Beyond the Sky and the Earth

by Jamie Zeppa

  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?”

  Students swarm in and out, asking for lemon tea, fried rice, Pala where’s my thukpa, Pala can I put this on my tab, two coffee one cigarette how much? Pala remains unruffled, counting out change from a drawer, calling out orders to the kitchen, knocking a persistent grey kitten off the counter. In spite of the faded gho tied sloppily around his waist and his rubber flip-flops, he has a stately, dignified bearing; Shakuntala says that he was born a Tibetan prince and came to Bhutan when he married Amala.

  We order baleys, wheels of soft Tibetan bread, and the national dish of chilies and cheese. It is so hot that my eyes run and I choke. “Today ema datsi very hot,” Amala advises me, clucking sympathetically. “Better you eat more baley.”

  On the wall across from me is a collage of pictures cut out from fashion magazines, lollipop models in severe makeup and frizzy pink hair. Someone turns on a cassette player and pop music bubbles out around us. Two young men enter, exhaling ribbons of cigarette smoke. They are wearing jeans and tee shirts emblazoned with “Guitar Heroes” and “Metallica.” I am surprised to see them out of national dress. I feel very far away from Pema Gatshel, from class II C who had never seen a keyboard before and thought Johann Sebastian Bach was my mother. I have a strange feeling that I have left Bhutan.

  But when the students see Shakuntala and me, they put their cigarettes behind their backs and bow gracefully. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

  I look up at the same time and notice the picture above the window. Instead of the usual formal portrait of the King of Bhutan, there is a black-and-white photo of His Majesty as a teenager, dressed in a gho, accompanied by a young woman, perhaps his sister, in a white miniskirt and high white boots. A fitting photo for this place, I think, a mix of tradition and fashion, Guitar Heroes and driglam namzha. I am still, most definitely, in Bhutan.

  Back at the library, I begin to prepare notes for my first lecture. The information seems to be coming from a small dark room far back in my head, and my notes are sparse. The literature section of the library has two ancient critical texts on Shakespeare, neither of which helps much. The next morning, I sit in the empty staff room, practicing my lecture in my head. My hands are damp, my stomach queasy. I have managed to clean most of the fungus off my shoes but cannot get my kira down past my ankles. Lecturers drift in and out, greeting each other with an exaggerated formality. Good morning, my dear sir, and a very good day to you, and I thank you most kindly, sir. Mr. Bose, the other English lecturer, a small, dapper, grey-haired man from Delhi, is explaining the intricacies of attendance to me, pointing out the registers on their shelf by the door. “You have to be careful,” he says. “The boys bunk from class but get their friends to answer for them during roll call.”

  “The boys? But not the girls?” I am confused. Out of the five hundred students, only eighty are female.

  He waves a hand impatiently. “No, no. When I say the boys, I mean the girls, too. And you mustn’t forget attendance. It must be taken in every class.”

  “Even for the degree students?” I ask.

  “But of course!” he answers cheerfully. “Especially for them! They’re the worst rascals.”

  The bell rings, and I pick up my chalk and notes. “You forgot the attendance register,” Mr. Bose calls out. “Good luck!”

  I open the door of the classroom and walk into a heavy silence. “Good morning,” I say. The class slowly rises, and there is a weak chorus of half-hearted “good-mornings.” I introduce myself, write my name on the board, smile brightly until my face hurts. Class XII stares back coolly. According to my attendance list, there are six girls and forty-nine boys. No one in the room looks younger than twenty.

  “I, uh, I’ve been told that I have to take, uh, attendance,” I say, wondering why my voice sounds so thin and apologetic, how I can stop my hands from shaking. The attendance list contains several Nepali names which I have not seen before. How do you say Bahadur? Bah-hay-der? Bay-hah-der? I settle on Badder, which elicits a few snickers and an outright snort.

  Enough of this. I launch into my lecture. Who was Shakespeare, what is tragedy, why do we study it. I ramble on and on. After several long minutes, someone calls out from the back, “We finished Macbeth last term.”

