“So.” I felt relieved to be out of the oppressive, impotent ministry. “You plan to come back for that visa?”
“I’d consider it, if his teeth were better.”
“Offer to pay for his dental work. It’d probably cost less than what you’re paying for a black market visa.”
A taxi pulled up. We scooted into the back. The driver looked at us in the rearview mirror. “Kahaa janee?”
Grace looked at me. “Where are we going?”
“Let’s get some lunch.” I leaned forward. “Nanglo Café janchau.” The driver wagged his head. Grace wagged hers in imitation and grinned at me. I suddenly wanted to make love with her, as soon as possible. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Not a lot. I’ve got to pick up my slides at Lotus before five.”
“Today is your didi’s day off, right?”
“Yeah, she works Tuesdays and Fridays. Why?”
“I don’t know . . .” I felt strangely shy. She reached over and held my hand, still radiant from our charged encounter with the prime minister. “You just look so adorable this morning. And I have to spend tonight at home.”
“That’s right,” she looked sullen. “When are you flying to Lukla?”
“At six in the morning. Ugh. And I still have a million errands to do.”
The trek was a bold and crazy idea, inspired by my longing to spend some time in the mountains. Hiking in the Khumbu would be a tonic. I’d get good interviews, I hoped, with the Sherpas and hill tribes, the village folk who made up most of Nepal’s population, but whose perspectives on the revolution had been ignored even by the local media.
“When are you getting back?” Grace asked.
“In five days. Next Tuesday. May 8.”
“Wow. Short trip. Wish I could come.”
“Me, too. I was thinking, we’ve never trekked together.”
“That’s true. It could be great.” She paused. “Or it could be a disaster. Literally.”
“It wouldn’t be,” I said. But I’d certainly considered it.
A CORD OF smoke rose from the incense burner on Grace’s dresser. Bells, horns, and shouts filtered in through the window. Outside, the leaves of the nearby trees were powdered with beige dust. Grace snored a little, her arm thrown across my chest.
Our lovemaking had evolved, become more intimate and bonding than it had been in February. But I sensed that she was wary, unsure of how completely to forgive me for my silence during March and April. The fact remained: I hadn’t called, or written, or turned to her after Jordan’s death. But I had kept my parting promise: I’d come back. That counted for something.
I looked at the clock and took a long breath. My to-do list was a nightmare ; I hadn’t even rented a sleeping bag. Very soon, I’d have to extract myself from her embrace. But not yet. I looked at Grace. The sense that we belonged together seemed to illuminate me from within, like a phosphorescent tide. It was thrilling, unanticipated. My memories of our courtship had been derailed by my departure, Jordan’s death, Carlita, the revolution. But here in her Kathmandu flat, watching her ribs rise and fall through the skin of her back, I could imagine a future. There was a shape, a kinetic whole, we could make together.
I kissed her on the neck. She didn’t wake up when I rolled out of bed. A few minutes later I was dressed and slipping my daypack over my shoulders. The bedroom door made a thin, creaking sound. Grace rolled onto her side, pulling a pillow over her head.
“Sweet dreams,” I whispered, and closed the door as quietly as I could.
35
Promises
HOT WATER CAN be the ultimate luxury—and at 50 rupees for five minutes, it was also the bargain of the century. I washed my hair under the black bladder of a solar shower, pulled on a pair of shorts, and checked out of my guest house in Namche Bazaar. The Sherpa settlement had mushroomed since my last visit, six and a half years earlier; every house now had dangling electric bulbs, and even the more modest lodges offered pizza and brewed coffee.
I hiked up the well-worn trail that winds above the village and stopped for breakfast in Kunde, beneath the sacred mountain called Khumbila. The trek from there—which passes through Khumjung and drops to the Dudh Koshi (“Milk River”) before climbing fourteen hundred vertical feet to the far ridge—is one of the most beautiful in Nepal. I made my way carefully down the slick flagstones, drinking in the staggering views of Ama Dablam to my right, the gleaming face of Lhotse visible a few days up the valley.
