Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [118]
“I think it can still be solved, Arun.”
“No, madam.” His voice is hard and certain and very bitter. “This problem will never be solved.”
After he leaves, I pull on shoes and run out of the house, up the driveway behind the staff quarters to the main road. The sky is dark and swollen. Lightning splits open a cloud and I am drenched in rain and sorrow. I am afraid that Arun’s prediction will come true. I stand under the eaves of a shop, wiping water and tears from my face.
At a jam session to celebrate the end of the school term, Tshewang and I dance together once, and then sit outside on a bench behind the student mess. Whenever the music inside stops, we can hear the winter wind roaming wildly in the valley below us.
“What will you do in Canada?” he asks.
“See my family and friends. Go to bookstores, see movies, eat.”
“You won’t want to come back, maybe.”
“No, I’ll want to come back.”
“I’ll miss you,” he says, looking elsewhere. In the weak yellow light of the overhead bulb, I study his profile, thinking how much I like him, his quick energy and wit and the thoughtfulness underneath. I know if I said, come back to my house with me, he would come. The burden of keeping silent is killing me. It is the only thing keeping me safe. I lean over and kiss his cheek. “Goodbye, Tshewang.” He turns and we kiss again, a brief, shy, utterly delightful kiss. “Goodbye, miss.”
I walk home alone, the sky full of stars, the night full of the smallest sounds, my whole self full of longing and sorrow that run clean and clear, a dark, quiet river over broken stone.
Return
Ahi-lux has been sent to Tashigang to take the Canadian teachers to Thimphu at the start of the winter break. After we load our luggage into the back, we go to the Puen Soom for a last cup of tea with Karma. “Today not good for travel,” he tells us. “Today is the Meeting of Nine Evils. Better you stay and go tomorrow.”
“My students told me the same thing,” I say. So did Kevin’s; so did everyone’s. Many years ago, the story goes, a man and a woman met at a crossroads. Unaware that they were actually a brother and sister who had been separated in infancy, they fell in love, and when they consummated their relationship, the nine evils descended upon them. No one could tell me exactly what the nine evils were, but everypne had warned me to stay at home in order to avoid them. We look at each other, wondering, and then Kevin says no, we have to go today, let’s not be silly about this. “Maybe the Nine Evils won’t bother phillingpa,” Kevin tells Karma as we climb into the truck. Karma looks doubtful.
The truck roars out of town and breaks down just outside of Tashigang. The driver climbs out, cranks open the hood and bangs something, and the engine grumbles to life. This happens more times than I care to count, and we spend much of the first day sitting at the roadside, while the driver hammers away under the engine hood and curses. Finally, between Mongar and Bumthang, hours away from either, the truck chokes to a halt and the driver opens the hood, peers in, and closes it. “No chance,” he says. “Engine is gone now.” We are stranded. A passing flatbed stops and we pile our luggage and ourselves onto the back. There is something wrong with the flatbed’s engine as well, and it cannot go faster than fifteen kilometers an hour. The low-lux, we call it. It chokes and wheezes the endless way up to Trumseng-La, desolate with mist and snow and black ice. We huddle together, hungry and weary, wrapped in sleeping bags that feel like cellophane against the gnawing cold, and a quarrel breaks out over the use of the word “fuck” and whether freezing in the back of a fucking flatbed at four thousand meters above fucking sea level with at least six hours more in the company of a bunch of fucking uptight teachers is justification for using it