2025 MFP: Beasts of Burden

         My dearest friend and neighbor, Shanshan, who I drank tea and gossiped with for some thirty-odd years, taught me certain essential lessons about the womanly virtues which I have taken pains to disavow. This was out of respect for our dissimilarities and in simple distaste of her choices. Yet I cannot deny that she was guided by the most extraordinary sensibilities. Like a Himalayan goose she labored great distances north and south in pursuit of the pole star of her existence. Tales of her life had the effect of destabilizing my convictions, and I have held my observations of her trajectory close inside me like one long, unreleased breath. 
         From the years between 1973 and 1988 her husband Dechen returned to Lhasa every summer, attempting to bribe the county judges into approving their divorce papers without Shanshan’s signature. He had a mistress, a secretary in the military where he was a mid-ranking official. This poor other woman was pregnant, then gave birth to a girl. Contrary to my expectations Dechen was neither foolish nor especially ruthless. As a young man he had married Shanshan in accordance with his parents’ wishes and the blessings of the monks, then took adequate care of her and their son. What he had later succumbed to could well be attributed to all human beings, who are generally not as loyal a species as the migratory birds.  
         “Shanshan, why did you come all the way to Hong Kong?” I had asked, over our first shared meal. She served me buttered tea and a fried pastry called khapse, while I offered her plastic containers of steamed dumplings. I was fascinated by this small, wistful woman whose tan cheeks were burnished with plateau redness, the result of growing up against harsh mountain wind. She wore her hair in a long, graying braid and throughout our decades of companionship never spoke of anyone with rancor or dissatisfaction. 
         I thought of her then as no more than a caged housewife, clipped, blindfolded and moved quietly from one foreign locale to another. Ever since studying ornithology in Yunnan I’ve felt qualified to make these comparisons - I know a great deal about the lives of birds and can spot these avian patterns around me. So I was confused to then discover that she had willingly, by the force of her own wanting, taken her son and followed Dechen east into Chengdu, then down to Kunming, passing briefly through Wuhan, before finally settling into my port city. So startled was I by her frankness when retracing her journey over a pocket map that I assumed I had misunderstood her, for there was no easy common dialect between us. 
         “I go where he go,” she said firmly, referring to the husband who had long divorced her, who had nested with his new family an hour away. 
         In the early years in Hong Kong she made a living with her young son by selling Tibetan meat pies by the metro station, profiting a tidy sum from an authenticity-hungry economy by donning her bright wool gown and fox fur cap. In the summers this attire gave her a strange, insulated appearance against the swarm of cotton-clad city-dwellers. It struck me as perverse, to see her exhibit herself like a trained parakeet to the gawking commuters. It was as if underneath each curious side glance or petty purchase they pelted nuts and trash into her enclosure. For Shanshan beyond any other woman I hoped for emancipation, which I pictured taking place in her own grassland, with her wingspan extended into startling blue sky. In our private evenings, after her son fell asleep, we would peck sunflower seeds together and watch TV serials, and she would point out with a finger held taut every pixel on the screen which reminded her of Lhasa. 
         Yet of her own volition she had traveled thousands of miles in pathetic pursuit of Dechen’s occasional attention. As far as I could tell she was immune to the fact of her legal separation with her husband, yet she made no unnecessary attempt to contact him. On the surface it appeared that they had come to a friendly and cosmopolitan truce, since he visited her three or four times a year of his own accord, arriving with his arms weighed down by earnest and generous gifts. Her son had amassed an extensive collection of light-up toy trucks which continued to expand long after he had outgrown their noisy spectacle. Between Shanshan and Dechen’s efforts the boy’s itinerant childhood had cumulated into several genuinely pleasant fledgling years, where neither man nor fate had yet been cruel to him. 
         In early 1992 I discovered that Shanshan had never stopped thinking of herself as a married woman. She invited me to dine one night, a few days before the lunar new year when Dechen was typically visiting. It was an unusually cold winter for the temperate peninsula. The rainfall condensed into an opaque precipitation, which in brief and sudden bursts took the form of snow. I was hesitant to agree, since I felt tenderly for Shanshan and did not wish to encounter the cause of her sorrows. Yet I was curious about the man who had inspired her many years of devotion. After some deliberation I picked up a festive fruit basket from the local vendor, and, bundled in my heavy overcoat, I came by her door.
