I Am a Fish in Yamdrok Yumtso

Lhashamgyal

(Translation from Tibetan by Lucia Galli)

 

Read Previous (Part I)

 

4.

Since I came to Beijing, I no longer have dreams.

Starting from when I was five or six years old, I kept having the same dream.

In it, a swollen and ever bigger Yamdrok Yumtso resembled a blue balloon, inflated to the point of bursting. The crystal-clear waves of the lake, folding one upon the other, rose higher and higher, destroying the main road that looked like a desiccated water viper, while the village of Shelkar – the pens and farms on the mountains and the locals and their cattle in the valley – were drawn into the lake, engulfed within the great flow. In the dream, I could hear the pulsating splashing of the flood and the feeling of my body being hit and touched by the water – moist, damp, heavy, smooth. I was enveloped by waves, sometimes rising upwards, sometimes pulling downwards.

At first, I felt an indescribable fear and I even cried out in my dream. Moving my hands, I reached out within my bed, managing to grip the shoulder of my mother, who was sleeping nearby. At the edge of wakefulness, I heard her say, “Mama’s darling, Mom is here. Were you dreaming?” yet I couldn’t wake up. I was still underneath, in the depths of Yamdrok Yumtso, and it was even difficult to breathe. I could hear my mother speaking in the real world, but I could not come out of the dream. Hearing my mother’s words, the fear that I had of being absorbed in the lake gradually quelled, and little by little the moisture of the water and the hitting of the waves faded away, and I felt a familiar sense of lightness and easiness. I saw myself turning, bit by bit, into a fish. It was a very odd sensation. Seeing myself morphing into a fish was like being split into two, as though one part of me was watching the other transforming into a fish – a goldfish. Within the blue, crystal-clear lake, light sparkled on its gills, while it moved gracefully in the depths. In my heart I shouted with joy, “I’ve turned into a fish, I’ve turned into a fish!” and I woke up with a cry of delight…

I had the same dream many times over after that. When I was able to speak clearly again, I described it to my mother. She wasn’t suffering from rheumatism yet. Caressing my head, she said, “Mama’s darling, this is because you were a fish from the lake before you were born.”

“Mommy, is Daddy a fish from Yamdrok Yumtso too?” I asked with the naivety of a small girl. At that, she didn’t answer, but standing in our yard, she turned and looked towards the lake, stunned. When I was a child, I kept asking my mother who my father was, but she never gave me a clear answer; because of that, my mind got confused into thinking that he must have been not a man but a fish.

“Pelha, this is a gift your father left you.” The day I had described my dream to her, my mother had looked at the lake stunned for a moment, then had taken out a dzi stone from her breast pocket. The agate was oblong, pierced through, and with whitish patterns over its black surface. My mother had untied the chakdü at my neck and threaded it through the hole of the dzi so that the stone now hung at my throat.

“Pelha, your father was not a fish but a great tradesman. He has gone far away for business but left this dzi for you. A stone just like this one hangs at your father’s neck. You must never lose it! If you do, he won’t recognize you when he comes back,” my mother told me that day.

Starting from then, two branches – “night’s dream” and “day’s hope” – grew from the tree of time, endlessly swaying under the wind rising from Yamdrok Yumtso. Every night I dreamed of turning into one of the lake’s fishes, and every day I stood at the corner of the main road, the one that looked like a desiccated water viper, staring at the neck of every passerby. When spotting someone wearing a dzi stone at their throat, I would ask, “Are you my daddy?” adding, full of hope, “I have a dzi like yours.”

But those men always answered me, “I am not your father, girl.”

I later bumped into a traveler on a bicycle. That man almost uprooted the tree branch that was “day’s hope.” He removed his face cover, dismounted from the bike, and shaking off the dust from his torso, placed it down in front of me, propped up on one of its pedals. “Let’s swap our dzi stones, lass,” he told me, untying the agate at his neck, his wrinkles mustered into a smile. “I’ll throw in a notebook and a pen,” he said.

“Are you my daddy?” I asked him.

“I am not!” Amazement appeared on the man’s face.

