The Abominable: A Novel

Chapter 12

But how do you keep a chicken carcass fresh over weeks if the snows hit you at Camp Three below the North Col, Mr. Deacon? Do you plan to carry ice with you? An electric refrigeration unit?

We awake early at Reggie’s estate. The plantation house has a neatly manicured backyard as trim and broad and long as a cricket field. Above and below the house, morning fogs seem to be rising like respiration from the green rows of tea plantings, and suddenly I can see silhouettes of men moving between and then out of those rows, onto the yard, as if the fog had congealed itself into human forms. I count thirty figures as the sun brightens and the fog begins to dissipate. Beyond the plantation hills rise the distant white peaks of the Himalayas so brilliant with the dawn’s sunlight that I have to squint toward them, and yet still their white glare makes my eyes water.

“Too many men,” says the Deacon. “I’d planned on only a dozen or so Sherpa coolies.”

“Just ‘Sherpas,’ not ‘coolies,’” says Reggie. “‘Sherpa’ means ‘people from the east.’ They came over the nineteen-thousand-foot Nangpa La generations ago. They’ve fought a thousand years for their land and independence. And never have they been anyone’s ‘coolies.’”

“Still too many,” says the Deacon as the ragged forms of men solidify more fully and move across the grassy expanse toward us.

Reggie shakes her head. “I’ll explain later why we need at least thirty. For now I’ll introduce all of them and pull aside the dozen or so that I think will make excellent high-climbers. ‘Tigers,’ your General Bruce and Colonel Norton liked to call them. Most of the chosen speak English. I’ll let the three of you interview them and choose whomever you want as your two co-climbers.”

“You know all their names?” I ask.

Reggie nods. “Of course. I also know their parents and wives and families.”

“And these Sherpas all live near Darjeeling?” asks Jean-Claude. “Near your plantation?”

“No,” says Reggie. “These men are the best of the best. Some live in the Solu Khumbu region of Nepal, near the southern approaches to Mount Everest. Others come from the Nepali district of Helambu or the Arun Valley or Rowaling. Still others from Kathmandu. Only about a fourth of these climbers live within four days’ walk of Darjeeling.”

“Previous expeditions have always chosen a few Darjeeling Sherpas and then added more porters from the Tibetan villages along the way,” says the Deacon.

“Yes,” says Reggie and smacks her leather riding crop against her gloved palm. She had come in from her morning ride as the three of us were gathering in the huge kitchen for coffee just before sunrise. “That’s why the first three English expeditions had some good Sherpa climbers but many porters not at all fit for climbing. Tibetans are wonderful people, proud and courageous, but when pressed into duty as porters, as you probably remember from your two expeditions here, Mr. Deacon, they tend to act rather like unionized Englishmen and go on strike for better wages, more food, fewer carrying hours…and always at the worst time. Sherpas don’t do that. If they sign on to help, they help until they die.”

The Deacon grunts, but I notice that he doesn’t argue the point.

Pasang has put the thirty Sherpas in a rough line, and one by one they come forward, bow to Lady Bromley-Montfort, and are then introduced to us by Reggie herself. As the strange names wash over me, I wonder how she can tell the little brown men apart, but then I realize my own American astigmatism: this Sherpa is heavier than the others, this one has a full dark beard, that one a few wispy whiskers, this one is clean-shaven but with brows grown together into a single black line above his eyes. This man has missing front teeth, the man after him a dazzlingly brilliant white smile. Some are burly, some thin. Some are dressed in fine cotton, others in little more than rags. A few wear Western-style hiking boots; far more are in sandals; some are barefooted.

Introductions completed, Pasang waves more than half the men into a more distant part of the yard, where they squat amicably and speak softly amongst themselves.

“I’ve never interviewed a Sherpa for a job position before,” whispers Jean-Claude.

“I have,” says the Deacon.

But in the end it is Pasang and Reggie who help us make up our minds. As the three of us make little more than small talk, Pasang might say, “Nyima can carry more than twice his weight all day without tiring,” or Reggie might comment, “Ang Chiri lives in a village situated above fifteen thousand feet and seems to have no trouble with greater altitudes,” and that sort of information, along with a man’s ability to speak or understand English, is what helps us decide, especially on who our personal Sherpas will be.

After twenty minutes, we realize that Pasang will be Reggie’s sole Sherpa—as well as Sirdar or boss-man of all the Sherpas, even while serving as the expedition’s physician. J.C. has chosen Norbu Chedi and Lhakpa Yishay as his Sherpas. The two men, while from different villages and evidently not related, look enough alike as to be brothers; both have let their bangs grow down over their eyes, and Reggie explains that these long bangs take the place of darkened goggles to protect against snow blindness where the men live high up amongst the glaciers.

