“Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.
The images I hold of Wonderland are infused with meaning. Or are they? More likely, their majesty defies meaning, standing instead aloof and apart. An attempt to describe them insulting; indecent to drag majesty down to my own mawkish terms. But our shame had already done that: Loup and I had already shown ourselves unworthy of this last adventure. Oh Pascal, we behaved badly. Did you witness our vulgar rupture of the silence…. our failure to reach the top… our egoism? Burgeoning the list of our failures.
Four months have passed since the suicidal plane crash in the Alps of Haute Provence. And since I cancelled our early spring hike. The word I heard on France Inter that terrible day, pulvérisé, to describe the plane and its human cargo, that terrible irreversible English and French word, pulverise, still haunts. As do the days and days following France Inter interviewing the pilot's work associates, the disbelieving families; desperate for clues as to how such a harrowing thing could be possible. How suicide could turn so effortlessly into homicide.
Avoiding the precise location, but with a lingering wish to pay my respects, I consult my maps, and plan a trip which will take us deeper into an adjacent river valley. The valley of the Haute Bléone. And up to the higher reaches. Not high peaks by alpine standards, but for a flat-lander 3,000 metres is pretty high. At this point, I am unaware that among those scattered in the ravines below the Massif des Trois-Évêchés are a mother and son from Melbourne. Two extraordinary people whom I learn later devoted their time and spirit to their community, wherever they were. I am ashamed of my ignorance, that my knowledge gleaned from the French radio is so scant. As if the seal of my bubble actually does prevent me from engaging.
Once last year, before the young pilot inflicted his self-loathing onto babies and parents, exchange-school children and opera-singers, Loup and I explored the lively Bléone’s flanks and her smaller tributaries. We got spectacularly lost as we climbed a disused track, traversing tumbles of rocky scree at dizzying degrees; not my favourite aspect of hiking. Susceptible to vertigo, I have to crawl on hands and knees to avoid throwing up. Regretting that no matter how much I channelled Heidi as a little girl, I was never going to be a natural in the Alps. Never a Brigitte Muir.
We pass memorial stones in honour of soldiers and resistance fighters lost in World War Two. Hours later, having crawled and scraped our way up the goat track, we clamber back down a washed out cliff, past a medieval church and cluster of houses. The only thing setting Chanolles apart from Utopia is a battered plane propeller and a memorial to three Officer’s wives and their five infants, who crashed there in 1948. Never suspecting that these same mountains would take more children from the sky, we planned to return to Wonderland as soon as we could.
The morning sun is behind the trees as we set along the trail, the air smells of wild berries and cedar. Loup, normally a fastidious packer, has left the preparation to me. It’s an easy overnighter, after all. Perhaps this is where our trouble started. I am used to my heavy pack, and tend to not count the extra grams, whereas Loup insists on micro wherever possible. We have splurged on a super lightweight tent, and a compact gas burner. But I will carry cans of sardines, and a two-nip bottle of whisky, so I give Loup the 600ml bottle of wine. The chocolate, fruit, bread, and water are my other heavy items. He carries the salami, cheese and tent.
‘Why not lump a bit of luxury, and enjoy ourselves?’ I counter, unaware that the extra 187mls will become an issue.
‘Well this is good, a gentle easing into the climb’, says Loup cheerily, as we skirt the litter of boulders beside the creek…. ‘We should be nicely primed.’
‘Yeah, it’s perfect!’ I leap with joy. To be away from the mistral, the arid hut. Set free.
‘Look, Loup, look!’ I cry in amazement at every bend, but am soon reminded that Loup likes to be left in silence. For him, these moments in the mountains or forests are about escaping from people, about disengagement. For me however, this is my opportunity to share, to re-engage. One of us is desperate to switch off, the other ecstatic at finding common ground with others. Loup cannot possibly know how good it feels as I greet each fellow hiker with a ready smile,
‘Bonjour Madame, Monsieur…Bonne promenade…Je vous en prie…Bon courage’
Later, when I reflect upon this, je comprends. I get it, that I could not possibly know either, how urgently my husband needed silence. His weeks were a cacophony of sound: of him yelling on the building site, yelling on the phone, being yelled at. Loup would often admit,
‘It’s sad to say Frey, but if I’m nice, the work doesn’t get done. If I yell, it does.’
