Ghost Story
I don’t believe in ghosts,” old Potter growled. “Not here, not now; but hear that wind? The locals call it the voice of the long insect, because they won’t say snake. They say snake, because they won’t say ghost, demon or whatever...the raksha. They won’t say it because to say the name is to call the creature. And this stuff we’re drinking is called rakshi. Think there’s any connection? He swirled the bottom half of the tea-glass of rakshi and threw it into the back of his throat, the way the locals did. “Didi!” he husked to the Nepali woman, who kept the wayside hut in which we were spending the night, “Aur ek-janna! Sorry, will you be having another?” he asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said. “I haven’t had meat either, not since I left Pokhara airport. I didn’t know how to ask for it. You’d think they’d offer it, but no. And I never even knew about the whiskey. Thanks!”
I’d been hustling in old Potter’s wake for three days, since the stony trail staggered up out of the Himalayan valley where the little airport was. I could out-hike the old guy, but until I caught up with him, at every village I’d found the two or three available carpets, which might have been for sale, rolled up against some wall, waiting for Potter on the return leg of this buying expedition.
“Wait till you try the jard,” he said, giving his glass to the hostess and motioning for me to do the same. “It’s a sort of cross between beer and porridge, made from the watered mash before distilling. They drink it for strength. If the mash is rice, rather than this sour corn you get all the time, it’s what the gods swill– rather like pear-juice with vitamins.”
“I’d like to try that,” I allowed. For a boy from Dublin, Virginia, I’d been doing pretty well in the villages since I came up from India. I’d just sing-song, “Carpet, carpet!” and a fan some one-rupee notes. You could practically steal genuine, hand-tied, yak’s wool carpets for less than the postage it took to send the generator of my Landrover back to the British for repairs. But Potter had one advantage I didn’t. He spoke the language. I’d heard about him back in the capital. Either he’d been something with the British consulate or USAID, maybe the Peace Corps, unless you were foolish enough to believe the CIA story.
But I was taking the lead from this point on. “The map says that the way around Dhaulagiri peak branches off to the north about a mile up the way. Guess I’ll be ahead of you on the trail from here on in, if that’s the way you were thinking of going. I don’t suppose there will be all that many rugs, though they say not many buyers have been up that way.”
“That’s Mustang,” Potter said, “the little Tibetan kingdom. The government doesn’t bother them as long as they don’t raise an army and bother anyone else. But a solitary traveller could find himself pretty dead up there, just for his shoes. I don’t know that I’d recommend you go that path.”
“You’re heading that way,” I snapped back.
“I might,” he said. “But I have friends.”
“Maybe you need friends, but I can take care of myself.” I had him blocked in a corner and he knew it. “I can take care of the rug market up there, too. Of course, if you enjoy the walk and just like to visit your friends....”
Potter couldn’t think of anything to say, so he was quiet for a minute. Finally he changed the subject and came out with, “They brag on their water. Say the best comes from farthest up. But up there I wouldn’t drink what they brew from it.” He accepted a filled glass from the Didi and contemplated, creasing his tan.
“Why’s that, then?” I asked, and took a sip of mine.
“I don’t believe in ghosts and yetis and that sort of thing, not here, not now. A Brahmin chappie down in a valley once told me that if the yeti comes across you asleep, he kills you without even thinking a second thought– maybe not a first one.” He paused to pantomime a belch. “I know– what’s the yeti to the likes of you and me? I couldn’t agree more. But one autumn day I was at the crest of a pass and feeling like a nap, with all the Solu valley waiting down and around the bend. I’d been tasting the harvest run of rakshi up and down the mountain and couldn’t keep up in the thin air. My Sherpa had gone on too fast. I looked around at the rhododendron forest, where an inch of old snow was drying back into the air. Not one footprint, other than my coolie’s mark, could be seen anywhere, on the trail or off. It occurred to me that no human foot had been set on this bit of land in a devilish long time. The conviction took hold that little, monkey-furred yeti was somewhere nearby, with his backwards feet and pointy head. I didn’t bother about a rest after all and caught up with the Sherpa and my gear in about twenty minutes, down the way. By that time I didn’t believe in the yeti again. But, if I go back up there, I’ll believe again, and maybe for good reason. Some reason, leastwise.” He tossed back the first half of his glass and gave a long gasp, ticking with his tongue like the mountain folk did, to show appreciation.
