Thin Air

by Michelle Paver

  The snow globe was a wedding present. ‘Isn’t he darling?’ cried Clare, burying the little man in snow.

  That night, I had the dream for the first time. I knew at once what it meant. If I married Clare, I’d end up like Kits. Kits with his well-heeled existence, his impeccably connected wife, and his bouncing progeny. I had thought I wanted all that, but now I felt breathless and trapped. I had to break out of the snow globe before it was too late.

  The next day, Clare’s grandmamma gave a dinner. I told my poor fiancée over the soup. She wasn’t so much hurt as indignant, and not entirely surprised. Then I told her papa. Then I stood up and told everyone else. All my pretty chickens at one fell swoop. Aunt Ruth always said I was given to extremes.

  Kits has never asked me why I did it, and so far, Cotterell and McLellan have also steered clear. But last night before dinner, Garrard did, so I told him.

  ‘I was in danger of becoming a younger version of Kits,’ I explained.

  ‘Would that be so bad?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean.’

  He stroked his beak like a thoughtful vulture. ‘But then – why climb with him?’

  I blinked. ‘Well. That’s different. I want to climb the mountain. It doesn’t belong to Kits.’

  His close-set eyes twinkled. ‘And anything he can do …’

  I snorted a laugh. ‘It’s not like that! This is the chance of a lifetime! This is Kangchenjunga!’

  It’s still dark, and the native dogs are barking fit to wake the dead. Now I know why they sleep all day: it’s because they bark all night. The luminous dials of my wrist watch tell me it’s four o’clock. In two hours, we set off.

  My stomach is churning. I’ve never been on an expedition. Most of my climbs have been in the Alps: up and down in a day, then back to the hotel for a bath. I do hope I measure up.

  Shivering, I check my gear for the umpteenth time. Kitbag, bedding roll, beloved Swiss climbing boots, trusty Norwegian rucksack, japanned tin medicine case; thank God I put my medical papers in that, and not the book-bag.

  I know what’s rattled me. It’s not the dream, it’s the coolies’ wretched superstitions. The day before yesterday, they got wind that we’ll be following Lyell’s route, and it scared them rigid. I’ve no idea why, but there was quite a row.

  It was an overcast morning (still no mountain), and they were waiting on some flattish ground at the edge of town.

  I hadn’t expected that there’d be so many of them. ‘You told me this was a small show,’ I said to Kits. ‘Why do we need sixty porters?’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s small for the Himalayas. Dyhrenfurth and Smythe had more than four hundred.’

  I was surprised to see several older men among them, and even some women. All were small, slight people with high-boned faces burnished by wind and sun, pan-stained teeth, and frightened expressions. Most sported earrings of turquoise or coral, and grimy silver amulets on their breasts. A few wore European clothes (I gather that’s a sign of rank), but the rest were in colourful calf-length robes that left their scrawny shins naked.

  I was concerned that the majority were barefoot, and I queried this with McLellan. He said he’d be issuing boots in Nepal, once the ‘laggards’ had dropped out; he seemed offended that I’d asked. I’m afraid he might be a bit of a martinet. I hope that’s not going to be a problem.

  The row erupted as I was heading for the tin-roofed shack where I’d set up my ‘clinic’. Cotterell was standing beside a mountain of big wooden packing crates, chatting to the Assistant DC and a fellow from the Himalayan Club. McLellan was seated on a camp stool under a tree. He wore a white pith helmet on his carroty head, and he seemed to be enjoying himself, taking names and thumbprints in receipt for pay and rations, which were being dispensed by Garrard and Kits.

  Suddenly, the Scotsman leapt to his feet and started ranting in some unintelligible tongue at two natives who stood before him with respectfully averted eyes.

  It turned out they were the sirdar – the headman – and his assistant, and they were flatly refusing to set off the next day as planned, because that happened to be the same day on which Lyell had set off in ’06.

  ‘Or so they say,’ fumed McLellan, who’d gone puce beneath his freckles. ‘It’s a filthy trick to extort more rations!’

  ‘Can’t we just let them wait another day?’ I asked.

  He stared at me. ‘Give in to a coolie once, Dr Pearce, and there’ll be no end to his tricks!’

  ‘But why do they mind the date?’ said Kits. ‘I rather like the idea of leaving on the same day as Lyell.’

