The Ascent

by Ronald Malfi

  “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” someone called off to my right. I looked and saw Chad strutting toward me, a backpack slung over one shoulder. “We should get a bottle of champagne to christen her.”

  “No chance it’s got seat belts, huh?” I replied.

  Chad snorted. “What’s a seat belt?”

  The bus doors shushed open, and dark-skinned teenage boys spilled out. They chattered to each other in a language I didn’t understand and quickly surrounded Chad like aliens deciding whether or not they should beam him aboard the mother ship.

  “Hey, guys,” Chad said as they quickly relieved him of his backpack. They carried it to the bus. “Jesus, I feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger among a bunch of hobbits. Look at these people.”

  At the next cabin, Petras appeared on the porch. Bundled in a winter coat and thick gloves, he looked twice as large as usual. Heraised a hand in my direction, then disappeared back into his cabin, only to return moments later dragging a duffel bag by its straps.

  After all our gear was systematically loaded onto the bus, we gathered outside the main lodge in anticipation of Andrew’s arrival.

  “Let’s smoke ‘em while we can,” Chad said, pulling a cellophane pack of cigarettes from within his jacket. He shook some into his hands. “Who wants one?”

  Everyone except for Petras grumbled in agreement, and we held out our hands. Chad lit the smokes one by one with a silver Zippo.

  Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and felt the smoke fill my lungs. I was aware of a barely noticeable grin creeping across my face.

  “Might be a stupid question,” Shotsky said, sucking the life out of his own cigarette, “but did anyone think to bring, like, a gun? You know, for protection.”

  “From what?” Chad said.

  “Anything. Whatever’s out there.”

  “I got this,” Petras announced, producing a five-inch hunting knife with a pearl handle from his belt.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  Petras turned the knife over in his hands. “Yeah, could kill a bear with this thing.”

  “No bears where we’re going,” Andrew said, appearing beside the bus. He leaned against the grille, silhouetted by the headlights. The sun hadn’t risen yet. “Just people. Sorry to disappoint, but it’s just us, boys.”

  “Fair enough,” said Chad. “Let’s get a move on, shall we?”

  Andrew smiled. “Let’s roll.”

  We piled onto the bus and trundled along the dirt road for forty minutes before we reached the city. I had anticipated returning to Kathmandu, with all its intricate temples and bustling marketplaces, but this was a smaller city—a remote Buddhist village—situated at the foothills of a mountainous forest. The homes and shops lookedlike log cabins, void of any distinguishing markings. As the sun came up, I could see chickens and goats in the streets and young children pulling rickshaws through the mud.

  “Where the hell are we?” Curtis whispered in my ear.

  “Looks like purgatory.”

  “If this is purgatory, I’d hate to see hell.”

  The bus stopped outside a long, concrete building, pressed close to the ground and surrounded by rhododendrons.

  When the doors whooshed open, Andrew stood at the front of the bus. “Anyone want some Taco Bell?” He stared at the rest of us, imploring.

  We all just stared back.

  He broke out into a laugh. “Just kidding. Sit tight. They’ll load up the rest of our stuff.”

  Sure enough, more young boys stuffed crates and boxes into the cargo hold beneath the bus. Men in flowing maroon robes watched from doorways and porches, smoking elegant, long-stemmed pipes.

  Chad swooped down in the seat in front of me, beaming like a pair of headlights. “Listen, Timmy, I was all wired up the other night. No hard feelings, right?” He held out a hand.

  “Sure,” I said, gripping his hand, then dropping it like a wet rag.

  “Excellent, man.” Chad hopped up and sauntered toward the back of the bus.

  “The guy’s a blatant asshole,” Curtis said, staring straight ahead.

  “I wouldn’t have pegged him for the apologetic type.”

  “Despite what just transpired, I don’t think he is.” Curtis glanced over his shoulder, perhaps to check on Chad, then turned around. “I’d watch my back if I were you.”

