Unpublished: The Death Zone (English)

This is a mountain tale from a peculiar point of view.

The one of a woman that is desperately trying to reach her husband’s body, dead two years before on the Everest. Writing it has been a touching experience. I hope that it will be the same for you in reading it.

When I get out the plane, at Lukla airport in Nepal, Frank Neil looks at me.

Neil is almost two meters tall, has a thick beard and wears sunglasses. He never speaks loudly. To anyone. Not even with the arrogant American that sat beside me for all the flight or with the Briton (my same nationality) at his second attempt on the Everest that knows already everything and is trying to attract my attention with no success.

 “Are you sure you want to do it?” Neil asks me.

I don’t even allow myself to smile. I fear that showing that slit on my face could create a crack in my determination.

 “You shouldn’t even ask.”

 “I still don’t understand why. You’re not a climber.”

I put my backpack on my shoulders.

My legs bents for a moment because of the weight.

But everytime I stand up. And I go where I want to go.

Neil is right.

I’m not a climber. Or better, I wasn’t.

Up to two years ago.

 “Hi sweetheart!”

My husband’s voice sounds cheerful. I pretend to smile, but it’s since the beginning of the week that I feel fear.

Since Sam told me that everything is ready and with his friend Philip is going to climb the Everest.

He is a manager of a software firm with a passion for mountains, but he didn’t succeed to involve me in it.

We travelled across Europe and all its mountains. He was climbing them with his backpack and his friends, the belt full of carabiners and ropes, while I was comfortably sitting in the hotel.

When he climbed the the Eiger’s northern wall I was on the hotel terrace.

It’s since the beginning of the alpinism as sport that on those terraces there are telescopes used to see people climbing the Eiger.

I remember that while Sam was on the wall an austrian gentleman asked me in his strongly accented English if I wanted to have a look.

And, stupidly, I accepted. I recognize Sam immediately, thanks to his fuchsia wind jacket.

He was clinged to a ledge. I panicked because he wasn’t moving. And when he did it I thought he was about to fall down at any moment.

I stepped back from the telescope like I had seen Beelzebub in person and there was no way I could be persuaded to watch again.

When I met Sam that evening, back from the top, I was angry with him. And proud and tender at the same time.

I watched his face and his blue eyes were shining and his beard was enlighted by a smile running from ear to ear.

Sam had always that expression of happiness when he was back from a climb and conquered the top of a mountain.

And that look and that smile were something I knew very well. Because he was showing them only in another occasion.

When he was looking at me.

I hear the door being locked and one moment after he bends to kiss me. He growed his beard all the week long. But when he touches my lips he always manages to be delicate.

Or  maybe it’s because I am still in love with him and being scratched by his beard doesn’t matter.

“It’s happening! Still two days left and we go!”

He’s merry like a baby the night before Christmas. I am scared to death, instead. The Everest is not like the other moutains.

It isn’t the Eiger nor the Mont Blanc.

It’s twice the height.

 “I’m happy for you” I answer.

He carries me in his arms and he kisses me again. The istinct is to bring him to the bedroom and to make him not to go away anymore. I feel my stomach hard because of the fear.

I don’t tell him anything, because I could spoil his entusiasm.

He puts me down and heads toward the basement.

“I’m going to prepare the equipment. From now I am on vacation!”

Actually, everyting is ready. But Sam knows that no one can be kidding with mountains. And this calms me down a little. He doesn’t let anything by chance. Not even his athletic preparation.

I read something about Himalaya’s climbing history and I wonder why he hadn’t begun with something like the Lhotse, 400 meters lower. It would have been anyway an eight thousand.

But Philip and he are competitive people. They always aim to the top.

During the last night he’s at home I reach out him. I hug him.

We make love with no hurry, taking all our time.

When I came, I strongly enfold him in an embrace.

And I feel him inside me in the same strong way.