         The smells of cooking were already filling the small apartment, a smoke rich and hot with tones of turmeric, pepper, cumin. The low hanging ceiling of the living room was adorned with bright orange brocade streamers. Dechen was sitting on the floor, fiddling with a Rubik’s cube to the fascination of his son. Nearly fifty, he was lean and tall, with an angular face and unstained teeth. Shanshan stood beside me, her arms behind her back and beaming with pride as she showed me her man. I was not altogether impressed but conceded that he fared better than most his age. 
         “Finally we have four for mahjong,” she said cheerfully. “Go set the table, Dampa.” 
         “Miss Ngamei,” Dechen said, shaking my hand. “I wish to thank you for keeping Shanshan company, and hope to return this favor one day.” From his serious tone I understood the phrase to be a vow of some kind. 
         Dinner was a vibrant array of lamb stew, potato momo, radish broth and tsampa dumplings. Before eating, the family pressed their hands together, bowed their heads and recited a quick prayer. Around me Shanshan had never insisted on this routine, and she nudged Dechen and whispered in Tibetan like a shy schoolgirl for him to explain its significance. 
         “My Chinese is not so good,” she blushed. “But please you tell her.”
         “It is an offering to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha,” Dechen said, turning to me while mixing tsampa inside his palm. “To remind ourselves to eat with mindfulness and that the purpose of food is to keep our bodies healthy so we can benefit others. Us Buddhists believe in the simple and observable fact that each action taken bears comparable fruit. So good is met with good, and evil with evil, and follows us in this life and the next.” 
         Shanshan looked up from her chewing and nodded solemnly. The bare and unreflected feeling of karmic retribution had also permeated the background of my upbringing, but after nearly a century and a half of British rule such explicit practitioners of the faith were rare in Hong Kong. The Europeans did not even spare the birds. The passenger pigeons whose immense flocks had once darkened the sky in cloud-like patches were hunted by colonialists to extinction. I was tempted to ask why Dechen had abandoned his wife and son if he was so confident in reincarnation, but already feeling unenlightened I decided against spoiling Shanshan’s perfect evening. 
         “You should have mentioned your rituals,” I said, reaching under the table to pat Shanshan’s knee. “All this time I’ve been so uncultured around you.” 
         Shanshan shook her head. “No, no, you are not uncultured. Just modern woman.”
         After a moment a mischievous grin snuck across her face. “And pale like milk.” 
         At this remark the three Tibetans burst into laughter, which they left unexplained to me. After they had contented themselves with their joke I realized from Shanshan’s sly and satisfied smile that she had saved the observation for just this moment. Dinner was solid eating, and as my belly filled I felt as though I had finally understood the full flavors of the plateau. By the time we cleared the table for mahjong, Shanshan was tipsy and in high spirits, Dechen being pleasant company and very affectionate with his son. Dampa basked in the attention and reveled in the pleasure of rapidly spinning his head left and right, finding a loving face on each side. He whined uncharacteristically for his parents to let him take a sip of the beer, and though Dechen was hesitant, Shanshan relented and rationed a small glass for him. We played many rounds late into the night, Shanshan drinking several more beers as the moon crept overhead. She insisted, with rare and wonderful loudness, on placing bets on some loose sachets of nuts, which all belonged to her. I lost to her son on purpose, played fairly against her, and challenged Dechen viciously just to see if he would be a good sport – which he was, although nothing yet was at stake. 
         Well past midnight, after her son had passed out snoring on the table, after calming Shanshan’s singsong begging with the promise to return tomorrow, I was finally permitted to leave. As I was putting on my boots I overheard Dechen speak to her in a low voice. His body was tense. Her smile wavered. She responded slowly, her eyes wide and her words slurred. Dechen sat her down gingerly, then held his head in his hands. 
         I walked back into the room, covered in gooseflesh and glaring. Dechen caught my gaze. He knew his place and confessed without protest. 
         “If you must know, Miss Ngamei,” he said, his head bowed, “I’ve come to ask for money. My wife has fallen ill and needs treatment for her heart condition.” 
         Just then the room drained of its drowsy cheer. Dechen was not speaking of Shanshan but rather his second wife, the mistress he had divorced my best friend for. I felt a wicked wave of justice for Shanshan, but kept my neutral face. Was this not retribution of some kind? The shrike, the sweet songbird, impales its prey alive on barbed branches. In moments like these it is easy to understand why the Buddhists, or indeed any other person of faith, cling to their notions of cosmic retribution. Vengeance is easier by fate than by one’s own hands. 
