Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

Desolation filled him. It pressed inside him, slowing him down, buffeting him from inside, making him stumble. Not the Sierra. Everything living that he loved in this Alpine world would go away, and then it would not be the Sierra. Suddenly he thought of Joe and a giant stab of fear pierced him like a sword, he sank back and sat on the nearest rock, felled by the feeling. Never doubt our emotions rule us, and no matter what we do, or say, or resolve, a single feeling can knock us down like a sword to the heart. A dead meadow—image of a black crisp on a bed—Charlie groaned and put his face to his knees.

He tried to pull himself back into the world. Behind him Frank was still wandering, lonely as a cloud, deep in his own space; but soon he would catch up.

Charlie took a deep breath, pulled himself together. Several more deep breaths. No one would ever know how shaken he had been by his thoughts. So much of life is a private experience.

Frank stood over him. He looked down at him with his head cocked. “You okay?”

“I’m okay. You?”

“I’m okay.” He gestured around them. “Quite the drought.”

“That’s for sure!” Charlie shook his head violently from side to side. “It makes me sad—it makes me afraid! I mean—it looks so bad. It looks like it could be gone for good!”

“You think so?”

“Sure! Don’t you?”

Frank shrugged. “There’s been droughts up here before. They’ve found dead trees a couple hundred feet down in Lake Tahoe. Stuff like that. Signs of big droughts. It seems like it dries out up here from time to time.”

“Yes. But—you know. What if it lasts a hundred years? What if it lasts a thousand years?”

“Well, sure. That would be bad. But we’re doing so much to the weather. And it’s pretty chaotic anyway. Hopefully it will be all right.”

Charlie shrugged. This was thin comfort.

Again Frank regarded him. “Aside from that, you’re okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” It was so unlike Frank to ask, especially on this trip. Charlie felt an urge to continue: “I’m worried about Joe. Nothing in particular, you know. Just worried. It’s hard to imagine, sometimes, how he is going to get on in this world.”

“Your Joe? He’ll get on fine. You don’t have to worry about him.”

Frank stood over Charlie, hands folded on the tops of his walking poles, looking out at the sweep of the Muro Blanco, the great canyon walled by long cliffs of white granite. At ease; distracted. Or so it seemed. As he wandered away he said over his shoulder, “Your kids will be fine.”

W ake up Sunday morning. In the van, outside a fregan potluck house, down in Foggy Bottom. Put on clothes one would wear to give a talk: “scientist nice,” meaning shirt with collar, dark walking shoes, Dockers pants.

Walk to the Optimodal that Diane found near the White House. Work out, shower and shave, then east on G Street. Find a deli open for lunch; most of them closed on weekend. Eat lunch and then continue east to the MCI Center, where the Wizards play basketball.

A building like all the others in the area, filling a whole block. This one, instead of offices and shops bordering the sidewalk, has glass doors by the dozen, and poster-holders between the doors, advertising all kinds of events. The glass doors have lines of people outside them. Many Asians, many of them in Asian attire.

Wait in line, then give an attendant a Ticketron ticket. Inside, wander down the hallway looking at the tunnel entries, checking the section numbers. Hallway lined with food stalls and souvenir stands and restrooms, as in any sports arena in the country. Beer, wine, hot dogs, pretzels, nachos. Like a basketball game, or a rock concert. Strange to see when attending a talk by the Dalai Lama. Walking in a category error. Maybe that was always true.

Plan to meet the Quiblers at their seats, a good thing; impossible to tell if one has circled ninety degrees or a hundred and eighty. Which way is north? No way to tell.

After two hundred and seventy degrees, perhaps, come to proper number and show ticket to usher, get ushered to seat. Great seats if it were basketball, in the middle, just above floor, which is now occupied by rows of chairs, slowly filling with people. Stage at the end of the floor, where one basket would be. Empty seats; presumably the Quiblers’. An hour and a half before the scheduled start. Don’t want to be late for the Dalai Lama! Arena at this point nearly empty. And big. A big oval of seats, rising to a great height on all sides. Was that glassed row what they called luxury boxes? Maybe the Dalai Lama is not a sellout.

But he is. Arena fills. Quiblers show up around half an hour before the start. Shake hands with Charlie and the boys, give Anna a hug. She too dressed up a bit—as if giving a talk at a conference, yes. Looks nice. All the women in the arena look nice.

Sit and chat about the crowd and the venue and the event, the boys looking around with the same curious expression one can feel in one’s own face. Watching people. Mesmerized by the sight of so many people, pouring in tunnels from concourse and taking their seats. Charlie says capacity twenty thousand, but with the section behind the stage cordoned off and left empty, more like thirteen thousand. Thirteen thousand human beings, all races, nations, and ethnicities seemingly represented. All gathered to hear one man speak. This is Washington, D.C. Capital of the world.

A big screen behind the stage. They test a video system that shows, greatly magnified on the screen, the image of an armchair on the stage, which makes the actual chair suddenly look tiny. There are two armchairs, in fact, and a carpet between them, a coffee table. Small tree in pot behind. Bouquets of flowers surround the base of a lectern, set off to one side.

People appear on stage, causing a groundswell of voices, then applause. An American woman from the Tibetan-American Friendship Society welcomes the crowd, which now packs the arena to capacity, no unoccupied seats to be seen, except in the empty section behind the screen. A Democratic congresswoman introduces the Dalai Lama, at great length and with little eloquence. Then a pause; the hall goes silent.

“What?” Joe asks, looking around bug-eyed.

A cluster of people in maroon robes walk up the steps onto the stage, and sudden applause bursts out. Everyone stands, everyone. Joe stands on his chair, then climbs into Charlie’s arms. His head is then just higher than Charlie’s. Now it can be seen how their faces look alike.

Dalai Lama on stage. A big swell of applause. He wears the kind of robe that leaves his arms bare. He holds his hands together, bows slightly in various directions, smiling graciously. All this is repeated hugely on the screen behind him. The face familiar from photographs. An ordinary Tibetan monk, as he always says himself.

On the stage with him appears a shorter Tibetan man in a Western three-piece suit. This man sits in the armchair on the right and watches as twenty or thirty more people ascend the stairs onto the stage. They are all dressed in colorful national or ethnic or religious costumes, Asian in look. Buddhist, one supposes, with lots of white and many splashes of brilliant color. There is a light purple they appear to favor.