Sleeping Tigers (32 page)

I laughed and sat up, deciding to ignore my impulse to cover my breasts. “That’s it in a nutshell? Your philosophy of life is to quit wanting? Sounds more Puritan Wasp than Buddhist to me. In any case, it’s utter bullshit. You’re just bailing out of trying to achieve anything difficult.”

“I never claimed to want to achieve anything beyond feeling the rhythms around me.”

“Heavy. Incomprehensible, but heavy.”

Jon smiled and pointed to one side of the plant. “See that plant?”

“Which one?” I searched the shore. “There are plants all around us.”

“Exactly. Only by focusing on an individual plant can you understand the struggle of a single life.”

Jon scooted over so that we were facing each other, sitting so close together that our knees touched, the water bubbling around us at chest height. He reached out and turned my head until I was looking slightly left. “There? You see? That single plant that has taken root between those two smooth stones? The plant with three black leaves among the green?”

“I see it.”

Jon released my face, but I kept it averted, staring at the plant. I was acutely conscious of our legs touching, of my breasts buoyant in the water. I couldn’t look at him.

“Now focus on a leaf.” His voice was soft, suggestive. “One single leaf of that one single plant.”

“Which one?”

“The choice is yours, don’t you see? Select a leaf, and become it. Become that leaf shuddering in the breeze, clinging to the stem of that plant.”

“I once had the esteemed role of a tree in my elementary school play.”

Jon wouldn’t be derailed. “Look at the leaf,” he coaxed. “Feel how the nature of that leaf’s existence is as tenuous as yours. It’s an obvious metaphor, but one that would escape most anyone struggling to survive life in the U.S.A. We live mindlessly, putting ourselves on automatic pilot to get through our days. Think about it. You probably got up at the same time every day before work, had your coffee and cereal, did your job, and came home blind tired. Maybe you rented a movie on the weekend or went out to dinner. Meanwhile, the climate is changing every minute, terrorists are planning their next strike, entire nations are dying of AIDS, and people are going hungry in some countries while, in others, people shovel dirt over plastic bags of uneaten food.”

I dared to look at him. Jon’s face was close to mine. Almost close enough to kiss. I knew he was thinking the same thing. “You’re right,” I agreed evenly. “That was how my life went, once upon a time. One oblivious step after another. Then I thought I was going to die, and learned life’s biggest lesson: nothing is forever, so if you’re going to do anything, do it now. Instead of slowing down, I wanted to speed up and leave no desire unexplored.”

His brown eyes didn’t leave my face. “What do you mean? This?” He lowered his eyes and reached out to stroke the scar on my breast. “Was that your life lesson?”

“Yes.” I tried to smile, but couldn’t. “Having cancer taught me that my days are numbered. It was a good lesson, but a hard one. I want to stay this awake to the beauty of every moment and not be lulled back into complacency ever again.”

“Ah,” he said softly. “So you’ve started over, trying to get your life right this time. No more hamster wheel.”

“Or cage,” I agreed, and tipped my head to stare at the sky again.

“Maybe you and I aren’t so different after all,” he said.

I thought about this as I continued watching the clouds gather. It was going to open up and pour buckets on us any minute. The black foothills humped their backs beneath slate clouds that were settling on them like pigeons. I willed myself to stand up and get dressed, to make my way back to the lodge before the rain began and made walking the rocky trails difficult. But common sense wasn’t enough to pull me to my feet.

It seemed that every moment of my life was worth examining. Was that good or bad? Too much navel gazing, and I’d turn into one of those aimless backpackers trading stories about India and Bali. On the other hand, they were engaged in the world, the whole world, in ways I never had been.

Was it possible to do both, to contribute to the world while merely observing it? To be content in the moment, but plan for the future? Could you follow your heart without losing all common sense?

The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to be fully conscious of my life, to measure time by growing with the people I loved, in a place I could call home, while reaching out to others who had less. I would raise Paris and I would teach other people’s children. I would continue to help my brother find his way.

I thought about Cam’s shame and fear and fury driving him into drugs, and the courage it had taken him to kick the habit. I remembered the joy in my mother’s voice as she told me that Paris had taken steps on her own, and her goofy fruit hats for babies. I closed my eyes briefly and saw David raising himself up on one elbow in bed to kiss me. There was a whole world to explore just in David’s eyes. I wanted them all in my life.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Sounds to me like you exhaust yourself looking for ways to deny all the joy that life has to offer. I don’t want to drop out of my existence in order to become more aware of it.”

