Once, high in the mountains, a taxi climbed along a river valley, floating out into space as it swung around the corners. Below, eagles wheeled over forests of ice, and the road uncoiling through dazzling snow. Inside, my wife said, ‘This is Heaven.’

‘Wait till Rajmarg.’

‘Tell me about it.’

I leant back and took the air on my face. It stung, and tasted of cedar. A goat watched us safely past. ‘I didn’t come up here to talk.’

‘What did you come for?’

‘More than anything, to be free from desire.’

‘Whose?’

High above us, the peaks rose sharp and white as shark’s teeth, against an oceanic blue. The air was too thin to breathe.

‘Madam?’ Asiz twisted in the front seat, and flashed his immaculate teeth. ‘Sweet tea, madam?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Not as sweet as you.’ He grinned from lobe to lobe. I squinted away.

‘When do we stop?’

‘A village is coming shortly. Have you any other desire, madam?’

‘Desire? I … No.’

He grinned and grinned, his eyes filmed in their clear, brown slick. ‘Nothing?’ His head dangled forward.

The village arrived, clinging to the side of the mountain, temporarily halted in its fall into the valley. We found a tea stall. ‘Anyone for cholera?’ muttered my wife.

‘Sugar for the sweet lady?’ asked Asiz. Above us, the jagged peaks stepped away, higher and whiter, all the way to Tibet. Immortal beings, they say, lived up there. Whole caveloads of saints and goats and snow.

‘Oh look,’ said my wife.

‘Please ignore,’ said Asiz.

Along the roadway, a woman was shuffling in the kind of rags you find on exhumed corpses. A child grew at one hip. Around her feet rose a mist of dust.

‘Don’t look.’

‘Why?’

‘She’ll see.’

‘She can see us anyway.’

‘Oh shit; she’s coming.’ I made to pour tea. Already the morning was a film of plastic wrapped on our skin. She lodged at our table.

‘Sah’b, sah’b.’ She held her palm to our noses, swaying in the perfect sunlight. ‘Sa-ah’b,’ she moaned. Flies surfaced on her arms.

‘Let’s go.’

‘Relax,’ said my wife.

‘”Relax”?’

‘Think,’ she pointed out across the valley, ‘of where you are.’ In the still air, a single crow carked.

‘Sa-aaah’b!’ Bony fingers clamped my wrist. I tugged. She held. I made a mental line above my wrist – she could have it.

‘It should be beautiful in the mountains today.’ I sipped my tea.

‘What?’

‘The mountains. Those tall things.’

‘Sah’b.’

‘She’s offering you something.’

Between thumb and forefinger, I took a card, brown and sweated to the texture of boiled cabbage:

“OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT BEGGAR.

Jai Sah’b. These children very poor.

Their parents are die. Also relatives dumb.

They have need 50 paice, also 1R, or 2R.

Then God Bless You.”

It was printed in a city a thousand kilometers away. I handed back the card. ‘Very nice.’

She stowed it in a crevice below her rags. The bundle on her hip did not stir. Was it alive? She held up one hand as if testing for rain. ‘Sa-ah’b, sa-ah’b.’ The flesh of her face looked very burnt – a face barely fifteen years old.

‘Asiz, tell her not today thank you.’

‘She does no harm, sir.’

‘Thank you, Asiz.’

He grabbed her arm, shouted in her face. She bared her rusty nails, ‘Sa!-ah’b!’

I stood. ‘Forget it.’

Up the mountain, the taxi clattered and ground into second gear, sliding on pats of snow. Air became impossibly blue, sharp in my throat. I tried to sleep.

‘Is this your first visit to Rajmarg, sir?’

‘I came twelve years ago.’

‘Ah, beautiful.’ He smiled. ‘You too, madam?’

‘No, my . .’

‘Madam.’ His eyes came out. ‘Be careful of bears.’

‘Bears?’

He turned to watch the road. We examined the back of his neck, the motif of stains down his banian. His neck seemed as thick as my wrist. ‘At Rajmarj, there was a village girl.’ He grinned. ‘She went out alone with her goats, they say. She met a bear. He was a big, brown brute, shaggy as a beaten carpet. He carried her off.’

‘Didn’t she run away?’ asked my wife.

