by James Salter
Suddenly his foot slipped off. He caught himself.
“Now, don’t get stupid,” he muttered. “You can do this. You could do this blindfolded.” He looked up. There was a piton. Just get to that. It had been climbed before, he told himself, it had been climbed many times.
“A little farther …There.”
He clipped a carabiner in and tied to it. He was breathing hard. More than that, he was chastened. He pulled up his pack.
On top, finally, was a ledge, a good one. He paused to calm himself. It was late. If he went on, he might be caught by darkness. It was better, he decided, to bivouac here.
The stars that night were brilliant. From the ledge he gazed up at them. They were very bright—their brightness might be a warning. It could mean a change of weather. It was cold, but was it that cold? He could not be sure. He felt secure but utterly alone. Within himself, over and over again he was turning the vow to climb this pillar. The higher he went, the icier it would become.
The difficult part lay ahead. In a corner of his mind he was already abandoning the attempt. He could not allow that corner to spread. He tried to stop thinking. He could not.
In the morning it took him nearly an hour to sort out his things. It was very cold. There is a way of climbing dangerous pitches with the rope tied in a large loop and clipped to pitons along the way, but it means going back down to unclip and takes time. He tried this once or twice but found it clumsy and quit.
The rock was now glazed with ice. He had to clear the holds; even then a thin covering sometimes remained. This part of the Walker the sun did not reach. Several times he slipped. Talking to himself, reciting, cursing, he kept on, stopping to read the route description whenever he could …65 ft. with overhang. The folds had begun to tear.
He began the overhang. The pack was pulling him backward, off the face. He was afraid, but the mountain does not recognize fear. He hammered in a piton and clipped an étrier to it. He waited, letting the venom drain from his blood, and blew on his fingertips stinging from the cold. The Gray Tower was still ahead.
The ice became worse. Things he could have done with ease were dangerous, even paralyzing. Off to the west there were clouds. He was nervous, frightened. He had begun to lose belief in the possibility of going on. The long, vertical reaches beneath him were pulling at his feet. Suddenly he saw that he could be killed, that he was only a speck. His chest was empty, he kept swallowing. He was ready to turn back. The rock was implacable; if he lost his concentration, his will, it would not allow him to remain. The wind from yesterday was blowing. He said to himself, come on, Cabot would do this. The kid at the Choucas.
At the foot of the Tower was a difficult traverse. Slight holds, icy footing, the exposure severe. There are times when height isn’t bad, when it exhilarates. If you are frightened it is another story.
He was standing with one foot on a small knob. Above was a steep slab with a crack running up it. He began chopping it clean with his ax. He started up. The footholds were off to the side, no more than the rims of faint scars, sometimes only a fraction of an inch deep. He had to clear these, too. His toe kept slipping. The crack had begun to slant, forcing him out on the slab.
There was nothing to hold to. He tried to put in a piton, bits of ice hitting him in the face. There were only ten feet more, but the rock was slick and mercilessly smooth. Beneath, steeply tilted, the slab shot out into space.
His hand searched up and down. Everything was happening too fast, nothing was happening. The ice had weaknesses but he could not find them. His legs began to tremble. The secret one must keep despite everything had begun to spill, he could not prevent it. He was not going to be able to do this. He knew it. The will was draining from him.
He had the resignation of one condemned. He knew the outcome, he no longer cared, he merely wanted it to end. The wind had killed his fingers.
“You can do it,” he said, “you can do it.”
He was clinging to the face. Slowly his head bent forward to rest against it like a child resting against its mother. His eyes closed. “You can do it,” he said.
They came up the meadow to find him. He was sitting in the sunlight in a long-sleeved undershirt and faded pants like a convalescent.
“What turned you back? Was it the weather?”
“No,” he answered slowly, as if he might have forgotten. There was nothing to withhold. He waited silently.
“Technical problems …,” someone suggested.
He could hear the faint whirring of a camera. The microphone was being held near.
“There was ice up there, but it wasn’t that.” He looked at one or another of them. A summer breeze was moving the meadow grass. “I didn’t prepare,” he said, “that was the trouble. I wasn’t ready. I lacked the courage.”
It was true. Something had gone out of him.
“But turning back takes courage.”
He nodded. “Not as much as going on.”
“What will you do now? What plans do you have?”
“I don’t know, really.”
“Will you stay in Chamonix?”
“I’d like to get away for a little rest, I think.”
“To the States?”
He smiled slightly. “Perhaps,” he said.
As they were packing to leave, one of the journalists came over to him.
“I don’t know if you heard the news. It just came this morning.”
“What news?”
“Your friend, Cabot …”
“What about him?”
The air itself seemed to empty.
“He fell.”
