Mysterium

by Susan Froderberg

  “Sauce-making,” the porters call it. They had pointed at the tent Sara and Devin were in, the men standing about giggling like children.

  For Sherpas Mingma and Pasang, any jiggy-jiggy upon a sacred mountain is strictly forbidden and so foretokens punishment, especially among the unmarried. They gather stones and build a stupa to appease the goddess Sarasvati, decorating the mound with juniper boughs and colorful prayer flags. In front of the stupa they assemble a small altar, and here they place sticks of burning incense, asking the goddess to ensure safe passage for all to her summit. Though the most exalted virtue for the sahibs is victory, the highest good for the porters and Sherpas forever remains the blessing.

  Wilder watches Vida settling into her huff. He scratches his beard, looks up to the sky for signs of the impending. He feels nettled too at the sight of Sara and Devin all lovey-dovey together, feels it like a tussis, like something not properly healed. Devin had offered him a lone and steady friendship this trip, and now this comrade in arms is lost to him, with Sara the sole object of Devin’s scrutiny and care. Irony, I guess you would call it, Wilder thinks, for isn’t it a kind of leaving that Lucas had accused me of when Vida came into the picture? Didn’t I leave my twin brother for a new other half, as he called her? He looks up to the sky, blinks the snow from his eyes. Or did I partway leave my wife after Lucas died? He sees Vida sitting outside in the snow looking like a wing-tucked insect nabbed in a vast white net. He goes to her, stands there as if he has words of truth to speak, maybe something he has not been able to say. He covers his mouth to stifle a cough. She looks at him, squinting to keep the snow from striking her eyes.

  * * *

  THE SEVEN porters stand around moaning about their loads, though the weight of the carry is repacked to half of what each man has this far hauled. Wilder stoops to pick one of the bundles up to prove the task manageable, strapping the bulk onto his back and charging off in the lead. The porters grudgingly fix tumplines to their foreheads, lift the burdens, following Wilder. He leads them across the river over an old avalanche cone of snow and begins the climb up into the ravine.

  When the porters arrive to the fixed line at the steepest pitch in the gully all draw to a halt. They loosen headstraps and drop cargo without further ado, refusing now to carry any farther. The scree is loose and slippery, made worse with the cover of fresh snow. Adams encounters the frightened men as they are turned to head back to Base Camp, their loads abandoned. “Where is Sara?” he says.

  “Right behind,” Wilder says. “Likely right ahead of Devin.”

  Adams quickens his pace to her.

  “Sixteen thousand feet,” Sara says, heaving breath. “Feeling it.”

  “A thousand more to the ridge,” Devin says. “Halfway there.”

  “Wait,” Sara says. “To catch air.” She pauses for her breathing to settle, looking far below to tents turned vermilion dots in the hollow, bright as pricks of blood. “Wow, we’ve walked all the way up here from down there.”

  “Sara,” Adams says, intercepting the girl. “Talk to the porters,” he says. “They are transporters, not climbers or Sherpas, understood. But tell them the way is safe. Look, a rope is fixed for them to make it up the couloir. If I can do it, sexagenarian that I now am, so can they. Tell them we will not only double their pay, but triple it.”

  Sara makes clear to the men the offer. The porters turn to one another and opine among themselves. Two break from the group. They go to Sara, lower their heads, say they are sorry. No, they cannot do it. They have families who depend on them to return home. They bring hands together in prayer, and wait for her to speak. She hesitates, but gestures in return, giving them her blessing. The men thank her, both reaching out to touch the sleeve of her anorak. They turn to head down the ravine, back to Base Camp to collect their things.

  Wilder volunteers to get the other five porters up the ridge, assisting them into their waist harnesses, attaching to each harness a safety tether and mechanical ascender. With Sara as template, he shows the men where to clip the carabiner onto the static line above the device. Now tackled and coupled, Sara takes the lead, scrabbling up the cliff, sliding the metal link up on the rope as she proceeds, the long rope of her braided hair swaying side to side from beneath her knitted cap. Those below move out of line of the fall of loose rock, their necks craned and mouths hung open, gazing up at Sara’s ascension, as though the world of the vertical were most natural to her. She reaches the wand at the top of the line, plants her feet, and waves down to those who will follow, clouds of cumulus billowing above her head. “Come up,” she says, breathless. “Come up.” She stands at the top upright and proud, her arms held akimbo.

