Sleeping Tigers (31 page)

I sat beside him until I was certain Cam’s fever was going to stay down. We would talk again this afternoon, I decided. If he was so hell bent on staying in Nepal, I’d have to convince him to accompany me to Pokhara for blood tests. If I got Cam as far as Pokhara, he might even talk to Mom on the phone. Could she persuade Cam to come home with me? Surely we could find a rehab program that would be better than going cold turkey here in the Himalayas.

Slightly cheered by this possibility, I traipsed downstairs with my towel and kit. I’d just finished brushing my teeth with tiny squirts of purified water from my own bottle when Didi approached. She took my arm and gestured, speaking too quickly for me to understand the words. She wanted me to follow her.

We walked past stone houses with flat roofs stacked high with firewood. After a few minutes, the houses thinned out and we were in the fields, following a muddy track along the river. The mountains stretched flat against the bright blue sky, tufts of snow swirling upwards from the peaks like gauzy white scarves.

What did the world look like from that height? I would be invisible from the peak of one of those mountains. Visible or not, I was aware of my insignificance to the future of the mountains, the trees, the rocks, the villagers I saw. That thought was oddly liberating.

I slowed my pace and took big gulps of air. Didi turned around and gave me a shy smile, her teeth flashing white and square against her brown skin in a way that reminded me of Karin.

God, what I wouldn’t give to talk to Karin or David right now. Even my mother! I’d never felt so isolated. Strange, since I’d just spent the past three nights sleeping in the same room as my brother. On the other hand, I knew from my relationship with Peter that the loneliest days are the ones where you keep company with someone you love who can’t hear you.

After a few minutes, Didi stopped and pointed. I caught my breath. We were on a slight rise, overlooking some sort of shrine. Buddhist flags fluttered white from every branch of every tree, the sound of cloth like the wings of a thousand birds taking flight. Stone cairns were stacked along the paths. The waist-high, hand-built rock towers overlooked the water like soldiers of faith.

A few women were washing clothes along the river, which from this distance looked like a lazy snake covered with bright insects. On the opposite side, women worked the terraced rice fields, using water buffalo to draw heavy wooden plows and following them to drop seeds in the furrows.

Didi headed down the river bank and stopped just above the water’s frothy edge, pointing out a pool formed by a semi-circle of stones. The half-circle reached a radius of fifteen feet or so from the river bank.

“
Taato
,” she said eagerly, still pointing. I recognized the word: hot. This must be one of the hot springs. I raised the towel, and she grinned and nodded before leaving me to bathe.

At David’s suggestion, I had brought along a bar of biodegradable soap. I took it out of my kit, stripped off my clothes and draped them over the branches of the nearest bush. Then I made my way gingerly down the stony river bank and slid into the pool.

The air was hot, but the water was much hotter. It smelled of salt and metal. Beyond the pool’s rocky perimeter, the river crashed and sang, rising in angry tufts above the larger rocks. Those must be boulders brought down by avalanches from the mountains, I decided, since they were so much larger than any of the others.

I settled into the water and rested my head against a rock. When I was seated on the pool’s silt bottom, the water bubbled at chest height. My limbs relaxed, buoyed by the salty water. An enormous crow cried out above me and tumbled through the air on the warm breeze. I followed the bird’s progress for a moment, then plunged my head beneath the hot, swirling water.

The minerals stung my eyes and nostrils, but I stayed beneath the water’s surface, letting myself go limp and floating to the surface on my stomach. The pool was deepest at its center, about three feet. I let the river’s current toss me about, face down, twisting my head now and then to grab another breath before plunging my face back into the warmth. It felt so good not to think, not to do, just to be.

Eventually, I sat up again and watched a flock of crows scribbling the sky above the river. The birds’ cries were harsh, anguished.

I heard footsteps behind me, then Jon’s voice. “Isn’t it amazing that the Nepalese even have a crow god? They call him
Kag Basundi
.”

“Do you mind?” I sank lower into the water and crossed my arms over my breasts.

“Mind what?” There was a smile in his voice. “Mind that there’s a crow god? Of course not. I think there should be a god for every thing, not a God for all things.”

Jon walked around the pool to the rocks separating it from the river and balanced there above the frothing water. He wore the same singlet and shorts he’d worn out of Kathmandu.

He shed his clothes, tossing them onto the riverbank, and slipped into the water to sit cross-legged in front of me. The fine hairs of his torso glinted silver against his brown skin.

No tan lines, I noted, and Jon was nearly as thin as Cam. Yet, his slender frame looked strong. I tried not to look at his penis, or at him, but that would mean turning my head away and admitting that Jon had once again succeeded in unnerving me. And so I glared, noting the swing of his stiff penis in the water, the long tendons in his muscular legs, the sinewy arms.

Infuriatingly, Jon grinned. “Don’t worry, Jordan. Just because a man has an erection doesn’t mean you’re obligated to do something about it. Though it would certainly be my pleasure to help you enjoy your time in Nepal.” He stretched one leg out in the water and brushed his foot against my calf. “How are you? You look like you’ve lost weight. Haven’t been sick, have you?”

I shook my head. “Cam has, though. Oh, I forgot. You knew that already. You knew Cam was sick when you left him sweltering away upstairs alone in that smoky lodge. You even knew that Cam was using heroin in Berkeley.”

“Hey, I helped your brother make the choice to get clean. And when he got sick here, I offered to bring him down the mountain when I went to Kathmandu. It was his choice to stay. I honored it.”

“You almost honored him dying up here in the mountains,” I said, exasperated.

