Touching the Void (19 page)

The light faded quickly. Night was approaching and with it the wind grew stronger. I didn’t waste time warming my frozen hands, but urgently followed the soft marks of filled-in footprints until I could see no more. It was dark. I lay face down in the snow defeated. The strenuous crawling had warmed me and I could lie still feeling the wind pushing snow up around me without being cold. I wanted to sleep. I couldn’t be bothered to move any more. I was warm enough sleeping on the snow. The storm would cover me like a husky and keep me warm. I nearly slept, dozing fitfully, edging close to the dark comfort of sleep, but the wind kept waking me. I tried to ignore the voice, which urged me to move, but couldn’t because the other voices had gone. I couldn’t lose the voice in daydreams.

‘…don’t sleep, don’t sleep, not here. Keep going. Find a slope and dig a snow hole…don’t sleep.’ The darkness and the storm confused me. I lost track of how long I moved through the snow, and even forgot that I was on a glacier with crevasses all around me. I kept crawling forward blindly. Once there was a roaring, louder than the wind, and a sudden blast of ice fragments hit me. An avalanche, or a cornice falling from Yerupaja into the glacier. I registered that it hit me, its force spent, and swept over me. Then the wind noise returned and I forgot the avalanche. It never occurred to me that I might have been in danger.

Suddenly I rolled forward and fell. In the dark I couldn’t make out what I had slid into with a rush. As I came to a stop, I turned and faced the way I had come. There was a bank of snow above me, and I groped my way back up it, dragging at the snow with my axes, hopping and crying out with the pains in my knee.

I dug the snow hole in a confusion of pain and exhaustion. As I burrowed into the bank I was forced to twist and turn to enlarge the hole, so wrenching my knee excruciatingly from side to side. The other voices returned once I was sheltered from the wind, and I dozed off with their images idly flitting through my mind. I jolted awake and started digging to the repeated tune of a song in my head, then dozed, then back to my voices.

I fumbled in my rucksack with unfeeling hands for my head-torch. I pulled my sleeping bag from the sack and found the torch inside. With its feeble dying light I saw that the cave wasn’t long enough for me to lie stretched out, but I was too tired to carry on digging. Leaning forward to remove my crampons put unbearable pressure on my damaged knee. I groaned and sobbed with frustration as my deadened fingers flicked ineffectually over the heel-release bar. I couldn’t grip the bar hard enough to pull the crampon from my boot. I was bent double over my legs trying to avoid breaking through the roof of the cave with my head and cried with pain and impotent fury. I stopped pulling at the bar and sat quietly until the idea to use my axe came to me. The bar on each boot popped off easily with the leverage from the axe. I lay back in the cave and dozed. Hours seemed to pass before I had laid out the insulation that and struggled into my sleeping bag. Hefting my broken leg into the bag was awkward and pain-wracked. The boot snagged on the wet fabric of the bag, jerking fire from the knee joint. My leg felt amazingly heavy when I lifted it into the bag, and it felt dead and lumpy. It got in the way like a pestering child, making me irritable, as if it were something I ordered around and it stubbornly refused to obey.

There was no sound of the storm raging outside. Occasionally I felt the wind tug at the end of the sleeping bag protruding from the entrance, and then this also fell quiet as the snow covered my feet and sealed the cave. I checked my watch. Ten-thirty. I knew I must sleep, yet now that it was safe to sleep I felt sharply awake. Memories of the crevasse came back in the dark of the cave and forced hopes of sleep away. My knee throbbed unmercifully. I worried about getting frostbitten feet, and thought of my fingers. It occurred to me that I might not wake up if I fell asleep, so I kept my eyes open and stared into the dark. I knew I was being scared unnecessarily by such thoughts now that it was dark and I had nothing more to do, but it didn’t help.

Eventually I slept in a dreamless black stupor. The night was long and silent while the storm blew itself out on the snows above me, and from time to time pain and childish fears ambushed my sleep. It was late when I awoke. The sun glowed through the tent walls, making me uncomfortably hot in my sleeping bag. I lay motionless, staring at the domed roof. It seemed incredible that at this time yesterday I had been stumbling through the crevasses at the end of the glacier. Joe had been dead thirty-six hours. I felt as if he had been gone for weeks, yet it was only seven days since we had set off together up the mountain. There was a hollow ache inside which no food could fill; it would pass with time. Already he was a vaguely recollected memory. It was strange how I couldn’t picture his face in my mind. So, he was gone, and there was nothing I could do to change it. I fumbled with numb fingers to release the sleeping-bag drawcord, shuffled it off me, and went out to the sun. I was hungry.

