Nima

by Adam Popescu

  “Mother left the shoes outside this morning,” she whispered. “Remember? Ang had gone out in the morning, in the snow. And his shoes got wet.” She shook her head. “Mother left the shoes out to dry.”

  That little shoe, made from yak hide, sewn by Mother just a month earlier—she clutched it and she knew—and she sat wailing up at the skies.

  We all fell apart.

  I don’t remember everything that happened next, as if it was a bad dream I have yet to wake from. Norbu took off his jacket, wrapped me in it, took my hands in between his and rubbed them. I remember his hands were so big and strong. Norbu’s father and mother came too, as did other villagers, helping my sisters and me, trying to take us away, to stop us from starting to dig again. Women tried to console my mother, but she pushed them away, still clutching that shoe, hysterical.

  I freed myself from Norbu’s arms and dropped next to Mother. She tried to push me away but I held her, my face pressed against her heaving chest, both of us streaming tears. All of my sisters gathered around us, holding each other and weeping.

  When I looked up I saw a ghost. A living ghost. I wiped my eyes to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. I hadn’t even thought of him, so focused on my brother.

  My father had dug his way out of the snow. He dragged himself to where we were and knelt down next to his wife, one hand holding hers, the other reaching for the shoe, and he screamed something without words and they both rocked back and forth, the snow under his right leg now a dark crimson. And then he fell over and passed out.

  He should have died that day.

  The avalanche had pinned him between two boulders, a shelter that kept him alive. But one of the boulders crushed his right leg. He still found the strength to dig his way out with his kikuri blade, and he was found by neighbors of ours looking for survivors. They gave him water, and he half crawled, half walked his way to the village. Of the men who were on the mountain with my father, five died that day. But the highest toll was in Khumjung. Twenty of our villagers were killed when the ru’ struck.

  Father should have died right next to Mother, he was bleeding so heavily from that broken leg. It was his grief alone that kept him going. We could see the white of the bone sticking out of the skin, the muscle hanging off the leg, peeled, a red mess. Again, Norbu, without speaking, without hesitating, lifted my father with the help of two other men, and they took off down the valley. My sisters huddled around my mother, still on her knees clutching Ang’s shoe, but I turned and followed the men carrying my father.

  There’s no hospital on the mountain. And none of us had enough money to take Father or anyone else down to Lukla, to fly them to the capital—not that a helicopter would try to land up here right after an avalanche. Sometimes the sound of the blades can trigger another ru’, shaking free what snow and ice didn’t hit the first time.

  Over my shoulder, where my village once was, only the hill with the rich Sherpas’ homes was still recognizable, survivors crawling like ants, pulling and lifting other ants out of the white mess.

  Don’t look back.

  The men carried Father to the only place where we could find help: the infirmary at the Sir Edmund Hillary High School. I had studied there for two years, making my hour-long walk in snow or in sunshine, from my home to the school, all to learn basic English, history, mathematics. The school serves the whole Khumbu region, teaching mountain children for a year or two before their families pull them out and send them hauling goods to make money. Goods they will never use, for tourists they’ll never know, so their families can buy the rice, barley and grains that won’t grow in our sterile soil. It’s the only place for miles with a nurse and a supply of Western medicine. The school itself is nothing but a few rooms, each with a blackened stove that we would gather around while the headmaster taught us the geography of Nepal, the home of eight of the world’s tallest peaks. We took turns passing the single lesson book, sharing pencils made black from fingers used to feeding yak fuel to the flames.

  “Keep your body warm to keep your mind warm,” the headmaster was fond of telling us.

  When we entered the infirmary, Father’s eyes were completely shut from the pain, his cracked lips mumbling something I couldn’t understand. Norbu and father’s two climbing friends stared in silence. But they weren’t staring at the man lying on that narrow cot. They were staring at the figure standing beside my father, an apparition—a female nurse. By their terrified looks, it may as well have been a yeti looming above my father. The nurse smiled a mix of sympathy and scorn. I had never seen her before but I believed in her ability. Instantly, I loved this woman.