He flicked his head to one side. ‘Madam, these bears are fast, and most powerful. Twice as strong as any man,’ he gestured to me, grinning, showed his slippery, brown gums. ‘She woke in a cave. The bear licked the salt from the soles of her feet, so she could not walk away. He brought her fruits and water. When she had eaten, he took his pleasure with her. Many times. She could not move.’ He turned, and pointed ahead. ‘here is Rajmarg, sir.’

‘Did she die?’

‘When they found her, she looked different. She had the look of someone from another world.’

‘So she died?’

The taxi jerked to a stop. Buses and ponies choked the road, men in turbans jogged from bus to bus, dragging ponies through clouds of dust, shouting, shouldering, wedging tourists into small flocks. ‘How do we get past, Asiz?’

Our eyes cramped against the dust. ‘Sah’b! Pony! Nice trip to glacier!’ A hoof cracked my toe. ‘Very cheap, sah’b! Yes! Come on, sah’b!’ Asiz shouted something; they turned away.

‘Up there, sir.’

We lifted our chins. Over the roofs of buses and handicraft sheds, a valley of glacier hung in the air. ‘Wow,’ said my wife.

‘It is far to walk, sir.’

Already the sweet smell was in my nose, the stirrings of direction. Not so far, I thought. ‘Asiz, we’ll be back in four hours.’

He seemed unwilling to blink. In one eye I spotted a broken vein. ‘Alone, sir?’ His lips closed to a small pout.

‘Thank you, Asiz.’

Above the firs, all around us, the peaks stood up in welcome, grey with rock, streaked in snow and trees, too large to believe. The earth was broken open, lifted and tipped into massive valleys. ‘Up here!’ I pulled us along the mud slick path, away from the grunt of trucks. yammering ponymen. Streams silvered down from impossible heights, cut the path, icy to drink. We gulped for air. ‘Nearly there!’

Then over a shoulder of the mountain we sat on a rock, gazing down across the glacier, the lifted heads of peaks ran to the horizon. The air was so fine, a breeze could barely speak.

‘What is..?’

‘Shhh.’

I crossed my feet beneath me, closed my eyes. High in the tree-tips, the birds whispered… ‘Ommm,’ I chanted (ommm) deep, like a call to God.

He was there. Beside us he stood, silent, grey-white as snow, watching through hollow eyes. No more than four feet high. His hand came out. ‘Baksheesh. Sah’b, baksheesh.’ He bleated, ‘Sah’b. Sah’b,’ prodding his open mouth.

I shut my eyes, continued to hum.

‘Jai Sah’b,’ he latched onto my arm. The pong of him was sharp, like soaking-wet fur. I leant away. He began to tug my sleeve.

‘Piss off.’

‘Sah’b. Sah’b.’ The skin of his face was raw and blotched with scabs. Mud caked his nostrils and eyes. ‘Sa…’ I reached back, nearly broke my hand on the side of his head.

***

A peacock ran across the road, made the car crunch to a stop. ‘Look,’ said my wife. ‘It’s trying to fly.’

‘I don’t give a shit.’

But I watched the frail bird, lost on the end of its great tail, stumbling to lift its burden out of the dust. it toppled forward, shedding feathers, sprawled down a gully. ‘Serves it right.’

Asiz grinned. ‘How was today’s jaunt, sir?’

‘We saw no bears, Asiz.’

‘That is a pity.’

‘No girls in caves.’

He smiled.

At dusk, we reached the lake again. The lights of our houseboat winked like wiser friends. We sat, hearing the water lick its lips along the flank of boat, watching the dusk seep over. The lake became black and slick as satin sheets. Far away, a Mosque began to assert itself, to plot and call in the night. The hashish boats drifted out, and a sprinkle of hookahs littered the gloom.

‘That bear girl,’ said Asiz. ‘She went back to her village. They gave her more goats, urged her to marry.’

‘Did she?’ asked my wife.

‘But she wanders away, madam.’ He smiled to us both. ‘She is spoilt for men.’

‘Oh?’

‘You understand this, madam?’

My wife searched out into the dark that was the mountains, her eyes hooded.

He squatted on the step into the lake. ‘Australia must be a lovely place, madam.’

‘Yes.’

‘A place one can only dream about.’

She stared down at his gentle face, the eyes, the waiting eyes staring up from the lake.

***