In the Claws of the Eagle

by Aubrey Flegg

  He listened to their easy chat. Two were about his own age, eighteen or so, the others were in their twenties. Erich wished he could join them, but felt shy. He imagined them connected by some subtle bond – their ropes perhaps – a bond that didn’t include him. He had never been one for games and group activities; after experiencing Klaus’s scouts he had decided that he was a loner, but this was different.

  ‘Hey, I didn’t see you. Come and join us,’ the oldest of the group called out. Erich nearly said no, but they were all looking up at him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and slid down.

  ‘I’m Stephan.’ He introduced the others. ‘I saw your boots at the door – not tourist boots – climbing on your own? Sausage?’ Erich’s eyes widened. Stephan was holding out a whole sausage on his fork. He accepted it gratefully and bit into it; the juice burst into his mouth.

  ‘I’m just breaking them in,’ he mumbled. Then he realised that this sounded like bragging, and came clean. ‘They’re my first proper boots. I might try the tourist route tomorrow.’ To his relief, the conversation veered on to boots in general, soft nails versus hard nails, their plans for tomorrow, and then reminiscences of past climbs. Stephan had even been to the Himalayas. Erich sat like a mouse in a theatre, enthralled, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. He could go on listening to stories of snow and ice, and of vertical pitches on the sun-warmed rocks of the Dolomites forever.

  In the morning, before anyone else got up, he took his breakfast – a heel of bread – outside. Having just bought his boots, he was literally penniless and didn’t want the others offering him food again. He would let them go, and then take the tourist path to the top. It was cool and fresh, the rearing cliffs of the mountain rose almost vertically behind him. Would he ever have the courage to climb them … certainly not on his own. He discovered a tiny white flower, an edelweiss, in a crack at his feet; its petals were like velvet. He heard a voice above him.

  ‘One of our group couldn’t make it. If we had an extra man we could make up two ropes of three, would you like to join us?’ Stephan was standing looking down at him.

  Like! Of course he’d like … ‘But I’ve never been on a rope before!’ It was out now; his boots were all just a show.

  ‘No time like the present. If you decide you don’t like it, we will see you down.’

  Erich nearly objected that his grandfather said that he must always be able to climb down what he had climbed up, but he held his tongue.

  To begin with, Erich could have kicked himself for having agreed to come, but Stephan, the leader of his rope, was patient in showing him how to tie it onto his waist, and how to pay it out while Stephan climbed. Erich soon realised that the rope, far from being a quick way of pulling all three climbers to their doom, protected them and secured them to the rock. Just as he had imagined, the rope really was a living link between them all. His boots clicked neatly into the firm rock and he could feel the air under his heels. Gradually life took on a vertical dimension, a world where red-legged choughs did acrobatics and eagles soared.

  His last lesson that day was how to coil up the rope so it didn’t twist; the climb was over. They arrived back at the refuge in good time for Erich to start the trek back down into the valley. The others were staying on for another night. He wanted to linger, but he must be back in Vienna for classes on Monday. He said his thanks and was shouldering his rucksack when Stephan came up.

  ‘We’re not a club, just a group of friends, but any time you’d like to climb with us, this is my address; drop me a card. Some time I’ll tell you how difficult that climb you did today was, not bad for a pair of new boots!’

  Erich practically floated with pride all the way down into the valley.

  Piano smugglers

  Of all the bizarre expeditions! Izaac and Uncle Rudi were driving the breadth of Austria with a dismantled piano in the back seat of Rudi’s car! When they arrived at the border with Switzerland his uncle joked so much with the customs officials that Izaac began to be suspicious that Rudi was up to something. Then when they pulled into a junkyard and sold the old piano for a few Swiss francs, he was sure. But what Rudi’s game was he had no idea. It was only when they drove through the massive gates of one of the principal banks in Zurich that Izaac twigged. Sure enough, when Uncle Rudi lifted the floorboards of the car, there were the bags of gold coins that he had purchased for the family at the time of the Wall Street Crash.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t let you in on it, Izaac.’ Rudi whispered as the bank managers wound themselves about them, like cats being served cream. ‘I thought it better that you knew nothing about it. You might have given us away at the border!’ he chuckled.