  I had stopped going to school that year, even though my father was doing well on the mountain. My mother was starting to show with Fifth, and we still had a field to plow and animals to take care of, jobs that fell to me and Second, the two oldest. There was no time for school. So many things I learned from that sole lesson book, so many pictures of lives unlike my own, they felt so far away now. It was difficult to believe there was another world beyond the mountains. When I looked up from the schoolyard or from the village, from anywhere in the Khumbu, I saw the peaks. What else could exist beyond the Himalayas?

  Once, the headmaster had held up a mobile phone and given us a lesson about an invisible force called wifi. I decided then that I would have a mobile. I had no one to call, but I knew the device could conjure some sort of power, and help me find my luck. I remember the headmaster letting me touch the mobile. It was so small, so light, I didn’t want to give it back. He ended up yanking the thing out of my hands and giving it to another student to examine. The headmaster kept on talking until my head became dizzy, and when I told him so, he sent me to see the nurse, a man with a large mole on his cheek and a single long black hair growing out of it. I hated that mole hair touching my face when he got close, hated his cold hands when he felt my forehead, hated him ogling my neck, my chest.

  But that man was gone now. In his place, a woman in a white coat, she couldn’t have been that much older than me. A female nurse with a look of knowing, a confident expression of belonging. Thankfully, my father’s eyes were still closed, I knew how he would have reacted.

  The other men didn’t say a word, they just followed the yeti’s friendly orders and helped hold him down as she straightened the bone on a wooden splint, Father gritting his teeth and moaning so loudly she finally stuck a spoon in his mouth. “So he won’t bite off his tongue.”

  I watched from the doorway as the nurse put two delicate hands on Father’s leg—hands with thin fingers, nails painted the color of a blood pheasant—and when those small hands pushed down with all her weight and set the leg, I heard the snap and looked away.

  Eyelids fluttering, words garbled with that spoon between his teeth, a web of saliva on the sides of his mouth, how could he recover from this? I felt like running out into the cold until it was all over. My fingers were wrapping around the doorknob, but Norbu pulled me back and held me close. I remember his smell so well. Like outside—like the mountains—and when he stroked the back of my neck I didn’t recoil like I had with the mole man. I pressed my face into the crook of his arm and cried and cried. And though I was thinking of my father, my brother, the destruction, I couldn’t help but marvel at this unknown woman. Confident, capable, even in a moment like this.

  I wanted to know more about her. Clearly, she wasn’t from Khumjung. She must have studied in the capital, but if she was working here, then she couldn’t be a mother. I broke away from Norbu’s grip. The nurse’s slender fingers held a long sharp object that she filled out of a tube of clear liquid. She held it up, squirted some out, then pierced my father’s arm. A prick of blood swirled inside the tube.

  She saw me looking and pulled out that pointy thing from his arm. “It’s called a hypodermic needle—it has medicine in it, to help with the pain. It won’t hurt him, I promise, it’s just sharp in order to go into the bloodstream quickly. It will work very fast, it will help, please trus
t me.”

  I watched my father become still. He looked like he had died, and I remember feeling nothing. Nothing at all. That scared me more than anything that day. By then, Father’s friends had departed and abandoned him to the yeti, unable to watch and surely fearing bad omens. But Norbu had stayed. In this worst of all moments, a small laugh was caught in my throat, and I swallowed to push it back down, almost choking.

  I took a step closer and touched my father’s face. It was burning hot.

  “Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “He’s resting now. Just resting. He’s still alive, still breathing. The fever will pass, the medicine will help.”

  I watched his chest rise and fall. But so slowly.

  “It’s from the pain and stress. The leg is broken very badly, and in more than one place. I gave him something to put him to sleep and I set the leg straight again, but it will take time to heal. It won’t be easy.”

