‘And how do you expect to find it?’ asked his host.
‘I have two dogs, and I’ll get more — strong dogs that can survive in the snow.’
Ulmulk thought this was a good story, albeit a little strange. He was a civilised Pakistani, and the barmanu belonged to a realm that was too mythical for his refined education. What kind of European in his right mind would travel here in search of a creature that was invisible? Yet, for all that, this Jordi didn’t seem totally nuts: he certainly had a way with words, and he defended his ideas ably. Who could he really be working for? Ulmulk knew that many foreigners in Pakistan were never quite what they claimed to be.
He was surprised several days later when he met Jordi, surrounded by dogs, on a street in Islamabad. Ulmulk knew he was serious, so much so that his own curiosity was awakened, and he took an interest in the project to the extent of inviting Jordi to tell him more about it another day with more time.
They talked a lot about that incredible story. But to Ulmulk the most incredible thing of all was that Jordi actually made him believe in it. He only identified one problem: Jordi couldn’t talk to everybody, and so he couldn’t convince everybody, and many people weren’t going to swallow his story. There were already plenty of people, in fact, who didn’t believe he was really in Pakistan to search for the barmanu, but suspected other reasons.
‘I also want to investigate the culture of the Kalash.’
‘Mmm … They’re a remarkable people.’ Jordi could see the subject did not please Ulmulk. ‘But the barmanu will require a great deal of dedication on your part. Anyway, I wish you luck.’
Jordi knew how right he had been to bet on an approach to Siraj Ulmulk when the director of the Aga Khan Foundation lent the expeditioners a house with a large garden, perfect for housing the dogs. He also gave them the use of a Land Rover, and put a cook and a shokidar (an odd-job man) at their disposal.
The Lowari Pass closed in November, as it did every year, making it impossible to travel to Dir or to Peshawar by the shortest land route. The rock-falls and landslides of the Lowari Pass had killed too many travellers in winter, leaving them entombed under the snow until the arrival of May unveiled their bodies. Chitral was facing a new spell of withdrawal and cold, even more dependent on the plane that daily linked the valley with the metropolis.
Between January and February 1994, large clouds furrowed this region of the Hindu Kush, preventing air traffic for several days — though, unlike in other seasons, the sense of isolation took a different shape in Jordi. The valley seemed remote but also familiar. He felt rage at what he had not achieved and calm at being back there, his spirits fluctuating from the adrenaline of expectation to impotence at the accumulated snubs. His interview with Belgian television had had no practical repercussions in France. It still burned him that the publishers Albin Michel and Robert Laffont had turned down his proposal to write a book mixing his Pakistani diaries with scientific contributions, but he kept the publishers’ responses in a drawer of the wooden table he used as a desk.
That gloomy winter afternoon he opened this drawer once again, seeking a spark of something. But of what? Of rage? Of hatred? Of pride? He put the sheets of paper with the publishers’ rejections next to one another. The opaque skies invited him to ask more than ever what the point was of his search, to ask what the likelihood was of success. He put one piece of paper onto the other. Why wait for no one to reply? He knew what he was looking for; he knew the importance of his research. Other people’s ignorance had nothing to do with him, and he ought not to be affected by it. He crumpled the two sheets into a ball and threw it onto the pile of firewood.
At the end of winter, he focused on getting back in touch with old friends such as the prince Hilal and his cousin Abdul Rani Khan, the top man in Kesu who had shown them great affection on previous trips and who went wild with delight at seeing his dear inglesi once again. Abdul Rani Khan was a force of nature, with a hoarse voice, a grey beard, and gestures as brusque as they were well meant. Insatiably curious, he found in the inglesi an ideal source of contrasts and inspiration, exchanging endless stories with them, involving them in tests of manliness.