  The money was counted, the bags carried off to the vaults, and the paperwork undertaken with Swiss precision. Then, amid assurances of confidentiality, an account was opened in the family name of Abrahams. A password was entered into a leather-bound ledger, and immediately locked away in a gigantic safe.

  Izaac drove most of the way home. The bank had given them a hearty lunch with plenty of wine, and Uncle Rudi, unfit to drive, was prone to sudden fits of giggles. Izaac was justifiably worried that he might tell the customs men on the way back how he had fooled them.

  It was, however, a cold sober Uncle Rudi who called the whole family together a day or two later and explained the situation and how they must handle it. Having learned that Jewish businesses were being targeted in Germany, he had thought it best that the family fortunes should be safe in a Swiss bank. He then gave them each a copy of the details of the bank, the account number, and, most importantly, the password. They were to memorise these before leaving the room. These were their passwords for a future. When half an hour was up he took their slips of paper, including his own, and burned them in the tiled stove that stood in a corner of the room.

  A Puppet in Hollywood

  Two years after Izaac’s aborted attempt to get to America, he set sail again. This time the trip was uneventful and the tour had been a resounding success. His name was now almost as well known internationally as it was back home in Austria. Last night, after an eventful day, he had given his final performance in all the glamour of a Hollywood celebrity concert.

  ‘Hey! Mr Abrahams sir, you have certainly hit the headlines today, sir.’ The man at reception was holding out The Hollywood Herald.

  ‘A review so soon?’ Izaac was surprised. He began to read. Austrian Violinist Quells Kids’ Riot in Beverly Hills ran the headline. So that was what it was about! Yesterday afternoon, when Austrian violinist, Izaac Abrahams, came to prepare for his evening concert at the Beverly Hills Palladium, he didn’t know that he would end up playing for five hundred excited kids. When puppeteer ‘Peter the Piper’ failed to show for his matinee performance, stage manager Shawn O’Dwyer thought he had a riot on his hands. Here is what the kids had to say:

  ‘Cool! Great!’ says Mark J. Sands Junior. ‘This guy walked on stage just like he was a puppet. Jerky steps, he has this violin, see, but whenever he gets it to his chin his right arm drops, or flies up in the air, so he looks up and gives out in German like to the man operating him, so like fools, we all look up too. When he gets his puppet strings straight he begins to play tunes, from musicals I guess. That violin, it’s only a little piece of wood, but the sound he can get out of it is something else.’

  Next I asked Amy Kit, whose dad works in the Disney studios:

  ‘I liked the time he looked like a duck – not Donald Duck – a sort of wild duck,’ she says, ‘and I liked when his violin turned into a python. Wow… it nearly got him.’

  So, today being the last day of Izaac Abraham’s West Coast tour, I asked him if he was anxious about going back home with all the trouble facing Jewish people in Germany. He said that Austria was different and that they would hold out against Hitler. He laughed and said that, anyway, he had someone to go home to.

  When the ship docked in Hamburg, Izaac took the train south through France and Switzerland; he didn’t want to trav
el through Germany again. He got up as the train wound down through the mountains, shaving carefully in the tiny wash-hand basin in his sleeper compartment. Then at last came the familiar suburbs of Vienna. He felt his pulse racing. Why did the train have to crawl? At last, the Westbahnhof. Would Gretchen be there? He lowered the window, searching the platform, and there she was, by a pillar, stretching up to see him over the crowd. He hurried to the door, overnight case in one hand and violin in the other, and here she came, flying down the platform towards him.

  Fear for Lives on the Adlerwand

  Sabine Hoffman strained to hear the voice of the newsreader, her face anxious.

  ‘Next, to news of Adlerwand, where fears are growing for the fate of the three men trapped on the face due to a fierce overnight storm.’

