Blue Sky Kingdom

by Bruce Kirkby

  “Oh, he’d love your family to visit,” our friends promised.

  But with no phones or Internet at the monastery, how could we ask?

  Eventually we tracked down the lama’s nephew, a student in southern India, and inquired if our family might visit his uncle, perhaps stay for a few months and teach English.

  Weeks later we received his cryptic reply: Most generously. Problems are none.

  * * *

  And then there is the TV crew to explain.

  In the years before Bodi was born, Christine returned to university, completing first a master’s degree in counseling psychology, and later a doctorate. She defended her dissertation with Taj in her womb. She saw occasional clients in a private practice, but the vast majority of her energy was devoted to raising our boys—a shared decision I supported wholeheartedly.

  Which meant my erratic income was responsible for feeding four hungry mouths. So I pursued every opportunity, saying yes to anything, no matter how unqualified I was, confident the details could be sorted out later. For years, I had been in touch with an ambitious young Australian television producer, tossing around ideas for an adventure-based television series. Nothing ever seemed to fit, but nonetheless, we stayed in contact.

  Shortly after we started planning our journey, Wes called and I apologetically explained I’d be away for the remainder of the year, travelling to the Himalaya with my family, where we’d live amidst Buddhist monks in a remote monastery. I promised to give him a shout as soon as I returned to talk about other television ideas. There was a long pause on the line.

  “Hold on, mate. Maybe that’s it? The ultimate family relocation!”

  After drafting a hasty proposal, Wes circulated it among Los Angeles television executives. Having seen television pitches fail before, I dismissed the possibility as outlandish and carried on with preparations—vaccinating our children, applying for visas, packing and repacking the lightest of gear.

  Late one night, just months before departure, the phone rang. It was Wes.

  “Better sit down, big guy. Travel Channel loves the idea. I think we are going to get the green light.”

  I sensed a world of opportunity opening before us, never pausing to consider the imposition of such a production on our family. Christine was lukewarm to the idea, worried the crew would destroy the very peace we sought. I suggested our family could still disconnect from screens and connect to each other—even while being filmed. Most importantly, Wes had promised we’d be left in peace upon reaching the monastery.

  Ultimately, as is often the case, money was the deciding factor. Production fees could pay the bills in our absence. So with a mix of trepidation, excitement and some reluctance, we said yes.

  Hoping to avoid an overproduced reality show, I suggested we engage just a single camera operator, embedded within our “travelling family,” allowing us to capture a gritty, authentic vision of the experience.

  “Sorry mate, but the network has a different vision,” Wes explained. “They’re after something cinematic. There’s gonna be a crew of sixteen, minimum. There’s even a budget for helicopters. It’s gonna be epic, mate. Epic!”

  For the first time, I sensed we might be in over our heads.

  * * *

  The Hanjin Ottawa followed a great polar arc on its journey across the Pacific, tracing the same straight-line routes flown by aircraft, northward past Alaska and the Aleutian chain, across steely grey Arctic waters, then south down Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, toward the busy ports of Asia. There were thirty-two souls aboard: eight German officers, sixteen Filipino deckhands, four television crew and our family. Together we faced two enormities: ocean and time.

  Time was tamed by a strict schedule.

  Breakfast was served at 7:30 sharp, then morning tea at 10:00, lunch at 12:00, afternoon tea at 15:30 and finally supper at 17:30. Officers ate European food in one mess while the deckhands were served Asian food in another, and we took turns visiting both. Bodi, a stickler for punctuality, thrived under this rigid marine protocol.

  I could have happily passed the rest of the days reclining on deck chairs, watching the ever-changing colors and moods of the ocean. But that wasn’t going to work with two boys who required constant attention, so we developed our own strict family routine as well.

  Each and every day after breakfast, we donned life jackets and walked the perimeter of the ship together, a trek of more than a kilometer, always pausing to play hide-and-seek on the expansive bow. Afterward, we visited the karaoke room, where off-duty Filipinos cheered wildly as Bodi belted out K-pop anthems. Following lunch, we read stories to the boys. Then, as the pair drew in their journals, Christine and I spelled each other off for an hour of physical exercise, running laps of the ship or visiting a small gymnasium with weights, a punching bag and table tennis.

