by Adam Popescu
“What happened to your hair?”
“I cut it.”
“But why, Nima?”
Don’t call me that, I want to tell him, stop calling me Nima. Just take me back to the village if you must, but don’t humiliate me. I want to say all that and more. But I’m afraid of making him angry. And yet, even after all that I’ve done to him and his family, there’s a look on his face that I’ve never seen before—he looks hurt.
“Why did you leave? I thought we wanted the same thing. That’s why I chose you alone.”
I pull back, and that strong hand falls to his side.
“Nima—”
“Don’t call me that.” I’m more forceful than I intended, but hearing my true name is too painful. “If you’re going to take me back, just do it.”
Norbu looks perplexed. He spends a long moment studying my face. “What should I call you?”
“Ang.”
“Ang,” he says, nodding, understanding. “I’m not here to take you back. If you didn’t want to be my wife, I would never force you.”
He tries to touch my hair again, but I shift and place the cap back on.
“Then why are you here?” I ask, pulling away again.
He straightens, clears his throat. “I’m working as a guide. What about you?”
“The same.”
I want to ask him how he manages with the dust, the constant load, the pace and strain, and the clients’ demands, but of course I can’t. I can’t ask him for help. He smiles with those perfect white teeth of his, and I suddenly feel the strain lessen, my mouth isn’t as tight. Somehow I’m smiling, too.
“If that’s your path to dharma, then so be it. Your father would be proud.”
Norbu Norgay, I want to say, how are you not furious? What kind of man are you?
Norbu crouches to whisper in my ear, but there’s a booming voice to our right—“Oy, boy, more beer! Beer. Now!”—one of Norbu’s mikaru clients. Norbu nods, disappears into the kitchen. My feet are stuck in place, my heart beats out of my chest. I pull my knit cap farther down my face and follow Norbu into the kitchen. He’s busy loading beers onto a tray.
“The keys,” I say to one of the boys who run the lodge.
“Three?” he asks.
I nod. Lasha is still sitting there, cards on the table. His eyes are drunk, and he doesn’t say a thing. Norbu disappears with the tray of beers, and the boy hands me the keys—two—“One more room,” I tell him. He nods, reaches for a notebook, marks down the room and rate, and then hands me a greenish-gold piece of chipped metal, the number six roughly carved into the key. My own room. I step back out into the dining area. The men cheer as Norbu places the bottles in front of them: “Good, good, thanks, mate.” And I head to Val and the others, slamming the keys onto the table, harder than I meant, the impact of the jingling metal makes Val spill curry from her spoon.
Would he really have let me go down the mountain to study? Or maybe join him, man and wife, both working together on the trail…
Norbu walks past me silently and out of the room. Gone again.
“Dal baht power, twenty-four hour,” Val jokes in Nepali English. She’d said that she wanted to start teaching me her language tonight, but I don’t remind her. It’s the last thing I can think about right now.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
Val pushes her empty bowl out of the way. “That man you were speaking with—I saw the way he looked at you. How do you know him?”
My mother often said that everyone has white days when their power is high, black days when they’re low and vulnerable. If you want to help someone, you must do it when your white days overlap and fall in a row. But to harm someone, you first determine when your white days overlap with your enemy’s black days. If you can determine that, you’ll perform spells more effectively. Moments like these, or earlier today, with the soldiers, I can see Val tapping into her white days. Able to do things she otherwise couldn’t and see things she wouldn’t normally see. So what’s the use to lie if she can peer through the veil?
“That was Norbu, the one I left. The jilted bridegroom.”
I look over at Ethan and Daniel, now done with their meals. The big one massages his temples, the smaller one yawns deeply.
What if they understood, too? These men wouldn’t know what to say. They’d probably get rid of me. Taking orders from one woman is enough, right, boys?
“Did he come looking for you?” Val asks. “You’re not going back are you?”
“I can’t go back, Val. I can’t.”
“You don’t have to, Nima. It’s your life, your choice.”
But Val looks worried as she picks up the keys from the table. She gives one to Daniel, another to Ethan.
