A Hundred Million Years and a Day Read online

  ‘Listen to me, Umberto. All your objections, I’ve already made them. All of them. After that, I invented others. But remember the fragment of bone I saw in Leucio’s belongings … His description of the glacier, its position between the three mountain peaks … it all fits. Am I certain? Nobody could be. So, imagine: maybe a brontosaurus, as Peter said, the chance to prove that Marsh was right and that it is a distinct species from the apatosaurus. Even if it’s an apatosaurus or a diplodocus, we’re talking about a complete skeleton. Not a puzzle that we’ll have to painstakingly restore using guesswork and plaster. It would be the Holy Grail for any museum director or university vice chancellor. We are maybe a few days’ journey from one of the most incredible creatures to have ever walked the earth. A giant that will engrave our names in history.’

  ‘Your name, Stan-eh.’

  He’s right: that’s the tradition. Ladies and gentlemen, Stan the dinosaur, Titanosaurus stanislasi, the pièce de résistance of London’s Natural History Museum. Scissors, ribbon, the curtain falls, gasps and wide eyes as the largest fossil discovery of the last one hundred years is unveiled.

  ‘And the university is funding all this?’ my friend asks.

  ‘Luckily. Although you know them – it wasn’t easy. I had to do some arm-twisting.’

  ‘So what’s your plan?’

  ‘Three scenarios. One, we discover the cave and the skeleton quickly – let’s say in two weeks. We separate the head and bring it back with us. That would be ideal, the dream scenario. Two, we take longer than expected to find it and don’t have time to take a sample before we return. We photograph it, we measure it, and we come back next year. The discovery will be ours and we’ll have proof. Three …’

  Everybody knows the third possibility. I screwed up. I swallowed the babblings of a crazy old man out of laziness or, worse, out of weakness. Because when I listen to Alfred Deller sing Vergnügte Ruh on Madame Mitzler’s record player while she hems my trousers, there’s a lump in my throat. Because I’m going soft.

  Peter raises his glass of grappa, eyes shining.

  ‘If we’re not capable of believing a story just because it’s a good one, what is the point of this job?’

  Thanks, kid. Umberto in turn raises his glass and smiles fawningly.

  ‘To Stan-eh, the dinosaur.’

  Vergnügte Ruh. Joyful peace. It doesn’t take much.

  Our guide arrived at the end of a baking hot night. The man entered amid caramel heat, greeted by grunts and averted eyes, which, in this world where nothing is like the rest of the world, are signs of respect.

  Gio is an old Italian, the favourite guide for English mountaineers who come here to steal the height that is lacking in their own country. The mountains change, but he is always the one they call, the world over. Or rather they call his neighbour, the one with the telephone, who runs to fetch Gio from some roof in the village. And Gio puts down his roofer’s tools, picks up his bag and his leather shoes, says goodbye to his wife, swears that this will be the last time – he’s lying, and they both know it – and he leaves. Switzerland, France, Italy, the Himalayas. Gio is expensive: I almost choked when Umberto told me the price. Gio is expensive because he’s not dead. He has climbed Annapurna, the Eiger, the Matterhorn and other mountains, and he is not dead. He has never slipped or fallen, either because he is lucky or because he is the best. Both come at a price.

  Our guide is thin and wiry; he is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Wherever he is, you have the impression that he has always been there. No past, no future, just there. Umberto and he are from the same village, about three hundred miles from here; that is how they know each other. Gio is ten years older than Umberto. He speaks a Venetian dialect that Umberto translates in an undertone, a rare patois full of solitary consonants and strange repetitions that sound like gunfire.

  Gio could not care less about the aim of our expedition. Climb up, survive, climb down – that is his Holy Trinity. He spreads out a map and places a bony finger upon it. There it is, the path that I spotted, the only one that allows access to the stone cirque. Allowed – past tense. It was swept several hundred metres away by an avalanche two winters ago. As for what remains of it, Gio does not want to go there.

  But. His finger moves.