The Deacon has chosen Nyima Tsering—a short, stout Sherpa with a loud giggle he uses as prelude to his pidgin English answer to each question, and who can carry more than twice his own weight. The Deacon’s second choice is a taller, thinner, more English-proficient man named Tenzing Bothia who never went anywhere without his own assistant, young Tejbir Norgay.

I choose a smiling, roly-poly, but obviously healthy and happy fellow named Babu Rita to be one of my two Tigers and Ang Chiri of the high-altitude village as my other co-climber. Babu’s wide grin is so infectious that it’s everything I can do not to grin back at him all the time. He has all his teeth. Ang is a relatively short man but with a barrel chest so broad that my father would have described it as “doing a Kentucky thoroughbred justice.” I can imagine Ang Chiri climbing all the way to the summit of Everest without ever needing oxygen from anyone’s tank.

We spend a few more minutes chatting, and then Reggie announces that the jovial little fellow named Semchumbi—no last name evidently—will be the head cook for the expedition. A tall, serious, relatively light-skinned Sherpa named Nawang Bura will be in charge of the pack animals.

“And speaking of pack animals,” says Reggie, “we need to start apportioning the gear into bundles for the mules.” She claps her hands, Pasang makes gestures, and all thirty of the men rush toward the lower stables, where our trucks are parked with the gear.

“And, gentlemen, you need to get about choosing your riding ponies and saddles,” says Reggie, leading us briskly toward the larger upper stable.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I’m sitting on the white pony and my feet are flat on the ground.

“They’re Tibetan ponies,” says Reggie. “Much more surefooted than regular horses or ponies on the icy mountain trails we’ll be taking, and able to graze where a regular horse or mule would find no forage.”

“Yes, but…,” I say. I stand up and let the pony walk out from under me. Jean-Claude is laughing so hard he’s holding his sides. His legs are short enough that he can hitch them up his pony’s flanks and look as if he’s actually riding. The Deacon has chosen a pony but hasn’t bothered getting on the thing.

When I saw Reggie’s big roan gelding trotting into the stable at dawn after her ride, I assumed we’d be riding real horses into Tibet. After all, Bruce’s equipment list for the 1924 expedition had recommended each Englishman bring along his own saddle.

I look at the miniature white pony walking out from under my bowed legs. Hell, even an English saddle would weigh the poor thing down; an American western saddle would crush it.

As if reading my mind, the Deacon says, “You can ride with just a blanket pad on the poor beast, but you’ll get tired holding your legs up, Jake. Sliding off the pony on some of the narrow mountain trails we’ll be on would be a bad idea…it might be three or four hundred vertical feet to the river below. There are wooden Tibetan saddles that Mallory wanted us to use in ’twenty-one, but I would not recommend them.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“They’re shaped like a wooden ‘V,’” says Reggie. “They’ll crush your testicles after two or three miles.”

I’ve never heard a woman say testicles before, and I realize that I’m blushing wildly. Jean-Claude doesn’t help by laughing.

“I’m going down to help Dr. Pasang supervise the loading,” says the Deacon.

Reggie is telling the liveryman which small pony saddles should go with which small pony. I get the largest saddle.

“Luncheon is at eleven sharp,” she calls after the Deacon. “We have to settle the provisions problem then.”

The Deacon stops, turns, opens his mouth to say something, but then pulls his unlit pipe from his tweed jacket’s pocket and bites down on the stem. Making a military turn on his right heel, he walks quick time out of the stable and down toward the garages and smaller stable, from which direction we can hear the shouting of Sherpas and the braying of mules.

The Deacon and Reggie argue loudly during lunch, continue the argument over sherry in the afternoon when the gear and provisions finally have been apportioned to packs for quick loading on the mules in the morning, and resume the arguments again during dinner in the grand dining room.

They argue over provisions, about the route, over alternate plans for the search for Percival Bromley’s corpse, about methods of climbing once we get to Everest, and—most central to all of the arguments—about who is in charge of the expedition.

