by Trevanian
"All right, George. You win."
With a catalogue of pain, he clawed his way up the bank. When he had scrambled to the top he grinned at her, expecting some kind of praise. Instead, she archly walked around him, getting no nearer than three feet, and started on the return trip to the lodge. He watched her glissade easily down the bank and take the downward trail.
"You are a savage, George Hotfort. I'm glad we took your land!"
Back in the rock garden lounge, he consumed an enormous dinner with the concentration of a Zen neophyte. He had showered and changed clothes, and he felt a little more human, although his legs and shoulders still protested with dull, persistent aches. Ben sat across from him, eating with his usual vigor and drawing off great gulps of beer to wash the food down. Jonathan envied him the beer. George had left him a few hundred yards from the lodge and had returned up the trail without a word.
"What do you think of George?" Ben asked, stabbing at his face with a napkin.
"Lovely person. Warm and human. And a conversationalist of considerable accomplishment."
"Yeah, but she's a climbing fool, ain't she?" Ben spoke with paternal pride.
Jonathan admitted that she was that.
"I use her to help break in the handful of climbers who still come for conditioning and training."
"No wonder your trade has fallen off. What's her real name, anyway?"
"George is her real name."
"How did that happen?"
"She was named after her mother."
"I see."
Ben studied Jonathan's face for a moment, hoping to discover the discouragement that would make him give up the idea of climbing the Eiger. "Feeling a little bashed?"
"A little. I'll remember that workout the rest of my life. But I'll be ready to get back to work tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's balls! That was just an appetizer. You go back up in an hour."
Jonathan started to object.
"Hush up and listen to your ol' buddy." Ben's broad face bunched up in folds around his eyes as he became serious for a moment. "Jon, you're no kid anymore. And the Eiger's one bitch-kitty of a face. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd have you give up this whole idea."
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"Just take my word for it."
"All right. I think you're out of your head, but if you're set on going, then goddam my eyes if I don't make sure you're in top condition. Because if you ain't, you're pretty likely to end up a grease spot on those rocks. And it's not just for you either. I'm ground man for the team. I'm responsible for all of them. And I'm not going to let them be dragged off by a headstrong old man, you, who ain't ready for the climb." Ben punctuated his uncommonly long tirade with a deep pull of beer. "Now you just take yourself a swim in the pool yonder and then lay around in the sun eye-balling the skin. I'll have them call you when it's time."
Jonathan did as he was told. He had begun to enjoy the game of estimating the ballistic competence of the various young ladies around the pool when a waiter came to tell him his rest period was over.
Once again Ben took him partway up the trail, then he was turned over to George, who paced him even farther and faster than in the morning. Jonathan spoke to her several times, but he could not dent the expressionless facade, much less get a word from her. It was twilight when she left him as before, and he limped back to his suite. He showered and fell on the bed with a lust for sleep. But Ben arrived just in time to prevent him from finding that refuge.
"No you don't, ol' buddy. You still got a big meal to put away."
Although he nodded off repeatedly over his plate, Jonathan consumed a big plank steak and a salad. And that night he found sleep without the usual soporific assistance of the Lautrec article.
The next morning (if three-thirty has any right to that title) found his joints filled with cement and pain. But he and Ben were on the trail by four-thirty. It was a different path and noticeably steeper, and again he was turned over to George Hotfort about halfway up. Again the easily swinging hips drew him upward as he muttered curses against his pain, the heat, his trembling legs, and all Indians. Again at each pause George's mocking, disdainful eyes observed his struggles without comment.
Dinner and a swim, and up again in the afternoon.
And the next day; and the next; and the next.
His climbing trim came back faster than he had dared to hope, and faster than Ben cared to admit. By the sixth day he was enjoying the training and keeping up with George all the way. They moved higher and steeper each day, always making more distance in the same amount of time, and sometimes now Jonathan led and George followed. On the seventh day he was scrambling up a shale drift when he looked back to see (oh, rewarding sight!) perspiration on George's brow. When she got to him she sat down and rested, breathing hard.
