Beyond The Sky And The Earth Part 3

I volunteer to wash the dishes, but Jane doesn't have running water inside the house. We will wash them tomorrow outside. Out in the latrine, squatting in the malodorous darkness, I realize what a luxury my indoor plumbing is, even if the running water doesn't run very often. Back inside, Pema and Jangchuk and I say many goodbyes and then they are gone. Jane puts cushions on the floor under the window and I unroll my sleeping bag over them and climb in, fully dressed. My feet and shoulders ache, my face is rough and gritty, and my brain feels like it is sloshing around inside my skull. Jane sets a candle on the low table. "Now, there are just two things I have to tell you about before you go to sleep."

I am already asleep. I do not want to hear two things.

"If you hear things falling off the shelves in the night, it's just the rats. And in the morning, could you just reach behind you and slide open that window to let the chicken out?"

"The chicken?" I had forgotten about the chicken. I struggle to sit up. There it is, sleeping in a nook near the stove. "Do you get fresh eggs every morning?" I ask Jane.

"Well, that's why I got it, but it doesn't lay eggs for some reason," Jane says. "Good night."

I blow out the candle and push myself down deep into the sleeping bag. Do not think about the rats, I tell myself. Do not, do not. I lie there, hoping that sleep comes before the rats, but it does not. And it's not just rats, it's the Rat Olympics. I can hear them sprinting across the floor, vaulting from shelf to shelf, somersaulting over pots and plates. On the sidelines, spectator rats cheer them on. Something falls with a crash and the crowds go wild. I sit up, gasping.

"They knock that same tin off every night," Jane calls from the next room.

I find my flashlight and aim a spot of light at the kitchen. There is a moment of silence and then they begin again. I burrow deeper into my bed and concentrate on the gentle ringing of a horse's bell outside. Eventually, I fall asleep and dream I am walking. All night I walk up and down hillsides, over streams, through forests. I have a dim idea that I am trying to walk out of Bhutan, but Bhutan never ends. I awake, exhausted, to cool grey light and the sound of clucking. The chicken is heading my way. I fumble with the wooden slat above my head, but the chicken is not interested in the window. It is interested in my flashlight, which it hops and clucks around until the flashlight falls to the floor with a suspicious little ping! I retrieve it and turn it on. I take the batteries out and put them back in. Nothing. The chicken throws itself out the window with a shriek of satisfaction. I lie back down, composing a letter in my head to the manufacturers. Dear Sirs: Your $50 high-tech flashlight guaranteed to last five years has been broken by a barren chicken. Dear Sirs: Your $50 high-tech flashlight guaranteed to last five years has been broken by a barren chicken.

We sit outside on the step, eating oatmeal with powdered milk for breakfast. Sunlight pours down thickly and the whole green world shimmers. Jane is talking about how hard it was when she first arrived. She hadn't quite realized ... how hard it would be. But then, she got to know people, Jangchuk and Pema befriended her, she learned a little Sharchhop. And she started teaching and that made up for everything else. The kids make it all worthwhile, she says. They are bright and unaffected and responsive. She loves them.

I say maybe I've made a mistake, maybe Bhutan is not for me.

Jane nods. "I felt that way at first. But you know what they say about these overseas postings: anyone can live anywhere. You think you can't in the beginning, but then you do."

After breakfast, we go to collect water, each of us carrying a plastic bucket. A group of children follows us, shouting "Good morning, miss!"