In the middle of the arguing at lunchtime, the Deacon brings up a mystery that we haven’t been able to solve despite all of the Deacon’s contacts with the 1924 expedition: i.e., how on earth had Percival Bromley been allowed to tag along behind the expedition? Both General Charles Bruce, before he became ill and had to leave the expedition, and Colonel Norton, who took over general command of the expedition, were sticklers for staying with the plan they’d laid out. Even the addition of one more person to be responsible for would have fouled up their plans, and certainly young Percy wasn’t such a renowned climber that Mallory and the others wouldn’t have objected strongly to his nearby presence, even if he weren’t a member of the expedition. Even the Deacon’s good friends Noel Odell and the moviemaker who’d caused such controversy with his dancing lamas, Captain John Noel, had told the Deacon that they had no idea why Percy had been allowed to tag along. All they knew was that both General Bruce and Colonel Norton insisted that it was all right, against all logic—and each climber that the Deacon queried had said that Percy was such a nice and unassuming chap that as long as he simply followed the expedition, perhaps a half day’s march behind, he was tolerated.

But there had been no plans for young Lord Percival Bromley to go with them even as far as Everest Base Camp at the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier. Everyone had understood that.

In the middle of arguing over provisions, the Deacon returns to this issue of how and why Percival Bromley was allowed to tag along to Mount Everest.

Reggie is weary of the talk, and her tone is of the sort that ends most conversations. “Listen one last time, Mr. Deacon. Cousin Percival was visiting here when the ’twenty-four expedition leaders were invited to the plantation to have dinner with Lord and Lady Lytton, as well as Percy and me. Lord Lytton, as you may remember, was Governor-General of Bengal, and he and General Bruce and Colonel Norton met alone with Percy for the better part of an hour in the study. When they emerged, both Bruce and Norton announced that Percy would be allowed to follow the expedition—not travel with them, you understand, and never be on the official rolls, but strictly travel behind them—the condition being that Percy provide his own pony, tent, and foodstuffs. The last was no problem because Percy had been assembling his kit here at the plantation for two weeks before the expedition arrived in Calcutta.”

The Deacon shakes his head. “That makes no sense. Let someone just follow the expedition into Tibet? Someone with no official clearance to be in Tibet? Even if Lord Percival were following a day behind the real expedition, as an Englishman, his arrest or detention might have put the entire expedition at risk with the dzongpens and Tibetan authorities. It makes no sense at all.”

“What are these dzongpens I’ve been hearing so much about?” asks Jean-Claude. “Just local headmen? Village chiefs? Tibetan warlords?”

“None of the above, really,” says Reggie. “Most Tibetan communities are run by dzongpens—usually two men—one an important lama and the other an important layperson from the village. But sometimes there’s a single dzongpen chieftain.” She turns back to the Deacon. “It’s getting late in the afternoon, Mr. Deacon. Have all your questions been answered to your satisfaction?”

“All save for why your cousin was trying to climb Everest after the Norton Expedition had left the area,” presses the Deacon.

Reggie laughs with no humor in her voice. “Percy never attempted to climb Mount Everest. Of that I am certain.”

“Sigl told both the Berliner Zeitung and The Times that he had been attempting precisely that,” says the Deacon. “Sigl says that when he and the other Germans arrived at Camp Two—just exploring out of an original intent to meet Mallory and then from sheer curiosity—he, Sigl, and the other Germans could see your cousin and Kurt Meyer staggering down the North Ridge. Obviously in some difficulty.”

Reggie shakes her head with absolute certainty. Her blue-black curls slide across her shoulders. “Bruno Sigl lied,” she says sharply. “Percy may have had a reason to go up onto the mountain, but I know for a certainty that he did not go into Tibet in order to attempt a climb of Mount Everest. Bruno Sigl is a common German thug who lies.”

“How do you know Sigl is a common German thug?” asks the Deacon. “Do you know him?”

“Of course not,” snaps Reggie. “But I had inquiries made in Germany and elsewhere. Sigl is a dangerous climber, dangerous to himself and anyone with him, and in his regular life in Munich he’s a fascist thug.”

“Do you think that Sigl was somehow complicit in your cousin’s and this Meyer’s death?” asks the Deacon.

Reggie fixes her ultramarine gaze on the Deacon but does not answer.

In the calmer part of the afternoon, we show Reggie J.C.’s modified 12-point crampons and the shorter ice axes for vertical travel. Then Jean-Claude demonstrates the jumar climbing mechanism and the caver’s rope ladders we’ve brought.

“Brilliant,” says Reggie. “It all should make getting onto the North Col infinitely easier—and safer for the porters with the fixed ropes and ladders. But I don’t have boots rigid enough for the pointed crampons, I fear.”

“You’d need them only if you were leading the climb,” says the Deacon. “And I guarantee you will not be doing that.”

