Beyond The Sky And The Earth Part 12

Tshew.a.n.g visits unexpectedly one Sunday morning. He sits uneasily at the edge of the divan, refusing my offers of coffee and tea. Everything about him is in motion. He chews his nails, taps his feet, fiddles with his pen, and his eyes fly around the room. Our conversation is full of polite abdications, sorry go ahead, no what were you saying? Outside, in full view of the world, we talk effortlessly and endlessly. Inside, alone, we are unable to finish a single sentence. Well, this is a disaster, I think unhappily. Why is it all wrong? I feel thirteen again. He plucks up a magazine and then he is gone, completely absorbed in what he is reading. I lift a notebook from the pile I've been marking, but I cannot read a word with him sitting there. I consider his face and his hands, remembering his legs and the curve of his shoulders from the morning in the rain, wondering what would he do if I went over there right now and kissed him, wondering what kind of lover he would be.

He puts down the magazine and says, "Miss, can I borrow a book?"

I reach over and pull One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude from the bookshelf and hold it out to him. "Okay, great," he says, shoving the book into his gho. "Well, I should get going." from the bookshelf and hold it out to him. "Okay, great," he says, shoving the book into his gho. "Well, I should get going."

"Okay." I want desperately, dangerously for him to stay, and I cannot wait for him to be gone.

At the door he stops, studying a cla.s.s II C picture. I want to ask him what he is thinking, does he feel this powerful pull or not. Does he think of me the way I think of him. Say something, I think. Please. "Thanks, miss," he says and closes the door behind him.

Miss. Madam. Ma'am., I burst into tears.

Foreigners Can't Understand

Dini and I are asked to judge a debate about the role of women in Bhutanese society. The debate is not taken seriously, and the conclusion is that there is no gender problem in Bhutan. "What about the fact that there are five hundred male students and eighty female students at the college?" Dini asks. "How many women ministers are there? How many women dashos? How many women are elected to the national a.s.sembly?"

"And what about how the women on campus are treated?" I add. They are often hissed at and hara.s.sed when they get on stage to make a speech.

"There is no discrimination against women in Bhutan," a male debater reaffirms. "If women want to become ministers, they can. If they want to be elected to the national a.s.sembly, they can be. They just don't want to be."

"Why don't they want to be?"

He pauses to think. "Because they're busy with their families. Anyway, if they have any ideas they want raised, their husbands can do it. And when we hiss at the girls, we're only teasing them. They know that."

Dini leaves the auditorium in disgust.

I try to discuss this in one of the senior cla.s.ses. "Let's define gender problem," I begin one morning.

"Is this in the syllabus?" someone asks from the back of the room.

"No, it's not in the syllabus," I answer, unruffled. "But I'm just curious about what const.i.tutes a gender problem to you."

The answers are similar. The way women are treated in India. Widows made to throw themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. Girl babies aborted, or left to die. Inst.i.tutional barriers. Discrimination embedded in law. But none of this happens in Bhutan, they say. Therefore, there is no discrimination.

But there are other forms, more subtle but still very powerful, I begin.

A student interrupts. "The government says there is no discrimination against women in Bhutan. And the government must be knowing whether there is or isn't."

I stand silenced at the front of the cla.s.s. If I persist, I will be contradicting the government. If I stay silent, I will implode. "Write me an essay on it," I say finally, knowing that I will not be able to read them.

I am just beginning to see how large the gap is between what I try to teach and the Bhutanese way of thinking and learning. I give what I think will be an inspiring lecture on Sh.e.l.ley's "Song to the Men of England" to my senior poetry cla.s.s and the students object to the poem.

"We are not believing like this," one says. "We believe if you are born poor, that is your karma. It means you must have been very greedy in your last life."

"But the rich people in this poem, what about their karma? Are you saying they have a right to exploit the peasants?"

"No," another explains. "If they do all these things like in this poem, they will be reborn poor next time and will have to suffer. So there is no need for uprisings because karma will take care of everything."

"But what about helping to alleviate the suffering of others? As Mahayana Buddhists, aren't you supposed to be acting compa.s.sionately?"

Yes, they say, compa.s.sion is important, but they cannot see the link between compa.s.sion and working to change inst.i.tutionalized injustices. Anyway, in Bhutan, the social system is handed down to us from our forefathers, one says finally. It is part of our traditional culture. We must preserve our traditions and culture.

