A Change in Altitude (32 page)

“If I get to the top.”

“Oh, you will. Don’t worry.”

Patrick and Kevin hadn’t been able to help their pace. Repeatedly, they went ahead and then remained in place for Margaret and Everdene to catch up. Kindly, the two men let them rest and get some air before continuing on and then having to do it again. Margaret, in slightly better condition for this particular leg than Everdene, enjoyed the position of being
not last
but tried not to exploit it. She gave Everdene encouragement, keeping the banter light and often telling Everdene not to talk. The four had a water break in the middle of the bog. Margaret thought of Njoroge, who seemed camel-like in needing so little water to keep going—unless he was drinking it when she wasn’t looking. Margaret thought this impossible: he was always ahead of them, and not very far ahead of them at that.

During a short breather, Margaret told Everdene that when they reached the glacier, the group would stop for thirty seconds in the middle so that Margaret could look down. She explained that she hadn’t been able to do it the year before, and she felt it necessary to conquer her fear. The guide understood the plan, Margaret said, and only Kevin needed to be informed.

Everdene nodded, unable to utter a sentence.

At the top, both women sat at the edge of the bog, even though the area was still muddy. Patrick, recognizing that Everdene was in some trouble, signaled to the guide.

“I think we need a rest and some water,” Patrick said.

Kevin sat next to his wife, and she laid her head on his shoulder. Patrick picked that moment to tell the story of those early Africans, on the mountain for the first time, who thought that the water in the cooking pot was bewitched when it turned to ice. Telling the tale was quite an accomplishment on Patrick’s part, Margaret thought, since he was short of breath, too. Only Kevin, amazingly, seemed unfazed by the arduous slog.

“You’re amazing,” Margaret said to Kevin. “Your lungs must be enormous.”

“Can’t account for it,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m as surprised as you are.”

Njoroge, who was standing nearby, scrutinized the peaks. “The rainy season is coming to greet us,” he announced.

As they approached Mackinder’s, Margaret thought about the rats. Had they been eradicated in the past year? She thought not. She would sleep covered up and close to Patrick. She wouldn’t take his hand, too painful an echo.

“Gosh,” Everdene said when she looked inside the banda.

“Did you bring ground cloths?” Margaret asked.

“We did. Oh, it’s awful.”

“It’s only one night.” Margaret had intended to bring in her bedding and lay it out, but then she thought better of it. The idea of sliding into the bag with a rat in it was beyond imagining. “Listen,” she said to Everdene, who had dumped her bedding onto a dirty mattress. “I’m going to tell you something that no one told me last year, and I wished they had. When we go to bed, there’s a strong likelihood of rats.”

“In the banda itself?” Everdene asked, incredulous. Her hair was pasted to her head from the sweating and her hat.

Margaret nodded. “I’m telling you because I nearly had a heart attack when one ran over my hand. Lay your bedding out just before you go to bed. Lift the sleeping bag as high as it will go over your face and keep your hands inside the bag. Though they frightened me, they never really bothered us. I think they just run around the edges of the banda, looking for food. They probably leave when they haven’t found any. After a while you won’t be able to keep yourself awake worrying about them, so you should just give in and go to sleep anyway. Do you and Kevin have bags that zip up together?”

“We do. We didn’t use them last night because we had cots.”

“That’s your best bet tonight,” Margaret said, thinking she and Patrick would do the same. “It’s up to you, of course, as to whether you want to warn Kevin or not. Four of our party last year slept the night through and never even knew about the rats.”

“I won’t tell him,” she said. “He sleeps like a stone. But thank you for telling me. I’d have screamed if I’d felt one.”

“Your husband doesn’t snore,” Margaret couldn’t help but point out.

Everdene laughed. “No, he doesn’t.”

“I’m jealous,” Margaret said.

Despite the condition of the banda, Everdene seemed revived by having reached Mackinder’s. Only Patrick appeared to be under the weather. His skin had turned white and blotchy. As he sat at the edge of the veranda while one of the porters washed the mud off the back of his parka, he seemed listless. Margaret sat beside him.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I think so. Just need a rest.”

“No songs tonight, I’m guessing?”

“Do you know what the meal is?”

“Let me guess.” She put a finger to her cheek. “Stew?”

