Rising Abruptly (18 page)

She tries the monkey hang, but her arms are dying on her, her calves shake, the whole house shakes with her shaking. And she falls, and falls, dangling in mid-air, held by the rope. She growls in frustration, in jealousy of Jacques's ease and, finally, in anger. Anger gives her the impetus to hold on to the edge of the roof, as sticky and slippery as decaying onions. A couple more moves, scraping her knees on the aluminum trough, grating her hands on the rough shingles, and she crawls on all fours. Stands up on the roof. Jacques pulls in slack and she walks uphill toward him, holding on to the rope with both hands, quite aware of the force of gravity on the sharp angle of that terrain. He clips her in to the belay station.

He shouts playfully: Secure! Normally, you're responsible for clipping in yourself. And you're the one who has to say secure, loud and clear, before your partner can take you off belay. He kisses her. Wasn't this fun?

A whole hour it took me!

Don't exaggerate.

How embarrassing. I'll eat onion-stuffed crow for a week, Jacques. How dare you rat on me to your climbing buddies. So embarrassing.

You made it, Maddie. First try. You climbed the Bowness Bungalow route.

They both laugh, hoisting the head of garlic. Jacques fastens it to the apex of the roof. It gleams in the autumn sun.

For the first time, Maddie realizes how high above the street they stand: How will we get down?

Rappel. I'll teach you rappelling. You'll love it.

Love it? She's not so sure, but she must believe. What's the alternative? Live on the roof with the big garlic?

Maddie can almost touch the snow-capped rocks rising against the perfect blue western sky. She fancies she can hear glacier water running. She looks at Jacques. He squints at her.

L'air des montagnes, Maddie. Wait until you breathe that mountain air. After one day up there, you will sleep like never before. I promise. Best sleep in the world.

You've always known your onions, Jacques.

He breaks into that grin of his.

They gaze at the grey limestone walls leaning against the distance. Jacques, full of promise and expectation. They gaze at the giant head of garlic tied to the chimney. One day, perhaps, a strong chinook will send the sculpture crashing down along the property line. Maddie studies Jacques's face, wondering how she got herself from her warped Montréal apartment to this unreal land.

What's wrong with this picture, Jacques?

Wrong? He squints at the distance. Then looks at her: From where we stand, ma grande, not one single thing I can see.

He holds her in his strong arms, against his strong heart, gently blowing into her face his sweet perfect-pickled-pearl breath.

You and I, my onion lady, are just fine.

Nepal High

THE PEOPLE of Borlang Bhanjyang are positive. The yeti killed Jeanne. He took her in the middle of the night. Dragged her out of the mud house and carried her into the heart of the Himalayas. Didn't they find her broken body at the foot of a cliff? The woman where Jeanne is staying, the mother of Jeanne's mountain guide, Rana, can't stop herself from beating her breast and wailing, imploring the Nepalese gods and goddesses to forgive her negligence. The wooden panel closing the window. Left open. On the shadowy night.

The inhabitants of this hamlet of five houses perched on a hill between three deep valleys are gathered together in front of the low door. They tell a long story Rachel does not understand. Except the word yeti that they repeat over and over.

They show Rachel the famous window through which the creature entered the room. The poor beast couldn't be much bigger than a cat to have managed to slide through such a small opening. Jeanne and the yeti, a new legend taking form. A story to be told from village to village, the tale that will expand over long winter evenings. Jeanne who could not stand still.

Rana asks Rachel what she wants to do with the body. She looks at him, not understanding. She is dreaming. When she wakes up, Jeanne will be there, as skinny as ever, as ready as ever to mock Rachel's concerns. The body? What body, Rana?

Two men enter the low-ceilinged room, carrying a stretcher covered with layers of colourful light fabrics topped with wildflowers. They set down their burden on the beaten-earth floor and exit without a word. Even though the villagers have returned to their own concerns and gone home for their evening meal and even though only Rana, his mother and his maybe seven-year-old brother remain in the room already darkened by night, Rachel feels dozens of eyes watching her next move.

She stares at the fabrics, notes the freshness of the yellow flowers. Doesn't dare lift the diaphanous shroud. What does a mutilated corpse look like? Maybe Jeanne sustained fatal injuries to her internal organs, leaving her body intact on the outside. Rachel can't bring herself to look.

She gingerly feels the shape lying under silk. A vaporous coldness enters her fingertips to freeze her to the elbow. It is rigid, that thing she touched, the arm of her dead cousin. What was she doing outside in the middle of the night? Restless Jeanne. See how still you are now.

Rana? Can we have her cremated? Can we burn her on a funeral pyre, according to your customs?

Rana nods: Yes. Jeanne, she was my sister.

Something else. Her things. She brought things with her to Borlang Bhanjyang. Photos, recordings, from her previous stop. When she went to Tibet.

Rana's eyes brighten and he shows her a metal box in the small space reserved for the dead woman. He then joins his mother and brother, both silent at the other end of the room where a tiny fire burns.

The Nepalese night tightens its grip around the hamlet, over the big mountains, while the wind carries the story of the Western woman who came to join her mother in death, the story whispered all the way to the highest summits where her spirit will be preserved in the thin air of eternal cold. They all came here to die. Jeanne's mother. Rachel's father. And now, Jeanne herself. End game.

Stooping on account of the low ceiling, Rachel moves closer to the group gathered around the fire. Without that small flame burning in the hearth dug in the floor, it would be pitch-dark. From time to time, Rachel glances behind her. Through the flickering flame, it seems to her that something is moving under those layers of cloth.

