Miracle in the Andes Page 13

  It is hard to describe the depths of the despair that fell upon us in the wake of the avalanche. The deaths of our friends staggered us. We had allowed ourselves to believe that we had passed the point of danger, but now we saw that we would never be safe in this place. The mountain could kill us in so many ways. What tortured me most was the capriciousness of death. How could I make sense of this? Daniel Maspons had been sleeping only inches to my right. Liliana had been just as close on my left. Both were dead. Why them and not me? Was I stronger? Smarter? Better prepared? The answer was clear: Daniel and Liliana wanted to live as much as I did, they were just as strong and they fought just as hard to survive, but their fate was decided by a simple stroke of bad luck—they chose their spots to sleep that night, and that decision killed them. I thought of my mother and Susy choosing their seats on the plane. I thought of Panchito switching seats with me just moments before the crash. The arbitrariness of all these deaths outraged me, but it frightened me, too, because if death here was so senseless and random, nothing, no amount of courage or planning or determination, could protect me from it.

  Sometime later that night, as if to mock me for my fears, the mountain sent a second avalanche roaring down the slopes. We heard it coming and braced for the worst, but the snow simply rolled over us this time. The Fairchild had already been buried by snow.

  THE WRECKAGE OF the Fairchild had always been a drafty and crowded shelter, but in the aftermath of the avalanche it became a truly hellish place. The snow that invaded the fuselage was so deep that we couldn’t stand; we had barely enough headroom now to crawl about the plane on hands and knees. As soon as we had the stomach for it, we stacked the dead at the rear of the plane where the snow was deepest, which left only a small clearing near the cockpit for the living to sleep. We packed into that space—nineteen of us now, jammed into an area that might have comfortably accommodated four—with no choice but to squeeze together, our knees, feet, and elbows tangled in a nightmare version of a scrum. The air in the fuselage was thick with dampness from the snow, which gave the cold an even meaner edge. All of us had been covered with snow, which quickly melted from the heat of our bodies, and soon our clothing was soaked through. To make matters worse, all our possessions now lay buried beneath several feet of snow on the fuselage floor. We had no makeshift blankets to warm us, no shoes to protect our feet from the cold, and no cushions to insulate us from the frozen surface of the snow, which was now the only surface for us to rest on. There was so little clearance above our heads that we were forced to rest with our shoulders slumped forward and our chins pressed to our chests, but still, the backs of our heads bumped the ceiling. As I struggled in the jostling heap of bodies to find a comfortable position, I felt panic rising in my throat and I had to fight the urge to scream. How much snow lay above us? I wondered. Two feet? Ten feet? Twenty feet? Were we buried alive? Had the Fairchild become our coffin? I could feel the oppression of the snow all around us. It insulated us from the noise of the wind outside and altered sounds inside the plane, creating a thick, muffled silence, and giving our voices a subtle echo, as if we were speaking at the bottom of a well. I thought, Now I know how it feels to be trapped in a submarine on the ocean floor. Despite the cold, there was clammy sweat beneath my collar. I felt the walls of the fuselage close in on me. All my claustrophobic fears—of being trapped by the mountains around us, of being shut off from escape and cut off from my father—were being realized in an absurdly literal way. I was trapped inside an aluminum tube under tons of hardened snow. Teetering on the verge of panic, I remembered the peaceful acceptance I’d felt under the avalanche, and for a moment I wished they had found Liliana instead of me.