He sweetly cuddles me and while doing it he falls asleep. He’s happy, I feel it with every cell of my body. I begin to cry, silently. And I also fall asleep only when I am exhausted.

It never happened before. Because it never happened that he was leaving without me.

We wake up early in the morning, I have to bring him to the Heathrow airport, where he has an appointment with Philip. When I get in the bathroom for a quick shower he is naked and brushing his teeth.

He has on his shoulders the red markings of my nails.

 “Oh my God, Sam! I’m so sorry… I…”

He laughs like a fool.

 “You really gave it, sweetheart. Like a tiger!”

 “Does it hurt you?»

“Nah… “

 “I’m sorry anyway. I never reacted this way before.”

 “There are always first times in life. Like climbing the Everest.”

He turns and looks at me.

I shiver.

 “It will be awesome doing it. Like being with you this night.”

I nod and I get under the shower

I open the water trying to relax, soaping myself, washing my hair.

Sam knocks to the shower’s door.

“Wasn't it supposed be something on the fly? It’s ten minutes you’re under the water…”

He’s worried he could lose the flight.

 “Yes, you’re right, sorry.”

I rapidly rinse myself, dry in a second (I had short hair in that period) and dress up.

The Volvo Station Wagon has been loaded with Sam’s stuff already. I only have to drive.

He whistles, then he puts some music and uses the hands to follow the tempo of a Led Zeppelin’s song: Kashmir.

We arrive at the airport and we took a cart.

It’s six o’clock in the morning of a working day and pratically the place is deserted.

We put everything on the cart and we make the check in.

I leave him before the security checks, at the terminal entrance.

Again a kiss, while I see Philip saluting us from the other side. He has already gone through the procedure.

“Try to come back…” I mutter.

I’m making all the possibile efforts to avoid spoiling everything because of the fear I feel.

“Are you kidding me? How couldn’t I be back to my sex tiger?”

If Sam’s mood could be converted in feet above the sea level, he would be already on the top of two Everests, one on top of the other.

I begin to think I am a fool, because his high mood is contaging me.

He caresses my face.

“I love you. Ciao. See you in twenty days.”

“I love you…” the phrase gets out my mouth half chocked.

I see him with the backpack on his shoulders (all the rest has been shipped to the cargo hold as special load) heading towards the metal detectors.

I remain until, with his belt and the shoes in his hands, he passed the checks and greets me.

He lifts them high, like a trophy, while he shakes the head, roll the eyes and the security operators don’t know if laughing or feeling pissed off.

It’s the last Sam's image I have.

Because he never returned from that expedition. He died on the Everest with Philip during the descent to the base camp, after having reached the top.

I don’t know how I endured the sorrow.

I made crazy things.

Absurd ones.

I felt my home suddenly empty.

The nights and the week ends were the worst moments.

I didn’t go even to the funeral.

I put the excuse that I was sick (not far from the truth) and I refused to go to a ceremony where someone buried six feet under the damp earth of a cemetery a coffin filled with rocks, obliging me to pretend it was the body of the man I loved.

That I still love.

I was in anger. And in pain.

One evening I was so out of my mind that I set on fire the mountain equipment Sam had left in the garage. And I nearly risked to burn the whole house.

My job has been my only steady point.

Going out, having mandatory timetables forcing me to do something helped me.

I work in London but I live in the countryside.

I take a train that in twenty minutes carry me from a sleepy and quite village in the countryside to a Tube station. And from there to my office. One hour in all.

A whole hour I can use for reading or thinking.

There are two roads to reach the train station from my home. One pass by in front the cemetery gate where Sam is “buried”, the other one, much longer, goes across the countryside.

For months I always used the longer one.

At the beginning of summer, just one year after the tragedy, coming back from work on a Friday I find that the road I usually take is closed to car traffic.

There are road workers with their yellow segnaletic jackets.

I get off the car, I approach them and ask.

 “Sorry, madam, but until next Thursday here nobody can pass. We are repairing a broken sewage pipeline.”

