Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

Whymper’s realization at that moment was that the first three men had been secured by one of the thicker, more solid ropes, while Old Peter Taugwalder had tied Douglas to himself by a much thinner, lighter rope, not often used for roping the actual climbers. There was no doubt in Whymper’s mind at that moment that Old Peter had deliberately used a less secure rope in case the first four men should fall. In later years, the famous British climber came close to accusing the old guide of this in plain words and print.

In truth, though, all the ropes—even the thinner one Old Peter Taugwalder had around his shoulder when it came time to tie Lord Francis Douglas on to the common rope connecting all seven of them—had been used without any thought or undue concern as connecting ropes between the climbers during the descent that day and on many others. Edward Whymper simply didn’t concern himself with relative rope thicknesses, tensile strengths, and the mathematics of breaking points in different diameters and makes of rope until after the tragedy on his day of triumph on the Matterhorn.

No one ever did find the remains of 18-year-old Francis Douglas, and this fact gave rise to an odd little footnote to the tragedy.

Lord Francis Douglas’s somewhat elderly mother, Lady Queensberry, as Whymper wrote, “suffered much from the idea of her son not having been found.”

In truth, it was worse than that. Lady Queensberry soon became obsessed with the morbid conviction that her young son was still alive somewhere on the Matterhorn—trapped high in an ice cave, perhaps, while surviving by eating lichens and bits of mountain goats, drinking the water that tumbled over his prison from the snows above. Perhaps—most probably Lady Queensberry thought—her beloved son Francis was injured, unable to descend on his own and even unable to find a way to signal to those so far below. Or perhaps, she told one old friend during a visit, Francis had survived the fall to the glacier—after all, he wasn’t attached by rope to those who had died so horribly—and was even now eking out a cold survival in a crevasse somewhere.

Men of honor such as Professor John Tyndall—who had almost joined Whymper on the famous first ascent—then returned to the Matterhorn to carry out systematic searches for Douglas’s remains. He wrote to Lady Queensberry and promised “to exert to the full extent of my abilities in the difficult and dangerous—but necessary for your piece of mind—task of finding and returning your brave son’s body to his native land and ancestral home.”

But Douglas’s mother wasn’t interested in someone returning her darling son Francis’s body. She knew he was alive and she wanted him found.

She went to her grave believing that Lord Francis Douglas still lived, stranded high on the north face of the Matterhorn or wandering the cold blue caverns beneath the glacier at the mountain’s foot.

So the Deacon calls a halt to our descent through the “treacherous bit,” and Jean-Claude and I stand there a few meters lower than him, both of us getting colder by the minute (the north face is in full shadow now and the wind has grown colder as it increases its howling), and—at least on my part—wondering what the hell old Richard Davis Deacon is up to. Perhaps, I think, he’s getting senile. After all, the Deacon, although physically more fit than I am at 22, is entering his dotage at age 37 (the precise age of George Mallory when he disappeared on Everest this same month).

“This is the place,” the Deacon says softly. “Precisely the place where Croz, Hadow, Hudson, and Lord Francis Douglas fell and went over that edge…” He points only 40 or 50 feet below, where the arching crest of the Matterhorn’s picturesque overhang becomes an invariably fatal drop.

“Merde,” says Jean-Claude, speaking for both of us. “Jake and I know that. You know that we know all that. Don’t tell us, Richard Davis Deacon, former schoolteacher that you are, that you brought us down this miserable route with no fixed ropes—we have a dozen or more to choose from just thirty steps to your right, and I’d be delighted to drive in a piton and clip in a fresh rope if you like—don’t tell us you brought us this way just so you could show and tell us a piece of history that everyone who loves the Alps and this mountain has known since we were in short pants. Let us quit talking and get off this fucking face.”

We do so, moving easily and confidently to our right, always aware of the emptiness below us here, until we move out onto the relatively safe slabs—a series of upturned steps was the way Whymper once described the ridge after giving up on the Italian side (downturned slabs) and trying this Swiss Ridge—and from there we unrope, and the descent becomes, despite the continued danger of rockfall or slipping on ice, “easy as eating your piece of pie,” as Jean-Claude would sometimes say.

We knew now that, barring any nasty surprise, we’d reach the Hornli Hut at 3,260 meters, almost 11,000 feet—a comfortable enough hut for one perched on a narrow ledge and wedged into the mountain itself—before full darkness fell. Two-thirds of the way down we reached an old cache of ours. (Our cache—mostly just some extra food, water, and blankets for the hut—was set almost exactly where Whymper’s people had left their rucksacks during their ascent. What must the three survivors have felt and thought on their silent descent as they lifted their dead friends’ four rucksacks and carried them down the mountain with them?)

I realize that I’m feeling morbid and depressed as hell—plus my week of climbing the Matterhorn, not to mention the many previous months with these two men, is now over. What am I going to do now? Go back to Boston and try to get a job? Literature majors tend to end up teaching literature they love to bored freshmen who couldn’t give the slightest bucket of warm spit about the material, and this thought of making my future living in the Fifth Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Academic Hell depresses me even more. Jean-Claude looks pretty miserable as well, but he has a great job to return to as a Chamonix Guide. He’s very close friends with the Deacon and obviously sorry to see the long climbing vacation—and relationship—end for now.

The Deacon is grinning like an idiot. I’m not certain that I’ve ever seen Richard Davis Deacon fully grin before—smile ironically, sure, but grin like a normal human being? Much less grin like an idiot? Uh-oh. Something is very wrong with that grin. His voice, although audibly excited, is slow, almost formal in its Cambridge cadences. The Deacon is taking turns making serious eye contact with each of us as he speaks—something else he rarely does.

“Jean-Claude Clairoux,” he says softly. “Jacob William Perry. Would you care to accompany me on a fully funded expedition to climb Mount Everest in the next spring and early summer of nineteen twenty-five? It will just be the three of us as climbers and some necessary porters—including a few high-climbing Sherpas to help establish the high camps, but still just porters. We will be the three climbers—the three men attempting the summit. Only us.”

This is where Jean-Claude and I, knowing that this must be pure fantasy or mean-spirited bullshit, should be shouting, “You can’t be serious” and “Go tell it to someone who just got off the boat, Limey,” but this is the Deacon speaking, so the young French Chamonix Guide and I look at each other intently for a long few seconds, turn back to the Deacon, and say in total solemnity and almost perfect unison…

“Yes. We’ll go.”

And so it begins.

Chapter 2

So there at the center of the most beautiful 9,400 acres in the world resides a permanently broken heart and an eternally damaged mind.