Is Magda’s mother Jewish?
It had never crossed Josef’s mind but now that it did, it suddenly explained so much left unsaid about her family’s journey to India. Continuing to eat in silence, Josef’s fantastic, ridiculous fantasy of climbing Mount Everest to claim Magda collapsed inside him as if punctured by the swastika pin.
At the end of the first course, the ship’s captain got to his feet and, calling for silence by tapping the side of his glass, welcomed the assembled diners, saying that sadly for some it would be their last as the ship would be arriving the next day at the Port of Bombay.
The news was met with a round of applause. As it died, Schmidt, by now on his second glass of wine, stood up and shouted loudly to the assembled room, “Heil India! Heil Hitler!” His salute was met with a resounding repetition from most of the assembled diners and more applause. As that too subsided, Josef noticed Magda’s father whisper something under his breath to his wife. She glanced at him with a flicker of alarm, faintly shaking her head before looking back down at her food.
Their daughter had stopped eating and, putting down her cutlery, was now staring directly at the still-standing Schmidt with a look of utter loathing. Schmidt, oblivious to her gaze, was inspired by the success of his toast. Calling for another glass of wine, he sat back down and began to loudly lecture the table on how it was an honor and a privilege to be able to lead fine young Germans to the mighty Himalayas, how wise and generous was a regime that supported such a venture.
Some of the table’s guests murmured approval at what Schmidt was saying until Magda, with an obviously forced smile and knowing full well from Josef the stated objectives of the expedition, said, “Professor Schmidt, please do tell us some more about your expedition. Is it to try to climb the mountain of Nanga Parbat once again? I imagine it is about time that some more fine young Germans died for the honor and privilege of placing our beloved führer’s proud flag on the top of that dreadful mound of snow and rock.” Undisguised sarcasm oozed from her precisely chosen words. Magda’s mother visibly tensed as her daughter spoke. Her father angled his head downward before looking up at her through greying eyebrows, lips pursed as if willing her, through his stare alone, to be silent.
The question flustered Schmidt for a moment before he responded abruptly, “No, young lady, it is not! How …” He checked himself, explaining to the rest of the table in a more magnanimous tone, “Actually it is as much a scientific expedition as it is a mountaineering venture, although, that being said, we do hope to visit the summits of a number of the still-unclimbed peaks of the Kangchenjunga massif.” Looking directly at Magda and her mother, he then said, “And when we do, I can assure you all that it will be my pleasure to see that our proud swastika does indeed fly from each. Who knows, you might even be able to see them all the way from Hyderabad.”
Josef was instantly concerned that Schmidt seemed to already know the von Triers’ destination, sure it hadn’t been mentioned during the dinner. A sense of unease took him, bringing with it the thought that perhaps his invitation had been deliberate when Schmidt had seen the von Triers were going to be at his table that evening.
Magda, with a look of unconcealed scorn, spoke to Schmidt again. “Do you not think it is somewhat frivolous, Professor Schmidt, to be sending young men up dangerous mountains instead of considering what is really happening in Germany? There is daily talk of war, visible evidence of murder, persecution, theft, and yet here you are”—she glanced again at Josef—“marching up mountains, waving your little flag without a care in the world. Your hubris is larger than any of the mountains you seek to climb. In fact, I find it to be greater than Mount Everest, the highest of them all. Actually my only real surprise is that you do not have that mountain on your pathetic list of planned conquests.”
Her words dropped onto the table, where the other guests slowly digested them in an anxious silence until Schmidt stood up and leaned across the table and stabbed a finger toward Magda to reinforce every word of his angry response. “There is absolutely nothing frivolous, young lady, about demonstrating to the world the superiority of Nazi Germany and its fine Aryan youth!” Retracting his finger, eyes scanning the other guests with an imploring look for support, he said to them in a more moderated tone, “I have read that the British climber George Leigh Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, would only say, ‘Because it’s there.’ Well, I say to you all, we, the Third Reich, should climb mountains because we are here, and the entire world should both see it and know it!”
