by Fritz Galt
It was strangely arousing to see her fly across the field and handle the ball like a pro.
The first boy, red with embarrassment, dug the ball out of the net and sent it flying Brad’s way.
Now, Brad had grown up playing soccer. He could dribble. He could balance the ball on his forehead. He could kick it from behind over his shoulder. But, perhaps because of his distraction from watching May, all his skills suddenly abandoned him.
The ball shot past him.
“Ay-yo,” May cried in disappointment.
Okay, that did it. He retrieved the ball and sent it sailing back to his teammate. He rushed the goal, expecting a pass in return. With the grace of Zizou, the boy pitched the ball over his head back toward him. Brad pivoted on one foot and swung the other around to meet the ball. Leather met leather. He used just the right touch to guide the ball toward the net.
But May was there and the ball landed in her hands.
“I am goalkeep,” she announced.
“No, uh-uh. You didn’t call it.”
She wagged a finger at him. “You did not look.”
“No fair. That’s cheating.”
The two boys watched them fight over the ball, and suddenly Brad saw the humor in the situation. Only moments before, he had wondered if May even liked the game.
He shut up and stood back in wonder as she launched a kick high in the air. Man, this was some soccer mom in the making. More than that, he wanted her to coach his children.
“Do not look sorry.” She mussed his hair. “It is just a game.”
“Hey, don’t touch the hair.”
“Do you want to be on my team?” she asked.
“Okay. Why not? We’re pretty good.”
“Team China.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. Aw, what the heck. Such decisions wouldn’t be his to make anymore. He was in love with his teammate.
He wanted to propose on the spot.
But she had turned away, and the two resumed strolling along the gravel path.
He looked around for more privacy where he could pop the big question.
Ahead were several benches, all occupied. People from nine to ninety were watching something. He decided to check it out. Two teams of men in casual attire were playing boules, trying to make their metal balls land closest to a small white ball.
A wet snowflake dropped out of a tree and landed at Brad’s feet. He looked up. A bird cooed happily.
“Let’s move on.”
What they needed was fewer people, and fewer birds.
May found a bench facing a sculpture garden. “Let’s eat here.”
“Why not?”
As soon as they claimed the empty bench, she unwrapped their sandwiches. Although he had bought dinner, she played host and presented the food to him.
There was much that they could discuss about the past few days, from the Air Show to the Shangri-la Symposium, but he didn’t want to cover old ground. She sat quietly beside him, munching on her dinner and occasionally flicking pieces of crust at the dozens of pigeons that they had attracted.
As twilight settled into the darker recesses of the park, he found himself becoming part of his surroundings. The thud and clunk of the boules lent a rhythm to the evening. A horse whinnied in the pony ride corral. Snatches of conversation reached them as couples and families strolled past. A long, indistinct object of art made from scorched metal intrigued passers by. The air was redolent with the blossoms of fruit trees. And the tiny motions of May beside him seemed as natural as breathing.
After they finished licking their fingers, he sensed that it was time to propose to her.
He moved a slight distance away so that he could face her. “I have a very important question.”
She cocked her head and gave him a “bring it on” look. Was this going to be one of his dumb jokes?
That made him more nervous. He could leave no room for misinterpretation.
He needed to preface his remarks. “This is serious.”
She tried to adjust her expression, with only some success. He was having a hard time seeing through her tinted lenses. He wiped the last of the mayonnaise off his finger and reached for her sunglasses.
With womanly submission, she let him take them from her. He stuffed them into his shirt pocket and gazed into her eyes. They were wide and the whites gleamed in the gathering dusk.
He fumbled in his pants pocket and pulled out the velvet box. Had Earl played a trick on him and given him something other than the ring? It took a few seconds to figure out how the box opened. But perseverance paid off.
Fortunately, the ring was inside, sitting on a cushion of satin. The diamond reflected the red glow of the setting sun.
“Will you marry me?” he asked. The question felt stilted and clumsy.
She pressed her lips tightly together. But it was the rapture in her eyes that told him everything he needed to know.
“Of course I will marry you.” She grinned from ear to ear.
“Great!”
“I will not marry anybody else.”
That sounded weird. “Good,” he said, uncertain of exactly what that meant. He was glad that she wanted to marry him, but had she missed the point? “Do you want to marry me now?”
With that, she pinched her eyebrows together in what looked like consternation. He held his breath and waited. Oh damn, he had forgotten to put the ring on her finger. He was embarrassing her.
“This is for you.” He took the ring out of the box.
“I know,” she said, and laughed nervously.
He twisted on the bench to figure out which was her left hand. Her young fingers looked like porcelain.
She extended her ring finger, and he slipped the diamond onto it. Perfect fit.
She sucked in her breath. He had done his manly duty and made his proposal crystal clear, sparing her any further awkwardness. At last she let her breath out, as if inflating a balloon. “It feels happy.”
“Ah, yes. It looks happy there. Does this mean you accept it?”
“Oh, you are kidding. I love it.”
