We have done fifteen minutes of climbing. How much more of this slope is there? How steep is it? Steep enough for it to be impossible for me to stand up straight without the weight of my rucksack pulling me over backwards.
I plod on, putting one foot ahead of the other. Each step counts. A miracle, wouldn’t you say? One step. Just one step and the distance to the top is less than it was before. Step, step, merely lifting the foot and bringing it down slightly further on. Couldn’t be simpler. Hardly more strenuous than standing still, what with the heavy load on my back. Step. Between the stones there is moss. Also bare ground. Sand and pale grit, an occasional bleached bone or vertebra. No sign of anyone having been here before. But then we too have been covering our tracks.
My watch tells me it’s nine thirty-five. We’ve been going for nearly an hour. An hour already! And I can easily keep it up for another hour, two hours, three, as long as I like. It’s bad, but it’s not getting worse. Where’s my headache? Gone, since I haven’t given it a thought.
The top.
When we take a rest the strong man doesn’t even bother to take off his rucksack. He looks round for a stone of exactly the right height for his rucksack to fit on top, and then leans back, holding the collapsed tripod like a spear in his crossed arms.
I spread my map on the ground and take out my compass. I try to align the map along a north— south axis, using the compass. But the ground is uneven, and the compass needs to be horizontal for the needle to rotate freely. My hand is trembling too much for me to keep the instrument steady on my palm. Holding the map with the other hand doesn’t help. The sharp stones dig into my knees as I lean forward.
‘What are you looking for? North?’
Arne squats down beside me. He repositions the map.
‘There you are,’ he says.
Now I can see what is on the end of the frayed cord round his neck. It’s a plastic boy-scout compass. He holds it in his left hand. As it is a fluid compass, it always points roughly north, whichever way it is held.
‘This is where we are now, isn’t it?’ I ask, indicating a spot on the map.
‘Oh no,’ Arne says. ‘Not there. We’re only here.’
He stabs a chewed yellow pencil stub at a point three centimetres further down. Three whole kilometres.
I focus on the map and the landscape by turns, trying to match the one with the other. I raise one knee, but that only increases the weight bearing down on the other and hence the pain. I sit down, but find I can’t bend over far enough to read the map. Damn! I’m not in good shape today. What will they think? I don’t want to be a laughing stock. I WILL NOT BE LAUGHED AT.
They must speak highly of me when my back is turned! I must be just as capable as they are, regardless of my in-experience — more capable, in fact.
20
Black shadows of the Vaddasgaissa streak southwards across the plain. Beyond the shadows the ground is pale green, grass green, bottle green, British racing green, brown. Small lakes and winding streams reflect the blues and pinks of the sky in shades of anodised aluminium.
All the pools and lakes are linked by streams. Not a single hole remotely suggestive of a meteor crater. I have never actually seen a meteor crater, just pictures in books. If I came across one I might not even recognise it.
But the man who first thought of attributing a hole in the earth’s crust to the impact of a sizeable meteor? Who was he? When and where did he make his discovery? What was his name?
A deep loathing of textbooks engulfs me. Don’t textbooks describe everything as if everyone has always known that that’s the way they were? Where does that leave all the human effort, doubt and despair that had to be endured before a particular conclusion could be reached? Ninety-nine out of a hundred discoveries are seen as foregone conclusions, or else as the work of legendary figures, nameless supermen to whom the failures or semi-failures of their predecessors simply did not matter. There is no glory in geology. Just think: all those writers getting their names and photographs in the paper thanks to my mother’s weekly articles, whereas I can’t come up with the name of a single expert on meteor craters. Yet there must have been hundreds. It’s not just me who’s so ignorant, not even Sibbelee would be able to give you names. Nobody can, apart from a few scholars specialising in the history of science. Nobody reads what they write either, except for the tiny number of people who happen to have taken an interest in the history of science instead of in umpteen other subjects that are no less fascinating. But the information never runs to more than a name or two, possibly a few dates, and that’s it. Rarely if ever do scientists spend their days in the company of people who could write their biographies.
How happy I would be to find just one little stone of cosmic provenance. A meteorite. I vow that no detail of the wildernesses roamed by me will escape my notice. But these mountains offer nothing but rubble.
I am falling behind again. Not by much, but I am finding it harder and harder to keep my head up. Almost doubled over now, I try to make my legs go faster.
What if she were called Dido. Where did I get that name from? Dido, Queen of Carthage, fell in love with Aeneas, the hero who fled, carrying his father on his back. A sight heavier than my rucksack.
Her name certainly isn’t Dido. But I can call her that anyway. I don’t know her address, not even her surname. Too late to ask Eva. I won’t be writing to anyone at all during the next couple of weeks.
My purpose here is to find something. Something that will cause a sensation. The rest is irrelevant. Any fool of a tourist can send postcards. I have other priorities. Still, there are plenty of things everyone else is capable of doing. But not me. Not me …
Yet another river. A wide one. It gets wider and wider as I approach. The strong man is already on the other side, gesturing, calling out. Arne, Qvigstad and Mikkelsen are perched on different stones in the rushing water, laughing. They look as if they’re playing tag, ducking this way and that as they spring from one stepping stone to the next.
The river foams like a waterfall. The bank is so soggy that I am almost knee-deep in mud. I stand still.
The stone closest to me is occupied by Arne. How did he get there? It is quite pointed, and one-and-a-half metres out from the riverbank. He can’t just have stepped onto it, he must have taken a running jump. But how, on such muddy ground?
Looking further away I see Mikkelsen flexing his knees. He gives a shout, flies through the air flailing his arms and lands on the stone already occupied by Qvigstad. They grab hold of each other, teeter, regain their balance. Then, one after the other, they stride across the remaining stepping stones as if they’re wearing seven-league boots. They catch up with the strong man, who has already started walking.
I am still at the water’s edge, scanning the river upstream and down, but can’t see any stones closer to the bank. Arne reaches out to me.
‘Jump,’ he says. ‘Draw up your knees as much as possible.’
Jump! My feet are sinking deeper and deeper in the mud. Bracing for push-off will only make me shoot into the ground like a bomb. Arne’s hand is too far away for me to catch hold of it. I can’t very well keep him waiting, though. False step, losing my balance, being fished out of the water soaking wet, watch ruined, camera full of water, rucksack with food — not just my own food! — sopping wet, down sleeping bag waterlogged. I can’t remain standing here and I can’t walk away either. What a nuisance it’ll be for the others if I arrive at the other side soaked to the skin. Not that they’ll laugh at me, they’re too polite.
I am unafraid. There is nothing to be afraid of for someone who has no choice, someone with only one thing left to do: the impossible! I lunge forward, grope for Arne’s hand — miss it, fall flat onto the stone he’s standing on, face smashed, waist-deep in water, ankle fractured. I jump. It’s as if Arne and I exchange a fleeting handshake. My right foot touches down, the rubber sole has excellent grip, the left foot follows, I draw myself up and there I am, standing next to Arne on a pedestal in the rushing water. He bends over. Scoops water with his cup, then offers it to me.