Sleeping Tigers (29 page)

“Mom really left Dad? Yeah, I’d say that’s different,” Cam agreed softly, and drifted off to sleep again.

I settled on the floor beside him and leaned my head against the wall. Lulled by the drone of the rain on the roof, I didn’t even change out of my damp clothes before falling asleep beside my little brother.

Cam was still sleeping soundly when I managed to unfold my stiff limbs the next morning. My mouth tasted like dead water buffalo.

I found the well in front of the inn. Water gushed from an iron pipe. The mountain water was icy, but I forced myself to hang my head beneath the spray, gasping, and scrubbed beneath my t-shirt before brushing my teeth, trying not to swallow any water. Probably too cold for parasites here, I reassured myself, just as I was startled by a white horse wandering through the courtyard with a bell tied around its neck.

As the animal reached the edge of the courtyard and nosed among some tall weeds, the young Nepalese woman who had tended the fire last night jumped out from behind the stone wall and grinned at me, revealing a Jack-O-Lantern’s scattered arrangement of teeth. In this light, I could see that she was only a girl, really, still in her teens, but with an old woman’s hunched, narrow shoulders.

The girl introduced herself as “Didi.” When I smiled, she pointed at my comb. I gave it to her.

To my surprise, Didi offered to comb my hair. Her touch was delicate and she hummed as she worked, exclaiming now and then over my hair’s texture and color. Or perhaps she was only commenting on the knots? There was no way to know, but I thanked her anyway.

The young woman then led me into the kitchen, where she offered various breakfast options by pointing out scraps of food on the unwashed plates. I chose apple pancakes, thinking of Cam, and hot tea.

While I waited for the food, I tried my cell phone, but Jon was right: there was no coverage here. There didn’t appear to be anyone using a computer, either. Probably no Internet access. Damn it. How would I reach my mother, tell her that things were okay?

Not that they were, really. Maybe it was better if I couldn’t speak to her yet. I’d try hiking to a nearby village to call her later.

The pancakes had a smoky aftertaste, but otherwise were thick and grainy and delicious. Didi and I managed to communicate through sign language. She taught me some Nepali, too, giggling at my pronunciation.

Meanwhile, I wondered where Jon was. Had he spent the night here? Only Cam and I had been in the men’s bunk room; on the way downstairs, I’d ducked into the women’s room to get a change of clothes and my travel kit, and saw Fernando curled against one of the German redheads beneath a muslin sheet, his head cradled between her small freckled breasts.

After breakfast, Didi went to work in the kitchen, squatting to scrub the dishes in a rubber bucket full of cold water. I climbed the stairs with a mug of tea and a bowl of oatmeal for Cam. To my horror, I found him quaking beneath his pile of blankets, shaking so hard that he had to clutch the wool to his chin to keep the blankets around his shoulders.

I knelt beside him to force a few sips of tea between his lips, but Cam was shivering too violently. The liquid flowed out of the corner of his mouth, shiny on his dry skin.

I tried to sit my brother up, to spoon a little tea into him that way and get it to stay down, but Cam was too heavy for me to lift. I finally laid him down again and thought hard, biting my own lip as Cam’s mouth shivered open, exposing his swollen tongue and yellow teeth.

Cam’s breath stank of sulfur, which made me wonder whether he had been drinking from the hot springs. But wasn’t there also some parasitic infection that could be diagnosed by those rotten egg burps?

I ran into my room to dig through my backpack. My mother, always paranoid about bees and wasps crawling into soda cans, had packed half a dozen straws in a plastic bag. I took one out and pocketed it.

Back in Cam’s room, I tugged my brother to a half-sitting position, leaning him against my lap. Then I put the straw in the teacup, sucked some of the liquid up, and held a finger to the end of the straw as I moved the tube to Cam’s mouth.

I used my free hand to squeeze Cam’s lips into an “o,” inserted the straw, and lifted my finger a little at a time off the end of it, tapping the straw shut every half second so the liquid would travel just a few drops at a time down my brother’s throat. I’d added a good amount of sugar to the tea; I hoped this might revive him. It was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to get him to a clinic in this condition.

I fed the entire cup of tea to Cam this way, moving the straw back and forth between the cup and his mouth. I didn’t want to shock his system by giving him too much at once; I decided to give him one cup of tea, then wait half an hour. Perhaps next I could try him on some runny oatmeal with salt.

