"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen." "I thought I would cut this rope, since it seems to be obstructing my path." "I can't seem to find my partner." "He was here a moment ago, then let out a cry and disappeared." "My, my." "I seem to have made a faux pas." "My friend was on the other end of that rope." "Rotten luck." "He was also my business partner." "But the show must go on." "Tonight, we are presenting a chilly little tale entitled," ""The Crystal Trench."" "It follows at a respectful distance." "I had come from London that Wednesday on my first visit to the Alps." "Strange, after so many years," "I should remember it was a Wednesday." "A Wednesday in September, 1907." "I came up the valley by train." "Dark canopies of clouds obscured the Schwarzhorn, but I could make out the broad, icy spread of the nearby glacier." "It had a sort of majesty." "At least, I thought so then." "With its solid depths of ice and its silent, relentless flow as it crept along its inevitable course." "Now, 40 years later, I know the glacier for something else." "Something I had better never have known." "I was to meet my guides, the Blauers, at the Bowed House Hotel." "I had climbed easier peaks in Austria with the Blauers, preparing myself for Schwarzhorn." "Oh, hello." "How are you?" "Welcome, welcome, welcome." "Here." "Please, sign there." "Everything's arranged." "How's your mother?" "Fine." "Fine." "I had scarcely entered the lobby, when I discovered both Frederic and Hans Blauer engaged, as usual, in an argument with another man." "Hans!" "Frederic!" "You are just in time to settle an argument." "It seems to me you were arguing when I left you last year in Torino." "Never with each other, Mr. Cavendidge." "Only with those who insult our intelligence." "I don't care!" "I saw what I saw!" "lmpossible!" "They were right at the top." "Maybe you can still see them." "What should I look for?" "Two men on top of the Schwarzhorn." "Now?" "At 4:00 in the afternoon?" "I was looking through this, you understand?" "And suddenly the clouds seemed to draw apart, and there it was, the Schwarzhorn." "Then two men climbed into my view." "They were near the very top of the peak." "Which direction did they come from?" "The south." "You see?" "That's not possible." "If they came by the south, they would have had to have come by the Lerner Ascent." "At least I know which is north and which is south!" "Even a child knows that!" "One of the climbers, the one in front, was moving very slowly." "He seemed weak." "The second man was stronger," "I saw him lift the rope between them." "It was slack." "He shook the snow off it..." "The rope was slack?" "And then?" "Then the clouds closed in again, and I could not see them anymore." "If what you say is true, it could be very serious." "That's what we have been telling him, Mr. Cavendidge." "He can't just go around inventing stories like that." "I saw it, I tell you!" "It's just possible, of course, just, you understand." "On a fine day, a party coming by that route might find themselves on top of the Schwarzhorn at 4:00 in the afternoon." "But on a day like this, no man in his senses would be on any ridge of that mountain," "I can only hope you're mistaken." "Come and help me unpack." "Good!" "I'll show you some boots I bought in London." "Mr. Cavendidge?" "I have bad news." "There has been an accident." "On the Schwarzhorn?" "How could you know?" "Ranks has just sent word from the Vern hut." "Ranks?" "What has he got to do with it?" "He was with him." "It is terrible!" "They were so young..." "Boys!" "Countrymen of yours, that's why I have come to you." "Now, if you'll tell me what's happened?" "They arrived here last week." "They were not experienced climbers, but they had no respect for our guides or for our mountains." "They would not listen to what anybody said." "If only Herr Ranks had not come from Austria." "Do you know him?" "No, but the Blauers told me about him." "They say he'll climb with anyone." "As soon as he met these two young men, he suggested the Lerner Ascent to them." "They went up to the Vern hut, slept the night there, and started up the Schwarzhorn with provisions for three days." "That was four days ago!" "And Ranks has come back alone?" "No." "One of the boys is with him." "George Liston." "They're moving him down to the clinic at Brig, tonight, hoping to save his hands and feet which are badly frostbitten." "No, it is the other boy, Michael Ballister." "He died when he almost reached the top." "Ranks says that he and Liston were too exhausted to bring him down, so they left him up there." "We'll have to go and fetch him as soon as the weather clears." "Is that what you wanted to ask me about?" "No, there is something else." "His wife..." "Ballister's wife is here in the hotel." "Someone must tell her." "You expect me to?" "Who else is there?" "But why me?" "Like you, she's English." "And it is better if she hears it from one of her own countrymen." "They've only been married six months." "All day long she has been trying to hide that she was anxious about him." "Where is she now?" "In the dining room." "We'd better tell her now." "Mrs. Ballister, I do not believe you have met Mr. Cavendidge." "He's just come today from London." "Good evening." "Good