  Erich’s mother switched off the wireless. She would paint her way through this, as through every other crisis. The rest of Altaussee stayed glued to their sets.

  ‘After two days and two nights on the north wall of the Adler Mountain, watchers are beginning to fear for the lives of the three-man Austrian and German team who are attempting the first ascent of this awesome mountain face. ‘Only the North Face of the Eiger presents a greater challenge,’ opines a member of the Austrian Alpine Club, observing the climb from the alpine ski refuge at the mountain foot. The storm that lashed the mountain during the hours of darkness has left the face coated with fresh snow. Since daybreak there has been no sign of the climbers moving on the face. Local guides are preparing for a rescue operation, using the easier west face route. Despite objections from local alpinists, a German film crew is also planning this ascent. “We strongly oppose this ghoulish interest,” a spokesman says.’

  It had been the worst night that Erich had experienced on a mountain since he had begun serious climbing with Stephan three years ago. The storm had raged with demonic fury, lashing at the thin sheet of tenting that covered them. The ledge they were sitting on, a mere fifty centimetres wide, sloped out. Only short lengths of rope, attached to a single steel piton driven deep into a crack in the rock, prevented them from hurtling into the abyss below. During the height of the storm, lightning had struck at the face. Each strike had commenced with a terrible tingle, a blue light would hover about the steel piton, and then would come a jolt, and a flash that lit their terrified faces as the electrical discharge hit them. Then came the snow, hissing stealthily over their covering sheet.

  The storm passed and the first light of day filtered through. Long before the reporters and watchers below began to stir, they had had their breakfast. They forced down the last of their cold sausage. Apart from some chocolate, and some loose raisins, that was the end of their provisions. It was time to review their position. Up or down, they must escape from this terrible face today, before their strength failed.

  Their shelf represented a cul-de-sac. It was perched at the top of a vast, near vertical slab of smooth rock that offered no holds for hands or feet. Either they must go back, losing precious hours in the process, or they must find some way to cross this slab. Stephan was adamant.

  ‘We can’t go back, lads. If we do, we could lose half a day and won’t have time to go up or down. We have to cross it! Let’s give it a go; it might, just might, lead into a crack to the summit!’

  It took them some time to arrange the rope to Stephan’s satisfaction. Erich remembered doing something similar as a boy, using a rope that was tied to a lamp post as a swing. Having moved back along the shelf to get as wide a swing as possible, Stephan was nerving himself. A two-thousand-foot fall down nearly vertical rock waited him if anything went wrong.

  Then he was off, hurtling in a wide downward arc, swinging across the slab, his feet half running, half scrabbling at the surface. He stretched out; a centimetre more and he would be able to grab the far edge of the slab with his fingers, but he was just that little too short, and swung back like a pendulum, spinning and bouncing off the rock, cursing and swearing. Then, without hesitating, and taking advantage of the momentum of his backward swing, he lunged forward to try again. The rope – stretched to its limit – crackled with the strain, then his hands were on the edge, and with a heave he pulled himself forward to straddle the edge like a rider on a rearing horse. He looked over the far side.

  Erich and Herbert hardly dared to breathe.

  ‘It looks good!’

  Relief flooded through them. Erich pounded Herbert on the back in delight. Joining Stephan was easy; they would slide along the rope like a cable car, pulling themselves towards him. Once they pulled the rope after them, however, there would be no going back.

  Light was just creeping into the valley below when the three climbers came together on a perilous ledge and looked up. A cleft, like an open book, soared above them. Clearly this was the way to the summit; the only trouble was that it was choked with fresh snow.

  ‘Before we cut off our retreat I’m going to test that snow,’ Stephan said. He probed ahead with his ice axe. Perhaps it was this, perhaps it was the sound of his voice, but at that moment they heard a snap and a rumble. While the others hauled Stephan bodily back onto the ledge and hunched over him, the whole mass of snow began to move. Compressed air from the avalanche snatched at them as the night’s snow thundered past them down the cleft, to burst out over the face below.