"Oh, come on George!" Jonathan pleaded. "We can't spend out lives sitting here. Upward, upward. Get thine swinging ass in gear." Because she never spoke, he had fallen into the habit of talking to her as though she could not understand. George evaluated the hang of scruffy rock above them and shook her head. Her denim shirt was dark with sweat under the arms and at each pocket where her breasts pressed against the cloth. She smiled at him for the first time, then she started back down the trail.
Never before had she accompanied him all the way back to the lodge, but this time, while Jonathan showered, she and Ben had a long talk. That evening a champagne cooler with half a dozen bottles of beer buried in ice appeared with dinner, and Ben told Jonathan that the first phase of his conditioning was over. They were through with the soft shoe work. His kit had been assembled, and the next morning they would go to work on the stone faces.
A second six-pack was consumed in Ben's rooms where he outlined the next few days. They would begin on easy faces, no more than ten or fifteen feet above the scree, where Jonathan would get the feel of the rock again. Once Ben was satisfied with his progress, they would move up and put a little void under themselves.
Their plans made, the two men chatted and drank beer for an hour. Ben took vicarious pleasure in watching his comrade's delight in the cold brew he had been denied throughout the first phase of conditioning, although he admitted mistrusting any man who could go without beer for that many days.
For some time Jonathan had been aware that his hardening body was growing eager to make love, not as an affectionate expression, but as a biological eruption. It was for this reason that he asked Ben, more or less offhand, "Do you have anything going with George?"
"What? Oh! No." He actually blushed. "For Christ's sake, I'm twenty-five years older than her. Why do you want to know?"
"Nothing really. I'm just feeling tough and full of sperm. She happens to be around and she looks capable."
"Well, she's a grown-up girl. I guess she can go with whoever she wants."
"That might present a difficulty. I can't say she's been pestering me with her attentions."
"Oh, she likes you all right. I can tell from the way she talks about you."
"Does she ever speak to anyone but you, Ben?"
"Not as I know of." Ben finished his bottle at one long pull and opened another. "Kind of funny," he commented.
"What is?"
"You wanting George. Considering the way she's been grinding you down, a body would think you'd have some kind of hate going for her."
"Who knows the devious working of the id? In the back of my mind I may be carrying the image of impaling her—stabbing her to death, or something." Ben glanced at Jonathan with a hint of a wince in his eyes. "You know what, ol' buddy. Way down deep you've got the makings of a real bad ass. I don't know that I'd like to be alone on a desert island with you if there was a limited food supply."
"No worry. You're a friend."
"Ever have any enemies?"
"A few."
"Any of them still around and kicking?"
"One." Jonathan considered for a moment. "No, two."
There had been rather
a lot of beer, and Jonathan was asleep quickly. The Jemima dream began, as it had each night, with deceptive gentleness—a rehearsal in sequence of their relations from the first meeting on the plane. The sudden images of Dragon's derisive face, like quick intercuts in a motion picture, never lasted long enough to force Jonathan awake. The flickering hurricane lamps dissolved into harlequin flecks. The arc of her cigarette glowed in the dark. He reached out for her, and she was so real he experienced a tactile tingle as he slid the flat of his hand over her hard-under-soft stomach. He felt it press up against his palm—and he was fully awake! Before he could sit up, George drew him tightly against her, gripping him with strong arms and wrapping supple legs around his. Her eyes too had a Mongol cast, and it was possible to make the substitution.
He did not wake until after five. Because of recent habit, the late hour seemed to accuse. But then he recalled that they would be working faces today, and you cannot work a face before light. George had gone. She had left as silently as she had come. A stiffness in his lower back, a feeling of tender emptiness in his groin, and a slightly alkaline smell from beneath the sheets reminded him of the night. He had been awake when she left, but he feigned sleep, fearful of being called on to perform again.
