Beyond the Sky and the Earth (7 page)

“Is there diesel in Tashigang?” Lorna asks.

Nancy looks up, surprised. “You mean you were sent out here without any spare diesel?”

“The driver managed to find some along the way, but there’s none in Bumthang or Mongar.”

“Well, there’s none here either,” Nancy says, sighing. “We’ll have to go ask
Dasho Dzongda
for help this afternoon.” The Dzongda is the district administrator, and Dasho is a title, like Sir, conferred by the King.

Lorna sighs, too. “I guess we have to get gowned up, then,” she says.

We finish the tea, and Lorna and I walk up the ridge behind the town and sit under some prayer flags, looking out across the narrow river valley. The hillsides nearby are brown and dry and detailed with shrubs and rocky outcrops and zigzagging paths, but in the distance, the mountains become insubstantial in the haze. Tashigang Dzong is on a lower spur to our right, above the turquoise river. Across the river and up behind the ridges is Bidung, Lorna’s new home. Somewhere south is Pema Gatshel. Somewhere west is Thimphu. And beyond Thimphu—but no, I am too tired to retrace the journey mentally. I want to just click my heels three times and be home.

After more tea at the Puen Soom, we struggle into our kiras and walk through the lower market with Nancy to the dzong. A policeman stands at the gate, beside a jumble of worn rubber flip-flops and plastic sandals. “You have to wear shoes
and
socks into a dzong,” Nancy explains, “or else go in barefoot.” We step into the cool inner courtyard. Directly across from us is the massive stone wall of the dzong’s three-storied temple. On either side of the courtyard are offices with thick wooden doors. Handlettered signs pasted on the lintels announce the DISTRICT EDUCATION OFFICER, DISTRICT ANIMAL HUSBANDRY OFFICER, DISTRICT AGRICULTURE OFFICER. Very young, freshly shorn monks peer down at us from the wooden balconies above, and giggle when we wave to them. We are led into the Dzongda’s chamber, where we sit on a bench under the window and are served tea and more Orange Cream Biscuits. I remember not to cross my legs and to wait for the Dzongda to begin drinking his tea before I touch mine. “Please have,” he says, gesturing to our teacups. “Thank you, Dasho,” Nancy says, and then explains who we are and where we are trying to go without diesel and why in very respectful tones. The Dzongda listens, nodding, and then rings a bell. A clerk appears, bent forward in a bow, and the Dzongda barks a long order in Dzongkha. The clerk murmurs over and over the honorific word for “all right.”
“Lasso la, lass, lass, lass.”
The Dzongda has ordered a release of diesel from an emergency store. He says that the District Education Officer will arrange for horses and porters to transport Lorna’s things to Bidung, I can leave tomorrow in the hi-lux, which will drop me off in Pema Gatshel and return to Tashigang to take Nancy to Thimphu. It is all settled.

Out in the courtyard, we pass a regal-looking monk with a cat-o’-nine-tails. The small monks scatter at his approach. “The
Kudung,”
Nancy says, “the Disciplinarian.”

“They sure take authority seriously here,” Lorna remarks.

We spend the night in a guest house, a stark, unwelcoming wooden cabin above the town. I lay awake for hours, listening to the dogs barking hysterically in the alley below. I can find nothing to throw at them except the batteries from my walkman: I fling them out into the night, and the barking continues uninterrupted.

The next morning, it is just Dorji and me on the winding road from Tashigang to the Pema Gatshel junction. Thirty minutes outside of Tashigang, we pass a cluster of immaculate white buildings spread over a green plateau. “Kanglung College,” Dorji reports. I look longingly at the neat lawns and gardens, the basketball court, the wooden clock tower that declares the wrong time in four directions. This could have been my posting, I think sadly, noticing the tidy cottages, the electricity wires, a tall young man with the most beautiful face I have ever seen, reading a book under a flowering tree.

Just outside of Kanglung, a coy road sign informs us IF YOU LIKE MY CURVES, I HAVE MANY. Another admonishes BE GENTLE ON MY CURVES. An hour later, the driver announces, “Khaling,” as we drive through a heavily misted town. An hour after that, we stop in Wamrong for lunch. I have seen no hint of the Canadian teachers already posted here and in Khaling, Leon and Tony, whom I met briefly in Thimphu. I sit on a retaining wall and nibble biscuits, looking out over the cloud-filled valley below. Two young boys stop throwing stones at a grotesquely deformed dog, to stare at me, pointing and whispering
“phillingpa”
—foreigner. “
Kuzu zangpo,
” I greet them. They bump into each other, laughing, embarrassed, trying to scramble away.

