Every Lost Country Page 26

  He lays down his burden, kneels and props up the stiff husk in a seated posture.

  Ah, a sky burial! says Murloe. Splendid. I attended several in Tibet.

  I think I read about them, Lawson says.

  They leave your remains, you see, and the birds come for you. Of course, the elevation here is too extreme for any bird.

  I must have been dreaming, says Lawson.

  Yes, it’s the air up here. Healthy for the lungs, I believe, but hard on the grey matter. Then again, an oxygen-fast, now and then, might be as wholesome as any other. Splendid view, isn’t it?

  You earned it. I’m going to leave you here.

  Well, that would be fine! That’s awfully good of you!

  But there’s nothing I can leave with you.

  Such as foodstuffs? I’ve gone beyond that, my friend. Years beyond!

  Right. Of course.

  It’s awfully good of you to do this, you know.

  I guess I’ll be going down now, Lawson says.

  Fine! Thank you so much!

  It’s really nothing. I’m glad I could help.

  He gets back to the cave and somehow a full day has gone by, it’s dusk and he crawls inside and pillows his head on his pack, it’s lonely without Murloe’s remains and there’s the handset radio, so on a whim he crawls back out with it and tries to stand but he’s dizzy and lies sprawled there and turns it on and at some point, then or some time later, it beeps. The cloud ceiling is gone. A few harbinger stars shining down. He has never felt as deeply peaceful as he does now—nowhere close. There’s nothing left to prove. There never was.

  “Come in!”

  “Wade Lawson, is it you? Over?”

  “Kal! It’s good to hear another human voice! How are you down there? How is Shiva?”

  “Pardon? Oh, improving very well! There’s a Nepali doctor here now, and others here also. How are you? Where are you now?”

  “I’m good, good. We’re near the summit. Uh…actually Murloe’s still up there.”

  “Who is, pardon, who’s up there? Jake Kravchuk? Tashi Sherpa?”

  “Jake? No, Murloe. Right, though—thanks for the reminder—I need to go check on Jake. Maybe he’s still asleep. I’ll go join him there. And I’ll explain to you all about Tash, soon. I’m finding it hard to remember right now. It’s kind of strange. But you know what Tash is like. He might just be playing a joke on us. Sure you haven’t seen him?”

  There’s an interlude of static.

  “_____are you now, exactly, Wade Lawson? Come in? We can’t get the GPS reading.”

  “Come in, Kal?”

  “Are you really a_____not need help now? It would_____exactly where? Over.”

  “I told you, Kal. We made it. We’re near the top. And I feel good. I’m pumped. Kal? Come in?”

  “__________let people know you did the summit, then?”

  “Oh, sure. If you feel like it.”

  “Pardon? Come_______like yourself, Wade_____please to climb lower now_____oxygen and_____over!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll explain everything when I come down.”

  “You are coming down?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  A spree of static like the ovation of a massive, distant crowd, then Kaljang says, “_____wife is on the satellite dish again. Over.”

  “Book’s ex-wife?”

  “No! Your ex-wife__________call again.”

  “Jenn? She’s on the phone?”

  “_____patch her through now?”

  “Yes,” he cries, “now!”

  There’s a click and he hears Kaljang’s scratchy voice say, “Please talk now!”—then Jennifer, halfway through a sentence, speaking in her soft lowland burr. The static vanishes completely, as if Lawson’s will to hear every word is keeping it at bay.

  “_____still there, Way? It’s Jenny. What’s happened, Way? Where are you?”

  “We made it to the summit. I’m near the summit of Kyatruk. Really good to hear you, Jenn. You sound so damn clear. Where are you?”

  “What’s that? Are you starting down now?” (She says the word like dune.) “What time is it there?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Where’s your watch, Way?”

  “Don’t seem to be wearing it now. It’s dark out here.”

  “What?”

  “More stars by the minute.”

  “You’re outside, then? Why are you not—”

  “I was wondering if you’d call …”

  “Of course I would call, Way.”

  “… when all that stuff first started happening.”

