by Frank Huyler
“What else can we do?”
He shook his head.
“There is something,” he said, quickly, as if to get through it. “We can call a helicopter.”
It hadn’t occurred to me. He had his satellite phone.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
“There is a problem, however,” he continued, in the same tone. “He was not a soldier. He is only a cook.”
“So,” I said, understanding at last. “They will not come unless we pay. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Rai said, lighting another cigarette. “We cannot call the army. But we can call a civilian one.”
“Then call them,” I said. “I’ll pay for it.”
“It will cost two thousand pounds,” he said.
“I don’t care,” I said.
“Thank you,” Rai said, and for an instant he looked as if he might weep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I imagined a long wait—a day, or even more. I imagined Ali, wrapped up and guarded against the animals at night. I imagined we were farther away.
Rai looked carefully at the map, and made the call from high on the hillside. There was no signal in the narrow valley, and so he climbed. Elise and I watched him, sitting a safe distance from Ali on our packs.
The soldier, meanwhile, went through Ali’s duffel. We watched as he spread the contents out on the ground a few feet away. Tins of food. Pots, silverware. A blanket, and finally a few belongings—a black plastic comb, a cheap digital watch. A few pairs of blackened, threadbare socks. A blue polyester hat, a hand mirror. All of it soaking and dripping.
At the bottom of the pack, folded carefully, wrapped in a plastic bag, was my fleece shirt. The soldier laid it on the gravel. He looked up at me, questioning. I shook my head, and pointed to him.
“You can have it,” I said.
He understood me well enough, and smiled, bowing his head at me. He lifted the shirt by the shoulders, and shook it, as one would a wet towel, held it at arm’s length, and looked at it with a critical, appraising eye. He rolled the fabric between his fingers, then stood, and carefully draped the shirt across a nearby boulder, where it could dry in the sun.
Ali’s nephew, if he noticed any of this, gave no sign. He sat by himself, staring dumbly off at the river, no doubt worn out by his display. A few minutes earlier Elise had tried to approach him, but he had not responded. He had simply shaken his head, and stared at the ground, and after a while she’d given up. Only the soldier, it seemed, had been able to offer him some measure of comfort, and now he was fingering my shirt and smiling with pleasure.
I didn’t really want to think about my shirt, wrapped like a precious thing, in the bottom of Ali’s pack. I didn’t want to think about how little he had, or how pathetic and small it all seemed. He lay covered in a blanket now, his legs protruding from beneath it. I watched him for a while, then looked up again at Rai, a tiny figure high on the side of the ridge. He was descending toward us. As the minutes passed, we sat there, not speaking, watching his approach.
“They will be here in two hours,” he said, when he reached us. “So we must get ready.”
“Two hours?” I asked, incredulous. “I thought we’d have to wait until tomorrow.”
“What time is it?” Elise asked.
“It is three p.m.,” he said. “We will be in the city by seven. Maybe eight. But it will be light enough to fly.”
It was very hard to believe, sitting there in the empty canyon, with no sign of anyone anywhere, with only the river, the rocks and distances, the sky above us, after all this walking and struggling. I could hardly conceive of it.
We waited, not saying much. Rai and the soldier spent some of the time rolling Ali up in a blue plastic tarp dug out of the soldier’s pack, then tying it tight with a length of cheap white nylon rope. He looked vaguely like a rug when they were done. The tarp was large enough to wrap him completely, and they wound the rope around him over and over again. It was unpleasant to watch—Rai, on his knees, straddling the body, cinching the rope as tight as he could, then handing the loose end to the soldier, who lifted Ali by the feet, and flicked the rope under him for Rai to grab once more. Soon Ali was a bundle, wrapped in blue plastic and clothesline. When they were finished they stood, and wiped their hands on their thighs.
Despite Rai’s assurances, I didn’t expect the helicopter to come that day. I expected mistakes, inefficiency, incompetence, more phone calls—all of that. I expected to be there for the night.
