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He hesitates. “Yes, miss,” he says gently.

It hurts all the more for the compassion in his face. “Well, thanks for saying it, Tshewang.”

“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.”

Tshewang winks as he passes and flashes my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. 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 grass, 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 grass 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 passes 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 pass, 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 passed 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