Rising Abruptly (20 page)

With her baby finger, Rachel traces the white scar meandering across her forehead. Blows out the candle. Lies down on the straw mat. Tries to pierce the darkness pulsating in front of her eyes. She would pursue her mute dialogue with Jeanne, but the three high notes of the reed flute stop and a man of flesh and bones and hatred comes from another mountain to terrorize her. Stiff as a board, she listens.

The silence of the blue-black night shatters in an angry scream. The man roars. Above Rachel's head, the Nepalese woman answers. The man replies with a long argument full of rage. Fleas have found Rachel. In the dark, she glances toward her cousin, wondering if the vermin are also bothering her.

The woman comes down the narrow staircase and rushes outside. The man is right up against the house. A single vicious voice in the dark. A broken flute, carrying its distorted notes from mountain to mountain. The woman shrieks long and hard, syllables stretching into monotonous sounds.

The man bellows again, stronger, more menacing. That's it. He has come to claim Jeanne's body. You had a Nepalese lover, Jeanne? A Tibetan lover? The male claiming his due. Petrified on her mat, Rachel wonders why Rana doesn't take charge. The one coming down the stairs is not Rana, but his little brother. Rachel opens her eyes as wide as she can in an attempt to see in the dark. Nocturnal blindness makes her vulnerable. Disoriented, she can't find her lighter, her matches.

The boy opens the door. Rachel peeks outside. The night is less dark than inside the house. A flea walks on her belly, takes a bite. She squashes the insect. And fear, a true fright discharges from her belly as the man is standing on the threshold, not two steps from her face, a sickle in his hand. He stares at her, the white of his eyes alive, panicky.

The man's stocky body is squarely visible in the open doorway. He points a finger. At Jeanne? At Rachel? He screams. The woman shoves the raging man outside, pointing toward the living guest, pointing toward the dead guest, all the while shrieking. The man pushes his way back inside.

Fleas are still grazing on Rachel's flesh. Once more, the woman expels the man from her home. Tearing each other apart with their rage. The little brother half-closes the door, letting the paler night into the house. He moves into the shadows. Comes out. Armed with a knife. Rachel feels life trickling out of her. What if Jeanne was murdered in this house, her body thrown into a deep valley?

This night belongs to raw instinct. To trek through the mountains of Nepal, only to find Jeanne in ultimate stillness, never again to hear the three high notes of the reed flute, to die, her throat slit by a seven-year-old boy, to carry with the last moment of consciousness the screams, the terrible screams of a man and a woman consumed with hatred.

No. Rachel has not died. With fear and pride, the boy stands guard over her. The screams are getting more distant. Carrying a lamp made out of a tin can, the woman comes back. Pushes the door shut.

Rachel gets up. Where is Rana? She wants to leave Jeanne behind in her Nepalese death. Go far away from this place she does not understand.

Sleep, orders the woman.

Docile, Rachel lies down again. The woman goes back upstairs with her child. Once upstairs, she resumes the screaming match until her voice is raw. The man's voice reaches from afar, from the next mountain, as if the man had flown away on the wind. Soon, silence re-establishes itself. The fleas are voracious. The trek and her sorrow catch up with her. At last, Rachel sleeps.

In the mud house filled with cold and congealed smoke, a blue dawn enters through cracks, pushing the shadows into corners. Somewhere, a cock crows. Where is the flute?

Outside, clouds shroud the land. Dewdrops drip from the roof. Inside, Rachel sits on her mat, her back to the villagers who have begun their daily chores, as if they had not witnessed the night's events. A neighbour comes in to fetch embers to rekindle her cooking fire.

A lump in her throat, her heart pounding, Rachel stares at the vaporous fabrics and at the yellow flowers that brighten the dawn. Slowly, she gets up and reaches toward the veils, remembering the horrible rigidity of Jeanne's arm she felt last night.

