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not so Utopia.'
At the mention of a monastery, Abe remembered his epileptic monk and wondered
where the poor boy had disappeared to. He made a mental note to ask
Nima. He couldn't remember the boy's name, and that gave him a start. But
then he couldn't remember Jamie's face either, and for some reason that evened
out his losses.
'We can actually go there?' Carlos asked. It was easy to see that one did not
visit the monastery with ease.
'It is my pleasure,' Li said, 'I am authorizing this for you.'
'Can we bring cameras?' Stump asked.
'Of course,' Li said. 'Cameras. Video cameras. Everything. You will see
archaeology of old Tibet. And something else. I have learned that tomorrow
Tibetan nationals will perform an archaic ceremony. Very special. Very dark.
Very educational.'
P. T. Barnum could not have done a better job. The climbers were hooked. Down
at his end of the table, Carlos whispered the word puja.
He was convinced they were about to get another blessing. Li smiled
broadly at their enthusiasm.
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 dzong
that had once protected the region, or what was left of it, unfolded before
them. Acre after steep acre, the dzong
's remains lay in collapse, sprawled in terraces across 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 dzong was saturated with both.
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
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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 Yucatán.
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.
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