Another example of our disconnect: Loup brings the yelling home without realizing, and for a while I would remain mute against his barrage, but then launch into my own attack. It was not a pretty cycle. I was fed up with being a wallflower. Or an escargot, sloping off into the mistral-scoured scrappy garrigue. Back on our trail, instead of extolling aloud the beauty of the silver birches, their dappled bark and chartreuse leaves a delicacy I didn’t realize I had been missing, I keep quiet. And think to myself about my father; how he loved these trees and insisted on planting them in his Australian garden. Must have been his Danish roots. I reflect on how he would have stopped in awe as with each step, around every curve, appeared another revelation. And I miss him and realize too late our sacred common ground. I would have like to introduce him to my mentor, in her birch-shaded garden back home.
Heading toward the cooler air under firs, the trail becomes an enchantment of moss-dens and come-hither birdcalls. A local fire fighter tells me later that these same birds stopped singing for a week after the plane crash. And as we climb I am conscious that each foot forward is inherently flawed: us being alive and human. Happily, our footprints are concealed by the moss, forgiven by leaf rot and indulged by the industry of insects. But I am still uneasy about my liberty, about the gift of life we take so blithely. Then without warning, we are thrust out again into bleached scree. I scurry over the glaring heaps to reach the shade. And wait for Loup.
‘Shall we have a break chéri?’ I don’t have a tube for my water, so need to stop and unload my pack. Relief for a few minutes… time doesn’t count.’
‘Here, let’s have some biscuits and mandarins’.
Loup sucks greedily on his tube of water and rips off his shirt, which is drenched with sweat. I want to do the same.
‘Christ I’m unfit’, he says, collapsing onto a primrose-speckled rock.
We eat lunch in silent complicity. We hear the roar of water not far off, but cannot yet see its source. The mountainside opposite falls steeply, and the trees walk a tightrope across treacherous ravines. Everything feels at once old and new. I am enthralled. No longer an escargot, but a mountain goat. And then I remember that time is important if we want to reach the top. Setting off again, rounding a jumble of boulders, I stop, astounded. Here is the torrent falling, crashing below. The sound is deafening. A vertical wall of water jets down at breakneck speed; declaring that it alone can do so without breaking. Tantalizing, it beckons to be touched, as if I could simply lean across the vaporous air and trace my fingers through its lace. As if this sensation might be worth the falling.
Loup catches up, and I beg him to take a video. Impatient with my incessant need to share everything with my daughters, he nevertheless records ‘un très bel souvenir.’ Traversing this section, I am slower and unsteady. That old foe vertigo pushes up my lunch. I notice for the first time the heaviness of my pack, as it threatens to dislodge me when I take a wrong step. Upon reaching the first pass, the trail is gentle, meandering alongside the glacial melt. I am relieved to approach the col where the mountain begins to disrobe her forest. But now that she is bare above the tree line, the sun takes advantage and is unrelenting. Our packs seem to swell with the heat. Zigzagging again up slippery shale, I plant my shepherd’s baton against dizziness.
This slender beech my lifesaver; I thank the boy whose family I met along the Chemin de Compsostelle, his prized pocketknife once whittled this gnarled bark, to reveal creamy bone-core. The sweet spot is where the stick licks into my sweated palm, steadying my grasp. Worrying my thumb and forefinger across its tip, I think of the nape of the neck of my baby grandson, the trace of down behind his ear; of the velvet pad of my dog’s paw, soft in my hand. I think of the intimacy of my husband.
