Peak (6 page)

"Who's Zopa? And how does he know about me?"

He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Zopa used to be
sirdar.
You know what that is?"

"Head Sherpa," I said.

Sherpas are mountain people who live on the slopes of the Himalayas. Without them and their climbing skills, no one would get to the summit of Everest.

"Right," Josh said. "Zopa got me to the summit of Annapurna the day you were born. He was there when Teri called and gave me the news. Since then, he's asked me about you every time I've seen him. Bugging me, really ... saying that it's not good for a father to neglect his son."

Obviously, Josh had not listened to him.

"Zopa stopped climbing years ago," he continued. "He's a Buddhist monk now. Lives at the Indrayani temple. The Lama there has given him permission to forgo his vows for a few weeks to take you up to Base Camp."

"Forgo his vows?"

"It's not as big a deal as it sounds. I don't know all the details, but leading you to Base Camp was considered to be auspicious, meaning the right thing to do." Josh smiled. "And I'm sure the donation I made to the temple didn't hurt. They're a little strapped for money."

"So, Zopa is okay with this?"

"Absolutely. He's curious about you. And he didn't say this, but I think he's getting kind of bored with being a monk."

"What's he like?"

"Cagey," Josh said with a smile. "If he agrees to do something, he'll do it, but he may not be doing it for the reason you think he's doing it. And he'll never let you in on why he's doing it."

"Huh?" Josh was beginning to sound like Paula and Patrice.

"It's hard to explain," he said. "You never know what Zopa's real motivation is. I asked him to take you up to Base Camp. He said he would, but he's not taking you up there just to do me a favor or because I gave money to the temple. There's another reason—more likely half dozen reasons—he agreed to do it. And you and I will probably never know what all of them are.

"It was a sad day when he retired, I can tell you that. He's been on the summit of Everest more than any other human being. At least that's the rumor. Zopa says he can't remember how many times he's reached the top, but I think he knows exactly how many times it's been. He speaks perfect English, and although he doesn't talk very much, when he does you need to listen very carefully to what he's saying. The Sherpas do. A lot of them drop by the temple before they climb to have him do a reading. If he tells them not to go, they won't go up, no matter how much money we offer them."

"How do I get in touch with him?"

"He'll come by in a day or two. In the meantime, you need to sort through this gear. Most of it's yours and you'll need all of it to get up the mountain. I wasn't sure on the sizes, but if something doesn't fit right tell Zopa and he'll swap it out at one of the shops downtown." He looked at his watch. "I'd better get going."

He started toward the door and stopped. "Charge whatever you eat at the restaurant to the room. Do you have any cash?"

I shook my head.

He pulled out a thick wad of money and peeled off several bills.

"It's not as much as it looks like. Seven thousand rupees is about a hundred and fifty bucks U. S."

I took the bills and set them on the dresser.

"I'll see you in a couple of weeks," Josh said. "Maybe less if Zopa thinks you're ready. Oh ... Before I leave town I'll call your mom and tell her you're okay."

I interpreted this to mean that he would call and lie to her about where we were and what we were doing. Better him than me.

"Enjoy the trip," he said, and with this he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the door. My head was kind of spinning, but it wasn't from altitude. I think it was Josh's energy that was making me dizzy.

There was a light tapping on the door, so faint I barely heard it. I opened it.

It was the concierge. He gave me a slight bow.

"I will turn down your bed."

He wove his way through the junk as if it weren't there, pulled the comforter back, and fluffed the pillows. When he finished he looked at the window. The curtains were drawn.

"This will not do!" he said. "You are missing the setting of the sun."

He pulled the curtains back with a flourish.

Behind them were the Himalayas washed in orange and pink light. They were much bigger than I had ever imagined.

GEAR OF THE DEAD

THE NEXT MORNING,
after a huge breakfast in the dining room, I came back upstairs and started sorting through the gear.

