Their flashlights turned in our direction and we took off running, Freds making as much noise as he could.
“Damn, Freds,” I panted as we followed him. “Why did you do that?”
“Just follow me,” he called back at us. “I got a plan.”
We led the soldiers through the saal forest for about half an hour. Then all of a sudden Freds stopped and crouched down. “Okay,” he whispered. “Be quiet. We’re there.”
“Where?”
“This is the poacher’s meadow. See? The Jeep’s back. Now if we can just sic them soldiers on the poachers, wouldn’t that be great. Here, find something to throw. Here, here’s some rocks. Start throwing them at the Jeep.”
He started firing away like Sandy Koufax, and after a while there was a whang! and then another. Voices came from behind us, then from off to one side. The soldiers were crashing through the jungle rapidly now, and a flashlight beam caught the Jeep and held on it. More voices, off in the jungle beyond us.
“Let’s get out of here,” Freds whispered, and dropped to his hands and knees. Bahadim and I crawled through muck and shrubbery, following him. Behind us there were indefinable crashing noises, then gunshots. Then volleys of gunfire. We crawled faster.
Eventually Freds stood up.
“I think we’re in the clear, boys!” he declared.
“It does not seem so very clear to me,” Bahadim opined. “It is jungle.”
“That it is. But no one’s chasing us.” And he took off at a jaunty walking pace.
Once again we followed him. But after a while I said, unhappily, “You mean no humans are chasing us.”
“Well—yeah. Why, do you think…?” He stopped to listen.
“It’s awfully quiet,” I pointed out.
We started off again, as silently as we could.
“Awfully quiet.” I was whispering now.
And before us, off beyond some trees, a branch clicked. It seemed there was a sound, like breathing: a low, quiet, rasping kind of breath. The kind of rasping breath that could have growled, or roared, or purred.
“Maybe we oughta take refuge,” Freds whispered, his voice sounding worried.
“Any suggestions?”
“How about up a tree?”
“I think tigers can climb trees,” I said.
“Nah.”
“Cats can climb trees,” I said. “Why not tigers? They’ve got the claws, and the power. Leopards climb trees for sure.”
“I still think we’re better off up a tree than down here.”
And in fact while we were having this conversation we were circling a big double-trunked saal tree, trying to find a way up it, so apparently it was a moot point. Bahadim offered the opinion that some tigers could climb while others couldn’t. Freds complained that saal trees were not good climbing trees, which they weren’t; the trunks tended to rise for thirty feet or more before extending their branches. The double-trunker we were circling looked our best bet, but I still wasn’t sure we weren’t heading up a dead end, so to speak. So there we stood for a few minutes, arguing bitterly in sharp undertones about the climbing ability of tigers.
Finally Freds broke the deadlock by saying, “Hey, whatever, I’m going for it. Better to make the damn tiger work for us, even if it can climb.”
“How do you plan to get up this thing?” I asked him.
“Kind of like bouldering,” he muttered. “Can’t be worse than five eight or nine.” And he gave it a try.
It took a lot of attempts, and he kept sliding back down. “Okay, okay. Five eleven, five twelve. Maybe a six.” Finally he got past the crux and hauled himself up into the cleft between trunks. I boosted Bahadim up on my back, then climbed up after them. Freds led the way, up the more mutant-looking of the two trunks, over broken bark and what felt like big crawling ants.
Once we had skinnied up to where the branches began there were a lot of them, and we could spread out a little as we climbed higher. This took us a long time, however, and all the while Freds and I were bitching at each other about tigers and their climbing potential. The jungle was still dead quiet, except for the horrendously loud noises that we seemed to make from time to time; so it was a serious issue for us. “Shit, you don’t know a thing about it!” Freds said. “Didn’t you ever watch Wild Kingdom?”
“Of course!” I replied. “And I’m sure I remember tigers up in trees, with whole deer dragged up there after them. They sleep up there!”
