More problematic were the seekers of enlightenment, the Buddhist devotees and questing Christians who desired desperately to break free from desire, and preferably do so sooner than their friends or neighbors so they could brag about it. The worst of them were spiritual snobs, contemptuous of anyone who didn’t share their particular muddle of mysticism, guessing ahead as to which Buddha statue was which like a bright child eagerly lifting its hand in class. Sam had quested, too, but then seen it through the eyes of too many fellow American pilgrims, and now he didn’t think you had to fly to enlightenment, or that high elevation produced anything but light-headedness. But if you played along, complimenting the women without flirting and hanging with the men without pretending to be their equal, the seekers might leave a good tip. For a week you became their confidant and then never saw them again, to the relief of both parties.
This pair was different. Barrow seemed about as religious as a hedge fund trader shorting the investment trash he’d sold his clients. Something about the newspaper tag didn’t sit right. Mackenzie had gotten drunk with journalists and this one was too… what? Smooth. And free spending. He had a wad like a Mafia don. The girl was oddly tolerant of Jake’s bullshit, having perhaps been well and truly fucked one too many times. She was bright but in love-a disastrous combination-and was probably convinced her dude was deeper than any dude could ever be. In Sam’s considered opinion, any attractive woman who preferred her own feckless companion to Mackenzie charm had, by definition, terrible taste in men. Rominy was pretty, and if Anderson-Barrow wasn’t around, Sam might have a go at her.
But there was more to their oddness. Barrow spent money with the ease of a man who hadn’t really earned it, and both of them seemed after more than family memories. They were going for Their Precious, Sam guessed, and the guide worried what their reaction would be when they inevitably didn’t find it. There was nothing in the Kunlun, which is why Lhasa’s Tibetans didn’t want to go there. Travel often disappointed, and when it did, some people took it out on their guide.
Meanwhile, Barrow passed the time with dorm room philosophy.
“What makes us happier is the real question, isn’t it?” Jake said after staring out the window for a while. “Money? Flush toilets? Enlightenment? What did you come for, Sam?”
“God. Didn’t find him, but I stayed for the people. The Third World is homey.”
“You know, the Germans came here in the 1930s.”
“Did they now?” He hated it when clients tried to lecture him.
“The Nazis, and I guess they tried to sell the Tibetans on some kind of alliance. But the gap was pretty wide. And then came the war.”
Mackenzie decided to humor Jake’s Trivial Pursuit. “The krauts came to Tibet? I’ll bet that went over big. Let’s be friends with crazy Adolf!”
Jake laughed. “The weird thing is, Hitler did some good things in Germany they could have used here. The autobahn, employment, the Volkswagen.”
“I don’t think Tibet needed an autobahn in the ’30s, since they had no cars. And I don’t recall Hitler doing much good, Mr. Anderson. I mean Barrow.”
“Jake. That’s because it’s the victors who write history.”
Holy-moley, Sam thought. Was this guy a Holocaust denier? Wouldn’t that be fun to prattle on about for the next three weeks? “So why didn’t Hitler stop with the Volkswagen?” Sam asked in his most carefully calibrated neutral guide voice. “What was his thing with the Jews?”
“Psychologists have had a field day,” Jake said matter-of-factly. “Hitler the prude: a grandfather who had some illicit affair with a Jew. Hitler the mama’s boy: the doctor who cared for his mother when she died of cancer was Jewish. There are rumors young Adolf contracted syphilis from a Jewish prostitute. That he was insulted by a relative of the Jewish writer Kafka when he was down and out in Vienna. That he was in love with his niece and got twisted over her suicide or murder. That he only had one testicle, and some Freudian thing was going on.”
“I go with the niece theory. Nazis just weren’t good with girls, were they?”
“Actually, most were happily married. If anything, they were socially conservative, family-values types. Hitler didn’t marry because he thought bachelorhood made him more politically appealing.”
“The messiah.”
“There were more than a few Germans who thought that. Not that they’d admit it afterward.”
“You, too?”
”Of course not. I just study the period. Rominy puts up with it.”
“Jake calls it open-minded,” she said from the back.
“And what do you call it?” Sam asked.
“Nutty.” She flipped a page, and Jake laughed. “You’ll be sorry you got him started, Sam.”
“I admit it,” Barrow said. “I like to argue.”
Sam didn’t like Jake’s casual confidence because he was jealous of it. The other thing about the tourists he guided was that they were usually paired, like Jake or Rominy, or bonded in some mountaineering fellowship. They always belonged-either to each other, like the Three Musketeers, or to some place Back There, where they’d come from and where they’d return to. They were anchored. They had careers, money or the expectation of it, maybe family, at least friends, Facebook
… something. And Sam, the drifter, the broken home kid, the college dropout, stung from one too many dumpings by indifferent ratty-haired girlfriends, and one too many lazy betrayals by self-centered traveling mates, and with one too many fuckups from one too many drinks or joints or dumb-ass decisions… had only secretly sensitive Sam for company. His very own self, indivisible, with liberty and restlessness for all. Reduced to accompanying people he didn’t know and sometimes didn’t like, for a fee, like a Craigslist whore. What the hell was he doing with his life, driving to Outer Bumfuck and trying to make conversation about Nazis? Driving belongers around. Barrow, he thought, gave all the signs of being in some kind of tight fraternity. A let-me-challenge- political-correctness nerd who Sam decided was annoying as hell.
Rominy, he liked.
“But Adolf can’t get over his own private frustration?” Sam challenged. “So he kills six million Jews, and six million more besides? Poles, Russians, gypsies, retarded people, homosexuals, Freemasons… I mean, come on.”
“Let’s assume he did,” Barrow said mildly. “Some people think he was possessed by the devil. Hitler’s own explanation is simpler. He was gassed during World War I and said he had a vision while in the hospital of saving Germany. He thought Jewish financiers and leaders had cost Germany the war.”
“You defend this guy?”
“I try to explain him. Unlike most people, I’ve actually studied him. If we could understand Hitler, maybe we could understand anyone. Even ourselves.”
“Good luck with that.” Yep, Barrow was a smug little prick. Or maybe Jake was just fascinated with the Third Reich, like any number of people who pause to look at accidents, tour torture museums, and walk the gravel of old concentration camps.
“You know what’s funny?” Sam asked. “He goes after the Jews and gets Israel. Be careful what you wish for. That’s why I’m laid back, man. Why the Tibetans are laid back. Mind your own business and look after your own soul-if everyone did that, the world would be happier, right? That’s what Jesus said. That’s what John Lennon said.”
“One crucified, the other shot.”
“That doesn’t make them wrong.”
“No, but their world would be medieval.”
“John Lennon’s world would be medieval?”
“Their laid-back world, I suspect, would have no Land Cruisers,” Barrow trumped.
“We wouldn’t miss Land Cruisers if we didn’t have them,” Sam said doggedly.
“It’s a long walk to the Kunlun Mountains.”
“We wouldn’t miss the Kunlun Mountains.”
“Look,” said Jake, “I’ve studied Hitler because where we’re going is where the Germans went in 1938. I’m curious what they found. Curious what they were looking for. Rominy here is an heir to someone who got wrapped up in it all, an American explorer. So the more I understand about the Nazis, the more idea I have of where they might have gone.”
“The Kunlun? They went to Nowhere Central, man. They went to where there’s no there there.” He glanced