  “Duly noted.” Which was when I happened to catch Shomas moving through a crowd of vendors in the cluttered marketplace. I noticed him in profile, but it wasn’t until he turned and glanced at our bus did I recognize him fully.

  “Jesus Christ.” I jabbed a finger at the window. To Curtis I said, “That’s the guy who broke into my cabin.”

  Curtis leaned across my lap and looked out the window. “Which one?”

  “Son of a bitch.” I shoved Curtis aside. He called after me, but I was already off the bus and sprinting across the street. I followed Shomas’s hulking shape through the crowd, his clothes the color of sawdust and easily lost in the confusion. He turned a corner behind one building—or at least I thought he did—and when I pursued him, turning that very same corner, I was alone. The land dipped into a gradual valley where yaks grazed in a field far below. I must have miscalculated; had Shomas turned this corner, there was no place for him to hide.

  And why hide? Did he even know I was following him?

  “Hey,” Andrew said, startling me with a hand on my shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I thought I … I recognized someone.”

  “Got a lot of friends out here, do you?” There was no humor in his voice.

  “Sorry.”

  “Run off like that again and we’ll leave your ass.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Get back on the bus.”

  When I reclaimed my seat, Curtis thumped an elbow into my ribs and muttered, “The hell got into you, man?”

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” I said before I fully understood what I was saying.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Never mind.”

  “You losing it already? Because we ain’t even on the mountain yet.”

  “No,” I told him and wondered if it was the truth.

  2

  BY MIDDAY. THE BUS LET US OUT AT THE CUSP OF

  a dense forest. Two Tibetan guides in full regalia waited for us. It was as far as the bus could go, so we all emptied into the mud and strapped our gear to our backs. Andrew spoke briefly with the guides in Tibetan, while Petras and I tied bits of leather around our exposed calves and neck to keep the leeches off.

  “Do you understand any of it?” I whispered to Petras, still keeping one ear on the dialogue between Andrew and the guides.

  “Very little. My Tibetan is shaky at best. Something about a river, following a river. The Valley of Walls is farther than Andrew originally thought.”

  “What’s the Valley of Walls?”

  “I don’t know. They keep saying …”

  “What is it?” I pressed. “What?”

  “Beyul,” he said.

  “The hell’s that?”

  “If it’s what I think it is …”

  “What is it?” I pressed on.

  Before Petras could answer, Andrew clapped. “We’ve got a few days’ hike ahead of us, gentlemen. The Valley of Walls is farther than I thought.”

  Petras and I shared a glance. This time he did wink at me, and I said, “Nice translating, chief.”

  Our backs and shoulders burdened with gear, we tromped through muddy ravines while following the two Tibetan guides and cutting swaths through the hemlock with large knives. Andrew remained close to the front of the line.

  By late afternoon, the forest opened onto a sprawling mountainside dotted with ferns. The air was clean and scented with pine. Ahead in the unreachable distance, seeming to float unanchored to the earth,the crests of the snowcapped mountains rose like the humpbacks of sea beasts. A trail of white stone led in a gradual slope to a distant valley over which an e
nchanting mist hung suspended.

  “There it is,” Petras said at my side, pointing at the line of snowcapped ridges on the horizon. “That’s where we’re headed.”

  I was not intimidated by the distance. In fact, I was invigorated at the sheer prospect of it all. My feet ate up the earth, covering the distance without difficulty, and I was hungry to keep moving even as a smoky twilight settled over the valley.

  We crossed the valley and migrated through dense trees. In the oncoming dark, monkeys chattered and howled nearby, and I frequently heard other animals—bigger animals—burst through the underbrush no more than fifteen yards away. Yak herders waded through a small stream and smiled at us with toothless mouths. They bent at the water’s edge and cleaned mud off their hands.

  As the moon climbed, we came to a low-running river, no wider than a four-lane highway. We paused while our guides shared words in low voices and tested the current with stalks of bamboo.