  One by one, each of the porters hefts his load, clips in, and jumars up the steep pitch. Animated by Sara, and delighted with their newly spawned mountaineering skills, they are nearly enthusiastic when they come to the next fixed line. Wilder and Devin go back to retrieve the abandoned cargo. Sara, trailed by Adams, leads the porters to the tent at the top of the ridge.

  * * *

  “THIS COULD not be a more inspiring place,” Sara says. Her father has just marched back to Ridge Camp, and Sara embraces him, both of them squashy and plump with down. “Aspiring,” she says, “I should say.”

  Troy points to the higher crest out across the glacier. “There,” he says, “is where we were. That’s where we’ve planted Advanced Camp.”

  “The new snow on the slope to getting there is unappealing,” Adams says.

  Reddy and Troy agree. “Avalanches began tumbling down last evening,” Reddy says. “We tested those wet slabs a little nervously coming back across. Best to wait until morning to make the crossing again. Before daybreak,” he says, “when the snow is good and hard.”

  The porters settle their hauls for stockpiling before the next shuttle up. Adams insists they return to the ridge early tomorrow with more carries. Sherpa Pasang opens up several of the cartons, humming a tune as he sorts through food and gear. He finds the snow shovel, and begins to expand Ridge Camp.

  “Fixed lines are in place,” Reddy says. “Pasang and I should go down to Base Camp and help the porters carry up supplies tomorrow. As it is, we will be back-and-forthing for the next many days. Professor, I leave you with the others tonight at this magnificent site.”

  “I should be up at Advanced again by the time you’re back,” Troy says. “I’ll start ferrying cargo from here to there before dawn.”

  “And from there we begin the assault,” Wilder says.

  “If the mountain does not first assault us,” Adams says. “Having to make tomorrow’s crossing beneath that steep snow chute makes me rather uneasy, I must once again admit.”

  “You’ll need to move fast, old man,” Wilder says with a grin.

  “If the weather lets up we’ll be fine,” Troy says. “Most of the new stuff will be shed from the mountain with temps warming during the day. It will freeze tonight. Be crusted over by morning.”

  “Then let us pray the mountain will play for us today a concerto of sloughing snow,” says Adams. “And be done with it.”

  By evening the surrounding mountains have snagged the clouds, a canopy that closes up over them like an infant’s skull. They crawl into their tents for the night and are barely settled in when the terrifying boom hits. All bolt upright in their sleeping bags. The avalanche is farther away than it sounds, but all night long they hear the grating of closer snowslides heaving down the narrow defiles on both sides of their campsite, making everyone jittery about tomorrow’s crossing. All night long it snows a wet and heavy snow. At sunrise, it is still snowing, making it too dangerous to cross the chute. All agree retreating back to Base Camp would be iffy with the trail through the gully erased by the fresh cover, and the fixed lines certain to be buried. What to do but wait it out?

  “We have supplies enough,” Troy says. “Just need patience enough.”

  “The Himalaya can test one’s staying power,” Adams says.

  K
arma presses the sticky yellow tabs in place on the side of his face. Still no one asks him about this practice, not because of any kind of manners, but because the sirdar’s habit no longer seems odd.

  “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” Sara says.

  “Tie in,” her father says.

  She hooks the rope into the coupling link on her harness, trudges through the snow to a place that slants down the ridge. How much more difficult it is for a woman. Having to get the cumbersome rain pants down over the heavy wool pants, and beneath this there is still long underwear and another layer of regular underwear to manage, and all of it you have to get around the harness without peeing on it. She squats and catches her breath. Feels the warm dribble in the cold. Her backside must be red as a monk’s robe, she thinks. She reaches for a handful of snow to clean herself, and sees the drops of blood she has left in the white. But she knows it’s not the right time of the moon’s cycle, and the spotting isn’t enough spill to even call it the usual.

