Sleeping Tigers

by Robinson, Holly

  A head protruded from inside a heap of blankets on the left side of the room. I recognized Cam’s tangled pale hair, the only part of him that I could see, and called his name from the doorway. He didn’t answer.

  I approached slowly, watching my brother closely for signs of movement, suddenly terrified that he’d died up here without anybody noticing. But no: Cam’s hands were moving. He made shadows dart this way and that against the wall, the way he had when we were children entertaining ourselves at night: This is a wolf eating a rabbit, this is a princess trapped in the jaws of a lion. Preparing ourselves for epic lives, we giggled our way through preposterous shadow plays, using flashlights after our mother hushed us and told us to go to sleep.

  “Cam?” I stood directly behind him. My brother faced the wall. He held something in one hand, a small plastic cube with an abstract metal sculpture inside it.

  “Cam?” I repeated. The wool smelled like a combination of urine and wet goat. I moved to stand between my brother and the wall. “Cameron!” I said sharply.

  He shifted his weight slightly and squinted up at me. “Ruth?”

  Who was Ruth? I got down on my knees next to the lantern and touched his forehead. Cam’s skin was hot and dry, almost papery, and his blue eyes had lost their luster and were sunk deep into the sockets. He had a raging fever. His face was covered with a short, scraggly beard, and the slender stalk of his neck protruded from a deep valley of sharp collarbones.

  How long had my brother been sick? I couldn’t remember what Jon had said; my own eyes were threatening to close and my muscles were on fire.

  “Cam? It’s me, Jordan,” I said gently.

  Cam stared at me without comprehension. I began to panic, my own breath coming in short, dry gasps. “Cam,” I said again. “It’s Jordy. I’m here.”

  He rolled onto his back, offering up the plastic cube in the palm of his hand for my inspection. “Treasure,” he said.

  I still didn’t know if he recognized me. “Cam, do you know who I am?”

  My brother nodded, then turned his gaze back on the cube. “This pyramid lets the old souls come to you,” he said, his speech slightly slurred. “But be careful. If you hold it more than a few minutes, you get a headache.” He set the cube down on the floor and closed his eyes.

  What the hell was he talking about? I studied the room, trying to calm myself. The only window was covered with plastic which rattled with rain. There were more books than gear, and a few t-shirts and bandanas were draped over a wash line.

  Whose were they? Little in the room seemed to belong to Cam, other than a small heap of clothing next to his nest of holey blankets and a tin cup like a prisoner’s. The cup was empty. When did he last have anything to eat or drink?

  I reached out and shook Cam’s shoulders. “How long have you been here?”

  My brother opened his eyes again and grinned crookedly. I inhaled sharply at the sight of Paris’s face mirrored in her father’s. “Now, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? How long we’ve been here?” He started humming an unrecognizable tune.

  “You need a doctor.” By now, I was talking more to myself than to Cam. “How long have you had this fever? When was the last time you ate?”

  Cam stared at me, his gaze nearly vacant but for the reflection of the flickering lamplight. “My fever’s going down again now. Before, I was shaking so bad, it felt like my bones were going to fly out of my skin. Weird stuff. I was, like, hallucinating and shitting blood.” He shuddered. “I can’t eat until I’ve starved the bugs out of my body. Fasting’s the only way to drive them out. I’m staying up here to avoid temptation.” He sighed. “Did you know they make apple pancakes here? That’s the first thing I’ll have when I’m cured.”

  “You’re not going to cure yourself this way. You’ll just dry out like a locust shell.”

  Cam shook a bony finger at me. “Don’t take care of me. I’m on a mission. I have to take care of the world before it will take care of me.”

  I reached out and touched his forehead again. His fever must be 103, at least. Between that and fasting, Cam could very well be hallucinating, drifting in and out of a trance state. It was nearly dark now; I would have to wait until morning to descend the mountain again into Pokhara. There must be a clinic there, and I could get cell service, call my mother. I had to let her know that I’d found Cam. I could call David, too. He would know how to help my brother.

