Solo Faces (17 page)

Banning had not been impressed with Rand when he first met him. He hadn’t known that much about him, he’d even thought him ordinary.

“I didn’t know you were interested in poetry.”

“Actually I’m interested in very few things, that’s the problem,” he muttered. “Do you want to know what I’m really interested in? It’s disgusting. Making people envious—that’s it. That’s all it is. I wasn’t always that way. There may have been a tendency but not much. I was stronger.”

“I envy you,” Banning said.

“Ah, don’t.”

That was what he would remember, those words casually uttered and Rand lying asleep, as if dead, the snow unmelted on the floor near his boots. In the morning there was light through the ice-glazed windows and the sudden rumble of something outside—Banning jumped up to see what it was. The train to Montenvers was passing not far off. In the daylight the room was even barer, an inventory of its contents would not fill a dozen lines. Above the shelf there was a postcard pinned. The handwriting was a woman’s. The final line he remembered also.
I know you have glory waiting for you,
it read. It was signed with an initial.
C.

T
HERE WERE TWO REPORTERS
waiting by the bridge over the tracks. They followed him across.

What could he tell them? he asked disarmingly—he was taking the train, that was all. One of them snapped pictures as they stood on the platform. There was a crowd. People were turning their heads to look.

Was he going up to the Walker? Was he going alone?

“You’ve got all these people wondering what’s going on,” he said.

“You’re carrying a lot of equipment,” they noted.

“It’s not as heavy as it looks.”

“How many kilos?”

“Oh, maybe ten.”

“You mean twenty-five,” one said.

They talked in a bantering fashion; Rand denied nothing, but admitted very little. Meanwhile a strange metallic pounding hung in the air. He turned to look—it was a workman repairing the rails.

“What are conditions like on the Walker?”

“I’m not really sure. Have you heard?”

“Ice,” one of them said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” He looked again toward the workman. The hammering had a solid quality, unhurried, clear.

“Perhaps you should take him with you,” they joked.

A light turned red. In the distance, a somewhat ominous rumble. The train was coming.

From Montenvers he descended to the glacier, a lone figure with a pack. There were groups of inexperienced climbers learning to walk on the ice, others heading up in various directions or coming back. Gradually he passed them, passed the Charpoua and the iron ladders fixed to the rock at Les Egralets. By noon he had started up the Leschaux Glacier itself. He was moving steadily, stopping only occasionally to rest.

Afterward they said he had seemed different, it was hard to describe. He was a bit disheveled, perhaps, as if a measure of caring had lessened. His ardor had lost its edge. They expected him to appear at the Leschaux hut, but he didn’t go to the Leschaux. He went on alone up the glacier.

He’d been paying no attention to what was ahead, but more and more he could feel it there, a presence in the sky. He could sense it as, from miles away, one feels the sea. He was carrying too much, ice ax, crampons, a sleeping bag, food for five days. Every pound was crucial. Still, he needed it all. He had a sketch of the route with every scrap of information he could find, where it crossed the ridge line, where the rock was no good. Finally he stopped and raised his head.

Dark, flanked by snowfields, the greatest pillar of the Grandes Jorasses soared four thousand feet in an almost unbroken line. The bottom was in sunlight. Farther up, it was nearly black.

A human face is always changing but there is a moment when it seems perfect, complete. It has earned its appearance. It is unalterable. So it was with him, that day, as he gazed up. He was thirty—thirty-one if the truth be known—his courage was unbroken. Above him lay the Walker.

There had been good weather, a spell of it, perhaps enough to clear the ridge of ice. From the base, he could not tell, the scale was too vast. He might be early, but the weather would not hold indefinitely. The snowfields didn’t seem too large. The rocks at the base looked clean.

He had planned for two nights on the face. About halfway up lay the Gray Tower, the most difficult part. From there, retreat was said to be impossible, the only way off was to continue to the top. He could see no other parties; he was alone. For a moment he felt the chill of desolation but gradually took heart. He began to scramble over easy rocks, not thinking far ahead, emptied soon of everything except the warmth of movement.

