SO THIS WAS INDIA; they were in India. The airport was dimly lit and derelict, with black-on-yellow signage (TOILETS, DRINKING WATER, SECURITY) subtitled in Hindi and Urdu—he somehow knew the names of the scripts, but couldn’t make sense of the words. And for India, or what he thought he knew of India, the airport was uncommonly quiet.
Other than the sixty-odd folks unloaded from their flight, the only people in the terminal were a few harried-looking staff and a flock of wild-eyed young men in fatigues, rifles strapped to their backs. There was so much space. But to enter those spaces alone felt perilous, so he hung close to the big man, his companion or keeper, the one who seemed to know him and yet whose face was as unfamiliar as this foreign land.
He trailed the big man to the baggage claim, reluctant to admit to having no idea who either of them was. It seemed a betrayal of their camaraderie—a failure, even. He merely listened politely when spoken to, responded with as few words as possible and followed along. Even so he kept having to squirm away from looks of scrutiny: one eyebrow scrunched, the other scuttling up the big man’s broad, corrugated forehead. Who are you? these looks seem to ask. An excellent question.
Soldiers flanked the baggage carousel, rifles shifted to ready position, half-cocked. Fingers hovered over triggers. Beyond them, out the windows and past the tarmac, the horizon was serrated with mountains. These had the look of teeth.
‘Kashmir, huh?’ murmured the big man.
Kashmir, then. But why?
He sensed the big man watching him and thought for a moment to confess: fine, yes, who am I? and who are you? and what’s going on? and what’s happened to my brain? But he resisted; no need to panic when surely it all would soon return. The altitude had likely just scrambled his memory. It couldn’t have been wiped clean. All he needed was a bit of time to get back on track to finding himself again.
The conveyer belt heaved into motion; a siren wailed and a red light twirled.
‘Goal!’ said the big man, pointing at the light. ‘Like hockey. Get it?’
This seemed to require laughter. So, obediently, he laughed. But the big man shushed him. ‘Easy there,’ he whispered, indicating a nearby soldier with a sideways twitch of his eyes. ‘Don’t cause too much of a ruckus.’
Luggage tumbled down the chute, circled, was collected piece by piece; the crowd dwindled. A nearby billboard flipped through tourism ads: a laneway through autumnal trees, a meadow of vibrant flowers, a houseboat floating on a lotus-clogged lake. He’d no idea which bag was his. Though perhaps on sight he’d remember it. Or his friend might. He eyed the big man for some flare of recognition. But the guy had turned his attention to his phone, madly thumbing the screen.
‘I’m not getting a signal,’ he whispered. ‘You?’
He patted his pockets, located a phone in his jacket: on the home screen was a photo of someone in headphones behind a microphone. He worried it might be himself. What breed of raging narcissist would carry around his own picture? He touched his face, tried to match the features to those in the image. But his skin felt pouchy and battered, while the guy in the photo seemed so vibrant, so alive.
‘Bro?’
‘Sorry. No. It says, No service.’
‘Huh.’
Again the big man seemed to be eyeing him a little too penetratingly, so he turned back to the carousel. All that remained was an ominous package, unlabelled and bound with twine and tape. Surely this wasn’t his? If he made a move for it might the big man caution him away? Or encourage him—Yeah, go for it, that weird one’s yours!
But it was lifted free by a soldier and carted off.
The belt stopped with a shudder.
‘Can we go now? All we brought’s our carry-ons anyway, right?’ The big man passed him a duffel and hitched his own backpack; he’d been carrying both.
‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘No sweat. Just figured you were waiting for the snipers to disperse. Only following your lead. All you out here, Hometown Hero.’
Was this home? Kashmir? It seemed unlikely; his thoughts came only in English. And the big man had a Canadian flag stitched onto his backpack. He suspected that he too was Canadian, though he wasn’t sure how this was meant to feel; certainly the realization conjured nothing in particular. He needed a look at himself—the bathroom would have a mirror—but the big man was leading them toward the exit.
Two guards stepped into their path. The big man flung up his hands in surrender. But the intervention was harmless; they were required to sign in as foreign visitors. From behind a desk an indifferent-seeming woman provided pens and clipboards. The forms bore the heading, THE STATE OF JAMMU AND KASHMIR, and an official crest.
Kashmir. Some facts swam up from the murk: an uprising, an occupation. A dangerous place to be traveling. Why were they here?
‘Passports,’ demanded the woman behind the desk, hands out and palms up.
