60

Tsang Province, Tibet

April 11, 1939

11:45 a.m

Squinting his eyes against the harsh sunlight, Josef began to pick out the sharp point of the fortress of Kampa Dzong in the far distance, the castle rising up on its own narrow crag, dominant and dangerous in that otherwise empty, silently hostile land. At Wewelsburg, Josef had told himself that Tibet would be a land of snow and ice but what he encountered on the long descent from the Sepu-La was very different. The snow of the high pass quickly vanished, and the country that stretched out below soon became an ochre desert of blasted rock and gravel, dust and mud.

Tramping ever further into it, Josef knew why he had conjured something softer and more hospitable in his mind’s eye. It had been easy, comforting even, in the fearful uncertainty of Himmler’s castle to conjure Tibet as a mountain land permanently in the thrall of Christmas, a place of pine branches bending beneath balanced slices of new snow, of long, sparkling icicles, of brooks covered with sheets of clear ice that trapped air bubbles, a place where he, as a mountain man, would be at home. But it proved to be just one more deceit. The arid, barren plain they followed offered none of those things.

With every heavy step a desperate loneliness grew in Josef as he and Ang Noru forced themselves ever onward under the pale blue sky, constantly fighting against a bitter northwest wind that robbed the land’s harsh brightness of any heat, feet being pummeled by the rocks and rubble of the faint pathway marked occasionally by small towers of rocks or the bleached bones of long dead yaks or mules. Ang Noru worked tirelessly, as did their two ponies, but none of them offered much companionship. When they had first set off together from the Zemu, Josef had tried to converse with him more as a friend but soon gave up when the Sherpa showed little inclination to do the same. He suspected that Ang Noru didn’t really trust him. Josef didn’t seek to change the situation. It was enough to focus on the demands of their brutal trek, to follow the way that Ang Noru sullenly indicated, to wonder why the hell he sometimes struggled to keep up with a man who had lost all his toes to frostbite …

Nearer the fort, Josef began to make out far beneath, a low, flat village kneeled on the valley floor as if in subservience. Josef wished they could avoid them both but knew that would not be possible. They had to stop there. Increasingly nervous at the prospect, he repeatedly told Ang Noru that they must be careful. The Sherpa nodded in serious agreement, adding only that such places were full of eyes and ears, all eager to earn favor with the dzong pen.

Josef already knew something of the overlord of the region. When he had studied the route with Fischer in Darjeeling, the German had identified it as the only place where they might be able to get new supplies in Tibet. He had gone on to explain that its dzong pen ruled both the town and the desiccated region with a harsh feudal order that squeezed everything it could into his coffers. Fischer had been grave in his warning that if caught by the overlord then there would be nothing anyone could do. Their only hope, he had said coldly, would be that the dzong pen would probably value selling Josef to the English higher than the entertainment of beheading him.

Uncharacteristically, as they approached the town, Ang Noru began to talk some more. He recalled how the British expedition with which he traveled to Everest six years before had feted the dzong pen with gifts, as was customary to buy the man’s favor and hospitality when they passed through his land. Delighted, the lord had responded the first night with a feast of rice, blood sausages, and freshly roasted mutton.

But, of course, it had only been for the English sahibs. The smell had made the Sherpas’ mouths water while they guarded the supplies outside in the fort’s courtyard. Ang Noru even smiled when he recounted how, in revenge for this torture, the Sherpa had angrily concocted a plan to tell the sahibs that they had eaten all their tsampa and that bad crops in the region were making purchasing unexpectedly more expensive. The morning after the banquet they had demanded an additional cash advance of four rupees a man to make up the difference and ensure they had enough food to be fit and strong to carry on to the mountain.

The sahibs, fearing anything that might hinder their progress to its top, had fallen for the story completely and the Sherpas had spent their ill-gotten windfall on chang and rakshi, the local beer and firewater, the very next night. “Big party with many chang girls, we make. Even bigger headache next day,” the Sherpa said, his eyes gleaming at the memory. “Sahibs very cross with us blokes. Long silence on walking days after,” he added, laughing at the irritation they must have caused.

It was the first time that Josef had heard Ang Noru really laugh. It showed a warmer, friendlier side to the normally distant, angry man who accompanied him. It hinted at what else had been taken from him when they cut off his toes. Josef was reluctant to stop Ang Noru’s rare amusement, but, recalling Fischer’s words of warning once again, he took the Sherpa’s arm, stopping him to look directly in his eyes. “Ang Noru, no chang this time. Very dangerous. Do you understand?” There was no reply.

