One More Time (3 page)

‘So have you picked a daughter that you like?’

Mani’s eyes opened wide with delight and an embarrassed kind of happiness.

‘I see one girl—’ he broke off into bashful laughter.

‘Is she the same age as you?’ But I knew she wouldn’t be. Almost every married Nepalese man I’d
seen seemed to have a wife almost half his age by his side.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I am old, thirty-eight, I tell you very old for Nepali man. She is younger, maybe twenty-two!’ Again his face lit up with a smile. ‘Maybe nineteen.’

‘Nineteen!’ I said, playing along with him. ‘Oh, that’s very young. So young for somebody so much older!’ Mani seemed quite taken with the idea.

‘In Nepal many wives younger than man. I have to work hard, make much money, build house. If I do, I catch mother’s eyes, if she happy, then I can marry daughter. But it takes long time and all woman married before twenty-five years—so I only get young girl.’

‘So you have to prove yourself!’

‘Yes. If I am doing well, no drinking, then I get better type wife!’

I chuckled. ‘A better quality wife?’

Mani found it amusing as well. ‘Yes, a better type wife. If I am working bad, save no money, I get no wife or wife not so good kind.’

We both looked off into the distance and contented ourselves with our separate thoughts. I felt guilty to be thinking it, but I now wondered if Mani was a virgin. He must be!

A few minutes passed and then almost instinctively we rose at the same time to begin trekking again.

Mani set off well ahead of me and led the way out from the comfort of our shelter, back into the blistering heat. My feet were starting to feel the pinch of this forever-uphill trail, and I tried to distract myself by thinking of other things.

Why, at thirty-eight, hadn’t Mani been married yet? His references to not drinking or smoking weed as his main challenge in winning a young lady—or her mother—had seemed overdone. Isn’t that what all mothers want? Observing Mani, he didn’t strike me as somebody who had skeletons in his cupboard but perhaps I was wrong. It made me question if there was more to Mani’s ‘bad luck’ than just being unfortunate. Bad luck was not something that I believed in now; over time I had convinced myself it didn’t exist. When I was younger though, rather than do anything about my ritual praying, I’d thought, if I could only have a stroke of luck then I’d wake up one day and the damn praying would have gone away. But I’m not lucky!

It all began when I was about six. Very young. I started not sleeping at night. I couldn’t seem to switch my mind off. I used to lie in the dark visualising terrifying
images in the shadows. I wouldn’t intentionally try to scare myself; at first I would be trying to picture Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse—happy things that would help me relax. Gradually, though, the images would change and before I knew it, Santa would be wielding a sharp knife and Mickey would have transformed into the devil. It scared the life out of me. But as soon as I’d snuck into bed beside my little sister, Sarah, or youngest brother, Sam, the images would disappear and I would be asleep in seconds. Their rooms had the same shadows, the same darkness—that didn’t matter as long as I was in beside somebody else.

At the beginning my parents must have thought I would soon grow out of it. Why wouldn’t they think that? Many kids are frightened to sleep on their own. But at age thirteen I was still creeping in beside Sarah or Sam. It was embarrassing. I was older than both of them for Godsake. How weird was it to be sleeping with your brother or sister at thirteen? It was like still wetting your bed.

Then, almost overnight, I suddenly became obsessed with germs. I started washing my hands in a strange way; repeatedly and methodically for hours at a time. I had to be convinced that all possible germs had been removed. It was insane—but there was nothing I
could do about it. And it worsened. Every time I had to wash my hands it was as though a brick wall formed inside my mind and the only way I could break it down was to precisely and correctly perform the washing. The frustration was unbearable and I was always stressed and agitated.

Then shortly after I’d started the hand-washing ritual I developed another ritual involving my feet. A sensation would come over my foot which required me to rub the other foot over it until this sensation was gone. There was nothing physical about this sensation—it was entirely in my head. I knew this, but the ritual burrowed in to become a driving force. As I wore out shoe after shoe, my parents were forever asking why.

I knew the solution was simple: stop doing it. But stopping was a much greater task than it sounded. Then again I didn’t care about my shoes. I could get new ones. But what about my hands?

Excessive hand-washing took its toll and it wasn’t long before my hands became dry and worn. Cuts and cracks soon followed.

