Annapurna (35 page)

‘You won’t last more than a few days at this rate.’

If only they would realize how cold this argument left me! When they had finished their vain appeals, Oudot turned up; he wasted no time in making a tactful approach, but simply commanded me to swallow what I was given:

‘You must finish up those kidneys. I’ll be back in a moment to see if you have. Surely you don’t want to be forcibly fed.’

Sarki cut up the beastly kidneys with his dirty, sticky hands and stuck them on the end of his knife to feed me. For ages I chewed away like a child without being able to swallow. Oudot would be certain to come back! He was my bogeyman … There! That’s one bit down! I felt that it would choke me and that I would bring it up again immediately. Hell! Still all that to swallow. Oudot came back, looking stern: ‘You’re not trying, Maurice!’ Turning towards Sarki, he ordered him to carry on …

Every meal was like that.

Under the banyan trees the air was cool. Nice plump chickens ran about unsuspectingly. If I could have one of these, now, that would be a change from the tough mutton whose very smell nauseated me. A peasant was ready to sell us one on condition that we caught it ourselves. He had hardly finished speaking when G. B. Rana grabbed his gun and fired. The chicken was cut in half and ended its existence in a casserole. Angtharkay brought it to me in triumph, for it was quite an occasion if the Bara Sahib actually wanted to eat something.

My particular coolies, who came from Dana, were extraordinarily expert; four of them carried me as though I was a feather. Among them there was a one-eyed fellow of about fifty who was full of the kindliest attentions towards me. At every halt he would explain that there was not much further to go, and that they knew the paths. My confidence in their strength and ability gave me courage: if a single coolie had stumbled, either Lachenal or I might have been hurled down hundreds of feet. Sometimes the stretcher would be at an angle and I would have to make desperate efforts with knees and elbows to stop myself sliding. When I could not do so I called out, and a Sherpa would run up and hold me on. These
alarms
were nerve-racking and I asked for a Sherpa to remain constantly by my side. Sarki was detailed to do this and he stayed by me the whole time. He gave me fresh water and bananas, helped me to eat, and inflated my mattress at each halt to keep the stones on the path from sticking into me. I had grown so thin that the least irregularity hurt me.

One night we camped near Banduk at the foot of a huge waterfall. The rain teemed down as I lay in my tent, but I scarcely heard the onslaughts of the monsoon as I tried to get to sleep. I was thinking of the nightmare descent, and it seemed to me to be physically impossible to bear such a prolonged agony. Though the smell from my dressings made everyone feel ill, no one uttered a complaint; but I often came very near to fainting myself.

Ichac slept by my side, and at last I dropped off too. In the middle of the night I woke with a start. It was pitch dark. An overpowering force made me sit up and a horrible fear held me in its grip. I had the dreadful feeling that I was about to die, and I was deafened by the sound of bells. Where was I? I cried out loud. The light went on, and to my enormous relief I realized that I was in the tent, and remembered I was part of the Expedition. Ichac was alarmed:

‘What on earth’s the matter?’

I tried to explain to him that appalling sensation of nothingness.

‘Must have been a nightmare,’ he said. But all the same he left the light on and talked gently until I had quietened down again.

First thing next morning I spoke to Oudot about it. He told me that morphia sometimes produces such reactions, and from then on I resolved never to take morphia again; I would rather bear the worst pain than pay that price for relief.

Near Beni we were told there was an epidemic of cholera, so we had to avoid the village by crossing the Gandaki by a bridge spanning the whole breadth of the swirling, unbridled torrent. But this bridge, which was 200 feet long and suspended 50 feet above the river, gave us a good deal of anxiety. It was made of two chains with bent rusty rods supporting some old worm-eaten planks, and its length caused disquieting oscillations which could become alarmingly violent. The
cacolet
would have to be used. Lachenal went first, and after a few yards he began to cry out. Some of the Sherpas helped Ajeeba, who was carrying him, by holding back the
rods
to prevent Lachenal’s feet from being hurt. When my turn came I tried to bear it all with as much courage as I could muster, but though the Sherpas held back the rods and Ajeeba walked as carefully as he could, the swaying made me feel horribly sick. On the other side I joined Lachenal and the two of us howled in concert before the embarrassed coolies.

