Mysterium

by Susan Froderberg

  “Wilder?” he said. “Left—morning—copy?”

  A blast of static.

  “He—down—Advanced—no?”

  “No transmiss—Ad—Camp.”

  Loud crackle and hiss of lost words.

  “—Kilo.”

  “—out.”

  “He wouldn’t have tried to go up to the east ridge alone, would he?” Sara said. “He would have seen the storm coming and gone down to Advanced. Right?” She looked into Devin’s eyes for an answer. She put a hand to her face.

  * * *

  THE INTERCELLULAR spaces of Adams’s brain had returned to equilibrium down in the oxygen-saturated oasis of the Sanctuary, and he got his wits back again. His face was changed from greenish and bristled to roseate and clean-shaven, his comportment and speech returned to pedigree and idiosyncrasy, with all its oddities and quiddities. He sat with the others around the table in the mess tent taking in the faint warmth and humidity of shared breath, their tabernacle seeming luxurious with space and food and light. Outside the tent, the mountain forged weather over her cold dells and down her icy hollows and slopes. The sahibs chewed on strips of jerky, gulped wads of it down with cups of soup, followed the meal with jello wedges swallowed cold. All the while the gale howled outside. The wind gusted up in boisterous outbursts, rattling and sucking at their shelter like someone with a cudgel rustling animals out of their lair.

  Mingma poured ginger tea. “For calm the stomach,” he said.

  Vida held on to the hot cup with both hands. She was wide-eyed and fidgety, overcome with nervous questions about death by means of freezing.

  “Be aware of early signs,” the doctor said. “Violent shivering, for example.”

  Mingma filled cups, muttering in agreement.

  “Or when fingers are no longer able to lace boots or button buttons,” Reddy said.

  Vida stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her parka.

  “When one loses a pair of gloves because they have dropped from one’s frozen claws and are blown off a cliff,” Adams said. “Not a good omen.”

  “Frostbite, yes, but this is still in the category of mild to moderate symptoms of low body temperature,” Reddy said. “More serious indicators are lack of proper attentiveness, poor decision-making, carelessness, simple remiss. For example, failure to properly tie a knot or clip into a safety harness, or deciding to abandon a knapsack rather than heft the weight of it.”

  “Or a veritable desire to lie down and fall into a deep slumber,” said Adams. “A wish for a siwash in the snow. A symptom most serious.”

  Vida looked at him, still concerned about his cognitive abilities. “Siwash?”

  “Siwash,” he said. “To camp without a tent.”

  “Torpidity is a common symptom,” Reddy said. “Quite common. Soon after, one enters a profound state of hypothermia.”

  “What then?” said Vida. A morbid interest had come over her. She wanted to hear about visions, final thoughts. She wanted to hear last words, regrets, about what spilled out of the body when all has ceased to be.

  “Shivering stops,” said Reddy. “Heart rate declines, as does respiratory rate, limbs begin to stiffen, the skin pales, pupils dilate. One becomes increasingly numb, fortunately, before drifting off into a peaceful oblivion.”

  “There may be hallucinations at the late stage,” said Adams.

  “Before the pumping of the ventricles stops,” said Reddy.

  Vida’s heart took off in a run. “That avalanche sounds close.”

  “Not avalanche,” Reddy said. “That,” he said, “that is thunder.” He looked toward the tent door, as if he expected someone to walk in.

  “Prepare for a long night,” Adams said. “I myself shall begin now.” He excused himself, and rose from the table. “The Sherpas may join me in my tent, where we shall cushion one another in plump columns of down until morning. Please fill a flask with your healing gingery tea, Mingma. Pasang, you might go ahead and light the shelter and fluff things up for us as you hum us one of your tunes.”

  “Porters will manage all right for themselves?” Reddy said.

  “Yes, Sahib.” Mingma touched his chest in a customary manner.

  “They come for help only before someone should die,” Pasang said.

  Vida looked to see if the Sherpa was joking, but saw no smile. Now she wondered about Wilder again, where was he, which camp was he at, who would be with him.

