From the bazaar, the travelers turned west, leaving the Everest route, pushing higher and higher into the clouds and fog. One false step and they would plunge ten thousand feet. Then, startlingly, as if the curtains opened on a great stage, the grayness vanished and the monastery was in view. Sherpa children ran out laughing to greet the tall boy and his little companion, both puffing, both ecstatic. Bells rang to shatter the icy silence.
It was a moment of clarity, denied to all but a very few. They stood on the edge, thousands of feet above the clouds, with crystal beads of ice hanging suspended from their hair. Winds whistled through holes in the mountains, and above stretched a sky so blue that it could never be imagined. From far away came the occasional tinkle of a yak bell. The view of the Himalayas was so staggering that it seemed wrong for human eyes to look upon it. The wisdom of Buddha, if one believes, is powerful here. Jennie felt removed, severed, alien to the earth plane.
They held one another until the light was gone and darkness wrapped the summit of the world and stars came out close enough to touch. And both of them knew that it would never be the same between them again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Each night, Pan American’s Flight 2 roars off the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport, turns sharply to glide briefly over the lights of Manhattan, then noses east across the Atlantic, circling the world in little more than forty hours, making oceans, continents, wars, mountains, and men seem insignificant and characterless.
On May 4, 1975, the 747 landed in the steamy early evening at Teheran, and, as the flight had lost time earlier in Europe, transit passengers were requested to stay on board. Two weary young French passengers were annoyed, as they had wanted to stretch their legs. But as they both worked for another airline, they grumbled only to themselves and settled for standing at the open door and taking the sticky night air and gossiping with the stewardess. One of the travelers was Jeanne Paumier, a reservations clerk who was the classic French girl—a tiny gamine from the Rive Gauche with hair chopped like Piaf’s and with an inherent sense of flair and chic. Her companion was a friend—and only that—named Christian Rucher, also a reservations agent. They were traveling to India for a ten-day vacation, most of which was to be spent in Kashmir, whose lakes at the top of the subcontinent near the Pakistan border have enchanted sultans and romantics for centuries.
Abruptly a surly voice whiplashed behind them. They turned and beheld an angry young man in dungarees. He appeared to be a hippie of Oriental blood, for his hair was long and unshaped, stuffed under a leather cap. A new black beard dribbled unappealingly from his chin, and his eyes were concealed behind dark glasses. He spoke in hot and accented English, informing the stewardess that he wished to disembark and purchase caviar and that he was going to do just that, rules be damned! He seemed used to ordering people around. Jeanne speculated that he was a rich man’s son who grew up kicking servants and torturing cats. The stewardess, not wanting a scene, told the pushy traveler he could have ten minutes inside the terminal. No more. At that, Christian Rucher asked permission to get off for a smoke—and that, too, was granted. Inside the terminal, the two men introduced themselves. Christian shook hands with the hippie, who gave his name as “Alain Gauthier.” He was, of course, Charles Sobhraj. His profession, he said, was photography, and at that revelation, Christian understood better both the man’s wardrobe and his abrasiveness. Photographers in Paris are known for wearing blue jeans and bullying people. Alain said he was traveling to New Delhi on assignment for Paris-Match to do a reportage on India, that country being a growing favorite of French travelers.
When the jumbo jet flew off on the Teheran-Delhi leg, Gauthier wandered down the aisle until he found the seats of Christian and Jeanne. Without being invited, he perched on the arm, filling their ears with tales of the wonders and perils of India. When he learned their vacation destination, he shook his head as if he could not believe the coincidence. He, too, was going to Kashmir, had in fact been there many times, and could assist them in negotiating for a houseboat, the most desirable accommodation. How lucky they were to encounter him, rattled Alain, for the houseboat agents were notorious sharks whose quoted prices usually began at thrice the real value.
Later, when the plane landed at Delhi, Jeanne agreed that Alain Gauthier was a lucky find, leading them with assurance through the confusing maze of Indian immigration. The moment a newcomer steps inside the terminal, an ominous knot forms in the stomach. Above, in the glass-walled balcony where people wait for family reunions, bodies are packed together tightly, staring down at the serpentine lines of passengers. The men are in cotton pajamas and turbans, their women in saris with jewels in their nostrils, children huddled against parental bodies like knots on a tree branch. Their faces are copper dark and forbidding, and at that moment the revelation clutches everyone who experiences it for the first time. India!
