by Tom Martin
Herzog must be a hard man, she thought. He was in his sixties. To do this climb was bad enough, even at her age, but they said he still scaled peaks as well. Physical strength and will-power, that’s what got you up mountains; but by his age the will-power had to be pre-eminent, compensating entirely for the fading strengths of the body. To do this climb, at his age, Herzog must be a man with an iron will Or, she thought grimly, really a magician, able to conjure himself up these ancient ravines, to warp the properties of the physical world. It wasn’t possible, but then what was possible anyway? – she no longer knew, and couldn’t begin to imagine.
44
The final ascent wasn’t nearly as bad as Nancy had expected. Perhaps she had acclimatized, or maybe she was invigorated by her twenty-four hours’ sleep: either way, she reached the top of the 13,000-foot pass without having to rest again. She didn’t realize at first that it was the top of the pass. She simply noted that the party had stopped, and for a time she was bent double, struggling to breathe. Yet when she looked up she saw several great piles of stones and hundreds of prayer flags fluttering in the mist. The air was full of freezing moisture and it was impossible to see more than twenty yards. Presumably the view was spectacular; she would never know. As they reached the first pile of stones, the sherpas burst into song and tied small flags of cloth to some of the sturdier-looking flagpoles. They began to chat excitedly to Jack, and Nancy asked what they were all talking about.
‘They say that we should enjoy the cold while we can.’ Jack laughed heartily, also in high spirits. ‘As soon as we drop down four or five thousand feet, it will be boiling hot.’
She found it hard to believe, but soon enough they were off again and, within the hour, the mist had vanished and she could clearly see the path ahead and the surrounding landscape. They were at the top end of a lush tropical valley. The path ahead was a wavy black line etched into the scree slope; the descent was clear, and a welcome change from the merciless climb of recent days.
They plodded on downwards and gradually the scree was broken up by vegetation: first, ankle-high dwarf ferns and then waist-high bushes. When they descended to about ten thousand feet the trees returned. Now, as the sherpas had predicted, they were stripping off their clothes, first the sheepskins and then the chubas. The sun was directly overhead with not a wisp of cloud to offer protection – just an azure, blemish-free sky and all around an ever-growing riot of greenery.
Their course wound through jungle, and the sterile silence of the upper levels was now replaced with a cacophony of noise: insects and animals, snuffling through the undergrowth; life in all its colour and vibrancy. They stopped for lunch in a deserted village that was surrounded on all sides by cornfields partially overrun by the creeping jungle. They drew water from an abandoned well, cleaned it with iodine drops, and made tea and tsampa.
With Jack translating for her, Nancy asked the sherpas if they had any experience of tertons. The oldest sherpa, a man called Glumbuk Mergo, gave a long and sincere account of how he had once witnessed a terton drawing a terma out of a giant rock boulder. This had happened down in his home village in what was now China, many years ago, when he was a boy. With much waving of his hands, he explained how he had seen an old terton strip himself almost bare and then, after meditating for three days and nights, he had stood up and struck the rock with a hammer, in front of the entire village. There had been an explosion, like a lightning strike, and everyone had fallen to the floor and hidden in fear. When they looked up they saw a terrifying spirit beast, a terdak, the guardian of the terma in the spirit realm, fighting with the terton. There were more explosions and they all ran into the forest and hid. When it was quiet again, Glumbuk and some of the other young men came back and discovered the terton lying on his back with the terma, a thick yak-skin book in this case, resting on his chest.
Jack translated all this with a smile and winked at Nancy when he got to the bit about the terdak. Nancy said nothing, but she wondered at Glumbuk’s certainty, his absolute conviction that this was what he had seen. With my own eyes, he had kept saying, pointing at his eyes to emphasize his words. After that, one of the sherpas went off and picked some orchids for Nancy and a mood of levity took over the group; for a brief hour they forgot about the risks they were taking and the strange mission they were embarked upon.
