We were surprised that he spoke perfect English.
“We are here,” began Stanley, “in order to transportâ”
“I know why you are here,” he said, “and also who you are.” He raised his stick and pointed it at the coffin. “And who is in there, too. I expected you to know me as well.” I looked at Stanley and he looked at me.
“Actually, sir,” I told him, “we have no idea.”
Clearly irritated by our ignorance, the man took off his hat, revealing shaggy hair which had been tamped down by his hat into a strange gray helmet.
We recognized him instantly.
“Pringle!” said Stanley, the word having escaped his mouth only a fraction of a second before it left my own.
“That's right,” he said, replacing the hat, then tilting his head back so he could fix us with his piggy and suspicious eyes.
Now I remembered what Stanley had said about Pringle spending his summers in the Alps. I wondered how on earth he had found us.
He jabbed the steel spike of his walking stick towards the rooftops of Palladino. “I hear you've had some trouble with accommodations.”
“We've done all right,” I said.
“Ah, but not as all right as you had hoped, judging from your time at the café this afternoon, which I must admit I watched with some hilarity from a bench across the street.” The lips stretched tight across his teeth.
“How kind of you,” said Stanley.
Pringle's hand clenched around his walking stick. “There's no kindness about it, as you well know, but the reason I'm here now is to offer you some good advice.”
Wind sifted through the trees. It had begun to rain. The air beyond the woods turned smoky gray. Raindrops which
had filtered through the branches tapped against the fabric of our tent.
“I'm here to reason with you,” said Pringle, “and to make you see that you have been sent on a fool's errand. It is a needless risk of life. And for what? For him!” Once more, the walking stick, like a magician's wand, was aimed at Carton's coffin. “That man, who tried to ruin my life, is now doing his best to ruin yours. It's just one more stunt in a lifetime of stunts, and I have had to sit back and watch him misinform the public, humiliate me with his cruel impersonations, and generally bring disgrace to the science of mountaineering.” He stepped towards us, which forced him to tilt his head back even farther in order to look us in the eye. “But this time, if we can all just agree on the facts, then logic can prevail over the madness in which we now find ourselves.”
It was strange to hear this man speak of Stanley and me and himself as if we were all united in some common struggle against Carton.
“As soon as I heard he had died,” continued Pringle, “and that he wished his body to be brought to that mountain he has claimed as his own, I knew you would be passing through Palladino. So I made sure I got here first and took the liberty of informing the café owner of a regulation that I found in the bylaws of the town, to the effect that no person who is deceased may be brought inside a public place of lodging. It's all there in black and white in the mayor's office, which also happens to be the grocery store. You can go and see it for yourselves if you don't believe me. The important thing is, the mayor believes me. And that is why you are here, instead of down in Palladino.”
“I'm having a bit of trouble seeing where logic fits into all this,” said Stanley.
“Yes,” I added, “unless it involves tying you up and rolling you back into town like an old pudding.”
Pringle gasped and shuffled backwards. The walking stick was raised yet again. “You had better reconsider your language, since you might not have noticed that my stick has a sharp pointy bit at the end!”
“It's not all that pointy,” said Stanley.
“It's sort of a medium pointy,” I added.
“It's pointy enough!” Pringle shouted.
“Not for what you have in mind,” I told him.
“Quiet!” he shouted. “It's all a joke to you, isn't it? But people die up there in the mountains, and you might join them before long if you don't listen to me.”
“Mr. Pringle,” I said. “We make jokes not in spite of the fact that people die but because they die, and because, as you have pointed out, we might soon be among them. We make jokes to remind ourselves that we are still alive.”
Slowly, he lowered the stick. “The fact remains that you should abandon this journey at once, before you are forced to endure any further humiliation. You owe him nothing! Even to have brought him this far is more than he deserves!”
The rain fell harder now and the last particles of daylight were effervescing into darkness.
“Well?” asked Pringle. “Will you give me an answer?”
