Читать книгу Saving Fish From Drowning - Amy Tan - Страница 5

Lateness, I would have reminded my friends, is one of the deadly sins on a group tour, not to be tolerated, and punishable by the fates in any number of unforgiving ways. But this rule and warning were not established early on, and after that mistake of a lunch, my friends spent an additional twenty minutes locating everyone so they could board the bus.

Rupert had taken off down the road to check out the rock-climbing possibilities, and because he was fifteen and utterly unable to discern the difference between five minutes and fifty, not to mention between private and public property, he had managed to climb a stone wall and trespass into a courtyard housing six hens and a disheveled rooster. Roxanne was capturing arty footage with her camcorder of Dwight walking down a deserted road. Wendy had located some photogenic children who belonged to the sister of the chef’s wife, and she busied herself taking pictures with a very expensive Nikon while Wyatt made faces to make the kids laugh. Bennie was adding shading to the sketch he had made of this local Chinese bistro, a dilapidated building at a crossroads that appeared to lead to nowhere. Mr. Fred, the bus driver, had wandered across the road to smoke a cigarette. He would have stayed closer to the bus, but Vera, who wanted to board, had asked with exaggerated waves of her hands that he not contaminate the air around her. Miss Rong was in the front seat, studying a book of English phrases. Moff also got on the bus, and lay down at the back for a five-minute nap. Heidi boarded and applied a disinfectant to her hands, then put some on a tissue and wiped down the armrest and grab bar in front of her. Marlena and Esmé were doing their best to use the latrine with its perilous pit. Bad as it was, they preferred privacy to open-air cleanliness. Harry had gone searching for a better loo and in doing so saw a pair of interesting red-breasted birds with twitchy eyes.

This tendency for people to wander off was already becoming a habit, with Rupert and Harry vying for first place in being the most dilatory. When everyone had finally been rounded up, Miss Rong counted heads: the black lady, the plump man, the tall man with horsetail hair, the kissing girl, the man who drank too many beers, those three with baseball caps, another two with sun hats, and so on, until she reached eleven and had to start over again. At last, she found the requisite twelve. She gave the signal to the bus driver with a triumphant “Zou ba!” and off they went.

The bus’s transmission and shock absorbers were put to the test as Mr. Fred lurched into oncoming traffic and in Russian-roulette fashion passed slightly slower vehicles on the uneven road. The combination of bad suspension and frightful suspense was ideal for inducing motion sickness in almost everyone. Heidi felt no queasiness whatsoever, thanks to her anti-nausea wrist device. And Rupert was also unaffected and was even able to read from a black-covered paperback, Stephen King’s Misery, which held as its ignominious bookmark a page of the notes I had worked on so laboriously.

Stone Bell Temple lay ahead. I had hoped my friends might learn about the importance of its holy grottoes and their carvings, many created in the Song and Tang dynasties, with the more recent ones completed in the Ming, several hundred years in the past. By seeing a medley of ancient Nanzhao, Bai, Dai, and Tibetan images, they might have sensed how streams of minority tribes’ religions had joined the dominant—and often domineering—Chinese river of thought. The Han Chinese have always been good at absorbing motley beliefs yet maintaining their own as paramount. Even the Mongols and Manchus, who had conquered and ruled them since the thirteenth century, had assimilated Chinese ways and had virtually become Chinese themselves. Think about this, I would have said to my charges: as we go into this temple, think about the influences of tribes, invaders, and rulers upon one another. You see remnants of their effects in both religion and art, in essence those areas that are expressions of the spirit.

The bus rumbled on. The tribe they were about to meet was the Bai, and my twelve friends would have a profound effect on them, and vice versa.

“Hey, Dad,” Rupert called out, holding up the page from my notes, “get this.” He began to read what I had written: “‘One of the shrines is most aptly named the Grotto of Female Genitalia.’” Rupert snickered through his nose in an unattractive way and neglected to read further, where I had written the following: “Many tribes in this region believe that creation begins from the womb of darkness and death. Thus, there is a profound reverence for grottoes. This particular grotto is unspectacular but delightful, and contains a rather plain and small shrine, about twenty inches in width and twenty-four in height, and carved simply in the shape of a vulva surrounded by labia onto which have been inscribed tributes over the centuries to fertility. The grotto symbolizes fertility, and fertility is fervently worshipped in China, for to lack fertility is to lose one’s family line, and a family without heirs is consigned to oblivion, darkness, and the permanence of death.”

