Thin Air Page 5

  ‘That’ll do,’ says Cotterell. Without further discussion, he calls a halt beneath a large rocky overhang, and tells the Scotsman to issue the boots.

  The coolies are pathetically grateful, and with the enforced rest, McLellan’s temper swiftly improves; he has the grace to look sheepish. That’s good, because I need him to translate for me. ‘And the sahibs need to hear this too,’ I say tartly.

  Once everyone’s under the overhang, with a shaggy wall of yaks shielding us from the worst of the elements, I have their attention.

  ‘Mountain sickness,’ I shout, pausing to let McLellan translate, ‘attacks at random. Old, young, fit – it makes no difference. You’re breathless. Your head hurts. You vomit. Can’t sleep. Bad dreams. You get angry.’ I catch McLellan’s eye and he reddens. ‘I can make you feel better – but if it keeps getting worse, the only cure is to descend several hundred feet. If you climb higher – you die.’ I let that sink in. ‘So if you feel ill, tell me! It doesn’t make you less of a man … or woman,’ I falter, catching a wry glance from a pretty Sherpani. ‘Is that understood?’

  A general murmuring and shuffling of feet.

  ‘Good. End of lecture.’

  * * *

  Well that’s cleared the air. I feel better too. All that rot about ‘unseen spirits’ and ‘birds of ill omen’. And being scared of my own tent! I’ve been letting this country affect my nerves. It won’t happen again.

  I gave Garrard and McLellan phenacetin for their heads, Kits a bromide for his nausea, and we soldiered on – and at long bloody last, we were over the Kang La. The view up there is supposed to be ‘stupendous’ (of course), but all we saw was whirling snow.

  What a relief, though, to be going downhill. After a couple of thousand feet, it grew warmer and the snow turned patchy, with drifts of tiny blue gentians. Cotterell has just called a halt at a stretch of levelish ground surrounded by stunted birch trees.

  I’m so tired it’s taken me a while to notice that the wind is getting up and the coolies are scrambling to pitch camp. The sky has turned an ominous, glassy green, and charcoal clouds are piling in from the north. As if to remind us of its presence, Kangchenjunga is sending us a storm.

  There’s no time for dinner, I can already hear the boom of thunder stalking us along the ridges. We sahibs grab mugs of tea and chunks of fruit cake, and dive into our tents.

  Suddenly the wind’s screaming, snow hammering my tent, which is flapping like a live thing. No, not snow, hail. Through the little celluloid window in the front flap, I glimpse a birch tree thrashing like a twig in a blue flare of lightning. I’m huddled in my sleeping bag, cradling my mug, with Cedric trying to burrow under my legs, and the lightning flashing, thunder shaking the ground beneath me, but I’m not frightened, I’m exhilarated. There’s no point being scared, there’s nothing I can do. If I’m struck, I’ll be dead in a heartbeat.

  ‘I say, Stephen!’ yells Kits from the adjacent tent. ‘You might want to put down that mug!’

  Oh God, it’s tin; he must have seen me silhouetted in the glare. He’s hooting with laughter, and so am I as I fling the mug aside. The next instant, I realise how illogical that is, chucking a tin mug when I’m inside a tent with a metal frame, and I laugh even harder. The coolies, crammed in their tents, are laughing too; they’re enjoying the storm as much as we. And I love the fact that bloody Lyell never had a storm on his trek, not with that ‘glorious’ weather – so this belongs entirely to us.

  The storm rages on, and I must have slept, because Nima is waking me with tea and hot buttered chuppaties.

  It’s still dark. The tapes of my tent flaps are frozen, but although I don’t remember doing it, I tied them with thief knots last night, which means that one good tug does the trick.

  Dragging on my stiff, cold boots, I crawl outside amid clouds of frosty breath.

  Camp has been transformed by a glittering blanket of snow. The sky is clear and ablaze with stars, so astonishingly bright that I don’t need my torch.

  The sky is clear. At last I make out the dark bulk of mountains all around. I wish I knew which one is Kangchenjunga.

  The storm has settled my nerves as nothing else could. I feel better than I have in months. And for the first time since leaving England, I haven’t dreamt at all.

  6

  The coolies have been making trouble ever since the Kang La.

