Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [81]
A packet of mail. My grandfather writes that I must really appreciate life in Canada now. You see now how lucky we are here. My mother writes about how proud she is of me, enduring all this hardship. They have it all wrong. There is no hardship any more, I write back. I love my life in Bhutan. I do see how lucky I am—to be here. A letter from the field office in Thimphu reminds me of the upcoming conference for Canadian teachers in Tashigang. No letter again, still, from Robert.
Lorna appears at the door two days before the conference. “I just came to use your bathroom,” she says, bolting through the sitting room.
“Haven’t they finished that new latrine yet?” I call out.
“Yes,” she yells back, “but it doesn’t have tiles.”
Over coffee on the front steps, Lorna tells me she is having an affair with a man in her village.
“How did it begin?” I ask, thrilled.
“In a maize field,” she confesses, and I have to spit out a mouthful of coffee so that I won’t choke. “Don’t laugh. We were coming back from a village party and he grabbed my arm and said, ‘Miss, I lob you.’ I couldn’t resist that.”
“So he speaks English?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. He speaks a few words.” She is suddenly convulsed with laughter. “The first night, after we made love, we were lying there in my bed, trying to think of what to say to each other, and finally he turns to me and says sadly, ‘My little brother is dead.’ And I’m like, ‘Aww, that’s so sad, I’m so sorry.’ I thought that he was confiding some tragic childhood memory. Then I realized he was saying he couldn’t get it up again.”
I laugh until my stomach hurts.
“It’s true,” Lorna says. “I swear. But listen, don’t tell anyone. Not that I think anyone would care, really.”
“Well, it’s all very romantic,” I say, surprised at the wistfulness in my voice.
Lorna looks at me quickly. “How’s Robert?”
“Who knows. I haven’t heard from him.” I am making it sound like Robert is the problem, but I know in my heart it is me. He hasn’t written very often, but when they do arrive, his letters sound just like him, affectionate and loyal and full of practical advice. It is me who is changing. My letters to him sound false and forced to me.
The conference passes in a sleepy blur, under the swish of the ceiling fans in the Royal Guest House resplendent with blue-cloud painted walls and brocade hangings. In the afternoons, we trudge up a path behind the bazaar, following the river to where it widens into a pool. It is too shallow to swim, but we sit in the water and talk quietly. Children stare at us curiously, ten grown-up foreigners sitting in the river, doing nothing. They strip off their school uniforms and wash them in the river, passing around a sliver of soap as they scrub and pound their clothes on the rocks, and then hang them in the trees to dry.
In the evenings, we eat at the Puen Soom. The three new teachers, fresh from Canada, pick at their food and send their plates back, asking for smaller portions of rice, half of this, no, a quarter. “How do you eat so much rice?” Marnie asks me. She is wearing a white blouse and peach-colored jeans, one of several perfectly coordinated outfits with matching accessories that she puts on each day; each morning in the guest house she curls her bangs with a propane-powered curling iron.
I look down at my hill of rice and shrug. “You get used to it.”
“I don’t know if I’ll get used to anything here,” she says doubtfully, looking