  There is another way, known to only a handful of men: a via ferrata created long ago by smugglers. Elevated, dangerous in places. Are we capable of negotiating it? Umberto is a born mountaineer – sì. Peter, too, has done some climbing in his youth – ja. But I am not fit or athletic. Worse, I suffer from vertigo.

  ‘Stan-eh?’

  ‘No problem.’

  Gio lays down the rules. Up there, in our stone fortress one and a half miles above sea level, we will obey his every command. We must take as few metal objects as possible. The mountain is so rich in iron that lightning is always drawn to it. If the mission takes longer than expected, he will decide when it is time to come back down, just before the bad weather begins. ‘Aeo intendù?’

  Umberto cracks his knuckles.

  ‘’Son a ciatà fora chel mostro! Let’s hunt the monster!’

  And Gio mutters: ‘Là su, i mostre l é solo chi che te te portes drio.’

  This time, I don’t need a translation to understand the law of the mountain.

  Up there, the only monsters are the ones you take with you.

  Night is still sticking to the mountains, a thick, inky paste that will be hard to lift. Gio had been waiting for us when we emerged from the locanda a little earlier, staggering under the weight of our brand-new rucksacks. Sitting on the edge of a drinking trough, he was smoking one of those twisted Toscanos that scorch your throat. I’ve seen grown men cry at their first puff and thirteen-year-old kids sucking them like liquorice. The cigar’s smell, in the languor of dawn, was reminiscent of the air after a lightning strike.

  A convoy was waiting, swallowed up by the darkness. Three donkeys with worn coats like velvet, leaning on one another so as not to collapse. Each carried a red metal container on one side, a pack on the other. A farmer, wedged against them, was sleeping on his feet. That was my expedition? I had sent a large sum of money to Umberto the previous month, for these three old nags? Four, if you counted the old man …

  By gesturing towards the mountain peaks, invisible in the blackness, then towards his ludicrous donkeys, I communicated to Gio: them, not enough, me, not happy. Not happy at all. I was not about to be swindled by a bunch of country bumpkins. And I knew country bumpkins, because I was one. I, too, knew how to rig a scale on market days by weighing down the tray or removing a couple of fruit just before packaging them. My father had showed me. Gio exhaled a huge puff of cigar smoke before sucking it back in through his nostrils: it would have been stupid to waste good second-hand smoke in this land where everything is so rare. He spoke too fast for me to understand.

  ‘Tell him those lousy donkeys are not enough, Berti. I’m no sucker.’

  ‘They’re just here to transport the oil for the lamps and the fire. Everything else is already up there.’

  ‘Everything else?’

  ‘Most of the oil, the tents, the firewood, some provisions of dried meat, the tools and stuff that we’ll need to catch a few rabbits to brighten up our everyday fare. Gio’s men took everything up last week.’

  ‘They … On the via ferrata?’

  Gio shrugged and muttered a response that was instantly translated by Umberto.

  ‘About nine hundred pounds of equipment.’

  With the dab of a paintbrush, dawn reddens the sky and outlines the cliffs.

  ‘And they’re actually mules, not donkeys.’

  If anyone ever takes an interest in my life, I will pass over this episode in silence. The stuff about rigging scales as well.

  The mountain path has petered out. There is now no more than a trickle of stones beneath our feet, occasionally punctuated by an orgy of roots. The valley is narrowing and sheering. We can hardly hear the river any more. Above our heads, the s
pruces are racing the granite cliffs towards the sky. Arrogance in defeat: therein lies the nobility of those trees. The heat has returned, even more intense than before, filling the narrow pass with an incandescent haze.

  I have never felt at ease in the mountains. As a child, I saw them from below. They were called the Pyrénées, but at six I heard this as Pires Aînés. The worst elders. I imagined older brothers, immense and terrifying, of another race, probably evil. Maybe that was why we didn’t climb them. As soon as you set foot on a mountain, the question is direct, almost stark. ‘Are you sure about this? You didn’t make a mistake?’ The mountain has questioned me a thousand times this morning and I haven’t known how to reply. Sometimes I have the feeling I am getting close, that the next curve is hiding a secret, a variation. But the trees all look the same and the stone remains. Umberto and Gio walk ahead, one behind the other, left right left right, ambling like camels. Behind, Peter patiently waits for me to move forward. He doesn’t pass me when I stop, a mark of deference that gives me the impression that I am slowing everybody down. Last come our three donkeys – sorry, mules – and the villager whose name I don’t know. He’ll take the animals back when they can no longer continue.