No, sad to say, my queasy friends did not read this, although their imaginations had become quite fertile. The Grotto of Female Genitalia: What could such a curiously named place look like? Collectively, the women envisioned a primordial cave emanating warmth, mystery, comfort, safety, and innate beauty. The men pictured a cleft in the mountain with overgrown bushes behind which was a tiny entrance that led into a moist cave, and Bennie’s imagination further embellished is as dark, slimy, and filled with screeching bats.

Before they reached their destination, however, the travelers saw large domed ovens on the left side of the road, smoke spewing from their vents. What were they baking? Miss Rong made rectangular shapes with her hands, and pointed to homes and walls. Loaves of bread? Oh, bricks and tiles! Marlena suggested a photo stop, Wendy agreed, and Vera, ignoring the groans of the men, who believed a shopping spree was about to take place, raised her palm to order the bus driver to pull over.

Esmé was the first to see the water buffalo on the right side of the road. It appeared to be stuck, with mud up to its belly. Why was it blindfolded? And why were those men whipping it? Wendy began scribbling madly in her journal. Bennie sketched a quick impression.

Miss Rong happily explained that this was how the mud was “smashed” so it would be soft enough to place in the molds. And the buffalo’s eyes were covered so the beast did not know it was going in circles. All twelve travelers were now transfixed as the buffalo plowed its wretched Sisyphean route. ’Round and ’round he stumbled and lurched, haphazardly and endlessly, his great body heaving to take another breath, his nostrils flaring with fright as the whip came down across his hindquarters.

“Man, that is one miserable existence,” Roxanne said. The others echoed similar sentiments.

Esmé was close to tears. “Make them stop.”

Miss Rong tried to ease their discomfort. “This is karma,” she tried to explain in her rudimentary English. “Past life this buffalo must be doing bad things. Now suffer, so next life get better.…” What she was trying to say was this: Your situation and form in life are already determined before you are born. If you are a buffalo suffering in mud, you must have committed wrongs upon others in a previous existence, and thus, you deserve this particular reincarnation. Perhaps this buffalo was once a man who killed an innocent person. Maybe he was a thief. By suffering now, he would earn a much cushier reincarnation in the next go-round. It’s an accepted way of thinking in China, a pragmatic way of viewing all the misfortunes of the world. You cannot change a buffalo into a man. And if a buffalo does not mash the mud, who else would do this job?

Miss Rong blithely continued her philosophical talk: “So family must having a house, house must having bricks, buffalo must having smash mud. Do not be sad, this the way of life.…” She enjoyed the opportunity to inform her charges of Buddhist ideas. She had heard that many Americans, especially those who travel to China, love Buddhism. She did not realize that the Buddhism the Americans before her loved was Zen-like, a form of not-thinking, not-moving, and not-eating anything living, like buffaloes. This blank-minded Buddhism was practiced by well-to-do people in San Francisco and Marin County, who bought organic-buckwheat pillows for sitting on the floor, who paid experts to teach them to empty their minds of the noise of life. This was quite different from the buffalo-torture and bad-karma Buddhism found in China. Miss Rong also did not realize that most Americans, especially those with pets, have great sympathy for animals in misery, often more so than for miserable humans. Animals, with their inability to speak for themselves, the pet lovers believe, possess innocence and moral purity. They do not deserve cruelty.

If only Miss Rong could have posed the situation in better English and with more comprehensible cases of comparison: For a man who rapes and murders little girls, what is a satisfactory punishment? Should he not be turned into a beast of burden who lives in mud and is whipped every waking hour so that he might learn what suffering is and thus become a better being in his next incarnation? Or should the villain be paraded about town to the jeers of a crowd, as they do in some countries, placed in a burlap bag, tossed over a cliff, and then dismembered so that he will have to walk sans penis in hell? On the other hand, as has been described in both Christian and Chinese hells, would it be more just if he were consigned to a vat of oil, one that boils eternally and in which each moment is as unbearable as the first dip of the toe, so that his horror is endless, without any hope whatsoever of redeeming himself? Given my present state, I weighed which of these various hells was least horrific and thus most appealing, and I hoped that my current state of limbo would not lead to my learning which was true. I hoped I would not come back as a mudsmashing water buffalo.

