By Barbara Kerley he Nepali hills keep on going face. "Who would have taken the oil sizzling. He teaches me how to make jellabies, lets me sit on his mat. It is hotter work than I had imagined, squinting in the smoke, and more dangerous. I burn myself on the splattering oil. Hari apologizes, saying he’s burned himself so many times he doesn’t notice “Me? A while. I was a boy. British, Germans. They used to dance together, men and women. They danced like this.” Hari holds an imaginary partner to his cheek. “Whiskey. More brandy. They dance.” “Did you like it?” Hari shrugs. “I liked it. I was a boy. I got homesick. I came back to Nepal.” He feeds the long log a little farther into the Porters top the road and continue down the other side and on up the next. The porters are barefoot. They carry 80 pounds on their backs. If they keep going, the hot steady ascents, a small tea shop at the crest, trailing smoke, the precarious jog down the dark cool side, momentum prodding heavy loads, they could reach Pakistan, or China. Ask a porter in northeast Nepal where he is going. He’ll tell you. “Tibet.” And then the row upon row of distant hills take life, swarming with porters, school children, women gathering fodder, tradesmen making the rounds from town to town. Dusty feet, sweaty ground. And always the porters passing by. The porters stop and make camp sometimes behind Hari’s shop. The pond supplies water plentifully, though it is the same pond used to wash dishes and clothes. Waterbuffalo cool down in this pond, bellowing bulk with splayed legs submerged. But it is water, nonetheless. The porters seem happy to stop at night, cooking their rice on campfires. It’s a busy road up the hill, thick dust in summer and mudslides in monsoon. Hari makes tea for the porters during the rains, umbrellas lined up outside his shop. Even donkey trains come up the hill. The lead wears a bell and a knotted headdress. Each donkey is harnessed to bags of rice, a hundred pounds on each flank. And the idle ones, unharnessed, shake flies off the sores on their backs. You must stay to the inside when sharing the trail with a donkey train. They’ll bump you over the edge, massive weight, without even meaning to. Better to stand back and let them all pass, suffering the dust and the donkey farts. Better still to give them a little headstart. Hari has a son named Arjun. Skinny- legged with knees wider than his thighs, Arjun likes to play hoops. He rolls his hoop past Hari’s shop and on around. Arjun plays hooky more than he should. Hari asks, “How is my son doing in school? Can he learn?” "Do you have any pictures," I ask, "of when you worked in India?" I try to imagine the same bald head, the same ears sticking out, the same serious expression on a ten-year-old ■ When the light is just right they look JL like paper cutouts, receding in layers. On the first range you can make out trees, footpaths, a few fires at night. The next range is mossy and soft, a purple tint over the green. And so on, farther back, until silhouettes are sharp purple against a white sky. The impression of Nepal is that it is uniquely the same, in the villages. Explore one village and you feel like you know every other village on every hill: the mud houses, the thatched roofs, the sheds for the water buffalo. On the next hill there will be a woman hanging clothes up to dry on the beams that jut out from the house. There will be a child, or a tiny ancient woman, prodding a half ton waterbuffalo down a dirt road. There will be girls carrying jugs on their backs, men playing cards, old men minding the store. “Do you have any pictures,” I ask, “of when you worked in India?” I try to imagine the same bald head, the same ears sticking out, the same serious expression on a ten-year-old face. But Hari doesn’t. “Who would have taken my picture?” he asks. Hari is making jellabies, a fried batter soaked in sugar syrup. He squirts the batter through a hole in a cloth bag; it hits Throw out the china and crystal when you think of Hari Bahadur's teashop. There are no proper waiters, no potted plants, no scones delicately warm and served with jam. Add a mud stove, a long log slowly fed intp the fire, maybe a chicken or two. And me on a mud bench, skirt tucked under my knees as Hari tells me about his travels, his view of foreigners. Illustration by Margaret Chodos-Irvine Once I showed Hari how to make cake with a preciously scarce egg. We fashioned an oven out of a large lidded pot, placed over the fire. Twenty minutes of fuel for one little cake. But Hari is a gentleman with his preciously scarce fuel. He says he will make cake again when I’m gone and think of me. Hari’s teashop is by the pond, on a road that runs up from India. I have been to the top of this road, seen hawks soar below, felt summer heat fade at 5 o’clock. “When I was in India I worked in a big hotel,” he says. “The foreigners would come, Americans, Germans. Whiskey, brandy.” Hari whips out an imaginary tray. “Whiskey, brandy,” he laughs. “I was a boy. I cleaned their clothes. I ironed their pants like this.” Hari pulls a crease into his worn cotton lungi, transforming the shift into starched khaki dress. “Like this,” he shows me again. Hari returns to his fire. He blows on the coals, sucking air in noisily through his teeth. "You don’t get dizzy when you breathe in this way.” He squats next to the log as a small flame erupts. Hari adds more water to the kettle. “How long were you there?” I ask. Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 39 C an d ac e B ie n e m an
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