All the stuff didn't make up for all the birthdays and Christmases Josh had neglected, but it came pretty darn close. It was all state-of-the-art equipment, most of which I'd only seen advertised in climbing magazines. Camp stove, coils of rope, cams, titanium ice ax, crampons, thermal gloves, digital camera, O
₂
regulator and face mask, tent, subzero sleeping bag, sleeping pad, altimeter watch, carabiners, batteries, ascenders, pitons, harnesses, climbing helmet, headlamp ... Everything I needed to get through the death zone.

Most of the clothes were too small, especially the boots. I suppose Josh couldn't have asked my mother for my sizes without tipping her off. And he couldn't have asked me, because until I passed the physical he wasn't sure I was going, which got me to wondering what he would have done if I had failed the physical.

But only for a moment.

The gear called to me, and nothing matters when you are up to your knees in brand-new, expensive climbing equipment.

It took me two hours to figure out how the altimeter watch worked. An hour to set up the tent. I faced it with the opening toward the window so I could see the Himalayas. I snapped a couple photos of my view with the digital camera, then I got hungry and decided rather than going down to the dining room I'd just cook up some food on my brand-new camp stove. (I know this sounds goofy, but I get a little out of control when it comes to gear. I opened the window so I didn't get carbon monoxide poisoning.)

As the freeze-dried beef Stroganoff was simmering away there was a knock on my door. I thought it was housekeeping again. They had come by earlier asking to clean the room, but I told them that I had everything I needed and to come back tomorrow. I slithered out of the tent, carefully stepped over the stove (so I didn't tip it over and burn down the hotel), and cracked open the door, hoping they wouldn't smell the gas burning or the food cooking.

It wasn't the housekeeper. It was a Nepalese boy, about my age but two inches shorter. He was smiling up at my head, which is all I had revealed through the crack. Below my head I had nothing on but my boxers because I had been trying on gear all day and it was getting hot in the room from the stove and the sun coming through the window.

"Peak Wood?" he asked.

"Actually, it's Peak Marcello, but yeah, that's me."

"My name is Sun-jo. Zopa sent me over to bring you to him."

"Oh sure ... uh..." I glanced at the mess behind me. I didn't want to leave him standing in the hallway while I got ready, which was going to take a while.

Appearing like a total idiot won over being rude. I let him in.

Sun-jo looked a bit shocked at the setup, but he didn't burst out laughing, which I might have done if I had stumbled onto something equally as stupid-looking as my indoor camp spot.

"My dad ... uh, I mean Josh, got me some new gear and I was ... uh ... testing it out, so I would know..."
Ah, forget it,
I thought. "I'm just making some lunch. Are you hungry?"

Sun-jo said he was.

As I got dressed, I watched him checking out the equipment, and I knew he was a climber. No one else would fondle gear as lovingly. He picked up various items like they were more valuable than gold, which they
were
when they were the only thing keeping you from falling off a rock face or into a dark bottomless crevasse.

I cleared a spot for us on the bed and served him a bowl of Stroganoff and an energy bar for dessert. It turned out that Sun-jo's father had been a Sherpa. Unfortunately, he had died up on K2 the previous year trying to rescue a group of climbers. Only one of the climbers survived.

K2 was discovered in 1856 by a surveyor named T. G. Montgomery. The
K
stands for Karakoram. The
2
means it was the second peak Montgomery listed on his survey. At 28,250 feet it's a bit shorter than Everest, but most climbers agree it's a lot harder to reach the summit.

I told Sun-jo how sorry I was to hear about his father, but he shrugged it off, saying he hardly knew his dad. He and his two younger sisters had spent most of their lives at a private boarding school in northern India.

"My sisters and I only came back to Kathmandu on holiday," he said. "My father was usually up on the mountain during those times."

Hearing about his sisters caused a little ache in my belly for Paula and Patrice, but it went away as I watched Sun-jo casually tie a length of Spectra cord to a hex slung with a triple fisherman's knot.

"Where did you learn to climb?" I asked.

"My grandfather instructed me," he answered.

His English was better than mine. He had kind of a British/Indian accent. Mine was kind of a Bronx/Cody, Wyoming, accent—which did not sound nearly as cool or refined as his.

