The Second Descent, Richard Paul Russo

Opening: A cold dense fog lay heavy on the mountain that morning. Rafael stood in the snow outside his tent and searched for the summit, which was only three or four hundred meters above them, but he could see nothing through the diffuse gray fog that hissed and crystallized into particles of ice, a kind of snowy mistfall.

Capsule: Death lingers in this superb, richly crafted story, penetrating the text in ways we don't anticipate and perhaps absent from the crevices where we might expect it. The story has been described by reviewers as "bleak" and "allegorical." I certainly agree with the latter, but perhaps it's revealing of my own sensibilities that while I can see that the setting and some of the imagery are bleak, I did not find the story as a whole bleak--in fact, more like uplifting.

The title is highly suggestive and as soon as we realize the characters are climbers in that first paragraph it raises obvious questions. The story consists of twenty scenes separated in two sections. These alternate between Rafael's present-day narrative (if, in fact, he is living in any kind of physically quantifiable time) and memories of past significant events of his life, as well as the earlier (and future?) climbs and attempts to descend (reach the summit?) of the nameless mountain and one of its mirage-like cities. RPR wisely lays out the obvious questions early on, in the second scene: "He doesn't understand why they're engaged in a second descent, or how it's even possible." Making an explicit reference to this conundrum so soon works well, serving multiple functions. For one, it lets us know that the character is wandering through an existential landscape, where there are no immediate or graspable answers. We quickly understand that the story will not offer a resolution to it, but rather explore the character's search for understanding. In addition, it signals to us that RPR is going to play fair and give us all the information it is possible for us to have while immersed in Rafael's universe. That is to say, the puzzles of the story won't result from an incomplete presentation of events. As much as Rafael perceives and experiences, so will we.

Death appears in the loss of three members of the original seven that formed the climbing expedition. Skeletons, crosses, graves, even a priest. But the rituals of death do little to dispel its presence or instill in us the sense that Rafael has dealt with it. In fact, they achieve the opposite effect, drawing attention to it. In the third scene Rafael sees "a thousand dead souls still on their final journeys" in the eyes of Yusuf, who may in fact be a walking dead, an apparition, or a metaphor for the ultimate release brought about by death. This seems to be confirmed by the statement that "for Yusuf nothing ever seemed to be personal," while for Rafael everything is. Rafael is engaged by the full immensity of life, while Yusuf, perhaps, has completely departed from it and is alive for Rafael only as a reminder of this engagement. The references to death continue, hardly how we might consider: for example, Agent Orange in the context of the Vietnam war, bacterial meningitis afflicting Rafael's daughter Leila when she is five, and putting her "close to death", and so on. I'd like to suggest here that perhaps the most weighty death is the death of Rafael's deep-seated anxiety and fear about the inscrutable future and the unknowability of what lies ahead. This, I think, is what comprises the central character transformation and offers us a philosophical perspective that does not evade the existential emptiness of reality but presents a way of coming to terms with it. If we pursue the metaphor, we discover that there is a physical-temporal metonymy at work; the descent down the space of the mountain is our motion through an unrevealed future, and the inability to see how far the climb is, the impossibility of knowing what is to come.

What is the way of coming to terms with this? Rafael receives an insight when attempting to prepare for the possible outcomes of his daughter's medical treatment. Interestingly, this scene transpires in the present tense, though it clearly does not belong to the mountain-present storyline. This suggests that the events in these scene are as emotionally significant as anything that is really happening "right now", and thus co-inhabit Rafael's notion of present. Also significantly, Rafael's insight is not one he is able to articulate in a way that his wife Kiyoko will understand. The central experience consists of a shift in emotion; at first, when confronting the darkest possibilities Rafael is physically "wrung out, exhausted" by the grief and pain. Next, he ponders the best case scenarios. And what does he feel? This is where RPR's technique shines through with genius. A linear, emotionally accessible approach would have been as follows: Rafeael considers dark possibilities, feels terrible, then considers optimistic possibilities and feels better. While logical and consistent, that sequence would have achieved but a fraction of what RPR's choice does. It is this: Rafael considers dark possibilities, feels terrible, considers optimistic possibilities--there is no stated emotional response to this--and then he returns to a consideration of the worst case scenarios a second time.

Why is this so effective? When Rafael revisits the darkest options, "the pain is muted, the dread fainter." This is the core of his experience. By opting for a cyclical consideration of possibilities, RPR is not only making the thought process lifelike (in difficult situations we often struggle to imagine outcomes, and the more painful the more we might obsessively revisit them), but infusing the psychological landscape with an almost Buddhist, meditative sense of depth. Simplifying grossly, Rafael has meditated profoundly, and this has allowed him to diminish his existential anguish. But there is another reason this choice is masterful. Rafael is imagining the worst "once again." This is a second descent into his own deep-seated fears. RPR's elegant technique sidesteps the identification I have presented, but the text makes it readily available to a close reading.

Rafael's inability to communicate his insight to his wife further amplifies the existential theme. "He stops trying, and they never speak of it again." The "never" here, with its finality, suggests that the experience cannot be communicated, and is a purely internal one that must be undergone to be understood.

The insight carries from one storyline to the other. The realization that provides Rafael some measure of calm is that while he will never know how true his fear is that the second descent is literally endless (that there is, perhaps, no assurance of meaning forthcoming), there is a chance that he might discover that it is false, and that possibility is motivation enough to continue the trek. Rather than succumbing to the "sense of futility" his companions seem to leave him behind for, he is able to alter his perception and rejoin them. That is much a victory as we can hope for, and encourages us to continue along our own internal descents.

Richard Paul Russo was interviewed regarding the composition of this story.