And then suddenly I’m the one falling.
Somehow, I get disconnected from the rope, and I see Augustin’s astonished face up on the ridge, I see his extended hand groping for me, but I’ve already gone too far. I disappear with blinding speed into the cold, shadowy mountainside, I spin into the darkness. I try to scream, but a weight crushes down on my chest, making it impossible to breathe. A primitive denial tears out of me, and in a panic I flail about. I’m trapped in my Gore-Tex coat; I struggle to extricate myself, to do something there’s no point in doing—
And then I’m sitting upright, completely disoriented, my body hot and feverish and drenched with sweat.
I have no idea where I am.
What I do know in my half-asleep state is that there is a great menace looming, but at least I’m no longer falling. The pressure on my chest and arms is the down sleeping bag, which is wrapped around me like a cocoon. Only after I have thrown it off in a panic do I realize that the swishing sound is the brook, not the wind over a gaping mountainside. Shining through the tarpaulin is the light from the toilet block. The shapeless heap next to me is Augustin, safe and sound, asleep.
I need to pee. I usually hate the works: struggling out of the comfort of your sleeping bag, trying not to wake your climbing buddy when you unzip the tent, then into the cold, not to mention rain or snow. Now I don’t mind. I want to be outside, away from the petrified silence of the fall. Incredible, it was so real. I look away, shake my head, but can’t shake the afterimage from my mind.
Woozy, I crawl out of the tent. My calf muscles are screaming, and cold dewdrops from the tarpaulin trail down my bare back.
I stagger a while away, don’t feel like walking all the way to the toilet block. I search for a spot by the embankment, pull down my boxers, and do what I have to do.
I stare at the night sky. The mountain ridges framing the narrow valley are contours. There is no moon but there is an astonishing number of stars. A solitary orographic cloud slowly weaves its way through the night. Above it, you can catch glimpses of the Milky Way. Normally, it’s an endless, breathtaking scene, but now it makes me shudder involuntarily. The universe seems like a cold and hostile place, not meant for human life. Just like all these rocky and icy stairways to heaven that we keep trying to ascend. In the daytime there’s a deceptive calm and a sense of security, but then, when the sun disappears behind the horizon, the isolation descends on you, the clammy certainty that if you scream, there will be no one, absolutely no one, to hear you.
The Maudit is back on my mind, the horned peak, the mountain we saw in the distance. Here and now, half naked under the chilly starry sky, I have no desire at all to climb it. Rather, the thought of it seems repugnant.
Back in my sleeping bag, I rub myself warm and fall in and out of a restless sleep. The dream doesn’t come back, but at a certain point I am awake, because Augustin is sitting up and appears to be looking for something. He mumbles something in German, growingly agitated. I realize he’s sleep-talking.
I sit up too and say, “Hey, it’s okay. Go back to sleep.”
He mumbles some more and lies down, seems to sink into sleep right away. I pull his sleeping bag up over his shoulders so he’ll keep warm.
I suddenly have a strong urge to be with you and to hold you, you and your wonderfully warm body, because if I have you in my arms it’s in a different place, a different time—between clean, white sheets and away from the loneliness of the mountains, in a place where I don’t feel compelled to conquer them. And when we wake up, it’s in each other’s arms in a spacious, luxurious room awash with blazing sunlight.
The Turn of the Screw
Notes by Sam Avery
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.
—Henry James
1
’Course you never told them the whole story.
What you didn’t tell all those flawless faces in the rooftop bars with floor-to-ceiling windows and color-changing mood lamps, what you didn’t tell all those meticulous mugs in the underground East Village hangouts with their electronic music and killer cocktails, is that you only ever were looking at them cuz you had no choice. The so-called metrosexual offspring of media moguls and venture capitalists, with their clean-shaven jawlines, marble cheekbones, and depilated eyebrows, their protein-shake pecs and designer-clothes-clad abs, sipping mojitos and cherry blossom ’tinis—you didn’t tell them you were addicted to them for all the wrong reasons. That the upper-class ass-essment was no more than your pathological trauma therapy.
One call from the Police Cantonale, one time I go into the hospital room at the wrong/worst/WTF moment, just when they’re changing his bandages, and I become dysmorphophobic. The day before I didn’t even know what that word meant.
So there I am in New York, sipping my Absolut Elyx Cup: vodka/cuke/mint/lime/prosecco. Within spitting distance, my baby sister, Julia, jigging with some stud who’s so full of himself his LV sweatshirt doesn’t even show any armpit stains. Mr. Flawless Face 1, 2, or 3 philosophizing my balls off: “Ya think people have the right to take on challenges so they can discover their true potential?”
Oyster breath, Paco Rabanne aura, thinks he can get me laid with his brazen IQ spiel. Can’t get it through his thick skull that all he was to me was a mental one-click-away porn. His immaculate Ultra Brite smile a living sexvertisement for everything gone from between my sheets.
What you didn’t tell them is that you loved someone, someone on another continent, another bed, faceless, breathing through tubes and eating with his veins. That, for the time being, romantic candlelight dinners meant slurping Gerber through a straw. That you should thank whatever it is you believe in that the hole in his head was gone, so the food can’t ooze out of it.
Or that he pushed someone off a mountain. This someone you loved, gone to all ends to discover his true potential.
No, you didn’t tell them that.