The Harder They Fall (9 page)

The bread oven was wide and bulky, especially with so many people helping to carry it up the loose stone steps and into the bakery, with Andy left to do little more than supervise and cringe each time a corner snagged on a wall or someone slipped and lost their precarious grip on a sharp metal edge. If it had been up to him, he’d have left the packing materials where they were, although as Zuza had pointed out, they wouldn’t have stood any chance whatsoever of getting the oven through the doorway with an extra six inches of polystyrene surrounding it. However, all his earlier assumptions waned to know-it-all complacency as soon as he stepped inside and discovered just how much had been achieved. The oven was the very last piece of equipment to be installed, and was set down in its final resting place, in amongst the racks and work stations, sacks of flour and stacks of baking tins. It was an incredible sight and he wasn’t ashamed that watching the people of Syabru hugging each other and singing in celebration brought a tear to his eye, so overwhelmed by what he was witnessing that he temporarily forgot about Dan, fighting febrile hallucinations back in the guesthouse. Now his worries returned in full force, and he quietly attracted Bhagwan’s attention to ask him if he knew of the family Michal had mentioned.

“Yes. I will take you when we are finished,” he offered.

“Thanks,” Andy said solemnly. He was so grateful for all that Bhagwan had done for them, but his priority was to get Dan help as quickly as possible and waiting for the revelry to reach a suitable pause wasn’t really a luxury he could afford. Regardless, he told Bhagwan that he was going back to wait at the guesthouse, where a quick assessment of the situation saw him filling a bucket with cold water and using his last pair of clean socks to sponge Dan down, whilst his brother protested as wildly as he could in the state he was in. Bhagwan arrived about twenty minutes later and immediately went off on his own, the pickup truck skidding on the wet stone road as it pulled away. After a short while he returned with the doctor: a willowy, middle-aged man with a heavy accent, deep furrows in his forehead, and eyebrows like black fronds of fern fanning across his temples until they joined with his hair. He took out a stethoscope and placed it at various points on Dan’s sweat-glistening torso.

“Heart is fast,” he said, taking a thermometer from his pocket and poking it into Dan’s ear. He frowned at the reading, swapped the thermometer for a penlight and shone it into Dan’s eyes. He shrugged.

“Not mountain sickness, but what it is I can not say for sure. The Patan hospital will tell you. You take him there as soon as possible.”

“How soon?” Andy asked. “Can it wait until tomorrow?” He was less concerned about missing the village celebrations than he was about being driven back down a wet mountain road that was deathly at the best of times, by someone who had already spent almost half a day behind the wheel. The doctor shrugged again. However, the fact that Dan wasn’t involving himself in any of this discussion was sufficient cause for Andy to believe that it couldn’t wait that long and Bhagwan had picked up on his friend’s concern.

“We go now,” he stated resolutely. “My cousin will make strong coffee and we’ll be OK.” He smiled and nodded reassuringly. The doctor was still waiting to be seen out and Bhagwan followed him towards the door. “It is OK. And when I am too tired we take turns.”

Andy didn’t much like this idea. It was one thing to race sports cars up and down deserted English country lanes; it was an entirely different matter steering an ancient pickup with lousy brakes and only one working windscreen wiper down a Himalayan dirt track in the pitch black, although one look at his brother told him that if that was what it took, then he would do it. Andy set about collecting their belongings, all the while watching out of the corner of his eye and stopping every so often to re-position the wet sock. Dan was drifting in and out of sleep and the sweat was pouring off him, but would he keep that sock on his head? Andy re-soaked it and put it back again.

“I swear to God, if I had a staple gun,” he muttered. Dan made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a groan and lifted his head.

“I feel like shit,” he said.

“You don’t say!”

Bhagwan came back with Zuza and Michal, who wanted to thank Andy and Dan properly and were disappointed they couldn’t stay.

“No need for thanks,” Andy smiled, shaking Michal’s hand and embracing him. “We’ve done nothing, compared to what you have achieved here. It is truly fantastic.”

“Ah, it is the people of this village that are fantastic, not us,” Michal said modestly. Zuza came over and kissed Andy on the cheek.