Where has Loup gone? Has he stopped to splash and slurp the icy water? Crystalline water, as we’ve never seen before… never before have we climbed so abruptly out of our banal bitumen into something so shimmery, as if we’ve stepped into the dreamy ether of a Turner canvas. Or is it the celestial creepiness of a Caspar David Friedrich? Whilst waiting for Loup, I think again about those recently lost. About the grief on the other side of the neighbouring summit… the spectre of pulverised plane parts. I count the miniature blades of alpine grass dividing paradise from hell. I imagine clawing for the crocheted corner of a baby blanket trapped under rock, wondering, did blood drip down this brook? The local fireman told me it was all over so quickly. No survivors to rescue once they’d finally climbed up here; no colour left, no stubborn life to stain the snow.
Afterwards, when Loup and I stop below in the village on our way home, we are silenced before the flags of nations commemorating their innocents and their wise. How could one son, his devilish sadness, torpedo them all into the face of Wonderland? There’s a conundrum for you, Pascal. Not that you took souls with you, but you did want to exact some kind of revenge… upon those who had hurt you. And those who hadn’t. Your young brother, for example.
Well, that’s what your letter said, anyway. Are some things so unforgiveable, that you must leave for your little sister to read, hateful words that can never be unsaid? But who am I to talk of hateful words, isn’t that why we came to the mountains, to stop my snail-slime of hateful words? Sometimes I think I recognize what got to you Pascal, when back at the hut I look at myself in my gift from Loup in better days. The handsome oak-framed mirror, (absurdly refined in our misery hut), reflects back someone I do not like. The tight lines around my mouth: a sphincter around a drain; and the kitchen knife clamouring in my ear. But I’m not thinking about that today, in Wonderland. I’ve quite forgotten about the menace of knives and forks. But just thinking about that one big, unfathomable unhappiness, right there on that summit, got me thinking about you, Pascal.
‘Coo-eee?’ I call after Loup, anxious. He appears around a boulder, brow and hair dripping.
‘Are you ok hon?’
‘No energy…. I’m totally fucked!’
Loup is drenched. He sucks greedily on his water tube.
‘We can stop if you like… you go in front…’
‘No … you keep going. Anyway… you know I’ll catch you up on the descent.’
Reassured, I plough upwards. A log bridge leads toward an elaborate hut. Ah, this must be the famous Refuge. I’d read about it, but staying in close proximity with numerous others was not our intention. Pathologically anti-social, we seek the void. We have both neglected to bring money, so not even a drink is in order. Embarrassingly, the trail leads me right up to the chalet, and I have to cross its magnificently appointed deck to continue. Barefoot people sit drinking and chatting, their hiking boots lined up at the door; for them, it is evidently the end of the day. When I approach, they stop and stare.
A tall man in yellow stripy pants, orange crocks, wisps of receding blonde hair and cerulean eyes direct from the sky, regards me with curiosity then welcomes me in French. Loup has dropped behind again. So, when the sunny local asks,
‘Vous allez où? Where are you going at this late hour…aren’t you staying?’
I am bamboozled, wondering if it is the height of rudeness to pass through his Refuge, and not stay. Not even buy a drink?
‘Ah,’ I blabber, thinking hurry up Loup,
‘Nous allons camper au près the summit… we’ve got all our own gear,’ I say flailing, unconvincing. My lack of alpine savvy is obvious. For one thing, it’s clear, I’m not from here.
So, I act on an impulse, changing everything forever. The polite thing to do is to ask this mountain-man about his mountain, right? To show at least that much respect.
Naturally, without further thought, I swerve around, unable to reach my map myself, aiming my backpack towards him,
‘Excuse me, would you mind showing us a good place to camp?’
Neither embarrassed nor hesitant, he unzips my backpack top pocket, removes my map, and shows me where to find shelter and water, carefully pointing out each of the landmarks he knows like his own skin.