  After a few moments, Andrew turned to us and said, “We cross here. Once we’re on the other side, we’ll move through the trees. There’s another clearing just up the embankment. We’ll set camp there tonight.”

  I took off my boots and secured the bands of leather about my legs. Touching a toe to the surface of the water caused icy tremors to course up through the marrow in my bones.

  “Latch on,” Andrew said, tossing me a length of rope.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I know it’s shallow and there’s hardly a current, but we’re not taking any chances. You okay with that?”

  Not taking any chances? I thought. Is this the same guy who once stripped off his clothes and dived blindly off a cliff?

  “No problemo, amigo,” I intoned and hooked the rope througha clamp on my belt. I fed the remaining length of line to Petras, who did the same, and continued to pass it along to Curtis, Chad, Shotsky, and Hollinger.

  We crossed with little difficulty. At the opposite bank, after unlatching ourselves from Andrew’s rope, we surveyed each other for leeches before climbing back into our boots and ascending the vast, wooded incline toward the next clearing.

  Farther down the line, Chad began crooning Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang.” When no one joined him after several minutes, he lost interest in singing and proceeded to mutter to himself beneath his breath.

  This caused Petras to chuckle—he was right at my back as he did so; the sound was unmistakable—and in turn caused me to grin and laugh.

  Soon Curtis began belting out the song, his voice much stronger and more disciplined than Chad’s, and this time the whole company, with the exception of the two Tibetan guides and Chad, chimed in.

  “Come on, mate!” Hollinger prodded Chad from the back of the line. “Sing on, now! We know you know the words!”

  Chad joined in, adding the “ooh” and “aah” when required. All in all, it was a surprisingly adept rendition.

  When we reached the summit of the clearing, the moon was full in the sky, larger than I had ever seen it. Wisps of clouds drifted seemingly close to the ground—so close I felt I could reach out and touch them. The air was thin and cool, and my lungs were still acclimating, but I felt alive and rejuvenated.

  His hands on his hips, Andrew wolfishly surveyed our surroundings and said, “We camp here and leave tomorrow at first light.”

  I dropped my rucksack and erected my nylon tent. Beside me, Petras did the same, humming some obscure tune under his breath. The Tibetan guides established a fire at the center of camp, using bamboo stalks and dried rhododendron leaves for kindling, andbegan cooking brown rice and beans in a cast-iron pot. The smell was instantaneous.

  After peeling off the extra layers of my clothes, I slipped away from camp and passed through low-hanging moss where I urinated on a patch of saxifrage. From this height, I could hear the rushing of the river and see its meandering tendrils glittering like slicks of oil beneath the shine of the full moon. Beyond the hills, the tendrils convened into a single strong-flowing current that dropped perhaps one hundred yards beyond the valley into a steaming, misty gorge.

  Hannah would have been speechless, I thought, feeling a dull pang deep inside me.

  Back at camp, the Tibetan guides were doling out mugs of brown rice and fat red beans.

  I claimed a mug and shoveled a spoonful into my mouth. I hadn’t realized how hungry I’d been until I swallowed that first spoonful.

  “Here.” Hollinger handed me a tin cup. “Careful. It’s hot.”

  “Thanks.” The cup warmed my hands, and the tea tasted like basil.

  Hollinger nodded and walked over to his tent. Grinning, he planted an Australian flag outside the tent door, then peeled off his sodden boots and proceeded to rub his toes on a straw mat.

  I looked across the plateau and tried to make out the distant mountains, but it was too dark to see anything that far away. I could see Andrew standing on the precipice, his hands still on his hips, gazing out over the valley. He was briefly silhouetted against the moon. It was impossible not to think of that night in San Juan … which inevitably made me think of Hannah. I chased the thought away.

  Petras sat down beside me, busy with his own bowl of beans and rice. “You’ve got some stamina.”

  “I’m still wide awake. I could go another ten miles.” Truth was, as long as I was active and exerting energy, I didn’t think about drinking. Now, sitting here in the dark while the world slowly wound down, I felt my tongue growing dry and fat and that old urgency causing my

  throat to convulse reflexively.