“I don’t mean ‘do you accept it’ as in ‘do you like it.’ I mean do you want to keep it as a token of our engagement?” He knew from the look in her eyes even before he finished that he had lost her. “I mean, if you take the ring, we will get married.”
“Of course.” She still didn’t seem to have grasped the specifics. What girl anywhere in the world didn’t understand an engagement ring?
His shoulders tensed. He forced another question. “Is there a problem?”
“I am not sure I can marry you now.”
“Now? Now that I gave you a ring? Or now, as in this very moment?”
“I must be sure if I can marry you.”
He clutched his forehead. Whatever could that mean? Should he have sought Dr. Yu’s permission first?
She began to dig around in her tiny purse. “I expected this question.”
Oh no. She had anticipated his proposal? There went the spontaneity. Had Skeeter or Jade spilled the beans? “You knew that I wanted to marry you?”
“Of course.”
Well, if it was so widely advertised, why hadn’t anyone told him? He had thought it was entirely his idea. What in the world was she trying to dig out? A ring for him?
She pulled out a scrap of paper. It looked like a chart torn from a magazine.
“This will say if we are marrying.” She studied the chart.
What in the world was it? A permission slip from the principal? He instantly resented the thing.
He glanced about as she squinted in the gloom. People stood around the hulking sculpture in the grass beyond the trees. The boules game was disbanding and players headed home.
“Ah, shi,” she mumbled. “I am twenty-four years old.”
“I know that.” It was not a problem. So it was slightly over the hill for Chinese girls. But her age made no difference to him.
“…and I will be twenty-five at t
he end of the week,” she calculated.
“That’s right. And I am already twenty-five.”
“Then there is a chance we can get married,” she said.
Was he supposed to be relieved? How could a slip of paper decide his future? “What are you reading?”
“Chinese calendar,” she said. “I cannot marry a man my age in the Year of the Snake.”
“Okay, fine. What will we have to do? Wait a year?”
“No. Then I am too old.”
“Okay.” He was confident that they could work it out. “So how can we swing this?”
“You have to marry a younger woman this year.”
“And I choose you.”
“Okay. My birthday is on Friday. I was born at six o’clock in the evening. I am a younger woman for…” she counted on her fingers, “four more days.”
“Fine. Then we’ll get married by Friday.”
She eyed him carefully. “Is that possible?”
“Why not? We have you, and we have me. We even have the Notre Dame Cathedral if we want.”
“But since you are a foreigner, I must get married in Beijing where I’m officially registered.”
He swallowed hard. They might have to cut their trip short. “Okay, then Beijing it is.”
She lowered her eyes in submission. “I must invite my father to the wedding.”
“I’m sure he will bless the marriage.” He had forged a great relationship with the old guy. Certainly becoming his son-in-law would be allowable.
At last she raised her eyes and locked on him. She reached up with the hand bearing the engagement ring and stroked the back of his neck. She had rarely approached him so directly in public before, except when she needed to revive him from unconsciousness. She was all his now, no matter where, no matter what.
He leaned forward and pulled her close. Their lips met passionately.
Something snapped between them.
“My sunglasses,” she said.
“Don’t worry about them.”
To any passerby, they were just another pair of lovebirds taking advantage of the darkness to make out. How wrong one could be. They were more than lovers. They were officially engaged.
Several minutes later, Brad heard a clanging sound from the gates. “I think the park’s closing.”
She drew back, reached for her purse, and began to tidy up. The Chinese certainly obeyed authority without question.
With her instant attraction to the diamond, her affectionate embrace, and her Pavlovian reaction to the gates, the thought flitted across his mind that maybe he was marrying a robot.
He offered her an arm and they headed through the trees. It felt nice to be the object of so much affection. But was it just pro forma? Was she the kind of girl to lose all her spunk once she got married?
They approached the dark streak of metal in the grass. A group was still gaping at it. “What’s with that piece of junk anyway?”
“Oh, that is my airplane.”
He choked on something, perhaps a stray breadcrumb.
Maybe she could use a little less spunk. They turned away from the sight.
Hustling toward the gate, he decided to resolve their scheduling dilemma once and for all. “So we’ll get married in four days.”
“But not tomorrow. My father is speaking.”
“I know. I wrote the speech.”
“Are you coming?” she asked earnestly.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Then we will marry,” she said, as if that decided it: they would marry. Or did she mean only then would they marry?
He dropped the subject. Sometimes silence was their best means of communication.
Chapter 22
Tuesday
Dr. Yu gave the keynote address the next afternoon. “To study the legend of Shambhala from an anthropological point of view, one must erase recent history.”
He looked around the room and saw disappointment written on people’s faces. Was he going to undermine all their research and beliefs?
“We need to tune out the Beastie Boys and Three Dog Night’s interpretations of the mystic land. We must ignore the exploitation of the legend by fiction writers and the hijacking of the Shambhala legend by neo-Nazis who believe that Adolf Hitler fled there. Going further back in history, we must put aside the thoughts of occult enthusiasts and esoteric writers from the previous two centuries. Yes, we must look beyond the teachings and codified tantras of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. We must even put aside all texts of the Kalachakra and their many commentaries and look at the origins of the concept of Shambhala.”