Cam needed to be hydrated enough so that I could leave him here tomorrow while I went back to Pokahara to find a doctor and a pharmacy. I couldn’t bear to do it tonight; I didn’t like the idea of walking alone down those tricky mountain paths—the thought of the bridge made me shudder—from the village and back. Plus, the trip would take eight hours. My muscles were still so sore that the idea of hiking that distance even in daylight made me wince. But what other choice did I have?

I sighed and leaned my head against the wall. Was Cam shivering less? No, just a moment between spasms. I hoped David would be able to diagnose Cam by phone. He might even be able to suggest medications available at one of the pharmacies in Pokhara I’d noticed along the main drag. Or I’d see a doctor at one of those tourist health centers. But wouldn’t a doctor want me to get a stool sample, bring it in? Thinking of everything I had to do—and of everything that might go wrong in a country like this— made me suddenly feel light-headed and nauseous.

My head ached, probably from the altitude. I had no idea how much time had gone by, but Cam was still shaking and sweat poured down his face and neck. Helplessly, I watched my brother twitch and rock on the floor, his head jouncing on my legs, while I waited for the tea to work its magic.

Then another possible remedy occurred to me: I slid Cam’s backpack across the wooden floor and eased his head onto it from my lap. I lay down beside him and, as quickly as I could, lifted his blankets and rolled beneath them, trying to keep my face away from the filthy wool and hoping Cam had nothing contagious. I pressed my body against his, immediately feeling the burn of his skin through our clothes.

Soon, the combination of the tea and my body heat did the trick. My brother’s shivering subsided. I lay my head against his shoulder and heard the beating of Cam’s heart beneath the blankets. Maybe the worst was over.

Chapter
fifteen

C
am drifted in and out of consciousness during the next twenty-four hours. His sleep was punctuated by a raspy cough, and he left the bed only to crab walk into the corner of his room on all fours and use the pot I’d borrowed from Didi. I stayed with him, descending the steep wooden stairs only while Cam slept to empty the pot and ask Didi to prepare foods I could give my brother in small doses.

My brother was clearly too sick to go anywhere or to be left alone. During his worst spells over the next two days, I forced him to eat and drink a little at a time, then slept with my back curled against his, rolling away whenever his fever broke and sweat seeped like rain from his skin. At first I also tried pressing a cold damp cloth to his head, dipping it into a small tin pan I’d filled with water, but Cam irritably tossed his head and the cloth always slipped away.

Didi offered various healing potions of her own. I accepted them on faith, muddy-looking pastes that stank of herbs I didn’t recognize, and mixed them into Cam’s oatmeal and tea to disguise the taste. She also helped me learn vocabulary: “
chiura
” for beaten rice, “
phul
” for egg, “
tsampa
” for a gruel made of toasted barley flour, “
dal bhat tarkari
”for lentil soup, and “
thukpa
” for a rich beef broth with pasta strips.

The few villagers who passed the house whenever I was outside pumping water at the well in the courtyard paid me little attention, other than a grinning “Namaste” accompanied by a slight bow. I saw little of the other lodgers, either. The girls seemed to be volunteering with Domingo, Melody, and Jon; they set out early each morning and came back sweaty, sunburned, and covered in dirt, their fingernails black crescents from mulching, weeding, and pruning the small trees. I still hadn’t been down to see the nursery and orchards.

My second afternoon at the lodge, I came outside to wash in the courtyard and saw Domingo and Melody washing after their day’s labor. Afterward they put on white cotton clothing and performed yoga exercises in the courtyard.

The villagers gathered to watch. The Nepalese women were hunched beneath firewood on their backs or balanced children on their hips; they tittered with hands over their mouths at the odd sight. The older children invented their own yoga antics, knocking into each other and falling to the stones, while the men leaned on walking sticks and spat betel juice on the ground.

Of course, I knew that I must make almost as entertaining a spectacle with my fancy toiletries kit. I soon gave up on taming my hair, which in this damp, hot climate sprang out from my head in corkscrew curls. I soon gave away my makeup and earrings as well. All of that seemed so superfluous here. All I had left was a wooden comb and my toothbrush, its bristles now a brilliant rust color from the iodine tablets I used to purify my drinking water.