“If you’re not my daddy, I won’t swap my dzi stone with you,” I replied.

“Well then, I’m your daddy!” The wrinkles on the man’s face gathered once more into a smile, and he bent closer.

“You’re not!” I shouted and, moving off from the side of the road, I dashed towards the village, but at once the man stretched out his hand, grabbed my arm, and made for my throat. I screamed. The village drunkard Sötsé heard that long screech while exiting our yard, and moving unsteadily, he immediately picked up a stone from the ground and came over, shouting, “Eater of your father’s corpse!” The man relaxed his grip, mounted his bike, and ran off in the direction of Nakartsé.

That time even my mother had come out of the yard. “Pelha, how many times have I told you not to show your dzi stone to anyone!” When she came out, the strings of her apron were tied at the front rather than at the back. In those years, while standing at the edge of the road asking all the passersby, “Are you my daddy?” I saw that drunkard Sötsé regularly entering our yard, drinking ravenously the barley chang my mother brewed, and then staggering outside. My younger brother was born a short time later, and the people of the village said that his father was Sötsé.

“Mommy, the dzi stone that hangs at Daddy’s throat is like this one, isn’t it?” I asked her.

“Yes, it is just like the one at your neck. A nine-eyed one,” my mother replied, leading me inside the yard. “Apart from you and your father, no one else has a dzi like that at their neck, so in the future, don’t ask this sort of questions to anyone who happens to wear an agate. If you do, someone will rob you, like they tried to do today,” she told me.

“Mommy, my dzi has nine eyes, right? What are they looking at?” When I asked that, my mother placed me on her lap, and after counting the eyes on the agate at my neck, she looked at me. Pupil-like, those round, white lines seemed to be staring unblinkingly at something.

“One eye, two eyes…” My mother counted the nine eyes once more. “A nine-eyed dzi is very rare,” she said.

Later, my mother began to be affected by rheumatism. The joints of her hands swelled, and it became gradually impossible for her to do any heavy work. I stopped attending school at Nakartsé and returned home to help her. My mother always said that her rheumatism was an affliction caused by lu and that she deeply regretted any sin she might have committed against the spirits of the land.

In those years, I was still dreaming of turning into a fish in Yamdrok Yumtso, but that stopped abruptly as soon as I arrived in Beijing. The horizon of the city, with its pollution, had cast a blurriness over my vision; after a long time of living such a life I had the feeling that even the perception I had of myself had little by little become unclear, and I felt as though everything had lost clarity.

5.

The Beijing night had little patience, the mass of darkness quickly squeezing in and pressing on you from every corner. At night, the roads of the city were like the bed of a river, the never-ending cars a flowing stream of light. I saw the twinkling white headlights of those approaching and the shining red backlights of those receding, and the cycling red, yellow, and green of the traffic lights. Underneath the blurriness of daytime, the darkness and mirage-like lights of the night made me feel as though I had not woken up from a dream.

There was a time when, walking hand in hand with Yudrön, I said to her, “This road is like the Tsangpo.”

“Are you writing a poem?” she replied.

“How I wish I could become a fish! I would swim in this road like it was a river and get to Yamdrok Yumtso…it would be wonderful!” I chirped happily.

“Don’t be silly. You’d just be run over by the cars on the road,” Yudrön answered.

I thought then that she had no power of imagination and that was the reason why Sumpa didn’t like her. I had reflected on the true shape of creativity and in my mind that was Sumpa.

My friend and I had left our room to go to The Lhasa Sunlight. Our lodging was in a skyscraper not far from the club, just fifteen minutes down an alley southward. Two bunk beds for four girls had been squeezed in each of the twentieth-floor apartment units. My younger brother Pelnam once said that it was like a dormitory. “I have rented a room nearby so that I do not have to crowd in with other boys like Sumpa,” he added. I have never been to his place.

After walking along a road flanked with lines of trees, we entered The Lhasa Sunlight.

It was daytime now. Namdröl and I had taken that very same road the day of our “date,” but we had moved past the club and spent some time in a nearby teahouse.

“Let’s go to my place,” Namdröl had said that afternoon.