All he got in return was our silence and the sound of the rain, through which he would soon be walking back to Palladino.
Pringle stalked away towards the trail. After only a few paces, he turned and raised his voice to us again. “This work you do,” he said, “is the work of the devil!” His teeth were so clenched with rage that he could barely speak.
Briefly, we saw his dark shape disappearing down the lane before his black clothes merged with the darkness. Below, the cheerful lights of Palladino flickered like the embers of a fire.
Stanley returned to his tree-stump seat and picked up his cold mug of tea. “That does it. I'm going to finish this job if it's the last bloody thing I do.” He spoke the way his uncle talked, tearing his words from the air.
“I think that's the point Pringle was trying to make,” I replied.
Stanley ignored me. “If he thinks he can put us off just by making sure we don't get a bed to sleep in, he's got another thing coming.”
Unfortunately for Stanley and me, we were the ones who had another thing coming.
T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING, in preparation for a trip into town to meet up with our guides, we made the first of many modifications to our coffin-hauling technique.
Although it probably would have been safe to leave the coffin at our camp in the San Rafaele woods, we did not dare to after the visit from Mr. Pringle.
By fastening lengths of rope around our shoulders and through the carrying loops, we were able not only to drag the coffin forward but also to stop it from sliding too quickly downhill. For the sake of the already scarred runners, I hoped we wouldn't have to drag the coffin around too much before we set out across the ice.
Now and then, as we moved along, we would hear a thump from inside the coffin, as Carton's body slumped from one side to the other. The idea of him embalmed beneath the plates of zinc seemed too abstract to be horrifying or sad. The coffin
wasn't particularly heavy, which got me to thinking about the whole process of embalming. I seemed to recall something about Egyptian mummies having their insides removed, and their brains pulled out through their noses with the use of hooks. I wished I had asked Webb about it, but such questions had seemed too morbid at the time.
When we reached the streets of Palladino, the scraping of our runners soon attracted the attention of people whose houses overlooked a street called the Via Capozza. As soon as they discovered what was making all the noise, they crowded into their doorways. Unfriendly-looking women in headscarves and faded dresses held back their wide-eyed and whimpering children.
Our destination that morning was the Cooperativo di Palladino,which I gathered was some kind of communal storage space for goods moving in and out of the town. The
cooperativo
was a small tarred-wood building with green-shuttered windows. As with most of the buildings in town, the roof was made from irregularly shaped flat stones, on which grew luminous patches of emerald or sulphur-colored lichen. Beyond the Via Capozza, a few narrow, muddy side streets trailed down towards the river or wandered up towards the San Rafaele woods. Aside from a modern sign for Pirelli beer in the window of the café and concrete-pillared telegraph poles lining the road out of town, the place seemed lost in an earlier time. Even the rusty-fendered car parked next to the fountain seemed more out of place than the donkey-pulled cart tied up to a tree on the opposite side of the street.
We came to a halt outside the
cooperativo,
where Stanley made himself comfortable on a bench, feet up on the coffin, morning sunlight warm against his face.
Leaving Stanley with the Rocket, I went to sort out our
guides. As I walked inside the building, I felt that the worst of our troubles would soon be behind us. Much work lay ahead, but from now on we would have the help of experienced climbers. With their strength added to our own, the placing of the coffin on Carton's Rock seemed less of a dream and more of a certainty. Before the war, Stanley and I and the others had usually gone without guides. They were too expensive for us, and their presence took away some of the challenge. But this time, we needed all the help we could get.
The building was larger inside than it appeared from out on the street. Boxes lined the pine walls, reaching all the way up to the ceiling. Some were cases of wine, others of beer, others of canned foods like tomatoes and beans. There were also sacks of flour, large wicker-wrapped glass jars of olive oil, and wheels of Reggiano cheese. In between the various stacks was a walkway which led down to a booth, rather like a large ticket booth, behind which sat a man in a heavy woolen sweater, with a wild beard and dark curly hair almost down to his shoulders. Behind him was another storage area, containing racks of hunting rifles, shotguns, and brown metal cans of ammunition with military markings done in yellow paint.