  I didn’t know what she gave him or how it worked, but I was relieved that my father’s eyes were still closed. Those wild, red eyes. And the way she spoke soothed me. So calm, so sure of herself.

  There were two plastic chairs by the cot, and I sat in one and Norbu in the other. One of the cot’s legs was held up by three medical books. I twisted my head to read the only visible title: Leprosy & Infectious Diseases in Nepal.

  “Do you still go to school here?” Norbu blurted unexpectedly, looking straight at my father, as if afraid to make eye contact with me.

  “I plan to return. And you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Nothing left for me to learn here. What do I need books for?” he declared, stretching his arm and pointing at what propped up the cot.

  “Can you read?” I asked. He shook his head again. “How about your name? Can you write it?”

  “What for? Everything for me is on the mountain.” It sounded so strange to hear his dedication to the mountain after it had just destroyed our village. “Every year, she takes revenge. She doesn’t always give, sometimes she takes away.”

  “And my brother?” My voice rising. “Why did she take him? What did he do wrong?”

  The nurse held up her hand towards me: quiet, girl, her face said, your father needs to rest.

  Norbu whispered to me: “Your brother was an innocent, that’s true. And the loss is deep. Sometimes she takes innocents along with the guilty.”

  So simple, so cold. Norbu sat with his arms folded, not knowing what else to say. The nurse held her hand on Father’s wrist, mouthing something. It looked like she was counting.

  “Where did you learn… ?” I asked her. I didn’t know the right word for what she was doing.

  She laid Father’s hand down. “Good pulse, his heart is strong. I learned to be a nurse at the Model Hospital in Kathmandu.”

  The capital. Even its name, it sounded so like another country. So foreign. Kathmandu. I’d never been, of course. I’d never been off the mountain. “What’s it like there?”

  She held up a finger to her lips. “Please, be quiet for your father. I will tell you, but we must whisper, and let’s speak over here.”

  I nodded, getting out of the chair and walking to the doorway after her. Norbu remained seated, but leaned towards us to listen in.

  “Kathmandu is very flat,” she explained softly. “So flat, there are no mountains at all.” She paused. “And it’s a very different place for women. Very different from here…” She trailed off, like she had revealed too much.

  “How different?”

  She took a breath. “In some ways, it’s much easier for women there. And the trouble with the Maoists has passed, so there are no more killings. The streets are safe now. You can walk by yourself, shop at the market, there’s running water and electrical power everywhere—you can drive a car—you know what a car is, yes? It’s like a mechanical carriage, except there are no horses pulling it. Kathmandu is very different from here.”

  “But you can work? Women can work?”

  “Women can work and do almost anything men can do.”

  A place where women can live and work as men do. I glanced at Norbu, arms still folded, but listening.

  “What’s it like to live on flat land?”

  “The air is different. You feel more of it when you breathe. And the ground,” she held her palms straight in the air, “it’s just like this. There are places in our country that are forever green instead of black and gray and white. Places where it’s not just rock and ice.”

  “And Kathmandu is one of those places?”

  “It is. Kathmandu is in the valley, and that makes life easier.”

  “How is it easier?” Norbu asked from his plastic chair. The nurse signaled with her finger to her lips, and Norbu rose out of the chair and stepped towards us. “I’ve been to the city. You can’t see the mountains, you can’t roam free, there are always walls keeping the sky out.”

  “Well, yes. But you can buy food and water—so many kinds of food, meat as well—and there are cinemas. You sit in a darkened room with many other people and a movie appears on a large screen, like a television program, but the screen is much larger.”

  “Why would you want to sit in a dark room with strangers?” wondered Norbu.

