IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF MY HUSBAND’S FOURTH DAY of climbing, his base camp calls me via satellite phone. The news is not so good. After climbing straight through the night, Jozef is now two-thirds of the way up the west face of Shipton’s Peak. He has come farther on the face than anyone ever has. But now his radio is malfunctioning.
Jozef’s friend Hugo says to me, We were talking, and then it just cut off. He says, Of course we worried. But there were no avalanches on the face, and then we spotted him through the binoculars. When the sun set he flashed down with his headlamp that he was all right.
I tell myself, over and over, until my heart doesn’t pound so much: Jozef is still alive.
What now? I ask.
Hugo tells me Jozef’s options, and I write them down. I always answer these calls in my studio, away from Stane, our son, who is eight. This is a superstition of mine; in case the news is bad, I want to compose myself before I have to face our boy. And when Hugo and I hang up, I sit for a while, thinking of what I will say. Then I take the manila folder full of pictures and walk into the living room. Stane is sitting on the sofa with Jozef’s brother Karel, playing on Karel’s laptop computer. As soon as Stane sees me he wriggles out from under Karel’s arm.
Was that Hugo? he asks. Can I talk to him? You hung up?
I give Karel a look, and he puts his hand on Stane’s head.
Hush for now, Karel says.
I sit down on the sofa, a little ways from Karel. I pat the space between us and Stane sits. Karel puts his arm around Stane; his arms are so long that his fingertips nearly brush my shoulder.
Papa’s all right, I say. But his radio is broken.
Did he get hurt? Stane’s face is more curious than frightened.
No. It just broke. Once it got dark, he used his headlamp to signal he’s all right. But it’s not very good news.
Stane is watching me carefully. Karel is twisting the beard over his chin with his thumb and forefinger. He knows right away what losing the radio means. But it is as if both of them are waiting for me to tell them how I feel about this, about Jozef having his chances reduced, when they were so low to begin with already. I tell myself not to be angry. If I do not know what to feel, how can I expect anything from them?
Is Papa in trouble? Stane asks, his voice quieter now.
I say, Yes. They use the radio to tell your papa where he ought to climb next. It’s hard for him to know, when he’s in the middle of the face. And he can’t climb back down the pillar. He doesn’t have the right equipment. He’s going to have to change his route.
I open the folder and we look at pictures of the west face, all 3,900 meters of it. Before he left for Nepal, Jozef printed this picture for us, overlaid with a grid. Hugo has the same photo in base camp, with the same grid. Every time he calls he gives me Jozef’s coordinates; and afterward Stane and I make a line with a wax pencil: the day’s progress. My husband’s life, like a stock on the market.
I point out a square in the center of the face, at the foot of a sloping field of ice a kilometer high and wide.
Papa’s here, I say. He can’t go straight up, like he wanted. So instead he has to go this way up the ice field, here to the ridge. From there he could come home, or go on to the summit. Either way it is very dangerous for him now. It won’t be easy for him to make the ridge.
Stane asks, Could he die?
This question takes me by surprise. Jozef sat down with Stane before leaving and talked to him about the west face, about how no one has ever climbed it before. He told Stane it was dangerous, that he could get hurt. We have always talked to our son in terms of danger, and not death. He sees death on the television, of course, and he knows about animals that die to make meat. He knows his uncle Gaspar died and went to heaven before he was born, that he fell on a big mountain while climbing with Papa. But who knows what all of this means to him? Now he has asked me the very thing I am trying to say to Karel between my words.
He could, I say, and I keep my eyes on Stane’s. This is a very dangerous place for Papa to be. That was true even before he lost the radio, and now it’s even more true. Going to the ridge is risky, and if he gets hurt he can’t call for anyone.
Stane thinks this over, his mouth screwed up. This is his thinking face, which at other times has made me smile behind my hand. Not now.
He should come home then, Stane says. By the ridge.
That’s what I think, too.
Can I see the picture?
Stane holds the photo on his lap, and Karel looks at it over Stane’s other shoulder, as Stane traces his papa’s route with his small square finger.
The radio was all he lost? Karel asks me now, his voice husky.
I don’t know. He didn’t signal much to Hugo.
Did he signal anything for us? Stane asks.
Jozef has been passing along messages to us, both through Hugo and through the website Hugo and his team have been updating from base camp. These messages are only a few lines long, but all the same they are what Stane lives for—and why not? His papa might as well be calling from a rocket ship. I would like to lie to him here, but I don’t have the heart to do it.
No, I say, he didn’t. I don’t think he had time.
Stane’s pink fingertip moves across the photo, the black triangular cliffs of the headwall, the little icy smears that maybe—or maybe not—will provide a route. Stane looks up at me and Karel, and talks like he has information we do not, like it is in little boy’s heads that these issues are decided.
Papa will be okay, he says. He’s good on ice.
Karel runs his fingers through his hair, and over the top of Stane’s head gives me a look full of fear and relief. He has no children of his own to ask him questions like this. To him, parents are magicians: keeping Stane peaceful is the same as pulling a coin from his ear.
Yes, he is, I tell my son, and kiss his forehead, trying my best to sound as sure as he does: calm, hopeful, as though he and I have not just discussed his father’s death.
As though I do not want to scream, to call Jozef the callous bastard that, in my heart right now, he is.
LATER STANE GOES outside to play with his plastic toy men; he has been fighting a war across the complicated terrain of the yard and the drive, and even onto the low and crumbling Roman wall that follows the road for the length of our valley, halfway to Kamnik. Casualties are heavy in this war; many of his men die, only to be resurrected the following morning. I hear him sometimes, making explosions under his breath, mimicking screams. I’m being naïve. All little boys are eager to know about death, and the ways it happens.
I should remember, too—such things are not just the domain of boys. When I was a girl not much older than Stane I became obsessed with the Holocaust. I had just begun painting: I filled canvas upon canvas with skulls and bones and gray swirls of smoke, until my mother told me I would have to see a doctor if I continued.
Karel is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, student essays at his elbow. I can see he is only pretending to read them.
I’ll make dinner, if you’d like, he says.
No, you sit right there.
Really, Ani, you’ve been running all day. Rest and let me pull my weight.
Karel has been with us all week; he arrived from Ljubljana Saturday, the day before Jozef began his solo. Jozef had been in Nepal almost six weeks by then, acclimatizing, and talking to me and Karel both from base camp at night. It was Jozef who asked Karel to come and stay with us.
I tried to argue—I did not think I wanted company for the week of a climb. But Jozef said, It will be good for both of you. Don’t tell Karel I said so, but he and Marja have been fighting. You two can worry about each other instead of me.
Karel and I are good friends, we always have been. He is a professor of art history, and even though he and I both know I will never be a great painter, Karel is one of the few people who understands that what I do carries value. He used to paint when he was young. We are the only artists in Jozef’s family, and we have always spoken to each other with something like relief.
And in the end Jozef was right—having Karel here has been good for us. Stane loves him. Karel brought his laptop so we can look at the expedition website, and he has been teaching Stane how to use some other programs. He has offered every other second to do housework. In a strange way our house has been more alive since Jozef left; we pay attention to who goes where, to do what. I’m going to paint, I always say now. When Jozef is here? I just go.
Karel has been so concerned for me and Stane that he has not spoken of Marja, not yet. I have not asked—other than simple courtesies—but I think Jozef is right about this, too. Karel has been subdued, above and beyond worry for his brother. His shoulders slump, and he sighs heavily, like a much older man. It looks like a long time since he has slept or eaten well. I tty to put good food in him, but aside from this I don’t know what to do.
