Uzma Khan - Thinner Than Skin

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.

Next I was overcome with a desire to vanish myself. That cascade of light pouring down the side of the drop: I could pour with it. It was the only way to free myself of thought, now that I was thinking again. They looked so young, in their union of trust, my former lover, my former best friend. All the shame the two refused to carry was swiftly encumbering me. I needed to be rid of it. I needed to be someone else. Only then would I release all the cracking and heaving from somewhere deep inside.

Vanish me . I squeezed my eyes shut. My legs did the rest.

The day was searingly hot already. I’d left my pack behind. I felt no need to retrace my steps. There was that half bottle of water left inside. I was sure I wouldn’t make it back down without it. Yet I stayed, on a ledge, letting the thirst pool on my tongue. Perhaps it was the same ledge as earlier this morning, when I’d nearly fallen to my death. That would have been better.

The questions I could not leave behind. Their first time? Or with her all those nights away from our hotel? His own desire prompting him to ask, on the shores of the lake, if she and Wes had ever been lovers? Or had it begun even earlier, as early as Karachi? No? At the cabin in Kaghan, then, the day before we left for Gilgit? He said he wanted to return to Karachi for — how did he put it? — personal reasons . Had he been trying to warn me? And what about that look of disapproval, the morning after the owl-sighting, the morning Farhana and I last made love — had it, in truth, been envy? Hadn’t he been different with me ever since? And what of poor Zulekha? He’d come here to say goodbye to her, and in the process, stolen Farhana?

The questions would kill me before my thirst could. What difference did it make? Perhaps she’d found a better man to return to. Or simply, a better man.

I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Which is worse, a crime committed because you don’t look, or because you do? The one that is an accident, or the one that is calculated?

It was a chance calculation. More like an accident.

What exactly had happened when I’d approached them? Had I approached them? I couldn’t remember. I remembered some things only, such as wondering if I’d have the strength to push him. And the glacier had heard. A ray of sun had tickled her rib; she began to sweat. Adjusting her spine, she shrank, expanded, then advanced. They were fools to stand on that rib, but even so, I would not have thought it possible, the way their position moved, sliding closer to the edge, as she oscillated so very slightly, to and fro, a micrometer shrug, and Irfan was slipping backward, while Farhana’s eyes opened at last. He reached for her when he saw me. He reached for that red sleeve he’d been kissing just moments earlier, when the ice was firm, when the sun was still behind Ultar’s spire. And I saw it: she pulled the sleeve away. She did not want to fall with him. She would not hold another drowning body. She had let him go, while crying for help.

Across the chasm, I could see it now. Ultar’s shadow. The sun had peeled off his mask. Underneath lay a russet tongue of gravel between a file of punishing teeth. There was a legend about that mountain but I couldn’t remember it. No doubt it involved a demon and a death. The wind was kicking up now and it probably wasn’t a good idea to keep sitting here; I leaned back and let the gale tear at my flesh. They’d looked sublime. Eyes shut, cheeks flushed. Hands roaming. More sublime than she and I had looked in the water, on the edge of Saiful Maluk.

I’d tossed him my pack. “There’s water left.” He hadn’t moved. I’d also noticed two mithai boxes, not just the one, pushed to the bottom. Both wrapped in red cloth. I decided to take one for myself at the last minute, then I threw the pack. He caught it. I waited for him to look up. When he finally did, I was glad the light obliterated his face.

Wes and Farhana watched me leave. “Are you going for help?” Wes called after me. “I think his leg is broken.” He was asking me? The man who could wrestle polar bears by himself? He could surely haul a small brown man off a slippery shelf.

At least he was kind enough to announce himself this time. The escort cleared his throat, waited briefly, then hopped down to the ledge where I was hiding from the world. By now I could barely open my eyes.

“I need water,” I whispered.

He said nothing.

“Do you have any?”

He shook his head.

“Why are you on this mountain? There isn’t jade or ghee up here.” I didn’t really care how he answered; all my questions were tired now.

He answered with a hideous grin, reminding me of someone else.

“Do you want my jacket?” I asked.

“What for?”

“You’re following me.” It wasn’t a question. It was closer to acquiescence.

He laughed.

“Why are you following me?”

He was nodding and grinning and laughing all at once. “To kill you.”

“What would you be trading then?”

He kept laughing.

My eyes were drooping less. I saw that he was not bad looking. His teeth, the part of him I’d been speaking to, were his worst feature. But the expression in his wide brown eyes was surprisingly mild. It might have been my own desire to see him this way, but see him this way I now did. A silky head of hair, the color of wheat, fell almost to his shoulders. Slightly darker than Kiran’s and better kept. In fact, all of him was better kept. His clothes were good. A thick gray jacket of rough weave, perhaps yak wool, with white embroidery around the buttons. The embroidery was not as smeared with mud as it ought to have been, given the conditions. A necklace of large black stones, jade perhaps, though not in a color I’d seen before; a belt of real leather; solid shoes. I’d thought he went without shoes, he’d been that silent. But this man did not walk on glaciers on the soles of his feet.

A gun lay at his feet. I only noticed it now, while taking in the shoes. If he’d carried it around his shoulder, as, after all, an armed escort should, I might have noticed — though it was dark, how would I? But it wasn’t the kind to sling around the shoulder. It wasn’t the automatic weapon I’d seen him with when we first picked him up, on our way to Gilgit. It was a pistol.

From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a bottle. Thirsty, I reached out. He gladly proffered it; the scent turned my mouth sour. I shook my head.