Leaving Mother Lake (30 page)

“But I am Gatusa!”

I looked at him, incredulous. This was Gatusa! No, that just could not be!

A mischievous twinkle flashed in his black eyes. “Maybe I’m not as you imagined . . . ,” he said, his smile broadening.

I glared at him.

“I really am Gatusa,” he said again.

Oh, he was so right. He was nothing like I had imagined! Nothing like Geko! And that awful smile of his! How dared he?

“You’re Gatusa?” And I threw my shoulder bag at him and shouted in Chinese, “How dare you be so ugly?”

And then we just stood there, silently staring at each other in common disbelief.

Gatusa did not stoop to a reply. He only bent forward to pick up my bag from the ground and hand it back to me. Then he picked up my suitcases and said in a calm voice, “Come on, let’s go. You must be hungry.”

Oh, how could I not have thought of asking him for a photograph? But I had never even sent him a photograph of myself! Why should I have asked one of him? We were Moso people, we did not exchange photographs! Oh, but I felt so cheated, betrayed. How could
he
write such beautiful things? How was such a thing possible? I did not want to walk next to him. I fell back three feet behind him.

Gatusa had made arrangements for us to stay with his friend Qin Zhengxing and his family. Qin’s wife had prepared a feast in my honor and by the time we came in, everything was ready to be served. Touched by all this kindness and cheered by the excellent food, I somehow managed to put a smile on my face and even to feel a little ashamed of myself. But when, after dinner, Qin called the children away and they all retired to another room to let us have some privacy, I was furious all over again. I sat in my chair looking vacantly ahead of me, as though Gatusa had become invisible, refusing to talk.

Meanwhile, he drank his tea, ignored my mood, and began to tell me about his work, his dreams, how he was planning to collect and translate Moso oral literature for
Camellia
magazine, and his ambition to record every Daba ceremony and every song and story. “It will take years, but I am young. . . . You’ll see, things have changed a lot since you left. Almost all the children go to school now. They learn Han values and the ways of the modern world, and if we do not record our culture, in another generation everything may be forgotten. We Moso must not stay out of the world.” He gazed at me thoughtfully, his eyes shining with intelligence and perhaps a little scorn. “The problem is, how do we become part of the world without losing ourselves in it?” But I had no answer to that question, and he went on talking about other things concerning our people, about our past and our future — things I had no idea about. He was often very funny, and he spoke more beautifully and he was more intelligent than anyone I had ever met. I felt myself charmed again, as I had been by his letters, until later in the evening, when it was time to sleep, and I asked Qin’s wife to show me to her youngest daughter’s room.

Next morning at breakfast, I was in a bad mood again and there was an awkward tension all around, relieved only by the chatter of the children. The Qins must have felt grateful when Gatusa looked at his watch and announced that we had to leave because the Living Buddha was waiting for us.

We hurried to the ugly modern building where our guru resided under the official title of Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the CPPCC. Gatusa pushed the door open, and a sweet scent of incense enveloped us. I followed him inside and then up a dark staircase and into a large hall cheered by the warm glow of butter lamps. As my eyes adjusted to the half-light, I made out the couches and the low tables, the mural paintings, the butter sculptures, incense burners, a photograph of our Living Buddha in his yellow robes, and next to it, a larger portrait of Mao Zedong. The hall was something halfway between a Communist Party meeting room and a Tibetan temple, but everything here was clean, pure, calm. I gazed at the mole on Mao’s chin . . . just like my Ama’s — and I realized that this was the first time since the bus had pulled into the station at Ninglang that I thought of my Ama. I realized that all this time, I had been so preoccupied with being angry with Gatusa that I had completely forgotten about my Ama. And yet it was not only for Gatusa that I had come home after all these years. The truth was, I was afraid. I was terribly afraid of going home. What if my Ama had not really forgiven me? What was the point then? What worth were all the dreams in the world, if I did not deserve my mother’s love?

Guru came in from a side door, wearing a gray Mao jacket and a People’s Liberation Army winter hat, with the fur ears tied in a bow at the top of his head. He looked just like a party cadre but for the rosary around his neck, his face filled with kindness, his thick eyebrows and large forehead radiating intelligence. He was a living god and even under his PLA headgear he had what we call a Buddha face. On seeing him, on feeling his presence, I felt unworthy of the honor.