And that is the end of that debate.

Like cla.s.s II C, they want to memorize everything. They are uncomfortable with ambiguity and keep asking, "But what's the real answer? "

"Why can't there be more than one answer?" I counter.

They shake their heads. For the exams, they say, there is only one right answer.

"But not for literature," I say. "Everything we read is open to interpretation."

"Please, madam," someone says. "If we don't pa.s.s English, we won't be promoted."

Mr. Bose, I have noticed, sits at the front of his cla.s.s and reads from his yellowed notes while the students write frantically. There is no discussion, no room for other interpretations. I remember the kids in Pema Gatshel being hit for asking questions: questions insulted the teacher, the thinking went, because they implied the teacher had not done his or her job properly.

"I won't be insulted if you ask questions," I tell the students. "In fact, I'm insulted when you don't ask."

In private, they sometimes share their critical observations with me, but in public, they wear the smooth, untroubled face of conformity. I ask why they never express their doubts and criticisms openly, and they tell me this is not how things are done in Bhutan. Questions about how things work might be read as dissent. My own questions about the political situation are drawing more hostile answers from both sides. "I'm only asking," I say uneasily, knowing that I am both asking and telling, that my asking holds value judgments. One student tells me with uncharacteristic bluntness, "Foreigners can't understand. This is not their country. They should not get involved."

I turn it over and over in my mind one evening at Pala's, at the little table in the back corner, underneath bougainvillea and orchids. I am exhausted by the constant debate with myself. It is like walking a tightrope-I climb up and manage to balance for a short time, arms out, feet splayed, muscles tightened against the pull of gravity-yes, from here I can see how all values are culturally constructed. From an intellectual point of view, it's a fascinating place to be: here there are no universal standards or ethics, only endless constructions and points of view. But now that I am up here, I realize, there is no place to go, except back down, to my own side and point of view.

Amala brings out a mug of changke, changke, a thick tangy drink made out of fermented rice. "Taste," she says. "Just now I am making." a thick tangy drink made out of fermented rice. "Taste," she says. "Just now I am making."

"Thanks, Amala."

"No problem," she sings out as she goes back inside. It is her favorite phrase, acquired from the students. She complains that her English is "all broken" but I love the way she talks.

Tshew.a.n.g sticks his head around the corner. "h.e.l.lo, miss," he says softly.

I wave at him and pick up my pen. Go away, I think. I am too demoralized to talk, and after last Sunday's awkwardness, he is the last person I want to see.

"What's wrong, miss?"

"Nothing. I'm writing some letters."

"Can I sit here?" He pulls out a chair across from me.

"Isn't it time for your night study, Tshew.a.n.g?"

He sits down anyway and waits, his eyes trained on me. "What is it, miss?"

I cannot resist the kindness in his voice and eyes. I tell him about my frustration in cla.s.s over the students' reluctance to debate issues. "I just want them to talk," I say. "What's wrong with really debating the issue of gender in Bhutan?"

He considers this. "There's a time and a place for everything, miss. What good is it to say something if no one is ready to hear it?"

"Because silence feels like complicity and cowardice to me."

He pulls a purple blossom off the bougainvillea that runs along the railing beside the table and holds it in his palm as if he were weighing it. His face is very serious. "Miss, I think you should know.... The students like you, you're a good teacher and all, but some of your comments ... about political things ... might not always be appreciated."

It is tactfully put, but the frown lines between his eyes convey the real message. The bells for night study reach us dimly. "Yes," I sigh. "I know. But it's hard to stay quiet when you feel strongly about something. "

He pushes back his chair but does not get up. "You know, miss, a person can be completely right about something ..."

"But?"

"A person can be completely right about something but still not have the right to say it," he says.

"So in your wonderfully diplomatic Bhutanese way, you're saying you also think I should shut up and mind my own business?" It will hurt to hear it from him. I put it harshly, hoping he will say no.

He hesitates. "Yes, miss," he says gently.

It hurts all the more for the compa.s.sion in his face. "Well, thanks for saying it, Tshew.a.n.g."

"Good night, miss," he says, and places the purple flower in my hand.

When he is gone, I lay my head on my arms and send silent questions out into the night. Where did you come from. How did you get to be the way you are. Do you know that I have never met anyone like you in my life.