  ‘The plan,’ snapped McLellan, ‘is for the coolies to leave tomorrow on foot, with us catching up the next day by motor – and that’s what we’ll do.’

  He launched into another tirade at the two natives, and things looked grim. Then the tirade became more measured. Finally, the natives broke into grins.

  ‘I’m sending a runner with their hats,’ muttered McLellan. ‘It’s preposterous, but provided their hats leave today, they’ll feel they’ve made a start. Bad karma averted, and all that rot.’

  ‘Clever,’ I remarked.

  He gave me a cool look. ‘I do know these people, Dr Pearce. The coolie is half child, half devil, and an inveterate liar. You’d do well to remember that.’

  ‘How do we reassure them about following Lyell’s route?’ said Garrard, scratching his untidy fair hair.

  ‘We don’t,’ said the Scotsman. ‘They’ll forget; they’re easily distracted.’

  ‘Hope you’re right, old chap,’ murmured Garrard.

  I left them to it, and went to begin my medical checks.

  My clinic was full, and I found myself in an oniony fug of unwashed flesh. McLellan had tartly reminded me to ‘worm the coolies’, and my predecessor, poor Hewet, had laid in supplies for mass inoculations against smallpox, typhoid and typhus. To a man (and woman), the coolies politely accepted my doses of santonin and castor oil – and just as politely declined to be inoculated.

  In desperation, I rolled up my sleeve and inoculated myself. Still no good. I was beginning to despair when one of them stepped forwards and offered himself for sacrifice.

  He looked about fifty, a small, squat goblin with a wrinkled mahogany face, and teeth and lips stained purple with pan. He wore a green robe criss-crossed across the chest, a knitted yellow cap with a scarlet bobble on top, and a black pigtail down his back. Thrust in his belt was a reed flute and a vicious curved dagger, like the one on Charles Tennant’s desk (all the natives have them). In heavily accented English, he told me his name was Nima. Then, with a big purple grin, he bared his powerful arm.

  After I’d inoculated him, the others swiftly fell into line, laughing and joshing as they submitted to the needle. McLellan calls them all coolies – I don’t know if that’s a collective term or a job description – but I could see there were different races, and I had Nima point them out. Bhutia, Lepcha, Limbu, Sherpa. Nima’s a Sherpa. He told me proudly that Sherpas are from Nepal, and they’re much the best climbers. He seems to look down on the others.

  I wish I knew more about them, and I wonder if McLellan’s view of them can be right. Once their fears over Lyell were laid to rest, they seemed rather happy people to me, friendly, and with a lively sense of fun.

  If only they weren’t so confoundedly superstitious. Most wore narrow white ribbon-like scarves painted with fine black squiggles, and when I asked Nima, he gave me another purple grin. ‘Prayers, Doctor Sahib.’

  ‘To whom?’

  His grin wavered. ‘They are keeping away bad things.’

  ‘Bad things?’

  ‘—In the mountains, Doctor Sahib.’

  The depth of my dismay startled me. I felt slightly sick. Why? It’s not as if I believe in this tosh. I’m a doctor. And like Garrard, I’ve no faith in ‘higher powers’.

  The dogs are still barking. It’s a red dawn, the first day of our expedition, but Darjeeling remains shrouded
in cloud. I wonder if Nima thinks that’s good or bad.

  Ours will be a small, fast expedition: twelve Sherpas and fifty lowland coolies – unlike those vast, bloated Everest affairs. Major Cotterell has planned the whole show with military precision, and last night, we went over our route. North through the jungles of the Sikkimese foothills, west over the great Singalila Ridge (some sixteen thousand feet high), then down into Nepal, and up the Yalung Glacier to the mountain’s south-west face. For the first four nights we’ll be sleeping in dak-bungalows – I gather they’re government rest-houses – and after that, tents.

  As for the mountain itself, Kits warned me in London not to get my hopes up about making the team for the summit, and he repeated that last night. I didn’t care for being put in my place in front of the others, but I don’t really mind about the summit, I only want to climb. I just hope I don’t let them down.

  I suppose I still feel a bit of an outsider. Kits, Garrard and Cotterell travelled out together, and McLellan knows the country and the natives. All I have is my medical expertise: what Kits calls ‘high-brow stuff’. It doesn’t really help.

  But I do love the sound of that glacier. I’m longing for glittering pinnacles of ice, and deep blue crevasses. A simpler world, far away from Harley Street and snow globes.