Hour melted into hour. I couldn’t tell whether Cam was any better or not. He didn’t seem to be any worse, yet I couldn’t bear the idea of leaving him to find help. I waited for a sign that he was mending or getting worse so that I’d know what to do; meanwhile, I grew increasingly disoriented by the fragmented schedule of caring for him.

I woke on the third night to discover a white thumbnail moon tacked to the black sky over the mountains. Another time, I scrambled out of the blankets to get dressed for breakfast and discovered Domingo and Melody eating dinner. The violent lightning storms usually began some time in early afternoon; the heaviest rains typically fell just before dark. I sat or lay beside Cam by the hour, watching the changing light and the shifting patterns of rain through the spattered plastic across the window.

The fourth night, I was roused by the sound of hail on the tin roof. I breathed in the heavy mildewed air of the leaky stone lodge and experienced a sharp, almost physical memory of lying next to Cam in the bedroom of the summer cottage on Frye Island in Maine.

Our last summer there–the summer before I started junior high and my father decided to sell the cottage–my brother and I built an entire fairy city out of twigs and stones on the tiny, dappled beach below the cottage. Day after day, we added towers and turrets and walls, embedding the outer walls with tiny blue stones from the lake.

Cam and I talked then about how we’d soon be old enough to run away and live in a foreign land with no rules to follow, no jobs to do, no family but ourselves, no clocks but our stomachs. Now, at last, it seemed as if Cam had succeeded in doing that, and I’d followed. But I felt like an unwilling playmate; I just wanted to go home.

I sat up in the dim morning light, hail thundering in my ears, and shifted my weight to cradle Cam’s head in my lap. All around us, previous lodgers had tacked magazine photographs to the walls. One ad for “tenderly Korean Airlines” showed an Asian woman serving a drink to a Western business traveler.

Above that hung a faded world map, where a former lodger had circled our position on the globe in ink and written, “You are here. Now what?”

Now what? Now purgatory, I thought, something I’d never imagined while making all of those urgent preparations to get on a plane and find my brother. I drifted off again, still sitting up, and woke when the sun fingered the edges of the plastic-covered window. The plastic was oily and pink in the new dawn light. There was no sound outdoors. What had awakened me?

Blearily, I rubbed my eyes and scanned the room, and was shocked to see a monk in scarlet robes bowing towards us, his hands pressed together, Jon hovering just behind him. I hoped the monk wasn’t offering Cam his last rites. Both men disappeared before I could gather my wits together and confront them.

Cam, meanwhile, finally had cooled off and was sleeping peacefully. I eased his head onto a pillow I had made out of one of my shirts, then settled in beside him and slept, too.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was lying alone and sweating in a pool of sunlight. Cam sat cross-legged near the window, meditating with his open hands relaxed on his bony knees, his eyes closed. I sat up and waited to speak until he opened his eyes several minutes later.

“You’re up!” I observed, pulling on my sneakers. “How do you feel?”

He smiled at me peacefully. “The fever’s down and my headache’s almost nil. What a relief. My head’s been in a fucking vise grip these past few days. What’d you do, Jordy, call in the Marines?”

“No Marines. Only me. Hungry?”

Cam shook his head and patted his sunken belly. He had put on the t-shirt and shorts I had washed for him and dried on a line strung across the room. Cam had also made an effort to comb his hair. “Not yet. You go. Eat and get some air. You look like shit.”

“Ditto.”

Cam offered me a crooked grin. “At least we’re a matched set,” he said before closing his eyes again.

His breathing soon became so regular that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. I glanced out the window. By the cloudless blue of the sky, it must be mid-morning. I gathered my things and went downstairs, where I washed at the courtyard faucet and then sat in the kitchen while Didi boiled water for tea and eggs.

I had brought my calendar down to the kitchen. Five more days until my flight out of Kathmandu. Time was running out. But how could I possibly broach the subject of Paris with Cam? Was he well enough? He’d have to be. I didn’t have a choice.

I trudged back upstairs carrying a bamboo tray loaded with a bowl of oatmeal, a plate of apple pancakes, two hard-boiled eggs, and two cups of black tea. It had been so hot and smoky in the kitchen that my eyes burned and sweat streamed between my shoulder blades.