  They have finished Macbeth and I still have forty minutes left before the end of class. “Oh dear,” I say, chewing on a thumbnail, and someone repeats mockingly, “Oh dear.” I scan the rows: one student meets my gaze. He has longish hair and a proud handsome face, and he is leaning back in his seat, legs stretched out in the aisle. For a brief moment, I think he is going to smile but it turns into a smirk.

  Now what? I think. We cannot very well draw pictures or sing the “Momo Song.” “All right,” I say, “then ... write me a composition.”

  There is much scuffling and rummaging for paper and pens.

  “On what topic?” someone asks.

  “On anything,” I say.

  “Anything?” someone echoes. It is Smirk.

  I am suddenly very tired. This is not class II C. This is not fun. I should have stayed where I was. I sit at the front of the class, watching the students write and waiting for the bell to release me.

  My next period is a batch of new admissions. At least they cannot have finished Macbeth last term, I console myself, but when I push open the door, I am unnerved. The long, narrow classroom is packed. As far back as I can observe, students are squashed together on the wooden benches. I cannot even see the back rows. I pull out the attendance list: nine girls, seventy boys.

  “Good morning,” I say, and the response is deafening. Benches are pushed back as the class rises and the room echoes with “good mornings.” Someone misses the seat on the way back down, a desk is overturned, and laughter rises up in a wave. “We’ll take attendance first,” I say, but they cannot hear me. I can barely hear me. “Class Eleven,” I say. “Class Eleven! ” Finally I shout, “Class Eleven!!”

  The noise subsides, but there is still some kind of disturbance going on in a back corner. Two students have straitjacketed another with the sleeves of his gho. “Class Eleven! Untie him! Don’t tie each other up with the sleeves of your ghos.” And then I am laughing because it’s just like class II C, only there are more of them and some of them have mustaches. I stand at the front of the room, staring at the class. Seventy-nine students! “It’s a zoo,” I marvel aloud. They seem pleased with this description.

  After class, I find Catherine from Rangthangwoong and Pat, a Dutch nurse posted in Tashigang, sitting on my doorstep. “We’ve come for afternoon tea,” Catherine says, “and then we’re going back to Tashigang on the four o’clock bus.”

  “But how did you find out so fast that I was here?” I am pleased to have company already.

  “There are no secrets in eastern Bhutan,” Catherine says. “Come on, let’s go visit the Fantomes.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Behind the infirmary is a cottage hidden by cypress trees. On the wooden verandah, dozens of orchids grow out of clay pots and mossy logs, the names of the flowers inscribed neatly in English and Latin on wooden plaques. I stop to examine a spray of delicate white blossoms with scarlet tongues. Lady’s Slipper. “People eat this one,” Pat says. “Orchid curry. It’s a great delicacy.”

  In a book-lined s
itting room, Mrs. Fantome, a plump woman in a crisp, apple-green sari, pours tea into porcelain cups. “Cream or lemon, dear?” she asks. Cucumber sandwiches cut into dainty triangles and slices of vanilla pound cake are passed around. Mr. Fantome wears white trousers and a worn brown sweater and speaks with a faintly British accent. He studied at Oxford, Mrs. Fantome tells us. They have been at Sherubtse for the last twelve years, she teaches chemistry, he is a retired English lecturer. They used to teach in Sikkim but had to leave after the tragedy. I have no idea what this tragedy might be and am too embarrassed by my ignorance to ask. Mrs. Fantome gives Pat her recipe for pound cake, and Mr. Fantome and I discuss Milton, or, rather, Mr. Fantome discusses Milton and I try to look like I remember what Milton wrote.

  On the way back to the college gate, where the bus to Tashigang will stop, Catherine explains the Fantomes’ unusual name. “Mr. Fantome’s grandfather or great-grandfather was a French convict who apparently jumped ship in India and then changed his name to Fantome,” she says.

