Nima Read online

  ADAM POPESCU

  NIMA

  A NOVEL

  AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK

  The Unnamed Press

  P.O. Box 411272

  Los Angeles, CA 90041

  Copyright © 2019 Adam Popescu

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected]. Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.

  www.unnamedpress.com

  Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of Unnamed Media LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Cover Artwork by James Chia Han Lee

  Designed & typeset by Jaya Nicely

  ISBN: 978-1-944700-85-0

  eISBN: 978-1-944700-96-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  NIMA

  1

  IT’S STILL DARK, BUT WE’RE ALREADY WALKING WITH FILLED baskets on our heads. Wicker baskets filled to the brim with yak dung cakes, some frozen, some still the faintest bit warm, we bend and scoop and pile our baskets high. It’s easier to pick them when they’re flattened like stones, but tonight is a cold night, and there’s a frost covering the earth. Stuck in the frozen ground, we have to dig them out, clumps of dirt and grass coming along with them.

  We work without seeing, over trails we’ve walked so many times, forever collecting these gifts. Gifts that give us fuel to burn our fires, to keep us warm, to cook our food, to keep us alive, we fill our baskets high, we fill them until the baskets’ thump lines dig into our skin.

  Second, the one born right after me, her basket’s strap cuts into her forehead, and she tries to adjust the weight and bends too low, spilling everything. We all turn to look. In the dying moonlight we can just make out Second, down on both knees, scooping and heaving the dung back into the basket. My sisters and I all crouch and help her while Mother looks on, clutching her tokma, the T-shaped walking stick we all carry and use to prop up our loads during rest breaks. She shuffles toward us, basket steady, round eyes squinting.

  “Every piece,” Mother commands. “We need every piece.”

  She bends and gathers the spilled dung, flattening it with her palms, then placing the pressed clump back into Second’s basket. “The thinner it is, the more we can collect. The more we collect, the longer the celebration.”

  Second nods apologetically.

  “More pain only means we’ve collected more for the stove, and that’s good,” Mother advises as I help Second readjust her basket, pulling a rag from around my neck and placing it under her thump line.

  “This will feel better,” I whisper.

  Cakes of dung, grainy and thick and musty, burn longer than the timber that we’ve long ago cut away. At this altitude, we’re just where the tree line ends. Life has been like this for thousands of years. No roads, almost nothing from the outside, all we own is what we can haul on our backs. We live by the season, man and beast as together as sap sliding down the bark of a tree. Forced together.

  “Thank the yaks for leaving us these gifts,” Mother goes on. “Auspicious gifts, gifts that will bring us great fortune. Tomorrow will be a special day.”

  I still can’t believe that it’s happening, and Second seems to read my thoughts. “We could have been matched with someone worse, Eldest. At least we know him. And he is from a good family. And handsome!”

  “He is.”

  “But worth picking dung cakes before dawn?” Second laughs.

  I still can’t see her face, but I know that she’s beaming with satisfaction. “In three days, we’ll both be married,” she whispers to me.

  Married. Today we are gathering supplies and cleaning our home. Tomorrow we are visiting with the family of Norbu, the man I—the man Second and I—will marry. The day after, I’ll become his wife, and so will Second. Two women for one man. It’s not unusual for Sherpas to take more than one bride, yet it’s usually one woman for two brothers. Even that doesn’t happen so often now. That’s the old way. It’s Father, all because of him, dragging us backwards. Here I am, a bride-to-be, hauling yak dung. Do brides down the mountain do this?

  “Are you nervous yet, about the wedding night? Do you know what we’ll have to do?”

  I nod to my excited sister, the one I’ll soon share everything with. Of course I know, I’ve seen it done in the fields. And by my parents. Three bodies will be more warmth for the night, and I won’t be jealous if my sister goes first…or maybe I will. Maybe I’m already possessive of a man who’s not even mine yet, one I’m not even convinced I want.

  “We’ve worked very hard to bring the six of you to this day, Eldest,” Mother tells me. “We’re happy for both of you—and for all six of you.” All my sisters nod. Then Mother comes close and inspects each of our hauls. “How much have we gathered? Are your baskets full?”

  Numbers. Everything a number.

  How many yak dung cakes can we collect to keep the fire going?

  How many pounds of barley can we grow, how many of millet? How many pounds can we keep to feed us and our animals? How many can we trade for rice? How much rice will feed us all? How long will the winter last? How long will the drought last?

  So many numbers—even we ourselves are numbers.

  Six sisters. Five of us here, the little sixth is at home, too small to work. Six sisters.

  Six girls.

  I am called Eldest, the Dremu, in ours, the beautiful language of the Sherpas. I’m also called Chig, which means the first. But my true given name is Nima, though I never hear it said. It’s easier to call six daughters by numbers than by names.

  My second sister is Nyi, the third is Soom, the fourth is Shi, and the fifth is Nga. The youngest, the suckling sixth, is Doog.