“Those were leopards, George. The spotted ones are leopards, the striped ones are tigers. And tigers only use trees for scratching posts. They’re too big to climb them, they break the branches I guess, or it’s like the thing of why can’t there ever be giant nuclear ants, you know, double the size and quadruple the weight or whatever.”
I didn’t see how that applied. “They’ve got the strength and they’ve got the claws.”
“Claws ain’t no help when you’ve got to go down the damn tree! That’s why cats are always getting rescued out of trees by firemen! There ain’t no firemen out here to get these tigers down, and they know it. They’re not as stupid as cats. Their brains must be ten times bigger.”
“Brain size doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence.”
“You tell that to a worm.”
We climbed some more. Bahadim mentioned that he thought Chitwan jungle contained leopards as well as tigers.
“Well shit!” Freds said. “You got any better suggestion than this?”
“No, no,” Bahadim said. Besides, he admitted, climbing trees was the recommended refuge from tigers. If nothing else you would be safe from rhinos. And it was said that if you climbed high enough you would get up into branches too slender to hold either leopards or climbing tigers, if they did indeed exist.
So we climbed as high as we could.
Eventually I found myself wedged in a narrow crook, hanging on to small branches on both sides, swaying very noticeably. No view whatsoever of the ground. Above me through leaves I glimpsed the stars. Freds and Bahadim were clattering around to either side of me, partly visible through intervening branches. “This is as high as I can go,” I said, and tried to get more comfortable. The swaying was really very noticeable. “Jesus, Freds,” I said. “The things you get me into.”
“It is not Freds who has gotten us into this horrible position!” Bahadim burst out. “It is you, George Fergusson, who has done this to us! You have assaulted His Majesty King Birendra!”
Apparently in our hurry to escape Bahadim had not gotten the chance to fully express his displeasure with me about this. It had been too loud to talk during the cart run, and at all other times we had been too busy. Now we were at leisure, so to speak, and he really laid into me. He called me every kind of fool he could think of. A lot of times he had to lapse into Nepalese to get just the right phrase.
“Interfering in the affairs of Nepal! Messing about where you don’t know what is going on! Stupid! Fool! Idiot! You are just another arrogant stupid American, putting in your hand where you are not wanted, with terroristic actions no better than a bomb thrower like Ram Raja Prasad Singh, aggh! And what is the justification for this stupidity! Are things so perfect in your country that you must come to ours to solve our problems? No! No! No! You are going all over the world pretending to solve everyone’s problems and meanwhile you are making half these problems yourselves, sending out soldiers and practicing usury and exploding your chemical factories on us! And back in your country, are there not poor people to help? Are there not political problems? Do you not have any corruption there in your own military? Yes you most certainly do! Why don’t you mess with your own country’s affairs and leave the poor rest of the world alone! I invite you to kidnap your own king if you are feeling a need for such a thing! Kidnapping the King of Nepal! Stupid! Stupid! STUPID!” And then a long string of Nepalese.
“Hey,” Freds said. “Give him a break, why don’t you. It was just an idea.”
“Just an idea! Just an idea, to kid
nap the King and overthrow the government!”
“Well sure,” Freds said. “Why not?”
Bahadim couldn’t believe this.
“No, really,” Freds said. “That’s basically what you’re doing, right? You’re running an alternative government there under the city, right? So why shouldn’t you take over? The King’s father did the same thing. If you guys had been ready for it, you might have been pretty damn happy to see George hand the King over to you as easy as that. You might have liked it.”
“No!” Bahadim said. “Never! You do not understand.”
“I guess I don’t,” Freds said.
Bahadim took a deep breath. His set of branches was shaking, he was so upset.
He pulled himself together, calmed down. After a while he tried to explain. “We in Nepal, we are loyal to the King. We love our King. He is our King, the King of an independent Nepal, which has never been ruled by any other country.”
“Yeah, but he’s a crook.”
