Zero K by Don DeLillo Page A

yaks to carry supplies and tents. Tents pitched everywhere. Prayer flags draped everywhere. Men with prayer wheels, men in woolen face masks and old ponchos. All of us here to make the circumambulation of the high rim at five thousand meters. I was determined to follow the trail in the most demanding manner. Take one step and then fall to the ground in body-length prostration. Rise to my feet, take one step, then fall to the ground in body-length prostration. It would take days and then weeks, they told me, for someone not raised and trained in the age-old practice. Thousands of pilgrims every year for two thousand years, walking and crawling beneath the summit. Blizzards in June. Death in the elements. Take one step, then fall to the ground in body-length prostration.”
    He spoke about levels of devotional stillness, states of meditation and enlightenment, the fragile nature of their rituals. Buddhists, Hindus, Jains. He wasn’t looking at me now. He looked at the wall, spoke to the wall. I sat with fork in hand, suspended between the plate and my mouth. He spoke about abstinence, continence and tantric bliss and I looked at the meatlike specimen at the end of my fork. This was animal flesh that I would chew and swallow.
    â€œI had no guide. I had a yak to carry my tent. Thick brown hairy thing. I kept looking at it. All brown and shaggy, a thousand years old. A yak. I sought advice on whether I should make the trek in clockwise or counterclockwise fashion. There are codes of conduct. The distance would be fifty-two kilometers. Uneven terrain, altitude sickness, snow and fierce wind. Take one step and fall to the ground in body-length prostration. I carried bread, cheese and water. I ascended the main path. I saw no Westerners, there were no Westerners. Men wrapped in horse blankets, men in long robes, men with little wooden shoes fitted to their hands, clogs fitted to their hands to protect against the pebbles and stones as they crawled. Reach the level of circumambulation. Follow the rocky trail. One step or stride and fall to the ground. Body-length prostration. I stood outside my tent and watched them walk and crawl. It was methodical work. They were not showing fervor and holy emotion. They were simply determined, faces and bodies, doing what they’d come here to do, and I watched. There were others standing and resting, others talking, and I watched. I intended to do this, fall to my knees, stretch full-length on the ground, make a mark in the snow with my fingers, speak several meaningless words, inch ahead to the mark made by my fingers, rise to my feet, take a breath, take a step, then fall to my knees again. Parts of my body would lose all feeling in the cold and cutting wind. Those who aspire to total emptiness. Those with foreheads forever cut and bruised from bending to the earth, from kneeling and bowing down and striking the earth. I intended to do this, take a step, fall to my knees, bow to the earth, inch ahead to the mark made by my fingers, speak several nonwords for every step I take.”
    He kept reminding himself what he’d hoped to do and the repetition was beginning to sound stressed. Could the words reframe the memories? He stopped speaking but kept remembering. I could see him outside his tent, tall man, bareheaded, shrouded in layers of castoff clothing. I knew I wasn’t meant to ask whether he’d managed to crawl for an hour or a week. But I responded to the act itself, the principle of it, the man’s intentions, so far outside my own fragmented visions, a thing for others, blunt and punishing and filled with steep traditions and simple reverence.
    In time he resumed eating and so did I. It occurred to me that my sensitivity to the meat on my fork was completely phony. I didn’t feel guilty, even if it was yak meat. I chewed and swallowed. I was beginning to understand that every act I engaged in had to be articulated at some level, had to be performed with the