  “And what was the tragedy in Sikkim?” I ask.

  “It was annexed by India in the seventies. Sikkim used to be a separate country, like Bhutan. Remember there was that American woman who married the King of Sikkim?”

  “Sort of. But why did India annex it?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about a power struggle between the Sikkimese and Nepali immigrants.”

  Over the next week, I am invited to almost every lecturer’s house for sweet tea spiced with cardamom or ginger and plates of samosas, pakoras, fried peanuts. During these visits, I begin to piece together the network of alliances and shifting hostilities that exists beneath the daily my-good-sir routine. At Mr. Gupta’s house, I am warned to keep away from Mr. Matthew, at Mr. Matthew’s house, I am warned to stay clear of Mr. Bose. Mr. Bose advises me to have nothing to do with Mr. Chatterji, Mr. Chatterji claims that the Mr. Bose is not trustworthy. Mr. Ratna says Mr. Nair is a drinker, Mr. Nair says Mr. Harilal is a trouble-maker. Mr. Krishna allegedly carries tales to the principal, and I would do well to be careful of what I say, to whom, and where. “I wouldn’t pay the slightest attention,” Shakuntala says when I see her again in the library and recount the various warnings and dark allusions. “Some of them are well meaning and genuinely interested in their work, but a lot of the others are only here to make money. These little plots and subplots keep them amused. I stay clear of all of them. The students are much better company, anyway.”

  I am not sure about the students yet. The Zoo is my favorite class because they are loud and enthusiastic, but last week, one young man informed me that I looked “damn fat” in my kira. (He himself looked as if he was put together out of wire coat hangers.) I had barely recomposed myself when another chimed in, “But ma’am is very simple.” Fat—damn fat—and stupid! Thank you, I thought to myself, you’ve both just failed English. And Smirk’s class continues to be difficult. Difficult in comparison to class II C. By Canadian standards, their manners are exquisite. They still stand up when I enter the room. They hand me their homework with both hands and bow when I pass them in the hall. But they are also testing me. They mimic the way I say their names but when I ask for the correct pronunciation, they remain silent. They ask me how old I am, and if I am married, and how long I have been teaching. I refer to the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Smirk smirks and calls out, “What do you mean by Romantic?”

  I fold my arms and try to look bored, but I am thinking that maybe Father Larue was right after all. “What do you mean by ‘Romantic’?” I ask.

  There is an uncomfortable silence that stretches out and out.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” he finally says, embarrassed.

  The small class of third-year degree students is easier because they are mostly silent. They are extremely attentive, sitting quietly with pens poised above thick notebooks, but they will not speak. I spend a week on a Shakespearean sonnet, talking about structure and imagery and language, and I have no idea at the end of the week what the poem means to them, if it means anything at all. I have no idea why I am teaching it beyond the fact that it is in the syllabus, and the fact that it is in the syllabus here, of all places—well, this is what we should be discussing, instead of laboring over the intricacies of every metaphor. I ask the students if they have any questions, comments, anything. No ma’am, they say, no questions. I pick up a piece of chalk and fill the blackboard with big white letters: TALK. They laugh at this, but they do not talk.

  In my other degree class, I am to teach “language,” but the only set topic in the syllabus is precis writing. “What am I supposed to teach them for the rest of the year?” I ask Mr. Bose. He advises me to take attendance and then release them. “No, seriously,” I laugh, “what should I do with them?”

  “I have told you seriously,” he replies.

  In the evening, I sit at my desk under the glare of a bare bulb and write letters. I write to class II C, telling them that I have put up their pictures and that I think about them every day.

  I write to Lorna: We have a VCR and a grand piano and a bread slicer. The students are all very cool and sophisticated. Some of them have informed me that I am damn fat and simple. I think I hate it here.

  I try to write to Robert. I want to tell him how everything has changed for me, how I marvel at the distance I have come. I want to tell him how difficult it is to imagine going home at Christmas, but I cannot. My mind seizes up. I reread the letters I have received from him, but I cannot reconnect myself. I can still close my eyes and see him in the armchair in his apartment, but the picture gets smaller each time I call it up.