I have to admit, in a small way, that I have enjoyed worrying about Karel. He is so much easier to worry over than Jozef.
Does Stane ever want to climb himself? Karel asks suddenly.
I start washing potatoes for zlikrofi. I think about how Jozef and I have had this discussion before. Stane is just old enough to want to do what his father does, to be a famous mountain climber, to be on commercials. I have forbidden it. Jozef knows to agree with me, but he also says, You have to let him make his own decisions. You can say no, but you might just mother him right onto the rock.
I tell Karel, He asks sometimes. But we don’t allow it.
Jozef goes along with this?
Jozef loves his son. He doesn’t want him risking his life.
Karel seems about to say something more, but we are interrupted by Stane, who opens the door and shouts in that someone is here. Just as he says this I hear the sound of an automobile coming down the road. We live deep in the country; we have neighbors here—mostly people from the city in summer homes—but we do not hear cars very often. I look out the kitchen window and see a van slow in front of our house, a cloud of dust from the dirt road billowing slowly behind it. On the side of the van is the 24ur insignia.
Reporters, I say.
Karel drops his cup to the table in disgust. I’ll talk to them, he says.
I can do it.
Let me. Please. You’re too rude.
The news people have come every other day since Jozef’s climb began: 24ur especially. Jozef’s last four climbs, all solo, have made him a celebrity—the best climber not just in Slovenia but maybe in the world. One of Hugo’s jobs is sending out press releases. I’m sure the news people know about the broken radio.
Giving in to Karel is a relief this time. Thank you, I say.
He smiles at me, very quickly, and then he goes outside to tell the whole country that Jozef’s family would appreciate privacy now, in this very serious time.
AFTER DINNER we play games; Karel is teaching Stane chess, and the three of us trade matches for a while until I reach my limit. The boys want to stay at it, so I go to my studio and paint for an hour or two—fussing, mostly. Then Stane comes in to tell me I have been relieved of my bedtime reading duties. Uncle Karel will read, he announces.
My studio is next to Stane’s bedroom, and I listen to them while I work. Karel sits and talks with Stane for a few minutes after the bedtime story is over. They have been like this all week: very serious with each other, Karel treating Stane like a little man, and Stane acting like one for his uncle.
I open a window and, standing near it, I smoke the one cigarette I am allowed per day when Jozef is on a climb. I try to send my mind out to Jozef—he will be climbing now—but I keep losing myself in the smoke and the sounds of the voices in the next room.
Then Karel is at the doorway. Stane would like to say good night, he says.
Stane is curled on his side. A toy soldier hangs off one of the big posts of Stane’s bed, attached by a length of string to the knob at the top. Its feet are against the headboard, and it leans back on the rope just like a resting climber, considering the tricky knob up ahead, the best approach.
When did your man go climbing? I ask.
Today. Uncle Karel found some rope and we put him up on it.
Is he careful?
He’s very careful.
That’s good, I say. I would like to know how the climb goes.
He’ll make it, Stane says.
I kiss his forehead and say, I think so, too.
Karel is in the studio, smoking one of my cigarettes, when I return.
I hope you don’t mind, he says, turning the cigarette in his hand with obvious relish.
I quit last year, I say.
Me, too. He offers one out of the pack to me.
I lean forward and he fumbles with my lighter and I keep leaning. We are both laughing guilty laughs by the time I take a drag.
You’re good with Stane, I say.
He’s a smart boy. I hope I don’t bore him.
Be serious. He loves you.
He loves his papa, that’s for certain. Karel grins. You know, he asked me about the college for a while yesterday, and I still don’t think he understands what it is I do there. Finally I told him I look at paintings like yours, and this he understood. Then he said when he grows up he will work outside, not sit indoors all day.
I have heard this opinion myself.
I say, Stane’s eight. Tomorrow he’ll tell you he wants to start a restaurant on the moon.
Karel chuckles, and we sit for a while. With him here I surpass my cigarette limit, and then some. I look out the window and try not to notice that Karel watches me. He is content to do this, I think, and I am content to smoke and be watched. We are quiet and calm.
Well, Karel says, finally, after a showy yawn, good night Then he hugs me, quickly, from the side, squeezing my waist. He says, Wake me if there’s news, all right? Or if you need anything.
Then he moves away from me, out into the hall, not looking at my eyes.
LATER, WHEN I am in the dark of my bedroom, I wonder: What, exactly, would I need from Karel?
If anything, when Jozef is on a climb I feel I have too much. I am lying in a soft bed in a warm house, with food and drink only a few steps away. This is safety, after all, the thing we build houses for, what we sleep together in beds to receive. Where is Jozef now? It is early morning in Nepal, the coldest hours, when the west face is frozen; right now he is climbing across the ice field by moonlight. He is at almost seven thousand meters; he will barely be able to take a breath.
Or he is dead. He has slipped and fallen, and no one will know until the morning, when Hugo trains his binoculars on the face and sees nothing.
Jozef chooses this. Alive or dead, he does not have to be where he is.
And I have chosen it, too.
Karel sleeps down the hall, in our bedroom; I have, despite his protests, taken the guest bed. It’s better this way; the bed is smaller, and I do not feel the space where Jozef ought to be. The bed Jozef and I use is old—we still have the cheap mattress from our flat in the city, before Stane was born, before we had money. I can hear the frame squeak every time Karel shifts. It occurs to me now that maybe the guest bed is better. I should have let him take it.
Maybe that is what he meant, a little voice says. Maybe what you need is to invite Karel to it now.
Karel and I have always flirted; that is the way Karel is, and he does it with the safety of a man who is not often taken seriously by women. It has always been better for us if I pretend not to notice.
But more and more Karel reminds me of someone I knew many years ago. A young man who was in love with me before I ever met Jozef.
This man, Peter, was a student in mathematics at the University of Ljubljana. I worked in a café then. And every day for months Peter came in and made his single coffee last for a long time, as the students do. He kept his books open in front of him, but mostly he made sad eyes at the girls who came and went. I liked him well enough—he always tipped me, and never complained—but I never thought of him otherwise. He was too timid. I was twenty-one, and I had not lost my taste for wildness in men.
But then one day, cleaning Peter’s table, I found a folded slip of paper with my name on it. Anica, it said, I can’t stand silence anymore. I have been in love with you for months. Here is my number; if you call me I will be happy. But I will understand if you don’t; and if so, I will never appear in here to trouble you again. All my love, Peter.
I thought the note was sweet, and I saved it because of what it said about me. But I did not call Peter. He kept his word; I never saw him again. And then, not too much later, Jozef came into the café, and I didn’t think of any other men at all, not for a long while.
Three years later I came across Peter’s note in my things—I was packing to move into this house. I was not much older, but something had changed in me. When I read the note again, I was filled with shame. All I could think was how Peter must have sat by the phone that night, and maybe the next, his stomach in knots. How he must have seen, more and more clearly, that he had failed. I should have called him, if even to tell him no thank you. Or let him take me out, just to see, just to be kind. I read his note again and again, and I hoped he was married, and happy.
And soon, after enough of Jozef’s climbing, I thought of Peter another way. As the husband I could have had. When Jozef has left me and Stane alone, waiting to hear if he lives or dies, I wonder if I wouldn’t be happier in the thin arms of Peter the mathematician, now thirty-five and balding, with a soft paunchy stomach next to mine in the bed.
