All the time they had been at the tail the snow had been melting around them – all, that is, except the snow immediately beneath the tail, which was shaded from the sun. As a result, the tail had been left as if on a pillar of snow, which made it not only more difficult to enter but also perilously unsteady as they moved about inside. On the last night it wobbled so much that Parrado became terrified that it would fall over and shoot down the mountainside. The four lay as still as they could, but there was a wind which made the tail sway and Parrado could not sleep. ‘Hey,’ he said at last to the others, ‘don’t you think we’d better sleep outside?’
Vizintín grunted and Canessa said, ‘Look, Nando. If we’re going to die, we’re going to die, so let’s at least get a good night’s sleep.’
The tail was in the same place the next morning, but it was clearly no longer safe. It was equally obvious that no more tinkering with the radio would make it work. They therefore made up their minds to return to the plane. Before they left they loaded themselves once again with cigarettes, and Harley – as an expression of all the misery and frustration he had felt in those eight days – kicked to pieces the different components of the radio they had so painstakingly put together.
He was wrong to waste his energy. The 45-degree climb back to the plane was almost a mile. At first it was not so difficult, because the surface of the snow was hard. Later, when it became mushy and they either sank up to their thighs or strapped on the heavy and cumbersome cushions that they used as snowshoes, it needed an almost superhuman effort which poor Roy was not in a condition to provide. Though they rested every thirty paces, he soon lagged behind, but Parrado stayed with him – cajoling, cursing, begging him to come on. Roy would try and then fall back into the snow with despair and exhaustion. His voice whined higher than ever before; tears flowed more freely. He begged to be left there to die, but Parrado would not leave him. He swore at him and insulted him to put fire into his blood. He cursed him as he had never cursed anyone before.
The insults were extreme but they worked. They drove Roy on until it came to a point where he no longer responded to either oath or insult. Then Parrado returned to him and spoke quietly, saying, ‘Listen. It isn’t much farther now. Don’t you think it’s worth making one last little effort for the sake of seeing your mother and father again?’
Then he took his hand and helped Roy to his feet. Once again he staggered up the mountain, resting on Parrado’s arm, and when they came to a slope of snow so steep that no effort of will could drive Roy to surmount it, Parrado gripped him with the enormous strength he still seemed to possess and brought him up towards the Fairchild.
They reached the plane between half past six and seven in the evening. There was a cold wind blowing, with a slight flurry of snow. The thirteen had already gone inside, and they gave the expeditionaries a depressed reception.
Canessa, however, was less struck by their unfriendliness than by the desolation of the spectacle they presented. After eight days away he saw with some objectivity just how thin and haggard the bearded faces of his friends had become. He had seen too, with a fresh eye, the horror of the filthy snow strewn with gutted carcasses and split skulls, and he thought to himself that before they were rescued they must do something to tidy it up.
3
Towards the end of the first week in December, after fifty-six days on the mountain, two condors appeared in the sky and circled above the seventeen survivors. These two enormous birds of prey, with bald neck and head, a collar of white down and a wingspan of nine feet, were the first sign of any life but their own that they had seen for eight weeks. The survivors were immediately afraid that they would descend and carry off the carrion. They would have shot at them with the revolver but were afraid that the sudden noise might cause another avalanche.
At times the condors would leave them but then reappear the next morning. They watched the movements of the human beings but never swooped on them, and after some days they disappeared altogether. They were followed, however, by other signs of life. A bee once flew into the fuselage and then out again; later still, one or two flies and finally a butterfly were seen around the plane.
It was now warm during the day; indeed, at midday it was so hot that their skin became burned and their lips cracked and bleeding. Some of them tried to make a tent to shelter them from the sun with the poles from the hammocks and a bale of cloth that Liliana Methol had bought in Mendoza to make a dress for her daughter. They also thought it would make a useful signal to any plane that flew overhead, for this possibility was uppermost in their minds. When Roy and the expeditionaries had returned from the tail, they had told the thirteen who had stayed in the plane that they had heard on their transistor that the search had been restarted.
The boys were determined that this should not tempt the expeditionaries to abandon the idea of a further expedition. They had had no high hopes for the radio and were not thrown into despair when Harley, Canessa, Parrado and Vizintín returned, but they were impatient that the last three should leave again almost immediately. It soon became evident, however, that while the news of the C-47 in no way affected Parrado’s determination to leave, it produced in Canessa a certain reluctance to risk his life on the mountainside. ‘It would be absurd for us to leave now,’ he said, ‘with this specially equipped plane on its way to find us. We should give them at least ten days and then, perhaps, set out. It’s crazy to risk our lives if it isn’t necessary.’
The others were thrown into a fury by this procrastination. They had not pampered Canessa and suffered his intolerable temper for so long only to be told by him that he was not going. Nor were they so optimistic that the C-47 would find them, for they heard on the radio first that it had been forced to land in Buenos Aires, then that it had had to have its engines overhauled in Los Cerrillos. There was also the shortage of food that was upon them, for though they knew that corpses were hidden in the snow beneath them, they either could not find them or only found those they had agreed not to eat.