A passport—yes! In his bag he located a navy booklet: Canadian indeed. Inside was a name that belonged to the same face pictured on his phone; both, evidently, were his own. Still no memories tumbled free. He copied his names—first, middle and last—onto the form, five strange syllables like the lyrics to a tune he didn’t know.
Most of the required information could be gleaned from a flight itinerary folded into his passport: his address was in Toronto; he was here for, apparently, pleasure. Many of the questions were baffling and he cribbed as best he could from the big man’s answers—Matthew, read his companion’s form. When he came to, What is your distinguishing feature? he checked Matthew’s page: Bigness. So he answered: Small.
And then they were through.
A man in a leather jacket and massive orange beard held up a DHAR – GULMARG sign. ‘Bro, check it out, our ride.’
‘Luggage?’ said the driver, offering to take their carry-ons.
This felt like an imposition. The duffel bag’s contents were his; any object could be the key to unlocking the secret of himself. So he clung to it, shook his head. The driver shrugged and led them to a waiting Jeep. Matthew cried, ‘Shotgun!’ and dove into the passenger seat, leaving him to slide into the back cradling his duffel like an infant.
On the way out of the airport they laboured through multiple checkpoints, including one posted with a massive armoured vehicle, some hybrid of tank and elephant. Scrolls of razor wire lined high fences on either side. From behind sandbag stockades snipers trained rifles at the traffic. At the exit a spiked barrier had to be rolled aside so the Jeep could pass through.
‘Serious,’ said Matthew. He turned to the backseat. ‘Was it this bad last time you were here, or do you remember?’
‘I don’t remember.’
A flash of their driver’s eyes in the rearview suggested reconnaissance.
Outside the airport military police lined the road, batons clenched in their fists.
‘Is this normal?’ Matthew asked. ‘All these soldiers everywhere?’
‘BSF,’ said the driver. ‘Border Security Force.’
‘In the city? All the time?’
‘Also CPRF, and army. And police.’
Matthew shook his head. ‘Yeah, but are they always everywhere like this?’
‘Yes, sir. Always.’ From the backseat this conversation had the detached feel of a TV on in another room.
‘My buddy’s from here,’ said Matthew.
The driver looked in the mirror again. His eyes narrowed.
‘Or his dad was anyway.’
The driver twisted a little in his seat. ‘You speak Kashmiri?’
‘No.’
‘But, who? Your father is Kashmiri?
‘Yes.’
‘He is a Pandit? He will be returning?’ There was a hopeful lift in the man’s voice.
‘Returning?’
‘Home.’
No, home was Canada. A safe answer: ‘We’re just here for vacation.’
‘Skiing package,’ said Matt.
Skiing. Ah.
‘But you should come first to my house.’ The driver’s voice chimed like a bell. ‘My wife, my friends, my children—we would be pleased to have you join us. It has been twenty-thirty years since we had Hindus in our home. Please. We will have tea.’
‘Can’t do it,’ said Matthew. ‘It’s nearly noon and we’re scheduled for a run this aft…I mean, we paid for a package, better use it. Right, Ash?’
Ash, he thought. Not the name on his passport. A short-form, a nickname: Ash. ‘Right,’ he said.
The Jeep drove on. High walls on either side of the road fronted palatial homes.
Pausing at a traffic light, Ash (Ash, he repeated to himself; my name is Ash) eyed two schoolgirls waiting on the corner. One whispered into the other’s ear; the second girl’s face lit up and her hand flew to her mouth. Everything about them was so familiar. (Was that possible? Did he know anyone here?) Perhaps they reminded him of someone—a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend? Who were the people that he, Ash, knew?
‘Anyhow, the tea party’s a nice idea,’ said Matthew. ‘But maybe another time.’
The driver seemed to deflate. ‘As you wish.’
The light turned green. Off they went. The girls were gone.
Then they were wheeling around a roundabout and the city receded behind them. The road scrawled toward a ridge of mountains looming against a dishwater sky and along it they went, with a light snow fizzing down from above and the steady whir of the wheels and the hum of the engine and the roar of the vents blasting warm air into the backseat, and Ash felt lulled and lost, fading, fading…
He jolted awake; Matthew was handing over his fleece. ‘Use my vest as a pillow.’
Ash scrunched it into a ball under his cheek. For some indeterminable amount of time he passed in and out of sleep, dreaming of being jostled around the backseat. When he finally sat up again they were heaving up a series of rutted switchbacks through a hillside forest of dim, shaggy pine. For a moment Ash wondered if his amnesia had been a dream. But he was still unable to conjure a single memory. The furthest back his life seemed to go was that flash of sudden awareness on the plane.