But the helicopter came. We heard it first, to the south, in the distance, and only then did we see it—a tiny speck in the high center, following the river. Rai stood, and began waving. As it approached, all I felt was relief—it was here after all, and soon all of this, these brutal last few days, would be behind me. The helicopter seemed as slow as a swimmer, and seemed to approach forever, as we stood and watched.
Just then the pilot must have seen us, because he abruptly changed course, curving in a wide downward arc toward where we stood. It was a small machine, light, with a round Plexiglas bubble canopy. It was not General Said’s piece of industrial equipment. It looked frail, delicate, and it came to a hover thirty feet or so above the river like a dragonfly. I could see the pilot clearly through the glass. He wore civilian clothes—a white dress shirt, dark pants. He was unhelmeted. I could see his feet moving on the pedals, as the machine bobbed and swayed. Rai waved with both arms, pointing to the gravel bank, and the pilot waved back, spun the helicopter effortlessly in the air, lowered it straight down to the ground, and settled, uneasily at first, onto the gravel—one skid, then the other. He shut off the engine, and it wound down, the rotors shining and skipping in the sun.
The pilot opened the door, then hopped out and walked toward us. He was very young—in his late twenties at most. Rai went out to meet him, and I followed.
They exchanged a few words, then switched to English. I looked at him carefully—his white shirt, his dark pants, his gold watch, aviator glasses dangling from a cord around his neck—and I guessed that he was a rich man’s son, playing at boldness.
Rai made the introductions, and the man looked me over quickly before obviously and rapidly losing interest. He cheered up dramatically, however, when he saw Elise—he took her hand, and smiled with lots of white teeth, and ran his hand easily through his well-cut hair.
“How do you like our beautiful country?” he said to her.
She looked at him, removed her hand, and did not reply.
Rai said something, and the man’s smile skipped a beat, and he looked over at the bundle on the riverbank, then back.
Though we stood out in the sun it was far too cold for a well-tailored dress shirt. The man glanced at us, and our gear.
“Only three can come,” he said, not smiling anymore.
It was a small helicopter. I turned to Rai.
“Did you know about this?”
“They only have these. The Lamas. They have no big ones.”
“I am cold,” the pilot said. “Get your things. I will wait in the chopper.” He turned, and walked away, then got in and closed the door, as Rai looked on with undisguised contempt.
“So,” I said. “We’ll have to leave the soldier and the boy. Is that right?”
“He knows the way,” Rai said, gesturing to the soldier. “And I will give them provisions.”
So that was it. Rai and the soldier dragged Ali over the rocks to the helicopter, and laid him down along one of the skids. Then the pilot jumped out again with a length of chain, and padlocks, which he handed to them before getting in the helicopter again. We watched as they lashed Ali tightly to the skids with the chain, then with green canvas straps that the pilot tossed out the door to them. He was directing them through the window, but made no effort to help. When they were done, the pilot emerged once more, and bent down with visible distaste to heave on the bundle, assuring himself that it was tight enough, and would not fall, that none of the lashings would come lo
ose and whip about in flight. He was shivering by then.
“Okay,” he said to us, opening the door on the canopy. “Your packs.”
He put them in the back himself, lifting them, clearly estimating their weight. He turned to me.
“Do you have a credit card?” he said. I fumbled for my wallet, pulled out the card, and handed it to him.
“Your passport also, please,” he said.
“Why do you need my passport?”
“So that I know you will pay,” he replied.
I gave it to him without a word.
“I do not like body recoveries,” he said. “All the time it is like this in the climbing season. And sometimes the climbers, they have no money. They do not want to pay.”
“We’re not climbers,” I said.
He shrugged, then turned back to the business at hand.
“How much do you weigh?” he asked me. I told him.
“And you?” he turned to Elise again.
“Forty-five kilos,” she said. “Less now, I think.”
He looked at Rai, who said something, and he nodded, doing the figures in his head.