“You take good care of your brother,” she said. “Come see us some time perhaps, when we are back home.”

“I’d really like that.” Andy hugged her. “I’ll email, soon,” he promised.

Bhagwan picked up their bags, leaving him free to assist Dan, who by now could barely stand. Slowly, they stumbled their way across the room and outside to the truck, where the owner of the guesthouse was positioning pillows on the passenger side of the seat.

“I’ll send money to pay for these,” Andy said and Bhagwan translated. The owner waved him away, as if to suggest that it wasn’t necessary, but it was. The people here had so little and yet they would readily share, indeed sacrifice what they did have to help a stranger. Once Dan was safely propped up with the pillows, Andy climbed in beside him.

It was so dark now that the previously poor visibility had effectively dropped to zero. A small group of locals had gathered with Zuza and Michal to give them a final farewell and then they were off, back the way they had come just a few short hours ago. As they settled into the motion of the road and their eyes became accustomed to the total lack of light, Andy moved across the seat so that he had a clear view of his side of the truck, and also to give Dan more space. He was curled up, his hands clasped as if in prayer, his cheek resting against them and his nose and mouth all squashed up. It wasn’t an attractive sight; Andy looked past his brother to his friend, who was frowning hard and singing under his breath. This was going to be one of the toughest journeys they had ever undertaken.

There was little to do to pass the time more quickly, with so much effort required to navigate the treacherous road; sometimes they chatted about nothing in particular; other times both of them stayed silent so Bhagwan could focus on an especially difficult stretch, or negotiate with other road users the safest means of passing in the dark, always with a terrifying awareness of the steep drop only a matter of inches away. Occasionally they would maintain a good speed for many miles, where the roads had been re-surfaced with tarmac and were in reasonable condition, but then they would come across the site of a recent landslide, where any existing tarmac now joined the rest of the stones and rubble. Bhagwan was doing an incredible job of staying alert, even spotting a stray yak on the road ahead when Andy could barely see past the truck’s bonnet. Dan was in a deep sleep and had fallen to the left, his head now resting on a pillow on Andy’s lap.

“You are very close, yes?” Bhagwan observed.

“Yeah,” Andy replied. The word was woefully inadequate and couldn’t even begin to describe their relationship as it was now. True, they had always been close; they were part of the same friendship group and these days, for the most part, enjoyed each other’s company. Underlying it all, though, were the remnants of hatred from too many years of secrets and it had taken its toll on them both. What Andy felt for Dan was beyond words. Dan was his little brother, and he could just about remember him learning to walk and talk; becoming a little human being instead of a baby. When Andy went to pee, Dan would go too, standing right next to him, watching and learning how to be a boy. When their mother came to collect Andy from his first day at school, Dan had leapt out of the car, his chubby little legs moving as fast as he could make them, to get to his big brother and give him the biggest hug ever. Soon they were both at school, and this need to be together was fulfilled through football and rugby. Their brief parting when Andy went to high school was almost intolerable: often mistaken as twins, the boys seemed to have internalised the closeness that this genetic association would have bestowed.

It was only as they reached the end of high school that their constant requirement to do everything together began to dissipate, and until recently, Andy had believed it was only natural: they had reached an age where they were individuals in their own right, with new friends and, more importantly, girlfriends. Dan and Adele’s on-off relationship was a big part of this, for when they were together, Andy was left to find other friends to spend his time with, but none of them could ever replace that closeness.

With all that had happened over the past couple of years, they had been able to re-establish something more like how it used to be when they were younger. Their business was flourishing and they hadn’t had so much as an argument in months, all this in contrast to the twenty-two years prior to that, when they had gone for long periods without even speaking and had given each other so many black eyes that they’d both lost count long ago. Now they were here: halfway down the Himalayas, with Dan in a potentially critical condition, and Andy felt completely responsible. He should have played the big brother card when Dan lied that he was OK, instead of trusting him to tell the truth. If the unthinkable happened, it would be his fault, for being such a coward.

