He was breathing hard and noisily through his nose. He slammed on the brakes, ran around to the back wheel and spat on the rim. It wasn't frustration. It was his way of determining how hot the hub was.
He remained kneeling by the back wheel, his head bowed.
"Are you all right, Mr. Fu?"
He stood up and staggered, and then he grinned horribly at me. He seemed manic. He yelled that he was fine, and it was obvious from the way he said it that he wasn't.
"It is very high here!" he cried. There was dust on his face. His hair was bristly. His color had changed, too. He looked ashen.
After that, we kept stopping. The wheel noise was dreadful. But that was not the worst of it. Mr. Fu's driving changed. Usually he went fast—and then I told him clearly to slow down. (No one will ever make me sit still in a speeding car again, I thought: I will always protest.) Mr. Fu's overcareful slow driving unnerved me almost as much as his reckless driving.
This did not last long. We came to a pass that linked the Tanggula Shan with the Kunlun Shan. It was a Chinese belief that in a valley nearby there was a trickle that rose and became the great brown torrent that ended in Shanghai, the Great River that only foreigners know as the Yangtze. The river is one of the few geographical features that the Chinese are genuinely mystical about. But they are not unusual in that. Most people are bewitched by big rivers.
This pass was just under 17,000 feet. Mr. Fu stopped the car, and I got out and looked at a stone tablet that gave the altitude and mentioned the mountains. The air was thin, I was a bit breathless, but the landscape was dazzling—the soft contours of the plateau, and the long folded stretches of snow, like beautiful gowns laid out all over the countryside, a gigantic version of the way Indians set out their laundry to dry. I was so captivated by the magnificence of the place I didn't mind the discomfort of the altitude.
"Look at the mountains, Mr. Fu."
"I don't feel well," he said, not looking up. "It's the height."
He rubbed his eyes. Miss Sun was still whimpering. Would she scream in a minute?
I got in and Mr. Fu drove fifty yards. His driving had worsened. He was in the wrong gear, the gearbox was hiccuping; and still the rear wheel made its hideous ratcheting.
Without warning, he stopped in the middle of the road and gasped, "I cannot drive any more!"
He wasn't kidding. He looked ill. He kept rubbing his eyes.
"I can't see! I can't breathe!"
Miss Sun burst into tears.
I thought: Oh, shit.
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
He shook his head. He was too ill to contemplate the question.
I did not want to hurt his pride, especially here at a high altitude, so I said carefully, "I know how to drive a car."
"You do?" He blinked. He was very thin. He looked like a starving hamster.
"Yes, yes," I said.
He gladly got into the back. Miss Sun hardly acknowledged the fact that I was now sitting beside her. I took the wheel and off we went. In the past few hours the ridiculous little Nipponese car had been reduced to a jalopy. It was dented; it made a racket; it smoked; and the most telling of its jalopy features was that it sagged to one side—whether it was a broken spring or a cracked axle I didn't know. It had received a mortal blow, but it was still limping along. I had to hold tight to the steering wheel. The sick car kept trying to steer itself into the ditch on the right-hand side of the road.
Mr. Fu was asleep. This cycle of frenzy and fatigue was something I had seen before in China. It seemed a Chinese way of living: working very hard, with tremendous concentration or else flailing arms, and then stopping suddenly and going to sleep. Often in trains, two chattering and gesticulating people would crap out and begin to snore like bullfrogs.
I could see in the rearview mirror that Mr. Fu's color had changed, the sallowness had replaced his papery look of fear and illness. In sleep he looked calmer, and he had a bold snore. Miss Sun, too, was asleep. I pushed in Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 and continued towards Lhasa. I liked this. I liked listening to music. I liked the fact that the other passengers were asleep. I loved the look of Tibet. I might have died back there on the road; but I was alive. It was wonderful to be alive and doing the driving.
