A few weeks later, he concluded his study for the ministry. He continued to send letters to possible patrons and collaborators from Valence, reading Camus’s La Peste, an abridged version of Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noir, consulting English dictionaries, reading history books, and expanding his wandering knowledge of Kalasha and Khowar, the most commonly spoken languages in the valleys. He would go out onto the mountain, and at night he studied almost till dawn, fortified by coffees. He didn’t need more than three hours’ sleep. One of the many mornings his eyes were bloodshot with tiredness, he met his mother in the kitchen.
‘What are you doing today?’ asked Dolores.
‘I’m going to the Vercors.’
While she cut the slices of bread she was going to toast, Dolores suggested: ‘Why don’t you go out at night, son? You work too much.’
‘Mum, would you rather I went to a disco to smoke and drink, and came back home completely shattered and spent my whole morning asleep? I’d rather go out into the countryside.’
His mother would not raise the subject again.
X
ONE of the first members of the Troglodytes Association was Jean Roche, who immediately took on the role of its secretary. Roche had read L’homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant at the age of twenty-two. It had excited him, and he himself had already put his name to a book about wild men. He had also travelled to the United States to follow in the footsteps of bigfoot.
When he joined the Troglodytes, Roche was working at France Telecom. He still works for that company, which in recent years has acquired a troubled notoriety following the suicide of twenty-five of its employees, due — it is said — to the intolerable pressure they were under. He is a tall, gangly man who wears glasses with thick lenses over which his extremely long eyebrows often hang down. His speech is sort of syncopated, as though in gulps.
Roche doesn’t have a lot to say about Jordi; they never talked much, but he was present at all the Troglodytes’ annual meetings. He carried out his role as secretary in an exemplary fashion, and he still visits the Magraner family from time to time, to remember.
XI
WHILE Erik was adjusting the strap of one of the rucksacks, he saw his friend’s legs in front of him, and the sheet of paper he was holding.
‘I’d like you to sign this,’ said Jordi, holding the sheet of paper out to him.
It was a declaration by which the signatory agreed to surrender to Jordi Magraner any material gathered during the expedition on which they were about to embark. Jordi didn’t like this procedure, but he considered it unavoidable. He invested a great deal of time in preparing every trip, he was certain that his investigations could make history, he had heard of salutary cases of betrayal in the competitive world of scientific research, and he wasn’t going to risk the possibility that some excess of confidence in another person might end up by rewarding them with the desserts that were due to him.
Erik knew the procedure. When the first expedition had got underway, his brother Yannik had signed a similar document by which he surrendered to Jordi the photos he would take. He added his signature.
In their first days in Chitral, Erik was introduced to a number of Jordi’s Muslim friends. They invited him to musical evenings, the two of them sitting on the floor amid smokers of opium and hashish while the sitar played in the background and a tube, a plank of wood, a log, and other improvised percussion instruments accelerated the thumping until they reached a frantic rhythm that multiplied the excitement of the single drugged-up dancer. Then his arms and his body were hurled out in a spasmodically anarchic circular movement that might remind you of a playful or undisciplined dervish, suspended somehow between limbo and reality.
‘Times change. The dances get faster and faster, traditions are being lost,’ said Khalil Rahman as he, Erik, and Jordi watched the dancer spinning. Khalil had become one of the men Jordi trusted in Chitral. Jordi put an arm around the shoulders of that thin man with a well-trimmed black beard.
‘Khalil is a great, great friend,’ he told Erik.
‘We’re also partners when we play cards,’ Khalil joked seriously.
‘We often went out to explore. He was a great help on the first trip.’
Khalil was a Nuristani — the descendant, therefore, of warriors. He possessed an unusually moderate temper that often provoked a nerviness in those who spoke to him. He seemed very certain in his actions; a sharp-eyed, unspeaking observer. He was so silent that it seemed almost instinctive to ask him what was going on in his head, how many ideas, and of what kind were circulating in there.
His family had fled the massacres and poverty in the land they had historically occupied in Afghanistan to settle in Shekhanandeh, the last village in the Bumburet valley. They were — are — Muslims.
Like Prince Hilal, Khalil worked for the forestry department, and he knew much of the territory intimately. He wore his smooth, jet-black hair uncovered, without the grip of the pakhol or some other cap, and so his fringe hung down over the map of Chitral while he pointed out some of the routes he thought most suitable for Jordi and Erik’s excursion.
‘If you have any problems, you send someone to tell me,’ said Khalil. He took hold of the hem of the waistcoat he wore over the shalwar-kameez, further emphasising the elegance of his slender body, and with a look at Jordi, added: ‘Though you’ll know this better than me before long.’
There’s a photograph in Dolores Magraner’s dining room today showing a smiling Khalil in one of his waistcoats, with Jordi, who had an arm over his shoulders. Only Jordi is wearing a pakhol and, across his chest, a multi-coloured Kalash belt, the kind they say brings good luck.