“But I must go back home!”

“There’s always the other road, where’s your home?”

I tell him my address. It seems he knows where it is, because he asks me if at one of the road ends there is a little Tudor style cottage with climbing roses.

Of course there is and I reply to him affirmatively.

 “Why do you want to take this road, then? The other one is even shorter!”

I glance at him, I thank him and I go back to the car.

Explaining to him it’s useless. Because, actually, I don’t want to explain anything to myself.

I follow the road that I always should have used, the most logical and direct to my home. And when I pass by the cemetery I realize that it’s still opened.

I slow down.

I’ve got the heart in my throat.

Then I gently brake.

I look at the gate I don’t know for how long. And then I became aware that I am occupying, motionless, a side of the road with no valid reason in the world.

It’s like if someone had put a incredibly long leash to my neck. And he starts to pull it.

I park near the entrance gate and I get in.

I vaguely remember the position but despite this, after a few steps, I find myself in front of his tombstone.

Samuel Cross. Date of birth. Date of death.

Everything happens so fast that I couldn’t tell even how.

I found myself kneeling, trembling, crying and shouting.

 “You’re not here! You’re not here!”

I insult him. I insult the man I love. If I had him in front of me I'd slap his face.

I still have him in my eyes, instead, with the belt and the shoes in his hands, while smiling at me.

 “Why didn’t you came back? Bastard! Why did you leave me alone? Why?”

I shake my head.

 “You’re not here…”

I am exhausted. And I am dreaming to be under those six feet of earth, in peace. And to look for him in that place where nobody can came back.

Suddenly that thought strikes me. I remain with my mouth open, while my tears are wiping away the make up, my nose leaks and fine threads of saliva are flooding my lips and chin.

I am a savage and wounded animal. But now I know that there’s  something that can appease me. Only one thing.

I get in the climbing school where Sam used to train.

They know me and the instructor looks at me like I am crazy.

And he has a point.

Because I, a tiny woman that considers very demanding some jogging to hold on an ass that she judges cumbersome and that at the smallest clue of lazyness tends to lose shape, with eyes so heavily black ringed to resemble a panda and with a nose so red to look like she spent the afternoon in a pub drinking a whole barrel of beer, got inside his office and just told him I want to climb the Everest.

 “Helen… Only expert climbers up there. Hardly trained people. What do you know about mountains?”

 “Also amateurs go up there. I know it. Sam paid a company that does those kind of stuff, the Wild Himalayan.”

 “Yes, they are amateurs lead by professionals. But they are amateurs that have already climbed. People in perfect shape who knows all the proper techniques.”

 “I’ll learn them.”

 “You can’t learn them in one day, it takes years.”

 “I’ll learn them” I repeat like a mantra.

 “Helen… This thing can’t end well. They will evaluate you. Even if I'd teach you everything I know, and if I'd manage to put you in perfect shape for the next summer, it doesn’t mean that they will let you do it, even if you pay.”

My eyes are filed with tears. I feel silly but I can’t do anything to avoid it.

 “Please Mike… please, please… I want to go to Sam… I want to go to Sam…”

Men can’t bear a woman crying. And if that woman is the widow of one of their best friend, they have no chances.

 “Helen, I beg you. Everybody here loved Sam. It has been a terrible incident, I know, especially for you but…”

 “I want to go to Sam… I can’t see anymore that stupid empty grave, please… please…” I whine.

He shakes the head. But he knows he can’t say no to me.

 “All right. But at one condition.”

 “Which one? Anything…”

Mike is not a fool and wants to test my determination.

 “A run of ten kilometers. With me.”

I haven’t even the smallest hesitation.

 “Where and when?”

 “I’m going to pick you up tomorrow. At five o’clock in the morning.”

Mike is an asshole.

And he’s trying to kill me.

At least this is the impression I had the moment I got off his car and I realized where he had brought me.  