  I’ve asked Nima what’s wrong, and he always gives a different answer. They don’t like following Lyell, or they’re running out of tsampa – ‘And we can’t eat your food, Doctor Sahib’ – or simply, ‘This way is not good.’ But why? I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something he’s not telling me.

  Tomorrow, the yak-wallahs return to their village, and five of our Sherpas want to go with them. Cotterell and McLellan are doing their damnedest to dissuade them. I’m keeping out of it. I’d only complicate things, or end up quarrelling with McLellan.

  We’re camped just west of the glacier, and although we can’t see it because of the high ridge of moraine along its flank, it’s sending a freezing wind that’s making the tents flap; the noise kept us awake last night. Fifty yards off, at the foot of the moraine, a large cairn marks the way to the ice. Tomorrow, we climb past it and head up the glacier. As the gorak flies, it’s only a few miles to the south-west face of Kangchenjunga.

  We can’t see that either, because of the guardian peaks. This morning we woke to the first clear skies since Darjeeling – and there they were, right on top of us: the towering sentinels that watch the approach to the mountain.

  Cotterell had tears in his eyes; dreaming of the Himalayas had kept him going in the trenches. McLellan doffed his topi and stood staring, his lips soundlessly moving; no doubt if he’d been alone, he’d have knelt in prayer. As for Garrard, Kits and me, we stumbled about like drunks, Garrard laughing, Kits shouting the names of the peaks: ‘Jannu! Bokroh! Look, Beak, there’s Kabru and Rathong – and good Lord, Koktang!’

  ‘My God! My God!’ I whispered. Wherever I turned, I was assaulted by dizzying heights of fluted ice, a glaring white against an indigo sky. Such immensity. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t take it in. Daunting to think that every one of them is thousands of feet lower than our mountain.

  Until today, these peaks had kept themselves well hidden. After the storm on the Kang La, we had days of rain and fog. We descended through pine forests wreathed in cloud, to the Yalung River. It glided silent and opaque, but the chaos of dead trees along its banks gave a grim foretaste of the torrent it will become in the Monsoon. That’s only a few weeks away.

  The bridge was down, so young Pasang struggled across with a rope, then we waded through the freezing water, clinging on for dear life. The yaks ploughed stolidly across, and Nima carried Cedric in a doko, while Cotterell, who’s prone to rheumatism, crossed on the back of his servant: a six-foot Englishman atop a small, staggering Sherpa.

  Yesterday, we passed a ruined monastery: the last trace of humanity on our route. It’s been abandoned for decades, but it felt as if the monks had only just left. Mossy carvings seemed to exhale long-dead prayers to the mountain: Please do not blight our crops, please do not drown our village … That’s what’s frightening the coolies: we’re getting close to the mountain.

  The others are still arguing with them, so I wander off towards the moraine. I can’t resist the pull of that glacier, I have to climb up and take a look.

  The snow is patchy as I head for the cairn, with clumps of grass poking through. It’s the last grass we’ll see for weeks. Cedric pads at my heels, occasionally launching a doomed attack on a gorak. The ravens allow him within snapping distance, then lift into the air with scornful caws.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do about Cedric. I feel responsible for him. After all, my pony trod on his paw. But a glacier’s no place for a dog.

  For the first time in days, I’m hot. I can feel the sun beating down on my shoulders through my flannel shirt, and on my head, despite my canvas
fishing hat. I’ve made everyone slather their faces with Penaten glacier cream, but I’ve stupidly left my snow glasses in my tent, and the glare is eye-watering. What’s more, I haven’t even reached the cairn and I’m panting. Is it the altitude? After all, we’ve been climbing since the river, we’re at over fifteen thousand feet.

  The summit of Kangchenjunga is over twenty-eight thousand. That gives me a deep, visceral thrill: half excitement, half dread.

  The wind has dropped to nothing, and I catch voices from camp. ‘No, we have snow gear for everyone.’ ‘But I told you, we have more than enough tsampa!’

  I turn my back on them, and once again, I’m alone with the peaks. There’s a wildness, a savagery about them that I’ve never felt in the Alps. They are so astonishingly remote.

