Beyond the Summit (29 page)

It couldn’t be true what his father was saying. Men couldn’t be that savage, that barbaric. Even animals didn’t rape their young. Dorje clung to Beth and vowed no one would ever touch her. Finally understanding, he relinquished all the resentment, all the accusations and hurt he had so carefully tended and nourished for fourteen years. His father wasn’t a cold, unloving man. He simply loved too much. “Did you ever find them?”

“The man confiding in me said all were taken to a labor camp. With only barley mixed with sawdust for rations, thousands died of starvation, cold, and exhaustion. He had escaped by pretending to be dead. He was dumped in a mass grave to be cremated the following day. He might as well have been dead when I met him. Every bone shone through his thin skin; his eyes bulged; his teeth were hanging from their sockets; all his hair had fallen out. He was a walking skeleton bearing a greater curse than a
shrindi.
”

“And Nimputi?”

Covering his face, Mingma wept quietly. “She had died only two weeks before and not far from the place we talked. I hadn’t arrived in time. If only I had come earlier . . . not gone to India. If only . . .”

“There was nothing you could do,” Dorje offered but knew his words were of no solace. “And your daughters?”

Mingma closed his eyes as the energy flowed out of him. “I wanted to search longer but was too overcome with grief. Maybe I was afraid of learning the truth. I couldn’t have endured more. Since then, I have questioned every refugee coming through Namche and no one knows of them.” After rising and putting more dung on the fire, Mingma stood watching Dorje and Beth. “You love this woman?”

“Yes, as you loved Nimputi.” Brushing her hair back, he felt Beth’s cheek. Still too warm. “And if I lose her . . .”

“You will be like me, alone and surviving on memories of what could have been.”

In the dim light of a flickering fire, they sat talking of love, and Dorje forgot about the pain in his side and the years of watching and waiting. He knew now that Mingma had never deserted him. He had only gone away for a while.

Mingma stayed awake all night to tend the fire for his son and this woman with eyes as blue as the sky above a snow-capped peak. Lying beside her on a bench barely wide enough for two, Dorje clung to Beth as if afraid her spirit would flee in the night. Watching them, Mingma knew his son would give his life for her as he would have done for Nimputi. They were both men who loved too deeply, and he didn’t want Dorje to suffer the same cavernous feeling that consumed him. When dawn came seeping down the mountainside, Mingma touched his son’s shoulder and whispered, “We must go now.” He waited outside while Dorje readied Beth for traveling, but when his son joined him ashen-faced, Mingma knew the rash had spread.

Claiming Dorje was too weak now, Mingma insisted on lifting Beth onto the yak and leading the animal, but in truth he was acting selfishly. Every step that he bore the burden of this young woman helped atone for leaving his own daughters behind. “I desperately wanted to keep looking for them,” he said, his thoughts forcing themselves in words. “But I was starving and as sick as the man who had confided in me. In a few more weeks I would have been dead and of no use to anyone. Already monsoon snows were falling on the high plateau and soon the Nangpa La would be impassible in my condition. Plus, I had two sons waiting for me in the Solu. I came home determined to see you and to regain my strength for another journey into Tibet when the snow melted.”

“Then why didn’t you come?”

The sadness in his son’s voice clutched his heart. “Too much happened at once. I almost died coming over the high pass in snow just as did so many of the refugees and their babies who followed the Dalai Lama when he left. In Namche, I arrived at an empty house where a young boy used to jump into my arms and hug my neck, yelling, ‘Baabu!’ Now the room was barren. Happiness no longer resided there, only my lifeless, mangled spirit lying in despair. I was alone and dying when Pemba entered.”

“Pemba? What does he have to do with this story?”

“He staggered into the room, and I was pleased to see my best friend who had left Tibet eight months before I did, but it wasn’t the same Pemba I knew. The waist-length braids were gone. Short stiff hair shot in all directions when he pulled a wool cap from his head, and his face was sunburned around an outline of the goggles
mikarus
wore. In climbing pants and a foreign jacket, yet barely five feet tall, he was a strange crossbreed. ‘What sort of specter visits me?’ I asked, thinking my illness was hallucinating again. Not a ghost, he told me, but a man wise enough to know our trading days had ended. Tibet was no longer ours. The future was in the mountains and the men who came to climb them. He had gone to work for an expedition.”

“He started that quickly?”

“Yes. I called him their pack animal, a small, belligerent yak, and said I was ashamed of my friend trading his soul for rupees.”

The rest was harder for Mingma to relate because it had altered the rest of his life, yet he had to make Dorje understand. “Pemba’s hands were trembling and his eyes were jumping from one thing to the next. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t prepared. He said three expedition porters had become ill and were forced to go down. That left the climbers three porters short for moving loads higher to the next camp.”

Watching his son, Mingma wondered if he could grasp the enormity of what he was saying. “I didn’t know why Pemba was telling me this or why in a cold room, beads of sweat were curling on his brow. He explained that the climbers saw a storm moving in and wanted to reach the top before it arrived. They couldn’t go further without supplies and didn’t want to lose days waiting for the remaining porters to haul them up. I knew bad news was coming and I couldn’t bear any more right then. I told him to stop but he was determined. His whole body drooped and his voice became thin and tight as he explained the climbers offered double wages to anyone who would carry twice in one day. His nervous eyes narrowed on me as he asked if I understood that double wages were more than I could make in a year.”

Stopping to shift Beth’s weight on the yak, Mingma took a few long breaths before continuing. “He said three porters volunteered and tried to make two trips in daylight but it was impossible with such loads. Then Pemba backed away and his eyes never settled on me as he spoke of my brother and another porter never returning. My brother? The words whipped and cut me like an ice storm. My brother was a simple man living in the isolated village of Phortse. He had no contact with expeditions. ‘You killed him,’ I yelled at Pemba. ‘You and your talk of easy money killed him.’”

