Beyond the Sky and the Earth (8 page)

It is dark by 6:30 in the evening, an absolute unbroken darkness, and crushingly silent. I light the kerosene lamps, fiddling with the wicks to stop them from smoking, and finally blow them out and light candles. I flip through my Sharchhop language notebook to the heading “School”—
sit down! stand up! don’t shout! go outside! the teacher is angry! do you understand?
—but find nothing to help me communicate better with class II C. I try to write letters home even though the headmaster says that another landslide has blocked the lateral road and there is a
bandh,
a strike, in Assam. It will take a week or three to clear the road, and no one knows for sure about the strike, the last one went on for one hundred days. Writing will put things in order, or in sentences at least. I begin but cannot get beyond the first lines. After that, I fall into an abyss, sit blankly, blinking, staring.

A thick white mist moves into the valley one afternoon, bringing a cold, solemn rain. It rains all night, and at dawn the roof begins to leak, directly above my bed, directly, in fact, on my head. I get up and push the bed to the far wall. The sound of rain on the metal roof is the saddest thing I have ever heard. Outside, mist lies in deep drifts over everything. All around, the mountains sleep, blankets of cloud drawn up to their shoulders, over their heads. The teachers in the flats below have set buckets under the eaves and have strung up a clothesline in the stair-well. Mr. Sharma whistles as he hauls his buckets of rainwater in. I resolve to stop feeling sorry for myself. I, too, will set out buckets to collect water; I will snap out of this sorry state.

I walk to the bazaar, skirting the deep puddles along the road, stepping gingerly over cow dung. Children come out of the shops to stare at me. “English, English,” they call shyly, and when I wave at them, they giggle and hide. Shopkeepers emerge from their shops to watch me pass. I feel a spectacle, and turn hastily into the nearest doorway. Inside, I point to what I want, a box of milk powder, two boxes of biscuits—no,
not
Orange Cream—okay, okay, Orange Cream, a jar of instant coffee. I am smiling painfully and nodding at the shopkeeper’s questions. I don’t know what he is asking.
“Gila,”
I say, which means “yes, it is.” He looks at me quizzically. It is not the right answer. What was the question? I cannot live here if I don’t speak the language.

Back out on the road, I contemplate visiting a few more shops, just to see what is available. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a blur. A dog growls, and there is a sharp pain in my ankle. I look down and see a tiny puncture, a spot of blood. But
why
did it bite me, I whine to myself, and then I realize. Oh god, oh god, I’ve been bitten by a rabid dog. I’ve come all the way across the world to die of rabies. I have to identify the dog. Yes, yes, the health lecture is coming back to me: confine the dog immediately and watch it for ten days for signs of rabies. But which of the twenty dogs milling around was it? I rush back into the shop.

“Khu, ”
I say breathlessly. Khu is dog. “Khu—” and I make a biting motion with my hand and show my ankle. The shopkeeper clucks sympathetically, but shows no alarm.

I have to ask if he knows the dog, if he thinks the dog is rabid. How do you say rabid in Sharchhop? I am thinking frantically. Mad. I could ask, is the dog mad? But I don’t even know the word for “mad.” I use the closest thing.
“Rotsigpa?”
I ask. Was the dog angry? The shopkeeper stares at me. He thinks
I’m
crazy. I can just hear him telling people, “What could I say? I
guess
it was angry. It bit her, didn’t it?”

I flee to the hospital, where the tiny puncture wound is washed with hot water and antiseptic soap. The Norwegian doctor there listens to my story and goes up to the bazaar. He and his family have been in eastern Bhutan for several years, and speak fluent Sharchhop. While he is gone, I eat marzipan cake and drink black coffee brought by Liv, the Norwegian nurse. How is this cake possible, I want to know. And will I get more of it before my throat closes up and I have to be tied to a stake like Old Yeller? When the doctor returns, he tells me he doesn’t think the dog is rabid. “There is a brown dog in the bazaar who is always biting people,” he says. “Was it a brown dog that bit you?”

“Yes,” I say. “No. I don’t know. Maybe I should go to Thimphu for rabies injections.” Or Canada.

