by Adam Popescu
“Ethan and Val?” he asks.
“Follow me!” I yell in English.
One hand in front of my face, the other held out to feel my way down, I lead. Daniel’s behind me. And behind him, Val and Ethan reappear. Ethan limps, but he’s on his feet.
We start heading down. Val, her chin tucked in to battle the wind, steps on a loose rock and chirps in pain, rolling an ankle—Ethan grabs her. Somehow they both stay on their feet. We keep lurching downwind, and I hit a patch of hidden ice and someone stops me from falling. I think it’s Daniel, but I can’t be sure, the churning elements are too overwhelming. I stagger on, and then, steps lower, the wind lessens. I can open my eyes fully, to check—we’re all together. Climbing back down, Ethan’s again favoring his right leg, but still he’s walking, and Val seems to be moving without trouble.
We shuffle back toward Gorak Shep, close enough to grip each other, the blind leading the blind. When we finally hobble into the lodge, everyone gathers around the stove. The Sherpa owners, a family of four, jump up to offer their chairs. “Where’d you go in this wind?” the patriarch asks. He has a stringy black beard and wire-rimmed glasses, and he takes them off and cleans them on his shirt repeatedly as if the action helps him hear better.
“Kalapathar.”
“Is it even possible, in this weather?” he asks, rubbing those frames. “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt.”
“At least nothing life threatening,” I murmur, watching Ethan massage his leg gingerly.
“How is it?” Val asks.
Ethan shakes his head, takes out a pill, a different color from the Diamox.
Daniel is holding his boots close enough to the stove that I smell rubber burning. I hurry to fetch tea. “Help her,” the owner tells his wife. I must have a wild look, my short hair exposed without my knit cap, and she tells me to go warm up by the stove. She’ll prepare the tea. The wife is no more than a girl, barely older than me, but her face is so much more dried and withered from living in this place.
Soon, I’m handed a mug of tea and I put it to my lips. Val takes my arm and pulls me down onto a plastic chair, next to her and the others.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I lead the group, I put us in danger. It’s my fault, I should’ve known.”
“You couldn’t have.”
Norbu would have known.
We sit for a moment, staring into the stove’s open flames. I throw a cake in, watch the flames take it.
Ethan looks like he’s in pain. Val leans over and brings her lips to his. Those are the moments I want.
“When you placed your lips on his—what’s that called?”
“Kissing,” she tells me, staring at me strangely. “It’s called a kiss. You don’t have that word in your language?”
I shake my head.
“You should try it with Norbu,” Val says, smiling.
“I have,” I say, feeling my cheeks redden. “I’ve decided, Val,” I go on, feeling my voice get stronger. “I want us to work together, if he’ll have me. And I’ll use the money to help my family, pay for my sisters’ dowry. I’ll save the rest.”
“Good.” She nods again, not prodding, giving me the chance to share. “And what about leaving the mountain?”
“In the off-season, I’ll go down to the capital. Maybe I’ll study, maybe I’ll roam like a tourist. Like a mikaru. I’m not sure yet.”
“Good. Good plan. Lots to see in Kathmandu.”
“And you?”
“Ethan and I are going to do the same as you, we’ll keep trying. When you have someone you care about, you have to keep trying. I don’t want to ask what if.”
“I don’t either,” I answer.
“So tomorrow’s Base Camp?” Val says in Nepali, so weakly it’s almost a joke.
“Tomorrow’s Base Camp,” I answer. Too tired to say anything else, I stare into the flames, rehearsing all the things I want to say to Norbu, all the things I’ve held back.
27
THE WIND BLEW ALL NIGHT, GUSTING AT THE TIN ROOF, MAKING RICKETY music. Another sleepless night. In the morning, the four of us gather in the common room for porridge and black tea. The wind is still furious.
“Felt like I was upside down last night,” Val tells me. “Couldn’t sleep at all.”
I couldn’t sleep either. “Oxygen’s fifty percent now,” I say to Val. She’s even paler today. Ethan and Val adjust their packs and cameras in slow motion.
“Ready?” I ask her.
“Will the weather let us?” she wonders.
“Isn’t that why you came here, for your story?”
