The Cloud Maker

by Patrick Woodhead

  The old monk continued swaying backwards and forwards, seemingly unaware that he was even being spoken to.

  ‘Menkom?’ Luca repeated, a little louder, waving one hand in front of the monk’s eyes.

  There was not a flicker of recognition. Luca shrugged and glanced back at Bill. ‘He looks a bit thin. Maybe he wants some food or something? Pass me one of the chocolate bars, will you?’

  As Bill dug into his rucksack and offered a brightly wrapped chocolate bar, the monk seemed to wake up and focus on the two men, waving the chocolate away with a sweep of his hand and pointing to the far ridge.

  ‘What do you think he wants?’ said Luca.

  Bill followed the direction of the pointing finger to where the orange sun had sunk halfway behind the mountain ridge. When he turned back to face Luca, a smile was playing on his lips.

  ‘You know, I think the old guy just wants us to get out of his sun.’

  Both men backed off a few paces and as the orange light washed over him again, the old monk nodded contentedly before settling back into his solitary chanting.

  Bill looked over at Luca, and laughed softly.

  ‘Ever get the feeling we’re a touch behind these guys?’

  After pitching their tents on a flat patch of ground a little further on from the monk, they walked up to the village in search of water. The farmer’s warning loomed in Bill’s mind once again, and he felt a prickle of fear creep up his spine.

  The village was nothing more than a collection of twenty or so shacks, built beside a small stream. Each building was raised on stilts above the hard earth, with uneven steps leading up to a single door. The doorframes provided the only touches of decoration, with symbols drawn across them in faded red and yellow paint.

  Everything was so still that they assumed the place must be deserted. Bill looked over at Luca, his face relaxing into a smile.

  ‘Maybe the farmer thought it was haunted,’ he said with relief. ‘Some kind of ghost village or something.’

  But Luca shook his head, his expression tense.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at a shack further up the stream.

  As soon as they spotted one figure they seemed to be everywhere, camouflaged by their dirty rags against the porches where they were sitting. Pitifully thin people sat listlessly on the steps: men with skeletal faces and children on their mothers’ laps, bodies barely more than a heap of bones. The only sound was the occasional bout of coughing. As Bill and Luca approached, hollow eyes followed their progress with a mixture of apathy and hunger.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Luca, raising his hand to cover his mouth. ‘What the hell happened here?’

  Bill shook his head, looking down the line of shacks to where another movement had caught his eye. A couple of mangy dogs were picking their way through the piles of rubbish by the banks of the stream, the lines of their ribs clearly visible.

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t like being here one bit,’ he whispered. ‘This place looks more like a morgue than a village.’

  As he spoke he looked over to the nearest of the shacks where a small girl was lying in the shadow of the roof. Strands of matted black hair covered her face, but aside from the shallow rising of her chest, she was completely still.

  Bill moved over and crouched down beside her. As he came close, her eyes flickered slightly and then were still, seemingly oblivious to the shock of seeing a white man standing above her. Sweat beaded her skin, and the fevered beating of a pulse was visible between her angular collar bones.

  ‘It’s probably not a good idea to get too close,’ Luca said from behind him. ‘Let’s get on with finding the well and use the purification pump back in camp.’

  Bill didn’t answer, his thoughts drifting as he imagined his own daughter in the same situation — wearing nothing more than a dirty dress, with bare feet and no one to feed her. He wondered if this girl’s parents had already died from the sickness and if so, why someone else had not taken her in so that she at least had someone with her during the final few days of her life. She seemed so unwanted and alone — a life just left to slowly flicker out.

  Behind him, Luca was still speaking.

  ‘I reckon it must be something like typhoid or cholera. We’ve had both those jabs so I’m pretty sure we’re in no danger…’

  Without hesitating, Bill scooped his hands under the little girl’s body and lifted her into his arms. Luca gave a shout of alarm, but Bill ignored him. She was as light as feather, no heavier than his daughter despite the fact that she was probably twice her age.

  ‘We’ll get the antibiotics from our medical kit,’ he whispered to her. ‘They’ll clear you up in a few days.’

  Luca shook his head.

  ‘You can’t do that, mate. You have to put her down.’ He moved closer. ‘There’s a whole village suffering here and we’ve only packed a few courses of antibiotics. We might well need them ourselves.’

  Bill’s forehead wrinkled in disbelief.

  ‘Tell me you’re not serious?’ he said. ‘Come on, we can help this little girl. We’re stronger than she is.’

  Luca looked skywards, closing his eyes briefly.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to help her, but we can’t go round doling out medicine. That’s not what we are here for. We’ve got a tiny medical kit and only two or three courses of antibiotics. What happens if one of us needs them?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit if we need them,’ Bill countered, his voice rising. ‘I’m prepared to take that risk.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I’m not. You can’t do this, mate. Think about it.’

  There was a silence as both men stared each other out.

  ‘Look, we’ve been here before,’ said Luca, more gently. ‘There are always children or women whose lives could be saved by some drug that only costs a tenner. It’s horrible, I know, but it’s also the reality of being out here in Tibet. It’s not for us to start handing out drugs just because it makes us feel better.’

