And with that he walked away.
The hours were ticking away. The party getting closer and closer.
Part of Kami’s problem was that he couldn’t second guess what Sasha would do; would she confront Brennan with what he had told her? Or would she just write a scathing article to send back to the States?
He waited for the explosion. But somehow it didn’t come. Then he learned that Alex and Kurt had gone to the lodge to fix up the party which would celebrate the end of the expedition and it gave him some breathing space.
The afternoon dragged slowly, cleaning ropes, washing sleeping bags in special cleaning solution, eyes smarting from the fumes. Then the hour came and it was time. Kami tried to make some last minute excuses but he was told – with a firm smile – to shut up by Tenzing and to come along with the rest of them.
Inside the lodge, the dining hall had been converted into a makeshift ballroom. Prayer flags had been strung up like bunting. A trestle table was groaning under the weight of the beer bottles that covered it. Lady Gaga was pumping out of the speakers, the Khumbu region’s only DJ doing his stuff.
Someone had managed to find some disco lights, pulsing quasars of green, red and blue that sucked up so much power they threatened to blow the town generator to smithereens. A gang of the expeditioners were already dancing, others making a bee-line for the table filled with sandwiches and samosas.
Kami was looking out for Sasha when he felt a strong slap between his shoulder blades. It was Alex Brennan; ‘Take a beer,’ the boss told him, handing him a can.
‘OK.’ Kami took a long drink. All he was thinking was ‘Does he know? Has Sasha confronted him?’
‘You seem depressed, Kami.’
‘No, sir. Just ready to be going home.’
‘Nothing else that you want to talk about?’
‘I’m OK, sir. Just wanting to get back to my family.’
Brennan nodded. ‘You won’t forget our agreement will you, Kami?’
Kami drank deeply on the beer, not knowing what on earth he could say. So he just nodded.
‘Good. And if there’s anything more I can ever do for you or your family … you can always count on me as a friend.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Have a great party, Kami. I’ll see you later.’
Brennan moved away and Kami finished off another beer. His head started to pound with the effects of the music and the alcohol. He began to feel nauseous.
‘Come and get some food,’ Lopsang called him.
Kami shook his head and instead went to seek out Sasha. He found her sitting in the corner of the ballroom, looking pensive and evidently not in a party mood.
‘You haven’t told him,’ Kami began.
‘Not yet,’ Sasha said, ‘but that doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening.’
‘I should not have said what I said. Please forget about it, I beg you.’
‘Kami. It’s too late to stop this now.’
Kami felt tears prick at the back of his eyes.
‘You did good, Kami,’ Sasha continued soothingly, ‘if he can lie about what happened up there, then who knows what he might lie about in the future. We can’t let him get away with it. There’s too much at stake.’
At that moment, Tenzing came up.
‘There’s someone here to see you.’ The Sirdar told Kami.
Suddenly the crowd parted and Kami saw a figure entering through the doorway. It was Jamling; weakened and looking fragile after his hospital ordeal, but with that mischievous glint firmly back in his eyes. The veteran Sherpa had travelled back from Kathmandu specially to congratulate Kami on his summit success.
Kami stood there, fixed rigidly to the spot, a growing sense of horror welling up inside him as Jamling picked up a walking stick and slowly shuffled across the room towards him. The guests fell silent as they watched, sensing that they were about to witness raw emotion.
It was the shining excitement in Jamling’s eyes that finally did it. The tears of joy that were already beginning to well up. The look of unconditional pride that said, ‘You made it.’
But he hadn’t made it.
Kami felt he was about to faint. He could feel Brennan’s nervous eyes boring into him, watching intently to see how he would handle himself. He caught Sasha’s gaze; her look was intense, she knew what was wrong, sensed how close to panic he was.
Kami took a step back. His head was swimming with shame and he could take it no more. He could not allow himself Jamling’s embrace.
He caught the flash of confusion – of hurt – in Jamling’s eyes as he turned … and ran.
Kami burst out of the lodge and hit the path. Hard sleet drummed hard against his face. The rocky trail was cloaked with snow and he was in it up to his calves as he raced up the track.
Lightning split the night; a rolling crescendo of thunder just a heartbeat behind.
In that strobing beat of light he could see the blue gleam of soaring snowfields, thousands of feet above the village. Then the night reclaimed them as he pulled the shrine bell out of his jacket pocket.
‘Kami!’ A faint cry. Someone had followed him out of the lodge. Was it Brennan? Or someone else? Kami couldn’t tell.
He hurried through the town, racing by houses which were shuttered down for the night. A horse reared as he ran by, he slipped on ice then regained his feet as he passed out of Lukla and onto the mountain trail.
Onwards. Steeper now. Gasping for breath but never slowing.
He passed a shepherd’s hut, the air thick with the smell of wood smoke. Two jet black dogs came snarling out of the shadows. Wet fur bristling. Glowing embers for eyes. They snapped at his ankles. Still he kept running, the shrine bell in his hand, as cries continued somewhere behind him. A woman’s voice was amongst them; Sasha? Again, too distant to be sure.
