Free Beyond the Sky and the Earth by Jamie Zeppa Page A

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.

The Way to Tsebar
    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.