Closing her eyes, she pulls away the layers of thin fabric, holding them high so as not to touch her cousin. Still as a statue, she waits a few seconds. Then holding her breath, bracing for the shock, choking on saliva, she opens her eyes.

It is no longer Jeanne, that. And yet, at the beginning of the fall, it was her. When she hit the bottom of the cliff, nothing of her remained. Half her face is gone and what is left is a white yellow tumefaction. Part of the skull is visible where hair and skin were ripped under the impact with rock. Rachel replaces the shroud, rushes outside in the cold humid air, runs past the last house and sinks to the ground. She wails, letting it all out. No shame in tears and sobs, for what she has lost is irreparable. End game.

Later, people carry the pallet covered with fresh sprays of flowers. They walk toward the next village, deeper into the mountains. Rachel follows the funeral procession, inquiring about nothing.

When they reach the village, an old man dressed in saffron robes presides over the ceremony. A stone deity splattered with red dye occupies the centre of a small square. In front of that effigy has been built the pyre on top of which is laid the corpse with shroud and flowers. Small bells send crystalline sounds into the air. Secret words are recited, then the pyre is lit. The flames work easily on the layers of fabric, less so on the cadaver. Rachel shakes all over, terrified to see the mutilated face. But soon, the roaring blaze takes over everything.

Rachel looks up toward Borlang. A man standing on a knoll waves a sickle, staring with rage at the blaze.

Him crazy. Rana's mother pats Rachel's hand. Him crazy.

An hour later, the flames become less intense. The limbs have been burned, but the long bones, and the skull, and the carbonized trunk are still eerily solid. Where are those famous grey ashes to be scattered?

Rana, we must burn everything. Everything.

Wood is expensive, Miss Rachel.

Rachel gives him a thick wad of rupees: I want ashes. Only ashes, Rana.

Rana shows the money to the old man. The old man gives orders. Children bring more wood. Well-fed once more, the fire rekindles. Grows in intensity.

By late morning, it is over. Wood and corpse have been consumed. On the flagstones, a pile of ashes mixed with the brittle thigh bones and part of the skull. The old man crushes the bone fragments. Then, he stirs the ashes until they cool down enough to be handled. Rana scoops up the remains of his sister-in-spirit and lovingly drops them into a funeral urn. He presents the urn to Rachel. She accepts the jar. Presses her cousin to her heart. Tells Rana she is ready to go back down the mountain with the box of archives and the urn, both vessels filled with a past that will forever remain closed.

Touching her scar in a gesture of farewell, Rachel looks one last time at the square where a few hours ago a roaring wall of fire was burning and where, now, only a stone statue stands with a dispassionate face.

Assiniboine Crossroads

DISCLAIMER
Let us be clear. Ours are not the horrendous climbing stories you read in alpine journals and other publications dedicated to
extreme
outdoor pursuits. For mountains to have meaning in your life, you don't have to be on the thirty-fifth pitch of a Big Wall on Baffin Island in the middle of a blizzard at –40°C, while Jake, still insisting on leading despite frostbitten fingers, hammers a pin into crumbly rock, while you, belaying on this pitch, haven't slept a wink in three nights as you and your (crazy) partner, anchored to the mountain two thousand metres above the glacier and three hundred kilometres from the nearest hamlet, are pummelled by sleet then snow then wind, after having run out of food two days ago with seven pitches still ahead, including the horrible crux of the notorious overhang with the unstable cornice you have to tunnel through to gain the summit ridge, and everyone knows the summit ridge ain't the
summit
yet, and, right now, your mood is deteriorating faster than the weather, from foul to murderous, and you're nurturing wicked thoughts of cutting the rope between you and fucking Jake who, once again, talked you into climbing
another
goddam
remote
mountain, but while shivering and swearing, you also know that, if you survive this misery, after a shower, a meal, two twelve-hour rounds of sleep, when you're toasty in that pub guzzling your fifth beer, you'll be raving to everyone, whether they want to hear it or not, how flat-out
awesome
it is to climb rad routes with that son-of-a-bitch Jake. Not those kinds of stories. We don't want to lead you astray.