They reached a plateau. Everything opened up: a little roadway led out from the trees to a great swath of white land and white sky and white fog swallowing the treetops.
‘Gulmarg,’ announced the driver.
The place had the look of ski villages the world around, Ash thought—and was surprised by the clarity of the images this inspired; there were things his mind had retained, then. Hotels lined a gravel slash through a wide, snowy valley and a gondola cycled up into a bank of low-slung cloud at the far end.
‘Frigging nice,’ said Matthew, drumming the dashboard with his knuckles.
They rumbled past a corral where a dozen men in shawls and woolly caps waited with meagre looking horses, eyeing the Jeep with the look of buzzards sizing up a corpse. Halfway down the strip they pulled up to an A-frame building with a paint-flaking sign—HOTEL PARADISE—and the eaves humped with snow.
‘Hotel,’ said the driver.
‘Paradise,’ said Matthew.
Other than the horsemen there weren’t many people about, though the place seemed designed for tourists. As such Gulmarg had an abandoned, funereal air, with the gondola ascending into the mist offering something like celestial escape.
Ash’s teeth rattled as he climbed down from the Jeep. ‘Cold,’ he said.
‘Check out that curry powder,’ said Matthew, gesturing all around.
Ash nodded, watching the Jeep rattle off down the road. Along the shoulder the snow was cratered erratically with horseshit.
‘Honestly, that’s what they call it here.’
‘Curry powder,’ said Ash. ‘Okay.’
The eyebrows were mobilizing again. ‘Something wrong? You don’t seem yourself.’
Myself—who would that be? Ash was his name, he thought. But having a name and being that person were very different things. Who was Ash?
Matthew sighed. ‘Let’s go check in, you frigging weirdo.’
So Ash followed him inside.
The hotel seemed inspired by Swiss chalets: sloping walls of unvarnished wood, an open lobby, a fire roaring away in the hearth. The man at the desk, though, was very Indian, with a big brown forehead and a luxuriant coif swept from it with pomade.
Matthew gave Ash’s last name and explained that they were on a package tour for three nights. Three nights: Ash figured that after one good sleep his memory would return. A temporary short-circuit—like a computer, he just needed rebooting.
A ledger was scanned, pages were flipped. The concierge was at a loss. Matthew looked at Ash. Ash looked at the concierge. The concierge squinted at the ledger, then at Matthew, then at Ash. Nobody said anything.
A room off the lobby labelled BAR & RESTAURANT disgorged a huge, gingery character. In an Australian accent, through a baleen of beard, he yelled, ‘They’re mine, mate!’ and swept his arms around Ash and Matthew, claiming them both. ‘The Canadians!’ he announced, squeezing their shoulders. ‘How you going?’
‘Good,’ said Ash. ‘Great.’
Matthew stepped back and clapped hands with the guy in a rockers’ salute. Although the Australian was as luxuriantly furred as Matthew was shorn, they were otherwise physical replicas: same size, same shape. Like a pair of minotaurs reuniting for a ceremonial greeting.
‘Guessing you’re David?’ said Matthew.
‘Dave-o, mate. Only folks call me David round here are the locals.’ He shot a furtive, ironic glance across the desk.
Forgoing the concierge’s offer for help, Dave-o acquired keys and steered Ash and Matthew upstairs by the backs of their necks. The room was clean and simple: two beds, a single dresser, a piny smell. No TV.
‘Get settled in,’ Dave-o instructed, ‘quick bite in the pub, then some runs this avo?’
Ash sat on one of the beds with his duffel in his lap. ‘This what?’
‘Avo, mate. You want to fit in round here, better learn to speak Australian.’
‘Afternoon,’ decoded Matthew. ‘Sounds good to us.’
‘Actually—’
‘Shut it, Ash.’ Matthew slung a leg up on the windowsill to stretch his calves. ‘We didn’t come here to sit around and read books.’
‘No, it’s not that. I just don’t know…’ Ash caught Dave-o grinning at Matthew; in their exchange was something transactional and exclusionary. ‘If I can ski,’ he finished.
‘Oh give it up.’ Matthew shook his head. ‘You’re not exactly La Bomba but you get down okay. And we’re not going up in the chopper today, anyway. Eh?’
‘Nope,’ said Dave-o. ‘Just some quick runs, then we’ll rip it up for New Year’s tonight. Get the heli out tomorrow.’
‘See, Ash? Quit being such a mons.’