  “I was camping, with Michael and, uh…and the baby. No TV and no mobile. We got home last night and since then I’ve been ringing you. Way, you need to come down. You can, can’t you? Physically you’re able?”

  “Come on, Jenn—you know me.”

  An annoyed-sounding pause. “Way…what’s happening up there?”

  “I feel good up here, Jenn. It’s hard to explain. Like, it’s not even me feeling good up here. It’s like I’m…six miles above myself. Like I forgot myself somewhere and if I come down, I’ll just have to step back into my skin. Yeah, and now I’ve got your voice in my ear, even—so that’s the whole package. I’m good now.”

  “Way …”

  “Hey, know what I’ve found out? Heaven isn’t the place you think it is.”

  There’s a pause: no static, just perfectly distilled silence.

  “But you cannot just sit up there and let yourself die!”

  “I’m already dead,” he tells her, “and it’s fantastic.”

  “Way, if this…if it’s some twisted form of revenge you’re…. I’m sorry, Way, but I had to get on with my life!”

  “Jenn, no, listen! I’m happy now!” (But. Except________) “My only concern now is Jake and Tash. I mean, I can’t figure out what’s happened to them. It’s like I’ve set them down somewhere and lost them. Lost the map. I’d really like for them to experience this high, too.”

  “Way, you need help.”

  “They may have snuck off, though,” he says. “If they decide to lay low, you know who’ll get blamed, eh? That’s the problem.”

  “It’s going to be fine, Way, I promise, but you have to come down.”

  “But, Jenn, Jenny, this really feels like My Rock.”

  “Oh, you! You and your—if it hadn’t been for you and your bloody rocks—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Ten thousand miles away she’s crying.

  “I mean, it was our son, Jenn…right? He took the marriage with him.”

  “It isn’t right to blame a wee boy. At least he tried to survive!”

  The signal disintegrates, then recovers. In the lull, he seems to hear a third voice, a faint signal interjecting in a whisper, She’s right, she’s right—she loved you, and you loved you. A love-triangle travesty.

  “_____want you to come down, and not______like the baby.”

  “What? Jenn? Come in—please!—come in?”

  “_____down and get on with__________stand to think of you dying alone!”

  A satellite flows across the night sky like a ship, a trawler, seen from below, up there on the surface of the world, towing the driftnet of static that ripples between him and the only non–blood relation he has ever been able, almost, to love. For a moment he sees it. The failure to love is the only failure. Then he seems to lose focus, a lapse of static behind the eyes. When he wakes he is in the ice cave, sitting like a Buddhist monk, facing a cave mouth now almost sealed by a portcullis of icicles. Through the opening that remains, the gorak peers in at him: yellow eyes the exact shade of October aspens in a high valley.

  You’ve come for my eyes, he says, extending his bare hand to the bird.

  THE LIGHTS COME BOBBING UP the dark valley like the torches of that army he read about in Darjeeling—a medieval army that perished in a snowstorm crossing a high pass as it marched on Lhasa. Now and then, faint sounds of crunching boots
, clinking steel. They might be here in an hour. In the darkness he waits shivering, the small machinegun slung over his shoulder and the medical kit in his hand. His mouth is too dry for the pre-dawn ration of soda crackers and dried apricots. The water is frozen in the skins—no time to thaw and boil it for tea. He does get an icy gobbet of meat into him, some kind of tinned luncheon stuff. He pockets the two remaining crackers for later, or for Sophie.

  The others prepare behind him. When he turns around, Amaris, a few steps away, more than meets his eyes, so that what happened last night—the dreamlike kiss, their whispered dialogue and close-nestled sleep—is verified, given a passport into their real, waking lives, such as they are right now. It does help. Desire is a narrative that keeps you moving forward, even at a crawl, needing to find out. Sonam loads blankets and the frozen water skins onto the yak, who’s snorting steam, trembling under his heavy, frosted coat. As Sonam hoists his coughing daughter onto the animal, it stamps and brays, sweeping its massive head back at him, grazing him with its horn. Sonam takes Diki back onto his own shoulders, but Sophie, beside him, says “Wait—let me help,” pointing at the child and then, with both mittened hands, at her own shoulders. Book’s heart surges with pride and love. Sonam with his feisty, gap-toothed smile—he’s lost a tooth at some point in the last few days—wags his hand toward the head of the valley and repeats some word, maybe “later,” then thu-je che, “thank you.”

