by Jeff Long
a late start from Kathmandu, they had reached the border too late for crossing, so the
climbers had slept where they could, on one of the big Indian Tata trucks or under
them. Hauling himself out by one of the worn black tires, Abe squinted up and around
at this borderland in the light of day.
He had come prepared for a landscape of collision, a place where two continental
plates were warring for dominance. What he hadn't prepared for was this: a single
bridge wedged at the base of an emerald green gorge, half a mile deep. On either side,
monkeys barked in the trees and thousand-foot waterfalls threaded walls thick with
rhododendron and pine.
They had spent six days in Kathmandu, speedy with jet lag, racing to finish stocking
the expedition with food from the local bazaar and with secondhand mountain gear
from the trek shops and from other expeditions. With his partner Gus, Daniel had
already headed north into Tibet to weed through the red tape and choose a site for
their base camp at Everest. Abe was glad for that. For the time being it was enough to
get acquainted with these strangers and this new land.
From their moment of landing, Abe had been enchanted. Kathmandu was a vortex
of centuries swirling upon themselves. Electric lines threaded among thirteen-tiered
temples. Honda motorcycles wove between ambling sacred cows. Ancient stone gods
peeked out of brick walls or peered up from holes in the asphalt. There was a layering
of time here that sucked at Abe's spirit, and at every turn he felt himself pulled
deeper and harder into Asia.
Yesterday they had mounted a jitney bus and the Tata trucks and the city had
given way to countryside and the countryside to mountains. The green and red hills
with their sleepy cattle and terraced fields had slipped by. The Kathmandu highway
had turned into this mean dirt strip hugging a white river.
High in the distance, in a scoop of morning sunlight, a Tibetan village lay carved into
the stone and clouds. Down here the air was warm and sticky and crowded with nasal
childlike songs from a shopkeeper's radio. Every breath tasted like truck fuel and last
night's rice and lentils. But up there, high overhead in Tibet, it looked chilly and
remote and peaceful.
Someone came up behind Abe and pointed at the distant floating village. It was
Jorgens, Abe could tell by the hand – square and veined like a miner's, with latticed,
weather-beaten skin – and because only Jorgens had the ease to go around slapping
backs or propping his arm on shoulders. Most of the climbers were still stalking wary
circles around one another, snuffling for aggression or dominance like pack wolves. In
a fit of bonhomie at the Kathmandu airport, Jorgens had even called them 'kids,'
exposing his wish that they be one big family. Abe canted his head enough to catch the
cropped monastic tonsure and the clunky horn-rims that ex-Marines seemed to
favor. 'Breakfast,' Jorgens grunted, and then he was gone, rousting climbers from
their nooks and crannies by the roadside.
Abe looked around him as the group rose up from the ground. There were leaves in
their hair and bags beneath their eyes. The ones who had slept under the trucks
sported oil stains, and now Abe found a greasy stripe on his own jacket. Half of them
limped from old sports injuries or tendinitis sustained in training for this expedition.
They did not inspire confidence as a collection of world-class athletes coiled to strike
the highest mountain.
Their Chinese permit listed them as members of the U.S. Ultimate Summit
Expedition to the North Face of Qomolangma – or Everest. But one of the climbers –
probably Robby with his mouth or Thomas, in another fit of forlorn criticism – had
dubbed them the Yeti, and it stuck. Composed of fifteen testicles, four breasts, and
'nine too many brains,' they were indeed a creature fit for the mountains. Including
airfare, gear, food, permit fees and bribes, it was costing over a half million dollars to
stitch together this monster. Its life expectancy was a hundred days, though just now,
after a single night in the open, the team looked mostly dead.
They limped and shrugged across the Friendship Bridge that spanned the border.
All their gear had to be off-loaded here and then loaded onto Chinese government
trucks hired at exorbitant rates. And because a section of road to town was in poor
repair, the bus chartered to bring up the climbers had been canceled. They would
have to walk for their breakfast.
On the far side of the bridge, four People's Liberation Army soldiers awaited the
expedition, their pea-green uniform jackets unbuttoned and their cheeks chapped the
color of radishes. They stared without amusement as several climbers capered back
and forth across the international line for each other's cameras.
At the end of an hour of hiking, the string of hungry climbers reached the village,
walking past shacks made of radiant blond pinewood saturated with dew. A waterfall
sluiced beneath the roadway and rocketed out into free space, springing hundreds of
feet into the depths. They came to a concrete arch marking the customs entry point
and overhead a huge fire-red Chinese flag billowed in the mountain air. Abe took a
deep lungful of the dream.
Big Tibetan half-breeds with gold teeth and white cotton gloves drove them up out of
the gorge and onto the high plateau where they connected with a new Old Silk Road, a
two-lane bulldozed road that extended from China all the way to Pakistan. To Abe,
the ancient trade route promised riches and forgotten cities. But around every bend it
delivered only more mountains and more emptiness.