“I don’t know about that,” I said, “I’ll take my chances with the yeti and the opinions of Brahmin’s won’t make me lose sleep.” I tossed back a gulp of rakshi and, from chin to belt-buckle, I lit up like the Milky Way on Saturday night. “Sweet Jesus!” I managed to croak.
“Didi must have had the fire a bit warm when she distilled this lot. Gives it that peppery finish.” Potter observed, staring at his glass and swirling it again. “But don’t do that,” he said thoughtfully.
“No,” I said, surprised at the harshness of my voice. “No, it’s all right. Good stuff.”
“They say you oughtn’t drink too much corn liquor, because it’s so good that you’ll use up all the goodness due you and have nothing left but bad luck,” Potter said. “But what I meant was, don’t take your chances and don’t ignore friendly advice, not even, or maybe especially not advice from Brahmins. Didi set about poking in the little fireplace with a stick at that moment. Tangy smoke filled the space between us.
He went on. “I was doing a stretch down in the terai a couple of seasons back.”
“It’s too hot. There aren’t any rugs down there,” I said, still a little choked-up.
Potter laughed, “Hardly. This was in connection with several new strains of rice which were being introduced. Coals to Newcastle, really. Anyway, we were bunked-up for a spell at a place called Dhanuka, where Ram’s bow fell, if you follow the news– back in the Ramayana. The site’s holy, with a shrine. A longish time ago, some chap down in India had sought to reduce his karma by providing housing for pilgrims and had a dharmsala constructed there. That’s where we were settled. Now, the time honored plan for dharmsalas is the hollow square, entered by a single gate. The rooms all open onto a courtyard. It gets beastly hot in the terai, you know– a hundred and twenty, when the cows come home. If there should be a breeze to blow through the heavy bars on the window of your cell, it would be scorching. It was too hot to work, too dry to plow. The perfect time to talk with farmers about new varieties of seed.
“It gets on your tick, that heat– the dust, the flies, the constant crowd of little children with swollen bellies, watching you with big eyes. If you don’t have any innate vices to fall back on, the pressure produces new cracks in your personality, if you follow me. Old Torgelsen was a big, fleshy Nordic type, six foot in his sandaled feet, blonde hair, going thin, so his head would burn and he turned red in the sun. He specialized in irrigation– hydraulic engineering. There wasn’t much call for his services, as the water hadn’t arrived. And the largest earth-moving tool available was one of those hoes they call a kodalo. We were the best thing that had happened in the district since Ram’s bow fell out of the sky. And if that happened during monsoon, then we were the most entertainment to occur in the dry-season ever.
“Old Torgelsen wasn’t taking it all as well as he might. He couldn’t get around the language. It didn’t bother me so much, as I generally go by the averages and just roll all north India into one sticky ball.
“Torgelsen, unfortunately, did what one just doesn’t do that afternoon, in the heat and the flies. Pandit, the Brahmin who was in charge of the dharmsala, came to sit with us after we’d been truckling about in puddles of our own sweat, followed by a jabbering claque. He was an acquisitive man, Pandit, who considered that the property of his guests was really safer with him. And he may have been half right, there. Anyway, he asked us how we were, how the day had been– one little question after another. He had requested previously to wear my watch, and I let him. He clearly felt he looked well in it, and he made no bones about letting me see the time whenever I took a fancy.
