One More Time (14 page)

Was I dead? The sounds of birds and wind and trees all around me were familiar but at first I was unable to move. The pain in my head was intense. Then, slowly, I opened one eye and, surprised by what I saw, the other. I wasn’t dead, I was exactly where I’d been before, lying out in the middle of the cold forest. I was still alive. He hadn’t killed me. Akio hadn’t killed me.

Akio—where was he?

Fear shot through me and I jumped to my feet. Dread of Akio eclipsed the pain and I leapt punching the air in every direction. If Akio was near, I would kill him. I swore to myself that I would kill him. But he was nowhere in sight.

‘Akio, you bastard. Come out you fucking wanker!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I stood still and listened carefully.

‘Where are you?’ I shouted, then listened again. Still nothing! There was no sign of him, and something told me that he was no longer near.

I gave up the fight and fell to my knees then curled to my side on the forest floor. For what seemed like hours I cradled myself. I was numb and defenceless.

Where did everything go wrong?

Why am I the way that I am?

How could Akio do that to me?

I could hear birds overhead and now the sunlight created an array of lengthening shadows in front of me. Leeches had attached themselves to my leg, and were sucking hard at my blood. But I remained in a daze.

When I became aware that night would soon fall, I rose slowly to my feet. The weight of the backpack sat heavily on my weary, damaged frame. I wiped my wet eyes and took a final look at this place, at what I’d just escaped from.

‘Holy God—’ I gazed upwards, slightly nervous. ‘Holy God, this is hard for me to say and I know that you know it is!’ I paused. Who was I talking to?

I continued because I knew that I had to. Whether there was somebody up there listening or whether it
was just to myself, the words had to be spoken. ‘Holy God, I don’t even know if you exist. I don’t know if anything I ever say to you makes a bit of difference to anybody. You know I’m not religious and, to be honest, I don’t believe that you’d listen to half of the crap I say, even if you do exist.’

I took another deep breath. ‘Look, the fact is that, well, I’m walking out of this forest and—and you’re staying, you’re not coming with me.’ It felt as though a load was being lifted from my shoulders. ‘This is it, this is my last prayer. If you’re really up there, if you’re really listening to me, then I know you don’t need to hear from me a million times a day. I wouldn’t like to hear from somebody a million times a day talking about wrecking their head. I trust you, I know you’ll look after us all, you always have and…’ This was the hardest thing I had to say. ‘And then again, if you don’t exist at all, then we’ll all have to look after ourselves!’

I looked in every direction. I took in the forest, the patches of sky, the fading light, the place where I’d fallen, and finally I looked up again.

‘Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll be seeing you.’

Turning around I took my first step back up the hill I’d fallen down. It was hard, like walking into the
unknown. I didn’t hesitate though. My head ached and my stomach growled with hunger but I quickened my pace. Not looking back, I climbed, each step more confident than the last. Thoughts circled around my head—guilt, worries, Akio, niggling pressures to perform rituals. I just let them circle and continued upwards. I didn’t fight the thoughts and I didn’t appease them either. I let them come and go. And I wasn’t frightened by them. I knew that what I was doing was the right thing.

My family would want me to do this. They don’t want me suffering the way I do. It’s time I started living my life.

At last I surfaced from beneath a dense patch of greenery and was greeted by the path. My heart lifted. This was living. I shouted it to the world. ‘This is what life is all about!’

Turning to the left, I hurried. There was about an hour of daylight remaining. And there was something I had to do. Stripes of red crossed the sky as the blue started to fade with the setting sun. The green of my surroundings gradually became a fuzzy grey and my eyes struggled in the pending blackness.

Through the aches and the throbbing and the thin light of my torch, thoughts continued to play at me but I refused to give in. I wouldn’t pray, I wouldn’t respond. Somewhere deep within I knew that forever more it was probably going to be this way. That this was something that would never leave me, something that I would spend the rest of my life fighting.

I passed through a small village where candlelit houses greeted my eyes kindly, but still I continued on. There was no more hard climbing, just up and down as usual—until my destination came into view.

I turned a bend and there it was, a collection of dimly lit households, scattered at the top of the distant hill. It felt good to see Chomrung again, even if it was still about an hour away.

The final leg of walking was uphill the entire way and my body was weakening under the weight of the backpack. I paused and started off again. But at last it was too hard and I did what I should have done at the bottom: I unbuckled the backpack and let it fall to the ground. I heard it tumbling down the stone steps I’d just climbed, but I didn’t look back to see where it landed. Instead I began to run. Tripping occasionally, I forced myself up the steep staircase, the teahouse directly in view. Everything seemed vivid. At last
I reached the teahouse, where I fell to my knees, exhausted. Yet I felt more alive than ever before.

‘Thank you,’ I cried at the top of my lungs. ‘Thank you!’

