Beyond the Summit (20 page)

Lips trembling, Beth looked into his dark brown eyes and nodded. A horrible acid taste climbed into her throat as she watched him haul clothes out to the car, slam the door, start the engine, and drive away. Remembering that night, Beth was again on the verge of tears as she caught up to the others waiting at the crest of a 13,000-foot ridge. A change in weather distracted them and saved her from embarrassment.

“Snowing again?” Hamar exclaimed and tipped his head back, flicking his tongue at the flakes.

“It does not matter,” said Dorje. “It will melt by afternoon.”

“What’s a little snow to you anyway,” teased Kirk with his toothpick traveling across his mouth left to right. “We’ve probably endured more of it than anybody here.”

Grumbling, Royd pulled a wool cap out of his daypack and zipped his jacket to the collar. “You’d better be right. I didn’t come here to freeze to death.”

They quickly descended 1,000 feet to the river and set up camp as soon as the porters arrived with tents. Beth spread her sleeping bag out on the pad and wadded some clothes into a pillow because she would need her parka tonight. Dorje was right about the snow stopping and rapidly melting, but it would be her first time alone in the tent without a warm body to snuggle next to. She missed Eric’s emotional and physical warmth but questioned whether that was enough to create an enduring relationship.

Since the days were growing shorter, they finished dinner around 4:30 p.m. as night smothered them in darkness. The Norwegians retreated to their sleeping bags to read by flashlight. Thirty feet away, porters crowded around a small fire, smoking
bidis
and casting occasional glances at Beth sitting on a large rock by the main cook fire, hugging herself for wamth. She should run to the tent as the Norwegians had, but Dorje was still about and she badly needed a connection tonight. The shadows stretched long and thin, and indigo hues deepened as daylight waned over the hills. As the fire turned to embers, Beth shivered and tucked her arms tighter.

A sleeping bag dropped around her shoulders and Dorje uttered in a matter-of-fact tone, “This will keep you warm.”

Wondering if he spoke merely as a
sirdar
taking care of a client or a man with feelings for a woman, she said, “Sit with me.”

“I cannot.” Turning his back to her, he added wood to the fire and started to leave.

“No, wait. Don’t go away. It’s early yet.” Feeling very much alone and sad, she desperately wanted him to remain. “We didn’t finish our discussion. Do you remember my last question this afternoon?”

He waited so long to respond that she was about to repeat it when a reluctant voice answered, “Yes. My parents had a divorce too.”

Realizing that he had probably struggled all day with what to tell her, Beth wanted to take his hand and say she understood but didn’t dare. “Please sit and tell me about Sherpa divorce . . . for my story, of course.”

Standing with his toe digging at the dirt, Dorje said, “Before the Chinese closed the border my father traveled every year to Tibet to trade
zopkios
and
zhums
for small horses that he took to India to trade for silk, brass, tea, and spices. The year that I was six, he was many months late returning. My mother usually sang and laughed like birds in the trees. Now that her husband was home at last, she was quiet. I watched her making
chapattis
and didn’t understand. My father said the snow was much deeper this year and taking 80 animals over the Nangpa La had been difficult. ‘No more excuses,’ my mother told him. ‘I know enough.’”

“What did she know?”

“I was too young to understand,” he answered and turned toward her. “Nima and I slept on the floor not far from our parent’s bed. He was only three and fell asleep but I was too excited about Father being home to let go of his voice yet. I heard them moving under the blankets and my mother said something in a voice that sounded like it was drowning inside her and my father came back hard and cold. They threw words at each other, words that had no meaning for me.” He squatted to stir the fire and rested his arms crossed over his knees, staring straight ahead. Neither of them speaking for a long while, Dorje finally added, “A week later, all of my mother’s family arrived one morning. The men took their seats on the window bench and the women sat on the floor. My father poured glasses of
chang
for everyone. My insides that had been all tied up like this,” he said, knotting his hands to show her, “finally relaxed. Everybody was laughing and smiling. The anger between my parents had gone away and I was happy.”

“I’m glad.” Feeling the connection she had sought and wanting him closer, Beth opened the bag. “Come sit and get warm.”

As though lost in his own memories, Dorje didn’t move but continued with a slight snag in his voice. “But then my father stood in the middle of the room, holding a glass of
chang
, and said things that hurt in my child’s brain. I kept shaking my head and crying, but his words wouldn’t go away.”

“What words?”

“He said that he and my mother were no longer married and that he was no longer their son-in-law. To show that they were breaking apart, he stretched a thread between himself and her brother and asked her father to cut it. I watched the ends of the thread drift slowly to the floor and felt they had cut me in two. I could not believe this was happening. Someone had made a terrible mistake. I yelled, ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ but no one listened. They drank more
chang
like nothing had happened, visited a few minutes, and left. I searched my parents’ faces. What did this mean?”

Hearing the pain in his voice and wanting to rescue him from embarrassment just as the weather had done for her, Beth interrupted with a neutral reporter’s question. “Is this how Sherpas get a divorce?”

He was rubbing his hands down his thighs over and over, his voice thin. “Yes. The ceremony is called
nia-tongu
and it means to get rid of a problem in a bad marriage. The wife must give her husband one rupee to pay for the beer his father brought during the
sodene
.”

