The Snow Leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

I ask Jang-bu to buy meat, and later our hostesses prepare the best meal we have eaten since September, a goat stew with potatoes, turnips, and a little rice, accompanied by many cups of barley chang. Jang-bu is my drinking companion; Dawa and Gyaltsen will not drink, and Tukten, despite his reputation, seems indifferent to it, though he takes a glass or two. The feast is held over a smoky fire of dung and twigs in the window-less main room on the ground floor, and afterward pretty Chirjing serves hot wheat bread with salt and a pat of butter. While we feed, more villagers come in, until the firelight is a circle of lively faces, young and old. I wonder if I have ever seen so many faces that I like in a single circle, and I go off happily to bed, my belly glowing. Soon Jang-bu calls me down again, for a man has brought the thin elegant lute known as the danyen, its stem carved as the long neck of a swan. Everyone is dancing. More villagers come, filling the smoky room with the companionable smells of human grease and coarse tobacco, and the old woman makes a fresh pot of chang, squishing the fermented barley through a wicker basket. One fetching, round-faced girl who looks somehow familiar brings a round-faced infant named Chiring Lamo, and while the young mother dances, our old woman holds the little girl in her lap. Infant and ancient are both heavily beaded, and the baby has a copper locket and a string of money cowries; the wizened visage and the pearly one wear identi...