Richard was busy priming the petrol stove by the cooking rock. He glanced at me and smiled. It was a beautiful day; one of those days to make you feel good and zestful. I went to the river bed and urinated on a boulder. Sarapo loomed in front of me but its spectacular beauty no longer interested me. I was bored with this place and these pretty views. There was no point in being here. It was barren and lifeless; I hated the place for its cruelty, and for what it had made me do. I wondered whether I had murdered him.

I walked back to Richard and hunkered down beside him in a black despairing mood. He silently handed me a cup of tea and a bowl of milky porridge. I ate quickly and tasted little. When I had finished I walked over to the tent, collected my washing things and made my way to a deep pool in the river. I stripped off and stepped into the freezing water, dipping myself hurriedly under and gasping as the cold took my breath away. The sun dried me and warmed my back as I shaved. I spent a long time by the pool, cleaning my clothes and picking at the sunburn on my face. It was a peaceful, cleansing ritual and my despair gradually faded as I mulled over the past few days. When I walked back to the tents it was with a fresh spirit. It had happened and I had done everything possible. Okay, he was dead and I wasn’t, but that was no reason for tormenting myself. I had to get things straight in my own mind before I could return and face the inevitable criticism. I knew that once I had accepted it all then I could tell others. They would never know what it had been like, and I doubted whether I could ever articulate it, even to close friends, but I didn’t have to so long as it felt right inside. The healing process had started. For the moment I was content.

Richard had left the camp when I returned. I searched round the tent looking for the medicine box. It lay partly hidden by some of Joe’s clothes at the back of the tent. I threw it on to the grass outside and then sifted through his things.

After fifteen minutes there was a pile of clothes and possessions lying in the sun by the medicines. I sat beside them, opened the medicine kit and began systematically to dose myself. I swallowed Ronicols, to improve the circulation in my fingers and prevent the frostbite taking too deep a hold. Wide-spectrum antibiotics followed, to combat infection. Then another drawn-out session of picking, cleaning and inspecting followed. It was wonderfully restorative. The ritualised examination seemed to confirm to me that everything was back to normal. It was a luxury and a balm. Feet, fingers, face, hair, chest and legs—all got the treatment.

When I had finished I turned to the pile of possessions and began sorting through them. I placed all his clothes in one pile and laid out his possessions in a line to one side. I felt quite calm and mechanical as I separated them. I found his used film and a zoom lens in a plastic bag. It was a large bag so I gathered all the things I wanted to give to his parents and put them in as well. There wasn’t much.

I found his diary. He had written something almost every day, even on the plane from London. He liked writing. I glanced through it but didn’t read the words. I didn’t want to know what he had said. I ignored what climbing equipment he had left behind. It was of no value to anyone but a climber. I would pack it home with my gear. When I turned to his clothes I flicked through them quickly. I soon found his hat. It was a black-and-white patterned woolly hat with its bobble missing. I knew he had really liked it, and I placed it in the bag with the rest. It came from Czechoslovakia. Miri Smidt had given it to him in Chamonix. I couldn’t bring myself to burn it.

Richard came back just as I had finished with what I would give to Joe’s parents. He fetched some petrol and we burnt the clothes in the river bed. The trousers wouldn’t burn well and we had to use a lot of petrol. Richard had suggested we should give them to the girls and the kids down in the valley. They would have liked to have them, as their clothes were so tattered, but I went ahead and burnt them.

When it was over we returned to the cooking rock and sat quietly in the sun. Richard made a hot meal and provided endless cups of tea. We played cards or listened to music on the personal stereos. Richard went and fetched Joe’s stereo from the plastic bag because his was broken, and the day passed idly. When we talked it was quietly and about home or future plans. The hollow feeling was still with me and the guilt which I knew I could never erase, but I could deal with it now.