  The following hours were some of the darkest of the entire ordeal. Javier wept miserably for Liliana, and almost all the other survivors mourned the loss of at least one especially close friend. Roberto had lost his closest amigo, Daniel Maspons. Carlitos had lost Coco Nicholich and Diego Storm. We all mourned for Marcelo and Enrique Platero. The deaths of our friends left us feeling more helpless and vulnerable than ever. The mountain had given us another show of force, and there was nothing we could do in response except to sit shivering in a miserable tangle on our hard bed of snow. Minutes passed like hours. Soon some of the survivors began to cough and wheeze, and I realized that the air in the fuselage was growing stale. The snow had sealed us in so tightly that we’d been cut off from fresh air. If we didn’t find an air supply soon, we would suffocate. I spotted the tip of an aluminum cargo pole jutting up from the snow. Without thinking, I drew it from the snow, grasped it like a lance, and, resting on my knees, began to drive the pole’s pointed tip into the ceiling. Using all my strength, I stabbed the ceiling again and again until somehow I managed to punch through the Fairchild’s roof. I pushed the pole upward, feeling the resistance of the snow above the plane. Then the resistance ended and the pole broke free. We were not hopelessly buried. The Fairchild was covered by no more than a few feet of snow.

  When I removed the pipe, fresh air flowed in through the hole I’d made, and we all breathed easier as we settled back into our pack and tried to sleep. That night was endless. When dawn finally arrived, the windows of the fuselage brightened slightly as the dim light filtered down through the snow. We wasted no time trying to dig our way out of our aluminum tomb. We knew that because of the way the plane was tilted on the glacier, the windows on the right side of the cockpit faced skyward. With tons of snow blocking our usual exit at the rear of the aircraft, we decided these windows would be our best route of escape. But the way to the cockpit was also clogged with snow. We began to dig toward it, using shards of metal and broken pieces of plastic as shovels. There was only room for one man to work at a time, so we took turns digging in fifteen-minute shifts, one man chipping away at the rock-hard snow and the rest of us shoveling the loosened snow to the rear of the plane. In the dim light, I couldn’t help thinking that my bearded, emaciated, disheveled friends looked like desperate prisoners tunneling their way out of a cell in the Siberian Gulag.

  It took hours to burrow a passage through the cockpit, but finally Gustavo dug his way to the pilot’s seat, and, standing on the dead body of the pilot, was able to reach the window. He pushed against the window, hoping to force it out of its frame, but the snow pressing down on the glass was too heavy, and he couldn’t muster the strength. Roberto tried next, but he did no better. Finally, Roy Harley climbed onto the pilot’s seat and, with a furious shove, pushed the window free. Climbing through the opening he’d created, Roy dug up through a few feet of snow until he broke the surface and was able to look around. A storm was pounding the mountain with high winds and pelting snow that stung his face. Squinting into the wind, Roy saw that the avalanche had buried the fuselage completely. Before climbing back down to us, he glanced at the sky. He saw no break in the clouds.

  “There’s a blizzard,” he said, when he climbed back down into the fuselage. “And the snow all around the plane is too deep to walk on. I think we would sink into it and be lost. We are trapped inside until the storm ends, and it doesn’t look like it will end soon.”

  Trapped by the weather, we had no choice but to hunker down in our wretched prison and endure our misery one long moment at a time. To brighten our mood, we discussed the only thing that gave us comfort—our plans to escape—and as these discussions progressed, a new idea emerged. Two failed efforts to climb to the mountains above us had convinced many in the group that escape to the west was impossible. Now they were turning their attention to the broad valley that sloped away from the crash sight down the mountainside to the east. Their theory was that if we were as close to Chile as we believed, then all water in this region must drain through the Chilean foothills and into the Pacific Ocean to the west. That would include all the snow melting in this region of the cordillera. That water must find a way to flow west, they reasoned, and if we could find the path of that flow down through the cordillera, we would find our route of escape.

&nbs
p; I did not have much faith in this plan. For one thing, I couldn’t believe the mountains would let us off so easily. It also seemed insane to ignore the one fact we knew to be true—to the west is Chile—and follow a path that would almost certainly take us deeper into the heart of the Andes. But as the others decided to place their faith in this new plan, I did not argue. I don’t know why. Maybe my thinking was muddled because of altitude or dehydration or lack of sleep. Maybe I was relieved to be spared the terror of facing the mountain. For some reason I accepted their decision without question, even though I felt it was a waste of time. All I knew was that we must leave this place, and that we must start soon.

  “As soon as the blizzard ends, we must go,” I told them.

  Fito disagreed. “We must wait for the weather to get better,” he said.

