by Damien Leith
‘Oh, no! You’ve got to be joking.’ But Mani wasn’t joking.
‘You see—’ he pointed towards a tiny blue dot high in the distance. A building, barely visible, nestled deep within the forest at the top of the mountain. I’d noticed most houses along the trek had blue corrugated rooftops.
‘That is our next teahouse—we rest there tonight.’
‘Ah, Christ almighty,’ I moaned. It had to be at least a thousand metres, and practically vertical! ‘That’s going to take forever!’
‘Three thousand steps,’ Mani replied. ‘Maybe three hours’ walking.’
Mani’s friend from the teahouse overheard our conversation. ‘Maybe you would like to stay in my hotel tonight instead and start fresh tomorrow morning?’
‘Ah, no, maybe next time.’ I knew this was the best response to make. ‘I would rather get it over and done with today.’
Mani threw an approving glance in my direction; it felt good.
‘You sure? Nice rooms, very cheap!’ the manager persisted.
‘Thank you, but no, we better go.’
The manager blurted something to Mani in Nepali and both men gave a cautious laugh. Had he commented how fit and courageous I was, not to give in for the night at such an early stage of the trek? No, more likely he just said I was a tight wanker.
Mani once again set off purposefully, over a wooden bridge, across a gentle clear stream and finally to step number one of our three thousand! Before we’d reached the first rocky slab of the staircase I’d decided that, no matter what came or went, I wouldn’t count them. But—one, two, three, four—it was like counting sheep except the pain in the legs reminded you that, yes, you were still awake and, no, you hadn’t reached the top yet…299, 300, 301, 302. It was so goddamn steep! I glanced back at the height we had already travelled.
If somebody fell here it would be one heck of a drop!
I didn’t like that thought; once again it made me think of my family. You’re worrying too much. They’re all fine. I calculated that it would be about seven in the morning back in Ireland. Dad would probably be driving off to work.
Dad always used to ring me on my mobile in the mornings on his way to work. He never talked about much, just wanted to make contact. Dad, like Mam, lived for us kids. What if he collided with a truck en route? What if his tyre had a blow-out?
I tried to banish these thoughts with a short prayer, but I couldn’t complete it—each step of our ascent needed my concentration. Yet the anxiety of the prayer weighed heavier and heavier. And because of the prayer’s incompleteness it was only a matter of time before I’d have more thoughts of home and terrible possibilities.
…1003, 1004, 1005, 1006…
Unfinished prayers led to guilt and fear. Now I was fearful that because I didn’t complete the prayer Dad would have an accident. It would be through no fault of his, it would be because of my unfinished prayer. I began silently reciting the prayer again—but it was too difficult and I couldn’t get it right. Each new step met me faster than the time I needed to complete the prayer, and excluding stopping altogether and making it obvious to Mani that there was something wrong, there was nothing I could do.
But Mani had stopped up ahead. Before I reached him he had already taken the backpack off and was walking swiftly back towards me.
‘You alright?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘I need piss!’ he replied as he hurried by me and disappeared into a heavy patch of trees. His urgency was bizarre.
Ah, what a relief! There was nobody around, I was totally free of interruptions. With my eyes focused on the highest point in the sky and fingers and toes flexed, I finally had success.
‘There’s a lot going on in your head, Sean, isn’t there?’
We lay beside each other. The beach hut was grey and bare but neither of us was much concerned with the surroundings. We were in India but we could have been anywhere in the world and we would have been oblivious to it. I was focused on her eyes and she on mine, that was all that mattered.
‘What makes you think that?’
Her directness was a surprise; no one outside family had ever really commented before.
‘You can tell,’ she replied softly. ‘Sometimes I talk to you and you’re someplace else.’
She couldn’t have been more on the money. I wanted to change the conversation, but I didn’t know how.
‘You don’t need to say anything,’ she continued. ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ Her face was lit up, her eyes glowing in the half light of our room. ‘All you’ve got to do is keep those things under control. Don’t let them take over your beautiful soul.’ She wagged a playful finger at me. She instinctively knew more about me than most people I’d known for years. I felt comfortable that I didn’t have to talk.