It’s summer, but on the Breacon Beacons, Wales, it’s awfully cold and sometimes it’s drizzling .

I watched on the BBC a documentary about the park. It’s wild, awesome and it has the worst weather of the whole british islands, if you don’t consider the Highlands up north.

It’s such a selective enviroment that the special forces of my Country use it during the admission tests.

He gives me five minutes for warm up and stretching and then we begin.

He is the hare, I am the turtle and I have to keep his pace.

The first part, two kilometers, a mild climb, cut my legs.

The following stretch of road goes up sharply and reduces my lungs to a mass of burning pain.

He doesn’t encourage me, he doesn’t tell I can make it.

He countinuosly asks me if I want to give up and to go back to the car.

 “I did it this track a lot of times. Even twice in a row. I can go to the car and pick you up. What do you say? Let’s go back home, Helen?”

 “F… Fuc..k you, M… Mike.”

I feel bad. But I keep going, waddling.

He allows me to stop all the times I ask for it. He gives me water to drink. He tells me at which kilometer we are.

But he warns me that if I make only one step back he brings me back to the car and end of story.

At kilometer six I vomit water. 

 “Do you want to go back?”

 “No!”

I am lumbering, not even running.

At kilometer seven got a sprain and tears fills my eyes because of the pain.

I am going ahead jumping on one foot.

When he tells me he wants to check my ankle I shout him not to touch me.

 “Dont be silly. I want to see if it’s broken.”

He moves my foot, he touches my ankle, he takes off my sock.

From the little backpack he carries on the shoulders he takes the first aid and wrap my ankle tight.

My pain becames dull.

 “We should go to the hospital.”

“No!” I shout.

Mike glances at me and slowly nods.

“Try not to force it. There are only three kilometers to go. You can make it.”

I nod.

I wear again my running shoe and I keep limping on one foot.

Mike doesn’t ask anymore if I want to give up.

He tells me only how much is left to the arrival.

I recognize the crossroad we past with the car when we arrived.

Now I can’t hop. I walk and limp, slowly.

But I don’t stop.

I can see the car, we are completing the circuit, and after an endless interval of time I can put my hands on the roof.

It’s lunch time and to run ten kilometers it took almost four hours.

Mike opens the car and makes me to seat on the passenger place.

He gives me the jacket and trousers of the gym suit and helps me to wear them.

 “I didn’t pass the test, did I, Mike? Too slow, too slow…”

“Stop it. It doesn’t matter how much time it took. The point was to demonstrate another thing.”

 “What?”

 “Do you still want to go to Sam?”

 “More than anything else.”

“You have the determination. It will be far worse than this. Believe me. But you aren’t in shape and you haven’t any technique.”

 “I don’t care.”

 “Okay. I’ll put you in condition to go to Sam.”

I had hard months. From both physical and psychological point of view.

I had to work during the week and to attend the climbing course every evening and every week end at the school.

Sometimes I was so tired after the school that I went to sleep without even having the dinner and I woke up at night with a hole in the stomach.

I saw my body changing.

Aside the fact that I am quite short, I wasn’t in shape at all.

I run every day.

Then I made exercises at the wall and tractions at the drawbar at home.

Now my shoulders are larger, legs and arms are muscular, I have  six-pack abs and an ass that could raise the envy of a brazilian samba dancer.

There is also the theorical-practical course about climbing techniques.

I discovered I have talent in making knots.

I need to see it only once and I know how to do it immediately after.

And I remember in which context I should to use it.

I am not that talented, instead, for the movements on the wall.

I tend to use too much the arms and the hands, while the legs are those ones that give much of the thrust, instead.

Then there are travels for climbing mountains in Austria and Italy. In Autumn.

While during the the winter there isn't anything because I am a beginner. Only trekking to take confidence in carrying a heavy backpack and learning techniques for marching in the snow.

I like to handle carabiners and clogs, metallic stuff that you shove into the rock slots and when pulled, thanks to some gears, they expand and stick to the wall creating a coupling point for the rope.

