by Mike Bond
“That is not my religion.”
“It was you, then, who got nailed to the tree?” He slid the blade back into the shaft. “How interesting that an aid to prayer in your world is also a weapon to kill.”
“That is not my world.”
Undying returned with a slip of paper. The old man turned to Cohen. “I cannot show thee this until Stihl tells me.”
“He can never tell you now, and I cannot give you the new name until you show me the old.”
“Why?”
Cohen allowed himself to smile. “How do I know you are the one?” He crossed to the exit. “Without the name of the old contact I cannot give you the new, nor can I make an agreement concerning guns.” He stepped outside, the sun-bleached dusty air almost cool after the tent. The guerrilla with the AK was not visible. Perhaps one o'clock by the sun: Paul could be at Phu Dorje's now. With the name of their contact we can get them all. He faced the old man. “You are with paper?”
“For what?”
“My instructions are to give you the name of the new contact…in exchange for the old.”
The old man nodded his chin at the plain of white tents. “My people's lands were stolen by the Chinese. Our children slaughtered, homes, fields, and temples destroyed. Our sacred books burned. Yet, we will never be defeated. We will never give up.” He smiled. “It would not be wise to betray us.”
“If you fear that of me we should speak no further.”
“I fear that of everyone.” The old man hesitated, then passed Cohen the slip of paper:
KOHLER IMPORT-EXPORT
293 Fulton Street
New York, N.Y.
10038 U.S.A.
Cohen tore it up. “I will write the new words.” He printed an imaginary Upper East Side address on the paper that the tall Tibetan had brought and gave it to the old man. “Mark these words on an envelope and send it, and someone will come to you.”
“But in four days thou return.” The old man motioned to the tall Tibetan, who took the leather bag of hashish from his blanket and handed it to Cohen. “A token for thy journey,” he grimaced, then gripped Cohen's elbow. “You are familiar with our treatment for those who betray us?” He jabbed his fingers under Cohen's ribs. “Cutting here, we reach a hand beneath the ribs and squeeze the beating heart. Not too quickly, letting it come back then squeezing again. After some time, perhaps hours, perhaps days, we crush it. It is a painful death.”
“He who fears death does little.”
“Sometimes there is even more to fear of life,” the old man smiled, “than death.”
6
THE FLIES HAD been in it for several hours, a few becoming stuck as it dried. Others now wandered its crust with impunity. It had gone deep rust, almost black. Her eyes glazed, her neck sliced to the white-red bone, Seral lay twisted in its center. Her parents sprawled face down behind her, the boy beneath his mother.
He stumbled into the other room and fell on the floor, coals from the hearth warm on his face. Vomit came up; he forced it back; it went down the wrong way and choked him. He spat into the hearth.
Life's a joke, Seral. It had no meaning. It wasn't real, it wasn't there. Don't mourn it. Better to be dead. Death's done you a favor. Seral's black shining eyes looked into his. “To be favored by death?” her lips said silently.
“I don't believe…” he ran screaming into the other room, his shoes crunching dried blood, her body sucking free of it as he took her up in his arms. A red glob squirted from her throat; he wiped it from his knee. Putting her down he knelt beside Phu Dorje and cut the bandanna gagging his mouth and the rawhide tying his hands behind him, then did the same for his wife.
A while later he found himself leaning over, knees and forehead on the floor. He shook himself. The posture of one awaiting execution. And so I should be. For I killed them. By coming here yesterday. Somebody's watching.
He stroked Seral's braids. At what moment did they kill you? Was I drinking coffee with the tall Tibetan? Was I calmly eating baisi and rice? Was I bullshitting with them at the refugee camp? And pretending I was in danger? Was Undying laughing inside, watching me, while it was being done? Or did it happen later? Does he even know? Is their New York contact, the Kohler Import-Export place, real? Are they all playing with me? God, too? Waiting for me to lead them to Paul? To then kill us both? Seral…at what moment…?”
Kim! He lurched to his feet, grabbed the kukri from the wall and dashed into the alley tripping over two women hunkered on the step. “Namasté, sahib!” one called, laughing.
Sprinting through the Sherpa bazaar he snatched a bike from a protesting Newari and raced to Kim's school. The headmaster was a slight, graying, bowing man in a white topi. “She is gone this hour with two who came for her.”