Lorna comes to visit for a weekend. Over supper at Pala's she tells me the latest crisis at her school, a science teacher who is convinced that other people are listening to his thoughts through some kind of "frequency device" implanted in his head. "We sent him to the Basic Health Unit," she says, "and they gave him aspirin and sent him home. His wife is really scared."

Tshew.a.n.g winks as he pa.s.ses and flashes my copy of One Hundred One Hundred Years of Solitude. Years of Solitude. The sight of him makes me flush. The sight of him makes me flush.

"Who is that?" Lorna asks.

"No one," I say, putting my head on the table. "Oh, Lorna, I think I should go home."

"He's cute," she says.

"And smart. He reads. He's funny. He's-"

"Your student."

"Well, technically he's not my student."

"Don't you 'technical' me," Lorna says. "Didn't you learn your lesson the last time?"

"Yes," I say miserably. I have told her about the student I slept with after the winter holidays. "But this is different."

"Does he feel the same way about you?"

"I have no idea, Lorna, and it's a good thing because it's the only thing that makes me behave myself. I am this close to falling in love with him."

"Well, stop," Lorna says, without much conviction.

The Map

On an all-day walk through villages and rice paddies around Kanglung, I pick my way around the spur of a mountain, through a forest of oak and rhododendron, and emerge in a glen with a brook curling through it. The mountain wall rises up behind, and all around are trees; it is a completely sheltered and sheltering place. The sun lies thickly, like honey, over the long green gra.s.s, and I feel warm and sleepy and inexplicably content. I sit and take out my journal to describe the place, but the pen in my hand feels heavy, and I stretch out in the gra.s.s in the warm yellow light instead and sink into an intensely calm and pleasurable state, a kind of golden dreamplace, although I am not asleep, and I don't know how much time pa.s.ses before I sit up, blinking. I have no idea what I've been thinking. I leave reluctantly, telling myself I can return tomorrow.

But the next day, I cannot find the glen. I walk for hours until I realize I am lost. It didn't seem possible to get lost; there are only two directions, down and up. But I do not recognize the houses or chortens I pa.s.s, and the path falls into shadow as the sun lowers itself into the western valleys. I keep walking up, certain that I will eventually hit the road. A wind rouses itself and bits of mist float past. The mist thickens as I ascend until I am walking through a soft, cold, dense fog. Finally I hit tarmac, except this is not the road. It is a runway. I know where I am now: I have heard about this out-of-service airstrip at the army camp in Yongphula, above Kanglung. It has not been used since the Indo-Chinese border skirmishes in 1962, because planes had a tendency to crash into the side of the mountain at the far end of it. In the twilight, swathed in mist, it is a strange and desolate place. Two dark figures emerge from the fog; as they approach, I see that they are Bhutanese soldiers. Behind them they are pulling a dog, its jaws muzzled with a heavy rope. Its back legs look crippled, and its eyes have a yellow glare. The soldiers make biting motions with their hands, and I understand that the dog is rabid. I hurry back down the path until I come to the road.

I try again and again, counting the landmarks from the first visit. There was a waterfall, yes, and I pa.s.sed a house just like this one, and then I went up but here the path goes down....

I begin a map of the area, drawing the college buildings, the clock tower, the pine trees, the bridge. The villages around, connected by paths. Lopen Norbu's house. The old lhakhang and the village above. I draw in streams and the river where the students immersed the statue of Durga last year, boulders, a tree full of brown monkeys near the prayer wall above Kanglung. The prayer flags at the bend in the road. The place where I saw a red panda, sunning itself above a tangled bamboo thicket. And places which have revealed themselves, a small cave high up in a rock wall, uncovered when a cloud moved and the light shifted, a waterfall appearing as the mist drifted away. I think that if I finish the map, I will find the glen again. There's only so much physical s.p.a.ce here, it's simply a matter of tracing out the paths and filling in the landmarks.

I remember things from my childhood, a love of secret places, places inside of places. I remember searching for a secret pa.s.sageway in my grandparents' house, tapping on walls, squeezing past boxes and empty suitcases to explore the back of closets. "There are no secret pa.s.sageways in this house," my grandmother said firmly. But I was certain there was a way to go through the mirror into a different world, or to fall through an invisible doorway into another time. Here, the folds and pleats of the mountains give me that same feeling, the places that have been forgotten in forests and the far corners of valleys. There are ruins of houses, abandoned villages, skeletons of terraces overgrown with green, and I long to know why the people left, and how long ago, and what conflict or disease sent them away. There are stories everywhere.

