
Stars That Wooed Each Other the Length of the Sky
E
veryone thought he had caught a common cham rim—fever, muscle pain, a pounding headache. But he knew. He couldn’t keep down a single cup of butter tea. He opened his mouth and showed me a smear of reddish blisters on his tongue. “Leave, lock the door, tell everyone to stay away,” he rasped. I obeyed him, as always, going back to my tiny room in my landlord’s house. I begged the family for a cup of honey and yak butter so I could set up a shrine for the Goddess of Tian Hua, Heavenly Flowers. One of my first memories in life was watching my mother make offerings to the goddess, while her youngest sister, my aunt, lay on the kang under an “ugly mask.” But her sister’s beauty couldn’t be concealed, and within three days, Heavenly Flowers—the jealous goddess’s ultimate revenge—blossomed and overflowed from under her mask, their juicy pods proliferating, shrouding my prettiest aunt in a monstrous skin. They burned her, together with the shrine, a week later. A glimpse of that scab-infested body had sent me into a crying fit. Ma had hushed me. Don’t offend the goddess! she’d hissed. Or she’ll put a curse on you too.
I sketched out a portrait of the Goddess of Tian Hua from memory, embellishing her golden flowing robe, pearl-draped headpiece and the phoenix throne. I spread honey, butter, dry rice and seven bowls of clear water on the makeshift shrine. I kowtowed and prostrated all through the night, channeling the countless pilgrims I’d met in this strange land of devotion. I suspected it was all my fault, my unclean desire attracting the dark force that corralled my scholar. When I set foot in his village six months ago, hitchhiking and fleeing from an arranged marriage that had turned violent, he was squatting by the mud wall with a boy six or seven years old, their noses buried in a worn book, the intricate red and gold design on its cover reflecting the sun. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from his face, at once exotic and familiar: his high cheekbones and aquiline nose, the jet-black long hair tied up in a ponytail. My heart had leaped when he sensed my shadow and looked up.
I kowtowed and prostrated all through the night, channeling the countless pilgrims I’d met in this strange land of devotion. I suspected it was all my fault, my unclean desire attracting the dark force that corralled my scholar.
“You’re shaking. Did you travel far?”
He didn’t wait for my reply before shedding his chuba, with azure floral embroideries on its cuffs and collars, and laying it around my shoulders.
“Your feet are bleeding. We have bandages in the house, and some herbs.”
He took the boy’s chubby hand and headed inside. I waited for his return, staring into the glacier-covered mountains encircling the village, and the impossibly blue lake shimmering in the distance like a magic potion in a cup. I thought I could watch this scene of wonder until my last breath.
It might have been love at first sight, but neither of us would utter a word about it. He was the scholar who lived a life more ascetic than a monk’s, who must have liked me because he thought I, like him, harboured few earthly desires. And I, after burning through a fever dream in the first few days, soon understood my perpetual status as an outsider, if not an intruder. After all, it was my Han brothers who had brought pestilence to the pure soil of his hometown, contaminating its marbled water with the blood of imagined enemies. So I became his wallpaper, his quiet student and assistant. When he gave lessons to the neighbours’ children, I listened in, my tongue moving in silence and caressing the contour of his native language, nasal and melodic. He taught me how to grind barleycorns and make tsampa paste. When he cleaned the offerings and the small statue of Buddha on his wooden chest, I fed the single yak that lived on his first floor, running my hands through its long, warm fleece and conversing with the gentle beast through its huge and watery eyes. On cold nights, we sip tea beside an open log fire, and he’d introduce me to the continuous cycle of birth, life and death, with his Tibetan-accented Mandarin, drawing me inside the many surprises and contradictions of his faith—its blend of lofty aspiration and sober realism, its mix of divine calling and humanism and even a touch of mischief. Heat and colour rose to my cheeks as I met his eyes, calm and deep like the clear lake in the mountain.
When he wasn’t teaching or studying, we traversed for hours to the neighbouring village. We’d begin our journey cautiously, bowing our heads through the alleyways. I sensed the unspoken reprove and suspicion from his villagers’ silence and only allowed myself to breathe when we were out of their watchful eyes. The next village was down a deep valley carved for millions of years by the motion of Yarlung Tsangpo. We chuckled at our different pronunciations of the same geography and marvelled at the green patches of fertile land below the hovering glacier. We’d hike along a narrow, verdant path to an empty rock monastery perched on a cliff, strings of colourful prayer flags flapping under the robust sun.
“I still hear their voices sometimes,” he’d intoned the first time he took me there. “Their chants hung like a cloud over the rock face. Behind those red walls, there’s a courtyard. As a boy, I came here every Sunday to watch them in their ‘clapping debates.’ Their bodies pranced; ideas and laughter flew around the yard. Always a fun time.”
I had noticed the temple’s semi-charred façade and the small pile of broken prayer wheels by the wall. Suddenly I could picture the monks’ forced exodus, the ancient structure stripped and vandalized by a whirlwind of nonbelievers.
“That’s why your neighbours hate me.”
“I didn’t take you here to make you feel bad.”
“I deserve it.”
He sighed and fell silent.
When he spoke again, he had slipped back into the teacher’s mode. “We used to be a mighty empire too, ruling large swaths of Central Asia, even marched into your capital Chang-An. Think about the Mongols who occupied both our land and your Middle Kingdom. And the Nepalese, the Sikhs, the Russians, the Brits and their Indian mercenary. This is nothing new. It’s survival of the fittest.”
“Are you seriously making excuses for my people’s crime?”
