That Savage Water (4 page)

Without my bags, the cool of the midday breeze hits the damp of my shirt. I feel the lightness that comes from having set down the heaviest loads, the freedom of moving forward unencumbered.

Outside the rear of the station, we stand on an abandoned platform of cracked asphalt. Leggy weeds flower in the baking sun; pigeons warble somewhere in the eaves. Steel tracks wander the yard unused like the ruts of forgotten wagons. There is a quiet here that feels almost rural. I look out at the yard's fence line, to the clusters of soot-caked buildings and edifices of peeling advertisements for Punjabi action films and soda brands. Hitched to an orange cart, the semitonal haw of a donkey tumbles the fence from a side street. From beneath the haze emerge the spired domes and sunburnt turrets of the Emperor's Mosque, the low wail of the noontime call to prayer. Farther still in the distant hills, those prisoners of Peshawar running free. What trains were pulled along these tracks, I think. What massacred people?

Come this way – Sahir jumps onto the gravel hugging the rail ties so solid and brimful with history – Quickly, Shane. This way!

To our right, a row of carriages pulls from the station; an engine chugs and draws, heaving its massive weight forward. As it accelerates, a line of men sprints beside it, grabbing onto the handholds, leaping up and inside. One after the other as the train speeds up, the men are pulled up to the roof by the hands of those crouching on top, their shalwars flapping in the breeze.

We men love to take chances, don't we? – Sahir looks back at me – You must take risks to feel the full rewards of freedom, don't you agree?

He flashes a grin, startling and familiar. Behind him, the train capped with turbaned men disappears into the hot smog of Lahore.

MAGHRIB – 4:59 PM

I remember that feeling of relief when Mr. Mason's texts began arriving to my phone as well. He had the numbers of all the skiers on the team to reach us in case we lost track of time or wandered off-piste, to rein in an energetic flock of boys released across the mountainside. Relief, I remember, galvanized into a kind of pride I could only share with Adrian. I remember walking through the hallways, taller, dragging my hand along the lockers, trying to suppress a grin.


Nice practice today. Feeling more confident?


Yeah, felt like I improved my approach a lot.


You're not as brave as the others. You play it safe. It shows in your speed.


I like to know what I'm doing before I try a new trick. Speed's fine, I guess.


Risk isn't for everyone. We'll have to loosen you up next time.


Yeah, I could use that. I tighten up when I'm nervous.


Bet you're tight a lot of places :)

Something drew down in Adrian's face as he read, the muscles around his lips tightening into the flexes of a scowl.

You ever send him that picture? – I asked – I'm thinking I should send him one too.

It's true – Adrian stepped back, suddenly bolder – You don't take enough chances. That's what makes you such a lousy skier anyways. If it were up to you, you'd just follow in my tracks the whole way down.

What? No way.

You can't even do a simple spread eagle. And the whole team has to baby you on a twist.

Fine, I won't take one. Who even cares?

That night at practice the snow was ice crystals and pellets; they shot through the air like artillery, soaked our jackets and formed a stubborn drag our skis resisted. I didn't ride the lift with Adrian. I watched him a few chairs ahead scraping at the slush on his ski with his pole, the slope's lights dim aureoles behind the blizzard. Later, I looked down to see Mr. Mason coaching Adrian at the kicker. I felt sick, snapped in two, when Adrian launched into the air, spun and landed a 360. I watched Mr. Mason ski down and shake him by his shoulders, cheering. The snow's wetness permeated my gloves, my jacket, my hoodie, my T-shirt to my skin, the chairlift carrying me deeper into the clouds.

Two weeks later, Adrian found me by my locker. His eyes were red with the remnants of tears he'd wiped away quickly, his posture a strange blend of the macho I admired him for and the skulking of a scraped-kneed boy.

I'm off the team – his lashes were damp clumps – Fuck those motherfuckers. Suspended too.

What do you mean? Who?

Mr. Mason and Mr. Lucas. I just had a meeting in the principal's office. All three called me in. Cocksuckers kicked me off the team.

What? What for?