She nods. “I’m not sure what I’ve got, to be honest. The story is different now. This trip has turned into something else. Not what I expected.”
“But still good?”
“Still good. Just different. Deeper. More personal.”
“And how do you feel? Headaches, stomach?”
“I took a lot of ibuprofen last night. So did Ethan, for the swelling. He’s fine, just got scared. We’re both a little groggy. Nothing a strong cup of coffee can’t solve.”
Brave woman, but she speaks with bravado.
When we step out of the lodge, it’s so cold I feel the porridge icing up in my stomach. The skies cry like some poor creature caught in a hunter’s trap. “The wind is strongest here in between mountains,” I say, raising my voice to be heard. “I don’t think it will be as bad further up.”
Daniel and Ethan curl their fingers into fists and throw up their thumbs. Val takes my hand and shows me how to do it. An hour later, on the glacier again. White, blue, black ice covers rocks waiting to crack and fall into frozen caves no human will ever explore, and if they do, they’re caves they’ll never escape from.
An hour later we are still battling a strong wind like we’ve offended Khumbi Yulha and Jomo Miyo Lang Sangma. We walk on a moon of ice, and in between the blocks of ice, crevasses as deep as the mountain is high. If I fell and survived, what would I fill my mind with until death came for me? How long would it take to end it all—and how would I do it?
Two hours pass. Three. Nearly four. I’m using the terrain as wind cover. I’m pushing them hard. I’m pushing myself hard. My knees burn, my face burns, my stomach is churning. The others plod along, slowly, puffing and wheezing. Daniel doesn’t bother with his camera today, no jokes or chatter from Ethan or Val. They walk with their shoulders slumped, barely picking up their feet, Ethan especially. Val said he was okay, but he’s so slow and stiff.
“Conserving energy,” she answers when I ask how they’re doing.
The sun starts vanishing behind the ridges. After what happened yesterday, we have to be careful—I don’t want the group trekking in the dark. Nothing can go wrong today. Between two huge frozen slabs we stop, and Ethan sucks from that tube, and Daniel finishes his water. They’re dripping sweat, and I watch it harden instantly on their faces, crystals of ice streaking down their temples. Val uses a handkerchief to pat their faces dry. Onward, in that same slumped formation. I keep watching the sun. It’s gone now, descended beyond the ridge. An hour, maybe two, until it’s fully dark. And then? We’ll have to head back downhill, but still partly in the dark. I’ll give it fifteen more minutes before we turn, that’s it. Then I see something ahead, a few kilometers in the distance…they look like yaks or ibex. Little brown dots, moving on a slab of frozen rocks. “What is that?”
We get closer, but they don’t move like yaks. Whatever it is, they stand on two feet, and there are many of them. A dozen or more. Maybe two dozen.
“Are those people?”
They are: ants floating on a vast boulder pile with tiny prayer flags and multicolored tents. We made it: Base Camp. The doorstep of the Earth Mother.
I pick up my feet and break into a trot. The mikarus follow without instruction, and we’re all running now, hopping over stones older than the dharma. We catch up with two Sherpas and two red-faced Westerners, a couple in their thirties, I recognize them from Norbu’s group.
Each Sherpa holds an arm around one of the mikarus—they look sick, their eyes sunken, cheeks sagging, victims of altitude—nothing we can do for them, and we’re too excited. We dash past them without even pausing to speak.
Val starts filming on her mobile with giddy drunkenness, all of us forgetting our pain. We hoot and whistle, closer and closer. We made it. Before us the great mountain pierces through the clouds and into the sky.
“So tell me again, for you this is no big deal?” Val rasps in between steps.
“All this, for a pile of rocks,” Daniel spouts, a huge smile blooming on his face.
“But what a pile of rocks,” Ethan grunts.
Staring straight up at the pure white pillars, I know this is a mountain monastery, a holy place. And far beneath it, Base Camp, a smattering of little brown dots, sits as if in worship—it’s too cold and too late in the season for the masses to be climbing.
