Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [6]
Robert stood in the middle of the room, staring at the piles. “Surely you don’t have to take all this,” he said.
“I do,” I said, stuffing woolen socks, tampons, and The Norton Anthology of English Literature into a hockey bag. “It’s like preparing for a two-year camping trip.”
“It looks more like you’re preparing for a natural disaster. What kind of place are they sending you?” he asked, reading the instructions on the delousing shampoo.
“It’s a remote posting, Robert.”
“Well, maybe it’s too remote,” he said. “After all, you haven’t really been anywhere before. Couldn’t they send you to an easier posting? What about—”
I put my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to hear it, Robert,” I said. “I am going to Bhutan.” I was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire not to go.
Robert spoke my fears aloud. “It’s just so far away, and for so long. Two years—I won’t even be able to phone you.”
“You could apply too,” I said. “We could go together.” We had talked about this possibility before, but I knew that Robert had other plans for his life now. He had been a professional musician before I met him, but it hadn’t paid off, and he’d given it up to return to university. It had been a sad and troublesome choice, to give up the thing he loved best, the music in his head, in order to have something more tangible, a degree in his hand, a guaranteed job in teaching or administration. My grandfather wholly approved, but secretly, I sympathized with the part of Robert that missed his music. He was rebuilding now, he said, putting the pieces in place, he wanted to have something when he finished. This was not a time to go anywhere.
I could call up the office in Ottawa, I thought, and tell them I can’t go. I could cite personal reasons. I could still apply to graduate school. I could take a year to think about it. Two years was a long time to be apart—I should think about it. But I knew that if I didn’t go now, I never would. And lots of people had relationships over long distances, I told myself. We knew several couples who had survived long separations.
I went back to the List. I would take my portable keyboard and lots of batteries, and books I’d always wanted to read: a collection of Buddhist readings, Lost Horizon, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I selected photos of Robert, my family and friends, a few postcards to stick on the walls of my new home, a miniature blue teacup I’d had since I was a child. My luggage grew heavier; I bought another hockey bag. This comforted me. I wasn’t going out there with nothing. In between the shopping and packing, I argued endlessly with my grandfather on the phone. We debated travel v. academic qualifications, the first world v. the third world, challenge v. goddamn stupidity, the chances of contracting dengue fever on the other side of the planet v. the chances of being run down by a milk truck outside one’s childhood home, for the experience v. for the birds. Another letter came, fixing the departure date for February 16, 1989, several weeks away. I called my friends to say this is it, yes, I am going, goodbye.
A few days later, I got a phone call from the head office in Ottawa. The principal of the college in Bhutan, a Canadian Jesuit, had rejected my application. He wanted someone older, with more experience. Apparently, he was uncomfortable