Loup arrives in the midst of this exchange, but stands at a distance, silent. Awkwardness mires the air as mountain-man refolds my map, and I go to take it, but he deftly replaces it inside my backpack.
Again, he asks ‘are you sure you have everything, enough water, are you well prepared?’
He’s astonished when Loup suddenly pipes up in perfect French,
‘Oui. We do have everything we need, merci. Au revoir.’ Somewhat coldly.
The trail is just a goat track now, unmarked, apart from ragged cairns of stones. It is difficult to see the next stage, as often the slope obscures it. Loup lags further and further behind. I’m gaining ground, higher and higher. It seems Loup, though ten-years-younger and legs-twice-longer, can’t cope. As if he carries the world on his back. I wait, concerned and perplexed. Where is the indefatigable Loup who roller-bladed with his tent on his back, all the way from Adelaide to Darwin, with no support?
‘What’s up chéri? Is it your ankle?’
The ensuing venom is devastating. His eyes blacken, iron-grim.
‘Since when do you ask a stranger to dive into your personal affairs…the intimacy of your backpack?’
I am dumbstruck.
What follows is a precarious pantomime; thank Christ the marmots and the chamois are our sole audience. I am ashamed you had to see this Pascal. Loup is not himself. Or not somebody I recognise. Accusing me of seeking preferential treatment from a total stranger, inviting attention.
‘How dare you ignore me, your husband, in favour of that man?’
At first I think this an act, a drama associated with his physical fatigue, rather than with legitimate outrage. But the toxins keep bursting open like pus. If we were animations, the face of Loup would be slime-green, his eyes sulphur-yellow, his pupils black pinpoints, and his tongue a fiery fork. I would be puffed up like a spiny puffer fish, purple with indignation, jagged hair on end, with steam exploding out of my ears.
‘Are you doing this deliberately Loup? Do you really want that divorce? Do you really believe I would suddenly take it into my head to deceive you?’
Forcing me to ask myself, would I wilfully spoil this Wonderland?
It’s a rueful thing that since that letter from the Bank, Loup has raised the notion of divorce more than once. Not out of malevolence, but as a roundabout way of saving my arse, and in so doing, his own. We had received only vague advice on how much jurisdiction the French had over my private affairs back home. But now we are playing a dangerous bluff.
Hurling the tent, stove, and wine out of his pack and chucking it on the ground, Loup spits:
‘You think I’m just inventing this? Hallucinating? You’re calling me mad now? Ok, so you want to be fucking independent, well be my guest! Vas te faire foutre!’
Then he takes off, miraculously finding speed in his vengeance. Loup is rarely aggressive, but when he is, he is without pity. Inviting me to fuck myself.
His eyes are the worst. Cold metallic pellets.
But I cannot let him leave like this. I hurriedly re-stuff everything into my pack, the extra volume bulging above my head. I hump the food, water and wine, tent and stove, up over gaping chasms, pursuing him. Shocked and stunned by his accusation, ashamed by the commotion of our egos. Lost in Wonderland. Guilty?
Loup’s momentum doesn’t last long.
Fixing my eyes upon his, I try and calm us both, playing the grown up,
‘Loup just think about where we are. For Christ’s sake, we can’t split up in this situation! Look at what’s around you… you’re fucking scaring me! Please tell me, is it your head, your stomach… where does it hurt?’
Terrified that he might have altitude sickness, or asthma, (neither of which he’d ever had before); terrified that he was the one with more mountain experience, and I was just a novice; terrified that we would allow such a stupid travesty to rupture our marriage; terrified that we had offended the mountain, and the souls that newly lay there.
Bluffing my way as the leader, we pushed on higher, because we did not know what else to do. Talking about it was impossible. Loup was clammed shut.
‘Do you think we should camp here…or there? It’s more sheltered here, no? But there’s no water, so maybe we should keep going…?’
I blabber, desperate for Loup to engage.