“No problem,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The soldier and the boy stood a few feet away. The boy looked disconsolate. Their packs lay at their feet.
Rai turned to the soldier, and said a few words. The soldier replied, and then, somewhat to my surprise, Rai reached into his pack and quickly counted out a sheaf of bills, which he handed to him.
The helicopter was no larger than a small sedan, and it smelled like a new car. Rai sat up front, and Elise and I were pressed together with our gear in the back. The pilot slammed the doors, tugged on the handles, then trotted around to his seat, put on his seat belt, and began flipping switches. He pressed a button, and the engine came to life, driving the soldier and the boy a few yards back. The din was higher pitched than the Mi-17, a more female shriek, but deafening all the same, and we had no earphones. With a glance over his shoulder, and no ceremony at all, the pilot lifted off, scattering the gravel with the rotor wash, and then we were away, over the river, out into the center of the valley, the two figures shrinking rapidly in the distance. They looked up at us, and I looked down at them, until they were specks, until there was nothing left of them at all—just two dots, at a bend in the river, invisible, had I not known precisely where they stood. To the north, a sea of empty country, full of peaks and snow and valleys, glimpsed in the gaps of the ridges. Meanwhile, inches away, Ali lay fluttering and shivering like a flag. Soon it was hot in the bubble, with Elise pressed tight against me. I thought—life on one side, death on the other, and how strange it all is, how utterly dumbfounding and mysterious.
The light sparkled in the globe of the canopy, and caught the grains of dust, and soon we left the course of the river, crossing slot canyon after slot canyon, the ridges rising and falling beneath the skids, with only the occasional streams sparkling below us. A dry land, a labyrinth below us, without landmarks to guide us. How casually the pilot flew, the tips of his fingers delicate on the stick, his eyes up, on the horizon, glancing down every so often at the instruments. He was following a compass heading, and had no use for the maze of shadows beneath us, as the machine swelled and sighed in the cold gusts above the ridge tops. Lower and lower, as Ali shook on. But Rai had tied him well, and none of the lashings came loose.
Rai saw something then, because his head turned and he looked down, and then he reached out and touched the pilot’s arm, shouting above the engine, and pointing.
We were over a dry valley, studded with tiny bushes. From the air, the bushes looked black against the gray and brown earth. At first I didn’t see what Rai was pointing at, and I leaned forward, against his seat, following his outstretched finger to the ground.
It was a rough line of them, walking together. They were to one side of us, ahead of us, and as I watched we rapidly gained on them, until they were abreast, and I could see them clearly, a few hundred feet away and several hundred feet below. They had stopped, and turned, and they were also pointing.
Rai shouted once more at the pilot. The pilot glanced over, and though it hardly seemed as if he moved the controls at all, the helicopter rolled steeply, pressing me against my seat, and then we were descending, my stomach rising into my chest. They came up fast, their faces lifted, and the pilot eased the stick back. The nose nodded up, the airspeed fell to nothing, and then he brought us to a hover thirty feet above the ground, almost directly over them. They scattered, hands above their heads, but then he backed away, like a horseman, light and easy in the saddle.
Perhaps there were thirty of them—men and women and children, all staring up at us with astonishment through the dust from the rotor wash. They were dressed like villagers. Many wore blankets on their shoulders, and they were carrying loads—rough burlap sacks, with coils of twine. But they were thin, so thin they startled me—their gaunt, drawn faces, their eyes open, their mouths agape, looking up. There were animals, also—a skeletal handful of goats tied to leads, the points of their shoulders like pins, their hides drum-tight across their ribs. I imagined they were all that were left, that one by one the others had been consumed, as the weeks passed. But they were nearly out of the mountains. They had only a few more days of walking left.
“Who are they?” I shouted at Rai.
“I don’t know,” he shouted back, over his shoulder.