“Torgelsen was sitting cross-legged up on his charpoy, that sort of table-bed, you know. Pandit was playing about with the oddments Torg had set on the little table there– his watch, which he had taken off for the heat; a pencil or two; some papers to do with the job and a nice Chinese-made fountain pen. It annoyed Torg more than he liked to let on. He was close with his things. Anyway, Pandit slipped the pen into the breast pocket of his shirt. He wouldn’t have any use for it as a writing implement. He only signed his name every few years, but he probably liked to be seen wearing it. And, as he tucked the pen in there, old Torg took his sandal and slapped Pandit’s wrist.
‘“Put that back!” he snapped. It was the heat. Even Pandit knew that. But you don’t hit a body with your shoe unless you intend to spit on his grave shortly after. Not thereabouts, at least. Pandit was mortified and left, sans pen.
“That night, like every night, we toted some bedding out to the courtyard from our
hot-box rooms, hoping to catch a motion of air to sleep in. Usually there would be ten or fifteen of us, depending on the number of pilgrims who stopped by. Pandit would even leave the main gate open, in hopes a bit of air would find its way in like that. But it was no-go that night.
“Now, a certain number of sleepers always went up on the roof, but Torgelsen and I never did. I couldn’t have said why. We had the impression from Pandit that it wasn’t the thing to do. Something about a spot of unpleasantness which had occurred up there, about which our Pandit was very unclear. Why we gave it any credence, I really couldn’t say. But this night, the pavement radiated almost visible heat beneath our bodies and the lightest garment was like bearskin. Pandit, who was our usual guide in these matters, wasn’t about, as I say. I imagined he had gone to his home in the next village. So when Torgelsen, sat up abruptly, with an oath, and announced that he was bloody-well going to try the roof, I just trailed along, my ground-sheet over my arm.
“The roof was accessed by a stair within the corner of the building. Emerging at the top, we picked out way between the sleepers’ bodies scattered about in the dark. Though there was bright starlight, there was no moon and the other sleepers had all sacked out right at the head of the stairs. Torgelsen and I preferred the isolation of the bit of flat roof down the length of the building and around the turn. We spread out there in luxury and, after counting all the stars twice, I dropped off.
‘I woke from a terrible dream and sat up, like a trod-on hoe. Torgelsen snored a few feet away. I had dreamed that I was underwater, unable to breathe. And when I woke, I found I had been holding my breath. It was faintly embarrassing, after a fashion. “Breathe, you great, bloody-damn-fool!” I told myself, and lay back down, drugged with heat and weariness.
“The second time I woke to urgent shaking and Pandit’s hissing voice.
‘“Saahb, wake, wake! Wake yourself!” He had his face right close to mine and, as I took a shuddering gasp, I believe I must have taken in some of his breath. I had been dreaming again. This time the dream was that someone was smothering me with a pillow. It was dark and I lay on my back in the dream. A pair of arms held a pillow by the ends and pressed it tightly over my face. And then whoever it was brought his chest into play, laying on top of the pillow. His arms and chest were pale in the dark. I had stopped breathing again! Even at that moment, I couldn’t believe it had happened. I had never failed to breathe before and never since.
‘“You are sleeping here!” Pandit hissed. “Here you sleep! Here!”
“I was up and across the roof in the space of time it takes to think of it, down the stairs and in the middle of the courtyard standing, looking about. I thought about heading through the open gates of the hollow square, but the dark night beyond didn’t look that inviting. Pandit was right behind me with my ground-cloth.
‘He spread it and said, “You sleep here. Up there is not good. Sleep here.” I wasn’t disposed to debate. I fell onto the cloth, where it was spread among the other sleepers, and passed into peaceful oblivion.
“In the smudge of light dawn afforded, I dragged my things back to our little room and went out to perform ablutions before the heat seized hold again. It was a bit of time before I thought to look out for old Torg.
“He was where I had left him. Pandit hadn’t waked him the night before. No one would be waking him now. He wasn’t breathing. Not a mark on him, of course. They brought his body out by autogiro– chopper, don’t you know– to be returned to family somewhere. I gave his watch and pen to the holy man, who kept the shrine– for luck– and left the district myself. I don’t believe in ghosts, not here, not now. But I wouldn’t ignore friendly advice, particularly from a Brahmin, or slap anyone with a shoe or sleep on any roof again for any money.