         “Help me, Shanshan,” Dechen begged. “I’m ashamed to even ask. But my daughter is seven years old. She can’t lose her mother.” 
         Dechen had waited for her to be drunk and vulnerable to make this terrible demand. Shanshan looked at him, then at me, vacantly, her cheeks moist. I realized with a jolt that this abandoned housewife had no feeling of triumph against the other woman. I searched her face but could not interpret its constellations of movement. My body ran cold.
         To this day I remember that moment when Shanshan made her decision. She wrapped her arms around Dechen, her sobs leaving wet splotches on the back of his shirt. She spoke to him quietly in Tibetan. And then it was done. She agreed to give him whatever the other woman needed. Dechen nodded soberly, in tears himself, answering her in his vowing register. The pair leaned into each other, Shanshan resting her forehead on his, Dechen gripping her hand tight. The contrails of their past life together had left the residue of intimacy between them. Shanshan’s crying woke Dampa, who upon rousing from the table, seemed to misinterpret the scene with his parents in each other’s embrace and a wide smile broke across his face. Shanshan and Dechen did not notice their son elated and upright, approaching with open arms.
         What could have happened, if, like the albatrosses, human beings could not outlive their grief?
         I patted the boy’s shoulder and stopped him. Not knowing what to say, I simply shook my head. Dampa stood still, stunned by my apologetic gesture. In his young life he had never been truly mistreated. He could not even comprehend what was happening to him. After a moment the child collapsed onto the floor and held his knees to his chest. 
         Dechen hung his head. He knew clearly, I could tell, that he was a man with the insatiable habit of making a mess of his own life and the lives of others.
         The next morning I walked Shanshan to the bank and the pawnshop. I carried a flimsy umbrella over the both of us, but now sober, Shanshan seemed indifferent to the wet and cold. In fact she seemed unlike herself, walking as though she was in torpor, a sleep-like state I had only observed in small-bodied hummingbirds who live in a constant struggle against death by hunger and exhaustion. The money from her savings and the pawned jewelry in her marital trousseau totaled to an impressive sum, and she relinquished without flinching her gold earrings, turquoise bracelets, and prized strands of coral. 
         As we threaded through the crowds on the way back, Shanshan suddenly took an unfamiliar turn and led me down a tight alleyway, where we snaked through to another street, past the noisy fruit market and cluster of hair salons, and came to face an empty storefront. The small space was just a hole in the wall, with the landlord’s contact plastered over its window. Shanshan lingered at this vacant lot with longing.
         “I don’t tell anyone. I save money to open restaurant here,” she said softly, running her hands over the brick walls, pacing the length of the entrance in three slow steps. “Here, put up sign, blue and gold. Here, pies and momo. Machine to play Tibetan songs. In the back, soups and meats. Now I wait many years more before possible again. So many years.”
         I sat down with her at the damp edge of the street. Having exhausted her tears last night, what came out of Shanshan was a dry suffering. It frightened me to know that love could drive a person to such indignities.
         “Maybe never possible again. But it fair, since I’ve been so evil,” Shanshan said, her red and puffy eyes taking me in. She spoke the next words with shuddering pain, as if with each syllable she spat out mouthfuls of teeth. “When Dechen divorce me, I want harm to come to her. I pray for sickness and misfortune. Her daughter was born and I not stop begging at the altar. You understand, Ngamei? This repentance. My debt to her, and to an innocent child. I won’t carry it to the next life.”
         I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The rain had stopped but left behind an oppressive humidity. I lowered the umbrella. There was a horrible, orbital anger inside me, encircling Shanshan’s meekness, her foolish refusal to let herself live or to revel in the natural entitlement to spite. I knew not of another animal with such total docility. Even the smallest, most flightless creature is born with the instinct to fight for itself, though this is often not enough. 
         “When will Dechen pay you back?” I demanded. “He should not have asked you.” 
         “Dechen know he is wrong to ask,” Shanshan answered flatly. “He say he will pay soon. And if in this life he has nothing to give me, he promise in the next life he will be reborn as my beast of burden.” 
         To this I could say nothing. Against the miseries of my friend’s own making I could ultimately do nothing. We sat there a while, underneath the bellies of crows and seagulls in flight. We stayed until Shanshan could bid farewell to her almost restaurant. Then I walked her back home, where the aftermath of her womanly virtues was waiting. Inside my own apartment I soaked my cold feet in a basin of hot water, and as the temperature of my body rose I wondered whether there had ever existed a beast that carried no burdens. Not even the cranes and storks are spared this. In 1882 a farmer in Scotland shot down a stork who carried in its neck a spear of west African origin. This is how we discovered their migration.
