by Win Blevins
Hu - u - u - u - ung. Her consciousness sang with this sound. Hu-u-u-u-ung. It was the seed syllable of Akshobhya, the immovable, the unfluctuating, that which cannot be disturbed.
Sun Moon sat with her back straight, her hands resting below her navel, palms upward, right on left, thumbs forming a triangle. Her neck was slightly bent, eyes slightly open. Hu-u-u-u-ung. Though the wagon bumped and the world passed through her field of vision, she kept her mind empty. Hu-u-u-u-ung. She did not yet feel the center of the wheel, that which cannot be disturbed. She breathed. Hu-u-u-u-ung.
“By God and by damn,” began Jehu the freighter. The iron band squeezed her throat. It grabbed her there when her bad troubles started, began on the road to Chengdu, in China. An iron band that felt like it was not around her throat but inside it. It came and went unpredictably, and always it squeezed. She was afraid of it, and steeled herself against it, against it.
“By God and by damn,” Jehu repeated. The man had a voice like a metal wheel rim on rock. She opened her eyes wide, blinked rapidly, wriggled her trunk. Over the weeks she’d found it was best to bring herself back to the world of impermanence voluntarily, not wait for Jehu to bang her down. Besides, she couldn’t concentrate through the clamp of the iron band.
“Best we get you fixed up.” He reined the mules to a stop. Sun Moon shook her head, trying to get rid of the clamped feeling. Far below the road she could see Hard Rock City, a village of tents and shacks deep in a twisting canyon. It was as ugly as she expected. She pulled the mantle farther onto her left shoulder. Her nun’s clothing was the emblem of her dedication, which no one in this land understood. If I cannot regain the world of the center of the wheel, this incarnation will be wasted.
She ordered herself, Stop! Since that day near Chengdu, she seemed to have no control of her thoughts and emotions. Or none except to squeeze them till they obeyed. My gods have abandoned me. Sometimes she felt so empty she gave in to despair. Then she would demand obedience from her foolish feelings again. Only on this long wagon trip, when she had turned to regular meditation, and started remembering the goddess Mahakala, Paldan Lhamo, protector of women in danger, had she begun to regain a little peace. Unfortunately, as a nun in her twenties, she was stronger in book learning than in the practice of meditation.
Then why be swamped with dread now? This is giving in to fear.
Pictures, smells, and sounds flickered through her mind—the glow of butter lamps, the smell of incense, the endless reverberation of the voices of countless monks and nuns—om mani padme hu-u-u-u-ung—the freedom of a world without lust, jealousy, ignorance, and anger.
She looked sideways at Jehu. His grin was mad brown teeth, his hair was wild and scraggly, his eyes filled with lust for flesh, money, and power. Why do I let such a creature affect my inner self? She took a deep breath, let it out. The air was cool and wet, and felt like loss.
She made her eyes follow the dark line of willow bushes along the creek at the bottom of the canyon. She shaped words for them in her own language, not in uncomfortable English. It was the time of when the season arced toward winter. Willows curved sinuously as a serpent down the canyon, painting the undulating colors, tangerine and wine against the dun grasses. Above, pines, firs, and cedars darkened the mid slopes of the mountains with their mysterious greens. Autumn aspens daubed brilliant gold, the color of monks’ robes, onto the evergreens. Higher yet the slopes prophesied the coming season—they sang in chaste white of change, winter, death. On the topmost ridges the setting sun painted the snow the pink of meadow blossoms.
She felt a pang. Home. Home did not feel like the halls of the convent where she had spent a decade, not even the good times of the celebration of the Lamp-Burning Festival on the twentieth day of the tenth month. The rhododendron color reminded her of the meadows where her family camped in the summer, where the people gathered for the Zharejia each summer. In this cold, mountainous country summer felt remote. On this continent the meadows of the summer camp were as far away as one half of a heart cleaved from the other. I want my home.