‘Mammy, Sean has something wrong with his hands! Mammy go look, go look!’

Sarah and I had been playing with each other and the fun had turned into an argument. She pinched me,
then I pinched her back. She slapped me and I returned the slap. The coarseness of my hands shocked Sarah.

‘What did you hit me with? What have you got in there?’ She wailed and grabbed my hands to see what they were hiding.

I whipped them away. I’d washed them for over an hour that morning, and they were in a terrible state by afternoon.

‘Sean, show me your hands,’ my mam demanded. Reluctantly I opened them up and let her look.

‘Sean, what have you been doing to yourself?’ she exclaimed, examining my broken skin.

‘Nothing, nothing!’ I retorted with embarrassment. I tried to pull my hands back from her but she dragged me closer.

‘Your hands are in bits. Did you hurt yourself?’

‘No!’

Mam regarded me sternly; she knew that I wasn’t lying but I was obviously not telling her the facts either.

‘We’ll show them to your father!’

I was petrified.

Mam didn’t show my hands to Dad, and looking back on those days I think that it must have dawned on her then that there was more to my problems than just adolescence. She took to watching me like a hawk.

I don’t look back on those years with fondness. Life was a terrible struggle for me. Every day was spent trying desperately to hide my problems. And I was good at hiding them. I would wait until no one was in the house to do the hand-washing, and all my other rituals I did when backs were turned or people were distracted.

The turning point was one morning at around one o’clock when my sister said, ‘Not tonight, not any more. You’re too old to be sleeping with anyone. You’re like a baby. What’s wrong with you anyway?’

‘Ah, just tonight, just one more night. I can’t sleep alone. I’m frightened.’

I sounded like an addict, only concerned about one thing—my needs. Intent, focused, I was oblivious to what my sister had said to me.

‘No, get out. You’re too old, get out!’

Sarah had talked like this before that night, but never with such determination.

‘Ah, come on, Sars, please. I’m serious—I really can’t sleep. I promise I’ll sleep on my own tomorrow night. Please just tonight. This will be the last time.’

Jumping out of bed, Sarah powered towards me and grabbed me by the arm.

‘Out!’ she exclaimed in fury, as she led me from the
room and into the hallway. ‘You have to sleep on your own from now on, Sean.’

‘But, Sarah, I can’t. I just can’t! I’m scared!’

‘I don’t care,’ she replied rigidly. ‘Sam has locked his bedroom door and so will I. You’re on your own. No more of this!’

‘Please,’ I begged in a whisper, worried that Mam and Dad would wake up with all the commotion.

‘No, Sean. You’re being pathetic and if you keep doing this—’ she hesitated—‘I’m going to end up hating you!’

Sarah’s eyes were filled with such resolution I had nothing more to say. What could I say? Seconds later she was gone and I heard her bedroom door locking. Suddenly I was alone; it was just the darkness and me. At first I considered turning the hall lights on, but decided not to—I had to be brave.

I had nowhere to go, Sam and Sarah had locked me out and John was out of the question. I couldn’t possibly have gone to Mam and Dad. I realised for the first time that night, as I stood barefooted on the cold hallway floor, just how foolish I was. A thirteen-year-old who slept with his brother or sister every night—if anyone heard about it they would have laughed their heads off. People might have even
thought it was perverse, which was the furthest thing from the truth.

It wasn’t just a case of being utterly frightened of sleeping alone: it was the fear of closing my eyes and not knowing what was happening in the room from then on. That’s what bothered me most: the fear of not knowing. Having somebody beside me relieved that fear enough to feel safe and to sleep soundly.

I sat down on the floor with my knees tucked up close to my chin. I began to feel sorry for myself, mainly because I felt stupid.

The night stretched on endlessly. I was exhausted but just too frightened to close my eyes. Each time I felt myself nodding off I would wake with a fright.

What’s there?

There was nothing there; it was still just me and the hallway.

You’re an absolute chicken!

I don’t know when it happened but sometime in the dark of that night I drifted off to sleep. I woke up lying in the same position on the hallway floor, astonished I had made it through the night. The sunlight that crept through the hallway curtains was the brightest and most comforting I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe I’d
managed on my own. It was still very early morning but I was ecstatic.