  He paused, staring down at the little girl in Bill’s arms.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I want to give her the drugs just as much as you do, but it just doesn’t make sense. Who are we to decide who gets them and who doesn’t? Why not the women so they can look after the children, or some of the younger guys so they can work the fields?’

  Bill didn’t answer.

  ‘Come on, mate. I know it’s shit, but we’ve got to be practical here.’

  There was a long silence before Bill eventually turned and very carefully laid the girl down on the step where she had been lying. He stared at her for a while before reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket and curling her hand round a crumpled chocolate bar.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, then stood up, squaring his shoulders. As he looked at Luca, his eyes hardened.

  ‘Come on then. Let’s get that fucking water.’

  Luca nodded grimly, his grey eyes fixed on Bill’s. Then, together, they marched up the track, their boots crunching over the rocky ground.

  Chapter 23

  When they woke up the next morning, the herders were gone.

  For the first time on the expedition Bill was the first to rise, immediately taking in the smouldering remains of the campfire and the baggage dumped in a pile beside it. He swore, then slapped his hand against the fly-sheet of Luca’s tent.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Luca emerged with tousled hair, rubbing his eyes. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Bill simply pointed to the baggage and for a moment Luca craned his neck round, looking for the herders.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  Wearing only his thermal long johns, he walked barefoot across the dusty ground to the pile of heavy bags. Crouching down, he unzipped each one to double-check its contents. Without his top on, the alabaster white of his torso contrasted against the dark tan of his forearms and face. From the last week of being on the trail, he had lost a few pounds in weight and now looked lithe and wiry. As he crouched on the ground, with his body coil
ed over the bags, the entire line of his ribs was visible down his back.

  Picking up one of the two wooden boxes that lay to either side of the fire, Luca prised open the top. Both boxes had a few broken slats from days of being strapped to the yaks, but the supplies were still carefully packed within.

  ‘At least they left the food and our gear.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘But we’re stuffed if we don’t find a route up from here. There’s no way we can carry on with everything ourselves. How many days’ food do you think we have left?’

  Luca shifted the boxes to one side and looked from bag to bag again, his frown deepening. ‘I don’t know, but we can’t afford to waste any more time. We’ve got to find a way up that rock-face. I’ll go up this morning and see whether there’s anything that will work. Are you okay staying here and sorting through the gear?’

  Bill nodded. Twenty minutes later he was building up the fire as Luca tightened the laces on his climbing boots and, without another word, left in the direction of the mountains, his shoulders hunched with fresh determination.

  He spent most of the day pacing up and down the base, scanning every inch of the mountains’ curving flanks. There was something about the cliff-face that was bothering him. No matter which angle he viewed it from, he couldn’t quite visualise the way ahead. The cliff itself was a vertical drop of about eight hundred metres with long, ragged cracks running down its entire length. It was solid granite and would hold their protection well, but it was the route itself that looked almost impossible. It was a maze of overhangs and long sections of perfectly smooth rock.

  From time to time his vision blurred and for a few moments it would seem as if the rock itself was changing shape. But then he would blink again and it would change back, so that he was left looking at smooth, unpassable sections of rock.

  By the time he got back to camp it was late afternoon and his eyes were aching.

  There was no sign of Bill. A small fire made from clods of dried yak dung smouldered away by the tent and neat coils of rope were laid out over the fly-sheet. Resting on one of bags were bundles of nuts and friends, while the carabineers had been clipped by size on to slings.

  Luca grabbed the battered kettle and shook it, feeling water slosh around inside before balancing it on the corner of the fire. For a moment he looked back at the mountains, his eyes searching for a route. There must be a way through. There just must be.

  As he was taking the first sip of his coffee, he heard a commotion coming from over the ridge. With his mug still in his hand, he walked up the path to the first of the village shacks.

  Bill was standing there, a rucksack open at his feet and about twenty villagers huddled around him. They had obviously dragged themselves from their huts and stood, some swaying from weakness, with their hands outstretched. Shaking his head, Luca threw his coffee onto the ground and sprinted the remaining distance.

  ‘Luca,’ his friend said, an expression of guilt spreading across his face.

  Luca took in the emaciated figures crowded around him. ‘Tell me you haven’t…?’

  ‘I couldn’t stand by and let it happen.’

  Luca began to say something then fell silent, shaking his head in disbelief. He couldn’t exactly get the antibiotics back again. The damage had been done.

  ‘Great,’ he said sourly. ‘Really fucking great.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bill said again. ‘I just couldn’t stand the idea of us sitting healthily in our camp…’

  Luca looked at the villagers gathered around them with their hopeful smiles. They held their medicine carefully in the palms of their hands, nodding their heads and giving thanks to these strange newcomers and their gift of healing.

  ‘But we only had a few courses,’ he sighed. ‘What the hell are you giving the rest of these guys?’

  Bill gave a sheepish shrug and looked away.

  ‘Just a few painkillers. Everyone saw me give the antibiotics out, so I had to give them something. It’s all I could think of and… well, it won’t do them any harm.’

