“Yes, water!” Guenther suddenly shouted in English. “Come!” he ordered, leading the three of us into the pub next door. Tipping back the handle of the tap, he poured four steins of lager.
Mongolians aren’t exactly beer drinkers; they overwhelmingly prefer their dairy cocktails. In fact, the average German drinks 160 times the single liter of beer that a Mongolian will consume in an entire year’s time. However, the Chinggis brand is beginning to grow on the locals, and for good reason—the brewery manages to take the very best from both Mongolia and Germany. It’s brewed according to German purity laws, but the water is local Mongolian, and the finished product is piped straight to the tap in the adjacent Chinggis pub.
“A gift for you,” Guenther proclaimed as he passed out our beers.
“Guenther, thank you,” I said, infused with the emotion of his passion for what he’d come all this way to do. Inspired, I’d begun to notice a pattern; first, in the Irish cyclists, then in Quiza and Bold, and now in Guenther. Every one of them had been simply transformed when describing their dream or their work. It was like a light switch had been flipped on, right behind their eyes.
“No,” he said, proud eyes shining brightly. “Thank you.”
“Cheers, Guenther,” I said, raising my glass to meet his.
CHAPTER 21
NO
Previously, we were handling our local business in Japan by setting up a cooperation committee. Representing the Institute of Economics in Japan, I came to Mongolia. It is my assessment that we need a special body that will be able to promote trade and commercial relations between our two countries.
—Voiceover, MM Today broadcast
“Uh-oh,” Tobie said after we’d left the brewery. “Gandima’s been calling me.”
“What do you mean ‘been calling’?”
“I mean, about a dozen times.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Our number was up. Digging into my bag for my own cell phone, I learned that our suspicions were correct. Gandima had been calling me, too. There could be only one reason for the sense of urgency—we’d been caught working for TV5.
“Where have you two been?” she demanded angrily after we’d arrived together at the station. The ride there had seemed interminable, like the wait for a stay of execution that you’re not going to get. Eyes blazing, Gandima was as angry as you might expect; she’d been lied to and avoided, and now we would pay for it.
“Are you two working for another station?” she demanded without preamble.
Squirming, I made a split decision to gamble on our technicality. “Not exactly,” I said.
That was it. Her eyes flashing with rage, Gandima exploded.
“The orange microphone!” she said. “I saw you holding it, Patricia! That is TV5’s microphone! Are you or are you not working for them?”
She was right. The orange microphone was undeniably TV5’s, and I’d been holding it, talking into it, with Tobie’s camera in my face, right in front of Guenther’s brewery. Gandima’s case was airtight.
“I drove right by you two,” she spat, and I winced. How could we have been so reckless? On one hand, we were unpaid interns, and we were simply seeking more and better opportunities. But on the other hand, and Gandima would point this out right away, it was all a matter of loyalty.
Right away, I came down with that queasy feeling you always get when you’re caught completely in the wrong, when there is absolutely no good reason for your behavior and no good way to explain your way out of it.
“Do you understand the word ‘loyalty’?” Gandima said, drawing out that last word for maximum impact. If it was meant to be a verbal slap, it succeeded.
“I’ve already told Enkhtuya what you’ve done,” she added, quietly now, the resignation in her voice audible.
“Gandima,” I said, treading carefully, “I’m sorry.” Unfortunately, I didn’t stop there.
“The thing is,” I began, launching into an explanation of the technicality upon which Tobie and I had based our fabrication. I was about to learn that sometimes an apology is best left without the “but.”
“No,” she said, cutting me off. “The thing is,” she said, mocking me, “the entire station is disappointed in you. Here in Mongolia, it’s a matter of loyalty.”
“And you, Tobie,” she said, turning her attention to him, “you owe the station for your trip to Roaring Hooves. What you have done is illegal.”
Gandima’s office was a tinderbox, and we’d all thrown in a match.