  The faint swishing of Choden’s robes approaching. “Ready, Lewis!” she whispers. “Please be careful with that.”

  “Right, sorry. You do know the way?”

  “Mr. Lodi said to me, from here, it’s a sure thing.” She recites carefully, “Climb until the little pass at 6,500 metres, on Kyatruk’s shoulder, which is the border, then south along the border, down to the glacier and the main pass, where I believe your base camp is.”

  He nods. “It does sound close. We must be at 6,000 now.”

  “Kyatruk is just ahead, sure, we should see it when the trail turns a little, but it is a mountain. It takes days for pilgrims to walk all around Mount Kailash—the mountain that’s holy to us?”

  “You don’t mean it’s going to take us days?”

  “I think we’ll be there by dark, Lewis.”

  “Thank God,” he whispers—a phrase he hasn’t used in years, since before Rwanda. After a moment he asks her, “Did you ever do that pilgrimage, around Kailash?”

  “Alas,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Now I never shall.”

  They turn and start after the others, Tenzin not among them. Over the fire before the others woke, Choden told him that Tenzin had come back from his post an hour earlier to wake her—she was already awake, tending the fire—and warn her that the Chinese were coming. He’d handed her his binoculars. He’d told her he would climb the far side of the valley and snipe at the soldiers from the mountainside to draw their fire and slow them down. If he stayed with the refugees, he feared, he might bring the soldiers’ fire on them, while his own shots, farther up the valley, might cause an avalanche. This way, once the refugees were safe, he could disappear into the high passes and try to make his way slowly home.

  “Does he think he has a chance?” Book asked. “Did he ever think so?”

  Choden took off her glasses, adjusted the strap and polished the lenses with the sleeve of her over-robe. “He hoped, but he wasn’t hopeful.” She strapped the glasses back on, regarding Book calmly in the firelight. “It’s just my opinion, but I believe Mr. Lodi really did want to lead us here, and now to fight with the Chinese, in the guerrilla way, like his father. I can see how you feel, Lewis, but he makes the choice in his own pride of heart.”

  The anonymous massif to their left will hide the sun for most of today, maybe all day, but the twilight is rising. Sonam, with Diki on his shoulders, leads the groaning yak by its rope and nose ring instead of slapping its wounded haunches. Dechen walks bent double, using a pine bough for a cane, her other, bare hand twirling a prayer wheel. The young monks still move in a bobbing cluster like one being. Sophie and Amaris support Lasya between them; she’s stiffer, wearier today, but insists on carrying the baby, still swaddled tight to her chest. The burly nun Dolma keeps wandering off-trail, her hands stretched out and groping, as if she has been struck blind. She’s the last of the party Book would have expected to give out. He guides her back onto the trail. He keeps glancing behind them. When those flashlights are no longer visible, there’ll be enough light in the valley for the soldiers to see their quarry, not far ahead.

  The muffled wail of the baby, then the mother’s lullaby, tender and terrified. They’re approaching the snowline, the sky a deep, freezing indigo over the white pyramid that’s massing into view—Kyatruk, finally, it must be—while a heavy subsystem of snow clouds billows downvalley toward them, not a thousand feet above the trail. Beside the trail now a few bones glow in the twilight, then a long rift of sooty grey snow. One by one the refugees dodder off course and scoop up handfuls. The snow is hard, sharp-grained, seeming to cut the inside of Book’s mouth and tongue as he sucks it.

  A harsh, tearing shot rolls out across the valley. Sophie and Amaris, ahead of Book, halt and turn their opened faces, while Lasya, singing softly between them, her head bowed toward her son, doesn’t look back. As Book turns, there’s a flash from high up on the north side of the valley, above the snowline. He counts by seconds and hits five before the thunderclap—Tenzin’s second shot. Now the valley’s dim floor is lighting up with small red flashes, like gas flares in an oilfield, and soon after comes the squiblike clatter of automatic weapons firing.