“No! This is not true. King Birendra is not a crook. People say this because he is King, perhaps, or because his youngest brother is a wastrel. And the Ranas, they surround him—the Queen, the Army, his advisors—they are everywhere around him, and they make it impossible for him to act as fully as he might like to act. He is not a forceful King like his father was, I admit that. But he is a thoughtful man, and he knows where the problems in Nepal are coming from. He wants things to change.”
“He does?” Freds and I said together.
“Yes, yes. King Birendra would like political reforms, to be aiding the economic reforms. He is only frustrated by all these aid programs, by the bureaucracy and the corruption and the Ranas. He wants a constitutional country, you see. But it is not in his power to accomplish this. Many many people like to have the palace in charge. The King is captive of the caste system, of the power of the Ranas. They are richer than him, and they control the Army, you see. So he must work with us.”
“With you!” I cried.
“Yes. You remember, I told you that we are working under the city to help the people, with funds provided by rich Nepalis who are sympathetic to our cause?”
“Birendra?” I was amazed.
“Yes,” Bahadim said. “We have contacted him, and he knows what we are doing. He helps us. It is one way that he can be starting to change things, without the Ranas knowing about it. He is our patron. We communicate with him through that crack in his closet. He is our King, we love him. He has his flaws, but he is trying, and what is wrong with Nepal is not his fault, or not entirely. He does what he can, now, and so do we.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, shocked.
“It was not your business! I told you, in Nepal we keep some things secret, some things that belong to Nepal alone. Naturally it cannot spread about that the King works through an underground government! If that were to happen the Ranas would stop it. So I kept it a secret from you.”
“So then it’s all your fault, ain’t it,” Freds pointed out. “If you had just told George, he would never have tried to help you out in that particular way.”
Bahadim’s only response to this was in pungent-sounding Nepalese.
I sat there swaying, thinking about it. “So if the King knows about you,” I said to Bahadim, “then you should be able to patch things up about the tunnels and all.”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Some of his bodyguards are in his confidence, and know about us. They probably were assuming that we had been overwhelmed by Ram Raja Prasad Singh, or some other terroristic group. When they are less nervous and we have time to explain, we can clear things up, and hopefully the tunnel system will not be exposed.”
“Good,” I said. I sighed. “I’m sorry, Bahadim. I just lost it there for a while, I guess. That God-damned A. Rana drove me insane. And when you told me the latest, about that poaching business—”
“You need not worry about that,” Bahadim said shortly. “We have traced the Jeep Freds reported to a motor pool in Chitwan, one used by A. Rana’s nephews. Now that Freds had led the King’s bodyguards into a fight with these poachers, the King will take a very close interest. We will stop A. Rana, and probably get him into very big trouble indeed. Although it may take some time, because of confusion caused by your kidnapping.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I blew it.”
He sighed. “It is all right,” he said reluctantly. “You were only trying to help.” A pause. “Although I must tell you that we do not want your help in this matter, thank you. And it seems to me that there are as yet many things still to be helped in your own country.”
Another hesitation; then he said, “You know, ours is not the only underground government in this world. We have contacts, some by actual tunnel, some only by information, and they extend to many many countries. Including your own. Under the cities of Washington, D.C., London, Moscow—”
“Tunnel systems?” I said.
Freds called out, “Subways, remember George?”
“No no no,” Bahadim said. “They are under the subways and the like.”
“It’s like what I told you, George,” Freds said. “Shambhala’s tunnel system is older and bigger than you could ever imagine. It was a really great civilization. Thousands of years, thousands of miles.”
“Very extensive indeed,” Bahadim said. “And now being used again to bypass the Ranas, you see. Or whatever equivalent exists.”
“Well,” I said. “I’ll have to look them up. If I ever go back.”
“I recommend it,” Bahadim said, and I couldn’t tell if he meant looking them up, or going back.