The ship’s purser instantly shouted, “Bravo!” and, holding aloft his glass said, “Guests, we should drink to that!” Offering up, “Because we are here!” as a toast, he took a heavy swig of wine. The other diners drank, clinking their glasses, nervously laughing to shake off the discomfort of the exchange.
Schmidt continued to speak after emptying his own wineglass. “I have not the slightest doubt that just one good German could climb Everest itself if he set his mind to it, such is the strength of the Nazi will. Do you not agree, Josef Becker?”
The question jolted Josef.
Filled with alarm at Schmidt’s angry hint about his secret project and embarrassed at being drawn into the argument, he was not sure how to reply.
Magda quickly removed the need by standing up from the table and saying, “Mr. Becker, when you step on your summits on behalf of yourself and your Nazi colleagues, I only ask that you please be mindful of those who have been walked over in order to raise your flag of shame.”
Watching her stride away from the table, Josef could say nothing in return, stunned.
Schmidt’s face swelled with a red rage. He stared at Magda’s father before blurting in a spray of spittle, “That was an outrage, von Trier, an absolute outrage. A wayward daughter is most definitely not an asset, sir, particularly given her racial heritage. I will expect a full apology, or I will demand satisfaction of you.”
Von Trier, a proud, educated man who reminded Josef of the generalmajor in Garmisch said nothing as he looked back at the blustering Schmidt. In the absence of any response, the professor repeated, “An apology or satisfaction, do you hear me, sir?”
Magda’s father’s eyes narrowed. Then for all the table’s guests to see, he traced the tip of an index finger slowly down the line of a faint yet long scar on his left cheek, all the time continuing to stare Schmidt straight in the eye.
“Professor Schmidt, it is most definitely not in your best interest to demand satisfaction of a Prussian, whoever he might have married. I was a student at Heidelberg until the eve of the Great War, in which I fought for four long years. As you can see from my face, I bear a dueling scar that proves the stupidity of my university days. What you cannot see are my other scars that prove the stupidity of war. Even if you study only what you can see, you might think again about the wisdom of speaking to me in such a manner.”
With a conciliatory smile he turned to the other guests. “I hope that you will forgive my daughter’s little outburst. She merely fears for the future, as I think we all do to some degree. She is still young, and sadly her passion sometimes gets the better of her. I will see that she supplies each of you with a written apology. In the meantime, I would suggest to the entire table that we try not to let her behavior ruin this delicious dinner.”
Schmidt puffed himself up for a further response, but the ship’s purser cut across him with a loud exclamation of, “Hear! Hear! Now then, everyone, a good dinner shouldn’t be spoiled.” The purser then made a big show of calling for more wine in an attempt to further defuse the situation, his intervention allowing the other diners to return gladly to their food with an intense concentration that permitted little eye contact or conversation. Josef could see that Magda’s mother’s hands were trembling as she ate. Her father cut into his food, staring at Schmidt as if filleting one of the professor’s fleshy cheeks with his knife. Schmidt said nothing more for th
e rest of the meal.
41
The knock on Josef’s cabin door came at 1:00 a.m. As soon as he’d unlatched it, Magda pushed into the little room.
Standing before him, eyes red as if she had been crying since the dinner, she smacked him as hard across the cheek as she could. “That’s for deceiving me.”
Pushing past Josef, she walked to the porthole of his cabin and looked out at the calm sea and the black, star-filled horizon before hanging her head and resting her hand on the pile of books and notes on Josef’s desk. “I should hate you, but I can’t, and that makes me even angrier.”
“There is no reason for you to hate me, Magda.”
“But there is. I thought you were kind and good, just a young adventurer seizing an opportunity to do what he loves. But how can you be, really, if you are accompanying a man like Schmidt on an official German expedition?”
“I can’t tell you. You know as well as I that we have both been avoiding reality to pass the time.”