I like much less using nails and hammer.

On springtime, Mike brings me to the Matterhorn, Italians call it Monte Cervino.

In some ways, with its point shaped top and the winds creating flag shaped clouds, it resembles the Everest. It’s more steeper and it’s much less high.

We sleep at the Hornlihütte, the most expensive high altitude chalet of Switzerland. We reached it after an easy trekking along the crest, from the upper station of the cableway that departs from Zermatt.

Well, at least to me it seemed easy, because according to Mike now I go along mountain paths like an ibex.

At three o’clock in the morning we wake up, backpack and ropes on our shoulders and we begin climbing.

He’s the leader and I follow.

I have to think every move: where to put a hand, where to put a foot. One after the other. An effort that constantly engages my mind to the point I don’t realize that I am suspended on a rock wall almost vertical only by clinging with the tips of my feet and of my hands.

When Mike disappears, twenty meters higher, I understand that we arrived.

The Matterhorn top is a small spike always covered by snow.

If you exclude from your sight what you have under your feet, it seems you’re flying.

On one side there’s Switzerland, on the other Italy.

And mountains lower than the one where you are as far as the eye can see, aside the Mont Blanc massif toward South West.

For the first time I deeply understand what Sam felt every time. And I felt him closer as never happened before.

Mike glances at me, while he is taking out from the backpack a thermos with hot tea and whisper a phrase, because on the mountains, in this moments, you don’t shout, but you behave like you’re inside a temple made of rock and snow.

 “You’re almost ready.”

We remain on the Matterhorn top for ten minutes, enjoying an unparalleled landscape without eschanging one more word.

Then we begin to go down.

It’s always Mike that brings me at Heathrow to take the flight to Katmandù. The same one that Sam took two years earlier.

He strongly hugs me and I return the gesture.

 “You’ll make it. You’ve been incredible. You shaped yourself, body and mind. You’ll see, you will pass the evaluation at the base camp. I know Frank Neil. If he doesn’t think you can make it he will send you back.”

 “I hope it will not happen.”

 “If it doesn’t happen, and it won’t, you will know that chances are on your side.”

I pass the security checks and they asked me to remove my shoes and belt.

After the metal detector I take them. And I have got a lump in my throat.

I turn. I have tears in my eyes but I smile and act like a clown.

I am waving my running shoes as a good luck greeting.

Mike is laughing.

And I am laughing too.

After so much time.

He makes the gesture with the thumb upward.

I nod.

Then I wear my shoes, I pack toghether my luggage profaned by the checks and I walk toward the gate.

To arrive from Lukla airport, 2400 meters above the sea level, to the Everest base camp, at over 5364, you must go along a trek by feet with the needed contour of sherpa and yak, used to bring all the rest of the heavy loads. The journey takes four days and it’s useful to start the acclimatation.

In the final stretch, after leaving Tengboche monastry, there is the Chukpa Lare Pass, at 4200 meters above the sea level. The traveller able to reach it will see a stupa with the coloured flags that send prayers to the Buddha, typical in all Nepal. The stupa hosts a monument dedicated to all the climbers dead on the Everest.

When I see it I open-wide my eyes and despite the tiredness I ask Neil if we can stop for five minutes.

Frank Neil gives the order to stop for a pause.

Then he walks with me to the memorial site.

I kneel in front the slab proven by the weather and I read the names. There’s also the one of my husband.

I pass my fingers with short and chapped nails along the letters, while I feel Neil’s glance like the hand of an angel on my nape.

It isn’t like reading the tombstone in the cemetery, in England. Here Sam is close and I feel him.

There are many names. More than two hundred. Some of them are women.