I let it pass, feeling a bit overwhelmed. Also my butt had gone to sleep. I had to change position. During our crawl through the jungle we had warmed up and more from our hypothermic run down the tunnels, but now the sweat was cooling us down too far, and I was growing cold again.
The horizon that must have been the eastern one was going a little gray, but there was a long way to go to daylight, and there was nothing to do but sit up there, swaying in a slight breeze and shivering. From his perch Freds kept up the never-ending narration of his life, his voice a familiar staccato pattern that faded in and out of my consciousness. “Shit, it is freezing ass up here. Could you believe how cold that roller coaster ride was? My eyeballs were freezing open! Reminded me of the time I was doing my novice training under Kunga Norbu at the secret Rongbuk, and we got to the test they have of your tumo powers where they take you up at night to one of those glacial creeks at about fifteen thousand feet and strip you naked and pour a few buckets of creek water over you and soak about twenty white sheets and leave you there, and see you’re not only supposed to keep warm but you’re supposed to keep so warm that you dry out the wet sheets, as many of them as you can and the more you do over the course of the night the better you do on the test, it’s a numerical thing kinda like your SAT scores and very accurate in finding out who’s gonna be the best lama. Well, I mean to tell you when they dumped that ice water over me I had every bit of my tumo training shocked right out of me, I mean I just plain forgot it and there I was buck naked and sopping wet at fifteen thousand feet in November at eight P.M. and nowhere to go, I didn’t know what to do.…”
On and on he rattled. I think I fell asleep a little, although every shift in my perch brought me bolt upright as I recalled where I was.
The sky got lighter and lighter. My hands got horribly sore, and I realized I had been clenching the branches the whole time I had been up there.
“… so when they showed up I had the sheets all folded and looking ironed practically and dryer than toast, but Kunga Norbu was suspicious and when he found the ashes he beat the shit out of me with a stick—”
“Freds?”
“What? Hey, George! Good morning! Sun should be up any minute, hey? What a day! Boy, it’s gonna be great to get out of this tree, isn’t it? Gonna be great to get down and over to Daubahal’s camp and then back to Kathmandu, man, we can go to the Old Vienna I
’m starved aren’t you? I’m gonna have wiener schnitzel and goulash and apple strudel, maybe two apple strudels, sure, and Dasain should still be going and Kathmandu is such a blast during Dasain, we can get out in the street and just party our brains out to celebrate.”
“What exactly is it we will celebrate?” Bahadim croaked wearily.
“Why—well—well, getting out of this tree for one. I don’t know about you, but my legs are falling off. I think I got frostbit on our ride. Kind of reminds me of the time we decided to bicycle to Makalu—”
“Freds!” I said.
“What!”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, hey, sure bro. Never let it be said that I bothered anyone, not that you’d want to go to sleep up here or anything, I probably should bother you.…”
I let his voice drift into the background of jungle dawn sounds. I was tired—very, very, very tired.
But something in the way Freds had talked about Kathmandu had brought the image of the city strongly to my mind, crawling all over the insides of my eyeballs. And as the red sun cracked the horizon and the thick humid air filled with light, and we started trying to descend the tree (“Where’s them firemen? Maybe cats ain’t so stupid after all!”), I kept thinking helplessly of the city, of the crowded streets and the open-front shops and the corner temples and the street operators, and I knew that it would never change—that when we got back the cows would be in the streets blocking the crazed traffic, and the giant bats would be hanging upside down in the pine trees on the palace grounds, and the lines of people would be stretching hundreds of yards out of the post office and Central Telegraph, and the peddlers would be sitting on the sidewalks selling candies and incense and antibiotics and unidentifiable fruit and bolts of brilliant cloth, and crows and clouds and rainbows would be flying overhead with the Himal to the north and bike bells ringing and everything aswirl in the ramshackle old streets of the town, and I found I couldn’t wait to get home to it again.
XIX
OH, ONE LAST THING; about those underground governments: keep your eye peeled. And tell everyone you trust about them, okay?
Escape From Kathmandu Page 30