Emil Zopfi
. . when you say Cengalo, I think of scaly plates of rock which burst through the ice like reptiles' backs and hide their tiny saurian heads in the white cornices like timid animals. And of the lofty ridge cutting a slice of blue sky like a keen blade.
Cengalo, Cengalo. . .
Cengalo sounds strange, sinister Why. . . ? Like the monotonous scrapings, perhaps, that fill black summer nights when the farmers down there in their rude log cabins sharpen their scythes. . . Iike that perhaps? Yes, just like that.
Actually, we wanted to do the North Face of the Dru. We wanted to get it over with quickly before the days got shorter. And then Hori still had this course to do in September, this computer programming course, or whatever the hell it was. The new red climbing sack stood, packed and ready, out in the hall on the new carpet, on the quiet monotone green, on the artificial meadow with its synthetic curls. And the new wallpaper, damn it, was torn because I couldn't find the rubber end for the ice hammer, I was in too much of a hurry. Then the phone rang: "There's a storm in the west. . . it's just awful."
"But I've already arranged my holidays for tomorrow. . . and the session, what about the session with the television crew."
"The others want to go down to the Bregaglia." "The Bregaglia?"
"Cengalo."
"Cengalo, Cengalo. . . hang on a minute." "Pick you up at one tomorrow."
"That pillar we saw after the Badile. . .?"
There are four of us. And our guide had ordained one pair of crampons and one axe per party. Which meant that Dieter and 1, armed with our axes, toiled upwards cutting steps in the gleaming black, gritty ice, thrashed upwards so to speak, cursing and wobbling and poking around in the dismal damp light of the headtorches; while the other two, Hori and the Guide, strolled past us with their hands in their pockets. . . crunch, crunch, crunch. . . crampons like sharks' teeth, snap, snap, snap. . . someone else pops up below us, someone with a fearful rusty-red snout; one of the opposition, and with him, Anja.
"You all right?"
"For Anja we'd cut steps all the way up the Badile Couloir and down the Gemelli Couloir if need be."
Suddenly, we are overcome by sickness; yes, that dreadful sickness Kluckeritis, named after its first victim the guide Christian Klucker, who hacked his way up all the ice gulleys around here. God knows why. Kluckeritis overcomes us and. . . hack, hack, hack. . . Anja trots past, lightfooted as a deer, with Rednose. . . crunch, crunch, crunch. . .
. . but wait, there's a light up there in the darkness, on the slabs below the cornices . . . people, people up there? The others see nothing, plod onwards. There it is again, hanging clear and quiet on the cold, dead ruins; not a gleam, not a warm glow, no . . . just a pale, deathly pale light. How did the story go again? A light on the mountain, a light on the cliff, alpine lights . . . midsummer lights, midsummer nights . . . God knows, that was a long time ago. The souls of the dead, perhaps, the souls of the dead, restless, haunting the mountain? But the light there is a quiet light, alone and far off . . . The cockerel, yes, the bitter, forgotten king of the Alps, the old cockerel; it is his betrayed soul sweeping lightly over the mountain and whinning like the wind . . . cengalo, cengalo. . .
After the bergschrund we climb a series of loose, dusty gullies, down which the rocks hum like swarms of buzzing, angry insects. At last, at last, we reach the ridge, the dragon's back, which disappears into the milky light of the morning far above. Our breathing comes in gasps; damn, these sacks are heavy. The Guide presses on.
"Come on, get a move on! We've no time to lose."
. . . but what does time mean, when over there the sunlight is falling on the summit slabs of the Badile, in a flash, as if thrown there, then it trickles slowly down, reforms as fine threads in the cracks, cobweb-like, then falls in a silent cascade over the rock steps to bounce glistening on the scales and drip down walls and roofs until finally, finally it trickles into the cracked maze of the Bondasca glacier. What does time mean . .. perhaps you still know?
"How many years is it again?"
Hori chews on a tough bit of ham. " Hang on. . . " "It's '73 now, huh. . .?" "And four, no five years ago I got married, or. . ." "Of course, that was before the South Africa trip." "Two years after I got my degree." " '63, it was thawing outside I think. "Then it must have been '62. . ." " '62, you're right." "Eleven years ago. . ."
Anja smiles. Redsnout gets out cheese sandwiches and a huge water bottle, while the Guide and Dieter are searching in the grassy grooves for holds, jugs, peg cracks, rocky protuberances and whatever else they need to make upward progress. We gaze across at the smooth sweep of the Badile and can hardly believe that it is eleven years since we climbed on it, in bad weather and after a bivouac at the foot of the wall.
"Hey. . . "
". . . hang about, the karabiner's jammed. . ." "It only seems like it was yesterday."