  Cam had fallen asleep. I needed a bathroom desperately. I made my way back down to the kitchen. The Spaniard was still playing cards. I decided to try my own luck rather than ask him, and passed through the curtain covering the door to the right. The long room behind the striped cotton was furnished with several chairs, a small table occupied by a battered Scrabble game, and a platform bed.

  Domingo and Melody were lying on the bed side-by-side without touching. Domingo snored with the uneven, guttural sounds of a faulty lawnmower. Melody heard me enter and sat up slowly, straight-backed as a zombie rising in a coffin. She looked like the living dead, too, with black circles beneath her eyes and a cauliflower complexion. She stared at me as if I were a ghost.

  “You’re Cam’s sister,” she said.

  I wanted to ask her questions, but first things first. “I’m looking for a bathroom,” I said.

  Melody nodded slowly, as if there were nothing surprising at all about me jetting all the way to the Himalayas to find a bathroom. “There isn’t one,” she said.

  This was not good news. “So what do I do?”

  She pointed through the kitchen door. “You have to go outside. Head for the stone wall near the river. There’s an outhouse, but don’t try it. It’s overflowing because of the rains. Everyone just goes behind the wall. Left side of the wall for pissing, right side for everything else. Watch your step. Not everybody follows the rules.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Welcome to the Kingdom of Nepal.” Melody granted me the shadow of a smile.

  With a wince, I slid my feet back into my cold, sodden hiking boots and ventured forth. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but by now it was completely dark. The river crashed angrily against its banks nearby. With my luck, I’d probably fall in and be dashed against the rocks before I even had a chance to pee.

  The outhouse appeared suddenly in the mist, a crooked gray shack with a metal roof. I sidestepped to the right of it and squatted behind the stone wall, taking in the outlines of the village houses huddled on either side of the river. The water glinted a metallic gray, occasionally sending up a white plume. Something stank of sulfur and minerals. The hot springs, maybe. A couple of water buffalo wandered along the river banks, snorting and then breaking into a trot, tossing their heads.

  Back inside, Melody was in the kitchen. I took off my boots again and set them near the fire. Melody handed me a cup of tea, but her eyes wandered and I knew that she was looking for Jon.

  I cradled the mug in my hands, hoping the water had been boiled, and glanced at the Spaniard. He was softly cursing over his hand of cards. Apparently he’d failed to beat himself at his own rigged game. “What’s wrong with Cam?” I asked Melody.

  Melody wore a gray sari that had come partly unwound and dragged on the floor. She hoisted herself onto the edge of the table and perched there with her broad flanks nearly on top of the cards scattered on the table. The Spaniard gave her rear a push, but she ignored him. “I don’t know. Domingo and I have been helping Jon in the orchard, but Cam’s been sleeping for like five days. When he’s not puking, that is.”

  “Ouch. Poor guy. What does he have?”

  “Probably the same parasites we’ve all got, only worse,” she said. “Jon wanted to check out another government volunteer program near Chitwan, something to do with orchids, so we stopped there for a while. The mosquitoes are bad in the lowlands at this time of year, and the water is even worse. We purified the water but every one of us got sick anyway. Except Jon, of course,” she added. “He drinks right out of the riv
ers, and look at him. Amazing.”

  Pretty hard to look at a guy who’s never around, I thought, but there was no need to belabor the obvious to Melody. At least Jon didn’t leave her behind with Val. Where Jon was concerned, that probably counted as a major life commitment.

  “Has Cam seen a doctor?”

  Melody shook her head. “He’s fasting to rid himself of the parasites.” She pinched a handful of her own sari-covered stomach in disgust. “We all fasted, but I’m the only one who still managed to gain weight.”

  I couldn’t see how parasites would be driven out by fasting, but maybe they knew something I didn’t. “Why didn’t any of you take Cam to the doctor, if he’s so much worse than you are?”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “Cam has no interest in doctors. He wants to beat this thing on his own.”

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked, exasperated. “That’s idiotic and cruel. You don’t just let somebody lie around with a 103-degree fever for five days!”