My mind was clear. I was sitting on the stone steps enjoying the scenery when Mani returned. He’d managed to sneak into my prayer again but now I didn’t care. It was easier to add him than contend with the guilt of not adding him.
Mani sat down beside me—we were both exhausted, and the steps still stretched above us.
‘Are we nearly halfway?’ I asked optimistically.
‘I think maybe…’ He paused to look up in the direction we were heading. ‘Maybe no.’
‘No!’ It was a desperate no. I sighed. ‘How far then?’
‘Maybe still many steps, I think two more hours.’
Two more hours. It was a feat of science, never before had such scrawny legs achieved so much in such a short time.
At two-thirds of the way I was still counting the steps…2121, 2122, 2123, 2124…Was I intentionally trying to punish myself? I might as well have been counting each second it was taking. It was as painful as the trip to India from Ireland: nine-hours on a beautiful, shiny new Boeing 747, with all the trimmings, all the extras—including the option of viewing the journey on my own personal on-screen flight map showing miles to destination, time to destination, miles travelled since departing—it was a neurotic’s nightmare, 14236 miles, 14225 miles, 14218 miles…
Mani sat down on one of the steps up ahead. He left the backpack on. As soon as I caught up I sat also and drank the remainder of my water.
‘I think it’s going to rain.’ I indicated the gradual swoop of black clouds in our direction. At lunchtime I’d observed how far away they were and thought we would probably avoid them. Since then the wind must have shifted, and sometime during the hours between steps one thousand and two thousand we had begun climbing towards the clouds rather than away.
‘I think not.’ Mani gazed into the sky. ‘I think today we will get lucky.’ As he spoke I noticed for the first time that he’d begun to look tired and was breathing more heavily.
‘Are you tired?’
‘Ah, a little, not so bad.’ Mani’s face creased into a smile. ‘Today, Mani not so fit, tomorrow and the next day, very fit!’ He slapped his thighs for effect.
‘Ah, good on you,’ I laughed. ‘At least one of us will be.’
‘This season you are Mani’s customer number one. I arrive from Kathmandu to Pokhara three weeks ago but no work until now, very bad time, I think—tourists not come to Nepal. Very bad time!’
‘Yes, it is a very bad time,’ I agreed. ‘When I first arrived in Nepal, I didn’t know as much about all of the fighting—if I had, I probably wouldn’t have come.’
Not surprisingly, these words didn’t cheer Mani up. You think that by agreeing with somebody you’ll make them feel better, but you’re actually rubbing salt into the wound. I went silent. There was an awkward pause and I threw a stone at a nearby tree. I missed.
‘I do this job for fifteen years,’ Mani began, sounding optimistic again. ‘When I start we have many tourists and many work. It was good time but Mani not so interested in keeping money. Now I have plan for money and wife, but now no tourists. I think maybe I am unlucky—but I am happy because now I am not drinking and no ganja.’
‘Did you drink a lot?’
It was an odd question, but I felt that Mani had led me there.
He smiled. ‘Drink and Mani very good friends.’ The conversation ended there, and that seemed like a good place to leave it. This was none of my business.
We started off again on what would be our last stretch of the day. Every bend, every hopeful ending met once again with a vertical staircase. Secretly I had hoped that Mani had been mistaken when he’d said it was three thousand steps. In fact, he had underestimated. At the three-thousand-steps mark, Ulleri finally came into view, but we were at least ten minutes’ walk away.
When at last we hobbled into the quiet streets of the town, I was shattered by the marathon.
Ulleri was a small village quite similar to Birethanti. Mani chose a guesthouse from the six available and negotiated a fair price. I crawled up the final insult of the day, a staircase to the bedrooms, and plonked my aching body down onto the hard surface of my bed. Relief!
But Mani must have read my mind. He knocked on the door.
‘The shower has hot water. I think that you should wash!’
