Refiner's Fire (47 page)

“They sure move fast, Malcolm. They gone.”

“That's right, but we're always around, travelin' from place to place, crossin' paths and such. It's hot, Lewando. Why don't you go down and see if you can get us a pitcher of ice-cold tomato juice with vanilla.”

“You bet,” said Lewando, pulling on his shirt.

Marshall and Lydia were bleary-eyed, on yet another train, rushing to the cool of the Alps and the sea-green of Chamonix. Lydia was pale, but she looked magnificent. Marshall watched her as she slept, alarmed that his all-too-active eye had seen her as purer than alabaster. But then, far above misty rows of pine the mountains appeared in sunlight, white ice reflecting in seething bursts like cannon fire in a battle. Lydia awoke and peered through the glass at the ice ramparts. Her face was indeed as smooth as alabaster, and she had magic in her eye.

When they arrived in Chamonix they were extremely tired, but Marshall had a certain affection for viewing recurrent images from exhaustion. In the same way that the static and scratches on an old record can make it more hypnotic than if it were clear, so too the veil of fatigue can enhance the always incomprehensible greatness of mountains. They found that when they were tired there arose within them a driving power seldom utterly allayed, an imagination by which they could effortlessly travel the peaks, catapulted by self-generative vigor.

Many a traveler has arrived in Chamonix late in the day and ignorantly wandered off to climb the mountains, as if they would succumb to so casual an assault. Marshall and Lydia saw from the unparalleled height and distance of the white world spread before them that they had to approach slowly. After they left their knapsacks at a little pension, they walked until the streets began to fade and clean meadows overtook them. They wound on an earthen path to the top of the hill which in that valley is such a nuisance to roads and railways. It allowed a long uninterrupted view of high fields, mountain walls, and mute bays of ice stopped still as if the world were only a photograph of itself. The great glaciers called out with cold Alpine names—Miage, Bionassay, Tacconaz, Bossons, Tour, Argentière, and the Mer de Glace. But for the few thin lines of the téléphériques, and a hut or two amid the mountains the great space before them was as uninhabited as the sea. It took such mighty leaps, and its spires thrust so high, that to look upon the depth and distance of it shocked and beat upon one's insides as if a shell had exploded nearby.

Somewhere at the junction of the Vallee Blanche (a great white wave which came tumbling in stillness from Mont Blanc) and the Mer de Glace (an enormous river of ice), Metzner lived in a wooden hut. He stayed on the glacier for months, despite the chance of being buried in an avalanche from the Vallee Blanche or swallowed in a crevass of the Bergschrund—where, in sharp and fickle disorganization, the glacier began.

“I know from men like that whom I've met in the Sierras, that they don't like to talk. Complete isolation stops the tongue. They become entrapped in their own silence,” said Lydia, gazing at the dance of clouds above the timberline. She knew almost surely that he would then contradict her, for she could sense the tension to which he was often subjected because he didn't really know who he was, because his mother (and possibly his father) had died by violence—and because he was, perhaps, a bastard. In these times, he drew away from her and became cold, possessed, and tormented. He had told her that more than anything in the world he hated hardening to her, but that he found a certain satisfaction at being driven, at being the agent of inevitability, at suffering the pleasurable siege of determination. She hoped for him someday to rid himself of those driven strengths which took him from her. They were, after all, about to venture onto the glacier in fulfillment of the first steps. As if he had not heard her, Marshall stared at the path leading to the mountains. “Marshall,” she said, “I think that men like Metzner become too embittered to remember anything reliably...”

“That's so,” replied Marshall. “But I know myself from complete isolation, that memory sharpens until it is a scalpel which cuts out the heart. Every detail has an edge, and the details swarm at you like gnats. I believe that the keenness of his memory will compensate for his reticence. First, though, we have to find him.” He motioned at the array of distances before and above them. “Look.”

