Solo Faces by James Salter Read Free Book Online

didn’t understand. He waited until the guide, who had nothing else to do, finally noticed him again.
    “Come back tomorrow.”
    “Thank you so much,” he said.
    They hadn’t made a note, they hadn’t asked for a name. He went downstairs. There were two police vans parked across the street. It was raining like winters in England, days of going to work while cars, their windows up, dry and warm inside, splashed past. He was used to working in the cold, in unheated houses, and going off on weekends to climb in the cold as well, not a meteor figure like Haston or Brown—it took big climbs to do that, incredible climbs—but somewhere close behind. He was lingering near the edge of things awaiting his chance. He could climb as well as any of them. The confidence on absolutely impossible routes, even to dare them, that was perhaps what he lacked. It might come. In any case, he was waiting.
    He walked back in the rain. The longer the storm lasted, the less were the chances. Up there it was cold, ice forming in great, invincible sheets. All the features of the rock would be covered, whole routes obliterated. He was lucky—diarrhea had saved him.
    “I couldn’t go,” he would often later say. “I was too busy.”
    It was one of those coincidences that mark famous lives.

9
    I N THE SILENCE OF the peaks and valleys, fading and then drifting forth came the dull, unmistakable beat of rotors. From a distance the helicopter resembled an insect slanting across the snowfields, lingering, then moving on.
    The rain had stopped. There was blue sky visible behind the clouds. Snow covered everything in the upper regions, every horizontal, every ledge. The summits were still shrouded, the cold clinging.
    A climber was caught on the Central Pillar of Frêney, that was what they were saying. The sound of the rescue helicopter going back and forth became more and more ominous, like one of those disasters where nothing is announced but the silence tells all. Accidents were common. Occasionally there was one that stood out because of its inevitability or horror. Really cruel instances never vanished; they became part of climbing, as famous crimes become part of an era.
    The search stopped in the late afternoon. A lone figure had been seen on the glacier. At noon the next day, dirty and exhausted, the pack hanging from one shoulder, Rand came up the path to the campground. He walked looking neither to the right or left, as if there were not another soul on earth.
    Love was sitting outside his tent and called to him. Rand walked on. From inside his parka he took out a bottle of wine. The cork had been pulled. Still walking, he began to drink.
    On reaching the tent he simply dropped to his knees and disappeared by falling forward, his feet outside. After a moment they were drawn in behind him.
    Bray found him lying there, eyes open.
    “What happened?” he asked.
    Rand’s gaze drifted over slowly.
    “I thought they were going to bring down a frozen body.” Bray waited—there was no reply. Then a low voice,
    “That was some beau fixe. ”
    “How far up did you get? Where were you?”
    He had closed his eyes when he lay down, but only for a minute. They had opened again by themselves. He lay there teeming with words, like a dying man who could not confess, who would take them with him to the grave.
    “It caught me by surprise,” he said, “it came in so fast. I didn’t have time to do anything. I got to a small ledge. At first it was just rain …”
    “And then?”
    “I stayed there. That night and the next day.”
    “You weren’t frightened?”
    “I was paralyzed,” he said. “I thought how stupid I’d been. I went up for the wrong reason, I didn’t know anything. No wonder it happened.”
    There were several faces attempting to see in. Rand’s voice was too low to be heard.
    “Finally I decided I had to try and get down. I made some rappels. The rope was frozen. I chopped holds. I was afraid I’d drop the ax, it would