“Where do you live?”

“Come and you’ll find out. It’s not far.”

“And what will we do once we get there?”

“I’ve got butter and tsampa in my fridge. We’ll eat those!” A laugh escaped me when Namdröl said that. I covered my mouth with a hand so as not to show my ivory teeth, aligned like the conch shell beads of a necklace. I did not know if Namdröl was iffy. He was undoubtedly endowed with a sense of humor. Sparking laughter was a skill he used to seduce women. Would he use the same tactic if I were a Chinese girl? I wondered. Would he say, “I’ve got some fish in my fridge. We’ll eat that”? Many of the patrons of The Lhasa Sunlight had invited me to their houses or apartments, but unlike Namdröl, they had no clue when it came to finding a funny reason to do so. A few would just get drunk and then say brazenly, “You’re a pretty Tibetan girl. Come to my place tonight and I’ll make it worth your while.” From the way they spoke, it seemed that everything could be measured in terms of “gain” and “loss.” When I had first heard that, I had got angry and even argued with them. Later, though, Yudrön told me, “If you get mad at this, you’ll spend the whole year upset. Ignore them.” Even more to the point, during a work-related meeting with the girls, the owner of The Lhasa Sunlight set a precise code of behavior: “The patrons are the gods under whom we take refuge. It is vital to please them.” I didn’t know whether the owner was an educated man, but he always imparted us many “lessons” on having a “situation.”

At first, I thought that a “situation” was how a thing was, but I had gradually come to understand that a “situation” was just something that benefitted The Lhasa Sunlight. Take the patrons, for example. They were said to be like gods. If such a divine patron said wicked things, was he still a god? Although I thought that, I didn’t dare say it.

I eventually became accustomed to this type of proposition from both regulars and newcomers. “Why, is there a pile of gold or silver at your place?” I would reply sarcastically. Or I would say playfully, “I’ll come. Just throw a red carpet from here to your place. I’ll walk over it to get there.” Even Yudrön said, “Pelha, you’re becoming an expert!”

“It’s good that the tsampa is in your fridge. The summer heat would spoil it otherwise,” I shot back at Namdröl. “It’s almost time for my work meeting. Bye,” I said and, getting up, I left the teahouse. We had been exchanging many affectionate voice notes through WeChat over the previous days. He had repeatedly said that he wished to see me, but I had offered no answer. “Please, you must meet me tomorrow,” he had said the previous night. “There’s something important I must tell you. I’m not joking this time.” I knew he had nothing special to talk about, but I had still got up early to meet him. I was well aware that Namdröl’s ultimate goal was to invite me over to his place, yet I laughed at his using tsampa and butter as an excuse. After laughing, a sense of unhappiness crept over me. Did this Pelha girl come across to men as someone easily beddable? Yet I showed no anger when they told me such things. Like Yudrön had said, I had become an expert. When I left the teahouse, I saw from the window that Namdröl had remained behind, seated motionless on the couch.

As usual, many patrons gathered at The Lhasa Sunlight that night. Those men were dressed in fine clothes and acted only with extreme politeness and attentiveness. At first, they just wished to enjoy the tastiest dishes and some songs, but bit by bit, most began to behave differently, acting up and talking loudly, in line with the loss of control that getting heavily drunk on barley chang brought on.

That night Sumpa did not perform his most popular song, but another one, titled “Makye Ama.” The two loudspeakers at the side of the small stage were still playing the intro, and Sumpa took the opportunity to say in Chinese, “This song is dedicated to my achak Bai-la. I thank her from the bottom of my heart for having helped and supported me until now. Tonight, I wish to entertain her, here at The Lhasa Sunlight.” He bowed, and after straightening back up, gestured towards the bottom of the stage.

As by previous arrangement, Yudrön and I danced in accompaniment to Sumpa’s song. As he spoke, I noticed from my position on the slightly elevated stage that the woman he had addressed as “Bai-la” sat in the dim lights of the auditorium. She always dressed in total black, never to be seen in anything white as her surname.[1] Every time she came to The Lhasa Sunlight I felt as if a shadow had been cast in the middle of the day. She stood up, waved in answer at the stage, and sat down again.

