To the Back of Beyond(29)
He spent the greater part of the night in a state between sleeping and waking. His mind was churning, images surfaced that were more like dreams, and then for moments at a time he knew only pain and cold and exhaustion. His jacket grew heavy with snow. Thomas tried to think of home, his warm bed, Astrid and the kids. But the scenes escaped him, he saw mountains lit from within under a starless sky, he flew up never-ending sheer surfaces, so close to the rock that he could make out the tiniest details. He was sustained by an air current that picked him up and dropped him, but even when he fell he didn’t lose control, he fell and fell down along the vertical wall. Then he was suddenly wide awake and could feel only cold and pain and the hard rock beneath. He had to get up and move around. He pushed back the jacket and saw that it had stopped snowing. It was completely dark in his little crevasse, but there were stars in the sky. He took the headlamp out of his rucksack and saw that his watch had stopped at half past seven. It must have been damaged in the fall, the casing was scratched and the glass cracked. Although there were no indications that the night was nearly over, he began to clamber up the wall. His headlamp lit only a small circle that trembled up and down in front of him. He climbed slowly and cautiously, testing every hold before trusting it. The rock was wet and slippery, snow had settled on little ledges and in cracks that now burned his fingertips. It took a long time before he reached the top and hauled himself up over the rim. He knelt in the snow and directed the beam of his light like a searchlight in the nearest vicinity. Then he switched it off, to force his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The starry sky was of an overpowering beauty, the stars seeming to vibrate with cold. Even though there was a half-moon the barren waste of the landscape was surprisingly easy to see, it was as though the snow was giving off a pallid illumination. Even so, Thomas set himself to wait for it to get light before moving off.
The terrain was still gently uphill. Thomas wanted to reach the highest point, where he would surely find a marker. No more than six or eight inches of snow had come down overnight, but it was enough to make progress appreciably harder than the day before. The snow blanketed the uneven terrain, and small hollows and cracks were barely discernible. The sun had yet to crest the horizon, but the sky was already light. The snow had lost its luminosity, it just looked gray now, and much darker than in the night. His sprained ankle hurt, and Thomas walked very slowly, stopping frequently. Finally, on the horizon before him, he saw a cairn of stones. He felt so relieved that for a moment all strength drained out of him, and he almost sank to his knees. On the wide plateau there were several six-foot piles of rock like sentries staring out in all directions. From the tallest of them a rusty iron cross poked out, and next to it were yellow markers, one of which pointed him back down to the pass, another to an upland farm an hour away. Between two stones in the cairn was a discolored tin can that contained a summit book—a simple ring binder and a ballpoint pen. Thomas turned the pages of the binder. Some climbers had just entered their name and the date, others made a note of the route they had walked, while others again had offered a comment: the beauty of God’s earth, we’ll be back, fog all day, reached the top much too late. The newest entry was a week old, just a single name in spidery handwriting. Thomas tried to work out what day of the week it was, but he couldn’t be sure, and finally just put his name.
As he was descending to the farm, the sun rose and it got so bright that he had to shut his eyes against the glare. Farther down, where the limestone scree gradually gave way to pastureland and the terrain flattened out, the snow was only half as deep as on the exposed summit, and in some places he saw bunches of grass poking through it.
It took him twice as long to the alp as the marker had promised. Finally, though, he saw a long cow barn and a small hut beside it, which he soon reached. The lower floor was of quarry stone, the wood above was old and weathered, only the fiber-cement roof seemed to have been replaced recently. The windows were shuttered, but the door wasn’t bolted. Hesitantly, Thomas stepped in. It was colder inside than out. It took a while for his eyes to get used to the dark. Even after he had pushed open all the shutters, it didn’t make much difference.
The hut seemed to have been abandoned for the winter. He looked around. The room was sparsely furnished, apart from a table with a corner bench and a few chairs, there was a two-ring gas cooker and a kitchen unit above it. Thomas hoped he might find something to eat, but the cupboard contained only a few spice jars, a box of sugar cubes, some packets of various teas and a half-full jar of Nescafé. Next to the table was a wood-burning stove, in a corner a large wooden chest containing blankets, some items of clothing, and various odds and ends in sealed plastic boxes. Above it was a wall shelf with maps, walking guides, books on the flora and fauna of the region, and a few novels. There were also board games, a set of playing cards, and a leather tumbler with a pair of dice. On the walls there was a walking map of the area, a few children’s drawings, and photographs, all showing the same woman, now sitting in the sun outside the hut, now scaling a rock, now milking a goat, now herding a few cows. In the back wall of the hut was a locked door. Thomas went through the chest and the kitchen cupboard and finally found the key in an old cracked cup full of thumbtacks and rubber bands.
The back room was even darker. From there a steep flight of steps led upstairs where there was a tiny bedroom on the mountain side, and at the front a slightly bigger one. The mattresses had been stood up against the wall, the woolen blankets hanging on lines. Climbing back down he noticed a second door, behind which was a chemical toilet and a big wooden box resembling a sea chest. He lifted the lid and saw by the light of his lighter all kinds of dry goods, rice, noodles, sugar, salt, cans with vegetables, and even meat. There were some bottles of wine, and three one-liter bottles containing a clear liquid; according to the handwritten labels these contained tr?sch, the local fruit brandy.