In any case, it was the slim and always elegant Hilal who one day took the Kalashnikov that his cousin Abdul carried slung over his shoulder, as above, ordered a white stone to be placed a hundred metres away, and fired, a perfect hit. He handed the Kalashnikov to Erik, challenging him to hit the bullseye. The young historian took the gun. He was visibly nervous, though there was no good reason to be so, but a challenge was a challenge. He tried to breathe with his belly like he’d been taught at that shooting club in Drône during the initiation classes. His heart was beating fast. His shot raised a cloud of dust very close to the stone. There was applause.
The princes wanted to test his brother, too. Yannik, who had just done his military service in the French air force, tensed his imposing frame, and pointed. He hit the target. They applauded.
‘You two have won their admiration and their respect,’ said Jordi to the L’Homme brothers as he, too, applauded. He had himself enjoyed this respect for some time.
‘We should expect other challenges of this kind,’ he said later to his companions. ‘While we’re here we can forget about smart talk and diplomas. What these people are really interested in is what we’ve got in our bellies.’
The way Jordi talked sometimes … Erik got the sense he was living another life, the life of a character in fiction. And that he liked it.
Some days later, Abdul Rani Khan parked his pick-up outside the house of the inglesi and honked the horn. He had brought a supply of Kalashnikovs.
‘You’ll accept these guns. That’s an order,’ said the prince. ‘In the valleys where you’re going to be working, you’ll need some security.’
Jordi held out his arm to take one of the rifles, unsure what expression he ought to have on his face, moved by such a gesture of trust. In that world, a gun is the thing of greatest value. After that comes a horse. Then a woman. He closed his eyes for a few seconds by way of silent reverence. And he took hold of a Kalashnikov. He held it tightly, with a feeling of vanity. He raised it with one arm, in the style of those Indian chiefs in westerns. How many men can have received such a gift?
Even while seeing himself so perfectly integrated among Muslim princes that they would arm him, he nonetheless still had a thought for the Kalash. Where did all this leave his original idea of learning more about them? Why had he withdrawn from his intention after the first disappointment? A real scientist doesn’t give up so quickly just because the first results weren’t what he expected. Giving up. Hadn’t he thought this was something he’d never do? But he had strayed, he had to acknowledge it; the pagans remained an enigma to him, a culture that was too damaged and inaccessible to his mood at the time. Yes, he had got close to some of the Kalash, it was true; he’d been asking them more about their day-to-day lives, about how they built those houses that were immune to the not-so-uncommon seismic movements in the area, and he had attended parties at which he watched them purify their homes, make offerings, leading him to investigate their universe of fairies and demons … though all these approaches proved so superficial that they only increased his sense that he really knew nothing about them, and as a result he avoided referring to the Kalash in his conversations.
When, in one of their last chats, the hotelier Ulmulk had asked him how his research into the Kalash was going, Jordi had replied: ‘I’ve come here to look for the barmanu.’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But you were very interested in the Kalash, too, right?’
‘I’m focusing on the barmanu. That’s my goal, and I don’t want anything to distract me.’
He had said it with such conviction that he could feel how much he was betraying himself, and this certainty of his cowardice repulsed him. Anyway, he ought to assert these words confidently when he was with Ulmulk; as for the others, wha
t did they know about the embers they did not see? And so he would keep on looking for his hominid. Right now, with the Kalashnikov he was holding over his head, gripped tight.
The explorers carried out interviews with witnesses whose descriptions gave them drawings that recalled both large apes and clothed bears, prehistoric men, individuals of various races, and people who were deformed. They enjoyed a total lunar eclipse. They walked with snowshoes when night fell, when the snow hardened. From time to time, Yannik would film a few seconds of their progress on an old camera. Erik felt tipsy with the adventure, thrilled to be experiencing it. His existence finally had a meaning. It was as though some higher being were guiding him; he was being won over by a sense that at any moment he might run into the creature and hurl its existence into the face of the world, like the glove in a challenge.
‘One day they’ll see!’ said Erik again and again, sometimes out loud and sometimes to himself. ‘One day they’ll see!’
