“C’mon now, Mrs. N,” Pino said, trying to sound encouraging. “You’ve come this far, and done worse. And I’ll have the other end of the rope.”
The violinist made a puffing noise, hesitated, and then nodded weakly. Pino untied the group line and knotted it to Mimo’s to create one long line. While he worked, he whispered to his brother. “From now on, keep your mouth shut.”
“What?” Mimo said. “Why?”
“Sometimes the less you know, the better.”
“Where I come from, the more you know, the better.”
Seeing it was fruitless to argue, Pino tied the rope around his waist. He imagined himself a tightrope walker and held the ski poles horizontally to help him balance.
Each step was dreadful. He’d test first with the toe of his crampon, kicking gently until he heard rock or ice, and then press his heel directly onto that spot. Twice he felt his balance teeter, but managed both times to right himself before reaching the narrow ledge beyond. He paused, his forehead resting against the rock until he felt composed enough to drive a piton into the face.
He got the rope rigged through it. Mimo pulled back the slack, and the rope was taut, like a banister. The wind gusted. The whiteout returned. They were visually separated for more than a minute. When it calmed and he was able to make out the others back on the other side of the catwalk, they looked ghostly.
Pino swallowed hard. “Send Anthony first.”
Anthony held on to the taut rope with his right hand and put his boots exactly in Pino’s prints. He was across in a minute. Judith followed her brother, holding on to the rope and putting her boots in Pino’s prints. They accomplished the task with relative ease.
Mrs. D’Angelo came next. She froze between the avalanche chutes, looking hypnotized.
Then her young son called out, “C’mon, Mama. You can do it.”
She pushed on, and when she reached the ledge she wrapped her arms around her children and cried. Mr. D’Angelo came next and accomplished the feat in seconds. He explained that he’d done gymnastics as a boy.
The wind gusted before Mrs. Napolitano could begin the journey. Pino cursed to himself. He knew that the mental trick to crossing something like the catwalk was not to think about it until you were actually in motion. But she couldn’t help thinking about it now.
Her ascent of the chimney, however, seemed to have emboldened Mrs. Napolitano, because when the wind ebbed and the visibility returned, she started across without Pino’s prompting. When she was three-quarters of the way across the catwalk, the wind picked up again, and she vanished in swirling white.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Pino shouted into the void. “Wait it out!”
Mrs. Napolitano did not reply. He kept testing the line gently, feeling the weight of her out there until, at last, the wind dropped, and she was standing there coated in snow, as still as a statue.
When she reached the ledge, she held on to Pino tightly for several moments and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life. I know I haven’t prayed that hard in my life.”
“Your prayers were answered,” he said, patting her on the back, and then whistling for his brother.
With one end of the long rope tightly knotted around his brother’s waist, and Pino ready to take in slack, he said, “Ready?”
“I was born ready,” Mimo replied, and set off quick and sure.
“Slow down,” Pino said, trying to pull the slack rope through the piton and carabiner as fast as possible.
Mimo was already almost between the two avalanche chutes. “Why?” he said. “Father Re says I’m part mountain goat.”
Those words had no sooner left Mimo’s mouth than he stumbled slightly. His right foot shot out too far, and broke through. There was a sound like someone plumping a pillow. Then the snow in the chute swirled and slid like water cycling down a drain, and to Pino’s horror, his little brother went with it, vanishing into a whirlpool of white.
Chapter Eleven
“Mimo!” Pino yelled, and heaved back on the rope. His brother’s weight jerked in the void and almost pulled Pino off his feet.
“Help!” Pino cried to Mr. D’Angelo.
Mrs. Napolitano got there first, grabbed hold of the line behind Pino with her mittens, and threw her weight backward. The rope held. The load held.
“Mimo!” Pino shouted. “Mimo!”
No answer. The wind gusted, and with it the world above the avalanche chute whited out once more.
“Mimo!” he screamed.
Silence for a moment, and then came a weak, shaken voice. “I’m here. Jesus, get me up. There’s nothing but a lot of air below me. I think I’m going to be sick.”
Pino hauled against the rope, but it gave no ground.
“My pack’s caught on something,” Mimo said. “Lower me a little.”
Mr. D’Angelo had taken Mrs. Napolitano’s place by then, and though he hated to give up any ground in a situation like this, Pino reluctantly let the rope slide through his leather gloves.
“Got it,” Mimo said.
They heaved and pulled and brought Mimo to the lip. Pino tied off the rope and had Mr. D’Angelo pin his legs down so he could reach over to grab his brother’s rucksack. Seeing Mimo’s hat was gone, seeing him bleeding from a nasty head cut, and seeing how the chute fell away below him, Pino surged with adrenaline and hoisted his brother onto the ledge.
The two brothers sat against the rock face, chests heaving.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Pino said at last. “Mama and Papa would never forgive me. I’d never forgive me.”
Mimo gasped, “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Pino threw his arm around his brother’s neck and hugged him once and hard.
“Okay, okay,” Mimo protested. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“You’d do the same.”
“Of course, Pino. We’re brothers. Always.”
Pino nodded, feeling like he’d never loved his brother as much as he did right then.
Mrs. D’Angelo knew some first aid. She used snow to clean out the scalp wound and stanch the blood flow. They tore pieces of a scarf for bandages, and then wrapped the rest around Mimo’s head for an improvised hat that the children said made him look like a fortune-teller.
The gusts slowed, but the snow fell harder as Pino led them up to that ledge along the low neck of the crag.
“We can’t climb that,” Mr. D’Angelo said, craning his head up at the peak, which was like an icy spearhead above them.
“We’re going around it,” Pino said. He pressed his stomach to the wall and started to step sideways.
Just before he rounded the corner where the ledge dropped nineteen or twenty centimeters in width, he looked back at Mrs. Napolitano and the others.
“There’s a cable here. It’s iced up, but you’ll be able to grip it. I want you to hold it, right-hand knuckles up, left-hand knuckles down, above and below, right? Do not under any circumstances release your grip until you reach the other side.”
“Other side of what?” Mrs. Napolitano asked.