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to CCC Homepage(AUTHORS' NOTE: It's been two years since the last installment, so here's a quick summary of Chapters 1 - 5).
Francoise, an excellent climber, is a classically arrogant rich bitch. She and her long-suffering husband Pierre live in a large Parisian mansion. She eats her Roquefort with Chardonnay, and hates wax-wrapped gouda balls.
Sister Esperanza Immaculata (Sr. Mac) is one of the famous "climbing nuns" from the ancient and venerable Convent of Mounting Mary Magdalena, nestled into the side of the Schreckkind mountain, part of the Grossvater Massif, near the Austrian town of Oberundsoweiter. The order survives by selling Schreckkind Kase (a unique cheese) and functioning as an elite guide service. They build their strength by lifting their young cows (squats, presses, .....). Like most of the alpine climbing world, the nuns are determined to summit the Direttissima (Direct Route) on the Nordwand (north face) of the Schreckkind; sadly, over 800 years, 350 nuns have died in this attempt. Sr. Mac is warm, earthy and friendly - a real Mensch! - and thusly an opposite to Francoise.
Francoise's friend Marie is the daughter of Elf Zwanzig and Isabelle. Elf was one of those amoral Swiss bankers who did business with Nazis during WWII; in fact, he was the banker personally responsible for Hitler's hordes of gold, much of it stolen from Jewish victims. He kept the key to Hitler's safety deposit box up inside his left nostril. In 1944, he died mysteriously, drowning in a vat of Toblerone chocolate (with almonds). Isabelle worked out her despair by joining the Convent of climbing nuns, and quickly became one of the most famous guides in Europe. It was rumored that she hid her husband's nose (and presumably Hitler's key), slung on a prussik cord, under her habit. Tragically, during a solo attempt on the Schreckkind, she disappeared into a crevasse, 400 meters from the summit.
"Jose," owner of the Pas de Destivelle climbing gym in downtown Paris, is really Hermann Winkhaus, a Nazi war criminal. He admires sardo cheese, money, and finds punctuality to be sexually exciting. In league with other Nazis, particularly the frighteningly Teutonic Helmut Strenger (bastard son of Hermann Goering and She Wolf Elsa), he plans to retrieve Hitler's key from its icy grave. They intend to covertly search the Schreckkind during the annual Oberundsoweiter Winter Festival, which this year has the added attraction of the Schreckkind Kontest. Volkswagen has offered 1 million Deutschmarks to any team of two which summits by the unclimbed Direct Route; a lottery will be held on January 1st to determine the order of starting times for the teams (who have agreed to postpone their assaults until then).
A Mossad operative by the name of Solomon Abrahamovitz (survivor of Dachau, and a strong ice climber) has deduced the Nazis' plan, and has created his own in response. While he and Marie conspire on the ground, Sr Mac and Francoise will likewise search the mountain for Marie's mom, also under cover of the Schreckkind Kontest. (Marie is actually a better climber than Francoise, but she is an engineer for VW France, and thus disqualified from climbing; more importantly, she is afraid to step onto the route which killed her mother...). Meanwhile, everyone travels to Oberundsoweiter for the Winter Festival.
On the night of Winter Solstice, Pierre escapes Francoise's never-ending tirades by trout fishing with his pet Clorox bottle, Ralph. Due to a bizarre accident, they nearly drown, but are rescued by St. Bernadette dogs (all female), who comprise the Guide and Rescue Dogs Auxiliary at the Convent of Mounting Mary Magdalena. (The nuns, incidentally, were staging a seance that night and eating Pont L'Eveque cheese). The dog named Brunhilde pulls Pierre to shore, gives him snout-to-mouth resuscitation and a good-sized quaff of Irish whiskey, and they fall immediately and deeply in love (Pierre likes a girl who carries her own drinks); they are last seen walking towards the Alpenglow.
Four O'Clock a.m., 31 December, four alarm clocks rang in different rooms of the Chalet Bergschrund. While most eyes in Oberundsoweiter continued to slumber demurely behind closed lids, eleven eyes blinked open (Solomon surrendered one to a sadistic guard in Dachau; from the neck up he favors Moshe Dayan), and six weary bodies slouched from their beds to continue their training for the events to come. Tomorrow, the lottery; today, some final preparations.
In Room 201, Francoise pulled on lycra and fleece, then walked downstairs to the front door, to begin a 20 km jog.
In Room 211, Marie rose to a spot of tea and a bagel, while Sr Mac quaffed a Treefrog Beer. Then they went outside to the Chalet's stables, and searched the swine herd for suitable specimens for some porcine weight lifting, which Sr. Mac grumbled was "A sorry substitute for hefting heifers." After one hour of pigpumps, they joined Francoise for a run. All three planned to join Solomon that afternoon at the town's premiere climbing gym, installed on the inside walls of the Santa Voluptua Catholic Church (Father Horst Luftspieler called 1-800-ASK-POPE to get permission to weave some way cool routes between the Stations of the Cross).
Even after 10 days, Francoise still smarted at Pierre's departure, and blurted to her companions, "The jerk had gone to the dogs long before he left me for that bitch," dried her third and final tear, and muttered, "Oh, bonne riddance." She didn't want to admit it, especially to herself, but inside she was actually hurt. Marie regarded her with the same look she gives gorgonzola left too long in the afternoon sun on the Amalfi Coast (where she would rather be now). She and Sr. Mac made feeble attempts to cheer Francoise, but this simply annoyed her all the more. It seemed the year was ending rather poorly, and all three women were more than a bit nervous about the ordeal which lay ahead. How can you outsmart Nazis, when your brains feel like feces?