         Shanshan would endure another fifteen years of wandering through metro stations with her cart of meat pies before the grown-up Dampa secured small investors for his mother’s restaurant. Whatever Dampa felt about his father he never disclosed, but his devotion to his mother was open and unabashed. Shanshan was over sixty then, and cut the ribbon on her long-awaited dream on the eve of the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong’s liberation from British control. That long summer day was punctuated by the noise of firecrackers and dragon dancing. The small crowd that had gathered at the steps of the new Taste of Lhasha seemed to be made of the same cheer as the greater masses gathering for the city. For a brief moment, I was convinced that the spirit of liberation had at long last touched her. Standing beneath the streamers I caught a glimpse of Dechen and his wife, both clapping in the background. She was a thin and unpossessive figure, who had enjoyed fifteen years of an ordinary perfect life on the back of Shanshan’s quiet labor. Her heart stopped pounding six months later. In that moment she seemed to be giving back to Shanshan the man she knew they both loved.  
         Perhaps the Buddhists have it right after all, that each action bears its natural response. But whether good is met with good, and evil with evil, is something else entirely. The ripples of that stone cast into my life certain aspersions on the affairs of the heart - in love like in all matters there are questions of worth. Even separated, Shanshan and Dechen seemed entangled somehow, as though cutting across the city there were invisible lines of want and sorrow which bound them together in this life and the next. Knowing this, I myself could only love others sparingly, and with reservation. 
         Dechen returned to Shanshan one final time in the winter of 2012. By then his daughter had married and left for Shanghai. The military had long dispensed of him, and he trailed from one construction site job to another. His veteran history, however, had left him jumpy and uneasy around loud noises, a tendency which resulted in an accident that drove a steel rebar halfway through his thigh. It severed his tendons. Whether this debilitation had left him wanting of familiar faces, or if he was simply a man who lived poorly without a woman’s care, I do not know. He hobbled by the restaurant after sundown, in familiar fashion, with gifts tied to the handles of his crutches. 
         I had retired by then and passed the idle hours of the evenings in the kitchen dicing garlic and potatoes with Shanshan, her busiest hours being the early morning rush. Dampa, unpacking produce in the front, saw him first, and his body stiffened. 
         I walked into father and son exchanging heated whispers. 
         “Auntie Ngamei,” Dampa said, eyeing over his father with a sober, aquiline gaze. “Perhaps we ought not tell my amma about this visitor. He may mean well. But he can bring her no good.” 
         Hearing this Dechen deflated. Gently he untied the bags of hawthorns and oranges from his crutches and laid them in his son’s hands. He turned around and manoeuvred clumsily down the steps. How many decisive moments, throughout the course of a human life, occur from the simple and brute force of chance? By comparison the murmurations of crossing sparrow flocks are more predictable. Shanshan, looking up from the kitchen, happened to glimpse just the tip of his dark head as it slipped into the night, and came out running.
         Dampa stood frozen, the ghost of his child self hovering over him. Shanshan rushed to embrace Dechen. She laughed and cried and praised the heavens. His decrepit state did nothing to deter her – her womanly touch over his injuries, his sagging body, burst with newlywed tenderness and obsession. Without hesitation she settled him in her home, as though his decades of disloyalty and itinerance was merely an interlude in their marriage which had now resumed in its natural course. In his last years Dechen hid himself behind the restaurant kitchen, where he could chop onions and prep dough without putting pressure on his legs. However ineffective he was, his instincts for labor never waned. Of course, there is no known point in a bird’s lifespan where it loses the capacity for flight. Dampa, seeing his mother’s radiance and renewed vigor, resigned himself to her decision. When he and his handsome bride welcomed their first child after a difficult pregnancy, Dampa made prostrations at the altar, where he promised the Bodhisattva these blessings would be cherished. 
         For all of Dechen’s failures as a husband, he was in the day-to-day a likeable character whose charms were especially effective with children. He and Shanshan made adoring grandparents to Dampa’s darling baby girl. This was a task for which Shanshan seemed to have waited her entire life. When their granddaughter started walking she was constantly underfoot in the restaurant and took whatever she pleased from the customers’ plates, being rarely reprimanded. On her days of rest Shanshan and I wandered together in the old open-air markets, which seemed to grow quieter every year. The city’s commercial hubs were gravitating towards the new indoor malls, with white tiles and fluorescent lighting which intimidated us both. In this, the ever-modernizing city had finally outgrown me. At our small, familiar markets Shanshan spent her time perusing the haphazard heaps of food and trinkets, selecting with care the goods to spoil her granddaughter and her husband. When she was satisfied with her picks, she and I would return to her apartment and sit by the droning of the TV, drinking tea and retasting our memories which contained by then decades of marinated sweetness and melancholy.