Thus saddened by this tour of Buffalo Torture, the travelers continued their bus journey to the grottoes. As the road climbed into the mountains, Marlena and Harry were interested in taking note of the scenery. It was an excuse to lean their faces together and make small talk. “Those are poplars, I believe.…” “Look, eucalyptus.” “What are those?”

Moff, who was sitting behind them, answered in a bored voice: “Willows.”

“Are you sure?” Harry said. “They don’t look it.”

“Not all willows are the grand weeping variety.”

He was right. These willows were a scrubby, fast-growing kind that can be cut back often for kindling. Higher up, the willows gave way to long-needled pines, and trudging along the road was a phalanx of Naxi women collecting the fallen needles.

“What do they use those for?” Marlena called out to Miss Rong.

Miss Rong struggled to say it was for the animals. Everyone assumed she meant that the animals ate the needles, which is not so. In the winter, the animals nest in the needles to stay warm, and in the spring, the Naxi women use the manure-soiled needles as fertilizer when they plant the new crops. With a limited diversity of life, there is greater diversity of purpose.

“Where are the men?” Wendy demanded to know. “Why aren’t they out there breaking their backs?”

“Yes, very lazy,” Miss Rong joked. Then she added, “They play outside, do poetry.” She was partly right. The rest she knew but didn’t know how to verbalize clearly, so I will translate: In China, there is a saying made popular after the revolution: Women hold up half the sky. In the Naxi Autonomous Region, women have always held up the whole sky. It is a matriarchal society, where the females do the work, handle the money, own the houses, and raise the children. The men, meanwhile, ride on the backs of shooting stars, so to speak. They are bachelors, boyfriends, and uncles, roaming from bed to bed at night, not knowing which children they have fathered. They take the animals out to graze early in the morning, they bring them back at dusk. In the mountain pastures, they roll their cigarettes and smoke, and when they call the animals, they lure them with love songs. They sing at the top of their lungs, which extract oxygen much more efficiently than those of most Americans. So Miss Rong was correct in what little she said. The men do poetry. To hear a song sung in the mountains is always poetry.

At the entrance to the temple park, the bus stopped and my friends jumped out for camcorder documentation of their arrival. They gathered behind a sign, “Sincerely Welcoming you to Famous Grottoe of Female Genitalia.” Harry had his arm around Marlena’s waist. The others arranged themselves in various positions according to height. Roxanne held the camcorder. Meanwhile, Miss Rong had gone to pay the park entry fee. She stepped up to an old man sitting in a tollbooth the size of an upright coffin. He spoke to Miss Rong in the Bai dialect that was common in that region, telling her, “Hey, be careful today. We may get a thundershower any minute, so stay off the high ridge. Oh, and one other important matter—please note, the foreigners should avoid going to the main grottoes between the hours of two-thirty and three-thirty, because a television crew from CCTV will be filming a documentary there. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Miss Rong, who was ashamed to let both the man and her charges know she did not understand Bai, nodded briskly in return. She believed he was just reminding her that as an official tour guide she was required to take her tourists to the state-approved souvenir store. Each time she had been asked to be a substitute tour guide, the main office had reminded her of this as her foremost duty.

Before embarking on the trail, several of our group made a visit to the restrooms, two gender-assigned concrete pavilions with an open trough through which a paltry stream of water constantly ran, failing, however, to wash away the deposits. Heidi donned a face mask before entering, turned on her air purifier, and retrieved from her pack various germ-fighting supplies. The other women crouched and buried their faces in their sleeves, trying not to retch. In the men’s latrine, Moff let out a gusher strong enough to jet-spray gum off a sidewalk, while Harry, standing at the other end of the trough, focused his mind and squeezed his muscles—lats, abs, quads, and glutes—and out came a meager trickle. Though he had not attained relief, he zipped up quickly, not wanting to prolong his humiliation.

Let me add here that I am most emphatically not in the habit of watching or talking about people’s private business. I also abhor scatological humor and salacious gossip. But these are things I knew with these Buddha-like talents I now possessed, the Celestial Eye, the Celestial Ear, the Mind of Others. Furthermore, I report these intimate details that are salient only so that you might better judge later what occurred and why. Just remember: Throughout history, many a world leader was injudiciously influenced by his malfunctioning bladder, bowels, and other private parts. Didn’t Napoleon lose at Waterloo because he couldn’t sit in a saddle, on account of hemorrhoids?