"Good morning Kezang, good morning Nidup, good morning Karma," Jane calls back. The village tap is a black standpipe in the center of the village. Several people are there with an a.s.sortment of buckets, bamboo containers, jerry cans and tin pots. Jane knows everyone. "Pema Gatshel lopen, " she tells them, pointing to me. " she tells them, pointing to me. Lopen Lopen means teacher. We fill the buckets and haul them back. I slop most of my water onto my ankles and shoes. Jane washes the plates and pots on her front step, scrubbing them with a gritty powder first and stacking them up in grey soapy piles, rinsing each item carefully so that no water is wasted. The kettle on the kerosene stove is steaming, and I pour the water into a Chinese thermos. There is no shop in Tsebar: kerosene and all other manufactured goods have to be carried across the valley from Pema Gatshel. Jane cooks on the mudstove in the evening, and only uses the kerosene stove in the morning, to cook breakfast and boil water. Her stove uses wicks and is easier to light than my "pump and explode" type. "Oh those things," Jane says. "They terrify me. I don't know how you manage." I like the sound of that word, means teacher. We fill the buckets and haul them back. I slop most of my water onto my ankles and shoes. Jane washes the plates and pots on her front step, scrubbing them with a gritty powder first and stacking them up in grey soapy piles, rinsing each item carefully so that no water is wasted. The kettle on the kerosene stove is steaming, and I pour the water into a Chinese thermos. There is no shop in Tsebar: kerosene and all other manufactured goods have to be carried across the valley from Pema Gatshel. Jane cooks on the mudstove in the evening, and only uses the kerosene stove in the morning, to cook breakfast and boil water. Her stove uses wicks and is easier to light than my "pump and explode" type. "Oh those things," Jane says. "They terrify me. I don't know how you manage." I like the sound of that word, manage. How is she doing? Oh, well, it's difficult but she's managing. manage. How is she doing? Oh, well, it's difficult but she's managing. I do not tell Jane that I manage by not cooking. I do not tell Jane that I manage by not cooking.

Now she collects the buckets again: she is going to the creek to wash clothes, and I go with her. We walk through the village, several stone and mud houses scattered around a temple. Groves of ancient mango and oak trees crowd close around the village. With its tarmacked road and gypsum trucks and shops, Pema Gatshel suddenly looks like a big town in comparison. I ask where the path goes to after Tsebar and Jane says that India is only a few ridges away. I stand and turn, taking in the view: 360 degrees of mountains folded into one another, ridges running down into unseen valleys and rising again, this geography repeating itself over and over. It is hard to imagine the plains of India from here. It is hard to imagine anything at all beyond these mountains, and I have the strangest feeling that I have been here forever, that I have dreamed up that other life in Canada.

We turn off the main path and hobble down a slope to the creek, where Jane immerses her clothes in the shallow water, and I sit on a rock in the shade. She tells me about Jangchuk and Pema, how they took care of her in the beginning, bringing her dinner every night until she could manage for herself. Jangchuk is a gomchen, gomchen, Jane says, a lay priest and the caretaker of the temple. Gomchens usually belong to the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism (slightly different from the Drukpa Kargyue sect, which is the official religion of Bhutan); they are allowed to marry; they do not wear the robes of a fully ordained monk, but their ghos are longer, worn calf-length instead of knee-length, and they often keep their hair long. People go to them for all sorts of religious ceremonies, for blessings, horoscopes, births, deaths, illness. Jane says, a lay priest and the caretaker of the temple. Gomchens usually belong to the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism (slightly different from the Drukpa Kargyue sect, which is the official religion of Bhutan); they are allowed to marry; they do not wear the robes of a fully ordained monk, but their ghos are longer, worn calf-length instead of knee-length, and they often keep their hair long. People go to them for all sorts of religious ceremonies, for blessings, horoscopes, births, deaths, illness.

"Don't people go to the hospital in Pema Gatshel?" I ask.

"Mmm, they'd almost always go to a lama first, because illness is usually seen as having a spiritual cause. If the lama is unable to do anything they might go to the hospital, but by then it's often too late, and if the person dies in the hospital, people blame the foreign medicine."

"Is traditional Bhutanese medicine herbal?"

"Some of it is," Jane says. "But most of the treatment here consists of particular prayers and pujas. They also do a couple of other things, like blood-letting. Tiny incisions are made at a certain place on the body. The worst thing I've ever seen was the searing. I didn't actually see it, only the scars on Pema. They burn the skin with a heated metal rod." She draws thick rectangles on her arm with her thumb and forefinger to show me.