Ash stared at his hands, palms then backs, as unknown to him as those of a stranger. ‘No, that’s not it,’ he said, looking up. ‘I don’t think I can remember how.’
‘To ski? Are you out of your mind? I told you, it’s like riding a bike.’
‘Or a lady,’ said Dave-o.
Matthew’s laughter filled the room.
‘It’s not just skiing.’ Ash let the silence that followed swell with portent, wanting Dave-o and Matthew to experience the full burden of its emptiness.
And then, when he spoke, his confession sliced through it like a blade.
‘YOU NEED TO STOP calling me that. Just say Matt.’
‘Okay,’ said Ash from his bed. Matthew—Matt—was at the window. The open bag on the floor held Ash’s things. Picking through it had felt like invading someone else’s life; even its smells were foreign. ‘And me? I’m just Ash?’
‘Yeah, only your dad ever used your full name.’
‘What’s Ash like?’
‘You’re Ash!’ Matt’s face crinkled in worry. ‘You swear you’re not messing with me?’
‘Swear,’ said Ash. ‘I don’t know what happened. Everything’s…gone.’
‘You don’t remember anything?’
‘I told you, nothing personal. I know what India is, I know what Kashmir is, I even know what’s going on here politically. The world isn’t the problem. I could tell you the starting lineup of the 1992 New York Knicks, and the first lines of a bunch of books—“If I’m out of my mind, it’s all right with me” is one that keeps coming up—and sing the national anthem, but anything to do with me just isn’t there anymore.’
‘So, like, what you did last week. Nothing?’
‘Last week, yesterday, last year—all gone. But history? If I wasn’t there? I remember just fine. It’s all the stuff I was around for that’s the problem.’
‘Crud. So what do we do?’
‘No idea.’
‘Well who better to help you get it all back than your best bud? I know you better than anyone.’ Matt seemed suddenly enthused; he had a function now. ‘Your favourite food is pizza. Your favourite pop is root beer. You play hockey left-handed but golf right. In grade five you broke your leg mountain biking in Medway Creek and I fireman-carried you home but your dad blamed me anyway. As if it was my fault!’
‘Keep going.’
In a kind of informational mania Matt provided Ash’s age, employment, birthdate, birthplace, and so on. Some of it he’d already covered—that Ash hosted a show on the radio, that he’d written a book. When the facts were exhausted Matt listed some important people in Ash’s life—family, friends. But none of these names conjured faces or feelings. And when Matt finally paused for a breath Ash was still left with a vacuum where his self should have been.
‘Well what about more recent stuff?’ Matt said, collapsing on his own bed. ‘Do you remember getting here?’
‘I told you, everything starts on the plane. It was like waking up. Or like being born.’ He frowned. ‘That’s not it either. I want to say being reincarnated—like having my consciousness flash into a new body with no sense of what was there before—but that sounds cheesy. How Hindu am I?’
‘Not very. But, wait. You don’t remember flying to India?’ Matt seemed to say this carefully; when Ash shook his head he continued with gusto. ‘Not much to remember, I guess, just two old pals heading to your homeland. Or your dad’s homeland anyway.’
‘My dad’s from here?’
‘He…is.’ Matt’s voice wavered.
‘But he lives—’
‘Yeah, in Quebec.’
Before Ash could pursue this line of questioning (What was his dad like? Did they get along?) there was a knock on the door. An alp of polar fleece and beard loomed at the threshold. ‘How’s he going?’ said Dave-o, peeking into the room. ‘Anything coming back?’
This was directed at Matt. Ash waited for the assessment.
‘We’re working on it,’ said Matt. ‘Piece by piece.’
‘Putting Humpty together again,’ sighed the Australian. ‘All right, I’ve done some checking and it looks like this sort of thing isn’t totally unheard of. Happens sometimes to travellers, no real reason for it. Mind just goes blank for a bit. Comes back eventually.’ He handed a stack of paper to Matt, who passed it to Ash. ‘Some info I found online.’
Ash scanned the pages. Half were about transient global amnesia; the rest, dissociative fugue. Did he trust this grizzled bushman with a diagnosis?
‘Not to worry, mate!’ Dave-o’s buoyant pitch made Ash feel not just absent, but mentally delayed. ‘You’ll be right soon enough!’
‘One sec?’ Matt said to Ash, and gestured to Dave-o to join him in the hall.
The door closed behind them. Murmuring followed, nothing Ash could make out. He flipped through the printouts, which included testimonials by survivors and clinical notes. The word fugue comes from the Latin word for ‘flight,’ explained one website. What was he fleeing?