He climbed and climbed. Faster than he thought possible, spurred by some pulse inside him. Far below he could hear the rush of a mighty river, above him the frozen sleet was settling thickly, loading the slopes with millions of tons of unstable snow.
The path went right. Kami went left. Out onto the snowfield. Right beneath the steepest face.
He was only wearing trainers but he didn’t care. He slipped and slid and clawed his way up the snow slope, ripping his nails but not registering the pain.
Behind him came lights. Hunting him down.
Breathing in snatches. Lungs on fire. The mountain a vast monolith above him, shrouded in night clouds and dark as hell. Somewhere up there were avalanche slopes, silent, brooding, ready to wreak havoc. Million-ton bullets waiting to be chambered in nature’s game of Russian roulette. At the base was the rocky cave that the other Sherpas had told him about. A hard place of worship. A hidden shrine.
He could see the dark cave – and the light flickering inside.
He continued up the slope, got to the shrine. Indra’s shrine – the god of thunder and war. The flame was comforting.
A candle of hope in this night of turbulence and electric air. A fitting night for this fiery god.
Thunder rolled above. Brittle snaps of noise which sent balls of lightning spitting far across the valley.
He brought out the shrine bell. Clutched it like a talisman to his breast as he chanted the words of a timeless prayer.
A plate of flowers was there. The petals shrivelled but perhaps the gods would not care. He scattered them around the image of Indra, while cries of ‘Kami’ rang shrill across the snowfield.
Footsteps were approaching. Faster. Faster.
‘Gods will you forgive me?’ Kami muttered.
He rang the bell, the sound clear and light against the thunderous roar of the storm. Shreeya was so far away but in this moment of delusion he imagined she might hear that noise and be heartened by it.
‘Kami!’ Dark shapes were out
there, picking a precarious way across to the shrine.
‘Leave me alone!’ he yelled. But his scream was swallowed up with a further mighty clap of thunder and through the driving snow he could see a vast shape racing down from the threatening slope.
Avalanche. He stepped out of the shrine and stood there, watching in awe as the night became a solid, threatening force.
The roar of the airborne snow merged with the rolling thunder of the tempest until it was impossible to tell which part of the wall of sound was avalanche and which was storm. It sounded like the whole mountain had split in two.
‘Run! RUN!’ Brennan’s scream was raw.
Kami turned. He knew it was pointless to run further.
And suddenly he understood; he had asked the gods for forgiveness and this was their answer.
It was all so clear. And death was so close.
Kami raised his arms. If this was his fate then he wanted to face it without fear. Then a dark shape flew across the ice slope towards him, half running, half falling. It was Sasha and the last thing Kami remembered feeling was her body wrapping around him, protecting him, cradling his head and bracing herself for the impact as the mighty wall of snow tumbled down the slope towards them.
Then they were swept away, glissading, the night air filling with powdered ice as Kami felt the darkness engulf him.
Chapter 12
The sun was low in the sky. The shutters of Kami’s little bedroom were casting long shadows across the room. I looked at my watch. It was almost 5 p.m. Kami had talked through the whole day and he was now so wiped out he could barely keep his eyes open.
I was also exhausted but I felt no need of a rest; in fact I would have listened to Kami for days on end if he could have continued. The whole story had been shocking, not least because of the totally unflattering portrait it painted of Alex Brennan, a man I had admired on the occasions I had seen him interviewed on TV.
Above all, there was a vitality to Kami’s telling of the tale, an urgency, a total lack of self pity that was quite amazing. ‘Don’t cry,’ he had told me several times during the story, ‘There is no time for crying.’
Dawa entered the room. ‘Better you let him sleep now,’ he said. He had looked after us kindly during the long hours, bringing us lentils and rice and tea.
I gently unfolded my fingers from Kami’s hand, and picked up the tray of empty dishes and tea cups. I took them to Dawa’s little hut and washed them clean before walking out onto the patio. The afternoon had a mellow feel to it and I stretched my arms above my head to ease some stiffness.
Then I remembered the shadow I had seen at the bottom of the cliff, the half seen figure that had spooked me when I had first arrived. That sensation of being watched. The odd conviction that someone, or something was there – silent, ever vigilant.
I re-entered the bungalow, ‘Dawa!’ I called to him urgently, ‘Kami never told me about the carer. Can you ... ?’
But Dawa shook his head firmly.
‘I have told you that I am not permitted to speak of this,’ he said politely. And he closed the door.
I was uncertain about what to do. Should I try and kill my curiosity? I had seen Kami, after all, and heard his whole story. Wasn’t that enough?
But was it the whole story? I still wasn’t sure.
So I wandered to the forest edge and stared towards the cliff face which was hidden there. Through small gaps in the trees I could see the darker texture of rock. High above the trees I could see the upper reaches of the outcrop – two or three hundred metres high.
I noticed a track, not much more than a faint line of compressed earth. I followed it, a meandering trail of some thirty metres which stopped abruptly at the rock face.
Standing at the foot of the cliff I craned my neck backwards and gazed vertically up towards the high stony lip. Scudding gangs of clouds were streaming past and the cliff seemed to be tottering with them. It was seriously steep, I realised, and not something I would want to try and climb without a rope and a partner.