The sherpas were just packing up the paraffin stove when suddenly they became aware that they were being watched. Unnoticed, an old man dressed in red-orange robes and wearing a golden-red crown on his head had approached to within ten feet of their camp and was now observing them calmly with his hands pressed together in greeting and prayer. The sherpas looked as stunned as Nancy was, unable to believe that an old man had managed to sneak up on them. For a moment even Jack seemed to be speechless, but then he managed to regain his composure. He stood up and, putting his hands together, he bowed low to the old man, in recognition of his seniority.
There followed an exchange of words. The old man’s voice was high-pitched and grating and he spoke in very short, abrupt sentences. Jack appeared to Nancy to be asking all the questions; he spoke at length, clearly putting propositions to the old man. Suddenly their visitor turned and pointed down the valley in the direction of Metok and embarked on a long monologue that lasted for two or three minutes, Jack nodding at him earnestly as he spoke. When he had finished Jack offered him some tea, which he refused with a brisk movement of his hands. Bowing, he departed, slipping into the jungle without a sound. The sherpas looked anxiously at Jack and Glumbuk Mergo said something in Tibetan. Nancy too wanted to know what the old man had said.
‘What’s going on?’
Jack, who was frowning, said a few words to Glumbuk Mergo and then turned to her:
‘Bad news. That man, the red king, is a powerful yogi. He’s just come from Metok.’
‘And?’
‘The Chinese soldiers are terrorizing everyone as they go down the valley, beating people up and threatening them with torture and death.’
‘How did he get past them then?’
‘He’s a yogi – he can become invisible.’
She hardly batted an eyelid when he said this, so used had she become to the strange world of Tibet. It wasn’t that she necessarily believed it, it was more that she felt incredulity was inappropriate, given the disorienting effects of the terrain and all the bizarre things she had experienced already. And, after all, the red king had appeared out of the thin air.
‘But why? What are they after?’
‘A man. A white man – they say he is a spy.’
‘Anton, I presume?’
Jack did not bother to respond.
‘So what do we do?’ Nancy asked. Jack was looking grim.
‘We have a problem. The red king said we should go through the jungle but I don’t think the sherpas will like that.’
‘Have you asked them?’
Jack inhaled deeply and turned to Glumbuk Mergo and his two companions. They had been watching the exchange between the Westerners in silence. He spoke in Tibetan for about a minute, after which all three of the sherpas began to shake their heads. Looking down at the ground, they muttered under their breaths. One word in particular they seemed to all be saying: ‘Migu, migu.’
‘What is “Migu”?’ Nancy asked Jack with great anxiety.
‘“Migu” is the Tibetan word for yeti. They won’t go into the jungle here. They say that the migu lives round here.’
‘What?’ said Nancy in dismay. ‘They’re seriously afraid of the yeti?’
‘Of course they are. That is why this village is deserted. The “migu” has moved into this area and the peasants are afraid.’
‘Well, look, offer them some more money.’
‘I did.’ He looked back at the sherpas. ‘You saw their response.’
She glanced at the three men. They were regarding her with expressions of absolute resolution; there was no way on earth that she was going to be able to persuade them into the forest.
‘Well, what do we do?’
‘We either turn back or we go on alone into the jungle,’ said Jack. ‘We can’t risk staying on the path a moment longer, not now we know why the soldiers are here. I was banking on bribing them if we came across them; I’ve done that in the past with the garrison; they are just a bunch of drunkards, but these soldiers have been sent here specifically to find Herzog – there will be no chance of that. They will arrest us and God knows how we will ever get out.’
He paused then added, ‘Maybe Anton really is a spy. Maybe the Chinese know something we don’t. Maybe this whole thing with his father and the Nazi terma is just a cover, or a coincidence.’ He paused again, lost in thought, and then said, ‘But I can’t imagine why he’d bother spying in Pemako. There’s nothing to find and he knows it inside out anyway.’