She tells me about another treatment which Pema underwent for her chronic stomach pain. After some prayers, she said, Jangchuk had taken a cow's horn with a hole in the tip and applied the base to Pema's stomach. He sucked on the tip and then lifted the horn-there on Pema's stomach was a black clot, which Jangchuk hastily threw out. Jane said he hadn't made an incision; she had been watching carefully, and there was no sign of bleeding. "What was it, do you think?" I ask. Jane shrugs. "I don't know. Jangchuk said it was the thing that was making her sick, and sure enough, she got better shortly afterward."

I do not answer. I am thinking about magician's techniques, sleight-of-hand, a false-bottomed horn. "Do you think it could have been a trick?" I ask Jane.

She says she considered this, but why would he trick his own wife?

"Maybe it was psychological," I said. "A placebo."

But Jane shakes her head. "No," she says. "Jangchuk believes in his medicine. You know, in the beginning, people would tell me so-and-so was sick because he'd seen a ghost or a black snake, or he hadn't made an offering to his guardian deity, and I'd just shake my head. But now, I'm not so sure."

"But do you believe that people really get sick because they've seen a ghost?" I ask.

"I can't say anymore. So many things happen here that you just can't explain, and I don't know enough of the language to understand the whole picture. I ask the older students but I think a lot gets lost in the translation. They say 'ghost' or 'black magic' but who knows exactly what that means? We're seeing just the tip of a whole belief system. Faith makes things real."

"But only psychologically," I say. "Not physically real, right?"

"With ghosts and black magic, what's the difference?"

I watch her soap and pound her clothes on the rock, wring them out and drop them into her bucket. Laughter floats down from the groups of other women washing their clothes upstream. We climb back up to the main path. Jane goes home to hang up her clothes, and I go to the temple, where Jane says there will be a puja, a religious ceremony, held regularly in honor of Guru Rimpoche.

The temple is surrounded by a stone wall. In the flagstone courtyard, prayer flags hang limply in the warm air. The whitewashed walls of the main building taper slightly as they rise to the gently pitched roof. Around the top, under the eaves, is the broad band of dark red paint that indicates a religious structure. Inside, under the window where the light falls in, men wearing maroon scarves over their ghos sit in a row, their musical instruments in front of them: bronze and silver horns, some very long, a drum held upright on a carved wooden handle, cymbals, a bell. Prayer books, consisting of long narrow sheets of unbound paper between thin wooden covers, lie open in front of them. I remember to take off my shoes and stand hesitantly in the doorway until Jangchuk sees me and gestures for me to come in. Sitting cross-legged on the polished wooden floor, I study the frescos on the walls, the carved pillars, and the elaborate altar, which is laden with b.u.t.ter lamps, bowls of water, offerings of rice, fruit, flowers, incense, packages of biscuits. The paintings on the walls show dozens of Buddhas and other figures I do not recognize; the paint has faded, and the walls are smoke-blackened, but the faces of the Buddhas are serene and gentle, smiling down. Behind the altar is an enormous Buddha, gold painted, with black eyes and dark blue hair and the same kind smile.

The prayers begin softly, rhythmically, partly chanted partly sung. I close my eyes and try to think about nothing, but I cannot keep my mind empty, or even quiet. Thoughts roll in, pulling me along. Suddenly the horns are blown and I am so startled I nearly leap to my feet. The sound is long, clear, trilling, mournful, something between music and a cry. From the longer horns, low notes blurt out. A drum begins to beat. I can feel the music at the base of my spine, in my stomach, my throat. The chanting begins again and the bell st.i.tches bright silver notes into the droning voices. A sudden, short silence, followed by a prayer sung in a minor key, and I struggle to keep the melody in my head, but it is driven out by the cries of the horns and the renewed beating of the drum. I cannot think because my head is full of the sound. It is beautiful, it is not beautiful, it is discordant and stark, it is frightening, yes but it is also somehow comforting, it is music for great unroofed s.p.a.ces, it is, what is it? It is convincing, I think finally. It is the closest word I can find. I close my eyes and now it is easy to think of nothing.