'A war road,' Carlos Crowell called it. He and Abe were riding side by side atop a
canvas tarp in the bed of one truck. Along this road, Carlos said, the People's Republic
kept Tibet garrisoned with occupation troops and stocked with everything from rice
to nuclear weapons. Along this road, back to China, flowed commune crops and
minerals and what was left of Tibet's forests.
'They've stripped her clean,' Carlos said. Even stating the facts depressed Carlos,
who felt he had a special connection to Tibet, and indeed most of the Third World.
This was his fourth time here.
Whippet-thin, Carlos was an ex-Peace Corps hand who had served in Rwanda a
decade ago, then drifted on to become a part-time dharma bum and entrepreneur. He
knew just enough Asian slang to keep everyone wondering how much he really did
know. Part of his uniform was the fresh set of red puja threads on his wrist from a
blessing he'd arranged for himself back in Kathmandu. At his throat hung a turquoise
cylinder from his New Age import-export shop in Eugene, and his wispy ponytail was
pulled back to show two tiny gold earrings.
Most of the other climbers tended to treat Carlos's colorful spiels about the
holocaust that China had unleashed upon Tibet as ghost stories rather than real
history. The stories were fabulous and gruesome and no one paid much attention
except for Jorgens, who had instructed Carlos to zip his yap once they crossed the
border. 'A million-plus Tibetans snuffed since 1959,' Carlos regaled Abe as they
motored along. 'That's one out of every six people here starved, shot,
bayoneted,
burned, crucified or beaten to death with iron bars. Manifest Destiny, Han-style.' His
claims were horrific, but the land seemed too barren and empty to support such
bloodshed. Certainly there were no bodies heaped along the roadside. For the sake of
keeping up his end of the conversation, Abe said so.
'Oh, there's killing fields here. They stretch for acres. Miles. I haven't found them
yet, but I'm looking, man. Mountains of skulls with a single bullet hole through the
buttside of each.'
They managed to ride in silence for a while, then Carlos leaned close. 'I shouldn't
ever have come back here,' he said.
Abe had no idea what he meant, but it sounded circular and self-absorbed the way
Carlos liked to be. 'Back to Tibet?' Abe asked.
'Everest,' Carlos said. 'Here we go again. Renting the mountain from a regime that
doesn't even own it. Paying lip service to butchers.'
'But all we're doing is climbing,' Abe said.
'Yeah, yeah. I've heard that one. All the world's a playground for us climbers. The
thing is, every time one of us comes and climbs here, we kiss the Chinese ass.'
'Well, I guess I don't know about that.'
'That's okay. You're ignorant,' Carlos said, but it wasn't meant as an insult. 'You
don't know what it's like here. I do.'
'Ignorance is bliss,' Abe lamely offered.
Carlos shook his head bitterly. 'Maybe so. But one thing's sure. Knowledge is
complicity.'
For the rest of the day, their convoy of three army surplus trucks spewed huge
roostertails of dust across the land. The plateau was barren. The land lay as flat as a
Wyoming oil range – except to the south. All along the right-hand horizon lay the
Himalayas, abrupt and enormous. Unlike the Nepalese side of the chain with its
foothills and forests and paddies, there was no preface to these eruptions. Abe couldn't
get over that. There was nothing intermediate between the extremes.
Human beings – even animals or vegetation – were practically an event. At one
point, Carlos thrust his arm out. 'Would you look at that,' he said.
Three horsemen were riding past, dour and fierce-looking. Two wore Aussie-style
cowboy hats, the third a fur cap. One carried a rifle with a twin-pronged stand made
of long animal horns.
'Khambas,' Carlos said. 'Once upon a time the CIA trained a bunch of those dudes as
guerrillas.'
Abe waited. Even when he was serious, Carlos seemed to be pulling your leg.
'No, no, it's true, man. They used to fly guys like them to the Rocky Mountains, an
old army camp in Colorado. Taught them, armed them, had them running ops across
the Nepal border. They'd blow up roads, attack convoys or outposts. But you know
how that goes. After a while the Agency pulled the plug. The spooks call these kind of
guys Dixie cups. Use once, throw away.'
The horsemen had long braids bound with chile-red twine. None of the three wasted
so much as a look at the truck convoy. Abe reached for his camera, but already they
were gone.
They reached a cold little village called Shekar at five and drove straight to a
concrete hostel provided by the Chinese Mountaineering Association. The village
stood at 11,000 feet. Their Chinese liaison officer – their keeper while they were
in-country – met them with a smile. 'There's one of the butchers,' Carlos muttered.
'We belong to him now.'
Wearing a crisp yellow windbreaker with ULTIMATE SUMMIT on the back and along
one arm, the L.O. was easy to recognize. 'Welcome to my country,' he greeted them.
His name was Li Deng and he was tall and well educated, a Han apparatchik from
Beijing, maybe thirty-five years old. He spoke superb British English and occupied
some high rank in the Chinese Mountaineering Association, a government bureau.
With his brand-new clean pump-up basketball shoes and hundred-dollar Revo
sunglasses – all expedition issue – he didn't look very Marxist or genocidal.
