When my old dad told me about women, I wasn’t more than about ten or so. He said always pay for your own whiskey – well, that was what he said first, sitting by the fire and looking into the coals like they had the truth of eternity glowing in them. He said always pay for your own whiskey, then he sat looking for a spell. And then he said… and his eyes glowed from the embers… and always pay for your women too.

And that was about all the wisdom I ever got from the man.

Out on the road in some dusty place I’d never think about him, but there must be some kind of vestigial sense of origin in the temporal things with which we decorate our existence. I grew into a different man, as all sons do, if they are to become men themselves and not mere followers of genetic predestination. Still, there were moments I could sense similarity with my old man and force myself away onto the uplands of a more individual destiny.

So how came I to be on a mountain in winter, stealing myself for a march through snow towards an uncertain goal?

Well that’s a story in and of itself.

I had been traveling fitfully through a part of the world which was less concerned with the lure of glittering society’s doings than my national home. This is not to make a claim upon the relative merits of one people’s choice of conversation over that of another. I am sure that if I could determine the inflections of voices and words of the people of that place with the ear of a native, I would find myself as assaulted by unwanted information regarding the relatings, goings, doings and froings of individuals for which I could not care much as in my own home town. But as a stranger in the parts, I was excused from overt familiarity with the inflections and intrigues that grip all groups of people born in the same place. Instead I was free to enjoy the soaring crags, the dusty valleys and ethereal light that shone through the racing clouds over a land stark and yet noble.
There was one other foreigner there. A Russian, or so he claimed, although I could no more say that was his true origin than determine from what river was spawned an individual fish. The man was a constant miasma of shifting tales and repeated half-truths. Entertaining for a spell, but not someone to whom you might willingly and without care tie yourself with rope to cross a yawning chasm of ice miles from any populace or safety.

And yet that was the matter as it occurred. Later.

There was a town beauty there; the daughter of a chief, as near as I could gather. The Russian had been in those parts longer than I, and explained to me in a strange mix of English, Francais and his own deep native words thrown in for spice, that he could procure her favors for me. I replied in no uncertain terms as forcefully as the difficulties in communication allowed, that he would do no such thing, for I, a freeborn and proud man of my own honor, would be beholden to another man for very few things in life, and for the favors of a woman, never.

This put a dampener on our presumptive comraderie as fellow travelers in a strange land.  He retreated to the farmhouse of the headman, and I stayed with a joyous crone and her blind husband, who far as I could tell did nothing but smoke his pipe peacefully by the fire and sigh words of their peculiar religion to himself all day long. The crone proved a fine cook, and I fatted myself for a week in their company, the few gold sovereigns in my possession being more than adequate for an extended stay.

Outside the snow piled up and I waited for a break in the weather to continue my quest towards the mythical lands beyond the hills, where an excitable Italian in a bar in Genoa had told me  there might always be easy work to be had and pleasure enjoyed. I had taken the man’s assertions with a grain of salt, as it is the wont of many men, when falling in the drink in unfamiliar surroundings, to embellish the particulars of this or that far-off region.
I had previously heard from a different fellow on a train about the glories of the Yukon, whose fields had just been opened many years before, and the tales of starvation and dysentry that came out of those parts later and are well-known to most men of inquisitive minds, had served as a salutary prophylactic to any further propensity I might have to take any tale of a putative paradise told on a moment’s whim as gospel truth.

Regardless of the particulars, this mythical land of ease did indeed seem to have considerable reserves of gemstones and hard wood, I had found through the occasional article of reading or snippet of conversation. For all intents and purposes it became my personal Shangri La, although I did not favor the thought in a conscious manner until later. However, as I wandered on a path chosen more by fate than plan, I had contrived to end up on a road which would, in a few months travel in good weather, lead me to that land of possibility, beginning to gleam in my imagination with the deep warmth of a well-cut emerald.

Meantimes, however, I was in this little valley hamlet as the snows filled the passes. I helped a bit around the crone’s small acreage on occasion, as befits a fit man in his prime, in between reading deeply Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in the original; a task I had set for myself as a means of procuring the personal satisfaction of as deep a knowledge of our real world as could be reasonably expected.

