“There’s an old saying—” now that Ralo was full of momos, he once again drew out his speech in a slow drawl “—‘When nothing’s going your way, you take a piss and it runs down your thigh’—how true that is. After Alak Drong left my house that time, a friend from Gansu came over. That evening he said he wanted me to accompany him to a girlfriend’s place. As we were passing by Tsezhung Monastery we came across two guys from my camp looking for their cattle. After I took my friend to the edge of that cursed woman’s camp, I went straight home. So the police said that I’d been to the monastery in the middle of the night and that I’d been up to something, and they took me in. No matter how much I swore I hadn’t, they wouldn’t believe me. Think about it—‘a dog won’t swallow metal and a man won’t swallow his oath’—could a braided, black-headed Tibetan like me swallow an oath?”
At that moment the guard came back with a book, a few packs of cigarettes, and a thermos of milk tea. Ralo and I sat together drinking the tea and smoking the cigarettes. “Eh—my wife hasn’t been to see me in over ten days, what’s going on? Did she and my son get sick? Alak Drong protect them.” Gradually, Ralo fell deep into thought.
Fourteen
The walls of the cell were white and the beds and floors were all made of wooden boards, which gave the place a feeling of cleanliness, but the door was reinforced with iron plates and the little window was covered by iron bars, leaving you in no doubt that this was no ordinary room. The jail contained people who had been taken into custody by the police, prisoners who had been given a short-term sentence (less than one year) by the courts, and also people like Ralo, who were still being investigated. Their crimes varied in severity, and for some it wasn’t clear if they’d committed a crime at all. Regardless, they referred to themselves unanimously as “criminals.” Only if you called yourself this were you allowed in and out of the cell, and sometimes in and out of the yard.
The practice of referring to oneself with the Chinese word for “criminal” was something that Ralo had already mastered. He would face the sentry standing bolt upright, throw back his head, suck in his snot, and say, “Reporting to the class monitor! The criminal would like to enter [or ‘leave’]!” When he said this it sounded just like the braying of a magnificent donkey. I heard, though, that when Ralo first arrived he didn’t even know the Chinese for “report,” which caused him great difficulties, so much so that things sank to the level of that phrase from his youth: “No one should learn from Ralo.” Countless times the class monitor (the sentry) made him stand at the foot of the wall as punishment, I heard. This was the second time since Ralo’s marriage to the nice woman that things had reached the point of “No one should learn from Ralo.” The first was a few years after he returned to lay life. When still a monk he’d learned to chant some sutras, and later this became an immeasurable source of wealth for him, as more and more people requested him to come and perform religious services. Unlike the monks from the monastery, Ralo didn’t haggle and barter when he did these religious services; he took whatever his patron offered. Leather, sheepskin, lambskin, sheep wool, yak wool, yak down, butter, cheese, tsampa—Ralo would take anything. This was very convenient for people, and as Ralo’s customer base grew and grew, the income of Tsezhung Monastery’s monks shrank and shrank, causing Alak Drong to become concerned. But Ralo gradually became as if possessed, or perhaps we should say his old affliction returned. When he was doing divinations he would say things like, “If you don’t recite the Hayagrīva Mantra ten million times, then your daughter can’t be saved,” or “If you don’t recite the Sitātapatrā Mantra ten thousand times, this task cannot be accomplished.” Sometimes he didn’t even bother with a divination, he just sat with his eyes closed for a moment, then said, “Oh—the horse that you lost can be found to the west,” or “Your child is now in India,” or “This patient only has three days left to live—om mani padme hum.” For a short time Ralo was renowned as a clairvoyant. Unfortunately, Alak Drong soon announced: “Ralo’s visions and trances are nothing but a scam.” From then on no one invited Ralo to their home to perform religious services, and he was once more reduced to the level of “No one should learn from Ralo.”
“This is all because the monks from Tsezhung Monastery are jealous and like to lie and badmouth people,” said Ralo despondently.
