“And if we must escape on our own,” said Fito, “we will need strength or we will die on the slopes.”
“Fito is right,” I said, “and if the bodies of our friends can help us to survive, then they haven’t died for nothing.”
The discussion continued all afternoon. Many of the survivors—Liliana, Javier, Numa Turcatti, and Coche Inciarte among others, refused to consider eating human flesh, but no one tried to talk the rest of us out of the idea. In the silence we realized we had reached a consensus. Now the grisly logistics had to be faced. “How will this be done?” asked Pancho Delgado. “Who is brave enough to cut the flesh from a friend?” The fuselage was dark now. I could see only dimly lit silhouettes, but after a long silence someone spoke. I recognized the voice as Roberto’s.
“I will do it,” he said.
Gustavo rose to his feet and said quietly, “I will help.”
“But who will we cut first?” asked Fito. “How do we choose?”
We all glanced at Roberto.
“Gustavo and I will take care of that,” he replied.
Fito got up. “I’ll go with you,” he said.
“I’ll help, too,” said Daniel Maspons, a wing forward for the Old Christians and a good friend of Coco’s.
For a moment no one moved, then we all reached forward, joined hands, and pledged that if any of us died here, the rest would have permission to use our bodies for food. After the pledge, Roberto rose and rummaged in the fuselage until he found some shards of glass, then he led his three assistants out to the graves. I heard them speaking softly as they worked, but I had no interest in watching them. When they came back, they had small pieces of flesh in their hands. Gustavo offered me a piece and I took it. It was grayish white, as hard as wood and very cold. I reminded myself that this was no longer part of a human being; this person’s soul had left his body. Still, I found myself slow to lift the meat to my lips. I avoided meeting anyone’s gaze, but out of the corners of my eyes I saw the others around me. Some were sitting like me with the meat in their hands, summoning the strength to eat. Others were working their jaws grimly. Finally, I found my courage and slipped the flesh into my mouth. It had no taste. I chewed, once or twice, then forced myself to swallow. I felt no guilt or shame. I was doing what I had to do to survive. I understood the magnitude of the taboo we had just broken, but if I felt any strong emotion at all, it was a sense of resentment that fate had forced us to choose between this horror and the horror of certain death.
Eating the flesh did not satisfy my hunger, but it calmed my mind. I knew that my body would use the protein to strengthen itself and slow the process of starvation. That night, for the first time since we’d crashed, I felt a small flickering of hope. We had come to grips with our grim new reality, and found that we had the strength to face an unimaginable horror. Our courage gained us a small measure of control over our circumstances, and bought us precious time. There were no illusions now. We all knew our fight for survival would be uglier and more harrowing than we had imagined, but I felt, that as a group, we had made a declaration to the mountain that we would not surrender, and for myself, I knew that in a small, sad way, I had taken my first step back toward my father.
Chapter Five
Abandoned
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, our eleventh day on the mountain, I stood outside the fuselage, leaning against the Fairchild’s aluminum hull. It was a clear morning, about half past seven, and I was warming myself in the first rays of the sun, which had just risen above the mountains to the east. Marcelo and Coco Nicholich were with me, and so was Roy Harley, a tall, swift wing-forward for the Old Christians. At eighteen, Roy was one of the youngest passengers on the plane. He was also the closest thing we had to an electronics expert, having once helped a cousin install a complicated stereo system in his house. Just after the crash, Roy had found a battered transistor radio in the litter of the wreckage, and with a little tinkering he had coaxed it back to life. In the rocky cordillera, reception was very poor, but Roy fashioned an antenna from electrical wires he had stripped from the plane, and with a little effort we were able to tune in stations from Chile. Early each morning, Marcelo would wake Roy and lead him out onto the glacier, where he would manipulate the antenna while Roy worked the dial. Their hope was to hear news about the progress of rescue efforts, but so far they had managed only to pick up soccer scores, weather reports, and political propaganda from stations controlled by the Chilean government.