At one o’clock, the eager travelers began their downward trek into the canyon that was the heart of Stone Bell Mountain. They were slightly disoriented from jet lag, the bouncy bus ride, and retreating motion sickness. Miss Rong’s version of English did not help matters. She was trying to recall which English words meant “east,” “west,” “north,” and “south,” and eventually she translated her directions thus: “Descend shady side, see temple grotto, ascend sunny side up, return the bus.” Of course, such terms are relative to the time of day. In fact, they rely entirely on the assumption that sunny and shady remain constant even after the sun has been completely obliterated by storm clouds as black as the tumbling seas.

To those who might visit the Lijiang region one day, let me assure you that winter is an excellent time for travel. It is the dry season. Even in late December, the days are usually warm and pleasant, while the nights are brisk but easily managed with a sweater or light pullover, unless, of course, you are someone like Heidi, who prefers layers—a down vest with Gore-Tex waterproofing, microfleece leggings, a 30 SPF shirt pretreated with mosquito repellent, a heat-retaining cap with visor, and a two-ounce Space blanket—in other words, a compact arsenal of techno-wear to enable her to handle every impossibility. I am not poking fun at Heidi, for as it turned out, she was the only one who was suitably prepared for mosquitoes with voracious appetites for Americans, and for skies that demonstrated with dramatic effect what might occur during a surprise flash flood.

When the rain first began to fall, soft as tears, our travelers had long since dispersed themselves like sheep on a sparse range. Each had gone off to stake his or her own unique experience. Roxanne had led the way uphill for Dwight and Heidi. Wyatt and Wendy sprinted down the shadier paths for a bit of smooching and pawing. Marlena and Esmé accepted Harry’s invitation to search for wildlife and the fabled pine with limbs as gnarled as an old man’s arthritic joints. Bennie and Vera wandered downward, taking the path of least resistance gravity-wise as they passionately discussed the building of the new Asian Art Museum and the various ways to blend innovation with tradition. Moff and Rupert jogged away, the younger lad soon being two turns ahead of his father, at which point he was seized with a desire to hoist his limber self up a steep face of rock, at the top of which was a grotto surrounded by a stone relief. He scrambled across scree, stepped over a low roped fence, and began to climb. At the bottom was a sign in Chinese that read: “Forbidden to Enter! Danger!”

Soon water was filling the rocky crevices of the canyon, and as the rain came down more ferociously, a distinctive wind-whirring and rock-tocking sound reverberated. It was like an orchestra of stone bells, the Chinese version of an aeolian harp. To hear it, you would think this was how the mountain had received its name; but in fact, the name came from a stony formation at the top that resembles a bell. It’s quite prosaic. In any case, the sounds rang loud as a bell, loud enough to dampen the shouts of people to one another.

“Rupert!” Moff cried out. No answer.

“Which way?” Marlena shouted to Harry, who was peering up and then down the path. Her words fell to the floor of the canyon, unheard along with the cries of ten thousand others lost over the ages.

In short order, the paths had become too tricky to traverse. So everyone did what was most natural, what people over the last twelve centuries have done, and sought refuge in one of the sixteen grottoes and various temples that pocked the sides of Stone Bell Mountain.

Marlena, Esmé, and Harry were closest to the main temple grounds, whose original building, now gone, was constructed during the Nanzhao Kingdom, around the ninth century. The decorative pillars and tile roofs, which Harry could make out through the rainy haze, were from a remodeling job done during the Ching dynasty, only a hundred or so years old and repainted in more recent years after its near destruction during the Cultural Revolution. The three rain-soaked visitors scrambled up the zigzag path, and when they arrived at one of the temple buildings above a courtyard, they were stunned by what they saw from ancient times. As the rain poured down the awnings, it created a misty curtain, a scrim behind which stood a pretty, young woman in turbaned headdress and bright pink jacket singing to a young man who accompanied her on a two-stringed an erhu, which had the versatility to sound like anything from a young woman moaning in love to a horse shrilling in fright. Our travelers stepped closer, but the singing couple remained oblivious of the intruders.

“Are they real?” Esmé asked.

Marlena said nothing. They must be ghosts stuck in time, forever reliving one moment that was dear to them, she thought.