I was thus ensconced in a world of Latin and universal constants, when an excited banging on the door of the house portended a change in my immediate existence. The blind man by the fire stopped his murmuring with an inquisitive expression, and the crone bustled to unbar the door. In tumbled the Russian, his hair wild, unkempt and unhatted, his face a mixture of comical terror and serious relief at his entry. With quick gestures and guttural imprecations he let it be known that he had fallen distinctly out of favor with the chief, and was leaving anon, nay this very instant. He also led me to believe that it would behoove me in my personal journey to join him, as foreigners would no longer be particularly welcome there.

Well, as I might’ve thought to myself, had I had time enough to reflect and posit, this was a fine pickle. The man, who had apparently ruined the surroundings for us both, now desired me to join him in a trek across lands which still suffered the howling frost and treacherous footings of a wintry hell. And this I must do through absolutely no fault of my own, but because of his actions, actions I myself had done what I could to dissuade.

The man told true, however, because glancing out of the door, I could see a band of three men scurrying across the village center towards a small cluster of huts, no doubt to gather more forces. The chief, for it was he in the lead, cast a glance my way such as left no doubt as to the truth of the Russian’s assertions of his lack of amity towards me as a well.

Nothing for it but to gather my belongings, fortunately few in number, toss one more sovereign on the raw table, grab half of a chicken that was slowly roasting over the fire on a spit and nod my goodbyes to the crone and the blind man. He barely paused in his murmurings as we headed out into the snow.

And that is how I came to be bound by a stout rope of perhaps twenty feet in length to a wild Russian in the far-off snowfields of a mountain range whose name I cannot recall, as it had never been told to me. We struggled through
the dusk, which fell with a relentlessness most untoward for gentlemen caught in our situation. Yet there was a fitful moon above, which through ragged clouds showed a path of sorts that wended its way along a shallow tree line, and thus protected us from the full ferocity of the wind above the ridge and the snows which lay deep in the cols and alpine fields. I do not know if the headman and his villagers followed us at all, but we kept at it for hours in the glinting dark anyway, since it was too cold to stop, and a fire would have been difficult in the open.

I am not a man to exaggerate easily, at least I do not believe that to be my character, yet I do think with all truth at my disposal that I came as near death that night as is possible for mortal man without paying Charon for that final ride across the Styx. The cold ate into the bones, through all the many layers I had procured during the months I had previously clambered into these mountains, setting the teeth to chattering the moment there was the least halt in forward motion, and causing a sort of illusion of the mind that one’s head was being physically clenched in a giant’s hand and squeezed tighter and tighter. Not feeling my extremities was another sign, and I was beginning to see the light on the snows lifting and dancing before me, a type of night snow-blindness with which I had never been familiar before, but which even I in my depleted state recognized as most dangerous. It was all in all a most unpleasant means of spending a night. Although I rate myself reasonably tough, I believe we would have both died, had not a providential crack in one of the innumerable winding granite towers led to a small cave, in which we were doubly fortunate to find evidence of some previous occupant, a shepherd perhaps of the summer months, who had left some small pieces of wood on a sort of natural platform in the cavern’s interior.

What bliss to strike a safety match, light a scrap of tinder and see the wood crackle into life. Life, indeed, it felt as if sweet Aurora herself had come and was enveloping us in her warm embrace. The wind still soured outside, and tendrils of its cold malignancy found their way around our feet, but we stood carefully over that fire, and as we felt warm life flow back into our bodies, it was an exhilaration which I can put to words only with the greatest difficulty and which has few likenesses in any other facet of experience.

The morning found us curled on opposite sides of cold embers. Yet we were alive. I had at the man then for this brush with death; I imprecated and swore, and we came to the briefest of blows. Yet it made no difference to my situation, and he did, in fact, seem to know the best way through the mountains. An angle of my practical nature forced out my hand in a gesture of peace. He accepted gladly, babbling of eternal trust and friendship. This I took at face value but with mindful caution. I did not trust the man, and my instincts would prove correct.