  It’s always “Eldest, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth.” Never “Nima, Nyi, Soom, Shi, Nga.” “Six daughters,” my father crows almost daily, from behind his bottle. “Six mouths to feed.”

  When I was small, I thought all Sherpas were like my father: a climber, helping the mikarus up the mountain, a weight-bearing porter to white-eyed foreigners, leading and opening their trails, laying ladders over crevices, tying ropes to pull them up, feeding them when they’re hungry, helping them when they’re sick. The people of the East don’t get altitude sickness. Just mikarus. But not all Sherpas are alike. Not all Sherpas climb.

  Trekking work is the only way to make real money on the mountain. Enough to not have to rely on the yaks—on the old ways—enough to not have to worry about what we can eat, what we can barter, what we can grow, where to find good pasture. And for many years we didn’t nee
d to worry because Father made good money as a climbing Sherpa. Now when we’re around him, we speak softly, avoid eye contact. When we’re alone we’re always wondering: Are we such a curse to him and Mother? Ever since Father stopped working, he wants lay-koh in the house: zero mouths to feed.

  There was no reason to be afraid of him before it all changed. Before he came home with his right leg broken in three places. Before that, he wasn’t hobbling around like a cripple. He hadn’t become a zi—a short-tempered drunk who beats me, my sisters, my mother. He beats all of us, all save Doog, the baby.

  It was another life when he carried loads on his back like most Sherpa men do—like they wish to do. The pride, the respect, the honor, the money. All of it was good. Better than good. It was enough. I remember how he would come home at the end of a trek, the mark from the thump line branded deep on his forehead, his belly hungry, and his pockets full. He was happy when he was on two feet. Eager for Mother’s cooking, he even played with his daughters sometimes. At night, always on the first night of his return, no matter how tired he was, he took his wife to bed, hoping to fill her with a son this time, not another little girl.

  A Sherpa that only makes girls is a Sherpa who can’t have climbing heirs. And there’s a reason girls are only allowed to carry supplies but not lead treks: girls are bad luck on the mountain. We knew all this from my father’s own mouth. He talked about everything, it was his right to speak without minding anyone else’s feelings but his own—the master of his home. Once I tried to run after him as he started on a trek, I wanted to be like him—but he sent me home with a slap.

  When my brother Ang was finally born Father was overjoyed. Ang means beloved, and he was. By all of us. He was like a living doll, that tiny man—someone to play with, someone different than us. We shared the same blood, but he wouldn’t be like his sisters—no, no, we all were well aware of that. We live the Sharwa way, the Sherpa way, us, the people of the East.

  My brother Ang was called by his true name, not by a number. I was Eldest already to my family, but Ang would always be the true first, thanks to the little manhood peeking out from between his legs.

  So happy to have a living heir, Father invited all the male neighbors in our town into our front yard, to raise a cup of our home brew, drinking to the mountain spirits who finally blessed him with a son. His fourth child. A life that lasted four years. For four years, my father worked like never before, he was on the mountain every day of the season, all for the chance for the highest—and most lucrative honor—to be part of an expedition to Jomolangma, the place mikarus call Everest. My father had a son now, and when he moved it was like his feet never touched the ground. Like he skipped across the air.

  In Ang’s fourth year, a team of British explorers hired our father and he got his chance. He wouldn’t be the lead, an older Sherpa, a sirdar from our village, was chosen instead, but Father would still get to climb the roof of the world and look down on us all. The trip was scheduled for the coming year, permits were bought, and Father was happy. We thought he would rest in preparation, but then he was hired for one more trek, the last of that season—fourteen days round trip to Base Camp.

  It was nearly spring, more than three years ago now, a joyous time. Light snow flurries at night but sun in the day. A good time for our family, a good time for the whole village. My sisters—there were only three of them then—we were all working in the field with Mother. Father was supposed to come home later that day, and we kept looking up at the trail. We could see it from where we were working, waiting to see him rush down the path. Sometimes he came home with presents, things the mikarus had given him—chocolates, gloves—and he would give them to us.

  We had been crouching since dawn, harvesting carrots and potatoes. My back was aching. I straightened, looked up, saw no one. Every time I would rest, I would look up. Around midday I saw him, finally, loping down the trail, a brown dot on the mountain getting closer and closer.

  He saw me and waved. I squinted as I waved back. He was holding something, I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, maybe a gift for me and my sisters. My heart leaped—and then it hung in my chest, frozen. Behind him, farther up on the trail, I heard a sound like thunder on earth, a deep tuuuuungg, like the blow of a hammer against a bell. A sound all Sherpas know.

  The piece of mountain Father stood on fell right off into white nothingness and Father disappeared with it. I watched the way a rat watches a cobra before the snake strikes. Fixed on that piece of mountain where my father was swallowed, slabs of snow, ice and rock kept growing, kept tumbling down toward us. I watched—we all watched it—and didn’t breathe.

