Beyond the Summit (46 page)

“What happened? Where are the others?” she pleaded once they were settled. As their story unfolded, Beth tried to explain to Mingma and Nima using gestures and the few words Nima had learned from her. Jarvis and Paul had made it to the top and stopped briefly at High Camp on their way down where they visited with Dorje and Marty who were preparing to summit the following morning.

“How were they?” Beth asked anxiously.

“The American was sick but the Sherpa appeared strong and eager,” said Paul. “We stayed only a short while because we were done in and wanted to reach the South Col before dark.” He explained they were headed back toward Camp II the next morning when it began to snow. They met the Darjeeling Sherpas and the Americans trying to find the fixed ropes on the Lhotse Face, but all was obscured in the flat, white light.

Jarvis continued. “Agreeing it was ill advised to climb in such weather, the four of us turned back toward the Cwm while the Sherpas went ahead to search for Dorje and Marty.”

Told you so
, fear whispered in her ear.

Shut up. It doesn’t mean he’s hurt
, she yelled back in her head. But watching Paul’s gaunt face and his eyes sunken in deep, gray hollows, she couldn’t hush fear’s incessant voice.

“We watched them with binoculars,” the Frenchman continued. “Both made the summit with Dorje dragging the American up, but it was snowing on their way down and we lost sight of them just below the Balcony.”

“Zopa and Namkha insisted on going on alone. We would get lost too and only make things worse,” answered Paul. “The Americans and sirdar spent the night in Camp II with us. Jarvis and I came down because we’re too sick, but the others are waiting in the Cwm. Don’t worry. Zopa and Namkha are strong and will find them.”

Beth curled in on herself like a wilted flower that had shriveled and lost its bloom. “Dorje up there,” she told Mingma and Nima trying to mask her tears. “We wait for him.”

While she and Nima stood shivering at the base of the icefall until after dark, Mingma and Pemba burned juniper incense and made rice offerings to the goddess Miyolangsangma. They chanted prayers in a low monotonous intonation that droned through the silence of the camp until dawn. Alone in her tent, Beth refused to listen to fear’s mockery and convinced herself that last night’s prayers had ended the storm and brought sunlight. Tonight’s would bring Dorje back to her.

As the sun rose, color flooded the earth’s highest peaks with pink and gold pouring down the fluted walls and spilling over the glacier. Beth stretched her arms with her face to the sun bathing in its warmth. Surely such a resplendent beginning could only herald good news. For the first time in two days, she was able to converse dry eyed. To pass the time until Dorje arrived, she played cards with the cook, kitchen boys, and Nima, drank hot tea, and savored Dorje’s favorite dish of
rigi kur:
crispy potato pancakes served with a big lump of yak butter. The world felt good this morning.

Pemba was the first to see them. Hearing his shouts, Beth and Nima dropped their cards and raced each other giggling to the end of the glacier. They teased and played as they had last fall while pointing to shapes in the clouds, but now, they were tried to make out individuals in an icefall. Too far away yet, the climbers appeared only as dark specks against glistening white, but she was certain Dorje would emerge triumphant. When the roped figures traversed the rim of a crevasse to detour around it, she counted only five. Had Zopa and Namkha remained behind or had the Americans gone for an assault in clear weather? Awaiting Dorje’s arms, she quashed all other possibilities.

Standing beside her in his blood-red robe and bold features, Mingma’s presence had struck her the first day in the market place. There was an undeniable pride that set him apart. Dorje had told her of Nimputi and his daughters and why his father didn’t come for them in the Solu. She was glad they’d made peace and Dorje could return to him with a forgiving heart. On her other side, was Nima. How different from his father and brother, a gentle, intuitive soul who couldn’t hold onto anger.