As they made downward, the city began to light up softly. They saw cows plodding through a gate, directed by a little boy with a switch in his hand. The copper-colored bells made them remember that one cow in Columbine had been given a bell, and that at night in their separate cabins they had heard it. They would rest on Sunday, outfit themselves the next day, and begin practice climbs to break in boots, clothing, and equipment. They were both fairly competent mountaineers, experienced on rock and ice.

Marshall flung open the wooden shutters and a world of mountains flooded into their room—thousand-foot pitches covered in ice, vertical faces of a half a mile, white massifs in direct moonlight. They slept as one can sleep only high in the mountains, after a hard day, in pure air, in a country at peace.

C
LOSING A
curtained door behind them, they called at the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix. Because it was the beginning of an unheralded holiday about which they had heard only vague rumors in too rapid French, one man alone was in the office. He was an old veteran who observed the mountains but did not climb. He looked like a kindly baker with silver-gray hair, and would have been easily believable in a white apron instead of his dark blue suit with several enameled pins on the lapels.

They told him their needs, and he responded with the care of someone who has spent decades climbing rock walls thousands of feet above nothing. His accent was so French that it had a life of its own, and it seemed as if there were four people in the room.

“I am aware of Professor Metzner, and I can tell you that if you wait two weeks or perhaps three you can find him then in less than a day. The téléphérique goes to a point relatively near the Bergschrund. Or, if you wish, you may take a helicopter and the process will demand only an hour or two. But you will have to wait two weeks or more.”

“We can't afford to stay for that long. Why two weeks? Are your guides that busy?”

“To the contrary, they have practically all returned to their winter professions. The season is over. You could get a dozen in no time if it were not for the
Vent du Souverain.
No one will go up, no one can go up, in the
Souverain.
The téléphériques cannot function, and conditions become absurdly dangerous, worse than the most savage day in winter. No one, except perhaps Gaston Reynelle. But I would not advise it. It is too dangerous, and though he is the greatest Alpinist in the world, he has never seen the
Vent du Souverain
, for the last one occurred just before the First World War. I was merely a child. Gaston was not even born. No, no, yes, yes, even his father was not born!” he said, holding up his finger, allowing Marshall to see how the sign for exclamation had originated.

“Monsieur,” said Lydia with an elevated dignity reminding the old guide of days when he had assisted on royal climbs, “please tell us about the
Vent du Souverain.
It is something of which we do not know.”

“They have felt it already in Zermatt and Argentière, which means that it will entrap the valley within a day. It is something from ancient times, and it arrives without much warning every half century or so. It is ... it is a rare and miraculous condition brought about by the conjunction of Arctic and African winds. They meet in the Alps, twist above the mountains, and...
lutter.
”

“Struggle.”

“No, more precisely...”

“Wrestle?”

“Yes, wrestle.
Le combat entre les vents.
(The French language is the most magnificent. It is our king. Its sounds are so beautiful that they are better than most nations, and thus synonymous with France.)

“The northern wind always subdues the one from the south. When they have stopped winding about the summits, they fall to the valley, the hot wind underneath. In the valley it becomes like summer. The fields are dry and everything is hot, as hot as the Sahara. One can hardly move...
immobilité.
But above!” He became excited, and, as old Frenchmen often do, proceeded to publicly amaze himself. “But above! It is unbelievably cold. Avalanches tumble into the valley and turn into rivers which boil and vaporize before they can put even a drop into the dry bed of the Arve. While the air above is clear and dense, the air below is thin and molten hot.

“Thus at night it curves into a mirror which gathers or rejects the light. Sometimes the moon appears blindingly—a hundred times its natural size—and the mountains are roofed with white. We watch then the mountains of the moon itself. Sometimes the stars shower upon us and each man and woman shudders and fears. And sometimes it is absolutely and completely black—a void.

