His voice filled with scorn.
“You think you’re better than everyone else, Math. An exemplary mountaineer, an exemplary husband, an exemplary friend. But you’re nothing but a pathetic clown. No one who really knows you can stand you!”
Too late. Mathias Reimz was already pulling himself up on the ropes.
“Vera will cry for me! She wouldn’t for you!” shouted Philippe Auguste as loudly as he could.
The crevasse was plunged into darkness once more.
The excitement of the visit roused Philippe Auguste’s body. His heart beat strongly now and the blood that had been about to freeze in his veins flowed easily into his muscles. Suddenly, perhaps because his brain was also working better, he remembered that mountaineers never take with them the ropes they use to descend into crevasses. They were a dead weight, an unnecessary burden on the journey back to camp.
“What if Mathias…,” he thought. He was gripped by hope.
He got up and felt around in the dark. It was only a moment but so intense that it made him laugh out loud with joy. There were the three ropes that, by force of habit, Mathias Reimz had left behind him.
Philippe Auguste’s wounds made him groan with pain, but he knew that a greater suffering, the worst of all, awaited him at the bottom of the crevasse. Tightening his lips against the pain, Philippe Auguste took hold of the ropes and began to climb, slowly, trying not to bump against the frozen walls. He used the narrower places to rest, forming a bridge with his back and his good leg. An hour later, he had managed to climb the first ten yards.
When he had climbed some eighteen yards, an avalanche of snow threw him off balance crushing him against a hard lump on the wall. Philippe Auguste felt the blow on the same side he had the cut and the pain filled his eyes with tears. For a moment he thought of the gentle death awaiting him at the bottom of the crevasse. But hope was still there in his heart and it whispered a “perhaps” to him that he could not ignore. After all, he was lucky. Fate had given him a chance. He had no right to doubt it. Besides, the fall of snow indicated that the mouth of the crevasse must be very near.
Half an hour later, the walls of the crevasse became first gray then white. Philippe Auguste considered that, in throwing him against the wall, Fate had wanted to put him to the test, and that this, at last, was his reward.
“The sky!” he gasped. And it was indeed the rosy sky of dawn. A new day was breaking over Nepal.
The sun was shining on the snow. Ahead of him, toward the north, rose the mighty form of Lhotse. To his right, across the frozen valley, was the zigzagging path down to Camp One.
Philippe Auguste felt his lungs revive as he breathed in the clean air of morning. He opened his arms to the vastness and, raising his eyes to the blue sky, mumbled a few words of thanks to the Mountain.
He was still in that position when a strange feeling troubled him. It seemed to him that the arms he had stretched out had bent again, against his will, and were embracing him. But who was embracing him?
He looked down to see what was happening and a grimace of terror contorted his face. Mathias Reimz stood in front of him. He was smiling mockingly.
“It’s not nice to cheat, Phil,” he heard him say just before he felt the shove. And, for an instant, as he fell toward the bottom of the crevasse, Philippe Auguste Bloy thought he understood the meaning of those last hours of his life.
Everything — the visit, leaving behind the ropes — had been a premeditated plan of torture: Mathias Reimz had not even wanted to spare him the pain of unfounded hope.
A Rhine wine
“HOW ABOUT LEAVING the martini that’s on the schedule for another day,” suggested the uncle from Montevideo, laying aside his papers and getting up from his leather armchair. The story-reading session on the verandah was over.
“That depends on what you have to offer in its place,” we joked.
“I can offer you a delicious Rhine wine that I have in my cellar. Hearing that story about Klaus Hanhn made me feel like opening a bottle. How about it? Shall I put it to cool in my fontefrida?”
The fontefrida was my uncle’s name for the well inside the house, next to the kitchen.
“For my part, I’d be delighted. The truth is I’ve never drunk Rhine wine in my life,” I said.
“You’ve never drunk it and yet you write about it in your story! The nerve of the boy!” said my uncle, laughing and shaking his head.
“You’re back to being nineteenth-century man again! Experience and originality and, if possible, two or three adulterous affairs per novel. So much for your newfound faith! I bet even the story you plagiarized was from the nineteenth century!”
“Now that you mention it,” my friend broke in, “what writer did you base yourself on for the story about the crevasse, Uncle? You never told us.”
My uncle walked over to the door like a child ostentatiously feigning indifference. He knew the stories he’d read had impressed us.
“Not a word! The program states that any questions and comments must wait until the second cognac of the afternoon. So until then you have only two options: silence or small talk. Now go and sit down at the table in the garden. The wine will only take five minutes to cool.”
“As the honorable Mr. Fig-eater wishes,” I said, getting up.
“The table will be in the shade, won’t it?” asked my friend, looking out the window. The temperature outside was hovering around the 95° mark the radio had forecast.
“It’s underneath the magnolia tree in the corner. But, come to think of it, perhaps I’m being too trusting putting it there. I can hardly expect you to behave like pale nineteenth-century maidens. If you like, I’ll come over in a minute and pull it out into the full blaze of modernity.”
“Oh, very droll,” we both said as we went outside.
The “modernity” of which my uncle spoke filled the whole garden. One was aware of nothing else, just its intense heat and light. Only the monotonous song of the crickets interrupted the general stupor imposed on Obaba by that Sunday’s heat.
My friend and I hurried off in search of the magnolia tree and then, seated comfortably in the center of its shade, we settled down to make small talk, as required by the program. Our conversation, which began with predictable remarks about the oppressive heat and the drought, drifted off into thoughts about the unusual tree sheltering us.
“You only ever find magnolia trees in the gardens of houses built by rich Spanish emigrants returned from South America,” my friend remarked.
“They must bring them back as a souvenir. It’s the same with palm trees.”
“As a souvenir? I’m not so sure about that. I can’t imagine one of those rich men looking out at his garden and feeling nostalgic for his days in Panama or Venezuela.”
“Why else would they bring them?”
“Because they needed a symbol of the wealth they’d accumulated out there. They couldn’t come back to their village and set themselves up in a normal house. They needed to show their fellow countrymen that they had triumphed, that it had been worthwhile emigrating.”
“Well, I don’t know, you may be right…”
“How odd. I thought young people today were always so certain about everything,” my uncle said, interrupting us. He was carrying the tray with the aperitif. “Rhine wine, small glasses, Spanish olives, anchovies from Bermeo…” he recited as he placed one thing after another on the table. “Well, what do you think?”
“You may belong to the nineteenth century, Uncle, but one must concede that there are some things you do very well.”
“Is the wine good?” he asked when we’d tried it.