The woman’s singing rose, her voice warbling in unearthly surges. The man began to sing in response. Back and forth they went, with an incredible athleticism in their trilling vibrato. The man walked closer to the pretty woman, and at the end, she leaned into his chest, falling back like a viola returning to its protective case, and allowed him to wrap her in his arms.

“Hullo!” a female voice suddenly called out.

When Harry, Marlena, and Esmé turned, they saw a woman in a pink business suit standing under the eaves of another building, waving frantically. Behind her were two men, one with a video camera and the other holding a boom. They were, of course, the television crew that the old fellow at the entrance booth had mentioned in his instructions, the same ones that Miss Rong had failed to understand.

“Omigod! Are we in your way?” Marlena shouted back. “We are so sorry. We had no idea—”

The woman and her crew ducked from under their awning and ran toward them. The two costumed singers also came over, the man now smoking a cigarette.

“No problem, no worries,” the woman said affably. “You are from UK? All three?”

“America, USA, all three,” Harry answered. He pointed to Marlena, Esmé, then himself. “San Francisco.”

“Very nice,” the woman said. She translated for her crew and the singers. They nodded and talked among themselves, which worried Marlena. She, who had been raised in a Shanghainese family, understood about as much Mandarin as Miss Rong understood English, and it sounded to her as if the crew was upset that they had botched their shoot. Eventually, the pink-garbed woman spoke to them again in English. “We are documentary making for this region, from national television program, for awareness of Bai minority culture, as well the scenic beauty in Stone Bell Mountain, to show appreciating the tourists around the world. We like to ask you question. Is okay?”

Harry traded laughs with Marlena. “Sure. Absolutely delighted.”

The cameraman positioned himself and motioned for Harry and Marlena to step more to the left and closer to the woman in pink. The soundman lofted the boom above them. Words were exchanged in Chinese, and the filming began with the woman speaking rapidly in Beijing-perfect Mandarin: “As you can see, Stone Bell Temple, with its rich culture, ancient historical grottoes, and fascinating landscape, deserves its world-renowned reputation. Tourists from many countries come, drawn by the enjoyable scenery and the educational prospects. These same tourists have a choice of visiting Paris, Rome, London, or Niagara Falls—but here, in beautiful Stone Bell Mountain, they have made their choice. Let us meet two of them, a prosperous family from San Francisco in America.”

She switched to English: “Sir, lady, please to tell us what you think this place, Stone Bell Temple and Mountain.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Marlena said, “even in the rain.” She did not know whether to look at the camera or at the woman in pink, so she did both, glancing back and forth, which gave her a furtive appearance.

Harry assumed his television posture, a more erect back, chest forward, a steady and honest gaze at the camera: “This place is truly spectacular.” He gestured to an elaborately painted beam. “Absolutely charming. We don’t have anything like it back home. Nothing quite this old or, for that matter, so … so vibrant, so vibrantly red. The aesthetic is utterly, utterly Chinese, absolutely historical. Oh, and we can hardly wait to see the magnificent grottoes we’ve heard so much about, the female one.” He looked back at the interviewer, gave a quick nod to indicate that he considered his delivery to have been an adequate take.

The woman switched back to Mandarin: “Even young children are so intrigued they beg their parents to come to Stone Bell Mountain.” She gesticulated to the cameraman, and he immediately switched his direction toward Esmé. She was walking in the courtyard, which was decorated with bare crape myrtle trees and tubs of prunus flower bushes, their tiny pink buds in various stages of emergence. At the far end of the courtyard, an old woman sat on a stool with a baby on her lap, the mother and daughter, respectively, of the caretaker who lived on the temple grounds. Beside them was a dirty-white Shih Tzu, toothless and deaf. It reminded Esmé of the little puppy back at the hotel. As she approached, the dog jumped up, knocked over a low stool, and made a bluff charge at her, barking ferociously. Esmé shrieked.

“Little girlie,” called the interviewer. “Please come back please, so we can ask you question why your parents bring you here.”

Esmé glanced toward her mother questioningly, and Marlena nodded. When Esmé returned, the woman shoved her between her mother and Harry, then said: “You happy to be here with mother and father, come so far enjoy beautiful Stone Bell Temple. Yes?”

“He’s not my dad,” Esmé said peevishly. She scratched at an elbow. The itchy bumps left by mosquitoes made her even more irritated.

“Sorry. Can you say again?” the interviewer asked.