  “We better start settling in, Mrs. Carson, before the thunder brings lightning with it,” Reddy said. He filled a flask of tea, dug into a crate of rations and brought forth a small bottle of brandy. The wind picked up, wailing like a female in some ancient death proclaim.

  Vida followed Reddy into the night, the wind doing its frightful impersonations. She could feel it working its way into her body, the cold of it, the emptiness of it. It made her feel remote from herself, as if something inside her had broken apart and slipped out when she wasn’t paying attention. Lightning sheeted the sky, the ironmongery left out in the snow flaring up in a mystical violet fire. Reddy opened the tent flap. He beamed the headlamp on Vida, and she shielded her eyes. He helped her get her boots off. Then he shucked his, and they climbed into the tent and slid into their down sleeping sacks in all their wintry apparel. Vida lay back and closed her eyes to the dark underside of her eyelids. “I’ve never been up this high in a bad storm,” she said. “And we’re not as high up as the others are right now. What it must be like for them. They must be afraid,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

  “It takes courage to admit you’re afraid,” said Reddy. He put a hand to her shoulder. “But not to worry, the others know to dig in and wait the storm out. They’re equipped. They will be all right.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “You might help me complete a list I’m working on lately. A list on the use of safety pins in wilderness settings.”

  She raised herself up onto her elbows. “You kidding?”

  “No, I am quite serious. Here, have some tea.”

  She sat up. “Everyone knows what to do with a safety pin.”

  “Ha!” Reddy put a finger into the air. “But to be truly resourceful.”

  Vida smiled the smile that had first caught Reddy’s eyes. It pleased her to see how he again warmed to it. She felt triggered by an impulse to talk about what was, what had been between them. Take her mind away from here. But to talk about what had been would be to tell an ordinary story, a story of adultery and desire, illusion, wish, a story old as any story there is. The talk would be romantic, saccharine, cliché, for neither of them had the power of language and speech to make the tale otherwise. To speak of the intrigue, to attempt to recall the passion between them, to put a name to the feelings, would be to strip away the significance of whatever they might have had, just as it would take everything away that might still be left. And she knew that he knew this too.

  “A safety pin can be used to prick the blister of sappiness,” she said.

  Reddy slapped at the tent walls to knock the snow free. The wind smote back at the tent. Vida’s wild eye grew wilder. “Don’t worry,” Reddy said. He hit at the tent walls again. “I will at intervals go out and dig us out, all night long, I promise. Here, drink.” He opened the bottle, sniffed, poured, took a swig. “I have sleeping pills if you wish.”

  “Yes, I wish,” she said. She watched Reddy pilfer through his duffel, seeing the elegance in his movement and his manner that had caught her in the beginning.

  “Do you ever think about your wife?” she said.

  He paused, raised his head. “Yes, I think about her all the time.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “It’s a good thing.” She thought to tell Reddy about her decision to leave Wilder, but didn’t.

  “Here, have one of these.”

  She opened her palm, and in it he placed a glossy red capsule. She recalled the wild raspberries she had picked and touched to Reddy’s lips, already a y
ear ago now. She wondered if he thought of this too.

  “Here,” he said, touching her cup with his cup. “Drink up.”

  She popped the capsule into her mouth, swallowed the rest of the spirits, and lay back on her back. Thunder racketed out in the wild beyond in a shattering-of-metal sound. Vida felt the heave and quake of it in the ramparts of her heart. She pulled the hood of the down bag over her head. She waited for sleep to take her.

  * * *

  AS SOON as the sun breaks through the clouds Devin takes his binoculars out and scans the base of the north flank. Right away he spots it; the yellow tent set below a wall of icy spires. He puts all his layers on, packs his pack up, steps into his boots, and crawls out of the tent. He laces the gaiters, grabs the ice axe. He tells Sara to stay put where she is. “Unless someone should come up to get you,” he says. She nods, squinting in the radiant light, her head poking through the folds of the opening. She imagines herself to be Eve born to the world today. J’arrive!