As he showered, he promised himself to use the girl sparingly. She would send a man to a sanatorium in a fortnight, if he let her. She climaxed quickly and often, but was never satisfied. Sex for her was not a gentle sequence of objectives and achievements; it was an unending chase from one exploding bubble of thrill to the next—a plateau of sensation to be maintained, not a series of crests to be climbed. And if the partner seemed to flag, she introduced a variation calculated to renew his interest and vigor.
Like those of swimming, the techniques of climbing are never forgotten, once properly learned. But Jonathan knew he would have to discover what new limitations the past few years of age and inactivity had placed on his skill and nerve.
The experienced climber can move up a face he cannot cling to. A regular, predicted set of moves from one point of imbalance to its counterpoise will keep him on the face, so long as he continues moving, rather in the way a bicycle rider has little trouble with balance, unless he goes too slowly. It is necessary to read the pitch accurately, to plot out and rehearse the moves kinesodically, then to make them with smooth conviction from hold to hold, ending in a predicted and reliable purchase. In the past, this constellation of abilities had been Jonathan's forte, but during his first day of free climbing he made several misjudgments that sent him slithering down ten or fifteen feet to the scree, banging a little skin off elbows and knees and doing greater damage to his self-esteem. It was some time before he diagnosed his problem. The intervening years since his last climb had had no effect on his analytical powers, but they had eroded the fine edge of his physical dexterity. This erosion was beyond repair, so it was necessary that he train himself to think within the limits of his new, inferior body.
At first, for safety, Ben insisted that they use many pitons, making the face look as though lady climbers or Germans had been there. But it was not long before they were making short grade five and six pitches with a more Anglo-Saxon economy of ironmongery. One problem, however, continued to plague Jonathan, making him furious with himself. In the midst of a skillful and businesslike series of moves, he would suddenly find himself fighting the rock, succumbing to the natural, but lethal, desire to press his body against it. This not only deprived him of leverage for tension footholds, but it made it difficult to scan the face above for cracks. Once a climber presses the face, a fearful cycle begins. It is an unnoticed welling up of animal fear that first makes him hug the rock; hugging weakens his footholds and blinds him to purchases that might be within grasp; and this, now real, danger feeds the original fear.
On one occasion, after Jonathan thought he had overcome this amateurish impulse, he suddenly found himself caught up in the cycle. His cleated boots could find no grab, and suddenly he was off.
He fell only three of the forty meters between him and the rock below before his line snapped up short and he was dangling and twisting from the rope. It was a sound piton.
"Hey!" Ben shouted from above. "What the fuck you doin'?"
"I'm just hanging from this piton, wise ass! What are you doing?"
"I'm just holding your weight in my powerful and experienced hands and watching you hang from that piton. You look real graceful. A little stupid, but real graceful."
Jonathan kicked angrily off the rock and swung out and back, but he missed his grab.
"For Christ's sake, ol' buddy! Wait a minute! Now, don't do anything. Just rest there for a minute."
Jonathan dangled from the line, feeling foolish.
"Now think about it." Ben gave it a moment. "You know what's wrong?"
"Yes!" Jonathan was impatient, both with himself and with Ben's condescending treatment.
"Tell me."
With the singsong of rote Jonathan said, "I'm crowding the rock."
"Right. Now get back on the face and we'll go down."
Jonathan took a mind-clearing breath, kicked out and swung back, and he was on the face. During the whole of the retreat he moved glibly and precisely, forgetting the vertical gravity of the valley and responding naturally to the diagonal gravity of weight-versus-rope that kept him leaning well away from the face.
On the valley floor they sat on a pile of scree, Jonathan coiling rope while Ben drank the bottle of beer he had stashed in the shade of a rock. They were dwarfed by the nine "needles" towering around them. It was on one of these that they had been working, a column of striated, reddish rock that rose from the earth like a decapitated trunk of a giant fossil tree.
