Little snow whirls auger about at their feet. The sun is high and ringing, the blood singing in their ears. They stop to drink, shedding down coats and layers of wool and fleece as the heat becomes more stifling. They wrap their necks with balaclavas, concealing flesh with hoods and gloves, eyes covered with mirrored glasses and attached leather patches that shield the sides, noses and lips painted thick with zinc paste, cheeks lubed with a shielding grease. They slog on with their sap boiling steadily away, their tongues swelling in the scorched and waterless air. A glacial tributary below gurgles and purls in the deep.
Following the route where the fathers had gone before them, the trio arrives to the roping-up place at the base of the operose rib. A path of small steps has been chopped out of the ice from the bottom to the top of the thousand-foot incline, a place to stape their front points. Fixed lines have been planted along the way. They stand in a pyramid of shade cast off by the steep rise, suddenly shivering in their freezing sweat, quickly combing through backpacks and adding back layers of clothing before they start up the cold blue wall. Tightening their crampon straps, cinching their packs snug to shoulders and backs, the climbers one at a time clip their etriers and jumars to the fixed line and rung their bodies up, adjusting the cam, top-stepping and pulling up with hardened arms, muscles biting, lungs on fire. There are stretches where they need to detour the vertical and traverse the rib instead, avoiding with tremendous care the bayonets of ice that promise to slice the nylon line or them. Laboring on, one by one laddering themselves up to the top of the crest until they are emerged up and over the verge, and then all lie sprawled in the wondrous light. Mysterium, a towering priestess of velvety-white geometry, beckons from above.
Devin’s father comes forward and looms over his son, casting the younger man into a puddle of shadow. Reddy reaches a hand down to offer him a lift up, but Devin rolls onto his knees and gets himself to his feet.
“Welcome to Adams’ Rib,” Troy says. He slaps Wilder and Devin on a shoulder each in reward as they stand. His daughter he embraces wholeheartedly, and she clings to her father’s downy corpulence for a long time, both knowing they are closer to something unspeakable now.
Reddy looks over the cliff for the other two to appear, but sees only Karma below at the roping-up place. The Sherpa paces and shuffles about, clapping his hands and stomping his feet to keep from freezing in the shade as he waits for Adams, who must still be very far behind as he is nowhere in sight. Karma, losing patience in the cold, retraces his steps back into the raging sun until finally he sees their leader come out from around an edifice of ice. Adams stops, tugs a kerchief from out of his pocket, wipes the fog from his goggles. He looks up at the other climbers gathered far ahead of him, little dots they are up high on the rib, and he cups his hands together, calling out loudly to them in his familiar trebled yodel. Someone on the crest raises an ice axe in answer. Then Karma appears directly in front of him, seeming from out of nowhere, like an apparition out of a cloud. The Sherpa’s form dilates and fades in the squint-white light as he approaches. He holds a water bottle out to his leader, but Adams just stands fixed with a spooked look on his face, sweat pouring off his brow.
“Sahib.”
Adams nods, his throat scoured raw from calling out in the vaporless air, his mouth parched, his lips cracked and blistered.
“Drink, Sahib.”
Adams takes the bottle. With trembling hands he puts the rim to his swollen lips, spilling most of the water down the front of his jacket. He coughs. He takes gulps of air, takes another drink of water. He heaves. “Shall go back,” he says, his voice a sandpapered whisper. Karma pushes the bottle forward, and Adams takes another swig, their shadows pools of melted anatomy beneath their feet.
“Poorly acclimatized, I am.” Adams hands the bottle back.
“Camp One is very small camp,” Karma says. He raises the water bottle toward the top of the rib. “Very crowded if we go up and make seven. Best for Sahib and me that we drop loads at roping-up place and go down to low camp. Please, you rest two days there and be good.”
Adams looks up to the crest. He huffs out a speck of dry laugh. “I would swear that I saw one of them levitating up there.”