  At noon, we take a lunch break. A rectangle of dried meat, some hard bread rubbed with garlic, and a few mouthfuls of metallic-tasting water. Then we fold away our knives, put our rucksacks on our backs, and recommence our interminable attack, human atoms eroding the mountain like the water, wind and ice before us.

  A miracle has occurred. I have found my mountain legs. They were there, by the side of the path, waiting for me, and I put them on without even realising. They are wonderful legs, full of contained power, spring and technique for coping with the treacheries of the path. Suddenly I am light on my feet, and soon I walk close behind Umberto, who gives me a knowing little smile. I am one of them now.

  Lying on my sleeping bag under a streak of stars. The first day of an expedition that might last ten or a hundred, it’s impossible to say. There’s a rock digging into my shoulder. But I can’t move, my body is too weary. My new legs have been neatly put away just below my waist – I wouldn’t want to wear them out too quickly. Behind the horizon, a dragon stretches out its immense neck and roars into the night. I’m waiting for you. My eyes close amid a scent of everlasting flowers, a fragrance of brides and old women, of eternal renewal.

  Soon.

  The Commander was my father. Everybody called him that, in the bar, on the street, at the market, even though he was a farmer without any military glory in his past. It was said that the name came from a beating he had once given to a guy from the next village, who had looked at him the wrong way. Leaning over the man as he lay in a pool of his own blood, my father had yelled: ‘So, who’s in command, eh? Who’s in command?’ The name stuck.

  One day, a Spanish seasonal worker came into our living room, his face grave with dust and sweat.

  ‘Un pépin à la grange, jefe.’

  Something went wrong in the barn, boss.

  About fifty crates of apples had been knocked over, their contents scattered. The guilty party was lying in the middle of this disorder: a blue merle puppy with one ear folded over, asleep, with a fruity bubble at the corner of its mouth. Pépin – the something that went wrong – entered my life without any explanation, just as he would later leave it.

  He followed me everywhere. His youth and mine mingled in a whirlwind that left us panting, tongues lolling, knees grazed. Soon he grew stronger, faster, more cunning than me, and I raged at being trapped in a body that was too small. Pépin’s world was round and I was its centre. He encircled me in an attentive dance, drifting further and further away, so that by the time I was nine and he was four, I guessed at his presence more than I saw it. But he was still there, flashing on the edges of my life like a speck of dust on an eyelash.

  *

  At school, I was a loner. I preferred reading to sports and hunting, which was enough to classify me unambiguously as a pansy. To prove that his son was no sissy, and to boost my popularity, the Commander organised a birthday party to which he invited my schoolmates. It didn’t matter to him that it wasn’t my – or any of my friends’ – birthday. He shoved us into the barn with a leather ball: have fun, kids. After a few limp passes, they made me the goalkeeper. The goal was a narrow space between two haystacks. The others quickly realised that it was more fun to aim at me than to score a goal. I somehow managed to dodge all their shots until Castaings, the mayor’s son, knocked me off my feet, as stars danced before my eyes and distorted laughter rang in my ears. They sat me up and wedged me against the wall. One of the Etcheberry twins got ready to take a penalty kick.

  Castaings raised his hand to give the signal. Then suddenly vanished, snatched away in a growl of shadow by the darkness behind him. After a second of stunned silence, the others ran off screaming. When I opened my eyes, I was alone in the barn, with Pépin sitting in front of me. My dear old Pépin. I hadn’t seen him this close in weeks. My fingers sank into his coat below his ears, where it was thickest, and I buried my face there to breathe in his smell of warm cake, candied fruit and sun-baked honey. He was much bigger than he had been in my memory.

