by Jeff Long
she came toward him.
'Abe,' she greeted, and opened her arms to hug him. 'I am so glad to see you.' She
smelled like coconut shampoo and Ivory soap like the woman he had gotten used to
smelling in their shared tents on the mountains. They had been apart for less than a
week, but it felt like a season since he had seen her. She had missed him. He had
missed her. He had missed them all. It was good to be down. He was dizzied by how
good it felt.
'Kelly?' he rasped.
Her embrace had flesh to it, warmth and substance. She didn't pat him quickly on
the back and release him. She held him against her for a long, long minute.
In the span of that embrace, Abe was flooded with so many thoughts that they came
to him only as a babble. He wanted to sing his joy and cry at the same time.
'You look so good,' Kelly said.
Abe knew that wasn't so. He could feel his lips splitting, literally, in a smile. He
tasted blood and knew his face was blistered and skinned and hairy and smeared with
old glacier cream. Worse than the ugliness, he stank. There had been no chance to
wash in the weeks at ABC and higher, and now he smelled the feces caking his
underwear. He was ashamed and yet strangely exhilarated. He had become a child of
the Kore Wall, a foul yeti himself. Even so, this golden woman held him.
It struck him. He had survived the mountain. And not just in the minute-to-minute
sense of dodging its missiles or making it through another night. He had turned his
back on the Hill, and however temporary this respite, it was now only an image
against the sky. He was alive.
Abe wanted to tell Kelly some of this, but when he opened his mouth all that came
out was his bronchial croak. 'Kelly,' he said again.
Kelly held him out from her and looked into his eyes. She seemed to have some
notion what his wild gleam was all about. Maybe she had suffered this same ecstasy.
'Come on, Abe,' she said, and led him by the arm. They went directly to her tent, not
to his cold, empty hospital dome. She stripped the pack off his back and made him sit.
He felt drunk and couldn't quit grinning. After the mountain's murderous violence,
this peace seemed surreal. He could actually sit here without ducking or listening for
the crack of avalanches or shivering or sucking at the air for breath. He could just sit.
Kelly disappeared, then returned with a steaming mug of tea and bright boxes of
crackers and a slab of cheese, and the crackers weren't a ball of mangled wet crumbs
and the cheese wasn't frozen to stone. 'I told the others you're down,' she said.
'Jorgens wants to debrief you right away. But I told everyone to stay away.'
The sun was warm and not a breeze was stirring. She helped him from his sweater,
which was stiff with old blood. 'Christ, Abe,' she said when the gash in his arm came in
view. 'Was there some kind of massacre up there?'
'It was...' Abe stopped, trying to recall the ordeal.
'I asked Krishna to heat some water,' Kelly said. 'I'll wash you. Then we'll clean that
arm. And there's time to sleep before dinner. Here. I want you to sleep in my tent.'
Abe felt tears running down his face.
'Thank you,' he creaked.
She reached for his hand and squeezed it. 'You're down,' Kelly assured him, knowing
his disbelief. 'It's time to rest.'
At dinner that night, Abe related the latest news on their progress to Four. He
described Daniel's fall and the bad night at the cave and Daniel and Gus's continuing
effort to establish Camp Five. Freshly washed and shaven, wearing a clean white
T-shirt with a tequila advertisement on the chest, he sat at the table and felt profound
contentment. His arm was throbbing under a bandage that stood brilliant against his
bronzed flesh. Kelly had cleaned and stitched it for him, and Abe was getting drowsy
from a Percodan he'd taken for the pain. He would sleep well tonight.
With grave courtesy, Krishna served the climbers plates piled high with steaming
rice and lentils and Tibetan dumplings. Krishna surveyed the general vicinity to make
sure people had the necessary amenities – a spoon, a bottle of ketchup, some Tabasco
sauce – then hustled back to stir his pots and start supper for the Sherpas who sat in
the corner by Krishna's stoves, warming themselves, waiting politely for the members
to finish. Their happy chattering blended into the background noise of the stove roar
and the wind whipping a loose cord against the tent.
People reacted to Abe's news as if Daniel had just subdued a dragon and made their
valley safe. They were excited and grateful and eager to have him return to their
ranks. Even Jorgens and Thomas were pleased. The summit was within striking
distance now. Their long shot was suddenly much shorter. It would be difficult to fail.
'It will be different this time,' Stump said. 'I've found the bug in our radios. This time
we have communications.'
'This time we're rested,' Robby added.
'Then we're agreed,' said Jorgens. 'We go for it. Three days,' Jorgens said. 'Then we
go back up. We finish our business.'
They had been down for several days already, some for more than a week, and the
hiatus showed in their faces. Their concentration camp visage had fattened. The
faraway stares, the bony grimaces, even their raggedy, emaciated beards had filled
out. The mineral blueness of their flesh had softened and receded, leaving them with
the color of life.
'Three days,' Thomas seconded.
'And then,' someone pronounced, 'home.'