“Didi, aur ek janna! And bring one for my friend, as well.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said. “I haven’t had meat either, not since I left Pokhara airport. I didn’t know how to ask for it. You’d think they’d offer it, but no. And I never even knew about the whiskey. Thanks!”
I’d been hustling in old Potter’s wake for three days, since the stony trail staggered up out of the Himalayan valley where the little airport was. I could out-hike the old guy, but until I caught up with him, at every village I’d found the two or three available carpets, which might have been for sale, rolled up against some wall, waiting for Potter on the return leg of this buying expedition.
“Wait till you try the jard,” he said, giving his glass to the hostess and motioning for me to do the same. “It’s a sort of cross between beer and porridge, made from the watered mash before distilling. They drink it for strength. If the mash is rice, rather than this sour corn you get all the time, it’s what the gods swill– rather like pear-juice with vitamins.”
“I’d like to try that,” I allowed. For a boy from Dublin, Virginia, I’d been doing pretty well in the villages since I came up from India. I’d just sing-song, “Carpet, carpet!” and a fan some one-rupee notes. You could practically steal genuine, hand-tied, yak’s wool carpets for less than the postage it took to send the generator of my Landrover back to the British for repairs. But Potter had one advantage I didn’t. He spoke the language. I’d heard about him back in the capital. Either he’d been something with the British consulate or USAID, maybe the Peace Corps, unless you were foolish enough to believe the CIA story.
But I was taking the lead from this point on. “The map says that the way around Dhaulagiri peak branches off to the north about a mile up the way. Guess I’ll be ahead of you on the trail from here on in, if that’s the way you were thinking of going. I don’t suppose there will be all that many rugs, though they say not many buyers have been up that way.”
“That’s Mustang,” Potter said, “the little Tibetan kingdom. The government doesn’t bother them as long as they don’t raise an army and bother anyone else. But a solitary traveller could find himself pretty dead up there, just for his shoes. I don’t know that I’d recommend you go that path.”
“You’re heading that way,” I snapped back.
“I might,” he said. “But I have friends.”
“Maybe you need friends, but I can take care of myself.” I had him blocked in a corner and he knew it. “I can take care of the rug market up there, too. Of course, if you enjoy the walk and just like to visit your friends....”
Potter couldn’t think of anything to say, so he was quiet for a minute. Finally he changed the subject and came out with, “They brag on their water. Say the best comes from farthest up. But up there I wouldn’t drink what they brew from it.” He accepted a filled glass from the Didi and contemplated, creasing his tan.
“Why’s that, then?” I asked, and took a sip of mine.
“I don’t believe in ghosts and yetis and that sort of thing, not here, not now. A Brahmin chappie down in a valley once told me that if the yeti comes across you asleep, he kills you without even thinking a second thought– maybe not a first one.” He paused to pantomime a belch. “I know– what’s the yeti to the likes of you and me? I couldn’t agree more. But one autumn day I was at the crest of a pass and feeling like a nap, with all the Solu valley waiting down and around the bend. I’d been tasting the harvest run of rakshi up and down the mountain and couldn’t keep up in the thin air. My Sherpa had gone on too fast. I looked around at the rhododendron forest, where an inch of old snow was drying back into the air. Not one footprint, other than my coolie’s mark, could be seen anywhere, on the trail or off. It occurred to me that no human foot had been set on this bit of land in a devilish long time. The conviction took hold that little, monkey-furred yeti was somewhere nearby, with his backwards feet and pointy head. I didn’t bother about a rest after all and caught up with the Sherpa and my gear in about twenty minutes, down the way. By that time I didn’t believe in the yeti again. But, if I go back up there, I’ll believe again, and maybe for good reason. Some reason, leastwise.” He tossed back the first half of his glass and gave a long gasp, ticking with his tongue like the mountain folk did, to show appreciation.