The door reopened; Matt was now solo. ‘Dave-o’s going to try to get a doctor in later this evening. So if you want we can just hang in the room until then.’
‘Oh, no, come on,’ said Ash. ‘Aren’t you here to ski?’
‘Bro, no way. I want to help you remember who you are.’
‘I don’t think that’s how it works, like something will trigger me and everything will come pouring back in. Listen: No treatment is needed for transient global amnesia. It resolves on its own and has no confirmed after-effects. Basically I just have to wait it out. I bet by dinnertime I’ll be back to my old self.’ Ash laughed. ‘Whoever that might be.’
Matt brightened. ‘So it’d be good to do something. As opposed to sitting around.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, not to pressure you or anything, and if it doesn’t work out we can come right back, but muscle memory’s a different type of memory, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Me and Dave-o were talking. Maybe your body has memories stored that your brain doesn’t. And something physical could kickstart things again.’
‘Okay.’
‘All I’m saying, honestly?’ said Matt, kneeling beside Ash’s bed as if in prayer. ‘Is once we get out there I bet you’ll remember how to ski.”
IN THE HOTEL’S BAR & RESTAURANT Matt and Ash met the other members of their group, an alarmingly tattooed Norwegian couple, Jens and Tove, in identical floppy haircuts and turtlenecks and perfect, rigid posture. A handful of other guests, mostly Indians, were also having lunch, which arrived in the form of partitioned metal trays spotted with lumps of yellow and brown.
The skiers would begin with drinking.
Dave-o handed out five quart-sized Kingfishers. ‘I shouldn’t,’ said Matt, retreating, before accepting one as if defeated by protocol. A cheers to Ash’s memory went round the table, the bottles clinking with so much force that Ash’s frothed up over his hand.
‘So when do we hit the slopes?’ said Matt.
‘This guy!’ said Dave-o, clapping Matt on the shoulder. ‘Bloke after my own heart.’
Matt grinned: a compliment. Or at least a statement of solidarity.
‘After lunch we’ll do some runs up the gondola. Take the chopper up tomorrow to the peaks where the real curry powder’s at.’
Matt elbowed Ash. ‘See?’
Ash nodded, drank. The beer had a coppery taste, but the mechanics of drinking—lift, sip, lower, repeat—offered a comforting sense of ritual. So he drank some more.
‘We were up yesterday,’ said Jens. ‘Great conditions. Fat snow.’
‘Fat snow,’ said Tove.
‘These two’ve skied all over the world,’ said Dave-o. ‘Ask them if they’ve ever been anywhere so pristine.’
Jens and Tove sat in expressionless silence until Matt leaned in and shouted: ‘Have you ever been anywhere so pristine?’
‘No,’ said Tove.
‘No,’ confirmed Jens.
‘Sweet,’ said Matt.
Ash was half-done his beer. A giddy sensation twirled around his temples and his body felt like a fist unclenching. He chased this new lightness to the bottom of the bottle.
‘What’s amazing here is that they’ll take you anywhere you want,’ said Dave-o. ‘Nowhere’s out of bounds—short of maybe Siachen.’
‘What’s that?’ said Matt.
The Australian explained the glacier’s prevalence in the conflict, the Line of Control and the current ceasefire, how invariably one side would launch shells over the border and start the whole business up again. He presented this information with a kind of beleaguered futility, as it if were a story he’d long ago tired of telling, one that sprawled with no end in sight. Or spiralled back on itself, again and again.
‘But the glacier,’ said Matt. ‘Can we ski it?’
‘For the right price?’ Dave-o dropped his voice as if revealing a secret. ‘I bet they’d let you waterski the Ganges.’
Ash finished his beer and eyed the others’ drinks covetously.
‘So how many people have died here?’ asked Tove.
‘Yes,’ said Jens, ‘how many?’
‘In the Troubles?’ Dave-o raked his fingers through his beard. ‘Couldn’t tell you. If you’re really interested I can hop online tonight and get all the answers you want.’
Online. The word had the cheery ring of a solution: surely Ash must have an email account. And archived in it would be everything he needed to know about himself. Eagerly he pulled out his phone. Dave-o intervened. ‘That won’t work here, mate.’
‘Too high up,’ said Matt.
‘No, no,’ said Dave-o. ‘The network’s closed. To get mobile service in Kashmir you got to do a whole application.’
‘No Wi-Fi even,’ said Tove.
‘No Wi-Fi,’ echoed Jens wistfully.