  Melody bristled. “What did you expect me to do? Carry Cam down the mountain when he’d just fight me the whole way? Don’t start giving me shit just because your brother is so fucking determined to make things harder for the rest of us! If it were up to me, I would have made him stay in Berkeley to deal with things there. Jon’s the one who insisted that Cam needed to do this, too, to prove that he was worthwhile or something. I think Jon was afraid to leave him on his own.”

  “Sorry. You’re right. This isn’t your problem.” I set my mug down on the table. The Spaniard immediately picked up my tea and drank it, slurping noisily.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” I flicked the man’s hairy cheating wrist with two fingers so hard that the tea splashed out of the cup and onto his hand.

  “Putana!” the man yelped, setting the mug down. He narrowed his eyes at me, then lost interest and picked up his cards again.

  Melody grinned. “Meet Fernando, our resident bastard,” she said. “He’s hanging out here until it’s cool enough to go back to the beach in Goa.”

  Without taking his eyes off the cards, Fernando reached over and pinched Melody’s hip. “You,” he said solemnly, “are a big pest whore.”

  Melody rolled her eyes.

  “So how do I go about renting a room in this place?” I asked. “Or do I have to volunteer?”

  “You pay either way.”

  “You pay to volunteer?” I was incredulous.

  She shrugged. “Nepal needs the money. Ostensibly, the money is supposed to go to the lodge and the people in the village, but I have my doubts. Anyway, you pay the girl who works in the kitchen. It’s the equivalent of ten dollars a day for all meals included and a bed in the loft. Everyone calls her ‘Didi.’ Domingo and I are sleeping downstairs, but there’s room in the women’s loft. You can wash at the pump outside, in the courtyard, or bathe in the hot springs along the river.”

  I thanked her and climbed upstairs again to check on Cam before I settled in for the night.

  Cam heard my footsteps and stirred to a half-sitting position. “Jordy? How’s Mom?” he croaked.

  I sat down beside him and studied his face, surprised that he would ask about our mother. Maybe Cam knew how much she worried about him and felt guilty despite his own best efforts to forget that he even had parents.

  “She’s on the outs with Dad.” I hesitated, thinking I might add something about Mom taking care of Paris right now, then decided against it when a deep cough rattled Cam’s chest. We could talk about Paris when Cam felt better.

  “Mom is always on the outs with Dad,” he wheezed then. “That’s her M.O.”

  “This is serious. She left him this time,” I said. “She’s with me in San Francisco.”

  I thought of my mother, and of Paris, too, who at this hour was probably in her high chair, happily gumming a bagel or scooping up oatmeal with her fingers. I turned the knob on Cam’s lantern slightly to see Cam’s face better. The raindrops sounded as big as golf balls on the metal roof above us.

  “Mom really left Dad? Yeah, I’d say that’s different,” Cam agreed softly, and drifted off to sleep again.

  I settled on the floor beside him and leaned my head against the wall. Lulled by the drone of the rain on the roof, I didn’t even change out of my damp clothes before falling asleep beside my little brother.

  Cam was still sleeping soundly when I managed to unfold my stiff limbs the next morning. My mouth tasted like dead water buffalo.

  I found the well in front of the inn. Water gushed from an iron pipe. The mountain water was icy, but I forced myself to hang my head beneath the spray, gasping, and scrubbed beneath my t-shirt before brushing my teeth, trying not to swallow any water. Probably too cold for parasites here, I reassured myself, just as I was startled by a white horse wandering through the courtyard with a bell tied around its neck.

  As the animal reached the edge of the courtyard and nosed among some tall weeds, the young Nepalese woman who had tended the fire last night jumped out from behind the stone wall and grinned at me, revealing a Jack-O-Lantern’s scattered arrangement of teeth. In this light, I could see that she was only a girl, really, still in her teens, but with an old woman’s hunched, narrow shoulders.

  The girl introduced herself as “Didi.” When I smiled, she pointed at my comb. I gave it to her.

  To my surprise, Didi offered to comb my hair. Her touch was delicate and she hummed as she worked, exclaiming now and then over my hair’s texture and color. Or perhaps she was only commenting on the knots? There was no way to know, but I thanked her anyway.