The days in the Hindu Kush offered a promise of grandeur that, even when he was still in France, had helped him to accept the depressing nature of the day-to-day. He was proud of daring to live like this, of granting himself this permission to dream. He was certain that the experience would mark him in future, and he was right. When almost fifteen years later he sat down to write Footsteps in the Snow, in which he recalled the time of the expedition, Erik would state:
I believe that the pride of a young man who has dreams is, for him, a way of surviving. And when I say dreams, I’m not referring to those that populate our night-times, delighting them, wearying them, sometimes disturbing them. Nor to the common daydreams that are the mere idling of the spirit. I’m talking about those waking dreams that take control of our being, penetrate our hearts, embrace our souls, and consume us, leaving us without rest.
They ate no more than was necessary. If they were lucky, a shepherd might invite them to share some black, salty tea with corn crackers. It was one of these men who told them about the tracks in the snow.
‘A woman saw it two days ago. She showed us the tracks in the place where she found them,’ said the shepherd. ‘They are very big.’
Two days. It hadn’t snowed for three, and the temperatures had stayed low enough to preserve tracks.
‘Can you lead us to the footprints?’
They were led to the outskirts of the village of Kanderi, moving very slowly across the thick, white blanket.
‘There,’ said the shepherd, pointing towards a row of marks that disappeared into the forest.
The sun had slightly altered the tracks, and a light covering of fresh snow was just starting to obscure it, but there could be no doubt. The dimensions of the prints were clearly extraordinary. The men exchanged amazed looks. They stood around the tracks, measuring the size of the footprints.
‘These prints are from a bare foot,’ said the shepherd. ‘No man walks barefoot in the snow.’
‘The camera, Yannik — the camera!’ cried Jordi.
And there it was. Proof!
Jordi hurried to send the photographs to the scientific laboratories in Paris to get the prints authenticated. The discovery had released something in him, and he could almost feel the ideas flowing and connecting; he would have to perfect his exploring technique, perhaps devise traps or involve the locals in his story so they’d help him to design an ambush, to act, definitely somehow to act, because that was it, it was there — Where are you? — perhaps hiding just a few metres away. He had to think, think, think how best to lure it out of its hiding-places.
From then on, he spent even more time, whole days, coming up with methods of investigation that would allow him to sight the barmanu.
‘How many hours’ sleep do you get?’ asked Erik from his bed one morning. He’d been woken by the noise of dogs, and through his sleep-filled eyes he could make out Jordi rummaging about in search of who knew what.
‘Erik …’ murmured Jordi, approaching his friend with an empty teapot in his hand. ‘Erik, I’ve come up with a protocol of action. If we carry it out, it can’t be long before we find it.’
‘Find it …’ Erik repeated, dumbfounded. The fact that the conversation was happening in murmurs made it somehow all the more surreal.
‘Yes, yes. You’ll see. When your brother wakes up, I’ll explain it. You’ll see.’
That morning, Jordi spelled out the protocol. It involved carrying out incursions, standing on guard duty, and continuing to take interviews more rigorously than ever. It involved taking advantage of every second of the day, without a moment’s pause. The L’Homme brothers could see the goal, the protocol had its reasons for being as it was, and so they accepted the plan and fulfilled their duties to the letter.
‘Do you know what they call us?’ said Erik one day when he returned from chatting with a villager. ‘The dangerous men.’
The phrase put Jordi on his guard. Danger is not welcome anywhere.
‘Why dangerous?’
‘They say we want to control time, and that that’s something only crazy people do.’
‘Tell them to call us idiots,’ Yannik butted in. ‘The idiot men. That would be more accurate.’