* * *
UP ON Adams’ Rib, nothing is more paramount than keeping one’s feet reliably on the ground. Though Camp I is spectacularly placed, it is anything but spacious, the crest broadening out only wide enough to accommodate two small tents, allowing little clearance and heart-stopping drop-offs on either side. Devin and Sara and Wilder had intended to let go their loads and return to Advanced Camp the same day to lessen the population. But since Adams and Karma have retreated, the three toss out the ground cover, plant the second A-frame, and begin to settle in for the night. With cliff edges but a few feet away from the outside of each tent, the party designates east and west crest for specific purposes: the upside to be snow source for meltwater, downside of the tents now decreed the latrine.
The sun dips behind the western peaks and hurls the camp into shadow and below-zero cold. The threesome roll out sleeping pads and down-filled bags, and they huddle inside their shelter; Reddy and Troy settle in for the night inside the A-frame pitched beside. They light cookstoves, melt snow, boil the meal, drink tea. In one tent there is talk of esteemed climbers, talk of other summits, the meaning of success. Next door, they chew over movies and music and first meals of choosing as soon as they’re back home to the States. All make plans for the next day, exchanging information with staccato’d shouts out the mouths of the tent flaps. Come first light they will one by one rappel down the splintery blue-glass of Adams’ Rib and together make their way back across the bergschrund, glissading down the Bobsled and back to Advanced Camp. Then begins the routine of shuttling provisions and equipment higher onto the mountain, caching much of the cargo at the roping-up place, an undertaking that will take many all-day forays without porter assistance. Through the unpersuadable landscape they will each be laden and traipse.
* * *
ADAMS SITS cross-legged in the shaded cover of an abutment of rock, arms outstretched and rested upon his knees, examining bands of seared flesh. Pasang, crouched beside the firepit, blows at the dead ash as he watches his leader. The ash comes alive in a pulsing glow, and the Sherpa adds twigs to the embers. When there are flames enough he adds more brush to blaze the fire, then gets up to attend Adams, who has been sitting in the same position staring at the burns on his arms for too long.
“Bhalu Sahib,” Pasang says.
Adams shifts his gaze to look up to the one who is speaking. The Sherpa sees the man’s eyes gone strange beneath the shaggy white brows.
“You wear gloves in sun, but shirt not more long at sleeves.”
Adams squints at the Sherpa as if he were looking into a blinding snow. Then he goes back to studying his forearms.
“Sahib,” Pasang says. He puts his hand on the man’s bear-like shoulder. “Bhalu Sahib,” he says.
* * *
VIDA AND two of the porters head out from Base Camp carrying pack loads of extra rations and oxygen canisters at Karma’s radio’d request. They climb up into the gully and out of the thick mist of the Sanctuary; swelling clouds passing above like a tote of slow-moving cargo. It will be a full day’s journey to Advanced Camp, but the going is easier this time, with the glacier’s steep gutter now innocent of fresh downfall, and a path hard-packed enough for them to troop across. They stop midday to rest at the ridge and make tea. It is nearly evening when they enter Advanced, where the tents and the makeshift kitchen are now positioned within a lee of solid rock. There is a smoky fire burning, and salty buttery tea when they arrive. But Reddy has yet to return down from Camp I on Adams’ Rib.
Vida looks in on Adams and finds him asleep in his tent. They say he has complained of a severe headache and extreme fatigue, but so has most everyone at some point during this trip. She closes the tent flap to leave him to his dreams, but when he hears the zipper finish Adams opens his eye
s and goes back to gazing at his wife, whom he believes he sees lying here next to him. He reaches out to touch the long hair spilled out about her pillow, breathes in her scent perfused throughout their nylon room. She carries the home smell of lavender soap and mahogany polish, of potting humus and of something medicinal, like camphor or menthol. She has her home sweater on, which is odd, but he believes there must be good reason for it, for Hillary does nothing without thinking matters through. He reaches out and takes her in his arms, holding on to her as if she were tethered and keeping him afloat. He bobs and drifts along in the soft even rhythm of her breathing. It is a fine thing being married for a long time, no longer having to say what the other already knows you will say.