  Class II C writes back. The letters are addressed to “The Miss Jeymey,” and the envelopes bear instructions: “Fly my letter very quick” and “Open with smile face.” Sangay Chhoden writes: Dear Miss, I am very happy to write without no reason. How are you that side. Here I am fine with my kind teachers and friends.

  Karma Dorji writes: Dear Miss, I am very unhappy at pema gatshel, why means you is went.

  Norbu writes that they have a new sir and he is beating them nicely. I put my head down and cry.

  Lorna writes: Cheer up, simple is a compliment here. It means good-natured. My kids told me I was damn fat and homely and later I found out that homely means easygoing. Homely people make you feel at home. Get it? There’s absolutely no consolation I can offer on damn fat, though, and you’ll just have to put up with the sliced bread.

  Cultural Competition

  I walk to the bend in the road before breakfast, the wind soft and warm against my face and bare arms, carrying the smells of green things and earth. Kanglung is drier than Pema Gatshel: apart from a few afternoon showers, the days are mostly warm and bright. In the new light I see a peak in the north that I have not noticed before, a black stone spire much higher than the ridges and crests around it. Yesterday, some students told me that gods and other spirits reside in naturally sacred sites called nheys. Peaks, rocky outcrops, a circle of cypress trees, a waterfall, all can be nheys, and if you disturb one, you will fall sick, or some other misfortune will overtake you. Everyone knows this, they said. If you damage the natural world, you must suffer the consequences.

  All around me are constant reminders of Buddhism: rough prayer walls along the path, a prayer wheel turned by a stream, prayer flags soaring above the ridge. If I close my eyes, I can conjure the Toronto skyline, giant hypodermic needle jabbing the sky, glass facades of office towers, all cold perfection. Here, things grow and fade and die, and no one pretends otherwise. The older walls of a house remain mudbrown and rutted beside the smooth white walls of the newly built addition. The old and the new grow out of each other and there is no attempt to make everything perfect and perpetually modern. There would be no point, when everything is changing, is fading away.

  In class, I battle against clichés, cant, and bad grammar. “I want to hear what you have to say,” I tell the students. “Write me something different, something you haven’t already writt
en a hundred times before.” I spend hours marking their homework, drawing arrows from subjects to verbs, restructuring convoluted sentences, and writing notes of encouragement beside any signs of original expression. Mr. Bose tells me I am wasting my time.

  In a shop outside the college gate, I stop to buy laundry soap. The shopkeeper hands me my package and I recognize my own handwriting. “... careful with subject-verb agreement,” I read. “Don’t use clichés.” The soap is wrapped in one of the compositions I corrected this morning. “Where did you get this?” I ask.

  The shopkeeper shows me a stack of papers. “The students are giving,” he says. “I tell them not to throw, I will use in my shop. Instead of plastic. Plastic is too expensive.”

  Shakuntala shows me past exams set by the University of New Delhi. Write a composition on one of the following: Time and tide wait for no man. A book is the best of friends.

  It occurs to me that Mr. Bose may be right.

  But there are also signs of hope. A student named Tobgay writes about how education has changed his family life. When he was first admitted to Sherubtse, his parents were thrilled, especially his father who was illiterate. During his first-term break, at a family gathering, his father proudly asked him what he was learning at the college, and Tobgay told him. I told that we saw the picture of the first man walking on the moon and everyone laughed at that. I told it was true, the people had gone up to the moon even and then my father became angry with red face and bulging eyes. Don’t tell lies, he told. It is not a lie, I told. After my cousins went, he told that he felt shame by me telling such things and, now that I am in college I think I am a high shot to tell such things like this or what. How people can go to the moon, he told. So now when I go home for holidays I am never telling what I learned at college and when I am at home all the things we learn at college seem impossible, like people walking on the moon.