Jon’s eyes had darkened to nearly black, reflecting the clouds. “Okay, so you’re not my soul mate. But you come awfully close.” He glanced down at my breasts again.

I felt myself flush, my face even hotter, if possible, than it had been from the steaming water. “How can you say that? I stand for everything you’ve left behind: attachment, desire, connection. I’ve stalled out a hundred million miles away from Nirvana.”

“Miles are the poorest measure of a journey,” Jon said, cupping my scarred breast in one hand. Then he released it and did the same with the other. I didn’t move. I longed to ask him if both of my breasts still weighed the same. But of course not. They never had.

The long soak in the hot water and the conversation had left me feeling as languid as a plant swirling in the current. I watched Jon fondle my body, at first from this mental distance, and then with a growing heat as he played with my nipples, stroked my belly, and got up on his knees to nestle his cock between my breasts. He stayed there for a few minutes, absolutely still, his buttocks just beneath the water, his stiff cock braced against me.

My body drifted with the swirling current against his. When I made no move to separate from him, Jon slid one hand between my legs and began rubbing his cock slowly, ever so slowly, between my breasts. I enjoyed the sensation until I looked up at his face.

Jon’s eyes were closed, and I remembered Karin’s description of making love on those fishing nets with the waiter in Mexico, of how afterward she had felt as if she’d made love not with any one man in particular, but with all of Mexico. Was Jon thinking about me? Or was I his Nepal, another step towards his Nirvana? His face was a mask of concentration, his mouth a tight line.

I pushed Jon away from me, not quite hard enough to knock him over. I thought about David, about his warm dark eyes, gentle hands, and kind smile. I didn’t want to be with Jon. He was a man who made me separate body and mind. I wanted to be whole, and to be loved as such. I didn’t want to make love to an idea, but to a friend who also happened to be my lover.

I stood up, steam rising from my skin as the water spilled from my breasts, belly, and thighs back into the churning pool. I was the tiger, uncurling, flexing.

“Just because a man has an erection doesn’t mean I’m obligated to do something about it,” I reminded Jon, and leaped onto the river bank, stranding him on his knees.

Chapter
sixteen

I
forced my leaden limbs into my clothing and ambled up the path from the hot springs, carefully retracing my steps to the lodge. I had reached the outhouse and was about to pass it when I was startled by something in my peripheral vision.

I paused to study the object more closely. At first I thought it must be a scarecrow tossed inside the tilted shack, a bundle of rags on sticks with the limbs at odd angles. Then I realized it wasn’t a scarecrow at all, but my brother: I recognized the t-shirt and skinny arms. I broke into a run, shouting his name, but Cam didn’t move.

My brother was curled on his side on the outhouse floor, shivering so violently that his eyes had rolled back in his head. His shorts were pulled up to the waist but he’d soiled them. He must have been on his way to the outhouse, but lost control of his bowels. Now his bare legs were covered in feces. Worse, some of it looked bloody.

I wanted to run to the lodge for help, but didn’t dare leave him. The rain was starting to fall in sheets, now, curtains of water across the field. I flipped my brother over onto his back, grabbed his wrists and began hauling him towards the lodge, shouting as I struggled, retching every few steps from the smell and look of him, terrified that my brother might die as I slid him across the ground.

Nobody came. Cam grew heavier with each step, until at last I was barely inching him along. His white arms and legs picked up the mud and his shirt pulled up around his armpits; he looked like a giant grub worm making its slow way across the earth. A maggot, I thought hysterically, my brother’s a maggot, and at that I was finally able to scream.

I’d reached a path leading between the village houses. An elderly Nepalese woman and her young daughter ran out of their hut. The three of us draped Cam over our shoulders and carried him. I was in the lead, Cam’s face next to mine. He made no sound, but his eyelashes fluttered against my cheek. At least he was still alive.

When we got him into the lodge, the two women trilled in excited Nepali to Didi. The girl helped me strip off Cam’s clothes and dampen cloths in her bucket of dish water to wipe the worst of the mud and feces off his skin. Then she laid another wet cloth across his forehead, gesturing wildly and speaking so rapidly that I could understand nothing. The words were a wall of sound and I leaned against it, my own body so fatigued now that I could scarcely stand.

Domingo and Melody appeared, rubbing their eyes. Fernando came downstairs smoking a cigarette. I took one look at the Spaniard’s powerful torso and shrieked at him to help me carry Cam into the living room and lay him on Domingo and Melody’s bed.