'Meanwhile,' another voice piped up. 'I have for you a surprise.' It was Li. Bundled to
the skull in expedition gear, he stood from his chair at the end of the wicker table. He
threw back the cherry-red parka hood and smiled at them, though the kerosene light
pulled out the struck hollows and bony edges of his face and it was hard to tell if he
was happy or in pain. His parka and Gore-Tex overpants had the crisp spotlessness of
a dress uniform and appeared to have suffered little exposure to the elements for
which they were intended.
'Good night,' he greeted them with a lecturer's formality. He had a starved man's
gleam in his eye, and his look of loneliness was almost obscene. Abe had forgotten him
completely.
'Tomorrow, for you, my friends and guests, is the viewing of Shangri-La,' he said.
Abe was shocked by how much Li's accent had thickened over the last nine weeks. His
syntax had slipped radically. It was the altitude and the forced hermitage, Abe knew.
They were lapsing, all of them.
Li continued with a showman's pitch. 'The real Shangri-La, you see.'
'The Rongbuk monastery,' Carlos blurted aloud.
'Yes, Mr. Crowell.' Li beamed. 'Sixty years ago, Mr. James Hilton wrote his book. He
based it on reports from early British expeditions to Qomolangma.' Qomolangma –
the Pinyin bastardization of the Tibetan Chomolungma. Mount Everest. 'He has a
pass, Shangri-La. We have a pass, Chengri La. He puts Utopia in a very high Chinese
monastery. We have this place. Rongbuk Monastery. Only now, not so Utopia.'
At the mention of a monastery, Abe remembered his epileptic monk and wondered
where the poor boy had disappeared to. He made a mental note to ask Nima. He
> couldn't remember the boy's name, and that gave him a start. But then he couldn't
remember Jamie's face either, and for some reason that evened out his losses.
'We can actually go there?' Carlos asked. It was easy to see that one did not visit the
monastery with ease.
'It is my pleasure,' Li said, 'I am authorizing this for you.'
'Can we bring cameras?' Stump asked.
'Of course,' Li said. 'Cameras. Video cameras. Everything. You will see archaeology
of old Tibet. And something else. I have learned that tomorrow Tibetan nationals will
perform an archaic ceremony. Very special. Very dark. Very educational.'
P. T. Barnum could not have done a better job. The climbers were hooked. Down at
his end of the table, Carlos whispered the word puja. He was convinced they were
about to get another blessing. Li smiled broadly at their enthusiasm.
As Abe and Kelly returned to her tent, he looked up at the ghostly white massif of
Everest. Daniel and Gus were up there somewhere, probably holed up tonight in the
cave at 8,000 meters. There was something vaguely mythical about the notion – a
man and a woman in the mountain, their light mixing with the stars. 'I hope they're
okay up there,' Abe murmured to Kelly as they were falling to sleep. He had his good
arm around her shoulders and she was tucked close against him, each in their own
bag. Chastity had little to do with their separation tonight. Abe was going to be in a lot
of pain soon. The local anesthetic was wearing off and his arm was starting to throb.
'I wish they would come down with us,' Abe said.
'Sleep, Abe.' Kelly rolled her back to him. They slept.
Early next morning, in the spirit of a picnic, the climbers took off downvalley along the
road that led out to the Pang La and out to the world. Bounding through the rich
oxygen, they reached the monastery by ten and headed up a wide stone staircase that
snaked around the mountainside.
The sun was huge and white in a sky that verged on black outer space. Abe sweated,
but the sweat evaporated the instant it hit the dry air. They carried rocks to throw at
stray dogs, for there were Tibetan settlements nearby.
As they climbed the staircase, dust coated the sunblock on their faces. Some of them
had elected to paint their noses with a bright green sun cream, their lips with blue,
and that contributed to the festive spirit. Abe stuck with plain white. After an hour
their faces were mostly just brown with layered dirt.
The staircase turned around a ridge and quite suddenly the fortress – or dzong –
that had once protected the region, or what was left of it, unfolded before them. Acre
after steep acre, the dzong's remains lay in collapse, sprawled in terraces across the
mountainside. Like a miniature Great Wall, a serpentine wall climbed straight up the
incline. What buildings still stood were in pieces. Not one had a roof. The wind keened
through the gaps and across disintegrating walls as if this were a vast stone whistle.
The climbers were quick to unsheathe their cameras. Once before, on a trip to Inca
ruins in Peru, Abe had observed how gothic settings were irresistible to the Western
tourist. Decay and apocalypse made for excellent spice in home slide shows, and this
dzong was saturated with both.
Childlike, the climbers fanned out. They scrambled into deserted rooms, proving for
themselves that living people had once eaten and prayed and slept here. A narrow
labyrinth turned into a series of cells with entrance holes barely the size of a rib cage.
They decided these must be meditation chambers, where solitary monks had lived for
months and years at a time. Faded paintings of Buddhas and pop-eyed demons
decorated some of the leeward walls. Some of the listing walls showed traces of old
orange and white wash, brilliant against the darker earth. Here and there, they found
caves in the hillside filled with big heaps of clay tablets, each stamped with Buddhist
figures. Some caves held thousands of the little plaques. Abe knelt in front of one such
pile. The tablets were made of worthless clay, but they sparkled like Spanish
doubloons in the brilliant light.