G. B. Rana intended to make his horse swim across. Several nylon ropes were tied together and from the opposite bank everyone hauled on the animal. The unhappy beast resisted heroically, for he smelt danger. He was thrown into the river willy-nilly and immediately disappeared beneath the water. From time to time his ears, a leg, or a flank appeared – surely he would be a corpse when he arrived. Not a bit of it! A few yards from the bank a head emerged and gradually the horse scrambled on to terra firma and advanced on us with Olympian calm.

It was late and we pitched camp near the river. But cholera was raging on this side too, and the next morning, after an unforgettable session of ‘trimming’, we hastened to leave this unhealthy district.

It was raining every day and when we had to find shelter that evening we cursed and swore. We wanted a house where we could all be together, where we should have more room to sort things out and where, too, we should no longer hear the exasperating noise of rain on the roofs of the tents. When we reached the straggling hamlet of Kusma we were in a quandary, for there was no suitable house and the ‘authorities’ whom we had approached conducted us to the gompa! We settled ourselves without ceremony, and soon, from the sacred place which we supposed to be no longer in use, there arose a cacophony of bawdy songs.

Some of the party saw to paying off the coolies who had to go back to Dana, and recruiting others to come on with us to Tansing. Schatz collected the equipment and checked the loads; Couzy, who had been unanimously elected cook, peered into all the open containers. Everything was uncertain; we did not know whether we should have enough coolies to enable us all to leave next day. We were told there were another five marches. Actually it took us over ten days.

Some fifty patients awaited the Doctor Sahib. They had all kinds of diseases, mostly inflammation or unaccountable fevers. It would
have
taken a long time to see all the patients, and required a lot of medical supplies, not to speak of endless patience on Oudot’s part. He drew up a standard questionnaire:

This questionnaire was given to Noyelle who translated it into English for G. B.’s benefit, with the help of a few words of Hindustani, and G. B. translated it into Gurkhali. The replies had to follow the reverse order, and after all these intermediaries they were often pretty queer. The Sherpas were doubled up with laughter. They could only understand part of the conversation – the last bit that began in Hindustani, went on into Gurkhali and then came back in Hindustani. By this stage it had suffered a farcical change!

Oudot had tremendous prestige. People came long distances to see him, for he had become a sort of god. We admired the touching simplicity of these creatures who put their health and sometimes their lives in the hands of a complete stranger. It was the first time they had been examined by a real doctor. When they were ill they consulted the village witch doctor, or so-called ‘healer’. The great panacea was always the same – an ointment of cow-dung.

The patients were not always very tractable; they were bound by the dictates of their religion, and they did not like it when Oudot touched them. The hardest job was to examine the women, who were excessively modest and would not allow themselves to be touched on any account, still less undressed. On one occasion Oudot succeeded in getting all the finery off a Nepalese girl. When she was half undressed Sarki, who had been helping, discreetly left the tent. Nothing would then persuade the girl to proceed further.

Medicine had to be dealt out to all of them. Whenever he could, Oudot gave them something relevant to their ailment; otherwise he distributed inoffensive pills which had a mainly psychological effect. But there was no knowing what they might do with the things. They would unhesitatingly swallow anti-sunburn ointment or the most solid of plasters, and cheerfully swap medicines given for
particular
illnesses. But they showed great courage in any surgical treatment.

One day an unfortunate youth came along with a double compound fracture of the wrist. The radius stuck out from a mass of pus, the arm was enormous, and the hand swollen out of all recognition. He was certainly in a bad way. Oudot – always by the same complicated process of interpretation – discovered that the accident had happened a fortnight ago. He told the parents that amputation of the arm was the only way of saving their son. They refused, and made it plain that all they wanted was a dressing. Well, it could not be helped. Oudot gave the patient morphia and then tried to get things back in place: he succeeded after a fashion and finally put the arm in plaster.

‘What will happen?’ I asked Oudot anxiously. There would be no one to change the dressing, and in a few days the wound would begin to suppurate again.

‘There’s nothing else to be done. He’ll probably be dead in a fortnight.’