Cam was still meditating, palms cupped loosely on his knees, eyes shut tight. His fingers were long, like mine and our mother’s and Paris’s, but his ragged, untrimmed nails were embedded with a week’s worth of dirt. I resisted the urge to run back downstairs for a pot of hot water for his hands and simply divided the food in half. If I were going to catch whatever illness or parasites Cam had, I’d already done the damage by lying next to him these past few nights. No point in worrying about germs now.

I studied my brother closely, debating how to raise the subject of Paris and her welfare. Cam might say he felt better, but he still looked unwell. His eyelids were a bruised purple and his pale skin was flaking around the corners of his eyes and mouth. He was so thin that the flat planes of his cheekbones shone through his waxy skin.

“Hey,” I said. “Open your eyes. Time to quit contemplating Nirvana and start eating it.”

Cam obliged, smiling at the sight of the knife and fork. “Utensils! How civilized.”

“God knows, it’s a losing battle around here.” I held a plate out to him, but Cam’s hands remained on his knees, trembling slightly. “Come on,” I said. “Enough fasting. You need to build back your strength. And these are apple pancakes, see?”

“Sorry. No can do. I feel like I’m going to puke.” Cam unfolded his legs and stretched out on the blankets.

Guiltily, I ate two of the pancakes and swallowed some black tea. Then I bundled a shirt beneath Cam’s head to raise it a little before spooning oatmeal into his mouth. To my surprise, he ate without resistance, chewing with the methodical, steady rhythm of a ballplayer with a chunk of tobacco.

Again, I saw Paris’s tiny profile superimposed on her father’s gaunt, handsome face. My heart ached for her, and for my brother, too, because he wanted to deny himself the joy of knowing his child.

“You and your daughter look alike when you eat,” I told Cam. “She has your cheekbones and the same fierce terrier look when she’s mad or when she’s eating. She’s a lot neater than you are, though,” I joked, wiping his chin with a cloth Didi had sent up with the tray.

I put a straw in his tea and Cam slurped the hot liquid up noisily, giving no sign that he’d heard me say anything.

“You’re not really feeling any better, are you?” I fretted. “I should get you to a clinic now that you’re well enough to travel.”

“I don’t need a doctor. It’s just Delhi belly, Jordan. Every Asian traveler’s lament. Had the same thing last time I was in India. Calcutta! What a cesspool! And I am better. I couldn’t even see straight yesterday.” Cam rolled over onto one elbow. “Guess I have you to thank for that. Where is everyone, anyway?”

“At the nursery, I suppose. I think Jon must be living down there. I’ve hardly seen him.” I pushed the tray aside. “What bugs me is that nobody tried to get you any medical help. You could have died, Cam. You were seriously dehydrated.”

He shook his head. “Don’t blame them. They knew that I came here to get centered, sort of start my life over. They were respecting my solitude.”

“Unlike me.”

“Right.” He fiddled with the tattered hem of a blanket. “So why are you really here, Jordan?”

“Like you don’t know.” I sighed. “I came to talk to you about Paris.”

“Who?”

“Your daughter. That’s what Nadine named her.”

“Stupid name.”

“Look, are you going to talk seriously, or not? Because, if not, I’ve got better things to do than sit around here wiping your face.”

“Sure. I’m all ears.” My brother laughed, a sharp bark. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

I nodded. I was running out of time; I had to talk to Cam now, about all of it. “Well, first of all, you should know that I initially came to San Francisco not only because I needed to put some distance between myself and Peter, but because I had a health scare, too, and it changed everything for me.”

He stared at me, his blue eyes enormous. “What sort of scare?”

Even after so many months, it was difficult for me to say it. “The Big C. Breast cancer.”

“Are you kidding me, Jordy? When? What happened?” Cam tried to sit up, groaned, and settled for a half-reclining position against the wall behind him. “My gut’s sore,” he said gruffly, waving a hand when I looked alarmed. “I’m fine! But what about you?”

“I’m fine now, too, but it was a hairy ride for a while.”

“Tell me,” he said, his blue eyes focused with unnerving intensity on my face.

I had to struggle to keep my voice calm. Being with my brother during these past few fractured days had led me to keep remembering the time he saved me from drowning for love under the ski jump. Now that he was better, or at least coherent, I wanted another turn at sanctuary. But Cam couldn’t give that to me yet.