Though Ralo was sometimes in danger of letting that “old affliction” flare up again, thanks to his kindhearted wife he had undergone a sea change. He had become father to a son and was now a livestock herder, and he spent his days happily combing his braid. One day he invited Alak Drong to his house to present him with a horse and two yaks. But people’s jealousy is like a bad toothache—it won’t give you a moment’s peace. “Haha! Even that snotty bastard Ralo has the nerve to invite Alak Drong to his house. Has the world gone mad?” they cried, red-eyed and lips aquiver, and when the police came to investigate the matter of Alak Drong’s missing horse, they told them, “Who else could it be but that snotty bastard Ralo?” and offered up some reasoning and evidence. “There’s no response to a black lie and there’s no bottom to the black earth,” as the saying goes. Ralo, slack-jawed and nose running, could do nothing.
I couldn’t help but get angry. “But that’s outrageous! If you do end up getting charged and going to court over this, then I’ll defend you.” One of our cellmates, a cadre, told me that not only had Ralo been formally charged, but also the prosecutor’s office would soon bring the case to court.
This man was called Tsepak. He was a high-level official around forty years old. After his activities were brought to light by the masses, the judicial authorities took him in for questioning six times, and five of those times he’d been released without them harming a hair on his head. This time he’d come up against an anticorruption drive, and I thought he was done for sure, yet he seemed quite relaxed, as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Later, after we got to know each other, I discovered the reason for this nonchalance. As he told us, quite candidly, “Look, boys, it doesn’t matter if you’ve committed a crime or not. When you get a chance, have a word with your family and get them to take all those useless expenses and stuff them right in the judge’s mouth instead. I guarantee you’ll get results. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being both a law enforcer and a lawbreaker, it’s this. I’m giving this to you straight, ’cos I feel sorry for all of you.” What he meant by “useless expenses” was the money people spent on hiring top lawyers and conducting elaborate religious services. He wasn’t anything like the corrupt officials of my imagination. He was refined and intelligent, skinny with a fair complexion and a pair of glasses. He looked just like a cultured intellectual. He certainly didn’t give you the impression that he was a thief—at most you might think he’d pinch a couple of books. I stared at him for some time. “Akhu Tsepak, did you really pocket as much as everyone says?” I asked. “If you’re on the take when no one else is then you’re a fool, and if you’re not on the take when everyone else is then you’re even more of a fool,” he said with a smile. “It’s just a shame that as soon as I went on the take everyone started getting jealous and the thieves decided to catch a thief. I guess it’s because when I worked for the Ministry of Justice I didn’t know what I was doing and arrested too many ‘thieves.’ But I’ve stuffed money in the judges’ mouths before, and I’m still stuffing, so I’ll be fine.”
Fifteen
The “son of a bitch” guard that Ralo mentioned finally made an appearance atop the stone wall. He had a big ass that stuck out like a black woman’s, and the gun hanging at his belt made it seem to stick out even more. He strutted up and down the wall with his hands behind his back clutching a string of mani beads, making him look like a chicken about to lay an egg. I called him Mani Ass, and soon everyone else started calling him that behind his back too.
Mani Ass really was a son of a bitch. With the exception of Tsepak, he called us all “pricks,” and Ralo he called a “snotnose prick.”
“
Snotnose prick, go get some water.”
In his very practiced manner, Ralo held up his trousers with his left hand, grabbed the empty thermos with his right, and shuffled to the cell door. “Reporting to the class monitor! The criminal would like to leave!”
“Go.”
“Reporting to the class monitor! The criminal would like …”
“Go.”
Ralo entered bringing a thermos full of cold water and told me that it was for washing our faces the next morning.
The afternoon crept up on us and the cook arrived with some food. It was almost as if my family and Tsepak’s had been in touch to arrange the perfect combination—one of us got some mutton and the other some yak yogurt.
Ralo was happy now that he had something to eat, but the food our relatives brought seemed to remind him of his own family. “My wife hasn’t been in over ten days. Ya—she …” he began, but he was cut off by an interjection. “Maybe she’s been snagged by someone else?”