The doctor reassures me. “No, no,” he says. “I am sure that is not necessary. We’ve had no reports of rabies in Pema Gatshel recently.”

“I guess you’re right.” I certainly
hope
he’s right.

“You’re staying in the building across from the school?” the doctor asks. “Where the other Canadians used to stay?”

“Yes. I need to see the landlord, actually,” I say. “The roof leaks, there’s hardly ever any water, and the whole place needs to be painted. ”

“Oh, I think the landlord lives in Thimphu,” he says. “Water is very much a problem here, especially in the monsoon: too much outside, not enough inside. But what to do?”

What to do, what to do. I’m beginning to see that “what to do” means “absolutely nothing at all can be done.” Back in my flat, I begin to unpack, swallowing hard periodically, checking my throat for pain or other signs of hydrophobia. The apartment has no cupboards or closets, so I lay things out on tables and windowsills, all my medicine and tools and batteries, I line my shoes neatly up beside the door and drape a few shirts over a clothesline the former tenants have strung across the bedroom. I leave my portable keyboard in its case on a bench, and stack my books on the little bedside table. There doesn’t seem to be much else. How have I come with so little? I have left everything behind.

T
he mist is at war with the mountains, and winning. It creeps like a disease, withering green trees, eroding ridges, diminishing the massive bulk of the mountains, turning solid rock to shadow. Everything looks long-deserted, haunted, like the last day of time. At night, it rains heavily. I have never seen so much rain. It’s only March, not even the monsoon yet. I imagine the massive landslide on the lateral road, the rest of the mountain being washed away. It will take months, maybe years to fix. I feel besieged.

I walk around the school compound after class, watching the clouds moving over the mountains. Sometimes they fall from the sky in great swaths into the valley below, or are torn in strips that trail behind the main cloud body, dragged through forests and over ridges. My attempt at free-lance phonics was an astounding failure in class II C today, as was spelling dictation. Some of the kids can write passably well, others can barely hold a pencil. We spent the rest of the day drawing pictures. Later, in the staff room, talking with the other teachers, I felt acutely the edges and corners of myself which do not fit in here. I am too casual, too blunt, no one laughs at my jokes. I find myself speaking more slowly and formally, answering in complete sentences, standing almost at attention. I am afraid of making a mistake, saying the wrong thing, giving offense. I don’t know why it is so difficult and there is no one I can talk to about it in my own language, my own inflections.

I give myself a good talking to: you said you wanted to come for the experience. Well, here it is, the experience. It’s culture shock, it will pass. There’s a whole page on it in the Briefing Kit, with a chart. Anyway, you only have to stay a year, you can go home at Christmas and not come back. You can always go home now, if things don’t get better, if you hate it.

I hate it.

But I don’t have the courage to ask to be sent back. I want divine intervention, I want to be absolved of blame and responsibility. I wish for an urgent message from home, an ultimatum from Robert, come home right now or it’s all over between us, a serious but not too terrible illness, easily treated with tablets and bedrest at the Toronto General Hospital.

I sit at the table until it is dark, fiddling with my shortwave radio, which seems to have direct access to Radio Beijing. Everything else is noise—fading orchestras, electronic bleeps and blips and squelches. I turn it off. Outside, the dogs begin to bark. Hark, hark, I say aloud, and eat a cracker, an Orange Cream Biscuit, another cracker. I wish for cappuccino, I wish for baked potatoes, I wish for raspberry cheesecake. I wish to go to sleep and wake up in Canada. My legs are covered in flea bites which calamine lotion does absolutely nothing to help, and I scratch them until they bleed. I can’t believe I volunteered for this. Am I going to cry? Then I remember the tin. The tin, the tin, how have I forgotten the square tin with the round lid, the rat-proof tin, the treasure box, the Christmas chest, the store of all goodness. I pry open the top, reach in and pull out a cellophane package of dried beans. Lentils. Split peas. A package of origami paper. It is Sasha’s box. I have Sasha’s split peas and origami paper and she has my chocolate. Life is suffering! Now I
am
going to cry. I sit on the floor and cry and cry, and when I have finished, I have decided: I will go home in the morning. I have made a mistake, a terrible terrible mistake, but it can be rectified. I will send a wireless message to Thimphu. I will say I am sick. I will lie, I will cry, I will beg. I will throw myself on the floor and scream. They cannot make me stay here! They cannot make me stay!

