The group arrives at the Ganges by midafternoon, and here they will follow the holy river with its throngs of devoted for many miles ahead. Upon the river’s banks are bathers bathing in the beautifully filthy water, as other souls go about beating their clothes upon stones, and still others drink from the waters or bless themselves with it in their various and curious ways. There are women in colorful saris, brightly veiled and bejeweled with nose hoops and bracelets of gold. There are topknotted sadhus in saffron-colored sheets singing in top voice in strange tongues. There are priests chanting, pilgrims lamenting, families wailing, goats bleating, monkeys screaming, brakes screeching, bells ringing, while everywhere is the smell of sandalwood and camphor, the sting of smoke in the eyes and the nose, the blaze of funeral pyres, a mix of sweet incense and burning dung. They pass a group of men bearing above their heads a stiffened body wrapped in hodden cloth, the corpse posed on a bier of wooden poles and a platform of woven bamboo. The riders begin to notice corpses everywhere along this course: corpses being carted down the road, corpses lined along the banks of the river, corpses piled stiff into flatbeds, all on their way to the flames.
“They say the soul is released through the fontanel,” Sara says. “Those who grieve listen for the burst of the head bones. Then comes relief.”
The driver puts the brake on and eases out of the line of traffic, the passengers unaware of the sudden blapping of the tire as its fill of air escapes the rubber casing. “Relief,” someone says, as the truck rolls to a stop. All trundle out and wander off in separate ways, some ducking behind rocks or dusty shrubbery. Troy finds a flat rock to sit on, and in the minutes of blissful stillness he writes a few of the day’s sentences.
A rough climb out of hell at the start. How quickly fatigue can wear one down mentally, morally. Do not allow, especially up on the mountain. Dismiss any doubts or misgivings. This is only the beginning. Turn thinking toward the zenith.
Troy turns to see Vida alone at the side of the road, stooped over and vomiting. Reddy notices this too, goes to her and puts a hand on her back as she gags, her boyishly short hair turned to curls in the wet heat. He offers his handkerchief, some water. He thinks of his wife. He thinks of the hideous disease that snaked its way through her body; Maggie heaving and retching as if she labored to disgorge the evil thing that had lodged itself inside her.
“Vida, there is some medicine if you wish,” Reddy says.
Sara goes to her and opens a water bottle and soaks a bandanna. She wrings the wet cloth and Vida takes it and puts it to her forehead and lips. Adams gives Vida his seat in the front of the cab. He climbs into the back with the others and the truck starts up and totters the passengers forward and onto the road, back into a vertigo of diesel fumes and smoke.
The driver stops again toward evening, the pilgrims hungry and weary. They pile out of the truck, arrived at a settlement where dead crows are hung on poles to scare living crows away. Water slurries past in a gray foam. A growling mastiff yanks at its chain. The driver guides them toward a run-down domicile, a shelter appearing more for the keeping of cattle or the storage of tools. He pushes aside a rug that serves as a door, and they enter a dark smoky room. Pupils dilate to calibrate. Candles burn, illuminating the fierce eyes of demons and gods painted on walls: peaceful and wrathful deities alike, lords of death, lords of time. A filthy barefoot man stands before a dung-burning stove stirring something that boils in a pot. He motions them over to a table. They sip at sweet milky tea in the methane smolder of the fire, black ash settling onto their clothes, getting into their noses and throats. They cough. They sneeze. They wipe their weepy eyes. Hardly anyone touches the lumpy mud-colored sludge the cook has served them, but for the driver. Sara takes a bite of it, showing off her courage. Above her head, a mandala of cobweb webbed to the cement, a spider supping on a fly.
The riders return to the truck in silence, climb in and back to the clamor and stagger of the road, leaving the dungeoned clamminess behind, leaving a whirlwind of powdery earth spiraling out into the dissolving world behind.
Dark comes on like a clap of thunder. They are tossed about in the night, reeled in a continual grinding of gears and the miss and surge of the engine, headlights cutting through the dust as the driver steers on, the thick exhaust of piston and cylinder trailing off into the gloom. After a time and to everyone’s relief the Delhian pulls off the main road, following a side road to an open strath of scrubby land, and here he puts the brake on. All collect their sleeping pads and makeshift pillows and spread out among the gnashing weeds, sinking to the ground, exhausted, lilting, feeling they are moving still, bounced about by the gouges and the stones in the road, pitched and heaved in the gnarl of clutch and shift. In the trembling air they can still smell the miasma of the pyres and hear the echoing moans and fading laments of the river grievers they have left so many miles behind. Until each of them is seized by slumber. The ghosts of mothers and brothers and wives steal in and veer away in their dreams. Fulgurous clouds gather like prowlers. Lightning flares soundless above.