In the darkness, I see Norbu’s face. I’m by myself, in a room for a mikaru, my team on either side of these thin walls—Daniel to my left, Ethan and Val to my right. I never ate—too nervous to see Norbu again, or Lasha—and I can feel my hunger curled up with me. Perhaps it’s the pain keeping me from deep, dreamless sleep. Then I see my father, then Ang, my mother, each of my sisters, and Val, Ethan, Daniel, and one more I don’t recognize. Dirt on the cheeks, bloodshot pupils, short hair, cut unevenly…it’s me. When I wake, I’m crying.
19
THE WOMAN WITH CLAWS IS MIXING THE MORNING PORRIDGE, BARLEY tsampa, and when I step in, she hands me a bowl and a heavy spoon full of gray sludge. Thwap. She tosses a few crumbled cakes into the stove, that familiar earthy smell wafting into my nostrils. I can feel her eyes on me, but I scoop the sludge and eat right there, standing close enough to the flame to feel its touch. My stomach’s settled now, and I eat for the day before and for today, I eat that gray gruel that has no taste at all. I picture buckwheat, barley, millet. The woman with the claws is still watching and stirring that black cauldron, claws wrapped around a long wooden spoon.
“What will you do now?” she asks.
The question startles me, but I close my eyes and keep eating. A bite of syan dough dipped in ginger, another of turmeric-spiced potato, a roti smeared with yak butter.
Again, she asks, “What will you do?”
My last bite, transformed into wide thukpa noodles. She takes the finished bowl from me and, waiting for my answer, taps on its rim, a sound like a mouse scurrying up a tree trunk.
Once more: “What will you—”
“I’ll keep going,” I cut her off finally. “I’ll keep working.”
She sets the bowl onto the counter. “No. I meant what will you do with your groom?”
“What business is it of yours?”
The words come out harsher than I intended. She’s my elder, but I don’t bother apologizing. I’m right.
Her fingers tighten around her spoon, while the lines on her face deepen as she smiles. “I am a member of the Norgay household. I was once married to his uncle—before he married the others, those sisters.”
I shake my head in disbelief—it cannot be mere chance that I meet her now, and under the same roof as Norbu.
“What happened?”
She touches her belly, rubs it with those talons. “I couldn’t give my husband a son. I couldn’t even make a child. So he took another wife—two wives, to make sure. Two wives and neither could produce for him.” A laugh now. Cold. “It seems I wasn’t the problem after all. In matters of the heart, expectations, needs, and passions always increase suffering. Always. The only way out of that situation is to dissolve the unrealistic expectations. Spiritual discipline.”
Two youngsters walk into the kitchen, the boys from the day before, the ones who played cards with Lasha and Norbu. The old woman fills two bowls. So she became a mother, and these are her sons?
She serves that sludge, which the boys happily accept, and I stand there, jaw shut.
One of the boys—at most fourteen—peers back at me and whispers something to his companion, something I can’t hear, and they both laugh. I feel the an
ger and shame bubbling inside, and then something else, a throbbing in my gut. The boys snicker again and before I can put them in their place, the long wooden spoon comes out from the cauldron.
“Quiet,” she crows. “If you want to eat from my kitchen, you’ll practice respect. Or you won’t eat at all.”
The boys lower their heads and drop their smiles. She’s still pointing that spoon, porridge gathering where the handle meets the tip. The stove crackles and she goes back to stirring the soupy sludge. Her back turned, one of the boys reaches out to touch my hair under my knit cap: “What kind of woman has hair like a man’s?”
Whack!
He lets out a yelp. A drop of porridge hits the cold floor as the mother raises the spoon again, then down again. Wet grains of porridge strike my cheek. She pushes the boys with the end of the spoon and they take their bowls and scurry away.
“Ever since their father died, they think they run this place. But not until I’m gone and given to the sky. Do you care for more porridge? The mikarus will want breakfast soon.” She slops down another helping. “My name is Dorjee Sherpa. It means ‘thunderbolt.’ I was born in a storm,” she says proudly. “Or so my parents told me.”