  The ship’s swimming pool was empty—sea water in northern latitudes is unconscionably cold—but the sauna worked and we visited it regularly. A small theatre held VHS movies from the 1980s. Library shelves were heavy with nautical tomes. Wine and beer were available in the commissary, to which Klugscheisser held the only key.

  Days before leaving home, we had purchased our family’s first iPad. It was a concession, aimed at helping our boys pass the interminable hours aboard trains, buses and cars. Optimistically, we’d loaded it with educational games designed to improve math, spelling, social skills and eye contact, but within days, members of the television crew had exposed our boys to more nefarious possibilities: Fruit Ninja, Cartoon Wars, Plants vs. Zombies. Resistance proved futile.

  The temptation on the Hanjin, with endless hours to fill, was to start using the tablet as some type of pediatric travel sedative, but driven by a mix of guilt and principle, Christine and I maintained our half-hour daily rations of screen time. This didn’t prevent our two young negotiators from hammering us relentlessly in a quest for longer quotas, and soon it appeared their days were centered on the infernal device—an addiction eerily reminiscent of my own relationship to my smartphone.

  * * *

  After a week at sea, a pig was skewered on a piece of rebar, stuffed with lemongrass, then roasted above a bed of charcoal. Deckhands took shifts rotating the browning animal by hand.

  “I am so happy for the pig we are going to eat,” Taj clapped as he watched.

  That evening, colorful lights were strung across an upper deck, alongside flags representing every nationality aboard the Hanjin: Filipino, Polish, German, Czech and Canadian. Klugscheisser made the first ceremonial cut, and then dinner was served. Crates of San Miguel Beer appeared and house music thumped from tinny speakers. Our boys danced without restraint, encouraged by the cheers of the ship’s crew.

  Despite such joys, I remained constantly aware that we were interlopers in an industrial environment. Grease-covered wrenches the size of horses’ legs hung in rows outside the engine room. Massive shipping containers groaned with each pitch of the ship. Steam hissed from hidden vents, heavy doors slammed, and through it all skipped our velvety boys.

  The deck railings caused Christine and me the most dread, for they were all that stood between our boys and oblivion. Widely spaced and designed to prevent a full-grown man from pitching overboard, it appeared Bodi or Taj could easily slip through these barriers. And if they did—like tripping in front of a train—there would be no chance of survival.

  “It can never happen,” Klugscheisser replied when I asked if he’d witnessed anyone going overboard during his decades at sea.

  The Hanjin Ottawa cruised at twenty-one knots (thirty-eight kilometers per hour), he explained, and required nine minutes to slow down and turn around. By that time, a full-sized life raft would disappear from view. A person floating in the frigid waters of the North Pacific would be lost forever.

  So we insisted the boys don life jackets each and every time they passed through the storm-safe doors leading to outer decks—not so much for flotation as for the grab-loops on the collars, which Christine an
d I never let from our grasp.

  * * *

  After twelve days at sea, a gale blew up and the volcanic summits of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula wobbled on the horizon. Biting winds sent foam tumbling across black waters. Containers strained against lashings. Buckles screamed in protest. Flocks of shearwaters and petrels took shelter in the lee of the superstructure. In the mess hall, a wall calendar swung to and fro like a pendulum.

  A piercing siren indicated an abandon-ship drill that afternoon, and we hurried to join the crew on a rain-swept deck, at the muster station. The first mate barked a roll call. Thirty-one of thirty-two souls replied “aye.” Only Klugscheisser was absent. In marine tradition, he remained on the bridge. He would be the last to leave the ship in case of a disaster—if at all.

  Then the first mate unlocked an orange survival pod (no larger than a rowboat) and everyone piled aboard. Bodi went first, complaining bitterly that it smelled stale inside. Taj followed, wide-eyed. The last thing I saw as I ducked inside was the Hanjin’s call sign stencilled on the roof, conveying an ironically misspelled message: DANM.

