As Abe and Kelly returned to her tent, he looked up at the ghostly white massif of
Everest. Daniel and Gus were up there somewhere, probably holed up tonight in the
cave at 8,000 meters. There was something vaguely mythical about the notion – a
man and a woman in the mountain, their light mixing with the stars. 'I hope they're
okay up there,' Abe murmured to Kelly as they were falling to sleep. He had his good
arm around her shoulders and she was tucked close against him, each in their own
bag. Chastity had little to do with their separation tonight. Abe was going to be in a lot
of pain soon. The local anesthetic was wearing off and his arm was starting to throb.
'I wish they would come down with us,' Abe said.
'Sleep, Abe.' Kelly rolled her back to him. They slept.
Early next morning, in the spirit of a picnic, the climbers took off downvalley along the
road that led out to the Pang La and out to the world. Bounding through the rich
oxygen, they reached the monastery by ten and headed up a wide stone staircase that
snaked around the mountainside.
The sun was huge and white in a sky that verged on black outer space. Abe sweated,
but the sweat evaporated the instant it hit the dry air. They carried rocks to throw at
stray dogs, for there were Tibetan settlements nearby.
As they climbed the staircase, dust coated the sunblock on their faces. Some of them
had elected to paint their noses with a bright green sun cream, their lips with blue,
and that contributed to the festive spirit. Abe stuck with plain white. After an hour
their faces were mostly just brown with layered dirt.
The staircase turned around a ridge and quite suddenly the fortress – or
that had once protected the region, or what was left of it, unfolded before them. Acre
after steep acre, the
mountainside. Like a miniature Great Wall, a serpentine wall climbed straight up the
incline. What buildings still stood were in pieces. Not one had a roof. The wind keened
through the gaps and across disintegrating walls as if this were a vast stone whistle.
The climbers were quick to unsheathe their cameras. Once before, on a trip to Inca
ruins in Peru, Abe had observed how gothic settings were irresistible to the Western
tourist. Decay and apocalypse made for excellent spice in home slide shows, and this
Childlike, the climbers fanned out. They scrambled into deserted rooms, proving for
themselves that living people had once eaten and prayed and slept here. A narrow
labyrinth turned into a series of cells with entrance holes barely the size of a rib cage.
They decided these must be meditation chambers, where solitary monks had lived for
months and years at a time. Faded paintings of Buddhas and pop-eyed demons
decorated some of the leeward walls. Some of the listing walls showed traces of old
orange and white wash, brilliant against the darker earth. Here and there, they found
caves in the hillside filled with big heaps of clay tablets, each stamped with Buddhist
figures. Some caves held thousands of the little plaques. Abe knelt in front of one such
pile. The tablets were made of worthless clay, but they sparkled like Spanish
doubloons in the brilliant light.
'Souvenirs,' said Li. 'Yes, Doctor. Go ahead. Take some. These are not precious
antiquities. It is permitted under the law.'
'But they're religious, aren't they?' Abe was hesitant, even though his daypack was
wide open. He wanted to bring some of these tablets home. How else could he ever
prove that something so common could be so beautiful?
'Artifacts of a dead religion,' Li said. 'And anyway, they will turn to dust here.'
The monastery and its fortress had apparently been dead for centuries. Abe
contemplated aloud what sort of holocaust had been visited upon this civilization.
'I wonder what brought this all down,' he said. 'Drought? Or maybe famine? Or
plague?' Immediately he felt like a gringo touring overgrown pyramids in the Yucatan.
Li didn't answer right away. Finally he said, 'Earthquakes,' with a sobriety that was
almost mournful.
'Here?' Abe was surprised. The land had such an immovable quality, a look of
infinite gravity and stasis.
'Oh, yes,' Li expanded. 'The Himalaya is a very young mountain range. The Indian
subcontinent is all the time pushing against the Chinese land mass. There are many
earthquakes here.'
Abe ventured that they must have struck a long time ago.
Again Li looked at him curiously. 'Very long ago,' he said.
'That's what it looks like. Centuries ago.'
'Yes,' said Li.
Like clockwork, the afternoon winds began at high noon, three o'clock Beijing time.
Slapped by the wind, the climbers hastily regrouped and headed on higher.
As the group strung out along the trail, Abe walked with Carlos in the rear. Carlos's
sprained ankle had worsened and he was crutching along with two ski poles. The hike
was painful, but he was determined to keep up. Abe shared what he'd learned about
this place.
'Earthquakes?' Carlos barked. 'The L.O. said that?' He came to a halt and turned.
Abe faced his own reflection in Carlos's sunglasses.
'Look around,' Carlos said. He pointed at a building and then a section of the wall,
then more structures. 'See those holes? You ever heard of an earthquake that
punches round holes in a building?'
Abe hadn't.
'Artillery,' Carlos said. 'Chinese artillery practice.' Then he went on walking.
They reached the backside of the mountain and a whole system of hidden valleys
opened magically in the distance. Their flat spacious floors were outlined with
commune plots. Abe could just barely make out a line of tiny people working in
rhythmic unison, an almost indiscernible ripple of labor upon the earth. The wind
blew. The line of workers shifted like a slow tide.
Suddenly the smell of pines washed across them. The aroma was quite powerful,
then it was gone.
There was not a tree in sight. Indeed, Abe hadn't seen a single tree on the whole
Tibetan plateau. And yet, suddenly, for that brief moment, the air was thick and
sweet with cedar. It was like spying a rainbow in a desert. A few moments later, the
rich scent returned, then drifted away again.
'You smell it, too?' Carlos inhaled the breeze.
'Pine,' Abe said. 'Cedar pine.'
They followed the corkscrewing trail around to a second shoulder of the mountain.
Fifteen minutes higher, they reached a ridge where the others were drinking water,
waiting for them, taking pictures. They had stopped beside a pile of mani stones.
There were several hundred of them in the heap, each rounded by ancient rivers,
each carved with prayers in beautiful Tibetan calligraphy.
Atop the pile lay an animal skull, carved and painted with prayers. The rocks were
piled at random, but the skull was lodged in place with great care. The display sang of
a people embedded in the land. Robby fired off some more Kodachrome, angling for