The owner of the teahouse helped me into the dining room. I was laughing, and strangely enough he seemed to understand.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked, seeing the blood on my head. ‘You need somebody to fix your head, it look very bad!’

‘No, I’ll be okay. I want to see Mani, where is Mani?’

The owner stared at me, confused for a second, and then gave a gentle smile.

‘We have prepared him in one of the rooms. Tomorrow he leave for Pokhara!’

‘Tonight I want to stay with Mani. Can you show me where he is?’

Outside one of the upstairs rooms, we stopped for a second.

‘You sure, you okay?’

‘Yes. I’m meant to be here.’

I wasn’t nervous about entering the room, but just in case I reminded myself of who it was I was going to see: Mani, a soft and gentle man who wouldn’t harm a fly.

And indeed, there was nothing to be nervous about. There were two single beds in the room; Mani was laid out on one of them. A candle flickered warmly on a side table. They had draped his entire body in a white cotton cloth, leaving only his face exposed. He looked totally at peace with himself and, strange as it sounded, I felt happy for him; he seemed to be in the right place.

‘You were a good man, Mani, a very good man.’ Bending down, I kissed his forehead. It was as if he might suddenly wake and speak, he looked so like a man in a deep sleep.

‘You’re not going to have that wife after all, Mani.’ I nodded my head in sorrow. ‘I suppose it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe you weren’t so lucky after all.’

Now tiredness caught up with me. I lay down on the other bed.

‘Things have a way of working themselves out, Mani. I only knew you for a short while but the memory of you will stay with me forever.’ I was silent for a moment.

‘Goodnight, Mani,’ I whispered drowsily and smiled. Then I fell asleep, not a thought in my head, my mind at rest.

Morning arrived and I awoke early. I was lying on my side, facing Mani.

‘Good morning, Mani,’ I whispered. ‘Today we both leave for home!’

Four of us carried Mani’s body from Chomrung back to Birethanti. No one spoke for the entire trip, the three other men concerning themselves with the job at hand, and at all times mourning. This was a spiritual journey and Mani, I felt, would have been happy to be thought of with such love.

Images and words continued to press me, but I held strong to my decision. My demons were not going to just vanish overnight. Giving anything up is like turning your back on everything you think you know and understand. You can train yourself to live without
it, but you can never forget it, and for as long as you live it still remains a part of you.

Going downhill in the final stage of our journey was more arduous than going up. Along the way people stepped aside to let us pass, but nobody asked what had happened to Mani.

By five hours into the second day, we were close to the end. We had dropped considerably in altitude and the countryside was becoming busier with houses and people. Soon Birethanti came into view. I think all of us became excited and we walked a little faster.

Om, Mani’s trekking boss and cousin, was there to greet us. He was in floods of tears as we arrived, and embraced me for a few moments. ‘You good man,’ he whispered gently, ‘you very good man.’

Mani was back with his own people and our journey together had run its distance. Om and the three men would continue with his body to Pokhara. I placed a farewell hand on Mani’s forehead and then, with a heavy heart, finally turned aside. I didn’t look back to see the men carrying Mani away. It was hard to believe this was the end. I hadn’t reached base camp, but it felt like I had reached a great deal further. After one last look back along the track, I headed towards Nayapul and the main road.

As I sat in the first taxi I could find, I felt a mixture of joy, sorrow and disbelief. In silence, I recalled the various events of the trek. It seemed like I’d been away for such a long time. Serena came back into my mind; I really hoped I’d see her again.

The driver looked up and into his mirror at me.

‘Did you meet the Maoist?’

The Maoists! ‘Yes!’ I answered.

‘Oh, you very lucky.’

Lucky? If anything they were the start of all the problems.

‘You very lucky to still be alive,’ the driver continued. ‘One boy, Japanese, Maoist kill, nearly five days ago.’

I felt my face go pale with fright.

‘What?’

The driver passed a newspaper over to me. It was in English, but still I couldn’t believe what I saw. In the centre of the page was a picture of Akio, and below it, one of his family arriving in Nepal to take his body back to Japan.

‘Very sad,’ the driver sighed. ‘And very sad for Nepal. I think not many tourist come now for trekking, not good for business.’

I was hardly listening.

Five days ago?
That would have been when I saw Akio being chased. How could that be?

After a few minutes of pure confusion, I smiled to myself. ‘Unbelievable,’ I said. ‘Unbelievable.’

I looked up at the driver. ‘Have you got a radio in this car?’

‘Yes, you want to hear some music?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘And turn it up as loud as you can!’

HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in Australia in 2007

This edition published in 2010

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

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www.harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Damien Leith 2007

The right of Damien Leith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Leith, Damien, 1976—.

One more time.

ISBN: 978 0 7322 8641 5. (pbk.)

ISBN 978 0 7304 4426 8 (epub)

I. Title.

A823.4

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