It was cold by the time he reached the first ice which was harder than he expected, even with crampons. He had an intimation that worse was ahead. Carefully he worked his way upward.

In the late afternoon he had reached a vertical wall. The holds were not good. He had climbed only a short distance when he decided he could not do it carrying his pack and climbed down and took it off. He tied one end of the rope to it, then started again with the other end fastened to his waist. The rock was slick in places, he didn’t trust it. He was climbing poorly, making mistakes. A wind was blowing. It made the face seem even more ominous and bare.

Suddenly his foot slipped off. He caught himself.

“Now, don’t get stupid,” he muttered. “You can do this. You could do this blindfolded.” He looked up. There was a piton. Just get to that. It had been climbed before, he told himself, it had been climbed many times.

“A little farther …There.”

He clipped a carabiner in and tied to it. He was breathing hard. More than that, he was chastened. He pulled up his pack.

On top, finally, was a ledge, a good one. He paused to calm himself. It was late. If he went on, he might be caught by darkness. It was better, he decided, to bivouac here.

The stars that night were brilliant. From the ledge he gazed up at them. They were very bright—their brightness might be a warning. It could mean a change of weather. It was cold, but was it that cold? He could not be sure. He felt secure but utterly alone. Within himself, over and over again he was turning the vow to climb this pillar. The higher he went, the icier it would become.

The difficult part lay ahead. In a corner of his mind he was already abandoning the attempt. He could not allow that corner to spread. He tried to stop thinking. He could not.

In the morning it took him nearly an hour to sort out his things. It was very cold. There is a way of climbing dangerous pitches with the rope tied in a large loop and clipped to pitons along the way, but it means going back down to unclip and takes time. He tried this once or twice but found it clumsy and quit.

The rock was now glazed with ice. He had to clear the holds; even then a thin covering sometimes remained. This part of the Walker the sun did not reach. Several times he slipped. Talking to himself, reciting, cursing, he kept on, stopping to read the route description whenever he could …
65 ft. with overhang.
The folds had begun to tear.

He began the overhang. The pack was pulling him backward, off the face. He was afraid, but the mountain does not recognize fear. He hammered in a piton and clipped an
étrier
to it. He waited, letting the venom drain from his blood, and blew on his fingertips stinging from the cold. The Gray Tower was still ahead.

The ice became worse. Things he could have done with ease were dangerous, even paralyzing. Off to the west there were clouds. He was nervous, frightened. He had begun to lose belief in the possibility of going on. The long, vertical reaches beneath him were pulling at his feet. Suddenly he saw that he could be killed, that he was only a speck. His chest was empty, he kept swallowing. He was ready to turn back. The rock was implacable; if he lost his concentration, his will, it would not allow him to remain. The wind from yesterday was blowing. He said to himself, come on, Cabot would do this. The kid at the Choucas.

At the foot of the Tower was a difficult traverse. Slight holds, icy footing, the exposure severe. There are times when height isn’t bad, when it exhilarates. If you are frightened it is another story.

He was standing with one foot on a small knob. Above was a steep slab with a crack running up it. He began chopping it clean with his ax. He started up. The footholds were off to the side, no more than the rims of faint scars, sometimes only a fraction of an inch deep. He had to clear these, too. His toe kept slipping. The crack had begun to slant, forcing him out on the slab.

There was nothing to hold to. He tried to put in a piton, bits of ice hitting him in the face. There were only ten feet more, but the rock was slick and mercilessly smooth. Beneath, steeply tilted, the slab shot out into space.

His hand searched up and down. Everything was happening too fast, nothing was happening. The ice had weaknesses but he could not find them. His legs began to tremble. The secret one must keep despite everything had begun to spill, he could not prevent it. He was not going to be able to do this. He knew it. The will was draining from him.

He had the resignation of one condemned. He knew the outcome, he no longer cared, he merely wanted it to end. The wind had killed his fingers.