Wherever he is, he would not be so different from Karel. They are men who live in their minds more than their bodies. They value safety in their lives. Is it awful of me to think of Karel like this—as another kind of life for me? I don’t know. But here he is in my house, and it is not my fault that my husband is not. It is not my fault that I have to think of myself: what I would have to do, if Jozef does not come home.
We spoke for the last time just before Jozef left for the face; he called me from base camp to say goodbye. This is our habit, before one of his solos. Five years ago we would have spoken at the airport in Ljubljana, but now technology has made things more immediate. I stood in my studio, the phone to my ear, and looked out my window across our valley. The sun was setting and the peaks to the east glowed a deep orange, like they were burning. In Nepal Jozef stood under a full bright moon.
I’m looking at the face right now, Jozef told me. You should see it. It’s unbelievable.
I have seen it, I said. Jozef had kept its pictures strewn across our house for a year. I didn’t need to be in its presence to fear it. You should turn around, I said.
Ani, he said. Please don’t do this.
We were quiet for a while then, listening to the hum of energy in our phones. I tried to see him where he was: on a glacier, the ice blue in the moonlight, that horrible black face blotting out half the sky. Jozef does not carry phones on his climbs. He will take a radio, for route finding and emergencies. But a phone, he says, violates the spirit of the mountain. After we hung up, I would have no more chances to speak with him. Maybe not ever. But even so I did not know what to say to him.
Tell me you love me, Jozef said. I have to go now.
We have an understanding, Jozef and I. He must focus himself for a climb. He needs to know that I love him, that all is right with us. If he is to survive, he cannot go to the mountain angry, or distracted.
But I said, Please don’t do this. There is no shame in turning around. Come home to me.
Ani, he said, tell me.
Even over our little phones I could hear the anguish in his voice. Once he had told me, Do you know how I make it up the mountains? I pretend they are between you and me. I pull myself to you with my hands. But I was twenty-one when he told me that. Back then I believed we had magic powers, the two of us.
If it keeps you from going, I said, I won’t tell you.
I’m going. We’ve talked about this.
I knew he would. He is still alive only because of his stubbornness.
I was crying. I told him, I love you, and the words felt like a defeat.
I love you, too, he said. And then he said what he always must, our mantra, Ani, as long as you love me I will be all right.
I was supposed to say, See you soon. I wanted to scream at him, to smash the phone against the wall.
Jozef, I said, this is the last time.
I held the phone to my side and walked into the living room, where Stane was waiting for me to be finished.
Tell your papa you love him, I said. Say goodbye.
Four days ago I was so angry I felt I might shake apart. Now I can barely shut away the shame, the awful shame. He might die—no matter the reason—and I am too selfish to tell him that I love him?
I used to think Jozef and I were made for one another.
Now, for very different reasons, I see that we still are.
When Karel first arrived at our house, he and I made plans to visit his and Jozef’s father. Karel has been calling him all along with updates about Jozef’s climb—but Papa is a difficult man, and we are never sure what he hears and what he doesn’t. It’s only proper to make a visit.
Papa lives an hour from here, outside of Maribor, and we leave in the early morning. I am in a foul mood as I direct us around the house. My head aches; if I slept at all I do not know it. Stane whines about taking a bath, and I am harsh with him, which only puts him in more of a sulk. Karel, ever helpful, offers to drive. We are just walking out of the door when Hugo calls.
He’s at the ridge, Hugo tells me. We saw him when the sun came up. He’s made a camp.
A camp? Is he climbing on?
You know what I do, Hugo says. But listen, he climbed all through the night to get there. He’s going to need rest no matter what he does, especially now that he’s on level ground. If he makes a move up or down, we won’t see his lamp till evening.
I tell Stane and Karel all of this in the car. Karel nods as he listens.
I bet he’s going to the top, Stane says.
Why do you think that?
I don’t know. He’d have come down already if he wasn’t.
Well, I say, maybe he’s tired.
Maybe, says Stane. I have a feeling.
Stane likes to say he has feelings; he wants badly to believe he has supernatural powers. We have tried to discourage this; the last feeling he got was that he was going to get a bicycle for his birthday, when he had already gotten one the year before.
Both Stane and I sleep through most of the drive to Papa’s. I do not even dream, and then Karel is touching my arm. Ani, we’re here, he says.
Papa’s house is small and dark, a cottage on a road that used to be lonely, but now is lined with houses. Jozef told me the city came to Papa, not the other way around.
Papa meets us at the door and gives us all bear hugs, making bear sounds. He smells like cigarettes and too much cologne. He is almost eighty years old, completely bald. He has Jozef’s eyes, which are icy blue—but in Papa’s head they are hard, frightening. Maybe this is because I know how growing up with him was. Papa seems to like me, but sometimes he looks at me, and I shiver, because he knows what I must know.
Inside we sit at the dining-room table, and Papa putters between us and the kitchen. Coffee? he asks. You must be tired.
That sounds wonderful, I say.
How about you, Stane? You want some coffee, too?
He’s not allowed coffee unless it’s weak, I say.
Oh no no, strong coffee, says Papa. Strong coffee makes a strong man. Papa ruffles Stane’s hair. Stane looks to me in a way that is half hopeful, half frightened. We can put a little sugar in it, Papa says to him. Sugar for my sugar!
Okay, says Stane.
Papa, Karel says. You’re not his mother.
Papa frowns at Karel, then glances my way, a dark look, and for a second or two I can see it, I can see something of what Jozef must have seen so often when he was a boy. But Papa is an old man, and much has changed for him, and so his face softens. He nods at Karel.
He says, Yes, yes. Boys today are not like they used to be. Milk, then? You want milk, Stane?
Stane does not know how to answer, and he looks at me again, imploring.
I say, Milk would be fine, Papa. Say thank you, Stane.
Thank you, Grandpapa.
Karel says, Let me help you, Papa.
Mama, can I have some of yours? Stane whispers, when they’re in the kitchen.
I tell him just a sip, but I’m watching Karel and Papa through the doorway. Karel is helping with dishes and cups, moving as he moves in my kitchen—with an eagerness, like a waiter moves around a table. Papa grumbles and sometimes glances back and forth, confused. Karel guides him with touches on the shoulder, little jokes about what health nuts Jozef and I are, about how old Papa is getting, how he’ll have to go to a home any day now. What a bad son you are, Papa growls.
I whisper to Stane that his grandpapa is only kidding.
If Jozef was here we would never have gotten past the offer of coffee. We would be listening to an argument, or maybe we would be staring at Jozef refusing to drink the cup in front of him, all of us quiet before the battle of wills.
I can see so much of these men they cannot see themselves. Jozef and Gaspar both fought Papa. They left home the moment they could, each of them a teenager. Karel is the youngest; he was still at home when their mother died. Karel and Papa went through her dying together. I did not know her, but I know Karel takes after her. He knows Papa must be flattered and cajoled, not fought. Through the doorway Papa laughs and rubs his hand along Karel’s back. I have never seen Jozef and his father do anything more than shake hands, each looking off in different directions.
The coffee comes, and since Karel made it, it is drinkable. I mix some with Stane’s milk, careful to keep the grounds out, and he is happy, though he works to keep his face from crinkling when he sips. Then Papa insists we take our cups outside to the back patio. Today the air is fine and warm, and the patio is a good place to be. The backyard, though, is unkempt, especially compared to the one next door, which we can see through a line of pine trees that acts as a fence. Two children are playing in that yard, the oldest a boy Stane’s age. They have a sandbox and a complicated wooden fort and colorful toys. They see us and call out a greeting to Papa, and he waves them over.