When I open my eyes again, I am not sure where I've been. Jangchuk and the others are standing up and filing out into the courtyard, and they motion for me to follow. Outside, we are served plates of rice, vegetable curry, dahl and ema datsi with bowls of arra, and I am exhorted to eat more, drink more. When I finally stand up to go, I feel lightheaded. Also strangely light.

At Jane's house, I fall into a warm and dreamless sleep. When I wake up, it is dark outside, and Jane is picking through a basket of rice by candlelight. Tomorrow I will walk back to Pema Gatshel. The thought does not make me as unhappy as I expected. Anyone can live anywhere. We will see.... I search for my flashlight to take to the latrine and then remember that it is broken. I take a candle instead, which I somehow manage to drop into the hole. I remind myself to ask Jane why she just doesn't eat that chicken.

For Tour Kind Information and Necessary Action Please

I am in a drugstore. The aisles seem unusually long, it is some kind of superstore, and everything gleams under the overhead lights. I push my cart slowly, studying the shelves carefully. What do I need? Look, here's this bath gel new and improved with a flip-top lid. The drugstore leads into a grocery store. I stand in the cereal section, considering deeply: Shreddies or Fruit Loops? The store will close soon, I have to hurry. "Shoppers," a glad voice says, "visit our ladies' department for unbelievable savings." I wake up, blinking: I am in Pema Gatshel. I must push back against the dark disorientation this realization causes if I am to get out of bed, and it seems I must get out of bed: someone is knocking on the door. am in a drugstore. The aisles seem unusually long, it is some kind of superstore, and everything gleams under the overhead lights. I push my cart slowly, studying the shelves carefully. What do I need? Look, here's this bath gel new and improved with a flip-top lid. The drugstore leads into a grocery store. I stand in the cereal section, considering deeply: Shreddies or Fruit Loops? The store will close soon, I have to hurry. "Shoppers," a glad voice says, "visit our ladies' department for unbelievable savings." I wake up, blinking: I am in Pema Gatshel. I must push back against the dark disorientation this realization causes if I am to get out of bed, and it seems I must get out of bed: someone is knocking on the door.

On the doorstep are two of my students. Karma Dorji, who rescued me on the way to Tsebar, is short and st.u.r.dy, with a round, cherubic face, nut-brown skin, and a distinctive cowlick. Norbu is taller, with a crooked little grin and a perpetually runny nose. Their ghos are faded, and on their feet they wear rubber sandals. Silently they offer their presents: a bundle of spinach, a cloth bag of potatoes, a handful of spring onions. Karma Dorji reaches inside his gho and removes a small brown egg. "Thank you!" I say. "Thank you very much!" They look embarra.s.sed at my effusive thanks.

"My mother is giving," Norbu says.

"Please tell your mother thank you," I say, wondering if I should be paying for these things.

"Yes, miss." They leap down the ladder-like stairs and bound across the playing field.

Back inside, I hear water sputtering from a tap. This means I must fill every bucket, basin, pot, pan, bottle, kettle, jug, mug and cup right now, before the water disappears. In the kitchen, I pump up the kerosene stove until it is hissing steadily, throw a lit match at it and run into the bedroom, waiting for the explosion. When none comes, I creep back to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the blue flame. It immediately dies, and I have to repeat the process.

In the bathroom, the water has stopped. I have one full bucket. I can either bathe or wash my clothes. The drain is partially blocked, and although I have stuck a variety of implements down there-thick branches, thin willow wands, a piece of barbed wire-there is always a swamp in the middle of the bathroom. Gritting my teeth, I squat next to the bucket, and begin to pour the cold water over myself with a plastic jug. By the time I have finished, I am shivering violently and have to climb back into bed for several minutes before I can begin my daily kira ritual, a series of physical and mental contortions as I swathe and pin and belt the length of cloth around me. Sometimes, I stop, exasperated, holding some unexplained end, trying to figure out how it got free and where I should put it, and I wonder if I shouldn't just give up and wear a skirt and sweater. No, I will not give Mrs. Joy the satisfaction. Yesterday in the bazaar, an old woman stopped me and began to tuck in various parts of my kira, pulling the skirt down as she yanked the top up. Stepping back, she studied her adjustments critically. "Dikpe?" "Dikpe?" I asked. Okay? She shook her head and waved me on: it was still wrong, but it was the best she could do with me. I asked. Okay? She shook her head and waved me on: it was still wrong, but it was the best she could do with me.