         “I live well,” Shanshan surmised one night, stretching as she tidied up our heap of sunflower seed husks, her joints cracking faintly as she moved. Dechen wandered by and gave her arm a light squeeze. “I am good wife, good mother.”
         This was a difficult matter for me to assess, for I had been neither and was thus in the habit of repudiating her choices. Yet we were nearing our seventies and it seemed pointless now to attempt to dissuade her from her principles.
         “Indeed,” I conceded, smiling. “Good woman, there is nothing else left to do.”
         Shanshan responded with a playful sternness. “Oh, plenty to do still. You know, of course, I want to see Lhasa again.”
         Dechen heard this and his shoulders sagged. It was one of the many signs that he understood completely the extent of Shanshan’s sacrifices, though he could do nothing by way of redress.
         Three years later his condition had deteriorated irrevocably and caring for him had become a significant burden on the family. His old wound was in a constant state of infection and he lashed out whenever it was suggested that he take to permanent bedrest. Restrained inside the apartment, Dechen allowed himself to be doted on by Shanshan only when he felt his contributions commensurate to her unconditional affections. These occasions became more and more rare, and by the autumn of 2015 the once surefooted Dechen had been reduced to something of a ghostly spectre, drinking constantly to numb his pain and given buckets of peanuts to peel in order to placate his spiritual need to be helpful. 
         One morning I dropped by their apartment to pick up Shanshan’s forgotten wallet and deliver it to the restaurant. The early sun cast a beautiful glow over the city. Dechen was sitting in his wheelchair by the window, staring vacantly at the sparrows in the courtyard. I gave the irritable old man a polite greeting, keeping my thoughts private. I always stayed quiet when there was real disagreement. 
         “Miss Ngamei,” Dechen said suddenly. “Shanshan is very tired, isn’t she? I’ve made her very tired.” 
         To this I could only agree. Against my better judgement I added something else. 
         “Perhaps in the next life you’ll really become her tilling ox, her carriage horse,” I said mildly. “Maybe ease her burdens for a change.” 
         Dechen looked at me as though I had put a bullet through his chest. His eyes watered. He cried into his clenched fists and slumped into his chair. By the next morning, he had disappeared, informing no one of his whereabouts. He had even left behind even his wheelchair. It was scarcely imaginable how he had inched his broken body away. But as the Buddhists tell us, the possibility of escaping the consequences of one’s actions is simply a mirage over murky waters. Driven into a frenzy, Shanshan shut down her restaurant and hovered in the streets, her heron-white hair streaking from her head. She carried print-outs of his picture taken decades ago at their wedding, asking passersby if they had seen her husband. No reminder of her perfect son or granddaughter seemed to dull her pain. Finally, unable to bear her erratic suffering, I sat down with Dampa. We were by then long-time allies against his mother’s heart. We discussed the matter honestly, and came to an agreement. Dampa found copies of his father’s old letters, and forged another in shaky Tibetan script. We picked a return address in Lhasa, near her old home. 
         Shanshan boarded a train bound for Tibet a few weeks later. She ordered Dampa firmly to stay in Hong Kong with his wife, now nearing her due date with their second child. She did not even inform her son of the date of her departure, and there was no talk of a return ticket. I saw her off at the station alone. It was just past dawn and the span of the sky was a rapidly brightening blue. She could hardly stay still as we sat waiting by the platform. Truthfully, I had never seen her so joyful. As the minutes passed she inched her arms outwards on the backrest, as if her limbs were loosening and becoming weightless. Her chest puffed with songs and whistling – the tunes of her childhood, she told me. What earthly creature, including the mighty condors and egrets, could exert a greater force of will and wanting? When the loudspeakers called her destination, Shanshan turned away from me with some longing. I was the first to let go of her hand and wave her farewell. I knew this day would come. I could always sense the avian patterns around me. As she walked away to her next life, the velocity of the surrounding trains drove fierce gusts of wind through her body and gave her silhouette the brief illusion of being airborne.  

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