Beyond the Sky and the Earth (21 page)

Finally, I have to tell them to go home. I have not packed a single thing. They leave, but just before dark, Norbu and Karma Dorji return. A man died suddenly in the house next to Norbu’s, they explain, and they are afraid to sleep at home. The people are saying the man was killed by black magic. They sit at the table quietly and refuse all offers of tea, crayons and books. Occasionally, I hear one of them murmuring a mantra. It begins to rain, a sudden, completely familiar rush of sound. “See, miss,” Norbu says sleepily. “That man is died and now rain is coming.”

I go into the bedroom to pack, but I get nothing done. I sit at the window instead, thinking about doen, all the possible meanings, all the possible ghosts, from demons and the spirits of the dead to gods of rocks, trees and earth. I think about the magicians who still know the old religion, the rituals from before the arrival of Buddhism over twelve hundred years ago. They are said to be able to summon the spirits and send them off to do their bidding—bring hailstones to flatten crops, dry up rivers and wombs, suck out someone’s life force, cause madness, disease and death. I can no longer say, “I don’t believe in ghosts and black magic.” Everyone around me believes. Even the other foreigners are unsure. A Canadian teacher in Dremitse awoke to see green lights dancing at the foot of her bed, a British teacher saw a child temporarily possessed by the distraught spirit of a dead uncle, the teachers who lived in this flat before me reported voices coming from empty rooms, too close and distinct to be from outside or downstairs. I heard these stories in Thimphu, ages ago, when I could still say, “Nonsense.” If, as Buddhism teaches, separateness is an illusion, if we all partake in and help create a much vaster reality than we can know, then everything is interdependent, and anything is possible. The rain grows heavier, a thunderous roar, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and I am cold. I light every candle and lamp I have, and sit with Norbu and Karma Dorji until they fall asleep at the table.

The rain stops, and I wake Norbu and Karma and put a mattress on the floor for them. They curl up under a blanket, and I stand in the doorway, watching their small faces relax into sleep. I must squeeze my eyes tightly to stop the tears. If I feel this sad leaving Pema Gatshel after five months, I cannot imagine how I will feel leaving Bhutan after two years.

T
he college truck swings off the main road through a gate, stopping outside a row of white two-story houses separated by well-tended gardens. Four young men step out of the shadows of a cypress tree. “Good evening, ma’am,” they say, bowing gracefully before heaving my hockey bags out of the truck and carting them off. I am struck by how neatly they are dressed: the folds of their ghos are perfectly straight, their white collars and cuffs are immaculate, and they are all wearing dark knee-highs and polished shoes. The vice-principal, a soft-spoken man in a plain navy-blue gho, appears with a ring of keys. “Welcome to Sherubtse College,” he says. “We’re very glad to have you here. Shall I show you to your quarters?”

I follow him over a wooden footbridge. “Here we are,” he says, stopping outside the last house. “Each house has four flats. The upstairs flats have balconies, which are quite nice, but the downstairs ones have gardens. I prefer a garden.” He opens the door to the downstairs apartment, and we file into a sitting room. I stand gawking at the peach-colored walls, the fireplace, the bookshelves, the divans with rose-colored cushions. There is another fireplace in the bedroom, a white-tiled toilet, shower room, dining room, and a kitchen with cupboards.

“I hope these quarters will be adequate,” the vice-principal says. “They’re very simple, of course, but if there’s anything you would like us to do to make them more comfortable, please let us know.”

Is he kidding? After my place in Pema Gatshel, this looks like a spread from
Better Homes and Gardens.

In the sitting room, the four students who carried my luggage are examining my keyboard with interest. I smile, remembering how class II C had subsided into an awed silence the first time they saw it. Karma Dorji had pressed a key gingerly, and they had all backed up, startled at the sound.
Zai
,
yallama! What is inside, miss?

“That’s an electronic piano,” I inform the four college students.

“Casio or Yamaha?” one asks. “What’s the voltage?”