All at once, in this house at the far reaches of the world, the deep fatigue and stress accumulated over this long, long day pull her down into the earthen floor. Only this morning on the streets of Kathmandu, she never doubted she was on her way to meet Jeanne. Alive.

An accident? What accident?

Rana found Rachel in the small hotel on the outskirts of Kathmandu where Jeanne had asked her to wait for her. And waiting, that's what Rachel had been doing. For days. Hiking the Himalayas around Kathmandu. Perhaps as far as the Helambu region, from where many a mountain guide hails. That had been the plan. Simple. But with Jeanne, the simplest thing always became convoluted. True. Afterward, the game was worth the candle. So, Rachel waited. This morning before dawn, the innkeeper rapped on her door. A man was asking for Miss Rachel. He was waiting in the dining room.

The man introduced himself as Rana. Jeanne had hired him to guide them on a few treks, perhaps in the Helambu, perhaps…

Yes, yes, Rachel knew the plan. Why…

Perhaps even as far as Base Camp at Sagarmāthā and…

Sagarmāthā?

Chomolungma. The many names of Mount Everest.

Yes, yes, Rachel knew that too, but. Chomo was not in the plan. Half-asleep, she feared she was missing important facts. Did Jeanne change their plan and now wanted to trek
all the way
to Base Camp? Rachel wasn't in top shape for that kind of trekking.

Miss Rachel's shape did not matter.

Maybe not to him, but it sure did to her. Why was her daffy cousin waiting outside and sending the guide to do the talking for her?

Jeanne was in his native village of Borlang Bhanjyang…

Where was Bor-jyang?

In the mountains. A few hours' walk from here.

What was she doing in the mountains? They were supposed to go in the mountains together. Why the change of plan? This was maddening.

So, too, was it for Rana, apparently, who tried to stay focused.

So, what was Rachel supposed to do?

Miss Rachel had to come right away.

Right this minute? It was still night.

Please, Miss Rachel.

Okay okay, would the guide give her a minute? She must get her pack, gather her things, gather her thoughts, forget nothing. She hurried back upstairs. Damn damn damn Jeanne! Rachel hated rushed departure.

When she came back down, fully loaded and in a foul mood, Rana held the door for her. She felt bad. Why take it out on him? She relaxed her face and that's when he told her.

There was an accident.

An accident? What accident?

Woodsmoke in her eyes. Woodsmoke in her lungs. Words spoken low in a tongue Rachel does not understand. Darkness compressing against bones. Behind her back, Jeanne. Dead. Jeanne's mother and Rachel's father, sister and brother in love with the world and who died in the world, somewhere not far from here. The cousins' growing years, punctuated by the unimaginable parental vanishing act. The act connecting the two girls beyond blood alone. The endless speculations. The fairy tale returns. The heroic rescue missions they would mount. And then, the call of the mountains. The same lure that took Jeanne's mother, that captured Rachel's father. The girls learned mountaineering, so that one day, they would find, what? A long time ago, Rachel stopped believing the unbelievable. Not so Jeanne. Oh, yes. She knew her mother was beyond rescue. But whereas the endless game of questions and answers no longer mattered to Rachel, Jeanne had never given up the need to know what how why. And where. So, here they came, under the pretence of a trekking trip, to discover at last some kind of an answer. And tonight, so close and forever too far, nothing will get resolved. Rachel, alone somewhere in the world, alone with her memories and her burns. Alone with the burden of a very old fatigue. And no one with whom to share any of it. No one. There was only Jeanne. Rachel closes her teary eyes and holds her fitful breath against that woodsmoke.

In Kathmandu this morning, after thunderstorms and torrential rain, the sky was clear and the cleansed air smelling of wet earth. The sun was still low between the quiet houses, but the light presaged a fresh beginning.

Rana guides Rachel to Sundarijal, a village on the other side of the valley where they will reach the trailhead and climb into the Kathmandu foothills. For now, a road crosses rice fields through which a soft wind runs, bending the young green shoots of the second planting.

In the countryside, daily activities have begun. The regular sound of a water pump. Hand threshing. From wide bamboo sieves, women throw grains into the air, the straw falling back on them in a gold rain. On the ground, red chilies drying in the sun fill the air with their sweet scent and their sharp capsicum sting.

Compared to Rana, used to tramp up and down his vertical land, Rachel walks slowly, only beginning to reacquaint herself with her mountaineer's legs, the practice abandoned for all the wrong reasons. Work, daily life, but mainly because Jeanne had been away too long and Rachel was not very good at prompting herself, she explains to the guide who shows no sign of impatience. He slows down his pace, waits for her, is vague when, a little out of breath, she asks him about the accident. How serious could it be? With Jeanne, one never knows what to expect. As if there were no urgency, and perhaps there is none, they stop for chai at the local stall. They unload themselves of their burden, Rachel her backpack, Rana a huge basket that he carries on his back held by a strap slung across his forehead.

Rana sips the spiced tea and talks softly: Family, it is the link with the earth. It is the natal land, something above one's own life. We can rely on family, lean on family. In our houses in the evenings when the family gathers around the fire, it is the sweetest moment of the day. But families are beginning to fall apart. Even here in Nepal where the tie has always been strong. Young people like myself leave to see the world, to live their own lives. Friends become more important. Even when the friendships don't last. Family though. Even when it is far away, family remains the tie that stretches beyond mountains. Beyond cities, beyond ambitions. On the other hand, we don't choose our family. If we come from a bad family, we can't disavow it, we can't cut the tie completely. Friends, we can choose. For good or for bad, friendship gives you more control. Let's go. It's getting late.