There was another factor too, which was their sense of pride in what they had achieved. They had survived now for eight weeks in the most extreme and inhuman conditions. They wanted to prove that they could also escape on their own intiative. They all loved to think of the expression on the face of the first shepherd or farmer they found as he was told that the three expeditionaries were survivors from the Uruguayan Fairchild. All of them practised in their minds the nonchalant tone they would adopt when telephoning their parents in Montevideo.
Fito’s impatience was more practical. ‘Don’t you realize,’ he said to Canessa, ‘that they aren’t looking for survivors? They’re looking for dead bodies. And the special equipment they talk about is photographic equipment. They take aerial photographs and then go back, develop them, study them … it’ll take weeks for them to find us, even if they do fly directly overhead.’
This argument seemed to convince Canessa. Parrado did not need to be persuaded and Vizintín always went along with what the other two decided. They therefore set to work to prepare the final expedition. The cousins cut flesh off the bodies not just for their daily needs but to set up a store for the journey. The others were set to sewing the insulating material from the tail into a sleeping bag. It was difficult. They ran out of thread and had to use wire from the electric circuits.
Parrado would have helped them to do this, but he was not skilled with his hands. He therefore took photographs with the camera they had found in the tail and collected together the clothes and equipment he would need for the expedition. He filled a knapsack made from a pair of jeans with the plane’s compass, his mother’s rug, four spare pairs of socks, his passport, four hundred US dollars, a bottle of water, a pocket knife, and a woman’s lipstick for his broken lips.
Vizintín put his shaving kit into his knapsack, not so much because he intended to shave before reaching civilization but because it had been a present from his father and he did not want to leave it behind. He also packed t
he plane’s charts, a bottle of rum, a bottle of water, dry socks, and the revolver.
Canessa’s rucksack was filled with all the medicines he thought they might conceivably need on their journey – adhesive bandages, a tube of dental floss, aspirin, pills against diarrhoea, antiseptic cream, caffein pills, muscle-warming ointment, and a large pill whose function was not known. He added to this a woman’s foundation cream to protect his skin, toothpaste, his documents, including his vaccination certificate, Methol’s penknife, a spoon, a piece of paper, a length of wire, and an elephant hair as a good-luck charm.
December 8 was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. To honour the Virgin, and to persuade her to intercede for the success of their final expedition, the boys in the Fairchild decided to pray the full fifteen mysteries of the rosary. Alas, soon after they had finished five their voices grew thinner and fewer, and one by one they dropped off to sleep. They therefore made up the rest the next evening, the ninth, which was also Parrado’s twenty-third birthday. It was a mildly melancholy occasion, for they had so often planned the party they would have in Montevideo. To celebrate here on the mountain, the community gave Parrado one of the Havana cigars that had been found in the tail. Parrado smoked it, but he took more pleasure from the warmth it provided than from the aroma.
On December 10, Canessa still insisted that the expedition was not ready to leave. The sleeping bag was not sewn to his satisfaction, nor had he collected together everything he would need. Yet instead of applying himself to what was still to be done, Canessa lay around ‘conserving his energy’ or insisted on treating the boils that Roy Harley had developed on his legs. He also quarrelled with the younger boys. He told Francois that at the tail Vizintín had wiped his backside on Bobby’s best Lacoste T-shirt, which put Bobby into an unusual rage. He even quarrelled with his great friend and admirer Alvaro Mangino, for that morning, while defecating onto a seat cover in the plane (he had diarrhoea from eating putrid flesh), he told Mangino to move his leg. Mangino said that it had been cramped all night and so he would not. Canessa shouted at Mangino. Mangino cursed Canessa. Canessa lost his temper and grabbed Mangino by the hair. He was about to hit him but simply threw Alvaro back against the wall of the plane instead.
‘Now you’re not my friend any more,’ Mangino said, sobbing.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Canessa, sitting back, his temper once more under control. ‘It’s just that I’m feeling so ill.’
He was no one’s friend that day. The cousins thought he was deliberately procrastinating and were especially angry with him. That night they did not keep his special place as an expeditionary, and he had to sleep by the door. The only one who had any influence on him was Parrado, and his determination was as great as it had ever been. That morning, as they lay in the plane waiting to go out, he suddenly said, ‘You know, if that plane flies over us, it might not see us. We should make a cross.’ And without waiting for anyone else to take up his idea, he went out of the plane and surveyed an area of pristine snow where a cross could be best constructed. The other boys followed him, and soon all those who could walk without pain were stamping the ground along preordained lines to make a giant cross in the snow.
In the middle, where the two lines crossed, they put the upturned dustbin which Vizintín had brought up on the trial expedition. They also laid out the bright yellow and green jackets of the pilots. Realizing that movement would attract a flier’s attention, they drew up a plan whereby they would run in circles as soon as a plane was sighted overhead.
That night Fito Strauch went to Parrado and said that if Canessa would not leave on the expedition then he would.