“Uh, Yamaha.”

The vice-principal clears his throat and the students bow again. “Thank you,” I say.

“Thank you, ma‘am. Good night, ma’am,” they answer, and disappear into the growing darkness outside.

The vice-principal invites me to dinner and leaves me to unpack. I wander through the rooms again, running my hand along the fireplace mantels, turning the lights on and off. I arrange my books on the shelves, and then sit on one of the divans, overwhelmed. It is all so neat and orderly, I don’t know how I will ever adjust. Even my thoughts seem sloppy and unruly, and I struggle to impose some order on my perceptions. I’ve only been here for an hour and already I want to go back. I want my rough unpainted flat in Pema Gatshel and my barefoot, grimy students. From the open window, the smell of flowers drifts in.

At dawn the next morning, I sit on the front steps, watching the sun set fire to the clouds above a dark ridge. The staff quarters are set on an incline, over the campus which looks like a cross between a community college and a summer camp. From my steps, I can look across the valley to the temple of Dremitse on a hilltop, or north to the sharp toothy peaks along the border. The strip of garden all around my house is ablaze with crimson poppies, orange gladioli, yellow dahlias, and several varieties of roses. A flowering shrub climbs up the door frame and drops tiny pink petals on my lap. Huge crows swoop and circle overhead, and a bird I cannot see sings sweetly from the gracious arms of a cherry tree. I sip milky coffee, missing the sound of one of my kids climbing up the stairs to present me with an armful of potatoes or infected flea bites.

Later, I put on a kira and walk across campus to the main academic buildings. “Good morning, ma‘am,” students say, bowing politely as I pass. I wonder why I have gone from “miss” to “ma’am,” and notice again how neatly everyone here is dressed. I am conscious of my bare feet in rubber flip-flops and my wild hair. My kira is faded, and I am wearing it too short, hoisted up over my ankles (for walking through mud, of course, but there is no mud here, only smooth rolling lawns and neat paved pathways). I may have to buy a new kira, and I will definitely have to find my shoes. I haven’t worn them since March, when the first rains rolled into Pema Gatshel.

I study the framed pictures of English poets on the walls of the vice-principal’s office as he explains the history and functioning of the college. He is extremely precise and formal, but his smile is warm and his whole face lights up when he talks about teaching. Over dinner last night, he spoke primarily of the students, and the difficulties and unexpected insights he had gained teaching another culture’s literature in Bhutan. “But, of course, there are universal stories,” he said. “How else would we ever be able to connect?”

Sherubtse, which means “peak of higher learning,” started out as a public school, the vice-principal says, and is now affiliated with the University of New Delhi, which fixes the curriculum, sets and marks the final exams, and issues the degrees. Most of the lecturers are from Delhi, although the number of Bhutanese lecturers is slowly growing. Canadians have been involved at Sherubtse since Father Mackey founded it in the late ’60s, the vice-principal explains. Mr. Rob, the WUSC lecturer who I am replacing, taught here for five years. The students are divided into two groups: the pre-university students (called, most unpoetically, PU) who are completing classes XI and XII, and the college students who are majoring in arts, commerce or science. “You’ll be teaching all levels,” the vice-principal says as a typist enters with my timetable. “Do you have any questions at all?”

What I really want to know is how old the students are, and are they all as sophisticated as the ones I met last night, and is it too late to change my mind.

“I couldn’t help noticing the phone on your desk,” I say instead. “Is the college connected by phone to—?”

“To Tashigang and Samdrup Jongkhar,” he says. “Do you want to make a call?”

“No, no.” I smile down my disappointment. For a brief moment, I had imagined calling Robert.

