Tibetan Cross

by Mike Bond

  KATMANDU TERMINAL squatted brightly in the noon sun. He descended amid the Newaris, eyeing the reflective terminal windows as he crossed the tarmac. Before the door he slipped behind a fuel truck, crossed a grease-slick unloading bay, hurdled a fence, squeezed between two panting buses and ran unhindered across the parking lot and along the road toward town.

  He took an approaching taxi to Katmandu's center, ran, always glancing back, through thronged streets rank with feces, curry, and smoke, turned into a shoulder-wide alley in the Sherpa bazaar, waited but no one followed, crossed a paved square still sticky with the blood of a newly slaughtered buffalo, and knocked softly on a carved, worm-eaten door.

  The steely-haired woman in a red shirt and leather skirt smiled as she asked him in, arranging pillows for him to sit on by the coals. “There is still a touch of winter in the house, Koan.” She leaned through a wool-string curtain to the second room. “Seral, it is Koan.”

  Cohen knelt to hug the little girl who ran to him. “And Phu Dorje?” he asked.

  “At the bazaar, coming soon. You have eaten?”

  “Not since yesterday. But I bring sorrow.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You are hungry?”

  “Ho.”

  Seral brought him meat stew, chai, a clay bowl of rice wine. She sat by him, silent, one hand on his knee. When he was done he took her into his lap, tucking back her braids. “Such a silent one thou art, little snowflake.”

  “Thou art also quiet, Koan-daju.”

  “Ho.”

  “My mother too sits silent in the other room. But I am happy to see thee.”

  “And I thee.”

  Phu Dorje entered softly, slipped his sheepskin coat from his back and sat on the far side of the fire. “I am surprised thou art not in Dhuala Himal.”

  “All has gone wrong, my brother.”

  “Where are thy friends?”

  “Thy brother Goteen is dead. Also Alex. Paul perhaps has escaped.”

  The Sherpa crossed his legs carefully. “An avalanche, then.” His face was calm, eyes tiny and black. He motioned to Seral; she stood and ran quickly into the other room.

  “Above Changtshang. Where the trail cuts to Muktinath…”

  “No danger is there.”

  “Stihl and some Tibetans killed them.”

  “Why?” Phu Dorje whispered.

  “Because of what we saw.”

  “Saw?”

  “It was not to go to Mustang that Stihl wanted. At Bagling we met Tibetans on horses. Stihl wished to travel with them up the Kali Gandaki, because of some robbers, he said. But it was guns they were taking into Tibet, to fight the Chinese.”

  “And so? Since the Chinese first marched into Tibet, have not the Americans sent guns upriver to the Tibetans?”

  “But Stihl was of them, in secret. He and the Tibetans had a great bomb, taken apart, on the ponies’ backs.”

  “Bomb? What is?”

  “A great fire, like the sun.”

  “How did thou not see this great fire, at first?”

  “It was locked in metal. Later, they would release it among the Chinese, perhaps in a large city.”

  “To do what?”

  “It would destroy all the houses, kill all the people.”

  Phu Dorje shook his head in negation. “In a city are women and children.”

  “It has been done before.”

  “Who would do this?”

  “Americans. It was war.”

  “Even in war one does not kill women and children.” The flames hissed as Phu Dorje spat. “How did thou escape?”

  “They shot Alex and Goteen at once…”

  “How did he die?”

  “Instantly. His body fell into the river.”

  “Then?”

  “Paul and I climbed the canyon wall and separated. He went up the ridges toward Thorungtse.”

  “In that valley are many Tibetans.” Phu Dorje rose and stepped through the curtain. Cohen removed his glasses and rubbed the ridge of his nose where they had indented to the bone. Phu Dorje returned. “My family will go to the village. We will tell Goteen's wife. Then we will find Stihl.”

  Cohen shook his head. “I will find him first.”

  Phu Dorje took his hand. “Two years thou hast been here, a blood brother to my tribe. Not like the other white climbers for whom we carry oxygen, tents, food, boots, the flags they plant at the top of the world. Not one who climbs a mountain with our help only to exult that he has climbed it, when it is we who have made that possible. Thou hast danced at our weddings and climbed like a Sherpa. Thou speak the Nepali tongue, which many of us do also, thus we do not have to use our childish English with thee. But it would be better for thee to leave the Himal, going home.”