“Wonderful name.” I don’t feel wonderful. My stomach aches.
“Same as the mountaineer, the one who summited nineteen times. His name was Ang Dorjee Sherpa. Like your name, too. Well, like the name you call yourself. Yes, I’ve heard. You may take that cap off now. And tell me what your parents really named you.”
“Nima,” I say, keeping my knit cap on.
“Nima. That means Sunday. You were born on a Sunday, yes?” she asks gruffly, as another Sherpa enters, his bowl ready. I’m still standing awkwardly, the pain in my stomach clouding me. The newcomer looks me up and down—they all must know—but he doesn’t say anything. Dorjee Sherpa’s glare is a stern enough warning, he gets his helping and goes.
“Norbu means ‘beloved,’” she continues. “And Ang means ‘young.’ Having a day of the week as a name is not so bad. Be happy you’re not Lobsang or Tashi. If your name meant ‘disciple’ you would be in a shedra by now, studying. And if your name meant ‘good luck,’ well, that would be no luck at all. Too much responsibility, far too much to live up to. A day of the week is as good as anything to be named after. At least that’s something you can count on.”
I try to smile, but the fire inside me makes me gasp. Dorjee Sherpa must notice, she picks up a glass, fills it with a steaming brew, opens a jar, mixes its contents into the tea. “Take this,” she commands. “For the pain. It won’t taste good, but it will ease the trouble.”
“Thuuche. Thank you.”
“Now go. I have work and mouths to feed.”
The tea tastes terribly bitter—Dorjee Sherpa’s touch—but I drink it just the same. Then I sit at a table across from three Sherpas. All men, of course. They cast their gaze down, as if looking at me could infect them. Then they begin to multiply, two more Sherpas, and four more, then five more, then six. When the room is full, Lasha marches in. He sits down and eats his porridge without uttering one sound. He watches me, sipping that miserable tea, watching him back.
Then Norbu. He looks tired. He eats his entire meal with his back to me, then he gets up to return his bowl to the kitchen—not looking at me once. Across the room, Lasha rises to take his leave. “Lepcha,” he mutters towards me.
A witch, am I? A fleeting moment alone until the mikarus file in now, trampling loudly enough to be heard from the other end of the corridor. Then some of the Sherpas return, too, scampering to take their orders. The white men are those from the night before, the ones who speak the strange English. My own mikarus enter, finally. They move like every muscle aches.
“Did you not sleep well?” I ask Val.
Val, eyes sunken under yesterday’s tan: “Not really. Not at all, really.”
“Trouble with stomach?”
“We took turns in the bathroom all night. I think I lost five pounds.”
“I’ll get you tea right away. Very important to drink, three liters every day.”
Val burps, nods.
“Eggs or porridge?”
“Porridge.”
Daniel’s nose is dripping into a stubbly mustache and down into his beard. Ethan coughs deep, an effect of the altitude.
“Eggs,” Val adds. “Eggs all around. And coffee if there’s any.”
She must not be feeling well, she’s treating me like most mikarus do Nepalis, as if they’re servants first, humans second.
“Porridge, eggs, and coffee, okay,” I answer. I’m starting to talk like the mikarus, too. I’m learning.
Back in the kitchen, as if Dorjee Sherpa could hear our thoughts through these thin walls, she’s already frying eggs and potatoes. There’s a line of Sherpas waiting for her to prepare their clients’ meals, including Norbu.
“The mikarus are hungry,” I announce, looking at Norbu from the corner of my eye. He still won’t look at me.
“The mikarus are hungry,” Dorjee Sherpa repeats. “Well then, we mustn’t keep them waiting. Eggs for three?”
I nod. “And one porridge.”
“Eggs for three and one porridge,” she repeats back. “And coffee.”
“And coffee.”