  And I think I know why I’ve conceived such a dislike of the coolies’ superstitions. They remind me of Charles Tennant. I see him now, crouching in his study among those ghastly curios: that glaring mask and that thigh-bone trumpet. The coolies are scared of the mountain, and so is he. That’s what I can’t bear. I want it clean and unsullied.

  McLellan’s trick with the hats was clever, but unwise. By humouring the coolies’ beliefs, he’s given undue importance to Lyell – and that’s something we must avoid. An expedition that took place twenty-nine years ago can’t have anything to do with ours. It cannot possibly affect us, unless we let it.

  * * *

  This is much better. Already, Darjeeling feels a million miles away.

  We left after breakfast in three Austin motor cars driven by a trio of breezy young English tea planters who’d agreed to ‘run us down to Singla Bazaar’ – ‘us’ being the five sahibs, the cook, Pasang (the handsome young assistant sirdar), and two other Sherpas, who’ll see to our needs until we catch up with the rest of the coolies tonight, at the first dak-bungalow.

  A cuckoo sounded an incongruous note as we wound our way down through the wet green hills, and I glimpsed tea terraces when the mist allowed – which mostly it didn’t.

  ‘Such a shame,’ remarked the chap at the wheel. ‘The views are stupendous.’ I’m becoming rather tired of hearing that.

  Now it’s noon, the motors have gone, and we’ve picked up our ponies. Mine is a scrawny little grey with a drooping feather in his browband. I can’t pronounce his name, so I call him Flick, as he enjoys swishing his tail in my face.

  My saddle is hideously uncomfortable, but I don’t care. We’re in the jungle. The air is alive with mosquitoes and the shrieks of unseen birds. There’s a rank smell of decay, and it’s hot. My bush shirt is soaking wet, and I’ve reminded everyone to wear their hats and take their quinine.

  Before us glides a jade-green river, spanned by a rickety native suspension bridge, cobbled together from frayed rope and very dodgy-looking planks. Once we’re across, we’ll be in Sikkim, and the expedition will truly have begun.

  The bridge is festooned with hundreds of small, rather jolly flags coloured blue, white, red, green and yellow.

  ‘Apparently,’ says Garrard with his formidable nose in a book. ‘Each flag is inscribed with Buddhist prayers which are released at every gust, in a lazy but ingenious ruse to avoid effort.’

  My heart sinks. The book is Bloody But Unbowed. I wonder if we’re to be treated to excerpts at every step.

  Between us and the bridge stands what looks like a large stone urn; this too is sacred. Garrard calls it a chorten. As I plod past it on Flick, a Sherpa darts out, respectfully takes hold of my bridle, and tries to lead us around the other side.

  It’s Nima, the one who volunteered to be inoculated. ‘Always left, Doctor Sahib,’ he says with a shy smile. ‘Left, like the sun.’

  Our old nurse used to insist on the same thing with churches: always clockwise, never widdershins. But I can’t allow this sort of unreason, so I tell Nima firmly, ‘Thank you, but I shall go on the right, as I intended.’

  With a bow he stands back, and watches me pass on the ‘wrong’ side, with something like pity on his brown goblin face; as if I’m a puppy in danger of walking off a cliff.

  ‘Did you know,’ says Garrard, still reading, ‘there’s a god on Kangchenjunga? And this river is fed by its glaciers.’

  ‘Is that why they’re making offerings?’ says Kits.

  Each of the coolies is tossing in a few grains from the twisted strip of cloth that holds his rations.

  ‘Well, my cigarette stub will have to do,’ yawns Garrard, flicking it in as he leads his pony across.

  ‘It’ll get nothing from me,’ says McLellan, who’s a staunch Presbyterian.

  ‘Or me,’ I mutter with feeling.

  The bridge sways alarmingly as I lead Flick on, but he takes it in his stride, and we soon reach the other side.

  To my irritation, Kits has tossed in a handful of annas.

  ‘Why on earth did you do that?’ I exclaim.

  ‘Why on earth not? A few pennies to mark the occasion! After all, Lyell came this way twenty-nine years ago to the day.’

  ‘But Kits, not in front of the natives!’

  ‘Dr Pearce is right,’ Cotterell says quietly. ‘Unwise to sink to their level, Kits old chap. Best to maintain the proper distance.’

