They took Mutt to the Apollo Deaf Tailors to be measured for a winter coat that would be cut out of a blanket, since the days had passed into winter, and while it didn’t snow in Kalimpong, just turned dull, all around the snow line dipped, and the high mountains around town were brindled white. In the morning, they found frost in the runnels, frost on the crest, and frost in the crotch of the hills.
Through cracks and holes in Cho Oyu, came a sterile smell of winter. The bathroom taps and switches threw off shocks. Sweaters and shawls bristled with aroused fibers, shedding lightning. "Ow ow," Sai said. Her skin was a squamous pattern of drought. When she took off her clothes, dry skin fell like salt from a salt cellar and her hair, ridiculing gravity, rose in crackling radio antennae above her skull. When she smiled, her lips split and spilled blood.
Vaselined shiny and supple for Christmas, she joined Father Booty and Uncle Potty at Mon Ami, where, in addition to the Vaseline smell, there was an odor of wet sheep – but it was only their damp sweaters. A thatch of tinsel on a potted fir glinted in the light of the fire that razzmatazzed and popped, the cold smarting beyond.
Father Booty and Uncle Potty sang together:
Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?
When nobody answered, they shouted all the louder -
WHO THREW THE OVERALLS IN MRS. MURPHY’S CHOWDER??
And they all joined in, drunk and wild.
Oh, beautiful evening -
Oh, beautiful soup in the copper Gyako pot, a moat of broth around the chimney of coals, mutton steam in their hair, rollicking shimmer of golden fat, dried mushrooms growing so slippery they’d slither down scalding before you could chomp upon their muscle. "What’s for PUDS?" Lola, when she said this in England, had been unsettled to find that the English didn’t understand… Even Pixie had pretended to be bewildered…
But here they comprehended perfectly, and Kesang lugged out a weighty pudding that united via brandy its fraternity of fruit and nut, and they made the pudding holy with a sanctifying crown of brandy flame.
Mustafa climbed to his favorite place again, on Sai’s lap, turning first his face to the fire, then his behind, slowly softening, until his bottom began to dribble down the chair and he leaped up with a startled yowl, glaring at Sai as if she had been responsible for this indecency.
For the occasion, the sisters had brought out their ornaments from England – various things that looked as if they might taste of mints – snowflakes, snowmen, icicles, stars. There were little trolls, and elf shoemakers (why were cobblers, trolls, and elves, Christmasy? Sai wondered) that were stored the rest of the year inside a Bata shoe box up in the attic along with the story of the English ghost in a flouncy nightie with whom they used to scare Sai when she first arrived:
"What does she say?"
"Hmm, I think she makes a whoo hoo like an owl, whistling low, whoo hooo, sweet and serious. And now and then she says, ‘Care for a drop of sh-e-rr-y, mye dee-a-r?’ In an unsteady, but highly cultivated voice."