It took an effort on Jordi’s part not to look at him. His face would have expressed too well the contempt he felt towards that smartarse. And yes, it was true, he wasn’t good at dealing with Yannik’s ironic comments. Actually, for quite some time he’d rejected any comment he made, and now the photographer seemed to be questioning him at every moment. Maybe he was wrong, but Yannik was taking his confidence too far; there was a very fine line between sarcasm and a lack of respect. Apart from which, he couldn’t forget how at the airport he’d backed down on Yannik signing that new photo-permission letter. With that gesture, he had shown weakness. He was certain that had Erik not been right there, if he hadn’t felt he had that support, Yannik would not have dared make his proposal. But there were two of them. More of them. They also knew the territory, not like he did, but they did know it now … Once again, Jordi had to force himself sternly to keep calm when he saw the brothers talking alone to each other, and he noticed his own paranoias unspooling and threatening to madden him.
He received a letter from Valicourt remarking on how the polemic around his theories was evolving. Just as well she was tough, because they were making things really hard for her. Poor Cat. Don’t forget I’m with you. He replied to her with an encouragement to give battle, not to stay in the shadows, to disseminate the results of his investigations and to occupy without any complexes the privileged position to which his revolutionary proposals were going to raise her.
Then he unfolded the map and continued to sketch out the expedition he would be undertaking with her in the summer along the route of the ex-Soviet Pamir and the Wakhan Corridor. He was also contemplating entering Nuristan. He was going to India in July; in August, to Tajikistan. His teeth didn’t hurt — a good sign. In spite of the pitfalls, his suspicions, and the ghosts he sensed on the bad days, everything was going just as planned, wasn’t it? In order to vouch for his optimism, he wrote in the margin of the map: ‘I’m feeling much better. I’m in another world here, another universe.’
Yet that was not quite right. He lit a Pree. No, despite what he had written, all was not truly well. He took a long drag on the cigarette. He was smoking more than usual, for example, which was not a good indicator of calm. But, well, it was just that … where was he going to find the resources that were still lacking to carry out an expedition like the one he’d dreamed of, for fuck’s sake? He couldn’t think about anything else. The money hadn’t appeared; perhaps it never would. He began to cross out the lines he had just written on the map. And the worst thing was that his uneasiness was having an ever-greater effect on his cohabitation with the L’Homme brothers. He pressed down hard with the biro. He would have to tone down his behaviour towards them. If they knew how much he appreciated them … but they co
uld be such spoiled brats. And so naïve. Was it so hard to understand that those people had a different way of thinking? That European ideas counted for very little here? And on top of that, now they would just go, leaving him in the lurch. He smoked, staring at the dark, thick, blue border with which he had just circled the map.
‘What I don’t understand is why he doesn’t talk,’ said Yannik, letting out a big cloud of steam. ‘He should just say what’s going on, and we can talk about it, but it can’t go on like this. I can’t do it.’
The L’Homme brothers were returning to the refuge after several hours patrolling the mountains. The orange of the peaks was being tinted with indigos and magentas.
‘I don’t know. He has such a Spanish kind of spirit,’ replied Erik. ‘He doesn’t realise that France is the country of the word, that things get solved by talking about them. Don’t think any more about it — you know what he’s like. Leave him be; if it comes to it, we can go back to France anytime we want.’
Yannik came into the house and started arranging clothes without greeting or even looking at Jordi. He felt bad; he couldn’t hide it.
‘Hi. We’re here,’ said Erik, unloading his small rucksack.
Jordi replied with a grunt, concentrating on the cracks in the floor. There was still enough light from outside to be able to make out shades and colours in the room. Jordi’s face was tense. Though he was still, he gave off a worrying nervousness. And sadness. Erik had never seen him demoralised before. Yannik was undressing with his back to both of them. Jordi made as if to get up — only a quick movement — but then resumed his initial position, and his face altered. It was as though his pain had acquired a shape, as though his suffering had managed to represent itself in that expression. Erik remained immobile, absorbed by the ghastly sight. It was strange and captivating to be able to see so clearly through someone’s face to what was happening inside their head. Erik witnessed the moment when Jordi, for the first time in his life, crumbled.
In the Land of Giants Page 9