‘You have to use the hotel computer,’ said Dave-o, ‘And even then someone’ll sit with you to make sure you’re not ordering a drone strike on Srinagar. Though? You ask me? I think they’re just curious and bored. Anyway, I can set that up later if you want.’
Ash spun his empty bottle around a ring of condensation. ‘Sure.’
‘Some drink to remember,’ sang Matt, thumping Ash on the back. ‘Some drink to forget. Way to go, bro. Let’s get you another.’
‘It’s dance,’ said Ash.
‘What?’
‘ “Hotel California,” right? Is what you were singing?’
Matt looked baffled. Ash let it go. How could he explain what he knew?
Dave-o wagged Ash’s empty at the bar. The boy there sprung to attention, held up five fingers and yelled something back. The Australian responded in twangy Kashmiri.
‘Wow, you speak the language?’ said Matt.
‘Been here seven winters now. You pick up the essentials.’ Dave-o tilted his head, squinted. ‘I hope this doesn’t sound poofy, Matt, but I keep thinking I’ve seen you before. And not skiing. Maybe on the telly?’
Matt shrugged. ‘I’ve done some acting.’
‘A soap ad, was it?’
‘You got me.’ For Jens’ and Tove’s benefit, he explained the campaign.
‘God, those things used to make me cry like a girl. All those guys with their kids.’ Dave-o slapped his knee. ‘But where’s your boy now?’
‘My what?’
‘Your son. That little guy you were aeroplaning and pretending to shave. Cute little bastard. Back with his mum in Canada?’
‘No, no. That was just an actor. All the dads and kids—none of us were related.’
‘Whoa.’ Dave-o appeared to be revising his worldview. ‘So you don’t have kids at all?’
‘None’s I know of,’ said Matt. He seized Ash in a headlock. ‘Except this little guy!’
Ash went limp as his head was knuckled, then kissed, then released as their lunches and a round of fresh Kingfishers arrived. While the others sopped up watery dhal with chapatis, Ash tipped back his beer, eyes watering as it glugged saltily down his throat.
THE CONTAINER, TUCKED AMID the socks and underwear at the bottom of his carry-on, was about the size of a child’s shoebox. The weight of it was surprising: heavy as iron. Ash struggled to think what such a thing might be—a gift? He shook and sniffed it. No clues.
‘Dave-o’s waiting,’ called Matt from the hallway. ‘Get the lead out!’
Ash left the box among his things, bundled up in the few warmer items of clothing he could find—wondering distantly why, if they’d planned a ski vacation, he hadn’t packed long johns or mitts—and chased Matt down the corridor.
They were to fetch the Norwegians on their way out, but at Matt’s knock Tove’s face appeared, looking grave. ‘We won’t be skiing. Jens is feeling…unwell.’
So it was just the two Canadians who met Dave-o at the rental shop, a shack crammed with ski equipment and staffed by a young Kashmiri in plastic sunglasses who Dave-o introduced as Karim. Ash bought cotton pyjamas to wear under his jeans and sweatshirt. But all the men’s outerwear was in large sizes.
‘They’re used to outfitting Germans and Dutchmen, guys twice your size,’ said Dave-o. ‘Going to have to get you in a kids’ kit—or women’s.’
After some rummaging around, Karim presented a turquoise and pink snowsuit almost shyly, as if it were the pelt of some exotic beast he’d accidentally slaughtered.
‘Wow,’ said Matt. ‘Too bad we’re not going to a gay bar on the moon. Perfect outfit.’
Dave-o affected a lisp: ‘I just love the zigzag piping, sailor.’
Matt took out his phone to snap photos of Karim zipping Ash into his snowsuit. The jacket was ribbed and elaborately patterned; the pants flared into bellbottoms. Matt showed Ash the pictures: amid all that Technicolor, his face looked sketched in grey-scale.
‘He’s like a time-traveling aerobics teacher,’ said Dave-o.
‘Like a soccer mom on acid,’ said Matt, and between belly laughs he told Dave-o about a class ski trip when Ash had caught a pole in the rope tow and been dragged halfway up the hill before the patrol jimmied him free.
‘Crikey, mate,’ said Dave-o. ‘Not much of a rescue team in Gulmarg. Fall from the gondola and we may have to leave you up there until the spring melt.’
Next Matt chose him a pair of boots, sparkling and silver. ‘See if these fit, Cinderella.’
Karim knelt and eased Ash’s feet into them. Were his arches meant to feel so pinched? He couldn’t remember. ‘You from around here?’ Ash asked Karim.