He said this with a fatalistic air which rather frightened me. Yet he was right. It was not possible to reason with these people as if we were in Europe – here we were still in the dark ages. I thought of all these unfortunate people who were a prey to epidemics against which they had no means of protecting themselves: no doctor, no vaccine. In countries like these death gets its own way easily and the process of selection is intensive. On our long homeward march we often met funeral processions, and it was not cheering for Lachenal and myself to see the biers, so like our own litters. The corpses were swathed in strangely coloured winding sheets and were preceded by horns whose notes re-echoed back and forth among the mountains. The families and friends of the deceased followed in silence, showing no undue sorrow. Death was but a period of transition and had no distressing implications. Were they not assured of reincarnation in other and more perfect shapes? The bodies were buried along the banks of the Krishna Gandaki, and the monsoon floods would carry them away down to the sacred Ganges.

Every day Oudot attended to the injured members of the Expedition. He was perpetually running after his medicine chest, which was invariably either right on ahead, and then we had to
catch
up with it, or else far in the rear, and we had to wait ages. But neither Lachenal nor I was ever in any hurry for the M.O. to get to work. Gradually the injection of large quantities of penicillin began to take effect; the fever abated and the fear of generalized septicaemia receded. I began to talk and to take an interest in what was going on around me. One day on a green sward at Putliket, Oudot started performing on me as usual.

‘Don’t make such a noise!’ he begged me.

‘Gently, Oudot, please!’

‘I’m being as gentle as I can. Look out – does that hurt?’

I braced myself with all my strength to bear the pain, and clenched my teeth:

‘It’s all right, I didn’t feel a thing.’

‘Good!’ said Oudot, and gave a great snip with his scissors.

‘Ouch!’

I felt a shock all over me, and Oudot announced:

‘The first amputation! The little finger!’

This gave me rather a twinge. A little finger may not be much use, but all the same I was attached to it! Tears were very near. Oudot picked up the joint between his finger and thumb and showed it to me.

‘Perhaps you’d like to have it as a souvenir? It’ll keep all right, you know! You don’t seem very keen?’

‘I certainly don’t want it. There’s no point in keeping a black and mouldy little finger.’

Throwing the ‘souvenir’ casually on to the lid of a container, Oudot said:

‘Well, you’re no sentimentalist.’

The line of demarcation between the living tissue and the dead was now clearly visible. Oudot worked with a
rugine
,
¹
and every day one or two joints, either on my feet or my hands, were removed. All this was done without anaesthetics, in the open, how and when it was possible.

One day Oudot would operate in a native house, another by the side of the road, amidst the unavoidable dust; sometimes along the rice-swamps in spite of the damp and the leeches; or again in the
middle
of a field, in the rain, beneath the uncertain shelter of an umbrella held in the shaking hand of G. B. Rana’s orderly. Without respite Oudot cleaned, cut and dressed.

While these sessions went on, and we casualties endured our tribulations in a nauseating stench – blood everywhere, pus dripping from the bandages and hundreds of flies sticking to our wounds – we were often, paradoxically, spectators of amusing incidents. Now, after the first rains, came the season for planting the rice. All available labour was busy in the rice-fields, and to find porters became the Expedition’s worst headache. The others were very perturbed: we
had
to get out of these parts at all costs. Oudot begged G. B. Rana to use his authority and employ high-handed tactics to recruit coolies. He reminded him that we were under the protection of the Maharajah, who would not tolerate our being held up at the moment of leaving his country. G. B. did all he could, but his efforts had no success.

Gradually our attitude hardened. Although we had offered to supplement the ordinary pay, we soon saw that, unless we paid exorbitant prices, the further we penetrated into the densely cultivated areas the greater our difficulties would become, until we just should not be able to advance. For all their reluctance to act as slave-drivers, my friends were obliged to employ a system of ‘voluntary’ recruitment. The method was simple: we had to get men where they were to be found, take them by the seat of their pants and place them very gently underneath the loads and the stretchers. The men objected strongly at first, but it ended in smiles. They would get enough rupees to wipe away all regrets on the one side and all remorse on the other. The Sherpas tumbled to the operation perfectly, and I imagined that we were not the first Himalayan expedition to employ this method. They would stroll innocently about the villages sniffing the air, ready to pounce upon the first native whom they judged capable of carrying a load.