Fate and Love

WITH HER BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER in tow, Chieftain Rongong came out to the meadow.

I was dreaming when they arrived, a very noisy dream. It sounded as if flowers blooming in profusion beside the water were making a racket. I nearly woke up a time or two, but then I heard someone say softly, “Let him sleep. It’s exhausting to be the young master of a powerful chieftain.”

Vaguely I thought to myself, “It would be even more exhausting to be a powerful chieftain.”

Around midnight, I woke up and heard a loud wind whistling outside. Still too sleepy to open my eyes, I asked, “Is that the wind?”

“No, it’s the water.”

“They say that if the water is loud at night, the next day’s weather will be good.”

“That’s right. The young master is very smart,” said a strange voice.

I went back to sleep and slept very well that night, which was why I didn’t want to open my eyes right away the next morning. Since I often felt lost when I first awoke, not knowing where I was, I knew that my brain would be shocked into emptiness by the bright morning light if I opened my eyes before I was ready. I would be like a wine decanter that contained nothing but sound. So that morning, I shifted a little, feeling each body part before sending my consciousness toward the center, approaching my brain, and asking the questions: Where am I? Who am I?

I asked myself, “Who am I?”

I was the second young master of the Maichi family, the one whose head wasn’t quite right.

Then a perfumed hand touched me carefully as a voice asked, “Is the young master awake?”

“I’m awake,” I answered in spite of myself

The voice shouted, “The young master is awake!”

I sensed two or three more fragrant people come up to me. One of them said sternly, “Open your eyes if you’re awake.”

Normally, after I opened my eyes, I’d stare at something for a while before getting a fix on where I was, which was how I could make sure not to lose myself. There were times when I’d been awakened before I was ready, and for the rest of the day I was at a loss as to where I was. That was what happened this time. People around me started laughing before I had time to pose my important question and figure out where in the world I was. Someone was saying, “Everyone says that the second young master of the Maichi family is an idiot, but he sure knew where to find a good place to rest.”

A hand fell on my shoulder and shook it. “Get up. I need to talk to you about something.”

Without waiting for me to get up, several hands dragged me out from under the blanket. Amid women’s taunting laughter, I quickly saw myself, a stark-naked fellow with that thing between his legs standing up proudly. Their hands reached out and quickly dressed me. Now I really couldn’t recall where I was. The arrangement in the tent was familiar, but the seat of honor was taken by the female chieftain. As several hands dragged me over to her, I asked, “Where am I?”

She laughed and said, not to me but to the maids who had pushed me forward, “I wouldn’t know where I was if I awoke to find strangers all around me either.”

They giggled. It was impossible to stop those women from tittering at a moment even I found bizarre.

“Laugh if you want,” I said. “But I still don’t know where I am.”

Instead of answering my question, the female chieftain asked, “Don’t you recognize me?”

How could I not? But I shook my head.

Gnashing her teeth, she flicked a whip in her hand and opened a hole in the top of the tent.

“Where are my people?” I asked.

“Your people?”

“Yes, Sonam Tserang, Aryi, and Dolma.”

“Dolma? Was that the girl who shared your bed?”

I nodded. “She has the same name as my cook.”

She laughed. “Take a look at the girls around me.”

They were all very pretty. “Are you giving them to me?” I asked.

“Maybe, if you do as I say. But let’s eat first.”

I discovered that none of the servants who delivered the food was mine. After a few bites, I could tell that it hadn’t been prepared by Dolma. So while the female chieftain was occupied with eating, I racked my brain trying to figure out where I was and where my servants had gone. But I couldn’t, so I held my head and fell backward, only to land in the arms of a girl. The chieftain wasn’t upset by that.

“We’ll manage just fine if you stay like that,” she said.

Still holding my head in my hands, I said to the girl, “My head’s about to explode.”

She began to massage my temples with her perfumed hands.

When the chieftain finished eating, she asked, “Can you sit up now?”

I sat up.

“Fine, now let’s get down to business. You know you’re my prisoner, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“Where am I?”