A Land Without Pity

I awoke screaming. It was light in the snow cave, and cold. The nightmare subsided slowly and I remembered where I was. It wasn’t the crevasse. The relief washed over me as I tried to forget the dream. I lay still, looking at the rough snow roof above me. It was deathly quiet, and I wondered whether the storm was still raging above me. I didn’t want to move. It was going to hurt after the long cold night. I twitched my leg gingerly and was rewarded with a stab of sharp pain from my knee. My breath clouded on to the snow roof and I watched it vacantly.

The dream had been so vividly clear that I had believed it to be true. I had seen myself back on the ice bridge, crumpled against the crevasse wall, sobbing. I saw myself sobbing but could hear no sounds. Instead a voice, my voice, recited a soliloquy from Shakespeare over and over again: Ay, but to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod…

I was awake now, and knew exactly where I was, but the words still echoed in my head, and I remembered where I had learnt them. Ten years ago I had recited those words in just the same parrot fashion, over and over again I had said them aloud in my room, trying to memorise them word-perfectly for the O-Level literature exam in the morning. I was astounded. I hadn’t read the lines since that time and yet now I could remember every word:

…and the delighted spirit,

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside,

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendant world…

I felt delighted, and muttered the words to the silent snows around me, listening to the odd acoustics of the cave. I chuckled to myself, and began again when I could remember no further. I forgot how frightening it had all sounded in the dream as I became more adventurous and bellowed the words out in my best Laurence Olivier voice, all the time lying flat on my back in my sleeping bag with my nose protruding from the hood:

…or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought

Imagine howling:—‘tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

When at last I tired of the game, the silence was overwhelming. My boisterous mood vanished and I felt despairingly lonely and silly. I thought of what the words meant, and of the dream, and was close to tears.

My feet had been buried by drifting snow and I yelled at the burning stabs in my knee when I tried to kick them free. While I struggled to roll the wet clinging sleeping bag back over my lower legs I accidently broke a hole in the cave roof. Bright sunshine suddenly burnt away the snow shadows in the cave and I knew at once that the storm was over. I reached for my axe and swept away the rest of the roof. It was going to be a hot day. The sun rapidly melted away the cold night shivers, and I sat in the hole that was left of the cave gazing around me. At my feet, a slope ran down to an old snow-filled crevasse. I was facing the moraines but I couldn’t see them from the glacier. Everything was white and alarmingly smooth. The storm had made a good job of covering the footprints I had been following the previous night. For as far as I could see, the surface of the glacier undulated away in unblemished waves of fresh snow.

As I slowly packed the bag into my sack and fumbled to roll up my Karrimat with numb fingers, I realised how desperately thirsty I was. If it had been bad yesterday I couldn’t imagine what it would be like today. I tried to think where the nearest flowing water might be. I could remember seeing water only at Bomb Alley, and that was miles away. I would be lucky to reach it today. As soon as the thought struck me I was shocked to see how planned everything had become. I couldn’t remember consciously deciding how long it would take to get to camp, yet there was no doubt that I had done so for I had already dismissed any hope of reaching Bomb Alley. Strange things seemed to be going on in my head. I had no clear memory of the sequence of events on the previous day. Vague snatches of unconnected memories came to me—the hollow floor in the crevasse and the sunbeam, an avalanche blast in the storm, falling down the slope where I snow-holed, and that obscene ice cliff—but where had the rest of the day gone. Was this due to lack of food and water? How many days had I been without them? Three days, no, two days and three nights! God Almighty! The thought appalled me. I knew that at this height I needed to consume at least one and a half litres of fluid each day, just to combat the dehydration of altitude. I was running on empty. Food did not worry me. I wasn’t hungry, and although I must have burnt up a huge amount of energy, I still felt that I had reserves. But the way my tongue felt thick and coated and kept sticking to my palate frightened me. The smell of water in the sun-heated snow surrounding me drove me close to panic. Eating snow quenched the dryness in my mouth for a short time but I dared not think what was happening inside. It just wasn’t possible to eat enough snow to stave off that urgent need for liquid. Whatever planning I had done subconsciously seemed pretty futile as I looked at the snow rolling into the distance. I wasn’t going to make it.