Is the Buddha saving man, or is man saving the Buddha? From now on I will hold to no faith. I can only strive to save myself. Man is beyond salvation.
I put down my notebook and stare outside the window at the grey sky above the grey wall. I wish I was in a room of my own. These four walls are splattered with spit and there are cigarette butts on the windowsill. In her last letter, my sister wrote: ‘Some hooligan smashed your front gate last week, and seeing that it was left unrepaired, your neighbour took the opportunity to build a kitchen on one side of it and a coal shed on the other. He even had the cheek to nail his washing line to your front door. Don’t pick a fight when you get back though. His mother belongs to the residents’ committee.’
I pack my camera and go for a walk. There are very few houses at this altitude. That is probably a hamlet ahead, although it looks more like a sheep pen. The slate roofs of the stone houses nearly reach the ground. The path is soft and dry, each step I take lifts a cloud of dust that hangs in mid-air. A dog creeps under a fence and barks slowly. A girl looks out from under a roof, disappears, then emerges again with a mirror and sits down to comb her hair. The dusty path is scattered with broken slate. Behind me, girls approach carrying stones on their backs. They pass through my cloud of dust then stop to catch their breaths. Everything moves in slow motion: the clouds, sheep, dogs, prayer flags, me. My head throbs. A crack opens from one side of my forehead to the other and my crown comes loose. Soon it will lift like the lid of a space observatory. My memories start to slip away. The names Guoping, Xi Ping, Lu Ping, Wang Ping drift through my mind, but I cannot put faces to them. None of those women were perfect, but if one of them still loved me, I would not have to live this vagrant life. I have travelled for so long, to so many strange places, I have become a stranger to myself.
In the afternoon, the village secretary takes me to see the Nepalese silversmith. Apparently he can carve images of the horse-headed Hayagriva and the eleven-faced Avalokiteshvara with his eyes shut. There are no lights in his dark basement, so I never see his face. He spent most of his life in the confines of Shegar Chode Monastery.
When I return to my room my stomach tightens. I shouldn’t have drunk that second cup of tea, the silversmith’s yak butter was so rancid it singed my throat. I run to the latrine and empty my bowels, but when I reach my door I know I must go again. This time I take a jacket and torch. An hour later, I stagger out of the latrine and fall to the ground in agony. I scream my daughter’s name and cry for help, but the noise shoots to my stomach. My hands grab at the night air as faces of wrathful deities flit before my eyes. At last I make it back to my room, but when I collapse on my bed and take a deep breath the gripes return. That yak butter was more poisonous than the water of Sugan Lake.
In the middle of the night, I lie awake on the metal bed under two thin quilts, shivering with cold. A wind howls through the rain and snow outside. This stinking body no longer belongs to me, my mind is as empty as a plastic bag caught in the high wind. Suddenly, I think of Beijing, and realise that although it is crammed with police, at least there is a bed and pillow waiting for me there. I came to Tibet hoping to find answers to all my unasked questions, but I have discovered that even when the questions are clear, there are no clear answers. I am sick of travelling. I need to hold onto something familiar, even if it is just a tea cup. I cannot survive in the wilds — nature is infinite but my life has bounds. I need to live in big cities that have hospitals, bookshops and women. I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people’s beginnings and ends. I have stopped here, not because the Himalayas stand in the way, but because my inward journey has reached its end. In fact, we all tread a path — the gold-digger, the coil-remover, Myima who left her turquoise behind and rose to the sky. We are just travelling in different directions, that’s all.
This path has ended, but from now on, my journey will be much harder.
In the morning the village secretary rides me to Tingri hospital on the back of his bicycle. When the doctor says he has run out of anti-diarrhoea pills, I ask for an injection of glucose and salt water so that at least I will be able to stand up. He digs into a drawer of empty pill bottles, pencils, tweezers, batteries, finds a syringe and attaches a drip to my arm.
I lie in the hospital bed, and moan to the secretary, ‘Look at the state of me! And I didn’t even touch the hem of Green Tara’s skirt.’
‘At least you still have your ears and nose.’
Last week, I would never have guessed that a thousand-metre rise in altitude would bring me so close to death. I was at four thousand metres at the time, in the town of Lhatse, trying to hitch a ride west to Tsaparang to see the tenth-century ruins of the vanished Guge Kingdom. It was a seven-day drive into the desert. I started walking along the empty road, hoping a truck would pass. When at last I reached a point where there were neither huts, paths, nor prayer stones, I gave up and turned back.
In the evening I came to a petrol station which had a restaurant built at the back. I walked inside and asked the cook for a bowl of noodles. When he disappeared into the kitchen, I went to the counter and stole a copy of China Youth. I crouched in the corner and read the magazine from cover to cover, twice. I was so excited, I began to read the articles aloud. I had travelled so far that I had forgotten the sound of my own voice.
The village secretary returns from the bus station and says there is a bus leaving for Shigatse in the morning. I tell him I will take it.
Road and Direction
When I reach Lhasa, Mo Yuan is already back from Guangzhou. There is a girl with thick plaits standing behind him. He hands me a parcel from Lingling, and makes it clear my presence is not welcome. So I go next door to Liu Ren and resolve to leave Tibet as soon as possible. Liu Ren says Mo Yuan and Dali have hardly left their room since they got back. I say it is understandable, I would not have disturbed him if I had known she was there.
I remember him saying before he left, ‘Last summer, Dali and I were standing at the back of a boat watching the waves break, and I felt a sudden longing to grab hold of her and jump into the sea. I’m so damn in love. .’
Dali has graduated from university now and has moved to Tibet to be with him.
‘Have you thought of transferring back to China?’ I ask Liu Ren. I am afraid he will agree to the vasectomy just to keep his job.
‘I am not as fancy-free as you. If someone pays for my food, I have to do as they say. I have a family to provide for. Anyway, I like Tibet.’
‘You’ve had the operation, haven’t you?’ I watch my twin’s face change.
‘Yes.’ He looks down, his nose twitching. ‘The cop just left,’ he says, changing the subject again.
‘Was he asking about me?’ Images of Beijing flit through my mind: police vans, housewives, the wind blowing through the lanes, heaps of cabbages drying on the roadside. I open Liu Ren’s jar of Sichuan pickles and pull out a small gherkin.
‘No. It was Tian Ge. The tall policeman with the Tibetan girlfriend who runs a snack stall. Don’t you remember? He gave you those confiscated photographs of the Dalai Lama. Well, he and Drolma are escaping to Nepal. I am worried though. He has taken a gun.’