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“I won’t tell if you won’t,” I say.

“I knew this would happen,” she says. “I mean you and Tshewang. I knew that day we saw him at Pala’s. Well, are you happy now?”

“I don’t know, Lorna. I’m happy, all right. I’m ecstatic, except when I think of the future. We want to get married, but we don’t know if it’s even allowed. Tshewang has already told his parents about us, and says they are fully supportive, but of course there are a thousand other things to consider.” I go through the List of Unresolved Issues and Unanswerable Questions, and she throws in a few of her own. Cultural differences, conflicting expectations about marriage (she has observed that marital fidelity does not seem to be considered a great virtue in Bhutan), power imbalances caused by money, education, experience. “I don’t think Bhutan allows dual citizenship,” she says. “If he emigrates to Canada, he’ll have to give up his Bhutanese passport. And would you really be content to stay in Bhutan for the rest of your life?”

I can’t say for certain about the rest of my life in any one place. After all, I only know two places, Canada and Bhutan. “I love Bhutan,” I tell her.

“Yes, I know. I love Bhutan, too, but I know I couldn’t live here forever.”

“Anyone can live anywhere,” I say.

“For a time, sure. But I think part of the reason we love Bhutan so much is that it’s not permanent. We know we have a limited time here, that’s what makes it so precious. And it’s a difficult place to get to. Remember how you felt going home this winter, how you were so worried you wouldn’t get back? It’s one of those impossible places that everyone dreams about. The forbidden kingdom.”

“That’s all true, Lorna, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with Tshewang. ”

“I’m not questioning your feelings for Tshewang, but these things form the background of your relationship and you should think about them. ”

I do think about all these things. They go around and around in my head in a whirlwind of fear and hope. I write lists, For the Future and Against, For the Relationship and Against, I have arguments in my head as different people, Ann Landers debates P. B. Shelley, my grandfather contends with Florentino Ariza. I thought Bhutan was all I would want, I tell Lorna. Just more time in Bhutan, enough time, until I was full up with it, saturated, satiated. I thought that would be the end of it, but it seems there is no end to wanting. Now there is a whole new desire. Now I want Tshewang.

“Well, you have him,” Lorna says.

“I have him now, yes, but I want him tomorrow and next year and the next. We want to have a future together. We want to have furniture.”

“Why can’t you just be happy with what you have now and say goodbye when it’s time to leave?”

Because I cannot bear the thought of that. Because the thought of never seeing him again paralyzes me with grief. It’s not that kind of love, and I’m not that kind of person, and it’s too late for that now, anyway “I want what I want,” I say. “And I don’t want to come to the end of my time here and say to Tshewang, ‘Well, sweetie, that was nice. Have a happy life.’ ”

“Well, given the circumstances,” Lorna says, “and I don’t mean to discourage you, but given the circumstances, I think you should at least think about it.”

I say that I will but I know that I won’t. I haven’t told her the other thing I want: a baby.

I think of all the relationships and circumstances in which children can be conceived, and I think of Tshewang and me in our little room, the pure flame of our love and our time together, and I want a child to come out of it. There will never be another time like this.

F-7

Outside our room, there are changes. Two new Canadian lecturers arrive, part of a new project that links Sherubtse with a Canadian university. One is a warm sunny man whose house is instantly full of the students and lecturers he befriends effortlessly; the other is an odd, older man who manages to stand erect in spite of the heavy white man’s burden he is carrying. He