Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  ‘We’d better go,’ he said to Billy.

  They crawled into their own tent and lay down, side by side.

  Peter dozed fitfully and awoke in starts. His breathing came as unevenly as though he had just run up Cader Brith while out of training. He thought that if the wind did not stop for a moment he would go mad; then he thought that if the wind did stop he would be mad.

  Young Billy Barnes was to be his companion, then. It was a pity Billy hated Harry Walsh so much. It was a pity he divided the world so readily into good and bad, friend and enemy. Mistakes were crimes to him, and differences of opinion, heresies. Peter had seen, while they were jammed into the other tent, that the talk about oxygen had worried him. Harry’s decision was too far from ‘common sense’ for Billy to waste thought on it. Besides, it was Harry’s, and that was enough to condemn it. But George Norris was a great climber and a good man; and Peter Savage was a great climber and a good man; and they disagreed. Worse, they disagreed in an area where there was no practical test to decide ‘rightness,’ as there might be in the choice of a route or the placing of a peg. In other words, their mountaineering ‘soul’--the thing that made them mountaineers and not climbers--had cast around the clean, concrete, and lovely shape of the mountains a dimly defined and only half-luminous veil of spiritual values. Billy understood, of course, the particular value that had made them risk many ‘expensive’ lives on the off-chance of saving three ‘cheap’ ones, for it was an extension of a code he had been brought up with and probably had real faith in. The value that had yesterday sent Peter down with the Sherpas rather than up towards the summit was more difficult for him, especially after the war, when they had all been forced to decide such things and usually to choose the heroic course. More difficult still was the value that had made them give Pahlwan a chance to become a better mountaineer than he was. For one thing, it had turned out tragically. For another, many sound men would not have agreed with what was done, just as there was the disagreement about oxygen.

  All these values and many others constituted the fabric of their mountaineering souls. Peter hoped that Billy would find his own, because . . .

  ‘Metaphysics, at twenty-five thousand feet!’ he mumbled aloud.

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Peter replied, and cursed a huge stone under his hip.

  He remembered the sense of destiny that had once been the mainspring of his life; and he remembered telling Gerry of his mistrust of God because He was liable to change the rules, so that one could only be ready. Well, it looked now as though he had lived his whole life, and all its triumphs and tragedies, only so that he could be an indirect and clumsy instrument in the remaking of Harry Walsh . . . There was a little more than that.

  Somewhere in the blundering act of giving, though separated from Emily by seven thousand miles of desert and sea, he had finished the act of union begun in the liquid depths of her body under the Matterhorn.

  It didn’t seem much, when he remembered that he had been ready to become Viceroy of India and improve the lives of three hundred million people; or to lead huge armies and alter the face of the world for generations to come; to climb higher, farther, more boldly than any man had done before, and from a dozen ‘unconquerable’ peaks wave the banners of national pride and the symbols of man’s indomitable will.

  It didn’t seem much, but it was enough.

  Sleep, sleep, come to me!

  He had to work it out somehow, or he would never sleep. Was there a parallel between mountaineers and monks? The difference would be that the monk devoted his tested and improved soul to the abstract glory of God, while the mountaineer, living among people, going out from people to the mountain and returning from the mountain to people, was bound to use his soul in the pursuits of his ordinary way of life. (Would a man who spent his entire years alone, climbing mountains, be called a mountaineer? He thought not. He would be called a monk.) Then the ordinary lives of mountaineers, their families and works and loves, contributed equally with the mountains in the formation of them? Yes. He had an example of that here in the same sleeping-bag with him. Himself. It was not on the mountains that he had developed the value which condemned the ‘unfair’ conquest of great peaks; it was in his relationship with Emily, and perhaps with Gerry. Between them those two had convinced him that victory was not enough. Again, it was not his mountaineering skill that had blended this expedition into such a wonderful stew of enthusiasm, friendship, self-sacrifice, and human determination; it was something that others, off the mountain, had given him--Harry, Adam, the Old Captain, his grandfather, young Baber, Emily again. And when he returned from Meru--if he did--surely he would find that these icy forges, which had steeled his mountaineering soul to a new suppleness (and, he hoped, grace) had also tempered him as a husband, father, and friend.

