Rongbuk Monastery, Rongbuk, Tibet
April 30, 1939
4:00 p.m.
Josef spent the days after their arrival totally lost despite the fact that he was at his destination. He passed the time mostly walking the Rongbuk Glacier, desperately trying to process Schäfer’s abandonment of Operation Sisyphus. Thinking alternately of climbing the mountain or escape, he knew that he could do neither. He had no equipment to go up, he had little possibility to get away. Even if he could, the risk to his family, to Magda was too great. There was no way out.
Returning to the monastery, exhausted by the hike and the painful uncertainty of what should be his next move, Josef saw the distant figure of Ang Noru approaching. When they met, the Sherpa said immediately, “The monks say a runner has come from Shekar saying that the British now know we are coming to the Rongbuk, that we wish to steal Chomolungma from them. The abbot of the monastery is greatly disturbed. He wants to see you. You must come back with me now.”
Josef said nothing in reply, simply adding the British to his desperate situation as he followed wearily behind.
At the monastery’s chorten, he wanted only to sit and drink some water, to recover a little from the punishing pace Ang Noru had set for their return, but it wasn’t possible. A pair of older monks was waiting to take them inside immediately.
Following them into the main monastery building, Josef felt unsteady on his feet, the metal studs of his boots slipping and rattling on the stone floor, black flagstones rounded at the edges and polished smooth by generations of bare feet.
For a moment, he imagined he was stepping across the back of a giant tortoise. Josef told himself again that he really did need to drink some water and rest. But given no chance to pause, he and Ang Noru were shown the way through an ornately carved doorway hung with a heavy curtain of once rich but now dusty and faded silk. They stepped into a wood-paneled hall. To its center, a square roof opening let a shaft of white light fall to the floor, tentacles of sweet incense smoke wandering into it to slowly dissolve, bright dust particles hanging as if suspended on invisible threads.
Eyes growing accustomed to the half-light that surrounded it, Josef saw opposite a raised dais, also draped with embroidered silk. In its center was the silhouette of a cross-legged man in heavy robes and a tall curved hat that rose up and forward like the helmet crest of an ancient Greek warrior. The abbot, Josef assumed, was leaning forward and staring down at the perfect square of light on the floor between them. He made no movement at their arrival, gave no acknowledgement that he even noticed their entrance.
Looking around at the dark sides of the hall, Josef saw many other monks sitting motionless on benches. Above, a gallery looked down from every side of the room, its balustrade lined with more monks. The silence was perfect except for the click of Josef’s boots as he walked on toward the shaft of light. It was so strong, so sharply defined, he was almost reluctant to step into it, but, looking ahead at the platform, intent only on reaching the man who had summoned him, he lifted a foot to step through.
Immediately he felt Ang Noru’s hand on the back of his jacket, holding him still. His boot hovered mid-air, penetrating the shaft of light, illuminated and amputated from the rest of his body. “Stop. Look. Mandala,” the Sherpa whispered in fast succession as he pointed to the square of light on the floor.
Pulling his raised foot back, Josef looked down. His first thought was that it was a painting he had nearly trodden on. He could see the edge of a square wooden frame. Within, it was filled entirely with sand that had been dyed in bold colors, intense and vivid after his long journey through pale, broken shades of rock, snow, and earth. The bright yellows, reds, greens, purples, and oranges shone up from the floor, as if determined to remind him that their colors still existed in the world.
Looking back up toward the abbot, Josef saw the outline of a frail hand lift to point at him and then back at the floor. His eyes followed the pointing hand down again. This time, they traveled beyond the blocks of colors into its complex geometry. Breathing in the overpowering scent of the incense, he felt himself being absorbed into the mandala’s every detail. He began to see intricate filigrees, every fine line laid out like the edges of an ornamental garden with beds full of flowers, jewels, crowns, and stars. The patterns confused his already tired mind, the shapes and forms twisting and turning until, with a stab of shock, he recognized the four swastikas that pinned each corner of the grand design’s outer square. He quickly turned his gaze from their marks into the center of the composition.
It was a perfect circle entirely filled with a flower. A ring of eight rounded petals fanned out, each holding an eyeball. The eight lidless white spheres, every iris a different color but each with an identical black pupil, stared unblinkingly up at him. The very center of the flower contained an image of a goddess sitting cross-legged. Her left hand was cradling a globe in her lap. Her right palm was raised in warning, as if demanding Josef stop and look. Behind was a triangular mountain edged in black. It was the great mountain outside. Her mountain. The mountain he had thought he could climb. My mountain. From each of its three sides projected the triangular summit of a smaller mountain. The effect was of a six-pointed star—a star he recognized as readily as the swastikas, a star he had seen vilified in newspapers, daubed on the walls of shattered businesses, on the abandoned documents of terrified people he had guided over the mountains …
The memory of it all brought Josef’s fatigue and misery crashing down onto him. He almost buckled under it, but held himself upright to stare into the picture yet more. The mandala began to speak to him, telling him that it wasn’t even a painting. He saw every individual colored grain of sand arranged before him. They poured into his body like an hourglass, slowly filling him, images of his journey to that place rising to their surface: the fight in the chang hall, the cliff below the fort, the hawk chick, Schäfer’s letter. The images turned darker, colder: Magda crying on the boat, the SS dagger on the table, Kurt sliding to his death, Gunter’s bandaged hands drenched in blood, the little girl Ilsa, the shots ringing out over the valley, the explosion of the chapel.
With each new memory, Josef felt an overwhelming desire to make amends, to right the wrongs, to bring the dead back to life, to keep those still living alive. The wave of pure compassion submerged his heart until it overflowed into his arms and began to drip from the ends of his fingertips. It pooled around his feet to form small red rivers of blood that raced away from him into the woods as a distant pair of light beams began to twist and turn up the hill …
Josef passed out.