“Over the top of the eastern mountains,

Appears the white, clean face of the moon.

The face of Makye Ama

Appears in my mind.”

Such a renowned song was sure to please everyone, and Sumpa’s voice was unmatched. I was sixteen the first time I had heard one of his songs, and I had been astonished: how could the voice of a man be bent into something so pleasant to the ear? Sumpa’s throat could carry to the end of a wide grassland and his high pitch could lift to the top of the mountains. His voice was like a pleasant dew nourishing the mind, its melody seeping into the heart with the pealing sound of cool water pouring down freely and unobstructed. In those years, I had felt my body growing under my young clothes while listening to Sumpa’s songs. When later, after my arrival in Beijing, I met with the Sumpa of my dreams in the flesh, I bleated like a timid lamb. He looked twice as magnificent than on the television screen! His locks, long and softly waved, were gathered in a knot at the top of his head and starkly tamed into a brown lump. His high nose bridge and long, thick eyelashes, with their white and black brightness, resembled a vulture stretching his wings. His lips were embraced by soft, clear skin, and when he smiled, the sight of his teeth, arranged like rosary beads, roused an incontrollable joy. My love for him was like an unbridled wild horse, and I had no way to restrain it.

A hazy feeling of sadness coalesced amidst the melody of Sumpa’s song. This melancholy was certainly elicited by the Sixth Dalai Lama’s “Makye Ama.” In that moment, I was the Makye Ama of the lyrics, and I was trying as best as I could to convey the sadness felt by the Makye Ama of the song through the movements of my body. I had been a performer for about two years, and by then I had mastered all kinds of regional dances: the Drochen of Ngari, the Podrang Nangma of Lhasa, the Dranang Zhapdro of Tsang, the Repa of Chamdo, the Alche Lhamo of Tölung, the Dokdro of Lhatsé, the circle dances of Amdo, and so on. I had even outdone my dance teacher, Yudrön. Everyone said to me, “Pelha, you are as flexible as a fish!” and I was very pleased at the comparison. It was especially when we performed as backup dancers to Sumpa’s songs that at times I let my limbs move and my body flex as my heart desired. Yudrön complained about it endlessly. “If she dances like that, the audience won’t know which of us is messing up the performance!” However, the spectators cheered at my impromptu dancing and those throwing me kataks multiplied. “You do this because you want to get more kataks!” Yudrön would tell me later and even stop talking to me at times.

Tsewang, a boy who had arrived at The Lhasa Sunlight from Lhoka, piled the folded kataks upon a plate and weaved his way through the tables. Patrons could get a white scarf for ten renminbi or a yellow one for twenty. Taking hold of the kataks, they threw them towards their favorite performer on the stage, and at the end of the show, the performers handed all the kataks they had around their necks to the club bookkeeper who would then pay them back fifty percent of their value. That too was part of our monthly salary.

“If you don’t follow our dance routine,” Yudrön told me, “I will no longer perform the accompaniment to Sumpa’s songs with you.” I thought that she was using that as a pretext. Since Yudrön and Sumpa were not on speaking terms, she did not wish to dance along when he sang. I believed that to be the main reason. However, the owner of the club was serious when he said, “You two must dance along with the music, standing at either side of Sumpa facing each other like two goldfish.” He had even given us both some newly made Tibetan costumes. “Wear these. Our patrons – our protective gods – will like them,” he said.

“Atsi! Boss, this costume is so thin and full of holes that one can see everything through it. I feel naked with this on!” I complained, refusing to wear those outfits.

“Pelha, doesn’t everyone say that you’re as flexible as a fish?” the owner asked then. “Have you ever seen a fish with clothes on?”

