Beyond the Summit (33 page)

That afternoon, Dorje felt like a traitor going to the temple, but it was an obligation he owed Pemba who had been a constant friend. The dispensing of abundant food and drink was not done solely to gain prestige but was an opportunity to earn religious merit through hospitality. Dorje arrived as a procession of lamas circled the
gompa
and then entered the courtyard surrounded by villagers. A drum, the moaning of long
dung-chen
horns, and the clash of cymbals signaled the beginning of the ceremony. The senior lama stabbed a dough
torma
shaped and decorated with colored butters in the form of an evil spirit and cast it into a pit. While several lamas added dirt and water and then covered the
torma
with stones, others chanted asking the gods for assistance in fending off demons.

Ready to party when the ritual ended, the villagers headed for the food. The fifth of an eight-day celebration where no one worked, everyone ate and drank as much as they desired in an atmosphere of relaxed sexual play. Lavish tables awaited them spread with vegetable and meat-stuffed
momos
, potato pancakes mixed with spices, fried breads, fresh fruit, yak cheese, and cooked rice balls to be taken home. Instead of the customary home-brewed
chang
, Pemba offered expensive bottles of Johnnie Walker afforded only by tourists. When the music began, men and women formed separate lines and shuffled forward and backward, laughing as they reeled and staggered. Singing bawdy songs, they pinched and tugged at each other in mock sexual encounters at the most elaborate party anyone had ever known.

Surprised to see his brother waiting outside when he arrived home, Dorje wanted to hold and protect him, but Nima had shunned him ever since the incident with Beth. There had been no words of recrimination or hostility, only a cold distance. Dorje was determined to end it now because his brother was as vital to him as his own limbs.

“How could you go to Pemba’s party?” Nima demanded.

“I owed him that. He and Mingma put aside their difference to come for me just as you and I must do for Father tomorrow.” He hooked his arm around Nima's neck and tired to touch their foreheads together, but his brother pulled away. “I love you, Nima, more than myself and want things the way they used to be.” As much as Dorje ached for a great outpouring of emotion from his brother, he remembered needing to peel away layers of anger before letting Mingma back into his heart. So he must be patient and let Nima slowly strip his away too.

The next afternoon, Dorje watched two boys dressed as skeletons come out of the temple and whirl wildly about. In demon masks, other dancers joined their antics, greatly amusing the spectators. Then several lamas led a procession to a pit outside the village where they and the skeleton boys hurled rocks at a
torma
representing the universal enemy. With flames shooting up from the pit, a lama threw the broken
torma
into the blaze. Shouting victory over evil forces, everyone marched back to the
gompa
ready for the party to begin. When they discovered only simple buckwheat cakes and
chang,
the festive mood quickly faded. Musicians played but no one danced. Instead, villagers stood about the yard in small groups gossiping. Quietly moving among them, Dorje listened to their hushed conversation.

“We had much better food last night,” a woman whispered.

“And Johnnie Walker,” said Chotari who had come often to Mingma’s house and bragged about the high quality of his chang that left no grains floating on top.

Dorje was furious at him for complaining instead of accepting what his host offered because Chotari and all the others were denying Mingma his greatest opportunity to earn merit. About to throw them all out, he saw Droma Sunjo signaling him with palms down and shaking her wrists. She glanced sideways at Mingma standing beside his barrels of
chang
, head raised, shoulders back, and eyes staring straight ahead. She approached Dorje wearing the scarf draped over her goiter and with Dawa in tow—a public show of support for Mingma. “Your father is proud,” she whispered. “Don’t let your anger rob him of that.”

She was right. He had to find another way. Grabbing Nima’s arm, he pushed a brass pot of
chang
into his arms and said, “Let’s get this party moving.”

Forcing a smile, Dorje asked Chotari, “Shall I fill your cup with the finest beer in the Khumbu?”

Startled, Chotari stared at him. “I suppose so.”