He checked the crowd. Most seemed upset by his summary dismissal of their faith or beliefs. But some appeared intrigued by the approach of his discipline. So he plowed on.
“As an anthropologist, I must go to the physical and cultural roots of the idea of Shambhala. To that end, I have investigated the three oldest historical references to Shambhala. And I will structure my talk around each of those data points. The first reference comes from the ancient texts of the Zhang Zhung culture, which flourished in western Tibet long before Buddhism arrived there. Secondly, I will briefly examine the discussions of Olmolungring, a similar type of land described in the Bon scriptures of Persia. And finally, I will explore the Indian origins of the concept, namely the origins of the Kalachakra text.”
There were no objections from the audience. Good. After all, Yu had been intrigued by the legend of Shambhala even before Peking University reopened its doors after the Cultural Revolution. And in the past year, he had turned his attention back to the vision that still haunted him. Was there a place where war did not exist and people lived in spiritual purity? Was there a Shambhala? He gripped the lectern and launched in.
In his youth, he had fallen in love with the vision of a physical place on Earth where all was bliss. But great minds that dwelled on the idea had found little scientific evidence to prove its existence. Yu was now seventy, and his youthful idealism was at odds with the skepticism of his profession.
He had known how the research would turn out long before Brad West even set foot in the Sanskrit library. The enthusiasts in the crowd were doing more than grasping at straws. Whether they were involved with the religious aspects or curious about the geographical problem, if they were devout practitioners or conspiracy theorists, he had bad news for them. And the hardest hit would be the idealists, the dreamers, the young at heart.
The Kalachakra text demonized other religions, prophesied a holy war, and suggested ways to survive the onslaught. That opened a whole tray of tofu, namely inter-religious strife, that the world did not need. But, for the purpose of his argument, it exposed Shambhala as a figurative construct devised to warn Buddhists and protect the religion from Islamic invaders.
To bolster this theory, he explained how his research showed that the idea of Shangri-la was borrowed from previous cultures trying to protect their religions. At that point, he detailed how and why past cultures had created the myth.
“The only reason that we are discussing Shangri-la is that even though the place did not exist, the story did, as it was intended to do. History shows that the Moghuls rapidly stamped out the Buddhist religion in much of central Asia and northern India. Had Tibet not escaped incursions from the Middle East, the story of Shambhala would have died for good.”
He gathered his notes together. “And so,” he finished after an hour of vigorous defense of his hypothesis, “I have reached the inescapable conclusion that no such place as Shangri-la, or Shambhala, or whatever you want to call it, now exists or ever did exist. It is a political and historical fluke. In short, Shangri-la exists only in the imagination.”
He shut his eyes. What higher purpose had forced him to break the hearts of so many devoted idealists?
Then he heard applause. Vigorous clapping erupted from the middle of the room.
He opened his eyes, only to see his research assistant, Brad West, demonstrating his
unqualified support of the speech. Of course, Brad had written most of it.
The rest of the room, as he had predicted, sat in stony silence.
It had gone over like an iron kite. But science wasn’t a popularity contest. The meeting had one more speaker, who would offer a brief conclusion to the symposium.
Rather than return to his daughter and Brad West and endure the harsh glares and cold shoulders of fellow members of the society, he stepped into an adjoining room to collect his thoughts.
Due to the heavy drapes, little afternoon light reached into the room. He sidled over to a leather chair that sat in a pool of light. He focused on a pitcher of water and an empty glass beside it.
“Please join me,” a man said from a chair profiled in the window.
Yu peered into the shadow and made out the shape of a bent old man.
“If you’re here to disabuse me of my theory,” Yu said, “it won’t work.”
The man laughed, though his voice was weak. “It was an interesting speech.” He was reaching for an inner pocket of his jacket.
Was it a gun?
Yu quickly pivoted behind his chair and ducked.
Instead of firing a gun, the man laughed again. “Remember? We met yesterday, at the restaurant.”
Yu straightened his back and cursed. He shielded his eyes to make out more features of the man. The gaunt face with the square jaw came back to him, as did the German accent. “I remember now.”
“Here,” the man said. “Take this.” From his pocket, he produced a yellowed envelope. “It is important that I pass this on to you before I die.”
Yu took it and examined the envelope. There were no markings, except the decaying effects of time.
“Go ahead. Open it. It contains the Shangri-la Code.”
Yu was puzzled. He had never heard of such a thing. Curious, he slipped his fingers into the envelope and pulled out a single piece of paper. He unfolded it and read the letterhead out loud, “U.S. Department of War.”
Fascinating. An historical document.
The document was an original, created on a typewriter. He tilted it toward the light and read it softly to himself. In plain English, it laid out a code to be followed and the reasons for its secrecy. Among other things, it said that the kalika, or ruler of the land, could not partake of the rejuvenating waters. The kalika had to return to society to pass the code on to the one he chose as next kalika. By the end of the document, he gained a good idea of where Shangri-la lay.
