I stand up, go to the gate. That, I think, is a campfire. I’ve never seen, it’s true, red/blue/green cinders, but still, that is, I am almost positive, a campfire. I’m embarrassed on the boy’s behalf for his motley, boisterous, easily excited entourage.
But maybe, part of me protests, this is how a miracle happens?
Another part answers: It has all the marks of a Sunday school.
I return to my assigned spot, resolve to ignore all future faux-excitement, and just watch.
THE LONGEST NIGHT IN HISTORY, PART II: COLD, COLDER, UNBEARABLY COLD
At 8:30, I take my winter hat and gloves from my pack. Abruptly the lamas rise and exit in a group. What, I think, the lamas are chickening out? I’m tougher than the lamas? Soon they return, laden with mattresses and fat sleeping rolls and plump pillows. What, I think, the lamas are incredibly well prepared for what is shaping up to be a damn cold night?
Subel goes back to the Committee Tent to sit by the fire.
Now it’s just me and the snoring, sleep-moaning lamas.
From near the source of the drumming, I suddenly hear dozens of barking dogs. The drum patterns morph into Native American patterns from old Westerns, as if what they’re doing over in that village is planning to attack and overrun our little outpost here, using their constantly barking attack dogs.
Before long the dogs and drums fade and I’m lapsing into odd exhausted waking dreams: The boy sticks a pole into my chest, which is made of fiberboard, so the pole goes in easily and painlessly. Don’t go for the heart, he says. I don’t get it. Should I write about you? I ask. Sure, he says, go ahead, just tell the truth, doubts and contradictions and all. I don’t mind.
Soon my legs and feet are freezing. I take my socks out of my pocket and put them on. The vest/sweater combo is keeping my torso warm, but my neck and legs are becoming problematic. I drape a pair of dirty sweatpants around my neck, take out my coat (a shell that’s supposed to have a fleece lining, which I’ve somehow managed to lose), arrange it over my legs. Subel returns from the fire and stretches out behind me, trying to sleep. I think of him back there: no socks, just a flannel shirt and a light windbreaker. I have an emergency blanket in my pack, a tinfoilish thing in a small cardboard box. I throw it back to him, he unrolls it for what seems like hours: the noisiest thing I’ve ever heard.
“Am I being too loud?” he asks sweetly.
By 10:30, he’s asleep. I’m fading fast. The dogs sound distant, gooselike. The drummer seems tired. I try to feel the boy sitting out there, and really I can’t. How are you doing this? I think. Forget eating, how do you sit so long? My back hurts, my legs hurt, the deep soreness in my ass seems to connote Permanent Damage.
At 10:58, a jet passes overhead, bound for Katmandu.
At 11:05, I take the dirty sweatpants from around my neck, stand up, put them on over my khakis. I put the coat/shell on, drawstring it tight, tuck my chin down, so none of my face is exposed. With a rush of happiness, I remember there are two more dirty pairs of pants in my pack! I drape them like blankets over my legs and feet. What else do I have? Two pairs of dirty underwear, which I briefly consider putting on my head.
By 11:22, I can see my breath.
Even in my socks, my feet are freezing. I sit still; any move may cause an increase in Coldness, and any increased Coldness is, at this point, unacceptable. I remember a certain yoga move that involves tightening the rectum to get a heat tingle to surge up the spine, and do this, and it feels better, but not better enough to justify the exhausting rectal flexing.
At 11:55, dozing off, I wake to the sound of a woman’s voice, possibly my wife, shouting my name from near the Committee Tent.
Time slows way down. I wait and wait to check my watch. Three hours go by, slow, torturous hours. It is now, I calculate, around three in the morning. Excellent: Next will come predawn, then dawn, then the minivan, the hotel, America. As a special treat, I allow myself to check my watch.
It’s 12:10. Fifteen minutes — fifteen minutes? — have passed since my wife called my name. Dammit, shit! I find myself in the strange position of being angry at Time.
Subel stirs, gets up, says he’s going back to the tent: His feet are too cold.
I take out the flashlight, carefully write: If it gets colder than this I’m fucked.
It gets colder.
Soon I’m making no effort to stay awake or, ha ha, meditate: just trying not to freak out, because if I freak out and flee into the Nepali darkness, it will still be freezing and I’ll still have eight hours to wait (eight hours? Christ!) before the minivan returns.
At 12:15, time officially stops. My current posture (sitting up cross-legged) becomes untenable. I can’t help it. I fall over on my side. This is going to invalidate the whole idea of: Stay up all night, confirm no Overnight Feeding. Oh, fuck that, I think, have a feast, I don’t care. The ground is hard and cold through the thin mat. I ball the dirty pants up around my frozen feet. The drums start again, accompanied by the inexplicable smell of burning rubber. Wherefore burning rubber? I can’t figure it.
It starts to rain.
To say I fall asleep would be inaccurate. It’s more like I pass out: unwilled, involuntary, unstoppable. Out I go, totally, like a wino on whom a clothes hamper has exploded.
I would characterize the quality of my sleep as: terrified/defiant. I am think-dreaming: Hypothermia! People died out here last night, people who were probably wrapped in blankets. People are probably dying right now. This is serious; try and wake up, really.
I won’t wake up, I won’t, I answer myself. Because if I wake up, I’ll be back where I was before, trapped in that freezing endless torment of a night.
But finally I do wake up, with a start, shivering, colder than I’ve ever been in my life. I struggle back to a sitting position, find my flashlight, groggily check the time.
It’s 1:20.
I’ve slept an hour.
Shit shit shit, the night is still young.
It starts to rain harder. The flashlight makes a little hiss-pop and goes out — possibly, it occurs to me, the boy’s way of saying: Lights out.
Looking into the darkness, I think: Still there? Through all of this, and much more, so many other intolerable nights, before I even knew you existed? If Snake One bit you on a night like this, did you hear it coming? Did you think of bolting, screaming out, calling for your mother?
Poor kid is just sitting in the dark all alone. Tonight, anyway, nobody seems to have the slightest interest in feeding him.
Something powerful starts to dawn on me.
No one has entered the Enclosure all night. After a couple of early checks, the brother and his pal hightailed it back to the Committee Tent. The only entry, the front gate, has been locked since we arrived.
The fact that the Powers That Be (tonight, just the brother and his pal) let us spend the night with no advance notice argues against the existence of a Secret Feeding Plan, because any such Plan would therefore constantly be at the mercy of Drop-Ins, i.e., would have to be aborted anytime anyone showed up to spend the night. There could theoretically be days in a row, weeks even, when it would be impossible to perform the food sneakage.
A suave, logical Devil’s Advocate arrives in my mind.
Come on, think aggressively, he says. Don’t be a sucker. Is there any possible way they can be sneaking him food?
They could theoretically, I answer, be hiding food in the woods and bringing it in over the fence at a position far from the gate.