Beth held her breath as the figures drew near enough to identify. First came Mark followed by Sean and the
sirdar
. Her confidence eroding, Beth clutched Mingma’s sleeve to steady herself. When the last two climbers disappeared in the shadow of a sérac, fear cried out that he’d won, but she refused to listen. Stooped over their axes as if consumed by fatigue, the Sherpas emerged each dragging something over the ice. She grabbed Nima as her legs buckled. Mingma caught her other arm and held her as they desperately searched for two more figures. Perhaps Dorje and Marty were waiting for the others to pass so they could ski down with bravura yelling
Geronimo
.

Forty-five minutes later, Mark, Sean, and the
sirdar
exited the icefall and approached Beth. She was so apprehensive she could barely comprehend what Mark was saying. In limited English, the sirdar had recounted the experience of the Darjeeling Sherpas to him. After losing sight of Dorje and Marty just below the Balcony, Zopa and Namkha had gone up immediately looking for them and searched all night using headlamps and repeatedly calling Dorje’s name. But it was impossible to see anything.

Beth started shivering uncontrollably as if her blood had turned to ice. Teeth chattering and feeling faint, she clung to Mingma while the sirdar talked to him in Nepali.

“Beth,” Mark whispered. “Do you want to hear more?”

“Nooo,” she cried, shaking her head with tears streaming down her face and then, “Yes, I have to know.”

Gazing at her with much tenderness in his eyes, he continued. “In sunlight the next morning, they probed everywhere below the Balcony, looking for footprints, but all had been buried or blown away. They had almost given up when Zopa spotted something on a steep slope 100 feet below them. Namkha belayed him while he rappelled down to Dorje and then to Marty 40 feet further below.”

Beth inhaled so quickly the cold burned her throat. “Nooo, nooo,” she sobbed. “He’s not dead. Don’t tell me that.”

“I’m so sorry. No one could have survived the night with his head injury. They’re bringing him and Marty down now. The American has severe frostbite but will survive.” His eyes moist, Mark withdrew a paper from his pocket. “He loved you very much and wrote this weeks ago in case he didn’t return. He also instructed me that his earnings were to go to a Sherpa girl named Shanti and their baby.”

Gratefully taking it, she was much too absorbed in the Sherpas bringing down the one being who had taught her that she could love. Dorje was wrapped completely in a sleeping bag. Needing to see him once more, she dropped to her knees and tried untying it with trembling fingers.

The sirdar wiggled his hand side to side. “No. Lama must come first.”

Sobbing convulsively, Beth lay beside Dorje with her head over his heart, wishing her love could make it start beating again.

“He saved my life,” said a familiar voice. Marty was sitting on a makeshift stretcher with his hands and feet wrapped a bluish cast to his face. “I may lose a few fingers and perhaps even toes, but I’m here and only because of him.”

“What happened?”

“You couldn’t see anything and your mind plays cruel tricks on you up there.” His voice thick with emotion, Marty said, “It was an accident. Nobody’s fault. We fell.”

The doctor had joined them and instructed the Sherpas to take Dorje and Marty on down to camp. “I swear it was an accident,” Marty called back to her.

Mingma lifted Beth to her feet with a protective arm around her. She buried her face in his robe, sobbing, as pain and desolation wrapped their tendrils around her heart leaving her so heavy with them she thought she would drown. Nima was crying too. As Mingma gripped them both, Beth couldn’t imagine the depth of his sorrow after finding his oldest son only to lose him again.

Despite Beth’s pleading, Mingma, Nima, and Pemba wouldn’t join the expedition members for dinner that night, preferring to build a dung fire outside their tents and mourn in private. Knowing Mingma blamed foreigners for the many deaths among his people, she couldn’t argue because he was right. None of them would have gone on the mountain otherwise. Her eyes still swollen with tears, she looked around the table at the gaunt, sun-baked faces and wondered why they did it. To prove something to themselves and the world? Power? Glory? Were any of those worth the loss of life? Opposite her, sat a different Marty from the presumptuous, wild-talking man who had left camp many days earlier.

