The Snow leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

  The white crown of Great Kanjiroba, rising to 23,000 feet in the northeast, up the Tila Valley, is the one snow peak in sight: this was the peak climbed by the Japanese. Otherwise, the hills around are low and worn, sadly eroded by years of makeshift farming, and the town itself, with most of the vices and none of the virtues of the twentieth century, is depressing. I am happy to go back to Dansango, where the half-naked Dawa, having washed out all his clothes, walks about singing in the sunshine, so relieved is he that his hard journey is coming to an end.

  Near the white shrine at the point of rivers, I spend a peaceful afternoon in meditation, letting my mind dissolve in the bright tumult where the rivers meet. At dark, I join Tukten and Dawa at the fire. Drinking our arak quietly, we talk little, feeling dull, content. I wonder if Tukten will drink heavily, but he does not.

  I study this old soldier with the half-moon scar on his left cheekbone, the sad eyes and wild smile that light a face like an ancient Mongol mask. Away from the other sherpas, Tukten and Dawa get on very well; not once have I heard a rancorous word between them, although they have to share the same small tent. Dawa defers to Tukten, as he should: throughout Dawa's illness and malingering, Tukten has been a true Bodhisattva, as courteous and gentle to the younger sherpa as he is to me.

  Coming down, coming down—a dream of falling, in a machine no longer in control. I manage my panic with deep breaths, go so far as to wish my fellow passengers good luck. At the point of crash, there comes a cosmic ringing, and, lulled by river sounds, I wonder if I am dead; I feel half in and half out of my body, fighting free, yet not ready to let go.

  NOVEMBER 30

  We are at the airport early, clean and rather shy with one another. Tukten has thrown away his cap and rags and looks refreshed in my spare jersey, for in Kathmandu I shall recommend him to the trekking outfitters as a sirdar or head sherpa. I pay wages to the sherpas for their months of faithful work, having Tukten explain to Dawa the when, where, and why of the accounting; then I take Tukten aside to pay him his promised bonus. They have no wish to question me or count their money, for fear of seeming impolite, and both are delighted with their tips. Presented with a receipt, Dawa takes special pleasure in drawing his own name for the first time in his life; the whole idea convulses him with laughter. As for Tukten, he seems pleased that I think him qualified to be a head sherpa, and is willing to be interviewed in Kathmandu—less in hope of betterment, I feel, than out of courtesy to my ambitions for him.

  A man on horseback, friend to Tukten, comes to make a parting gift of arak. Toward noon, a sound of motors falls out of the Kanjiroba skies; a flying machine is circling the new moon, and the whole town comes running to the airstrip. As the plane lands, the horses shy, and children run in the plane's dust; near the runway, two oblivious figures breaking the earth with their crude harrows move on and on and on, step after step. Then the plane roars away into the south, and excited crows swirl in the valley air.

  Inspection by police is done with quickly because the inspector, too, turns out to be a friend of Tukten. When the plane returns, we are lifted up from Jumla and carried back east, in a matter of hours, over the dark canyons and white mountainsides that required so many long hard weeks to cross. Threading a high pass between peaks, the pilot, joking with the co-pilot, flies fifteen feet above the ground with one wing tip just yards away from the glinting ice, and the only one unfrightened by this idiotic trick is Dawa Sherpa who smiles shyly, in awe.

  The plane emerges from the snow peaks and peacefully to the southeast, down along the white massifs of Dhaulagiri, past Annapurna and the clear cone of Machhapuchare and on south across the foothills to Bhairava, where the Kali Gandaki comes down out of the mountains into India. As the plane circles, its shadow falls on what must have been Lumbini, at the end of a raw new road over the mountains that is the gift of Buddhists from Japan: I call to Tukten to point out to Dawa the birthplace of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Dawa sighs.

  Bhairava, on the Ganges Plain, is another name for Shiva the Destroyer. It is not far above sea level, and after two months at high altitudes, we gasp in its humidity and heat. Then the airplane is off again to the north and east, and the whole white rampart of the Himalaya is spread out, peak upon peak. As the plane circles Kathmandu, Tukten points to what he says is Everest, far away to eastward, great Lachi Kang where Milarepa died. However, I think that Tukten is mistaken. Lachi Kang is too far off to see.