Val takes off her pack, guzzles water, craning her neck. We all stop, perhaps a thousand meters from Base Camp, with the sun creeping lower. But we’re so close, the little dots aren’t so little now—and beyond them, the endless ice fall. Pure white. We can’t even see the mountain from here, Everest is hidden behind the ice fall, that’s how imposing it is. Val opens her bag, hands out tiny flags with stars and red and white lines. “For when we get there,” she says, and laughs. “A little piece of home.”
Flags are typically placed at the summit, but teams to Base Camp often place them here, too. I hope we can all write our names on the flags when we get there.
“Good trek,” I say to Ethan, another phrase I’ve just learned. I hold out my hand like I’ve seen other mikarus do. He looks at it, then takes it firmly and pulls me in and hugs me. Then he lets go and Val hugs me. Then I hug Daniel. The mikarus laugh between sips of water. I ask Val what she will eat first when she returns to mikaruland.
“Chicken.”
“Just chicken?”
“Kentucky Fried Chicken. A whole bucket. No more curry. I want KFC all day.”
“KFC?”
“KFC, baby.”
“Me, too,” Daniel clammers hoarsely.
They’re excited. They should be. We did it. And I got them here, safely—by myself. No one can take that away from me. And in the moment I realize this, I begin looking for Norbu—I want to share this with him.
Val still holds her mobile in one hand, the little flags in the other. Snap. Snap.
“Nima, lean in with me, I want to take a selfie with you.”
She pulls me close, and we grin widely as she holds the phone out in front of us. Snap. She places the mobile in my hand. “Here, you try.” With the camera before me I can see my face peeking from behind wisps of my hair, tired, haggard, and happy. So happy to be here.
“Try to get Base Camp in the background. Yeah, like that.”
Snap.
Around us, Daniel and Ethan howl like mad dogs, their echoes bouncing off the peaks. “I can’t believe we made it, I can’t believe we did this.”
Val hands me one of the flags, holds up hers and waves it as she trains her mobile. Snap. Moment after moment gets trapped in that little device. We’re walking again now, over jagged boulders, deep snow, and navigating through pieces of ice shards, every step getting closer to the tents, orange and red and black, colors that pop against the white background—all of it populated with men and women preparing to scale the peak. Mikarus and Nepali of all kinds, Sherpas and Dolpas, Brahmin, and Chhetris—many more than I expected at this time of year, all in the shadow of ice and rock, and framed by those sacred flags. We’re on a ridge now, just above the camp, the final descent, the final steps.
Snap.
“You think Norbu’s down there?” Val asks.
So many mikarus. That big group milling about and taking photos, that must be Norbu’s. I scan the rocks. If I squint, I think I can—yes, I make out Norbu, even from here, I recognize his broad shoulders, the way he stands, that blue jacket. The prayer flags flap right over his head. His group must have noticed us, because they’re shouting at us now. Strange. His group and ours haven’t had any meaningful interactions—why would they be greeting us?
Norbu’s blue jacket sticks out among the white snow and ice. He’s looking at something in the distance. Then he turns and begins to run towards me, perhaps a thousand paces away. All the mikarus around him are running now.
I glance up, above the camp, and it looks as if the mountain is moving, as if the glacier’s coming closer. Next to me, Val drops the little flags she’s holding. Then there’s a sound I had hoped I would never hear again, a deep, thunderous tuuuuungg that drowns out my crying ear.
I reach my hand up my sleeve, tugging my arm hairs to make sure I’m not in dream. I keep tugging despite the pain. And I can’t stop watching. Norbu is still running towards me—and I start running towards him.
That blanket of white rises high above the ants, right over Base Camp and Norbu’s team. It goes so high that the sun is gone. I reach out to Norbu as everything turns white, and the white comes crashing down just before I can touch his outstretched hand.
28
WE’RE RUNNING THROUGH A WHITE MIST, RUNNING WITHOUT WATCHING where we land, trying to avoid falling rock and snow and ice, trying to outpace the storm. I was just out of reach of Norbu’s grasp before it hit—I stretched and touched him—when the ru’ came down, its impact sending me flying back, and now I’m still running, Val, Ethan, and Daniel and I, each of us hustling to keep the ru’ from dragging us under and burying us.
I am the bad luck woman that they say I am.