Unmoved, still resolute, Tobie stared stony-faced at Gandima. “If I’ve done something illegal, then let’s take this to court.”
The room went quiet, and with that, Gandima stood up and left. Tobie and I looked at each other and said nothing. A moment later, she returned, and Tobie walked out. For good.
“You,” she said, staring hard at me after Tobie left. “You must not appear on air at TV5.”
Right away, I promised her I wouldn’t. And I meant it. When your dependability, your very word, is being called into question, you make things right. And if it took losing my chance to have my own talk show at TV5 to make things right, then that’s just the sacrifice I’d make.
“And if you plan to stay working here, you must apologize to every single person at the station, starting with Enkhtuya.”
“Of course,” I said, contritely. I felt terrible, and right away, I vowed to right my wrong.
Head hung low, I marched myself straight into Enkhtuya’s office. “Uchlarai,” I said to her. Head down, eyes squeezed shut to seal away the tears, I made the best of what little Mongolian I knew for a situation as complicated as the one I’d created. “Excuse me,” I offered, sparing us all a long explanation in English.
“Uchlarai,” I said to the cameraman. The height of a young teenager, he was as short as he was wiry and strong. Unsmiling eyes set in a withered and deeply lined face, he looked at me for a long time, like he was sizing up my sincerity before accepting my apology. Tipping his chin forward, he was still bearing down on me with only vaguely softening resentment. But then, ever so subtly, he nodded.
And it was much the same with everyone else at the station too. My apology tentatively accepted, it was time for me to really make things right.
Still though, there was the problem of what to do next. And incredibly, it was Gandima who offered the solution—the same solution Tobie and I had concocted in the first place. I could go on working for TV5 as long as the stories that Tobie and I produced would air only internationally and didn’t appear on air locally in Mongolia. I could also continue working for Gandima at MNB, correcting scripts and reading voice overs. The only snag was that Tobie and I would no longer work together for her. At that moment, though, it hardly seemed to matter. Besides, her falling-out with Tobie was about to become permanent. Gandima and Tobie would never speak again.
After I’d spoken individually to everyone I knew at the station, apologizing to each of them, I left for the day. It was the middle of summer, a dry, warm evening, and I walked into town.
Up ahead, I spotted Evan walking along Peace Avenue. It was his last night in the country, and there would be a farewell dinner for him later at one of the local restaurants.
“I’m leaving,” he said, and we both knew that this meant more than getting on a plane.
Concentrating as hard as I could on my toe and the circles it was drawing in the dirt, I inhaled the choking smell of dusty concrete deeply. Neither one of us spoke. Although I’d had plenty of occasions to remind myself why this was never going to work anyway, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if. Meeting Evan at all had seemed like destiny. And letting go of a fantasy always takes a little bit longer than you want it to.
“I know,” I said, still looking at my feet. There were plenty of things we’d left unsaid, but it was better this way. Lingering only harbors regrets.
So, with that, we said good-bye. The next time I’d run into Evan, he’d be engaged to the girlfriend he told me
about.
CHAPTER 22
YES
The Institute conducts research studies on economic and trade relations in East Asia. We do hope that the matters discussed at this meeting will yield positive results for intense development of these ties between Mongolia and Japan. This will set a precedent for other East Asian nations seeking to foster prosperous cooperation and collaboration.”
—Voiceover, MM Today broadcast
“Come,” Gandima commanded sternly, and I followed her back to her office. It had only been a few days since I’d apologized to her and everyone else at MNB. Since then, I’d kept my head down and worked hard on script translations. At TV5, I’d followed Gandima’s orders and confirmed with Tem that Hello Mongolia! would be broadcast only internationally, not locally in Mongolia.
In the meantime, no one at MNB had spoken to me. Until now. I held my breath and waited for her to speak.
“You will do a screen test,” she said as soon as we sat down.
“A screen test?”
“A screen test.”
“But isn’t that …?”
“Yes, for the anchor role.”
