Mother Goddess of the World

XX

Kathmandu is a funny city. When you first arrive there from the West, it seems like the most ramshackle and unsanitary place imaginable: the buildings are poorly constructed of old brick, and there are weed patches growing out of the roofs; the hotel rooms are bare pits; all the food you can find tastes like cardboard, and often makes you sick; and there are sewage heaps here and there in the mud streets, where dogs and cows are scavenging. It really seems primitive.

Then you go out for a month or two in the mountains, on a trek or a climb. And when you return to Kathmandu, the place is utterly transformed. The only likely explanation is that while you were gone they took the city away and replaced it with one that looks the same on the outside, but is completely different in substance. The accommodations are luxurious beyond belief; the food is superb; the people look prosperous, and their city seems a marvel of architectural sophistication. Kathmandu! What a metropolis!

So it seemed to Freds and me, as we checked into my home away from home, the Hotel Star. As I sat on the floor under the waist-high tap of steaming hot water that emerged from my shower, I found myself giggling in mindless rapture, and from the next room I could hear Freds bellowing “Going to Kathmandu”: “K-k-k-k-k-Kat-Man-Du!”

An hour later, hair wet, faces chopped up, skin all prune-shriveled, we met Arnold out in the street and walked through the Thamel evening. “We look like coat racks!” Freds observed. Our city clothes were hanging on us. Freds and I had each lost about twenty pounds, Arnold about thirty. And it wasn’t just fat, either. Everything wastes away at altitude. “We’d better get to the Old Vienna and put some of it back on.”

I started salivating at the very thought of it.

So we went to the Old Vienna Inn, and relaxed in the warm steamy atmosphere of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After big servings of goulash, schnitzel Parisienne, and apple strudel with whipped cream, we sat back sated. Sensory overload. Even Arnold was looking up a little. He had been quiet through the meal, but then again we all had, being busy.

We ordered a bottle of rakshi, which is a potent local beverage of indeterminate origin. When it came we began drinking.

Freds said, “Hey, Arnold, you’re looking better.”

“Yeah, I don’t feel so bad.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin streaked all red; we had all split our sun-destroyed lips more than once, trying to shovel the food in too fast. He got set to start the slow process of eating another cigar, unwrapping one very slowly. “Not so bad at all.” And then he grinned; he couldn’t help himself; he grinned so wide that he had to grab the napkin and stanch the flow from his lips again.

“Well, it’s a shame those guys stomped your movie,” Freds said.

“Yeah, well.” Arnold waved an arm expansively. “That’s life.”

I was amazed. “Arnold, I can’t believe this is you talking. Here those guys took your videotapes of all that suffering you just put us through, and they stomp it, and you say, ‘That’s life’?”

He took a long hit of the rakshi. “Well,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down fiendishly. He leaned over the table toward us. “They got one copy of it, anyway.”

Freds and I looked at each other.

“Couple hundred dollars of tape there that they crunched, I suppose I ought to bill them for it. But I’m a generous guy; I let it pass.”

“One copy?” I said.

“Yeah.” He tipped his head. “Did you see that box, kind of like a suitcase, there in the corner of my room at the Guest House?”

We shook our heads.

“Neither did the Brits. Not that they would have recognized it. It’s a video splicer, mainly. But a copier too. You stick a cassette in there and push a button and it copies the cassette for storage, and then you can do all your splicing off the master. You make your final tape that way. Great machine. Most freelance video people have them now, and these portable babies are really the latest. Saved my ass, in this case.”

“Arnold,” I said. “You’re going to get those guys in trouble! And us too!”

“Hey,” he warned, “I’ve got the splicer under lock and key, so don’t get any ideas.”

“Well you’re going to get us banned from Nepal for good!”

“Nah. I’ll give you all stage names. You got any preferences along those lines?”

“Arnold!” I protested.

“Hey, listen,” he said, and drank more rakshi. “Most of that climb was in Tibet, right? Chinese aren’t going to be worrying about it. Besides, you know the Nepal Ministry of Tourism—can you really tell me they’ll ever get it together to even see my film, much less take names from it and track those folks down when they next apply for a visa? Get serious!”

“Hmm,” I said, consulting with my rakshi.

“So what’d you get?” Freds asked.

“Everything. I got some good long-distance work of you guys finding the body up there—ha!—you thought I didn’t get that, right? I tell you I was filming your thoughts up there! I got that, and then the Brits climbing on the ridge—everything. I’m gonna make stars of you all.”

Freds and I exchanged a relieved glance. “Remember about the stage names,” I said.

“Sure. And after I edit it you won’t be able to tell where on the mountain the body was, and with the names and all, I really think Marion and the rest will love it. Don’t you? They were just being shy. Old-fashioned! I’m going to send them all prints of the final product, and they’re gonna love it. Marion in particular. She’s gonna look beautiful.” He waved the cigar and a look of cowlike yearning disfigured his face. “In fact, tell you a little secret, I’m gonna accompany that particular print in person, and make it part of my proposal to her. I think she’s kind of fond of me, and I bet you anything she’ll agree to marry me when she sees it, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Freds said. “Why not?” He considered it. “Or if not in this life, then in the next.”

Arnold gave him an odd look. “I’m going to ask her along on my next trip, which looks like it’ll be China and Tibet. You know how the Chinese have been easing up on the Tibetan religions lately? Well, the clerk at the Guest House gave me a telegram on my way out—my agent tells me that the authorities in Lhasa have decided they’re going to rebuild a whole bunch of the Buddhist monasteries that they tore down during the Cultural Revolution, and it looks like I’ll be allowed to film some of it. That should make for a real heart-string basher, and I bet Marion would love to see it, don’t you?”

Freds and I grinned at each other. “I’d love to see it,” Freds declared. “Here’s to the monasteries, and a free Tibet!”

We toasted the idea, and ordered another bottle.

Arnold waved his cigar. “Meanwhile, this Mallory stuff is dynamite. It’s gonna make a hell of a movie.”