Due to Alain’s expert interference, the young French couple cleared customs quickly and found themselves in a taxi with their new friend, hurtling through the sleeping boulevards of the city. Alain seemed to know everything, pointing out embassies, hotels, important villas, and at the same time cursing the driver for going too fast, too slow, or on roundabout routes that increased the fare unnecessarily. “Everyone in this country is a thief,” said Alain. “You must be constantly alert.… If this driver takes one more false turn, I will report him to the Minister of Tourism.”
After a few hours sleep, Alain rang Jeanne’s hotel room, and, greeting her and Christian in the lobby like long-separated friends, presented gifts. For Jeanne, he had purchased a gold and amethyst ring. For Christian, a dagger encrusted with fake stones. Outside was a car engaged to whisk the newcomers about the city, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid and Humayun’s Tomb blurring before their eyes like a twenty-minute footrace about the Louvre with time only to see the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo. Alain was truly incredible, a bulldozer clearing a path through the congested madness of Old Delhi, as familiar with the rabbit warren of streets in Chandni Chowk bazaar as the boulevards of Paris, threatening the beggar children with their broken bodies and directing the French visitors to have no pity for them as they were “professionals,” forbidding them to eat tempting sugared apricots or sesamie-crusted pralines from a street peddler, but taking them instead to an outdoor restaurant called Moti Mahal, which in Jeanne’s eyes merited no marks for hygiene, but from whose tandoori ovens emerged incredible chicken that had been marinated in yoghurt and spices and flash-broiled in a brick-walled pit to seal the juices beneath a peppery crust. While they ate, a troupe of musicians performed and a fat woman with several pounds of jewels around her huge bosom sang endless songs of enormous heartbreak and smoked hashish without an eyelash of emotion. At this moment, Jeanne fell in love with India, overwhelmed by the exotic pageant that played continuously about her. And she thought to herself: “What an incredible stroke of fate to have met Alain Gauthier on that plane. We would never have found a restaurant like this.” Throughout the meal, she examined Gauthier surreptitiously. He held no sexual appeal for her, despite the muscles and authority. His visage was Oriental, and such men were of no interest to her. But there was an undeniable fascination, a lure, a force that made him the focus of every moment. If either of the French began a sentence and Alain interrupted, they fell into respectful silence and listened to what he had to say. Alain Gauthier, obnoxious as he could be, was a man to whom attention was given.
That night Jeanne wrote in her diary: “Today I met a very famous journalist and photographer. His name is Alain Gauthier and he knows everything about India. He seems to know everything about everything! He is taking us to Kashmir.”
But before they left the capital, Alain begged a favor from Jeanne. His English was inadequate, confessed Alain, and he needed someone to translate a few telegrams from his French into English before sending them. The cables all seemed to deal with money and travel, with messages like “funds will be available soon” or �
�new venture planned for Bangkok,” and they went to addresses in Paris, Marseilles, Athens, Istanbul, and Hong Kong. Some were signed “Alain” and others “Charles.” When Jeanne questioned the disparity in signatures, Alain smiled. “You know we French all have several prénoms,” he said. “Some people call me Alain. Others Charles. And most call me chéri.” Jeanne laughed and let it go at that.
They flew to Srinagar, the most important city in the Kashmir region, an enormous valley larger than Great Britain, cuddling tranquilly in the lap of the Himalayas like a lamb protected by fierce mastiffs. Since the Emperor Akbar first came in the sixteenth century to escape the staggering pre-monsoon heat of Agra, Srinagar has been a fashionable vacation place for wealthy Indians. Here is not the India of one’s imagination, rather a first cousin to Switzerland. There are even yodelers and St. Bernards. The natives, mostly Moslem, are more loyal to neighboring Pakistan than to India, their region having been a major bone of contention since the two countries were sliced by the 1947 partition.