There was no heat in the rooms and what illumination there was came from a bulb
dangling by exposed wires. An industrial-strength quilt covered Abe's bed. All the
rooms lacked to be jail cells were metal bars. The CMA was charging over a hundred
dollars per climber for the lodging, but no one complained because that was the price
of climbing in Tibet.
Abe stood at the window. The truckyard was losing its daylight and Abe shivered,
unprepared for the teeth of this highland cold. Tonight's roommate was Robby, a
spidery carpenter with an old two-tone crewcut gone to seed. He was flopped out atop
his quilt, prattling on about about how he'd stayed in this same miserable hostel in '87
on his way to another mountain, Shisha Pangma. He ranked staying here alongside
giving blood – he had a needle phobia – and swimming in the ocean – sharks.
In the window's reflection, Abe could see Robby sitting on his bed. The lightbulb cast
his eyes into shadowy sockets and there was no mirth on his lips. His Great Plains
inflection blunted any intended humor, another misfire. He seemed trapped in his own
monologue.
Abe had a headache and didn't feel like conversation, and it was too early in the
expedition to be telling Robby to pipe down, so he stood there and tuned out, watching
the truckyard. A scarred black mongrel was creeping beyond stone's throw of a pack
of ragged children. Further out, the notorious Tibetan wind skirled dust clouds that
blotted out the middle distance, but not the distant Himalayas.
Abe pressed his fingertips against the dusty Chinese glass and pondered the ghostly
scenery. There was mystery out there and he welcomed it. Absentmindedly he
started tracing a silhouette of the mountains on the cold glass. A moment later Abe
noticed the idle sketch under his finger and stopped immediately. It looked, for all the
world, like the lifeline on an EEG readout. He lifted away his finger before the line
went flat on the far horizon, then chided himself for being superstitious.
It was a forgivable primitivism. They were already beginning to starve for oxygen.
Abe could sense it. From the medical literature he'd steeped himself in, Abe felt well
versed in the effects of high altitude. Even so he was surprised to see the faint blue
coloration underneath his fingernails already.
From here on out, they would be living in a constant state of hypoxia, or oxygen
starvation. In fact there was just as much oxygen in the air – 21 percent – here and
on the top of Everest as at sea level. What varied was the ambient pressure needed to
force the oxygen from the lungs into the bloodstream. So they would have to breath
more air. Their bodies would produce more red blood cells to carry the oxygen. Their
blood would thicken almost to syrup, forcing their hearts to labor harder. Even the
youngest and fittest climbers would soon run an increased risk of heart failure. The
margins of normal health would wither away. And above 22,000 feet or so, their
bodies would slowly begin dying.
Out of his crash course in high-altitude physiology, Abe had derived one bit of
poetry. It turned out that even among people with a genetic tolerance for high
altitude, people like the Sherpas or Peruvian miners, life inside the womb was, in
effect, close to a sea-level existence. Newborns had to acclimatize like mountaineers.
Mountaineers had to adapt like newborns. For all its jagged contours, the world at
high altitude presented a level playing field.
Abe tried to identify some of the far peaks, but without luck. Over the years, he had
memorized the contours of Everest and Lhotse and Makalu and Cho Oyu and others
without stopping to think that all the pictures showed the range from the Nepal side.
Here in Tibet, the profiles were not only reversed, but distorted.
When Abe asked which were which, Robby said, 'Forget it. We're on the backside of
the moon now. Our labels don't count here.' But then he joined Abe at the window and
pointed out different mountains and gave their names. Even with Robby's help,
though, the range didn't become any more familiar to Abe, and that just made it seem
more alien.
'And that there's the Big E,' Robby said, pointing at a small, triangular bump to the
south.
'Sorry?' He wasn't paying attention.
'You know, like E Sharp, Big White,' Robby jived.
'Chomolungma, Mother Goddess. The Hill.'
Abe nodded: Everest. It looked very small from here.
'I wish we were there already,' Robby said. 'Daniel's been out there a week now,
nothing to do but smell the roses and do the hang with old Gus. But then luck's his
middle name.'
'Daniel?' Abe said. 'I never thought of him as lucky. Just the opposite.' Abe had
made a pact with himself not to preface his meeting with Daniel with expedition
gossip. But here it was getting handed to him and it was hard to turn away.
'Not lucky? Come on.'
Abe kept it general. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'I don't know Daniel. But the
man's lost his toes. He's broken bones. Taken bad falls. And he's tried Everest how
many times now, and never made the top.' And seen his young fiancée eaten alive by
a mountain, Abe almost added. So far as he could tell, no one on the expedition knew
about the nightmare that bound Daniel and Abe.
'Yeah,' Robby agreed, 'but he's alive.' His eyebrows jumped electrically.
'That's something,' Abe conceded.
'I'd trade him any day. You know what he does for a living?'
Abe didn't.
'He's a crash dummy. A technical adviser to manufacturers of climbing equipment.
He has to try out all the new toys. He has to climb full-time. And not on scruffy little