evening." "If you'll excuse me." "May I?" "Oh, of course, please do." "It's so good to hear English spoken again." "I never quite get used to all these accents." "This is one of my favorite tunes." "Do you dance, Mr. Cavendidge?" "Well, I..." "Funny, in London, it would seem quite improper for me to ask you." "But here it seems all right, doesn't it?" "I imagine you're a rather courageous person." "Oh, why do you say that?" "I'm hoping..." "No, praying that you are." "What do you mean?" "Mrs. Ballister," "I have been nominated a committee of one to tell you something, which is something, I'm afraid, no matter how gently I try, can only..." "Ordinarily, they tell people to sit down at a time like this." "I think you're a woman who might prefer to be standing." "I don't know what you're trying to tell me, but whatever it is, please say it." "Mrs. Ballister, your husband is dead." "His body is up on the Schwarzhorn." "It's not true." "It can't be true!" "How did it happen?" "Did he fall?" "Apparently he died of exhaustion and exposure." "Isn't there a chance that..." "That he's still alive?" "No." "We'd hardly begun." "Michael and I, we..." "We'd hardly begun." "I'll take a party up in the morning and try and bring him down." "But he said he was only going to the mountain." "He promised me he'd be all right." "He said I wasn't to worry." "Mrs. Ballister, the Schwarzhorn is one of the most dangerous ascents in the world." "Many experienced climbers have lost their lives up there." "You will find him, won't you?" "You will bring him back to me?" "I'll do my best." "Oh, please." "I don't know if I can bear it, not to look at him once more," "not to see him, to touch him again." "We crossed the mountain by the eastern arete, descending on the south side..." "Found Ballister." "It was then, the grimmest episode of that terrible day occurred." "With infinite care, we began to untie the frozen ropes which bound him." "A gust of snow blinded us for a moment, throwing us back and in that second, the body slipped away from us." "We watched hopelessly, as it gathered speed and disappeared into a crevasse." "He's fallen into the glacier." "I could not shake off the feeling that somehow I had betrayed a trust." "I had discovered that she was an only child and both her parents were dead." "She seemed so friendless, so alone." "Thank you." "Could I have my bill too, please." "Well, there's no need for you to leave just because I'm leaving." "It's all right." "I'm quite able to take care of myself." "I really don't want to stay on here." "When must you be in London?" "Not for a couple of weeks." "Could you come to Brig with me?" "Brig?" "Yes, George Liston's in the clinic there." "I want to talk to him and that man, Herr Ranks." "And since you know about mountains and climbing and things," "I..." "I thought perhaps you could come with me." "I want to find out if he's telling the truth." "The truth?" "About the accident?" "But why shouldn't he?" "Michael was strong." "He'd never have just stopped breathing." "Something else must have happened." "I've got to find out." "Will you come?" "Yes." "I'll come." "Thank you, Mr. Cavendidge." "In that second I knew I wanted to hear her call me Mark." "Not Mr. Cavendidge, but Mark. "Mark, my dear."" ""Mark, my darling."" "In that second I knew I had begun to love her." "Hello, Herr Ranks." "And this is Mrs. Ballister." "I'm a friend of hers." "I'm sorry about your husband." "And I'm sorry that I wasn't there the day you came to the hotel and persuaded him to go with you." "Perhaps, if I had been, he wouldn't have gone." "I know how you must feel." "You blame me, and you are right." "I am partly responsible." "What do you mean, you are responsible?" "Well, we left with too little food and that was bad planning on my part." "And I should have considered the youth of my companions." "You see, young men can never climb so well." "They don't have the lungs for it or the legs." "No, I should never have led them up." "And I should have controlled your husband more, madam." "He was an inexperienced climber." "I tried to warn him not to go so fast, but, he being young, believed there was nothing he could not conquer, not even the Schwarzhorn." "Finally, he collapsed altogether." "His heart gave out." "I swear to you we stayed with him until he died." "Although the wind was quite dangerous for us and he was evidently dying." "We stayed with him until it was all over." "Why do you make such a point about staying with him?" "Because it was at a great risk to us." "Liston and myself." "How can I be sure that you did stay with him?" "How can I be sure that you didn't go off and leave him to die alone on the ridge?" "Because I have told you so and Liston will tell you the same thing." "We were with him until he died." "Up there in the cold and the darkness, the utter loneliness..." "While I waited in the hotel with a fire and the sound of music!" "You left him up there to die!" "I know it!" "No!" "Please!" "No!" "You did it!" "I know!" "I have said it is my fault." "What more does she expect from me?" "Forgive me, Mr. Cavendidge." "I'm ashamed of the way I behaved." "It's all right." "You've gone to so much trouble for me." "Thank you." "Well, there's no point in our staying here." "What about George