“For the anchor role?”
“Yes, for the anchor role,” Gandima repeated, a smile playing on her lips.
“But, why?” I was dumbfounded. Delightfully dumbfounded, but dumbfounded nevertheless.
“Because we might need you to anchor,” she said simply.
“But what about …?” I began.
“What happened last week?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That matter, it is finished,” she said, waving her hand as if to dismiss it entirely. “You said you were sorry, didn’t you? To everyone?”
“Yes, I did,” I said.
“Then that is done.” Gandima spoke with finality and then changed the subject.
“Tomorrow,” she said, tapping her pen against the only bare spot on her cluttered desk. “Tomorrow is your screen test.” Rising halfway from her seat, Gandima concluded our meeting with another wave of her hand. It would be up to me to figure out how to prepare for a shot at anchoring the national Mongolian news, but I knew what my first order of business would be. I would need to buy a suit.
Right away, I headed to the Ikh Delghuur, the State Department Store, and made for the women’s department. There were about a dozen suits on display, all of them black, and I tried on each of them. Inside the tag of one of the pantsuits read the instructions, “Cry Clean Only,” and I knew I’d found the one. What had been lost in translation would be my lucky charm.
The next morning, I woke just after dawn. I had a lot of work to do. Auditioning for the anchor role and actually landing it were two very different things. Somewhere in between success and failure was a long-overdue face scrub.
I’d taken the day off work at TV5, and I put my time to good use. Scrubbing my face until it was raw and glowing, I daubed the new layer of pink skin with a thin coat of foundation, followed by concealer, blush, bronzer, and loose powder. I was going for the natural look, the one where you spend a lot of time applying cosmetics that are supposed to have the effect of looking as if you hadn’t spent a lot of time applying cosmetics. Slipping into my “Cry Clean Only” suit, I was more ready than I’d ever been.
Once at the station, I waited, and I’d do so for many hours. For Mongolians, the concept of punctuality is a somewhat fluid one, but this would work in my favor. While I paced the halls, calming my nerves, I reminded myself why I was here at all. I was here to follow a dream. Whatever happened next, well, it would all be part of the story I was creating for myself. My determination was absolute. I simply had to do my best.
Finally, Gandima arrived.
“Let’s go,” she said as she collected me from the hallway and led me downstairs to the studio.
“Are you ready?” Gandima asked, all business.
“Of course,” I said.
The studio was crowded; it seemed like the entire station had come for the show. Seasoned anchors, editors, and cameramen lined the walls. A stunning young Mongolian woman who looked more like Lucy Liu than Lucy Liu did, was there as well.
“Who is she?” I whispered to Gandima, pointing to the nubile vixen tossing her silky mane back and forth as if she were auditioning for a shampoo commercial.
“Your competition,” Gandima said before she walked off to arrange the teleprompter.
“Hi,” I said to the girl. “Are you here for what I’m here for?”
“Yes,” her mother said, answering for her. “I’m her mother. She’s twenty-two. And you are?”
“Her competition,” I said, squaring off in kind.
Tilting her chin up ever so slightly and cocking her head, the girl’s mother regarded me warily. “I see,” she said as she helped her daughter brush more luster into her pin-straight hair.
“Patricia?” Gandima called out from the front of the studio. “You will test first.”
I hadn’t expected that, and I had been eating a banana, something I would soon regret. There’s an old wives’ tale, or at least some advice repeatedly issued by my mother, which postulates that a banana has the power to calm a nervous stomach. This isn’t true, unless the old wives’ tale meant looking at a banana instead of actually ingesting it. Not only do bananas do nothing of the calming kind, they also turn to a sticky paste in an already dry mouth, making someone about to audition feel as if they’ve sipped a glass of glue and then inhaled a puff of talcum powder.
“Sure,” I said, swallowing energetically. “May I have a glass of water?”
“No,” Gandima said, directing me to the large angled desk at the front of the studio. “Sit down, read from the teleprompter, and be yourself.”