Did I smell that bad?
‘You want dal bhat tonight?’ Mani’s tone suggested that dal bhat was probably the best choice for the night, so I agreed, then made my way to the shower.
This was a small guesthouse, scantily decorated and with cold wooden floorboards throughout. A rough but pleasant place for weary bodies.
The shower was in an outhouse next to a smelly squat toilet—a hole in the ground over which you hovered to do your business. Standing under the shower, I watched the lukewarm water fall from my body and form a puddle at my feet. The size of the puddle increased. Alarmingly, it soon reached the perimeter of the toilet—eventually flowing into it.
I looked down at the puddle. What’s a bit of piss on your feet?
Grimacing, I dried myself off and got dressed. I was content to have day one over and to be out of my trekking gear and into something more comfortable, particularly the flip-flops on my aching feet.
‘Ah, my name is, eh, Akio.’ He was sitting alone at one of the wooden tables when I entered, but quickly rose to greet me. Another tourist!
‘Akio,’ I tried. ‘Nice to meet you. My name is Sean.’
‘Sean, good-o.’ He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and began to scribble in it. ‘I write your name so I not-o forget.’
I smiled, it was hard not to.
The room seemed like a greenhouse, though it was the restaurant. We sat down.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked him.
‘I come on bus to Nayapul and I trek to Ulleri from there!’
I had to smile again. ‘No—which country do you come from? I’m from Ireland.’
‘Oh, I see,’ he exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘I am residence of Japan.’
‘Japan? Very good,’ I said cheerfully. ‘And have you been in Nepal for long?’
‘I stay for two weeks only. You?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m travelling until I get tired of it all.’ He looked at me confused, so I decided to clarify. ‘Until my money runs out.’
He understood and gave an acknowledging nod. He was a short man, in his early twenties, of a sturdy, hefty build. His face was youthful and unlined and his stance expressed an enthusiastic confidence, which was refreshing.
‘So, how far are you trekking?’ I asked.
‘Not so far, I only go to Tadapani. I want to see hot-o springs.’
‘Hot springs?’ I replied. ‘I didn’t know there were hot springs in Tadapani.’
‘Yes. Tada, it mean hot; pani, it mean water. You go to Tadapani also?’
‘No, I’m going to Annapurna Base camp, in a different direction.’
I knew the route he was taking; we’d both be travelling to Ghorepani but then we would go our separate ways. His way would see him to the hot springs and back to Pokhara in four days; mine would take eight or nine. Feeling the pain in my legs, I was slightly envious of him.
‘So do you travel alone? Have you no porter?’
Akio seemed confused by my question. ‘I have good map. He is my guide!’
Mani broke up the conversation as he entered the room; he was showered and looking very fit. With him he brought a friendly black dog, which paraded around the room seeking attention.
Mani had already met with Akio while I showered. They began trying to impress one another with how much of each other’s language they knew. I was content to pet the dog and be reminded of my own two dogs, Benji and Rusty. They were like two extra kids in the house. Benji had never developed the quick assertiveness of his mother, Rusty. He’d grown to be a huge bear of a dog, utterly harmless in every way and never smart enough to be trained to do anything other than eat, drink and roll over for a rub.
‘Leechee, leechee!’ The yell came from Akio first, then both men sprang into action. There was a big leech on the dog’s head!
Stuck tight to the dog’s right ear was a fat leech about six centimetres in length, filled from the day’s feeding. And I hadn’t noticed a thing! It was the first leech I had ever seen, and it was disgusting. Akio promptly pulled a box of matches from his pocket. Quickly he began to strike a match along the side of the box but with no success. The matches were made from candle wax and weren’t very strong—each strike broke the stick in the middle and Akio was forced to try another and another. Mani approached the situation more calmly. Lifting the shaker from the table, he slowly poured salt onto the leech. Within seconds the leech began to shrivel up, and finally its grip on the dog failed and it fell to the floor, wriggling helplessly. Mani’s flip-flopped foot came down hard and fast on the leech; it took three crashing blows before the leech finally gave in.