  I suppose it’s because I come from the modern world of telegraphs, aeroplanes and several posts a day, but it’s hard to grasp that if I wanted to send a message, it would have to go by mail-runner, and I couldn’t hope for a reply within a month.

  And yet, though this place strikes me as unearthly, it’s not, it’s profoundly earthly. What’s unsettling is that it holds no trace of humanity. In the Alps, there have been times when I’ve felt isolated, but I’ve always known that people are only a few hours away. Out here, we might as well be on the moon.

  Yesterday, I tried to get this across to the others. ‘From now on, it’s just us and the mountain.’

  Kits rolled his eyes, and Garrard grinned. ‘Well, if you don’t count ravens, vultures and the odd wild sheep.’

  ‘Yes, but you know what I mean, nothing human.’

  The moraine is a dusty ridge of grey rubble a hundred feet high, haunted by snow pigeons. As I reach the bottom, they lift into the sky, swerving in unison before settling higher up.

  The cairn is larger than it appeared from camp; it must be ten feet tall. At its base, the coolies have left the inevitable offerings of incense and little dishes of ghee; and long ago, someone jabbed a bamboo pole in its flank, with a line of tattered prayer flags hanging limp.

  Cairns always remind me of a friend of Aunt Ruth’s, a doughty lady mountaineer of the 1890s who once unfurled a Votes for Women banner on the summit of one of the lesser Himalayan peaks, then placed her card in a jam jar and had her coolies build a cairn over it. How splendidly Victorian, to leave one’s visiting card on a mountain!

  There’s not a breath of wind, and the prayer flags hang lifeless.

  The other thing about cairns is that I always feel an ignoble urge to dismantle them and see what’s underneath. Idly, I pluck a stone from the base. It’s rough with lichen, which crumbles to black dust under my thumb. I replace it with a slight feeling of transgression.

  A gorak thuds on to the cairn, making me start.

  The bird fixes me with a knowing stare. I shoo it away, scolding Cedric for not doing his duty; but he’s not here, he must have returned to camp.

  The gorak has flown off and so have the snow pigeons, leaving me alone with the cairn. Idly, I walk round to the other side.

  I didn’t expect this. What a disagreeable surprise. There’s a plaque affixed with wire at about eye level. It’s made of battered aluminium, and seems once to have been a plate of the sort people use for camping; but someone has hammered in an inscription in rusty nails: Dr Francis A. Yates, 33, d. xx.v. 1906.

  I step back smartly, wiping my palm on my thigh. Until now, Lyell and his companions – apart from old Tennant – have scarcely been real. I’ve never given a thought to where they might be buried. And yet here before me, beneath this pile of rocks that I won’t touch again, lie the remains of a man. A man who was almost the same age as me when the mountain killed him.

  All I can call to mind of the tragedy is the bare bones (as it were). They’d climbed within a few thousand feet of the summit when a blizzard forced them to abandon the attempt. For days they were snowed in at an upper camp, and when the weather cleared and they began the descent, an avalanche struck. Lyell and Tennant braved all sorts of dangers to retrieve the dead and wounded – that’s why they’re heroes – but the injured men died soon after. Poor Dr Yates must have been one of those.

  Did he die here, where we’re camped, or somewhere on the glacier? If he died on the glacier, perhaps Lyell wanted to bring the body here, rather than simply lowering it into a crevasse. Perhaps he wanted his comrade to be buried beneath earth and grass, out of sight of the mountain.

  But what a dreadful, lonely place for a grave! Since the day they laid him to rest, no expedition has entered this valley. I’m the first living man who’s stood here in twenty-nine years.

  Although on reflection, does that matter? Surely the purpose of a grave is to benefit the living. Aren’t the dead beyond caring where they lie?

  Whatever I tell myself, the past feels uncomfortably close. This man was a doctor, like me. He made the same trek from Darjeeling that I’ve just made, then struggled most of the way up the mountain – only to end here, in this desolate place, beneath a pile of rocks. That could be me under there.

  Without warning, I’m overwhelmed by an appalling sense of loneliness. Not solitude, nothing so peaceful. What I feel is the howling agony of abandonment …

  Swiftly, I whistle for Cedric, but he doesn’t come. I wish I hadn’t whistled; the echoes do nothing to lessen the feeling – which is perfectly ridiculous, with camp only fifty yards off.