This is my grandson Stane, he says to them. The one I told you about—he’s a good boy. You three can play, yes? Stane would like your fort.
This decided, he crosses his arms and nods for the children to leave.
Stane looks at me—he does not have many playmates when school is out, not where we live, and he is shy with strangers. I wish that he would be more forceful in front of Papa. It’s all right, I tell him. Go on.
The children from next door, thankfully, are friendly. Come on, Stane, they say. Come see.
Papa says to me, when they are in the other yard, You treat that boy like a baby.
Karel says, Papa.
Papa pushes out his lips.
You’re right, he says. What do I know of raising boys? Eh? Two lunatics and a teacher.
He says teacher, not professor, and he says it with a sneer.
Papa, I say—I cut off Karel to do it. If you’d like us to leave you alone today, we will.
Again, the look, but I’m ready for it. I hold his eyes, and, surprised, he grows old again. His shoulders slump and he stares out across his yard, the piles of stone and the flower beds that in twenty years have produced nothing but weeds. The children are playing on the wooden fort. A nice, happy family, it seems from here. Papa must sit on his patio and watch them every day, the two children, the two parents I am sure are there inside the house. He hears all the laughter.
Well then, he says. How is my Jozef? He is still alive?
I tell Papa the story of Jozef’s climb so far. I have brought the file folder of photographs, and he asks to see them. I stand behind Papa’s chair—ignoring his too sweet, too smoky smell—and point out the route up the face, the places where Jozef has camped, the ridge which, if Jozef is sane, he will use today to abandon the climb. Papa puts on reading glasses and looks at the photographs over and over, his lips pushed out.
It’s as if he reads my thoughts. He points to the photograph and asks, He’s here?
Yes.
He won’t come down the ridge, Papa says.
Maybe, I say, maybe not—
Papa takes my hand and stares at me. Then he says, Karel, leave us alone for a minute.
Papa, I really—
Karel! Mind me, for once. Do me this one favor and then I promise I’ll die and leave you in peace.
Karel’s face clouds, but he comes closer, as if to pry the old man’s hand off mine.
It’s all right, I say.
Karel meets my eyes, then says, All right, all right. He walks off into the yard, halfway between us and the children, and pretends to be interested in the weeds.
Sit, Papa says to me. You sit and we’ll talk.
I pull up a chair.
Listen, Papa says. You are a good strong woman. I have always seen this. When Jozef brought you home, I knew you were a woman to love and to marry. You are good for him, the way my Sara was good for me. But the men of my family, we are good for no one.
Papa—
No! Listen. This is important. I have been a bad father, a bad husband. All of my life I’ve been bad. My sons were good boys but I’ve ruined them. I know. Sara told me when she was dying. I saw it when it was too late. I have lost Gaspar, and soon I will lose Jozef. This is God’s punishment for me. I keep living and my sons will keep dying.
Papa, I say, please don’t say that. Because as he speaks I feel a chill up and down my arms. His eyes are red-rimmed and his voice a rasp. He sounds to me both crazy and very sane, all at once.
I taught him everything, Papa says. Jozef will not turn away. He wants to go to the top. He wants to prove himself. You know why I know? All his boyhood I told him he was nothing. I know what he thinks. Look at me now, Papa. Look at what I have done. And if he was a banker or a doctor he would be right to do it. But I made him crazy, and look at how he tries to prove himself!
Papa thumps the file folder on my knee.
I thought maybe you were the one to stop him, Papa says. I thought: Here is a woman who will keep him on the ground. And then you had your wonderful son. Such a good boy! You are right to be cautious with him, I should learn this. I am leaving Stane everything, you know.
Papa shakes his head, and I am trying not to cry.
He says, his voice trembling, Jozef is wasting you, and the boy. I have tried to tell him. But he won’t listen, no one listens.
I try, I say to Papa. I try to tell him.
Papa gives me a look, both pained and shrewd.
Maybe. But maybe you spoil him, eh? Maybe you spoil both your little men.
Stane is in the yard, calling Papa’s name and laughing. He has something in his hand—I can’t see what it is. Papa calls to him and Stane runs toward us, loose-limbed, cheeks red.
You listen to me, Ani, Papa says, and then Stane is in front of him. Papa seizes him under one arm, and tickles him with his free hand and says, You love Grandpapa? Say it, say you love your grandpapa, say it, say it, yes?
I love my grandpapa! Stane shrieks.
This is good, Papa says, holding Stane between his big hands, kissing his hair. His eyes flicker to mine and then back again, and he says, Because your grandpapa loves you.
WE LEAVE Papa’s house at dusk. Stane is already drowsy, and we are not on the road twenty minutes before he is asleep in the backseat. Karel drives without speaking, and I do not break the silence either.
Papa is right. If Shipton’s Peak doesn’t kill Jozef, some other mountain will. So much is random, up there. Jozef tells me Gaspar was the better climber, after all—and Gaspar is gone, vanished, without even a body to bury.
He died just after Jozef and I were married. Even while we dated, he and Gaspar were planning an expedition: the southeast pillar of Annapurna III, knife-edged and vertical. He and Gaspar would go up quick and light, succeeding where everyone else had failed. And in any event they did well—so well that, near the top, on mixed ground, they followed two solo lines, unroped. We were racing, Jozef told me.
Jozef reached the mountain’s shoulder. He waited and waited for Gaspar, but Gaspar never arrived. The weather they’d enjoyed all week began to turn. Jozef’s base camp told him to come down. But he could not bring himself to abandon Gaspar.
He told me, soon after, shame-faced, Finally they told me that if I didn’t come down, you’d end up a widow.
Jozef spent the night abseiling down, struggling for hours through the blizzard. By the time he reached the camp he was frostbitten and delirious. He told me that he had heard my voice in the coldest parts of the storm. I told him, he said, to keep going, that I loved him.
I have learned now not to be shocked, when I see Jozef after a climb. Even one that has gone well leaves him emaciated, windburned, covered with cracks and sores. His hands are always rough—he maintains them that way, for friction on the rocks—but by the end of a climb they are almost always bandaged, swollen into stiff mitts.
But I was not prepared for what I saw after Annapurna III. The Jozef I had married was ruddy, bearded, bulging with muscle. The man in the hospital bed in Kathmandu was too thin, his weak chin shaved bare, his eyes heavy-lidded and dull from painkillers and grief. The corners of his mouth turned down like an old man’s. Flaps of skin hung from his cheeks, and from his nose. His hands were wrapped in gauze.
He could barely lift his arms to hold me. When I put my cheek next to him he started to moan and sob.
I listened, he kept saying. And, Gaspar’s gone, he’s gone.
I love you so much, I told him. I’m here. You’re home now.
Only then did he smile—and when he did, his lips cracked and began to bleed down his chin.
WELL INTO THE DRIVE home from Papa’s, the cell phone rings. Karel looks at me and pulls the car over to the side of the road while I answer.
He’s going to the summit, Hugo says into my ear. He reached the ridge and then a few hours later he flashed his light. He’s traversing back to the headwall. He must have seen a route.
I suppose I should have known, I say.
Listen, Ani, he climbed beautifully today. Just beautifully. I think he’ll be fine.