“Cam stinks like a goat,” Domingo whined. “Why can’t you put him…”

I halted his protest with a look, and Fernando carried Cam into the living room. We all began piling blankets and sleeping bags on him from every corner of the house to stop the shivering. Then Didi and I began trying to make my brother more comfortable. She rubbed an herbal paste on his chest, filled a bucket with cold water and gave me a rag. I dipped the rag in the water again and again, applying the cool cloth to Cam’s forehead and chest while I rubbed his wrists.

“It’s like I’ve got ice in my veins,” Cam moaned through clenched teeth, “and a knife through my temple.”

At least he was semi-coherent. But I couldn’t get Cam to swallow any water or tea; whatever I gave him just came back up in a rush, soaking the sheet and mattress. At one point he vomited blood. I gave up trying to replenish his liquids for the moment and ran upstairs for my first aid kit. David had provided me with everything, even sulfa drugs and antibiotics. But what good was medicine without knowing the diagnosis?

I listed Cam’s symptoms in my head: high fever, vomiting, bloody stools, shortness of breath. Those would be included in virtually every Asian traveler’s lament from Delhi belly to typhoid fever, from hepatitis to simple gastroenteritis. I crushed four aspirins into half a cup of tea. If nothing else, I could at least alleviate the fever, I thought. But Cam spat out the mixture.

I had no choice but to get to a clinic. Preferably a clinic with a well-stocked pharmacy and a doctor trained to treat foreigners. I asked Melody if there was anything nearer than Pokhara, but she shook her head. “You’ve got to go down the mountain,” she said. “Four hours’ walking. But at least it’s all downhill.”

Four hours of walking downhill meant at least five coming back up. Could I walk that far in a day? It was already mid-afternoon. That meant I’d have to walk back in the dark. This was a terrifying thought. The footpaths all looked the same to me.

What’s more, how could I leave Cam for that long? Didi couldn’t watch him alone. She didn’t speak any English. Domingo and Melody were witless. Who else could I trust?

Jon! I had to find Jon and get him to stay with Cam. He could draw me a map to get to Pokhara, too, or maybe even help me find a guide. But where was he?

“Jon?” Didi asked.

I must have said his name aloud. When I nodded, Didi tugged at my sleeve, bidding me to follow. Her silver tooth flashed and she hastily knotted her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, looking suddenly regal as she took long strides through the kitchen and out the back door. I trotted to keep up.

“You know where Jon is?” I asked.

She said something in Nepali and nodded. I kept pace with her as we went back through the village, this time veering away from the river and entering a grove of deciduous trees planted in neat rows. Some of the trees were taller than I was, while others were mere seedlings, no more than knee-high. This must be the nursery Jon was overseeing.

We plunged through the rows of trees, our footsteps silent on the mossy path beneath our feet. Even in the lashing monsoon rains, this would be a peaceful, fragrant place, I thought, catching sight of amaryllis growing at the bases of several trees, the brilliant red tube flowers like flames licking the dark wood.

We finally reached a small clearing. There were raised garden beds here—vegetables, flowers, and more tree seedlings—and a greenhouse. To one side of the clearing was a lean-to shelter made of yak hides. Wood smoke streamed from its center hole.

“Jon?” I looked at Didi, who nodded and turned heel. I hoped she was returning to the lodge, to keep an eye on Cam for a few minutes. I ran toward the teepee, hesitated for a split second at the curtained doorway, then ducked inside.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There was a fire, small flames surrounded by stones. An iron grill lay across it. A tea kettle, also black iron, sat on the grill like a fat, contented hen. Herbs hung from a drying line, as well as a few articles of clothing. And, opposite the fire, Jon lay on his side, his face peaceful in sleep, the lines erased in this soft light. His shoulders were bare, but he’d covered the rest of himself with an animal hide. For someone who’d sworn off attachment to possessions, this man knew how to cozy up a house.

“Jon!” I shouted, crossing the dirt floor to shake him. “Jon, wake up! I need you!”

He sat up with a start. “What the hell?” He squinted at me, his gaze quickly becoming more focused as I described my brother’s condition in detail, wringing my hands.

I felt the tears stream down my face but ignored them. When I’d finished and taken a long breath, Jon pulled me close in a quick embrace and said, “I’m so sorry, Jordan. I really thought Cam just needed more time for his system to adjust. But, if the fever’s been coming and going with this kind of regularity and this intensity, it’s probably malaria.”

