meditation.”
“A vision?”
“The book says that a Buddhist monk in the 12th Century, during his meditation, had a vision. In his vision he saw the end of the world and then he saw the Oracle of Singh Ma and the earth was healed.”
“You’re joking!”
“No. It says here that the Oracle represents a healing energy that will flood from the cosmos and stop the apocalypse as it is happening.”
“What? It’s going to save us from the apocalypse? Do they say which particular apocalypse it’s going to save us from?”
“I don’t know. I just read this stuff.”
“Great! You keep reading that stuff and I’ll keep learning how to fix people’s teeth.”
“Don’t be so cynical. If you’ve found a physical manifestation of this thing, it’s an esoteric icon. It’s not of this world.”
“What world is it of then? If I found it, it can’t be from any worlds that are that far away. Is it going to bring us good luck?”
Ping rolled her eyes.
“Sorry,” said Tashi. “I’m a practical guy. All this esoteric stuff doesn’t mean much to me. You’re the space cadet. What does it mean? Is it valuable?”
“How dare you call me a space cadet?”
And with that Ping got up and stormed away with her book firmly wedged under an uncompromising arm.
Shocked, Tashi followed her. He knew she’d won. If she really had found a picture of the thing he and Wen had found, there was no way he was going to prevent her from visiting his family. She had the ultimate excuse.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t serious.”
Ping turned and began to cry.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s my father,” said Ping. “The case against him isn’t going well. My mother thinks he’s going to stay in jail for a long time.”
“Surely they’ll clear him. He’s not a criminal.”
“I hope so. My mother is losing hope.”
“Don’t worry, my darling. Things will work out. You’ll see.”
* * *
The train journey felt as though it was never going to end. Tashi hated it because he imagined that Ping must also be hating it. The worst part was that she never complained once. She even pretended to be enjoying it.
Tashi had always travelled third class, hard seat. He’d never thought to do otherwise.
Ping, however, wanted to fly to Lhasa and travel first class back to Nagqu. There was absolutely no circumstance under which Tashi was prepared to allow her to pay his fare back to Tibet. Even though the money meant nothing to her, it was the last bastion, the line in the sand that his pride would not cross. That meant the train, all 28 hours of it. If he stretched his budget to its absolute limit he could almost afford to pay what he considered an exorbitant fare and travel second class, hard sleeper but Ping still had to pay for herself.
The small compartment contained six bunks stacked three on each side, so they had to share with another four passengers. There was no door separating them from the narrow corridor and the only seating available was in the corridor outside the compartment unless they wanted to lie on their bunks. Ping happily engaged two of the other passengers in conversation and was very pleased to discover that they came from a village not far from Tashi’s. Ping thought this meant they had something in common. Tashi didn’t want to have anything in common with ordinary Tibetans. He dreaded the moment Ping realised what she was really dealing with. He knew he was heading irreversibly towards her realisation of just how humble it was possible for a human being’s origins to be.
Tashi didn’t sleep very well that night, despite being on a second tier bunk that was actually quite comfortable compared to previous journeys he’d spent trying to sleep on the hard seats. Ping was on the bunk next to his with one of the passengers she’d befriended snoring loudly on the bunk above her. Tashi could tell by the way she kept tossing and turning, she wasn’t sleeping very well either.
The sound of the train was barely able to compete with an array of sleep related noises being randomly emitted throughout the carriage.
As the sun rose Tashi was unable to suppress the joy he felt at the sight of the prayer flags that began to appear scattered across the barren countryside as they gained altitude, speeding towards the Tibetan plateau. Their bright colours and random placement contrasted with the uniform silver power pylons that marched purposefully beside the railway track, symbols of progress, order and power.
Similarly, the closer they got to Tibet, the orderly, clean white sheep were gradually being infiltrated by yaks. Yaks are not orderly, clean or white. They are large, dirty, multi-coloured beasts that lumber around the countryside like lost, drunken hooligans. Tashi felt like a yak pretending to be a sheep.
By the time Ping finally gave up on her battle with semi-unconsciousness, Tashi was suffering from chest pains. He’d internalised his discomfort, having barely eaten on the journey and was dehydrated.
Ping rolled over and greeted him with a fresh Chinese smile that made him feel even dirtier than a yak. He felt like dried yak dung. If only somebody would set him on fire, so he could escape and float away on the cool mountain breeze.
Finally, halfway through the morning, the dreaded moment arrived. The squeal of the train’s un-oiled brake drums, accompanied by a lurching decrease in velocity, signified that unavoidable, ultimate humiliation was upon him.
Ping tactfully refrained from pointing out that they’d stopped at a railway station which was the only man-made structure in sight.
Several yaks stared at the train as if it was the first they’d ever seen.
Tashi’s mother and father were waiting on the platform. His mother had worn her best dress and his father looked like he was going to a temple. They’d managed to find clothes that insisted they were poor peasants. He could see them smiling expectantly amongst the few others meeting the train as it pulled up at the platform. Ping looked more like a Chinese princess than ever.
Tashi resisted a sudden urge to pretend they hadn’t arrived yet and stay on the train. His mother’s expectant smile was too strong a beacon for him to ignore.
The small part of him that wasn’t utterly ashamed of his humble origins was proud that both his parents had obviously devoted time and effort to their appearance and had come to meet them.
The very idea that he’d fallen in love with a Chinese girl constituted heresy to some of the less tolerant members of the small village he had been so desperate to leave behind forever. The colloquial expression, ‘the toad wants to eat the swan’s meat,’ referred to Tibetans (toads) who married into rich, Chinese (swans) families. It was a less than flattering description of his predicament. He had no way of knowing how his parents were going to react to Ping and was certain that a lot of his old neighbours would be openly hostile.
The pain had dropped to his stomach. Almost unbearably he helped Ping drag their bags down from the overhead storage rack. They clambered unsteadily towards the exit and down onto the platform.
Tashi’s reticence was instantly swallowed up by the radiance of his mother’s smile, which she quickly adapted to smothering him with kisses.
Ping stood back while his father fidgeted uncertainly. At the extreme periphery of his vision, Tashi could see the awkwardness looming between them. His father maintained his distance until Tashi was able to disentangle himself from his mother and affect a formal introduction.
Tashi’s mother threw herself at Ping like an out of control hugging machine. Ping appeared to be delighted and allowed herself to be hugged and kissed before a more formal acceptance of Tashi’s father’s hand, which she enthusiastically