Thinner Than Skin (31 page)

As I tucked the camera away, I noticed a box wrapped in a red cloth beneath the zoom. I hadn’t put it there. It was likely that this had also been adding to the weight. Perhaps Irfan had slipped it in, with mithai or fruit to break into at the glacier.

I kept climbing.

I grew excited at the thought of a celebration waiting for us at our meeting point. I wouldn’t open the box. I’d let Irfan say when. And with this thought, it was again all right to be by myself. I had the company of a surprise that I’d been designated to carry, I was the good messenger, and in the meantime, the stars were again sparkling almost at nail’s reach, the night was clear.

My mind began to drift. This time, instead of muffled footsteps, or goatbells, I heard Farhana’s voice, sweeter than a bell. We were at the Sutro Baths that day in May, her birthday. Before me on Ultar Sar I saw her orange scarf roll across the green peat as she asked,
“So, which is more beautiful. The desert, or the mountains?” I hadn’t known how to compare them, a horizontal wilderness with the most impenetrable perpendicular wilderness in the world. Now here I was, in a dark upright world that moved when I moved, in jaws that grew teeth when I tried to slip by them, and with no one to call out to if I fell into that widest jaw of all, the one below. I’d told her the experience energized me by removing me from myself.
Like seeing the world from behind a camera
. Except now, I had my camera with me, and I’d put it away.

Okay, which makes you happiest, the desert, the mountains, or these scummy baths with me
.

I’m happy anywhere with you
.

Soon I’d be happy again. Soon.

Half an hour later I was walking in mud, and a soft rain began to fall. My hands were filthy from guiding my feet through the muck. I wiped them on my jeans. The rocks were caked in soil and my shoes found no traction. I would have to walk around the mountain side, instead of going up. But which side? I was completely disoriented. I headed to my right, keeping my hands out in front, feeling in the shadows for a dry surface to hold. What I felt instead, more acutely this time, was a pair of eyes.

When I tried to look around to my horror I realized that I’d wound my way to the edge of a turn, past a gap, and onto a ledge. Again! Only, this time I wasn’t simply leaning against a crumbling wall but standing on it! Worse, I couldn’t even see it! My headlamp hadn’t illuminated the path; my feet were entirely in the dark. To go forward would mean falling into the chasm, witnessed only by Ultar and her echo. There was nothing for it but to slink to my left toward the mud again, raising my foot so it wouldn’t catch in the gap I’d been lucky to avoid without even knowing it. It was far worse than the last time; now it was raining, the earth was increasingly slick, and there was that gap. Plus, my feet were anchored in a space
so small I couldn’t even think of sitting and inching my way to safety on my behind. I had to jump. I had to jump in the dark. I pushed the panic in my gut down a few inches but it rose by twice as many. Worse was to come. The headlamp was growing increasingly dim and I hadn’t brought extra batteries. Once again I cursed Irfan. Then I cursed myself for depending on him.

Why did I keep doing it? Why had I twice stepped so near to my death? It was as though something was willing me to do it. It was not my will! These were not my legs! I wanted to shout, and then I think I did. I think I shouted,
These are not my legs!
before it dawned on me that this was a terrible time to shout. I had to get off the ledge. I could not afford to stand here indefinitely, the way I’d sat indefinitely on the gravel earlier. I could not afford any distractions. I had to think clearly what to do next. And then I had to stop thinking. I had to act. Stop thinking. Stop thinking. I took two deep breaths, scooped to the left, felt the gap with my toes, jumped. I fell face down in the mud. But it was mud, not air. I was safe. I pulled my bag off my shoulders and fished inside—I could
not
afford to think about what I had just escaped, I had to think about small things, such as, I could
not
afford to drop my camera here—I fished inside without upsetting the camera, or the box, for the flashlight. Instead, a flashlight was in my face.

“Not far now,” he said. It was the escort, and he was bloody calm.

“Is there a way up from here?” My voice was shaking.

“Oh yes.” He offered me his hand.

I was hauled up as easily as a twig, though I’d believed him to be scrawnier than myself. I followed him further into the belly of the mountain, away from the torn crook of her arm.

It was raining harder. My jacket had a hood. His didn’t. He seemed unperturbed by this. This was a good thing to focus on. It was a very good thing.