  “I am tired of waiting,” I replied. “How do we know the weather will ever get better in this damned place?”

  Then Pedro Algorta remembered a conversation he’d had with a taxi driver in Santiago. “He said that summertime in the Andes comes like clockwork on November fifteenth,” Pedro said.

  “That’s only a little more than two weeks, Nando,” said Fito. “You can wait that long.”

  “I will wait,” I answered. “But only until November fifteenth. If no one else is ready to go by then, I will go alone.”

  THE DAYS WE spent trapped beneath the avalanche were the grimmest of the ordeal. We could not sleep, or warm ourselves, or dry our soaking clothes. Trapped inside as we were, Fito’s water-making machines were useless to us, and the only way to ease our thirst was to gnaw chunks of the filthy snow on which we were crawling and sleeping. Hunger presented a more complicated problem. With no access to the bodies outside, we had no food and we rapidly began to weaken. We were all well aware that the bodies of the avalanche victims lay within easy reach, but we were slow to face the prospects of cutting them. Until now, when meat had been cut, it had been done outside the fuselage, and no one but the ones doing the cutting had had to see it. We never knew whose body the flesh had been taken from. Also, after lying for so many days under the snow, the bodies outside had frozen so solidly it was easier to think of them as lifeless objects. There was no way to objectify the bodies inside the fuselage. Just a day earlier they had been warm and animated. How could we eat flesh that would have to be cut from these newly dead bodies right before our eyes? Silently, we all agreed that we would rather starve as we waited out the storm. But by October 31, our third day under the avalanche, we knew we couldn’t hold out any longer. I can’t recall who it was, Roberto or Gustavo, perhaps, but someone found a piece of glass, swept the snow from one of the bodies, and began to cut. It was a horror, watching him slice into a friend, listening to the soft sounds of the glass ripping at the skin and sawing at the muscle below. When a piece of flesh was handed to me, I was revolted. As before, the meat had been dried in the sun before we ate it, which weakened its taste and gave it a more palatable texture, but the chunk of flesh Fito gave me now was soft and greasy, and streaked with blood and bits of wet gristle. I gagged hard when I placed it in my mouth, and had to use all my willpower to force myself to swallow. Fito had to urge many of the others to eat—he even forced some into the mouth of his cousin Eduardo. But some, including Numa and Coche, who, even under the best of circumstances, could barely stomach human flesh, could not be persuaded to eat. I was especially troubled by Numa’s obstinacy. He was an expeditionary, a great source of strength for me, and I did not like the idea of challenging the mountains without him.

  “Numa,” I said to him, “you have to eat. We need you with us when we hike out of here. You must stay strong.”

  Numa grimaced and shook his head. “I could barely swallow the meat before,” he said. “I could never stand it like this.”

  “Think of your family,” I told him. “If you want to see them again, you must eat.”

  “I’m sorry, Nando,” he said, turning away from me. “I simply can’t.”

  I knew there was more to Numa’s refusal than simple disgust. On some level, he had had enough, and his refusal to eat was his rebellion against the inescapable nightmare our lives had become. I felt the same. Who could survive such a litany of horrors as we had been forced to endure? What had we done to deserve such misery? What was the meaning of our suffering? Did our lives have any value? What kind of God could be so cruel? These questions plagued me every moment, but somehow I understood that thoughts like these were dangerous. They led to nothing but an impotent rage that quickly soured into apathy. In this place, apathy meant death, so I fought off the questions by conjuring thoughts of my family at home. I pictured my sister Graciela with her new baby boy. I wanted so badly to be an uncle to him. I still had the red baby shoes my mother had bought for him in Mendoza, and I imagined myself slipping them on his little feet, kissing his head, whispering to him, “Soy tu tío, Nando.” I thought of my grandmother Lina, who had my mother’s bright blue eyes and loving smile. What would I give to feel her arms around me in this terrible place? I even thought of my dog, Jimmy, a playful boxer, who went with me everywhere. It broke my heart to think of him lying sadly on my empty bed, or waiting by the front door for me to come home. I thought about friends in Montevideo. I dreamed of visiting my old haunts. I remembered all the small comforts—swimming at the beach, soccer games and car races, the pleasure of sleeping in my own bed, and the kitchen full of food. Was there really a time when I’d been surrounded by such treasures, when so much happiness had been within my reach? It all seemed so distant now, so unreal.