  The air was getting rarefied up here. He must add to that last thought--’and as the Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate of Rudwal.’ It brought the speculations back to earth--although it was true, damn it!

  He would try again, keeping a firm footing on the ground. Mountaineers did not like to bare their souls, even to themselves, and he was a mountaineer . . .

  One: The people he had worked with and the people he had loved, as well as those with whom he had climbed on the mountains, had made him a mountaineer. Two: Whatever the mountains had wrought in him was a part of him, and would influence those he worked with and those he loved. Three: Mountaineering consisted of people, including himself, and only incidentally of mountains.

  Three--no, four: All those statements were also true of the manufacture of sewing machines. But not as beautiful.

  Five: He was glad that Harry was all right again.

  Six: He hoped Billy Barnes turned into a mountaineer. Why? Because there was nothing greater. Better. Higher.

  Seven: He, Peter Savage, was a person (see Statement Number Something-or-other, above), and he was homesick for Emily, Rodney, Elizabeth, baby Gerry, Adam, Baber, Old Uncle Krishna Harnarayan, and all.

  Eight: There remained only the small matter of climbing Meru tomorrow.

  The wind was shrieking across the mountain, and they were very high--four of them alone. He was frightened. He would not be anywhere else.

  Chapter 43

  Nagging wakefulness haunted the hours when he should have slept; cold lethargy dominated the hours when he should have worked. He looked out at six in the morning, and found a powder snow blowing about the mountain and the wind in the north-east. The temperature was eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit. He could only estimate the wind strength, since they had no anemometer. He put it at seventy-five, with gusts up to a hundred.

  That gave him a torpid satisfaction. Wind such as that welded the impalpable cold into steel razors which slashed through clothing, skin, and flesh, into the heart of the marrow. An attempt on the summit would not be feasible in these conditions. But he must wait for an hour or so before he could decently cancel the effort. Billy lit the Primus.

  He tried to eat. Against his will, he found himself weighing the problems, for he was now approaching his last decision. Should they--or could they--make the attempt? Billy respected his silence. What few words had to be said struggled like heavy birds against the noise from outside, and landed, plop, sometimes where they were noticed, sometimes not.

  At eight o’clock he crawled outside and took a long look round the horizon. The sky immediately overhead was pale, cold blue. Arabesques of thin mare’s-tail cloud streamed across the zenith twenty and thirty thousand feet above him. To the south, over the edge of the Bowl, with the Needles to his left, he saw a mass of heavy, dark clouds, tinged with iridescent blue, high-banked along the line of the Himalaya. There the monsoon was in full torrential strength. The land between was pale gold to match the pale sky, without haze, but the angle of the light and the great distance combined to smooth out lakes, lesser mountains, and desert into one sweep of featureless, golden pallor.

  The wind had droppe
d. Forty now, with gusts to sixty. Backing into the north. Visibility still good for distance, when you could see over the blown snow; not so good for close work.

  It was just feasible. He groaned, went into the tent, and said: ‘Are you ready, Billy?’

  George and Oscar came out to see them off. There was no handshaking, and twenty minutes after he had made up his mind they began the ascent of the first nevé. They were roped. It was not necessary on the nevé, but he did not think they would be able to rope up when they reached the harder sections ahead. His hands were already frozen inside the heavy gloves, and he opened and closed his fists slowly as he trudged up, in the lead.

  There were many ways of surmounting that nevé, for it was wide and even, like a triangle, the sides closing to a narrow crest on the rolling ridge nine hundred or a thousand feet higher. Camp IV was near the centre of the base of the triangle.

