Leaving Mother Lake (22 page)

After the money, I showed the newspaper. No one could read but everybody liked the photograph. Seeing this, I went to my bedroom to fetch the postcards I had bought in Beijing, and the newspaper photograph of Nankadroma. I talked a lot about Nankadroma.

“Why didn’t you ask her to come back here with you?” my Ama said.

“I don’t think she would like it here. It would be too quiet for her,” I answered, already thinking that perhaps it was even too quiet for me.

Ama said nothing more about Nankadroma. She was much too happy to appreciate the meaning of my comment. Besides, people had got bored listening to my stories and everyone was talking and laughing again, and she wanted to join in the general mirth and to listen to Numbu, who had stood up to make yet another speech.

“As you all know,” Numbu said in the same formal tone Datso had used and that had made everyone laugh, “a vacancy has opened at our elementary school. Well, it has been decided that Namu will cook and clean for the teachers. She will earn fifteen yuan a month.”

This time nobody laughed. They cheered and nodded their heads in approval, and my mother was glowing. This was one of very few paying jobs in our village and every mother had held hopes for her daughters. Only a month or so before, I would have been among the least likely candidates, but now everything had changed. Now I was a star in my village and it seemed only natural that I should be given such a coveted position. The trouble was, I did not want to be a star in my little village, I wanted to be a star in the big world.

Love and Duty

F
or a few days after I returned from Beijing, I basked in my special status. I did no work and woke up very late, sauntering leisurely into the kitchen to find my mother already through with many of the house chores and Zhema absent, gone to the fields. I sat near the fireplace, drank butter tea, and ate roasted potatoes. I played with little Homi and Jiama. No one seemed to mind. I was a star and I needed to rest from my travels. Besides, I would soon start working at the school. Then late one morning, when I had finished breakfast, Ama asked me to go and dig a taro root from the garden.

When I came back into the kitchen, she threw the root into a pot and told me that I was going to make glue to stick my newspaper photograph on the pantry door. Ama needed me to watch over the taro because it had to boil for a while and she had too many other things to do. She was still talking when Geko came in with barley cookies and a bottle of wine his mother had given him for our family. Geko lived a few gates down from our house. He was about twenty years old, very tall, with a handsome, manly face and thick, wavy hair. There was a general agreement that he was the best-looking young man in the village. Ama greeted him and told him to sit near the fireplace, and while she placed his offerings on the ancestors’ altar, she asked me to serve him some tea. And while I was pouring the tea, she suddenly excused herself, taking Homi and Jiama with her and leaving the two of us alone in the house. I didn’t know where to put myself, and I was furious. It was obvious that my Ama had arranged the visit.

Meanwhile, Geko gave me a long look and took out a cigarette.

“How was Beijing?” he asked, rounding his lips and blowing smoke rings up in the air. “I thought you might never come back. I watched you when you left.”

I pretended to take interest in the taro root boiling in the pot.

He blew more smoke, through his nose this time, and moved off the kang to come and stand by my side and look at the taro. “Did you like the outside world, Namu?” he asked.

“Yes, I liked it a lot,” I replied coldly.

His face darkened, but he was not to be so easily put off. “Could I come and have a drink with you tonight?”

“I’ve never lit the fire in my flower room,” I answered as I turned toward him and stared very hard into his eyes — which among us is a very rude way to look at somebody. “I prefer to sit near the fireplace, down here in the kitchen.”

“What a waste,” he countered.

And then he smiled, a very sweet, disarming smile that caught me entirely by surprise, so much so that I could not think of what to say next and blurted out, “I don’t know why you should want to drink wine in my flower room. There are plenty of other girls in the village. Besides, I heard that you have a friend in Luo Shui.”

Geko burst out laughing. He had expected something a little less straightforward. “Oh, I don’t see her very often. It’s too tiring rowing the boat all the way across the lake at night.”