“You were smart to choose Dorje over me,” he said in a thin, dry voice when the others seemed engrossed in their conversations. “He was a much better man than I am or ever will be.”

Tears started welling up again at the mere mention of Dorje’s name, but Beth wanted to know everything that happened the last hours of his life to help her feel closer to him. Marty explained how Dorje saved him on the Lhotse Wall. “I’m not certain I would have done the same.”

“Surely you would have.”

Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. We were both still so angry then.”

Seeing the pain in Marty’s face, Beth knew such doubts would haunt him forever. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “Tell me more.”

“Dorje wanted to reach the summit so bad and knew I was too sick to go on.” Pausing, Marty wiped his hands across his eyes and sucked tears back inside as he continued. “I was delirious and hallucinating so he wrapped me in two bags and left plenty of oxygen before setting out.”

“By himself?”

“Yes. And he would have made it easily, up and back, if it weren’t for me. Like an idiot, I left the tent and followed his tracks until I couldn’t walk. He was already on the South Summit before he discovered me crawling up behind him.”

“So what did he do?”

“Probably yelled every expletive in the world before turning back for me and greatly jeopardizing his chances of getting to the top and his very life.” His bandaged hands trembling, Marty said, “By the time we reached the Hillary Step, I was so wasted I couldn’t move and sincerely wanted him to go on alone. He was within 30 minutes of the summit and didn’t deserve to fail because of me.”

“But Jarvis and Paul said you both made it.”

“He did,” Marty answered, his words now heavy and wet with emotion. “I only made it because he hauled my ass up there. I don’t know where he found the strength to do it, but I’m convinced it took too much out of him and contributed to all that occurred later. At least I have photos to prove we stood on top of the world.”

Tears rushed into her throat. “I want copies,” she said trying to swallow them.

“Of course. When we get back to Colorado if you’re still speaking to me. I know now that you never had an interest in me. I’m sorry for how I acted.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “Now tell me the rest. I have to know it all.”

“A storm hit us and we couldn’t see anything as we tried to traverse a very steep slope. He went ahead to belay me and then I’m not sure what happened.” As if trying to reconcile events in his own mind, Marty said, “You can’t think straight up there. I guess I was hallucinating again because I was sure I saw the two climbing Sherpas standing beside Dorje, smiling and waving me on. So I removed the anchor and started toward them.” His voice wavered. “Then suddenly I was falling and dragging him with me, certain that we were both going to die. But miraculously he stopped the fall and held as the rope slammed me against the snow. For what seemed like an eternity, I struggled to kick my toe pick in and take the weight off him. He whipped the rope and I lashed it back to let him know I was all right. Then I must have passed out because I don’t remember a thing until a Sherpa rescued me.” Elbows on the table, face buried in his hands, Marty shook his head. “Believe me, Beth, I’d give anything to have died instead of him. When I saw him, his face was covered with blood from a head wound. Why couldn’t that have been me?”

After trying to reassure Marty that it wasn’t his fault, Beth excused herself saying her stomach was too upset to eat. She yearned for the solitude of her tent where she could cry as long and hard as she wanted without everyone trying to comfort her. There was no consolation. Dorje was dead and her life would never be the same. Feeling empty and alone, she questioned whether she would allow herself to ever love again because the pain of loss was too great to bear more than once. When there were no more tears left, she lay with her head pounding, unable to breathe through her nose. She remembered the note Mark had given her. Where did she put it? Searching everywhere, she found it in her shirt pocket, next to her heart.

To my beautiful Beth. Tomorrow I will leave for the top of Everest. Please understand why I must do this. It is my fate and I want to make you proud of me so you will never be ashamed. If I do not return, know that our spirits will always be together in this life and all those that follow. You are my sunrise and my sunset. You will always feel my arms around you and my lips on yours. I will never stop loving you. This I promise with my entire heart. From the man who loves you more than his own life. Dorje.