  He led because he believed that his longer experience of all types of snow and ice surface would enable him to choose the smoothest route. The total saving of effort would not be more than the equivalent of another thirty feet, presuming he never made a false step or induced Billy to make one. Thirty feet might be the difference, in the end. Camp IV was only 2,441 feet below the summit if their measurements were accurate. He could feel his strength flowing out, as on this same nevé eight years before it had flowed in. It was best that he should use himself in these early stages, leaving Billy, who was moving well and breathing more easily than he, in better shape to go on alone in case he failed.

  The light glared and wavered against his goggles. The glittering surface of the nevé disappeared for seconds on end as the wind drew a screaming curtain of powder snow across it and whipped it on to tower over the southern gulfs in those spiral columns he knew so well. The familiar sludge of invisible lead gathered under his crampons and gradually sifted inside his boots, filling them up, squeezing his feet out of existence, then his calves, then . . .

  Rodney’s schooling was a big problem. There were schools in India that could give him the actual education, but that wasn’t enough. In the conditions of India as it was, he would never have his nose rubbed in the mud by the butcher’s boy. That was important. . . . Surely he had detected signs of a musical sense in Elizabeth? It was a little early yet to be sure, though. Nothing could be more harmful than to sit the child down at the piano and to teach her to hate music. Baby Gerry. Ah, he was just a baby. No good making plans or even thinking much about him at this stage. Just love the little beggar. He was too gentle for his own good. But you couldn’t be too gentle. . . . Just enjoy him while he was a baby and see that he stayed gentle.

  They reached the crest of the nevé. Half-past eleven. Three hours. They must have stopped several times during the ascent. Several times? All the time, to suck in groaning breaths of air. He didn’t remember any moving, only the stopping.

  ‘How are we going, Billy?’

  ‘A little slowly, Peter.’

  Good boy. Honest. Honesty is the best policy, absolutely essential in a mountaineer.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  That was Billy speaking.

  ‘Of course.’

  That wasn’t honest. Better amend it. ‘I think so. I can go on. For a bit.’

  Oxygen. He’d tried some in one of those Italian hospitals. Wonderful stuff. He was sucking a malted-milk tablet, sitting, his head bowed forward. Not in an Italian hospital. Here.

  Now what was there? A ridge, green-black rock. The windward side clear, the leeward dense with blown snow.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘I can’t hear,’ Billy shrieked.

  He’d lost his voice, then. Perhaps his vocal cords were frozen, or frostbitten. You had to breathe in through the mouth, however much it hurt. Otherwise you never got enough oxygen to keep a fly alive. Oxygen.

  He motioned for Billy to take the lead, and Billy set off. Billy was going slowly now. Better than himself, but very slow. This was painful work here. It was a temptation to take off the goggles to see where he was putting his feet. Rock slabs, with dry crystal snow, now in a thin layer, now whipped away and curling and coiling and writhing like ghosts on the left hand. There was a sheer fall on the left, where the nevé had reached and then fallen over a sharp edge. Two thousand feet down began the battleship prow of ice that surmounted the Gendarme Ridge. There was a little snow close under this knife edge, though, on the left--steep, and overhanging that drop, but packed. A strip, three, four feet wide, a foot deep. On the right, he didn’t know. Yes, he did. He’d looked over that side while they were coming up here in ‘13. It was a more gradual slope that side, but it was murderous, because it was this rock slab, bare of ice, snow, verglas, anything you could cut into, sloping down towards the Yangpa Ridge. Very dangerous.

  ‘Keep to the left side,’ he called. ‘In the snow strip.’

  Billy didn’t hear him. Next time Billy stopped, Peter whispered and pointed until he understood. The left looked worse, but there was something to cut into. The right looked safe, but it was death.

  All this had been different in ‘13. Not really, just a little. Wind blowing, snow falling, eight years passing. How had he got up here so wonderfully then? Levitation? Leap frog? Divine afflatus? Hubris, translated into terms of horse-power?