“I’m not hungry anyway.”

Margaret examined her husband more carefully. Bad color was one thing; no appetite was quite another. “This doesn’t sound good, Patrick. Maybe you’re getting AMS?”

“I say I need a little rest, and you jump to AMS?”

Margaret recalled advice either Arthur or Willem had given them the year before: often the person with AMS is the last to admit it. Margaret would watch out for Patrick. Perhaps a night of acclimatizing would help. It was always possible that he’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. He would be the first to suggest that one should look for the least-exotic answer first.

“I’m going to zip our sleeping bags together for tonight,” she said.

“I’ll do that.”

“Well, if you want to lie down, and you don’t feel well, just let me know, and I’ll go in and do it.”

“The rats,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

And then she left the subject alone.

That night, the cards again came out, and Margaret took Patrick’s place. They played gin until the sun set. At Margaret’s suggestion, the three lay on their backs for a few minutes to look at the stars. Margaret had made up the double bed, into which Patrick had disappeared. Kevin had asked earlier, when Patrick hadn’t eaten with them, if he was okay, and Margaret had said that she thought Patrick needed a rest, though they should all be on the lookout for signs of AMS in one another. Margaret said that she’d make an assessment of Patrick in the morning and that she could use Kevin’s help. Once she told Njoroge she thought Patrick was suffering from AMS, she explained, the trek would be over. The guide would simply turn around, and even Patrick was wise enough to know that one couldn’t trek farther up without a guide. He’d be furious, Margaret thought. Or would he be relieved?

“This is simply brilliant,” Everdene said of the large swaths of stars overhead. “I promise you, Kevin and I have never seen anything like this. This is worth the whole climb.”

“I wish I had a telescope,” Kevin said. “I imagine other climbers have brought telescopes.”

“I’ve been in different parts of America where the air was supposedly clear and there was no light pollution, and I’ve never seen this,” Margaret said. “Of course, you wouldn’t see this from the northern hemisphere. I’m no good at identifying constellations.”

Kevin had some skill in this area, as a result of the Boy Scouts, he said. He named several constellations he’d seen only in books.

“Makes you feel small,” Everdene said, surveying the dazzling panorama.

“We
are
small,” Margaret said.

“You are small, and you must go into the banda,” Njoroge said above them. “Tomorrow we are waking at three o’clock in the morning. Or did you misremember that?”

“I tried to,” Margaret said, sitting up.

Njoroge looked up at the stars as well. “Ngai is answering our prayers,” he said. “The rainy season wants to come to Mount Kenya, but he is making it stay away.”

“Let’s hope he keeps it away for at least another day,” Kevin said, hopping up.

“Ngai will do as he wants to do,” the Kikuyu guide said.

In the morning, Patrick made a tremendous effort, and Margaret thought that though her husband was still under the weather, his color was better. To show that he’d improved, he asked for a large breakfast. The cook wouldn’t give it to him—they would have a proper breakfast after the glacier—but Patrick did consume two large hunks of wheat bread with guava jelly and two cups of coffee in the fifteen minutes before the guide made them head out. Watching her husband, Margaret was sure Patrick was forcing himself to eat—he did it with bravado, like a child—but she couldn’t prove it. Stopping the climb for Patrick’s sake would enrage him and make him redouble his efforts to convince her of his health. He would then curtly remind her that he was the doctor and not she. She knew he could answer all the questions any ranger would ask, and wasn’t that the ultimate test?

“You think he’s okay?” Kevin asked Margaret.

“Not a hundred percent, but okay enough. Let me just talk to him.

“Are you all right?” she asked Patrick as they were hefting their backpacks.

“Jesus Christ, Margaret, what are you trying to do? I’m fine. Anyone here would say I was fine. Are you trying to sabotage us?”

His attack came with the force of a blow. Margaret was sure he’d practiced his answer.

“No, no,” she said. Everdene and Kevin had set out, wanting to give Patrick and Margaret privacy. “If you say you’re fine, then you’re fine. The last thing I want to do is sabotage us. Believe me, I want to get to the top as much as you do. Not at your expense, though.”

“I’m fucking fine,” he said.

Margaret turned and started walking.

