The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (51 page)

—Air here isn’t quite up to Switzerland, Ashley remarks. Might be the dryness. Or the dust. Or the cold. Hard to say, really.

Price looks at his bare plate.

—I don’t suppose we’ve had menus printed?

—They’re coming by yak train from Lhasa, Somervell says. They’ll be here in forty days.

Mills clatters in, shaking the snow from his broad shoulders as he takes the last camp chair. A pair of Sherpas serving as mess waiters bring in the sardines, lifting portions onto each plate with a large spoon.

—I doubt a menu has ever been printed here, Noel remarks. They’ve only two printing presses in the entire country. With each page carved by hand out of wooden blocks.

—Two presses, Ashley says, and all those holy books in the monasteries? They must be busy.

—Those books are all they print, Noel says. It’s said they have no written history for the last thousand years.

The colonel waves at one of the Sherpas and says something in Nepali, then addresses the table in English.

—I say, let’s start with the fizz. You fellows have all earned it.

The Sherpa gives each man an aluminum mug painstakingly deiced
over a spirit lamp. He fetches a green magnum bottle of champagne and uncorks it and wraps it in a dusty napkin. The Sherpa circles the table, rationing the wine carefully among the mugs. Ashley spears a sardine with his fork.

—No history at all?

—None has been found, Noel says. Those libraries have nothing but lamastic texts. One set of scriptures is a hundred volumes, a thousand pages per volume. Goes on the back of a dozen yaks. They’ve no time for anything else.

—Historyless, Ashley murmurs. That strikes me as jolly.

The colonel shakes his head.

—Jolly? I don’t see that living in ignorance of the past is jolly. Surely it condemns one to repeat mistakes.

—Strikes me as jolly, Price says.

—You two are only trying to get my blood up, the colonel says. For God’s sake, Price, you’re a teacher. Who has the quail?

—They’ve got two presses, Ashley says. So they can print only so much. They take religion over history. Seems sound to me.

—You’re an atheist, Price remarks.

There is much laugher.

—Soon to be a lamaist, Ashley says. I mean only that between wisdom and knowledge, one must choose wisdom.

Somervell lifts a piece of egg dubiously on the end of his fork.

—You’re presuming those books have wisdom. I presumed this egg was hard-boiled. It isn’t.

—We must send Kami to the Cordon Bleu, Ashley says. Let us start a subscription now.

—It’s the roarer cooker, Mills says. It takes about a case of paraffin to get a boil. And up here it’s a ten-minute egg.

The Sherpas circle with the third course. Tibetan mutton cutlets and tinned green peas warmed over a Primus burner. The colonel begins to prod Noel for anecdotes of his famous travels.

—That business about you in Tibet before the war, the colonel says. Let’s have the whole story.

Noel sips his champagne with practiced relish.

—It was back in ’13. I was in disguise.

He grins, putting a cube of cutlet into his mouth. He speaks in clipped sentences, directing his fork for emphasis.

—As a Mohammedan Indian, he continues. No Europeans being allowed in at the time, of course. Got within forty miles of Everest. Tibetan patrol caught up with us. Some chap fired a matchlock at me. Imagine, a matchlock. Frightful noise. Don’t know where the shot went, but it sounded like bloody armageddon. Must have been plenty of powder in there.

—You were the first foreigner to get near Everest? Mills asks.

Noel shakes his head. —The pundits got here first.

Noel smiles and leans back into his camp chair. He explains that fifty years ago the government of British India wished to survey the Tibetan territory to the north, but the country was hostile and Europeans were strictly forbidden from entering the kingdom. So the government trained Indians to survey Tibet disguised as pilgrims. The surveyors were called
pundit
s, a Hindi word for a learned man, and they were schooled in special surveying techniques so that no observer would recognize their labors. They entered Tibet at great peril, crossing remote and snow-blown passes at high altitude. The pundits counted distances in paces and recorded them by turning prayer wheels or spinning rosary beads; they learned to walk a mile in precisely two thousand paces, and on some journeys they walked two thousand miles.

—How many steps would that be? Noel wonders.

Price does not look up from his food. —Four million.

—With every step counted, Noel says. They hid compasses in amulets. Put boiling-point thermometers in walking sticks. Surveyed by evening stars, by sextant. At night they wrote all the figures down and rolled the paper inside those prayer wheels. Some were captured and tortured or killed, poor devils. Who’s pinched the sauce bottle?

The bottle is passed down the table and Noel douses his cutlet in brown sauce.

—There was one chap called Kinthup, he continues. Very game fellow. Sent to find out if the Tsanpo in Tibet was in fact the same river as the Brahmaputra. Damned big river, but no one knew where it started in the Himalaya. Kinthup was meant to get deep into the forest and cut blocks of wood in certain shapes, then send them sailing down the Tsanpo. Fifty logs a day. Survey captain in India had another chap watching downriver for the blocks for years.

—Exciting work, Ashley remarks, if one can get it.

Noel grins. —But the blocks never appeared. This fellow Kinthup had been taken prisoner in Tibet and sold a slave. Took him four years to get free. As soon as he escaped he went straight into the forest, cut the blocks and sent them downriver.