That night, when Sumpa sang “Makye Ama,” Yudrön and I danced in accompaniment at his side. By then I had got used to wearing the new Tibetan costumes the owner had given us. At first, I had felt very uncomfortable showing off in a dance outfit that shamelessly exposed so many portions of my skin. The attire itself was a two-piece dress. The blouse was thin, with high-stand flaps and a low-cut neckline, and body-tight. When I wore it, it even showed a sliver of my naked waist. The edges of the collar left my throat and neck completely exposed, and I had no place to hide the dzi hanging there. In addition to that, the roundness of my breasts noticeably escaped from the low-cut plunge, and my cleavage was in plain sight. I liked the skirt below slightly better, although by the way it showed the lower body it seemed to have been cut to the measurements of my round hips. Besides, I couldn’t get used to wearing those costumes at first because they made me feel as though I was sending the spectators the message that my young body was not often clothed, and in any case, I thought that Tibetan robes were not two-piece dresses, but one single piece that had to be tucked in a sash. However, I reckoned that Yudrön was already used to these kinds of clothes, as she had given it no thought. “It’s alright. It’s not like the owner is forcing us to perform naked. Please wear it without making a fuss!” she said.

“Fuss” seemed to be a term used in Yudrön’s regional dialect. Later, when I became familiar with her, I realized that it meant “don’t be a snob.” Actually, I wasn’t making a fuss about the costume. I was really embarrassed wearing it. I was worried about what my younger brother Pelnam would think if he ever came to The Lhasa Sunlight and saw the way I acted. Since childhood, I have been advising him, encouraging him to be better. I don’t know if he listened to me and kept to the right path, but I am certain that it was thanks to my advice that he has not strayed onto the wrong one up to now.

Yet, here I was, performing on the stage, arching my waist as gracefully as a fish and effortlessly moving my limbs under the dim lights of the night. I had become gradually accustomed to all of this. The anklets on my feet rang with a tinkling sound and the bracelets on my arms pealed when hitting one another. To me, Sumpa’s lyrics were like an anesthetic: when I listened to his songs, I was no longer able to control myself. Thus, my heart did its best to tell everyone that I was in love with Sumpa and I danced, shamelessly flaunting my naked body. That time, the patrons of The Lhasa Sunlight cheered loudly and clapped, throwing me many yellow kataks.

6.

The performance was over, and likewise the Beijing night had gradually grown late. The patrons of The Lhasa Sunlight had left one by one, group by group. That night, achak Bai-la and her friends were among those who had stayed on. They had eaten Tibetan food and drunk chang; Sumpa sat with that woman, talking to her.

When the patrons left, the club lights were turned down, and the waiters collected the plates and drinks left over on the now empty tables. Yudrön and I were seated at the end of a small table; after opening WeChat in our cell phones, we sat looking at our friends’ Moments. In the dimness, Yudrön’s face was illuminated by the bright glow emitted from the iPhone 5 in her hands. Her long eyelashes, coated in black mascara, flickered. In his WeChat message, Namdröl was saying, “Pelha, Pelha, please say something, please!” I no longer had to look at Yudrön and ask her to translate the Chinese; Namdröl had put his request in a voice note, and I could now talk to him.

“Are you done kneading the tsampa? If you have, I’ll come over to eat it!” I replied, laughing.

“Who’s that?” Yudrön asked, raising her head from the screen of her phone.

“Namdröl,” I said, smiling.

“He likes you. But is it you he likes or your dzi stone? You should be careful,” she said.

“Pelha.” I was thinking of talking about Namdröl with Yudrön when from the end of a table on the other side of the room, Sumpa called my name and made a beckoning gesture with his hand – “come here.” I stood up and moved over, leaving Yudrön behind.

“Pelha, serve some chang to achak Bai-la,” Sumpa ordered me. He had never summoned me in any of the previous times that woman had come to the club, and never invited me to join them. By the look of her, I judged that Bai-la woman to be well into her thirties. She wore a Manchu-style robe, long and black; her complexion was white and clear. After pouring some barley chang from a jug into her porcelain cup, I got up and grabbed myself a cup of tea. “Well, I served you your chang,” I said.

“Don’t leave like that! It can’t be that a Tibetan girl doesn’t drink chang! You must change your cup of tea for one of chang!” The man on Bai-la’s left side seemed rather drunk. He was as red as a monkey’s butt, and the words he spoke to me while he was adding chang to his cup were blurry.