In the morning they set on their way in a pouring rain, and by noon arrive to another arm of the exalted river. Soon enough they enter the foothills of the Himalaya to begin the endless hairpin turns through a steeply forested gorge, a serpentine journey through a jungle of weeping green, where sharp corners of rock walls are painted brightly in warning to slow the oncoming. The driver tells them it is a perilous road, and only a week ago a trailer filled with men and livestock slipped over the verge of the khud to go crashing down to the raging torrent below. “It is not so unlikely,” he says, betel leaf juice puddling in the cleft of his chin. The deity dangling from the rearview mirror jitters and twirls. The windshield wipers groan, the blades barely keeping up with the worsening rain, and how the driver can see the road ahead no one knows, though someone suggests he is driving by braille. The way continues snakelike, riders in the back toppled onto cartons and duffels and one another. Devin has convinced Sara to share the length of the upper crates with him. He holds on to her, she not minding in the least. They pass mudslides, landslides. They maneuver detours, endure delays. They stop to observe a pour of wet earth spilling out over the roadway ahead, watching as it slithers down into the ravine like a slimy breathing thing. The driver gets out of the truck to muscle the boulders out of the way, big guy that he is, a Delhian Hercules in an Ivy League shirt. He leaps back into his seat, eases the wheels through a covering of slick mud, and now the pilgrims are moving forward once more. They pass through tropical woods lush with vegetation, the wet forest imbued with snarls of primitive trees, with lichens and epiphytes, fronds and boughs and moss and rot, with the hollow calls of alien birds, the shrieks of wild monkeys. They climb high into a thickening mist. The rain continues to fall.
At the end of day three on the road they arrive to a steeply terraced hillside, a huddle of whitewashed abodes and weaving of stone fencing, where women are stooped at the stream beating clothes upon stones. Thousand-foot walls fall sharply away from the hamlet on two sides. Bearded vultures in the slope below glide in pursuit of the day’s prey. The riders climb out of the truck, thirsty, grungy, cranky, beat, hearing a final grating and moaning of hinging at the open and close of the tailgate. Goodbye to boister and flog of lime-green vehicle! They arch and flex to work kinks and cramps out of legs and necks, displaying among themselves an array of twists and bends and stretches. They will unload the truck of their tonnage of gear, and before dinner bathe in the icy river. A local cook will make a meal of fresh vegetables, spicy rice, hand-clapped chapatis, thick hot dal, the first honest food any will have eaten since leaving home. After dinner they will blow up the air beds, roll out the sleeping bags, bed down in a family-size tent. Time will pass at random and in swirl, and all will fall into deep slumber in the sound of the ticking rain.
* * *
BE BOLD and free. For a lady in heaven cares for thee.
Sara wonders now about her mother’s words: Are they her own, or bo
rrowed?
Be bold and free. Carry the thought with you going up the mountain.
Sara recognizes Amanda’s motherly need to equip and guide.
Carry the words with you going through life.
What else has her mother to counsel? Tonight she seems to want to go on at length, even knowing Sara’s exhaustion from so many long days on the road. But Sara cannot get Amanda’s voice out of her head. Foremost are her mother’s persuasions as to the better and worse members of the assembly of climbers.
Your father loves having you with him in the mountains.
Sara understands her father’s need to keep her close by.
There isn’t a more honored climber than Virgil Adams, a real master.
Who would not agree?
Doctor Reddy begrudges his son. As the son does his father.
Yes, Sara sees this too.
The son is resentful. Old wounds. The boy has some growing up to do, though I realize he’s recently lost his mother. You alleviate his pain.
Sara likes that she can make Devin feel better.
Sara’s mother perceives trouble in the Wilder fellow. He has a deep need to prove something on this expedition. Too deep a need.
But Wilder is their strongest climber.
His wife is fearful. She may fail to act.
Vida might surmount her fears on this trip, Sara believes.