This morning, like all the others, the signal faded in and out, and even when reception was at its best, the radio’s small speaker crackled with static. Roy did not want to waste the batteries, so, after fiddling with the dial for several minutes, he was about to turn the radio off when we heard, through all the buzzing and popping, the voice of an announcer reading the news. I don’t recall the exact words he used, but I will never forget the tinny sound of his voice and the dispassionate tones with which he spoke: After ten days of fruitless searching, he said, Chilean authorities have called off all efforts to find the lost Uruguayan charter flight that disappeared over the Andes on October 13. Search efforts in the Andes are simply too dangerous, he said, and after so much time in the frigid mountains, there is no chance that anyone still survives.
After a moment of stunned silence, Roy cried out in disbelief, and then began to sob.
“What?” cried Marcelo. “What did he say?”
“Suspendieron la búsqueda!” Roy shouted. “They have canceled the search! They are abandoning us!” For a few seconds Marcelo stared at Roy with a look of irritation on his face, as if Roy had spoken gibberish, but when Roy’s words sank in, Marcelo dropped to his knees and let out an anguished howl that echoed through the cordillera. Reeling from shock, I watched my friends’ reactions with a silence and sense of detachment that an observer might have mistaken for composure, but in fact I was falling to pieces, as all the claustrophobic fears I’d been struggling to contain were now bursting free, like floodwaters over a crumbling dam, and I felt myself being swept toward the brink of hysteria. I pleaded with God. I cried out to my father. Driven more powerfully than ever by the animal urge to sprint off blindly into the cordillera, I manically scanned the horizon as if, after ten days on the mountain, I might suddenly spot an escape route I hadn’t seen before. Then, slowly, I turned west and faced the tall ridges that blocked me from my home. With new clarity, I saw the terrible power of the mountains. What foolishness it had been to have thought that an untested boy like me could conquer such merciless slopes! Reality bared its teeth for me now, I saw that all my dreams of climbing were nothing more than a fantasy to keep my hopes alive. Out of terror and defiance, I knew what I had to do: I would run to a crevasse and leap into the green depths. I’d let the rocks smash all the life and fear and suffering from my body. But even as I pictured myself falling into silence and peace, my eye was on the western ridges, guessing at distances and trying to imagine the steepness of the slopes, and the cool voice of reason was whispering in my ear: That gray line of rock might give some good footing.… There might be some shelter under that outcrop just below that ridge.…
It was a kind of madness, really, clinging to hopes of escape even though I knew escape was impossible, but that inner voice gave me no other choice. Challenging the mountains was the only future this place would allow me, and so, with a sense of grim resolve that was now more ferociously entrenched than ever before, I accepted in my heart the simple truth that I would never stop fighting to leave this place, certain the effort would kill me, but frantic to start the climb.
Now, a frightened voice drew my attention. It was Coco Nicholich, standing at my side.
“Nando, please, tell me this is not true!” he stammered.
“It is true,” I hissed. “Carajo. We are dead.”
“They are killing us!” cried Nicholich. “They are leaving us here to die!”
“I have to leave this place, Coco,” I cried softly. “I can’t stay here another minute!”<
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Nicholich nodded toward the fuselage. “The others have heard us,” he said. I turned and saw several of our friends emerging from the plane.
“What’s the news?” someone called out. “Have they spotted us?”
“We have to tell them,” whispered Nicholich.
We both glanced at Marcelo, who sat slumped in the snow. “I can’t tell them,” he mumbled. “I can’t bear it.”
The others were closer now.
“What’s going on?” someone asked. “What did you hear?”
I tried to speak, but my words caught in my throat. Then Nicholich stepped forward and spoke firmly, despite his own fear. “Let’s go inside,” he said, “and I’ll explain.” We all followed Coco back into the fuselage and gathered around him. “Listen, guys,” he said, “we have heard some news. They have stopped looking for us.” The others were stunned by Coco’s words. Some of them cursed, and some began weeping, but most simply stared at him in disbelief.
“But don’t worry,” he continued, “this is good news.”
“Are you crazy?” someone shouted. “This means we are stuck here forever!” I felt panic gathering in the group, but Coco kept his head and continued.