“This occurs once in a half century, for two weeks or more. No one can come or go because of the cold in the passes. Everyone must sleep in tents. Forests of them spring up in the high meadows where the people try to catch some cool air—always to no avail. The populace is alternately gay and deeply sad. In the last
Vent du Souverain
my grandfather lost his life. Whereas the Swiss remain perfectly safe, the French are drawn by passion. From our meadow we saw a sphere of ruby-red fire at the summit of the Drus. My grandfather believed that it was God, and he set off at midnight across the Mer de Glace; foolish old man. He died within a wave of ice and forty years later his remains were spewed by the glacier. On his face was still an expression of wonder.

“I know of this professor of yours. He is not wise. In the
Souverain,
the glacier undergoes violent contractions, and becomes most dangerous.”

“And no guide will work except Gaston Reynelle?” asked Marshall.

“Perhaps not even he, though his will and determination have won him many triumphs. He has gone alone to rescue the rescue party. When just a boy, he climbed the Southwest Pillar of the Drus—the Col Bonatti—alone, at night, in winter! The other guides cannot speak to him because they become paralyzed with envy. He has no friends. When he is not in the mountains, he works in his father's blacksmith shop—Reynelle et Fils, Rue Rebuffat, 24. Perhaps he will listen to you and, more than likely, he will venture into the
Souverain,
for it is his nature to be arrogant.”

Gaston Reynelle was dark and thin. His expression was so intense that his eyes burned like rays. Marshall and Lydia looked through the window of 24 Rue Rebuffat and saw Gaston in an enormous room, striking hot metal on the strong absurd face of an anvil. He sweated, and his concentration was a marvel to behold as every sinew in his body struck at the red, and sharp metallic sounds rang out amid the darkness. His face was leathern and angular, his hair curly and black. One could see by the sheer musculature of his chest and arms that he drove himself beyond his own limits.

It was stirring and pitiful to see him pounding life into the metal. They knew that he was using up his mortality rapidly and without reward. But the metal glowed before him, his brow was furrowed, and the arm wielding the flying hammer flew. At times he would sigh and breathe deeply, unaware that he was being watched. He threw out his lean arms like a ballet dancer and stretched his neck. He seemed then to be caressed by an abstract spirit.

Embarrassed to watch, they knocked on his door and went inside. He looked at them with a fiery clasping eye. His strength circled them on a beam.

“Yes? May I help you? At your service,” he said, abandoning his ecstasy at banding the expansion of metal.

“Are you Gaston Reynelle?”

“I am Gaston Reynelle. In all of France and all the world there is none better in the mountains.”

“Then we have come to the right place, for we need a guide to lead us in the Bergschrund of the Mer de Glace.”

Gaston smiled. The fire beat and echoed behind him.
“Certainement!”
he said. “But in no circumstances for any reason will I take such a beautiful woman into the mountains during the
Souverain
.”

“She can climb.”

“I will not.”

“She is skilled.”

“I will not.” He struck his iron hammer against glowing steel and sparks flew as if to underline his determination. “I will not. Women are too beautiful. I will not!”

L
YDIA SAT
sadly on the balcony of their room as Marshall and Gaston made their way toward the summit of Mont Blanc, over which they would pass to descend through the Vallee Blanche and the Bergschrund. She cried like a leaf. Even though she had urged Marshall to go without her, she disliked breaking with their practice of sharing. But it was done, and she was left to see the
Vent du Souverain
in the valley, while they climbed.

Chamonix was broiling and dry. Above, the snow raged and the cold air was blue. She took off her sunglasses and turned her clear face to the distant round dome of Mont Blanc. With a sweet nearsighted stare, she gazed at it, and then rested her cheek against her bare shoulder, feeling that Marshall had left her when she loved him most. Determined to see the valley and its pastel tents in the heat of the
Souverain,
she wept nevertheless for being left.

Though not too well versed in technical climbing, Marshall exceeded himself early on, and Gaston was pleased as they crossed the lower glaciers and wound among the hills of ice. They traversed snowfields, pushing against the cold. They made their first camp as night fell and the stars battled above them. Lydia lay sweating in her bed, her arms outstretched for Marshall. Marshall held his own body to fend off the cold, and hallucinated images of terror and madness. Gaston, the brave one, screamed in his sleep.