Summit: A Novel

by Harry Farthing

  Nearer the fort, Josef began to make out far beneath, a low, flat village kneeled on the valley floor as if in subservience. Josef wished they could avoid them both but knew that would not be possible. They had to stop there. Increasingly nervous at the prospect, he repeatedly told Ang Noru that they must be careful. The Sherpa nodded in serious agreement, adding only that such places were full of eyes and ears, all eager to earn favor with the dzong pen.

  Josef already knew something of the overlord of the region. When he had studied the route with Fischer in Darjeeling, the German had identified it as the only place where they might be able to get new supplies in Tibet. He had gone on to explain that its dzong pen ruled both the town and the desiccated region with a harsh feudal order that squeezed everything it could into his coffers. Fischer had been grave in his warning that if caught by the overlord then there would be nothing anyone could do. Their only hope, he had said coldly, would be that the dzong pen would probably value selling Josef to the English higher than the entertainment of beheading him.

  Uncharacteristically, as they approached the town, Ang Noru began to talk some more. He recalled how the British expedition with which he traveled to Everest six years before had feted the dzong pen with gifts, as was customary to buy the man’s favor and hospitality when they passed through his land. Delighted, the lord had responded the first night with a feast of rice, blood sausages, and freshly roasted mutton.

  But, of course, it had only been for the English sahibs. The smell had made the Sherpas’ mouths water while they guarded the supplies outside in the fort’s courtyard. Ang Noru even smiled when he recounted how, in revenge for this torture, the Sherpa had angrily concocted a plan to tell the sahibs that they had eaten all their tsampa and that bad crops in the region were making purchasing unexpectedly more expensive. The morning after the banquet they had demanded an additional cash advance of four rupees a man to make up the difference and ensure they had enough food to be fit and strong to carry on to the mountain.

  The sahibs, fearing anything that might hinder their progress to its top, had fallen for the story completely and the Sherpas had spent their ill-gotten windfall on chang and rakshi, the local beer and firewater, the very next night. “Big party with many chang girls, we make. Even bigger headache next day,” the Sherpa said, his eyes gleaming at the memory. “Sahibs very cross with us blokes. Long silence on walking days after,” he added, laughing at the irritation they must have caused.

  It was the first time that Josef had heard Ang Noru really laugh. It showed a warmer, friendlier side to the normally distant, angry man who accompanied him. It hinted at what else had been taken from him when they cut off his toes. Josef was reluctant to stop Ang Noru’s rare amusement, but, recalling Fischer’s words of warning once again, he took the Sherpa’s arm, stopping him to look directly in his eyes. “Ang Noru, no chang this time. Very dangerous. Do you understand?” There was no reply.

  Well before the outskirts of the town, they separated, Ang Noru leaving Josef to wait with their two loaded ponies while he found a lodging for the night. Attracted by a cairn of rocks at the foot of the hill of scree that led up to the steep cliff wall below the fort, Josef hobbled their ponies so they couldn’t wander and went to investigate.

  Reaching the neatly stacked pile of yellow and ochre rocks that reminded him of a beehive, Josef saw set into the side a stone plaque. Expecting another Buddhist text or design, he was surprised to see it was carved with letters and words he could read.

  A. M. K.

  5 June 1921

  Om Mani Padme Hum

  It was a gravestone for a European that must have been engraved by one of his countrymen. Staring at the memorial, Josef tried to place the initials and the date from his studies of Everest at Wewelsburg, but, beyond understanding that the death must have happened during the very first British expedition to the mountain, he failed. The words engraved beneath the date were also lost on him, but as Josef repeatedly shaped the letters with his lips, he recognized the sounds as a phrase that Ang Noru often repeated over and over to himself as he walked.

  “Om Mani Padme Hum.”

  He said the words to himself, training his own mouth to utter the phrase. Quickly losing himself in its rhythmic sound, Josef repeated it over and over like the Sherpa. It relaxed him as he quietly contemplated the gravestone. The mantra and the memorial pushed him back to Gunter and Kurt, to the nine Jews, to little Ilsa—all dead, their passing unmarked. It made him worry for the lives he still held in his hands, his mother, his sisters, the beautiful Magda. They could not be allowed to go in the same way.

  I have to get to the mountain.

  A faint grumbling noise interrupted his reverie.

  It grew into a growl, rising in intensity, occasionally checking itself before continuing, each time becoming louder and stronger.

  The source revealed itself; a huge black and tan mastiff dog rose up menacingly from the dirt beyond the stone cairn.

  The beast, thick fur matted with solid clumps of filth, was covered in dust. Its yellow eyes fixed on Josef with a mean hatred, its mouth curling up at the sides to reveal two rows of heavy teeth set within pink-and-black-streaked jaws, strong enough to crack yak bone.

  The dog shook its shoulders and then, swaying its heavy head a little from side to side, hunched forward, preparing to lunge. In return, Josef could only slowly pull his ice axe from his pack and hold the pointed tip of its shaft out in front of him as he began to very deliberately step back.

  Seeing him make a move, the mastiff sprang.

  Josef stuck out the end of the axe to fend the creature away, but the dog angled its head as it leapt, seizing the wooden shaft of the axe in its teeth.