  “Save it for tomorrow,” Petras advised.

  “Hey,” I said. “What was it you were going to say earlier today? About the guides and Andrew? You’d heard them say something—”

  “Beyul,” Petras said, staring into his bowl. I heard his spoon scrape the bottom.

  “What is it?”

  “It means ‘hidden land.’ They’re believed to be places of middle existence between our world and the next. Some lamas have spent their lives seeking out these places, interpreting the beyul to be a sort of paradise, a Shangri-la. Others believe it is where the earth is weakest, where our world is physically capable of touching the next. Many others think these hidden lands are not meant to be found and that the spirits—or nature itself—will prevent travels from uncovering their locations at all costs. I once read a book by a lama who said he was guided for a full year by a female spirit—what he called a dakini—in search of a beyul hidden beneath a glacier. He never found it, and he nearly died of exposure in the process.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” I said, yet my mind was still echoing with the concept of a female spirit, the dakini. “After a whole year with nothing to show for it.”

  “On the contrary,” Petras said. “He was one of the lucky ones. You see, most lamas who set out to find a beyul die trying to find it. Or they simply vanish and are never heard from again.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And sometimes,” Petras continued, “you may be standing in the heart of the beyul and never even know it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you aren’t attuned to it. Your spirit isn’t ready or capable of accepting it.”

  Jackals howled in the distance. I jerked my head and could see the wreath of mist rising over the plateau. It was nearly impossibleto make out the trees below, and the winding, glittering river I had witnessed less than thirty minutes ago had now vanished.

  “Is that where we’re going?” I asked. “The Canyon of Souls? Is that supposed to be one of these beyuls?”

  “I honestly don’t know. And as far as we’re concerned, I don’t think it matters.”

  I barked laughter and shook my head. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

  “It’s the truth as I know it, anyway.” He motioned in the direction of the two guides, who were asleep under a canvas lean-to. “I believe that’s what our buddy Andrew was discussing with them earlier this afternoon.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?�
�

  “I’ve been out here before. A few years ago, I came by myself and spent nine months with a rucksack over my shoulders. Spent many nights in the Western Hills, in Pokhara, and made friends in Thamel. It was a good way to clear my head, and back then I needed my head cleared. It was a rough time, but I guess we all go through that at some point.” Petras faced me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You’ve been rubbing your leg the whole time. You get hurt?”

  I was massaging the scar on my left leg. It didn’t hurt; it had just become an unconscious habit. “No, I’m fine.”

  Across from us, Chad whipped out a harmonica and began playing some unrecognizable tune. Someone laughed, and someone else—possibly Shotsky—told him to shut the hell up and where did he think he was, the old West? Right on cue, Chad told his heckler to go fuck himself. Again, laughter from some disembodied voice.

  I sighed, smiling and shaking my head. “This is going to be a long couple of weeks.”

  Petras leaned over and squeezed my shoulder. It was such a brotherly gesture that it caught me off guard and rendered me temporarily speechless. “Get some sleep,” he told me.

  I watched him rise and shamble over to his own tent, the bonfire

  causing shadows to dance across his broad shoulders.

  After he disappeared through the flaps of his tent, I shifted my gaze out over the grassy plateau, black and still in the night, to the waning fire. Beyond the fire, I could see Andrew. He was perched on a large outcrop of white stone, his legs folded beneath him, his back facing the moon. He looked lost in meditation.

  Chapter 8

  1

  IT WAS NOON. ACCORDING TO SHOTSKY’S WRIST-

  watch, and on the third day of the hike when we reached the bridge spanning the cliffs. It was an unsteady rope bridge, like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, suspended at least five stories over a chalk white river. Great fronds waved along the riverbank, but they did not fully conceal the display of jagged white stones, slick with lichen, that hugged the wet earth.

  Chad tossed a rock over the side of the cliff; we all watched it plummet to the frothing waters below. Chad whistled but didn’t say anything.