I walk up the road into the village of Kanglung, which seems no bigger than Pema Gatshel, but much more prosperous. Past a row of large shops with verandahs, at a deep bend in the road marked by a dozen white prayer flags, I sit and look out over the land below. Pema Gatshel, two thousand feet lower, was wild boisterous green, overgrown, un-contained. Here, the forests are less dense, growing in small groves, and the fields are larger and flatter. Wide footpaths wind around rice paddies, past chortens and clusters of prayer flags, to solid farmhouses. I watch the sun sink into a bed of cloud, staining it pink, and wonder what class II C is doing right now.

Back at home, I rummage through my luggage in search of my shoes in between myriad visitors. The man from upstairs, Mr. Chatterji, economics lecturer, comes to say hello and welcome. Next is Miss Dorling, who teaches history, an exceedingly thin lady of indeterminate age and nationality, in a long pink skirt and jacket, leading two white yapping Apsoo dogs on a leash, welcome, welcome, she says, if there’s anything I need.... Mr. and Mrs. Matthew from southern India are next. Mrs. Matthew has warm, smiling eyes, but Mr. Matthew reminds me of a loud, disagreeable uncle. He gives me a short history of the college’s past principals, all Jesuits. “Now that Father Larue is gone, there is no one to say mass,” he tells me grimly. “You are Catholic, yes?”

“No,” I say firmly. I have learned my lesson from Mrs. Joy. “I’m not Christian at all.” Two students arrive, bearing a stack of books for my courses:
Macbeth, Pygmalion,
collections of poems and essays, a syllabus. Two more lecturers come to fill me in on the advantages and disadvantages of college life: the store, which stocks dry goods, vegetables and sometimes meat, the electrician who runs the generator and changes lightbulbs if he’s not drunk, the
dhobi
who washes clothes for the staff, the infirmary. And did I know that the college has its own VCR? And a grand piano? And a bakery? Yes, bread is available from the bakery on Wednesdays and Saturdays but I should be knowing this, since the bread slicer was just purchased with funding from WUSC. Bread slicer! Wait till the others hear this, I think. Lorna doesn’t have a classroom to teach in, and I can get sliced bread.

When I finally return to my luggage, it is dark outside. Pressure cookers sound in the flats around mine, students’ voices float up, doors bang, vintage John Lennon competes with Duran Duran in the hostels. By this time in Pema Gatshel, an exquisite silence would have settled over the valley and I would have been reading in bed by candlelight, not looking for a pair of proper shoes. I find the nun’s kira I bought in Samdrup Jongkhar, which I cut into curtains and staple over the wooden curtain rod in the sitting room. I set my blue teacup on the mantel. I find the pictures drawn by class II C, smiling suns, golden dogs, dancing girls, a bounteous blue moon, and tape them up all over the house. And finally, I find my shoes, wrapped in plastic at the bottom of a cardboard box. They are completely covered with the thickest green fungus I have ever seen.

T
he college has everything that was promised: a library with racks of newspapers and stacks of books, an auditorium with a red-curtained stage and a public address system. The science labs have microscopes, Bunsen burners, test tubes, snakes and mice pickled in formaldehyde. There is a photocopier, and a computer room for the new computer-science course. The buildings themselves seem remarkably well-kept after the corroded cement corridors of Pema Gatshel Junior High School. There are blacktopped basketball courts, volleyball and badminton courts, a soccer field with bleachers. I walk around and around the campus, trying to adjust to the sudden and staggering luxury of it.

I meet Shakuntala, the librarian, a tall Indian woman about my age, dressed in grey corduroy trousers and a dark-red blouse, her expressive face framed by wavy, shoulder-length dark hair. Her direct, unconstrained manner puts me at ease, and I know instantly that I have a friend. “Let’s go to Pala’s for lunch,” she says, and we walk across campus to a canteen overgrown with bougainvillea just outside the college gate. Inside the low-ceilinged room, Pala, a silver-haired man in his fifties, gives us a brief smile, and his wife, Amala, clears a space for us at a table under the window. Beneath her short, feathery black hair, she has lively eyes in a sharp, thin face. “Come in, come in,” she tells me briskly. “You from Canada, I think, yes?”