Free Fellow Travelers by James Cook Page A

morning a few days before Manny went back to Moscow. At first the ascent was less difficult than it looked, a gently rising slope through pine forests, but then the slopes grew steep, and you climbed breathless and leaden in the thinning air, your legs heavy, your breath churning in your chest. There were just the three of us, Manny and I and one of the mine workers, a squat Asiatic-looking peasant named Isaakii, who had lived in the valley since before there was a mine and who had been climbing those peaks all his life.
    We spent the night above the tree line under a shallow overhang that gave us some protection from the wind. It had snowed a little in the night, and the world was adazzle when we awoke. The sun came up on the blue line of the horizon, and we ate some of the sausage we had brought with us, got the blood stirring with a slug of vodka, and began climbing again. By nine o’clock we had reached the snow line. The snow was solid and hard as rock. Isaakii cut steps with his pickax, and with metal grids fixed to our boots, the going was fairly easy. Even so, you thought of nothing but what you were doing—climbing higher, finding the next foothold for your boot, the next nub of rock for your hands.
    By eleven, our route abruptly leveled off and we found ourselves crossing a snow field between two rocky walls. The air was cold and clear, the sunlight blinding; sweat froze on our goggles. By noon we were climbing the sharp face of the mountain top, roped together, driving pitons into the rock, and when we were 300 feet from the top, I knew I couldn’t go on. I had no breath left. I was weak and dizzy; I thought I was going to either fall or pass out. Isaakii said simply, Too high, and helped me back down a few hundred feet, then left me in the shadow of a rock, and the two of them went on without me.
    I watched Manny and Isaakii disappear from sight and began to feel better. The sun was hot and dazzling, and I was sweating even there in the shade. From my perch in the mountain, I could see all the rest of the world rolling away to the east—treeless, flat, snow-covered. The town was out of sight beyond the shoulder of the mountain, but you could see the ridge where the trees stopped. Beyond that there was nothing but white, more white sun upon snow, sun upon ice and running water, and the great blue vault of the sky. I watched the fluffy clouds in the distance dragging their shadows across the snow. Down below there were wild birds flying, in flocks, in formation, herons, cranes, like clouds of gnats.
    Suddenly somewhere a sound, a screaming cry, and for a moment I was frozen with terror, as if the universe had broken asunder.
    How much later I don’t know, Manny and Isaakii returned, half running back down the slope of the mountain, laughing, breathless, and Manny threw himself on the snow, while Isaakii hunkered down to watch.
    â€œI can’t begin to tell you,” Manny said. “You reach the top of that last peak, and suddenly you’re at the top of the world. I stood there, higher than anything anywhere, higher than anybody, and something began surging up in me, triumph, jubilation, I found myself roaring, howling, overwhelmed, something, bursting hidden deep inside me that had never got out before.”
    â€œAnd what else did you see—Moscow, Petersburg, the Alps?”
    â€œMore mountains, snowy saw-toothed peaks, bare rocks and valleys, ridges and glaciers, then where the mountains ended, just short of the horizon, there was this green and pleasant place, so lush, so beautiful you wanted to cry. The sunlight fell on it, the way it does when a thunderstorm is coming, with a shaft of light turning everything golden.”
    I was sick with envy. For a moment I could have killed him with my bare hands.
    Manny fell silent then, shut his eyes, and lay there a while, regaining his breath. Finally he sat up, and Isaakii said, We go back now. Off to the west was a wall of dark