“What’s your name?”

“Askarov.”

“Askarov?” I laughed. “From Kaghan?”

He did not answer.

“What is it you trade?” I tried again.

“Jade.”

“Jade? In return for what?”

“Many things.”

“Such as?”

“Ghee.”

“Ghee? Don’t you make plenty of that already?”

He grinned. It was the first time I’d seen him grin. It wasn’t pretty.

“Is there jade at the glacier, or ghee?”

He lost his grin. I think I preferred it.

“Have you climbed up here before?”

“It is not far now. You will hear it.”

Again he disappeared.

“Hear what? And where are the others?” I called after him, expecting no reply, and getting none. Twice he’d helped me, both times when I was lost, and in danger.

He was watching me.

The sky was growing pale. It was turning on its side, leaving behind a softer shade of black. The perpendicular wilderness began to seem less impenetrable. Just as well, because my headlamp quietly extinguished with a flickering that was not unlike a silent fart. I tore the straps off. I had only my flashlight now. I heard more rocks fall, not the defeaning shatter of the landslide on Ultar’s double, but a rumble nonetheless, followed by a roll of smaller rocks. A leopard or the escort? A ghost or Farhana? There was a creaking too; like the night, the stones were turning in their sleep.

I ate more biscuits. I drank a little water. I must save the rest. I had about half a bottle left. I took one last sip then screwed the top back on. When I looked up, I saw two shins, glowing about twenty
feet above my head. Like the mountain, my inhibitions were growing less impenetrable too. “Wes!” I shouted loudly. “Where the hell is everyone?” I was so excited to see him I almost forgot to take my pack.

“Right here,” he turned back. “We’re almost there.”

“Wait!”

But he did not.

I was alone again. Damn Irfan. Damn Wes. And damn Farhana. Wouldn’t
she
have wanted a word alone with me, just once on our way up?

And “Askarov”—where was he now? Tired of watching me? Just as well! I would
not
let myself ask—not here, not now
—why
he was following me. Maybe Irfan had asked him to look out for me. Irfan, who knew I wouldn’t follow Wes. Irfan, to whom I foolishly left all the practicalities of every trip. Maybe Farhana had been right. I did defer to him too much. Maybe I was going about this courtship in a very wrong way. Maybe she needed to see me at the front of the line, not stuck back here, bringing up the rear. Maybe she’d walk beside me if I were leading.

I pushed on. I couldn’t lead now. All I could do was push on. I concentrated on the small circle thrown by the flashlight at my feet. That little glow was just what I needed to coax me into a rhythm again, and nudge all my idle thoughts away. I hoped the battery would last till the sky turned gray, even gold. I tried to focus only on this. Flashlight, don’t die! Flash a little longer!

I began to see colors in my head. A wash of ash gray, charcoal at top, cream below, and a frayed edge that blossomed delicately from the faintest yellow to the most luminous salmon pink. It was so vivid before me I wondered if my sister had a dupatta of that pattern, or perhaps a sari. It might even belong to my mother, a stranger walking down a silver floor to a side street lit with white lamps, the cloth billowing behind her like a cloud. I didn’t know how long the image sustained me but, finally raising my eye past the light at my feet, I noticed there were patches of snow all around me now, mounds that glittered in the night.

The sight was so beautiful I thought I’d stumbled onto the silver floor of my imagining. I was in the middle of an oasis! How thirsty I was! I scooped a snow heap with my fingers; the taste was bitter and familiar. It pulled me back to that moonlit night in Kaghan, a night heavy with the silence of seduction, like tonight, and I was kneeling at the banks of the River Kunhar, gathering silver filigree deep into the folds of my tongue, while a reflection broke in the water. Instantly, I looked up. No owl. No opal moon.

The sky grew even lighter, a gentle gray streaked with gold. I thanked my flashlight and switched it off. More snow crystals stretched awake while others fell asleep. Surely they were stars, fallen from the sky! The hand of a fairy had strewn them on these slopes! I wanted to stuff myself with them, foul taste and all.