“Hmph, this wife is nothing like that old yellow-toothed one,” said Ralo with great confidence.
Out of sheer boredom the prisoners told stories from their pasts, holding nothing back. They even liked to discuss how good their women were in bed. According to Ralo, the yellow-toothed woman was peerless in that department, or at least he himself had never come across another like her. When that topic of conversation was exhausted, the braggarts and bullshitters began to invent stories. You knew it was all nonsense, but you had no choice but to listen and pretend you believed it. This was an experience that I myself was later subjected to, after we’d been through all the major things we’d seen and heard in our lives and the store of stories was empty, and we were forced to listen to the particularly skilled fabrications of one young bullshit artist. He was a half-Tibetan half-Chinese kid who’d just turned twenty. Judging from his name—Tseten Zhao—his dad must have been Chinese and his mom Tibetan. He could understand Tibetan but couldn’t really speak it, so he spoke in Chinese and I translated for Ralo as I listened. He said that he’d stolen a gun from the storehouse of an army barracks and robbed a bank. He was planning to escape to Hong Kong, but he fell into the hands of the Special Forces and ended up in prison. That prison was more or less the same as this jail, he said, the only difference being that a low wall had been put across the middle, on the other side of which were the female prisoners, most of whom were fine-looking prostitutes. All it took was one glance and they’d be snuggled up to your chest. Most nights he and some of the other guys would give each other a leg up, hop the wall, and screw around with the girls.
“Didn’t your prison lock the doors at night?” Ralo asked, dubiously.
“The wall around that prison was even taller than the one here. There was no way to escape even with the doors unlocked.”
“Didn’t the women get pregnant?”
“Yeah, many of them did.”
“So who’s taking care of the babies?”
“The female guards.”
“Bullshit.”
“Swear on my dad’s flesh.” (This was his most accurately pronounced Tibetan phrase.)
“Okay, then tell me more!”
He knew it was a load of crap, but Ralo still preferred to listen, as it helped pass the time. Tsepak and I were reading and had no desire to listen to his made-up stories, but Ralo kept urging Tseten Zhao to continue and kept urging me to translate for him, so we were forced to do as he wished.
Since Ralo didn’t wash, we took it in turns to add his water to ours; that way we got to wash our hair. This habit of washing neither his face nor his hair made the lice grow bolder, and they began to pose a threat to my well-being. Now I understood why Tsepak and Tseten Zhao had me sleep between them and Ralo. I had no choice but to suffer in silence, “like a mute eating bitter herbs,” as that Chinese proverb goes. Not long after we got in bed, one of Ralo’s audacious lice leaped over to my side and quite brazenly bit me in the armpit. From then on Ralo’s lice began a brutal campaign of abuse against me. I warned him to get them under control, but Ralo’s reaction was, to my surprise, one of indifference. “Having lots of lice means you have good karma. If they’re moving onto you, you should be happy about it.” Ralo’s lice were now not only harming my body but also seriously harming my mental state: they grew larger overnight and turned into beasts as terrifying as crocodiles. Their long, sharp fangs first devoured Ralo; then, flashing those blood-stained gnashers, they came for me.
Completely terrified, I awoke with a scream. As Ralo snored thunderously I had a vision of the lice scraping their way along the floorboards, coming to attack me, and there was no way I could get back to sleep. Put it this way—the lice feasted on Ralo and they feasted on me, and if it weren’t for the kindness of my wife bringing me clean underwear every day, who knows if I’d be here to write this story today.
Sixteen
After Tseten Zhao told us a thrilling prison break story, he feigned tiredness and pulled the covers up over his head. Then Tsepak turned in for the night, leaving me with only Ralo to talk to. After a while Ralo too went to bed, and I was kept awake by his thunderous snoring. I realized then that both Tseten Zhao and Tsepak had planned all this out in advance, their goal being to get to sleep before Ralo at all costs. It was too late for me, and I was left alone to endure the torment of Ralo’s snoring and the terror of the lice. Even after I fell asleep I kept being awakened by those fearsome “crocodiles.”