  At the trekking company, where we return our pots and tents, all praise of Tukten is in vain: he is known by bad reputation to the manager, who will have no part of him. Tukten, he says, is a loner who does not get on with the clannish Sherpa groups who make up the best expedition teams: unlike most Sherpas, he is an aggressive drinker, and his foul barracks language offends them. No doubt he is intelligent and able, no doubt he is excellent day by day, but sooner or later— the manager points sternly at the door, outside of which my friend awaits—that fellow will let you down when you most need him.

  And Tukten has known the answer all along, having only assented to my great plans to be polite, for he smiles as I come out—not to make light of things, far less to save face, but to console me. "Plenty job, sah," Tukten says; he accepts his life, and will go on wandering until it ends.

  Suddenly it is twilight, and our ways are parting. Shy Dawa, safely home with two months' pay, is happy and smiling; exhilarated by his flight through the thin air, he musters up some English, even looks me in the eye—"Goodbye, sahib!" But Tukten insists on escorting me to the door of my hotel, and is sorry that I will not let him pay the taxi. He wishes that I meet him three days hence at the great stupa at Bodhinath, four miles away, where he will stay briefly with his father's sister and renew himself as a good Buddhist before returning to Khundu, near Namche Bazaar, to pass the winter.

  With hotel staff hissing at my elbow, I shake Tukten's hand under the portico, and it occurs to me to invite him in to supper. I know that this is sentimental, a show of democratic principles at his expense, for the caste-crazy staff will make things miserable for this soiled Sherpa in the jersey much too big for him. Even if they restrain themselves for the sake of their baksheesh, a friendship formed in mountain sun might be damaged in the sour light of the hotel. All true, all true, and yet that I feel too tired to transcend these difficulties upsets me very much. I let him go.

  In the rear window of the cab, Tukten is ghostly; I stare after him as he withdraws into the dusk. It, is not so much that this man and I are friends. Rather, there is a thread between us, like the black thread of a live nerve; there is something unfinished, and he knows it, too. Without ever attempting to speak about it, we perceive life in the same way, or rather, I perceive it in the way that Tukten lives it. In his life in the moment, in his freedom from attachments, in the simplicity of his everyday example, Tukten has taught me over and over, he is the teacher that I hoped to find: I used to say this to myself as a kind of instinctive joke, but now I wonder if it is not true. "When you are ready," Buddhists say, "the teacher will appear." In the way he watched me, in the way he smiled, he was awaiting me; had I been ready, he might have led me far enough along the path "to see the snow leopard."

  Out of respect, I stand in the same place until Tukten is out of sight. The Hindus dart off with my backpack, sleeping bag, and rucksack, and for a moment I am all alone on the hotel steps. Off to the north, black clouds are shrouding the black mountains; it is snowing. I wonder if GS has left the Crystal Mountain. Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined—how is it that this safe return brings such regret?

  By mistake, all my November mail has been sent to Jumla: I stood right next to it this morning at the airstrip. India Airlines is on strike, and no one will say when a flight out of Nepal will be available. In my room-with-bath, anticipated for two months, the room is wintry and the bath has no hot water; for an hour the unqualified crowd in and out while I stand fuming in my
grimy long johns. Four or five line up at last for their baksheesh, and the plumber, whichever one is he, departs—gone until tomorrow, as I learn when it turns out that there is no more hot water than before. I force the door of the next room, usurp the bath: the hot water runs out as I soap. Stomping back to my own room, I discover that the hot water has turned up magically of its own accord. Feeling silly and quite suddenly exhausted, I sit down on the bed and begin to laugh, but I might just as easily weep. In the gaunt, brown face in the mirror—unseen since late September —the blue eyes in a monkish skull seem eerily clear, but this is the face of a man I do not know.