  “I shall wait here for Stihl. And for Paul.” Cohen replaced his glasses, caught momentarily by the room's sudden detail, by a kukri and a red cotton bag hanging on the tan wall.

  “And the Gurkhas – if thou goest to them?”

  “That is unwise. I saw the Mustang permits that Stihl had, permits that are impossible to get. He will say that we tried to rob him, that we killed Eliott. Stihl is American, with the power to get such permits. The bomb and the guns were American.”

  “And thy people?”

  “I go to them now.”

  “I do not want thy people to punish Stihl.” Phu Dorje eased back. “Stihl is a grain of snow on Annapurna; I will kill him because he killed my brother. But he is not the cloud that brings the snow.”

  “He can tell us…”

  “If he knows, and if we kill him slowly.” Phu Dorje bent to relace his rawhide boots. “And Paul?”

  “If he's alive he should reach Katmandu within two days.”

  Phu Dorje stood. “I must call together my family, so that we can grieve for my brother.” He looked up at Cohen. “That is all thy clothing? No shoes?”

  “All our things were with the porters and are lost. This cloak was given me by an old man with one eye, who took me three days’ journey in a night.”

  “It is Chetri.”

  “Ho.”

  “One cannot trust the lowland people.”

  “He was of the mountains.”

  HE MOVED QUICKLY through smoky alleys hung with bright linens and littered with human excrement over which pai dogs fought bloodily, emerging on a broad boulevard of motorbikes, rickshaws, trucks, and buses. Ahead, beyond the trees drooping in the heat and dirty air, the august portals of the American Embassy flanked by two Marines. His steps slowed. What can I say, in my own tongue, to my own people? How can I explain what we have done?

  Yet how reassuring the hard-jawed faces of the Marines, the tan four-door Dodge parked before the Embassy. It's been so long. Suddenly seeing his mother's face, lined and worn as it had been the last time he had seen her – for there is nothing to see in a closed coffin housing the cindered remnants of a plane crash. As he stepped from the curb she seemed younger, her skin now not desiccated by Montana's harshness, and he was running to her, she kneeling down – as he had an hour before with Seral – to comfort him against the impact of older boys in this new country laughing at his Jewish face and Irish accent, backing up their contempt with their fists. “Aye, and ye'll learn to beat ‘em, Sammie, sure ye will.”

  The Marines noticed him now as he crossed the street. It's been so long, feeling grateful, strangely, to be American again, part of a worldwide network of might and privilege. To be protected. Strong, clear faces. To have someone to tell.

  The Embassy door opening, two men, one in a tan bush jacket, the other in a suit. Stihl in the bush jacket seeing Cohen transfixed in mid-traffic, Stihl grabbing the other's arm and pointing, yelling now at the Marines awakening from their somnolescent stare of hostility and peering open-mouthed about them, one unlimbering his rifle as Cohen stood rooted to the street.

  The man in the suit already across the sidewalk, hand under his lapel, Marines with him, Stihl retreating to the Embassy door, calling inside. Man i
n the suit ten yards away, pistol in hand, yelling “Hold it!” as Cohen swung his fist and slammed him to the street, ducking the black blur of one Marine's rifle and barefooting him in the groin, swinging the pistol against the other's head so that his cap sailed across the street.

  Stihl darting out the door with others, checking his stride at the sight of Cohen bearing down, pistol in hand, Cohen squeezing round after round into the elegant, thin-lipped face as it jigged frantically back toward the door, blood spraying the Embassy wall, Cohen dropping the pistol and sprinting down the street until there were trees, parked trucks, and then buildings between him and what had happened.

  THE NARROW darkened alleys milled with late afternoon crowds; leaning buildings traded ornate shadows. No one seemed to notice him; unshod, threadbare, and filthy, he was unlike the overloaded, skinny, and underdressed mass only in his few days’ beard, an absence of umber in his skin, and the burnt sienna of his curly hair. He sat with a cool bottle of Indian beer in the back corner of a dirt-floored bar, alert to the faces flowing past the door.