  As I shivered in the clammy snow, racked with despair and forced to chew the raw, wet gobs of flesh that had been hacked from my friends before my eyes, it was hard to believe in anything before the crash. In those moments I forced myself to think of my father, and I promised once more that I would never stop fighting to make it home. Sometimes this would give me a sense of hope and peace, but often, as I glanced at our sorry condition and the horrors that surrounded us, it was hard to connect myself to the happy life I’d had before, and for the first time, my promise to my father began to ring hollow. Death was drawing closer; its stink was growing stronger all around me. There was something sordid and rank in our suffering now, a sense of darkness and corruption that soured my heart.

  I dreamed very little in the mountains—I rarely slept soundly enough to dream—but one night, as I slept under the avalanche, I saw myself lying on my back with my arms extended to the side. My eyes were closed. “Am I dead?” I asked myself. “No, I can think, I am alert.” Now a dark figure stood over me. “Roberto? Gustavo? Who are you? Who is there?”

  No answer. I saw something glitter in his hand, and I realized he was holding a shard of glass. I tried to rise to my feet but I couldn’t force myself to move.

  “Get away from me! Who the hell are you? What are you doing?”

  The figure knelt beside me and started to cut me with the glass. He took small pieces of my flesh from my forearm and passed them back to other figures standing behind him.”

  “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop cutting, I am alive!”

  The others put my flesh in their mouths. They started to chew. “No! Not yet!” I cried. “Don’t cut me!”

  The stranger kept working, slicing at my arm. I realized he could not hear me. Then I realized that I felt no pain.

  “Oh God! Am I dead? Have I died? Oh no, please, God, please …”

  The next moment I woke with a jolt.

  “Are you okay, Nando?” It was Gustavo, lying beside me.

  My heart was pounding. “I had a nightmare,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” he said, “you are awake now.”

  Yes, I said to myself, I am awake now, everything is fine.

  OCTOBER 31, our third day under the avalanche, was Carlitos’s nineteenth birthday. Lying beside him in the fuselage that night, I promised him we would celebrate his birthday when we were home. “My birthday is December ninth,” I told him. “We’ll all go to my
parents’ place in Punta del Este and celebrate all the birthdays we missed.”

  “Speaking of birthdays,” he said, “tomorrow is my father’s birthday, and my sister’s birthday, too. I have been thinking about them, and now I am certain I will see them again. God has saved me from the crash and from the avalanche. He must want me to survive and return to my family.”

  “I don’t know what to think about God anymore,” I said.

  “But can’t you feel how near He is to us?” he said. “I feel His presence so strongly here. Look how peaceful the mountains are, how beautiful. God is in this place, and when I feel His presence I know we will be all right.” Like Carlitos, I had seen beauty in the mountains, but for me it was a lethal beauty, and we were the blemish on that beauty that the mountain wanted to erase. I wondered if Carlitos truly understood what trouble we were in, but still I admired him for the courage of his optimism.

  “You are strong, Nando,” he said. “You will make it. You will find help.”

  I said nothing. Carlitos began to pray.

  “Happy birthday, Carlitos,” I whispered, then I tried to sleep.

  ABOVE: The 1964 team picture of the Stella Maris High School rugby squad. Guido Magri is seated fourth from the left. I am standing in the top row, far right. (Unknown)

  During the Old Christians’ 1971 rugby trip to Chile, I pose with Roberto Canessa and teammate Eduardo Deal, with the Andes rising in the background. (Unknown)

  The Old Christians on a Chilean practice field in 1971. Guido Magri kneels at far left and Panchito Abal kneels two men to his left. I am standing second from the right, with Marcelo Perez in front of me. (Unknown)