Solo Faces (3 page)

He was forgetting what he should do, struggling blindly, in desperation. His fingers ached. There was resignation heavy in his chest.

“Put your right foot where your left is!”

“What?” he cried miserably.

“Put your right foot where your left is and reach out with your left.”

His fingers were losing their grip.

“I can’t!”

“Try.”

He did as he was told, clumsy, despairing. His foot found a hold, his hand another. Suddenly he was saved. He began to move again and in a few minutes had forgotten his fear. Reaching Rand, he grinned. He had made mistakes. He’d been leaning too close to the rock, reaching too far. His moves had not been planned. Still he was there. A feeling of pride filled him. The ground was far below.

To the left, on a more difficult route, smooth, exposed, were two other climbers. Rand was watching them as he straightened out the rope. They were on an almost blank wall. The leader, hair pale in the sunlight, was flat against it, arms to either side, legs apart. Even in extremity he emitted a kind of power, as if he were supporting the rock. There was no one else on all of Tahquitz.

Rand turned from watching them. With a movement of his arm, he commented, “There it is.”

The forest was falling beneath them, the valley. Though still far from the top, they had entered a realm of silence. There was a different kind of light, a different air.

“The next part is easier,” Rand said.

The mountain had accepted them; it was prepared to reveal its secrets. The uncertainty was gone, fear of poor holds, of places where a toe stays only because of the angle at which it is placed, indecision—one move achieves nothing, there must immediately be another, perhaps a third. Hesitate and the holds vanish, draw back.

The top was level and dusty, like an untended corner of a park. Sitting on a rock in the sun were the two other climbers. They were in worn shirts and climbing pants, their rope and equipment lay near their feet. The leader, who was wearing tennis shoes, glanced up as Rand approached.

“I thought that was you,” Rand said. “How’ve you been, Jack?”

Cabot merely extended a leisurely hand. He had a broad smile and teeth with faintly jagged edges, of a lusterless white. His hair was rumpled, soiled, as if he had slept all night on a porch. He was amiable, assured. His voice had a certain warmth.

“The lost brother,” he said. “At last. Sit down. Want a sandwich?” He held one out, a graceful lack of deliberation in his movement. The sun glinted on his hair. His shoulders were strong beneath the faded shirt.

“I saw you struggling down there.”

“Have you ever been on that?” Cabot asked.

“The Step?”

“You own it, right? You bastard.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you.” There followed some scraps of song, Cabot singing as if to himself. “Some say that he is sinking down to mediocrity. He even climbs with useless types like Daddy Craig and me … Say,” he called to Lane who was ten feet off, not daring to join them, “how did he do? Did he manage all right?”

Rand was dividing the flattened sandwich.

“I asked everyone about you,” Cabot said. “Jesus. Not a clue. You know, I thought of you so many times. Really.”

He had been in Europe, in villages where the only telephone is in a bar and the walls of the houses are two feet thick. He’d spent the summer and fall there. The names of mountains every climber knows were now his own, the Cima Grande, the Blaitière, the Walker Spur.

“The Walker?”

“Well, we didn’t make it to the top,” Cabot admitted. He was hunched forward a bit as if in thought. “Next time. Of course, it only comes in shape every two years, if that. You want to do it?”

“Me?”

“You’ve been to France, haven’t you?”

“Sure. Who hasn’t?” Rand asked.

“You have to go. You’ve got to get to Chamonix. It’s more than you even dreamed. You go up the glaciers for five or six hours, you can hear the water running underneath. And the climbs!”

Rand felt his heart beating slowly, enviously. He felt unhappy, weighed down with regret. He turned to the second man,

“Did you go?” he asked.

“No,” Banning said, “I’m not that lucky.” He was in medical school, his climbing days were numbered.

Lane could not hear what they said, their voices were carried away by the wind. He could see them sprawled at their ease, the blond man leaning back and smiling, a piece of waxed paper waving near his foot. He was reminded of his mother and father talking when he had been younger, discussing things he was not meant to hear. There are conversations we are barred from, not one word of which can be imagined. He sat quietly, content to be near them, to have come this far.