  As he spoke, another hand stretched out from the crowd. As Bill doled out two small white pills, finishing the bottle, a movement from the far side of the village caught Luca’s eye. Another figure was striding towards them.

  ‘Who the hell…?’ he murmured.

  She was tall, with two straight curtains of very dark hair framing her face. In contrast to the shuffling forms of the villagers, she moved with the vigour of full health, the hem of her dirt-stained tunic billowing out behind her.

  She came close and even beneath the grey scarf that was tied like a surgeon’s mask across her face, the men could tell that she was furious. Strong dark eyebrows were angled low over green eyes that blazed with hostility. She stared from Bill to Luca, then back again. Around them, the crowd fell silent.

  Raising her right arm, the woman yanked the scarf down to the neckline of her tunic.

  ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ she asked in English and with only the lightest trace of an accent. Jerking her chin up, she gestured to the bottle Bill was holding.

  ‘Give me that.’

  Bill’s mouth dropped open in surprise as he handed over the empty plastic bottle.

  ‘You speak English.’

  Ignoring him, she glanced at the bottle’s label before looking up again, eyes bright with anger.

  ‘Nurofen,’ she said. ‘You have got to be kidding me. Have you any idea how irresponsible that is?’

  ‘I just thought…’

  ‘No. You didn’t think,’ the woman cut in. ‘This village is riddled with cholera, and here you are handing out painkillers! Don’t you understand, these people actually believe your Western drugs will cure them? All you’re doing is abusing their ignorance.’

  ‘Hold on a second,’ Luca interrupted, pulling himself together. ‘Bill’s already handed out all our courses of antibiotics — stuff we now don’t have for ourselves. He couldn’t handle disappointing the others so had to give them something.’

  The woman gave him a scornful glance. Then, turning to the assembled group of villagers, she spoke quickly in Tibetan, her voice low and emphatic. After a few moments the villagers began to look from her to Bill and Luca, their faces uncertain. As she continued speaking, they started to shake their heads and back off a pace or two, jealously guarding the white pills.

  ‘Of course they don’t believe me, why would they?’ the woman said, exhaling in frustration. ‘You’ve given them hope, and that’s the first they’ve had of it in a long time. But why do I get the feeling you won’t be around to pick up the pieces when they realise the drugs don’t work?’

  ‘Look, we didn’t mean any harm,’ Bill protested, his hands raised defensively.

  ‘That’s what you all say…’ she began, then drifted into silence, shaking her head in disgust. She let the empty bottle fall from her hand and Luca and Bill watched as it rolled a few centimetres on the ground before sticking on a patch of mud. Pulling the scarf back across her mouth, she gave them a final, withering glance before heading back towards the far end of the village. As she left, the crowd started to disperse, a few people staring down at the empty bottle before retreating to the wooden stoops of their homes.

  ‘Jesus,’ Luca said, his eyes wide. ‘Where the hell did she come from?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Bill, ‘but now I really do feel like an idiot.’

  Luca turned to see his friend staring down at the empty bottle, his shoulders slumped.

  ‘You were only trying to help. Don’t take it to heart. At least a couple of them will be saved by the antibiotics.’

  ‘Yeah, but…’

  As Bill raised his head, the beginnings of a smile crept across Luca’s face.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though. We’re sure as shit not getting a dinner date out of this.’

  Slowly Bill’s expression eased, the tension starting to drain from his face. He glanced back at the hut the woman had entered.
/>   ‘Who do you think she is? I mean, she barely even had an accent.’

  ‘Beats me,’ said Luca. ‘Maybe she’s an aid worker or something. She looked more Nepalese than Tibetan to me. Wherever she’s from, I get the feeling she wasn’t too impressed.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was only trying to help,’ Bill muttered. Straightening his shoulders, he turned back towards their campsite.

  After a final, curious glance towards the woman’s hut, Luca followed.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Who is it?’

  There was no reply, only repeated knocking, mechanical and incessant.

  ‘For the love of God, stop that infernal racket!’

  With more than his characteristic lack of agility, René lumbered across the empty restaurant in the direction of the front door. He winced as he blundered through a shaft of sunlight, breaking through from the curtains, and gingerly rubbed his temples.

  With years of experiencing biblically proportioned hangovers, he knew that an ice pack and a stiff dose of Paracetamol should just about see him through the day. Both, however, were kept in the kitchen which lay in the opposite direction from which he was currently headed. Reason enough for him to ignore the interruption altogether. Only the interminable knocking had galvanised him into any sort of action.

  As he unbolted and swung open the door, René mustered what remained of his strength.

  ‘What the hell do you think…?’

  He stopped abruptly, eyes slowly focussing on the silent figures in front of him. Three silhouettes stood in line on his doorstep, haloed by the harsh morning light. René squinted at them, feeling his headache double in size. Without a word, the leading two soldiers pushed past him and into the restaurant.

  ‘An unexpected pleasure,’ René said, stumbling back a couple of paces.

  A third man stepped over the threshold. He was smaller than the other two. As he walked further into the room, René could see his face was delicate, almost feminine, with no trace of stubble. Only the harsh line of his thin lips offset the fragility of his features.