When he came to, he was already sitting up on the stone floor, supported by two monks. Ang Noru immediately gave him sips of the coldest water from a brass bowl. Its chill revived him as a low bench was brought forward. The monks helped Josef up onto it, sitting each side to support him as he continued to drink.
Slowly recovering his senses, Josef reached up and felt the side of his face. It was coated with sand. With horror, he looked again at the mandala and saw the damage his fall had wrought on it. Brushing the grains from his cheek, he hung his head in shame until a bell rang out, the chime clear yet gentle.
Josef lifted his head at the sound to see the abbot now standing before him on the other side of the broken mandala, two young monks also supporting him. The man looked impossibly old, his paper-thin skin loose around his skull, his eyes cloudy. Shakily, he raised his right hand and clicked his fingers together to issue a strong snap that belied any weakness. Immediately four monks approached the damaged sand picture and knelt, one on each side. They reached into their robes and brought out short, coarse-bristled brushes, waiting.
A second finger snap even louder than the first set them instantly into motion. In perfect time they each placed the brushes on the edge of the picture and began to slowly drag the stiff bristles through the colored sand. Each brush continued the destruction of Josef’s collapse, pushing through the remaining design like tanks driving through ripe cornfields. Josef watched as the picture dissolved in on itself until it became only a swirl of sand they brushed into the center to stand like a small grey mountain between him and the abbot.
The abbot began to speak, very quietly.
Josef strained to listen to words he didn’t understand until Ang Noru began translating.
“The Rinpoche asks if you are now feeling better.”
Josef nodded.
The abbot spoke some more and then smiled.
“He thanks you for starting the destruction of the sand mandala. It has to be so. Everything is temporary, beauty, life, our world itself, everything. He says that you are tired, that you have come a long way to be here.”
“Tell him it is true. I have.”
The abbot spoke more, pausing so Ang Noru might repeat what he was saying.
“They tell him that you are here to climb Chomolungma alone. He says to tell you that there was such a man before who wished to do this, the Englishman Wilson. That man told the Rinpoche that he had seen the horror of total war and then went to the mountain never to return. They say he did not go far up the mountain, but the Rinpoche thinks that perhaps he didn’t have to in order to find what he was really seeking. He asks if you think you can go to the top and return? Is that what you are really seeking?”
“I did believe it, but I don’t any longer.”
“Why do you not think so now?”
“Because my countrymen have forsaken me. I have no equipment, no supplies. I am too weary. Even if I wanted to go to the summit, without such things it is impossible. The British will arrive soon to find me.”
The abbot nodded slowly.
“He says those British sahibs have already sent word to him that you are here to steal the mountain and ask that he stop you until they arrive to capture you. But he think it is difficult for you to steal something so big.”
The abbot’s face broke into a smile as Ang Noru began to speak to the abbot in Tibetan, his normally taciturn voice growing agitated and emotional.
The monk closed his eyes as he listened. There was a long pause before he responded, also at some length. When he had finished, he gestured to one of the monks supporting him to relay his reply to Josef. The monk did so in perfect German, slowly, word for word, so that Josef understood as if it was coming from the mouth of the abbot himself.
“The Sherpa says you are a man able to climb the mountain and that I should help you. But you should know that I have never wanted the mountain climbed. The triumph of the man who first treads the summit of Chomolungma means nothing here. It is as vain and temporary as the mandala. But I have thought much about your arrival, and perhaps this time it is not the case. I may be old, my spirit waning, but I can still feel that the world beyond the mountains is in great pain. Many are standing on the edge of oblivion.
“The Sherpa says you were sent by your masters to do their bidding, to make them even more glorious by climbing the mountain, but perhaps the Mother Goddess has deceived them and called you here instead to do her bidding. I think she wishes you to walk her heights to send a message visible to all the world to stop while it can.”
With that said, the abbot called another monk to his side. He whispered something into his ear before motioning to the two monks supporting him to help him turn. Together they slowly walked away as the monk the abbot had spoken to led Josef and Ang Noru from the hall in silence.
They followed him deeper still into the dark warren of the monastery, finally coming to an ancient, studded wooden door. The monk produced a heavy iron key and unlocked it. Swinging back the door, the monk took a butter lamp from a niche in the corridor wall and entered. As the amber light filled the room, they saw that it was full of wooden boxes, baskets, and canvas bags. Everywhere they looked were bundles of tents, bags of clothing, rolls of sleeping bags, coils of rope, even a wall of brass oxygen cylinders stacked to one side. Stenciled lettering on the sides of the crates read, “British Everest Expedition, 1924”; “Everest, 1933”; and Everest Reconnaissance, 1935.” Josef looked into some of them, finding can after can of food, rows of bottles, cups, plates, cooking utensils. In one there was an old gramophone with a stack of recordings, in another an artist’s painting set with a collapsible easel.
The monk said something to Ang Noru who in turn spoke to Josef. “The sahibs always ask the abbot to look after best equipment after expedition until next visit but then return with even more boxes. The abbot thinks that you will find everything you need here. He says the decision of what you must do now is yours, but if you eat a lot of this food and rest, such a decision will come easier.”
Ang Noru suddenly stepped away from Josef to a pile of new boots. Picking one up, he turned back to Josef and said, “See, my friend? I always know the English have extra boots.” Cursing in his own language, the Sherpa threw it at the wall with all his force. Turning to Josef with tears in his eyes, Ang Noru said, “With these things I swear to my ancestors now that we will do what all those sahibs could not.”