Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

‘And if we get caught venturing off without permits?’ broke in Bill.

‘Who’s going to check our permits?’ said Luca, waving his hand impatiently and downing his own shot of brandy. He winced and René looked on approvingly, refilling his glass as he set it back down on the table. ‘We’re going to be halfway up a bloody mountain.’

Bill sat forward in his seat, his voice terse. ‘I think it might be sensible to have an idea of what we’re up against before gallivanting off into a restricted area. And how the hell are we going to shake off the interpreter? They don’t let you leave without one.’

‘We’ll just have to give him the slip. Get up early,’ Luca replied.

‘That’s it, sneak off early? That’s the plan?’ Bill said, shaking his head. ‘You are kidding me, right?’

Luca raised his hands defensively.

‘Come on, Bill, it’s not like we haven’t done worse before. And like he said, René will be able to smooth things over from this end.’ Turning to look at him, Luca saw René lean back in his chair, the glass of brandy clutched loosely in one hand and resting on top of his belly. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

René seemed to drift reluctantly back to the present. He looked at them with eyes glazed from brandy. ‘You should be all right,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re not going anywhere too politically sensitive. It’s the tour operator who gets all their . . . attention. I’ll fix up some documents for you and they’ll get you where you need to go.’

They sat for a moment in silence, all appreciating the risk he was taking.

‘You know what I say? Screw ’em. After all the years of this shit, being thrown out would probably be a weight off my mind.’

‘Thank you, René,’ said Luca.

‘Yes, thank you,’ added Bill.

René nodded, signalling that the matter was now closed.

Scraping back his chair, Luca got to his feet.

‘Back in a second,’ he said, winding round the crowded tables and heading for the toilets.

On his way back into the main room, he stopped. The slim Chinese officer from the table by the window was standing in his way, polishing the lenses of his glasses with a cloth held in one hand. He kept the other in one of his pockets.

Luca stood still for a moment, waiting for him to move, and after a few seconds, coughed politely. The man slowly finished wiping the lenses, apparently in no hurry to get out of the way. Finally putting his glasses back on, he turned to look at Luca.

His eyes had unusually wide black pupils which seemed to obscure most of the irises. They made for a curiously blank expression. There was something about the way he stared straight through him that made the back of Luca’s neck tingle.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, using one of his few phrases of Mandarin, and ducked past, shaking his head.

Bill and René were engrossed in conversation when he got back to the table.

‘You really are an ignorant brute, aren’t you?’ René said, smiling at Bill. ‘The swastika is a Buddhist symbol intended to bring good luck. You see it painted on doorways and religious artefacts everywhere around here. Hitler just twisted it round a little, like he did with everything else.’

‘But painted on a human skull?’ Bill asked as Luca shuffled on to the bench seat beside him.

René snorted. ‘Don’t they teach you anything these days? The guys here don’t look at death the same way Westerners do. Think about it. What are the Tibetans supposed to do with dead bodies? Bury them? Hah! You try digging six feet down with the kind of perma-frost they get up here on the plateau. You’d be all fucking day!’

He gulped down another shot of brandy, signalling with his glass for Luca to do the same. Luca hammered it back, shutting his eyes as the taste of the alcohol hit him, and then grinning broadly.

‘And for that matter, you can’t cremate bodies either,’ René continued, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘There are bugger all trees up at this altitude and any decent wood is used for making stuff they need, not stuff they want to get rid of.’ He lowered his voice dramatically. ‘You know what they do instead?’

Both of them shook their heads.

‘They take long knives and slice the bodies into small pieces . . . bones, cartilage, muscle . . . everything gets hacked off the corpse. Then they let the vultures pick clean the skeleton and feed the pieces of flesh to the dogs.’

Bill choked on a sip of brandy and then shook his head, turning a little green. ‘That’s disgusting.’

‘Makes perfect sense to me,’ countered René cheerfully. ‘It’s called a sky burial, which sounds very peaceful and spiritual when, as with everything in Tibet, the reality is a little more bloody. The only bit of refinement about the whole thing is the flowers. It’s one of the few places where you get any decent varieties of Cousinia – gorgeous colours and actually rather rare. Pressed quite a few of them in my time.’ He paused for a second indulgently. ‘Anyway, the upshot is that lots of the leftover body parts get used for tools, musical instruments, all sorts of stuff. The head you saw was probably part of a drum, or possibly a drinking bowl.’

He remained silent for a moment, allowing this gruesome image to sink in.

‘Why not? If it can hold slopping brains in there, it should be able to cope with brandy!’

Nearby, some of the diners put down their knives and forks abruptly. Luca and Bill noticed their squeamish stares and started smiling.

René’s own red face creased into laughter, and before his belly had stopped shaking he was reaching for the brandy again. He held the bottle poised in his hand for a moment, face suddenly serious.

‘Whatever you’re up to this time, boys, good luck to you. If it means taking some risks, I’m willing to back you. Tibet’s a country that needs more people with courage.’ He began to refill their glasses, glancing sideways towards the two officers over by the window. A sudden melancholy tinged his smile. ‘And this is where I find mine!’

Raising their glasses together, they all downed the shot. Luca and Bill winced. René burped dramatically.

‘Just one more thing,’ Luca said, as the heat of the brandy spread through them. ‘What’s a po ?’

For a moment René frowned in concentration. Then he scratched the back of his head with his sausage fingers.

‘I’m pretty sure it means monkey,’ he said. ‘Why?’

Chapter 19

‘Wake up, Babu.’

The man looked down at the boy sleeping in his arms. The child’s head was nestled into his chest, so that all that was visible was a mop of tousled hair that swung back and forth in time with his step.

‘Wake up now, Babu. It’s time.’

He gently shook his arms and the boy gave a soft murmur. A moment later he tilted his neck back and yawned, his mouth stretching wide like a bear cub waking from a deep sleep. His eyes fluttered open; once, twice, then remained wide for a moment longer, trying to focus on the weather-beaten face of the man who was carrying him. He was staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on a faint glimmer of light in the distance. With each laboured breath frosted air appeared from his lips, slowly dissipating into the night sky as they moved forward.

The moon shone over the mountain peaks, bleaching out all colour from the path they had been following for hours. The guide was tired now, his steps slow and deliberate. Beads of sweat collected on his forehead, running freely down his dark skin before disappearing into his glistening black beard. He was hardened to the long climbs and endless trails of his native Nepal, but the weight of the rucksack on his back and the boy in his arms had taken its toll. The light in the distance was all that was keeping him going now.