When we reach the Pema Gatshel junction, the late-afternoon sun is already slanting over the hills. “Where is Tshelingkhor?” I ask Dorji. In Thimphu, someone said there was a village at the junction. Dorji points to two bamboo shacks at the roadside. “Shop-cum-bar,” I read. “Tshelingkhor.”

The hi-lux turns off the main road.

“Can a village be two houses?” I ask Dorji.

“Village can be one house also,” he says.

We bounce along the deeply gouged road, through a dense forest of gnarled oak, passing waterfalls and landslides. Suddenly, the forest opens and Pema Gatshel is below us, a deep, green, leafy salad bowl of a valley. Dorji points out the roof of the hospital, the dzong, a temple high on a hilltop. We drive through the bazaar, a straggling row of unpromising-looking shops. “Pema Gatshel Junior High School is there,” Dorji says, gesturing ahead. I see a metal roof, a barbed-wire fence, cement walls.

“My new home,” I think, but I do not believe it.

I
t is the third day of school, and I am standing in front of class II C. There is a blackboard but no chalk. There are no books, no crayons, no syllabus. There are, however, five students. The rest are “coming, miss.” They have been coming, miss, for three days. The headmaster, a young man with a wispy mustache and a brilliant smile, says it will take a week for all the teachers and students to arrive. It is always like this at the beginning of the new school year each spring, he says.

“And the books?” I ask.

“After some time,” he says, smiling. “We ordered them, but ... what to do.”

I certainly don’t know. I have five students who spring to their feet each morning and shout, “Good morning, miss.” I don’t know what to begin teaching, whether to begin teaching or wait until the others come, how to keep them occupied until the others come. I don’t even know their names yet.

This is how it has gone so far. First day: I am given a register and list of names and am told to take attendance. “My name is Jamie,” I tell the members of class II C, three boys and two girls who could be any age between four and eleven. “The first thing I would like to do is learn all of your names, so I’d like you to all stand up one by one and introduce yourselves.” This cheery speech is met by an exchange of bewildered glances but when the faces turn back to me, they are still smiling. “Does everyone understand?” I ask.

“Yes, miss,” they chorus.

“Okay, you first,” I say, pointing to a boy in the first row with standing-up hair. He looks like the oldest of the five.

“Yes, miss,” he says, rising to his feet. I wait. He waits. I smile. He smiles back.

“Yes?” I say gently.

“Yes, miss?” he repeats politely.

“Go ahead,” I say.

“Yes, miss.” He sits back down.

“What is your name! ” I finally exclaim, exasperated. He leaps to his feet again and shouts back, “My name is Song Sing!”

“Song Sing?” I repeat incredulously. He looks doubtful but says, “Yes, miss.” I run through the list of names. There is no Song Sing among them. “Can you come and show me your name?” I ask. “Come and show me where your name is here.”

He points to one. “This my name. My name is Tshewang Tshering.”

“Tsay-wong Tse-ring,” I repeat slowly. He looks relieved.

It takes most of the morning to get through the rest of the names. Phuntsho Wangmo. Sangay Chhoden. Karma Ngawang Dorji. Ugyen Tshering Dorji.

“Are you two brothers?” I ask the last two. “Brothers? Brothers?” They shake their heads shyly, giggling. Later, when I ask the headmaster, he looks equally confused. “Brothers? I don’t think so.”

“They have the same last name,” I say.

“Oh! We don’t have last names here,” he says. “Just two names, which a lama gives. It can be Dorji Wangchuk, Wangchuk Dorji. Karma Dorji, Dorji Wangmo. Only the Royal Family has one last name. And the southern Bhutanese, they are Nepali, they have last names. Sharma, Bhattarai, Thapa.”

“But how do you know who is related without last names?” I ask.

“Just like that only,” he shrugs.

Day Two with Class Two. I practice saying their names, and they practice saying, “Yes, miss.” No matter what I ask them, they smile and say, “Yes, miss.” Do you understand? Yes, miss. Am I saying your name right? Yes, miss. Where are you going? Yes, miss.

Maybe I am talking too fast. “Do you have, any, books?” I ask very slowly, and am elated when they say, “No, miss.” We smile at each other for some time. This gives me courage to try to fill in the complicated form the headmaster gave me this morning—student’s name, father’s name, mother’s name, village,
gewog,
student’s date of birth. We try it orally first, but I cannot even begin to spell their parents’ names, and what is a
gewog?
I give them each a piece of paper. “Write down,” I say slowly, “your name. Are you all writing your names?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Good. Is everyone finished? Okay. Now, write down your birthday. Okay? Your birthday? Under your name.”