Tired but triumphant, I climbed into my own bed, and within minutes I went back to sleep. That night had been a breakthrough. When I awoke there was a note at the foot of my bed.
‘Well done, Sean, so proud of you. Love Sarah.’
I still have that note.

And just like that, I was sleeping on my own every night. I stopped my hand-washing ritual. I even managed to cut back on the foot-rubbing too. It felt as though a weight had been lifted, a weight I’d been carrying for too long. Shortly afterwards the praying began.

‘Okay, we eat here, lunch.’

We had reached a small village, about three hours from our intended destination of Ulleri. The village was simple, not more than three guesthouses and a number of small barns. Apart from the blue roofs on the buildings, it blended chameleon-like with the surrounding countryside, the buildings overgrown with plants and trees and the brickwork weathered brown, so that you barely noticed the village until you were almost upon it. A group of young children scurried out as we arrived. They greeted us with such cheer it was as though we were arriving home.

Mani pointed to one of the huts.

‘We eat there.’

I was starved and would have eaten anywhere.

A middle-aged Nepalese man emerged from the teahouse. He had a gentle face and a welcome grin which he directed towards Mani—they were obviously friends—and immediately began to converse in Nepali. Suddenly I felt like a spare tyre. Mani would be more comfortable eating here with his friend, especially since quite likely he’d order
dal bhat.

Eaten with the bare left hand,
dal bhat
was quite messy. The idea of the dish was simple: add lentils to rice, eat it with the spicy onions and follow that with a hefty portion of the potatoes—generously washed down with plain yogurt. I had tried it on many occasions in India and found it to be quite pasty and tasteless. Years of growing up eating stews and lentil soups had killed off my palate for such dishes.

‘Dal bhat
at eleven in the morning,’ Mani had explained, ‘and again at four in the afternoon. Then at the night, seven o’clock and maybe again before sleeping.’

‘That’s a lot of
dal bhat.’

‘Mani love,’ he had replied, rubbing his stomach for effect.

So much of the same food, I thought, couldn’t be healthy, let alone interesting. It was economical alright, and easy to make in bulk. But still, I didn’t like
the taste of it. I chose something different at this teahouse—noodle soup and a bottle of Coca-Cola and retired to the company of my own thoughts. Mani opted to eat lunch with his friend and I found myself alone.

‘What’s wrong?’

At seventeen I was shocked to see Mam crying. She was alone, the living room was cold and the television hummed quietly in the background. Mam gave me a sorrowful smile.

‘Nothing,’ she finally replied. ‘Nothing to worry you. You go on off and do whatever you have to do!’

Mam was an upright woman with a heart of gold. Her protective sternness had never bothered me; though she was strict she was also the most loving mother any child could ever hope for. If we were punished it was because we genuinely deserved it and most times it was simply a scolding.

I sat down and put my arm around her. She needed a hug. ‘What are you thinking about? Tell me!’

Mam was also a very proud woman, and this was one of the first times that I’d seen her defences lowered. I could tell she wasn’t too comfortable with me trying to help. But eventually she spoke.

‘You’re all getting older!’ she finally whispered. Tears began again and I embraced her tighter.

There were many things I wanted to say, but I had no words that would ease her mind. We
were
all growing up and it frightened her deeply; it frightened me too. Mam had devoted her life to us and suddenly, before her eyes, we were slowly drifting away, relying on other people and other things.

A prayer was forming in my mind. Mani suddenly appeared and caught me unawares.

‘You not eat!’

I looked down at my food. I’d hardly eaten anything, even though I was so hungry. But now I needed to concentrate on the words of the prayer that ran through my head! What must he have thought of me as I stared past him in a bit of daze?

The prayer went well and I felt content that Mam would be okay.

‘I’ll eat it now,’ I finally replied. To Mani’s surprise, I began to scoff down my food.

Are they pissed off with me, I wondered as I ate. What must Mam and Dad—and John—think? Since I’d been in Nepal I’d resisted brooding on what state my family would be in and I was alarmed that the idea should come to me now. Yes, I’d fled Ireland. It was
the wrong thing to do, but what was done was done. I finished the remainder of my lunch. ‘Alright, how far to Ulleri?’ I was being too enthusiastic now.

Mani raised an arm and pointed towards the forested mountain that towered over this small village.

