61

Kampa Dzong, Tsang Province, Tibet

April 11, 1939

9:45 p.m.

The atmosphere in the crowded caravansary was charged with noise and heat and excitement. Pungent smells of filthy clothes, unwashed bodies, and animal dung mixed with sweeter fumes of food, tobacco, incense, and a huge juniper log fire to clog the thin air of the long communal room. Josef, just sitting on a bench against one wall, was finding it hard to breathe but he was enjoying the enveloping warmth from the fire and the feeling of satisfaction of having eaten a hot, rich meal.

Josef knew well that they should be hiding in the tiny room they had been shown to by little Phurbu’s mother, but Ang Noru had insisted that, for once, they eat properly, in some warmth, arguing that there would be so many people in the main hall that no one would even notice them. It was a thin argument, but in the chilly, claustrophobic room, still shaken by his encounter with the dog, Josef had found it impossible to refuse. He was as exhausted by loneliness as he was by the arduous journey with the surly Sherpa.

The hostel’s hall was indeed full. Half of the people in the room were Tibetan: tall, wild-looking men with hooded eyes and long, jet-black hair strung with heavy plaits of red wool, their fierce oval faces in no way softened by the small lumps of turquoise and coral that hung from makeshift earrings and necklaces. They were all drinking, intent on a noisy betting game at their center. Each had a long knife tucked into his belt, almost small swords with broad scabbards of turned metal inlaid with colored stones. Josef recalled Fischer’s warning that the Tibetan always carried two knives: one bold and visible in front to draw your eye as he embraced you with open arms, the other hidden, smaller and sharper, with which he would stab you in the back. Interspersed with the Tibetans were smaller men—hardy Sikkimese muleteers; skinny, malnourished Lepcha porters; plumper, moonfaced Asian traders; even shaven-headed monks in saffron and magenta robes. All of them were watching the Tibetans with quick, darting eyes, mouths full of bad teeth and the taste of easy money from the game at their center.

Josef had to acknowledge that Ang Noru was right. That game was the only thing attracting any attention. Each and every play inspired a crescendo of shouting and waving, until a silence fell and one of the players indulged in a highly theatrical shaking and casting of a handful of bones across a sturdy table. The pronged segments of the backbone of what was once a small animal would skitter and dance before coming to rest in configurations that were immediately clear in their implications to everyone except Josef. The shouting would instantly resume, accompanied by a frenzied redistribution of money. Ang Noru had found his way into the middle of it all, a grin on his face and a growing wad of dirty paper money in his hand.

The exhausted German took a swig from his wooden bowl of chang as he observed the scene. The thin, watery barley beer was not unpleasant to the taste even if it made him yearn for a stronger, smoother Bavarian weissbier. He had been surprised at the weakness of the chang, finding it difficult to deny Ang Noru after the Sherpa had told him to taste it and see for himself how harmless it was. He knew that it was probably time to reel the Sherpa in, but once again recalling his deliverance from the dog and enjoying the rare feelings of warmth and good food, Josef decided he would let him play a little longer.

Every time Josef’s chang bowl was near to empty, a young Tibetan woman would refill it before he could say no. When the girl poured the chang, she did so slowly, deliberately brushing his arms with hers and looking into his eyes, holding his gaze through long eyelashes. With a broad, brown face and doelike eyes, she was old enough to be a woman yet young enough to still have perfect, clear skin beneath her glossy, tied-back hair. Once his cup was full again, she would linger over Josef until he drank, or rude shouts demanded her attentions elsewhere.

When she moved away, Josef could see at the head of the room the proprietor, little Phurbu’s mother, surveying the scene and directing her chang girls here and there, pointing them to pay particular attention to various people in the room. She was continually gesturing the same girl to return to him. The more he drank, the more Josef forgot his worries about being there, about Ang Noru, about the chang. He even stopped thinking about getting up, leaning back instead against the wall and letting himself relax as the beer kept flowing, the Tibetan girl kept fluttering her dark lashes, and the game got louder and louder.

Occasionally he caught a glimpse of the boy Phurbu, the little tyke weaving between the legs of his mother’s patrons, quick, picky fingers reaching up into pockets and purses above, alert to every opportunity. It was amusing to watch him at work. Seeing a bamboo cage placed for safekeeping alongside a number of other bundles, the beady face of an unrecognizable small creature peering out, the boy crouched in front of it and began prodding at it with a thin black and white stick.

A loud bell rang.