" Damn. . . "
. . . the old, almost forgotten memories hang like milky clouds in our minds, and suddenly everything is there before us again, tangible and real. We feel first of all how the ice-cold, damp rock grows beneath our fingers, dusty and glistening, see how in the twilight it grows into a vast black wall, the excitement as morning overtakes us.
Seven parties below us on the glacier, closing in on us like glowworms in the night, scarlet patches of cloud shoot over the summit ridge ... bad weather, turn back. Turn back, to face a cold bivouac this single, solitary dawn, was this what we had dreamed of for so many years?
No! and the wall slides past beneath our fingers like a silent, grey movie. Is this climbing? No, it is gliding, hardly touching the rock we glide upwards and into the milky, collness. After hours, the shaft of light breaks on the summit ridge, and we look down over the slabs, and there, far below, the others are walking away from the foot of the wall; tiny figures, like tired ants. Defeated. The guide was with them then. Was that yesterday? Is it today? Eleven years ago? And tomorrow; what about tomorrow?
As a fearful storm broke, we had left the summit. Rain and hail swept down over the slabs tearing off anything that was not rock, poured in a white waterfall into the void below the buttresses, and were whipped by the storm into a foaming cloud of spray.
What was the storm to us?
We came down.
The Guide is in a hurry. "Come on, come on. . ."
He is an architect and his clients are waiting; time is money, money, money. Redsnout is on our heels. He climbs well, but his voice is dreadful, a real throat disease.
"How old are you then, Anja?"
"Twenty-seven. "
"And him with the red nose, that idiot, what's up with him?" "That is my husband."
. . . Cengalo, Cengalo. . . A strange and sinister word. We once wanted to go south, to pack up and take a roadl anywhere where the sea boiled below white cliffs; where the girls were dark-skinned and spoke in softly lilting voices, like Anja. Do you still remember? Cengalo sounds distant, sad, forgotten. . .
On the warm slabs of the huge summit ridge it was like climbing a majestic staircase. Higher and higher, towards the glistening shafts of sunlight. Above, on the horizon, the others were hanging like flies, silhouetted against the blue of the sky, crawling like insects with fragile, thin limbs, their backs shimmering as if they had wings. Two or three times the Guide hammered a peg in....
. . . Cengalo, Cengalo, that is music. The farmers undressing on summer nights, when even in the early morning a hazy heat hangs over the fields. And the dark-skinned girls lie awake in their chambers. . .
Slowly our feet begin to burn on the tiny footholds, and our fingers are already ripped to shreds. "Do you still remember. . .?"
.. . the wall over there once gave us strength, it was both objective and aspiration; it was the epitome of our youth, and we believed, believed . . . and then we forgot. Fever had overcome us and no power on earth could have held us back, then. Two days later, as we walked through Bondascatal we stopped again and again to look back, until the wall disappeared between the trees into the hazy midday shadows and all that remained was the pillar, flashing into the dark like an incredible burnished flame. . . We wanted to return, but who thought it would be eleven years?
"And now. . ."
"Hey, Anja and Redsnout have got a child, do you hear, a baby. He's called Anton."
Strange . . . something God knows what-is missing today. We find the climbing easy, like a well-oiled machine or a programme repeated a thousand times. But the fever which once took our breath away is gone. The fears are no longer with us, the fears we had that night on the wall when the stones were crashing and flying about over in the Badile couloir. . .
"Hey, Hori, have we changed since then. . .?" He shrugs his shoulders. Tomorrow it's through the glass door and up the stairs to the sixth floor again. It is like a film, but without the cold, hard holds which grow under our hands out of the night. A film which once in a while breaks, but without the summit ridge where we sit and look down at them as they crawl, ant-like, away.
After a final steep section, Dieter and the Guide are sitting on the boulders and have already coiled their ropes. The scaly plates of rock have become easy-angled and the summit cornice is only a stone's throw away at the top of a short boulder slope.
"Whoever wants to can go to the top. We're going down."
The Guide is in a hurry.
"Come on, before it gets misty. The hut's still a long way down and we want to be in the valley by tomorrow
morning. "
"Aren't we going to wait for Anja?"
The others shake their heads. When we are already quite a long way down the gully, she appears at the top of the last steep bit. We wave.
.. . to sit on the warm granite boulders between the last pine trees. To sit and watch the slabs of rock grow black in the evening light; how the cornices, the reptilian heads cowering beneath them, fade into the night, and that light sweeping slowly, slowly over the walls, the slabs, the gullies. . . The cockerel, the lonely restless spirit of the mountain, swirling over the ridges and finding no peace. . . To sit and feel her warm body close to mine and run my fingers through her long black hair. . .
"Anja. . ."
"Ja?"
"Close your eyes, then whisper two words:
"Cengalo, Cengalo."