Like Francys Arsentiev, that conquered the Everest’s with her husband Sergei. During the descent back to the base camp she became suddenly blind because of an edema to her eyes, and she had to stop. Sergei arrived to the camp number 4, at 8200, and realized that Francys wasn’t with him. Despite the hypoxia and respiration problems he made all the way back to 8600 meters of altitude, he found Francys and tried all the possible to save her during the night. The rescue team, the morning after, found Sergei alive, fallen nearby and managed to save him. For Francys Arsentiev there was nothing they could do: she died shortly after the rescue team reached her.

Also Sam’s body is there. In the snow. Together Franys Arsentiev’s body and with all the others that never made it back.

The doctor Meg McMillan is young, athletic and she twisted me up like a little soft pretzel.

She make me re-dress and calls Frank Neil

“Frank, for me she’s okay. Now it’s your turn for the evaluation.”

Neil gets closer while I am zipping up my fleece.

“Helen, I want to explain you something. I will not lie to you. I observed you with attention during the trekking from Lukla to the base camp. Mentally you’re strong. Determined. And this worth the fifty percent of what you need to climb the Everest up to the top. But the other fifty percent is how the body reacts in the Death Zone. And we won’t know it until we won’t be there. Willpower will be good only for one thing. To go away from there and to descend under the 8000 meters, even crawling if things are going from bad to worse.”

I already heard that name: the Death Zone.

It sends shivers to my spine just looking the documentaries.

In a week from now I’ll be right there, instead.

 “I know what it is” I answer.

“There’s nothing in the world that can prepare you to what will happen. It’s a go or no go. I saw short and fragile people like you climbing up then going down and making it. And professional and trained people spitting blood on the snow from their lungs and having blood-injected eyes because capillary broke since the atmosphere pressure was too low for them. The body, above eight thousands meters of altitude begins to die. Nevermind how strong and trained you are. And every body reacts in a different way. The only way to keep yourself alive is to go down under the eight thousand. If you stop because you can’t make it with your own forces nobody is going to help you, because everybody will feel sick and at the end of their ropes like you. And we can’t call helicopters, because at that altitude helicopters can’t fly. If you stop I’ll be forced to abandon you and letting you die. And there will be nothing I could do, because I’ll have to bring in the safe zone those ones still able to make it. Do you understand me?”

He hesitated for a moment.

 “There was Sam with me that day. He reached the top of the Everest with all my expedition. Rarely I’ve seen people radiating so much happiness like him. And, few hours later, coming back, I saw the light go out in his eyes like a candle fallen in the water.”

 “Are you trying to change my mind, Neil? Because if this is what you think you’re deadly wrong.”

Neil nods.

“Okay. Now you know the risks.”

The glance I give him must be really clean and sharp.

Because he turns to Meg McMillan.

“Meg, to me it’s a greenlight. She can come with us.”

 “Welcome to the Everest, Helen. This evening we’re going to have a little dinner to celebrate the newcomers. From tomorrow we’re beginning the acclimatation. You must be here for the checks at five zero zero. And again here when you’re back to the camp, for other checks. If you miss one of the checks you’re out. No exception.”

 “I am not a hothead, doctor.”

 “You can call me Meg.”

“I am not a hothead, Meg.”

She shakes her shoulders.

 “I make the same speech to everybody. I like to be crystal clear. Here nobody jokes with the physical condition. If you don’t submit to the checks you can kill yourself and the people around you. Because I know Frank. He told you that he’s going to leave you there dieing if you can’t make it. But I know he will try to rescue you anyway. You and anybody else of the expedition. Risking himself of not coming back anymore."

“How many dead under Neil’s leadership?”

 “Only two in seven years. Your husband and his friend. Frank didn’t sleep for weeks, asking himself if he could have done anything differently. I know it, because I am his fiancee.”

I smile, trying to be reassuring.

 “I’ll bring Frank back to you. Don’t worry” I say with decision while she glances to me surprised.

I feel my lungs exploding.

Every step is agony and torment.

Snow and cold are unbearable and it feel like I am advancing completely naked on the highest mountain crest of the world.