With the egg Norbu has brought me, I make a pancake, which I eat with Bhutan's own Mixed Fruit Jam, and then I leave for school, descending the steep staircase slowly, backwards, clutching the rails.

At school, I sit in the staff room with the other teachers, watching the students in the playing field. Many of them did not start school until they were eight or nine, which means that most of the cla.s.s VIII kids are in their late teens. They all wear the school uniform, grey-blue ghos and kiras. Some of the smaller kids wear hand-me-downs, faded and splotched and miles too big for them. Pema Gatshel has both boarders and day students, and many of the day students walk for one or two or three hours to school each morning and evening. When it rains, they arrive at school soaked, and sit in their wet uniforms the whole day.

When the bell rings, we stand on the steps for morning a.s.sembly. The students stand in front of us at the edge of the playing field, in lines according to gender and cla.s.s. The number of female students decreases steadily from preprimary to cla.s.s VIII. The school captain, a cla.s.s VIII boy named Tshering, leads the morning prayer and national anthem. From where I am standing, I can see the tip of a snow peak shining above a row of dark blue mountains in the northwest. I like to think that I am facing home, and wonder what Robert is doing right now, half the world away. It is yesterday evening there, and I picture him, with perfect clarity, in his apartment, reading the paper in his armchair, playing his guitar, cooking dinner. I wonder if he is thinking of me at the exact moment I am thinking about him. There is no way to find out. I am a million billion trillion miles away. Sometimes during morning a.s.sembly, my throat closes up and it hurts to breathe. Sometimes, though, I remember my book of Buddhist readings: feelings, desires, sorrows are all created by the mind. Everything in fact is "mind." If I remember this, I simply turn my attention back to the slow and stately singing, and the sadness drains away.

After the national anthem, a senior student gives a short speech in English or Dzongkha on an a.s.signed topic: punctuality, honesty, respect for dear parents and teachers. Every English speech ends with the same breathless rush: "... and so my dear friends, I sincerely hope you all will be punctual/honest/respectful to your dear parents and teachers." The headmaster then makes a speech in Dzongkha; I know only the first word, dari, dari, which means "today." which means "today."

Dari, after the a.s.sembly, the headmaster informs me that I have been a.s.signed to morning clinic, and will have to attend the first-aid course at the hospital starting on Monday. I have also been a.s.signed to the library, he says, and gives me the key. I have already been to the library, a poorly lit room with a few very tattered picture books, abridged editions of The Red Badge of Courage and Heidi, The Red Badge of Courage and Heidi, and a great many Canadian readers published in the mid-1970s. How these came to be here, no one seems to know. and a great many Canadian readers published in the mid-1970s. How these came to be here, no one seems to know.

I like the headmaster and his wife, who has just given birth to twins. At first, I think he is very young to be a headmaster, but I change my mind when I see him with the students. He is sternly and completely in control. It is not so much his character as the Bhutanese way of being in authority, I think, remembering the officials we met in Thimphu, the Dzongda in Tashigang. Whatever it is, it elicits a fearful, unquestioning obedience from the students. With the staff, he is more relaxed, but I sense an undercurrent of tension between him and the Indian staff. The Indian teachers freely admit they are here because they could not find jobs in India, and they almost seem to resent the fact that they have to take orders from the Bhutanese. Last week, in the staff room, Mr. Sharma commented loudly on the uselessness of attending morning a.s.sembly if it's going to be in a language he doesn't understand. "Half the staff doesn't understand Dzongkha," he said.

