The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (50 page)

It isn’t. I’m proud to say I’m finally cured of all such foolish ideas & don’t allow myself to suffer for anything. Past my tent flap is the Rongbuk Valley & I take her as she is; so I hope to take the East Glacier & the North Col, and so I take you too.

Imogen, I made mistakes. I squandered the very things I ought to have protected, and I expect no absolution, for in this world men admire one’s vices, but scorn true virtue & call it weakness. I broke faith with everything, save for you, and still I lost you anyway. Have I lost you for ever? The ceaseless wind whips back an answer. But I don’t listen. I trust only in the steadiness of own my heart – too mad or ardent to be anything but

yours – Everlastingly –

Ashley

I put the letters back in the plastic folder, looking out the tall windows of the café. I don’t want to read them again.

Crossing Rosenthaler Platz, I go into a convenience store and study a pair of glass-front refrigerators displaying dozens of German beers sold by the bottle. I choose a squat brown one with an illustration of Saint Augustine. The sky outside hangs purple in the west. I set off into the street, climbing the gentle grade of Weinbergsweg toward Prenzlauer Berg.

Ashley didn’t know a thing about her
, I think.
Just like me.

I guide myself with a battered tourist map and a vague desire to go eastward. At Zionskirchplatz I find a church with a towering steeple, the door unlocked, the inside deserted and in disrepair. I sit in a pew for half an hour, staring at the faded paint on the walls and pillars of the choir: borders and patterns of byzantine complexity, brushed on meticulously by long-dead artisans and now faded to almost nothing.

On Karl-Marx-Allee, grand boulevard of the former East Berlin, I walk on a sidewalk fifty feet broad, the Stalinist apartment blocks running east to the horizon. I buy a bottle of herbal bitters from an outdoor
fast-food counter and follow the boulevard to the old city gate of Frankfurter Tor.

It’s no good writing letters to people who never read them
, I think.
And a stranger reading them eighty years later doesn’t make it any better.

I follow Warschauer Straβe south to the Spree, where I snap photos along the last long stretch of the Berlin Wall, twelve-foot-high concrete blanketed with flaking graffiti. The huge mural above me reads
TOTALDEMOKRATIE
. Gaps in the wall reveal entrances to vast riverside nightclubs, the patrons spilling onto the sidewalk. Young people on foot and on bicycle throng past me, drinks in hand, and I wonder where they could be going at this hour. I check my watch. A little past three in the morning.

Keeping some distance back, I follow a group around a vast train station, then among side streets in a deserted industrial district. The road ends in a turnaround where a line of cream-colored Mercedes taxis wait for fares. Between a pair of chain-link fences, a dirt path leads to a huge building of crumbling gray stone. Light and music pulse from its tall windows. I file into the long line.

An hour passes before I reach the doormen. A pair of girls ahead of me is turned away, then a large group of well-dressed students is refused. The head bouncer sits on a stool beside the entrance, eyeing me with dim curiosity. He has a dark beard and one side of his face is covered in barbed-wire tattoos. I raise one finger to show I’ve come alone. He waves me in.

I pay the entrance fee and check my jacket and camera, passing through rooms of indistinct size and shape, vast caverns terminating in blackness or colored only by spinning electric lights. Everywhere is packed with sweaty dancers. The bass is driving. Thumping air pushes at my lungs and shakes my stomach. I climb staircases and find other rooms, secret crevices with embracing bodies barely distinguishable from the walls or ceiling. I buy a beer from one of the bars and gulp it down. No one else is drinking.

Soon I need to use the toilet. On the second story I find a bathroom
line that is much shorter than the others, but there are only two toilets at the end. The line barely moves. I wait in agony, counting the people ahead of me. Nine. Seven. Six. The walls begin to turn. I fix my eyes on a green exit light at the end of the corridor to slow the spinning. A fashionably dressed girl trots up along the side of the line. Voices behind me heckle the girl for cutting. The girl notices I’m alone and stops beside me. She takes my hand, speaking to me in English.

—Let me stay. I really have to go.

I let the girl wait beside me. For a moment she keeps my hand in hers. She wears an oversize black sweater over electric blue tights. Her reddish bangs hang down to her eyes.

—Thank you so much, she whispers.

The girl asks where I’m from. I try to steady my gaze and concentrate on her words. She has an accent I can’t place. I notice a silver brooch pinned to her sweater.

—That’s Celtic, isn’t it?

The girl looks at me, cupping the brooch in her fingers. It is a weaving of silver strands depicting a dragon and a pair of snakes, their bodies locked in struggle. I lean in to look closer.

—Christ. I’ve seen that before.

—Were you in Iceland?

I stare at the brooch. There was something similar in my grandmother’s jewelry box in the garage, but I can’t remember exactly what it looked like.

—It’s a Viking style from Iceland, the girls says. It’s some kind of battle. The dragon is good and the snakes are evil—

The girl frowns. She puts a cigarette in her mouth and lifts the brooch toward her eyes, reappraising the warring creatures.

—Or is it, she wonders, the other way around?

One of the restroom doors opens. The girl thanks me and dashes inside. Soon the other bathroom is free and I go in. As I lock the door and walk by the mirror, a shudder pulses through me and I turn away instinctively. I look back into the mirror. Something looks unfamiliar,
some part of my face doesn’t seem right. I lean on the sink and breathe in slowly, staring at my reflection. Are my eyes shaped differently now? Or is it the corners of my mouth, or the crown of my forehead? The fear begins to overwhelm me. I turn away.