“Stop acting stupid. They say you’re an idiot, but I don’t believe it. Now I want to know, are the rumors wrong or are you not really the second young master of the Maichi family?”

With all the sincerity I could muster, I told her I wouldn’t be able to remember anything, not a single thing, if she didn’t tell me where I was.

“All right,” she said. “Didn’t you come out to the warm spring pasture to avoid me?”

With a slap to my own forehead, I felt my head fill up with things, with everything. It all came to me. “I slept yesterday,” I said.

She snickered. “What nonsense is that? You slept yesterday and you woke up today.”

As the conversation progressed, I realized that I’d been kidnapped by the female chieftain. She had gotten nothing from the steward, who said he had no authority over the grain belonging to the Maichi family.

“Shall we take a walk?” she suggested.

“All right,” I said, “let’s take a walk.”

Armed women were guarding my servants. You see, that’s the difference between masters and slaves. Even under such circumstances, the young master was in the company of beautiful women. I could tell that my poor servants were hungry by the looks on their faces as I walked past.

“They’re hungry,” I said to the chieftain.

“My people are hungrier than they are.”

“Give them something to eat.”

“After we finish our discussion.”

“There’ll be nothing to talk about if you don’t feed them.”

“Would you look at this?” she said. “I’m having a tug-of-war with an idiot.”

But she told her people to bring them food, and my servants looked at me like dogs seeing their master. After strolling through the meadow, the chieftain and I returned to the tent. When she cleared her throat, I knew we were about to get down to business, so I spoke up first: “When do we leave?”

Caught off guard, she asked where we were going.

“To the Rongong dungeon.”

She laughed. “My God! You’re frightened. Would I do something like that? Of course not. All I want from you is some grain. You see, owing to my stupidity, my people are starving. You must lend me some grain. That’s all I came for, but then you decided to avoid me.”

The sun was directly overhead, turning the tent hot and stuffy. I was uncomfortable, but I could tell that she was much worse off than 1.1 told her that Chieftain Lha Shopa had mentioned grain as soon as he arrived, but she hadn’t said a word about grain until now. “As far as I can see, you came to introduce me to some pretty girls.”

She interrupted me. “But Lha Shopa went away empty- handed.”

“We had a disagreement. He said he was my uncle, and I said I was his, and that led to an argument.”

My comment amused her. “Yes, he’s the type who remembers every detail about family relationships, going back many years.”

“But he didn’t bring any money. Father said the Maichi grain is worth at least ten times the usual price.”

“Ten times?” she cried out. “I tell you, I only want to borrow some, just borrow it. You won’t get an ounce of silver. Do you hear me? Not a single ounce!”

I smiled. “It’s stuffy in here. I feel like going outside.”

Like it or not, she got up and followed me as I wandered among the tents. I was secretly treating her like one of my personal maids. When she grew impatient with walking, she said, “I’ve never walked like this with an idiot. I’m tired. That’s enough for me.”

We had, as it turned out, reached the warm spring, so I took off my clothes and slipped into the water, where I began to float. She turned her back to me, as if she’d never seen a naked man before. “Did you bring plenty of silver with you?” I said to her back.

“Is this how you discuss serious business?”

“Father says we can’t sell it for less than ten times the usual price. He knew that you planted only opium, so he built our granary at your doorstep. If he hadn’t, you’d finish it off before you even got home.”

She turned toward me, desperation written all over her face. After sending her servants away, she said tearfully, “I’ve come to borrow food. I don’t have much silver, and that’s the truth. Why are you doing this to me? Everyone knows that the Rongong family is run by women, which is why they never turn down one of our requests. Why are you rebuffing a poor woman now?”

“No one in the world takes advantage of an idiot. Why should a woman be any different?”

“I’m old. I’m an old hag.”

She then summoned two of her maids and asked me if they were pretty enough. I nodded. But when she told them to get into the water with me, I shook my head. “My God!” she exclaimed. “What else do you want? I have nothing left.”