  DECEMBER 1

  On this day, for the first time since early November, the skies at Shey clouded over with "a grim wind," and on December 3, Jang-bu and two Saldang men left for Namdo with most of GS's gear. On December 5, as if to see him off, the frost-colored wolf and three of its pack mates appeared on Somdo mountain, and the following day GS and Phu-Tsering went out over Shey Pass to Namgung Gompa, and from there to Namdo, without passing by Saldang. From Namdo, where Jang-bu awaited them with porters, they went up the Nam-Khong River past Tcha and Raka, as far as the cairn of great argali skulls under Namdo Pass. The porters had promised to cross the pass that day, but now they refused to go until next morning. At six that afternoon, it began to snow. What follows are excerpts from GS's notes for December 8 and 9, 1973, which came in a letter from Kathmandu:

  Dec. 8. Three inches of snow and still falling at 6 a.m. Porters of course beat it for home. Met a chap who said he'd guide us to pass. We have little choice but to go on. We threw away most food, all extra cooking gear, some of my specimens etc., etc., but our loads still awful. Guide fled after an hour. Weather getting worse and soon is a blizzard. We cannot see 100 feet, wind howling, snow flying horizontally and forming crust all over us. Once it cleared a little, and coming down slope toward us a caravan of 50 yaks in single file, moving black things in that white nothingness. One of most dramatic sights I have seen. Also they left us trail to follow for a little while. Then by luck a caravan of 6 yaks going our way came and took my suitcase. Still in the blizzard we crossed over the pass (alt. 17,500) and after an hour things cleared a little. Went on till dark, then stopped at a little cave.

  Dec. 9. Yak chap said he would not go on for a couple of days until his yak has foraged. 6-8 inches of fresh snow on trail. He said he would carry one load to next pass for 60 rupees payable in advance. I was suspicious, but little choice. One hour out of camp he purposely fell and said he hurt his leg; the money was with his friend at camp. Sunny today and we have to push on. Jang-bu showed his annoyance by beating the hell out of the fellow. That cured the leg but he would not go to the pass. He suggested going down the khola to the lake. I did not like the idea, knowing what the canyons are like. But the sherpas wanted that route—and Gyaltsen had never bought himself boots with the boot money, I found out. He wore sneakers and it was very cold. I did not want frozen feet on my conscience. We forced our yak friend to carry the load down the canyon until at 2 p.m. he fled. But we got most of our money's worth. A hellish trip. Ice falls, slippery snow-covered rocks, 6" trails along ledges covered with snow with cliff above and below. Since I was heaviest, everyone felt it logical that I lead and test ice bridges as we crossed and recrossed stream. Logical but not always pleasant: once I fell in, getting soaked from chest on down, and got my feet wet several times. By evening had done most of canyon: at least we had big fire.

  On December 10, the party emerged from the canyon onto the flats of Phoksumdo Lake's eastern arm that we had seen on October 25. Here a snow leopard —the only one ever seen on our expedition—jumped up ahead of GS in patchy snow, and the prints of a second animal were found nearby; since GS estimates a population of perhaps six for the whole Shey-Saldang-Phoksumdo region,6 it pleases me to think that the two were breeding.

  That day, GS's party climbed around the steep north end of the lake to our old Silver Birch Camp at Phoksumdo River. Leaving Jang-bu and Gyaltsen to follow with the gear, GS and Phu-Tsering set out next morning on a rapid march to Jumla, where they arrived on December 15, flying out two days later to Kathmandu. All this effort was in vain; GS's family had been unable to come to Kathmandu as planned, and because of the airline strike and other mishaps, he did not arrive home in Pakistan until three days after Christmas. Not long afterward, he had word from Nepal that because of a bloody skirmish between Kham-pas and Nepali troops near the Tibetan border north of Shey, the Land of Dolpo had been closed once again to the outside world.

  On foot and bicycle, I wander the old city of Patan, across the river, where Tibetan refugees make copies of true ancient relics of the Land of B'od. I visit stupas, temples, and pagodas of the valley and climb the three hundred thirty steps to Swayambhunath where, it is said, the Buddha preached among the monkeys and the pines. In the Asan Bazaar I keep an eye out for Ongdi the Trader, and encounter instead the sheepish Dawa in a new red plastic jacket. From a thief I buy an antique image, in painted clay, of an eleven-faced Avalokita, head split apart in His great distress at the debased condition of mankind. I meet Pirim and Tulo Kansha, last seen as they skipped away with their goat and chang into the pine forests at Phoksumdo Lake; the Tamangs greet me with their fresh, wild smiles, as enchanted with their meager life as ever. Jostled by throngs of northern Bhotes down off the mountains, we stand there grinning and exclaiming, slapping one another on the shoulder for want of other means of communication. And then Pirim's English is all gone, we slap and grin again, and part as suddenly as we have met.

