When we moved up a grade for the second time, Ralo could just barely recognize the thirty letters of the alphabet and still couldn’t write any of them, so he was held back again. The third and fourth years were the same. But whenever the teachers needed a sheep slaughtered, Ralo was indispensable, so it seemed that there wasn’t any harm in keeping him back.
At the end of the fifth year I finished primary school and moved to the County Nationalities Middle School.
Three
One morning in the middle of winter, as a typical snowstorm of the northwest highlands was dancing in the sky, I was in my office stoking a fire in the stove.
Suddenly, a nomad charged in without even knocking. “Is this the People’s Court?”
“Yes, can I help you with something?”
“Well, well! Aren’t you Döndrup?”
“Yes, and you …”
“Don’t act like you don’t know me!” He dragged a stool over to the stove and sat himself down. “You become a cadre and you forget your old classmates, is that it?”
Wait, was this Ralo, my classmate from ten years ago? Ah tsi, he really had aged. His forehead was lined with wrinkles and a cluster of uneven whiskers had sprouted about his mouth. What hadn’t changed was the thick yellow snot coming from his nose.
“Ah, well, of course I know you. Is something the matter?”
“Of course something’s the matter!” Ralo sucked in his snot before continuing. “Someone stole my wife. He’s called Sönam Dargyé. He’s the most no-good man in the camp. If you don’t believe me, just go down to Drakmar Camp—ask anyone there, and they’ll tell you the same. Last year the bastard stole Aku Rapgyé’s horse, and this year he sold Ané Tsokyi’s old dzo to some Muslim! And then yesterday, he beats me up and steals my wife, like it’s nothing. Doesn’t your court have the power to punish him, or are you afraid of him? Is your People’s Court going to help Ralo the proletarian, or aren’t you? I want to know today!” As Ralo went on and on, the snot ran down to his chin.
“Of course you’ll get help, but this is the criminal court. You need to take your case to the civil court.”
“I don’t understand this criminal civil stuff.” Ralo was getting angry. “If you’re not afraid of Sönam Dargyé, then go arrest him and get my wife back! Come to think of it, you can arrest her too while you’re at it.”
“Don’t get all worked up.” I passed Ralo a cigarette. “Ralo, my old classmate. We haven’t seen each other in years. How about we catch up first? What have you been up to all this time?”
“Okay. All right then.” Ralo gradually calmed down and we started to talk.
What follows is a few events that had occurred in Ralo’s life since we parted ways. In order to give the story its own flavor, I’ve done a bit of adding and subtracting here and there, but apart from that it’s mostly all the truth—in this, dear readers, you can trust me.
Four
Although Ralo still couldn’t write the alphabet, he had grown older than most of the teachers at the school and there was just no way he could stay on, so in the end he was expelled. The reason given was that he had knocked on a female teacher’s door one night. With no home and no family, what choice did Ralo have but to become a drifter?
At first, Ralo staved off the cold and hunger by stopping at any house he came across and volunteering to do manual work or put the cattle out to pasture. Once, an old man at one of these houses thought, Eh, it’s about time for our daughter to get a husband. This drifter Ralo can’t control his snot, but he’s not a bad herder, and at least he doesn’t have sticky fingers. If we get him as our son-in-law, we won’t have to get any betrothal gifts, either. Not bad!
For Ralo, this was most welcome indeed.
The strange thing was that Ralo, as if he’d been possessed, soon stopped doing any work at all, and wouldn’t even go graze the cattle. “I’m your son-in-law, not your slave,” he would say. This infuriated the old man. “Gah! The ingratitude of it! If I don’t teach that snot-nosed bum one hell of a lesson, then I’m no man!” Ralo paid the old man no mind and carried on doing whatever he pleased. Though there was nothing he could do about the snot, his cracked lips seemed to be healing and his face began to emit a red glow. Every day he combed his short, fine marmot-tail braid, and he drew out his speech in a slow drawl: “Ah …” “Oh …” “Really …” “Strange …” “I’ve never heard that before …” “There’s an old saying.…” You’d never have thought that this was the same man who’d been a snot-nosed drifter only a few days before.