Banning would become a doctor and disappear from climbing before he’d had his fill of it. Jack Cabot, it was hard to say. He was the kind of man who mapped out continents—climbing might not release him, might make him one of its myths. As for Rand, he had had a brilliant start and then defected. Something had weakened in him. That was long ago. He was like an animal that has wintered somewhere, in the shadow of a hedgerow or barn, and one morning mud-stained and dazed, shakes itself and comes to life. Sitting there, he remembered past days, their glory. He remembered the thrill of height.

“Who was that?” Lane asked.

“Back there? Oh, a friend of mine.”

They made their way in silence.

“Did you used to climb with him?”

Rand nodded.

“Is he good?”

“Pretty good.”

“He looked terrific.”

“Watch your step here,” Rand warned. He was moving more slowly. The slope of the rock had steepened. “I knew someone who fell right here.”

“Here? It’s easy,” Lane protested. “How could he fall?”

“He was running and he slipped.”

There were boulders far below.

“That’s the hard way down,” Rand said.

In Chamonix the
aiguilles,
the tall pinnacles, were covered with snow. The glaciers descended slowly, half an inch an hour, centuries deep.

B
EHIND THE HOUSE WERE
sections of piñon that had lain there so long the earth had taken their shape. The wood had hardened, fragments of a column shielding a world of ants.

Swinging the hammer in heavy, rhythmic blows, Rand was splitting logs. A forgelike ringing echoed as the wedge went deep and a clear, final sound as the wood came apart. The morning surrounded him, the sun spilled down. He was shirtless. He looked like a figure in medieval battle, lost in the din, in glinting planes of sunshine, dust that rose like smoke.

From the house, Louise was watching. Occasional glances, impatient, half-resigned, like a woman whose husband is intent on some ruinous, quixotic labor. Lane was in his room. He could hear the blows.

The car was gone, sold that morning. The sound of the wedge being driven was steady and unvarying. She went to the door.

“Hey, Rand.”

His head came up.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

“I’ll be finished in a while,” he said.

At last it stopped. She heard the logs being piled against the house. He came in and began to wash his hands.

“Well, I always said I’d do that. You’ve got enough for the winter, anyway.”

“Wonderful,” she commented.

“You might need it.”

“I can’t even make a fire,” she said. He was drying his hands, brushing bits of bark from his waist. Suddenly she realized she had no way to remember this image. He was going to put on a shirt, button the buttons. All this simply would disappear. She felt a shameful urge to reach out, put her arms around him, fall to her knees.

They had been in a bar the night before. It was noisy, crowded. There was something he had to tell her. He was leaving, he said. She could hardly hear him.

“What?”

He repeated it. He was going away.

“When?” she asked foolishly. It was all she could manage to say.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Going where?” She wanted to think of something incisive that would hurt him, make him stay. Instead she murmured, “You know, I really liked you.”

“I’ll be back.”

“You mean it?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a year. Maybe two.”

“What are you going to do, go back to climbing? Lane told me you met your old friends.”

“Friend.”

“Is he going with you?”

“No.”

“Well …” She was looking at her glass. She tried to force a smile and suddenly turned away.

“Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Louise …”

She was weeping.

“Come on …”

“Oh, forget it,” she said. Her nose was running.

“ …I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

Someone at the next table asked, “Is anything wrong?”

“Mind your own business,” Rand said.

“Yes,” she agreed. She had already risen and was gathering her things.

They drove home in silence. She sat against the door, her narrow shoulders hunched. She was folded like an insect, legs drawn up beside her, arms crossed.

In the morning her face was swollen as if she were ill. He could hear her breathing. Somehow, it seemed conscious, sorrowful, close to a sigh. As he listened it seemed to grow louder to become, he suddenly realized, the sound of a jet crossing the city at dawn.

He left behind some cardboard boxes filled with letters, shoes, fishing equipment. The letters were from an old girl friend, born in Kauai, who had cut his palm one night and, to seal their love, raised it to her mouth and drunk the welt of blood.