If the first mission had determined the best possible area for studying the barmanu, this one was meant to gather evidence of his existence. So Jordi had included among his gear the questionnaire comprising sixty-three questions he had used systematically in the first interviews.
He and Erik looked into the prices of Badakshi and Punjabi horses, but ended up buying a couple that were mixed race, which were cheaper, as well as a few donkeys, and they set off.
In January 1990, the forests in the lower parts were still suffering from the uncontrolled felling of trees. The scarcity of resources was encouraging a clandestine trade in wood, forcing many animal species to move their habitats up to the higher regions. It was assumed that these included the elusive, solitary barmanu.
These areas are practically unknown to mankind. During the climb, the explorers greeted a few Chitral Scouts, that division of the Pakistani army composed of two thousand men who watch over security along the north-western border. Further on, they passed through abandoned checkpoints. After certain peaks, they lost any trace of soldiers, because not even the Chitral Scouts often climbed to the heights of the Gujjars. These nomadic shepherds of Indian physique and dialect live on what they find, confined to pastures often only accessible to the hooves of goats, ibexes, markhors. To the Chitrali, the Gujjars belong to an inferior class of men, no matter that they are the best at interpreting the mountain’s sounds, nor that their senses have been developed to levels inconceivable to most human beings. Many are governed by an ancient morality that sees honour and truth as its primary values.
Honour.
Truth.
Jordi valued the Gujjars as key witnesses. In a leather saddlebag, he kept the names of every Gujjar who claimed to have seen or met barmanus. On the map, he had marked those places where they might find them.
On one of the first dawns, Jordi unzipped his sleeping bag, got up, and came out of the tent, positioning himself in a spot where Erik could see him through the slit of the little door. Jordi raised his open hand and recited the Latin phrase with which he was in the habit of greeting the sun. Erik had shared excursions to endless numbers of places with Jordi, and many pagan festivals, but when he saw him carry out that greeting in the middle of that wild state of
nature, the sight really struck him. Jordi possessed a primitive strength. It was a gesture that transmitted something definitively authentic, something true.
It didn’t take them long to come to the first Gujjar, and Jordi put him through his rigorous interview. With the questionnaire resting on his forearm, he listened in great concentration; he asked his questions, articulating each syllable clearly; he scrutinised the shepherd’s face in search of emotions that might bring any conclusive sign as to whether he should believe him or not.
Then he took out the series of drawings of possible barmanus that he had made himself following the accounts by other witnesses.
The Gujjar pointed to one of the drawings.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Jordi.
The Gujjar tapped the same drawing three times with several fingers. Jordi’s whole frame tensed in rapt euphoria. The shepherd had indicated exactly the same drawing he had been shown years before. His joy grew in the days that followed, as other witnesses insisted on descriptions of the barmanu that were almost identical to those he had gathered in 1988, with most of them indicating the same drawing.
‘But how are they able to answer so precisely?’ asked Erik one night. ‘How were they able to notice the colour of its hands, or the size of its fangs?’
‘It’s only logical that they should be able to give so many details,’ replied Jordi. ‘Societies with an oral tradition are usually very dependent on the natural world, so they’ve retained great curiosity and very sharp powers of observation. Their survival depends on them.’
It made sense. Erik saw his own initial incredulity tottering. There was logic to every one of his steps, and to his answers. Doors were opening before him that until very recently he hadn’t even contemplated, and now the interviews were affecting him in unexpected ways. With each new piece of testimony recorded in Jordi’s Carnet Rouge, Erik became more aware of the barmanu. What a few months earlier had seemed to him merely a pretext for the adventure, the object of dreams and romanticism, was now being transformed into reality.
The weather got worse. The Palearctic winter of the Hindu Kush was setting off constant snowstorms. The temperature reached twenty below zero. Jordi and Erik made slow progress between hills and chasms, wrapped in fur-lined caps, parkas, and Polar linings bought in France, fabrics that were meant to come close to 33 per cent cotton and 67 per cent polystyrene, considered by Jordi to be the most suitable combination against the cold. Some of the interviews were carried out at night, by the heat of fires inside the Gujjars’ homes. Afterwards the explorers would usually take shelter in their own tent.
On 27 January, the weight of the snow made the tent roof sag. It would have been impossible to save a good part of the equipment and the provisions, were it not for the assistance of three countryfolk who, in the middle of the storm, helped them to evacuate the gear to the home of Kutik, a woman who lived nearby. Solidarity on the mountain is a principle that is respected, necessary, the stronghold of an ancestral nobility which, that night, impressed the travellers even more.
In any case, the shepherds, the true lords of the mountains, were governed by codes that were very different from those of the Chitrali in the lower valleys. On the 28th, they ran into the local forest guard, whom they asked for the keys to the closest refuge.
‘Do you have authorisation from the District Co-ordination Officer?’
‘Yes,’ said Jordi.
‘The paper, show it to us.’
‘We aren’t carrying it with us, but the D.C.O. said we could use the refuges we found in the area.’
‘No authorisation, no refuge.’