“Well, who cares anyhow!” I snapped. I was so annoyed at myself for my lack of wit and playfulness. But somehow I did care. I didn’t like the thought that he had so many girlfriends. And that also surprised me, because I had never thought anything special about Geko. In fact, I had never thought anything at all about him.

We both went quiet and watched the taro root boil away until the wordless tension, growing heavy with expectations and restraint, brought us much too close for comfort, and I began to talk again, about Nankadroma and how she had fallen in love, and how her lover had a nasty jealous wife who had cursed her with a red letter, and how I had left Nankadroma brokenhearted and drunk in the hotel room. Nankadroma’s story was a very sad love story and Geko was all ears, but I could tell from the expression on his face that he was not sure I was flirting.

The taro had boiled enough by now. I ladled the glue into a little bowl and with a small paintbrush smeared it on the door of the pantry. Geko then placed my picture over the glue, carefully positioning it to make sure it was straight. He smoothed it flat, brushing his hands over my paper face, slowly, very softly, and I felt a little short of breath. His hands were long and graceful, like my father’s hands. He was standing so close to me and acting as though he could not even see me, but there was a sweet smell coming from his breath and his skin. When he was satisfied that the glue would hold, he took a couple of steps back and said, “Look! You’re very pretty.” Then he turned to me and asked with a big smile, “Do you want to go walking near Mother Lake?” And I said yes.

Now, outside festival times, couples do not usually walk around Lake Lugu in broad daylight, but the few people we saw on our way did not seem to mind. They simply looked at us and waved, and they smiled. Perhaps they were happy to think that at last someone was going to knock on my bedroom window.

I liked walking side by side with Geko. I liked talking with him as well. I told him more stories about my travels, and about the singing contests and the people I had met. Geko listened as though he were drinking my words, until I started to talk about Nankadroma again, and he said, “You had such a good time in the outside world. Did you really want to come back? Maybe you left your heart with your friend Nankadroma.”

Suddenly I no longer felt like walking with him. All the softness, all the pleasure I had in his company had vanished. He had seen right through me, and he had seen right.
I had left my heart with Nankadroma.
And I did not want to come back, but I was back, and there was nothing I could do about that, was there?

“Yes, I did. I wanted to come back,” I snapped. “I wanted to come back . . . just for you. Because your mother and my mother arranged everything. But now I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you! I don’t even like you.”

His eyes flashed, and then he burst out laughing. “What do you mean, you don’t want me? Hey! I don’t want you either. Who do you think you are? Do you think you’re too good for me?” He stopped laughing and took both my hands in his. “Tonight, I’ll come and knock on your window. You’ll see, after you’ve been with me, you will never want to leave, ever!”

That night I waited for him. I waited, determined not to open my door. But he didn’t come. I wondered if he had paddled across the lake to his girlfriend’s house in Luo Shui or if he had gone to visit someone else and who that might be, or if he really thought I had left my heart with Nankadroma. Whatever, he never came. Not that night nor the following nights. And at the end of it, I was disappointed.

My mother too was disappointed. She was very fond of Geko, and he was such a good match. Geko was the best-looking boy in the village and every girl wished to love him. It seemed so right that the two of us should fall in love now that I too was a star in the village. When Ama understood that things had not gone well between me and Geko, she became very nervous. Perhaps she could see in my eyes something that reminded her of her own girlhood. Something that had made her leave her mother’s house. At every opportunity, she mentioned Geko and how good-looking and kind he was, and how all the girls were chasing after him. And when she was not talking about Geko, she was talking about my girlfriends who were pregnant or already mothers.

Every night I lay on my bed and thought of him. My Ama was right. He was the best I could get. And if I did not get him, there were plenty of others who would. I did feel so ungrateful. My mother wanted to raise a big family more than anything in the world; why was I so resistant? “Namu, you have a good body,” Ama had told me that morning. “You could have ten children.” Ah! She was exaggerating. Nobody could have ten children anymore, unless you were willing to have all your pigs and horses and goats confiscated by the government. The new law limited all women to three children, a special rule because we were minority people. For their part, the Han Chinese could have only one child.