For a few long seconds we stared at them, and they at us. I felt a terrible urge to laugh. They’d walked right by us, I thought. They never even knew we were there. But then the pilot tapped Rai on the shoulder, pointing to his gauges, and suddenly we were turning in the air, gathering speed, climbing away, and Ali resumed his eager rattle once again.
Twenty minutes later we were in the city.
PART THREE
THE CITY
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
That night I lay on clean sheets, on the fifteenth floor, listening to the sounds of traffic far below. It was fifty degrees warmer. Crowds on the streets. Dark buildings. Headlights, shop lights, along the sidewalk. Only a few neon signs—electricity, even there, was in short supply. Many horns, the heat, wet and thick, the smell of rotting fruit and sewers and roasting lamb on spits, in glass boxes, weakly lit by yellow bulbs. The sound of a thousand small motorcycles, like standing next to a box of bees. We’d passed through it, on the way from the airport in the cab, with the windows down.
The glass was thick, the curtains heavy, and the air-conditioner flicked on and off. I couldn’t sleep; I felt strong and completely exhausted at the same time. I was alone. Elise was a few doors down, and I’d put her room on my credit card, just as I’d done with everything else. It was the most expensive place in town, and they charged like the West they pretended they were. Neither of us had eaten, nor had we wanted to.
The hotel felt like a bottle of clean water from an artesian well. It was a window to another world. The glass lobby, the concierge in his blue suit, the icy air after the sudden heat of the city, a few men in coats and ties, talking on cellular phones, sitting on dark couches with their tea—and we had walked in, with our packs and our boots, soaked in dust. They’d stared at us as if they belonged there and we did not.
After a while, showered and clean-shaven for the first time in more than a month, I got up, and reached for the phone. I didn’t give any thought to time zones, to the fact that he was on the other side of the world, that it was daylight, and he was working. I just dialed, and listened to the ring, without a hint of static. The machine came on.
This is Eric. Leave a message.
And then a beep. I hesitated, like someone who finds himself unexpectedly required to make a public toast, after a cascade of spoons on half-empty glasses. But then, in the most normal tone I could manage, I said I was back in the city, and would be coming home early, that everything was fine, and I’d call him with details when I had them. I hung up the phone softly, even gently, and then wandered over to the minib
ar, where there were tiny bottles of imported whiskey.
I’d heard this message many times, and it always disappointed me. It was his slow, mannered, laconic tone that did it—deliberately indifferent, as if he could barely be bothered. It seemed both forced and unworthy of him, so unlike the friendly, excitable young man he was, and I suspected that he’d recorded it many times, with care. It revealed nothing of his true self. It was like his new tattoo, and his earring: it was studied, and just then I wondered what friends he had made, how many there were, and whether they had similar messages on their answering machines. I’d met only a few.
I drank the whiskey neat, because even there I didn’t trust the ice. I pulled the curtains partly aside, and sat at the window on the executive chair, looking down at the street some fifty meters below. The hotel was the tallest building for miles, and I had a clear view of the city—the lights, the streaming cars on the dark roads. It didn’t shine—it wasn’t quite luminous, like the skylines of the West. But it was a city nonetheless, a vast one, with millions stretching out in their apartment blocks, in their shantytowns. No stars were visible; I had a sense of high clouds up in the dark. Several times I heard the sound of aircraft through the thick glass—the airport was nearby. Even through the air-conditioner, it felt as though it might rain, and that the rain would be warm and soft. With my face close to the window, I could see people walking in the streets, going nowhere in particular. Just out, idly looking into shops, men walking hand in hand, boys, a few women, in what passed for the comfort of evening. I was thirteen hours ahead of him, in another day altogether, and we were at opposite ends of the earth.
I drank two of the little bottles, sitting there in the dark. I nearly drank a third, but when I stood to urinate in the bathroom, careful not to switch on the light, because I had no desire to see myself again in the mirrors over the sink, I realized that I was swaying. It was good whiskey, smooth and silky to the tongue.