  The young woman then led me into the kitchen, where she offered various breakfast options by pointing out scraps of food on the unwashed plates. I chose apple pancakes, thinking of Cam, and hot tea.

  While I waited for the food, I tried my cell phone, but Jon was right: there was no coverage here. There didn’t appear to be anyone using a computer, either. Probably no Internet access. Damn it. How would I reach my mother, tell her that things were okay?

  Not that they were, really. Maybe it was better if I couldn’t speak to her yet. I’d try hiking to a nearby village to call her later.

  The pancakes had a smoky aftertaste, but otherwise were thick and grainy and delicious. Didi and I managed to communicate through sign language. She taught me some Nepali, too, giggling at my pronunciation.

  Meanwhile, I wondered where Jon was. Had he spent the night here? Only Cam and I had been in the men’s bunk room; on the way downstairs, I’d ducked into the women’s room to get a change of clothes and my travel kit, and saw Fernando curled against one of the German redheads beneath a muslin sheet, his head cradled between her small freckled breasts.

  After breakfast, Didi went to work in the kitchen, squatting to scrub the dishes in a rubber bucket full of cold water. I climbed the stairs with a mug of tea and a bowl of oatmeal for Cam. To my horror, I found him quaking beneath his pile of blankets, shaking so hard that he had to clutch the wool to his chin to keep the blankets around his shoulders.

  I knelt beside him to force a few sips of tea between his lips, but Cam was shivering too violently. The liquid flowed out of the corner of his mouth, shiny on his dry skin.

  I tried to sit my brother up, to spoon a little tea into him that way and get it to stay down, but Cam was too heavy for me to lift. I finally laid him down again and thought hard, biting my own lip as Cam’s mouth shivered open, exposing his swollen tongue and yellow teeth.

  Cam’s breath stank of sulfur, which made me wonder whether he had been drinking from the hot springs. But wasn’t there also some parasitic infection that could be diagnosed by those rotten egg burps?

  I ran into my room to dig through my backpack. My mother, always paranoid about bees and wasps crawling into soda cans, had packed half a dozen straws in a plastic bag. I took one out and pocketed it.

  Back in Cam’s room, I tugged my brother to a half-sitting position, leaning him against my lap. Then I put the straw in the teacup,
sucked some of the liquid up, and held a finger to the end of the straw as I moved the tube to Cam’s mouth.

  I used my free hand to squeeze Cam’s lips into an “o,” inserted the straw, and lifted my finger a little at a time off the end of it, tapping the straw shut every half second so the liquid would travel just a few drops at a time down my brother’s throat. I’d added a good amount of sugar to the tea; I hoped this might revive him. It was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to get him to a clinic in this condition.

  I fed the entire cup of tea to Cam this way, moving the straw back and forth between the cup and his mouth. I didn’t want to shock his system by giving him too much at once; I decided to give him one cup of tea, then wait half an hour. Perhaps next I could try him on some runny oatmeal with salt.

  Cam needed to be hydrated enough so that I could leave him here tomorrow while I went back to Pokahara to find a doctor and a pharmacy. I couldn’t bear to do it tonight; I didn’t like the idea of walking alone down those tricky mountain paths—the thought of the bridge made me shudder—from the village and back. Plus, the trip would take eight hours. My muscles were still so sore that the idea of hiking that distance even in daylight made me wince. But what other choice did I have?

  I sighed and leaned my head against the wall. Was Cam shivering less? No, just a moment between spasms. I hoped David would be able to diagnose Cam by phone. He might even be able to suggest medications available at one of the pharmacies in Pokhara I’d noticed along the main drag. Or I’d see a doctor at one of those tourist health centers. But wouldn’t a doctor want me to get a stool sample, bring it in? Thinking of everything I had to do—and of everything that might go wrong in a country like this— made me suddenly feel light-headed and nauseous.

  My head ached, probably from the altitude. I had no idea how much time had gone by, but Cam was still shaking and sweat poured down his face and neck. Helplessly, I watched my brother twitch and rock on the floor, his head jouncing on my legs, while I waited for the tea to work its magic.