We are camped amongst the willows of Chobuk monastery. The tent wall is wet against my head & I halt frequently to grease my face from a little pot that stays beside me all night. For the Tibetan plain has broken my skin raw, which was never made for such a hostile climate. All the other Sahibs have grown beards against the wind, but my attempt was pitiable & I gave it up.
On a bench outside, Mills wrenches away at the oxygen kit by hurricane lamp. Over in the mess tent, Price & the Colonel debate the plans & personnel for the summit assault. There shall be two parties of two climbers each, one with the oxygen, one without — for it’s a beastly load at those heights, and there isn’t a fellow here who wouldn’t prefer to summit without. If only we knew that was possible. I should like to be in the natural party, but it’s likely I won’t make a climbing party at all & will be kept in support.
A runner is departing with the despatches, so I end here. The post caught us at Shegar and though I truly didn’t expect anything, still I stood beside the mailbag like a boy, remembering a parcel that came to me one day at Le Sars, a place wetter than here, but no more hospitable. I felt then — I feel now — beyond the pale, on the far side of every river and boundary that divides civilization from emptiness. But I had you; I had the parcel in my hands, a long walk back to our cellars in the rain, where there would be no dry clothes & never any time to sleep. It didn’t matter. I was young and we were together.
The post goes out now —
Yours Ever,
Ashley
Rongbuk Base Camp
29 Apr 1924
Imogen —
We arrived at Rongbuk today. I began a meek letter describing our journey, but I’ve just burned it. For I’m cold & exhausted & there isn’t any time for half-truths — the post goes out tomorrow.
How I miss spring in this wasteland of grey moraine & ice; how I miss true earnest spring of primroses & grape hyacinths & long English grass. When I return, I shall know I have at last earned such luxury.
For seven years I tried not to look at your photograph, nor your handwriting, nor any trinket that could bring you to mind. It wasn’t any use. For even here I can picture you reading this, how you recline holding these sheets, the string of beads around your neck, everything.
It’s no good sending letters Poste Restante to someone who surely has a fine postbox of her own; but even if one knew the address, one never knows whose fortunate hands reach into that box. My own hands have only the fortune of touching the mountain, a cruel mistress who leaves them red & sore & cracked — but isn’t suffering the true proof of love? Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
It isn’t. I’m proud to say I’m finally cured of all such foolish ideas & don’t allow myself to suffer for anything. Past my tent flap is the Rongbuk Valley & I take her as she is; so I hope to take the East Glacier & the North Col, and so I take you too.
Imogen, I made mistakes. I squandered the very things I ought to have protected, and I expect no absolution, for in this world men admire one’s vices, but scorn true virtue & call it weakness. I broke faith with everything, save for you, and still I lost you anyway. Have I lost you for ever? The ceaseless wind whips back an answer. But I don’t listen. I trust only in the steadiness of own my heart — too mad or ardent to be anything but
yours — Everlastingly —
Ashley
THE BROKEN CITY
I put the letters back in the plastic folder, looking out the tall windows of the café. I don’t want to read them again.
Crossing Rosenthaler Platz, I go into a convenience store and study a pair of glass-front refrigerators displaying dozens of German beers sold by the bottle. I choose a squat brown one with an illustration of Saint Augustine. The sky outside hangs purple in the west. I set off into the street, climbing the gentle grade of Weinbergsweg toward Prenzlauer Berg.
Ashley didn’t know a thing about her, I think. Just like me.
I guide myself with a battered tourist map and a vague desire to go eastward. At Zionskirchplatz I find a church with a towering steeple, the door unlocked, the inside deserted and in disrepair. I sit in a pew for half an hour, staring at the faded paint on the walls and pillars of the choir: borders and patterns of byzantine complexity, brushed on meticulously by long-dead artisans and now faded to almost nothing.
On Karl-Marx-Allee, grand boulevard of the former East Berlin, I walk on a sidewalk fifty feet broad, the Stalinist apartment blocks running east to the horizon. I buy a bottle of herbal bitters from an outdoor fast-food counter and follow the boulevard to the old city gate of Frankfurter Tor.
It’s no good writing letters to people who never read them, I think. And a stranger reading them eighty years later doesn’t make it any better.
I follow Warschauer Straβe south to the Spree, where I snap photos along the last long stretch of the Berlin Wall, twelve-foot-high concrete blanketed with flaking graffiti. The huge mural above me reads TOTALDEMOKRATIE. Gaps in the wall reveal entrances to vast riverside nightclubs, the patrons spilling onto the sidewalk. Young people on foot and on bicycle throng past me, drinks in hand, and I wonder where they could be going at this hour. I check my watch. A little past three in the morning.
Keeping some distance back, I follow a group around a vast train station, then among side streets in a deserted industrial district. The road ends in a turnaround where a line of cream-colored Mercedes taxis wait for fares. Between a pair of chain-link fences, a dirt path leads to a huge building of crumbling gray stone. Light and music pulse from its tall windows. I file into the long line.
An hour passes before I reach the doormen. A pair of girls ahead of me is turned away, then a large group of well-dressed students is refused. The head bouncer sits on a stool beside the entrance, eyeing me with dim curiosity. He has a dark beard and one side of his face is covered in barbed-wire tattoos. I raise one finger to show I’ve come alone. He waves me in.
I pay the entrance fee and check my jacket and camera, passing through rooms of indistinct size and shape, vast caverns terminating in blackness or colored only by spinning electric lights. Everywhere is packed with sweaty dancers. The bass is driving. Thumping air pushes at my lungs and shakes my stomach. I climb staircases and find other rooms, secret crevices with embracing bodies barely distinguishable from the walls or ceiling. I buy a beer from one of the bars and gulp it down. No one else is drinking.
Soon I need to use the toilet. On the second story I find a bathroom line that is much shorter than the others, but there are only two toilets at the end. The line barely moves. I wait in agony, counting the people ahead of me. Nine. Seven. Six. The walls begin to turn. I fix my eyes on a green exit light at the end of the corridor to slow the spinning. A fashionably dressed girl trots up along the side of the line. Voices behind me heckle the girl for cutting. The girl notices I’m alone and stops beside me. She takes my hand, speaking to me in English.