Her mind flooded with pictures of the last Zharejia, Boiling-Tea-among-the-Flowers Festival, she had gone to with her family. The cluster of white canvas tents with the black or purple stripes on the seams and ruffled borders of green, yellow, and red, appliquéd with the eight auspicious symbols. She saw the curing meats (butchered always by non-Buddhists) and smelled the rich foods like milk and butter from the yaks, sausages, mutton, wheat cakes, and qingke wine. She heard the sounds of the several families of relatives gathered together for pleasure after the hard summer’s work, the gaiety, the inviting looks of the young people seeking lovers, the happy talk on the embroidered cushions, and the dancing to the jingle of the copper bells. She remembered the people dressed in their best clothes and sporting their gold, silver, jade, and ivory jewelry. Young men played Tibetan flutes, old men made music on their yak-hide zithers, women danced—it was a time of pure joy.
Most of all she remembered the flowers, worlds and worlds of flowers, splotches of yellow, pink, violet, and red in a green carpet stretching from timbered mountain to timbered mountain.
That summer she’d ridden out on horseback with a dozen relatives and friends simply to admire the flowers. A young man had tried to catch her eye, an attractive fellow, actually, and she’d had to suppress her response. Many monks and nuns, when visiting their families, indulged in love—it was not a violation of the vows at that time. But not Sun Moon. She had decided to keep not only chastity but virginity.
She reveled in her mind’s eye picture of her country, a mountain country so different from this one. Not dry, harsh, full of spiny cactus. A country lush with grass that fattens the ponies, brimming with water until some meadows became bogs.
Virginity, a woeful choice.
Jehu had taunted her with it. “Yes, this Tarim paid a thousand pieces of gold for you, he bought you, he ordered your abduction, he had you shipped like freight halfway around the world. And next this Tarim, this man who desires you, he intends to throw your virginity to the vultures.”
She had spent long hours wondering what sort of man this Tarim could be, to commit such an act. Tarim was an odd name for a Chinaman. He must have a spirit utterly foul.
The men who seized her had permitted her to keep it. The contract, they explained, with lecherous glee. On the great ship, in Gam Saan, San Francisco, her virginity remained to her, and on this trip far into the interior of a continent she knew nothing of. All for the contract Tarim had made. Which contract was to come to fruition tonight. Hundred-men s-wife. That was what they called it, or in the English she was learning daily, a whore. She had been abducted and shipped across the Pacific Ocean to become what the contract demanded, a whore.
No virgin. Her mind twisted nastily. Hundred-men’s-wife.
She brought up in her mind a picture of Mahakala, the dark woman of dreams who wore a necklace of human skulls and ate men, so that they might come back as something higher, and as creatures neither male nor female. Help me, Mother Mahakala.
“Stick out them hands, Polly. We’re gonna make a little show.”
Though she still missed many of Jehu’s words, she knew his meaning. She held her hands hard at her sides. “Not China Polly,” she said. “Sun Moon.”
Jehu grinned. “Sure, Sun Moon,” he said mockingly. “Now stick them hands out.”
She held out her hands and felt the rope bite against her skin. She turned her eyes away from the humiliation of seeing him lash her hands like a slave. In her mind’s eye she saw the faces of her mother and father when they were alive, and imagined the look of shame. At home slaves were but half-human. They butchered meat, they were blacksmiths and cobblers.
No China Polly. This was a small victory, but important. She refused to be called China Polly or China Mary. That’s what the Inji of this country called all Asian women. Inji was her people’s word for Britisher, the only white people they knew.
The battle over her nam
e started the day she entered the country, and it turned into an auspicious event. At customs she had been herded off the ship with scores of Chinese men and women, the men excited, eager to get to the gold fields, the women passive and morose. Sold by their families for gold, or sometimes kidnapped, they were resigning themselves to their fates as hundred-men’s-wives.
The customs scene was hubbub and confusion. None of the American agents spoke Chinese, so Chinese men met the ship and helped the newcomers through customs. Their names were recorded, and it was attested (truly or falsely) that they were entering the country voluntarily. For the male immigrants the Chinese were usually family members, and helpful. For the women they were pimps. The women made their marks on the official paper with only the pimps’ words for what they were signing.