The scree challenged Margaret as it had done the year before. Margaret remembered that she had hated every minute of the climb last year, the scree the worst offender. Again, she could see only cones of light from the torches above her. Patrick had taken off, in part, she thought, to prove that he was fit. She couldn’t even muster enough strength to encourage Everdene, who kept pace beside her and, frankly, seemed to be having less trouble than Margaret. Everdene’s strong legs helped her on this part of the climb, but she had the good manners not to try to outdo Margaret, thus upsetting the subtle hierarchy they had formed. Margaret liked the woman even better than she had before.

Margaret guessed that all experiences on the mountain would be different, even if you climbed it every year—a thought that seemed so grim, she banished it at once.

At the top of the scree, Margaret bent from the waist to be able to breathe better. Patrick coughed. He asked for water, and the porters allowed them each a drink and a cookie. Margaret’s throat hurt, and she tried to slake her thirst as best she could with the stingy cup of water the cook gave her.

Though the sun had not yet risen, it was daybreak, and Ngai was still working on their behalf. The day would be clear. The dark cloud, as far as Margaret could work out, had moved slightly off the peaks.

“Bloody miraculous,” Kevin said beside her. “With this kind of luck, we will make it to the top.”

“No other choice,” Margaret said. “Once the rains come, we’ve had it. And it won’t be rain at this height.”

“I imagine snow blindness would be the problem, then.”

The terrain between the scree and the glacier seemed mild after the misery of the scree. When the sun hit the rocks above them, Margaret was awed by the majesty of the mountain. No cathedral could compete. If one needed to find religion, this would be the place to do it. The sheer size of the peaks and the way they sparkled suggested spirits within. How easy it would be to believe in pagan gods, their might and strength and beauty so close at hand. The black cloud that menaced, the nearly blinding sight of the glacier ahead, the wind that picked up, the magnificence of the rocks themselves—each seemed to be delivering a message. All a group of people had to do was agree on that message, and a system of deities would be created.

Just before the glacier, the guide spoke to them. They would pause, he told them, at the center of the glacier for just a few seconds of rest. Margaret looked at Njoroge, though he kept his eyes from hers.

Margaret took her first step onto the ice. Once again, they had been placed in order by the guide. Everdene behind Njoroge, then a porter, then Kevin, then a porter, then Margaret, then another porter, and then finally Patrick, followed by the cook. Patrick, whose face was washed out from the glare, had been given a pickax to dig into the ice in case of emergency. Margaret considered whether she had made a mistake in not telling the guide the true reason for the pause needed at the center. Would he have backed away from her as a harbinger of bad luck? Would he have had words of wisdom that would have settled her thoughts?

Margaret couldn’t help but think of goats. The guide at the front and the cook at the back were shepherds trying to get their small herd across the ice. The image made her smile.

Margaret didn’t dare look down. She was saving that for the pause in the middle. She hadn’t even allowed herself to think about Diana’s fall, though she could feel those memories crowding her at the edges. Margaret took in long, slow breaths to soothe her nerves, but she found that that made her woozy. Examining the feet of the porter in front of her, Margaret wondered if Everdene or Kevin or Patrick was frightened. Patrick knew what was possible on the glacier. He might have images similar to Margaret’s.

They drew closer to the center of the ice, and Margaret considered whether her idea had been a foolish one. Why had she conceived of it? She didn’t have to stop and look down, a notion that was beginning to terrify her. She could so easily have stood alone at the edge of the ice and said a silent prayer. No one would have needed to know, not even Patrick. Why this mawkish request for ceremony? The guide would think she was trying to conquer a normal fear. Patrick would think she was paying tribute. Would Everdene and Kevin, hapless participants in this absurd ritual, dare to look down? Or had they already?

She felt the line stop. For the guide and for Patrick, she would have to do her bit now. She had only thirty seconds.

Margaret braced her feet. The porter in front of her turned around as if to signal that, yes, this was the time.

She gazed below her at the steep swath of ice. She made herself take her eyes all the way to the dark ravine at its end. She wished she had planned some words for this moment. Thinking that something appropriate would just come to her, Margaret found she had only images instead. Slight bumps on the ice. Teeth desperately tearing off a mitten. A red hood with white fur. The guide reaching out his hand. The still body spinning down the ice.