‘Oh leechee, very bad,’ Akio was excited. ‘My matches no good-o. I tried to burn but no good-o.’
‘I didn’t even see the damn thing,’ I said, still surprised by the whole affair.
The dog wasn’t fazed by its ordeal and in fact was now enjoying Mani’s attentions.
‘Tomorrow I think we will see leechees.’ Mani spoke thoughtfully. ‘Rain coming tonight, bringing many leechees tomorrow!’
Shit.
‘What’s tomorrow like? Have we got many steps again?’ It seemed like a good idea to know what lay ahead.
Akio answered. ‘Tomorrow has jungle, not as difficult as today—am I right?’ He looked at Mani.
‘Tomorrow not difficult, today very difficult. I think too difficult for first day.’ Mani shooed the dog away and stretched his legs.
Then the dal bhat arrived. Serving up our meal was a young Nepalese girl, perhaps in her late teens, maybe even early twenties. She had slightly slanted eyes, fair skin, well-defined cheekbones and a small, well-suited nose and mouth. She was slim and when she entered the room all three of us became silent and attentive. I thought she was very beautiful.
A year earlier when I’d ended a three-year relationship, my brother John had said, consolingly, ‘You’ll get over it.’
‘I’m already over it,’ I’d replied. ‘We were finished months ago. We just hung in there for routine.’
‘Then what’s wrong with you? You look upset.’
‘Nothing. It’s got me thinking.’
John was only half interested. ‘What?’
‘Relationships are about so much more than good looks. Next girlfriend I find will be somebody whose personality I hit it off with straightaway. If she’s good looking as well, that’ll just be a bonus.’
The Nepalese girl delicately served Mani and me a large helping each of dal bhat, while Akio tucked in to his choice of Tibetan bread, custard and fried potatoes. We ate in silence, too fatigued to talk, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
I watched as the Nepalese girl left our company and imagined the life she was leading in Ulleri. Back home a girl like her would have her choice of men and, at this age, would be experiencing life at its most exciting. In Nepal she was one of so many confined to a hard life, which would include a husband and a tribe o
f children. It seemed so young to be so old.
My own parents, who’d married young, would say that hard times lead to hard measures, people grow up faster when they know they have to. I pondered it…if a child of nine has to hold down a badly paid job so that their contribution ensures that the whole family has a place to sleep at night, well, surely with that must come early insight into adulthood? I supposed that was where Nepal was sitting in the bigger scheme of things: a poor country excluded from the advancement of the rest of the world, progressing with whatever tools it had to survive. It was sad.
Akio suddenly broke my train of thought. ‘I hear there are many bandits in Ghorepani, is it true?’
Bandits—that was a word I hadn’t heard in a while. Mani hadn’t understood, so I answered.
‘The Maoists, yes, I heard that they are in Ghorepani and they look for donations from tourists.’
‘Oh!’ Akio seemed unimpressed. ‘Oh, very bad.’ Silence fell again in the room.
‘I travel with you tomorrow,’ Akio started again. ‘I now travel alone, but maybe safer from bandits if we all travel together.’
It was strange and comical watching Akio, the nuts and bolts in his head intelligently and methodically figuring the way through a problem. While he thought out the difficulty, his face made many contortions.
‘Hey, the more the merrier.’ Despite feeling the odd sense of danger when they were mentioned, I was still not overly concerned about the Maoists. They remained in the shadows of my other consuming anxieties. ‘What time tomorrow, Mani?’
Mani smiled at me, knowing I wouldn’t be pleased. ‘I think we leave at six o’clock and maybe breakfast at five-thirty.’
A long day tomorrow! I decided to call it a night. When I reached my room it was five past eight, but I was wrecked. The room was freezing at this high altitude, but at the end of the day, a bed is a bed.
I lay in the dark trying to recite my final prayers of the evening. Nine-thirty came and went. Almost an hour and thirty minutes of exhausted praying, before I fell asleep.
5. Spasms