  Kits flushes. ‘Sorry, sir, won’t happen again.’ When the Major’s back is turned, he shoots me a dirty look.

  The stupid thing is, he’s botched his wretched offering. Some of his coins didn’t reach the river, they’ve landed on the bridge.

  A couple of macaques stream down a tree trunk and sidle over to pick them up; but Kits has ridden ahead and doesn’t see.

  4

  It’s just as well that Flick is sure-footed, because there’s a lethal drop to the river, and the trail’s nothing but mud.

  The rain began soon after we crossed into Sikkim. Hot, thunderous, tropical rain. We’ve been riding for hours, toiling up one steep forested spur, slithering down the other side, wobbling across yet another rickety bridge, then up the next spur, to start all over again.

  I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the leeches: tiny evil black worms inching towards us and dangling from every leaf. I’ve been attacked on my knees, wrists and once, to my horror, my neck. I kill the disgusting little brutes with a burning cigarette, but our barefoot coolies pinch them off without breaking step. My poor pony is suffering; I have to keep jumping down to check his fetlocks and ears. And it helps not a jot that Kits says Lyell never even saw a leech, as the weather on his trek was ‘glorious’ all the way.

  Kits is riding ahead with the faithful Garrard at his side, while McLellan, his freckled face puce beneath his topi, is keeping close to Major Cotterell. This means I’m on my own, but that’s fine as I don’t have to chat.

  I’m finding the jungle rather oppressive. This steamy smell of decay. These birds one hardly ever sees – and when one does, they’re utterly bizarre. Earlier, a magpie flashed past, but it was blue, with a yellow-striped tail a yard long.

  The trees are even worse. Every trunk, every twisted branch and tangled root is dripping with creepers and moss. All this rank disorder. It’s like a forest in a dream.

  Even familiar plants are unfamiliar. The leaves of the nettles are covered in virulent green blisters; and can that gigantic tree with the throbbing red blossoms be a rhododendron? Cotterell, a keen amateur botanist, keeps exclaiming at the magnolias and waxy white orchids. Just now, he called me over to admire a giant ‘flower’, its trumpet-shaped head a blotched greenish-purple, and bowed,
like a cobra about to strike. He says it’s a snake lily. I think it’s revolting.

  The rain is easing off at last, and we’ve come across three lads waiting for us under a tree. They look about ten, with shaven scalps and scarlet robes, but apparently they’re Buddhist monks, and they want to take us to their monastery for a blessing – or to beg the mountain not to kill us, I’m unsure which.

  We’re all eager to reach our billet for the night, but surprisingly, Cotterell thinks we ought to go with them: ‘Courtesy to the Maharajah, that sort of thing.’ It turns out that we needed the Maharajah’s permission to climb the mountain, and he only gave it on condition that we swore not to stand on the very top, lest we offend the spirit, or god, or whatever it is that haunts the summit.

  I wish Cotterell hadn’t agreed. Are we to be pursued by superstition even on the climb? Surely he can see that by humouring these beliefs – this fear of the mountain – we risk being infected ourselves?

  Still, at least the monastery isn’t far. It’s decrepit, yet strangely impressive: dim, cold spaces hazed with incense and lit by small butter lamps of gleaming bronze. Our coolies leave their packs outside and prostrate themselves, touching their foreheads to the floor. Their belief is extraordinarily strong. I wish I didn’t find it so unsettling.

  We sahibs take our seats on stools in a muddy courtyard, and wait for whatever-it-is to begin. Nima quietly tells me it’s meant to show us the right path after death, but McLellan calls it a ‘devil dance’; being a Presbyterian, he regards spirits as utterly beyond the pale. Either way, it’s hardly reassuring.

  The chanting begins: tuneless and surging, like a river. A monk strikes a green drum with a sinuous brass hammer. Another blows an enormously long horn in a deep, otherworldly drone that evokes the echoing boom of mountains.

  Now the ‘devils’ leap out. Shaggy dead-grass wigs and flying robes, rattling with tiny bones that I’m pretty sure are human metatarsals. Most of the ‘devils’ wear white skull masks with great ghoulish black eyes, but one of them seems to be a god. His mask is painted a lifeless blue-grey, with yellow fangs and glaring red eyes that remind me unpleasantly of the mask in Tennant’s study. Bloody Tennant. Why think of him now?