  She heaves a breathless breath, returns to her companions.

  Devin takes from out of his backpack Shipton’s book, Mountain Travel.

  “You kidding?” Wilder says. “What’s that thing weigh?”

  “You’re sounding like my old man,” Devin says.

  Troy pulls out notebook and pen from his backpack.

  “I’ve got a deck of cards,” Sara says.

  People moan.

  Adams takes a pencil and pad out and begins a letter to Hillary, expecting mail to go down with the two porters on their way back to the village. Sara volunteers Devin to assist her in making couscous and goat stew. Troy scribbles in his journal. Wilder grabs the shovel and heads out to scout for a latrine, coughing his dogged cough. Karma puts up a cook tarp, leveling a spot upside of the ridge, anchoring the plastic cover with stakes. The six of them will spend the next five days at Ridge Camp, sleeping, or trying to sleep, melting snow for water, cooking, eating, drinking, reading, writing, sketching, woolgathering, storytelling, all the while waiting for the sky to clear. Mornings will be clouded over and cold, and by the time breakfast is finished it will have begun to snow again, and so on through the afternoons. The waiting becomes shapeless, the hours of constant white and drift without width or breadth, with the silently falling snow blotting everything about them out. The days tock past like a watch face missing the hour hand.

  Ridge Camp, 17,000 feet

  July 28, 1981

  My Darling Hillary,

  We are many of us in the party now moved up beyond the mountain’s ankles and toes, to be perched upon her lovely knees. All but Doctor Reddy and Mrs. Carson and two of the Sherpas are situated with us here on the higher ridge; the aforementioned party members down at Sanctuary Base Camp with porters and shepherds. We have gotten a handful of porters who remain with the expedition to carry thus far, and we hope to convince them to assist us with transport at least to Advanced Camp, which we plan soon to establish. We should have done so by now, but constant wet snowfall has been a nuisance; thereby we remain camped on the ridge and wait out the weather so to avoid unnecessary objective dangers, in particular, those of the meddlesome avalanche. Inclement conditions are surely to lessen, and we plan then to begin the arduous task of conveying cargo loads up from the Sanctuary to Ridge Camp here, stopping to pause before going beyond to Advanced Camp, all of us then to serve as beasts of burden. Once most or all supplies are delivered to Advanced, we are set to take serious possession of Mysterium. Ah, how she beckons.

  Logistics have been set and camps are planned to be roughly situated as follows: Advanced Camp at 19,200 feet; Camp I on a high rib just beyond the eastern glacier at 21,800 feet; Camp II on the skyline crest of the east ridge at the top of the glacier, putting us at 23,600 feet. From there we follow the snowy shoulder to the buttress, hoping to make some headway up the rock and find ledge and protection enough for Camp III. The buttress, undoubtedly, will be the crux. If all goes as expected, depending, as you well know, on weather and lay of the land, we thereby will have installed our last camp and so achieved a height of over 24,500 feet: alas, we shall there be clinging to the lovely throat of Sarasvati. From this point we make our summit approach, the last thrust via Mysterium East at 25,100 feet, from there upward to 25,845 feet, where we shall stand atop the mountain’s precious summit, and there be handed our crown.

  Most all are feeling well, even so for the usual headaches, stomach upsets that manifest in each direction, sleeplessness, and the fearful nuisance of weather. The loss of a porter in the Gorge has affected us all profoundly. Still, morale is good as we remain quite hopeful, and none complain much of adversity.