  Mysterium shines like an iridescent pearl. All about her an ocean of snowpeaks swell up like foamy breakers. A gentle wind lifts layers of icy spicules that feather off into the air, air that is deathly close to Devin’s feet. He looks out along the long white plume, seeing not a single boot track. Then out ahead the first wand beckons. He wades into knee-deep snow until he is just past the wand, and here he plumbs a hand into the depths of the powdery drift until his thumb snags the buried line. “Good going, Wilder.”

  He clips into the rope and stands tall, hammered by a sudden happiness he can barely explain. Something about the day, the beauty of it, the enormity of it, has to be, and just the quality of the light, the incredible light all about him, standing alone where he is in this incredible otherworldly light, with the girl he loves so very much safe and waiting for him behind, and a friend in need of him ahead. He is overwhelmed with a sense of belonging, belonging to a place that fits to the person he is. Belonging to a place, and belonging to someone he chose and who chose him, someone not his mother or his father, though he felt he never really belonged to his father, for the simple reason that his father had failed to claim him. He suddenly feels pity for the old, lonely man. Devin knows that he now belongs to something greater, something more sovereign. He feels a delicious freedom, wherever it comes from, whatever, whoever, place or woman or both, mixed in with it too the euphoria of altitude.

  He slides his carabiner along the static line and trods the arête in the fresh downfall, avoiding the horrifying cornices, breaking trail, troughing a straight line through the snow, packing it down solid beneath his feet. The way back will be easier, and crossed enough times the crest will become a good firm sidewalk to have to travel over, even if it’s a mighty narrow one.

  He moves along cautiously, until he is off the rib and onto the base of the glacier. The snow is the texture of styrofoam, bunging up his crampons, and a thick mist begins to settle in, distorting breath and width and distance. He collides with a hummock he takes for a hollow and is working to get his bearings when the earth is suddenly giving way beneath him, sucking him in like quicksand, restraining him up to the waist. He flails his arms about, but the snow drawing him in is like the jaws of a giant fish. And like that, he is swallowed.

  People say such a thing will happen in slow motion, but there is nothing drawn out about the fall. It is more like being momentarily outside the body; Devin watching himself plunging into the depths of the crevasse. He was up there, and now he is down here, his consciousness not caught up to the action. He realizes his backpack, wedged into the breach, has stopped him from plummeting into the endless darkness beneath him.

  His feet hang into the fathomless cavity. His ice axe dangles from the sling on his wrist. He is buried in a deathly hush, in the coldest darkness he has ever known. He cries Sara’s name. He imagines her outside the tent melting snow for tea, anticipating his return, and he feels overcome by a profound regret at missing the tea and the warmth that is waiting for him, missing all and everything more that is Sara and the life to be had with her. He feels foolish, punished. He thinks of his mother. He wonders, why me again?

  He touches the pouch of his anorak, reaches into it gingerly as a thief picking someone’s pocket, withdraws his headlamp. He thumbs a switch and lights up sea-green walls of ice. An ominous tinkling of frozen splintering drops into the depths below. That this is it, the end of his story, that he will be held forever in this frigid prison is a thought that skitters through his mind like a tiny mouse frantic to get out. He realizes he has lost his hat, and the sweat of his terror has frozen his hair into a helmet. Fright needles along his spine, bores the cold deeper into his bones. He screams out a loud help, a drawn-out wail for as long as his lungs will hold. But his cry is absorbed by walls of solid ice; soundless as that in a terrible dream. He looks up to the silent sky hole of light overhead. How far away, he can’t really tell. What does it matter? There is only one thing to think about—how to move up and get out. He shines the headlamp over the chined walls, sees a narrow shelf above, an edge he could pinch with his fingers, and there, up there near a ledge along the wall, a place he could get a purchase on with the stick of his crampons. He has to stay calm. He has to think lightness into his body. He has to know that he will get out. He sees himself doing it. He takes his gloves off, pouches them in his anorak. He lets the ice axe hang loose from the strap on his wrist as he gropes at the narrow chinks in the wall and inches himself up, fingers crimped, feet planted flat, his back bowed like a cat. He manages to get his legs into a V, spiking his crampons into opposing walls, waggling his body back and forth, pulling up with his arms, his metal footwear like lobster claws barbed into the ice.

