"For example?" Lisi asked in a gravelly voice.
"You took two days to inform the family," Benegas responded "Look, Damian," Lisi said. "I will explain something to you. I believe I don't even have to explain it to you. I didn't have my notebook [at Camp Four]. And I was dead, dead, dead."
"Pat Falvey, the Irish, [said] when he went for you [the next morning], you were on the phone."
Nils Antezana wears an oxygen mask during one of the last phases of his summit.
(Photograph Courtesy Antezana Family)
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"That's when I [received a call]," Lisi explained. "And I didn't have Nils's home telephone number. And I could not send information the next day not knowing what had happened."
Benegas pointed out that Lisi had sent word of his own summit to his Web site. "It would have been better for you not to inform your Web page of anything," he said.
"No, no," Lisi protested. "What I informed my Web page -- "
Benegas cut him off, snapping: "You [said] you did the summit." Then, fuming, he added what Lisi had failed to mention on his Web site. "A person died on you."
Benegas moved the discussion to Lisi's decisions on the final day of Antezana's life. "I'm sorry, Gustavo," he said, "but all of you should have [turned around]."
"Damian, I did not know he was 60 years old," Lisi said.
"He was 69 years old," Benegas corrected. "All the more reason."
Lisi's voice soon began rising. "He was walking very fine during the entire expedition."
"You were seen going too slowly."
"You know something? A lot of people see you on the mountain," Lisi responded.
Soon Fabiola Antezana could stay quiet no longer. She and her husband wanted to know why Lisi had not immediately told others about Nils at Camp Four.
"That night I came down at 11 o'clock," Lisi said. "I was dead tired."
"But you were not unconscious," Fabiola said.
"No, Fabiola, I was not unconscious," Lisi said. "But I was dead tired . . . "
Her husband could not conceal his contempt. "You were tired."
Lisi stayed calm. "Coming down I suffered a fall. Look, I have the marks from the bumps."
Fabiola wanted to know about her father's last hours, so Lisi repeated the story he had told others. "The day we were bringing your father down, when I arrived at the Balcony, I remained there, waiting. They were 50 to 70 yards further up. They were helping Nils because Nils could no longer do anything by himself. He could not stand, could not walk, could not talk, nothing."
"Could not talk?" a skeptical Fabiola said. "Nevertheless, [you said] he told you, 'The mountain is my home. Leave me here.' "
"He told me that further up there, before I came down to the Balcony."
Shortly before they parted, Lisi tried offering more of an explanation. "I'm not going to lie to you . . . ," he said. "I was dead tired. It didn't occur to me [to notify people at Camp Four], don't ask me why, I don't know what happened . . . When I woke up, the first thing I did was ask Dorjee and Mingmar what we were going to do about Nils. The weather was horrible . . ."
Lisi suggested the group was looking for a scapegoat. "You have to find who is at fault. I know the story."
Benegas vented one last frustration: "I hope you question your career. Because, personally, I am going to make sure no one else will have you as a guide."
AFTER RECEIVING HIS CERTIFIED SUMMIT CERTIFICATE FROM NEPALESE OFFICIALS, GUSTAVO LISI LEFT KATMANDU AND WENT OFF TO CLIMB IN BOLIVIA, while hoping to attract clients for future expeditions. In an e-mail to The Washington Post, he reiterated his explanations about what happened on Everest, and asked that the controversy be allowed to end: "I AM SURE THAT MY FRIEND DESERVES TO REST IN ETERNAL PEACE, AND STOP QUESTIONING HIS EXPEDITION."
It has been left to his mother, Maria Marinaro Lisi, to speak about her son. "He phoned [from Everest] to say he had arrived [on the summit]," she says. "It was fantastic . . . It was everything to him that he made it to the summit." But, she adds, at some point later while talking from Everest, her son became inconsolable over Nils Antezana's death, the subject consuming most of their conversations. "He was sobbing uncontrollably."
Maria Lisi says she doesn't like talking about Everest. "I hate the mountain, I hate the mountain," she says, explaining that when her son goes climbing, "I never know if he'll return to me. You never know what the mountain will do."
In some ways, Gladys Antezana has learned exactly what it will do. Halfway around the world from Everest, she lights candles in memory of Nils on some days, and on some days she doesn't. There are moments when she gets so angry at him that she calls him names. She goes back and forth about it. They all go back and forth about Nils and his needs.
In one way or another, he had been climbing throughout his accomplished life, but, as he had said to his wife on that quiet morning, there was something missing. In Gustavo Lisi, he discovered a kindred companion, another man still searching for his peak. Despite their differences, they had found each other, and that was the real danger.
Michael Leahy is a Magazine staff writer and the author of the recently released When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback. Magazine production manager Leslie A. Garcia, Oscar Camacho and Tadeo Hernandez translated interviews for this story. Leahy will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