—It must be the drinking, I whisper.

A few minutes later I come out of the bathroom, but the Icelandic girl is gone. I walk through all the dance floors looking for her. A few times I think I catch her silhouette under a strobe light, but when I come closer it’s always someone else.

An hour later I leave the club, staggering out into the painful light of dawn. A long line of people is still waiting to go inside. I scan the crowd’s faces for the girl, but she isn’t here, so I ride the U-Bahn back to the hostel, rocked to sleep by the swaying train. A man shakes me awake holding an ID card before my eyes. A ticket inspector. I flash my ticket, skipping off the train at Rosenthaler Platz as the doors close.

The desk clerk at the hostel is asleep on the counter. I set a euro coin before his slumped head and sit at one of the lobby computers. I write an e-mail to my stepbrother.

Hi Adam—

Europe is impressive. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be gone. Tell Dad I’ve been industriously researching UK grad schools. He’ll be disappointed. If you told him it’s 7 AM in Berlin and I’ve been out all night, he’d probably be happier.

I have a favor to ask. It’s a little strange, but trust me, it’s important. I need you to find a brooch in my grandmother’s jewelry box. It’s in the garage, in one of those cardboard boxes on the top shelf. I don’t know which box, but it’s labeled and should be near the top of the stack, since I looked through it last month. The jewelry box is green. Look for a silver brooch—it’s supposed to be a dragon and snakes, but it basically looks like a bunch of woven strands.

Can you mail the brooch to me as soon as you can? I’ll be eternally grateful. Send it to this address, the fastest delivery you can get, I’ll pay you back:

Circus Hostel

Weinbergsweg 1A

10119 Berlin

Germany

Thanks a million. When I’m back I’ll have some stories to tell.

Tristan

P.S. Don’t tell anyone about the brooch.

30 April 1924

Mount Everest Base Camp, 18,190 feet

Rongbuk Valley, Tibet

He stands in a maze of wooden crates scattered among the stones. The expedition arrived at the base camp yesterday. Along the valley the wind blows viciously, flurries of snow churning the darkening sky. The crates surround Ashley, their lids breached, their contents open to the snow. He gives instructions to a pair of porters in bad Hindustani, his hoarse voice barely above a whisper. The porters nod in incomprehension. Ashley lifts his head to the swirling sky and tightens the muffler around his neck.

The steep valley walls crumble to a floor of colorless pebbles and dirt. The expedition’s tents lie huddled beside a frozen lake, a moraine heap above lending meager shelter from the wind. On clearer days the mountain’s pyramid might loom in the sky, but for now the blizzard obscures all.

Ashley runs along a column of yaks, a screwdriver in his mittened palm, scanning the cases roped onto the animals. He calls at a Tibetan handler to halt a yak. The handler pats the animal and unropes the case onto the rocks. Ashley unscrews the lid and lifts a tin up to the dusk
light.
HARRIS’S SAUSAGES ARE THE BEST.
He sorts the tins into other labeled crates, each of varied size so that they all hold forty pounds when correctly packed. Camp I, Camp II, Camp III, Camp IV. Ginger nut biscuits. Beef tongue. He screws the finished crates shut and paces among the emptied cases, squinting in the fading light. He ought to get his electric torch.

—Walsingham. Time for dinner.

Price approaches, a candle lantern swinging in his mitten. Ashley clears his throat and barks a reply.

—Something celebratory? Cheese omelette à la Rongbuk?

—No, Price says, Kami is under strict instructions. It’s the menu the general planned. Four courses and the champagne.

Ashley and Price cross the valley toward the mess tent, its four oil lamps glowing in the distance. They pass Mills, the young climber pounding a wooden stake with a huge stone. A porter holds the stake upright in the gale, his eyes fixed on his vulnerable fingers as he grips the wood. Mills waves at the two men.

—Come along, Price calls.

—Be right there.

They walk on. Beyond the curtain of blowing snow the army of hired local peasants prepares for the night. There are no tents for them. Some stack rocks to build shelters; others lie blanketless amid the snow, their thick woolen coats drawn tight over their chests. A few peasants struggle to relight a pile of yak dung in the wind. The dung is smoking, but no flame will come.

Price pauses to give instruction to a Gurkha corporal erecting a Whymper tent. Ashley waits beside them, stamping his feet to keep warm. They are only at the base camp and they are already wearing every stitch of their climbing kit.

A few minutes later they reach the mess tent. It is little warmer inside, but at least there is no wind. Most of the nine men are already seated at the table, each in his own camp chair. The folding table is
without a cloth, the condiment bottles arranged neatly at the center. The colonel sits at the head of the table; Price and Ashley take their seats nearby. Price spreads his napkin over his lap and looks at the colonel.

—We need to have another powwow about the stores.

—After dinner, the colonel says. Let’s keep our appetites while we can.

Price nods. His camp chair is so low that only his head is above the level of the table. The brim of his hat hangs down over his face, save for where it is held up by a large safety pin covered in candlewax.

—What’s the first course?

—The quails, in
pâté de fois gras
. Also sardines and hard-boiled egg.

—The deployment of the quails at last, Ashley wheezes.

—Dear Lord, Somervell says. You sound like death himself.