With the burn of glacial melt still in my mouth, I started walking again. Yet more snow. The palest apricot sky. I could hear birds now, distant and small, but there was an unmistakable thrill in the air nonetheless, and it was rising. I’d never known a daybreak as joyous as this. I looked toward the sun; it was still invisible to me but I was not invisible to it. I was shivering and sweating and I was alone but I was not alone. Perhaps I was delirious but I did not care. I spun toward the sun, again and again. I laughed.

When I stopped spinning I pulled my feet apart to steady myself, still laughing. In return, I heard a groan. It was not a human voice. It was not a rockfall. This was a groan that came from somewhere else. The first thought that entered my mind,
a whale
. The second,
but I’m on a mountain
. The third,
a whale on a mountain
.

I’d never heard a whale sing but I imagined it might be like this. It was the sound of sheer bulk. A lunge through a dark void of unimaginable weight, as the lungs sought release. And I was carried along, higher, higher, till I heard the first suck of air in the form of a crack. The beast kept pulling me toward itself. As the snapping and heaving grew louder, I heard the distinctive tone of ice, and it was as if an ancient corpse were trying to break free of its colossal tomb.

I was at the glacier.

The portion that met me first was the classic deep blue of polar glaciers, a color I’d never seen in the Karakoram before. But then I’d never been this high up. I climbed higher still. Before me stretched the gray sea of rock and gravelly moraine of the glaciers of the lower valley, but also a dozen ethereal blues, a dozen delicate violets. My mind was clear. I couldn’t remember when I’d taken the camera out, or snapped on the zoom, but apparently I had. I wasn’t thinking of the photographs my fingers took, but I trusted my hand completely.

As the cracking of the glacier continued, it released a memory.

How does sunlight travel through ice? I am asking Irfan. What happens to this light? We are in class eight; I think I am twelve, he thirteen. I am teamed up with Irfan in the physics lab to watch the rainbow in a prism, while our teacher says the sun has different colors, each with different quantities of energy. Orange and red hold only a little; violet and blue, considerably more. Irfan says he is blue; I am red. I agree, happily. Beside me, in my plastic thermos cup, floats a single cube of ice. I ask him if light passes through ice in the same way, blue first, and he says yes.

There near the summit, the crystals of Ultar Glacier sucked me in. The reds and yellows were vanished, the blues limning the ice prevailed. When my camera rotated, I saw them. Irfan, his lips on Farhana’s. I believe I photographed them before I knew what I’d let myself preserve.

A prince and a fairy in a crystal, one planting on the other the softest of kisses, his movements so tender they were devotional. Their eyes were shut as they felt each other through layers of clothing—he even kissed the sleeve of her red jacket—and both faces wore identical expressions: a look so sublime it was as though they were soaring on a carpet of feathers. And how united they were in their ascent! Free of haste, free of shame. If till then it had been a secret, they were through with secrets now. In the arms of discovery, they suffered no fear of being discovered. I knew I hadn’t kissed her in this way in a long, long time. For the briefest flicker
before my fury set in, I registered the truth of the moment. And captured all of it. My camera clicked; my mind could not stop the hand it trusted so well. It was what had been missing in my work so far and I was ill-prepared for the moment when I would find it: beauty, sweet and true. It was a miracle.

Then came ugliness. I saw the crevasse behind Irfan. I saw the indigo wash of light pouring off the drop, the fin-like gash of ultramarine swirling around the snowy edges now melting in the sun, and farther, the wide black mouth into which he might fall. It would be easy to slip. I couldn’t see the depth; perhaps it would only cause minor injury. Still, it would likely be impossible to haul him out without the gear we hadn’t brought.

My mind stepped in and slapped my hand away. How could I picture Irfan this way? What demons had possessed me? My hand lashed back. Good demons. Easy, just walk up and push. He was too wrapped up in her sleeve to resist. And he might be smarter, but he was smaller. Were he to fight back, you’d win. But first, pull yourself away from the kiss. How? Whose hand would help with
that?

My skin burned with the warmth between them. Breathing didn’t come easy. I could feel my resolve crumble. I couldn’t pull away from watching.
What was so spectacular about her sleeve?
And what was he going to do next—kneel? Kiss her damn shoes? In reply, the glacier groaned. High-frequency lust; low-frequency torture. All that pressure pooling at its surface in the sun! Wasn’t sunrise meant to be the hour of hope?
The season of creation
some poet or other had once called it. Fucking poet.