“Pelha, I’m grateful to achak Bai-la, so serve her barley chang on my behalf, OK?” Sumpa ordered me again. Bai-la looked at me, sitting still, a small smile growing across her face. In that moment, I felt as though her body held an intangible force, which made people feel helplessly small. I had sensed the same type of power coming from many of the men who came to The Lhasa Sunlight, and I had talked about it with Yudrön. “That’s the entitlement of the rich,” she had said.

“Well, if you’re grateful, I’m not! Why should I be polite and drink chang when I’d rather not?” That night there grew in me a nameless sense of self-respect in the face of the impalpable power of achak Bai-la, and when, feeling displeased, I addressed Sumpa in Tibetan, he was almost stunned.

“He, he.” Achak Bai-la tittered, making to slap Sumpa on the shoulder. “Sumpa, this girl likes you,” she said.

“It can’t be,” he replied, indifferent as usual, but with a bashful look on his face.

“I don’t understand Tibetan, but I can surmise it from her facial expression,” Bai-la said. “Girl, sit down and relax!”

“What you said is true, achak Bai-la. I’m in love with Sumpa, and I have been in love with him for a long time. It’s not a secret,” I said, sitting down.

“Our Sumpa is an impressive young man loved by many, isn’t he?” Bai-la took a sip from her cup, although no one had served her chang.

“You’re a wild one, girl, but I like your type!” exclaimed the red-faced drunkard seated next to the woman. He bent closer, and peering at the dzi stone at my neck, said, “I kept my eyes on that agate of yours when you were dancing. I gave it a good look…with this.” He raised a pair of binoculars and showed it to me. “If I’m not mistaken, that hanging at your neck is a nine-eyed dzi,” he said.

“Mr. Wang saying he was looking at the dzi is just an excuse. He was checking out the chick’s boobs, that’s what he was doing!” a nearby man said, and everyone around the table guffawed, turning the atmosphere noisy. In the past I would have been ill at ease with this kind of behavior, but now I couldn’t care less. Those who came to The Lhasa Sunlight were all decent and respectful at first, but once they got drunk on chang, they all started to say improper things like that.

“You saw what you think you saw. That stone at Pelha’s neck is a nine-eyed dzi,” Sumpa said seriously.

“Is it now? If that’s the case, a nine-eyed agate is currently worth tens of thousands of renminbi, at least!” the red-faced drunkard called Mr. Wang exclaimed. Turning to me, he said, “Girl, untie it and let me have a closer look.”

“Sorry, no. I never untie it,” I replied.

“Sumpa, given that you and Pelha are a couple, if she sells her nine-eyed dzi, won’t you have enough money not only to buy a house in Beijing, but even to produce DVDs of your songs?” Bai-la asked, reaching her chang cup toward Sumpa.

“You’re wrong. Us being a couple won’t get him any special wealth or profit,” I interjected, addressing Bai-la and interrupting whatever Sumpa was about to say. “Isn’t it, Sumpa?” I asked, facing him.

“He, he.” The woman attempted a smile, and when I noticed how her skin wrinkled in the effort, my headache blissfully cleared away.

Later, while Bai-la and her group were completely stupefied, Sumpa gave no signs of being drunk. It seemed that it was impossible for him to become intoxicated. Bai-la had dropped her head on his shoulder and was whispering slurred words in his ear. Every so often Sumpa lit a match to the end of the cigarette she carried at her lips, squeezed between her fingers, and they shared it. There were times when he felt generous and let the woman have it. I really didn’t want to see Sumpa acting like that. I felt heartbroken. “Atsi, cho-la! You are as obliging as if she was your mother,” I said sarcastically sometime later.

“Babe, I may not understand Tibetan, but I can see that you’re mad at me,” Bai-la said. “Have you ever heard of Tsangyang Gyatso?” she asked, straightening her body and extending her head in my direction. I did not know how to answer her sudden question, so I sat still, mimicking her smile.