Apart from the shaggy-haired man, I was the only one in the building.
His coal-black eyes fixed on me as I strode purposefully towards him.
“Good morning!” I said as I came to a stop in front of the grille.
“Giorno,”
he replied, still not taking his eyes off me.
I handed him the letter I had received from the Society of Mountain Guides in London, confirming the eight men we had engaged to help us in Palladino.
He looked at it and slowly lifted one arm off the desk. He let his hand fall open, with one finger pointing at me. “Do you know of the guide Giacomo Santorelli?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I can't say that I do, I'm afraid.”
The man nodded, as if expecting this reply. “Then you can meet him now.”
Despite the gloomy reception, I was glad that things were progressing and that I was at last able to meet one of our guides.
He opened the door to the booth.
I held out my hand. “William Bromley,” I said.
He did not shake my hand but only nodded. “I am Salvatore.”
I didn't know if this was his last name or his first, but it was clearly the only name he was going to give me.
Salvatore led me past the rifles to a back door, which opened out onto a narrow gravel road. On the other side of the road was a cemetery, and beyond that, across a flower-speckled field where a few sheep wandered among the dandelions, the lake's gentle waves flashed in the sunlight.
Salvatore opened a creaky wooden gate into the cemetery. The old wood was weathered gray and was patched, like the roof tiles, with scabs of lichen.
“Is he down at the lake?” I asked, thinking we were taking a shortcut.
“This way,” he said.
We walked along a path among the crumbling gravestones. The inscriptions had worn off most of them. In front of each headstone, the ground had sunk down after the coffin below had collapsed. On the more recent graves, pictures of the dead had been printed onto small ovals of porcelain and
attached to the stone. Stone angels with their eyes downcast stood among the graves, their once-fine features blurred like the faces of melting snowmen.
Salvatore stopped and turned. “Here,” he said.
I looked at him. “What?” I asked.
He gestured to the grave by our feet.
There, barely legible in the inscription on the upright slates, I read the name Giacomo Santorelli. Above the name, a face was trapped within a dish of porcelain. Its expressionless eyes stared unblinking from the stone.
“I don't understand,” I said.
“He was the guide for your Henry Carton.”
The old story unraveled in my head, how the guide had fallen down a crevasse and the only reason Carton had survived was because the rope broke. “I thought that man was lost,” I said.
“The grave is empty,” he replied.
I saw now that the ground before the stone was not sunk down, indicating that no coffin lay beneath.
“If you come back here in twenty years,” said Salvatore, “his body should appear from the glacier. That is what the scientists have told us, anyway.”
“I know Mr. Carton spoke very highly of his guide,” I said, not knowing what else to tell him, since it seemed a bit late for offering condolences.
“Everyone spoke well of him,” answered Salvatore. “He was the best mountaineer in this region.”
“I'm trying to understand,” I said, as patiently as I could. “Does this somehow affect my hiring of other guides?”
Salvatore folded his arms and looked out across the lake, squinting in the glare of sun off rippled water. “No guide will go with you,” he said, so quietly it was almost to himself.
“Why not?” I asked. “Did you not receive a letter from the Society of Mountain Guides?”
He nodded. “We received a letter. Yes.”
“They told us everything had been arranged, and that guides were being brought in from several towns in the area.”
“It was arranged, but it is not arranged anymore. The Society of Mountain Guides did not say anything in their letter about the coffin you have been dragging through our streets, or about Henry Carton being inside it. This we have learned from another Englishman who came here only a few days ago. His nameâ”
“Pringle,” I said angrily. “Yes, I know who he is, but I would be happy to explain everything to the guides when they arrive.”
Again he shook his head. “They are not arriving.”