'Souvenirs,' said Li. 'Yes, Doctor. Go ahead. Take some. These are not precious
antiquities. It is permitted under the law.'
'But they're religious, aren't they?' Abe was hesitant, even though his daypack was
wide open. He wanted to bring some of these tablets home. How else could he ever
prove that something so common could be so beautiful?
'Artifacts of a dead religion,' Li said. 'And anyway, they will turn to dust here.'
The monastery and its fortress had apparently been dead for centuries. Abe
contemplated aloud what sort of holocaust had been visited upon this civilization.
'I wonder what brought this all down,' he said. 'Drought? Or maybe famine? Or
plague?' Immediately he felt like a gringo touring overgrown pyramids in the Yucatán.
Li didn't answer right away. Finally he said, 'Earthquakes,' with a sobriety that was
almost mournful.
'Here?' Abe was surprised. The land had such an immovable quality, a look of
infinite gravity and stasis.
'Oh, yes,' Li expanded. 'The Himalaya is a very young mountain range. The Indian
subcontinent is all the time pushing against the Chinese land mass. There are many
earthquakes here.'
Abe ventured that they must have struck a long time ago.
Again Li looked at him curiously. 'Very long ago,' he said.
'That's what it looks like. Centuries ago.'
'Yes,' said Li.
Like clockwork, the afternoon winds began at high noon, three o'clock Beijing time.
Slapped by the wind, the climbers hastily regrouped and headed on higher.
As the group strung out along the trail, Abe walked with Carlos in the rear. Carlos's
sprained ankle had worsened and he was crutching along with two ski poles. The hike
was painful, but he was determined to keep up. Abe shared what he'd learned about
this place.
'Earthquakes?' Carlos barked. 'The L.O. said that?' He came to a halt and turned.
Abe faced his own reflection in Carlos's sunglasses.
'Look around,' Carlos said. He pointed at a building and then a section of the wall,
then more structures. 'See those holes? You ever heard of an earthquake that
punches round holes in a building?'
Abe hadn't.
'Artillery,' Carlos said. 'Chinese artillery practice.' Then he went on walking.
They reached the backside of the mountain and a whole system of hidden valleys
opened magically in the distance. Their flat spacious floors were outlined with
commune plots. Abe could just barely make out a line of tiny people working in
rhythmic unison, an almost indiscernible ripple of labor upon the earth. The wind
blew. The line of workers shifted like a slow tide.
Suddenly the smell of pines washed across them. The aroma was quite powerful,
then it was gone.
There was not a tree in sight. Indeed, Abe hadn't seen a single tree on the whole
Tibetan plateau. And yet, suddenly, for that brief moment, the air was thick and
sweet with cedar. It was like spying a rainbow in a desert. A few moments later, the
rich scent returned, then drifted away again.
'You smell it, too?' Carlos inhaled the breeze.
/> 'Pine,' Abe said. 'Cedar pine.'
They followed the corkscrewing trail around to a second shoulder of the mountain.
Fifteen minutes higher, they reached a ridge where the others were drinking water,
waiting for them, taking pictures. They had stopped beside a pile of mani stones.
There were several hundred of them in the heap, each rounded by ancient rivers,
each carved with prayers in beautiful Tibetan calligraphy.
Atop the pile lay an animal skull, carved and painted with prayers. The rocks were
piled at random, but the skull was lodged in place with great care. The display sang of
a people embedded in the land. Robby fired off some more Kodachrome, angling for
the light.
'Folk art,' Li said. 'I am reminded of primitive cave paintings.' For all his gab, The
L.O. seemed to be getting nervous, as if they were straying into dangerous regions.
'You guys smell the pine smoke?' asked Carlos.
Stump pointed to the top of the mountain.
Now Abe saw white rags of smoke and smelled the smell again. The smoke was
whipping down from a crumbling building which crowned the very summit.
'We are on time,' Li said.
The trail led up to a breach in the crowning structure. The mountainside dropped
away beneath the breach. Loose rocks spilled down from this gap, the leftovers from
the old wall. Using their hands, the climbers cautiously pulled up through the breach.
Nothing could have prepared Abe for what lay within the walls.
'Oh lord,' breathed Jorgens.
It was a lost world in here.
A manmade forest of prayer flags surrounded them. It engulfed them, a dense
breathtaking grove of red and yellow and blue and white squares of cotton. Each flag
was blockprinted with Tibetan prayers. Each fluttered rapidly upon a thin willow
branch that was bunched with many dozens of others. More of these bunches were
planted in haphazard piles of mani stones. Some were new and bright, others bleached
and rotted by the sun.
The summit structure was barely eighty feet across and even less wide. But no
cathedral in the world could ever compete with this holy place, broken, bare to the
sky.
For a minute the climbers just stood where they'd surfaced through the breach,
listening to the cotton stroking infinity. Kelly's mouth was wide open. Robby doffed his
Dalton Hardware cap and a whole floodplain of dry wrinkles broke out across his