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I was talking to Marco Polo.
He said Yes, OK, he went over the top a bit in the book to push up the sales.
But it was mostly true.
The years on the road. Turkey, Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, …
Disease, and a year to recuperate in Badakhshan.
Bandits, sandstorms and spirit voices in the Gobi.
The Pamirs were the worst he said, with the bloody horses dying below the high passes where your bones froze.
You know I said I was in China yesterday. (True enough. We hit Terminal 3 at 7.20 this morning.)
I had expected disbelief, but he understood pretty well what we can do.
I had not expected pity.
Perhaps this is how everything is. The scree steepens into rockface; you work your way up ten or twelve pitches, each worse than the one before, the last a brutal overhang with few holds, and those not good; somehow, pushing your limits, you struggle through to the top with your arms on fire, to find a car park, toilets and a café.
In a good hotel, on his fortieth birthday, he nurses a hangover and sips his coffee.
Five hours' walk above the valley there are gentians and saxifrage, and a stream falling.
He brushes his teeth, collects his papers and takes a cab to the first meeting.
Below the pass, snow finches flash and whirl across the scree.
Half the board are ready to sign but he can't convince the fund managers.
Chamois move up into the cirque, reach the ridge and disappear.
He takes a break and inspects the plant, puffing his way round the shop floor.
Above the moraine, four elements: snow, sun, rock and ice.
The accountants are evasive. He has lunch with a woman from marketing; nearly calls his wife.
A snow slope leads up to a cornice. Some tricky scrambling, then out at the top.
Afternoon fades into evening drizzle. They finish haggling. He phones London.
Another hour fighting the wind; one last crevasse, and the summit rocks.
Back in a cab past the bus queues. A bath; then dinner with a good bottle.
Here, now, is the top of the world, the sky vast, halfway to eternity.
He falls asleep watching a film about three lesbians, on his fortieth birthday.
In a shabby pub down a back street late one evening I found my old maths master sitting at a corner table crying.
Not a pretty sight, an old maths teacher weeping into his beer.
‘Let me tell you this,’ he said. ‘It does not add up. It does not fucking add up.
Two plus two is a random number.
The angles of a triangle make 37 degrees, or 460, or minus 11, or nothing you can determine. Circles bulge. Squares don’t have enough corners. Parallel lines all meet or do not exist or go where they bloody feel like. The x axis does not come on the same page as the y axis.
There is no geometry that fits our space.
You get on the number 4 bus for the station and when you arrive it is flight 968 to Istanbul diverted to Manchester and you have to walk back.
Time leaks out of the clock and scampers off sideways.
One woman is three women or no woman, not necessarily in that order.
You bastards knew all that didn’t you? You knew it all along,’ he said, knocking over his beer.
‘We tried to tell you,’ I said. ‘We tried to tell you.’
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