Exiles Read Free Page B

them, then blew the dust into the air. Evidently Sangita hadn’t had a chance to get to such things yet.
    On the other side of the stairs was a small dining room with a table and chairs, and behind it, the kitchen, which also had a doorway into the back of the living room—the opening Sangita had burst through the night before. You could, if you wanted, walk a complete circle around either floor. Peter figured that on long, fretful nights he might find himself doing just that.
    They opened windows to bring in some warm air, then went out back. The yard was small but had a stone patio and two trees: a tall jacaranda covered with purple flowers, and a persimmon. As if they’d been cued, a small flock of bright green parakeets flew into the jacaranda and began to sing.
    Peter watched them and said, “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”
    Alex eyed the birds skeptically. She crossed her arms over herself and shivered. “I think I’m coming down with some sort of tropical fever,” she said.
    He put a hand on her forehead. It was cool and smooth. “More likely hypothermia.”
    “Well, that’s
much
better.”
    |   |   |
    The summer monsoon had washed Kathmandu’s air of most of its smog, and now the light etched everything with the hard, crystalline clarity of a mountain morning. The streets were as full as they had been the night before, and Peter’s last foggy notions of exotic paradise burned off in the brightness.
    He’d decided to walk the mile to the teaching hospital, where he would be a visiting instructor and attending physician for the year. He planned to start after the weekend, but he wanted to meet his new boss, the chief of cardiology, and get a sense of the situation. On the way, he stepped around piles of garbage, cow shit, dog shit, and what was possibly human shit. People traveled on foot or by bicycle, or straddled little Honda Heroes and other motorbikes. Some rode in rickshaws with landscapes painted on the back. They led goats and water buffalo by ropes, dodging buses and bicycles, as dogs roamed free in small packs, happily investigating the garbage piles.
    Peter was taller and paler than just about everyone else, but there were a few other Westerners in the throng, and he wasn’t much noticed. This apparent invisibility came as a relief; he was just another “Ingie” shambling along among these small, lithe people, getting in the way of oxen and bikes. Kathmandu was bigger and more chaotic than he’d expected. But it was a pretty morning, he had a job, and he figured his daughter would eventually adjust.
    Both sides of the street were fronted by small shops displaying everything from handmade copper kettles to plastic bangles to the elaborate icons of Buddhist deities called
thangkas
. Every now and then he stopped to gawk. Boys of ten or eleven carried bundles on their heads with tumplines—giant, planetoid-like bales of rags and other amalgamations twice the boys’ size that probably weighed more than they did. Incense wafted out of storefronts in stringy white clouds. Peter saw a kid of about ten riding one of the ubiquitous green Chinese bicycles, with six or seven live chickens tied to it, upside down by their feet, their wings and beaks bound.Chickens, to him, had become slabs of flesh in a package. It was a startling pleasure to remember that the real thing had claws and would take out your eye, given half a chance. It made the situation seem a little fairer.
    He walked on. After Alex had thrown the dart that pierced Nepal, Peter felt the need for reassurance. He tracked down an old climbing buddy, Bruce Wang, who’d practiced medicine overseas.
    Bruce thought Nepal a reasonable choice. He gave Peter the contact at the hospital and added, with good-natured condescension, that a lot of people in Kathmandu spoke passable English, and that the city would offer at least some of the amenities spoiled Americans were used to. Although central heating, Peter reflected now, was apparently not