“Who?”
“Far mountain people.”
The bicycle chain broke by the stupa grounds; he dashed through the crowded, loud streets, knocking over animals and people. Her gate was ajar, the house empty. “Kim!” he screamed. “Kim!”
She lay under suntala trees by carved antique stones Paul had rescued from a ruined Rana palace, the Tibetan cross buried in her heart.
He carried her into the living room under the scroll painting of the old man and the waterfall, her head wobbling, her blood pattering on the ground. A milky sunset illumined the Big Sur poster, highlighting the cyan luster of the Pacific and the virid crowns of redwoods stepping up the cliffs.
There were voices in the street; he placed her gently on the pillows and stepped over the trestle table to the window. A child ducked from the window and ran to the gate, where faces peered expectantly.
A Gurkha rapped his kukri on the gate, his khaki uniform pea-green in the waning sun, the stainless steel of his kukri handle flashing. Cohen glanced down at his jeans streaked with Kim's blood. The Gurkha rapped on the door. Cohen darted into the bedroom, grabbed the football and a pen from the shelf, knocking over Kim's things, scrawled “Serpent – Easter” on the worn pigskin and shoved the football back on the shelf. The Gurkha shouldered open the door as Cohen ducked out the back, under the suntalas past the Rana palace stones, skidding and falling on Kim's blood. “He runs, policeman!” a voice yelled from the road.
He leaped the wall into a buffalo pen, a blunt-horned old rango lurching up, its leathery balls swinging like a pendulum. Ducking its horns he slopped through manure and dove over the gate into an alley blocked by an old man selling pans from a wooden framework supported on his shoulders, women in pink saris arguing round him, the street thronged by people shouting and pointing. He smashed through the women, the tinker falling with a yell and clatter, dashed right at the corner, then left at the next through streets jammed with porters, women, children, and dogs, and ran steadily westward past the town center and northward on the Pokhara road.
On the first crest he halted to look for Paul on the road ahead. Behind him, in a dusty haze riddled by Katmandu's frail lights, mounted Gurkhas cantered through the streets. A truck rattled toward him, dropping Gurkhas two by two up the hillside. He scrambled from the road into a magnolia clump. Headlights jigged over the leaves; the truck geared down and halted, valves rattling.
Swish of feet through grass. He slid the kukri from its sheath, held his breath. Two shapes against the city lights below; one glanced into the magnolias. The steps receded. He sheathed the kukri and exhaled.
Soft steps behind and in front. More left and right. The kukri blade pinged as he yanked it out. He squirmed through the magnolias, crushed grass thundering in his ears. Kukri between his teeth he bounded downhill on toes and fingertips, grass hissing over his legs. Glint of a blade in the starlight, two dark shapes ahead. To his left a ravine deepened toward the valley; he tossed a pebble tinkling down its raveled canyon. The man-shapes halted whispering; as they edged toward the ravine he circled them.
A stick snapped, they yelled and he was up and running down the chunky slope, across a wide paddy in the starlight, feet splashing behind him. He spri
nted upslope through a farmyard where chickens scattered squawking, a pig ran farting and squealing, its tether tripping Cohen into a cesspool gashing his knee, driving him faster up to forest whose startled birds chattered far overhead.
The Gurkhas spread out as they reached the farmyard, one slapping down the farmer when he came yelling, lantern in hand, into the yard. A voice called, followed by the snapping of rifle bolts, Cohen tripping into vines and creepers, thrashing at them with the kukri, hobbling breathlessly upward and falling again.
Above the forest the slope opened for a half mile, every bush and boulder visible. To left and right the forest faded into hills empty of cover. The first Gurkhas had reached the edge of the trees; Cohen sheathed the kukri and scaled hand over hand up a vine into the darkness.
Birds twitted furtively around him; the branches were slick with their pale, foul droppings. Beneath him the Gurkhas quartered and searched the glade, the only sound an occasional whisper of an officer and the constant snicksnick of kukris slicing through creepers and saplings.
After an hour the Gurkhas deployed up the open slope. When they were well above the glade, Cohen descended the vine part way, then lower. The birds did not stir. He dropped farther, wrapped his thighs around a bough, cleaned his glasses on Paul's shirt, and stared down into the glade.