They fell into silence. Nancy surveyed the ruined cornfields. None of it made sense, she thought. Herzog was the quarry in a manhunt and there was no telling what the Chinese knew. She looked back up the valley towards the peaks and the mist-swathed entrance to the Su La. She didn’t want to go into the jungle, it frightened her, she found it revolting – it was filled to the brim with insects, no doubt there were snakes and leeches and, worse still, wild animals. It was a horrible proposition. The path had been relatively easy; it meandered from settlement to settlement, so they were always within a few hours of shelter. The jungle was her idea of a nightmare, but then she had no intention of turning back now.
45
Within minutes, they had lost all sight of the path and they could no longer hear the river. Strange hoots and clicking noises competed with the seething of the insects in the undergrowth. It was a cascade of noise, created by millions and millions of tiny creatures. Jack had given Nancy mosquito repellent and told her to apply it generously, but it seemed to be having little effect: every few minutes she would slap herself, squashing a mosquito in mid-lunch. The going was slow. There were paths of a sort, too many in fact, but they were narrow and overgrown and occasionally they petered out all together, forcing them to retrace their steps.
Since the porters had abandoned them, they were now carrying their own bags. They had left the tent with the sherpas but had taken the paraffin stove, cooking utensils, sleeping bags, two small sacks of tsampa and a pair of kukris, which Nancy had learned were heavy-bladed Nepali chopping knives. Along with their water bottles it was quite a weight to carry. Besides that, Nancy had elected to wear long-sleeved clothes to offer one last barrier to the thousands of biting insects, and this meant she was sweating as she walked, far too hot, but she was damned if she would unveil more flesh for them to feast on.
They navigated by the rare glimpses that they got of the valley’s side: it was at least impossible for them to get completely lost, as the place was like a funnel, tipping them and the Yarlang Tsangpo and anything else that moved south towards the cliff-like border with the Indian province of Assam. However, Jack had explained – his face tense – that it was still possible to waste hours or even whole days by making one wrong turn and then circling back on ones self by accident. They didn’t have the food and water to do that, so it was imperative that they held to their course.
After four hours, Nancy’s arms were exhausted from slashing her way through the undergrowth. For most of the time, the jungle trees were spaced ten yards or so apart; over millennia they had grown so that they could all share the sunlight in the upper canopies. But, at some points, where the soil changed, or where the ground became steeper, there were great waves of shoulder-high vegetation and blankets of ivy that hung in curtains from the lower branches of the trees. At other points, the ground became waterlogged; they would have to tread a path over the backs of old rotting logs, one of which crumbled apart as Nancy stood on it, almost causing her to fall into a coffin-like interior that was filled with dark black insects. On other occasions, the going was good and the ground was hard, and Nancy’s mood improved. Then there was space between the trees, the air was cool because of the shade provided by the canopy, and at some points it was possible to see up to a hundred yards. Just as she was beginning to think it wasn’t so bad after all, however, they would sink into another patch of dense, tangled vegetation, and have to slash a nervous path, mindful that at any moment they might find their way irreparably barred.
Dusk was beginning to fall as they arrived onto what must have been a well-used animal track. The vegetation was thick on either side but the path was clear and there was no need to do too much hacking. Nancy was walking a few paces behind Jack. They hadn’t spoken for some time, it was hard to know how long. They were concentrating on the business of brushing vegetation out of the way, stepping over tree roots and of course watching out for snakes that might be crossing the path or the funnel spiders that were known to hover above the track, falling onto their victims as they passed below.
Nancy knew that all around the world, forest peoples could always tell who was coming and going in their part of the jungle because of the changing patterns in the background noise. She was just meditating on this and listening to the various hoots and tapping noises, the barks and rattles and cicada-like waves of sound that constantly played in the jungle air, when suddenly she became aware that the noise had died away in the area off to their left. Only a lone monkey, hooting at intervals, as if sending a warning, was making any sound at all. She tried to peer through the vegetation – she only had a clear line of sight for about ten feet – but now she was sure: animals had frozen in their tracks, insects and reptiles had suddenly fallen silent, off to the left, up ahead.