  Castaings escaped with eleven stitches, the others with the fright of their lives. The Commander made a generous donation for the refurbishment of the church. In return, Abbé Lavernhe helped the mayor to obtain the annulment of his first marriage. The mayor decided not to press charges.

  In the village, the rumour spread that I could talk to animals. Among the more simple-minded, it was said that I had dealings with the devil. My popularity never recovered. I came to understand that it was better to seek friends in the depths of rock and clay, and – if you didn’t find any there – to invent them.

  We hear it – a soft song of wool, a melody of hooves. We smell it – a breath of wet slate. But we don’t see it: the border is invisible. The border of a nation as vast as the wind, whose few inhabitants speak the language of animals. At noon we enter the land of the shepherds.

  At the narrowest part of the pass, a log bridge spans the river. The horizon opens up and unfurls over a vast plateau. The heat is still there, dry and white like the edge of a knife. Sharper and just as painful. The plateau seems to end in a cul-de-sac. No cirque, no mountain peak solidifies the horizon.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be able to see the three peaks now? Leucio’s landmarks? Are you sure we’re on the right path?’

  Gio: ‘Na croda, no te pos saé se te ra ciataras ancora agnoche te r as lasciada.’

  Umberto: ‘With a mountain, you never know if you’ll find it where you left it.’

  The two men continue to advance with the same serious expressions. I have just sampled the sibylline wisdom of the Dolomites. Either that or these rough creatures have a sense of humour that I had never suspected before.

  The grass in this country is traversed by clear water, little fledgling rivers that leave their nests for the first time and wander out into the great world. Cracks appear in the slab of heat, veins of coolness that we come upon unexpectedly. They slap us in the face, stop us in our tracks. We want to follow them back to their source, but we must continue straight towards the fleeing horizon.

  ‘What the …!’

  Peter bursts out laughing like a child – my foot has disappeared into a hole filled with water. Then he freezes like an attentive dog, finger pointed towards a vein of gneiss. Since our departure, he has swung between moods as nimbly as an acrobat. Now he remarks, very seriously – because he would never joke about such things – on the phenomenon of tectonic uplift that first formed this tortured region nearly forty million years before.

  Forty million years. These figures no longer amaze me as they did once, when I was trying to construct a timescale on the floor of my bedroom, one matchstick for every thousand years, and I realised with terror that my outstretched arms could not reach from the present to the birth of the mountains. For that, I would have needed arms str
etching all the way out to the barn. They’d have had to go far beyond that, to the peach orchard, to reach a diplodocus. And I couldn’t go to the peach orchard anyway, since I’d have had to pass through the living room, where my parents were yelling. So I pushed my matchsticks closer together and moved the furniture out of the way, allowing me to stay inside my room.

  Forty million years wasn’t old. Leucio’s dragon lived a hundred million years before the plateau’s formation. I had become used to such grandeur. You can become used to anything: to the collision of planets, to the shifting of continents, to trilobites so distant on my timescale that I would no longer be on my father’s property but in Abbé Lavernhe’s garden.

  Nothing surprises me any more. Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel sad. Or is it because, as my mother used to say, our family has sadness in its veins?

  Tonight we camp on the edge of the plateau. At this point, it narrows suddenly and veers eastwards, looking from a distance like a dead end. At the far end of this black gorge, the final ascent awaits us.

  Night has fallen, the air feels lighter. Unthinkingly, Umberto hums an old folk tune. Dots of fire sparkle behind us on the slopes: the campfires of the shepherds whom we saw during the day from a distance. Tall, mute figures, they responded to our friendly waves with a gesture that looked like a benediction.

  I could easily fall asleep like this, with my chin on my knees, but it’s impossible because Peter won’t stop talking. With the zeal of a preacher, he details the rock formations that surround us.

  ‘Typically anatexic … hervorragend example of migmatites … and that rift over there …’

  A lunar howl rings out and spreads across the horizon. Another joins it, then another, forming a warrior chorus that my primate genes have not forgotten. No words, but the message is clear: Run, you idiot.