“I don’t know about that,” I said, “I’ll take my chances with the yeti and the opinions of Brahmin’s won’t make me lose sleep.” I tossed back a gulp of rakshi and, from chin to belt-buckle, I lit up like the Milky Way on Saturday night. “Sweet Jesus!” I managed to croak.
“Didi must have had the fire a bit warm when she distilled this lot. Gives it that peppery finish.” Potter observed, staring at his glass and swirling it again. “But don’t do that,” he said thoughtfully.
“No,” I said, surprised at the harshness of my voice. “No, it’s all right. Good stuff.”
“They say you oughtn’t drink too much corn liquor, because it’s so good that you’ll use up all the goodness due you and have nothing left but bad luck,” Potter said. “But what I meant was, don’t take your chances and don’t ignore friendly advice, not even, or maybe especially not advice from Brahmins. Didi set about poking in the little fireplace with a stick at that moment. Tangy smoke filled the space between us.
He went on. “I was doing a stretch down in the terai a couple of seasons back.”
“It’s too hot. There aren’t any rugs down there,” I said, still a little choked-up.
Potter laughed, “Hardly. This was in connection with several new strains of rice which were being introduced. Coals to Newcastle, really. Anyway, we were bunked-up for a spell at a place called Dhanuka, where Ram’s bow fell, if you follow the news– back in the Ramayana. The site’s holy, with a shrine. A longish time ago, some chap down in India had sought to reduce his karma by providing housing for pilgrims and had a dharmsala constructed there. That’s where we were settled. Now, the time honored plan for dharmsalas is the hollow square, entered by a single gate. The rooms all open onto a courtyard. It gets beastly hot in the terai, you know– a hundred and twenty, when the cows come home. If there should be a breeze to blow through the heavy bars on the window of your cell, it would be scorching. It was too hot to work, too dry to plow. The perfect time to talk with farmers about new varieties of seed.
“It gets on your tick, that heat– the dust, the flies, the constant crowd of little children with swollen bellies, watching you with big eyes. If you don’t have any innate vices to fall back on, the pressure produces new cracks in your personality, if you follow me. Old Torgelsen was a big, fleshy Nordic type, six foot in his sandaled feet, blonde hair, going thin, so his head would burn and he turned red in the sun. He specialized in irrigation– hydraulic engineering. There wasn’t much call for his services, as the water hadn’t arrived. And the largest earth-moving tool available was one of those hoes they call a kodalo. We were the best thing that had happened in the district since Ram’s bow fell out of the sky. And if that happened during monsoon, then we were the most entertainment to occur in the dry-season ever.
“Old Torgelsen wasn’t taking it all as well as he might. He couldn’t get around the language. It didn’t bother me so much, as I generally go by the averages and just roll all north India into one sticky ball.
“Torgelsen, unfortunately, did what one just doesn’t do that afternoon, in the heat and the flies. Pandit, the Brahmin who was in charge of the dharmsala, came to sit with us after we’d been truckling about in puddles of our own sweat, followed by a jabbering claque. He was an acquisitive man, Pandit, who considered that the property of his guests was really safer with him. And he may have been half right, there. Anyway, he asked us how we were, how the day had been– one little question after another. He had requested previously to wear my watch, and I let him. He clearly felt he looked well in it, and he made no bones about letting me see the time whenever I took a fancy.
“Torgelsen was sitting cross-legged up on his charpoy, that sort of table-bed, you know. Pandit was playing about with the oddments Torg had set on the little table there– his watch, which he had taken off for the heat; a pencil or two; some papers to do with the job and a nice Chinese-made fountain pen. It annoyed Torg more than he liked to let on. He was close with his things. Anyway, Pandit slipped the pen into the breast pocket of his shirt. He wouldn’t have any use for it as a writing implement. He only signed his name every few years, but he probably liked to be seen wearing it. And, as he tucked the pen in there, old Torg took his sandal and slapped Pandit’s wrist.