‘Oh, no! You’ve got to be joking.’ But Mani wasn’t joking.

‘You see—’ he pointed towards a tiny blue dot high in the distance. A building, barely visible, nestled deep within the forest at the top of the mountain. I’d noticed most houses along the trek had blue corrugated rooftops.

‘That is our next teahouse—we rest there tonight.’

‘Ah, Christ almighty,’ I moaned. It had to be at least a thousand metres, and practically vertical! ‘That’s going to take forever!’

‘Three thousand steps,’ Mani replied. ‘Maybe three hours’ walking.’

Mani’s friend from the teahouse overheard our conversation. ‘Maybe you would like to stay in my hotel tonight instead and start fresh tomorrow morning?’

‘Ah, no, maybe next time.’ I knew this was the best response to make. ‘I would rather get it over and done with today.’

Mani threw an approving glance in my direction; it felt good.

‘You sure? Nice rooms, very cheap!’ the manager persisted.

‘Thank you, but no, we better go.’

The manager blurted something to Mani in Nepali and both men gave a cautious laugh. Had he commented how fit and courageous I was, not to give in for the night at such an early stage of the trek? No, more likely he just said I was a tight wanker.

Mani once again set off purposefully, over a wooden bridge, across a gentle clear stream and finally to step number one of our three thousand! Before we’d reached the first rocky slab of the staircase I’d decided that, no matter what came or went, I wouldn’t count them. But—
one, two, three, four
—it was like counting sheep except the pain in the legs reminded you that, yes, you were still awake and, no, you hadn’t reached the top yet…299, 300, 301, 302. It was so goddamn steep! I glanced back at the height we had already travelled.

If somebody fell here it would be one heck of a drop!

I didn’t like that thought; once again it made me think of my family.
You’re worrying too much. They’re all fine.
I calculated that it would be about
seven in the morning back in Ireland. Dad would probably be driving off to work.

Dad always used to ring me on my mobile in the mornings on his way to work. He never talked about much, just wanted to make contact. Dad, like Mam, lived for us kids. What if he collided with a truck en route? What if his tyre had a blow-out?

I tried to banish these thoughts with a short prayer, but I couldn’t complete it—each step of our ascent needed my concentration. Yet the anxiety of the prayer weighed heavier and heavier. And because of the prayer’s incompleteness it was only a matter of time before I’d have more thoughts of home and terrible possibilities.

…1003, 1004, 1005, 1006…

Unfinished prayers led to guilt and fear. Now I was fearful that because I didn’t complete the prayer Dad
would
have an accident. It would be through no fault of his, it would be because of my unfinished prayer. I began silently reciting the prayer again—but it was too difficult and I couldn’t get it right. Each new step met me faster than the time I needed to complete the prayer, and excluding stopping altogether and making it obvious to Mani that there was something wrong, there was nothing I could do.

But Mani had stopped up ahead. Before I reached him he had already taken the backpack off and was walking swiftly back towards me.

‘You alright?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘I need piss!’ he replied as he hurried by me and disappeared into a heavy patch of trees. His urgency was bizarre.

Ah, what a relief! There was nobody around, I was totally free of interruptions. With my eyes focused on the highest point in the sky and fingers and toes flexed, I finally had success.

‘There’s a lot going on in your head, Sean, isn’t there?’

We lay beside each other. The beach hut was grey and bare but neither of us was much concerned with the surroundings. We were in India but we could have been anywhere in the world and we would have been oblivious to it. I was focused on her eyes and she on mine, that was all that mattered.

‘What makes you think that?’

Her directness was a surprise; no one outside family had ever really commented before.

‘You can tell,’ she replied softly. ‘Sometimes I talk to you and you’re someplace else.’

She couldn’t have been more on the money. I wanted to change the conversation, but I didn’t know how.

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ she continued. ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ Her face was lit up, her eyes glowing in the half light of our room. ‘All you’ve got to do is keep those things under control. Don’t let them take over your beautiful soul.’ She wagged a playful finger at me. She instinctively knew more about me than most people I’d known for years. I felt comfortable that I didn’t have to talk.

My mind was clear. I was sitting on the stone steps enjoying the scenery when Mani returned. He’d managed to sneak into my prayer again but now I didn’t care. It was easier to add him than contend with the guilt of not adding him.