“I brought an extra pair of rigid boots,” says Jean-Claude. “And I think they may fit you. I’ll run and get them and we’ll see.”

They did fit her. She made some practice swings with the short ice hammers. The Deacon did not roll his eyes, but I could see this took some effort.

“Now I have an innovation for all of you,” says Reggie. She goes into a storeroom and returns a few minutes later with four pairs of what look to be leather-strap football headgear, or perhaps leather bands that a coal miner might wear. But there are two insulated batteries in the back and an electric miner’s lamp on the front.

“I had these made up after I returned from Everest last September,” she says. “Lord Montfort had extensive mining operations in Wales. These are the newest thing—electric headlamps instead of carbide flames that might trigger an explosion. The batteries are a bit heavy, but they power the lamps for hours…and I have a lot of extra batteries.”

“What on earth for?” asks the Deacon, holding the leather straps and lamp and heavy batteries at arm’s length.

Reggie sighs. “According to Norton, Noel, and others I spoke to as their defeated party retreated through Darjeeling last year, Mallory and Irvine had planned to depart their high tent at six or six thirty a.m., but the slowness of everything—getting boots on properly, trying to melt snow on the stove for water for a hot drink and hot gruel before departing but overturning the cooker, getting their oxygen apparatus on and working, everything done so terribly slowly at that altitude—kept them in their camp until eight a.m. or later. That’s far too late to leave camp for a summit bid. Even if they reached the summit, there was no way they could have gotten back down to their Camp Five before nightfall. Probably not even back down to the Yellow Band.”

“How early do you suggest a summit team should leave camp with these…these…things on their heads?” asks the Deacon.

“No later than two a.m., Mr. Deacon. I would suggest closer to midnight the night before the actual summit attempt.”

The Deacon laughs at the thought of climbing at that altitude at night. “We’d freeze,” he says dismissively.

“No, no,” says Jean-Claude. “Remember, Ree-shard, that thanks to you, we have Monsieur Finch’s lovely warm goose down duvet jackets, enough for all of us and for our Tiger Sherpas. And I believe that Lady Brom…that Reggie has a good point here. There are fewer avalanches at night. The snow and ice are firmer. The new crampons would work better with the colder snow and more solid ice. And if these headlamps truly show the way…”

“They do for hundreds of modern Welsh miners,” interrupts Reggie. “At least the engineers and supervisors. And Welsh miners don’t have the advantage of starlight or moonlight in their dark holes.”

“Magnifique!” says Jean-Claude.

“Very interesting,” I say.

“Leave high camp at midnight for the summit,” says the Deacon. “Absolutely absurd.”

There are 40 mules allocated for the trek in to Everest, and each mule is capable of carrying a double pack weighing some 160 pounds. One Sherpa porter can handle two mules even while carrying his own heavy loads of our excess baggage.

Reggie has argued for more prepared food for the expedition. The Deacon is adamantly against it. As we’re eating a delicious dinner of pheasant under glass set off with a very fine white wine, the two erupt at each other again.

“I don’t believe you understand my theory behind this expedition, Lady Bromley-Montfort,” the Deacon says coolly.

“I understand it all too well, Mr. Deacon. You’re attempting an alpine assault on the tallest mountain in the world, dealing with it as if it were the Matterhorn. You plan to buy as much food as you can in the Tibetan villages along the way and hunt for more: wild goats, rabbits, goas—Tibetan gazelle—white deer, Himalayan blue sheep, whatever you can find and shoot.”

“That is the idea,” says the Deacon. “And since you claim to have climbed both in the Alps and here in the Himalayas, you know that such an alpine assault has never been tried against Everest.”

“For good reason, Mr. Deacon. Not only the size of the mountain, but the weather. Even in this pre-monsoon season, the weather on the mountain can change in a matter of minutes. The mountain creates its own weather, Mr. Deacon. And you simply don’t have enough portable food to last weeks on the mountain if weeks are called for. You can’t just keep running back from the Rongbuk Glacier over Pang La to Shekar Dzong to go shopping when you run low, you know. And the tiny village of Chōdzong on the Everest side of Pang La doesn’t have enough extra food this time of year anyway.”

I’ve learned by now that La in Tibetan means “pass.” Pang La is the 17,000-foot pass south of Shekar Dzong: the last such high pass before one approaches the Rongbuk Monastery, the Rongbuk Glacier, and Mount Everest. Most expeditions take four days or more trekking from Shekar Dzong to Everest Base Camp at the opening of the Rongbuk Glacier valley…then many more days finding a way up the glacier and onto the North Col.