The Sherpas take their clients’ meals and shuffle out. Only Norbu remains. Maybe Lasha is speaking to Val while I’m in here. He might tell her I’m a witch, that I’m trouble, say I’m a criminal who broke my family’s marriage contract. He might say Norbu is here to take revenge. As the sirdar, there’s no reason Val wouldn’t take his word over mine.
Dorjee Sherpa flips eggs onto plates, hands them to him. “Here you are, nephew.”
He’s close enough that I can smell that scent of musk and sweat. Norbu takes a step closer and faces me. “Why did you go?” he asks. “I still don’t understand.”
The question is so direct I haven’t prepared for it. I don’t know what to say.
“I wanted you, just you. Why did you leave without telling me?”
I look over at Dorjee Sherpa. She pretends not to be listening, cracking eggs on the wok, the sound of the sizzle filling the air.
“I—I want something more than my mother’s life. I don’t want to live on my knees and on my back making food and children. I want to see what else is out there. Down in the valley. Or up on the mountains as a climbing Sherpa. A real Sherpa, like you, like my father.”
One of the egg yokes pops in the wok. Norbu, holding plates stacked along those tree trunk arms of his, nods with his whole body—the plates look ready to fall.
“I have to decide my own life, Norbu.”
“I would have given you that. I would have given you all of that.”
“Really, you would have let me travel down to Kathmandu after we’d married?”
He frowned and shrugged.
“My father didn’t send you to look for me?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not here to take you back against your will, Nima.”
My heart’s beating like a drum, my stomach’s fluttering, and my mouth is dry. He’s doing it again, catching me off guard, speaking in a way I didn’t expect. “I thought you wanted tradition—I thought you wanted the old ways.”
“Our world is changing. The only way to move is with the stream, not against it.” He struggles to balance the plates. “I’m not the same boy you remember from Khunde.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re going to Base Camp with your mikarus, yes?”
I nod, and he smiles with that too perfect smile.
“Nima, the Sherpa girl. We’ll talk again on the trail?”
I nod again. “Yes.”
Norbu leaves, and Dorjee Sherpa turns from the wok. I’m staring, losing my sight in the gray sludge, the gurgle of porridge bubbling, the eggs frying. If women and men are not so different, then why is the household set up like it is?
“Stomach still troubling you?” Dorjee Sherpa asks.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” I ask.
She beats the eggs in the wok, the yokes mixing with the whites. “A warrior does not win a battle by virtue of birth. Men always do what they want. So, why won’t this one do the same?”
She’s probably right, but I can’t focus on anything but the food. She dumps the eggs onto three plates. Then she pours the coffee, half moons of dirt under those long fingernails. “Life is impermanence. The only stability we have is the stubbornness of men. You didn’t know that, but you should from now on. Men don’t give up easily, they don’t give up something they want. I was foolish to think I would be kept if I could not bear a son, even if by no fault of my own. And you’re naive to think that your fates aren’t intertwined. Norbu Norgay won’t give you up so easily. Maybe he is telling the truth—I know that’s not his uncle’s way—perhaps the bloodlines are cleaner on his mother’s side. Pray to Mount Kailash that you two wed and you bear a son so he doesn’t cast you off, like I was.
Because if he does leave you, what other life is there for a woman on the mountain?”
“You don’t believe in another way? You wouldn’t have wanted more—more than this?”
She hands me the plates and the coffee on a tray. “What more is there?”
Val doesn’t want to waste our rest day, so three hours after breakfast, we’re above Namche, passing stupas and grazing yaks. We’ll climb higher, then return to Namche to sleep tonight. Still, each time I lift a boot, it’s like I’m freeing it from quicksand. When I stop, I can hear the mikarus behind me, gasping for breath. The sun is high but the air is chilly. My old life is still a half day’s walk away.
What is my family doing right now?
Is Second cross with me? Is she still crying? Has word gotten back to my father about me?
We climb a rugged ridge. Yaks feed on the short, yellowing grass on the jagged hillsides. Trees don’t grow this high up. The pain in my middle has diminished, perhaps from the tea, but my head aches. Perhaps I’m catching mountain sickness from the mikarus.