The Ascent(35)

arm and stepped around me, heading back toward camp. “Then why am I here?” I called after him.

Andrew paused. I expected him to face me, but he didn’t. I didn’t need to look at his face to know he was still sporting that horrible grin. “Same reason,” he said and walked away.

2



IN MY DREAMS. I SHUTTLE THE MOTORCAR OVER

the sloping lawns of the Italian countryside. Hannah laughs from the passenger seat. She is not the Hannah from real life—not the woman I was married to a million years ago—but rather she is the Hannah from my dreams, my nightmares. Her hair is short, and she wears a lambskin jacket and pantsuit. I grip the steering wheel, a silk scarf flapping in the wind. I am David, the man Hannah fell in love with after she left me. Or perhaps the man she fell in love with while she was still with me, still my wife. None of that was ever clear.

I’m not going to mess things up, I shout over the engine, the wind. Yes, you are, she says, and she doesn’t need to shout. I’ve got a second chance, I say. I’m going to make things right. I’m going to fix things for us. You can’t, she tells me. Why not?

Because I’m dead, she says. And because we are flying. I imagine cliff diving with Andrew and how I soared naked through the air, suspended for a million eternities, before crashing down through the black, icy waters. Flying, flying … What do you mean we’re flying? I say.

Hannah—the Hannah from my dreams, the dakini, not the real Hannah—faces forward and says, Look.

I look and find the ground has vanished from beneath the motorcar. We are careening over a precipice, suspended in air, a pair of cliff divers,the engine groaning and the wheels spinning without traction, and the chrome headlamps glinting in the sun.

3



IN THE MORNING. THE PROXIMITY OF THE GODESH

Ridge was overwhelming. The Valley of Walls lay at the base of the range, the earthen path that was once a river carved straight through a pass where it disappeared. The Sherpas said the drop had once been a beautiful waterfall, something witnessed by generations long gone. It was dry as bone now.

The mountain itself was tremendous, twisting and bulging at its foothills like slaps of clay stacked atop one another to dry in the sun, its peak obscured by cloud cover. With the waning darkness still toward the west, two of the Sherpas led us through the arid pass, their sandal-clad feet kicking up tufts of white dust. They spoke perfect English when they wanted to, but mostly they kept to themselves.

Half a mile through the pass, I could see where the rutted, dried riverbed ended at a sharp drop. Far below stood the jagged pincers of exposed, sun-bleached rocks. I could easily imagine this as a waterfall, and the quarry below still held the shape of a basin, although filled with boulders and lush with plant life. While I watched, a flock of giant black birds took flight, calling shrilly to one another.

Our group continued along the base of the foothills, winding farther and farther away from the Valley of Walls, which was now situated directly below us. From this vantage, I could see all the stone walls and how the valley itself curled slightly like a monkey’s tail. From this distance, the arrangement of the walls seemed nearly prophetic, something akin to crop circles or the looming statue heads on Easter Island. I tried to derive sense from the pattern, but it meant nothing to me. And perhaps that was how it was supposed to be.

We trekked through a series of stone portals wreathed with lichen,constantly ascending at a gradual incline. There was very little to grab onto here for support, and as the incline grew steeper, my back strained and I leaned closer toward my knees. A few of us skidded in the dirt, launching cascades of tiny stones down the face of the mountain.

I couldn’t help but look up as I climbed. The clouds were wispy but in copious amount, and I still could not see beyond the first summit. It was impossible to judge the distance. Yet each time we wound around the passageways (once, even entering a cave which smelled of kerosene that emptied out on the opposite side of the foothill), a new plateau would appear closer and closer above us.

“You hear that?” Curtis said, appearing at my side. He started climbing slightly faster than me. “What’s that sound?”

I listened. “Sounds like … running water …”

We reached the first of many plateaus to see a waterfall clear across the valley spilling into a forested gorge. Through its mist a rainbow projected, and I could see more of those great black birds swooping down toward the water for food. If this were a movie, it would be the part where the orchestrated music would kick in while the director of photography panned the camera for the breathtaking panoramic. For us, we were content to pause in our ascent just to watch and take it all in. Even Andrew, who’d seemed to be in a bad mood all morning, leaned against the crags, arms folded, and observed the spectacle in absolute silence.

By lunch, we had crested a ridge of fir-lined rocks that overlooked the entire valley. No longer could I make out the Valley of Walls nor the tiny huts and pagodas of the villages through which we’d passed. Here, we were utterly alone. There could have been a thousand of us, and each one of us would have been alone.

The Sherpas distributed cuts of burlap on which they piled steamed rice, boiled leaves, and cubes of grayish meat. Andrew wolfed his food down, then vanished through the trees, either to take a leak or continue with his meditation. The Sherpas read books and

ate very little, though they continued to stoke the small fire.