She should work her worries out elsewhere. Not when she’s part of a team at twenty-five thousand feet.
Negativity only gets in the way. Sara knows this absolutely.
You need to see what’s what, dear Sara. Watch everyone. Be mindful of everything. The goodness in you is often too hard to live with, a goodness too good to be true. You are also in need, don’t you see? Too much in need of attention and praise.
Her mother is not being helpful.
Sara rolls to her side, zips the sleeping bag up over her head. I’m on my mountain now: she smiles at the thought of this. She hears Amanda’s sigh. “Mother,” Sara says, speaking into the depths of the downy cocoon.
But there is nothing more for her mother to say.
* * *
THE SLEEPERS are torn from the conundrum of their dreams as morning begins in a pandemonium of engine din, screeching brakes, blaring horns, bleating goats, bellowing men. Adams and Troy poke their heads out of the tent to see the sudden outpour; the arrival of dozens of mixed Aryan and Mongol types piling out of an old military carrier, men in all manner of dress, their garb a strange array of patched and tattered jungle fatigues mixed with homespun cloaks, tweed vests, camouflage jackets, hooded sweats, silk-ruffled shirts, hand-knit shawls. Headgear is a hodgepodge of worn fedoras or cowboy straws, woolen caps, colorful turbans, embroidered doilies, hair cropped or left long and braided in odd and complicated ways. The barefoot men gather beneath a giant fir tree to umbrella themselves from the drizzle, considering the stacked sixty-plus-pound bundles that await them. Every man is assigned a load and given a number, a headstrap, an advance of a few rupees, a sheet of plastic for the rain. In return each gives a thumbprint and his word to continue the journey beginning to end, from village on through the Gorge and then up to Mysterium’s Sanctuary, where Base Camp will be set. The men heft cartons onto their backs to test the weight out, bracing the bundle with a tumpline pressed to the forehead. They walk the loads about, grumble among themselves. They toss the burdens off, point their fingers, wag their heads. Voices pitched, hands waving, they bargain loudly with the overseer.
It is no surprise to Virgil Adams, still no less a delight, that the Sherpa leader, the sirdar in charge of the other Sherpas and the porters, is the firstborn son of the man who had accompanied Hilman and him a quarter century ago to the highest camps of Mysterium. Karma is clearly his father’s son, with the same cheekbones, the Eskimo-like nose, the hooded eyes, as well as the small wiry build; a face and body stemmed and leaved from one of the many Tibetan-speaking Buddhist tribes, those arrived from the old land of B’od who have wandered hither over the years. Karma shouts orders in a voice resonant and tenor, making eye contact with the porters that is firm, direct, his stance and gesture clear signs of authority. He wears a turtlenecked sweater, a clean pair of canvas pants, name-brand running shoes, a wristwatch with leather strap— this ensemble many tiers above the subalterns paid to heave the climbers’ abundance up to Base Camp. Assisting Karma are two fellow Bhots: Pasang Sherpa and Mingma Sherpa, the two assistant Sherpas looking confusingly alike to the Americans. The two are busy already boiling water for washup and tea for the sahibs, as they will always address those who pay them to tend or carry or wait, though the Sherpas are themselves accomplished climbers. One at a time the sahibs emerge from out of the tent: Virgil and Hillary Adams, Wilder and Vida Carson, Doctor Reddy and son Devin, Professor Troy, all of them bleary-eyed and rumpled. Last comes Sara, even she less spirited than she had been at trip’s beginning, her mother’s voice too insistent during the night, until nearly dawn, when finally came the silence.
The sahibs mill about as a herd of goats clump in to add to the chaos of daybreak, the nannies and billies saddled with woven panniers needed to carry the porters’ staples up the mountain; their pounds of rice, their atta and dal. Soon the shepherds follow; bhakrawallas they are called here, smelling of smoke and dung and grease, hill people of a different strain; a scruffy earth-colored bunch with flat buttery faces and even more antic to their wardrobe than that worn by the porters; beltless and buttonless, pant zippers left open for the sake of ease. They wear black skullcaps and the dirt they are covered in like a second layer of skin.
The porters and the herders are here for the pay. They are here too for the privilege and reward of accompanying Sarasvati. They are in awe of her, believing her to be the material manifestation of the blessed goddess herself. She, the Virgin. She, the Universe. They want to be of service to this girl. They ask to have photographs taken with her. They watch her; they touch her with their eyes. They call her Didi, meaning big sister. This pleases her, they can see. She speaks to them in Hindi, some Nepalese. She smiles her radiant smile.