“Fell? Where?”
“In Wyoming, I think.” He turned to someone else. “Wyoming, n’est-ce pas? Où Cabot est tombé.”
It was Wyoming.
“The Tetons,” Rand said.
“Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“Yes, sure it was the Tetons. Was he hurt?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“I think very.”
The blood was slipping from his face. “But he’s alive.”
A faint shrug.
“You don’t know?”
“Yes, he’s alive.”
“How far did he fall?” Rand cried.
“It’s not certain. A long way.”
33
HE HAD SLEPT ALL afternoon, or nearly. He was listless, exhausted. The days seemed long.
Toward evening he wrote some letters. He stood on the steps of the post office after it had closed. Faces he recognized passed. He was not sure what he felt, if he was merely nervous and depressed or if the curve of life itself had turned downward. From the outside he seemed unchanged, his face, his clothes, more—his rank. He remained, in the eyes of some, a legend. Il faut payer.
Later that night, in a café near the center of town, he saw a familiar face. It was Nicole Vix, alone. She looked older. There were circles beneath her eyes. For a moment she glanced in his direction, their eyes met. It was a shock, like one of those relentless stories where as she goes down in the world he rises and years later they see one another again. He could hardly believe this was the woman for whom he was racked with longing that first, hard winter. She was worn, dispirited. Her moment had passed. He had an impulse to go over to her—she was someone who had been important to him in a way, someone he remembered.
“Hello.” She looked up. “Are you still working at the bank?” he asked her.
“Pardon?”
“Do you still work at the bank?”
“No,” she said, as if she had never seen him before.
“Where are you now?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t you remember me?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
In that instant he tasted a bitterness that was intense.
If he could have left that night, he would have. He had finally turned toward home, his thoughts were all there. Still, they nodded to him as he came along
the path from the Biolay in the morning, raised their hands in greeting behind shop windows. He felt like someone who had retired. A strange music—final chords—hung over the town.
On a Sunday he came down the road carrying his things. The lowest field was filled with buses, they were parked in ranks. The people who had come on them had not even wandered off. They were having picnics on card tables. Men in undershirts were lying in the grass, their wives or girl friends minding children.
At the hotel across from the station were two busloads of Japanese. They were getting out to have lunch at long tables set beneath the trees. All of them were neatly dressed, polite. The women wore sweaters. Many were young.
He stopped among them as if they were children. He was a head taller. He spoke to them in French. At first they did not answer, they were too shy, but his voice and manner were so friendly that soon they began to respond. Would they like a souvenir of Chamonix, he asked? He unfastened his pack and took out his pitons—they were used for climbing, up there, in the mountains, he explained. They were put in the rock.
“Ahh,” they said, politely.
“Here. Like this.”
“Ah!” They were giggling, talking. “Weight heavy.”
“Very heavy. Take it, it’s for you.” He was handing them out.
“Oh, thank you. Thank you.”
“Where are you from?”
“Kyoto.”
“Here, take it. You, too.” He was giving it away, the worn steel he had driven into granite that faces blue air. “This one,” he said, “was used on the Dru.”
They tried to understand him. Ah, yes. The Dru.
34
CATHERIN STEPPED FROM THE doorway and into the sunlight. Her car was across the way near a small park surrounded by trees—really not much more than a place where three streets came together. The grass was always tall and untended. Though it faced Vigan’s house, was only a few feet away, she had never entered it. She was searching for her keys when she noticed someone sitting in the shade. From the first moment she recognized him. She waited there, her heart racing nervously, as he rose and came toward her.
“Hello, Catherin,” he said.
He had changed from the last time she had seen him, even from the interviews on television. She could not tell what it was. She greeted him more or less calmly, hardly conscious of what she was saying.
“You look surprised to see me,” he said.
“Not really.”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“What letter?”
“I wrote to you, it was at least a week ago.”
“I never received it,” she said simply.
“That’s strange.” He waited. “Well, I said I might be coming, that’s all.”
She began to look for her keys again. He stood there. His letter had not reached her, nor in a sense had he. There was a distance between them, the invisible distance between what we possess and what we will never possess. She was even dressed differently. She was wearing clothes he had never seen before.
“How long have you been here?” she asked, not looking up from her handbag. Vigan had left the house only an hour earlier. The cook had then come. “Did you just arrive?”
“I got here at about eight this morning.”
“I see.”
“I walked around town for a while …”
“I see.”
“Not really. What are you looking for?”
“I have them,” she announced, holding them up. “How did you find the house? Well, you had the address, I suppose.”
“It’s no secret, is it?”
“No.”
“How have you been?” he said.
“Very well. And you? You look a little tired.”
“I’ve been traveling.”
“From where?”
