Seventy-Six

Which means, the young Sherpa realises, there’s nothing for it but to wait. But he doesn’t imagine an ecstatic vigil, nor anxiety for an imminent resolution. They are not two little boys under a Christmas tree ten minutes before midnight. If he wanted to look for an analogy, he would really have to think of someone next to a coffee vending machine. You put in the coins, you press the button, and you let time pass. Not much. Thirty, forty seconds, until the mechanism stops. Only then does the little door open so you can take the plastic cup. Those stirring sticks aren’t spoons. They’ve thought of everything, down to even that detail, to make sure we accept that what we are consuming is not really coffee, but rather some substitute, an homage.

Wait a while longer: after all, not so much time has passed. Twelve minutes? Fifteen? Not an excessive amount. This could still be considered a minor accident, an episode that – adorned appropriately – focuses the attention of family members having dinner together. The young Sherpa manages to dedramatise the matter for a moment. It’s a stumble, a bang on the head, a passing dizzy spell, and then they’ll get back on track. Are we going to reach the summit in these conditions? But of course: this is no big deal at all. At all. A slip. In a little while we’ll be skipping along the slope with the oxygen cylinders on our backs. Flying. We will be agile, determined. It will be heart-warming to see our light feet overcome with ease the limitations of our movement. We will laugh. We will skip, laugh, and climb. Without stopping, without stumbling. One foot and then another, closer with every passing second to the end. Night will fall, and we will sleep a deep sleep, soft and undisturbed. The sleep of the serene in the stuffed animal factory, the night they have brought their opium pipe, too. The next day we will contemplate the planet from its top.

Of course it is only a second, a gust of anaesthesia that relieves the sorrow of seeing the Englishman down below, lying on the rock, lost in his gravid corporeity. It’s a brief moment before the word is returned to the box of the irreversible, before it makes itself present with its flotilla of tragic predestinations. A regrettable loss, a true disaster. The life of a man. A young man, with enormous potential, intrepid, full of projects. A life in full bloom suddenly cut down by the bloodlust of the giantess, of this mineral titan indifferent to the fragility of mortals. Another existence reduced to the germinal point of senselessness, another proof of the pompous futility of human destiny. The young Sherpa feels terrible. He takes his eyes off the abyss.