  Clouds veil the sun, turning the light an unwholesome grey. I’ve lost all desire to climb the moraine. The air feels heavy and thick; somehow – oppressive. As I’m lighting a cigarette, I hear one of the others coming up behind me. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ I say between puffs. ‘There’s a plaque—’

  There’s no one there. Not a soul within fifty yards.

  In disbelief, I walk round the other side of the cairn. Still no one.

  But there was someone, I heard him. He was right behind me, I heard the scrape of boots on grit. And I knew he was there, I had that unmistakeable feeling you get when you know you’re not alone. I can’t understand why there’s nobody here.

  Again, I wipe my hand down my thigh, leaving a dark smudge on my trousers. I step away from the cairn. I clear my throat and stare down at my cigarette.

  ‘Stephen! Hulloa! Stephen!’ And there is Kits, halfway up the moraine.

  It can’t have been him, he’s too far away.

  ‘Wake up, Bodge! What are you staring at?’

  At last I find my voice. ‘Come down,’ I croak. ‘Take a look at this!’

  He skitters down to me in a rattle of pebbles and a haze of grey dust – and of course he’s thrilled by the plaque, as I knew he would be: it’s his first tangible link with one of his heroes.

  ‘Yates,’ he says reverently. ‘I knew he was buried somewhere around here, but I never imagined …’ Excitedly, he yells for Garrard to come and take photographs, then searches happily for the smallest pebble to pocket as a keepsake.

  For once, I’m glad of his noisy enthusiasm. And I’m heartily ashamed of myself. These morbid thoughts about Dr Yates, it simply won’t do. Imagine how merciless Kits would be if he found out.

  And yet, on reflection, I suppose it’s only to be expected that I’m a tad out of sorts. The remoteness of this place … It forces one to confront one’s own insignificance as never before. And we are so very far from help. As a doctor, I know better than the others how little I could do if one of us fell ill – or simply fell. All this has just been powerfully brought home to me by this unforgiving pile of rocks – this rather too tangible intimation of mortality.

  It would be odd if I didn’t feel alarmed.

  * * *

  Before nightfall, I stroll back to the cairn and add three small pebbles to its base: one to replace Kits’ keepsake, and two for him and me; because one oughtn’t to pass a cairn without adding a stone. And that’s not superstition, it’s merely a long-established custom, observed by mountaineers around the world.

  The sun has gone behind the western peak
s, and it’s already below freezing. The wind is whipping dust in my eyes and the prayer flags are fluttering forlornly.

  I’ve also come back to prove that I can: that there are no footsteps, and never were.

  Silence, apart from the hiss of wind and dust. No sense of someone behind me. And no footsteps.

  I suppose the uncomfortable truth is that I’m just as good at denial as anyone else. I’ve been telling myself that the altitude isn’t affecting me, but it is. The altitude, the heat and the glare, they’re all doing their work.

  And the echoes in this valley are so damned odd.

  7

  I know it’s a bad idea to read about climbing disasters, but Kits says there’s another cairn coming up, and I want to be proof against any more nonsense.

  What do I mean by nonsense? Well I don’t mean that I imagined those echoes, because I didn’t. I mean that it’s lack of knowledge which lets in the shadows. The fleeting glimpse causes the brain to weave nightmares – whereas if one turns on the light, then the ‘something glimpsed’, or in my case half heard, becomes thoroughly understood, and the brain is set at ease.

  Anyway, I’ve borrowed Cotterell’s pocket history of Himalayan mountaineering. It only has a few pages on Kangchenjunga, and that’s all I want: no details, just the facts.

  And my God, they’re bad enough. All mountains are killers, but ours is worse than most. In the thirty years that white men have tried to conquer it, it’s slaughtered twenty-one.

  A Swiss-led party made the first attempt in 1905 and lost four, although regrettably not the despicable Crowley, who refused to leave his tent to rescue his dying Sherpas. In ’29, an American tried it alone and was never seen again; so I wasn’t the first at Yates’ cairn; that Yankee must have been here six years ago. Then in ’30 came the vast Dyhrenfurth/Smythe show; they attacked the north face, and lost three. And in ’31, Bauer’s lot also tried the north face, and lost four.