Karma Sherpa takes one last group picture, clustering the sahibs into a hillock of shorter to tallest to shorter again, and in a snap of the flash they are set off on their march toward the Gorge. They start up a wide path of pine duff and conifer pollen; black ponchos cowled over their heads and their backpacks, looking like a misshapen troop of ghoulish hunchbacks in a steady rain. A clutch of runny-nosed children run and skip alongside in the mud, soon enough to scream their bye-byes and wave their hoorays. Rodent creatures screech warnings from branches of trees, skittering higher up into limbs or diving down into burrows below. The overhanging boughs are weighted with rain, and doused needles and leaves sprinkle the heads of the crusaders as if to christen and instigate. Sherpas, porters, sahibs: each to be part of the great mountain now.
Adams turns on the path and cheerfully reminds the others of the pleasure of cool weather, even if with it a shower, rather than the merciless heat that can suck the energy from the blood, as was his memory of the trek up a quarter century ago. “Lo, the time-leap,” he says, shifting the weight of his pack, water runneling from his poncho and dripping off the tip of his nose. “Yet the way does not change.”
His confreres nod their heads, wonder at his diction, return to their pacing. They are relieved, without saying, to be out of the noise and the heave of the rumbling truck, away from the sickening fumes of diesel fuel, cheered to have their feet planted on the ground and to be heading up now into high alpine. They stride through a wooded glen among the flit and chitter of dark-eyed juncos and dull-colored creepers, together lost alone in their thoughts, the difficult terrain ahead of them embosomed by cloud. Each is touched by a familiar landscape and the smell of known aromas, filling them again with the promises and longings of youth. Even the falling rain offers knowable solace. They sense themselves homegoing now.
* * *
AS TO social ethos—more so, ideology
and credo—what might be written of the odyssey? As separate climbers we are pairs of arms and legs, eyes and ears. Still, we are also heads and hearts, and together our various parts and aspects constitute the body and soul of the expedition. Then, in our entirety, what values might we take as one to the summit? What lessons might we leave behind? Will our ambitions remain utilitarian, in that we may seek the greatest good for the greatest number of us? At the same time, how do we carry on with each holding to his or her own code of ethics and measure of success? More so, how might our goals be tainted by a need for the limelight, a reliance on public opinion, on an ordinary tendency toward the mean?
* * *
IN THE thrum and patter of rain on hooded capes the corps becomes instruments of percussion slogging along in procession; lug soles slapping into puddles and scraping over stone, heavy boots sucking heavier out of the muck. They travel a footpath sprouted with strange tubular plants rising spirally and dripping like serpentine waterbeasts, and warty amanitas, garish and deadly, glisten and swell in the spongy duff. Lobes of liverwort spore among the conifer, and creeping things rattle in the bracken. The river, in aural pour, moves through the forest as if it were something arboreal.
They hike up and out of the refuge of trees, climbing until they are crested out onto an open ridge where on either side of the path the slope falls steeply away. They pause to get breath, sweat soaking their underclothes. The cold rain drips off the tips of noses and chins, tocks off the hems of their ponchos in a sound of feeble complaints. They nod one to the other and then they toil on again, like an army of insects driven by a remote intelligence. Gray heaps of tumid clouds blacken and shaft above. The muddy traces of their bootsteps sluice away in the rain.
Accumulating cumulonimbus turns raindrops to hailstones that strike like buckshot. They lower their heads, arms raised to shield faces, the stinging pellets making a crackling noise of static that needles the flesh. Adams shouts, signaling downward, as if punching at something menacing in the air, and now all follow, scuttling down the bluff seeking shelter of arbor again. They cross a grassy bald, the ground of the mystifying slick encrusted with lusterless crystals of ice, making the earth look cursed and sown with salt. They hurry off this strange patch of land and enter an enormous burn, the pelleting ice stopping as abruptly as it had begun. They huddle in the blackened forest studying their whereabouts. Surrounding them are dead trees blazed completely of their canopies, charcoaled trunks metallic as armor, fallen branches turned black as gangrenous limbs. They look at one another. They press on.
Mysterium Page 7