“What did he say?”

“The same as you heard yesterday. That Lhakpa chose to carry the extra loads, not him. Twice Pemba betrayed me, first by telling your mother about Nimputi and then by taking my brother on the mountain. When Lhakpa died, I assumed the responsibility of his wife and child forever because Droma Sunjo and Dawa can’t survive on their own. My life no longer belonged to me. I couldn’t return to Tibet or go to my sons. I could only hope you would come home.”

As Mingma strode on toward Tengboche, he wanted to lift a six year old into his arms and erase all that had happened. Perhaps taking care of his son’s woman as if she were his daughters would temper a few regrets.

As they dropped 5,100 lower, the snow depth diminished until by Tengboche the accumulation was no longer excessive and walking became much easier. But by the time Mingma climbed the stairs to the main gompa of the monastery, his legs were aching.
I’m too old for this
, he thought as Dorje lifted Beth from the animal’s back.

“Oh,” he answered and bowed. With her beguiling charm that tugged at his heart too, Mingma could see why both sons loved her. Relating all he knew of her illness to the head monk, he said he could only afford eight lamas to pray for her recovery.

After conferring with Beth, Dorje explained to him, “She says she is very ill and must see the doctor at the Khunde hospital right away.”

“But we can’t get there by dark and it’s too dangerous traveling at night. Explain that the lamas will pray for her.” Watching them, Mingma hoped their love was strong enough to bridge two such different worlds. His had not been so very different from Nimputi’s.

After spreading her pad and bag in the center of the room, Dorje stayed with Beth while four lamas sat cross-legged on either side murmuring prayers in low intonations accompanied by a pair of
dung-chen
. The low constant tone of the long horns resembled the sound of dragons mating to Mingma’s ear, but at last the sustained notes lulled Beth to sleep. Pacing the room, Mingma recognized the sorrow in his son’s eyes and could not allow him to lose this woman. When Beth showed no improvement by nightfall, he decided to summon other forces. Mingma sent a young lama for a shaman to exorcise the evil spirits causing her illness and told Dorje to warn Beth so she would understand and not be afraid.

An hour later, the shaman entered with long garlands of bells, beads, and snake bones hanging from his neck. As he strode across the room, strings of feathers and ribbons whirled from a headdress bearing paintings of the five Buddhas in meditation. Sitting beside Beth, he took her pulse at her wrist and her stomach and began chanting in a low, resonating voice while playing a
damaru
made from human half skulls. His right hand rotated the hour-glass-shaped drum making its clappers strike the membranes while his left fingertips cupped rice and held it to Beth’s face before pretending to pull it from her ear and toss it over his shoulder. Taking her pulse again, he announced with great assurance that a
pem
had caused Beth’s illness.

Removing two large brass cups from his basket, he told Dorje to fill one with water and the other with flowers and leaves. While performing a circular hopping dance, he beat a two-headed drum, the
dhyangro,
with
a long snake-shaped drumstick. As the drumming intensified, he shivered and sweat simultaneously, his breathing became labored, and his body shook violently. The clanging garlands of bells mimicked the rhythm of his body as his head thrashed back and forth with his lips flapping and sunken eyes closed. The timber and quality of his voice changed into deep guttural sounds and strange hissing sounds emanated from his mouth. “It’s coming! It’s coming!” he shouted and circled Beth to seal her in a protective ring.

When Beth started crying, Mingma told Dorje, “Tell her what’s happening and hold her tight. Don’t let her be afraid like Nimputi.”

The shaman’s face twisted and grimaced as he alternately hissed and moaned. His guiding deity spoke through him in a high screeching voice announcing it had seen the face of the
pem
: the spirit of a woman who had drowned and taken possession of Beth. When the shaman slumped forward, his guide departed and a sudden chill filled the room. Moments later, the shaman poured the container of leaves and flowers onto the floor and a small cloth bundle rolled out holding a tiny scrap of cloth which he said came from Beth’s shirt and mud from the sole of her foot. The witch had created the bundle to bring harm, and the invoked spirit had retrieved it to remove the curse. Kneeling beside Beth, the shaman placed his mouth over hers and sucked the evil in one long breath. Her body shuddered and grew limp.

After Mingma agreed to pay in
chang
and butter as soon as he returned to Namche, the shaman packed his things and left. Exhausted from being up all night and making the long, difficult trip to Tengboche, Mingma took a blanket and curled up on a bench near his son and Beth. He’d done all he could for now and hoped the gods had listened.

After the monk and lamas had departed to their rooms, Dorje lay holding Beth who still seemed frightened. To reassure her that faith healers possessed supernatural powers, he recounted the story of when his brother was sick. When prayer had failed to remove the swelling and pain in his stomach, their mother had called for a shaman whose personal deity said they must build a
torma
and fool the
shrindi
ghost into thinking it was Nima.

“What’s a
torma
?” Beth asked, gripping him tightly as if afraid to let go lest some evil spirit whisk her away.

“
Tormas
are made from barley dough painted with colored butters, usually in the shape of gods or demons. We use them in many ceremonies. It is a sin for a Buddhist to kill a living thing, so we sacrifice them instead of animals the way Hindus do. My mother and I made the torma and dressed it in Nima's clothes. We put cheese,
chapatis
, apples, and
chang
around it and then waited at the end of the room. The shaman ordered the demon to leave Nima and move into the
torma
that offered much good food and drink. He repeated this many times.”