“We have to stay calm,” he said. “Now we know what we have to do. We have to rely on ourselves. There’s no reason to wait any longer. We can start making plans to get out on our own.”
“I have made my plans,” I snapped. “I am leaving this place now! I will not die here!”
“Calm down, Nando,” said Gustavo.
“Fuck no, I will not calm down! Give me some meat to carry. Someone lend me another jacket. Who will come with me? I will go by myself if I have to. I will not stay here another second!”
Gustavo took my arm. “You’re talking nonsense,” he said.
“No, no, I can do it!” I pleaded. “I know I can. I will climb out of here, find help … but I have to go now!”
“If you go now, you will die,” Gustavo replied.
“I am dead if I stay here!” I said. “This place is our graveyard! Death touches everything here. Can’t you see it? I can feel its hands on me! I can smell its fucking breath!”
“Nando, shut up and listen!” shouted Gustavo. “You have no winter gear, you have no experience at climbing, you are weak, we don’t even know where we are. It would be suicide to leave now. These mountains would kill you in a day.”
“Gustavo is right,” said Numa. “You are not strong enough yet. Your head is still cracked like an egg. You would be throwing your life away.”
“We have to go!” I shouted. “They have given us a death sentence! Are you just going to wait here to die?” I was rummaging through the fuselage blindly, searching for anything—gloves, blankets, socks—that I thought would help me on the trek, when Marcelo spoke to me softly. “Whatever you do, Nando,” he said, “you must think of the good of the others. Be smart. Don’t waste yourself. We are still a team, and we need you.” Marcelo’s voice was steady, but there was a sadness in it now, a sense of wounded resignation. Something inside him had shattered when he heard that the search had been canceled, and it seemed that in moments he had lost the strength and confidence that had made him such a trusted leader. Leaning against the wall of the passenger cabin now, he seemed smaller, grayer, and I knew he was slipping rapidly into despair. But my respect for him was still very deep, and I could not deny the wisdom of his words, so, reluctantly, I nodded in agreement and found a place to sit beside the others on the fuselage floor.
“We all need to stay calm,” said Gustavo, “but Nando is right. We will die if we stay here, and sooner or later we will have to climb. But we must do it in the smartest way. We must know what we’re up against. I say two or three of us climb today. Maybe we can get a look at what lies beyond these mountains.”
“It’s a good idea,” said Fito. “On the way, we can look for the tail section. There might be food and warm clothing inside. And if Roque is right, the batteries for the radio are there, too.”
“Good,” said Gustavo. “I will go. If we leave soon, we can be back before the sun goes down. Who is coming with me?”
“I am,” said Numa, who had already survived the first attempt to climb the western slopes.
“Me too,” said Daniel Maspons, one of the brave ones who helped cut the flesh.
Gustavo nodded. “Let’s find the warmest clothes we can, and get started,” he said. “Now that we know the score, there is no time to lose.”
It took Gustavo less than an hour to organize the climb. Each of the climbers would carry a pair of the seat-cushion snowshoes that Fito had invented, and a pair of the sunglasses Fito’s cousin Eduardo had made by cutting lenses from tinted plastic sun visors in the cockpit and stringing them together with copper wire. The snowshoes would keep the climbers from sinking into the soft snow, and the sunglasses would shield their eyes from the fierce glare of the sun on the snow-covered slopes. Otherwise they were poorly protected. They wore only sweaters pulled over light cotton shirts and thin summer trousers. They all wore lightweight moccasins on their feet. The others would be climbing in canvas sneakers. None of them wore gloves, and they had no blankets with them, but it was a clear day, winds were light, and the bright sun warmed us enough to make the mountain air bearable. If the climbers stuck to their plan and returned to the Fairchild before sundown, the cold should not be a danger.
“Pray for us,” Gustavo said, as the climbers set off. Then we watched the three of them stride across the glacier toward the high summits in the distance, following the path the Fairchild had plowed through the snow. As they made their way slowly up the slope and into the distance, their bodies grew smaller and smaller until they were just three tiny specks inching their way up the white face of the mountain. They seemed as small and fragile as a trio of gnats as they climbed, and my respect for their courage had no end.