“You can do it,” he said, “you can do it.”

He was clinging to the face. Slowly his head bent forward to rest against it like a child resting against its mother. His eyes closed. “You can do it,” he said.

They came up the meadow to find him. He was sitting in the sunlight in a long-sleeved undershirt and faded pants like a convalescent.

“What turned you back? Was it the weather?”

“No,” he answered slowly, as if he might have forgotten. There was nothing to withhold. He waited silently.

“Technical problems …,” someone suggested.

He could hear the faint whirring of a camera. The microphone was being held near.

“There was ice up there, but it wasn’t that.” He looked at one or another of them. A summer breeze was moving the meadow grass. “I didn’t prepare,” he said, “that was the trouble. I wasn’t ready. I lacked the courage.”

It was true. Something had gone out of him.

“But turning back takes courage.”

He nodded. “Not as much as going on.”

“What will you do now? What plans do you have?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“Will you stay in Chamonix?”

“I’d like to get away for a little rest, I think.”

“To the States?”

He smiled slightly. “Perhaps,” he said.

As they were packing to leave, one of the journalists came over to him.

“I don’t know if you heard the news. It just came this morning.”

“What news?”

“Your friend, Cabot …”

“What about him?”

The air itself seemed to empty.

“He fell.”

“Fell? Where?”

“In Wyoming, I think.” He turned to someone else. “Wyoming,
n’est-ce pas? Où Cabot est tombé.
”

It was Wyoming.

“The Tetons,” Rand said.

“Perhaps. I don’t know.”

“Yes, sure it was the Tetons. Was he hurt?”

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“I think very.”

The blood was slipping from his face. “But he’s alive.”

A faint shrug.

“You don’t know?”

“Yes, he’s alive.”

“How far did he fall?” Rand cried.

“It’s not certain. A long way.”

H
E HAD SLEPT ALL
afternoon, or nearly. He was listless, exhausted. The days seemed long.

Toward evening he wrote some letters. He stood on the steps of the post office after it had closed. Faces he recognized passed. He was not sure what he felt, if he was merely nervous and depressed or if the curve of life itself had turned downward. From the outside he seemed unchanged, his face, his clothes, more—his rank. He remained, in the eyes of some, a legend.
Il faut payer.

Later that night, in a café near the center of town, he saw a familiar face. It was Nicole Vix, alone. She looked older. There were circles beneath her eyes. For a moment she glanced in his direction, their eyes met. It was a shock, like one of those relentless stories where as she goes down in the world he rises and years later they see one another again. He could hardly believe this was the woman for whom he was racked with longing that first, hard winter. She was worn, dispirited. Her moment had passed. He had an impulse to go over to her—she was someone who had been important to him in a way, someone he remembered.

“Hello.” She looked up. “Are you still working at the bank?” he asked her.

“Pardon?”

“Do you still work at the bank?”

“No,” she said, as if she had never seen him before.

“Where are you now?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t you remember me?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

In that instant he tasted a bitterness that was intense.

If he could have left that night, he would have. He had finally turned toward home, his thoughts were all there. Still, they nodded to him as he came along the path from the Biolay in the morning, raised their hands in greeting behind shop windows. He felt like someone who had retired. A strange music—final chords—hung over the town.

On a Sunday he came down the road carrying his things. The lowest field was filled with buses, they were parked in ranks. The people who had come on them had not even wandered off. They were having picnics on card tables. Men in undershirts were lying in the grass, their wives or girl friends minding children.

At the hotel across from the station were two busloads of Japanese. They were getting out to have lunch at long tables set beneath the trees. All of them were neatly dressed, polite. The women wore sweaters. Many were young.

He stopped among them as if they were children. He was a head taller. He spoke to them in French. At first they did not answer, they were too shy, but his voice and manner were so friendly that soon they began to respond. Would they like a souvenir of Chamonix, he asked? He unfastened his pack and took out his pitons—they were used for climbing, up there, in the mountains, he explained. They were put in the rock.