In Room 207, Solomon strained his one good eye to watch The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, ordered his usual pork chops from room service, and wondered if his plan to beat the Nazis to Hitler's fortune really had a chance to succeed. "Francoise is a great climber, but how will she hold up, now that her husband has dogged her?" he thought. Everyone knew Pierre would eventually leave Francoise, but his sudden canine romance took them all by surprise.
In Room 321, chosen because its balcony afforded an excellent view into Rooms 201, 207, and 211, Helmut Strenger and Jose/Hermann Winkhaus breakfasted on caterpillar fungus and turtle's blood. Then they took turns giving each other electric and hot massages, followed by acupuncture. "Ach ja, ach ja," Jose dreamily murmured. It was not the massages so much as their precise timing which thrilled him; even amongst Nazis, his erotic fascination with order and punctuality was legendary. The last needles were removed, and they began to assemble their collection of leather items.
JS Bach died in 1750. His devoted friend Stefan Grunwedel, who believed in Bach, God, and Luther (in that order), volunteered as organist at Santa Voluptua, for the simple reason that this Catholic church had the best pipe organ in the entire valley. Bach's death sent him into a spasm of intense despair, and to gain distraction he spent the next eleven years building Chalet Bergschrund. Creative neurotic depression resulted in a hotel as charming as it was spectacular. In typical Austrian fashion, it had carved gables, tiered windows, overhanging roof, and balconies adorned with flowerpots. Several very large windows afforded sweeping views of the entire Grossvater massif. The dining room's armchairs were exquisitely upholstered, stained glass lamps illuminated the tables set with dishware carved from agate and jade. Curtains were embroidered with folk art designs, and the rugs......... hmmm....well, yeah, they kinda sucked.
Lunchtime found Sr. Mac, Marie, and Solomon gazing through one of those immense windows, sampling Bratwurst, cheese (Emmenthaler and Stilton), and black bread. They sipped full-flower green jasmine tea (the flowers open up in hot water and add their delicate aromas to complement the leaves' piney terpenes). Fifteen minutes before, the blue-green veins in the Stilton cheese rudely and abruptly brought to Francoise's memory the phrase from James Joyce's Ulysses "the snot green sea", and to settle her stomach, she went up to the Zeitgeiste Deck for a Stoli and Tonic and some fresh air.
Her three comrades took advantage of her absence to talk frankly about their fears. Unconsciously, their discussion slowed as their eyes became more and more transfixed by the horrible beauty and symmetry of the Schreckkind's Direttissima, the Holy Grail, the listed cause of death on so many death certificates. The route begins at 6010 feet, proceeding from the south side of a small tarn, up through a steep moraine, 500 vertical feet of obnoxious tallus. Next, the Cwm of Telemarking Telemarketers presents 800 feet of deeply crevassed galloping glacier, which culminates in a modest-sized cirque. A narrow Couloir of Hypercohesive Clingwrap rises for another 700 feet, where loose snow, rockfall, and manky ice can flush even the best-anchored climbers into the Cwm below, to face certain crevassical entombment. The only enjoyable climbing takes place directly above the couloir, 300 feet (two pitches, precious little!) of good solid steep ice. Above this ice field, retreat is nearly impossible, because the next 1000 feet is The Wall of Quayle-Gingrich 2000, mixed snow, ice, loose and difficult fifth class rock climbing, lousy opportunities for bivy. The Wall QG2 crimps near its top into an amazing Arete Where Rula Lenska Gives Birth to Your Lovechild , sharp, plumbline straight, and 900 feet tall. People wouldn't try to climb it, except that the rock to each side is too smooth, featureless, and overhanging. And on the outside of each rock face is utterly unstable, heavily crevassed hanging glacier. No sane person would ever venture onto these glaciers; and yet, since Marie's mother, Sr. Isabelle, disappeared down the west side of the arete into one of these very same crevasses, our heroes - and villains - intend to do just that.
No one has ever successfully climbed the entire arete. Too bad, because the hideousness eventually gives way to a gorgeous finish, since it tops out with an Aiguille; then a relatively short col links the Aiguille to the last summit pinnacle, 800 more feet of climbing, but on a broader and easily protected slope.
In complete silence, the trio squinted their eyes at those crevasses, wondering which one contained the nun, the nose, the key to their triumph.
Up on the Zeitgeist Deck, as if in cosmic resonance, Francoise likewise squinted her eyes at the Direttissima, a vertical sliver of imagined reality, a mere razor's slice down the immensity of the Grossvater massif, its significance way out of proportion to its relative size. Although there was no breeze at all that day, a chilling moan of alpenschmertz blew up and down her spine. Suddenly, Francoise felt the entire weight and sadness of temporal beauty - how flowers, friends, the tasted memory of a good meal - all this vanishes in the instant of our death. Although the mountain may endure forever, what good is our appreciation of its majesty, if that majesty has no meaning in a brain that has no life? Surprisingly, an answer to her ponderance was soon to be forthcoming; but for now we must leave her to her suffering.
Helmut bore a grim but triumphant smile, as he spied on Francoise from his balcony, and recognized her chill and vulnerability. Inside the room, Jose gazed with admiration at his shiny black leather poodle. Just as he finally reached out to pet it, Helmut came in from the balcony and smugly announced: "I know how to fix the lottery."
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