Hugo is a fool, and I don’t care very much what he thinks. I know too that he is in love with Jozef, that to him any decision Jozef makes is the right one. He has made his bargain like I have.
I hope you’re right, I say. Give me a call when you know something.
I will Don’t worry, all right? This is Jozef. He doesn’t make mistakes.
I can’t say anything to this. I turn off the phone. Stane has not stirred in the backseat. I hide my face so that Karel can’t see it. I look into the reflection of my own eyes in the passenger window, and the sight is enough to make me stop. In the window I am a ghost, just an outline of a woman, not anyone who feels anything.
At the house Karel carries Stane inside. Stane puts his arms around Karel’s neck but never really wakes. In his bedroom I take off Stane’s clothes; he’s a rag doll. I kiss his damp forehead and then walk into the kitchen. Karel is sitting at the table, drumming his fingertips.
Are you all right? Karel asks.
We had the conversation earlier this week, about what a terribly stupid question this is, but all the same he still asks it of me, and with him I am not angry. No, I say.
I’ll leave you alone if—
No, I say, and sit down next to him. No. I’m too worked up. I haven’t been sleeping anyway.
Me neither. Are you sad or angry?
I say, Both. And terrified. All three and none at all. I don’t know.
I look at Karel, then tell him what Papa told me tonight.
Karel says, The old man sees more than he used to.
Then a look crosses his face. Papa and Karel spoke alone for a while, too. I wonder what it was Papa said to him. Did Papa spot Karel watching me, or me watching him?
May I tell you something? Karel asks.
My stomach goes in a knot, but I nod anyway.
Papa guessed a secret, Karel says. Marja has left me. It happened two weeks ago. We are going ahead with a divorce.
Karel. You should have told me.
No. Karel twines his fingers together and stares at them. No, I didn’t want to distract you with it.
You think about others too much. I pat his hands and say, Really, I want to know.
There’s a half bottle of wine in the refrigerator, and I set it on the table, then fetch glasses. Karel pours.
He says, Marja has taken a lover—she has had him for a year. A friend told me two months ago. I shouldn’t have been surprised—we have been sleeping in different beds for longer than that. I never confronted her—maybe I didn’t want to believe it. Then last month Marja went away for the weekend, on a trip with this man, and told me lies to my face about what she was doing. Contemptuous lies, and I realized, finally—all this time she has been taunting me. Certainly she has not been discreet.
Karel tips the wineglass one way, then the other. Then he says, The first night she was gone I went to a bar and met a student of mine. I took her home. We used Marja’s bed, and I left it messy for her to find.
He smiles, in a sick way.
He says, I didn’t do this to make Marja confront me. I know men who cheat for that reason—not just sex, you know, but because there’s something wrong, something they can’t name, and so they force their wives to name it for them. But this is not why I did it. I did it to hurt her.
He glances at me, just for a second. Now we are divorcing, he says. So I suppose I did.
I don’t blame you, I say.
I don’t feel guilty, Ani. Saddened, yes. But to feel bad for Marja I have to think back many years.
What he says disturbs me, but I don’t want to tell him why.
I don’t want to tell him how sometimes I lie in the bathtub while Jozef is gone and imagine him coming home from a solo to find us killed. He returns with that calm in him, the Zen thing he says he feels, and then he opens the door to blood and corpses.
You see, my ghost will say to him, you were not the only one in danger.
I tell Karel, Terrible thoughts come and go. We cannot help ourselves.
You’re a saint, Anica.
I think: Would a saint wish her husband an accident in the mountains? Because sometimes I do. I love Jozef, I do. But sometimes the thought rises in me that if he would only die, I would be free of this love. That I can suffer widowhood—I am prepared for it, after all—but not this torture, year after year. I wish for the avalanche to come, for the rope to part, and not only so I can live my life but so I can be right, so I can say that all this suffering and worry was for a reason.
Karel puts his hands over mine, and his thumb curls under to stroke my palm. His fingertips are soft; his hand feels like Stane’s, like mine. This gesture, this picture of the two hands, must be painful for him, because he stares for a while out the window, even though it is the darkest part of the night.
But he does not remove his hands.
Jozef’s a good man, Karel says.
I say, When he isn’t climbing, there’s no one better.
Karel’s thumb keeps making its little circle. I think of the softness of his palms on the bare skin of my belly, sliding along the inside of my thigh.
Karel says, I admire him. Not just because he can do something I can’t. I know one thing for certain about Jozef: he would never cheat on you. His vows are his vows.
But he does, I say, my throat catching. At least another woman wouldn’t kill him. I would rather him have affairs.
This is self-pity, but Karel is kind enough not to say so. Unburdening himself seems to have made him calm, light. He has a little smile.
He says, I have always tried to tell myself that Jozef is an artist, that what he does makes the world bigger, the way a painting does. Or maybe he is like an astronaut. I suppose when I think about it. I would rather the moon have been walked on, than not.
I tell myself the same things, I say, but what do the astronaut’s wives and brothers think, when the rocket goes up?
I imagine, Karel says squeezing my hand, they are like us. Helpless in who they love.
He lifts my hand with his and kisses the backs of my fingers.
I could stop him here. The gesture, we could tell ourselves, was sweet and consoling, nothing more. But I uncurl my thumb and brush it across Karel’s lips, and he kisses it, too.
There, I have done it—for the first time in my marriage I have made an advance toward another man.
I am not angry at Karel, but all the same I pull my hand away, amazed at myself. It drops to the tabletop like someone else’s. Karel’s face changes from tender to shocked. I can almost see his mind retreating from what he has done. I am no adoring student, no silly girl drunk in a bar. I am his brother’s wife.
I cannot apologize enough, he says, and leaves the room.
I sit at the table for a long while. My hand is flat on the table. I can still feel his touch on my hand, like water evaporating off my skin, leaving only a tingle behind.
FOR A LONG TIME after I retreat to bed, I wait for the sounds of Karel leaving, for the rumble of his car retreating down the road. I won’t blame him if he goes. Will I try to stop him? Tell him it was a mistake? Just because we imagine something does not mean it has to happen. But as I tell myself this I imagine rising up and slipping into Karel’s room. I kneel beside his bed and whisper his name, and then tell him, Tonight, I would like to feel safe.
But that is self-pity, too. Sleeping with my brother-in-law might do many things, but it would never make me safer. There is no safety in the love I have. I knew from the very beginning, when I told myself Jozef was an artist, too.
For the first few weeks I knew him, Jozef never told me he climbed. I saw he was muscular, I knew from his tanned skin he liked to be outside, but he told me he worked construction, pouring cement—and this explained why his hands were so rough, too. He was very good at asking me questions then, and not so good at answering them, but I thought this was because he was shy. I was used to men pulling at my clothes the moment we were alone (and in truth I liked it) but Jozef had not even kissed me yet. At heart I was a romantic girl, and so his shyness built itself in my head. I imagined all kinds of histories for him while we drank our coffees, while I held his rough hands in the darkness of cinemas.
But then one night, as we walked together, not too far from the university, he said, in an offhand way, that we were near his flat. I asked to see it, and his eyes grew big. He said it was a mess, that there was nothing in it worth seeing anyway.
But I felt bold that night—I told him it was time we saw one another’s flats, and held his eyes after I said it.
Jozef took me up a long flight of steps, where the lights were bad, the floors and walls stained. As I climbed I thought about how little I knew of him, how seedy this place was, how I might be walking into danger. I followed his trim shape past the flickering bare bulbs on the landings, and listened to him jingle his keys, and I felt a thrill.