An old man named Ah Wan met Sun Moon on behalf of Tarim. When the customs agent asked her name, he answered Soon Ming. He explained out of the side of his mouth that he had to give her a Chinese name—she was officially Chinese, not Tibetan. She protested to Ah Wan in Chinese and tried her few words of English on the customs agent, but he didn’t understand. “Soon Ming,” Ah Wan repeated.
“Sun Moon,” the agent said, and began writing.
She recognized the word sun and stopped protesting. Her name in her own language was Nima Lhamo, and Nima meant “sun.”
Ah Wan didn’t know this, but he chuckled at the new name, and told the agent, “That’s right, Sun Moon.” Thus she entered the United States officially.
Later they were walking to wherever he lived. He had tied her ankles together loosely so she could not run. Not that she had anywhere to run. “Sun Moon,” he said later, “yin yang, opposites in one. Auspicious.”
He had no idea how auspicious.
On the ocean crossing she had felt consumed with hatred, hatred for the men who had abducted her, hatred for whoever her jailers would be in America. It was a terrible conflict: She raged with hatred, but that feeling could not be the path of a nun. Her first goal in the convent had been to master the texts assigned to her. Recently she had starting meditating in hope of ridding of herself of the four afflictive emotions: lust, jealousy, ignorance, and anger. But she had a thought. The Tantras taught that a seeker could come to a quality of mind through its opposite, as Mahakala with her dancing perpetually both created and destroyed the world. Peace through violence, then, and love through hatred. Though she understood the Tantric path but dimly, she thought it might now be the only way for her.
Her new name seemed to confirm that. Sun Moon, a unity of opposites.
Now Jehu jerked the knots on her legs tight. No need—she slapped the words at him silently. On all the long journey from Gam Saan, San Francisco, she had never tried to escape. Why? She spoke almost no English then. She knew nothing of the country. Her skin marked her as Asian. Someone would have turned her over to one of the tongs in a breath. And that would be worse than anything this ruffian might do, and worse than what was intended by the man who bought her, this Tarim.
Jehu knotted her legs. “Be tricky mebbe stand,” he said, “wagon move. Lean on seat.” You speak English to me as though to a child, or an idiot. At least he wouldn’t be in her life beyond today.
He climbed on and started the wagon. Unable to protect herself, she fell like a log. Ouch! My hip! She rolled against the side of the wagon and sat up. She caught her breath. I despise you. I hate you. I abhor and loathe you. She scooted to ease the pain in her hip.
Her heart churned in the currents. She had taken the five vows of a nun, holding especially high the prohibition against killing or other violence. Recently she had devoted herself to seeking freedom from the afflictive emotions through meditation. Yet I feel violence, terrible violence. It rages in me like storms, it flows like torrents. She felt like she was choking on it. Whenever she felt the rage, she felt the tight band across her throat, squeezing.
She thought of the other way the Tantras taught, seeking a goal by embracing its opposite. O Mahakala, take my destructiveness and redeem it, transform it to … Violence is peace, Sun is Moon, life is death.
The wagon bumped into a deep rut, and lurched. She swayed and nearly fell. All day every day my spirit sways and spins, like a twig on a raging river. She forced her trunk upright.
The trail changed to an imitation of a road. Strange buildings jutted their faces at her, fancy wooden facades in front of canvas roofs and walls.
“Stand up, Polly. Let ’em see you.”
“Not Polly.”
Jehu glanced back at her derisively. “I mean Su-u-un Mo-o-on.”
Strange men hurled their eyes at her. Sun Moon stared back at them. “Look at the celestial heathen,” one cried.
“Ahoy the Chinee!” someone shouted.
“Stand back, boys, she’s mine.”
“She everybody’s!”
“Ahoy the whore.”
Demons, demons. She saw her body being stripped of flesh, stripped to bones. In imagination the demons drank her blood, ate her flesh, and broke her bones.
I give birth to Mahakala through my brow. She leaps forth, armed with sword and noose, wearing a tiger skin, garlanded with human heads. Her tongue lolls, seeking blood. She decapitates and crushes all the demons. She drinks their blood. Then, intoxicated, she dances and dances and laughs maniacally and dances and dances and laughs.
