The Glimpse Traveler by Boruch Marianne;

Author:Boruch, Marianne;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: hitchhiking, California, memoir
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2011-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 39

Once those guys decided that Frances wasn’t exactly Ned, not even close, I guess they refocused on their more immediate reason to stay alive: to build that boat, to take Satamanyu, their guru, to see his guru down in Peru. Ned had met their guru once or twice and had approved. Which is what the guy who had first stood at the door told us later that afternoon, before letting it out that his name was Mukunda, not his original given one. I’m fairly certain that had been ordinary, like Phil or Brian. This Mukunda thing was a christening he brought on himself in a moment of dazzling realization he said he had no words to describe. Or maybe Satamanyu named him, who knows.

A Brian morphing into Mukunda, and Shashee probably once first and foremost Steve: that naming, that renaming was a curious habit that hung on, full force, for at least a decade. Later, in the early ’80s, my husband and I, back from two years of teaching in Taiwan and getting our bearings in America again, would stay for a while at a co-op in Wisconsin, Madison’s Netherwood Co-op, a lovely old fraternity house on Lake Mendota sold in the late ’60s because who in his right mind wanted to be in a frat when the whole world-as-we-knew-it was dissolving, blowing up, and coming back new? Among the more standardly named residents at Netherwood—plain old Gail and Bill and Liz, sometimes Callaghan or hey, Sealock!—lived a young woman who called herself Starfish (nee Nancy), a guy named Seeker (born Kenneth), Kiva (a former Edwin), Mika (first a Linda), and Spoon for whatever dubious reason (previously Duane).

One of the house members turned out to be a middle-aged Chinese scientist. Mr. Ts’ou, my husband always respectfully addressed him though others in that place called him Joe, not bothering to learn the exact pronunciation, thinking—no matter how we explained otherwise—that the ubiquitous surname Ts’ou was his given name, that anyway he liked being called Joe, more American sounding, as if he’d been awarded most improved player on the bowling team. In truth, he’d recently arrived to study physics at the university, jubilant in his quiet way, so relieved to be sprung from the days of the Cultural Revolution where he had been sent to the backest backwater to slop pigs for a time. For all we knew, as a smarty-pants educated sort, already with two degrees, Mr. Ts’ou was one of the guys wearing those tall white dunce caps in the famous photographs, Mao showing the intelligentsia what was what and who was really who. In Madison, he was always asking us questions like the one that slipped out of him as we walked near the Student Union, amused at the ducks that dotted the lawn, their gadding about for a stray potato chip from someone’s lunch.

Who owns these ducks? Mr. Ts’ou had asked.

No one, I said. They just live out here, near the water.

Can we eat them?

As for the

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