  She smiled. “That’s city life. It is quite different, yes, but Kathmandu can be a very nice place—”

  “I’ve been,” Norbu chirped. “When my grandfather was honored by the Nepal Mountaineering Association. It was dirty. And it was flat, you’re right about that. The buildings block out the peaks—they even block out the sun. And it’s loud, so loud, so many autos and motorbikes, I couldn’t even cross the road. When my grandfather’s ceremony was over, I didn’t want to go outside again. I stayed in that room after everyone else had left. When I did leave, I couldn’t stop coughing. I coughed all the time until I was back on the mountain. My lungs were full of black soot. I never want to return there. If I lived in Kathmandu, I think I would die of sorrow.” A long pause. Norbu looked up at the walls of the small room, remembering. “I hate not seeing the sky when I look up.”

  “And what about women who work,” the nurse asked, “do you hate seeing that, too?”

  Norbu smiled. “The other men left when they saw you, but I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “Did they think I was a lepcha? Will they tell the other villagers not to bring their injured to a woman nurse?”

  “Some will call you a snow demon, no doubt,” he answered. “But they’re fools, there’s no such thing as a lepcha.”

  I strained to hear our neighbors coming down the mountain, carrying their own loved ones. I heard nothing but silence. The school was empty. It was Saturday, Nepal’s rest day.

  “Where do you sleep?” I asked her. And she smiled and pointed to the cot where my father lay.

  “All alone?” I whispered.

  “All alone,” she answered.

  Not a line on her face, she was too pretty to be a snow demon or a yeti. “You look very young,” I said, voicing my thoughts. She smiled again and said nothing. “Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to work in Kathmandu as a nurse?”

  “Believe it or not, it may be easier here. There are so few nurses in the Khumbu that when people need my help, they get over the shock of taking orders from a woman. I’m needed here, and there’s less competition than in the valley.” She riffled through supplies, opened a box of medicines. Even when squinting, not a single line on her face. “And thank you for saying that, but I am not so young. I am twenty-four.”

  Ten years older than me. “And not married?” I exclaimed, unable to withhold my surprise and feeling the blood rush to my face.

  “Not yet. If I was, I’d be stuck at home cooking, raising children, and washing my husband’s socks.”

  Norbu burst out laughing.

  “See?” she countered. “Be careful—”

  “Nima.”

  “Be careful, Nima. Some paths you go down, you cannot return from. Marriage is not bad, but marriage is forever.”

>   “Even in Kathmandu?”

  “Even in Kathmandu.”

  “Were you born there?”

  “No, I was born not far from here, in Namche Bazaar. I’m a Sherpa, too. My brother lives in Kathmandu.”

  Brother.

  “He let me stay with him in the capital, he was very good to me. If not for him, I wouldn’t have been able to study in the city, I wouldn’t have had the money. A very good brother.”

  Ang. A pain shot through me. My brother would never grow up. He would never—I started crying. The nurse must have thought my tears were for my father. She looked away, busying herself with picking through bottles and tubes and things whose purpose I couldn’t guess.

  “I haven’t seen you before, at the school,” she said to distract me. “I know all the boys and girls here. But you said you were planning to come back, yes?”

  I nodded, wiping my face. I stared at her white coat, her hair pulled back smartly.

  “Good, I’d like to see you again,” she said, leaning over my father. She placed a shiny round device on his chest and stuck its other end, a pair of metal prongs, into her ears. “I’m checking his pulse,” she explained. “This is called a stethoscope. It doesn’t hurt him, it’s only to listen inside, to make sure everything’s okay. Would you like to listen?”

  I nodded again, and she placed the cold prongs in my ears. I heard a deep drumbeat and then she moved the device on Father’s chest and I heard what sounded like wind blowing.

  “That’s his heart. And his breathing.”

  “Norbu.” I took out the prongs from my ears, offered them to him, but he shook his head. I placed them back in my ears. How could this be—listening inside my father’s body?

  “It’s not magic. It’s medicine, science. You seem interested, smart. Have you ever thought of becoming a nurse, Nima?”

  I felt Norbu watching me closely. Still giddy from what I’d heard, I didn’t care. “I…would like to go down the mountain and study there. To see for myself what it’s like. What I can become.”