“I’m a student of history.”
“That’s generous of you. Your villagers don’t feel the same.”
“No, many wanted to fight to the death. Many already did, and still many will.”
“But you won’t. You’re a pacifist.”
“More like a fatalist. Whatever happens is meant to be.”
“That’s why you hang out with me … ”
“It’s las skal.”
Yuan fen. Fate.
“ … the enemy who dropped from the sky to your doorstep.”
“You are not my enemy.” His stern voice shook me. “You are you. Not responsible for the crime you didn’t commit.”
I didn’t want his magnanimity; I wished he’d fight back to douse my burning guilt.
His gaze softened. “Remember what I said, will you, if you consider me a friend.”
I willed him to pull me into him then. I couldn’t be his friend, and neither could he, I was convinced. I had thought he was biding his time, even playing a game, that he understood the singular magic of forbidden love, the soreness in our hearts its own kind of drug. But weeks and months rushed by like a ruthless river, and we were locked deeper and deeper into an impasse, a tug-of-war. Callously, I began digging at him every chance I had; if I couldn’t caress his body and make him hold mine, I wanted him to be inflicted by the pain he’d inflicted on me. I grew sick of the cold, the endless cage-like mountains snaring us from all sides. I grew sick of the lice, the gamy tea, his neighbours’ silent stare whenever we passed their doorways. I grew sick of his silence, even when I shrieked in the deep valleys of the mountains, terrorizing the crows and vultures until they took flight and whirled into a black cloud above our heads.
I had thought he was biding his time, even playing a game, that he understood the singular magic of forbidden love, the soreness in our hearts its own kind of drug.
What am I to you? You think you are superior because you are a true believer? You and your villagers, aren’t you all hypocrites? The way your villagers treat women as if they are in between humans and animals, the way your holy monks flash their greedy eyes, the way the poor families send their sons to the monastery not to seek spirituality but a fuller belly! I see you all! You are every bit as human as I am. Drop your stony façade, stop pretending you aren’t made of flesh and blood, that you don’t want me the same way I want you!
He had let me scream, sad apologies pouring out of his weary, handsome eyes. He was retreating into himself with every passing day. He wouldn’t tell me what was on his mind, so I had to piece together the mystery behind the rumours. Men in the village kept on disappearing, answering the call from the Holy Capital, palpable like a fast-beating heart radiating energy waves through the mountain range. It was my people they were resisting, with short blades and even bare hands, and the sheer resolve of a devout tribe. There were murmurings of an impending exodus, a grand migration to the other side of the Himalayas where their bodies and spirits could finally roam free. My pacifist scholar drifted into a perpetual state of turmoil, unable to take up arms or quell the boiling blood raging inside him, unable to find room for the woman from the enemy tribe.
“Let him live,” I begged the goddess now, my tears blurring the smug smile on her face. “I’ll fold my unclean desire again and again until I can bury it in my pocket. I’ll be his chaste sister, so long as we can breathe the same air again.”
When dawn broke on the fourth morning, I tore apart my gaudy sketch and laughed at my stupid faith in a childhood myth. I ran all the way to his house, a gaggle of monks already lining outside, chanting and beating on their hand drums. I needed to break through their formation of yellow and maroon robes; I needed one last moment of privacy, of goodbye. The neighbours’ wives held me from behind. “Don’t cry, you’ll only confuse him. Don’t imprison his soul in a no-man’s land with your sorrow. Do him a favour; let him go … ”
By mid-afternoon, a professional carrier with droopy eyelids and a grooved forehead leaned on the door. I heard a young mother explaining to her children about the need to cart away a poisoned body, before the end of the customary seven-day period. To my shock, the neighbours fell into line behind me, as if I were his closest kin. My chest swelled with gratitude, as we followed the procession of monks to the foot of Mount Kalurong, my scholar wrapped in silky white cloth on the hunched back of the carrier. How different our two tribes are, I thought, having lived side by side for thousands of years. My people hold onto this life with unceasing tenacity and exhausting anxiety, the quest for longevity infesting everyone from the Emperor to the ghetto dweller. Here, among my silent neighbours who were determined to teach me nonchalance in the face of demise, as if they possessed the magic eyes to see into the Great Beyond, I no longer knew how to behave or feel. Are you all delusional? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t possibly offend them. They’d shown me the ultimate goodwill, even in this fraught, warring time between our tribes. The least I could do was to hold my tongue. And maybe, if I tried harder, I could see it through their prism too; I could tame the violent howls that kept bubbling up my throat.
At the foot of the mountain, a boyish monk turned to me: “You can’t go on.”
I nodded, my fighting impulse abated by the long march on the frigid path. The monks continued their ascent to a protruding rock. We lay men and women huddled in the cold as dusk descended, covering our heads with a blanket of fading colours. The rise and fall of an axe in the distance coincided with the seesawing pitches of the prayers. The flock of vultures, the silent witnesses of my unrequited love, now glided down to receive their rewards. My heart rammed into my ribcage and pain flooded my extremities, as if my own flesh and bones were hacked into pieces and torn by beaks.
It’s my chosen way, I heard his whispers in my ears, still stubborn as hell.
I swallowed hard, my breathing fast and furious, masked by the gusty wind.
To exit the cycle, without a trace of earthly attachment.
The sun made a skittish appearance on its way down, for a brief moment enveloping the tired monks and satisfied birds in one warm-blooded bubble.
So long.
I wiped away stinging tears. So long, love, I echoed, at the riot of birds. Till next life.