“Then they are already here?”
“They are not here and they will not be here,” said Salvatore. “No guides will go with you on this journey.”
“Do you think it is too dangerous with the coffin?” I was ready to explain my modifications to the Rocket.
But Salvatore only smiled contemptuously. “It is very dangerous to travel in this manner, but the danger is not what offends us.”
“I didn't realize you were offended,” I said, trying to remain calm. “I played no part in the death of your guide.”
Salvatore turned to face me now, still squinting, as if the paleness of my northern face was hard for him to bear. “But Carton did. Henry Carton has offended us!”
“Many guides have died,” I told him, “and many climbers, too.”
He breathed out harshly. “It is not the fact that the guide was killed. It is the manner of his death.”
“The fall?”
“The rope! It was hawser-laid rope. Do you know what that is?”
“I know what it is,” I said.
“Good. Then you know that a rope like this will hold the weight of five men, maybe more. A guide checks his ropes before every journey into the mountains. When a rope is frayed or stretched, it is replaced immediately. This is the same kind Santorelli used to tie himself to Carton.”
“Perhaps the rope became frayed on their journey.”
He let his head fall back slightly and stared at me down the length of his blunt nose. “If this is true, then why did Carton say nothing about it? In fact, when he was asked by the police, he said it had not been frayed at all, and if the rope had been stretched, they would not have used it. And what is more, Carton did not return with the rope to offer us as proof.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Only that the story Carton told us is incorrect.”
“A lie, you mean.”
He shrugged. “You can give it whatever name you want.”
A breeze blew in off the lake, making the dandelions nod out in the luminous green grass.
“So how do you think Santorelli died?” I asked.
“I do not know. I only know that it is not the way that Carton said.”
“Look,” I said. “I have no more of an answer than you do, but I did not cause the death of this man and neither did my friend outside.”
“But you travel in the name of Mr. Carton. That is the thing the guides will not accept.”
“And what did Pringle tell you about it?” I asked, my temper flaring up. “That we were on the devil's business?”
“It is not what Mr. Pringle told us that matters. What matters is what we told him.”
“Which was what?” I demanded.
“To go away. We told him to leave us alone. We do not need the advice of another crazy Englishman!” Now Salvatore began to walk back through the cemetery, talking to me over his shoulder as he went. “We are mountain guides! If a baker puts the wrong name on a birthday cake, he can make another cake. But if a guide makes a mistake, he may lose his life and the lives of his charges. Our work is very serious. We do not listen to little men like your Mr. Pringle. He thinks he knows everything about the mountains. He is like a thousand other people who go into the hills and come back to tell us what they have learned about climbing or about themselves or about the world.”
“What is the harm in that?”
He turned and glared at me. “No harm at all, most of the time. The harmful ones are those who believe that they have found one thing, one truth above all others, that this is the only way it can be seen from now on, that everyone else is wrong and the rest should be humiliated for seeing it differently. These people are the dangerous ones. Mr. Pringle thinks that because he knows the height of all these mountains, and a catalogue of names and dates, he is as important as the mountains themselves. And Mr. Carton, he believed that because he was the first to climb a piece of rock in whose shadow we have lived for ten thousand years, that he was somehow in possession of that rock. Of course these two men ended up hating each other, not because they are so different but because they are so much the same. If you English were not so busy despising each other, you might find the time to understand what it means to live in the mountains, not just to visit them.”
He may have said more, but I did not hear him. I was struck by an image, not of Pringle or of Carton or even of the mountains they worshipped. It was an image of Santorelli, frozen in the glacier. I saw his body suspended in the pale blue ice. His fingers were outstretched, legs halted in the motion of a swimmer, as if the glacier had enfolded him suddenly, as in the tumble of a breaking wave. But now he lay cradled in a world removed from the ticking of clocks, from the etching of years onto his skin, from the bitterness and squabbling of those who lived on with the burden of his death.