For a long time he saw no movement. He moved down, unable to see the lookouts the Gurkhas had posted, decided they would be watching the slope going down to the farm. He slid to the ground. Nothing stirred, and he crept up the open hill behind the Gurkhas, veering westward along a horizontal path.
After a half mile he stood and ran limping along the path, crossing the far western end of Katmandu's valley at midnight. Halting to remove Paul's too-large shoes, he massaged his blisters and the searing, torn edges of his knee, and continued barefoot. Never get to Paris now. Never track them down, Kohler Import-Export, in New York. Can't walk much longer. Maybe fifty rupees left – seven bucks. Should have taken some from Kim. Oh God Kim you can't be dead. What have I done, what have I done…
Villages and farms passed in a dream. Dogs barked; once a man's voice called, “Kata jané, daju?” A buffalo bolted from his path. In the long part of the night the pain in his knee grew unendingly; the cold was unbroken. Finally the stars dimmed.
Birds called, a dewy, solid sound. The hills took shape; the trail swam over them like a snake over green-black waves. Above tree-soft silhouettes the east inflamed as if dawning on the smoky remnants of a sea battle. Stars winked out like streetlights of a vaulted city, like airplanes shot down one by one till none remained. Sun burst over the jagged peaks, at once warming his face, drawing up steam from the road and gossamer mists from the east-facing slopes.
Himalayas trailing scarves of windblown snow walled off the north. The sun glinted on their black granite scarps and the gelid white of glaciers and snowfields. Shortly after sunrise the trail reached a small village. In a butthi he asked for chai, rice, and eggs. The butthi man shook his head sadly up and down, meaning no. “All the chickens have died, sahib. But,” he smiled, “we are with rice.”
TEN MILES FARTHER he reached the Bhutwal road and flagged down an ancient Ford truck heading south. “Kata janahuncha?”
“Thori janchu,” the driver said, revealing a few tooth stumps behind a bristly grin.
“I go to the splitting of the Thori road. You can carry me?”
The driver rubbed tiredly at his cotton headband. “Ten rupees.”
Cohen sat gingerly on spiky horsehairs padding the bare springs. The driver pushed the gearstick forward into first. The truck lunged, slowed, then gradually gained speed. The engine noise was too loud for talk; Cohen fought a nodding sleep as the truck labored over the sunbaked hills. The driver braked where dung-brick huts and tin sheds huddled meanly under bare-branched trees.
“Half way!” the driver exclaimed triumphantly.
Swollen-bellied children were gathering to hold out yellow palms, their eyes reproachful. Cohen glared at the driver. “Bhutwal is yet a half day from here.”
The driver inspected him calmly. His wrinkled simian fingers hung loosely over the wheel. The gearstick with its blue-and-white Ford knob vibrated erratically against his knee. “For a few more rupees, Bhutwal very close by.”
“Give back my ten rupees!”
“Why give back?” The driver appeared affronted.
“If I Nepali,” Cohen said, “you ask no rupees.”
“But you not Nepali,” the driver answered softly.
Cohen unclenched his fists. He twisted off the gearshift knob, stepped out, and threw it over the bare trees. It dipped across the blue sky, pinpointed with distance, and dropped with a silver flash into a rice paddy.
Where the road crested beyond the village he glanced back. In the emerald paddy beyond the desolate huts a lone figure in a cotton headband, trousers rolled to his knees, bent searching in the knee-deep reflection of the sky. Cohen trudged on. I become what I hate. Spread sorrow and death like a plague. On the hungry, the poor. On the least – the best – of my brothers.
The heat worsened. As he approached each new village, children met him, palms upward. When traffic increased he followed a path under the cathedralled canopy of a rhododendron glade. At the rim of a steep ridge he lay down on a small plateau edged by banyans. Below him the canopy of rhododendrons was unbroken but for the road's sinuous traverse.
With Paul's shoes for a pillow he lay in the banyan shadows, Phu Dorje's kukri clutched to his chest. That which is, is not. That which is not, is. I'm untouched. Dead. Have to be alive to feel. No one who has ever lived has felt what I feel. A tinkling disturbed him, three girls in red saris watching from the forest. “Namasté, sahib,” called the tallest, stepping closer. Her face was bony, her wrist angular as she held out her palm.