But then I saw the slick shine of bamboo. A series of rickety ladders had been built up the face, and I guessed they were probably the work of honey hunters. I counted six or seven leading up and the hint of some dark cavity set into the rock at the high point.
I crossed to the first of the ladders and gave it a shake. It felt rugged enough but the thought of committing my life to those flimsy things was seriously scary. I wasted a bit of time hunting around the base of the cliff for some easier trail upwards but there was none so I steeled myself for the climb.
I stepped onto the ladder. The rungs were brittle, fractured with age; with every nervous move upwards I felt my weight could shatter them to bits. A creeping fungus had attacked the bamboo; the wood was mottled with powdery black mould and my hands quickly became stained with the dark spores.
Two more ladders gained me another twenty metres or so of height and spat me out, panting hard, on a section of broken up ground where scrambling was possible.
I found a dry patch of rock where I could rest my legs and I was pleased to see how much height I had gained. Far below, the bungalow seemed no bigger than a doll’s house. It looked like the slightest flash flood could sweep the whole place away in the blink of an eye.
I traversed across the face and came to the next steep section; it was back to the ladders.
These final sections of bamboo felt even more dodgy than the ones lower down. There were places where the whole thing seemed to be held in place by little more than tendrils of moss and caterpillar spit. It swayed and creaked and groaned under my weight, and I could easily imagine myself crashing down to the valley floor hundreds of feet below in a blizzard of ripped out rocks and bits of bamboo.
A bee came to investigate. It buzzed around my head for a few seconds and then landed on one of the rungs to check me out, its furry orange body pumping as it rested.
Then another arrived. I swatted it away, but my movement attracted several more of the insects and I got a sudden spasm of fear.
Suddenly across the cliff face, just a few metres away, I saw the hive, a massive honeycomb completely covered with tens of thousands of the bees.
As I watched in horrified fascination the bees somehow simultaneously changed their body positions, causing a shift of colour from indigo-black to a warning flash of orange-red and then back again. The thing looked like a vast evil eye and I knew that there was nowhere I could run to.
The buzzing of the hive seemed to rise a few notches, become angrier.
Suddenly a voice came from above. A rich American voice.
‘Don’t worry about the bees. They won’t touch you this late in the day. Come on up.’
I saw a long haired figure silhouetted against the juddering clouds. Then it retreated back into the rock.
As I reached the final rung of the ladder I realised I was looking into the dark interior of a cave. The final move up off the ladder was a tricky one and I made a clumsy job of it, but a strong hand shot out of the gloom and I clasped it gratefully as I lumbered up over the lip and found myself on a narrow rocky balcony.
I looked into the cave. And there, partly obscured in the shadows, was Alex Brennan.
‘Who were you expecting,’ he asked with a smile, ‘Marlon Brando?’
He shifted his position and gestured for me to enter the cave. As my eyes adjusted to the low light I could see the shelter was the size of a small room. The floor was dry and covered with Indian-style rugs. A few meagre possessions were heaped in the corner, a sleeping bag, a metal box, some pots and pans.
Brennan was bare footed, dressed in a faded T-shirt and a tatty pair of jeans. He was not much changed from Kami’s description of him, the blonde locks a little longer and more matted perhaps, the athletic tone of his body softened and not so sharp.
My mind was in catch up mode, in a kin
d of shock. I had figured that Kami’s mysterious carer would be a local person, a holy man perhaps or maybe a member of his family. Not for a moment had I thought that it would be the great Alex Brennan himself …
‘Kami’s a special person, don’t you think?’ he said.
I could only nod my agreement.
‘You want some tea?’
He brought out a brightly-coloured Thermos flask from beneath a blanket. I nodded my thanks and he poured the yellow fluid into a chipped china bowl.
‘Dawa makes it,’ he said as he offered me the cup, ‘it’s really not so bad when you get used to it.’
I sipped at the lukewarm tea.
‘You were watching me these last days,’ I said.
‘Just checking you out. Plus I had to put you through a forty-eight hour quarantine to make sure you weren’t carrying some bug.’
Stupidly, I hadn’t thought of that. But it did make perfect sense. Kami was hardly in a position to fight off infection and even a dose of flu could kill him.
‘I guess he told you everything?’ he continued.
‘As far as the avalanche.’
‘Ah. And did he tell you Sasha died?’
‘No.’ I digested this news, feeling real sorrow. Kami had painted an affectionate picture of the American journalist even if their friendship hadn’t always been straightforward.
‘I thought he probably wouldn’t go that far,’ Brennan went on carefully, ‘that’s where the story gets real hard for him. She was trying to protect him. When we dug them out of the snow she was curled around his body, cradling his head, shielding him from the ice blocks.’
Brennan sipped his tea.
‘She gave her life for him,’ he said simply, ‘that was an outstanding thing to do.’
Somewhere outside the cave I could hear birds – black ravens – play-fighting up and down the cliffs.
‘Did she post a final article before she died?’ I asked.
‘Oh sure. I found a draft of it in her tent after the avalanche. Kami had told her everything and she’d already emailed it back to New York. That was her job after all.’
The Everest Files Page 19