“Chamonix.”
“Yes, of course.”
“How’s your baby?” he asked.
“He’s fine.”
“What did you name him?”
“Jean,” she said, the way the French say it.
“Jean.” He repeated it once or twice. “How did you pick Jean?”
“It goes with Vigan,” she said.
“Ah. What …” He found himself hesitating. “What does he look like?”
“He looks a bit like you.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
She had nothing for him, he could see that. Nothing remained. She was cool, disinterested. She had already assumed the beauty that belongs to strangers.
“Do you think I could see him?”
She did not reply. Within her was confusion. Further, she was nervous—someone coming along the street might see them standing here. Vigan himself might return. Ever since the baby had come he was more affectionate and unpredictable. He might turn the corner at any moment with a huge bunch of flowers on the seat beside him. And yet, here before her was the weary, unforgettable face of the man who was the father, who would always be.
“Well?”
“I don’t think you should have come,” was all she could say.
“I had to.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“It was now or never,” he said simply.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going home.”
She felt a shock go through her. Even though he had abandoned her, he was now doing more, he was vanishing forever from her world.
“When are you going?”
“Tomorrow. I just came to say good-bye.”
“Ah, well. He’s asleep,” she said. “He’s taking his morning nap. Besides, the cook is there.”
“I don’t want to see the cook.”
“Look, it’s very difficult.”
He said nothing. He had only a mild desire to see his child, it was merely curiosity, but the brevity, the calmness of her refusal was killing him.
“You know, I’m getting married,” she said. “Henri is going to adopt him.”
“When?”
“In the fall.”
“So I may never see him again. This could be the last time.”
It was everything, his worn clothes, the faint lines in his forehead, the innocence that clung to him no matter what. He was not weak, he was not begging, he stood there patiently.
“You must promise to go,” she said. “You must give me your word.”
“Don’t worry.”
“You promise?”
“You seem nervous about something. What is it? What do you think I’m going to do, steal him? I want to look at him, that’s all. Is that so much?”
“Wait here,” she said and went inside.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the street was empty. It was not hard to imagine he was elsewhere, in any small town, even Chamonix. Behind the walls and fences were little gardens, rows of green laid out in careful mounds. These houses, these villages, except for the antennas on the roofs, were unchanged from a century before. He had grown to love this country which was not his own. He felt a sudden overwhelming grief at the thought of leaving it. Something swept over him like a wave. He felt himself—his chest—beginning to crack, to fall apart. He could not help it. He loved her and this love had betrayed him. He stood there trying to withstand things: the houses, people passing, his own worthlessness. He wanted to run, to come back another time with his strength renewed, when he could hurt her somehow instead of suffering this useless longing, this regret.
Above him he heard a sound. He looked up.
The shutters of a window on the second floor had opened and after a moment Catherin appeared. In her arms she held her child. She stood as if alone, calm, unobserved. She was silent, focusing on it all her attention and love. From that distance Rand could barely discern its face. He could see the small hands, the pale hair. After a while Catherin looked down. The infant was moving its arms.
“What?”
She had said something, a silent word Rand could not make out. But s
he did not repeat it. Instead she drew the child closely to her, hesitated, and stepped back into the room. After a minute her hands reached out to close the shutters.
Catherin! he almost cried. It seemed as if all that had gone before was a journey, that the road had brought him here and ended. He did not know what to do. He stood there. Above him the leaves were sighing faintly, the weight of languorous hours upon them, of endless summer days.
It was in Grenoble on the way north that what she had said finally came to him, like a piece of a puzzle that is turned over and over and suddenly falls into place. He saw it plainly, the long blank wall of the house, the window, the small arms moving aimlessly, one simple word: good-bye.
35
A PALE AFTERNOON HUNG over the sea. It seemed that California was even more crowded, there were more people, more cars. The string of houses stretched farther up the coast. New businesses, signs. At the same time, he recognized it all. It was unchanged. Near Trancas a car slowed down to pick him up. The driver was a heavyset man in a rumpled suit. He’d come straight through from Mexico City, he said, heading for Seattle. He’d only stopped for gas.
“Where are you heading for?” he asked.
“Up to Santa Barbara.”
“You should have caught the local. What’s your name?”
“Rand. What’s yours?”
“Call me Tiger,” he said. He was balding, hair combed long across his scalp. He needed a shave. “Ever been to Mexico?”
“Not for a while.”
“I go there all the time. You can have a fabulous time in Mexico. It used to be you could see championship fights for five dollars. That was twenty years ago. Things have changed. When’s the last time you were there?”
“I’ve been in France.”
“Is that right?” he said. “Where were you, in Paris? I’ve been to Paris. I used to go there a lot. Are you going back?”