These thoughts had taken them a further hour into their descent: another six to go, based on their outward journey, although the rain had stopped and they hadn’t passed another vehicle for quite some time. Andy glanced across at Bhagwan and noticed him contorting his face into all manner of expressions that would have been comical in any other situation.

“D’you want me to drive for a bit?” he asked, his earlier fear subsiding the further down the mountain they travelled.

“Soon I would like a break,” Bhagwan said, “when we reach the rest stop down here.” He pointed to the road as it curved back on itself in a hairpin, before opening onto a wider stretch, where he pulled over. Once they were stopped, Andy observed that there were a couple of other vehicles in front of them, both also taking a break. The two men climbed out of the cab and spent a few moments stretching.

“Not long now,” Bhagwan told him. “You finish the drive. Only three hours.”

“Really? Wow!” Andy was surprised they had made such good time: four hours so far. At this rate they’d be back in Kathmandu by around five in the morning, which wasn’t an ideal time to turn up at the hospital. He would have to make a judgement call on whether they could wait until daylight when they were a bit closer to their destination.

As was his way, Bhagwan had wandered off to relieve himself and talk to another man who was leaning against his lorry and lighting one cigarette off the end of another. Andy glanced back through the windscreen at Dan: his temperature seemed to have dropped a little, but even in the cab’s dim light, it was clear to see his pale face still shining with fever.

Shortly, Bhagwan returned and took a pot and stove from the back of the truck, setting it down to brew some coffee.

“I had a brother too, but he died of blood cancer,” he said, his attention artificially centred on stirring the pot. Andy already knew this and it wasn’t the most helpful of stories to hear at this particular moment. It had happened just prior to his last visit to Nepal, and the grief remained almost as tangible now as it had been then, when it was fresh and raw. Andy watched and listened, as Bhagwan went on to explain how an American charity had paid for most of his brother’s treatment and that this had made them hopeful. They prayed hard that he might live, but it was not to be. Now there was a son and daughter left of the five that there once had been. It was such a sad story, repeated time and again in countries like this, and standing there, in the middle of a dark Nepali night, Andy fully appreciated his wealth and his powerlessness in equal measure.

It was time to get back on the road: Bhagwan shuffled onto the far end of the seat and tried to close the passenger door, but without moving Dan across, there was no way it was going to happen. Carefully, Andy lifted his brother’s upper body and held him up until all three of them were safely inside the cab. Dan stirred but didn’t wake, and Andy slowly lowered him, his head coming to rest on Bhagwan’s thigh.

“It’s OK,” he smiled, “you are my lost brothers.” Andy turned away and swallowed back the tears. He was getting too soft in his old age. He fastened his seatbelt and hesitantly started the engine, checking that he could position the gears, before he set off, slowly, down the steep stony road. Three hours: that wasn’t so long really. He chanced a glance to his left and saw that Bhagwan had tipped some water onto the almost dry sock and was tenderly wiping Dan’s face with it. He quickly turned his attention back to the road ahead.

“We’ve not always been close,” he explained. “I did something really stupid when I was young and Dan covered up for me. He’s always done that, you know? Taken the blame when it was my fault. I got him into so much trouble at school sometimes. I’d go off on some mad thing or other and he’d just follow, idiot.”

“Not idiot. He is the younger brother, yes? This is what we do.”

Andy laughed. “Yes, that is what younger brothers do. We’ve got another brother too—three years older than me—but we never felt the need to always be getting in the way of whatever he was up to. Still don’t now, as a matter of fact.”

“You two are the same. He is different to you perhaps, your other brother?”

“Very much so. Me and Dan—we like the same music, football team, girls. Other than Adele. She is stunning, of course, but she’s always been off limits. And their little girl. Honestly, Bhagwan, you wouldn’t believe how beautiful she is! She has the darkest brown eyes and she just sort of looks up at you, blinking those big eyes. She’s going to be a heart-breaker when she grows up, for sure. And she’s started to talk now too. She shouts ‘Addy’ whenever I go round to see them. She’s just awesome. And she’s growing up so fast. When she was born, she was so tiny you could fit her on your hand. Amazing!”