I took a deep breath. Mind over matter, mind over matter, I chanted to myself, trying to forget the pain shooting up my legs and the heaviness choking my chest. Mind over matter.
Ah Cheong, wearing his signature orange shirt, passed me by with a grin and a wave. I grinned back with the word ‘dumbass’ flashing through my mind. If I let him get to base camp before I do, I will never hear the end of ‘Men are stronger than women, yadda-yadda-yadda'.
A fresh supply of adrenaline pumped through me and I pressed on up the slope. “alpha-beta-gamma-delta-epsilon,” I said under my breath. A Greek alphabet for every step helped me focus on remembering what the next one was rather than the pain in my legs. When that became automatic, I began to think about other things that I needed to memorize; phone numbers, mathematical formulas and my ex-boyfriends’ full name.
Yet only 200 yards from the Mt. Kinabalu base camp, my body seized and I couldn’t move. I fell down to the side and even after I released my light backpack I still felt as though I was carrying over 100 pounds on my back.
“Oh God, why is it so hard to get to base camp this year?”
“You called?” said a little gnome-like man who appeared out of thin air.
I burst out laughing. Suddenly, he grew, or rather blew himself up like a blowfish and turned into a larger, meaner, hunched-back version of himself. “Doesn’t your mother ever teach you it is rude to laugh at your betters?”
“I’m sorry,” I said and hoped that I looked chastened enough to calm him. “I never imagined that God could look so small.”
He shrunk back down to his friendlier form. “We come in many sizes,” he explained. “Or rather we used to. Now almost all of us have been demoted to the status of spirits and ghosts.”
“So which are you?” I asked as I massaged a sore calf.
“I don’t know. I’m still a little confused. About 2,000 years ago, I was just minding my own business when a group of people came up the mountain and asked for help. I had nothing better to do, so I helped them.” He plunked down next to me and cupped his face in his hands. “Then they started calling me a god and began to worship me.”
“Sounds like a great life.”
He shrugged. “It was for a while, until a bunch of pony-tailed men came and told them a god was suppose to look grand.”
“That’s not always so.”
“I agree, but the villagers didn’t. So they began worshipping pretty pictures of non-existing beings.”
“Like what?” I asked, my curiosity perked.
“Dragons, phoenixes, griffins, flying people–all those stuff that can fly.”
“You mean, you’ve never seen them?”
“Of course not. That is why I say they don’t exist.” A pair of climbers trudged past us, panting heavily. He turned to face me and asked, “So, why did you call me?”
Well, I figured, since he is 2,000 years old, maybe he knows something that can help me get up there. “I’m feeling very lethargic this year. I can’t seem to shake off this heavy feeling on my shoulder.”
“Oh, that is because you are carrying Kamba,” he said nonchalantly. Yet the moment he said that, a pair of warty, dirty feet began to appear, each hanging down on either side of my shoulders. For a moment scenes from the movie Shutter flashed through my mind and my hair stood so hard on end, I felt as though they were being pulled from their roots. I dared not look up.
One of the feet thumped down on my chest. “Come on,” a voice of grunts said, “We must get higher up.”
“You’re too heavy for her, Kamba,” said the little gnome-like man. “I told you to ride on one of the bigger men.”
“But she was the fastest last year,” he said petulantly.
Feeling a little more confident after hearing his whiny voice, I said, “God is right. You are too heavy for me, and you are slowing me down.”
The gnome-like man puffed up his chest. “See you should have listened to me. I told you to ride the big man in the orange shirt.”
I furrowed my brow hard: Thinking, thinking, thinking. Then I said, “God is again right. You should have picked him. He is the strongest man I know and he might be the only one who can carry you all the way up the mountain and down again.”
“Oh, alright,” Kamba said. “But you still need to bring me close to him first.”
“No problem,” I said and mean it. “We are staying in the same camp ground tonight.” I turned to his friend and said, “I need some help though. Kamba is really too heavy for me.”
“Could you give me one of the red fruits in your bag if I help you?”
“You mean an apple?” He nodded. I grinned and said, “Of course. I’ll give you both an apple each when we reach base camp.”
Gnome man danced around me with joy twice then he blew himself up again and reached up to Kamba from behind me. I felt the burden on my shoulders lighten so I got up and climbed the rest of the way with a lot less effort.
Sure enough when we reached the wooden huts at base camp, Ah Cheong was bragging so loud in the open common hall that no one could avoid not hearing every word he said. “You are all so slow, like a bunch of tortoises.” He turned to me as I climbed the three steps. “Hey Anita, slow day today eh? Are you menstruating?” But before I could reply, he chortled.
I sat on a bench placed in front of the railing circling the hall and the weight fell off my shoulder. I turned to my side and saw Kamba for the first time. He looked exactly like a warty Humpty-Dumpty. I reached into my bag and took out two red juicy apples, which I placed on seat. Then after giving them both a nod and a smile, I went off to look for my roommates
At two the following morning when I again returned to the common hall to meet up with the rest of the climbers, the apples were gone. I never saw those two again but I could see Ah Cheong struggle all the way to the summit. The poor man was devastated and I could imagine how bad the humble pie must have tasted. Then again, why should I pity him? He was big and strong enough to carry Kamba up and down the mountain. However, the fact that there was no way for him to brag on that strength did give me a special kind of satisfaction.
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