  Billy began to cut steps, the axe-blade swinging up, falling of its own weight, a wedge of snow jumping silently out. About 26,400 feet here, probably.

  Surely there was something a man could do to show Harnarayan that young Baber was not a criminal and a traitor? Another thing--what Harnarayan and Adam were doing was good in its way, but in essence it was English, not Indian. The democratic revolt, the revolution, complete with slogans and catchwords, was an English idea. European, anyway. If they abolished the Old Captain’s India, they’d be sorry. But the widows had to eat better, and Dr Dhayal needed another forty beds, and everyone could do with a new heart.... They’d have to understand that Peter Savage might be a fool, but he wasn’t malicious. Adam did understand. One thing was sure--no one was going to get exactly what he wanted, however bitterly he struggled (using lies, might-is-right, oxygen). The way they met each other was going to matter more than who won, because victory was impossible--and, also, it was not enough.

  They had reached the place where Gerry threw away his axe. He could remember that time very clearly. Now what would happen? Would he be stopped again, by an unseen hand?

  He got over it, Billy leading. He felt no desire to throw away his ice-axe. He was just too tired, for one thing.

  ‘It’s past one,’ Billy said a little later.

  A little later again he saw Billy’s face very close to his-- obscuring the goggles, as a matter of fact--and his neck was twisted round. He took off his goggles to see better, but Billy put them on again and pulled him half upright.

  ‘You fainted,’ Billy said reproachfully. Reproachful because he hadn’t told him he was going to.

  ‘I didn’t know I would, you bloody fool,’ he said furiously.

  He got up, Billy trying to push him down, but he won and jerked his legs into action. About twenty steps, he thought, and then the rock rose slowly, levitating.

  When he thought he was conscious again he asked: ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Twenty-six thousand eight hundred. About.’

  Three hundred and forty-one feet to go. At this rate, two hours. Billy alone, an hour.

  He leaned against the rock fang on his right and motioned Billy on. Billy stayed, hunched over his axe, numb, gasping, his huge, black, round eyes catching the light. Goggle-eyed. That’s what it meant!

  ‘On!’ He was speaking into Billy’s ear, through the fur helmet, parka, and all.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look. Let me rest. I’ll never come again.’

  That unsettled Billy, because he had enough energy left to think. Billy knew this was his mountain. But Billy could see he had reached the end. The will was there, but every time he tried to make it work his legs, he f
ainted. He said: ‘I’m sorry.’

  Billy understood then that he could not go up there, and never would. So Billy could never go with him, his hero. Billy was young, so Peter said: ‘That’s an order.’

  Not good mountaineering. Bad ‘soul’ to order people to do things you can’t do yourself. Bad ‘soul’ to give any order, come to that.

  He said: ‘Use your judgement. As far as you can. Not more than one hour up--then turn back, wherever.’

  Billy helped him settle against the rock, and disappeared. Peter lay back, supporting himself with his ice-axe dug into the snow at his feet, the haft in his glove, the glove tight against his belly. Waiting was as exhausting as moving. Physical effort to force himself to wait. Very hard, hard . . .

  Emily had no business on this mountain, no business at all. True, he’d taken her up the Zmutt Ridge that day to show her that nothing was impossible, but Meru was impossible, because she was a woman. Just the same as he couldn’t have a baby. She should have stayed at home and let him tell her, one way and another, what kind of things there were on Meru.

  ‘Go down at once,’ he said angrily. ‘You haven’t brought Rodney and the babies with you, have you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said tartly. ‘How on earth do you think they’d get up here?’

  He was glad to see she’d had the sense to put on mountaineering clothes, good modern ones, with trousers, not the impractical stuff they used to wear when she was a girl.

  The wind backed another two points, and he knew he was done for. Now it was blowing directly on him, and he was freezing to death, not slowly. Death reached in, those razors in hand. He had to move to keep alive. There was no place to move to, except up or down. He had no strength to do either. What he had was a faint power to cling, like a shell on a rock, something left over from ten million years ago.