On the slopes of the great mountains, where frozen glaciers endure all of the year, where herds of cattle graze on buttercups, the armies of India and Pakistan patrol their respective sides on sleds and skies, shouting obscenities at the other. Forests of pointed rifles can be glimpsed. But the tourists who come to Kashmir are not overly concerned with military posturings. They want to smell the attar of blossoms that bloom in the meadows and orchards, hanging over the region like an eternal cloud of perfume, or laze on mirror lakes where kings once whispered adulterously into the ears of beautiful women and created the gardens called Shalimar to attest their love.
The airport at Srinagar is small, rural in fact, and the moment tourists are disgorged from the Delhi flight, seasoned importuners set upon them. Young girls in swirling pink and lime saris offer platters of shining mangoes and the sweetest oranges on earth. Others tempt with flowers, necklaces of marigold and palmyra and roses the color of sunsets. Men with great waxed mustaches and flirtatious manner drape and lock bracelets and pendants about a woman’s neck before she can summon a refusal, and over it all, like an operatic tenor drowning out full orchestra and chorus, blares the beseechment of the houseboat agent, a salesman rivaled in pushiness only by the camel drivers at the Giza pyramids.
“Don’t buy anything, don’t say anything,” commanded Alain to his wards, weaving through the high pressure sales force toward baggage claim. Never was Jeanne more grateful for this savior. Neither she nor Christian was adept at bullish maneuver and surely they would have been trapped into leasing an undesirable houseboat at an exorbitant price. Contentedly she sat on a bench and watched the confusion whirl about her. Her eyes suddenly caught those of another young woman, thirty maybe, whose face was profoundly weary. Stunned by the chaos and the heat, she pressed her hands to her ears to shut out the showering sales pitches. Jeanne imagined that here was a lower-class English girl, probably from Manchester, a filing clerk or shopgirl. She was decidedly plain, with a pointed nose and spectacles that sagged on the slope. Her blue jean cuffs were rolled up to reveal an unstylish glimpse of white athletic socks and tennis shoes. But when she looked back at Jeanne to smile shyly, obviously pleased to locate a sympathetic face as bewildered as hers, there was a modicum of appeal. Then an older, plumpish, balding man with sweat drowning his beet-red forehead appeared and put his arm around the girl. Jeanne nodded to herself. They fit. Of course they are man and wife. They are made for one another. Jeanne hoped that Kashmir would drench them in romance.
Then she heard her name called. Alain was beckoning, Christian beside him. It seemed the Class A houseboats had leaped in price and the best thing to do would be find another couple with which to share. The houseboats are conducive to sharing, containing private apartments and enough decks for sunning to ensure privacy. In that case, suggested Jeanne, she had just noticed a girl who seemed to be English, and her man, and they were dazed by the turmoil of negotiating. “Perfect,” said Alain, and in a moment, Jeanne had the couple in tow. She had addressed the girl in English, but had received a reply in a heavy accent. “Ah, you are French!” exclaimed Jeanne, as happy as if she had stumbled onto a bistro in the desert.
The girl smiled and introduced herself. She was Marie-Andrée Leclerc, from Quebec. And her friend was Bernard, also from Canada. Alain Gauthier leaned forward and kissed Marie-Andrée’s hand, startling her with his gallantry. For a few heavy moments there was silence while Alain scrutinized the Canadian woman, like a jeweler examining a questionable stone. Then came the welcome intrusion of a houseboat agent who yelled that all the choice accommodations were rapidly disappearing. “Forgive me,” murmured Alain. He was taken aback for a moment. Marie-Andrée, he said softly, was almost a double for his ex-wife.
Then, like a child walking a fence to impress another, Alain returned to the haggling with vigor. Furiously he denounced the agent as a thief among thieves. Three times he ordered his friends to pick up their luggage and stalk theatrically from the terminal. And three times the agent ran after them, lowering his price. Gripping the agent’s shoulder and squeezing it tightly, Alain said threateningly, “All right, we accept. But if this houseboat is inferior, you will hear from me.”