“Good. And you?” Dorje asked the man beside him. “And you?” He continued around the courtyard with Nima trailing behind offering the same. After many of the guests had been served, the others took care of themselves and the grumbling gradually subsided.

Then to start the dancing, Dorje dragged Nima to the center of the courtyard and put his brother’s arm around his waist, but Nima withdrew it. “Please,” Dorje whispered. “Put away your feelings for now and let’s show Father that we stand together for him.” When Nima’s arm slid around Dorje’s waist and held onto his side, Dorje’s insides rolled over and smiled, pleased with the world again. Gradually twenty others formed a men’s line with a steady swaying to get the song’s rhythm. The line moved forward and backward, punctuating each stop and start with a stomp, increasing in speed to a frenzied climax before settling down to a more stately, hopping. Two new
madal
players sat down, rested their drums across their thighs, and began a song with an unusual beat. Whenever someone lost the rhythm, he suffered the jaunts and jeers of the onlookers. Mingma appeared in his long robe and full sleeves. He raised the hem and began to dance. Moving forwards and backwards, he touched his heels and toes, stomped left, right, and left again, each step punctuating the music so rapidly it was as if he knew where the music was heading even before the drummers. Struggling to keep up, the other dancers failed, including Pemba.

Watching his father, Dorje thought how magnificent he looked with his robe swirling—the center of the village attention and Dorje wanted to stand beside him. He studied Mingma’s feet, trying to find a pattern. When one finally emerged, he closed his eyes to instill it in his head before stepping forward and putting his arm around his father’s waist. With his gape-toothed grin, Nima joined on the other side of Mingma and linked his arm with Dorje’s behind their father’s back. His entire face burst into a smile as Dorje waited for the beat that started the sequence and jumped in with a right-foot stomp, left heel kick, left toe. But it was too fast. He and Nima both stumbled about, always a beat or two behind. Staring proudly ahead, Mingma struck the ground harder and faster, challenging his sons to keep up. Dorje tried again and failed until he let his mind go and allowed his body to guide him. Finally keeping up beat for beat, he felt Mingma’s arm tighten around his waist while father and son danced inches apart as if they’d always been bound together. Dorje’s eyes clouded with tears as he experienced the love and wonder of a small boy again. Minutes later, Nima also got the beat and all three were in unison for the first time since childhood.

As Dorje walked back to the table for some
chang
afterwards, a strange voice sang out, “Buck buck. That was amazing stomping-ness.”

Dorje spun around and recognized the American from last fall. “You’re here with the expedition?” he gasped.

“Told you I’d be back.” His arms out and feet mimicking Dorje’s dance, the American sashayed toward him. “Ready to climb Everest with me?”

One of the field mice that had hibernated all winter and spring crept out of its burrow to see why Dorje’s insides were suddenly alive. “You mean that?”

Marty stood before him, his tufted eyebrows and shaggy hair trimmed. “Just you and me to the top like we planned. Ready?”

Dorje couldn’t believe the moment he’d waited for since they called him the Tenzing of the future had finally arrived. “Yes!” he shouted as the excited field mouse scampered up a wall and did a high dive off the top. “But I have no money, no gear. How—?”

“No problem, Buck buck. Expedition members have to pay huge fees for a climbing permit and we need porters. I’m hiring you just like I said I would.”

Dorje’s elation plummeted. “So I’m not going to the top.”

Grabbing Dorje’s shoulder, Marty wiggled it “No frown-ness. They’re hiring Khumbu porters to carry half way up. Then experienced climbing Sherpas from Darjeeling will cut steps to the summit.”

“But that’s not me,” Dorje said, feeling even more deflated.

“It will be once they see how strong and bright you are. Don’t worry. We’ll go up together.”

Dorje watched his lips moving as Marty talked about crampons, ice axes, oxygen, and his companion who had come with him, but the words drowned in images of carrying repeated loads through the hazardous ice field, of his uncle’s body lying lost somewhere on the mountain, of the many Sherpas who had died for nothing. His fate was to be Tenzing, not a lowly porter.

