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Alice, Rolling Down the Mountainside - Short Story
Literary Review, Spring, 2001 by Valerie Hurley
Loti wrote back to him: "I would like to advise you, but really I can only tell you my story. When I left the monastery, I hardly took anything. I left all my clothes, my books, even my writing pen. I wanted no one to know. Even now I do not understand why I did that. Perhaps I was ashamed. For a Tibetan monk to leave his monastery is a very large thing.
I went to my uncle. He is a lama. He is a good and kind man and he likes me. Soon after I left the monastery, I met an American girl. Isn't that funny, to leave a monastery and walk into the arms of an American girl? I met her in my village near Dharamsala. She was older than me. At first it was very sexy. We Tibetans are very free about sex, especially where I come from, Kham. I told my uncle about her, and he summoned us both. `Now if you are serious,' he said, `you should live together and love each other for life.' And I thought, I like this girl and it would make my mother very happy if I settled down. But it was very difficult. Oh my God. She never talked. Never. All the time silent, silent. I love to talk. I love to laugh. Every time I made a joke, she would look at me very badly. What is wrong with you Americans? Don't you like to laugh? When I go out drinking with my friends she comes and collects me, like a dog. She had no friends. That was the worst. She had no friends at all. Only me. So I had to be everything to her. That is very hard, to be everything for someone. And she wanted me to be everything--wonderful lover, wonderful husband, wonderful brother, wonderful friend. She was a Westerner, you see. She thought that if we lived together we would have absolute Nirvana, ecstasy all the time. We Easterners do not think that way. Yes, I wanted to marry her, but I did not expect endless joy; I just wanted to be with her more than with another woman, that is all. She used to scream at me, `You are selfish. You are not romantic.' And I would say, `Yes, I am not romantic but I do love you.' Then she would cry and tear her hair! And then she made me cook. An Eastern man is not trained, you know. My mother had always done everything, cooking, washing. One day my wife said, `I am not cooking any more.' So I had to learn. I learned fast,just to annoy her. I became a very good cook. Delicious. That made her angry. She thought she was going to humiliate me, you see. And I learned how to wash too. You know what her big trouble was? She was very holy. She wanted to give up everything. Don't drink, don't swear, don't joke, don't have too much sex! Don't, don't, all the time. Some Westerners give up everything and are feeling so superior. But they do not enjoy life a great deal. They are intent upon success. They do not live in a voluptuous world. There is not enough sensualism and too much success. The wisdom of Sunyata tells us that you cannot give to another without giving to yourself. There is no giver, no receiver, no gift. The flower gives itself to the bees, to us, without holding anything back. The flower does not give. It only opens."