“I have nothing,” he murmured, waved them away, and fell asleep.
CHATTERING, SCREAMING everywhere. Thick-tongued and sweaty, he jumped up, midslope sun in his eyes. The plateau was cut into shadow and light. Drops pattered on dead leaves. He looked up; a drop struck the corner of his mouth. Branches tossed in the banyans overhead.
A lemur peered down at him, its face yellow, sagacious, wrinkled below the cheekbones. Long fingers parted the leaves; another face joined it. Other lemurs ran gibbering along a branch. More drops spiraled down, smelling of ammonia. He hobbled into the clearing. The lemurs cavorted in the nearest high branches. He flung a rock, hitting one in the ribs. It screamed and fell, caught a lower branch. The others yelled, baring their teeth.
On the road below a motorcycle rounded a curve, vanished and reappeared, soon audible between lemur noises. It stopped in a patch of sunlight. Its rider, a blond man in a gray windbreaker, waved toward the edge of the forest. Three smaller figures dressed in red stepped onto the road. The man in gray bent down, took something from his pocket. One of the three red-saried figures pointed up at the plateau. The man reached over the handlebars to stuff something into her hand. He tipped the motorcycle back on its stand, readjusted his jacket, and slipped into the forest.
In the clearing, knee-deep grass nodded in a slight wind. In the forest, flat leaves caught the sunlight; compact white cumulus chased each other over undulant sea-green hills. The lemurs had quieted; one looked down at him over her shoulder as she nursed an infant.
He slipped into the forest, crunching leaves, skirting the thickest grove of rhododendrons, and crouched holding the kukri on his good knee. A leaf spun indolently down. A bird called, shrill and fast. He eased along the hillside, bent behind a tulip tree.
An ant ran over his hand. The bird called again. A stick cracked downhill toward the road. He moved his foot. No sound. He brought the bad leg forward, let it down; a twig crunched. He raised the foot, set it elsewhere, slowly, quieting his breath. Lemur screams exploded overhead. Branches cracked like rifles; urine spattered him. Echoes of their hooting rebounded from the hills. The lemurs pursued him, screeching, from tree to tree. The man in t
he gray jacket held a pistol on him, ten feet away.
“A novel approach,” the man smiled. “Stalking lemurs with a kukri – sporting, rather. Or is that what you were up to?”
“They pissed on me. I was going to climb up after them.”
“See how easy it is,” the man replied, “when you're properly equipped…” He raised the pistol, his right wrist in his left palm, and fired. A lemur tumbled head over tail through the branches and bounced once on the brown leaves, “…to achieve the results you seek?”
“What the fuck you do that for!”
“A specimen, naturally.” The man lifted the lemur's head with his toe. “A death for science is a creditable one, don't you think?”
“No.”
“You were going to kill them just for peeing on you.”
“I was hardly able.”
“Intent's the thing, my granny always said.” The man's wide-set eyes were cheesy blue. He extended a hand. “Sydney Stowe. London.”
The hand was limp as a piece of kelp. Cohen tried to smile. “What brings you to Nepal?”
“Primates. You?”
“Just traveling through.”
“Where to?” Stowe was kneeling by the lemur, deftly cutting its skin away from the rib flesh. The forest was silent.
“You scared me with that gun,” Cohen replied.
“Imagine my surprise bumping into an American with a pigsticker like that. Why don't you put it away?”
Cohen complied. “What made you come up here?”
“Saw some girls on the road. Asked them had they seen any monkeys. Simple as that.” Stowe slipped a bloody leg free of its skin. “At first I took you for a monkey man. Where you going?”
“Monkey man?”
“Ever since Schaller and Goodall the woods are full of earnest young Americans stirring up the wildlife.” Stowe's smile revealed an asymmetry of yellow teeth. “Long in Nepal?”
“I came yesterday. Don't like it here.”
“Why?”
“Nobody speaks English. I hate rice. I was going to Katmandu, but've decided to hitch back to Delhi.” Cohen glanced down at his bloody trousers. “And I've fallen and torn my knee. Shitty country.”