I smiled foolishly. “Yes, you do. You have a daughter, don’t you?”

She cried out in pain. “But you’re an idiot!”

Without another word, I took a deep breath and buried my head in the water. That was a game I’d played in the river every summer since I was a boy. I could stay submerged for a very long time. I surfaced after holding my breath as long as possible, but she pretended she didn’t see. So I kept at it, going under, then coming up, snorting like a horse after a long ride. The water was soft and satiny, and as I tumbled around, I stirred up a strong sulfur odor, which the people on the bank could barely stand. I was having so much fun that I forgot what we’d been talking about. Women were only women; they couldn’t begin to compare with the water. If the historian had been there, I’d have told him to take note of my feelings. Instead, I’d have to tell him when I got home—if I remembered it that long. I’d have him write: On a certain day in such and such a year, the second young master experienced such and such feelings, and stuff like that. I was sure that the tongueless one could make my feelings sound a lot more significant than I could. But maybe, since his vision had gotten so much sharper after losing his tongue, he’d just smile and ask sarcastically, “How significant can that be?” But I’d still make him write it down. That’s what I was thinking as I bobbed up and down in the water, which pounded my eardrums like thunder.

By then the chieftain was so angry that she tore a string of coral beads from her neck and threw it at me. My forehead swelled up immediately. “If Chieftain Maichi knew you’d hit his idiot son,” I said as I stood up, “you couldn’t buy a kernel of our barley even at ten times the price.”

Immediately realizing the gravity of her rash action, she moaned. “Young Master, please get out. Let’s go see my daughter.”

My God! I was actually going to meet the most beautiful girl in the world!

The heart of the Maichi’s second young master was thumping so wildly that he experienced sharp pains under his ribs, pains that filled him with happiness.

When we reached a particularly handsome tent, she turned somber. “Are you sure, Young Master? Are you sure you want to meet my daughter?”

“Why not?”

“Men are all the same, smart or stupid.” She gave me a long look. “Great misfortune falls to unlucky people who get what they do not deserve. No ordinary man should have a girl like Tharna.”

“Tharna?”

“Yes, that’s my daughter’s name.”

My God! The name made me hot all over. I’d already met a Dolma who was more wonderful than the former Dolma, and now here was a girl with the same name as my personal maid. Without even waiting for a servant to raise the flap, I rushed forward and was immediately caught up in the soft material. The more I struggled, the more tightly it wound around me. At last I got free. Panting heavily and holding onto the ripped flap, I stood before Tharna like an idiot. At that moment, even my fingernails were burning, let alone my heart and my eyes. It was as if a shout sent forth at Earth’s creation had traveled all that time before finally obtaining a response here, at this moment, from an unsurpassingly beautiful girl. Now she was sitting in front of me at the far end of the tent, smiling brilliantly, her sparkling white teeth showing between red lips. The clothes she wore were intended not to cover her body, but to suggest, to spark the imagination.

Unable to control myself, I shouted, “It’s you! It’s really you!” That first shout was loud and filled with joy. But when the second shout emerged from my mouth, I went limp and nearly keeled over. Somehow I managed to steady myself.

The Maichi’s idiot son was stunned by the girl’s beauty.

Startled by my entrance, Tharna looked at her mother. “Is this the one you came to see, Ah-ma?”

The female chieftain nodded gravely. “He’s here to see you, my dear daughter.”

Tharna said in a soft whisper, “I see.”

Then she closed her eyes, which should have aroused my sympathy. I was a kind person, but this was Tharna’s fate, the fate of meeting her man. I was rendered powerless when her long, curving, rainbowlike lashes fluttered.

Feeling that even my bones were blistering, I cried out, “Tharna!”

And she responded. A tear rolled out of the corner of one eye. But the smile returned as she opened her eyes, and said, “You know my name. Now tell me yours.”

“I’m the idiot of the Maichi family, Tharna.”

I heard her laugh. I saw her laugh!

“You are an honest idiot,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “yes, I am.”