But she speaks, stealing away the silence between them. She wishes to ask him a question. Perhaps, he thinks, she wonders about my having missed a day of shaving. But the query is otherwise, taking him by surprise.
“Why?” Adams says. “After all our years you shall ask me why?”
His wife looks into his mica-colored eyes.
“There are no words, really, to constitute a rational reply,” he says. “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence, so it is said in the Tractatus; the last line, mind you.”
“Don’t give me Wittgenstein,” she says. “Try.”
“I know only that my nature must be utterance enough. My entire being would be the answer I give to you.”
She regards him with a tender ferocity.
“Stop listening to the professor’s philosophy talk,” she says.
* * *
MIDAFTERNOON VIDA goes back to check on Adams, taking with her a tin cup of hot soup. She approaches the tent and hears him speaking. Odd, she thinks, and she calls his name before unzipping the door and putting her head through the sleeve. Adams sits up out of his mummy bag and fingers back strands of his matted hair, looking about the modest dwelling as if he has lost something there. Vida squeezes herself into the tent, carefully balancing the steaming soup. She settles in beside him, sees the wandering look in his eyes, a dull and vacant air to his face entirely.
“I brought soup.” She holds the cup forth. “It’s tomato rice.”
Adams calls her a filthy name and slaps the soup out of her hand, spraying a lumpy red slop all over the bedding and walls.
“Damn you!” she says.
Adams gives her a queer sidelong glance. She backs out of the tent and calls out to Karma. “He’s out of it. Totally.”
Karma looks at her, hooded eyes opened wide. Doctor Reddy should have come down and been here by now. The sirdar Sherpa goes to the mess tent, retrieves the radio, comes back out to the cold open air. He presses the push-to-talk button. Vida watches his lips moving as they graze the transceiver.
“Camp One, you must read,” he says. “Please, Sahibs, do you read?”
The radio erupts in a crackle of broken words.
“Need Sahib Doctor. Must come now.”
“Sara, me, Wilder here,” says Devin. “No Doctor Sahib.”
“Doctor Reddy at the ready,” Troy says. “Bringing up the rear there.” Troy motions with his head as he enters camp, plants his ice axe in the snow, unclips his pack, and hefts the burden off his back.
Reddy comes up from behind. “I am pleased to see a fire,” he says. “Even more pleased to see Pasang humming away busily patting chapatis.” He looks over to Vida. She is holding his medical kit.
“Adams,” Vida says, gesturing with her head. “In there. The tent dripping with soup inside.” She hands Reddy the kit, and he climbs inside the tent, sees Adams flat on his back staring at the ceiling. Their leader’s face has a greenish hue. His cheeks are fallen in, his nose and teeth unusually prominent. “You need a shave, Adams. Whiskers are not your style.” Reddy does not like what he has quickly come to recognize. He looks at the man and sees water and sodium levels rising. He sees wet brain: capillary leakage, sopping white matter, flooded subarachnoid folds, an intracranial casing about to burst like a dam. Adams drools. He mumbles something about needing a drink. Reddy opens the kit and unfolds it like a tackle box, which is what the box is, and takes out of it a rubber bulb and cord attached to a band of fabric. He pushes Adams’s sleeve up and wraps the cloth snug about the upper arm. He pumps the cuff up tight, opening slowly the air valve as he watches the dial wag out the numbers in a slow hiss of release. Reddy nods his head the way doctors will do, and removes the cuff. He examines the wrist burns. “Must be careful to keep all skin covered by clothing, or make sure to apply zinc at this altitude for any flesh exposed,” the doctor says. “I should not need to tell you,” he says. Adams looks at him, blinks, looks back to his wrists. Reddy reaches for his headlamp, takes Adams by the chin and shines the light into his eyes. He asks the patient a simple question. Adams repeats the question, his tongue thick, words slurred. The doctor shakes his head, brings forth a small vial from out of the tackle box, and with it a needle and syringe. He unwraps the syringe, uncaps the needle, and plunges it into the vial’s rubber stopper. He withdraws the solution, flicks the bubbles out of the tube, and before Adams knows what’s happening the doctor thrusts the needle into the thickness of his upper arm. The man doesn’t flinch.