But that was the girl I was then.
When he unlocked the door and turned on the lights, I didn’t understand at first what I saw. His flat was an attic room, with a sloped ceiling. A very small place. And all the walls and the ceiling were covered in naked plywood, and jutting everywhere from the wood were small, oddly shaped protrusions, in many different colors. Here and there, hanging from clips, were straps, loops of rope, collections of odd metal implements and tools. In one corner was a weight bench, and in the center of the floor was a mattress and a grimy tangle of sheets. It all smelled strongly of wood and sweat. I had never seen a climbing wall—I could only think that Jozef was a pervert, a sadist. My stomach did loops.
But Jozef looked chagrined, and said, Now you know my secret.
What is all this? I asked him.
He looked at me strangely.
I am a climber, he said. A mountaineer. My brother and I climb in the Himalayas. I train here. He smiled. These are my rocks.
I walked into the room and touched the walls, the plywood and the smooth nylon straps, the knobby holds. Some were rough and felt like stone; some seemed polished down by use.
I said, Why didn’t you tell me?
He looked at his feet, and said, Women are sometimes strange about it. I like you, and didn’t want anything to change between us. It was stupid of me.
I wish you’d told me.
He blushed, and said, I know. I’ve been a coward.
I liked that he blushed.
I asked, Are you afraid of me?
He nodded and then looked me in the eye.
You put me in knots, he said.
Jozef, I told him, I can’t see how a man who climbs mountains can be afraid of a woman.
His face clouded. On a mountain, I know what I’m doing.
I kissed him. Our kiss didn’t last long, but it could have; the moment I moved to him I saw his eyes soften, and I knew he would kiss me for as long as I let him, that he didn’t want to be shy anymore. I put my hands on his chest and was shocked at the feel of him. Even muscular men have a bit of softness. Jozef didn’t; under his shirt was warm stone.
Show me something, I said. Show me how you climb.
He blushed. I don’t practice in front of people. My brother, but not—
Not a girl? I said, still giddy from the kiss. Well, this is your punishment for keeping a secret. You owe me another one.
I’m not dressed for it, he said. This is my nice shirt and pants.
He meant it honestly enough, and I laughed. I went to him and unbuttoned his shirt and slid it from him. His eyes went wide, but he did not stop me. His chest and arms were almost frightening. They still are. His muscles are so distinct, he sometimes looks like a man without skin. I touched his shoulders and he shivered.
He was very rare, I thought, and maybe then I fell in love with him.
You can unbutton your own trousers, I said to him.
I’ll change in the bathroom.
A few minutes later, dressed only in spandex shorts, he climbed for me. He climbed a wall in two or three quick moves, his arms lifting him like he weighed nothing, like all that muscle was only a shell filled with feathers.
The ceiling, I said, when he was on the ground again.
He wasn’t even flushed.
All right, he said. But you have to keep the mattress under me.
He climbed from the lowest part of the ceiling to the highest, his back rippling near the level of my chin. I scooted the mattress along with my foot. And I could not take my eyes from him. Watching him was like seeing pornography; his movements were strangely intimate. The muscles in his neck and face strained. He made small grunts and moans. A bright lamp in the corner threw odd shadows, and his shoulders began to gleam with sweat.
And he was good. You do not have to understand the particulars of an art to know when an artist performs well. I knew, watching Jozef, that his artistry surpassed mine by orders of magnitude.
He defied gravity, just because I asked him to do it—and when he dropped off the last hold onto the floor, I was ready to make love to him, I was ready to do anything he asked.
His soul had lifted, too—when he turned to me, in an instant before he grew embarrassed and flushed again, I saw triumph, I saw passion. A muscle in his chest pulsed with blood, and it was all I could do not to press my lips against him there, to feel that fluttering, that life under my tongue.
You should take me out again, I said to him. Tomorrow night.
He smiled at me, slyly, and buttoned his shirt across his chest.
The sun is up high outside the bedroom window. For a while I lie still, trying to remember the night before, and when I must have slept. I hear laughter from the kitchen—Stane’s—and Karel’s deep voice answering. And I remember, with a flood of shame.
And, still, disappointment underneath it all.
I cannot hide from them. I put on my robe and walk into the living room, my feet numb on the cold wood floors. Stane and Karel are looking at the laptop in the kitchen. The whole house smells of coffee and bacon; Karel has been cooking what he knows to cook.
Good morning, lazy, Stane says giggling.
Aren’t we clever, I say and ruffle his hair.
Karel glances up from the computer and says, Coffee’s on. He gives me a brief look—like a dog that is sorry for something and expects to be hit.
Any news? I ask.
Papa’s almost at the top, Stane says. The line’s only this far away. He holds his thumb and forefinger apart.
The weather’s good, Karel says. He should make it.
Well, that’s good. I sit down; I have no idea what else to say.
Now that I am with them, we eat breakfast, though the clock says it is almost noon. Again I feel that strange disconnect—I eat strips of bacon, and thousands of kilometers away my husband is struggling up the headwall of Shipton’s Peak. He is, right now, doing what no one in the world has ever done. He writes his name in history as I sip my coffee.
I was thinking, Karel says, that after lunch we could all go for a walk. I’ve wanted to take a look at the Roman wall. I have Stane’s support for this plan, don’t I?
He does, Stane says eagerly. Can we go?
This sounds like a grand idea to me, too—far better than sitting inside the house waiting for the phone to ring. And I am grateful to the point of tears that Karel is still here, that he is trying to pretend we did not do what we did.
I shower and dress after breakfast, and I dawdle in the house for a moment while Stane and Karel wait for me in the yard. This is when I decide to forget the cell phone. The weather outside is beautiful, and, one way or another, I would like to be in that world, not inside my head, imagining asphyxiation, frostbite, a four-kilometer drop.
Then we walk. Across the valley the sun turns the limestone Alps from gray to a warm blond, and down lower the blankets of pine are rich and green. The river at the valley floor is not so much a color as a collection of lights and reflections of the land. We stay close alongside the Roman wall, which is really not much to see—it is mostly low and crumbling, with occasional tall pillars, overhung by trees, in places collapsed by growing roots.
Stane ranges ahead of Karel and me, like a shepherd dog looping around to see that his flock is safe, before returning to scout the road ahead. He has a bagful of his toy men with him, what looks like a whole regiment, and whenever he returns he has one or another clutched in his fist. He talks to them, sometimes.
Karel walks next to me with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looking from side to side across the valley—anywhere but at me. His face is perfectly composed, and this is how I know he is still troubled. Our footsteps rasp too loud, maybe because Stane is now too far ahead of us to make much noise—or maybe because Karel and I have not yet said ten words to each other.
I feel sixteen again, walking with a boy and not knowing whether to take his hand.
No. I feel twenty, waking hungover in a man’s bed and wondering how I am to make my exit.
But this is not right either. Maybe it is time to say to myself what is true: that I am a married woman of thirty-two who has come close to her first affair, who wants maybe to fall in love with another man. That it feels like nothing else feels. I blush. A strange gravity keeps pulling Karel and I to each other. Every once in a while our hips bump, and we quickly move apart.
I try to think about Jozef, the difficulties of the summit headwall. Right now he is almost certainly in agony, gasping, starving—a hair’s width from his death. And whether he has reached the top, or is still struggling up—even if he is on the way down—he is thinking, surely, of me, of Stane. I will pull myself to you with my hands. This is happening, right now, out to the east beyond the curve of the earth.