I wonder one thousand times why the hell I am doing it. And one thousand and one times I am putting one foot ahead of the other and I keep going.

… and I keep going.

… and I keep going.

There’s a passage, on the crest, marked with two ropes.

On the sides of this place there are many bodies of those ones that gave up left in full view.

I don’t stop nor I give a look.

Not now. It isn’t the moment. There is a team I have to respect, I can’t delay the other expedition members.

I start using the oxigen.

Suddenly the ascent is over.

Like in a dream I see a group of person lifting their hands, some of them are holding a ice pick, while I going toward them.

And I understood.

I am on the top.

There’s no highest mountain on Earth than this.

In a unique moment of grace, there are no clouds nor wind.

The giant bones of the planet are bending the dark skin of the rocks and the white mantle of the snow.

I am on the roof of the world.

Where Sam has been.

While we’re embracing each other using the few energies left, I think of him, that wanted this thing so much.

I love you Sam. I love you. I am here.

I repeat it inside my mind.

And I hear him answering.

My little tiger has grown up. You’re good. Welcome to my world.

But maybe is the hypoxia and I am imagining everything.

We’re descending and Neil is leading.

We have the vitality of a row of zombies.

I hate going down much more than climbing.

The istinct is to lie down and let go.

The result would be to remain there and to die.

We’re all exhausted.

Neil said that above the eight thousand we’re going to make just one short stop.

I am walking after him and I see that he is turning his head back more and more often.

“Neil?”

“What do you want, Helen?”

It’s hard to breath also for him, despite he’s using the oxygen.

All of us are dieing slowly.

Only one sherpa, quite famous, gained a curious 20 hours permanence record on the top of the Everest.

But these are bodies and cases more unique than rare.

Our simplier european caucasian bodies are ceasing to function one cell after another.

“When are you going to order the stop?”

“Even now if you’re too tired.”

“I can make it. Could we delay it half of an hour?”

He doesn’t answer me immediately.

Then the anti-wind mask encrusted with ice turns toward me and he stares at me.

“You’re crazy, do you know it?”

 “I come here for that reason. For Sam. You owe it to me.”

“I don’t owe you a damn. I have to take care of nine lives besides you and me” he gasps.

“If I put them in danger leave me with my my husband. In a way or in another I’ll be again with him.”

 “I won’t have another alpinist on my coscience.”

“You won’t have it. I promised Meg to bring you back alive to the base camp.”

He nods.

“All right then. But after this you’re going to do everything I say.”

“I’ll do anything. Even if you order me to jump into the crack after the seracs.”

He can barely laugh.

“Pause in half of an hour. Now stop talking.”

I pass by Francys Arsentiev corpse. And I glance at her. She’s still dressed for the mountain, the black long hair are almost all gone and the dessiccated skin adheres to the skull.

I look the face of death.

And the emotion I feel is of deep mercy.

Finding Sam’s body is easy, thanks to his fuchsia wind jacket. He liked that because it was a feminine colour. In that way he joked about himself and about the world of machos he belonged to. He knew how to laugh of himself and of life.

He lies down in the snow like he’s sleeping, huddled.

Despite the sorrow blinding my eyes, training makes some gestures instinctive.

I check my watch. I have just five minutes.

I kneel and I make the sign of the cross.

I pray a Paternoster rapidly, because also God deserves His part into this.

Then we are Sam and I, alone.

“Hi, my love…” I whisper.

I gently touch his wind proof jacket, but I don’t dare to take off its hood and to see how the decomposition has eaten the body of the person I loved.

“Hi Helen. I see that you came up here, you lazy girl that didn’t want to climb even the stairs at the mall.”

“Yes. I came. For you.”

“You have few time.”

“I know. But I had to know where you were, how you were. Your empty grave… it always had seemed to me a horrible joke. I couldn’t even cry on it.”

“Helen… it’s not anymore the time to cry. You should be back to the sea level. And to live. I don’t want to see you sad anymore.”