“Tsangyang Gyatso’s sweetheart had been left behind in Lhorong Mön, and he was sitting alone in one of the upper-floor rooms of the Potala Palace.” While Bai-la spoke with such deep empathy, holding her cigarette between index and middle finger, everyone quietened. “None of you can understand that feeling. You can’t.” She waved her hand. “Sometimes, in the darkness of the night, I am reminded of Tsangyang Gyatso. How at night he lit the butter lamp in that room and wrote poems recalling his childhood sweetheart. How the black windows of the one thousand rooms of the Potala stared out into the thick darkness of Lhasa’s sky, with just a dim light shining out from one of those. That was the room where Rindzin Tsangyang Gyatso sat recalling his love. Who can understand his loneliness and longing? Who? That loneliness, that longing…I feel as though they are my own. I totally understand him. You don’t, you don’t,” Bai-la said. When she lifted her head, I saw that there were tears running down her cheeks.

“Sumpa, thank you for your song tonight. ‘Makye Ama,’ the song that you dedicated to me, touched me to the core. Thank you, really. I wouldn’t even have minded dying, had it been amidst your singing,” Bai-la said, raising her cup of chang and drinking it bottoms up. I did not know why but that time I too felt completely under the spell of achak Bai-la’s power. Although I had no problem understanding the gist of Tsangyang Gyatso’s song out of Sumpa’s lyrics, I lacked Bai-la’s ability to eloquently convey whatever sensation I had.

7.

I wasn’t at all happy that night. Yudrön beckoned me over from the end of the table on the other side of the room. “Come back to the couch,” she mouthed, but I remained seated next to Sumpa. Given that I hadn’t made my way back to her, she sent me a WeChat note. “If you don’t come over, I’ll go home,” she said, and getting up, she left The Lhasa Sunlight.

After her monologue on Makye Ama, Bai-la beseeched Sumpa: he had to sing that song again. “Didn’t I just end my performance on stage? Didn’t I say it out aloud that it was specially dedicated to you?” he replied.

“But that song was not for my ears only. Many others in the auditorium heard it.” Bai-la clung to Sumpa’s shoulder, shaking it. She behaved like a little girl pestering an adult.

“You’re wrong if you say that, Bai-la,” Mr. Wang piped up next to me. “Sumpa was over there, but since we could still hear him, we cut our ears off!”

Placing his elbows on my shoulders, he pretended to chop off my ears. I just ignored him.

“Well then, first take your achak back to her place and then stay over for a while. You must sing that song to me alone!” Bai-la said. He’s not your servant! I thought, hearing that. Your demands are beyond measure!

But Sumpa said, “Achak, it’s my duty to take you home if you’re drunk. Be at ease.” His words did not make me happy, not one bit.

The night had got gradually late, amidst the tinkling of chang cups and blurred words of childlike talk. Bai-la and the others were yet to show any sign of leaving The Lhasa Sunlight. Under the dim lights, the few waiters on duty were nodding off, seated at the end of the empty tables. Yudrön had been gone for some time.

“Little sister.” The man called Mr. Wang came closer to me and whispered softly in my ear. “If Sumpa stays over at achak Bai-la’s after taking her home, what about you taking me home and then staying at mine?” His breath, laced with the smell of chang, tickled my ear as he spoke.

“Big brother, it’s my duty to take you home if you’re drunk. Be at ease,” I said loudly, and Sumpa turned his head in my direction and looked at me. A vivid look of displeasure came up into his eyes, and his expression prompted a feeling of tenderness in me. Sumpa usually adopted an attitude of utter indifference, paying no mind to things, and that made me feel invisible, like I was air in his eyes. Even that night he had not intervened when, seated next to him, I let loose quite a few words with Bai-la, so the fact that he had opened his eyes and was looking at me triggered in me a feeling of fondness. Yet, since he did not utter a word but just stood there staring, I turned my back to him and served Bai-la some chang.

“Really, little sister?” Mr. Wang exclaimed, happily.

“Really. How much will you pay me, big brother?” I asked.

“Your big brother can give you whatever you want, little sister.”

“Well then, a bitten apple will be enough for me,” I replied.