  The ledge is near his face now, and he raises his leg high enough to get his foot onto the thin platform, pushing off and muscling his entire body up, drawing nearer to the opening. He reaches up to the lip of the fissure, fixing a knee out on the edge of it, using his arms to drag himself out of the hatchway, and like this, he pulls himself up over the verge and on out of the crevasse. Daylight pours down over his head like a mother’s kisses.

  * * *

  THE SILENCE outside is immense. She has never known such pure quiet, the mountain softened and muted by new-fallen snow. She would listen for the voice of her mother in the wind, if there were any wind at all to hear. But she feels her mother’s presence all about in the caress of weather gowned down upon the mountain. Sara lies listening to her heart pulsing through the fleecing of her makeshift pillow. She senses the other heart inside her beating too. A tiny heart, just a translucent sac of throbbing tissue, a pink sheathed bud, yet to be looping and roomed, but a heart it is.

  She would tell Devin on their way down the mountain, adding to their rejoice at having made it to the summit together, happiness compounding happiness to come. One thing at a time. Then they would tell her father. “A grandfather, can you imagine?” she will say. She sees a look on his face.

  She puts her head outside the tent, inhaling the day like a vapor. She surveys the terrain to see how far Devin has gotten along the crest, but a thick mist has settled. It is impossible now to tell mountain from sky. An elemental light filters in through the tent walls, hollowing out the amnion space that contains her.

  She takes the pot from the stove, holds it out the tent flap, and fills it with snow. She lights the stove in the vestibule, waits for the water to heat, warming her hands on the warm flesh of her abdomen. Then she takes out of her backpack the small sketchpad, opens it to a sheet white and blank as that which circumscribes the day outside.

  I am Eve, day one.

  What do I see?

  How might I tell you?

  She begins to fill the page, conjuring images cached within memory. She envisions the mountain, the massif that enfolds her. She draws the nose-like buttress, sketches out the sloping shoulders, penciling in the earthy ribs and spines, the nipples of rocks, the icy teeth and clefts, the tongues and lobes and toe slopes, the fingers, the thumbs. She sk
ulls a dome of cold sky above. She fosters the drawing until her fingers begin to grow cold and numb, until she has to stop and massage her hands to bring them to life again. She puts her mittens back on and studies the lifeless sketch she has made, the lines seeming but a heap of unimportant particulars, a meager attempt to portray the mountain as it most certainly is: an ideal of the purely vertical, in all its strangeness, in all its wondrous is-ness and significance. How to bring forth such meaning? How to escape the rut of what is ordinarily seen? Eve, day one, would not be working from any memory. So, you are no Eve. She believes she may be learning a little humility.

  She warms her hands on a cup of tea. She will pick the pencils up, try again, even if the goal seems unachievable, not because of any technique lacking. She knows the wonder of what she wishes to depict belongs solely to another order, a realm beyond that only the rare artist might capture and achieve. Just as it is impossible to conquer a mountain by simply standing at the top of it, so she understands that the mystery of what might be seen cannot so easily be gotten by any kind of rendering. Maybe impossible, but always it is necessary to try, for only in the trying is one carried away into the wilderness of the unfathomable, and in this way drawn closer to the all-ness of the very thing itself.

  She could never explain to anyone these conclusions of hers very well, explain how the whole of what mattered was to see and to speak what truly is, or try to anyway, if only to keep realizing the falsity of the line or the shape or the word conceived. Try to say what can’t be said. Only by knowing what is false can anyone get closer to the truth. This she would say most certainly.

  * * *

  DEVIN CARVES a path through the deep snow by porpoising himself through it, finning himself up and forward with his arms, spouting steam from his mouth as he moves along. Wilder doesn’t hear anyone coming, thinking it might be a hallucination when he looks out and sees someone appear through the mist. But, no, it’s not an illusion, it’s Devin he sees, though the name he shouts out is not his friend’s name, but his brother’s. “Lucas!” Wilder tugs his boots on, climbs out of the tent, heads over to Devin, who lies toppled down and is struggling to right himself.