The Sultan’s Embrace was typical of the houseboats first ordered built by British tourists in the nineteenth century who were unable to purchase land from the crafty natives of Kashmir. They were willing to lease only water rights. Ninety feet long and only fifteen feet wide, built of teak and mahogany with exquisitely carved filigrees and furbelows, it was permanently anchored on an inlet of Dal Lake, choked by lotus blossoms of gold and pink. Her neighbors were boats named Lotus Garden and Your Paradise and Super Duper Deluxe and Shalimar Nights. Each couple took a private bedroom, and Alain moved into the third—alone. But from the moment all stepped foot onto the Sultan’s Embrace, Alain was the dominant member, captain of the ship and master of everyone’s life.
On the first night, the resident cook prepared chicken curry and set it proudly on a highly polished dining table. Jeanne had not given her appearance much heed, thus she was surprised to see that Marie-Andrée had combed her hair becomingly and wore a soft, clingy summer dress. She looked younger and far more attractive than she had standing at the Srinagar Airport. Immediately Jeanne caught onto the reason why: the Canadian girl was smitten by Alain Gauthier. Fantasies danced unhidden in her eyes. But on this night, the object of her attention was not receptive. Alain greeted the others, bade them to sit down, took one bite of chicken curry, and yelled imperiously for the cook. “This is garbage,” he said. He picked up the serving platter and threw the food into the quiet lake where it sank in a bed of water lilies and was attacked by a flurry of brilliantly colored fish. The cook was ordered to go into town and purchase a roast chicken from a restaurant.
Later that night, in the privacy of her room, Jeanne commented to Christian. Throughout the awkward dinner, Alain had bragged—yes, that was the best word, bragged—about his accomplishments. If one could believe him, Alain had been a French national champion in karate, a decorated military hero, and the possessor of a law degree from the Sorbonne. He had photographed leopards in Kenya and had been in the front lines during the Vietnam War. Christian was not impressed. “I don’t think he’s real,” he said. “I’m suspicious of everything he says.”
Jeanne fell asleep while thinking about the potential for tension in the week ahead. Marie-Andrée had set her cap for Alain Gauthier, and her boy friend, Bernard, would soon catch on.
Cries from peddler boats circling the Sultan’s Embrace broke sleep. Jeanne looked out her window and was enchanted. The lake was pearl gray silk, with fingers of mauve from a drowsy sun not yet over the mountaintops, and already the waters contained a floating market. One canoe was so laden with fresh flowers that the old woman’s head barely stuck out from blankets of lotus shaded in salmons with spidery innards of gold. Another offered fresh-baked breads, with mint and cheese hidden inside, and French style rolls. There were laundr
y boats and pharmacy boats with aspirin and diarrhea potions, boats that offered fur jackets and blankets, those that had candies and fruits, others that tempted with just-caught and still-wriggling fish for breakfast. While Jeanne watched the pageant with fascination, the door to her bedroom opened and Alain appeared, nearly nude, wearing only underwear, his muscled chest and legs on calculated display. His bathroom was not working. Could he use hers? Use it he did—for two hours, dipping into Jeanne’s toilet kit for shampoos and skin moisturizers and into Christian’s for after-shave. He emerged with glowing skin and carefully groomed hair, a considerable change from the hippie of yesterday. Changing into a bikini, he led his charges to the top deck and stretched out like a well-mannered ocelot at the feet of the two women. Marie-Andrée pretended to read, but Jeanne noticed that her eyes kept darting nervously over her policier to admire the oiled body that turned before her as if a peacock on a rotisserie. After a while, Jeanne bit her lip to keep from laughing. Not only was Alain conducting a blatant campaign for feminine attention, he was not even very good at it. Amateur, thought Jeanne. “But he is after you, cheŕi,” whispered Christian maliciously as he dived into the quiet lake.
True. For the rest of the week, Alain flaunted his muscles and karate stances for Jeanne, to the point where she felt like telling him not to waste his time. And he ignored Marie-Andrée, who watched him with barely disguised hunger. Bernard the Boyfriend watched everybody. “This is really a farce,” Jeanne told Christian. “Alain is after me, Marie-Andrée is after Alain, and Bernard is out in the cold.”
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