  Clenching his trembling hands he bit down the terror to run, run anywhere. Simply to run, running only, as if that simple act would free me. Now surely dead. The Gurkhas watching now, waiting now. Every trail out of town is a trap.

  Christ, I'm more afraid of the Gurkhas than my own people…The Embassy won't tell them about the bomb. There'll be some other story. His shaking calmed. Very careful, very strong. Coming into a game in the fourth quarter, four touchdowns behind. Almost nothing can't be done. For a moment he smiled, looking down at his hands, thinking Alex's words: “You're a guy with much more confidence than brains.” Who will believe me now?

  With Stihl and Eliott both dead how do I find the source? How do I find where they came from and kill their friends? Piss on nuclear war – it's due anyway. Divine retribution. But they killed Alex…A Gurkha popped his head in the door, yammered at the barman, stared into Cohen's corner, and left. No, that's not true – I do care about the bomb. But long ago I gave up hope about it. Since she died I've given up hope about everything. Haven't I? He peered at the dark street, put on his glasses. Kim's home now.

  A CHILL PERVASIVE fog had slunk down from the mountains, the streets nearly empty. The alleys all were silent but for the hum of an occasional streetlamp casting its weak pool on the damp, uneven, dung-stained cobbles, the sorrowful bellow of a tethered rango, or the faraway rattle of a bus fighting the slight grade up from the stupa grounds.

  He stopped, confused by the fog, retraced his steps. Gravelly footfalls approached, halted. He held his breath and backed against a wall. Leather-bound silent feet, a quick shape, braided hair above a variegated cloak, slipping past the rim of streetlight at the corner.

  The steps paused. He could hear the man's breathing, deep and steady. Lost like me. The steps returned. Fabric brushed the wall. A shadow crossed the light, trailing an odor of green wood smoke and curds. The Tibetan reached the corner, hesitated. He looked back the way he had come, shielding his eyes from the dim bulb, then trotted down the side street, kicking up a rock that rattled among dry dung in the gutter.

  Cohen moved away from the Tibetan, keeping far from the lights. He ran down an alley leading to the stupa square where a giant beehive temple, beribboned and prayerflagged, gave a suggestion of mass against the wheeling fogs. He crouched beside a bush and waited. For fifteen minutes no one came. He followed another smaller alley to a broken whitewashed wall behind which a small square white house sat in a tiled garden among suntala trees. After watching for a long time he knocked softly on the door.

  SHE HAD a dishcloth in her hands as she opened the door, her short amber hair tucked in a maroon Newari scarf, her jeans torn at one knee, a Coors T-shirt drawing his eyes automatically to her small high breasts. Her smile faded. “Sam, you look awful! What're you doin’ back?”

  He entered and locked the door. The same Tibetan rugs on the walls, the same worn gray boards of the knee-high trestle table, with thick cushions piled against the wall behind it. The same posters, of Big Sur, Santana, and the Bernini Fountain. (“Paul has a body like Bernini's David,” she'd once said.) By the door to the kitchen, the same silk scroll painting: a great convoluted mountain with its tiny figure of an old man stooping at a forested pool below a waterfall.

  “You should change your pictures, Kim.”

  “What's gone wrong?”

  “Alex is dead. I don't know where Paul is.”

  She lit a kerosene lamp and centered it on the table. She sat on the table edge. “How?”

  “Shot. By Stihl and some Tibetans.”

  “Who else?”

  “Goteen.”

  “Where's Paul?” Tremolo now in her voice.

  “I don't know. We split up to evade them. He should be here in two days.”

  Bending away, she was crying now, fighting to hold back. “You asked for it – I told you, I told him!” Her face scarlet, tears thick on her cheeks now, she buried sharp nails in his arm. “Mustang! I hate it, hate it, hate it! Oh how I hate that word! He'd be here now. He'd be here tonight! We'd have had dinner like we always do, and talked and read and made love and held each other. You! You had to drag him away – to Mustang!” She tore at his arm. “You always know best! Don't you? Don't you? Men always know best. Don't you!”

  She sat sobbing on the table. “And we're always your victims. Aren't we?” She faced up at him. “You bastards! When was the last time a woman ever killed anyone? When?”