But the next day, the mist is gone and the sky is a clean, clear, dazzling blue. I can see every curve and contour of the mountains all around, edges and lines are hard and bright in the sharp morning light. At school, there is a letter for me. It has come from Tsebar, a village across the valley and up the next mountain, from Jane, a British teacher.
I heard you were there, she writes. Why don’t you come and visit this weekend? I’d walk across but I hurt my ankle washing clothes in the creek.
She has drawn a map.
It’s only a three- or four-hour walk.
Only!

I decide to go. I cannot go back home until the roadblock is cleared anyway. I will go to visit this Jane across the valley, and on my way back, I will go home. I will pass this house and the fields and the school, I will pass the gate, the crooked shops, the little white temple, I will keep going, straight home. At home, I will go to the library, I will reread The
History of Literary Criticism.
I will make notes, a reading list, a study schedule. I will not make this mistake again.

I take my sleeping bag, my high-tech flashlight, a bottle of water, a mini medical kit and my copy of
Where There Is No Doctor.
Down the valley path I go, stumbling under the hot afternoon sun against rocks and the roots and bones of trees. In some places, the path descends so steeply that I must clutch wildly at overhanging branches and nearby shrubs to hold myself upright. The path finally levels out, and I find myself in front of three shops. I can see the gypsum mine further downhill. Funded by the Government of India, Bhutan’s principal aid partner, the mine is an immense, ugly white scar in the lush greenery. Parked on the roadside, loaded with chunks of gypsum, is a huge orange truck, its front and sides garishly painted with eyes and elephants, its windshield garlanded with tinsel and plastic flowers.

I continue on to the river, which zigzags wildly across the valley floor. I have to cross it six times, over sodden logs laid across large flat rocks. The sun is even hotter down here, and I am soaked with sweat by the time the path enters the forest and begins to ascend. Too bad I’m not staying, I think: I’d really be in good shape after two years of this.

I stop, panting, at a stream. How much farther up is it? Shouldn’t I be there by now? Is this the right way? Why is my backpack so heavy?

You shouldn’t have brought
Where There Is No Doctor.

What if something happens out here? I’ll need it.

The only thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to collapse under the weight of it.

You can’t be too careful.

Yes, you can. You can be careful unto craziness.

Caution is not crazy. Singing a song about tapeworm cysts in the cerebellum is crazy. Carrying a medical book into the jungle is not crazy. Coming here in the first place was crazy. Look at this narrow little path. This path is crazy. What if I get lost?

You won’t get lost, you have a map.

No, I don’t, I left it on the table with Sasha’s kidney beans.

You don’t need a map. This is the path, you just have to follow it. Keep going.

I keep going. The sun has disappeared and there is no sign of Tsebar. There is no sign of anything. I am already exhausted, and my water is finished. I practice my Sharchhop in my head.
Where are you going? I am going to Tsebar. Are you a nun? No, I am a teacher.
Shadowy thoughts of wild animals begin to solidify, taking the shape of bears. There are bears in Bhutan, I read it in a library book.
The Himalayan black bear:
fierce black bear with characteristic white V on its chest.

The way up grows even steeper, and my legs ache and burn and shake. I stop, gasping, and rub my stinging eyes. The path bifurcates around an enormous mango tree, one route continuing sharply up, another leveling off into a dense forest. It levels off because it leads to a village, I reason, and take it. Forty-five minutes later, it plunges into a pool of stagnant water and does not come out on the other side. I sit on an exposed tree root and stare into the shadows, trying to determine the most reasonable thing to do. Everything seems reasonable. I should go back to the mango tree. I should go back to Pema Gatshel. I should spend the night here. I should go on and look for the other end of the path. I should scream for help.

Everything seems possible: I will find the path, I will find a village, I will find Tsebar, someone will find me, no one will find me, I will be lost in the bush and die of starvation. My stomach feels like a huge, hollow, echoing drum, and I have run out of thoughts. I have reached the end of something, but I do not know what it is.