Liston?" "Don't you want to talk to him?" "What more can he tell me except..." "No, that won't bring Michael back." "Nothing will bring him back." "Only I." "You?" "Michael and I, we had what very few people have, a perfect marriage." "This may sound fanciful to you, but somehow it was ordained, predestined that we should meet, that we should love each other." "Six months..." "Such a little time, but we had more than most people have in all their lifetime." "Far more!" "And that's how I'll bring Michael back." "By remembering." "By taking each moment of our time together and expanding it into a month or a year of remembering." "Do you understand?" "That way, if..." "If I live to be 80," "I shall never live long enough to recapture all of it." "Stella..." "It's wrong to live in the past." "No matter how hard we try, we can't make time stand still any more than we can preserve the roses of last summer." "Oh, but you can." "Don't you see?" "You can!" "Particularly if the roses are packed in ice." "That way they might last forever..." "Mightn't they?" "I returned to London with Stella." "In the weeks that followed, I saw her whenever she'd let me." "Once I took her to a concert, twice to the theater." "But it was not until Christmas of that first year," "I had any encouragement from her." "A note inviting me to have tea with her in her house in Mayfair." "On the strength of this summons," "I stopped that morning at the jewelers and picked up the ring I had ordered weeks before, a ring I knew I would never place on the finger of any woman other than Stella." "Mark, it's so good to see you." "It's charming, Stella." "But, of course, it would be." "Please." "I'm so grateful that you were able to be free today." "This is a very important day." "I rather thought so, too." "Stella, I..." "I never thought the time was right before, but now..." "This says it better than I can." "If I could ever wear anyone's ring again, Mark, it would be yours." "I'm sorry." "Stella, please think it over." "I..." "I love you and you..." "You need someone, someone..." "Mark, I can't." "Where I'm taking you this afternoon and what we're going to do, will explain to you why I can't." "Well, Mrs. Ballister, I shan't bore you with the science of these computations." "I imagine you simply..." "This doesn't bore me, Professor," "I just want to be sure, that is all." "Mmm-hmm." "The question here was, how far and how fast does the glacier move each year?" "Well, the rate of flow differs from year to year, depending on the balance between the melting line and the accumulation area at the upper end of the glacier." "The melting line, of course, is at the lower end." "The ablation or wastage area." "Now, the flow of the glacier actually starts within the ice itself at least 200 feet beneath the surface." "There we get the basal slip along the bed of the valley, caused mostly by gravity." "But the ice also moves by crystals pushing each other out of shape." "Uh, we call this plastic flow." "By measuring the grains and the direction of the ice crystals, by readings on a micro altimeter, by checking our gravity meter to tell us what the rock floor is like, we can calculate the rate of flow rather precisely." "On the 21st of July, Mrs. Ballister, in the year 1947, more likely in the morning, rather than in the afternoon, I should say, your husband will come out of the ice at the foot of the glacier." "You see, Mark?" "I shall have Michael back after all." "I realized then that Stella had made her choice." "That for the next 40 years she intended to wait for Michael, just as I knew I must wait for Stella." "The years slipped away, each one faster than the one before." "And now once more I came up the valley." "It was a cloudy day, just as it had been that Wednesday 40 years ago." "And again I saw the broad, icy spread of the glacier." "I knew it now for what it was." "A tombstone." "A vast crystal trench which had enveloped us, molded and shaped us," "Stella and me, for this day..." "This 21st day of July, 1947." "I think you should go back to the hotel." "I'll come and get you when it's time." "But the Professor said, "More likely in the morning" ""than in the afternoon."" "Don't you remember, Mark?" "Yes, I remember, but all the same." "He couldn't be wrong!" "No, of course not, but still," "I think you should wait at the hotel." "No, Mark, I want to stay." "Mr. Cavendidge!" "Look!" "The glacier had used Michael Ballister tenderly." "The years had taken no toll of him." "Seeing Stella with him," "I could see what the years had done to her." "I knew what they had done to me." "Your locket was still around his neck, Stella." "The girl who stared out at me was not Stella, but someone strange." "A pretty face, but cheap." "It's a..." "It's a miniature of you." "Not a very good likeness, but..." "Thank you, Mark, but he had no locket with a portrait of me." "So much for our version of The Iceman Cometh." "I shall return for a final word in a moment." "First, we have come to one of those treacherous crevices that riddle the glacier of television." "I think I should begin my descent before I become the source of a legend about an abdominal snowman." "Next week, I shall once again return with another story, spliced together by commercials." "Until then, goodnight."