“But I have no choice. Mine is one of imprisonment and death.”
“And you think you are alone in that?”
“No, I share it with everyone of my mother’s blood. Do you also want to kill me because I am a mischling, a half-Jew?”
“Of course not. It means nothing to me. It never crossed my mind.”
“Well, now it must.”
“Magda, it makes no difference to me that you are part-Jewish. I have my own problems.”
“Staying alive on a mountain is not a comparable problem.”
“Of course it’s not. You should leave now.”
Magda picked up a book from the desk, looking at its cover. Turning back to Josef, she read aloud the title as a question “Der Kampf um den Everest?”
Josef instantly reached for the book, but she pulled it back from his outstretched hand.
“Was I right after all? Is this the opportunity you are really seizing?”
Exhausted, confused, totally disarmed by the soft, proud face before him, Josef sat on the edge of his bunk and, as if betraying an old love to a new one, said simply, “Yes, I am going to climb Mount Everest.”
“But how is this even possible?”
“I shouldn’t have told you. There are lives at stake here, lives that are precious to me.”
“Am I precious to you?”
“Yes.”
Letting the book drop onto Josef’s bunk, Magda took Josef’s hand, feeling the scar of his maimed finger in hers.
“Josef, I am never wrong about people. Tell me. I’m a strong person.”
He began to talk.
Slowly, precisely, Josef’s words guided Magda up the Paznaun to the coldblooded murder of his nine charges, including a little girl called Ilsa Rosenberg whom he, Josef Becker, had personally condemned to the worst death of them all. He continued to speak, pushing through his pain and guilt, to lead Magda back down again from that snowy godforsaken ridge to captivity, to torture, to more death, and finally blackmail. He explained every detail of his subsequent preparation for Operation Sisyphus as if reading from Pfeiffer’s own file. When he had finished, he pulled his hand from hers and said, “So that is it. Now you know everything.”
Looking at him with fresh tears in her eyes, Magda could only say, “I’m so sorry, Josef.”
Josef moved away from her to the small dressing table in his cabin and took something from its top drawer.
As he turned back to her he said, “Hold out your hands. Cup them together.”
Into her trembling hands Josef placed his edelweiss ring.
“This is me. I am the edelweiss, not the swastika.”
He closed Magda’s hands around the silver ring and then, gently taking her by the wrists, said, “Just as you are holding this ring in your hands, you also now hold me, my mother, my sisters. If you drop us we die, just like my friends, just like your own kind up on that hill. Are you truly strong enough to keep us safe?”
She said nothing, then kissed him tenderly.
Pulling back, she said, “I will hold you forever.”
Kissing Josef again with a passion, she pushed him back onto the bed.
Finch’s heavy book on Everest fell to the floor with a thud.
42
Avenue Michel Croz, Chamonix, France
September 12, 2009
6:45 p.m. (Central European Summer Time)
Walking past the Chamonix Alpine Museum, Quinn noticed that the leaves of the larch trees in the gardens were beginning to yellow and the evening was drawing in quicker. Summer was already ending.
Returning from Kathmandu, Quinn had stayed in London only long enough to organize with his bank that he could continue his overdraft and to collect his motorcycle from its lockup in South London.
In a desire to nurse the aging bike, he took a lazy southeasterly diagonal from Calais, across France, to the Alps, seeking out the slower, emptier Route Nationals, avoiding the traffic and the expensive péage of the autoroutes. After the tragedy and chaos of his Everest climb, it was refreshing to run the old GS down the straight, tree-lined roads, smelling the French countryside and feeling the moist, fresh air of the mornings change into the warm sun of the afternoons. For Quinn, a motorcycle trip was still the most effective way to put his mind in order. The long hours alone in the saddle allowed parallel journeys through thoughts and memories with enough time to arrive at positive conclusions, to look forward with hope rather than back in anger.