Since she could not control her anger, she would embrace the forbidden feeling, yes, would give way to volcanoes of hostility, yes, she would seek redemption in horror.
Sun Moon turned her face to the men jeering at her and looked straight into their lust-driven eyes.
Whore! Chinee whore! She understood that word. In Gam Saan, San Francisco, Ah Wan had shown her what happened to the women in the cells—two bits lookee, four bits feelee, six bits doee. “You’re lucky you were sold to the interior,” he said. She still saw in her mind the hopeless, despairing faces of the Chinese teenagers at the windows of their cells, brittle, lightless lanterns of yellow paper.
She glared at her taunters. Mahakala, fight for me. Fear jangled in her limbs. Sometimes the way past an evil is through it. A Tantric devotee deliberately embraced the forbidden, deliberately violating all five vows of virtue, in order to discover that the clean and the unclean were one. Mahakala, guide me.
Her nerves flashed rages of fear. She would walk the way of un-chastity. In imagination the touches of her abductors pummeled her, real as blows. She would be hurled into the pit of the unclean, the abyss of horror.
No! The band around her throat tightened until she gasped for breath, panicky.
Bracing her bound wrists on the side of the wagon, she forced herself up awkwardly. Legs against the board, she held her body erect. She stared at the men. Some lost their nerve and cast their eyes down. Other beamed at her with lechery.
Leering faces flooded her mind, grasping hands, pounding bodies, attacking lingams, her violated yoni. She quavered. Am I strong enough to pass through the violence to peace, through the profane to the sacred? Mahakala, Mother and Creatrix, protect me. Give me strength to fight.
She dared not frame the further question in her mind. Would I commit the act ultimately forbidden? Would I kill?
A rage of something—fear? bloodlust?—lightninged up and down her spine. She could not believe that she could follow the Tantras and come to love through murder.
“Well, boys,” someone jeered, “who’s first?”
Raucous laughter. Her eyes looked at the middle distance, without focusing, and saw none of them. Instead she forced herself to behold a carved image of Mahakala, skulls around her neck, Mahakala the destroyer, Mahakala the devourer of men.
2
Tarim picked up a piece of paper from the bar of polished wood, the bar where men drank the whisky that made them crazy. He handed it to her. It was written in Chinese ideograms. He watched her face as she read it.
She had a noble face, he thought, with high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and a lovely sheen of bronze skin.
He could tell little of her body beneath the nun’s robes, but they would come off soon enough. He wanted her. He noticed the desire in himself, almost with amusement. Even at his age he wanted women as fiercely as ever. And of course he would have her.
“Shall I read it to you?” he inquired in his soft, hoarse voice. It had been hoarse for twenty years, a throat injury from a knife.
She snatched it rudely from his fingers and eyed him hard. So you want to prove you can read. She studied it.
He observed the changes in her face. The creature felt sorry for herself. Perhaps she thought a hint of an appeal for sympathy, a gesture of the victimized, would affect him. He smiled to himself. You do not know me. You will never know me.
Tarim was of a hardy race, the Uighurs. They lived in East Turkestan, the part of China west even of Mongolia, north of India and Tibet. Yet they shared little with Chinese—the Uighurs were Turks by blood and by tongue, Moslems by faith. Living midway on the great trade route from Europe to Asia, they had been acquainted with every conqueror marching east or west, and had found ways to adapt. They became traders, great traders. They spoke all the principal languages of Asia and the Middle East. They knew the Chinese were only one more invader and interloper. The Uighurs, Turks, would outlast them all.
As a youth Tarim traveled far, apprenticed to his father, who traded the gold and jade from the region’s mountains. Tarim fell in love with gold. He discovered early that he disliked people, especially his family. So he left home to seek gold by trading in the sables of the vast Siberian forests. He acquired fluency in the Russian language, his fourth tongue, and found his way to the Pacific Coast of that land. He made no friends, established no ties. He learned peoples, customs, and religions, and came to despise them all equally. He gave himself a new name, the name of the great river of his rearing, merely because he liked the sound of it. He took what he wanted, and thought of those who did less as weaklings. He grew rich, and always lusted for more.