Well before the outskirts of the town, they separated, Ang Noru leaving Josef to wait with their two loaded ponies while he found a lodging for the night. Attracted by a cairn of rocks at the foot of the hill of scree that led up to the steep cliff wall below the fort, Josef hobbled their ponies so they couldn’t wander and went to investigate.

Reaching the neatly stacked pile of yellow and ochre rocks that reminded him of a beehive, Josef saw set into the side a stone plaque. Expecting another Buddhist text or design, he was surprised to see it was carved with letters and words he could read.

A. M. K.

5 June 1921

Om Mani Padme Hum

It was a gravestone for a European that must have been engraved by one of his countrymen. Staring at the memorial, Josef tried to place the initials and the date from his studies of Everest at Wewelsburg, but, beyond understanding that the death must have happened during the very first British expedition to the mountain, he failed. The words engraved beneath the date were also lost on him, but as Josef repeatedly shaped the letters with his lips, he recognized the sounds as a phrase that Ang Noru often repeated over and over to himself as he walked.

“Om Mani Padme Hum.”

He said the words to himself, training his own mouth to utter the phrase. Quickly losing himself in its rhythmic sound, Josef repeated it over and over like the Sherpa. It relaxed him as he quietly contemplated the gravestone. The mantra and the memorial pushed him back to Gunter and Kurt, to the nine Jews, to little Ilsa—all dead, their passing unmarked. It made him worry for the lives he still held in his hands, his mother, his sisters, the beautiful Magda. They could not be allowed to go in the same way.

I have to get to the mountain.

A faint grumbling noise interrupted his reverie.

It grew into a growl, rising in intensity, occasionally checking itself before continuing, each time becoming louder and stronger.

The source revealed itself; a huge black and tan mastiff dog rose up menacingly from the dirt beyond the stone cairn.

The beast, thick fur matted with solid clumps of filth, was covered in dust. Its yellow eyes fixed on Josef with a mean hatred, its mouth curling up at the sides to reveal two rows of heavy teeth set within pink-and-black-streaked jaws, strong enough to crack yak bone.

The dog shook its shoulders and then, swaying its heavy head a little from side to side, hunched forward, preparing to lunge. In return, Josef could only slowly pull his ice axe from his pack and hold the pointed tip of its shaft out in front of him as he began to very deliberately step back.

Seeing him make a move, the mastiff sprang.

Josef stuck out the end of the axe to fend the creature away, but the dog angled its head as it leapt, seizing the wooden shaft of the axe in its teeth.

With a muscular twist of its neck and a tug, the mastiff easily pulled the long axe from Josef’s grip. Furious, it shook it violently between its jaws, instinctively seeking to snap its spinal cord.

Only when satisfied that the axe was dead, did the dog drop it and move toward Josef again.

Its body lowered once more.

Josef turned to run.

The dog jumped a second time.

As it flew into the air, a small rock hit the dog in the side of the head with a resounding crack.

A bigger stone followed, thumping into its ribs.

The two well-aimed stones diverted the dog in midleap, sending it crashing into the dirt in an explosion of dust. Knocked senseless by the blows, the mastiff staggered back up onto its feet and shook itself, groggily seeking its target once more.

A second barrage of stones instantly struck it, their bruising accuracy leaving the dog no alternative but to turn tail and run.

Breathing heavily, his heart racing, Josef watched Ang Noru shout at the retreating dog and hurl yet another large stone after it. Beside him was a small boy of about six or seven dressed in little more than grimy, torn yet thickly padded rags. The twisted leather thong of a sling was hanging from the lad’s small right hand, another stone already suspended in its cradle.

The boy’s perfectly round, dirt-stained face creased into a huge smile, and his eyes closed to become little more than slits as he expertly spun the sling three times above his head and then sent its rock, bullet quick, into the dog’s fast disappearing backside.

Josef could only stutter, “Danke schön,” to the grinning pair as Ang Noru picked up Josef’s chewed ice axe and handed it to him.

“You must have a care for Tibetan dogs, Sahib Josef. If not, you as dead as old Sahib Kellas there,” the Sherpa said, pointing to the cairn of stones. “Yak herder dogs more dangerous even than chang! Let us go now. We stay at the house of young Phurbu here; his mother once most famous chang girl in all Kampa Dzong. So good she own her own hostel now.”

Watching the unlikely pair saunter off to retrieve the two ponies, Josef heard Ang Noru say, “Phurbu, good boy, son of Sherpa, I think, perhaps,” as he tussled the child’s mop of jet-black hair.