The Abominable: A Novel

and “Old Peter” Taugwalder.

The ghosts of the four dead men from that day speak the loudest from the stone to me, and any climber must learn to hear them and to love and respect climbing on the same stones they trod, sleeping on the same slabs where they slept, triumphing on the same narrow summit where Whymper’s seven shouted in triumph, and focusing hard on descending safely down the still treacherous section where four of them fell thousands of feet to their deaths.

And, mon ami, you love the view from the top.

Oui. I do love the view. It makes the aching muscles and bleeding hands all worthwhile. Better than worthwhile—forgotten. The view is all.

While I’m chewing and staring out at this view, Jean-Claude, catechism lesson for me completed, straightens out the newspaper that had been wrapped around the cheesecloth covering our sandwiches.

“Mallory and Irvine killed in attempt to conquer Everest,” he reads aloud in his soft French accent.

I quit chewing. The Deacon is in the process of tamping the embers or ashes out of his pipe before eating, batting the pipe against the side of his hobnailed boot, but he also freezes in place, boot on his knee and now empty pipe against the boot, and stares at Jean-Claude.

Our friend continues: “London, June twenty, nineteen twenty-four—The Mount Everest Committee has received with profound regret the following cablegram from…” He stops and thrusts the crumpled newspaper toward me. “Jake, it is your language. You should read it.”

Surprised, not understanding Jean-Claude’s reticence—as far as I know he’s as completely fluent in reading English as he is in speaking it—I take the paper, smooth it out some more on my knee, and read aloud.

London, June twenty, nineteen twenty-four—The Mount Everest Committee has received with profound regret the following cablegram from Colonel Norton, dispatched from Phari Dzong, June nineteen, at four fifty p.m.

“Mallory and Irvine killed on last attempt. Rest of party arrived at base camp all well that day. Two climbers who were not members of the expedition die in Everest avalanche on last day after others have left.”

The committee has telegraphed to Colonel Norton, expressing deep sympathy with the expedition. In the loss of their two gallant comrades, which must have been due to most unfavourable conditions of weather and snow, which from the first arrival at the scene of operations impeded climbing this year…

I continue reading the columns, part sorrowful report, part hagiography:

The tragic death of these two men—George Leigh Mallory, who alone of all those engaged in the present attempt had also taken part in the two previous expeditions, and A. C. Irvine, one of his band of recruits—is a terribly sad ending to the story of the assaults of the mountain that began three years ago. It is only a few days since we published Mallory’s own account of the second reverse suffered by the present expedition…

That reverse had been wind and snow, which had driven the men from their highest camps—“discomfited but very far from being defeated” was Mallory’s message to the Times. There followed several more paragraphs, summarizing Mallory’s refusal to surrender despite the cold weather, high winds, avalanches, and imminent onset of the monsoon that would end this year’s climbing season.

I pause and look at my two friends, seeking any signal that I should quit reading and hand the newspaper around, but Jean-Claude and the Deacon simply stare at me. Waiting for more.

A slight breeze has come up, so I grip the crumpled paper tightly now as I continue reading the long second column of prose.

Mallory wrote his whole dispatch in this spirit of one who was about to engage in a desperate battle. “The action,” he said, “is only suspended before the more intense action of the climax. The issue will shortly be decided. The third time we walk up East Rongbuk Glacier will be the last, for better or worse.” He had counted the odds and was ready to face them. “We expect,” he said in a later passage of his dispatch, “no mercy from Everest”: and Everest, alas! has taken him at his word.

I pause. The Deacon and Jean-Claude sit waiting. Far beyond the Deacon’s shoulder, a large raven hovers motionless on the slight breeze, its body poised above almost 5,000 feet of empty air.

I skip any criticism of the prose style and continue reading: Mallory’s history as a “distinguished mountaineer” and his absolute determination to summit Mount Everest (“Alas!” I think, but do not say), the contributions of General C. G. Bruce, Major E. F. Norton, and others in the past, surpassing the Duke of Abruzzi’s height record of 22,000 feet, set on a distant and irrelevant mountain named K2.

The story focuses on 37-year-old George Leigh Mallory, the determined and tested veteran of Everest, and young Andrew Irvine, only 22 years old—my age exactly!—leaving their high camp on the morning of June 8, presumably carrying oxygen apparatus, the two heroes being seen again only once more, hours later, by fellow climber Noel Odell, who glimpsed them “going strong for the top,” and then the clouds closing in, the snowstorm intervening, and neither Mallory nor Irvine seen again.

I read aloud that, according to the Times report, on the evening of their disappearance, Odell had gone all the way up to the precarious Camp VI, shouting out in the roaring high-altitude night in case Mallory and Irvine were trying to descend in darkness. Mallory had left his flare and lantern behind in the tent at Camp VI. He would have had no means to signal others below, even if he were alive in the terrible night.

After fifty hours had passed, said the Times tale, even the ever hopeful Noel Odell gave up hope and placed two sleeping bags in the shape of a T for observers with telescopes at the lower camps to see. The prearranged signal meant that no further search should be attempted—the two climbers were lost forever.

Finally I lower the paper. The rising breeze tugs at it. The raven no longer marks the blue sky, and the sky itself is darkening now with afternoon. I shake my head, feeling the strong emotion from my two friends but not really understanding the depth and complexity of it. “There’s just a little more of the same,” I say, my voice hoarse.

The Deacon moves at last. He puts his cold pipe in the chest pocket of his tweed jacket. “They said there were two more,” he says softly.

“What?”

“The first paragraph said that two men died. Who? How?”

“Oh.” I fumble with the paper, running my finger down the last column to the final paragraphs. Everything is Mallory and Irvine, Irvine and Mallory, and then Mallory again. But there at the end. I read:

After the main party had left Everest Base Camp, according to German explorer Bruno Sigl, who was on a reconnaissance mission for a possible future German attempt on Everest, Sigl witnessed thirty-two- year-old Lord Percival Bromley, brother of the fifth Marquess of Lexeter, and a German or Austrian climber whom Sigl identified as Kurt Meyer, being swept away by an avalanche between Camp V and Camp VI. Young Bromley— Lord Percival—while not a formal member of the Mallory Expedition led by Colonel Norton, had followed the expedition from Darjeeling to the Everest Base Camp. Although the monsoon season had arrived and Colonel Norton’s expedition had retreated from the mountain, it is thought that perhaps Lord Percival and Meyer were making one final attempt to locate Mallory and Irvine. The bodies of Lord Percival and the German or Austrian climber were not recovered.

I lower the paper again.

“Lord Bromley, a peer of your realm, dies on Mount Everest and it barely makes the newspaper,” mutters Jean-Claude. “It is all Mallory. Mallory and Irvine.”

“ ‘Lord Percival’ or ‘Lord Percy’ is how we say it in England,” the Deacon says very softly. “ ‘Lord Bromley’ is his older brother, the marquess. And Percy Bromley would have been a poor excuse for a peer even if he had been next in line. George Mallory, although from a humble background, was the royalty on that expedition.” The Deacon stands, puts his hands in his trouser pockets, and strolls away down the narrow ridge, his head lowered. He looks like nothing so much as an absent-minded professor walking on campus, pondering some esoteric problem in his field.

When the Deacon is out of hearing range, I whisper to Jean-Claude, “Did he know Mallory or Irvine?”