  Sitting on the table edge he told her all he knew, leaning against her, from time to time rubbing her neck at the shoulder or holding her hand wet with the tears she rubbed from her cheeks. After a while she got up and made tea. “Alex was your friend long before I knew him, Sam. Yours and Paul's.”

  “I keep expecting him to show up, as if nothing's happened.” He sipped the sour tea, letting it burn the membranes inside his cheek. “I always learn too late.”

  “He loved the mountains. It's not your doing.”

  “But I knew it was wrong. Stihl didn't add up. And I did it anyway.”

  She wiped at tears with the back of her hand. “I begged Paul not to go – something ate at me…He wouldn't pass up Mustang.”

  “We all wanted the money. It's like death, money.” He tugged her close. “You have to leave, Kim.”

  She pulled away. “I'm waiting for Paul.”

  “You'll have to wait for him in the States.” He held her face in his palms. “Paul's dangerous now, like me. He killed Eliott. They'll blame him for Alex, maybe for Stihl. You have to get away and stay away.”

  “If you're dangerous I shouldn't be with you either. In any case I'm going to keep on doing what I've been doing, till he –”

  “Keep teaching?”

  “Yes! Every day nine classes of ragged little Newaris with gentle, hungry eyes, their festering sores, their blindness cholera – God, Sam, do you know how many of my kids've died this year? Half the children die before they're five!”

  He sat again on the table edge and looked into her reddened hazel eyes. “It's a joke, life. I used to love it, but it's a vicious trick. It makes you love it, then snatches itself away like a cockteaser. It makes you love people then kills them. God, whoever He is, is a malevolent bastard.”

  “God tries, Sam.”

  Cohen rubbed exhaustion from his face. “Why do the best die, and the ugly and the evil live? The old man on the Modi Khola who gave me this poncho had a picture of Kennedy on the wall of his hut. Way back in the mountains of Nepal, back in the stone age – and he loved him too. Kennedy's dead, and his beautiful brother too, and Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Malcolm X, while an evil, ugly, craven cheat like Richard Nixon, or a malignant Barbie Doll like Ronald Reagan lives on! Why's that?”

  She began to set things straight in the tiny square room. “How different things would have been…” She looked down at his feet. “You must be cold!”

  “They're sure to be watching my place. By tomorro
w they'll be here, too. I gotta go – you too.”

  “You'd have to kill me, Sam, to make me leave.”

  “That's crazy! Go to Rayamaji's, anywhere.”

  “You go! Take some of Paul's clothes – in the bedroom.”

  “I guess it's me they want. Maybe it's safer for you not around me.” He resisted the chest-crushing urge to drop his face into his hands. “Seems unreal. So far away. I've been dead, Kim, dead all this time.”

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “Put on some clothes. Hurry!”

  IN THE BEDROOM a pale nightgown tossed on the bed, dresses and skirts hanging from a pole across the corner, white underpants crumpled on the floor. Beside the bed with its four posts set in tins of water to deter bedbugs was a leather trunk filled with clothes, Paul's and hers, among which Cohen found a clean undershirt, socks, shirt, and worn jeans. Beneath the hanging clothes were two sets of climbing boots, inners and outers, and a pair of running shoes, frayed in the toes, that fit him loosely. He sat on the floor tying the shoes. The clothes smelled like Paul, the blue and white shoes so reminiscent that Paul's absence was almost more than he could stand.

  He faced the mirror. I do not realize each second I am alive how deep life is. That's the measure of my failure. That is how I've been dead, how I must change. His severe, tanned features were pinched with fatigue, the wide thin lips blistered, the oft-broken nose sharp under narrowed, bloodshot blue eyes, the crinkled brown hair tangled with dirt and dried sweat, the beard reddish-brown and uneven, a boy's. “You're not very handsome, shitbird,” Paul had once said.

  “At least I'm white.”

  “Yeah,” Paul had chuckled. “That's the essence of your problem.”

  On a shelf above an ice ax with a bent tine was a football, its pighide worn slippery, its laces tanned by years of sweat and countless rains. It felt perfect in his palm, nothing but an extension of his arm, laces matching his fingertips. “I can remember,” he said to Paul, “when just the touch of this would bring me peace.” He took Paul's razor into the kitchen, heated water, and shaved. He finished the new tea she had brought him and put the cup in the basin. “Let's go.”