All morning we watched them climb, until they disappeared from view, then we kept vigil until late afternoon, scouring the slopes for any signs of movement. As the light faded there was still no sign of them. Then darkness fell and the bitter cold forced us back into the shelter of the fuselage. That night, stiff winds battered the Fairchild’s hull and forced jets of snow in through every chink and crevice. As we huddled and shivered in our cramped quarters, our thoughts were with our friends on the open slopes. We prayed earnestly for their safe return, but it was hard to be hopeful. I tried to imagine their suffering, trapped in the open in their flimsy clothes, with nothing to shield them from the killing wind. All of us knew very well what death looked like now, and it was easy for me to imagine my friends lying stiff in the snow. I pictured them like the bodies I’d seen at the burial site outside the fuselage—the same waxy, blue-tinged pallor on the skin, the senseless, rigid faces, the crust of frost clinging to the eyebrows and the lips, thickening the jaw, whitening the hair.
I saw them that way, lying motionless in the dark, three more friends who were now mere frozen things. But where, exactly, had they fallen? This question began to fascinate me. Each had found the exact moment and place of his death. When was my moment? Where was my place? Was there a spot in these mountains where I would finally fall and lie like the rest, frozen forever? Was there a place like this for each of us? Was this our fate, to lie scattered in this nameless place? My mother and sister here at the crash site; Zerbino and the others on the slopes; the rest of us wherever we lay when death decided to take us? What if we learned that escape was impossible? Would we simply sit here and wait to die? And if we did, what would life be like for the last few survivors, or, worse, for the very last one? What if that last one was me? How long could I stay sane, sitting alone in the fuselage at night, with only ghosts for company, and the only sound the constant growl of the wind? I tried to silence these thoughts by joining the others in another prayer for the climbers, but in my heart I wasn’t sure whether I was praying for their safe return or simply for the grace of their souls, for the grace of all our souls, becaus
e I knew that even as we lay in the relative safety of the fuselage, death was closing in. It is only a matter of time, I told myself, and perhaps the ones on the mountain tonight are the lucky ones, because for them the wait is over.
“Maybe they have found some shelter,” someone said.
“There is no shelter on that mountain,” Roberto replied.
“But you climbed, and you survived,” someone pointed out.
“We climbed in daylight and still we suffered,” Roberto answered. “It must be forty degrees colder up there at night.”
“They are strong,” someone offered. Others nodded and, out of respect, held their tongues. Then Marcelo, who had not spoken for hours, broke the silence.
“It’s my fault,” he said softly. “I have killed you all.”
We all understood his despondency and had seen this coming.
“Don’t think that way, Marcelo,” said Fito. “We all share the same fate here. No one blames you.”
“I chartered the plane!” Marcelo snapped. “I hired the pilots! I scheduled the matches and persuaded you all to come.”
“You did not persuade my mother and my sister,” I said. “I did that, and now they’re dead. But I cannot take the blame for this. It’s not our fault that a plane falls from the sky.”
“Each of us made his own choice,” someone said.
“You are a good captain, Marcelo, don’t lose heart.”
But Marcelo was losing heart, very rapidly, and it troubled me to see him in such misery. He had always been a hero to me. When I was in grade school, he was already a rugby standout for Stella Maris, and I loved watching him play. He had a commanding, enthusiastic presence on the field and I always admired the joy and confidence with which he played the game. Years later, when I found myself playing beside him for the Old Christians, my respect for his athletic gifts only deepened. But it was more than his rugby prowess that won my respect. Like Arturo, Marcelo was different from the rest of us, more principled, more mature. He was a devout Catholic who followed all the teachings of the Church and tried his best to live a virtuous life. He was not a self-righteous person; in fact, he was one of the humblest guys on the team. But he knew what he believed, and often, using the same authority and quiet charisma with which he pushed us to be better teammates, he would coax us to be better men. He was constantly chiding Panchito and me, for example, about our restless obsession with the opposite sex. “There is more to life than chasing girls,” he would tell us with a wry smile. “You two need to grow up a little, and get serious about your lives.”
Miracle in the Andes Page 10