"So, you're on holiday?"

"No," Sun-jo answered. "When my father died we did not have the funds to keep all three of us in school. The tuition is very expensive. My sisters are still in school and I am here to find work so they can stay there. Without a formal education there is no future for girls in Kathmandu. I would like to go back to school myself, but it is unlikely I will be able to. It is more important that my sisters attend school than it is for me."

Sun-jo wasn't much older than I was, and I wondered what kind of job he could get that would pay the tuition.

He looked at my altimeter watch, which he had been playing with throughout lunch. "We should leave soon. Zopa is waiting for us at the Indrayani temple."

I turned off the stove and put the dishes in the bathroom sink.

"Did you know there is a dining room here in the hotel?" Sun-jo asked. "I have not dined there myself, but I hear it is quite excellent."

"Yeah, I ate there this morning. It's great. The reason I cooked ... well, you know ... the new gear..."

Sun-jo smiled. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

OUR TRANSPORTATION
to the temple was the saddest motorcycle I had ever seen. There was more silver duct tape on it than chrome.

It took him six vicious kicks to get it started, and when it finally caught, the motorcycle belched out a column of gray smoke so thick I thought the bike had burst into flames along with my new friend. But the smoke cleared, revealing a coughing Sun-jo with tears running down his face and a mostly intact motorcycle—except for the bolt lying in a pool of oil under the engine.

"It is much better when we are moving forward." He gasped. "In this way the smoke cannot catch us."

I thought about running up to the room and grabbing my climbing helmet, but I was afraid Sun-jo might die of asphyxiation before I got back out, so I climbed on behind him and we lurched into traffic.

Sun-jo yelled something that sounded like, "Only two root beers, last go!" But I think he meant that the motorcycle only had two foot gears, fast and slow. He was right about our exhaust being behind us; the problem was that we were now speeding through everyone else's exhaust. For the next twenty minutes I squeezed shut my burning eyes and buried my face in his back, thereby missing most of Kathmandu.

"We have arrived," Sun-jo announced.

I unclutched my sweaty hands and opened my eyes.

"You must remove your shoes before entering the temple."

I took them off and put them next to about fifty other pairs of shoes and sandals.

"If you don't mind my asking," Sun-jo said, "what happened to your face?"

"It got frozen to a building."

Sun-jo laughed. "No, really..."

"Climbing accident," I said.

"That's what I thought."

I followed him into the Indrayani temple, which was like walking into another world. One where people whispered rather than shouted. There were no wandering cows (we had narrowly missed three of them on the way over), no horns honking, no screeching tires. The smell of flowers and incense saturated the air. Worshippers were kneeling in front of shrines, spinning prayer wheels, lighting butter lamps. Mystery, possibilities—this was the Kathmandu I had expected.

Sun-jo led me to a teak bench in the shade of a banyan tree. We sat for a while watching the orange-robed monks talking quietly to visitors and offering them blessings.

"Which one is Zopa?" I whispered.

"None of these."

"Shouldn't we let him know we're here?"

Sun-jo shook his head. "He'll be along when he's ready."

Waiting again, but I didn't mind. I spent the time trying to figure out how to gracefully bow out of a return trip to the hotel on the death motorcycle.

"Here he comes," Sun-jo said.

I expected Zopa to be a frail old holy man. And the monk striding toward us was old, but he was anything but frail. His arm and calf muscles (what I could see of them beneath the hem of his orange robe) were well defined and powerful.

You'd expect a Buddhist monk to have a spiritual presence, but whatever spirituality Zopa had was overwhelmed by his physical presence. When he reached us he put his palms together and bowed. I followed Sun-jo's lead by getting to my feet and returning the bow.

Zopa looked me over, frowning at the scabs on my face and ear.

"Climbing accident," Sun-jo explained.

Zopa pointed at my bandaged fingers.

"Split nails," I explained nervously. "They're almost healed."

"You look like your father," Zopa said. Actually, I looked more like my mother, but I wasn't about to disagree with him.

"How did you get here?"