Some of the party saw to paying off the coolies who had to go back to Dana, and recruiting others to come on with us to Tansing. Schatz collected the equipment and checked the loads; Couzy, who had been unanimously elected cook, peered into all the open containers. Everything was uncertain; we did not know whether we should have enough coolies to enable us all to leave next day. We were told there were another five marches. Actually it took us over ten days.
Some fifty patients awaited the Doctor Sahib. They had all kinds of diseases, mostly inflammation or unaccountable fevers. It would have taken a long time to see all the patients, and required a lot of medical supplies, not to speak of endless patience on Oudot’s part. He drew up a standard questionnaire:
How old are you?
Do you sleep well at night?
Have you a good appetite?
Where is the pain?
Do you cough?
This questionnaire was given to Noyelle who translated it into English for G. B.’s benefit, with the help of a few words of Hindustani, and G. B. translated it into Gurkhali. The replies had to follow the reverse order, and after all these intermediaries they were often pretty queer. The Sherpas were doubled up with laughter. They could only understand part of the conversation – the last bit that began in Hindustani, went on into Gurkhali and then came back in Hindustani. By this stage it had suffered a farcical change!
Oudot had tremendous prestige. People came long distances to see him, for he had become a sort of god. We admired the touching simplicity of these creatures who put their health and sometimes their lives in the hands of a complete stranger. It was the first time they had been examined by a real doctor. When they were ill they consulted the village witch doctor, or so-called ‘healer’. The great panacea was always the same – an ointment of cow-dung.
The patients were not always very tractable; they were bound by the dictates of their religion, and they did not like it when Oudot touched them. The hardest job was to examine the women, who were excessively modest and would not allow themselves to be touched on any account, still less undressed. On one occasion Oudot succeeded in getting all the finery off a Nepalese girl. When she was half undressed Sarki, who had been helping, discreetly left the tent. Nothing would then persuade the girl to proceed further.
Medicine had to be dealt out to all of them. Whenever he could, Oudot gave them something relevant to their ailment; otherwise he distributed inoffensive pills which had a mainly psychological effect. But there was no knowing what they might do with the things. They would unhesitatingly swallow anti-sunburn ointment or the most solid of plasters, and cheerfully swap medicines given for particular illnesses. But they showed great courage in any surgical treatment.
One day an unfortunate youth came along with a double compound fracture of the wrist. The radius stuck out from a mass of pus, the arm was enormous, and the hand swollen out of all recognition. He was certainly in a bad way. Oudot – always by the same complicated process of interpretation – discovered that the accident had happened a fortnight ago. He told the parents that amputation of the arm was the only way of saving their son. They refused, and made it plain that all they wanted was a dressing. Well, it could not be helped. Oudot gave the patient morphia and then tried to get things back in place: he succeeded after a fashion and finally put the arm in plaster.
‘What will happen?’ I asked Oudot anxiously. There would be no one to change the dressing, and in a few days the wound would begin to suppurate again.
‘There’s nothing else to be done. He’ll probably be dead in a fortnight.’
He said this with a fatalistic air which rather frightened me. Yet he was right. It was not possible to reason with these people as if we were in Europe – here we were still in the dark ages. I thought of all these unfortunate people who were a prey to epidemics against which they had no means of protecting themselves: no doctor, no vaccine. In countries like these death gets its own way easily and the process of selection is intensive. On our long homeward march we often met funeral processions, and it was not cheering for Lachenal and myself to see the biers, so like our own litters. The corpses were swathed in strangely coloured winding sheets and were preceded by horns whose notes re-echoed back and forth among the mountains. The families and friends of the deceased followed in silence, showing no undue sorrow. Death was but a period of transition and had no distressing implications. Were they not assured of reincarnation in other and more perfect shapes? The bodies were buried along the banks of the Krishna Gandaki, and the monsoon floods would carry them away down to the sacred Ganges.
Every day Oudot attended to the injured members of the Expedition. He was perpetually running after his medicine chest, which was invariably either right on ahead, and then we had to catch up with it, or else far in the rear, and we had to wait ages. But neither Lachenal nor I was ever in any hurry for the M.O. to get to work. Gradually the injection of large quantities of penicillin began to take effect; the fever abated and the fear of generalized septicaemia receded. I began to talk and to take an interest in what was going on around me. One day on a green sward at Putliket, Oudot started performing on me as usual.
‘Don’t make such a noise!’ he begged me.
‘Gently, Oudot, please!’
‘I’m being as gentle as I can. Look out – does that hurt?’
I braced myself with all my strength to bear the pain, and clenched my teeth:
‘It’s all right, I didn’t feel a thing.’
‘Good!’ said Oudot, and gave a great snip with his scissors.
‘Ouch!’
I felt a shock all over me, and Oudot announced:
‘The first amputation! The little finger!’
This gave me rather a twinge. A little finger may not be much use, but all the same I was attached to it! Tears were very near. Oudot picked up the joint between his finger and thumb and showed it to me.
‘Perhaps you’d like to have it as a souvenir? It’ll keep all right, you know! You don’t seem very keen?’
‘I certainly don’t want it. There’s no point in keeping a black and mouldy little finger.’