She tried to dismiss her fears, thinking that it was probably just her imagination or the changing acoustics of the forest, or perhaps it was simply a deer or another large mammal that was causing the disturbance. She began to walk again, quickly, so as to catch up with Jack. But the monkey was still hooting – and then she was brought up short. Jack had stopped and was holding up his hand in a gesture that obviously meant he wanted her to be quiet.
They stood frozen to the spot for almost a minute, then he turned to her and hissed, ‘Do you get the feeling something is watching us?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered back urgently. ‘I was just thinking there might be something out there.’
‘Where?’
She pointed off to the left, the adrenalin pumping.
‘Yes. That’s where I felt it.’
Her throat tightened.
‘What is it?’
Jack frowned at her, his heavy blond brow covered in sweat and furrowed in worry.
‘I don’t know: a migu?’
‘Jack!’
He moved his hand to his lips. She could see that he certainly wasn’t joking, then he whispered again, quickly:
‘Did you hear that?’
They were silent, waiting for a repeat of the sound he thought he had heard. And then she heard it too, quite distinctly, and her eyes bulged in fear.
‘Oh my God. It was a groan, or a growl or something.’
Jack was wiping the blade of his kukri on his trouser leg. He peered into the dense undergrowth. It was impossible to see anything. Impossible also to gauge distance. She tugged his arm.
‘Let’s go back.’
But he didn’t answer; instead, bending into a crouch, he began very slowly to creep forward, gently moving the fronds of the forest undergrowth with his outstretched kukri. Nancy reached forward and put her hand on Jack’s belt, terrified that something was about to drag her off into the bushes. Her other hand squeezed the handle of the kukri, ready to deliver at least one blow of as much force as she could muster to whatever might be coming for them.
Suddenly, Jack froze in his tracks; she could hear him curse in appalled amazement. Nancy moved alongside him on the narrow path. The vegetation changed. Further up the path widened. Their view was clear for fifty yards, and up ahead, thirty yards along, they could see the most terrifying sight she had ever seen: an enormous brown bear was standing on its hind
legs pawing furiously upwards into the air, trying desperately to catch hold of a big net that was suspended from the branches of an overhanging tree. The net was made from vine rope, and inside the net, scrunched into a ball, was what appeared to be a human. It was a trap, a trap that had been sprung by the poor soul who was being crushed in the net and tormented by the bear. Thoughts flashed through her mind: if the bear turned round and saw them, they wouldn’t have a chance, kukris or not. And what about the human in the net? How long had he or she been there? Were they alive or dead?
Jack, as quietly as possible, slipped his backpack straps off his shoulders. Nancy stared at him in horror, wondering what he was planning. Surely he’s not going to try to scare it away, she thought. Perhaps it might work – though she hardly knew much about the duelling habits of vast brown bears – but she imagined it might just as easily turn around and rip his head off and then come for her. Jack unclipped the top pocket of his bag and slowly pulled out a long plastic tube about the size of a rolling pin. She was desperate to ask him what he was doing but she knew she couldn’t speak.
He motioned for her to back into the undergrowth at the side of the path, and just as she began to do so she realized what the object was: it was a distress flare, for use when you were lost in the desert or high on some mountainside and you hoped a search patrol was looking for you. Jack backed off the path and holding the flare at arm’s length, pointing it down the path towards the bear instead of up into the sky, he pulled the cord at its base.
There was an enormous whooshing noise, much louder than Nancy had expected, followed by a huge flash and a clattering noise that lasted for a couple of seconds then died away. By the time she had regained her senses and looked back down the path the bear had gone and all that was left of the flare was a thick, acrid trail of smoke that hung in the air above the path and then disappeared off into the jungle some forty feet further along to the left.