They are still looking up at me. “Your birthday. Date of birth. When you were born,” I repeat.

There is a prolonged silence, and then a conference begins in Sharchhop with Tshewang Tshering, the tallest, explaining, and Ugyen Tshering Dorji, the smallest, disagreeing. “You go first,” I tell Tshewang. “When is your birthday? ” He picks up his pencil and writes very carefully while the others watch. Over his shoulder I read, “It is rice and pork.”

“Never mind,” I say weakly. “We’ll do it another time. You can go out now and play.” They tumble out of their seats and burst out of the classroom, shrieking, as if it were the last day of school.

The classroom is furnished with long, narrow tables and benches. The teacher’s desk is at the front of the room, its plain wooden top ink-stained, its two drawers empty. The blackboard is extremely small, but it doesn’t matter because the stubs of soft chalk I found make no impression on it whatsoever.

In the staff room today, I meet several teachers who have just arrived from India. Everyone is very friendly, shaking my hand, asking me my “good name,” welcoming me to the school on behalf of their colleagues and on their own behalf. Everyone asks me if I have “settled myself up” yet, and when did I come, and did I come across the top road, and am I knowing the Canadians who were here before me, Sir Dave and Mrs. Barb, except Mrs. Joy, from southern India, who asks if I am Christian. I am taken aback by this and stammer something about being raised a Christian but no longer, uh, something or other. The lines on her face deepen and she shakes her greying head; this is obviously the wrong answer.

Every second sentence is punctuated with the phrase “isn’t it.” Mr. Sharma asks me if I have met Mr. Iyya yet. I say no. “Oh, you will be having much in common with Mr. Iyya, isn’t it,” he informs me. “Mr. Iyya is always reading English novels and writing poetries. Mr. Iyya is a tip-top poet.” He asks what my qualifications are, and before I can answer, tells me his: B.A., M.A., M.Ed., M.Sc. Actually, he confides, he is overqualified for this place, isn’t it, but what to do.

Mrs. Joy asks me why I am wearing “that dress.” I look down at my kira. “You don’t have to wear their dress,” she says grimly. She is wearing a brown synthetic sari and a grey sweater.

“But I want to,” I say.

“It doesn’t look nice on you,” she tells me and I begin to ponder the . irony of her name. The bell rings for lunch, and I excuse myself.

The school is a cold, concrete edifice, its cement walls discolored, crumbling in places, waterstained. Behind are the girls’ and boys’ hostels, off to one side is the dining hall. The front yard, a large, bald, dusty rectangle, is also the “playing field,” where I send class II C each day after attendance to play until the bell rings for lunch. The whole compound is surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Across the road is a long, low ramshackle row of staff quarters, and a somewhat less dilapidated, two-story concrete apartment building, where I live. I mount the steep ladder steps to my flat on the second floor and let myself in, not wanting to be in any of the five dank rooms but not knowing where else to go. The cement walls are dark with smoke and grease and hand-prints, and I remind myself to find out who the landlord is. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad place with a couple of coats of paint, a carpet of some sort, some real chairs instead of those punitive wooden benches. There is an abundance of wildlife, mice or rats, black beetles with pincers from the tool department of a hardware store, moths and ants and fleas, and today, an enormous hairy spider. Are there tarantulas in Bhutan? I beat it with a broom and sweep it out the door; it resurrects itself on the step and scuttles off.

I turn on all the taps, but there is still no water. I really must speak to the landlord. I have not unpacked. I cannot unpack until I clean, but I don’t know how to begin to tackle the thick layer of damp and dust and decay that lays over everything. I have not had a bath since I left Thimphu, because there is rarely water in the taps, and when there is, it is numbingly cold and I am too afraid of the kerosene stove to try heating it. The stove, which has to be pumped before it is lit, hisses and splutters alarmingly, and I am sure that I will die in a massive kerosene explosion. I am almost out of crackers. The teachers downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Sharma, from Orissa in eastern India, have invited me for supper twice. “Please, it is no problem for us,” they said. “We have to cook for ourselves anyway, isn’t it.” But I cannot find the energy to go, to sit stiffly with strangers, nodding and smiling, trying to find things to talk about. Standing at the bedroom window, I look out over the verdant confusion of the Pema Gatshel valley. It makes my head hurt, looking down the green steepness, looking up into the empty sky. There are long moments when I cannot remember where I am. I feel completely unfamiliar to myself, almost unreal, as if parts of me have dissolved, are dissolving. The Buddhist view that there is no real self seems completely accurate. I have crossed a threshold of exhaustion and strangeness and am suspended in a new inner place.