It was just an old roach, not even a joint. Mr. Lucas caught me behind the portable yesterday. He took me to the office right away, stoned as hell – he rubbed his thumb along the metal edge of my open locker – You've got to help me, Shane. I'm a dick for saying you were a shit skier, but you've got to help me. I'm not giving up Turin for one lousy roach – he sniffed; it sounded like he loaded a rifle – Did you save those messages? The ones from Mr. Mason?

I remember the hallway turning dark and tubular, red as guts, the doorway at the end a far and unreachable galaxy. In my ears I heard the ski lift ratcheting us up to a peak we'd never skied or ever dared to.

It was the right thing to do, to help Adrian, I persuaded myself, though for nights I didn't sleep or slept fitfully, waking in tangled intervals embroidered with craving and dread. Success begs to be shared, I reasoned, so we should abandon our fear, we should face the enemy. Square and emboldened, I grew to want Turin for Adrian as much as he did. I fortified his plan because I feared losing him from the team, feared holding a secret I couldn't share with anyone if he left. We agreed to show the messages to our parents, to allow them to contact school authorities, to confront Mr. Mason together.

Still, in memory, those days are a collection of images edited together like old camcorder video. The way my mother's fork touched her plate as it trembled, how she left the pots in the sink and went to bed early. How in the meeting Mr. Mason was stone-faced and I searched him for fissures of anger, betrayal, hurt, but found none. Pillared between our parents, we shielded our phones in our palms, charged and sweaty with evidence. How Adrian was asked to load his photographs onto a laptop, to stand squinting beneath the alien light of the projector as it cast a pale image of his bony torso in boxer shorts onto the chalkboard. How I was asked to stand and do the same for the images on mine. Both of us were silent, teary-eyed travellers in confrontation with a part of the world we'd dropped ourselves into yet couldn't comprehend, a planet abuzz with such strangeness it paralyzed us to the bone. How the principal's voice crumbled the air at last saying,
That's fine now, boys. That will do.
How the clock above us froze in the fluorescents, how the texture of shame knotted the carpets, the chalk dust, the sound of handcuffs clicking shut. How neither of us could lift ourselves to look as the policemen led Mr. Mason from the room. How the red rotation of the cruiser's lights flashed off the classroom's unfamiliar surfaces. How the guilt of a consequence could be so much worse than the crime.

Adrian and I were asked to be present for the arraignment hearing. The list of charges looped in my head like the coaching mantras I replayed before a downhill run:
Luring and invitation to sexual touching involving minors. Commission and possession of child pornography.

You sent him those kinds of photos? – I whispered.

Adrian toyed with the end of his tie – Who cares?

A strange expression played around his face and it took me a moment to notice. He looked over at me and smiled without smiling, running his tongue across his teeth, newly smooth, porcelain-straight.

Holy shit – I whispered.

Mr. Mason pled not guilty and posted his bail.

ISHA – 6:25 PM

The most special thing about Pakistan is that we men are free to do as we please – Sahir lights a cigarette and kicks an empty bottle through the stalky weeds in the gravel – Do you smoke?

No, thank you.

We rule the land as birds over a valley. We are free to jump onto the tracks, to chase whatever train we wish to catch. Do you see what I mean?

That's why I ski, to find a piece of that feeling – I answer. A feeling like I've left the earth for a moment, flown, gained a softer perspective of snow and ice and blazing altitude, to sub-due something powerful, force it into forgiving me.

I have always wished to ski – Sahir says – Yet that is dangerous too. A few days ago in Kashmir an avalanche swallowed nearly two hundred soldiers. They ski down the glaciers from post to post with their rifles, the highest military base in the world. Do you believe that? Guarding the mountains as if someone would steal them.

Dangerous – I say – There is nowhere safe in the universe.

With his cigarette Sahir gestures out at the reddish haze above the city, the vibrations of the muezzin's calls crippling the dusk – May I ask why you came here? Why Pakistan?

