Cengalo, Cengalo
. . 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.»
From «Mirrors in the Cliffs», Edited by Jim Perrin, Diadem Books
Ltd. London 1983