Jon shrugged. “That would have been Cam’s choice, too.”

I lashed out at him with one foot, but Jon was too quick for me, grabbing my ankle before I connected with his ribs. “You idiot!” I said furiously. “You don’t just let people die!”

“Even when that’s what they want, more than anything else in the world?” Jon cocked his head at me. “Let’s just agree to disagree. Anyway, the truth is that I’ve seen people in much, much worse shape than your brother. Cam wasn’t in any real danger. And he didn’t just have me here to look after him. He had Domingo and Melody.”

“Domingo and Melody? Sure. They’re about as helpful as my fourth grade students.”

Jon leaned his head back against the boulders separating the pool from the river, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. “You’re right. A shame those two have gotten so lost inside themselves. I didn’t expect that. But you never know what will happen to people over time. Will they regress? Progress? Flip out completely?”

“How can you be so dispassionate?” My fury was abating, possibly because the hot bubbling water was making me feel limp. “You talk like people are rats in a very tricky maze. An experiment that you’ve designed just to see what they’ll do to get themselves out of a corner.”

He laughed. “Believe me, if I thought I could do that, I would.”

This was a pointless conversation, I realized suddenly. What made me think I could possibly understand how Jon strung his thoughts together? And why should I care?

I stopped talking—a relief, now that my brain, too, seemed to be soaking in hot water—and tipped my head back against the rock again, my arms still crossed to protect my breasts from view. Thick clouds were beginning to gather around the mountain peaks.

After a few minutes, though, I couldn’t help it: I had to ask him more questions. Really, why did someone like Jon make the choices he did?

“I just want to know why you convinced Domingo, Cam, and Melody to follow you here to the end of the earth, if you were only going to abandon them? I mean, why not just leave them in Berkeley with Val? Would’ve been a whole lot cheaper. I’m assuming you paid their way.”

“Not all of them. Melody has a trust fund.” Jon slid into the deeper water and floated on his back. “I didn’t convince them to come,” he said. “That’s not the point of anything I do. I presented the opportunity to do volunteer work and they followed their own intentions, with my support. Cam came here to get clean before he faced the fact that he’s a father. Melody and Domingo chose to follow us after hearing me talk about the inner peace and beauty here. There’s no hiding from nature in Nepal.”

That much we could agree on. In the past few days, I’d gotten used to going outdoors at all hours to wash or relieve myself beneath an expanse of sky. Last night, the sky had been clear enough for me to see a glittering net of stars thrown over the world as I stepped gingerly around the stone wall to pee. This morning, the sunrise was an orange ribbon laid flat along the horizon. I went out to fetch water and was stopped by the sight of mist rising over the valley.

As the damp air had cleared, a sudden ray of sunlight angled out of the clouds and lit up the small figure of a woman making her way down the steep hillside below the lodge. The woman’s hair was done up in braids trimmed in red wool, and she was herding a small flock of goats into the valley, singing to them as the animals darted around the rocks. An emotion had come over me that had left me nearly in tears. It was only later, back in that hot, humid room next to Cam, that I could name it: wonder.

Jon had drifted over in the pool and was now close enough to touch. I ignored him. He didn’t own the river. Besides, if he had felt any attraction towards me, he had done a good job of disguising it, other than that temporary erection.

“This is a beautiful country,” I admitted. “It’s the sort of landscape most people see only in dreams.”

I felt Jon’s leg brush against mine again. Again, I stalwartly ignored it, the way I’d overlook the accidental touch of a man on the subway.

Eventually Jon sat up. I stayed on my back, floating. Let him look. So what if he saw my scar, the evidence of flesh diseased, removed, discarded.

I focused on feeling cradled, caressed in the water. I didn’t mind my scar, not here. Instead, I concentrated on imagining how my body would look from the air, as a whole, the way the crows saw it: strong brown limbs, the V of dark hair between my legs, the pale torso with heavy pale breasts, the fan of hair floating around my face.

I carried a sleeping tiger within this body. Best to see the beast, acknowledge it, and let it roam where it might, since only then did you know what you were truly capable of doing.

“Are you staying in Nepal?” I repeated.

“I’m thinking about it,” Jon admitted. I could feel his eyes on my breasts, my belly, my sex.

“But won’t you miss your house? Your home?” I was genuinely curious. “You must be attached to Berkeley, if you grew up there.”
Attachment
. That was the name of Jon’s sleeping tiger, I decided.

“Attached?” Jon mulled over the word. “I suppose I am, and that’s why I forced myself to leave again. Whenever I see someone, or something, as beautiful, I try to analyze the object of my desire and break down its elements.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For instance, my house provides comfort, and I’ve got a pretty good collection of paintings,” he said. “There are the orchids, too, and the memories of my parents. Then I tell myself that the house is only a collection of boards and glass, the artwork is only bits of color on paper, the memories are flawed. You see? If we examine the objects that we desire, we inevitably find out there’s nothing to become attached to.” His gaze was still fixed on me.

“But what about the people we love?”

“Same thing. Think about a man you love, and consider his elements: His teeth, his hair, his arms and legs,” Jon said. “Those features might attract you. But, when you get right down to particulars like the foul taste of his mouth in the morning or the stink of his gas, you can see that every person is imperfect and every blissful moment is temporary. That’s the Buddha’s first Noble Truth: all realms are permeated by suffering. His second Noble Truth is that the dissatisfaction inherent in our existence is caused by our own spiritual blindness, which prevents us from recognizing that the things we crave are temporal. You can only reach Nirvana, the end of this cycle of wanting and being disappointed, through the cessation of such craving.”