But how could Ralo know that “one hell of a lesson” awaited him?
For a few days, the family had been stockpiling beer, cigarettes, and sweets, making bread, and slaughtering sheep and cows, as if they were preparing for a grand celebration. When Ralo asked what was going on, they said that a great lama was coming to visit.
“Oh, what good fortune for us!” said Ralo, combing his braid.
Ralo had a habit of getting out of bed very late in the morning. That day being no exception, it was almost midday before he was up. Putting on his fur-lined coat and exiting the tent, he saw a great many horses tied up outside and heard the sounds of raucous laughter and singing. Thinking to himself that the lama had arrived, he immediately fastened his belt and rushed over, but on entering the other tent he found everyone staring at him curiously. Puzzled, Ralo looked about and discovered his wife, decked out in her finest splendor, kneeling next to another young man. “What’s all this?” he demanded, even more puzzled now.
“Our family is getting a son-in-law,” his wife’s younger brother replied.
“Who are we getting a son-in-law for?”
“My sister, who else? He’s not for me.” Everyone burst out laughing.
“Is having two husbands allowed?”
“What? What two husbands?”
“Me, him.”
“Ha ha ha! A snotty little bum like you who gets drunk without even drinking? You’re the family’s sheep herder, how could you be her husband?”
“This is impossible! You can’t insult someone like this! If I don’t die right here in front of you, then I’m no man!” Ralo brandished his fists and leaped forward as the crowd struggled to restrain him. “You can’t stop a mad dog, and you can’t restrain a madman,” as the saying goes, and Ralo worked himself up into an even greater frenzy. “Haha! Have you never heard of the royal genealogies of the Ralo family? I come from a line of kings and queens! If I don’t bathe this camp in blood today, then my name’s not Ralo! I’m Ralo, you …” Ralo ranted on and on until the snot running into his mouth finally brought him to a halt.
The crowd, moved to hysterics by this absurd scene, let him go. Ralo didn’t dare raise his fists to the brother, so he just butted him a bit with his shoulder. “It’s my sister’s wedding day, so I’m not getting in a fight with a snotty little bum like you. Get a grip on yourself and piss off back to wherever you came from,” said the younger brother. But Ralo simply wouldn’t leave him alone and continued to butt him with his shoulder until the brother, his patience exhausted, grabbed Ralo’s braid and tossed him to the floor, pulling out the braid at the roots as he did so.
“Ah ho, my braid! It’s worth a whole yak …” Ralo rolled about on the floor in a fit. “If you don’t repay me for my braid then I’m not going anywhere!”
“If you don’t leave I’ll cut your ear off.” Unsheathing his knife, the brother stepped toward him. Ralo jumped to his feet and ran like the wind.
Five
Ralo wasn’t worried at all about his wife getting married to someone else. What he was worried about was how he could face other people without his beautiful braid. But before long his stomach was empty, and he had no choice but to return to civilization once more.
Ralo passed through many different camps and stayed at many different houses. At first, he would volunteer to do manual work or put the cattle out to pasture at any house he came across. But as soon as his belly was full, he’d g
ive up his herding duties and start talking with that slow drawl: “Ah …” “Oh …” “There’s an old saying.…” Some houses kicked him out with a “Get lost,” while others he left of his own accord.
One day Ralo arrived at a monastery. As the monastery was in the process of being rebuilt, it just so happened that they were taking in monks.
There was never any point in drifting through the mundane world anyway, and since that asshole cut off my precious braid, I’ve really got no way to face people. I might as well become a monk; that way I can at least chant some scriptures for my dear old mom. With these thoughts in mind, Ralo shed his lay clothing and adopted the robes of a monk, taking as his Dharma name “Chöying Drakpa.”