  On the day appointed to meet Tukten, I pedal across the late-autumn landscapes of the Kathmandu Valley to the ancient shrine at Bodhinath; the painted eyes above the white dome of its stupa, peering over the brown rooftops, watch me come. Tradition says that Bodhinath's creation was blessed by Avalokita, and that it contains relics of Kasapa, he who smiled a Tukten smile when the Buddha held up the lotus flower in silent teaching. In former years, the shrine was visited by throngs of pilgrims from Tibet, and the colorful stupa is surrounded by a square of dwellings and small shops that sell brass Buddhas, icons, urns, and ritual daggers, beads of bone, stone, wood, and turquoise, incense, prayer wheels, cymbals, drums, and bells.

  In one of these houses, Tukten said, he would be staying with his father's sister. Accousting inhabitants, calling his name, I walk my bicycle round and round the square, under the huge painted eyes, the nose like a great question mark, the wind-snapped pennants— Tukten? Tukten? But there is no answer, no one knows of Tukten Sherpa. Under the Bodhi Eye, I get on my bicycle again and return along gray December roads to Kathmandu

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Especially I wish to thank George Schaller for inviting me to accompany him to Dolpo in the first place, for his excellent company during our journey, and for his assistance and good counsel ever since. Dr. Schaller has furnished the striking photograph that appears on the book's dust jacket and frontispiece, and has been kind enough to review the manuscript for errors of emphasis as well as of fact. Warm thanks are also due to Donald Hall, who was generous, painstaking, and inspiring in his comments at an early stage when candid opinion was crucial; to Maria Eckhart, who made sensible and constructive suggestions throughout the several drafts; and to Elisabeth Sifton, the book's editor at The Viking Press, whose dedication and warm, tough-minded, and incisive defense of the book against its author's meddling in the later stages made a great difference.

  In their unfailing good humor, loyalty, and generosity, our excellent sherpas and good friends Jang-bu, Tukten, and Phu-Tsering, Dawa and Gyaltsen, as well as our young Tamang porters, made a hard journey a very happy one—not an easy task. To Tukten Sherpa I owe a special debt that is more meaningfully expressed in the book itself.

  Dr. Robert Fleming, Sr., was very hospitable in Kathmandu, and helpful as well with bird identifications and sound advice. Ashok Kuenar Hamal of the Nepal Panchat kindly expedited matters in Dunahi, and Dr. Eiji Kawamura of the Kitasato Himalay
an Expedition was generous in his aid to Dawa Sherpa on our return journey. John Harrison of the Sterling Library at Yale University offered generous assistance with research materials; John Blower (F.A.O. Wildlife Adviser to the Nepal Government), Robert Fleming, Jr., Michael Cheney, Joel Ziskin, and Rodney Jackson contributed valuable information.

  The patient guidance of the three Zen masters to whom this book is dedicated and the various writings of such Tibetan scholars as Lama Angarika Govinda, Dr. David Snellgrove, John Blofeld, and the late Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz have been drawn upon without restraint Since I am no authority on Buddhism, I owe gratitude and thanks to Lama Govinda and to Tetsugen Sensei (with Taizan Maezumi Roshi) for generous and helpful comment on the manuscript, and to Robin Komman, a student of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, who inspected it for technical transgressions —fine doctrinal points, transliteration of Sanskrit and Tibetan terms, and other matters on which no two scholars seem able to agree. A number of inconsistencies doubtless remain, but I like to think these will not matter very much to those who understand why this book was written.

  Finally, I should like to thank the many writers, poets, and explorers of the mind whose words have contributed to my understanding, whether or not they are identified here or in the Notes.

  P.M.

  Sagaponack, New York

  Winter, 1978

  NOTES

  PROLOGUE

  1. George B. Schaller, The Serengeti Lion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

  2. Lama Angarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds (Boulder: Shambhala, 1971).

  3. David Snellgrove, Himalayan Pilgrimage (Oxford: Cassirer, 1961).

  4. Peter Matthiessen, The Tree Where Man Was Born (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972).

  I WESTWARD