“I said, she’s my mother, but he’s not my dad.”

“Oh! Sorry, sorry.” The woman was now flustered. These Americans were always so frank. You never knew what kind of peculiar things they would say. They openly admitted to having unmarried sex, that their children were bastards.

The woman gathered her thoughts, reaching for a new angle, and began her interview again in English: “Just while ago, you enjoy the beautiful Bai minority folksinging, mountain girl call to her mountain boy. This traditional ballad happen every day for many thousand years. In your homeland you having Christmas ballad for celebrate two thousand years ago also until now. Is true or not true?”

Marlena had never thought of Christmas that way. “True,” she dutifully answered.

“Maybe since you already enjoy our traditional singing we can enjoy your same.”

The camera zoomed in on Marlena, Esmé, and Harry, and the boom was lowered.

“What are we supposed to do?” Harry asked.

“I think they want us to sing,” Marlena whispered.

“You’re kidding.”

The interviewer smiled and laughed. “Yes! Yes!” She began to clap. “Now you sing ballad.”

Harry backed away. “Oh, no.” He held up his hands. “No, no. Not possible.” He pointed to his throat. “Very bad. See? Sore, inflamed, can’t sing. Terrible pain. Possibly contagious. Sorry. Should not even be here.” He stepped off to the side.

The interviewer cupped Marlena’s mosquito-bitten elbow. “You. Please to sing us Christmas traditional song. You choose. Sing!”

“‘Jingle Bells’?” Esmé piped up.

The boom swung toward Esmé. “‘Jingo Bell,’” the woman repeated. “Yes! This is wonderful ballad. From Stone Bell to Jingo Bell. Please. Begin!”

“Come on, Mom,” Esmé said. Marlena was horrified at what her daughter had wrought. Of all times for Esmé to choose to be cooperative. Harry strode off, laughing and yelling back in encouragement, “Yes, sing! It’ll be wonderful!”

The cameras rolled. The rain continued to play in the background, and Esmé’s voice soared over her mother’s squeaky one. Esmé loved to sing. She had a friend with a karaoke machine, and she sang better than all her friends. Just recently she had learned that you didn’t have to sing the standard notes; you could do loops around them and land on the tune where and when you wanted. And if you felt the music deep in your gut, a natural vibrato came up. She knew how to do it as no one else she knew could. The pride she felt put a tickle in her throat until she had to sing to soothe it.

Marlena’s and Esmé’s singing grew fainter as Harry strode away. He took a path that led up, and he was soon in front of what he guessed was one of the famed grottoes with its life-sized figures. It reminded him of a nativity scene. The carved faces showed obvious signs of repair, and given the dim light, most of the finer features were difficult to see. Like many holy artifacts, these had been maimed during the Cultural Revolution, their noses and hands lopped off. Harry wondered what the Red Guards might have done to defile the Grotto of Female Genitalia. Where the devil was it, anyway? All those damn signs were in Chinese. What should he be looking for? In trying to imagine it, he pictured the luscious genitalia of Marlena, as she lay splayed on a secret hillside spot. A quickening surged in his groin, but it was not passion.

Bugger. He had to piss. He’d never make it back to that miserable loo. He looked back and could see Marlena and Esmé still performing their musical recital in the courtyard. The old woman had joined the small audience. She was holding the baby, making her clap her little hands in rhythm to another stanza of “Jingle Bells.” Harry chuckled and continued walking along the path until he was out of view. In fact, he discovered he was at the end of the path. And there—how handy indeed—was a public urinal. This one was recessed in rock, about twenty inches wide, two feet in height, with a receptacle brimming with what looked like urine and cigarette ashes. (What that was actually was rainwater that had washed over joss-stick offerings.) The walls were wavy and smooth, leading Harry to think it had been worn down by centuries of men seeking the same relief. (Not so. That stone had been carved to resemble a vulva.) And portions of the loo, he noted, had been etched with graffiti. (The Chinese characters were in reality an engraving attributed to the Goddess of Female Genitalia, the progenitor of all life, the bearer of glad tidings to formerly barren women. “Open wide my convenient door,” was how it translated into English, “so that I may receive good karma from everywhere.”) Harry deposited his karma in one long, hissing stream. At last, his prostate was cooperating, what relief!

Off in the distance, the interviewer decided that it was best to get some shots of the Caucasian man so that she might reinforce the point that tourists came from everywhere. The TV crew walked up the path. From about fifty feet away, the cameraman trained his zoom lens on Harry, who was grinning ecstatically as he issued forth. The cameraman in turn let go with a stream of invectives. He informed the others what he had just witnessed. “Arrogant devils!” Together with the sound man and the male singer, he ran off in the direction of their holiest and now defiled shrine, shouting angrily. Marlena and Esmé followed, baffled and scared.

Harry was surprised to hear the commotion advancing his way. He peered about to see if the temple had caught fire. Were they about to wash away in a flash flood? What were the men so excited about? He walked toward the brouhaha. And then, to his astonishment, they had him circled: three men spitting, lunging, their faces twisted in rage. You didn’t have to know Chinese to realize they were swearing a blue streak. Even the woman in the pink suit, while not as rabid as the men, wore a hostile expression. “Shame you! Shame you!” she cried.

Harry ducked the swing of the boom and hurried to Marlena. “What the devil did you and Esmé do?” The words fell out wrong, but that is what happens when you feel you are about to be massacred.

“What the hell did you do?” Marlena spat back. “They keep yelling something about urine. Did you pee on some shrine?”

He huffed. “Of course not. I used an outdoor urinal—” And just as he said that, he realized the probable and awful truth. “Oh, shit.” He watched as the woman in ancient costume whipped out a mobile phone to tell the Bai minority chieftain what had just happened. How utterly amazing, Harry marveled, they get mobile phone reception way out here in the middle of hell.

The remainder of that momentous afternoon was a frantic attempt to herd the travelers into the bus so they could escape. Bai park rangers found Wendy and Wyatt half disrobed in another grotto. Rupert had to be rescued from a crumbling perch, and in the effort, damage was done to sensitive plant areas and the feet of a carved god. To keep dry, Dwight had kicked in the padlocked door of what he took to be an abandoned shed, and he, Roxanne, and Heidi entered and huddled inside. When park rangers discovered them in this off-limits temple, they shouted at them to get out. Hearing these unintelligible threats, Dwight and Roxanne picked up sticks and swung wildly, thinking the men were rogue thieves. Heidi screamed, certain she was about to be abducted and sold as a sex slave.

The old man at the tollbooth turned out to be the Bai chieftain. He shouted at Miss Rong and demanded a huge fine for all these unspeakable crimes. When he realized she didn’t understand a whit of what he was saying, he switched to Mandarin and ranted at her until she began to cry, letting everyone see she had completely lost face. In the end, he said, each of the “American hooligans” had to pay “a severe price—one hundred renminbi, yes, you heard me right, one hundred!”

What a relief, Bennie thought, when Miss Rong told him. That was cheaper than a San Francisco parking ticket. Everyone was glad to fork over the money and be on the way. When the pile was handed over, the chieftain gesticulated and yelled again at Miss Rong. He held up the money and slapped it, pointed to the back of the bus, at the puzzled faces turned around looking at him, and slapped the money again. With each slap, Miss Rong jerked but kept her mouth pressed closed, her eyes tilted down. “Jeesh,” Wendy said.

When Miss Rong finally got on the bus, her glasses looked steamed. She sat in the front seat, visibly trembling. She did not count heads or speak into the microphone to explain what they would be doing next.

On the bus ride back to the hotel, most of my friends were quiet, the only sound that of fingernails scratching skin. They had stopped at a roadside spot for the customary bathroom break, and a cloud of mosquitoes had descended on them, as if it were the Bai army chasing them away. Heidi passed out hydrocortisone cream. It was too late for the DEET.

Bennie was exhausted. His shoulders sagged. Was this an omen of things to come? Did they think it was all his fault for picking the tour guide? He was trying so hard to be perfect, doing things they were not even aware of! And look, there were no thanks, just complaints and blame and anger.

Dwight broke the silence. He remarked that Stone Bell Temple should have provided signs in other languages. How was he supposed to know it was a temple and not a chicken coop? Vera glared at him. “You still shouldn’t assume you can break into places.” She was angry with all the men except Bennie. They had exhibited the stupid male prerogative of ignoring the rules. Harry was beating himself up, feeling the fool, certain Marlena had a similar judgment of him. He had shouted at her, had accused her, when he had been the idiot who sent those TV folks into a tizzy. He sat at the back of the bus, having banished himself there. Marlena was also mulling over what Harry had said to her. She hated being yelled at by authority figures. Her father had done that, and it didn’t make her feel cowed anymore, just livid.

