Rongbuk Monastery, Rongbuk, Tibet
May 8, 1939
5:00 p.m.
While the Gurkhas busied themselves unloading their equipment, Macfarlane sat on the monastery’s steps gazing in awe at the massive mountain that dominated the valley. Zazar, as always, had vanished inside.
The English officer, too tired to follow the formalities of his arrival, waited until the increased chill of the approaching night forced him to move. Stiffly getting up to go inside, he was met by the Gurkha sergeant.
“Zazar says the monks have told him there is a room for you to use while you prepare yourself for your return to Sikkim. Zazar also says the monks tell him that the German and the Sherpa have already escaped into Nepal by the Lho-La Pass and that you have no jurisdiction there, so your hunt is over.”
Macfarlane muttered, “Zazar says, Zazar says,” under his breath and followed the sergeant to the room, saying nothing more. All he wanted to do was rest.
Entering the simple room, the lieutenant was surprised to see a gramophone on the floor. Next to it was a bottle of Chateau Latour 1913 and an enameled tin mug, the initials “G. L. M.” painted on the bottom. A piece of paper lay on the gramophone’s disc, the playing arm pinning it down.
Raising the arm, Macfarlane pulled out the note:
Engländer,
Schau aus dem Fenster hinaus.
Solltest Du mich suchen, dort oben findest Du mich.
Nichts für Ungut,
Mad Dog
The German was lost on him but the music hall reference wasn’t.
Winding the gramophone, Macfarlane lowered the needle onto the now-spinning recording and reached for his pocketknife to uncork the bottle. It was a fine wine. Opening it, he thought he should let it breathe and smiled at the irony. After that he dug into his kit bag for the small German-English dictionary he had brought with him, originally to help his understanding during Schmidt’s expedition.
By the time Noel Coward had trotted into his fourth chorus of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” Macfarlane had finished his first enamel cup of wine and thought he understood the German’s message:
Englishman,
Look out of the window.
If you want to find me, that’s where I am.
No hard feelings,
Mad Dog
Pouring himself a second cup of the vintage wine, Macfarlane did go to the window and look out at Mount Everest towering above him in all its glory.
Josef Becker was up there, whatever the monks might be saying.
He wants me to know.
Another cup of wine accompanied the question of what kind of man could have the courage to face such a mountain. A little mad maybe, but Becker was no dog; he was as honorable and brave an alpinist as George Leigh Mallory, the man from whose cup he must be drinking.
And that Sherpa is with him.
A Sherpa, branded difficult and disloyal by Macfarlane’s superiors, that Becker had gone back for at Kampa Dzong, knowing full well that he was risking everything, including his life, to free him.
The same Sherpa that Macfarlane had simply sold to Zazar in a pathetic attempt to save his own skin …
The realization left Macfarlane feeling disgusted at the deal he had made.
It was little more than a devil’s bargain, and it was wrong. Was his own honor not worth more than that, more than Colonel Atkinson’s disapproval, more than blind loyalty, more than trying to prevent another country’s man from achieving what his own could not, however hard they tried? Becker was neither saboteur nor assassin. He was only a climber, at worst a trespasser into Tibet, nothing more.
With resignation Lieutenant Charles Macfarlane realized that if he was to be true to himself, rather than his superiors, his ancestors, his country even, then his hunt was indeed over, but not for the reason suggested by Zazar. He was contemplating a fourth cup when the Gurkha sergeant came to the door and said, “The Zatul Rinpoche wants to speak with you, Lieutenant Macfarlane, sir.”
Feeling flushed from the wine on an empty stomach, he followed the sergeant out into the courtyard. There they met Zazar. The man hunter looked at Macfarlane, a triumphant smile creasing his leathery face as he spoke to the sergeant.
“Zazar says that a villager has told him that the German and the Sherpa have not gone to Nepal by the main glacier but took the smaller one that runs off to the east to Chomolungma. Zazar says that there is only one way in and out, that they won’t be able to run up there. We have them, sir!” the sergeant reported.
Macfarlane turned away from both Zazar and the sergeant to enter the monastery, thinking, There is only one mad dog in the Rongbuk.
To his shame, he was the one that had brought it there.