It was still snowing. If they couldn’t get hold of the keys, they would be forced to descend several kilometres to sleep under cover. Jordi knew the guard. They’d never shown any particular sign of friendliness towards each other, but this situation posed a dilemma that went well beyond mere pleasantness. Jordi wanted to get this cretin who was only trying to annoy him, and smash his face in. Fucking arsehole. But he restrained himself. Wasn’t he the one who was always advising Erik to stay calm? ‘Keep smiling and play dumb, that’s the best defence,’ he’d recommended to him more than once. Yes, keeping calm was his best bet. But in situations that really could mean danger, mortal danger, and where it would take several kilometres of walking exposed to the storm for them not to die, he at least was not going to do it. He was master of those mountains, and so he began to shout at the guard in fury.
Erik rubbed his gloves, clapped them together, and looked down at the floor, up at the ceiling, and at the wooden boards of the cabin while his friend let rip. Jordi had developed his own way of dealing with people in Chitral, and he treated some of them with a toughness that bothered Erik. This argument was beginning to disturb him. He wanted to stop it, wanted it to be over with once and for all — Please, Jordi, leave it — but he couldn’t get involved, struck by that intimidating manner, by the way Jordi tensed his arms, by the way he clenched his fists till his knuckles flushed, by the specks of saliva that he spat out, by the darkness in his voice.
‘We’re going to the refuge, and you’re going to break the lock, Erik,’ Jordi commanded at last.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go!’
When they headed over to the neighbouring cabin, the guard raged, muttering insults, though he did not prevent them from going. Erik sensed a profound violence.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said to his companion. ‘The man’s a state employee, he has a job to do, and you know what it’s like with these people, how much their bits of paper matter to them.’
Jordi was making slow progress, coming down heavily with his feet to be sure of each step. He stamped on the snow. He let out a curse. He pursed his lips.
‘This is something that only someone who wants to fuck with you would do,’ he replied, stopping in front of the cabin door. ‘Things work differently here. Now, break the lock.’
‘But Jordi …’
‘You’re breaking the lock. We’re going to sleep here today. Break the lock!’
On 2 February, after Erik had got over a stomach emergency in the refuge, Jordi went down to the District Co-ordination Offices and returned with his signed authorisation. When he showed the letter to the guard, the man stammered something unintelligible, moving his eyes here and there incoherently. It was quite clear he couldn’t read. The guard transformed his original hostility into a sudden pathetic solicitousness. He invited them for tea. To Erik’s surprise, Jordi responded with a shrug. Ah, those L’Homme brothers! Of course they believe everything, Yannik and Erik, Erik and Yannik, two peas in a pod.
At night, after an hour of studying Khowar, Erik wrote a new entry in his diary: ‘It’s true that my responses are always western and they have no place here; I tend to take people seriously, to trust them immediately, while Jordi starts from an a priori position of their mendacity, ready to revise what he’s been told immediately. He’s the one who’s right.’
Erik began to take on that strange capacity of Jordi’s for dealing with the natives, which years later would allow him to escape unharmed from skirmishes with Taliban fighters or to open up humanitarian routes through territories that nobody else had dared to cross.
In the weeks that followed, Erik observed Jordi with greater care. His friend managed to get hold of food when it was needed, got their documents stamped to allow them into supposedly forbidden areas, and even put an end to a couple of brawls between locals. And yet he never noticed that nobody ever expressed real affection towards him. Around him there was laughter, politeness, but everyone kept a mistrustful distance; those dealings were missing something crucial.
One evening, as Erik was sitting on a boulder going over his Khowar notes, he surprised himself with the thought that he was himself missing some other kind of support from his friend. Jordi didn’t help him — not really, or at least he didn’t feel as though he
did. He doesn’t understand people, he thought. And yet, he understands situations so very well … Erik guessed that was why he so trusted him to resolve conflicts. But so far away from the world they knew, it wasn’t enough for him to have a problem-solver. He needed a friend — a friend! — and Jordi spent his time only looking out for himself and his own interests. With this attitude, it made sense that Jordi would distrust any help he might himself receive. From his perspective, everyone had his own interests, and so he disregarded anything that moved him away from his main goals. For example, why hadn’t Jordi made an effort to learn Kalasha and Khowar? I’m already speaking them better than him! Erik gripped the pages where he jotted down words in those languages. Because people interest me. I’m not only looking for the barmanu, I also want to have my own conversations with people. And not depend on him. As he got irritated, he became sad. Looking over into the valley, he imagined Jordi out there in the middle of it all, alone, surrounded by enormous trees. He couldn’t study any more tonight.
Erik’s ease with Kalasha and Khowar brought Jordi some comfort. His friend’s very different sensibility allowed them to approach more people, to learn other stories. He taught Erik new survival techniques and tricks for making the most of the environment.
Be careful when you go out at night to do your business. While you’re standing up, the wolves fear you — you’re a man. When you squat down, you become their height, and they see you as another animal. As prey.
In the Land of Giants Page 5