"How would you like to climb Big Ben tomorrow?" Ben asked out of lengthy silence. He was referring to the tallest of the columns, a four-hundred-foot shaft that eons of wind had eroded until it was wider at the top than at the base. It was the proximity of these peculiar formations that had caused Ben to select this spot for his climbing school, and he had promptly named the grandest after himself.
Jonathan squinted at the needle, his eyes locating half a dozen dicey areas before it had swept halfway up. "You think I'm ready?"
"More than ready, ol' buddy. Matter of fact, I figure that's your problem. You're overtrained, or trained too fast. You're getting a little skitterish." Ben went on to say that he had noticed Jonathan pushing off too hard when he was in a tension stance, taking little open moves without being sure of the terminal purchase, and letting his mind wander from the rock when it seemed too easy. It was during these moments of inattention that Jonathan suddenly found himself hugging the face. The best cure for all this might be an endurance run—something to break down the overcoiled legs and to humble the dangerously confident animal in Jonathan.
His eyes picking their way up from possible stance to stance, Jonathan played with the climb for twenty minutes before he accomplished the optical ascent. "Looks hard, Ben. Especially the top flange."
"It ain't no bedpost." Ben stood up. "Goddam my eyes if I don't think I'll come along with you!"
Jonathan glanced at Ben's foot before he could help it. "You really want to go?"
"No sweat. I've stumped up it once before. What do you say?"
"I say we walk up it tomorrow."
"Great. Now why don't you take the rest of the day off, ol' buddy."
As they walked back to the lodge, Jonathan experienced a lightness of spirit and eagerness for the morrow that had, in the old days, been the core of his love for climbing. His whole being was focused on matters of rock, strength, and tactic, and the outside world with its Dragons and Jemimas could not force its way into his consciousness.
He had been eating well, sleeping perfectly, training hard, drinking much beer, and using George with gingerly discretion. This kind of elemental life would bore him beyond standing in a couple of weeks, but just then it was grand.
He leaned against the lodge's main desk, reading an effervescen
t postcard from Cherry sprinkled with underlinings, and ————, and !!!!, and ......, and (parenthesis), and ha! ha! ha! No one, evidently, had burned down his home. Mr. Monk was as angry and scatological as ever. And Cherry wanted to know if he could suggest some reading on the preparation of aphrodisiacs for a friend of hers (someone he had never met) for use on a man (whom he had also never met) and whom he would probably not like, inasmuch as this nameless party was such a heartless turd!!! as to allow lusty girls to go untapped.
Jonathan felt something touch his foot and looked down to see a nervous little Pomeranian with a rhinestone collar sniffing around. He ignored it and returned to his postcard, but the next moment the dog was mounting an amorous attack on his leg. He kicked it aside, but the dog interpreted this rejection as maidenly coyness and returned to the attack.
"Leave Dr. Hemlock alone, Faggot. I am sorry, Jonathan, but Faggot has not learned to recognize the straight, and he hasn't the patience to wait for an invitation."
Without looking up, Jonathan recognized the chocolate baritone of Miles Mellough.
ARIZONA: June 27
Jonathan watched the lace-cuffed and perfectly manicured hands descend to pick up the Pomeranian. He followed the dog up to Miles's face, tanned and handsome as ever, the large blue eyes gazing languidly from beneath long black lashes, the broad, lineless forehead supporting a cluster of trained soft waves that swept around to the sides in a seemingly artless pattern that was the pride of Miles's hairdresser. The dog kissed at Miles's cheek, which affection he accepted without taking his eyes from Jonathan.
"How have you been, Jonathan?" There was a gentle mocking smile in his eyes, but their movements were quick, ready to read and avoid a thrust.
"Miles." The word was not a greeting, it was a nomination. Jonathan put his postcard into his pocket and waited for Miles to get on with it.