Then we are next to an opening in the wall, one that leads upward, to a trail.
I am not in control of my words. I say to Karel, We should go through. That path goes up to a nice meadow. From there you can see most of the valley.
Karel thinks for longer than he should. He says, All right.
I call Stane back. He arrives out of breath. I tell him we’re going up to the meadow.
He surprises me, though, by asking if he can stay down by the road.
I brought my men, he says. I want to play down here.
You don’t want to come up with us?
He shrugs and looks off into the distance. This gesture he has learned from his father. I cannot imagine what plans he really has—or maybe he doesn’t have any; maybe he is just tired of hearing grown-ups speak of art and Romans. If he and I were by ourselves, I might tell him to come anyway. But the guilty joy rises up in me, knowing Karel and I will be alone. Stane plays by himself in the woods all the time, he’ll be fine—this is what I tell myself.
We won’t be long, I say. Don’t go too far from the path here, okay?
Sure, Mama.
The walk up to the meadow takes only ten minutes or so. The path between the trees is shaded and cool, and I am pleased to find that my worries recede here a little, as they always have. I love the pine forests in the summer, the thick padding of fallen dry needles under my feet, the clean smell. Here and there chunks of rock break out of the humus, like mountains in bud, patched by moss. Several of them are marred by chalk marks—where Jozef works on holds and problems. I have helped him before, making sure a mat is always positioned beneath him. Lately Stane comes out here to help him, too.
Karel’s face is less clouded; he appreciates this place, even if his gravity won’t let him say so.
And then we are in the meadow. It is on a slope, and at the upper end of it we stop and lean against a rock and look out over our swath of valley. The river curves and gleams. Our house is just visible off to the left, the sun winking from a skylight. The highest peak across the valley has caught a wisp of cloud in the corrie just beneath its summit—from here it seems no larger than the house, but it must be a hundred meters wide. Jozef has said the mountains make their own weather, that sometimes it will rain up there when all the rest of the valley is in bright dry light. The earth and the sky turn independently of each other, Jozef says, and they sometimes grind and catch. As I think this a breeze picks up and the trees on the slope beneath us hiss and sway. The same air my husband climbs in.
But this is not true. Jozef is climbing at 8,000 meters. We are at 1,200 meters now. I look above the peaks of the Alps, into the deep clear blue. My husband is a madman, halfway to space.
I shift on the rock and my hand brushes Karel’s.
This is beautiful, I say. Isn’t it?
Listen, Karel says, abruptly enough that he has to cough after saying it. Listen, Ani. I think today I’ll go back home.
The thought fills me with even more sadness than I would have guessed. He says these words, and the valley seems less beautiful, the blue of the sky heavier.
You don’t have to go, I say.
No, he says. But I should. I’ve overstepped my place, and I feel miserable. My life is enough of a shambles without this on my conscience.
His hand has still not moved away from mine.
When I was twenty I would have insisted, I would have grabbed him in my arms—back then I thought that was the answer to everything.
If I tell you I agree, I say to him, I don’t want you to think that it’s because I’m sorry.
His eyes now are soft and brown and a little wet.
I mean it, Karel. Whether you know it or not, you’ve made this week bearable for me.
I hope that’s true, he says and pats my hand. His soft palm rests on my fingers.
Then he closes his eyes and says, Jozef and Gaspar tried to teach me to climb once. Have I told you that? We all went to the Dolomites one summer. It was a disaster. I got up on the rock, and I couldn’t move. I almost died, just twelve meters off the ground on the easiest crag in Italy, because my arms and legs began to shake. They had to lower me down on a rope, with Gaspar holding me around my waist. I cried. Eighteen years old and I cried like a baby. They were kind about it, they always were, but I knew I was different from them. We all knew it.
He looks at the sheer cliffs across the valley, maybe thinking, as I am, about how there’s not a single one Jozef hasn’t scampered up and down and sideways.
I grip his hand and tell him something I have never told anyone. Not even Jozef. It is a secret I keep so close I rarely admit it to myself. Why shouldn’t I tell Karel now? I have been ready to give him much more of myself, and this time here, in our meadow—the last of our time together—seems right for secrets.
I did a terrible thing, I say. You remember after Gaspar died? What an awful state Jozef was in?
I remember, Karel says.
And so I tell him.
The year after Gaspar died, Jozef and I moved to a tiny flat in the middle of Ljubljana. I taught art, and Jozef took a job as an instructor at the Alpine Club. He hated it. But that year nothing made him happy. He had lost several toes to frostbite; he could only walk with a cane at first, and he could not hold the construction jobs he loved. And of course he missed Gaspar—Gaspar who had taught him to climb, who had taken him in when Jozef fled their father. But more than anything he missed the mountains, and what he did there. Every night he wept. Some weekends he could not rouse himself from bed.
I was gentle with him. I told him always how glad I was that he was alive. I told him we could live a happy life together. I even told him he might climb again—it seemed an easy lie, a way to pacify him. I believed—I knew—that in the end, Jozef would come to the same conclusion I already had: that climbing was too dangerous, the cost of failure there too high.
But then he met Hugo, who worships him, and made him want to love himself again. Jozef bought special shoes; he taught himself to lose the cane. Then he and Hugo started hiking together. One day I came home and found Jozef putting up his climbing holds on the wall of our living room.
I have to try, he told me.
I told myself that, surely, physically, he wasn’t ready.
But one weekend, not two months later, he told me: he and Hugo were going to try an easy route on Triglav. The north wall of Triglav is 1,200 meters high, and sheer. No route there is easy.
I went hysterical. Jozef, in his way, tried to calm me by reassuring me of his prowess, his belief. This is when he told me how my love keeps him alive. How he climbs to me.
Finally I made him angry. He shouted, Do you only want to love half a man? Became that is what I am. You knew who I was when you fell in love with me.
1 didn’t understand, I said. I didn’t know.
You decide, he said, walking out the door. You can have me as the man I am, or not at all.
We barely spoke, and that weekend he and Hugo packed their gear and drove to the mountains. And he survived Triglav—not only that, he and Hugo did well, putting up a new variation. When Jozef came home I embraced him, told him I was sorry. I was—I couldn’t be without him, as miserable and frightened as he made me. And anyway Jozef was jubilant, his old self again.
I can’t help who I am, he told me. I can’t, Ani.
We made love again and again that night, and it was when we lay together afterward that he told me he was thinking again about the Himalayas.
Now I tell Karel, That was when I started poking holes in his condoms.
Karel looks at me, and then again out over the meadow, doing math.
He says, You were pregnant when Jozef left for Makalu.
Yes.
He squeezes my hand. I’m sorry, he whispers.
I thought he would stop, I say. But then the solos started. The baby only made things worse.
I am crying now, and can’t say any more. Karel rubs my hand. I pull him into an embrace.
And it happens, it happens.
After a few minutes in his arms, I stop my crying. I look at Karel’s face. The way his mouth doesn’t know quite how to hold itself, the way his mind is torn between concern and wanting. He is such a good man—like his brother would be, if his brother was not crazy.
Karel’s hands slide to my hips, and we hold each other. I take one of his hands in between both of mine and press it between our bodies. I caress his palm with my thumbs. I am used to rough skin, like sandpaper, to bandages and chalk and torn nails. Not this hand which seems to join with mine.
