Fifty-Seven

With the Second World War over, twenty years after the flight financed by Lady Houston over the summit of Everest, and as nineteenth-century colonialism gives way to new forms of imperial intervention, England maintains its anachronistic obsession with incorporating the planet’s highest peak into its showcase. The Crown entrusts the mission to John Hunt, Baron of Llanfair Waterdine and an officer in His Majesty’s army. Hunt takes the job seriously: he recruits top-notch mountaineers from across the Commonwealth and sets off for Nepal. He reaches Kathmandu with his team, and they install themselves at the embassy of the United Kingdom, where Hunt will plan the expedition. The next day he hires a group of Sherpas. When night falls, the mountaineers retire to their rooms. The Sherpas ask Hunt about their rooms. The British nobleman replies that there aren’t any beds for them. That the appropriate thing for the Sherpas is to sleep on the floor, like they do on the mountain. In protest, at dawn the next day, the group of Sherpas goes out to urinate on the sidewalk before breakfast.