George Saunders: The Braindead Megaphone

It’s misty, getting cold. There are open fires along the road, and local governments are distributing free fire-wood, concerned that people will freeze to death tonight in the countryside.

And they do. During this night, over a hundred people die of exposure across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, including one old man in this district. Temperatures in Delhi reach their coldest recorded levels in over seventy years.

And tomorrow night, the driver tells us, it’s going to be even colder.

THE LONGEST NIGHT IN HISTORY, PART I: THIS WILL BE SO GREAT!

Next evening the driver drops us at the Shoe Corral.

He’ll return tomorrow morning at eight.

Nearby is a kind of crude tent: four trees hacked into tent poles, with what looks like a parachute draped over them. This is the Committee Tent, where volunteer members of the Committee stay overnight to provide security. But tonight there’s no Committee, just the boy’s brother and a friend. Though not expecting us, they have no objection to our staying. Three lamas from Eastern Nepal will also be here, meditating all night. Will we need mats? Do I want to sleep near the lamas down by the gate, or up here at the tent near the fire?

We leave our shoes at the tent. The lamas are seated in front of the gate on a single mat, canoe-style. The brother puts my mat ten feet or so behind them, placing it carefully so leaf moisture won’t fall on me.

Prem has left for the night. The brother checks the padlock on the gate. Sitting, I can’t see the boy, but if I crane around the monks, I can see his tree. I’m wearing thermal long johns under a pair of khaki pants, a long-sleeve thermal undershirt, a sweater, and a sleeveless down vest.

This won’t be bad, I think.

It gets dark fast. A big moon rises, just short of full. The brother and his pal hiss angrily back and forth, then launch off on a perimeter check, their flashlight bobbing away in the dark.

From inside the Enclosure, or maybe the far side of it, I hear what sounds like a cough. Sound is traveling strangely. Was that the boy? Did the boy just cough? To note this possible cough in my notebook, I devise a system: I take out my mini-flashlight, mute the light with my hand, so as not to disturb the boy, record the time, make my note.

At 7:20, oddly, a car alarm goes off. How many cars in deep rural Nepal have alarms? It goes on and on. Finally it dawns on me, when the car alarm moves to a different tree, that the car alarm is a bird.

The Car-Alarm Bird of Southern Nepal keeps it up for ten minutes, then falls silent for the rest of the night.

In this quiet, even the slightest posture adjustment is deafening. If a tiny breeze picks up, you notice. If a drop of moisture falls, you jump. So when one of the lamas stands up and goes to the fence, it’s a major event. The other lamas whisper, point excitedly. The first lama paces back to me, gestures by touching his fingers to his forehead and flinging something outward. I don’t get it. He has a headache? His head is really sweating? He motions for me to return with him. Soon I’m sitting canoe-style between Lama One and Lama Two. I can hear Lama One mumbling mantras under his breath. Suddenly he turns to me, again makes the gesture, points into the Enclosure. I get it now: The gesture means, Look, there is something emanating from the boy’s forehead!

Do I see it?

Actually, I do: Vivid red and blue lights (like flares) are hovering, drifting up from approximately where the boy is sitting, as if borne upward on an impossibly light updraft.

What the heck, I think. My face goes hot. Is this what a miracle looks like, feels like, in real time? I close my eyes, open them. The lights are still drifting up.

A noise begins, a steady drumlike thumping from inside the Enclosure, like an impossibly loud heartbeat.

For several concept-free seconds, it’s just: colored up-floating lights and the boy’s amplified heartbeat.

I look through the binoculars. Yes, red and blue sparks, yep, and now, wow, green. And orange. Then suddenly, they’re all orange. They look — actually, they look like orange cinders. Like orange cinders floating up from a fire. A campfire, say. I lower the binoculars. Seen with the naked eye, the sparks look to be coming not from inside the Enclosure but from just beyond it. Slowly, a campfire resolves itself in the distance. The heartbeat becomes syncopated. The heartbeat is coming from off to my right and behind me and is actually, I can now tell, a drum, from a village out in the jungle.

I stand up, go to the gate. That, I think, is a campfire. I’ve never seen, it’s true, red/blue/green cinders, but still, that is, I am almost positive, a campfire. I’m embarrassed on the boy’s behalf for his motley, boisterous, easily excited entourage.

But maybe, part of me protests, this is how a miracle happens?

Another part answers: It has all the marks of a Sunday school.

I return to my assigned spot, resolve to ignore all future faux-excitement, and just watch.

THE LONGEST NIGHT IN HISTORY, PART II: COLD, COLDER, UNBEARABLY COLD

At 8:30, I take my winter hat and gloves from my pack. Abruptly the lamas rise and exit in a group. What, I think, the lamas are chickening out? I’m tougher than the lamas? Soon they return, laden with mattresses and fat sleeping rolls and plump pillows. What, I think, the lamas are incredibly well prepared for what is shaping up to be a damn cold night?

Subel goes back to the Committee Tent to sit by the fire.

Now it’s just me and the snoring, sleep-moaning lamas.

From near the source of the drumming, I suddenly hear dozens of barking dogs. The drum patterns morph into Native American patterns from old Westerns, as if what they’re doing over in that village is planning to attack and overrun our little outpost here, using their constantly barking attack dogs.

Before long the dogs and drums fade and I’m lapsing into odd exhausted waking dreams: The boy sticks a pole into my chest, which is made of fiberboard, so the pole goes in easily and painlessly. Don’t go for the heart, he says. I don’t get it. Should I write about you? I ask. Sure, he says, go ahead, just tell the truth, doubts and contradictions and all. I don’t mind.

Soon my legs and feet are freezing. I take my socks out of my pocket and put them on. The vest/sweater combo is keeping my torso warm, but my neck and legs are becoming problematic. I drape a pair of dirty sweatpants around my neck, take out my coat (a shell that’s supposed to have a fleece lining, which I’ve somehow managed to lose), arrange it over my legs. Subel returns from the fire and stretches out behind me, trying to sleep. I think of him back there: no socks, just a flannel shirt and a light windbreaker. I have an emergency blanket in my pack, a tinfoilish thing in a small cardboard box. I throw it back to him, he unrolls it for what seems like hours: the noisiest thing I’ve ever heard.

“Am I being too loud?” he asks sweetly.

By 10:30, he’s asleep. I’m fading fast. The dogs sound distant, gooselike. The drummer seems tired. I try to feel the boy sitting out there, and really I can’t. How are you doing this? I think. Forget eating, how do you sit so long? My back hurts, my legs hurt, the deep soreness in my ass seems to connote Permanent Damage.

At 10:58, a jet passes overhead, bound for Katmandu.

At 11:05, I take the dirty sweatpants from around my neck, stand up, put them on over my khakis. I put the coat/shell on, drawstring it tight, tuck my chin down, so none of my face is exposed. With a rush of happiness, I remember there are two more dirty pairs of pants in my pack! I drape them like blankets over my legs and feet. What else do I have? Two pairs of dirty underwear, which I briefly consider putting on my head.