The long climb was even slower, but I enjoy uphills. After an hour of sweat and steady breathing I reached the crumbling remains of the Tengpoche Gompa. The charred walls, recently destroyed by fire, stood in silhouette against the sky. Mount Everest was visible above the ridge to the north, its pyramidal tip appearing much lower than the surrounding mountains. I ate a bowl of thukpa and slept well, despite the thinning air. When I awoke, the soaring hump of Ama Dablam was bathed in golden light.
A half day of trekking brought me to Pangboche, nearly thirteen thousand feet above sea level. The village is set on gray moraine; a group of children on the outskirts played catch with round stones, pitching them back and forth with unnerving force. The Imja Khola ran nearby, hoarse and lively, iridescent with powdered mica. At this elevation Nepal feels like another planet: an alien world bereft of trees, greenery, or much in the way of oxygen.
Pangboche is the Nepali equivalent of Roswell. The local abbot led me into his gompa and displayed (for a small price) the village’s famous relics: a finger bone and conical scalp, with a few tufts of hair, alleged to have come from a yeti. (If true, I noted, the yeti was a redhead.)
The point of my trek was to gauge political awareness in a region far from the Kathmandu Valley. How were the overthrow of the king, and the prospect of democracy, playing in the mountains? Though my ability to communicate was limited, it wasn’t hard to enlist local teachers or guides who spoke English. With their help, and my own improving command of Nepali, I’d spoken with dozens of people, in tea shops and on the trail, from adolescents to the elderly, from householders to porters. Their replies to my questions were direct and basic. Democracy meant freedom of speech, government accountability, education, and the availability of decent jobs. It meant that people could steer their own destinies. Most of the Nepalis I met were fascinated by the concept. Most—but not all.
On the way to Pangboche I’d met a group of schoolboys and asked what they expected from the new order. They were all around fifteen years old. Their “leader,” Anil, was a tall youth with gazelle-wide eyes. In perfect, clipped English, he pronounced democracy a curse.
“Because of democracy,” Anil said, “hundreds of people in Kathmandu have been beaten and killed.”
“You are aware,” I replied, “that the Royal Palace and the police were the ones who did the killing.”
He shrugged. Killing of any sort was an absolute, and anything that provoked it, for any cause, should be demonized. I turned to his friends.
“Is there anything that could make you respect democracy?”
There was a lively debate, which Anil summarized. “We need schools. We need electricity. We need medicines. Every year many crores of rupees come to Nepal, but we never see the result. If the new government cares about us, they must give us what is promised. Otherwise, what difference between the old and the new?”
One of Anil’s companions was a thin boy with sad eyes and a shocking harelip. A bright silver button, an inch in diameter, was pinned to his jacket.
“Is that his third eye?” I joked.
“Oh, no, no!” Anil frowned earnestly, answering for his friend. “That was a picture of the queen.”
I inspected the button closely. Before the recent turmoil, buttons emblazoned with portraits of the king or queen, posed on a mint-green background, had been popular. This was the right size and shape, but no trace of an image remained.
“What happened to her?”
“The queen took all of our country’s money, to buy a house
and car. Also, she tried to kill the king. So yesterday he rubbed it in the dirt, to take the picture away. It took more than one hour,” Anil added with pride.
THE LONG MILES on the trail were an empty canvas. I filled them, painting with uninhibited strokes. Sometimes I’d converse with my brother, forgetting for the moment that he would never see these snow-runneled mountains, the mica-lined rivers, or the lammergeiers soaring overhead. Sometimes I bantered with Grace, or fantasized about where our path might lead. Every so often these internal dialogues became so cluttered that I had to stop, my head spinning, and ground myself. Even this wasn’t easy. The sky was deep blue and highly reflective, as if it had just been waxed. It was a state like infancy: Every sight, every component of the landscape, was infinitely interesting, helplessly distracting. Once, gazing to the south, I saw what looked like a brilliant vajra, moving steadily eastward. Was this a visitation? A sign from Padmasambhava? I watched it for five full minutes before realizing it was a commercial jet, its windows glinting in the sun.
The ground was dry and cracked, covered with stones, boulders, bones. Shadows were razor-sharp, uncompromising in the rare atmosphere. The sun itself was impossible to look at. I averted my gaze with fear and humility, understanding for the first time the unbearable brilliance of a star.