By the time he could see the first lights of Chamonix twinkling through the black silhouettes of the tall pines, the immense snowcapped hump of Mont Blanc glowing in the night sky above, he had convinced himself of a number of things: firstly, one day he was just going to keep going and ride that bike all the way to Cape Town; secondly, he was going to get to the bottom of the story of that old ice axe; and thirdly, above all, he had done everything he could for Nelson Tate Junior on that dreadful summit day.
Quinn had once heard Chamonix described as “the death capital of adventure sports.” Whether it was true or not, its outdoor industry,—so obsessed with the mortal pleasures of climbing, extreme skiing, BASE jumping, even wing-suit flying—lingered little on the death of its sportsmen. It seemed to include his recent Everest disaster within that category. Without even having to show Henrietta’s report on what happened with Nelson Tate Junior, Quinn was relieved to find that there was a lot of work waiting for him in Chamonix, and he threw himself into it. He led alpine courses teaching wide-eyed beginners to tie knots, to climb up, to rappel down, to use their sharp, new ice axes and crampons without maiming themselves or anyone else. He climbed a myriad of routes with a revolving selection of clients of varying abilities, equal only in the pink-faced exhilaration brought on by the intoxicating alpine cocktail of danger and beauty. He summited Mont Blanc and looked east across the tops of puffy clouds, over the occasional stabbing points of other peaks, toward the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa. A few weeks later, he summited the Matterhorn and looked back at the view in reverse as if studying a negative. On his days off, he teamed with other guides and made harder climbs on the Drus and the Grandes Jorasses, intent on discovering if he still had what it took. He did.
It was only at the end of the day when the payback came. In the evening, he would open his mail to receive the latest legal letter sent by Tate Senior’s camp. Aggressive and persistent, they talked of manslaughter and threatened ruin. At night, he struggled to sleep and when he did, it was fitful and haunted, hollowed out by revolving nightmares of death and failure on the Second Step that contradicted his belief that he had really done all he could to save the boy. When he awoke in the dark he would have to reach down from the bed to feel the carpeted floor of his room, tugging at the weave until convinced that he was not still up there. Only occasionally did he enjoy a happier, more colorful dream where he and Nelson Tate Junior summited and then descended
, laughing and joking, to a hero’s welcome. When that one ended, he desperately wanted to touch the floor and feel the cold rubble of the Rongbuk instead.
Quinn fought back by filling his restless nights with researching the old axe on the Internet. Quickly he found the details of every official national team that had ever gone near the mountain from the Tibetan side and, interspersed with it, the endless speculation as to whether Mallory and Irvine might have made it to the top so many years before Hillary and Tenzing. Digging further, he followed the threads of the other mysteries of the north side: the legend of Datschnolian and that “lost” 1952 Russian climb, the dispute over the veracity of the 1960 Chinese first summit from the north that produced no photographic proof, the lone wolves that went to the mountain, the Earl Denmans and the Maurice Wilsons of Everest lore.
Like a late-night scholar, he noted down the salient details of them all into a moleskin notebook, underlining the references to unexplained old high camps, ancient climbing equipment found abandoned all over the mountain, and the many theories and counter-theories of who might have left it there. Throughout it all, he was continually bounced back to the theories of what might have happened to George Leigh Mallory and Sandy Irvine. It ran and ran to a level of analysis and detail that would have put many doctorates to shame. Quinn even found an essay on how to handle their frozen camera if ever discovered. He scratched a sarcastic note to self across a page: “Keep it frozen at all costs—no airport X-rays either!!!”
However, despite all his studies, he drew a factual blank for Germans or Russians on Everest in those early years, so he decided to bait a few mountaineering forums to see if their chat might throw up something that he had missed. Taking inspiration from a beer mat on the table of the small apartment that Scottish guide Doug Martin was letting him share, Quinn converted its image of a grinning devil greedily eyeing a pint of a brew called Mephisto Ale into an anonymous sign-in of “Mephistopheles.” When asked also for numbers, he added “8848,” the height of Everest in meters.
Summit: A Novel Page 21