Two Sherpas


 
 
 
 Two sherpas
 
 
 
 First published by Charco Press 2023
 Charco Press Ltd., 
 Office 59, 44-46 Morningside Road, Edinburgh EH10 4BF
 Copyright © Sebastián Martínez Daniell, 2018
 First published in Spanish as Dos sherpas by Entropía (Argentina) 
 English translation copyright © Jennifer Croft, 2023
 The rights of Sebastián Martínez Daniell to be identified as the author of this work and of Jennifer Croft to be identified as the translator of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
 Work published with funding from the ‘Sur’ Translation Support Programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina / Obra editada en el marco del Programa ‘Sur’ de Apoyo a las Traducciones del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de la República Argentina.
 All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by the applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
 ISBN: 9781913867416
 e-book: 9781913867423
 www.charcopress.com
 Edited by Fionn Petch
 Cover designed by Pablo Font
 Typeset by Laura Jones
 Proofread by Fiona Mackintosh
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Sebastián Martínez Daniell
 Two Sherpas
 Translated by
 Jennifer Croft
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 My ear is crying.
 I am going down; you should go down, too.
 Nima Chhiring: 
 yak herder, former Sherpa
 
 
 
 One
 Two Sherpas peer into the abyss. Eyes scouring the nadir. Bodies outstretched across the rock, hands gripping the precipice’s edge. They seem to be expecting something. But not anxiously. Instead, with a repertoire of serene gestures that balance between resignation and doubt.
 
 
 
 Two
 One of the Sherpas gets distracted for a minute. He’s young; he’s still a teenager. Nonetheless he has already summited, twice. The first time when he was fifteen; the second a few months ago. This young Sherpa doesn’t wish to spend his life on Everest. He’s saving up to study abroad. In Dhaka, perhaps. Or in Delhi. He’s made some inquiries about enrolling in Statistics. But now, as his gaze focuses and empties out over this topographic hollowness, he fantasises that his vocation could be naval engineering. He likes boats. He’s never been in one: it doesn’t matter. He is fascinated by floating. 
 Who isn’t? Who doesn’t envy the jellyfish and its drift across the open sea? That sensation of going with a flow. That subtle phosphorescent unfurling, devoid of vanity; let the currents take care of the rest. To float. To disentangle yourself from the course of history; not to bear that cross. Amorality without excesses, without guilt. Blindness and bioluminescence. Tentacular electricity that discloses the dark of the ocean at night.
 
 
 
 Three
 The other Sherpa first trod the slopes of Everest five weeks after he turned thirty-three. He had arrived in Nepal six years before. With well-toned muscles but no advanced knowledge of mountaineering. Some previous experience, yes, but disjointed, lacking structure or specific training. Since his baptism as a Sherpa, he’s attempted to reach the summit four times. On none of those occasions has he made it to the top. Not necessarily through any fault of his own, or not always. But this recurring deferral explains to some extent why his next gesture goes a little further: beyond doubt and into irritation. Tourists… thinks the old Sherpa, who isn’t old or, properly speaking, a Sherpa. They always manage to do something, these people – these tourists, he thinks. Then says. With an ambiguous gesture, he indicates the void, the ledge where the body of an Englishman lies prone and immobile, and he says:
 ‘These people…’
 And so he breaks the silence. If the deafening noise of the wind ravelling over the ridges of the Himalayas can be considered silence.
 
 
 
 People from the East
 Five hundred years prior, a nomadic people with a tradition of seasonal migration across the central Chinese province of Sichuan initiates a process of gradual westerly motion. In exile, they become pariahs: refugees who must seek their new station in the mountains. The locals baptise them according to their cardinal origins. People (pa) from the East (Shar): Sherpas. 
 
 
 
 Five
 ‘These people…’ says the old Sherpa.
 And with that – that grimace of contempt, that gesture, that intonation, the astringent way he has of getting his two words off his chest – he reveals a couple of particularities: his age, which isn’t so advanced; his experience, which is relatively scant; but also his sorrow, his aversion, and his licence, issued by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation, his official permission to guide foreign visitors on their ascent of the highest mountain on the planet, the seal of approval from those offices in Kathmandu, that bureaucratic endorsement.
 
 
 
 Six
 The young Sherpa was four when his father died.
 ‘There was an incident with the forklift,’ is what he’s been told his whole life. ‘In the council warehouse, as they were loading up the Caterpillar parts.’
 Now he hears the old Sherpa saying:
 ‘These people…’
 And, 
 
 Seven
 If someone were to pose the question – if at this very moment a person were to come up on this cliff and distract the old Sherpa from his abstraction, redirect for a moment the old Sherpa’s gaze from the ledge where the Englishman is lying