It snapped Josef from his soft contemplation of the room around him to see that it was Phurbu’s mother ringing it. Immediately the girls began urging everyone to drink up, hurrying to collect the wooden bowls.

It must be time.

Josef was relieved that the evening had passed so peacefully. Standing to leave, he was surprised to find that the floor swayed a little before settling. Chang was stronger than it tasted. Shrugging the realization aside, Josef leaned into the crowd of gamblers and tugged Ang Noru by the arm, gesturing they should go.

The Sherpa wasn’t having any of it. When Josef insisted, hissing at him that the chang was finished, he was met with the immediate response that it was only because the rakshi was arriving.

Even as Ang Noru spoke, Josef saw indeed that the girls were now handing out smaller clay bowls and theatrically filling them from high above with a stream of clear liquid poured from narrower, taller bamboo jugs.

The gambling Tibetans cheered with approval. The instant their new bowls were full, they each stuck a finger in and flicked some of the spirit into the air three times before proceeding to drain the contents in single gulping draughts. They immediately called for more and repeated the action.

Josef felt a wave of panic ripple down his spine. He had to get Ang Noru out of there. Intent on keeping the Sherpa from the rakshi, he pushed deeper into the gamblers, but the more he strained to reach the Sherpa, the more he had the sensation that he was being held back from him. Pairs of hands were clutching his arms and pulling him away.

Ignoring his protests and laughing at his attempts to escape them, Phurbu’s mother and the chang girl tugged Josef back to the place where he had been sitting. Putting her finger on Josef’s lips, Phurbu’s mother quietly silenced him while the girl gave him his own full bowl of rakshi. She too then murmured something to him, putting down her jug and leaning forward to dig her nails into his thighs until he started drinking.

Even though he knew it was a mistake, Josef drank it down, telling himself just one and then he and the Sherpa were out of there.

The rakshi hit Josef straight between the eyes.

The buzz from the chang instantly became a howl.

People merged and melted, their actions slowing to become unrelated snapshots with faintly anticipated yet seemingly unimportant consequences.

The girl leaned her mouth close to Josef’s and whispered something he didn’t understand.

Her lips brushed his.

Magda.

Magda’s face appeared before his.

She was smiling and laughing.

He had to leave, but the rakshi—or was it Magda—was telling him it was all right to stay.

Stay, Josef. Stay.

Wild shouting, singing, and dancing were erupting from every corner of the smoky, half-lit room.

He looked again for Ang Noru.

There he was, still taking part in the game.

Only he and the biggest Tibetan were actually playing. The frenzied crowd surrounding them had taken the side of one or the other, waving their money behind either man in proof of their allegiance. Those behind Ang Noru were shouting, “Chomolungma! Chomolungma! Chomolungma!” over and over, clapping their hands in time to urge their champion on.

Through the warping blur of the rakshi, Josef slowly told himself that they were shouting the Tibetan name for Mount Everest. He thought that wasn’t such a good thing.

The Tibetan girl came back and, putting down her jug of rakshi, straddled Josef’s lap and leaned in on him with both of her hands around his neck. She started to massage his aching neck, stiff from carrying his heavy pack so far; it felt good. She began to tease his cheeks with the tip of her soft, wet tongue, her breath scalding his already burning face. She smelled like bonfire smoke. When she moved down to start biting his neck, Josef told himself that it wasn’t Magda. He knew that wasn’t good either.

Josef looked down at the ground in a last attempt to resist the alcohol, to avoid the advances of the girl, only to see that little Phurbu was opening the cage he had discovered. He was absolutely sure that the large spiny porcupine the boy was releasing into the room was going to be the worst thing of all.

From somewhere distant and remote, Josef registered that the big Tibetan and his supporters took Ang Noru’s final victory in the game as badly as the porcupine, which someone stepped on at the exact moment the backbone segments settled to reveal that the Tibetan’s half of the room had lost all its money.

With a roar, the Tibetan lunged across the table for Ang Noru’s throat.

With a piercing squeal, the porcupine lunged its long, black and white quills at the legs of everyone else.

The room ignited as surely as if it had been doused with gasoline and a match thrown into the center.

In the midst of the screaming, brawling mass, the big Tibetan pulled both his knives on Ang Noru.

Josef stood to help the Sherpa but the room was spinning so violently he could barely stand. He thought he was going to be sick.

A man with a dagger in his guts staggered into him, knocking him to the floor.

Josef got to his knees, only to be flattened again by another falling body.

He was sick.

When he raised his head again a small hand caught his and tugged.

Josef crawled after little Phurbu out of the door.