“Malaria! You don’t know that,” I said, trying to tamp down my own alarm. “Cam’s symptoms fit every tropical disease in the book.”

Jon rubbed his chin. “But only malaria has a regularly appearing fever generally proceeded by violent chills. And only malaria lets up enough to let you feel normal between spells.”

He leaned over to collect a t-shirt from the tidily folded stack of clothing next to his pallet. “If it is malaria, we need to know what kind it is. And you can’t know that without taking a blood sample to the clinic.”

“But how would Cam get malaria in the mountains?” I was still puzzled. This was the one disease I hadn’t considered. “I haven’t seen a single mosquito.”

“Right,” he said. “But we traveled through India before arriving in Kathmandu, remember? And then across the Nepal lowlands by bus. There’s plenty of malaria in that part of the world, especially during rainy season. Most Nepalis are immune to the common types of malaria, but Westerners are susceptible to it even if they’re taking the usual prophylactic doses of chloroquine.”

I wanted to scream. The clock was ticking. “I don’t need a lecture! I just want you to help me!”

Jon had pulled on his t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Now he stood up and wrapped his arms around my waist, steadying me against him. “I want you to know the real deal before you go to the clinic, in case you get some temporary Western do-gooder doc who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

“Do you think Cam will be okay if it’s malaria?”

“As long as we get him the right medicine in time.”

“You need to stay with him while I go to the clinic,” I said, desperate now to be on my way.

“Of course I’ll stay. Jordan, contrary to what you’ve always thought, I’m not a complete asshole.” Jon took my arm, leading me to the door of his teepee. “Be ready to leave in twenty minutes,” he commanded. “And wear long pants.”

“But…”

“Shhh.” He put a finger to my lips. “It’s all going to be fine, Jordan. You, Cam, everything. Don’t worry so much. It isn’t all up to you to save him.”

In my exhausted, frantic state, the next few hours were like a fairy tale, the kind of story designed to scare any child out of sleep: the black skies, the lashing rain, the tossing trees, the hasty departure from the dying prince’s side. And, in this story, the wicked witch was the sleeping prince’s last hope: an ancient, cackling, popcorn-toting madwoman who put me on the back of her knobby-kneed mule and gave me a ride to Pokhara.

Jon appeared at the lodge shortly after I’d changed into long pants. He checked on Cam, who had fallen into a deep, fever-induced sleep. My brother’s face was bright red. Even his ears were glowing, and his t-shirt was soaked through. Jon helped me lift Cam and change his shirt.

Then, before I fully realized what was happening, Jon had passed a needle through a match flame and was pricking Cam’s thumb with it. He collected the blood in a tiny jar, capped it, and tucked the jar into my front pants pocket, all without a word. Cam didn’t seem to notice any of this, though blood continued to seep from the pinprick. I fished a bandaid and antibiotic cream out of my backpack and bandaged his thumb, then kissed my brother’s slick forehead.

Minutes later, the old woman appeared with her mule. Jon spoke to her in fluent Nepali, making her laugh and slap him on the shoulder before she accepted a handful of bills he gave her from his own pocket.

“Look, I can pay for her to guide me,” I insisted, drawing Jon aside. “And anyway, I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s better for you to go. You at least know the way. You probably even know how to ride a horse.” I didn’t want to admit that I was terrified of riding alone into the mountains with this crazy crone.

Jon kissed me briefly on the cheek. “You’re the one with people to call,” he reminded me. “By the way, this isn’t a horse.”

“Thank you, Sherlock.” I hauled myself up onto the back of the mule behind the old woman, who stank of whiskey. Probably that was what she was swilling out of the filthy plastic container tied to her belt, I thought, as the woman let out a startling belly laugh and switched the mule into high gear.

We bounced off through the rain, me with my teeth clenched so that I wouldn’t bite my tongue. I clung to the old woman’s tiny waist to keep from pitching off the side of the mule, trying not to remember the passage I’d read in a guidebook about Nepali helicopter pilots refusing to fly corpses. If I died, my body would be left for the Yetis.

The old woman turned now and then to offer me whatever was in her plastic jug as we jounced on the rocky paths and skidded down the muddy ones, shaking her head in wonder when I declined. Her method of disciplining the mule was erratic, perhaps because of her alcoholic haze. She alternately tossed the animal bits of charred popcorn, so that it had to trot and snort down the path to fetch them, and switched its flanks until the animal gave an irritated toss of its head and kept pace with her sharp commands.