“You saw her at Lukla,” Marty said.

Marty’s words grabbed Dorje and yanked him back to the present. “What . . . who?”

“You know. That gorgeous blond, the one I said I’d give up my wild ways for. Well, I think I’ve got a real chance with her because she already likes me. And with your help . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

Surprised, Marty’s brows rose. “She wants to write about Sherpas climbing Everest and I promised to bring reports to her in Base Camp. I need you to give me the real story so I can impress her”

“Still washing up, I guess. But how do you know her name?” Marty shouted after him as Dorje frantically pushed through the drunken revelers and bolted from the courtyard.

Racing to the path overlooking the expedition camp, he watched her stroll up from the spring, head tilted, brushing her fingers through long, wet hair to separate and dry it. Having dreamt of this moment for months, he was suddenly scared and disappointed. She had come to write about Sherpas climbing Everest, not for him. Even the slightest hint of rejection in her eyes would rip his heart to shreds and he couldn’t face that. He would send a note asking her to meet him in a private place. If she didn’t show, he’d know he’d lost her and could mourn in solitude. Only problem was he could speak English but not write it, just like his father with the scriptures. Enamored with Beth, Marty certainly wouldn’t be an ally in this affair, so Dorje went to the trekker’s camp and asked if anyone spoke English and would write for him. A man in his twenties was delighted to aid a lover’s tryst. The note read
: I want to see you. Meet me on the boulder with the prayer flags high above the gompa. I will be waiting after dark. Dorje.
After paying a young porter to deliver the note, Dorje strode back to the
gompa
courtyard, purposely circumventing Marty, and quickly downed three cups of
chang
to give himself the courage to see her again.

Beth crawled from the tent as refreshed as a person could be who had just endured an icy sponge bath in public and then changed into wrinkled clothes. As soon as she stood up, a young Sherpa approached, bowed, and said, “Namaste, Memsahib.” After handing her a piece of neatly folded paper, he quickly disappeared as if embarrassed. Beth just stared at it a moment, bewildered by having received a written correspondence in the middle of Namche. Having no idea what to expect, she carefully opened it and read that the man for whom she had traveled half way around the world wanted to see her that night. Her arms dropped to her side and her body sank. Why hadn’t he simply come to her now, yearning to embrace her? Glancing around the camp and adjacent paths, Beth wondered if he was watching. With an uneasy tingling sensation, she read the note again. He wanted to meet her on a boulder on the hill above the gompa, probably because it was easier to let someone down in the privacy of darkness. If he told her he had waited too long and didn’t love her anymore, she would have to understand and accept it.

At the sound of Marty’s voice, Beth hid the letter behind her back. “Oh, such radiant-ness, my Everest queen. I shall erect a summit flag in honor of your beauty.”

“Thank you,” she said softly and touched his arm. “You’re very sweet.”
But I can never return your affection
she tried to communicate through her eyes but sensed he didn’t get the message.

When the dinner conversation inevitably turned to logistics of the climb, Beth quietly slipped away. Normally as evening shadows infused the white walls with gray, a hush settled over the village. The noisy paths emptied of laughing children, women gossiping over their wash, and men smoking bidis and playing cards on stone stoops. The glow of hearth fires slowly seeped through shuttered windows like thousands of orange fireflies dancing in the dark. Walking through the village that night, Beth felt as if she were alone in one of those deserted cities in movies about a nuclear holocaust destroying all life forms. Everything was eerie, silent, and black until she neared the
gompa
. There, alerted to the music and the light of a hundred butter lamps, Beth discovered a courtyard filled with the entire village populous drinking, singing, and dancing with an unrestrained freedom. After watching them a few minutes, she spun each prayer wheel in the outer
gompa
wall clockwise before heading up the hill.