"Well, half the staff does," the headmaster replied levelly. "Dzongkha is our national language. Mrs. Joy tried to give me a whispered account of "the problem with these people," meaning the Bhutanese, but I pulled away. I do not want to be a part of whatever factionalism is developing here.

Outside the door of my cla.s.sroom, I pause briefly, listening to the clatter and chatter inside. It stops abruptly as I swing open the door. This is my favorite part of the day. "Good morning, Cla.s.s Two C," I say. The entire cla.s.s leaps up and sings out, "Good morn-ing, miss!" Twenty-three faces are smiling at me. Sometimes they shout it with so much conviction that I laugh.

I have a syllabus now, and the students have textbooks and thick notebooks, and pencils which they sharpen with razor blades. I haven't mastered this skill yet, and have to ask one of the kids to sharpen my pencils for me. Sharpening miss's pencil has become a somewhat prestigious task, but they were puzzled the first time, watching me almost slice off my fingers, and there was much whispered consultation in Sharchhop. "Where did they find this one?" I imagined them saying. "She can't even sharpen a pencil."

I teach English, math and science in the mornings, and in the afternoon, the Dzongkha lopen comes in to teach the national language. From the other cla.s.srooms I can hear the drone of students spelling or reading and reciting in unison: "h-o-u-s-e, house, c-a-r-r-y, carry, g-o-i-n-g, going." In the other cla.s.srooms, the teacher says something and the students say it back, over and over and over. I cannot think what good this rote learning is doing anyone. I ask the students to read out loud individually and they look at me as if I have lost my mind.

Often, attendance is the only thing we manage to accomplish in cla.s.s II C. There are a thousand interruptions. A woman knocks at the window and holds up a cloth bag. The entire cla.s.s rushes over. "Cla.s.s Two C," I say, "sit down. There's no need for all of you to be at that window." Actually, there's no need for any of them to be at that window. "Who is it?" I ask.

"It is Sangay Jamtsho's mother," they answer.

"What does she want?"

"Sangay Jamtsho forgot his jhola."

"Sangay Jamtsho, go and get your jhola," I say. The entire cla.s.s rolls toward the door, like ball bearings, but I am there first. "I said Sangay Jamtsho. Sit back down, the rest of you."

Sangay Chhoden comes up to my desk. Beneath her thick thatch of hair, her delicate features are screwed up in concentration. "Miss," she says so softly I can barely hear. "House going."

"What do you mean, Sangay?"

"Yes, miss."

I start again. "House going?"

"Yes, miss."

"Your house?"

"Yes, miss, my house going! "

"Now?"

"Yes, miss. House going now, miss."

"But why, Sangay? Why house going now? Now is school. Are you sick?"

"No, miss. House going now."

I sigh, exasperated. "Are you coming back?"

"Yes, miss. Coming."

"Okay, go."

Dorji w.a.n.gdi, the office a.s.sistant, tea-maker, and general all-round helper whose official t.i.tle is "peon," knocks at the door. "Chit from Headmaster, Sir," he says, handing me a notice. It has been noticed that some teachers are "biasedly motivated" and all staff are kindly requested to follow the rules and regulations of the school and to attend to each and every duty including morning a.s.sembly without prejudice to their utmost ability for the smooth functioning of the school. This notice is for our "kind information and necessary action, please."

Sangay Dorji puts up his hand. His "stomach is paining," can he go to the toilet? Norbu's hand shoots up. His stomach is also paining. So is Sonam's! So is Phuntsho's! I tell them to wait until Sangay Dorji comes back, but Sangay Dorji does not come back. I am so intent on explaining the difference between long 'a' and short 'a' that I do not notice until another student calls out, "Miss! Sangay Dorji is playing outside! " I look out the window, and yes indeed, there is Sangay Dorji, playing outside.

I send Karma Dorji to get Sangay, and we get all the way to long 'o' before I look out the window to see Sangay and and Karma playing outside. Karma playing outside.