A few hours beyond Pheriche I stopped. I stood still for a moment, and turned slowly around. The landscape was miraculous, but my time was too short. I could go no further.
There was a small tea shop on the route back toward Tengpoche, and I sat down for a glass of chiya. Another guest sat at the other table: a local man, in his early forties, with the square face of a samurai warrior. He spoke the easy, idiomatic English of a Kathmandu professional. After a casual greeting, I joined him at his table.
He introduced himself as Norbu Sherpa, an officer with Sir Edmund Hillary’s Himalayan Trust: a charitable foundation created by the soft-spoken New Zealand climber who’d scaled Everest in 1953. Norbu had worked for the Trust for four years, but knew Sir Edmund since childhood. “I was raised in Khumjung and went to the first school he built.” He had just spent a month touring the Khumbu region with a fact-finding group of his own. The Trust, he told me, was keenly curious about the repercussions of the recent revolution.
“It will be quite difficult for the multiparty system to bring its message here to the Khumbu,” Norbu said, confirming my suspicions. “In 1960, when Nepal had its first experiment with democracy, there was violence and looting by right-wing reactionaries. As a result, the older generation associates democracy with anarchy.”
He took a pen from his pocket and sketched a map of Nepal on the back of an old Newsweek. “The young people—the ones who attend university, and who fought for this change—no longer live in the mountains, in the villages, with their extended families. They have moved to the cities.” Norbu drew large circles around Nepal’s big population centers, with arrows radiating in from Nepal’s northeast and northwest hills. “Even I live in Kathmandu, nine months of the year. For that reason, we have to be very cautious.”
I didn’t follow his reasoning. “Cautious in what respect?”
“Cautious about pretending we understand this place—even if we were born here. The people in this area know that we’ve changed. They know we identify ourselves with the cities, not the hills. They know that we no longer share their problems. So they don’t trust us fully.”
Norbu’s proposal was simple, and sensible. Educated people from the urban centers would be funded to return to their home villages, for two or three months at a time, and work on social projects: building water systems, improving irrigation, repairing the monasteries, staffing health posts.
“A genuine effort must be made to win the people’s faith and prove to the older generation that democratic leaders are good leaders. Because these next few months, before the first round of elections, are the most important of all. This is the phase where the new leaders will make it or break it. This is where democracy must be about showing, not just telling. The people here have had enough of promises. If the democratic leaders show they can run the country better than the king, the people will support them. Wholeheartedly.
“This coming monsoon,” Norbu told me, “when people come back home for their social and religious festivals, we will return to the Khumbu again. We will come in a big group: not to promote our political beliefs, but to mix with the people. Slowly, slowly, we will help them understand what democracy means, and what it can do for them.”
It was midafternoon by the time we parted company. The mountains seemed to be sublimating before my eyes. Plumes of mist boiled into the air, swept away by the jet stream in thick white banners. It was shirtsleeve warm in the sun, but the air held little heat; as the clouds thickened, the mercury plummeted. I pulled on my fleece and continued down the trail to Tengpoche, hoping my comfortable bed was still available. A bit of comfort seemed well earned. I’d gotten my story, and felt I was back in the swing of things.
Later that night, I bundled up and went outside. Tiny satellites crept between the stars. Was Nepal now my home? I’d loved the place for years, but had never felt this sense of commitment before. If we put our resources together, Grace and I could afford a nice compound—a house with a garden, kitchen, and rooftop view. The monsoon was only two months away. It was a good time to look for houses, when so many expats went on home leave.
“What do you think, Jord?” As if everything I did, from this moment on, was on his behalf as well as mine. “Is she a keeper?” I grinned. “Am I?” But the night sky was silent, and the constellations unreadable.
36
Grace Before Lunch
GRACE HAD NOTICED it the moment she’d awakened, just after dawn: something odd with the world. She remained aware of it all morning. It was as if a polarizing filter had been placed over the sun. But while the daylight appeared somehow muted, sounds seemed magnified: the neighbor’s rooster, a breaking bottle, a herd of distant cows. The buzz of an airplane, spilling in from the east.