  That evening Klugscheisser appeared at our cabin door. He looked tired, and instructed us to sleep sideways on the double beds. “That way you won’t fall out if the ship pitches hard.”

  As I lay in darkness, listening to Taj’s delicate snores while the storm shrieked outside, I wondered if the captain knew something we didn’t.

  * * *

  Hanjin’s gargantuan anchor chain peeling from the windlass woke me. Peering from our portal, I discovered perfectly calm seas. Nearby, a grassy headland rose from black waters. Green! After two weeks of nothing but blue and grey, the color hit me like an electric shock, bringing unexpected joy. Life, again.

  A late-night radio call had diverted us to Nakhodka, Russia, where fuel was wildly discounted. As customs officers boarded the ship, Klugscheisser warned me to hide any valuables, and I stashed a stack of Ben Franklins behind pipes in our cabin roof. (We’d brought four thousand US dollars in cash to see us through our time in Zanskar, a land beyond ATMs.) International maritime agreements waive visa requirements for a ship’s crew while in port. But our family and television crew, lacking Russian visas, were taken ashore in a tugboat, fingerprinted and fined six hundred dollars. Three days later, her belly full again, the Hanjin chugged back into the endless blue.

  On the seventeenth day, we plowed into the steamy air of Asia. Peeling off puffy jackets, we replaced them with shorts and T-shirts. An egret appeared, winging its way majestically toward us, landing with a squawk on the superstructure.

  By nightfall, the spectral orange lights of modern Korea burned on the horizon, like a wildfire out of control.

  I. A more literal translation is “smart ass.”

  II. Whether Buddhism is a religion or philosophy remains a matter of ongoing debate, with convincing arguments on both sides. But the nontheistic tradition—without god or supreme creator—refuses to fit neatly in either category.

  III. In 1976 a dirt track was constructed over the Pensi La pass, bringing the first whispers of modernity and waves of curious tourists. But lying near the Pakistan border, the track is difficult to access and closed for six months of every year by snow.

  IV. Gom is Tibetan for “meditation,” and gompa refers to a place of meditation. Today the term is widely used by travellers to imply any Buddhist monastery, but it more precisely refers to a fortified Buddhist compound.

  V. The terms “monk” and “lama” are used without distinction in Zanskar—and in this work—although subtle differences do exist. A monk is one who practices religious asceticism while a lama, meaning “guru” in Sanskrit, is a Buddhist teacher of advanced spiritual attainment.

  2 THE LITTLE PROFESSOR

  The Hanjin Ottawa made landfall after midnight at Busan, South Korea. Dawn revealed an army of spider-like cranes, plucking containers from the ship and dropping them atop lines of waiting trucks. Lights flashed and alarms shrieked, but there wasn’t a living soul in sight. Like all great ports, what was once a hive of opium dens, bordellos, mercenaries and markets had become an industrial wasteland, sanitized by the advent of mass container transport.

  After eating a final breakfast of eggs and sausage alone in the mess, we found the entire crew gathered on deck waiting to bid us farewell. Even the mechanics had emerged from the ship’s belly, where the engine was being readied for passage to Shanghai. Klugscheisser escorted us down the gangplank, pulling us into an embrace, his eyes growing misty.

  Then we stepped into Asia.

  Wes and the rest of the television crew were waiting for us on the wharf, wearing hard hats and hi-vis vests. After hugs and high-fives, Christine and I submitted to a round of on-camera interviews. At Wes’s urging, Bodi and Taj said a few cute things. Beyond Immigration, a taxi carried us toward a homestay arranged from Canada months earlier.

  A hotel or hostel would have undoubtedly been easier, but such amenities are increasingly shaped by Western preferences. When we travel, Christine and I tend to seek differences, and we wanted to instill the same in our boys—the habit of adapting to the unfamiliar, rather than instinctively bending the unfamiliar toward ourselves.

  Outside the cab windows we glimpsed a world of cement, plastic and glass, lit by neon and peopled by a citizenry glued to smartphones and selfie sticks. Rows of relentlessly uniform apartments sprouted from green hillsides like mushrooms. In the space of a generation, South Korea has risen from the ashes of a devastating civil war to become an economic powerhouse.