And there were presents of knitted socks from the Tibetan refugee village, the wool still with bits of straw and burrs that provided authenticity and aroused extra sympathy for refugees even while it irritated the toes. There were amber and coral earrings, bottles of homemade apricot brandy made by Father Booty, books to write in with translucent sheets of rice paper, and ribbed bamboo spines made in Bong Busti by a tableful of chatty lady employees sharing the tasty things in their tiffins at lunch, who sometimes dropped a pickle… and sometimes the pages had a festive yellow splotch…
More rum. Deeper into Lola’s intoxication, when the fire died low, she became serene, drew a pure memory from the depths:
"In those old days, in the fifties and sixties," she said, "it was still a long journey into Sikkim or Bhutan, for there were hardly any roads. We used to travel on horseback, carrying sacks of peas for the ponies, maps, hip flasks of whiskey. In the rainy season, leeches would free-fall from the trees onto us, timing precisely the perfect acrobat moment. We would wash in saltwater to keep them off, salt our shoes and socks, even our hair. The storms would wash the salt off and we’d have to stop and salt ourselves again. The forests at that time were fierce and enormous – if you were told a magical beast lived there, you’d believe it. We’d emerge to the tops of mountains where monasteries limpet to the sides of rock, surrounded by chortens and prayer flags, the white facades catching the light of the sunset, all straw gold, the mountains rugged lines of indigo. We’d stand and rest until the leeches began working into our socks. Buddhism was ancient here, more ancient than it was anywhere else, and we went to a monastery that had been built, they said, when a flying lama had flown from one mountaintop to another, from Menak Hill to Enchey, and another that had been built when a rainbow connected Kanchenjunga to the crest of the hill. Often the gompas were deserted for the monks were also farmers; they were away at their fields and gathered only a few times a year for pujas and all you could hear was the wind in the bamboo. Clouds came through the doors and mingled with paintings of clouds. The interiors were dark, smoke-stained, and we’d try to make out the murals by the light of butter lamps…
"It took two weeks of rough trekking to get to Thimpu. On the way, through the jungle, we would stay in those shiplike fortresses called dzongs, built without a single nail. We’d send a man ahead with news of our arrival, and they’d send along a gift to welcome us at some midpoint. A hundred years ago it would have been Tibetan tea, saffron rice, silk robes from China lined with the fleece of unborn lambs, that kind of thing; by then, for us, it would be a picnic hamper of ham sandwiches and Gymkhana beer. The dzongs were completely self-contained, with their own armies, peasants, aristocrats, and prisoners in the dungeons – murderers and men caught fishing with dynamite all thrown in together. When they needed a new cook or gardener, they put down a rope and pulled a man out. We’d arrive to find, in lantern-lit halls, cheese cauliflower and pigs in blankets. This one man, in for violent murder, had such a hand for pastry – Whatever it takes, he had it. The best gooseberry tart I’ve ever tasted."
"And the baths," Father Booty joined in, "remember the baths? Once, when I was on a dairy outreach program, I stayed with the mother of the king, sister of Jigme Dorji, the Bhutanese agent and ruler of the province of Ha, who lived next to you, Sai, at Tashiding – he became so powerful that the king’s assassins killed him even though he was brother of the queen. The baths in their dzong were made of hollowed-out tree trunks, a carved slot underneath for heated rocks to keep the water steaming, and as you soaked, the servants came in and out to replace the hot stones and give you a scrub. And if we were camping, they would dig a pit by the river, fill it with water, lower hot stones into it; thus you splashed about with all the Himalayan snows around and forests of rhododendrons.
"Years later, when I returned to Bhutan, the queen insisted I visit the bathroom. ‘But I don’t need to go.’
"‘No, but you must.’
"‘But I don’t NEED to go.’
"‘Oh, but you MUST.’
"So I went, and the bathrooms had been redone, all modern piping, pink tiles, pink showers, and pink flush loos.
"When I came out again, the queen was waiting, pink as the bathroom with pride, ‘See how nice it is? Did you SEE?’
"Why don’t we all go again," said Noni. "Let’s plan a trip. Why not?"
Sai got into bed that night in her new socks, the same three-layered design that sherpas used in mountaineering expeditions, that Tenzing had worn to climb Everest.
Sai and Gyan had recently made an excursion to see these socks of Tenzing, spread-eagled in the Darjeeling museum adjoining his memorial, and they had taken a good look at them. They had also studied his hat, ice pick, rucksack, samples of dehydrated foods that he might have taken along, Horlicks, torches, and samples of moths and bats of the high Himalayas.
"He was the real hero, Tenzing," Gyan had said. "Hilary couldn’t have made it without sherpas carrying his bags." Everyone around had agreed. Tenzing was certainly first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.
Sai had wondered, Should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them? Sherpas went up and down, ten times, fifteen times in some cases, without glory, without claim of ownership, and there were those who said it was sacred and shouldn’t be sullied at all.