With your compassion, give us your blessings
With your love, guide us along the path
With your wisdom, grant us accomplishments
With your power, guide us along the path
Dispel the outer obstacles externally
Dispel the inner obstacles internally
Dispel the secret obstacles into space
With reverence, I prostrate and take refuge in you.
When I was awakened by these words, it was already light. Ralo was sitting cross-legged on his bed, palms clasped, eyes closed, chanting to himself. This scene was similar to the one I would later witness in a truck on the way to Lhasa, except on that later occasion Ralo had shaved the hair around his braid clean off, and the braid itself had been neatly plaited. But if you looked closely you could still make out several lice, maybe living, maybe not.
I hadn’t actually committed a crime, but even so, during the month I was in custody my mom was so worried about me she couldn’t eat during the day or sleep at night. I wanted to repay her kindness, so I asked her what I could do for her—anything you want, I said. Without thinking twice, she said she wanted me to take her to Lhasa, so that’s exactly what I did. Ralo said, “When my mom passed away I couldn’t even light a butter lamp for her. I’ve got to take my mom to see the Jowo just once while she’s still alive this time, no matter what!” And like that, Ralo and I became what he called “fellow pilgrims.”
Early one morning, about four, I brought my mother down to the station. The other pilgrims had long since taken their seats on the truck, and we set off accompanied by a chorus of angry grumblings from the driver about us being late.
Amid the sound of the chanting pilgrims I heard one voice that sounded very familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place it. After we’d been driving for a little while I fell asleep. It was light by the time I woke up, and it hit me then that the familiar voice was Ralo’s. Like that time in the jail, he was chanting with his palms clasped and his eyes closed, and every now and then he clapped his hands together. This was what the faithful called “driving out the demons,” and it gave him the appearance of a yogin.
“Ah tsi ah tsi, first we were classmates, then we were cellmates, and now, thanks to the Three Jewels, we’re pilgrimage mates—what good fortune! Excellent, excellent.” Ralo was overjoyed to discover that I was on the truck with him.
There were about fifty people on the truck, including babies so young they were still suckling at their mother’s breasts and people so old they almost had the Lord of Death’s noose a
round their necks. It was also packed with everyone’s food, tents, fuel, and all the other provisions necessary for a month-long trip, as a result of which we were squeezed together so tightly that we could barely breathe. Nevertheless, with great determination, Ralo forced his way through to me, clutching a large basket to his chest with his left hand and guiding his wife by the wrist with his right. By his wife’s side was a child of about five or six. He was a handsome boy who looked identical to his mother, and not a bit like Ralo. Yet, when you saw the little braid tied at the end with a woolen thread, you knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was Ralo’s offspring. His name was Sangdak, but I called him “Little Ralo” for fun. If Ralo’s braid was like a marmot’s tail, then Little Ralo’s braid was exactly like a mouse’s. Ralo’s wife was called Dekyi, and you could tell from a glance that she was a kind and devoted woman. With the exception of chanting, she said only one thing in the whole of the month that I spent with her: “Ralo, snot.”
As Ralo smoked the cigarettes I gave him he began to talk more, and at the same time his snot drooped longer. It seemed that the more he smoked, the more his nose ran.
“Ralo, snot.”
Ralo sucked in his snot and cast an angry glance at his wife, apparently in retaliation for being reprimanded in public. This habit aside, he was, in general, very good to his wife.
Seventeen
The basket that Ralo clutched at his chest contained a decrepit old dog that looked like it was on its last legs; he said it was the reincarnation of his mother. Ralo’s wife had previously been sentenced for committing bigamy and had spent a few months in jail. On the night that she came back, Ralo dreamed that his mother came to his door and murmured some indistinct words, and when he got up the next morning and went outside, a puppy had appeared from somewhere. It stared at him and whined feebly, and his previous night’s dream returned to his mind. There was no doubt that this was the reincarnation of his mother, he thought, and he took the dog home and fed it on a diet of meat and milk. This was the mangy dog that he now carried with him.
The Handsome Monk and Other Stories Page 6