The Zemu Ridge, Northwest Sikkim—18,750 feet
April 3, 1939
6:30 a.m.
Namgel’s words cut through the canvas skin of the sagging Schuster tent. “Sahibs. We go summit. Breakfast tea.” Within, Josef laboriously crawled forward to receive the two tin cups he knew the Sherpa, crouched outside in the deep snow, was waiting to pass in.
Moving in the limited space of the cramped two-man tent, Josef could feel the altitude holding his body back, making him unnaturally slow and awkward. It was a new sensation to be so high. Unfastening the entrance, the cold beyond the tent instantly assaulted his outstretched fingers. It stabbed into the tip of the one damaged by the gestapo, painfully reminding Josef why he was really there.
Quickly pulling the two cups back in, his movements dislodged a shower of rime ice from inside the top of the tent. The flakes caught the back of his neck and slid down under his shirt collar, causing him to shudder involuntarily and spill some of the tea. Shaking it off, Josef began to drink what was left. It faintly heated his insides and filled his stomach with a feeling of optimism. Despite everything, he was looking forward to going still higher.
“Time to go,” he said to the other occupant of the tent, invisible within his long, eiderdown bag. Leaning closer, Josef tried to determine if Schmidt was still sleeping. It was difficult to tell now that he wasn’t snoring like a pig.
The bag’s exterior was still, encrusted with a thin layer of ice, giving it the appearance of a fat brown slug frozen to death by a hard morning frost. Looking at it with loathing, Josef told himself that the man was probably still out cold. Despite the long trek across Northern Sikkim, the heavy, overfed professor was nowhere near the condition necessary for what they were attempting, even if that obvious fact hadn’t stopped him from engineering everything so that he, and only he, would accompany Josef on this, the first ascent of the expedition.
Josef suspected—no, he knew—that Schmidt was using him to ensure that he got to the top of at least one mountain and that he did so with Josef by his side. If Operation Sisyphus proved successful, it didn’t take much to imagine the professor dining out forever on the story of how he had climbed a Himalayan peak with the man who stole Everest from the British. Ever the organizer, once the Base Camp had been established, Schmidt had neatly divided up the team to take some separate first looks at the higher snowfields above the Zemu Glacier. Undoubtedly, this was a good tactic to permit Josef and Ang Noru to make a first climb together and then make their subsequent exit from the expedition, but Josef was concerned that theirs was the only group attempting an actual summit. Even if the peak was low compared to the monsters that surrounded it, not even meriting a name on their maps, he still thought it would attract too much attention from that British Army officer, Macfarlane. The man was no fool, always watching them.
“Sahibs, sun coming. Necessary faster,” Josef heard Ang Noru shout this time.
Short of breath, Josef had to pause before he could answer with a simple, “Yes.”
Drawing in some more deep gulps of air to build his strength, he gave the inert sleeping bag next to him a hard kick with the heel of his double-stockinged foot. Schmidt exploded upward in a paroxysm of coughing before looking around with puffy, blinking eyes, saying breathlessly, “What was that? What time is it?”
Josef looked at Schmidt’s altitude-swollen face and, shrugging his shoulders, said, “Nothing,” as he passed him the cup of tea. Through the slit entrance of the tent beyond the bewildered professor, Josef could see that the snowy plateau on which they were camped was already beginning to glow golden from the dawn sun. He could hear also the low chatter of the two Sherpas as they made ready to leave the camp. “Drink the tea, eat some biscuit, and get ready as quickly as you can. It’s time to go up.”
In the cramped confines of the tent, Josef began his own preparations to go out into the cold. After twisting his woolen scarf around his neck and up over his head and ears, he struggled back into his windproof outer jacket and boots. He smeared his face with zinc cream, pulled his scarf up around his head, and then reached inside the deep ammunition pocket of the snow-troop jacket for his snow goggles. Looping them around his neck, he opened his rucksack to retrieve something else he had specially packed for that moment. From deep inside, Josef pulled out his army field cap tied in a tight roll since Germany. He had kept the cap hidden during the expedition’s long trek into the glacier, wary particularly of that English army officer, but if he was going to the top that day he was going to wear it instead of the woolen one he had been using. He always wore it on his big climbs.
Untying the string, he beat the cap against his knee to loosen it for reshaping. As he did so, he felt the metal of the skull and crossbones badge that Pfeiffer had attached. He looked at it. The sight instantly took him back to Wewelsburg, but his thoughts didn’t stop there. They traveled on further to that tramping file of nine Jews, the black woods dripping with rain, the blast of the wind carving down onto them from the snowy chapel ridge, the glint of that same badge on the cap of the SS officer who had taken all their lives away, one way or another. That badge has got to go, Josef told himself as he pushed the cap down onto his head and then himself out of the tent into the freezing air to join the two Sherpas.
The sun was climbing in the east by the time Schmidt was finally ready to leave. Together the four of them began to wade through the deep snow to reach the narrow ridge that led to the summit. Ang Noru broke the trail, followed by Becker, Schmidt, and then Namgel. They moved forward well until they roped together and filed up onto the narrow, snowy ridge. There, Schmidt immediately started to make the going painfully slow.
Every few steps they had to stop for the wheezing professor. Josef could feel the Sherpas growing frustrated, even if they said nothing beyond a questioning, “Sahib?” each time they halted. He quickly instructed Namgel to move ahead of Schmidt and shorten the rope between them all. He knew it would have the effect of the three of them almost pulling the professor along but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get Schmidt to the top as soon as possible and then back down so the real purpose of his journey could start.
The way was not difficult, but the exposure grew extreme as the ridge narrowed, the faces to each side of them falling away vertically to vanish into thick cloud lying far below. To the west, the huge, multiple peaks of Kangchenjunga reared up from the flat base of the same low-level cloud. Beyond, the summit pyramids of other great mountains appeared like atolls emerging from a calm but grey sea. Ang Noru and Namgel pointed to them in turn, mumbling unintelligible names until Ang Noru, his hand held above his round snow goggles, pointed to one in particular in the far distance and said pointedly to Josef, “Look, Sahib Becker. Mount Everest.”
Josef immediately looked at the black wedge that broke the far line of the horizon. A thick plume of cloud was blowing from the summit as if the distant mountain was steaming slowly off the edge of the world. He expected, any second, for it to vanish, consumed by the curvature of the planet, but it remained, fixed to the horizon, bleak and severe, so much higher than all the other peaks in between. The more he looked at it, Josef began to realize that this, his first real view of Everest, no longer in a photograph, was filling him with dread. He felt foolish that he had ever thought he could climb such a mountain.
It’s imposs—
Schmidt, struggling back up onto his feet and coughing as if he was about to choke, broke the moment, preventing the silent admission.
Josef quickly wrenched his gaze back from the immense mountain to say to the two Sherpas, “He’s on his feet. Let’s go.”
Ang Noru, who had been watching Josef as intently as he had been looking at Everest, said only, “Yes, Sahib Becker,” and when Josef stepped forward, instantly moved with him.
Namgel however stayed stock-still, as if frozen in his tracks, the rope between them all straining until it pulled them to a halt once again.
Turning back to see what was wrong, Josef saw Namgel’s eyes fix on the badge sewn to the front of his cap. His usual smile was missing. When he tugged angrily on the rope to get the Sherpa moving, Josef glimpsed him hastily perform a sign against the evil eye and start mumbling something continuously under his breath before he would follow.