Fifty-Eight

‘These people…’

The old Sherpa is speaking. He sees that the younger man nods but says nothing. Does the young man’s silence signify assent? the older man wonders. And sinks back into his drifting mind.

On the one hand, a reproduction of Turner, the Tibetan songs, the polished parquet of a spacious apartment in Amsterdam, or Zurich. Almost all of what’s wrong with this world. ‘Porters’, they call us when they’re there, these people. What people? These people: the people who visit the mountain. These people: self-indulgent visitors, thinks the old Sherpa. Those who see themselves as ‘mountaineers’, or ‘climbers’. A few, aware of their limitations, add a direct modifier, something adjectival, that limits their scope: ‘amateur mountaineer’, for example. Or ‘fledgling mountaineer’. But for the Sherpas, anyone who comes to the mountain with the intention of ascending is a visitor, plain and simple, an undesirable. A tourist. That much can be taken for granted. We are Sherpas; they are tourists.