I
N
G
ENEVA IT WAS
raining. The bus station was behind a church. There were only a few passengers when the driver appeared, climbed into his seat, started the engine, and steered his way into traffic to the ceaseless whacking of the windshield wiper and the voice of a comedian on a radio beneath the wheel.

Soon they were roaring along streets of small towns, barely skimming the sides of buildings. Pharmacies, green trees, supermarkets sailing past. In a front seat Rand sat high above it all. They were crossing railroad tracks, he was looking down into gardens, lumberyards, at girls running in the rain with wet hair.

The sky went pale. A few seconds later, ominous and near, like artillery, came the thunder. He felt he was being rushed to battle, across borders, through wet fields covered with mist that stretched out on either side. It was summer. The rivers were milky green. There were bridges, barns, cases of empty bottles stacked in yards, and sometimes through the clouds, a glimpse of mountains. He spoke no French. The cluttered towns with their shops and curious signs—he did not take them seriously. At the same time, he longed to know them.

The lights of oncoming cars began to appear, a sulfur yellow. The rain had ceased. The mountains lay hidden in a kind of smoke. It seemed as if the stage were being set; suddenly, at Sallanches, the valley opened. There, at its end, unexpected, bathed in light, was the great peak of Europe, Mont Blanc. It was larger than one could imagine, and closer, covered in snow. That first immense image changed his life. It seemed to drown him, to rise with an infinite slowness like a wave above his head. There was nothing that could stand against it, nothing that could survive. Through crowded terminals, cities, rain, he had carried certain hopes and expectations, vague but thrilling. He was dozing on them like baggage, numbed by the journey, and then, at a certain moment, the clouds had parted to reveal in brilliant light the symbol of it all. His heart was beating in a strange, insistent way, as if he were fleeing, as if he had committed a crime.

They arrived in Chamonix in the evening. The square in front of the station was quiet. The sky was still light. He stepped down. Though mid-June, the air was chill. A taxi took two other passengers off to some hotel. He was left alone. The town to all appearances was empty. He had a strange impression, almost a warning, that he knew this place. He looked about him as if to confirm some detail. The hotels that fronted the station seemed closed; there was light in the entrance of one. A dog trotted up to the edge of a low roof and stared at him. Above, in the trees, were the last rays of sun. He picked up his bedroll and pack and began to walk.

There was a bridge across the tracks. He went in that direction, away from town, and soon was on a dirt road. The pines had begun to darken. He came to a large villa in a garden overgrown with weeds. All sorts of junk was piled along the side, a rusted stove, flowerpots, broken chairs. Above the door was a metal sign: Chalet something-or-other, the letters had faded away. The window casements were deep, the shutters closed. He went around to the back where there was a light and knocked.

A woman came to the door.

“Is there a place to sleep?” he asked.

She did not answer. She called into the darkness of the house and another woman, her mother, appeared and led him up some flights of stairs into a room where he could stay for ten francs—she made it clear by holding up two hands with outstretched fingers. There were bunks with bare mattresses. Someone’s belongings were already there, shoes and equipment strewn beside the wall and on the single shelf a loaf of bread and an alarm clock.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

There was a washroom with one bulb. Everything was bare, unpainted, dark with years. He went to bed without dinner that night. It had begun to rain again. He heard it first, then saw it on the window. Like a beast that knows things by scent, he was untroubled, even at peace. The odor of the blankets, the trees, the earth, the odor of France seemed known to him. He lay there feeling not so much a physical calm as something even deeper, the throb of life itself. A decisive joy filled him, warmth and well-being. Nothing could buy these things—he was breathing quietly, the rain was falling—nothing could take their place.

C
HAMONIX WAS AT ONE
time an unspoiled town. Though crowded and overbuilt there are aspects which remain—the narrow curving streets, the sturdy barns, the walls built thick and left to crumble—that reveal its former character and vanished air. It lies in a deep V in the mountains, in the valley of the Arve, a river white with rock dust that rushes in a frenzy beside the streets. Overshadowing the town are the lower slopes of Mont Blanc with the snouts of glaciers alongside.