We set out for the further reaches of the long valley as the sun rose to display nature’s baleful magnificence. The clouds of the previous day were nowhere to be seen, and the snow lay in the most curious shapes and carvings, the wind having died down and left naught but these sculptures of white in its wake.

As I may have mentioned earlier, we had a stout rope of perhaps twenty feet in length, and this we used to secure ourselves one to the other, for in that wilderness of unvarying white, there might be any number of treacherous crevasses and canyons.

And so it proved to be.

For I was following, my eyes cast down on the ground before my immediate feet, my lungs laboring in the paucity of air at that alpine altitude, when I heard a sudden sharp expression of surprise, the fact of it being in a different language from my own no hindrance to the universality of its expression. I felt a sudden moment of disbelief, and then what slackness there was in the rope was taken up with a vengeance and I was cast forward upon my belly as if a giant had suddenly pushed me from behind. I slid along the snow and with, I am not ashamed to admit, a certain amount of desperation, grasped at the ground to prevent my falling as well into the chasm I could see before me, which had suddenly opened and swallowed up my erstwhile travelling companion.

It was only due to good fortune that I caught on a sort of rocky promontory which had eluded the otherwise all-encompassing embrace of the snow. I caught on this island of grey granite in that desert of unvarying whiteness and clung to it with my might. I could not see over the edge of the crevasse, but I could hear the Russian below, and feel all his weight digging through the rope into my waist. He called to me, but I did not answer. I might have said something, but breath was a valuable commodity to me in that situation, and I doubt he could have heard me, had I expended some small measure of it in calling to him.

In any case, as the initial shock of the event wore off, I was left in a quandary; clinging to my outcropping of rock, I could move one arm in some freedom, but was helpless to do anything else. My breathing was, as mentioned, already becoming somewhat belabored, and I could no more pull on that rope and thus bring the Russian to safety than a new-born chick could fly. I could feel him at the other end of the line, struggling apparently to haul himself up. The rope would dig into me with varying degrees, but for all that, he seemed incapable of pulling himself to the surface on his own, as the sudden drop of his weight when it dug into my waist made obvious time and again.

I do not know how long we were there in that position of impotence and desperation.  It may have been a mere ten minutes, or a full hour. But the realization of what had to be done took time to introduce itself to my consciousness, sidling up like a man of easy manners who makes his way into your home through cajolery and flattery, and before you know it, has his feet up on your divan and is smoking your tobacco.

I had the knife out of my pocket and in my hand. I can recall this moment with distinction, even if all others may fade. I saw, as if it were another man’s hand, how I took that knife and began to saw in the rope. And I heard, since the Russian had fallen momentarily silent, the sudden expression of horror from beyond the ledge, as the soft sibilance of that sawing, loud as thunder in that wilderness of stillness, made its way down the crevasse.

I blocked my ears from the voice, from its imprecations, expressions, demands and cajolery. I blocked my ears, and my arm and hand acted as if I did not myself command them, the rope slowly giving way to the weight at its end with stubborn tenacity. The voice reaching me changed tenor from flattery and promises to begging, and finally a sort of inhuman howl of anguish. I faltered once, nearly dropped the knife… yes, I faltered, but I did not fail. After an eternity, the knife reached the last few cords of the rope and it gave way on its own.

The scream lasted for more than a few seconds before ending with a terrible abruptness.

I recall undoing myself from the remains of rope tied around my waist with a strange, flailing anguish. I then sat panting on the snow for some while, before I could bring myself to crawl slowly on my stomach towards the edge of the crevasse. I did not see to the bottom, and would not have stretched myself far enough into that void for all the diamonds of the Kalahari.

Suffice to say I was sure there was nothing to be done but to continue on my own. The path went onward, yet I saw no gleaming jewels at its end. Rather, I heard a keening, although there was no wind.

I continued on.

And that was the tale of the valley. Now if you’ll excuse, I must be off. Gemstones don’t dig themselves from the earth on their own.