We kowtowed with our heads to the floor. Guru touched my head and then Gatusa’s, and he invited us to sit next to him on a couch while a servant brought us butter tea. I took a sip and looked at Guru’s portrait. He was so much more handsome in his tall yellow hat than in his PLA headgear.

“How is your life at the conservatory?” Guru asked.

I described my life the best I could. I told him about Shanghai, about my friends, my voice teachers, but I did not talk about my gigs at the nightclubs.

Guru listened carefully, smiling and nodding, and when I had finished talking, he crossed his hands in his lap and said, “You must study hard. You must become a great singer. And you, Gatusa, you must continue to write about our people’s customs and our history. You two will let the world know about the Moso. You two will tell the world about our culture. Don’t forget your roots.” He paused for a moment and took a sip of tea, and then continued in the same tone, “You two must continue to love your people. You two are an example for the younger generation. I am old. You two must work together.”

Gatusa glanced at me and I shot him a dirty look in return. Although Guru’s attention filled me with pride, I was beginning to get irritated with all the advice and especially with the way he kept saying “you two” — as though Gatusa and I were already a couple. I was beginning to feel as I had when my mother had left me alone in the house with Geko. It seemed that someone was always wanting to arrange my life. Why should I love a Moso man? Why did they all want to keep me in the mountains?

Guru spoke with us for more than an hour. Before we took our leave, he handed me a hundred yuan, to help with my schooling. I was touched and very embarrassed. One hundred yuan was no longer such a lot of money for me, now that I worked at the nightclubs, but it was certainly over a month’s salary for our guru. I refused to take it, but he insisted, and Gatusa also insisted. So I thanked him for his kindness and kowtowed one last time. On the way out, Gatusa tried to hold my hand to help me down the stairs. He meant well — there was no electric light and the stairs were pitch black — but I pushed him away. We returned to Qin Zhengxing’s house without talking. Qin’s wife brought us a cup of tea and Gatusa lit a cigarette, and seeing I was not in the mood for a conversation, he told me Guru’s story.

Our Living Buddha, Losan, was born on Nyoropu Island on Lake Lugu. His mother was the wife of the old Yongning feudal lord. When she was pregnant, she had a recurrent dream that she was standing in the library of a monastery, surrounded by holy books. There was no way out of the room, there were no doors, only shelves filled with books. In a later dream, a voice called out to her, “Dear precious lady, don’t worry. You will give birth to a little Buddha.” The day our guru was born, half of heaven turned bright red and a dragon flew from Mother Lake toward the sky, churning torrents of water in its wake, and it hovered above the mountain goddess Gamu until our lady gave birth. When little Losan was three years old, Tibetan lamas came from Lhasa looking for the reincarnation of a former saint from Delimin monastery in Sichuan, and they took him back with them. He did not return to our Moso country until 1954, when he took charge of the monastery and the temples in Yongning, but the following year the People’s Liberation Army came to liberate us from our feudal oppressors and our guru was sent to live in Ninglang town. Then, during the Cultural Revolution, after Mao Zedong declared religion a poison, the Red Guards destroyed the Dgebo lamasery and our guru was sent to work on a collective farm, where he lived like a simple peasant, growing vegetables and herding goats in the mountains. Everything he had learned had become useless, but he never gave up hope. He always believed in our people. After the Cultural Revolution, our guru was moved back to Ninglang, where he was given the title of Chairman of the CPPCC. And the previous year he had presided over the festival of Goddess Gamu, for the first time in more than two decades.

Gatusa paused. “Did you know that the county government insisted we build a wall to separate women and men at the hot springs?” He laughed. “It’s only shoulder high, so it’s completely useless!”

But I wanted to talk about something else. Better even, I did not want to talk at all. I barely excused myself and went out for a walk. I could not bear to hear any more about our country and our people. I could not bear to think about home, until I had seen my mother.

THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE VERY EARLY
. Gatusa was already up, waiting for me in the Qins’ living room. He suggested, perhaps only out of politeness, that I stay in Ninglang for a few days, but I declined. “I miss my mother too much. I want to go home.” Besides, I had arranged with the Living Buddha’s driver to take the Jeep to Luo Shui, and no doubt he was already waiting for me. I gave Gatusa the American cigarettes I had brought for him, and some tea and candy for his mother.

Outside, a fine cold rain was falling. I had gone only a little way down the street when I heard footsteps and turned to see Gatusa running after me, carrying an umbrella. “What now?” I thought. But he wanted only to give me the umbrella.

“I don’t need it!” I snapped.

“Ooooh, but where did you get such a bad temper?” he answered, partly talking to himself. He took his umbrella back, turned around, and walked away without turning again.

I sat next to the driver and we began the thirty-mile, five-hour drive to Luo Shui. It was still dark. I looked at the cold rain beating on the black window, and Gatusa’s words rang in my ears — Where did you get such a bad temper? Yes, I thought, where did I get such a bad temper? I thought of Geko and how much I had hurt him, and Hong Ling. Ah, but Hong Ling had asked for it! And what about Gatusa, what had he asked for? For months I had lived by the thought of him, my heart filled with joy and light, my thoughts striving for beauty. It had been the happiest year of my life, and I had achieved so much: I was thoroughly literate now — reading all those books, looking for that perfect sentence, the exact word to echo the love singing in my heart — and I had recorded my first cassette, and I was no longer alone, I had a soul mate, I was in love. . . . And in a single moment, in the little time it takes to place a name on an unfamiliar face, I had thrown everything away! How could that be?

It never occurred to me that I was shallow, superficial. I just felt sorry for myself and angry at myself too, but even angrier at Gatusa. But just below the surface, right under my skin where the anger burned, there was yearning and wanting, but I did not know what for. And that hunger is still with me, but I can see it now, just as I can still see myself clinging to the muddy edge of the precipice on the way to Yanyuan, crawling doggedly toward my dream, oblivious of the torrential water churning below, deep in the valley, where, should I fall, I would be lost forever. No, I was not shallow. But I was seething, and there was no end to it.

I stayed in this black mood for the rest of the trip, not talking to the driver, hardly noticing the sunrise or that it had stopped raining or the white peaks of the mountains — until we reached the last pass and Lake Lugu appeared before our eyes in its eternal magnificence.

Mother Lake, eternally blue, and our mountain goddess crowned by feathery clouds. There was no purer beauty than my country.

The dark cloud lifted from my heart. I could already see my mother in her festival dress, her long blue skirt, her red jacket, and our garden and my big sister smiling and little Homi and Jiama, and Howei and Ache. . . . I could already taste the butter tea and feel the heat of the fireplace.

The Jeep reached Luo Shui, where I went to pay my respects to my old relatives while my cousins prepared the boat. Everyone was so pleased to see me, and so astonished at my clothes, my short haircut, my boots. . . . We had to row across to the other side of the lake — an hour and a half, and then walk again for two hours. At last the children appeared to greet us, but I didn’t know who they were, and when I did, I did not recognize them. And they stood before me smiling, fascinated, confused, knowing I was one of them and yet unable to deny the absence of sameness their eyes could not fail to see.

My Ama was alone in the yard, chopping wood, her back to me. I did not dare approach her. I did not want to give her a shock. Besides, I was terrified. My knees were shaking, and my heart was beating wildly. What would she say? What was she going to do? What was I going to do? I asked the children to go and tell her I was there. She put down the ax and turned to see me, but she did not move. She stood and smiled and wiped her hands on her cotton trousers.

“Ami, I’m hungry!” I said, my voice breaking.

My Ama wiped her eyes. “Come inside, come inside!” And she called out, “Howei, come out! Quick, go and kill a chicken, Namu’s hungry! She’s come from such a long way!”

We brought my suitcases inside the house and I took out my gifts. Before I had opened the third bag of candy, our house was filled with little children, and I gave everything away. Then I gave my watch to Homi, and at last we sat down, all of us, near the fireplace. For a moment, everything seemed so simple. We were together, sitting at the hearth as though nothing had ever happened, and the thought crossed my mind that nothing ever did happen in our village.