“Ha, if you want to eat an apple, your big brother can buy one just plucked from the branches of a tree. A bitten one won’t be as tasty.” It seemed that Mr. Wang had not understood what I meant.

“You’re really drunk, Mr. Wang! Pelha is referring to one of the Apple cell phones,” Bai-la interjected with a thin smile. “Don’t let a child like her fool you,” she added.

“Ha, ha, ha!” Mr. Wang let out a great laugh and said, “I’m just too old, I don’t even understand the youngsters’ lingo. But now I’d really like to sink my teeth into a fresh apple!”

“Mr. Wang, you can take a bite of a ripe apple plucked from the top of a Tibetan tree, but will your stomach be strong enough to digest it?” Bai-la asked.

“You’re wrong, Bai-la. You can stomach digest a Tibetan apple, can’t you?” Mr. Wang pointed with his finger towards Sumpa. “If you can eat that, then I can too,” he said.

“We are not apples, Mr. Wang. You shouldn’t speak like that.” After raking his fingers through his long hair with an outward motion, Sumpa picked up his cup of chang and said, “Rather, enjoy the food, please.” He made to raise his cup over his head and then emptied it.

Sumpa wasn’t even a little tipsy. He was always like that. It seemed that most spirits could not intoxicate him. He raised the cup swirling to the brim with beer to his face and frowned; when I saw him adding more chang to his cup, a nameless despondency rose in my heart. In the depth of the Beijing night, with its dim lights and hazy sensations, the man I loved was drinking beer with people I had no relation with – a situation like this had never come up in my dreams. Growing up on the shores of Yamdrok Yumtso, I had always dreamed of Sumpa, this young man seated next to me, of how we would cherish our life together as lovers. I had been incredibly happy at that time: not only had I harbored no doubt that mine was the consciousness of a fish of the lake, but I had also been deluding myself into thinking that those dreams of me having a relationship with Sumpa were real. Now, the fact that the real Sumpa, who showed no interest in my love for him, was seated next to me, drinking beer, felt like a dream. How does one wake up from a dream within a dream? I wondered anxiously. I was somewhat dazed. It was late, and a muddling drowsiness had settled on my mind.

When Sumpa frowned and added beer to his cup, I felt despondent. I defended the man of my heart – the Sumpa of my dreams, the one who had travelled to the end of the world, but also the Sumpa who had become a plaything, who had turned into a dog – while he was chasing the depth of the Beijing night drinking beer. I kept waiting even if it seemed like he didn’t care for me.

I was caught in those thoughts when the red-faced Mr. Wang shook my elbow. “Are you meditating, little sister?” he said. “Please, give me your WeChat ID,” he added, putting his iPhone in front of his eyes.

“Give me yours and I’ll save it,” I replied, taking out my cell phone.

“Atsi, that’s bad! Why are you using that thing rather than getting an iPhone?” Mr. Wang exclaimed, pointing at my phone.

“I’m not as rich as you, am I? I don’t have the money to buy one.”

“If you sell that dzi of yours, you’ll sure be richer than me,” he said, indicating the agate at my throat.

“I’ll never sell it.”

“Why?”

“My father gave me this dzi,” I answered.

 Read Next (Part III)

Notes

[1] The Chinese surname Bai 白 means “white.”

Lhashamgyal (Lha byams rgyal) is a Tibetan author and scholar living in Beijing. Mostly known for his short stories, he is also a novelist, a translator, and a prolific essayist, with dozens of articles to his credit in both Tibetan and Chinese. Winner of several literary prizes, his works have been translated into French, English, and Japanese. President of the Tibetan Youth Society of the China Tibetology Research Center and editor of the journal Nationality Literature (Mi rigs kyi ’tshom rigs), he currently works as a researcher in the Religion Research Institute of the China Tibetology Research Center (Beijing), of which he is also Deputy Director.

Lucia Galli holds a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. Previously a research fellow at the Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l’Asie orientale (CRCAO, Paris) and a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), she is currently an independent scholar. Her most recent publications include peer-reviewed articles in Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Life Writing, Revue d’etudes tibétaines, and Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines.