The windows rattled a little bit from the bass blaring from the speakers located at the school across the street. The ensuing roar was a louder volume than I felt comfortable listening to my own music in my house. Visions of small children with bleeding ears and a future fraught with certain deafness danced in my pounding head. Some man directly under my window took to slamming metal pipes around. Dogs barked. A dump truck backed up with an insane bleep bleep bleep for nearly ten minutes. My eyelids began to twitch in sync with the scream of whistles piercing the morning. When sound of the bathroom faucet dripping began to assault my already tenderized ears I had to wonder if there wasn't any silent thing left in all the world.
This noise level would continue nearly non-stop for the next two days.
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The foriegn teachers' presence was requested as part of a judging panel for an English song compeition. Good thing too, otherwise the charasmatic boy with the large hair convincingly singing the tune of 'we will rock you' without a single correctly pronounced English word woud have walked away with the gold. The high pitched, tragically misprounounced songs were, luckily, loud enough to cover my stunned giggles... but quite unluckily, also loud enough to make my already sore ears sting. The whine of a ill handled microphone ricocheted in my head.
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English teachers in China make much of classroom repetition. The few remaining students still willing to attend class after already taking and passing their job placement exams in my otherwise abandoned classroom were no exception. Loud enough to make up for their missing classmates, they chanted conversation clips in unison and the ringing in my ears went up a notch. Then suddenly a long word, their confidence wilted in shame to the back of the classroom, the chanting turned to a very obvious mumble before dissolving into nervous laughter. Though my ears sighed in momentary relief, I scolded them, "Do not be afraid of long words!" and we practiced 'unfortunately' together and their confidence returned with vengeance.
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She had returned from nearly eleven months in Beijing, thinner, paler, less prone to silliness, but still herself under a large, beige sun hat. We ate sha momo's and I strained to hear her against the din of the small, though still busy, tea house. Chop sticks clinked against metal bowls, thermoses slammed on tables, tea was slurped, large spit wads where hocked on the floor, and I held a hand over one ear in a vain attempt to muffle all that I didn't want to hear. I have a dream that one day you will get married and come back to Lhasa and I can teach your children she half laughed in an admission that made me instantly remember all of the reasons I had missed her. The sting in my ears had given way to a dull tingle that I still couldn't shake and we walked hand in hand back to school trailing dreams like too many balloons behind us.
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I shook my head. The small forgotten kitchen corner of a smaller tea house was the quietest place I had been in days and I was just beginning to feel the edges of my headache soften. Okay then we stay here my small as a mouse friend decided. Somewhere a baby wailed and I winced. The throaty laughter of the tea house owner crowded the room and my friend pointed to a poster on the wall. She began its story in English but gave up and quickly went into Tibetan and I couldn't tell if I was able to understand the story of Buddha in Tibetan because of the Tibetan or because I already knew the story. He saw all the people no food, no drink, no bed and his heart was empty of happiness and he left his kingdom and sat under a tree... She intoned sweetly like a bedtime story for a child. I sipped tea and tilted my head, letting the pounding headache drip out of my ear and onto my shoulder.
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A row on the bus nearly made me late to meet a former student for dinner. His voice little more than a hoarse fog we nonetheless declared our hunger found a deserted upper room in a nearby Chinese restaurant and I quized him on TOFEL questions and gave him tips for practicing and phone numbers of other friends sure to help him. He wheezed profuse thank you's and I called it a quick night after handing him a bag of cough drops from America. You have sympathy for my throat he said in a way that I took to mean gratitude.
*****
Trucks rumble, honk by on the street outside. Dogs take turns populating the night with sound. Every now and then a cell phone blares a Tibetan pop song. The very house creaks and the faucet still drips. Everything makes noise, that's how it proves to itself that it exists.
But I am convinced, ears still swimming, humming with liquid noise, that I'll never be able to make sense of this day or any part of the Kingdom story here until I hear it in the silence.
So. Shhhhhh.....................