  There’s a Sherpa saying that there are as many types of ru’ as there are people. Wet and filled with sluffs and slabs, or ru’s that glide when the entire snowpack moves as one, or slush, like a flash flood of permafrost. This was a hard slab ru’, the most deadly kind of avalanche.

  So many things can cause a ru’. Layers of fresh snow weighing down the ice crust, or a bed of large-grained, wind-hardened snow made loose by heat from the sun’s rays, ice calving in the heat of the day, or rain which can make a melt-freeze, or an ice surge. Wind, trekkers, climbers, so many things can be the cause, and in a flash I thought of them all.

  One moment my father was there, coming down the trail, waving, calling our names, did he realize he was in its path—or was he realizing who else was in its path, further below?—then it took him and he was gone.

  Strange, the ru’ had seemed so far away, much too far to reach us, we all watched as the white surge kept coming closer, growing wider as it advanced. I knew how dangerous it was, we all did. Avalanches kill more than disease, famine, trail accidents, all put together. They kill every year. None of us could move—or stop watching that thick sheet crashing, a tumbling white pile swallowing birch trees and boulders, anything and everything in its path, tumbling closer and closer.

  Then I realized what would happen next. The village, our village, was at the foot of the mountain on a valley plateau, right under the path of the ru’. Khumjung, made up of a dozen Sherpa homes. The climbers were on the mountain that day, most other villagers were in the fields for the potato harvest, but their families, the very young and very old, were there. In between us and the mountain. We watched from the field as the white blanket rolled right over Khumjung and settled with a deafening whoomp. And then there was silence and I couldn’t see anything. The sun disappeared, blocked by a stormy white cloud. A single thought raced through my mind: Ang.

  2

  FOR A LONG TIME WE STOOD STILL, TRANSFIXED BY THE CLOUD. ITS most frightening part was its silence. The most deafening. One moment Khumjung had twelve homes: half a dozen built with wood, stone, clay and mud, homes huddled together under the foot of the mountain for protection from wind and weather. And the rest of the village, perched up on a hill, that’s where those lucky Sherpas who could afford more had built their homes. A village full of people I had known my whole life.

  All I could hear was my own breathing and weeping, then the screams that bounced off the peaks, echoing down the valley, screams from voices I was afraid I might recognize. The spell ended then, and we rushed forward with our field tools in our hands, crying out.

  Ang.

  We ran into the cloud of snow. He had been all alone, playing at home, having just recovered from a cold. My mother thought it best to let him rest that day. We ran like scared animals, crying and shouting and screaming, we ran towards home—or where we thought our home had been.

  Ang.

  There were blocks of ice where the village had been, stones piled as high as my shoulder, tree trunks split in two, shards of broken wood and glass, our whole village smashed—all except for the lucky rich who built their homes on that spared hill above us. I saw a horse, just its head and neck, sticking out of the snow, eyes empty. Dead yaks, goats—and dead people. People I knew, I recognized their boots, sticking out of the snow. Ngwang, the old man who liked to leave out millet for the
deer to come and eat, and Namba, the widow who would sit on her porch all day, no matter how cold it was, sipping her tea deliberatively—I recognized them and couldn’t stop to help.

  “The lucky ones die quickly in a ru’,” my father used to say. “Without suffering.”

  The unlucky ones found themselves in pockets of air that would only last a few minutes. Trapped out of reach and out of sight, below the snow. Alone. Suffocating. Dying.

  Ang.

  Our home was gone, all that was left was the tip of the juniper that grew in our front yard. That morning that tree had been taller than our home. Now it was just a stunted shrub poking out of the snow. We dropped to hands and knees, my mother and my sisters and me, blindly punching through the surface with our hoes and rakes. We dug and dug and dug where our house was—where we remembered it was, just beneath the ridge where the rich Sherpas lived. There was no ridge anymore, just flat land filled with snow and ice.

  We dug until our tools broke and then we dug with our fingers. We dug until our fingers bled and our nails cracked, the ice sticking to our bleeding hands. And still nothing. We couldn’t break through the cold slabs. So much had fallen on our home. Too much to remove. All around us, where there had been homes and plots, everyone was fighting the mountain. Everywhere it was all the same: panic and death.

  My arms were so tired, I couldn’t lift them. And then the sound of a shovel—when Norbu Norgay stabbed its tip into the slab it made a cracking sound, and then he stepped on the shovel’s head with his foot, scooped, and heaved. Not a word, just stab, scoop, heave. Stab, scoop, heave. Stab, scoop, heave.

  We all worked, side by side, not saying a word, clawing at the ice until the sun hid behind the peaks. But even with our neighbor Norbu helping us, we could not lift the mountain. Too much time had passed, far too long, we all knew that, but we didn’t stop. Not until my mother stopped digging and cried out loud. In her hands was a tiny shoe. Then she fell on her hands and knees, screaming and pounding furiously.

  We dug harder, he must be close, if the shoe was found, surely he was close—then, Second pulled me near her and grabbed my hand.