Srinagar, he was told.
To the pair of children’s skis assigned to Ash, the two big men added accessories: faux-mink stole, lime green gloves, sequined toque. Then Dave-o led them outside and, lowering his goggles like an aviator, instructed the Canadians to ‘Nordic over to the lifts.’ Ash did not understand until Dave-o and Matt had cross-countried fifteen yards down the road. His first step was perilous: a boot unclipped and the ski torpedoed away. He pursued it sheepishly, horsemen watching from the pasture.
‘Faster on horse,’ one of them suggested, jingling the reins of a wasted grey nag.
Collecting his stray ski, Ash wondered if Matt was concealing the real reason for their trip—a Dhar family reunion, say, or, if he did indeed work in radio, an investigative piece about the conflict. Surely there were stories to tell. One of these pony-wallahs, for example, might once have been a champion rider, reduced by sectarian violence to shuttling tourists from one end of Gulmarg to the other.
Shouts came from down the road. Matt and Dave-o waved their poles in semaphore. ‘Move it or lose it!’ called Matt. ‘We’ll get you a horsey ride later!’
Ash caught up at the base of the mountain. The touts were closing in and Dave-o brushed away offers of guided hikes up Mount Apharwat. ‘I’m the guide here,’ he said through a fierce, bearded grin.
The building that dispensed and collected the gondola was under construction, with loose wires and pipes bursting from bare concrete walls. They were the only skiers in line; the few other people were sightseers who would ride the lift to the top and, without exiting, cycle back down.
‘Looks like two per car,’ Matt told Ash. ‘You okay to meet us up top?’
‘Some solo time’s likely just what you need to jog the old grey matter,’ added Dave-o, clapping Ash on the shoulder.
A cable car came wheeling around the track and Dave-o and Matt piled in. As it swept them up the mountain, an aide appeared to help Ash into the next car. The doors closed and out it swung into the icy afternoon light. Halfway up the mountainside, a cluster of huts swung into view amid the trees. Militant hideouts, maybe? Ash waited for some young mujahideen to come staggering out with a rocket launcher and blow the gondola to smithereens. But the little village was swallowed by fog.
With the view blanketed below, the only thing to look at was the car ahead. Ash could just make out the back of Matt’s bald head and Dave-o’s gingery locks through the glass. Their car rocked slightly—with laughter, he presumed, as they mocked him. ‘Could barely get his stubbies on,’ Dave-o would yuck, ‘can’t wait to see him ride the bumps.’ Matt would respond with a catalogue of Ash’s lifetime of incompetence: a tumble down a gulch, his torso impaled on a stalagmite. None of it even had to be true. Whatever Matt claimed of Ash was, for now, fact.
Up he went, the lift grinding and twanging as it pulleyed him skyward. Then things levelled out and the fog scattered; a treeless plateau emerged. And here was the terminus, a squat building on stilts that absorbed the gondolas in darkness. In went Matt and Dave-o; Ash’s car slowed with a groan as it reached the platform. The cables clacked. The doors heaved open. Ash readied himself to debark, sure he’d find himself alone, with Matt and Dave-o (what a name, like a Dave-flavoured breakfast cereal) off on some gnarly mogul run over the backside of the mountain.
What he discovered instead was Matt leaning on his poles and the Australian nowhere in sight.
Ash skied up. ‘Where’s Dave…o?’
‘Got a call on his walkie-talkie, that Norwegian guy’s really sick. Looks like they’re going to have to chopper him to Srinagar.’
‘So he went back down?’
‘Yup, took off like a bat out of hell. Left me this though.’ Matt handed Ash a flask. Indian rum, musky as cheap cologne. Still, the trickle of booze down his throat was welcome. He took another sip before Matt snatched it away.
‘Easy now, that’s not ours!’ He pocketed the flask. ‘Gotta love Australians, huh?’
‘Love?’
‘Yeah! They’re so much like us.’
‘Us?’
‘Canadians.’
‘We’re like Dave-o?’
‘Sure. Australians, Canadians—we’re practically brothers.’
‘You two do seem very brotherly.’
Matt eyed him quizzically. ‘You jealous?’
‘Of Dave-o? I may not remember much about myself, but I can guarantee that nothing about that person would ever make me jealous.’
Matt laughed. ‘There you are. That’s the old Ash.’
Encouraged, Ash peered down the slope. ‘Like riding a bike, you said?’
‘Gosh, bro. I hope so. Do you remember how to do this?’
‘I guess we’ll find out.’
