At my feet lie the contents of my rucksack. Not a soul for miles and miles around to take any notice. The seventeen matches aligned on the flat stone are now dry. The flattened matchbox cover — four rectangles joined together: blue, black, yellow-and-red, black — is dry. Seventeen cigarettes, their surgical white tubing stained brown: dry. Maps: dry. Notebook: dry. Sleeping bag …?
I shake it out, plump it up, try teasing out the lumpy swansdown. Still too wet. I also check my camera in case the film has miraculously got unstuck. It has not.
I squirt half a tube of honey into my mouth, drink some water and smoke a cigarette. The wind is rising and between gusts the mosquitoes’ buzzing intensifies. It isn’t raining yet, although the sky has turned black save for a small patch of blue overhead. If only I knew where I am on the map, I could use my position plus the mountain to align the map properly, and then I’d be able to work out what time it is on the basis of the sun. All the stuff I’ve learnt is useless. But why do I need to know what time it is?
I gather up my belongings with deliberation, packing each item away as safely as possible (the matches go into my breast pocket wrapped in a bit of plastic — the least chance of them getting wet if I sink into a bog).
When I’ve finished packing I load my rucksack and take a last look round. No, haven’t left any traces. No clues to my ever having been here. Not such a good idea, perhaps. I tear a sheet out of my notebook and write:
I am on my way to Vuorje. Alfred.
I fold the note in four and leave it lying on top of a large stone with a small stone as a paperweight.
36
Mount Vuorje has three flanks: one facing south, one north-west and one north-east.
I am approaching the mountain from the south, but won’t be able to climb that side because it’s too steep.
Judging by the indications on the map, the north-west flank will present the least difficulty.
The terrain I am walking on now is already rising steadily. The rain has reached me, or I have reached the rain. Fat drops — actually hailstones that have only just melted — fall on my plastic mac, rapidly forming rivers running down to my trousers and into my shoes. By now the note I left on the big stone will be soaking wet, reduced to pulp, vanishing without trace.
My thoughts are becoming as monotonous as the rain, as boring as my aches and pains. My fear of Mikkelsen being on the scent of a major discovery is a suppurating sore.
And yet, despite the fear, there are moments when I realise with a shock that I’ve been going for several minutes (how many?) without scanning the stones at my feet for meteorites.
Round holes containing only water don’t occur at this altitude, nor do lakes.
I can now see the south side of the mountain in its entirety. A blue-black wall encrusted with ribbons of eternal snow. Trickles of whitish shale run down from the top like tentacles widening into enormous suction pads. I stay out of harm’s reach. My progress is slow, but it’s progress. In the face of my diligence even the clouds give up and drift away. The sun floods the landscape with russet and red.
I tell myself I’m keeping to an altitude of 720 metres. In any case, I’m taking the left way round the mountain. My horizon changes from one moment to the next. At last! Lake Lievnasjaurre! I can see the Obbarda-elv winding towards it. Another two kilometres and I’ll have a view of the whole lake. Qvigstad and Mikkelsen must be somewhere around here. Where’s their green tent? With each step I take — and my steps are small — I can see a bit more of the lake, some three hundred metres down from where I am now.
At last there’s no need to lift my weary head up high each time I want to survey my surroundings.
But the green double-roof tent is nowhere to be seen.
I sit down, stare at the mountain, stare at my map. I could, possibly, save time by not walking all the way to the foot of the north-western flank first. The sooner I get to the top the better. From there I’ll have a view to all sides, and I’ll spot Qvigstad and Mikkelsen, assuming they haven’t yet left.
Striking diagonally across the base in the direction of the summit means gaining altitude early on.
The north-western flank is surprisingly easy to climb. It isn’t bare rock, rather an undulating cover of stones and sand — originally mud flow, presumably, after which compaction was supplied by plants, creating the wrinkled effect of the skin on boiled milk.
There are some puzzling horizontal gullies running across the slope, dividing it into terraces. Probably gouged out of the mountainside by ice ridges in former times, creating an amphitheatre for giants with fifty-metre-long shins. But when I reach the uppermost rank I’m still a long way from the summit. Mountains always increase in height once you start climbing.
The vegetation peters out. I now come to a vast expanse of cobbles the size of cannon balls. The foot must be placed exactly on the middle of each stone or it slides off. Each step requires calculation, not the slightest move must be made without considering the consequences of a false step: foot jammed between cobbles, falling over, leg snapping like matchwood.
Every twenty paces or so I pause unsteadily to look about me. I do not dare to sit down, for fear of losing my balance when I get up again and being flung to the bottom at a dizzying speed, a gob of flesh and splintered bone spat out by Mount Vuorje.
Now and then I inadvertently dislodge a stone, at which it bounces up, comes thundering down, then bounces up even higher before crashing onto the cobbles further back. I can only breathe through my mouth now. My limbs are draped in sweat-drenched curtains. I have never read a description of what it’s like to climb a mountain such as this. That all you can see ahead of you is ten or twenty metres of slope ending in a sharp ridge, beyond which the sky begins. And that as you climb further the distance to the top of the ridge increases. Like being on a treadmill, some gigantic cylinder made to revolve under your feet. Is there no end to it? Why do I keep thinking I have reached the top when I haven’t? Maybe the people who have done this sort of climbing don’t want to admit how harrowing the experience was. Or they simply forget. Nobody can recall precisely what the dentist’s drill feels like. The pain is so excruciating and the sense of powerlessness so overwhelming that it is not something you dwell on, never mind put down in writing.
Another pause. I am panting heavily. A cloud comes drifting my way. Which it has every right to. I have ascended to the land of clouds, I am an intruder in their domain. The cloud sidles up to the mountain much as an airship in the old days, a zeppelin looking to use a church spire as a mooring-post. The cloud begins to envelop me. It is not nearly as dense as I had expected. Not a cloud, really, more like eddies of white mist. I take a deep breath and start walking again. A thin white deposit has formed on the crowns of the stones. Hoarfrost. The slope grows gentler at last, and then, abruptly, ceases to be a slope at all. I am at the summit.
Something stirs on the ground close by. Stirs, then stops. Some animal. A polar fox. White fur with brown markings on its back. It is standing right in front of me, wide-legged, head lowered between the shoulders, boxer-fashion, tufted ears pricked up. What does it want? Has it never seen a human being before? I wish I could coax it to come closer, like a dog. Suddenly it turns and trots away at a leisurely pace, as though dissembling its fright. Tail down, the tip almost touching the ground, it vanishes into the mist.
The summit.
What do I see? Nothing. White fog whichever way I turn. I can only see the small patch of level ground where I’m standing. I pace around in anguish: precipices on all sides, fringed in vapour. Where can Mikkelsen and Qvigstad be? They may be close by, but I can’t see them. The mist swirls past me as if I’m sitting in an aeroplane. The density of the cloud varies, but it appears to be endless, endlessly prolonging my blindness.