The map becomes its own place. I have started too small, I cannot fit everything in, and I must draw bubbles along the borders with miniature maps and symbols inside, connected to the main map with curly lines but one curly line becomes a Bhutanese cloud and another becomes a mountain, and then I give in and color in a lake that does not exist, and a river flowing out of the mouth of Tashigang Dzong, and stars wherever there is room. I look up from my map, out over the valley, north to the sharp peaks, south to the blue-shadowed ridges, up to the darkening sky with its watermelon-wedge moon and a handful of stars. My map has become a conflagration of s.p.a.ce and memory and desire, charting the exact s.p.a.ce where place and the experience of the place meet.

Jam Session

Dini and I are invited to a dance by the students in our third-year cla.s.s, a "jam session," it is called, held in the dining hall on a Sat.u.r.day night. "We don't have to be chaperones, do we?" Dini asks, and the students laugh. "No, ma'am," they say. "Just come and dance." We promise we will.

I put on my least teacherly clothes, a straight denim skirt and white tee shirt, and walk over to Dini's. She offers me a shot of Dragon Rum-"protection against an evening of Milli Vanilli," she says. "We're still going to feel like chaperones, you know."

"Dini, do you ever feel attracted to any of the students?"

"Only twenty or thirty of them," she says, and I laugh.

In the dining hall, the tables and chairs have been pushed against the wall, and crepe-paper streamers and balloons are taped to the ceiling and pillars. The students, in jeans, miniskirts and leather jackets, dance in pairs and large circles to unidentifiable dance music pounding out of a row of mismatched speakers. Two entrepreneurs sell boxes of mango juice and plates of chips by the door. Tshew.a.n.g, dressed all in black, slides off his chair beside the DJ. "Miss," he says, bowing formally, "would you care to dance?"

We thread our way across the floor, sticking to the outer edges because he dances as he talks, tirelessly, with frequent leaps and bounds. He keeps closing up the distance I try to leave between us.

"Sorry, miss," he says, laughing, when we have danced ourselves into a corner. "Would you like to sit down? Shall I get you a drink?" I slide onto a chair against the wall, grateful for the sharp breeze from the window behind. Tshew.a.n.g returns with a box of warm mango juice and angles his chair closer to mine. All along the left side of my body I feel the warmth of him, and I think I should move my chair a few inches away for the sake of decorum but I cannot bring myself to move at all. A slow number comes on, and the floor clears except for three or four brave couples. Tshew.a.n.g explains that they are officially "paired up," a fact which they must try to keep from the princ.i.p.al. "When he finds out, he'll call them to his office and make them promise to break up." His hand slides lightly down my forearm, pulling my hand out of my lap, and he holds my fingers in the tiny dark s.p.a.ce between us. All I can think is: yes. I want only this moment, and nothing beyond matters. My body is a cold, dark sh.e.l.l except for my hand. Life begins at my wrist, my palm pulses gently, my fingertips glow like embers.

A strip of orange crepe paper unravels to the floor in front of us, bringing me out of my trance. I have no idea what Tshew.a.n.g is thinking, if this is merely a flirtatious diversion for him or if his desires go farther, but I feel sure he would be shocked at the extent of mine. I am too old to be perched here with streamers coming down around me, listening to some sappy Air Supply number, aching to make love with someone who isn't even allowed to date and who keeps calling me "miss." I pull my hand back into my lap. "How old are you, Tshew.a.n.g?" I blurt out. I had not planned to ask it aloud, but I hope he says seventeen. That'll teach me.

"I'm twenty, miss."

"Oh yes. I-I remember when I was twenty," I say, putting a squint in my voice to make it sound like an event lost in the mists. "Well, I should find Dini. Thanks for the dance, Tshew.a.n.g."

He looks at me carefully, and then he leans very close and puts his mouth to my ear. "It's up to you, miss," he says, and his fingers brush my hair away from my earlobe, burning my skin.

It is me who is shocked. I stare at him, unable to think. "We can't," I say, panicking.