—Bravo, the colonel says. That’s the Indian soldier for you. Faithful to the core.

Noel swallows a bite. —Trouble was that no one was watching by then. Survey captain had gone back to England.

At the far end of the table, someone delivers the punch line to a bawdy joke and there is gleeful laughter. Ashley bends over his plate toward Noel.

—Was it the same river?

—Of course. Of course it was.

Noel takes a sip of champagne and shakes his head.

—It’s a strange country. Have you heard of Everest’s white lion? The Tibetans believe that a white lion lives on the summit of the mountain. The lion’s milk is supposed to be a panacea. Cures all problems physical and spiritual. No one’s ever gotten the milk. Except the Dalai Lama, of course. With his supernatural powers.

Price looks up from his plate. —The lion. When we first came in ’21, they thought we were climbing the mountain for her milk—

—Not far off, Somervell says.

—If it’s a question of divine right, Ashley remarks, perhaps our king should have a go.

The colonel frowns. —That’s different. We don’t ascribe magical powers to the king.

—Well, Price says, he’s the head lama of the Church of England. That’s something magical.

Noel shakes his head, squinting theatrically at Ashley.

—Now Walsingham, are you a brainy fellow like Price? Or are you the decent sort? I’ve seen you trading books with him. That’s the road to sin.

—I’m probably indecent.

—He’s thoroughly decent, Price counters. Did you ever bump into him under the blue lamp at Amiens? I’ll wager you didn’t. Though I say, Walsingham’s French is topping. Plows through Rabelais faster than you read
News of the World
. He may have learnt it from those mademoiselles.

—The blue lamp at Amiens, Noel repeats. Rum place, may have seen him there. Saw the Prince of Wales there once, smoking a cigar. Looked like him, anyway. They ought to have opened a Berlitz school in those brothels. Come to think of it, Price, all those damned French books in the camp library are yours. But we know you’re pure as the driven snow.

Ashley waves his hand in dismissal.

—Irrelevant. The
poules
all spoke English enough.

The table erupts. —Hear, hear! Noel bellows.

—I only chatted with them, Ashley says. Some were actually rather fascinating—

—But the white lion, Price insists. It isn’t rot. These folk beliefs are based on real things. It could be the snow leopard, for instance.

—Possibly, the colonel admits. Some are seen very high. They go after the bharal, and we’ve seen those up here. Have you heard of the snow leopard, Walsingham? Very rare. Only one white man’s ever laid eyes on them.

—Did he get the milk? Ashley asks.

There is riotous laughter, Noel roaring and wiping the tears from his eyes. Ashley’s laughter breaks into a wheezing cough.

—I suppose up there, Ashley adds, it would be ice cream.

Noel stands officiously and raises his mug.

—To the white lion of the snows, Noel toasts. May we find her and bring forth her dairy.

The British raise their mugs and drink. Only Price does not join in, staring blankly at the table. Ashley whispers in Price’s ear.

—You’re not after the lion?

Price smiles. His face is a patchwork of shadows under the swinging oil lamps.

—Not even in jest. May she remain a mystery.

Price raises his mug and drinks.

—Then you’re in favor of mysteries, Ashley says.

—It’s the summit we want, Price shrugs. We ought not ask for too much.

One morning as I pass the hostel’s front desk, the clerk summons me with a wave.

—Your package finally came.

He puts a FedEx envelope on the counter. I sit on a couch in the lobby and pull the envelope’s zipper, shaking out the contents. The brooch drops onto my lap along with a folded sheet of notebook paper.

Dear Tris,

Now you’re the best-dressed man in Europe. Hope you’ll still come back anyway.

Adam

I turn the brooch in my hands, running my fingers along the tarnished silver strands of the dragon’s body. The metal is worn and scratched, but otherwise the brooch resembles the one I saw in the nightclub. There is a small inscription in the silver on the reverse:
CVG,
the letters followed by a strange circular symbol.

I’d first seen the brooch when I searched the garage before traveling to London. Or had I seen it before? I think back to the seaside with my grandmother and I try to picture the brooch there, the twisted dragons glinting in the afternoon sun. But I can’t be sure.

I log on to the Internet on one of the lobby computers, searching for a specialist in Scandinavian jewelry who might be able to identify the brooch. I run searches using every term I can think of, but the only dealers I find are outside Germany. It’s already September 24 and I can’t waste time sending the brooch away. I run more searches with the term
Berlin
and I find the website of a jewelry designer whose name sounds Scandinavian. Among a section called “Replicas” I scroll through images of Viking jewelry.

The brooch is there. The plaited bodies of the warring creatures, the curled dragon’s head singing in exertion. It’s the same brooch but the style is different, the strands thicker, the dragon more realistically defined. The caption advertises
Brosche im Urnes-Stil, Sterling Silber
. I click on the
CONTACT
button. The address is Arthouse Tacheles, Oranienburger Straβe 54–56a, a short walk from the hostel.

I grab my bag and dash south across the intersection.