“And that’s it? A much better way than ours where everyone hates each other and fights.”

“There is more. My father was on the bench with Nima beside him carving trails in the thick wool rug with his fingers. And my mother stood at the window like she was waiting for someone. My stomach got all tied up again when a man entered wearing loose trousers and a shirt. The heavy folds in his lids made them look like snake eyes. I did not like him. He walked across the room to my father and laid some rupees on the low table. My father picked them up and both men bowed to each other. Then they sat drinking
chang
and talking.”

As Dorje gazed at her with his dark brown eyes, her heart skipped a beat. “If a man wants to marry another man’s wife and she agrees, he must pay her husband a fine.”

“Nima. While we were in the shop, he said Dorje
zendi.
”

“My brother likes you too much and does not want you to think I am free.”

“And are you?” slipped out before she could grab it to examine the consequences of what she was asking.

“My father promised me to a girl named Shanti. With money from this trip, I will soon have the
dem-chang
.”

Beth wanted to retreat and crawl inside herself because now there was a name attached to this faceless woman she’d been envisioning. “So we are both engaged,” she said, trying to comprehend fully her own feelings.

The fire had reduced to embers and the air was biting cold. It was late by Sherpa standards, although probably no more than 6:00 p.m. At home, she and Eric would not have begun dinner or would be on their way to the theatre. Here she was confused and shivering in the dark. She needed time to sort her feelings and certainly couldn’t keep her head on straight with him only two feet away. “I should go to bed now, and where will you sleep?”

He waited until she was in her tent and had zipped the door shut. Shivering with her sleeping bag pulled up over her head and ears, she lay questioning what on earth she was doing. If Dorje had asked to join her in the tent, she would have been tempted—and that was insane. Being this far from home was no excuse for her behavior. She was marrying Eric in a few months, and Dorje was betrothed to this woman named Shanti. The intellect that had always ruled her life, and done so quite nicely, said to stay miles away from him. But her emotions were crying out for more.

Walking to the porter’s tent, Dorje wondered how he could be so aroused in this cold, but when she asked where he would sleep tonight, he had sprung to life. What did she mean by that and the three offers for him to sit with her and even share the warmth of her bag? Probably just bored or lonely without Eric and wanting a Sherpa to play with. Knowing this, it still took every bit of self-control not to move onto that rock and wrap himself up or follow her into the tent. As Dorje looked for the best place to squeeze among the porters, he wondered how it would feel to make love. He could never be bold enough to suggest it. Instead he would lie here awake all night recalling every word and movement, wondering why he had told her things he’d never shared with anyone, not even Shanti.

The next morning, Dorje wished he hadn’t taken this job, sensing the Norwegians would be a problem to the end. The pay was good, however, and it meant ten days with Beth. He could put up with anything, even knowing she would break his heart when she left just as Pemba had warned. At breakfast he could hardly take his eyes off her and when she looked up at him, his entire being resounded. Every muscle and cell desired her. Needing to concentrate on something else, he watched Kirk push his eggs from one side of the plate to the other and finally shove it all out of the way and drop his forehead to the table, almost jamming the toothpick through the roof of his mouth.

“You should not drink up this high.” Dorje next turned on Hamar and Royd. “And you two go
bistarai
today or you will be as sick as he is.”

Royd removed an aspirin from his pocket and took it with tea. “Norway’s covered with rugged mountains and glaciers. I’ve walked them all my life and know what I’m doing.”

“How high are your mountains?”

“The highest is only 8,100 feet,” Kirk moaned. “Lower than we landed at Lukla. Plus we all live at sea level.”

Point made, Dorje removed their plates and announced they would depart in half an hour. They climbed a steep, forested slope on the left bank of the river with waterfalls cascading from above and then passed through groves of rhododendron and birch trees with occasional glimpses of Cho Oyu at 26,748-foot on the Tibetan border. When they reached timberline at 13,175 feet, it started snowing again. Frustrated by the weather, Dorje looked around for Hamar.

“He and Lhamu were right behind us awhile ago,” Royd said.

Angry at himself for being so absorbed with Beth that he could lose track of someone that large, Dorje grumbled, “Wait here,” and charged back down the hill. He returned twenty minutes later with a wet Norwegian in tow. “He was trying to drink from the river and fell in. I warned you the first day to only drink boiled water or you will get sick. Why don’t you listen?”

“We ran out,” Hamar complained. “Lhamu needed some too.”

“More trouble,” Dorje grumbled to himself as he started up the hill. They climbed four more ridges and finally looked down on Machhermo spread out in the wide valley below. By the time they made camp that afternoon, all signs of snow had disappeared and Dorje hoped they were done with it. During afternoon popcorn, biscuits, and tea, Beth asked about the three small stone buildings.

“This is a
yersa
,” Dorje explained. “We bring animals here to graze during the warm summer months while the lower meadows rest.”

“And people actually live in those places?” Royd asked wrinkling with his face in disgust like a desiccated old potato.

Dorje wanted to grab the man by his short red beard and shake him for disparaging his culture in front of Beth, but no Sherpa would carry out such a violent act against a tourist. So he gritted his teeth and donned his customary affable smile. Beth must have sensed his anger because she intervened with, “Can I go inside one to describe it for my story?”