Throwing the ‘souvenir’ casually on to the lid of a container, Oudot said:
‘Well, you’re no sentimentalist.’
The line of demarcation between the living tissue and the dead was now clearly visible. Oudot worked with a rugine,1 and every day one or two joints, either on my feet or my hands, were removed. All this was done without anaesthetics, in the open, how and when it was possible.
One day Oudot would operate in a native house, another by the side of the road, amidst the unavoidable dust; sometimes along the rice-swamps in spite of the damp and the leeches; or again in the middle of a field, in the rain, beneath the uncertain shelter of an umbrella held in the shaking hand of G. B. Rana’s orderly. Without respite Oudot cleaned, cut and dressed.
While these sessions went on, and we casualties endured our tribulations in a nauseating stench – blood everywhere, pus dripping from the bandages and hundreds of flies sticking to our wounds – we were often, paradoxically, spectators of amusing incidents. Now, after the first rains, came the season for planting the rice. All available labour was busy in the rice-fields, and to find porters became the Expedition’s worst headache. The others were very perturbed: we had to get out of these parts at all costs. Oudot begged G. B. Rana to use his authority and employ high-handed tactics to recruit coolies. He reminded him that we were under the protection of the Maharajah, who would not tolerate our being held up at the moment of leaving his country. G. B. did all he could, but his efforts had no success.
Gradually our attitude hardened. Although we had offered to supplement the ordinary pay, we soon saw that, unless we paid exorbitant prices, the further we penetrated into the densely cultivated areas the greater our difficulties would become, until we just should not be able to advance. For all their reluctance to act as slave-drivers, my friends were obliged to employ a system of ‘voluntary’ r
ecruitment. The method was simple: we had to get men where they were to be found, take them by the seat of their pants and place them very gently underneath the loads and the stretchers. The men objected strongly at first, but it ended in smiles. They would get enough rupees to wipe away all regrets on the one side and all remorse on the other. The Sherpas tumbled to the operation perfectly, and I imagined that we were not the first Himalayan expedition to employ this method. They would stroll innocently about the villages sniffing the air, ready to pounce upon the first native whom they judged capable of carrying a load.
Under the lee of a house right in the centre of the little village of Garomboree, I lay exhausted after a session with the surgeon’s knife during which I had undergone several amputations. I gazed blankly at the bustling activity of the stony main street. The Sherpas had gone coolie-hunting, and a porter belonging to the Suba of Tukucha who, the day before, had given me a superb sword of chased silver, had gone with them. He took our side and held forth louder than anyone. He had a stentorian voice, and the teeth of a savage, which terrified me: I was always afraid he would take a bite out of me. Suddenly Sarki, Angtharkay and Ajeeba shot out of a nearby alley pushing before them four bewildered rice-planters. In a twinkling all their tools had been taken away and after some ‘friendly’ propelling, hey presto, here they were! One after the other the ‘volunteers’ arrived at the scene of action as the enrolment went ahead.
We moved along in single file in the rain. As the day was drawing to a close and a strange and restful quiet reigned in the green countryside, the Sherpas spotted a fisherman, going home with his net well filled, walking slowly along ahead of us. Ajeeba nudged Phutharkay and Sarki, picked up a cudgel and advanced stealthily. There was a sudden scuffle: away went the captive’s net and line and his bags of bits and pieces, and a few moments later he found himself at the right front end of my stretcher, marching in step with his new friends. Poor fisherman! The Sherpas softened their tone, explaining that he would have to go on as far as Tansing, but that he would have a handsome number of rupees by way of compensation. The fisherman cried, and begged, and if he had not been prevented, would have knelt down and chanted a dirge. But as there was nothing to be done about it, he finished by smiling. ‘Well, that’s a good one on me!’ he appeared to be thinking.
Every day during our retreat, such scenes were enacted, for every night a number of coolies deserted, preferring to forgo the rupees owing to them. The situation became critical. The Expedition was scattered over several villages, and sometimes the front and the rear were separated by two days’ march. Some groups were brought to a standstill in lonely places where it was impossible to find even the trace of a coolie.
On June 29th, at Darjing, twenty-five coolies were missing at the roll call – and the weather was appalling. A former Gurkha N.C.O., who sported a magnificent cap, had, for several days, been playing a queer and rather sinister role as he prowled round the Expedition without any discernible reason. His conversations with the coolies were always followed by desertions; he harangued them and made trouble. Ichac came to Oudot and myself and said:
‘If this chap has such a bad influence on the coolies it may be that he has some authority.’
‘Yes, but if he uses it in this way, we shall end up like Harrer,’2 replied Oudot.
‘Perhaps we could conciliate him and make good use of his influence,’ suggested Ichac. ‘Why not employ him – use him as a recruiting sergeant?’
So we engaged him at ten rupees a day. He was not exactly a desirable character. If he managed to enlist coolies by bringing pressure to bear on the Subas of the neighbourhood, he also possessed an immoderate liking for chang and for the pretty girls of Nepal. In the evening yelling mobs threw themselves into wild dances which went on until far into the night. The next morning our recruiting sergeant reported for duty, seedy-looking and with tired eyes; but he braced himself up and was soon off on the quest for volunteer porters.