  Caught in snarled traffic, we were at a standstill in the middle of a seven-kilometer-long suspension bridge when Bodi announced he had to go pee— immediately! He couldn’t wait an instant. Christine looked at me, shrugged, and then handed him her water bottle. Tinkling followed, and the tang of urine filled the minivan. Our driver looked appalled and opened his window, but said nothing.

  A cherubic teenage girl waited for us outside a soaring waterfront apartment, wearing a cardigan, despite crushing humidity, and Hello Kitty tennis shoes.

  “Hello, family,” Kim Na Young cooed, bowing low.

  “Ann yeong haseyo,” Taj replied (with prompting from Christine), which means hello, or more literally, “Are you peaceful?”

  Aboard the container ship, we’d taught both boys the essential Korean greetings, and now Kim Na Young blushed.

  A silent elevator whisked our family and the television crew to the forty-fifth floor, where Kim lived with her middle-aged parents, Sunny and Nikki. Sunny was a professional windsurfer, and Nikki an investment broker. Kim explained her father had left work early to meet with us, a practice known as kal toe—“knife office”—and viewed with disdain in a country where sixty-hour work weeks remain common.

  After dropping our duffels in a barren hardwood room beside sleeping mats and shelves crowded with porcelain cats, the family prepared a traditional lunch of seared beef, lotus roots and fiery kimchi.

  Later they accompanied us to nearby Haeundae Beach, all wearing sunglasses the size of drink coasters. The heat was overwhelming, and our boys stripped to their underwear while Christine and I rolled up our pants, frolicking in breaking waves along with throngs of giddy locals. Amid the frivolity, I heard what I thought was a mosquito, but realized was a drone from the television crew, buzzing just feet over our heads.

  We’d grown accustomed to the crew’s presence, and despite how awful it probably sounds, being filmed from dawn to dusk was proving less intrusive than I’d feared. In some ways, it felt like we’d embarked on a (well-documented) road trip with a bunch of college kids—and our children.

  Even Bodi, who finds the company of strangers vexing, had grown accepting of the crew. But that didn’t mean he made their lives easy. He routinely turned his back on the cameras. And if a producer asked him to repeat a line, he would refuse to do so, fuming that he had already said it. Whenever the microphone battery pack clipped to his waist grew hot, as they were prone to do, he’d rip it off an
d toss it aside, leaving the audio technician frantically scrambling to retrieve the thousand-dollar piece of equipment. But Bodi was never once angry at the crew members themselves, for in him I have glimpsed the rarest of all human qualities: a complete absence of malice.

  At a pungent market, we watched as eels were skinned alive, touched the sandpapery skin of sharks and held gelatinous sea cucumbers. Bodi and Taj sampled fried moth larvae, a roadside snack that smelled like musty gym socks and tasted no better, popular with drunken men. Later, Bodi paused before a display of beaded bracelets and quietly asked Christine if he could buy a pink one.

  “Of course,” she replied.

  But we had no Korean cash, and a nearby ATM rejected my Canadian bank card. I tried five more bank machines without luck. By the time I returned, empty-handed, tears were cascading down Bodi’s cheeks. Soon he was thrashing about on the sidewalk, gasping for breath. As Christine comforted our distraught son, I instinctively tried to block the view of the hovering television cameras.

  The situation was soon resolved. Sunny lent us two thousand won (around two dollars US) and we bought the pink bracelet. Bodi rubbed his reddened eyes, and the emotional storm receded. Eventually I found a bank machine that accepted my card, spitting out a wad as thick as a paperback. But as we were swept on by rush-hour crowds, toward a bulgogi barbecue dinner, I found myself again agonizing over a decision Christine and I had made months earlier.

  * * *

  Christine went into labour on a midwinter night. Our first child was two weeks overdue, and the midwife had planned to induce birth the next morning with a foul-smelling concoction of castor oil and lemon verbena. But for a Prairie girl raised in small-town arenas, the excitement of Hockey Night in Canada was enough.