“Here, wipe your mouth,” Reddy says. He hands Adams his handkerchief, and Adams does what he’s told. Then the doctor sorts through the medical kit and retrieves a bottle of pills, takes a pill out, tells the patient to open his mouth, and places the tablet onto his swollen tongue. He watches Adams draw the tablet in slowly, as if it were a sacrament. Reddy hands him a flask of water. “Swallow,” he says.
“I am,” Adams says.
“You will be all right,” Reddy says, the way that doctors like to tell you. He gathers his kit and climbs out of the tent backward on hands and knees, rising to his feet and stumbling into Troy, who stands like a sentinel before him, lean and stately and tall.
“Ah!” Reddy says.
“Ah, what?”
“Gave him a shot of dexamethasone, and a dose of nifedipine. Now we must put him back on the oxygen and monitor him carefully.”
“Then we get him down. If it’s what I’m thinking.”
Reddy nods. “It is what you’re thinking.”
Greasy-looking torpedo-shaped clouds accumulate below the summit. To the west, a pea-green haze lurks over the dim chasm of the Sage’s Gorge.
“That haze is the color of Adams’s face,” Reddy says.
A heavy boom quakes the ground. They look up to see a slab of snow fractured from the mountain’s flank, careening down in a turbulent cloud.
* * *
SARA STANDS at the threshold of Adams’ Rib looking out to two luminous guardian rings shouldered on either side of the plummeting sun, her frosted breath spiraling up like incense into the empyrean. She stoops to scoop up a potful of snow, unclips the snap link from the line, climbs back into the tent. “What do mock suns look like? I think that’s what the halos are out there.”
“Sun dogs, you mean?” Devin says.
“It means we move up the mountain,” Wilder says. “I say tomorrow instead of heading down for more loads we scout up what’s ahead, see if we can make the next camp higher. Take an extra tent and get set up.”
“All the way up to the east ridge?” Sara says. She examines the raw cracks on her palms, wounds that look like the squinty eyes of a deity.
“We’ve humped more than our share up here already,” Wilder says. “We’ll be on the mountain until autumn at this rate. It’s over a month now.”
“Yes,” Sara says, grinning. “It’s almost my birthday.”
In the morning they wake to find the moisture of their fetid breath turned to a fur of hoarfrost coating the entire inside of the tent. Wilder causes a small blizzard of it as he stumbles outside to head for the latrine edge of the crest. Sara and Devin brush the icy crystals out of their hair. They wipe the frost off the down bags and swab the rest of it from the nylon ceiling before it begins melting and dripping, turning beddin
g and clothing into a sodden mess. Devin opens the door flap and sticks his head out and shouts at his friend. “Hey, man, watch your step if you’re not gonna hook into a line.” He puts his head back inside. “Won’t be needing sunglasses and zinc today,” he says. Sara curls back into her sleeping bag, closes her eyes.
Wilder announces his return with a dry hacking cough that kicks at his ribs. He pulls his smooth-soled inner boots off, parks them in the vestibule, and settles into the tent. “It’s looking pretty mean out today.”
“I could really use a rest day anyway,” Sara says. Her belly is cramping again, but she doesn’t mention it. Everyone’s belly hurts up here, and people do their best not to complain.
“At this altitude, wouldn’t hurt any of us to stay high and rest a day.”
“C’mon, Devin, don’t you wuss out on me too, man.”
“No worries. I can stay here on my own,” Sara says.
Devin looks at her. “No, you can’t.”
“Do what you gotta do,” Wilder says. He starts pulling on layers of extra wool and fleece. “I’ll take the other tent with me, set up Camp Two without you.”
“Take a look at those clouds,” Devin says.
“I see them clouds,” Wilder says. “Since when are you afraid of some clouds?”
* * *
LOST IS the ability to articulate elementary words, and speech turns clumsy. Lo! Adams wants to say. But “Yo” is what he says. He stumbles about camp like a drunk. He needs help to the latrine. He will not eat. He will not drink. He does not sleep.
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