Gianna & Gregor

A SMALL OPENING

Not for the first time, we are contemplating the North Ridge of Mount Assiniboine, its edge sharpened in brilliant sunshine.

The North Ridge, a classic climb and the easiest route to reach the summit, offers advanced scrambling on sometimes loose rock, with short sections of fifth-class climbing. Located on the Great Divide, the 3,618-metre pyramid of grey limestone is the seventh highest peak in the Canadian Rockies and the highest mountain in the Southern Rockies. Assiniboine rises nearly 1,525 metres above Lake Magog. From the campground near the lake, you begin by hiking, then you scramble via a headwall, then up snow slopes to get to the moraine where the Hind Hut serves as an alpine refuge. Higher up, you face the ridge. Nine hundred metres to the summit. Not too difficult if the rock is free of ice and snow and if you don't get off route.

In human parlance, mountains quickly become a litany of facts. Oh but, there is more to them than statistics. We first saw the peak from the Sunshine Meadows, shortly after arriving in Calgary from the Far East. Over the years and from many vantage points, while hiking, scrambling, climbing, we kept seeing its distinctive shape profiled in the distance among many peaks. Mount Assiniboine, beckoning. Seventh highest peak, as in a lucky number, perhaps. Rising on the Great Divide, as metaphor for what our life together had never been. Spanning decades, our relationship is defined by movement and an indefatigable avoidance of the commonplace. We never have climbed the mountain.

AT A CROSSROADS

Our desire to climb Assiniboine now is not a race against time. Time that is left to us. Neither is it another exercise in checking off yet another peak. This is an adjustment. Earlier this summer, we reached two milestones. We both turned sixty-five (to say we celebrated our birthdays would be a hyperbole) and we counted forty years together.

GIANNA: Five years ago, might as well be five weeks ago, we turned sixty. I was flabbergasted how fast we reached that number. Took to my bed, remember?

GREGOR: Taking to your bed, you might as well take to your grave.

GIANNA: We are officially
senior
citizens. Senior! The age of the walker.

Our adjustment of what we've postponed for too long. As in putting one's affairs in order before the Big Vanishing Act.

We are here now. At long last. Early August, the height of summer in this region of earth. The closest we've ever been to the peak. An adjustment for all the times we couldn't make it. For all the interruptions and interferences from work, life, the weather. Why do we persist in thinking that, if we don't make the summit tomorrow, there will be no take two? As it happens so often with mountains, we try and if we have to bail, we try again. Now though, we have to do it right the first time.

Without the forest fires, this campground near Lake Magog would be filled with hikers and climbers. And so would the nearby Naiset Cabins. And not a few well-to-do climbers from Europe or the States or Japan or China would be staying at the swanky lodge and would hire the services of a personal guide. The fires burning hectares of prime forest in Alberta and British Columbia are our chance of making it without the crowd. Apart from those fires, this summer has been a rare season of nothing but high pressure.

Contemplating the North Ridge, we don't admit it, but we are experiencing a bit of stage fright. At sixty-five, our bones and sinews are not what they used to be. To say nothing of our increasing slowness. We no longer have the energy of even a decade ago. And the loss of physical strength is exponential. The faster we lose it, the faster we will lose it. And mindset too is a factor. Of late, we have been noticing a drop in our mental resolve. Waning, our love of extravagance. Without it to boost stamina, the smallest change in the complex alignment of stable weather, good mountain conditions and minimal human traffic risks turning us around. Neither one of us will be the first one to suggest it. But it will come. With little resistance, we will pack our bags and decamp. We and the mountains, at a crossroads.

REHEARSAL WITH THE INSECT PEOPLE

The evening before departure, we opened a bottle of wine. The street light was casting a bright glow on the kitchen table. Felt as if we were on stage. Assiniboine very much on our minds.