Clouds of crystalline powder shower the slope as the metal edges of our skis shave the alpine skin to blue flesh. Utter wilderness and exhilaration, to explore the exploded heartbeat instead of fleeing from it. To find freedom from gravity, from consequences. Although a decade ago, I want Adrian to know that when the news came on, Mr. Mason's face was a cyan-magenta-yellow rendering above the text: ACCUSED TEACHER KILLED BY TRAIN, LAYS HIMSELF ON TRACKS DAYS BEFORE TRIAL. That I cried for us all as I read and vomited until I was hoarse. That I lay at the toilet's pedestal, heaving and exhausted, that I ran my astringent tongue across my teeth and thought of him. That I nurtured no resentment, no envy, when years later I heard he'd made the team for Turin. That I wheeled a friend's television seven blocks in a shopping cart to the house where I boarded in college to watch his qualifying round. That I gasped when I saw his skis contact ice and his legs fly out from under him and his body flail above the rippled braid of mounded snow, an impossible matrix of limbs and poles and catastrophe. That I felt it all for him as if it had been me.

Have you ever heard of ghosts? They're thin and white and made of air. They follow you to the ends of the earth crying out for things you can't give. I thought they couldn't follow me here but they did.

They will only leave you in peace once you submit – the blue of Sahir's eyes is clear as an iceberg – Yes, ghosts. We in Pakistan know them well but it is in both of our interests that we learn to coexist. We must strive to become better men, no matter the cage of our past. What is wrong? You look as though your mule has run. Are you sad for something?

No – I say – Just done, just through with phantoms. Tired and anxious. I want to ski.

Your train too – Sahir says, standing – We must begin looking for your friend.

The departure hall seems aged ten years. Families sprawl asleep amid the baggage; swarms of insects tick against the ceiling fans, their husks piling the corners of the floor in drifts. Re-entering the station, I breathe in that same feeling I had when stranded at school late at night after practice. Something dark and empty coated the familiar corridors yet made them seem kinder, less school somehow, more sanctuary. I try to picture Sahir's boyhood days, the classrooms he studied and recited in, the moths that flicked along the sil s as he chanted the Koran or memorized the dates of old massacres, the ghosts of his country stalking the land beyond the window.

You see, your things are safe – Sahir leads me into the baggage room. My skis and duffel bag are propped in the corner, dim relics in a museum archive – If you like, I will carry them for you. Don't worry, I don't ask that you pay me, this is my pleasure.

Sahir runs his hands over the lacquered finish of the planks, reading the binding mechanism, thumbing the edges' razor.

And in here? – he weighs the duffel.

The boots. They're heavy. I'll take them.

He ignores me, hooking the straps over one shoulder. He tucks the skis beneath his arm, his grin the widest Cheshire – It really is my pleasure.

When we approach the main hall, Akram is propped against the wall staring at the platform congested with pigeons. Small and agile, he looks like a bespectacled tour guide in charge of an unruly gaggle of kids. He exhales when he sees me, comes to his feet and opens his arms for a hug.

Oh, my God, Shane. Can you believe this country? – his arms pull tight around me – We're supposed to be glad the British left but I can't see a single redeeming benefit if the trains don't run on time.

It's good you're here. I spent the day with Sahir.

Sahir stands at my side holding the skis, the duffel bag, looking on as though trying to decipher a code.


Assalaamu alaykum
– Akram gestures to him – But it's not fine, Shane. My train was supposed to arrive eight hours ago. You've been waiting all day and I'm afraid it's all for nothing. We can't even go to Islamabad.

What? What for?

The expedition's been cancelled. That bloody prison break, didn't you hear? The Taliban has freed the lot of them, terrorists and kidnappers, isn't that right? The Consulate wants us out. Too dangerous, they say. Well how bloody dangerous is a glacier anyway? You won't find Al-Qaeda on skis, will you? I'm sorry you came all this way, but it's finished. Awful, I know.

Finished? That's it?

Adrian's fuming. You can't imagine how livid he is. The poor man is convinced he'll never get to ski another day in his life. I don't blame him. But thank God you came when you did. This train is the Samjhauta leaving for Attari. We'll be back to civilization in under an hour if we can catch it. What a hellhole. We'd have been better off in Nepal despite the Maoists. Come, I've already bought you a ticket.

The departure hall reverberates with the announcer's voice amplified off the heat and stone. Carriages creak and snap at their hitches, their wheels popping free of inertia as the train begins to roll.