Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

Early the next morning in Siliguri—after tea, coffee, and a good Western breakfast in an area of the station reserved just for British and other white passengers—we transfer to the narrow-gauge railroad that always departs for Darjeeling precisely thirty-five minutes after the mail train arrives in Siliguri. Seven miles up this line—the train really is so tiny that it seems a slightly overgrown toy train of the kind boys dream of owning—we reach the Sukhna station and begin the absurdly steep (and absurdly slow) switchback climbing to Darjeeling. The humid scents of the crowded Bengali plain are soon replaced by refreshing breezes and the thick, green, rain-scented forest that punctuates rolling plantation rows of tea plants. We are scheduled to arrive by noon, but two rockfalls onto the tracks put us hours behind schedule.

The engineer and fireman of the little Coney Island toy train roust out dozens from the third- and even second-class cabins to move the rocks fallen from the rain-drenched cliffs, but Jean-Claude and I enthusiastically join in the work, prying with crowbars to lever small boulders off the tracks.

The Deacon stands to one side, arms crossed, and glowers. “If you hurt your back or legs or hands now,” he says tightly, “you’ve ruined your chance at climbing Everest for nothing. Let the other passengers do it, for God’s sake.”

J.C. and I smile our agreement but ignore him, helping clear the track while the engineer and fireman and useless conductors (who collected all our tickets before the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway toy train started, since one cannot walk from one of the tiny cars to the next, but who have done no work since) lazily watch with crossed arms and frowning faces. From time to time they shout instructions and criticism in Bengali and Hindi and some other dialect. Eventually we’re finished, the rails are clear, and J.C. and I stagger back to our coach.

Twelve miles further on, we stop for another rockfall, this one with even larger rocks and boulders heaped all over the tracks. “Heavy rain,” says the engineer, shrugging and looking above us at the vertical cliffs from which run a thousand miniature waterfalls. Jean-Claude and I again join the second- and third-class passengers in levering off a few tons of rocks. Pointedly, the Deacon stays in his bunk and takes a nap.

So we arrive hours late in Darjeeling, not at noon as the schedule promised, but toward dusk. And in a heavy rain which has prevented us from catching views of the summits of Kanchenjunga or any of the other high Himalayan peaks usually visible—according to the Deacon—during the approach to Darjeeling. Two of us are sore and bruised from moving tons of rock, our muscles aching despite being honed for climbing, our climbing-necessary fingers torn and bloody; the third member of our party is also bloody—bloody disgusted with us.

We walk back to the fifth and last car on our Coney Island Express—the so-called “freight car,” in reality just a flatbed with our many crates and boxes hastily lashed down and covered with tarps—and wonder how we are going to get the tons of stuff to the Hotel Mount Everest. (Expedition members, especially their leaders, are often invited to stay up the hill at Government House, but our expedition is so totally unofficial that we want to be invisible. So the hotel it is.)

Suddenly, miraculously, a tall man with an umbrella appears out of the pounding rain. He’s followed by more than a dozen porters pouring out of three Ford trucks with wooden beds behind their cabs. The station platform has no roof. The rain is cold up here at 7,000 feet, and steam rises from the Fords’ hoods still ticking with heat.

The tall man is wearing a finely made cream-colored cotton robe with long wool vests hanging down like brown scarves. On his head is perched an elaborate and carefully fitted cap unlike anything I’ve seen so far in India. He doesn’t look either Indian or Tibetan—not quite Asiatic enough for the latter nor brown and short and dark-haired enough for the former—and while he might be one of the mythical Sherpas I’ve heard so much about, I know that Sherpas also tend to be short, and this man’s brown-eyed gaze is exactly level with mine—and I’m 6 foot 2. Without saying a word or making a gesture, he somehow projects a powerful sense of dignity and self-respect. He obviously has what some call “a commanding presence.”

The Deacon walks forward through the rain, water cascading from his fedora, and the other man extends the umbrella so that the Deacon can stand close under the broad black circle.

“Are you sent by Lord Bromley-Montfort?” asks the Deacon.

The man stares at the Deacon. Long, silent seconds pass in the pouring rain.

The Deacon points at his own chest and says, “Me…Richard Davis Deacon.” He points at the tall man’s chest. “You?”

“Pasang.” The voice is so soft that I can barely hear it under the pounding of rain on the umbrella fabric.

“Pasang what?” asks the Deacon.

“Pasang…Sirdar.”

I step closer through the rain and extend my hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Pasang Sirdar.”

The tall man makes no move except to shift the umbrella a bit so that it offers me some protection.

“No, no, Jake,” says the Deacon, almost shouting over the downpour. “ Sirdar means something like ‘head man.’ He’d be in charge of the porters. Evidently it’s just Pasang for now.” He turns back to the tall man. “Pasang…can…you…get these?” The Deacon gestures dramatically to the heaps of tarp-covered crates that J.C. and I had only begun to untie. “To…the…Hotel Mount Everest?” The Deacon gestures vaguely uphill toward the dark, multi-terraced hill city of Darjeeling, all but invisible in the rain, and says again, more loudly, “Hotel…Mount…Everest?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, Mr. Deacon,” Pasang says in a perfect Oxbridge accent. The soft, deep voice sounds as upper-class British as the Deacon’s. Perhaps more so. “We shan’t take more than five minutes.”

Pasang hands the umbrella to me and steps out into the rain to shout in both Hindi and Bengali to the dozen or so porters waiting silently in the downpour. The men rush to untie the crates and quickly load them onto the backs of the Ford carryalls. Somehow—I’ll never know how, except that J.C. is half-perched on my left knee while I am pressed sideways against the passenger-side door—the three of us squeeze into the cab of the first truck along with Pasang, who is driving. The downpour increases, and since the only working windshield wiper is banging away to clear the tiniest possible arc in front of Pasang, I can’t see a damned thing out the front, side, or back as the truck bounces, bucks, and grinds gears around unseen turns and up a seemingly endless series of steep and invisible switchbacks. Whatever Darjeeling looks like, I’m not going to see it this night.

Not one of the four of us says a single word during the ride up.

I’d expected the Hotel Mount Everest to be an old stone building set amidst other old stone buildings—gray, gray, gray. Instead we stop at a well-lighted and splendid-looking three-story Victorian structure perched high on a hillside. The hotel might fit an American’s mental image of Olde London Towne for all of its gables, rafters, towers, more gables, the elaborate porte-cochère with its brick drive and Elizabethan-style pillars, a shingled turret rising to the right of the main entrance, a garden out front with a white-graveled walkway, small leafy trees (not the great multi-trunked banyans of the lower elevations we’d climbed through on the tiny train) along the front of the hotel and elegant tall pines behind.

As we reach the hotel entrance, it stops raining so suddenly it’s as if someone has switched off a spigot. A full moon emerges from behind quickly scurrying clouds and illuminates the snowy summits of tall peaks to the north and east and west behind the hotel.