Chöying Drakpa didn’t miss a single assembly, and he memorized the Refuge Vows and other elementary chants before any of the other monks. This chanting scriptures business is much easier than what we did in school. This is my kind of studying! he thought. His continued devotion to his studies earned him the repeated praise of the disciplinarian, praise that almost reached the level of that phrase from his youth: “Everyone should learn from Ralo.”
But gradually Chöying Drakpa came to know of the “secret activities” and “open deeds” of certain lamas and monks. If that’s the way it is, then what’s the point? he thought. From then on, he was only at the monastery if there was something to eat and drink, or if there were families of the deceased offering donations to the monks. The rest of the time he spent in the nearby town watching movies, smoking cigarettes, and even drinking beer (which he called “fruit juice”), and so that other phrase from his youth once again reared its head: “No one should learn from Ralo.”
Worse than that, one afternoon a rumor blew through the monastery that Chöying Drakpa had been chasing after a girl from the camp across the river. Soon this rumor also reached the ears of the disciplinarian and some of the old monks. Chöying Drakpa might be lazy, thought the disciplinarian, but he has renounced worldly existence and turned his mind to the sacred Dharma, so there’s no way he could get up to such shameless things. Perhaps it’s nothing but lies and slander. I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes!
But there were two monks who did indeed see it with their own eyes. Chöying Drakpa, finding himself at loose ends, had gone down to the banks of the Tsechu to drink a “fruit juice.” It was a summer afternoon and the rays of the midday sun were streaming over Tsezhung County. Amid the soft green grass of the highlands great bouquets of globeflowers were blooming—from a distance it looked just like someone had laid out a green carpet dotted with yellow. Through this whole scene the Tsechu River flowed gently. If anyone with even a single artistic bone in their body were to come here, then the strains of “The Blue Danube” would naturally drift into their ears, as no matter what angle you looked at it from, the Tsechu really was just as lovely as the beautiful Danube.
Just then a girl from the camp across the river came to fetch water. She truly was a beauty. As she drew water she cast a glance at Chöying Drakpa from the corner of her eye, and he fell like an animal into a trap. At the end of the day, the most beautiful thing in the world is a woman, he thought. Seized with a sudden impulse, he struck up a Malho love song:
Can a wild yak climb
on the misty mountain?
Can a little goldfish swim
in the emerald lake?
Can I have the company
of the enchanting girl?
Without giving it much thought, the water-fetching girl responded with her own Ganlho song:
A black cloud with yellow rim
is made up of frost and hail;
a monk neither clergy nor lay
is the foe of Buddhist ways.
Because she sang quickly, Chöying Drakpa didn’t quite get the gist of the song, nor did he stop to give it much consideration. Usually it’s pretty rare for girls to sing to boys, he thought, but this one replied to me straight away. She must be into me! Overcome with joy and completely forgetting both the disciplinarian and his vows, he plowed into the Tsechu without even taking his off his boots.
At first, the girl thought the monk was just kidding around with her, so she wanted to kid around with him, but when she saw Chöying Drakpa rushing toward her, boots still on and snot running down to his chin, she thought, This monk must be crazy! Throwing aside her water bucket, she fled in terror.
When they witnessed this farcical scene, the monks who had been studying by the river couldn’t help but burst into laughter. At that moment, Chöying Drakpa came to his senses and stood, dazed, in the middle of the river.
Six
The sun set, and the monastery became even more still and peaceful.
“The greatest burden in the world isn’t having work to do, but having nothing to do”—what an accurate statement. It was indeed as if Chöying Drakpa was suffering under the weight of having nothing to do. He got up late in the morning and couldn’t get to sleep at night. The water-fetching girl’s alluring features and that sidelong glance (which he took as flirtatious) refused to disappear from his mind. Heaving a sigh, he left his monk’s quarters.