‘Just go slow, be careful. And I’ll be right beside you, the whole way down.’
Ash pushed off tentatively. Remarkably his body took over: Matt was right, it knew what to do. He turned his edges and slid off sideways, feeling ridiculous in his garish outfit—yet almost happy. This felt familiar. He smiled a little.
‘There you go!’ cried Matt, waving his poles in triumph. ‘Looking good.’
Ash made slow, looping tracks from one side of the hill to the other. After a few traverses he eased up on his angles, let himself gather a little speed. Matt followed, weaving expertly and patiently around him. The whoosh and whisper of their skis turned hypnotic as they descended in tandem, trees looming darkly on the periphery.
Skiing felt good. Life had become halting and tentative: a stab toward himself, a retraction. Swishing along so fluidly, the air brushing icily past, lulled him—the momentum, but also the control, even as the fog thickened and Matt became a hazy silhouette bumping in and out of view. ‘You okay?’ he’d call and Ash would reply, ‘Yup! Fine!’ Though each time these check-ins seemed more distant.
A misty wall rose up ahead. Ash slowed as he neared, searching for some way around. But the fog bled from one side of the hill to the other. So he entered with caution. It submerged him completely. Wary that a turn left or right might plunge him into the woods, Ash angled his skis inward. Down he snowplowed in what he hoped was a straight line. Everything everywhere was white.
And here came fear, the glinting edge of it.
Matt whooshed past a few feet away like something out of an energy drink commercial. ‘Wild!’ he hollered. ‘Frigging total whiteout! See you at the bottom!’
And vanished.
Ash slowed, knees trembling. He could barely make out the tips of his skis. The air was milky and motionless. He felt like a specimen floating through some miasmic jelly, and wary, too, that at any moment something huge and horrible might rise up in his path. Or, worse, that he’d ski cartoonishly off the edge of a precipice: the suspension, the dawning horror, the screaming, flailing descent. Then the fantasy dissolved, replaced by that now-familiar, blank static.
For a moment he felt lighter, airy. He was aware only of his body: a cold breeze sparkling on his cheeks, the pillowy terrain jiggling his knees, his hands clutching poles. Poles, why poles? He dropped them; they disappeared behind him. And why this knock-kneed crouch? He moved his skis parallel. And picked up speed.
The wind came more stiffly now, articulating his body within its currents. And the more rapidly he went the stronger and surer it came. For a moment the emptiness in his mind didn’t matter: he was just a form moving through space, hurtling down and faster down, icy air tearing up inside his woolly hat and whistling in his ears.
The fog tattered and broke. Out of it he plummeted. A town opened up before him. And a figure stood at the base of the hill, maybe seventy-five yards away. A big man in goggles, waving his ski poles. From this figure boomed a voice of authority: ‘Whoa there, Dhar. Ease up, slow it down now.’
Why? Faster was better. The faster he went, the more alive he felt.
The big man, fifty yards away, was still yelling. Matt, Ash thought: his alleged best friend, about whom he knew nothing. Beyond Matt was a fence, and beyond that the building from which a procession of those little booths climbed swaying up the mountain.
‘Are you trying to kill yourself?’ cried Matt. ‘Bring your tips in!’
Kill himself? Surely not. The alternative appeared to be stopping. But how? He lowered his hands to his sides but that achieved little. He crouched, which only increased his speed. He willed himself mentally slower. No result.
The skis cut fast through the snow with a gristly, raking sound. Matt was a hundred feet away, eighty, sixty. Close enough to see the terror in his eyes, and now bracing himself for impact—arms out, feet set. ‘I got you, bro!’ he cried.
But it felt wrong and possibly detrimental to crash into this person. So what to do?
Fall.
So he fell. Leant left and crumpled, skis detaching and pinwheeling away. His body crunched hard into the snow and knotted and pitched, over and over and over, like a bit of litter balled and flung from the window of a moving train.
And then it all stopped. Pain shot from his hip to shoulder. But pain was good: it anchored him. Lying on the frozen ground, Ash gazed up at the colourless sky. Snowflakes floated down, lighted wetly on his cheeks. Winter, he thought. Simple and clear: Winter, winter. The word tumbled through his brain, a sock in a clothes dryer—
A memory interrupted. Something here: wet socks, a burning smell. And this place. But before these elements could connect and concretize Matt was upon him, hollering and gesturing hugely—‘Gosh, good, you’re alive, are you okay, what were you doing, did you break anything, that was crazy, what were you thinking?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ash simply. And wondered when he might answer a question with anything but those words.