Wakefulness

Where did this old Sherpa come from? What is his background? What’s he doing here, gazing into the void, on a mountain at such a great remove? That’s what the young Sherpa wonders as he watches him, focused on his contemplation of the Englishman below. Meanwhile, the young Sherpa knows exactly where he himself has come from. From his house, in Namche, very nearby. The young Sherpa also thinks that he could do an exact and exhaustive review of his own genealogy and background.

For example, that second-to-last day of winter: March 19, a childhood Monday. It began with an anomaly. The young Sherpa – five years old, pure potential – awoke before dawn broke over the mountain range. He then remained unsleeping. It wasn’t worry. Nor was it a nightmare. Merely the impulse of a body that was ready to forsake the horizontal, to be wakeful, to synthesise some carbohydrates. He lay there for a while with his eyes open, perusing the grey contours of nocturnality, the silhouette of his surrendered sister on the mat to his side. That filled him with calm but not with languor. He sat up, arms stretched out behind him, hands resting against his sheet. He stayed like that for a few minutes, taking stock of his options. Eventually he got up and silently walked to the window. He opened the curtain a crack: a fragment of sky, a yellowish lamp post, insects on their clamorous quest to seduce the streetlights. The situation as novel and ambiguous. On one hand, a slight excitement, the feat of being the one person awake in the house, or in all of Namche, perhaps. A sensation that returned throughout childhood: the feeling of being exceptional. Of being the anointed one, that figure always so abused by mythical and commercial narratives. So the young Sherpa, focusing with all of his five years, stared at the broken horizon of the mountain to ward off the sun’s emergence and felt important. Even though, at the same time, there was also a vague anxiety, a feeling of vulnerability. Eagerness to put an end to that dislocated epic and run straight for his mother’s big mattress. Eiderdown and immaturity. To return to a prior state, less autonomous, more comfortable. To surrender to the heat around his mother’s body; to take advantage of her slumber. Perhaps if he had been a little colder, or a couple of years younger… He did not give in to the temptation: the young Sherpa was always a pragmatic child. He still is. He continued looking out the window. A bat flew past, a little one. The young Sherpa yawned and heard noises. It was his mother getting up, her steps, the door to the bathroom, that flush. The young Sherpa was overcome by guilt that had no basis: he was innocent of every crime. Except for wakefulness. But he felt like he’d been caught. He ran barefoot to his own mat and lay down as his mother came out of the bathroom. He stayed still. Face against the pillow, senses alert. Breathing as the only leakage; breathing: inevitable steady emanation. He pretended he was asleep. He imagined he was sleeping. Until he fell asleep.