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Pointe Lachenal?”
    “Sorry.”
    As Rand released him, the Englishman straightened his clothes. He looked even smaller and more wary, like a turtle about to pull in its head.
    “There was someone on the mountain with a sweater like yours.”
    “I gathered that,” he said.

7
    J OHN B RAY HAD, BESIDES his red sweater, a dirty suede jacket and the face of a thief. He smoked French cigarettes. There was a fever blister on his lip. He was twenty-two.
    “The guides are looking for the bastard who’s pulling all their pins,” he said. It was raining. They were sitting inside the National, the floor filthy from wet boots. “They don’t think it’s so funny.”
    “Too bad.”
    “You’re screwing up their act.”
    “Come on. I was a guide,” Rand said.
    “Is that right? Where?”
    “In the Tetons.”
    “Never heard of them. They must be new.”
    “Have you heard of the Himalayas?”
    “I don’t think so,” Bray said. Then, in a low voice, “Look out, here they come.”
    A group of Japanese was entering, looking around to find an empty table.
    “Hello,” Bray said with a wave of his hand as they squeezed past. “Nice weather, isn’t it?”
    They were nodding and acknowledging in some confusion. Humor does not readily translate.
    “Having some good climbing?” he asked.
    Finally they understood.
    “Oh, yes. Crime,” they said.
    “Where have you gone? The Triolet? Grépon?”
    “Yes, yes,” they agreed.
    “Good luck.” He waved after them, smiling. “Nice little fellows,” he said in an aside to Rand. “They come here by the thousands.”
    “I’ve already heard the story.”
    “Which one?”
    “About a bit of a nip in the air.”
    Bray had a wry, grudging laugh.
    “What’s that? I don’t know that,” he said.
    Outside the rain came in gusts. The campgrounds were drenched, the paths slick with mud. The National, which was known as the English bar, was cheap, unadorned. There is a strain of English whose faces are pale and crude as if they were not worth finishing or touching with color. It was these sullen faces that filled the room.
    “Never stops raining here,” Bray said. “You have to wait for what they call a beau fixe, stretch of good weather. Then it’s all right.”
    “Where are you going then?”
    “You mean climb? I hadn’t decided.”
    “Would you like to do one?”
    “What are you thinking of?”
    “You know the Frêney?”
    Bray laughed a bit nervously. “You mean that?”
    “Are you interested?”
    “I might be, yes.”
    “Why not, then?”
    “Um …be a couple of days on it, wouldn’t we?”
    “I would think so,” Rand said.
    The Frêney is a buttress, inaccessible and huge, on the side of Mont Blanc. There had been famous tragedies on it.
    “That’s where Bonatti got in all the trouble, isn’t it? Yeah, sure, I’d be interested.”
    Bray, a thick cigarette in his small hand, head bent forward as if pondering a chessboard, was a plasterer. British climbing had changed since the war. Once the province of university men, it had been invaded by the working class who cut their teeth on the rock of Scotland and Wales and then traveled everywhere, suspicious and unfriendly. They came from the blackened cities of England—Manchester, Leeds. To the mountains they brought the same qualities—toughness and courage—that let them survive in the slums. They had no credo, no code. They had bad teeth, bad manners and one ambition: to conquer.

8
    D OWN A CURVING, DAWN street in the stillness, at the hour when shutters are still closed and all that distinguishes this century from the last are empty cars ranked along the gutters, Rand walked. He was carrying a large pack and a rope. He passed almost no one—a lone woman going in the other direction and a white cat without a tail hunting in a garden. As he came close the cat stepped into some bushes. It had a tail, almost invisible, perfectly black.
    At the cable car station there were people already waiting. They