Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

— I’m very sorry.

The girl shakes her head slowly, leaning in toward me with a breathy whisper.

— It’s my birthday, she confesses. Drink up.

The girl walks on with her companion. They open an unmarked door and disappear inside. I take a sip of punch. It’s strong and must have plenty of rum, but it tastes good.

A strange thickness builds in my throat until I begin to feel queasy. I must have drunk the gin too quickly. I go into the bathroom, but as I walk to the toilet stall I glimpse an intruder in the mirror. But I’m the intruder. I lean toward the mirror running my hand along my face, not believing it’s my own. My eyes seem wider than I’d imagined, my nose thinner and more pointed. I turn from the mirror and go into the toilet stall, sitting down for a few minutes. But it only makes me feel sicker. Finally I bend over the toilet and throw up, heaving out the whole contents of my stomach. I flush the toilet and sit back down, leaning against the cold metal walls of the stall. My eyes are shut, my head dense with muddled images.

A damp cellar near Polygon Wood in 1917, with no fire and the soldiers wrapping wet socks around their necks to dry; the dark purple wallpaper of the Picardie bedroom, Mireille lying in the blackness with her grey eyes open, listening to my footsteps up and down the hallway; a candle lantern swinging in a snowbound tent on Everest, mittened fingers struggling to write on pages propped over the knees, the pencil skating across the paper; the blood-red house at Leksand, the tin of letters wrapped in paper and addressed to England but never sent; the lapping black water of the Eastfjords, two hundred and fifty miles away, a shuttered window beside the waves.

There’s a pounding on the stall door. I rise slowly and wipe my face with toilet paper, unlatching the door. The bathroom is packed elbow to elbow with young men. Someone calls at me in Icelandic. Another person taps my shoulder, but I ignore them and walk out.

The bar is packed now, the air hot and steamy. I check my watch: 2:14. I’ve slept for two hours. I edge my way upstairs, taking the last empty seat on a couch beside a young couple. They smile at me and move their coats so I can sit. I light a cigarillo. Moments pass and the young man beside me taps me on the shoulder, speaking in Icelandic first, then in English.

— Are you all right?

— Yeah.

— You were sleeping.

— I guess I drank too much.

— That’s OK, he says. So does everyone else.

The cigarillo is still lit. I take another drag. My eyes begin to close again, but I sit up straight and try to stay awake. I think about what Mireille said, of what I’m losing by going on with this. It’s more than just her, because I can’t imagine going back to my old life in California. But I’m also tired of this life.

I’m sick of traveling. I’m sick of searching, sick of questions I can’t answer, sick of disappointing Mireille and disappointing Prichard, sick of eating bread and cheese from my backpack and filling water bottles in public restrooms, sick of counting foreign coins, sick of war and dead lovers and the billion cruelties of the past that never, ever could be set right, not by a thousand of me circling Europe for a thousand years.

I collect my coat and go out into the cold. It’s a long walk back to the hostel.

15 May 1924

Rongbuk Monastery, 16,700 feet

Rongbuk Valley, Tibet

The expedition has been beaten off the mountain by terrible weather, forced to retreat into the Rongbuk Valley below. They have come to seek the blessing of holy men. They carry gold brocade and a wristwatch for gifts. The true present, the yakload of cement, had been delivered a fortnight before.

They trail past a great stone chorten, its golden paint flaking off in the wind; they file in silence beneath a web of flapping prayer flags, approaching the low whitewashed rooms of the monastery.

The battered men stand in the open court: British, Gurkhas, Sherpas, Bhotias. Climbers, noncommissioned officers, porters, syces, muleteers, cooks, a lone cobbler. Seventy men. In grimed palms they clasp a pair of rupee coins as offerings, rationed out an hour before from the expedition’s oaken coffers.

A monk leads the British and their interpreter up a narrow staircase. Unseen trumpets begin a ceaseless drone. The deep note continues without interruption: as one trumpeter exhausts his breath, another begins to blow. The nails of the climbers’ boots skid on the stone steps. Cymbals clash in time, marking the intervals. At first the British can see nothing in the dark, then a few rays of window light upon the worn steps.

— Some of those trumpets, Noel remarks, are made of human thighbones. They’ve drums made of skulls, with human skin on top.

Ashley peers through a window to a man braying a trumpet on a landing below.

— Looks like brass to me, he whispers hoarsely.

They enter a cramped dining room lit only by a few butter lamps. Amid the blackness they make out an array of small dishes set on a low table. The British sit awkwardly upon cushions on the floor.

— What is it? Mills says. I can’t see.

— Macaroni and spices, the colonel says. What else?

The British eat with lacquered chopsticks, the monks replenishing the empty bowls. The colonel glances at Ashley’s bowl, shaking his head.

— A bowl and a half, the colonel says. You’ll spark a riot. The head lama has been dressing and preparing for two days.

— How many have you had?

— Three, the colonel says. And I’m cooked.

Ashley lays his chopsticks across his bowl. His right leg has fallen asleep and he struggles to find a better posture.

— What’s the lama like?

— Damned impressive fellow, Noel says. Supposed to be the reincarnation of a god. Spent thirteen years in one of those hermit’s cells in the valley.

Mills lifts his chopsticks to the hovering shaft of light. The red lacquer is chipping at the ends, the wood mottled with indentations.

— Tooth marks, Mills murmurs.

— They’re probably older than you, Noel says.

Noel is on his seventh bowl. He grins and keeps eating.

The British file into the small chamber. A low ceiling; the scent of juniper smoldering in an urn. Monks sit on benches beneath huge bronze effigies, blowing horns and pounding drums. A pair of monks hold taut a piece of silk, screening something behind. The interpreter presses his face to the floor in reverence. The English stand silent, clutching their hats by the brim. No one speaks.

Slowly the monks lower the screen. A figure is revealed, fixed in Buddha posture and clad in rich silk gowns, the visage staring past. The trumpets drone on. The face is golden, expressionless, beautiful. The lama perceives the British, but does not react to them. No one speaks.

The screen is raised, the figure obscured once more. The trumpets cease. The British look at one another, bowing awkwardly to no one in particular. They file out of the room.

Now they all feast. The porters drink chang and buttered tea and further bowls of noodles. The British hate the tea and claim the yak butter is rancid, but they gulp it down before the monks’ eyes.

Ashley is sweating even as his body feels chilled. He excuses himself, navigating a maze of corridors and small chambers until he passes through the front gate into the bright sun. A syce leans against the outer wall, standing vigil over the mules and swinging a whip of yak wool in the wind. He extends his tongue in greeting.