Noisily, I licked my lips and sat down. I had only one shot here, and I was determined to make it happen.
Fashioned out of an old overhead projector, the kind you might see at work in a primary school, the teleprompter possessed the charm of being entirely makeshift. An assistant fed sheets of script beneath its mirrored reflector. At an angle, the words appeared on a small screen a few feet in front of me.
“Can you see the words okay? Because if you need to wear glasses, you will be disqualified.”
“No, no, they’re fine—it’s fine,” I assured Gandima, and began reading, cocking my head to match the angle on the projector. Peppered with Mongolian names and places like “Jargalsaikhan,” “Enkhbayar,” and “Arkhangai,” the script was a land mine of consonants. But I was nothing if not ready for just that. After all, I’d spent a summer writing stories just like this one.
“Next,” Gandima said abruptly after I’d finished.
As I stepped out from behind the anchor desk and the spotlights, the photogenic vixen approached. “Good luck,” I whispered, completely insincerely.
For every Mongolian word that I’d been confronted with, she faced down the same battle with the English words, and there were many more of them. From “prime minister” to “initiative,” the gorgeous girl butchered the entire English news script, save the Mongolian words it was peppered with. Right in front of us all, Gandima and the station manager deliberated. Back and forth, they negotiated. The girl, her mother, and I made a point of looking anywhere but at each other. Finally, and without any fanfare, Gandima made the announcement.
“Za, okay, Patricia, the anchor role is yours.”
Without another word, Gandima left the studio. One by one, so did everyone else, and I stood alone, silently beating the air with my fists.
CHAPTER 23
A Mormon Picnic
We are preparing for the possibility of setting up an industrial park, and we are looking forward to the joint implementation of other projects in the fields of geology and mining. This should attract more Japanese investors to Mongolia. We hope this will make more efficient the current investments as well as other areas of mutual interest.
—Interview, Director Japan Institute of Economics, MM Today broadcast
“Where’s the toilet paper?” I called out to Meg from the bathroom the next morning.
“Where’s the freezer?” she responded from the kitchen.
After performing my morning ablutions with my hand, I found Meg in the kitchen, looking for stuff that wasn’t there. The freezer was gone. And the fridge had been emptied, save half a dozen or so large, raw bones and one cucumber. The water filter was gone too.
“The futons are missing,” Meg called out from the living room. “And most of the other furniture too.”
Had we been robbed? We pondered this as we sat down at the bare kitchen table, drumming our fingers in contemplation. Usually Batma left breakfast for us every morning, a bowl of brown bread and jam, with maybe a single fried egg apiece. The bowl and the jam were gone, and there was no sign of either the eggs or Batma. The apartment was quiet. Where was the family?
We needed drinking water, so I boiled a pot of tap water while Meg and I munched on the lone cucumber that had been left behind.
Days later, the phone rang. Surprised that it had rung at all, Meg and I both jumped.
“Sain bain uu?” I said uncertainly into the telephone receiver. The last time the host family’s landline had rung, they’d been living in the apartment. And that had been awhile ago.
“Hello, is that Patricia?” a voice said in heavily accented English.
“Yes, but who is this?”
“This is the uncle, and I would like to invite you,” he said.
Invite me? Where?
“The family is in the countryside. They will come for you and for Meg Saturday morning,” he said.
“But wait, are they living there?” I asked, a bit annoyed. Batma and Badaa had made an agreement with the British company to provide food and a home for Meg and me. In return, we’d paid the British company, and the British company had paid the family. Although we’d been provided with a home, we hadn’t seen any food in weeks. And strangely, every time we went grocery shopping, the food we’d bought would disappear soon after, along with the freezer, the toilet paper, and, eventually, even the welcome mat. It soon became clear that the family’s visits back home were for the sole purpose of appropriating our groceries—but never our beer! Which may have had something to do with the fact that the family was Mormon.
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