Briefly—very briefly—I feel uncomfortable. I sense a shadow of menace, the sudden sensation of being stared at by a shapeless danger. It’s like there’s something there I just can’t seem to get into focus. Maybe it’s a premonition, but if it is, it is gone the next second.
I decide to dismiss it as nervous anxiety brought on by what happened with Augustin’s helmet. I look up and I’m intoxicated again by the beauty of the light that makes the horned peak radiate with intense life.
“I’d love to climb it,” I say. “But for such a prominent mountain, it’s weird I never noticed it before.”
Augustin nods and I see the familiar twinkle in his eyes. “Whichever one it is, it sure kicks ass. I’ll look it up in my guide when we get back down. It’s gotta have some nice routes; it looks steep.”
Without wasting more words, we decide right then that our next climb won’t be the Grandes Jorasses, as we had planned. That’s a big deal. The Jorasses Traverse is a route that has topped both our wish lists for a long time. But both of us are completely entranced by what we just saw.
When I look up again, the Maudit has disappeared behind a rising shred of clouds. I realize it hadn’t even occurred to me to take a picture.
We pack up our things, throw on our backpacks, tie ourselves on to the rope, and take off. During the descent, I catch myself constantly looking back to that place in the west, where the clouds have now accumulated into a dense mass that doesn’t reveal its secrets any longer. One time I lose my footing in the mushy snow but manage to retain my balance just in time with a swing of the arms. I curse myself. Concentrate, damn it. One slip and you’re dead.
We quickly lose elevation, and when we finally reach the glacier, the place where the Maudit should be has disappeared behind the Grand Cornier. But the mountain has called us, and we are its subjects. We can only heed its siren song.
??*
The plan starts to crystalize the following day around noon, when we’ve settled down to a typical climbers’ day off.
“Extrem brüchiges und heikeles Gel?nde,” Augustin reads out from the SAC guidebook. “Die Touren sind alle sehr langweilig und nicht empfehlenswert.” In English: brittle terrain, very dangerous, boring and not recommended. The entire lower mountain ridge west of Moiry condensed down to a single-sentence brush-off.
Augustin remarks, “You don’t need more than that to stay away.”
I study the 1:25,000 Landeskarte der Schweiz unfolded before me on the grass. The description corresponds with what I see: exposed flanks, the remains of the ancient glacier, almost completely melted away, no noteworthy peaks. And what about the Maudit? The guide doesn’t even mention it.
“Let’s google it later,” I say. I roll over and squint. “There’s got to be something.”
Our tent blazes in the sun in the campground in Mission, in the middle of what you might be tempted to call a battlefield. The site follows a series of terraces that gradually descend toward the brook. In the grass, the rope is drying next to the provisionally scattered crampons, ice axes, carabiners, and backpacks. The trunk of my Ford Focus is open. Augustin made fun of me because of the three corners held together with aluminum tape: two from the pileup on the Amstelkade last year and one because I’m just a lousy parker. In the car, more bags, crates, camping equipment. Our soaked thermal shirts, gloves, Smartwool socks, and Gore-Tex trousers hang from a washing line we stretched between two larches. The rest of our stuff is spread out on the grass between breakfast plates, water bottles, an empty carton of orange juice, and a piece of Swiss sausage wrapped in paper. It’s chaos, but the kind of chaos I love. A chaos I can find myself in.
Languidly, we lie in the midst of it on the Therm-a-Rests we’ve dragged from the tent, both of us in shorts, both of us blocking the sun from our eyes with a lazy arm, enjoying the heaviness in our bodies. The whispering of the water and the buzz of the cicadas join in a wonderfully meditative chorus that rises from the valley floor. Later, a time will come when we feel up to forcing ourselves to rise and clean up the mess, and maybe then we’ll repair to the campsite bar for a cappuccino or a Coke. But for now, the ground is good enough. The grass will do.
I know it’s unfathomable to you, but to me, this is the epitome of relaxation.
“Can’t you at least rent a chalet if you’re that intent on going to the mountains?” you once asked me. “I mean, I get it, totally retro, that back-to-nature spirit, but do you also have to go cuddle the grass and load up on fungus infections? I’ll pay for it, if I have to.”
But that’s not the point, of course. You know how antsy I get after a couple of nights in one of your favorite resorts or hotels. I need this simplicity when I’m in the mountains.
[In my mind I hear you protesting that luxury is not the only thing that makes you tick, and then I’d say, Really? and then you’d say yeah okay, but that you can also be very pure, and then I’d say Yeah, lying on a pristine, bleached five-star hotel sheet and smelling of Dior body lotion you’re very pure.]
You know I enjoy our juxtapositions, our squabbles and edges, the fact that at first sight, our worlds seem so incompatible. If there’s anything you can point to as to why we love each other, then it’s that, and I’ve been treating it for three years now as an unexpected gift. There’s nothing more damaging to yourself than trying to mold your lover into your own image. Instead, I respect the fact that our differences empower us, and I see each hitch as an exploration—each quarrel as a new, unconquered peak.
The mountains and you, they’re two completely different worlds, and if I could lay them both bare, I’d be perfectly happy.
I admire you for letting me go up every time again, because I know how much it frightens you. The day before, as soon as my iPhone had a signal on the way down, I texted you that we were safe and sound, and then again when I was lying in my sleeping bag, too exhausted to speak: We’ll call tomorrow.
And we did; we spoke that morning. [That was the last time, right? Incredible, it seems so long ago.] You ask when I’ll come home. You tell me about all the things you’re doing in Amsterdam, now that you have the place to yourself, about the friends you go out with. You demand that I be careful and think of you when I go climbing again and what it would do to you if my ass fell off a mountain. Subtlety was never your forte, but I think it’s kind of cute. Your ways of demarcating: this is your obsession and this is how it affects me.
It was nice to hear your voice again. Especially after what happened that night.
I thought I’d go around the clock in a dreamless sleep after our climb, but I don’t.
I kept seeing Augustin fall.
The red dot of his helmet, getting smaller and smaller, disappearing into the east face, his flailing limbs. What’s scary is that he doesn’t scream. He’s absolutely silent.
I reach for him every single time, but I’m too late. Every single time my innards dive down with him.