The curved sickle moon hung in the southwestern sky like an old man leaning on his walking stick. The sound of dogs barking drifted over from the camp on the other side of the Tsechu, and looking in that direction, Chöying Drakpa could see each of the homes clearly. One place had a fire going in the stove, and he could see it even more clearly than the others.
The face of the water-fetching girl appeared before Chöying Drakpa’s eyes like a film projected on the screen of his mind. He returned to his room, took off his monk’s robes, and put on his old fur-lined coat.
It was just over a mile from the monastery to the camp across the river, so Chöying Drakpa arrived there in no time at all. He turned toward the home with the blazing lamplight, and tiptoeing up to the flap of the tent he peeked inside, but only one person was in there. It was a woman, but sadly it wasn’t the water-fetching girl. She was sitting by the stove with her head in her hands, as though something was weighing on her mind.
Chöying Drakpa forgot about the water-fetching girl entirely and couldn’t help but enter the tent. The woman jumped up in fright, an “Ah ma!” escaping her mouth. After a moment she calmed down and asked who he was.
“I’m a passerby,” Chöying Drakpa answered with a grin. “Can I stay the night here?”
The woman sized up Chöying Drakpa in detail. He was tall and skinny with thick eyebrows and a purplish complexion.
“Ah tsi, of course you can.” She got up, and with a smile poured Chöying Drakpa a cup of tea. “Have a seat on the mat.”
Chöying Drakpa took a seat and examined his surroundings, and gradually his gaze came to rest on the woman. She was around thirty, with dark red cheeks and a high nose. She was plump and had a bulging chest. Chöying Drakpa felt his skin tingle with desire. “Is it just you here?” he asked her, flushing.
“Eh …” she sighed, a forlorn expression appearing on her face. “I had a good-for-nothing husband, but he left me and ran off to become a monk.”
“Ah, how terrible! Most monks are shameless like that. I can’t stand monks.”
“Absolutely. There’s no one in the world who loves to eat and hates to work more than a monk.”
“Rubbish!”
“Huh?”
“Oh—I mean those monks love to talk rubbish too.”
“Do you smoke?” the woman asked.
“Of course not … oh … yes, I do, I do.”
“Give me one, would you? This loneliness has made me take it up.”
After expounding for a while on the joys and benefits of smoking, Chöying Drakpa fished around in his pocket. “Oh—too bad! I didn’t bring any today.”
Chöying Drakpa and the woman talked for some time, and now and then he would send some compliments her way. After a while their intentions began to align.
“Ah, ‘There’s no suffering in the recitation hall, but you have
to sit ’til your butt’s numb, and there’s no happiness in samsara, but you can still dispel your troubles’—what a true saying!”
“What? You’ve been in a recitation hall?”
“I was before; it was pointless. What if the two of us could be together our whole lives, wouldn’t that be great?”
“If that’s what you want, then it’s easily done.”
“Of course that’s what I want! But we can’t stay here, because …” Chöying Drakpa recounted all of his troubles to her. After hiding out at her place for a few days, he helped her gather up all of her necessities, and under the cover of the moonlight they headed for Chöying Drakpa’s hometown.
Seven
When Chöying Drakpa was a monk, if someone called him Ralo instead of Chöying Drakpa he would get angry and butt them with his shoulder. Now that he had returned home, people once again called him Ralo and he seemed to like it, so we’ll go back to calling him Ralo too.
Ralo’s household registration was still here in the area, and his mother’s nomad tent and her belongings had been left in the camp storehouse. The Nomad Committee gave him a relief stipend and gathered some sheep and cattle from the community for him to tend, for which he had to sign a contract. At first Ralo worked diligently and his house really seemed like a home, but as soon as he had clothes on his back and food in his belly, the seeds of laziness gradually sprouted again. He stopped tending the livestock, stopped working, and went into town to idle around. Eventually his livestock contract was rescinded, and his wife lost all patience with him.
The Handsome Monk and Other Stories Page 4