Mr. Iyya, Pema Gatshel's self-proclaimed bard, knocks at my cla.s.sroom door. Originally from Madras, Mr. Iyya has been at the school for more than ten years. His curly black hair is slicked back with hair-oil, and he sometimes wears a spotted cravat. His everyday speech is a garbled mess of malapropisms, misquotations, and flights of fancy, and his poetry, which he pastes on the school bulletin board, is even worse. He is in charge of all English extracurricular activities-the school magazine, debates and plays. Underneath the genteel-poet guise, though, he has a terrible temper. Yesterday, I was horrified to see him break a stick on a cla.s.s III boy's hand.

"Yes, Mr. Iyya?" I ask.

He bows deeply and says he would like to apologize to my ladyship for this untimeless interruption but he would like to most humbly request me to borrow him my cane as he has the gravest misfortune of a broken one.

"My what?" I ask.

"Your ladyship's cane."

I stare at him. Mr. Iyya is definitely unhinged. I turn to cla.s.s II C. "He wants one stick for beating, miss," one of them informs me.

"I do not use a cane in my cla.s.sroom," I tell Mr. Iyya coldly, and close the door with a bang.

Dorji w.a.n.gdi knocks at the door. Another chit for my kind information and necessary action. There will be a puja at the school in a few weeks for the benefit of all sentient beings. All teachers are invited to attend.

Mr. Tandin, the cla.s.s VIII history teacher and Store-In-Charge, comes to tell me that the School Store will be open for one half-hour. I go up to the Store and bring back twenty-three boxes of crayons. Cla.s.s II C falls silent at the sight of them, and then erupts in a cheer. "Miss, I am very happy to you!" Sonam Phuntsho crows jubilantly. The crayons are magic. Cla.s.s II C is very quiet as I explain that these are their own crayons, and they have to look after them, as it is highly unlikely that I will be able to persuade Mr. Tandin to release twenty-three boxes of crayons from his paltry store ever again. I tell them I will read them a story and then they will draw me a picture of the part they liked most. "Once a long time ago there was a mouse," I begin, but there is another knock at the door.

After school, I go up to the library and fling open the window. Everything is covered with a fine white dust. I begin to pull books off the shelves in an attempt to impose some sort of cla.s.sification system, but there is hardly enough material to cla.s.sify. I ponder various systems, but the most appropriate one seems to be: unreadably tattered, moderately tattered, and untouched (all the Canadian readers fall into this category). I lock the door and go home to find three students sitting at the top of my stairs, their ghos splotched with mud from an after-school soccer game. Karma Dorji and Norbu are back, and they have brought Tshew.a.n.g Tshering, whose standing-up hair has recently been shaved off. "Are you waiting for me?" I ask stupidly. Of course they are. My Australian neighbor on the other side of the building, some sort of sheep or cow or horse insemination expert, has been out-of-station since I arrived. "May-I-come-in-miss?" they chorus as I open the door. Once inside, they stand uneasily. I usher them into the sitting room. They sit in a row on a bench, looking around, smiling at each other, dangling their bare, dirty feet above the floor. Finally, Tshew.a.n.g Tshering asks me, "Miss, you have snaps?"

"Snaps?"

"Yes, miss. We looking snaps."

Snaps? I feel my face creasing up into a hundred lines of bewilderment as I try to guess what "snaps" could possibly mean. I have an insane idea that they want ginger snaps.

"Miss," Tshew.a.n.g Tshering says. "Snaps. Mother, father, sister, brother."

"Oh, you want to see pictures! Snapshots!"

"Yes, miss!" They are nodding vigorously.

Oh hurray! I understand! I hurry off to the bedroom and pull out a Ziploc bag of photographs.

"This is my mother," I say, handing out the pictures which they seize eagerly. "My father. My father's house."

"This your sister?" Karma Dorji asks, holding up a picture of my brother, Jason.

"No, that's my brother."

"Your brother, miss?"

"Yes, Karma."

"He is lama!

"A lama? No ..."

"Why-why he is having long hairs?"