I remembered the smell of his breath and I burned to be close to him. But when I pictured myself with children clinging to my skirt, my thoughts again turned to Nankadroma — how beautiful and sad she was — and the red letter, because even the curse of a red letter seemed more interesting than anything in my village. No, I did not want even three children hanging on to my skirt. What I wanted was to be a famous and beautiful singer — like Nankadroma. What I wanted was to be just like Nankadroma. I wanted to look like a woman with a broken heart.

But I was just a girl who, for a moment, had brought fame to her people, and who was about to be rewarded with a fif-teen-yuan-a-month job, cooking for the teachers at the school — the only school in our village.

Sometimes I liked the idea of working at the school. I especially liked the idea of earning money. Although fifteen yuan a month seemed so little when compared with the two hundred I had earned in Beijing, it was more than many families made. Cash was so hard to come by in those days. Even the horsemen who took local produce to market did not always make much money, often resorting to barter, and there were no horsemen in our family. Also, I felt proud to cook for the teachers. Teachers were learned men, a bit like lamas, and I rather fancied the idea of cooking for them. The whole village agreed on this, cooking for teachers was a great responsibility and a great honor, not only for me, but for my mother and our family.

The morning of my first day at work, Ama made butter tea and served me as though I were an aristocrat. This job meant so much to her. From the time she had settled in Zuosuo, my Ama had worked hard to earn people’s respect, and now that her third daughter had brought fame to the village and was about to cook for the teachers, she had more reason than ever to be proud of herself. Meanwhile, I felt un-deserving and my heart ached. I had woken up thinking about Beijing again, and that morning I was not only thinking of the places and the people I had left behind, I was thinking of leaving home.

My mother accompanied me to the school. It was already summer and the weather was hot and humid, and the walk not a very pleasant one, as the school was some way into the valley, halfway between several villages. It stood in a quiet place, and from the path it looked particularly ugly, consisting of two single-story buildings, with no other decoration than a simple wooden porch. The walls were of rammed earth and had never been rendered. One wing housed five classrooms and the other the teachers’ rooms and the kitchen,
my
kitchen. Ama said the school was ugly because it was built in Han Chinese style. I thought it was ugly because everything in our valley was ugly, but I kept my opinion to myself.

My Ama wanted to make sure I did everything right. So she did all the work. She lit the fire and showed me how to cook a few dishes I already knew how to prepare. Then she showed me how to sweep the floor and wash the dishes and other things I had been doing ever since I was a little girl, which came as easily to me as walking. Finally she told me over and over that when everything was ready, I should go find the teachers one by one in each room and very politely call them to eat. “And don’t forget to serve them with both hands. Show some respect.”

Three of the teachers were Yi and the other two were Han Chinese. None spoke Moso or even standard Mandarin, only the Sichuan dialect — which was certainly a handicap as far as the children’s education was concerned, but it was not a problem for me. I was there to serve, not to talk. My mother cooked the teachers’ lunch and while they were slurping their soup, proceeded to inform them that I was a good girl but very young and inexperienced and, please, not to take it too seriously if I made a mistake. I am not sure how seriously they took my Ama or even how much of her broken Chinese they understood, but she really annoyed me. I did not want to be treated like a child. I was a grown woman. I had traveled the world all the way to Beijing. I had switched a television set on and off and sat in taxis and earned more money in a single night than the teachers made in six months! Surely I could manage to cook and clean without anyone’s doubting my skills. But perhaps she really annoyed me because I knew, deep in my heart, that I did not want to be cooking and cleaning for the teachers, that I was doing this work only to please her.

When the teachers were done with lunch, Ama wanted to wash the dishes, but I pointed out to her that the sky was darkening and she should hurry home before the rain broke. When my mother left, I felt relieved and very sad. I watched her running home, her body looking so small in her Chinese-style trousers. She was worried about me and she was worried about what was going on at home, what Homi and Jiama might be up to. She had worked so hard to raise her family. She was still working so hard.