Laying her hand, so soft yet so cold, on mine, she asked, “Have you agreed?”

“Agreed to what?’

“To lend my mother some grain.”

“Yes.”

At that moment, my head was gurgling like boiling water. How could I have known the difference between yes and no? Her hand was as cold as jade. Once she received the answer she sought, she laid her other hand in mine. This one was scalding hot, like fire. She smiled before turning to her mother again. “Would you excuse us, please?”

Her mother and the maids left.

Now there were only the two of us inside the tent.

On the ground, tiny yellow flowers peeked out from between two rugs. Since I didn’t dare look at her now, I fixed one eye on the flowers and the other on the two pairs of clasped hands.

She suddenly cried out, “You don’t deserve me. You really don’t deserve me.”

I knew that, which was why I had trouble looking her in the eye.

But she merely wept a bit before leaning against me and saying, “I’ll not fall in love with you. You cannot capture my heart, and you cannot earn my faithfulness. But I am yours now, so hold me.”

Her words filled my heart with ecstasy and searing pain at the same time. I held her tightly, as if clasping my own fate. And at that moment, I realized that, even from the point of view of an idiot, this is not a perfect world. Everything in it is the same: When you don’t want something, it is complete and pure. But when you take it in hand, you find it is only partly yours. Yet I was delighted to be holding this beauty in my arms, gazing into her eyes, my lips close to hers. I was the happiest man alive. “You see,” I said. “You’ve turned me into an idiot. I don’t know what to say.”

She surprised me by laughing. “Turned you into an idiot? Aren’t you the idiot known far and wide?” She reached up to block my lips, which were drawing up to hers, and muttered, “Who knows? Maybe you’re a fascinating man after all.”

Then she let me kiss her. But when I reached for her supple breasts, she stood up and straightened her clothes. “Get up,” she said. “Let’s go get the grain.”

At that moment, my blood and marrow, and not just my brain, were bubbling over with love. In a daze, I walked outside with her. There’s something between us now, I told myself, but I wasn’t sure what that something was.

After the female chieftain released my servants, we headed toward our fortress, the border granary. Tharna and I rode side by side ahead of everyone, followed by the Rongong chieftain, then her maids and my two young servants.

The steward’s mouth dropped when he saw us.

I told him to open the granary; his mouth dropped even lower. Pulling me to one side, he said, “But, Young Master, surely you remember the master’s orders.”

“Open the granary.”

Flames of madness must have shown in my eyes, for the steward, who believed that his absolute loyalty to the master gave him the right to insist upon certain things, said no more. He removed the key tied around his waist and tossed it to Sonam Tserang. When I turned around, I heard him mutter that, when all was said and done, I was no different from my smart brother, who could lose his wits over a woman. The old steward was a good man. As he watched Sonam Tserang walk downstairs to open the granary, then load sack after sack of barley onto the backs of Rongong’s horses, he said, “Poor Young Master, you have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

“I got the most beautiful girl alive.”

“They never expected to get so much grain. You see, they didn’t bring enough pack horses.”

They were forced to use riding horses for some of the grain, and even then, with fewer than thirty horses, they weren’t able to transport a quarter of one storage room’s contents. We had twenty-five such rooms, each brimming with grain.

The chieftain walked over from the laden horses and told me that her daughter was returning with her to wait for Chieftain Maichi’s marriage proposal. She added, “You’d better send someone soon.”

Before they sent more horses for grain, that was.

Tharna disappeared beneath the clouds as their caravan moved into the distance.

“Why is that lovely girl going too?” the steward asked.

The inquisitive look on his face told me what he was thinking. He believed I’d fallen into Chieftain Rongong’s beauty trap, and I began to regret letting Tharna go. What if she didn’t return? What good would all that damned grain be then? None, none at all. An empty feeling in my heart stayed with me that night as I lay in bed listening to a high wind blow across the sky. Look at me, losing sleep over a woman.

My heart—now I felt your existence. You were filled half with longing and half with torment.