  Down in the valley the watchers rushed out. Could anybody on the face have withstood such an event? Two rescue parties got ready, one to search the avalanche debris, and the other to climb up by the west ridge to see what help might be given from the top. Against all advice, the German camera crew went too.

  Out of sight from below, hidden in the now snow-free cleft, the three climbers began to edge their way up, rope’s-length after rope’s-length. For six hours they battled against gravity. As the day warmed, stones, loosened from the melting ice, rattled and crashed down the cleft, leaving a smell of gunpowder in the air. Fortunately it was so steep that the stones usually bounced clear, buzzing past them like dangerous bees. They reached their last obstacle at about the same time as, unknown to them, their would-be rescuers arrived at the summit. A huge overhanging wave of frozen snow – the cornice – hid them from above and blocked their exit from the face.

  Stephan, exhausted, asked Erich to take the lead. Somehow he would have to burrow through this roof of snow without bringing the whole lot of it down on himself and his companions. Working with his ice axe above his head, snow pouring over him and down his neck, he cut into the snow above. Black spots of exhaustion danced in front of his eyes. When at last he could see light shining through the snow he knew that with one more blow he would be through, but would that last blow bring the cornice crashing down? Working delicately, he shaved through the last inches. Blue sky filled the opening circle above him. He dug in his axe and lifted his shoulders clear, one careful heave and he would be out. At that moment he heard a shout. There were people up here on the summit. Someone had seen him emerging, and was running towards him.

  ‘Stop!’ he roared. ‘Get back! You’re on the cornice!’

  There were other warning shouts too. The man halted a few yards away, a hand out as if to help. Erich blinked; surely he was hallucinating. It looked like Klaus Steinman! Erich shut the hallucination from his mind and wriggled out of his hole like a seal on to ice. And like a seal he humped himself away from the delicate cornice. When he was sure he was on solid snow he drove the shaft of his ice axe deep into it, looped the rope around it, and gave two sharp pulls to tell Stephan it was safe to come on up.

  Even while he was drawing in Stephan’s rope, the Klaus figure was around him, trying to shake his hand, even to help pull on the rope. Then he was gone; the alpine guides had moved in to keep the area clear.

  Stephan emerged, hardly able to heave himself over the edge, and then Herbert. Now the guides were all about them, shaking hands, offering hot drinks, and sincere words of congratulation.

  Erich only gradually became aware that Klaus was real. He could see him now, talki
ng animatedly to the lens of a camera, dressed head to toe in fashionable climbing gear. One of the camera crew came over to ask the climbers to pose for them. Love of the world and affection for his companions was flooding Erich: this was the moment of euphoria that made climbers climb. Let them do what they wanted. He had no idea what he was saying to the camera. Klaus posed the questions, and provided answers for him when he hesitated. He agreed that this was a triumph for the Greater Germany, after all Herbert was a German. He put his arms over the shoulders of his fellow climbers and they smiled as best they could with cracked lips and wind-stiffened faces.

  None of them saw the newsreel film as it was shown in German cinemas, where the mountain appeared to be hung about with swastikas, and where it wasn’t all that clear whether Klaus Steinman was or wasn’t one of the party; he was certainly the best dressed.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Purity of the Race

  ‘Louise,’ Izaac said, ‘I think I should propose to Gretchen.’

  ‘And about time too!’ said Louise in return. ‘What have you been waiting for?’

  ‘Perhaps I felt I was too old for her.’

  ‘Nonsense, what is she now, twenty-three, for your twenty-seven? What’s four years! When will you ask her?’

  ‘I thought I would go out to Mödling. Perhaps I should see her father first. He might object.’

  ‘Not from what I’ve heard her saying, but her half-brother Klaus would be another matter. Off you go then; you can do this one on your own.’

  When Izaac had gone, Louise stretched her arms wide, then hugged hersel in pure joy at their future happiness together. She had grown very fond of Gretchen, just as she had loved Colette nearly a century and a half ago. Izaac and she would be perfect for each other. Gretchen might look as light as thistledown, but she had a steely quality that Izaac needed.