‘“Put that back!” he snapped. It was the heat. Even Pandit knew that. But you don’t hit a body with your shoe unless you intend to spit on his grave shortly after. Not thereabouts, at least. Pandit was mortified and left, sans pen.
“That night, like every night, we toted some bedding out to the courtyard from our
hot-box rooms, hoping to catch a motion of air to sleep in. Usually there would be ten or fifteen of us, depending on the number of pilgrims who stopped by. Pandit would even leave the main gate open, in hopes a bit of air would find its way in like that. But it was no-go that night.
“Now, a certain number of sleepers always went up on the roof, but Torgelsen and I never did. I couldn’t have said why. We had the impression from Pandit that it wasn’t the thing to do. Something about a spot of unpleasantness which had occurred up there, about which our Pandit was very unclear. Why we gave it any credence, I really couldn’t say. But this night, the pavement radiated almost visible heat beneath our bodies and the lightest garment was like bearskin. Pandit, who was our usual guide in these matters, wasn’t about, as I say. I imagined he had gone to his home in the next village. So when Torgelsen, sat up abruptly, with an oath, and announced that he was bloody-well going to try the roof, I just trailed along, my ground-sheet over my arm.
“The roof was accessed by a stair within the corner of the building. Emerging at the top, we picked out way between the sleepers’ bodies scattered about in the dark. Though there was bright starlight, there was no moon and the other sleepers had all sacked out right at the head of the stairs. Torgelsen and I preferred the isolation of the bit of flat roof down the length of the building and around the turn. We spread out there in luxury and, after counting all the stars twice, I dropped off.
‘I woke from a terrible dream and sat up, like a trod-on hoe. Torgelsen snored a few feet away. I had dreamed that I was underwater, unable to breathe. And when I woke, I found I had been holding my breath. It was faintly embarrassing, after a fashion. “Breathe, you great, bloody-damn-fool!” I told myself, and lay back down, drugged with heat and weariness.
“The second time I woke to urgent shaking and Pandit’s hissing voice.
‘“Saahb, wake, wake! Wake yourself!” He had his face right close to mine and, as I took a shuddering gasp, I believe I must have taken in some of his breath. I had been dreaming again. This time the dream was that someone was smothering me with a pillow. It was dark and I lay on my back in the dream. A pair of arms held a pillow by the ends and pressed it tightly over my face. And then whoever it was brought his chest into play, laying on top of the pillow. His arms and chest were pale in the dark. I had stopped breathing again! Even at that moment, I couldn’t believe it had happened. I had never failed to breathe before and never since.
‘“You are sleeping here!” Pandit hissed. “Here you sleep! Here!”
“I was up and across the roof in the space of time it takes to think of it, down the stairs and in the middle of the courtyard standing, looking about. I thought about heading through the open gates of the hollow square, but the dark night beyond didn’t look that inviting. Pandit was right behind me with my ground-cloth.
‘He spread it and said, “You sleep here. Up there is not good. Sleep here.” I wasn’t disposed to debate. I fell onto the cloth, where it was spread among the other sleepers, and passed into peaceful oblivion.
“In the smudge of light dawn afforded, I dragged my things back to our little room and went out to perform ablutions before the heat seized hold again. It was a bit of time before I thought to look out for old Torg.
“He was where I had left him. Pandit hadn’t waked him the night before. No one would be waking him now. He wasn’t breathing. Not a mark on him, of course. They brought his body out by autogiro– chopper, don’t you know– to be returned to family somewhere. I gave his watch and pen to the holy man, who kept the shrine– for luck– and left the district myself. I don’t believe in ghosts, not here, not now. But I wouldn’t ignore friendly advice, particularly from a Brahmin, or slap anyone with a shoe or sleep on any roof again for any money.
“Didi, aur ek janna! And bring one for my friend, as well.”