Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Here was born on the 25th of July 1921
LIONEL TERRAY
CONQUÉRANT DE L'INUTILE
From here he set out the 19th of September 1965
For his last climb in the Vercors
We ducked through a gate and started hiking up a steep stone staircase set into the
hill that backs Grenoble. The grassy terraces were overgrown with dandelions and ir-
ises, and the moldering château was covered with violet wisteria. Old vines crawled
helter-skelter across the walls backing each terrace step, and the woods loomed upward
beyond. This “perfect world in which to realize the dreams of a child possessed with
freedom and the wonders of nature,” as Terray had called his backyard in
Conquista-
dors,
came alive for me now. I could picture Lionel as a boy trapping rats, shooting
birds, and playing cowboys and Indians in this diminutive wilderness. No road had
ever allowed vehicles to approach the château; instead, as we learned in a brief chat
with the writer holed up on the ground floor, a donkey had hauled baggage up a steep
track to the front door.
The key Michel had been lent opened a creaky door on the third floor. Inside, we
stumbled in the dim light through an immense clutter of old furniture and junk.
Everything was covered with dust; the wallpaper hung peeling from the walls; old mir-
rors had grown cloudy and speckled. The disarray of the rooms testified to a ménage
in which no one seemed to have taken any pride. The third floor was like a multiroom
attic full of stuff its owner had not had the heart to throw out.
We tiptoed among the bric-a-brac: a bust of Beethoven, an old, broken stereopticon,
dusty books in dark bindings lying everywhere. In a closet, we found a heap of old
photos, themselves coated with dust. Several images of a pretty woman on horseback
evidently captured Terray's youthful mother in Brazil. A sheaf of newspaper clippings
about Terray, we realized, represented a collection his father had put together. Despite
his sire's disdain for mountain climbing, despite his nearly having disowned Lionel
after he was kicked out of school, the old man had evidently taken pride in Terray's
mature celebrity.
Michel had been given carte blanche by Marianne to look for old letters to or from
Terray. There were piles and piles of dusty papers on tabletops, in closets, inside desk
and bureau drawers, but an inordinate proportion of them seemed to be Terray's fath-
er's professional correspondence. Old bills, paid or unpaid, lurked everywhere, like re-
minders of mortality.