Mani sat down beside me—we were both exhausted, and the steps still stretched above us.

‘Are we nearly halfway?’ I asked optimistically.

‘I think maybe…’ He paused to look up in the direction we were heading. ‘Maybe no.’

‘No!’ It was a desperate
no.
I sighed. ‘How far then?’

‘Maybe still many steps, I think two more hours.’

Two more hours. It was a feat of science, never before had such scrawny legs achieved so much in such a short time.

At two-thirds of the way I was still counting the steps…2121, 2122, 2123, 2124…Was I intentionally trying to punish myself? I might as well have been counting each second it was taking. It was as painful as the trip to India from Ireland: nine-hours on a beautiful, shiny new Boeing 747, with all the trimmings, all the extras—including the option of viewing the journey on my own personal on-screen flight map showing miles to destination, time to destination, miles travelled since departing—it was a neurotic’s nightmare,
14236 miles
,
14225 miles
,
14218 miles
…

Mani sat down on one of the steps up ahead. He left the backpack on. As soon as I caught up I sat also and drank the remainder of my water.

‘I think it’s going to rain.’ I indicated the gradual swoop of black clouds in our direction. At lunchtime I’d observed how far away they were and thought we would probably avoid them. Since then the wind must have shifted, and sometime during the hours between steps one thousand and two thousand we had begun climbing towards the clouds rather than away.

‘I think not.’ Mani gazed into the sky. ‘I think today we will get lucky.’ As he spoke I noticed for the first time that he’d begun to look tired and was breathing more heavily.

‘Are you tired?’

‘Ah, a little, not so bad.’ Mani’s face creased into a smile. ‘Today, Mani not so fit, tomorrow and the next day, very fit!’ He slapped his thighs for effect.

‘Ah, good on you,’ I laughed. ‘At least one of us will be.’

‘This season you are Mani’s customer number one. I arrive from Kathmandu to Pokhara three weeks ago but no work until now, very bad time, I think—tourists not come to Nepal. Very bad time!’

‘Yes, it is a very bad time,’ I agreed. ‘When I first arrived in Nepal, I didn’t know as much about all of the fighting—if I had, I probably wouldn’t have come.’

Not surprisingly, these words didn’t cheer Mani up. You think that by agreeing with somebody you’ll make them feel better, but you’re actually rubbing salt into the wound. I went silent. There was an awkward pause and I threw a stone at a nearby tree. I missed.

‘I do this job for fifteen years,’ Mani began, sounding optimistic again. ‘When I start we have many tourists
and many work. It was good time but Mani not so interested in keeping money. Now I have plan for money and wife, but now no tourists. I think maybe I am unlucky—but I am happy because now I am not drinking and no ganja.’

‘Did you drink a lot?’

It was an odd question, but I felt that Mani had led me there.

He smiled. ‘Drink and Mani very good friends.’ The conversation ended there, and that seemed like a good place to leave it. This was none of my business.

We started off again on what would be our last stretch of the day. Every bend, every hopeful ending met once again with a vertical staircase. Secretly I had hoped that Mani had been mistaken when he’d said it was three thousand steps. In fact, he had underestimated. At the three-thousand-steps mark, Ulleri finally came into view, but we were at least ten minutes’ walk away.

When at last we hobbled into the quiet streets of the town, I was shattered by the marathon.

Ulleri was a small village quite similar to Birethanti. Mani chose a guesthouse from the six available and negotiated a fair price. I crawled up the final insult of the day, a staircase to the bedrooms, and plonked my aching body down onto the hard surface of my bed. Relief!

But Mani must have read my mind. He knocked on the door.

‘The shower has hot water. I think that you should wash!’

Did I smell that bad?

‘You want
dal bhat
tonight?’ Mani’s tone suggested that
dal bhat
was probably the best choice for the night, so I agreed, then made my way to the shower.

This was a small guesthouse, scantily decorated and with cold wooden floorboards throughout. A rough but pleasant place for weary bodies.

The shower was in an outhouse next to a smelly squat toilet—a hole in the ground over which you hovered to do your business. Standing under the shower, I watched the lukewarm water fall from my body and form a puddle at my feet. The size of the puddle increased. Alarmingly, it soon reached the perimeter of the toilet—eventually flowing into it.