And then I am closer, and Karel is closer, and he is touching my face with all the wonder and sweetness that I have wished for. He bends forward and kisses my forehead; his beard is soft on the bridge of my nose. I close my eyes and listen for Stane’s footsteps coming up the path, but the air is still, the whole valley silent.
The thought of my son should stop me, but no: I am putting my arms around Karel’s waist, lifting my face to his. I am a woman, it seems, who can kiss a man not her husband while within earshot of her son.
Karel’s face is large in front of mine, his hips pushing in close. I take off his glasses and tuck them into the pocket of his jacket. My hands slip underneath the jacket, and I feel his back, smooth under his thin shirt. He kisses well, more forcefully than I would have guessed. He places one large, warm hand flat on my belly. I am making sounds in my throat, the way I do when I kiss Jozef.
Because it is what I must do, I try to stop myself, to think of my husband:
Jozef walks into the meadow. He retreated from the climb after all, they helicoptered him out, and here he is, just home. He sees us. Karel’s hands are under my blouse, at the small of my back. Jozef’s face falls into shock, then pain, and I can see that he thinks: I fought for this. I stayed alive to see this. Karel is kissing my jaw, under my ear. Jozef shouts, My wife, my brother—
But this seems too much like vengeance, too much like I am kissing Karel in anger, which is not what I feel at all.
So I imagine my husband in love with me: Jozef, ten years younger, walks into the café. His beard is too big for his face, and the corners of his eyes crinkle up when he smiles at me—as though he recognizes me, as though he is surprised to see such an old friend in a place like this.
Karel’s arms are tightening around my waist, pulling me close to him, and up on the balls of my feet. I am stretching my mouth wide against his.
Jozef. I wake in the night after giving birth to Stane, only to see Jozef sitting awake in the corner; he smiles tenderly at me and asks if I would like some water. He holds the glass to my lips and then kisses me and strokes my hair. I love you, he whispers, runs his rough finger across my cheek. I love our son.
Karel puts his hands under my bottom and lifts me onto the rock. I curl my calves around his legs. He nuzzles the space where my blouse is open.
Love me, Jozef says. As long as you love me I will be all right.
Right now his hands are on rock, his lungs ache, he tastes blood.
Death, then. Think of death—death, after all, has given us permission. So here: Jozef moaning into my neck in the hospital. Papa’s eyes red with loss and rage. And here: Gaspar’s casket, my shocked husband hobbling to it with a cane, putting his hand on the lid, as though something is inside it. Here is Gaspar’s wispy blond girlfriend, arriving suddenly from Dresden, knowing no one and latching on to me in her grief. We were engaged, she says to me, her voice so thin it must hurt her to say any words at all. She says, We hadn’t told anyone, we were waiting till he came back to announce it. There’s Papa in a chair, head in his hand, Karel’s hands on his shoulders. Across the room Jozef embraces other climbers, some flown in from Russia and America. Two Sherpas are here from Nepal. None of the wives or girlfriends look at each other except in sideways glances, mistaken turns. We listen to the men we love so much say over and over, At least he died doing what he loved. I keep my arm around Gaspar’s German girl, knowing what she thinks, what all the women think: if Gaspar died doing what he loved, he would have died at home, he would have died inside her. These brave men are cowards, that is what I think. I look around the room, a little drunk from a flask Karel brought, the girl snuffling into my shoulder, and I know—for the first time I know—tonight is only a rehearsal.
My husband, alive, does not stop me. But Jozef dead and gone—this is what makes me pull away from Karel.
Love does not keep me faithful.
But shame does.
I’m sorry, Karel says, breath rasping.
I shake my head and slide away from him. No, I say, angry now. No. We both did this.
He nods twice, quickly, and rubs his jaw as though I have hurt it.
We have both agreed on a course, but there is still wildness in the air, that thing which is so easily called up between us but so difficult to dispel. I walk to the edge of the meadow and back again, to calm myself more than anything else. Karel stands next to the rocks, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. I want to tell him not to feel bad, but for now I cannot go closer.
Over the curve of the hill, a curl of dust rises: a car driving slowly toward the house. I look at Karel. We stand side by side on the hilltop and try to see who it could be—we can barely see the road from the meadow, only glimpses through gaps in the trees. The trail of dust slows and begins to billow, and then for a moment we see a van, marked on the side with the 24ur emblem.
Something has happened, I say.
We hurry back down the path. I try to prepare myself. Today is summit day, and that is all the news people care about: they don’t ever think about how, if Jozef makes the top, he still has to climb down, half dead. But maybe something else has happened. I tell myself: Hugo wouldn’t inform the media before me. But I have been gone for an hour, and there are many people at base camp, all with satellite phones.
I do not believe it, but of course in my heart I do: I broke my promise. I kissed Karel and Jozef has died.
I am almost running when I emerge from the woods onto the road. The van is parked twenty or thirty meters away. I walk to it, and this is what I see:
A cameraman and a newswoman are standing next to the Roman wall, right in front of one of the tall crumbling pillars, three meters high. And clinging to the stone, at the level of their heads, is Stane. I hear one of the newspeople say, loudly, so Stane can hear too, He’s his father’s boy, look at that.
Stane is climbing. Not the clambering up tree trunks I’ve seen him do. The newswoman was right.
He has been taught.
Stane grips the rock the right way, locking his thumbs over the tops of his fingers, keeping his balance out away from the rock, suddenly lying sideways, leaning away from a crevice while his feet push the other way. By the time I reach him he has touched the top of the pillar, and when he does this he emits a laugh, the squeak of delight I know so well.
The newspeople applaud, and the cameraman moves in, and Stane takes one hand off the rock to wave.
The newswoman is saying something about a new generation, and that’s when I force my way past her. I put my hands on Stane’s waist and pull him off the pillar. He’s heavier than he used to be, but I catch most of his weight, even though it nearly knocks me over.
Turn the cameras off, I say. Get out of here.
The camera swivels to me. The newswoman asks if I have any words about Jozef’s success today. All of the nation is watching, she says. We’re all very proud.
I turn and walk back to the house, Stane shocked in my arms. I am so angry I can barely see. I pass Karel, just coming out of the trees, and I say, Get rid of them.
Mama, put me down, Stane says. Put me down.
I set him down and then swat him twice on the behind, hard. The newspeople can see us, but I don’t care. I pull Stane along by the arm. He’s wriggling and trying to escape, without knowing why or where to go. I can’t help it. I tug him off the road, down the slope, into the trees out of sight. There I swat him again, and again, enough so that he stops struggling and begins to cry. Enough so that he knows.
Then I kneel and put my arms around him. Stane smells of little-boy sweat and pine needles. He tries once again to pull away, but then he sees me crying, and this hurts him more than the spanking. I hold him to me, my quivering son.
He is a man, eyes crinkling like his father’s, smiling at a girl in a café. He is calling a name into swirling snow, screaming wind, alone.
Mama, he says. It’s okay, I was only climbing.
I tell him, You mustn’t, Stane.
I am holding him as an infant, handing him for the first time to Jozef. Jozef’s face falls into pieces when he takes his newborn son—when he looks up again at me, for the first time as a father. And I know: my husband will never climb again, he will never risk anything, now that he has seen his darling boy. I shake and throb inside and think I might die from love. I watch Stane in his father’s arms and I think, My sweet boy, do you know what you have done? You have given me your father back. You’ve saved us. You’ve saved me.
You mustn’t, I say into Stane’s ear. I shake him with each word.
You mustn’t ever.