She’d noticed this phenomenon as a girl, on camping trips with her family. Every year, during spring break, they’d pile sleepily into a Dodge station wagon, the rear well packed with coolers and pillows, tents and Coleman sleeping bags, Monopoly and Risk, her father’s sleek white telescope. She and her sister Jen in the backseat, competing to spy red silos or Oklahoma license plates. They’d drive for hours, grinding in the slow lane past the luminous farms of Kansas, over the Rocky Mountains, into the stark pink of New Mexico or southern Utah. Sometimes they’d end up in Capitol Reef, or Canyonlands; sometimes in Bryce or Death Valley. Grace would crawl out of her tent at dawn, while her father was studying the morning star through his Celestron.
“C’mere, Gracie, look at Venus today . . .” He’d known she was there without taking his eye off the lens. “Look at that . . . just a tiny crescent . . . just like the moon. But it’s a whole world. Can you imagine that?” She’d peer through the ’scope, indulge him for a minute or two, then wander off toward the outhouses. There’d be frost on the rocks, sometimes a fox or a rabbit. A jet glinting noiselessly overhead. The air seemed to ring. Grace would stop amid the silence, amazed by the stillness of the planet, the sense that she’d caught the world unawares.
A small cloud blocked the sun, casting her flat into sudden shadow. Suddenly, Grace knew what she was feeling. The monsoon was coming. Not right away, but soon. The first storms might even arrive this month. The Himalayan spring was ending, even in the mountains. The last rhododendrons had bloomed.
Almost a year ago, during her first summer in Kathmandu, Grace had welcomed the monsoon. It had filled her with a sense of liberation; it made her want to sing and dance, to strip off her clothes and run into the street, her face turned toward the sky, like a woman she’d seen in a National Geographic story. There was something miraculous about the monsoon, something divine—as if the deluge, transported by thunderheads from the Bay of Bengal, might cleanse her soul. It was an
organic cycle, a rhythmic purge, another proof that God was female.
After a week of nonstop rain, though, her enthusiasm had dissolved. The lanes had become a stew of mud, garbage, and cow shit. Cars and trucks hove down the streets in a frenzy, chasing up curtains of filthy water. Taxis were scarce. She’d arrive home soaking wet, to a flat full of mosquitoes. Nothing dried out; even her bed smelled of mildew. And there was nothing to do. Most of her friends had left town, fleeing the floods in favor of Thai beaches, pilgrimages to Tibet, visits to friends and family. She’d been mired, alone, hugging her knees as the sky emptied and thunderclaps pounded her windows. An exile, marooned in a dark, dank cell.
Not this year. No way. It was still May: the perfect time to decide where to go. Where to go, and who to go with.
South India. She’d never been. Lou Tanner had gone last year; he’d flown to Madras, bought a Royal Enfield, and drove it around the horn of India: down to Kanyakumari, and up the west coast to Goa. Two weeks ago he’d drawn her a map, peppering it with the most fabulous place-names she’d ever heard: Mamallapuram, Tiruchirapali, Thanjavur, Ooticamund. The South Indian temples were like baroque wedding cakes, he’d said, their gates covered with hallucinatory sculptures of gods and goddesses, animals and mythic beasts. There was drumming everywhere. In one temple, Lou had heard a regular, explosive, popping sound. In a dim room behind the main altar, he’d found its source. A parade of pilgrims was smashing ripe coconuts onto the ground, symbolically shattering their prideful minds. And the beaches! He’d found a virtually unknown paradise, shaded with palm trees, near a fishing village south of Kovalam. “Just don’t try to swim in the morning,” he warned. “The locals shit on the beach and wait for the tide to carry their crap away.” Grace had grimaced, but Lou shrugged. “No place is perfect.”
She was dying to go—but not alone. The subcontinent was a vast unknown, a dizzying kaleidoscope of images and archetypes, urgings and maledictions, abstract advice. Gorgeous, maddening, overwhelming. There was one thing everyone agreed on: It was a tough place to be on your own. The friends who’d had the best times had gone with their partners.
Snake Lake Page 33