  However, I, my darling, must protest your absence all the while, if protest only in silence to myself. I realize I am one of the few of the core of this party fortunate to have a precious one left to write home to. Aside from Mrs. Carson, though even she has lost a brother-in-law, each has lost someone most close to them: a mother, a wife, a brother. On this expedition many must walk with their ghosts, perhaps as do I, being so acutely aware of my climbing partner Hilman with me here again these days. Yet, my dearest Hillary, I hold more than ever to thoughts of you. I think of you as I fall into sleep at night, and again as soon as I wake. The amber of our memories is ever more cherished as I see budding love now about me on the mountain. The gods do in truth send down to earth the glory of youth, and youth shall forever avail itself in delicious flesh and beguiling anatomy. And so always the lovers are seized, are they not? Caught in the rapturous arms of the other. No longer are they left to wander up and down in search of a higher place or a better world, for they find the entire world right where they are, there in the eyes of the beloved.

  And is this not, my darling, that which has carried the two of us along these many years, despite our trespasses and errors?

  Thou art not gone being gone.

  Always your devoted husband,

  Ad

  * * *

  THERE IS no sitting around a campfire as they wait the weather out, but they huddle around portable stoves melting water and drinking tea as Virgil Adams tells of William Hilman’s last adventure, the details told to him by one of the youths in the group the revered climber was with at the time.

  Adams says, “Bill simply got a bit too close to a yak along a narrow path as he was trying to sidle by.”

  “He got butted down the steep, right?” Devin says.

  “Yaks can get temperamental,” says Wilder.

  Adams nods, takes a sip of tea. “Those who saw the yak butt quickly down-climbed the slope and hauled Hilman back up. His head was bleeding badly, but he was still alive. Fortunately, there was a nursing student among the group who had a first-aid kit that included needle and thread and scissor, and she stitched up the split flesh of Bill’s head.”

  “That was a blessing,” Sara says.

  “Evidently, once stitched and bandaged, he was capable of walking without assistance,” says Adams. “He made it down to the village, where the group checked into a hostel and Bill took to a bunk to rest. Though he soon thereafter fell into a state of fevered bewilderment. They say he lay in bed for several days after the accident before succumbing to his injuries, when the dark thence clapped down on him with disinterested finality.”

  “Everyone gets their turn,” Troy says.

  Adams puts a spoonful of milk powder into his tea, stirs, and goes on with his story. “The young woman who had sutured his wounds sat by his bedside during his last hours, making notes of the gibberish he spoke in his delirium, hoping to decipher any thoughts or wishes that might be passed on to his family. Yet no sense could be made of the garble. Be told and fly? Dig hold of thee? Too cold for me? Alas, it shall be anyone’s guess.”

  “Simple nonsense, I suppose,” Troy says. “A head injury.”

  “Buy gold and flee?” Adams says.

  Wilder snorts a laugh.

  Adams swallows his tea. “To conclude, then, Bill Hilman was bathed and dressed in wool
ens and fresh denims, hair and boots brushed clean, mustache waxed, ice axe tucked into the stiffened crook of his arm, and his body was thuswise neatly parceled into his sleeping bag and flown back home. He was given an impressive memorial service,” he says. “In attendance were a former United States president, a Nobel Prize–winning scientist, and several Hollywood box office stars. Eulogies were voiced and wreaths arranged for a man whose future had indeed been annihilated, though his past, as was said, could not be nullified of its particular significance. A statue of him with rope coiled over his shoulder was raised in the park by the lake.”

  Devin scoops up a pot of snow, puts the pot to the flame.

  “What was it like at the top of Mysterium?” Sara says.

  “Mount Sarasvati,” Adams says.

  “Mount Sarasvati,” Sara repeats, ever pleased at the sound of her name.

  “What do I recollect?” Adams says. “There were definite words repeated between us, words meant to mark synapse and history. I will tell you that Hilman and I stood at the summit for many minutes longer than we should have stayed—this, you see, an attempt to take the whole of it in, wishing, as we did, to retain every speck and whit of our experience. We shook hands in a gesture of camaraderie. We shook hands again, to fix the time forever in memory.”

  People sip their tea. Wait for their leader to go on.

  “Lord, it was cold,” says Adams. He raises his shoulders and rubs his hands together. “The cold seeped in through the seams and weaving of our clothing, a maligning iciness that moved toes to spine to nape. We shivered in the wind, and agreed to head down. And just at this moment, we should be startled by the most incredible passing sight.”