Heaving ourselves up and over enormous expanse of rock, crawling on all fours; I drag my pack behind me like a limp body. My legs are jelly. The sun has long ceased to shine, but we’d been so busy denouncing each other, we hadn’t noticed.
Loup looks frozen. I am too.
For some reason, I just keep moving. It will all be all right if we just keep moving. I was used to Loup taking control in these situations and had no idea of what to do.
‘Let’s leave our packs here and look for somewhere further up’, I say unwisely, stubborn to get higher. We quickly unfurl our woollen and thermal gear, beanies, and gloves. The temperature has dropped 20 degrees in the last hour.
‘Here Loup, please eat some chocolate, or at least a mandarin…please’.
He begrudgingly eats two mandarins, saying that nothing else would go down. Even though it’s been eight hours since our lunch snack. We climb and crawl and heave, losing sight of any cairn or trail. The higher reaches are a lunarscape. Delicate ferns, dwarf alpine rhododendrons and scant grasses offer the only living relief from the massive rubble of pink and grey rocks, some as vast and high as the sides of a building. Under happier circumstances, the bouldering would have been exhilarating. Tonight it is alien in every way. Loup’s face is putty-grey, and I shake uncontrollably. We regard each other with sudden and alarming clarity. Our situation is precarious. I start sobbing and try to hug my husband who, after a moment’s stiffness, softens into me.
Tentative, I say,
‘You know when you said I was accusing you of hallucinating, that your hurt was not legit, that your jealousy was just hysterical paranoia? Well honey, those are all things you have labelled me with in the past. I know how you felt, you want to vomit, disappear into the ground and jump off a bridge. You feel so fucking null…!’
‘Well actually, no Frey… I wouldn’t go so far as to jump off a bridge, it wasn’t worth that.’ Says Loup with a wan smile.
‘You know I have more sense of self-preservation than you.’
That was true. I feared my jealous rages, how they took on their own life, ending in humiliation and self-hatred. But it was only later that I considered those things. Wobbly, we descend. We regain our backpacks, and decide to set camp lower. Neither of us knows whether Loup has altitude sickness. Luckily, he doesn’t yet have a headache. But his breathing is laboured.
‘I just want to lie down and sleep,’ he keeps saying. I am afraid to let him do that. The sky is an infinite indigo vault, darkening at the edges, and we are specks who don’t even count. It is 9.40 pm.
Loup regains control when I cry in pain, my knees snapping from the extra weight of the pack, the difficult descent. More like his old self, he takes back some of my load; and is gentle. But he is still grey and I am still terrified. The air is bitter, but beautiful… we are on a rock-strewn path to the moon. Or, fathoms deep under the sea, which is where this path used to be. We pitch the tent in a sheltered cranny. Straight away, Loup crawls into his sleeping bag. I urge him to eat.
‘Please chéri, a little bread and cheese, to keep you warm.’
‘But I am not cold,’ he replies, forcing down a few bites of his food and falling asleep whilst chewing.
I on the other hand am wide-awake, cold and hungry. A few sips of whisky bring comfort. I eat half-heartedly, shiver and listen. Listen all night long to make sure Loup is breathing right.
Listen to the howling, which could be the howl of wolves in the Mercantour, or the cry of a lost baby. Listen to the sudden draft of air across my cheek, which could be the updraft of an angel’s wing. Is that you Pascal? I’m too cold to sleep, until I feel at last the glow of the sun penetrate the tent and caress my sleeping bag. I know it is safe to sleep now, because I hear the zip opening, and feel Loup clambering across me to get out.
But when I awake two hours later, I cannot find him. I check to see his pack is still there. Good. But then panic: could he just wander off, in some kind of daze? Drop over the edge? I myself feel in some kind of daze, uncertain on my feet as I hurriedly pee. Then I see him, sitting way out on the edge of a rock in the sun. He looks peaceful, as he takes it all in. Perhaps having a yarn with you Pascal. I leave him be, in the magnificence.
In this beatific morning.