  Sonam shouts something and sweeps his arm overhead to point upvalley. The party creaks back into motion. Book stands frozen, watching the firefight, his squinted eyes beginning to pick out tiny figures crouched on the valley floor, far out of range of his own weapon with its final ammunition clip. On the snowy slope high above the distant toy troops, a small crag, a scattering of black boulders. Tenzin must be up there somewhere.

  A hand on Book’s shoulder. He turns, somehow expecting Amaris.

  “Papa, please, would you hurry?” She says it as if she’s twelve and they’re in a mall and he’s wasting time, making small talk with another adult. But her white, hooded face is solemn and haunted: no rolling of the eyes. No girl her age should have to look like this.

  “The shots, could they reach us?”

  “We’re a long way out of range,” he says, exaggerating slightly. “Don’t worry, love—they want to capture us, not shoot at us.” But he isn’t sure they don’t want to shoot the Tibetans, and the girl is dressed like one. He’s glad she’s still wearing her hoodie, at least. He always disliked it—it makes her look sullen, concave, hungry, as if she or her friends have ever known hunger, except by choice—but up here it’s a slight marker of difference.

  “Could they get Tenzin from there?”

  “It’d have to be a really lucky shot. He’ll be all right, love.”

  He takes her hand as they walk, glad the machinegun is slung on his other side.

  “We’re almost there, right?”

  “From what Choden says, almost.”

  “You saw the animal bones back there?”

  “I did, yeah.” He doesn’t tell her what he knew at a glance: they were human. A fibula, several ribs, a few vertebrae. Maybe she suspects it herself. They could have been there for anywhere from five to fifty years, maybe longer.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, love.”

  “About last night.”

  He looks at her quickly. There’s plenty of light in the valley now. Too much light.

  “You were awake,” he says, “weren’t you?”

  “I just want you to know something.”

  “Damn it,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

  “No, listen.”

  “Nothing happened, okay?”

  “Would you listen to me?”

  His felt boots are quiet, but he hears his steps clearly. “Go ahead,
love.”

  “If it were anywhere else, I might—I’d probably be upset, but up here everything’s so different, you know?”

  He nods. “It sure is.”

  “So I want you to know—I can live with it, if you, like, feel something for each other. I mean, I know you do.”

  “Sophie,” he says, moved but not wanting to crush her hope of a parental reunion, though he sees now it’s too late, it always was, “you know it might just be the, the situation, throwing us together? I mean, not together, but …”

  “Why do guys never see this stuff,” she mutters.

  “You mean, what women feel about them?”

  “No,” she says, “what they feel themselves.”

  Even at this altitude he’s not stupid enough to try answering.

  “Papa, you’re sweet, to be worrying how I’d feel. But I realized up here, the last day or so—I just want to see you happy. Whatever that means”—her voice is strained now, fading out—“when we get home.”

  He lifts a gloved hand to his eyes. The ozone smell of blood. How did she suddenly become the adult, helping him up the valley? Maybe we’re meant to live in a state of permanent crisis, no time for small talk, nothing taken for granted, people doing and saying now what they’re afraid of leaving undone or unsaid, everyone stripped to the soul—the weak of character unable to hide the truth and con you, the flawed transcending themselves, and the strong, like his daughter, stronger by the moment.

  The hard crash of Tenzin’s rifle. As the echoes dissolve, there’s a far-off drone of engines and he and Sophie look up. In the brightening sky high over the valley—above the icy ridges hackling on either side—a spotter plane and its frozen contrail catch the sun.

  The fugitives pause at the snowline, where the scattered plots of snow consolidate into a deepening white field and cover the trail. Ahead and above, low blue clouds are filling the valley, shrouding Kyatruk. Choden trots back to Book and Sophie and says they must allow Zapa to rest briefly, to eat the last of his fodder—from this point, he will have to make a trail for them through the snow. Sophie sinks into the snow and flops onto her back with her arms out, eyes shut, as if making an angel. She doesn’t move.