  With a muscular twist of its neck and a tug, the mastiff easily pulled the long axe from Josef’s grip. Furious, it shook it violently between its jaws, instinctively seeking to snap its spinal cord.

  Only when satisfied that the axe was dead, did the dog drop it and move toward Josef again.

  Its body lowered once more.

  Josef turned to run.

  The dog jumped a second time.

  As it flew into the air, a small rock hit the dog in the side of the head with a resounding crack.

  A bigger stone followed, thumping into its ribs.

  The two well-aimed stones diverted the dog in midleap, sending it crashing into the dirt in an explosion of dust. Knocked senseless by the blows, the mastiff staggered back up onto its feet and shook itself, groggily seeking its target once more.

  A second barrage of stones instantly struck it, their bruising accuracy leaving the dog no alternative but to turn tail and run.

  Breathing heavily, his heart racing, Josef watched Ang Noru shout at the retreating dog and hurl yet another large stone after it. Beside him was a small boy of about six or seven dressed in little more than grimy, torn yet thickly padded rags. The twisted leather thong of a sling was hanging from the lad’s small right hand, another stone already suspended in its cradle.

  The boy’s perfectly round, dirt-stained face creased into a huge smile, and his eyes closed to become little more than slits as he expertly spun the sling three times above his head and then sent its rock, bullet quick, into the dog’s fast disappearing backside.

  Josef could only stutter, “Danke schön,” to the grinning pair as Ang Noru picked up Josef’s chewed ice axe and handed it to him.

  “You must have a care for Tibetan dogs, Sahib Josef. If not, you as dead as old Sahib Kellas there,” the Sherpa said, pointing to the cairn of stones. “Yak herder dogs more dangerous even than chang! Let us go now. We stay at the house of young Phurbu here; his mother once most famous chang girl in all Kampa Dzong. So good she own her own hostel now.”

  Watching the unlikely pair saunter off to retrieve the two ponies, Josef heard Ang Noru say, “Phurbu, good boy, son of Sherpa, I think, perhaps,” as he tussl
ed the child’s mop of jet-black hair.

  61

  Kampa Dzong, Tsang Province, Tibet

  April 11, 1939

  9:45 p.m.

  The atmosphere in the crowded caravansary was charged with noise and heat and excitement. Pungent smells of filthy clothes, unwashed bodies, and animal dung mixed with sweeter fumes of food, tobacco, incense, and a huge juniper log fire to clog the thin air of the long communal room. Josef, just sitting on a bench against one wall, was finding it hard to breathe but he was enjoying the enveloping warmth from the fire and the feeling of satisfaction of having eaten a hot, rich meal.

  Josef knew well that they should be hiding in the tiny room they had been shown to by little Phurbu’s mother, but Ang Noru had insisted that, for once, they eat properly, in some warmth, arguing that there would be so many people in the main hall that no one would even notice them. It was a thin argument, but in the chilly, claustrophobic room, still shaken by his encounter with the dog, Josef had found it impossible to refuse. He was as exhausted by loneliness as he was by the arduous journey with the surly Sherpa.

  The hostel’s hall was indeed full. Half of the people in the room were Tibetan: tall, wild-looking men with hooded eyes and long, jet-black hair strung with heavy plaits of red wool, their fierce oval faces in no way softened by the small lumps of turquoise and coral that hung from makeshift earrings and necklaces. They were all drinking, intent on a noisy betting game at their center. Each had a long knife tucked into his belt, almost small swords with broad scabbards of turned metal inlaid with colored stones. Josef recalled Fischer’s warning that the Tibetan always carried two knives: one bold and visible in front to draw your eye as he embraced you with open arms, the other hidden, smaller and sharper, with which he would stab you in the back. Interspersed with the Tibetans were smaller men—hardy Sikkimese muleteers; skinny, malnourished Lepcha porters; plumper, moonfaced Asian traders; even shaven-headed monks in saffron and magenta robes. All of them were watching the Tibetans with quick, darting eyes, mouths full of bad teeth and the taste of easy money from the game at their center.

  Josef had to acknowledge that Ang Noru was right. That game was the only thing attracting any attention. Each and every play inspired a crescendo of shouting and waving, until a silence fell and one of the players indulged in a highly theatrical shaking and casting of a handful of bones across a sturdy table. The pronged segments of the backbone of what was once a small animal would skitter and dance before coming to rest in configurations that were immediately clear in their implications to everyone except Josef. The shouting would instantly resume, accompanied by a frenzied redistribution of money. Ang Noru had found his way into the middle of it all, a grin on his face and a growing wad of dirty paper money in his hand.

  The exhausted German took a swig from his wooden bowl of chang as he observed the scene. The thin, watery barley beer was not unpleasant to the taste even if it made him yearn for a stronger, smoother Bavarian weissbier. He had been surprised at the weakness of the chang, finding it difficult to deny Ang Noru after the Sherpa had told him to taste it and see for himself how harmless it was. He knew that it was probably time to reel the Sherpa in, but once again recalling his deliverance from the dog and enjoying the rare feelings of warmth and good food, Josef decided he would let him play a little longer.