For days on end, through the most fantastic country, we descended the high valleys of Nepal to reach the plains. After following the Krishna Gandaki for a whole week to Kusma, we had to abandon the route we had taken on the journey out: the waters of this great river were now so high that the crossings had become hazardous, if not impossible. So at Kusma we left the Gandaki and crossed a range of fairly high hills to rejoin the Andhi Khola Valley which runs parallel to the Gandaki, the banks of which were still negotiable. We rejoined our outward route again at Tansing.
The Expedition had turned into a limp and anaemic body straggling without much spirit on a course the reason for which escaped us. We were buoyed up by a single wish: to get to India as quickly as possible. This interminable descent of the valleys of Nepal, in endless rain and in the damp heat of the monsoon, had a bad effect on us physically. The others had lost their energy and they dragged themselves miserably along the little walls of the rice-fields, plodding listlessly on and taking no interest in anything.
Couzy and Terray brought up the rear. When we got near to the frontier, Noyelle went on to Gorakhpur, with the object of making arrangements with the Indian railways for our return journey. In the centre of our formation were Oudot, Ichac, Lachenal, Rébuffat, Schatz and myself. Every day Lachenal was more restive; he could not endure the least delay and swore at the coolies. During halts we sometimes found ourselves side by side. He was reading the Expedition’s only thriller – by small instalments, so as to savour it all the better; it was, I gathered, the story of a headless man – I never got further than that.
‘What a lot of time we’re wasting!’
‘We’ll have to be patient, Biscante; things aren’t always easy. Think of the difficulty of recruiting volunteers!’
‘What about G. B.! Don’t you think he could bestir himself a bit?’
‘The heat depresses everyone after all this hard going.’
‘Oh, hell!’ burst out Lachenal, his patience exhausted. ‘I just can’t stand all these chaps round us day in and day out, gesticulating, and bellowing a gibberish that you can’t understand a single ruddy word of! You make signs to them to come near, and they put down their loads! You make signs that you want to drink, so they bring you bananas! Oh, for my house in Chamonix, my wife and the kids!’
‘There’s not much further to go now. After Tansing it’s two days’ march to India. It’s no longer a question of days but of hours. All I ask for is a good nursing-home with a modern operating theatre, masses of medical supplies, dressings which are changed continually … and nice thick ones at that!’
The fact was that for some time our cotton wool had been getting scarce, though Oudot saved all the usable pieces. The surgical spirit had all gone and the needles had to be disinfected in my eau-de-Cologne.
‘Thank God we’ve got our M.O.,’ acknowledged Lachenal. ‘I can’t think what we’d ever have done without him. For one thing, you wouldn’t be here now! But don’t you think he could be a bit more gentle? God, how he hurts sometimes! You know, these surgeons, when they’re on the job they don’t worry about whether people are under an anaesthetic or not, they go on just the same – cut, snip, stab. Oh, what miserable wretches we are!’
And what a duet we set up! But how pleasant it was to complain!
1 A surgical instrument used for scraping bones and separating living and dead tissue.
2 Harrer was a member of a German expedition who, during an extraordinary trip, crossed the Himalaya, followed the course of the Brahmaputra and finished by settling in Lhasa where it is said he was chief engineer and then commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army.
19
Gorakhpur
THE PARTY HAD become gradually accustomed to the nomadic life which we had been leading for the last few weeks. Sometimes we made our way along the slippery little walls running between the rice-fields, but the stretchers were too wide for this and had to be carried right through the fields. This reminded me of those medieval lords whom, as a child, I had pictured trampling down flourishi
ng crops for their pleasure. Sometimes we proceeded in single file along tracks that took us right through the middle of strange maize-fields where the gigantic plants towered several feet above our heads.
During the halts the coolies would squat round us, taking it in turns for a puff at the same cigarette. Their religion forbade them to put their lips to tobacco, source of an impure pleasure; but they got round this difficulty by inserting the tip of the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, curled round to form a little bowl; putting their lips to this they inhaled without touching the tobacco, and so obtained an innocent delight.
As we approached Tansing the weather improved, and it was the sun now that made us suffer. The flies swarmed over my saturated bandages and there was nothing I could do about it. A Brahman came up and embarked on a long prayer; listlessly I answered, ‘Atcha! Atcha!’ As far as I could make out he said he was a sun-worshipper: it was not quite the best moment for such a declaration, and I wished him and his sun to the devil!
He gesticulated continuously while he droned on. I got tired of him and my eyes strayed to the freshly rain-washed sky. Suddenly my attention was caught by an object – unless I was mistaken it was an umbrella that the Brahman carried under his arm. Immediately I began to take an intense interest in what he was saying, and after a few moments I got him to understand that his umbrella would be most useful to me, and we continued to converse under its restful shade as he held it over us, trotting along beside the stretcher.
Another two hours and we were at the end of our march. While Sarki fed me with an astonishing number of bananas I heard cries and protests: it was Angtharkay hastening the poor Brahman on his way with a few well-placed kicks. I asked our Sirdar what it was all about and he explained as best he could:
Annapurna Page 27