‘No,’ said Parrado. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve talked to Muscles. He’ll go. He must go. He’s much better trained than you are.… All we have to do now is finish the sleeping bag.’
The next morning the Strauchs rose early and set to work on the sleeping bag. They were determined that by the evening there should be no possible excuse for any further delay. But something was to happen that day which would make their threats and admonitions superfluous.
Numa Turcatti had been getting weaker every day. His health, along with that of Roy Harley and Coche Inciarte, caused the greatest concern to the two ‘doctors’, Canessa and Zerbino. Though Turcatti, who was so pure in spirit, was loved by all on the plane, his closest friend before the accident had been Pancho Delgado, and it was Delgado who took it upon himself to look after him. He brought Turcatti’s ration of food into the plane, melted snow for him, tried to stop him smoking cigarettes because Canessa had said they were bad for him, and fed him little smears of toothpaste from a tube which Canessa had brought from the tail.
For all this care, Turcatti continued to decline, and Delgado decided that something further should be done. He made up his mind to get extra food for his patient and, true to his nature, fell upon the method of stealth. He felt, perhaps, that had he asked the cousins outright, they might have refused. There came a day, however, when Canessa had diarrhoea and was sitting near where Numa lay inside the plane. Delgado went out to fetch the food, and came in with three dishes. Canessa had decided not to eat, because of his diarrhoea, but it was a day when they had cooked a stew, and when he saw what Delgado had brought in he asked to taste it. Delgado let him, willingly; Canessa tasted it and then decided that after all he would have his ration.
Canessa went up to Eduardo, who was serving it out, and asked for his ration. Eduardo said, ‘But I gave your portion to Pancho.’
‘Well, he never gave it to me.’
Eduardo was quick to lose his temper, and he lost it now. He began to vilify Delgado, and as he did so Delgado came out of the plane.
‘Are you talking about me?’
‘I am. Did you think we wouldn’t notice how you sneaked an extra ration?’
Delgado blushed and said, ‘I don’t know how you can think such a thing of me.’
‘Then why didn’t you give Muscles his ration?’
‘Do you think I kept it for myself?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was for Numa. You may not realize it, but Numa is growing weaker every day. If he doesn’t have extra food he will die.’
Eduardo was taken aback. ‘Then why didn’t you ask us?’
‘I thought you might refuse.’
The cousins let it pass, but they remained suspicious of Delgado. They knew, for instance, that on the days when the meat was raw Numa could hardly be persuaded to eat one ration, let alone two. Nor did it escape their notice that those cigarettes Delgado so conscientiously prevented Numa from smoking, he smoked himself.
Even with an extra ration, Numa’s condition did not improve. Instead he grew weaker. As he grew weaker, he grew more listless, and as he grew more listless, he bothered less about feeding himself, which in its turn made him weaker still. He also developed a bedsore on his coccyx, and it was when he asked Zerbino to come and look at it that Zerbino realized how drastically thin he had become. Until then his face had been covered by a beard and his whole body by clothes. Removing the clothes to examine the sore, Zerbino could see that there was practically no flesh left between the skin and the spine. Numa had become a skeleton, and Zerbino told the others afterward, that he only gave him a few more days to live.
Like Inciarte and Sabella, Numa was intermittently delirious, but on the night of December 10 he slept peacefully. In the morning Delgado went out to sit in the sun. He had been told that Numa might die but his mind would not accept it. Later in the morning, however, Canessa came out and told him that Turcatti was in a coma. Delgado returned immediately to the cabin and went to the side of his friend. Numa lay there with his eyes open, but he seemed unaware of Delgado’s presence. His breathing was slow and laboured. Delgado knelt beside him and began to say the rosary. As he prayed, the breathing stopped.
At midday the cushions were laid on the floor of the plane again. It had become a habit, because of the heat of the sun, to take a siesta. It depressed them all to lie impote
ntly like this, but it was better than burning. They sat and talked or dozed off. Then, at about three in the afternoon, they began to file out again. On this particular afternoon, Javier Methol lay at the back of the plane. ‘Be careful,’ he said to Coche as he rose and stepped over Numa’s body. ‘Be careful not to step on Numa.’
‘But Numa’s dead,’ said Parrado.
Javier had not realized what had happened, and now that he understood his spirits dropped completely. He wept as he had wept at the death of Liliana, for he had grown to love the shy and simple Numa Turcatti as though he were his brother or his son.
Turcatti’s death achieved what argument and exhortation had failed to achieve: it persuaded Canessa that they could wait no longer. Roy Harley, Coche Inciarte and Moncho Sabella were all weak and incipiently delirious. A day’s delay could mean the difference between their death and their survival. It was therefore agreed by all that the final expedition should set off the next day due west to Chile.
That evening, before he went into the plane for the last time, Parrado drew the three Strauch cousins to one side and told them that if they ran short of food they should eat the bodies of his mother and sister. ‘Of course I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said, ‘but if it’s a matter of survival, then you must.’