  Every time Josef’s chang bowl was near to empty, a young Tibetan woman would refill it before he could say no. When the girl poured the chang, she did so slowly, deliberately brushing his arms with hers and looking into his eyes, holding his gaze through long eyelashes. With a broad, brown face and doelike eyes, she was old enough to be a woman yet young enough to still have perfect, clear skin beneath her glossy, tied-back hair. Once his cup was full again, she would linger over Josef until he drank, or rude shouts demanded her attentions elsewhere.

  When she moved away, Josef could see at the head of the room the proprietor, little Phurbu’s mother, surveying the scene and directing her chang girls here and there, pointing them to pay particular attention to various people in the room. She was continually gesturing the same girl to return to him. The more he drank, the more Josef forgot his worries about being there, about Ang Noru, about the chang. He even stopped thinking about getting up, leaning back instead against the wall and letting himself relax as the beer kept flowing, the Tibetan girl kept fluttering her dark lashes, and the game got louder and louder.

  Occasionally he caught a glimpse of the boy Phurbu, the little tyke weaving between the legs of his mother’s patrons, quick, picky fingers reaching up into pockets and purses above, alert to every opportunity. It was amusing to watch him at work. Seeing a bamboo cage placed for safekeeping alongside a number of other bundles, the beady face of an unrecognizable small creature peering out, the boy crouched in front of it and began prodding at it with a thin black and white stick.

  A loud bell rang.

  It snapped Josef from his soft contemplation of the room around him to see that it was Phurbu’s mother ringing it. Immediately the girls began urging everyone to drink up, hurrying to collect the wooden bowls.

  It must be time.

  Josef was relieved that the evening had passed so peacefully. Standing to leave, he was surprised to find that the floor swayed a little before settling. Chang was stronger than it tasted. Shrugging the realization aside, Josef leaned into the crowd of gamblers and tugged Ang Noru by the arm, gesturing they should go.

  The Sherpa wasn’t having any of it. When Josef insisted, hissing at him that the chang was finished, he was met with the immediate response that it was only because the rakshi was arriving.

  Even as Ang Noru spoke, Josef saw indeed that the girls were now handing out smaller clay bowls and theatrically filling them from high above with a stream of clear liquid poured from narrower, taller bamboo jugs.

  The gambling Tibetans cheered with approval. The instant their new bowls were full, they each stuck a finger in and flicked some of the spirit into the air three times before proceeding to drain the contents in single gulping draughts. They immediately called for more and repeated the action.

  Josef felt a wave of panic ripple down his spine. He had to get Ang Noru out of there. Intent on keeping the Sherpa from the rakshi, he pushed deeper into the gamblers, but the more he strained to reach the Sherpa, the more he had the sensation that he was being held back from him. Pairs of hands were clutching his arms and pulling him away.

  Ignoring his protests and laughing at his attempts to escape them, Phurbu’s mother and the chang girl tugged Josef back to the place where he had been sitting. Putting her finger on Josef’s lips, Phurbu’s mother quietly silenced him while the girl gave him his own full bowl of rakshi. She too then murmured something to him, putting down her jug and leaning forward to dig her nails into his thighs until he started drinking.

  Even though he knew it was a mistake, Josef drank it down, telling himself just one and then he and the Sherpa were out of there.

  The rakshi hit Josef straight between the eyes.

  The buzz from the chang instantly became a howl.

  People merged and melted, their actions slowing to become unrelated snapshots with faintly anticipated yet seemingly unimportant consequences.

  The girl leaned her mouth close to Josef’s and whispered something he didn’t understand.

  Her lips brushed his.

  Magda.

  Magda’s face appeared before his.

  She was smiling and laughing.

  He had to leave, but the rakshi—or was it Magda—was telling him it was all right to stay.

  Stay, Josef. Stay.

  Wild shouting, singing, and dancing were erupting from every corner of the smoky, half-lit room.

  He looked again for Ang Noru.

  There he was, still taking part in the game.

  Only he and the biggest Tibetan were actually playing. The frenzied crowd surro
unding them had taken the side of one or the other, waving their money behind either man in proof of their allegiance. Those behind Ang Noru were shouting, “Chomolungma! Chomolungma! Chomolungma!” over and over, clapping their hands in time to urge their champion on.

  Through the warping blur of the rakshi, Josef slowly told himself that they were shouting the Tibetan name for Mount Everest. He thought that wasn’t such a good thing.

  The Tibetan girl came back and, putting down her jug of rakshi, straddled Josef’s lap and leaned in on him with both of her hands around his neck. She started to massage his aching neck, stiff from carrying his heavy pack so far; it felt good. She began to tease his cheeks with the tip of her soft, wet tongue, her breath scalding his already burning face. She smelled like bonfire smoke. When she moved down to start biting his neck, Josef told himself that it wasn’t Magda. He knew that wasn’t good either.

  Josef looked down at the ground in a last attempt to resist the alcohol, to avoid the advances of the girl, only to see that little Phurbu was opening the cage he had discovered. He was absolutely sure that the large spiny porcupine the boy was releasing into the room was going to be the worst thing of all.