Wendy was unabashed by what had happened. She leaned against Wyatt, giggling as she thought about being caught in flagrante. It was exciting, in a weird way. She told him so in a naughty voice. He nodded, keeping his eyes closed. What they had done was not cool in his mind. He had been on ecotours where he was the one who had to reel in tourists who stepped on native plants, or tried to sneak home a lizard to keep as a souvenir or to sell. It irked him when people didn’t give a shit about the rules. He hated being guilty of the same.

Esmé sat with her mother, happily humming “Jingle Bells.” She hoped those Bai people would still use the part with her singing.

When the bus arrived at the hotel, Miss Rong muttered a few terse words to the driver, who then went off, leaving her standing alone at the front of the passengers. She kept her eyes turned down. Slowly, haltingly, she told her charges she would not be with them tomorrow. The Bai chieftain had said he was going to report the trouble to the authorities at the head office of China Travel Services. Her local boss had already called her and said to report to him immediately. She would be fired, that was certain. But they should not feel sorry for her, no. This was her fault. She should have kept them together as a group, explained to them what they were allowed to see. That was her responsibility, her job. She was very sorry she did not understand how to work more effectively with such an “individualistic group with many opinions, all not agreeing.” Since they were “so disagreeable,” she should have made stronger decisions to prevent them from committing the “danger of broken rule.” Her glasses were now spattered with tears, but she did not wipe them. She held her body rigid to keep from weeping aloud.

Though Miss Rong was incompetent, my friends were sad to think she might lose her job. That would be terrible. They looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes, unsure of what to say.

Before they could decide, Miss Rong took a deep, quavering breath to steady herself, picked up her plastic briefcase, and stepped off the bus.

My friends burst into talk.

“What a mess,” Moff said.

“We ought to give her a nice farewell tip,” Harry suggested. “Why don’t we collect some money now?”

“How much?” Roxanne asked. “Two hundred renminbi?”

“Four,” said Vera.

Harry raised his brows. “Four hundred? That’s almost five thousand for all of us. Maybe it’s too much. She’ll think we’re pitying her.”

“But we do pity her,” Vera said. “God knows they don’t give people unemployment in China when they’ve been fired.”

“I’ll give more,” Bennie said.

Everyone protested that offer.

Bennie added humbly, “Well, it was my fault for picking her.”

And no one made any noises in denying that, he noticed, and then felt humiliated and rejected, which launched him into anxiety.

“If she’s fired, why don’t we sign a petition of protest?” Wendy said.

Dwight sniffed. “Come on, this isn’t Berkeley. Besides, she really is a pretty bad tour guide.…”

All of a sudden, Miss Rong was again standing before them. My friends hoped she had not heard their exchange. “I forgot tell you one more thing,” she began.

Her former charges listened politely.

“One extra thing Bai minority chief tell me. Important I tell you.”

Oh, shit. The chief probably wanted more money, Bennie thought. Twenty dollars each was too good to be true. They were going to be shaken down for thousands.

This time Miss Rong did not look down. Her hair now looked wild, a statically charged crown. She kept her gaze straight ahead, as if she could see the future through the back window of the bus. “Chief, he telling other tourist authorities don’t letting you in … no cable car ride to Yak Meadow, no ancient music concert, no tourist traps. Because therefore you cannot enjoying no more beautiful things in Lijiang or in all Yunnan Province and China.…” Bennie had a sinking feeling. He saw the tour schedule crumbling, total chaos.

“He say for you bringing shame to Grotto of Female Things, everybody here you never have no more babies, no descendants, no future.…”

Dwight glanced at the mother-to-be of his children-to-be. Roxanne stared back.

Miss Rong’s voice rose higher and sang out louder: “He say even you pay one million dollar, still not enough keep trouble away.… He say he tell all gods give these foreigners bad curse, bad karma, following them forever this life and next, this country, that country, never can stop.”

Heidi’s anxiety bells were ringing.

Miss Rong took a deep breath, and right before she left the bus, she said in a voice that sounded clearly victorious. “This I thought you must know.”

At that moment, all twelve of my friends saw in their minds the water buffalo, knee deep in mud.