“For you it’s easy to say it, Sam. Christ… do you know how much I miss you, you ugly bastard?”

Sam laughs.

Or at least I imagine he’s laughing in my mind.

The body is still there, motionless. But I perfectly hear his voice.

“I miss you too. But we will meet again, Helen. One day.”

“When?”

“This is a one of those of questions that should never be made.”

“How can I live without you, Sam? How?”

“In the way you did up to now. You understood a part of me I loved deeply. Climbing the mountains. You did with an intensity unknown to most of life partners. The only part I loved almost as much as you.”

 “Almost? I… I believed that…”

“That I loved it more than you? No. You’ve been my reason to live. When I arrived to the Everest top you’ve been my constant thought. And even in my last moments before I die. I would had liked so much to be back home and to give you the joy I had felt. Like I did all the other times when you were waiting for me down in the valley. I didn’t make it. I am so sorry. But now you know it.”

“If you weren’t already dead I’d kill you. You got out from my life so suddenly…”

I laugh again, quietly.

And Sam is laughing too.

And, in that moment, I understand that I have to do what Sam couldn’t. To come back home. Alive. Only in this way the circle will be complete.

Only in this way his death will have a meaning.

And I will bring inside me much more than a simple remembrance.

I look the watch.

“Time is over, Sam. I have to leave you.”

“What are you talking about, honey? We’ll meet again. But much, much more far in time. What do you think about the idea of giving birth to a little boy?”

“Are you crazy? And with who?”

“Time will come. But you must choose with wisdom. There are few like me. And I'd like so much to be father.”

His voice hesitates.

“Go back to life, sweetheart. You have been in pain enough. If you will be again happy don’t be afraid to forget me. This will never happen. I’ll have my place in your life. But for the Lord's sake… go back to life! Do you promise me?”

“Okay… all right. I promise you.”

“Now it’s better you go. Otherwise Frank will begin to be seriously pissed off.”

Suddenly there’s only silence and wind.

And the rustle of the snow piling up on Sam’s body.

A last caress, touching the clothes and then, with an enormous effort, I stand up.

I don’t know what happened, but I feel light and in full shape.

I reach the rest of the team and I hook again to the rope.

“Are you all right? Did you find Sam?” asks Neil.

“Yes. I never felt so well like now. Sam greets you.” 

The windproof mask stare at me and I am sure that if I could take it away I’d find a dumbfounded and at the same time funny expression.

“You didn’t rest. But I won’t slow down for you until we’ll reach the camp number four, below the eight thousand.”

“No problem. I promised Meg to bring you back for tomorrow evening.”

We begin again to march in the snow.

And I, that I just returned from the world of the dead, I am the only one that isn’t walking anymore like a zombie.

Twenty days since I was back to England. And for the first time I put some flowers on my husband’s tomb.

Now that empty grave it doesn’t seems to me a cruel joke anymore.

Because I know where lies who I loved.

And I can bear the sight.

The pain is getting milder.

Memories are getting back in a sweeter way.

And they tell me how beautiful and rich has been the life I lived.

BBC apprehended about my story thanks to Frank Neil, and they wanted to interview me.

I am not a TV star and I am not interested being it.

Since the moment I’ve been back from Death Zone on Himalaya my life has begun again to flow.

I realize that now men are looking at me with admiration.

And soon I’ll decide to go out and to better know men I find interesting.

Hoping, sooner or later, to find the one that, holding in his hand a pair of shoes and his trousers belt, will make me laugh like Sam once did.

It will happen.

I promised.

And I feel I want to have a baby.

But I’ll never stop climbing.

Because it means that even if one day I’ll have someone beside me  and I'll be in love with him, a part of Sam will keep living inside me, unforgotten.

Working to this novel I had in mind two actors (I am very visual when writing...) that could play the roles of Sam and Helen. Here you are my choice:

Sam Worthington as SAM
 

Saoirse Ronan as HELEN