The haze begins to lift, the ice flow has stopped, and we stop moving. I try to keep my focus where that white blanket first landed. Or where I think it did. And then I rush back into it. The sound is worse than the sight. It’s the sound of screams.
Base Camp is gone, and in its place, slabs of white.
One hundred yards away. Fifty yards.
Twenty. Ten.
The air clears, and I follow the moans, the screams, men and women, arms and legs poking out of the snow, some buried to their necks, some hidden but screaming all the same. There’s a hand sticking out of the snow. Thick fingers, strong. I reach for it and pull.
Norbu’s hand.
I pull with all my might, but it won’t budge. I scoop snow, clawing at the ice with my fingers, stripping my gloves to get a better grip. Val helps me, both of us burrowing.
“He’s not moving,” I cry. “He’s not moving, Val!”
“Keep digging! Just keep digging!”
We manage to dig out the whole arm, but the jacket the arm’s attached to is black. I keep digging anyway, find the man’s broken face—a frozen caterpillar, those craggy cheeks—Lasha. I let go of him and he falls limp onto the snow.
I’m a girl being carried back to Khumjung. I am cursed.
“Nima! Val! Over here,” Daniel is calling.
I feel myself falling, scattered in the wind, lost on the mountain.
“Nima.”
Val pulls me back to my feet.
Ethan and Daniel have uncovered a few mikarus—alive. One has a bloody face, an arm dangling from his side. Another, a man with a beard and broken glasses, a cut running along the bridge of his nose, is on all fours next to Daniel, digging. Ethan has his medical kit out, helping whoever he can. There are three bodies, all Sherpa, all facedown in the snow. Two of them are fully dug out, one of them is still partly buried. So much snow and ice has fallen that I can’t even see the tops of the Base Camp tents.
I lift their faces. One of the boys who beat me outside of Pheriche. The other, same age, maybe a little older. His brother. Two fallen brothers, Dorjee Sherpa’s sons, they didn’t deserve this. The third Sherpa—he wears blue and my heart seems to stop—but when I turn the body over, it’s not him.
I’m on my knees, watching it all as if through someone else’s eyes. I’m losing my grip on this plane of existence. My soul is escaping. Then I hear a child’s voice: Eldes
t. Get up. Get up, Eldest. Get up and dig.
I can see Val beside me, watch her talking to me. But it’s not her voice I hear.
Eldest.
I still feel as if I’m floating, but there’s a tug now, something weighing me down.
ELDEST.
My brother’s voice brings me back. I wipe my face, get up, and turn to Val. “Show me your mobile.”
“What?”
“Your mobile, give it to me! Show me the last photo you took—of Base Camp.”
“I don’t—”
“Just give it to me!”
Val pulls out the phone, hands it to me. I open it, too many buttons—Val takes it and pulls up the last photo. I grab it from her and look at the small screen, searching for Norbu. He was standing next to two other mikarus. By a cluster of rocks. I look up from the mobile and try to judge his location—I count his paces in my mind as I run ahead. Then I drop to my knees and begin scooping piles of snow, first with my kikuri, then, afraid to strike flesh, using my hands, pile after pile, my arms burning. Keep going, the ghost commands. That little shoe we found back in Khumjung, that was all we could save.
Keep digging.
Norbu wrapping me in his jacket, taking my hands in between his, rubbing them to keep me warm. Carrying my father on his back to Nurse Lanja. Gently holding my hand while we waited to see if my father would live or die. Believing in me. Seeing me.
There are as many types of ru’ as there are people, my father would say. We and filled with sluffs and slabs, ru’s that glide when the entire snowpack moves as one, or slush, like a flash flood of permafrost. And this one? A hard slab ru’, the most deadly. When Father was coming down the trail, waving, calling our names, did he realize he was in its path, or was he realizing who else was in its path, further down?
So many things can cause a ru’. Layers of fresh snow weighing down on the ice crust, or a bed of large-grained, wind-hardened snow made loose by the sun’s rays, or ice calving in the heat of the day, or rain, which can cause a melt-freeze. Wind, trekkers, climbers, so many things can be the cause. Some even say it’s just the mountain’s way, a reminder of its power.