“We can buy extra food from villagers on the way in,” insists the Deacon.

Reggie laughs. “The average Tibetan villager will sell you his last chicken even if it means his own family will go hungry,” she says, showing her very white teeth. “But how do you keep a chicken carcass fresh over weeks if the snows hit you at Camp Three below the North Col, Mr. Deacon? Do you plan to carry ice with you? An electric refrigeration unit? And once you’re past Rongbuk, don’t plan to survive on what the party may shoot. Except for a few rare burrhel—mountain sheep—and even more rare yeti, there’s nothing up there. You’d spend your days hunting rather than climbing…and still likely starve.”

The Deacon ignores the yeti comment. “I’ve been there, please remember, Lady Bromley-Montfort. I’ve spent many more weeks exploring the north side of the Everest approaches than you could have.”

“You only spent so much time there in ’twenty-one because you and Mallory could not find the obvious way in via the East Rongbuk Glacier, Mr. Deacon.”

The Deacon’s face darkens.

“Listen,” says Reggie, turning to J.C. and me as well as toward the Deacon, “I am not suggesting that we provision ourselves the way Bruce, Norton, and Mallory did…Good Lord, I watched them leave Darjeeling. Seventy Sherpa porters—a hundred and forty porters by the time they added Tibetans across the border—and more than three hundred pack animals, carrying not just oxygen and tents and necessary supplies, but scores of cans of foie gras and smoked sausages and beef tongue.”

“Appetite wanes with altitude,” says the Deacon. “You need foods that stimulate the appetite.”

“Oh yes, I know.” Reggie smiles. “I lost more than thirty pounds on the North Col last August, you may remember my telling you. Above twenty-three thousand feet, the very idea of food becomes repugnant. And one does not have the energy to prepare it. That is why I’ve added the supplemental canned goods, simple staples, bags of noodles and rice that will warm up in the boiled water, in case we’re pinned down by weather.”

The Deacon looks at J.C. and me as if we should jump in to support him in this argument. We smile at him and wait.

“Instead of three hundred pack animals,” continues Reggie, “we’ll travel with only forty and buy replacements along the way if need be. Instead of seventy Sherpa porters, we’ll use only thirty. Instead of hiring another hundred and fifty porters in Shekar Dzong, I’ve arranged for us to trade the mules there for yaks and to continue with just our thirty Sherpas as porters. But we must have enough food. The search for Cousin Percy may take weeks. We simply can’t return without finding him because we’ve run out of food.”

The Deacon sighs. He can’t tell her the real reason that he, Jean-Claude, and I have signed up for this expedition. A wait for good weather and then an alpine dash for the summit and then…home.

Reggie looks at each of us in turn. “I know your real reason for coming on this expedition, gentlemen,” she says as if reading our guilty minds. “I know that you hope to climb Everest, that you’re using my aunt’s money and the excuse of searching for Percival’s remains only as a way to get yourselves onto the mountain and, with luck, to the summit.”

None of us replies. And none of us can meet her cool gaze.

“It doesn’t matter,” continues Reggie. “It’s more important to me to find Percival’s body than it is to you—perhaps for reasons you don’t yet understand—but I also want to climb Mount Everest.”

We all do look up at that. A woman on the summit of Everest? Ridiculous. Yet none of us speaks.

“It’s nine p.m.,” says Reggie as clocks throughout the great plantation house chime at the same second. “We should all get to bed. We’ll be leaving at dawn.”

J.C. and I rise with Reggie, but Deacon remains seated. “Not until we settle this issue of who is in command of the expedition, Lady Bromley-Montfort. An expedition cannot have two leaders. It simply won’t work.”

Reggie smiles at him. “It worked well enough last year when General Bruce grew ill with malaria, Mr. Deacon. Colonel Teddy Norton—who probably knew he would not end up on the summit team—took overall command of the expedition, while Mr. Mallory was in charge of the climbing plans and sorting out who would make the summit bid. Naturally that turned out to be himself and his healthy if inexperienced assistant Sandy Irvine…a nice boy. I enjoyed having him as a guest in my home. Now I suggest we use the same system. I shall be in charge of the expedition per se; you shall be climbing master on the mountain, answerable in terms of climbing decisions only to any sound suggestions I might have in the search for Cousin Percy’s remains.”

I can see the Deacon struggling to find the proper words to rebut this suggestion once and for all. But he is too slow.

Pasang…Dr. Pasang…pulls Reggie’s chair out of her way.

“Good night, gentlemen,” she says softly. “We leave for Mount Everest at dawn.”