Beautiful Ghosts (16 page)

He stared into the sky until he saw a falling star, then set out once again.

For the second time in two days, Shan entered the town through the market square. He waited at a public water pipe as a woman filled two buckets, then, exhausted from his nighttime trek through the mountains, he opened the faucet and held his face under the stream of cold water. He kept kneeling after he shut the faucet, watching the water drip into a small cement basin at its base, trying again to calm himself. He should turn and run back into the mountains, a voice shouted inside his head. No one in Lhadrung could possibly have information about his son. It was just the kind of cruel trick Tan might use to lure him.

But as he rose and took an uncertain step toward the shadows of the next building a hand clamped around his upper arm. A radio crackled, and someone began speaking excitedly. Shan turned and looked into the eyes of a young soldier with a pockmarked face, a face he had seen previously in Colonel Tan’s personal security squad. Another soldier stood at the open door of a small army truck, leaning his head into a handheld radio.

Moments later they were speeding across the valley floor, Shan sitting between the two soldiers in the cab of the truck. They drove in silence for less than ten minutes, entering a thin forest on the western slope, climbing a winding road Shan recognized. He had traveled up the same road over a year earlier, to a small walled compound, a partially destroyed gompa that had been under reconstruction as a private club for officials. Reconstruction seemed to have stopped, Shan saw as they climbed out of the truck. The stucco walls were heavily cracked, weeds still grew in the beds at their base. Only the bilingual sign at the entrance was new, announcing the Lhadrung Guest House.

As they stepped through the gate the soldier in front of him kicked up gravel. It was red. It was the gravel he had seen in the tires of the car driven by McDowell. Inside, canvas hung down from the top of the rear wall of the center courtyard, covering a row of bulky objects, no doubt the same architectural artifacts, dismantled or broken, he had seen arrayed along the wall the year before. A small fountain in the center of the yard wheezed and sputtered, ejecting a feeble spurt of water every few seconds.

His escort pushed him into the entry of the largest building and surrendered Shan to another soldier wearing a tunic with breast pockets, the sign of an officer, who led him toward a door painted with bright red enamel.

The large chamber they entered had been plastered and painted since Shan’s last visit, converted to a combination meeting room and lounge. At one end a long sofa sat in deep shadow, flanked by two overstuffed chairs adorned with lace doilies on their backs and arms. Beyond the sofa, in the far corner, were wooden chairs in deeper shadow. To the left of the entrance stood a long wide wooden table with a dozen wooden chairs. On the wall behind the table hung a map of the county and another of the People’s Republic of China. The only light in the room came from a fixture suspended over the table, illuminating three sour faces, all staring at Shan.

Colonel Tan sat at the head of the table, holding a cigarette close to his lips, letting the smoke waft around his head. Inspector Yao, wearing a peeved but satisfied expression, like a teacher about to dole out punishment to his least liked student, held a steaming porcelain cup in his hands. Opposite Yao, Director Ming sat with a stack of files in front of him, hands pressed to the table, an expectant look on this face.

The silence seemed as heavy as Tan’s cigarette smoke, broken only by a muttered curse from the colonel.

“Some pants. Get him some damned pants,” a slow, deep voice said from the shadows, in English.

Shan looked down at his legs. His trousers, already tattered and threadbare, had jagged tears below the knee from his falls the night before. A flap of cloth hung from his left leg, exposing part of a scraped and bleeding shin. Dried blood darkened the fabric in several places.

Tan glared at Yao, as if expecting a translation. But before Yao could speak, Ming stood with a melodramatic air. “There seems to be some mistake,” he said, stepping toward Shan. Shan gazed at the floor, at the elegant Tibetan carpet that ran the length of the table. Prisoner reflexes came easy after four years in the gulag. He did not move, did not react as Ming lifted his arm and pushed up his sleeve, then pointed to the tattoo on Shan’s forearm. “This man is a convict. A criminal.”

Shan sensed movement in the shadow, someone rising from a chair. “This man saved my life,” the same deep voice boomed, now in Chinese. “If you do not give him some clean pants I am going to take mine off and give them to him.” The words rang like an alarm.

Yao stood up, muttering to Tan, who rose a second later and barked an order. The officer who had escorted Shan reappeared, running to Tan, then out a rear door, returning less than a minute later with a pair of grey pants which he tossed to Yao, who laid them on the sofa in the shadows. When no one spoke Shan stepped to the sofa and changed pants. Near the sofa a large pad of paper was fastened to an easel, its top page bearing a name in large ideograms. Kwan Li. Below it was a description that read like a resume: Age forty-four; Prince; General; Served in Lhasa, Beijing, Xian. Turning, he stepped out of the shadows and found the American he had seen the day before seated at the table.

“Thank you,” Shan murmured, in English.

“Introductions were a bit rushed yesterday,” the man announced. “I’m Corbett. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Glad you could make it.” The American pulled out the empty chair beside him, nodded at Shan, then placed one hand over the other on the table and gazed expectantly at Yao.

Shan stared at the American. Corbett didn’t know him but seemed to be welcoming him, almost seemed to be taking Shan’s side in some battle that was about to erupt.

“Our messenger found you then,” Yao said.

Shan slowly shifted his gaze from the American to Yao and nodded.

“We require your assistance. International criminals are at work in Lhadrung.”

Shan did not answer until he had studied the faces of each of the men at the table, settling his gaze on Tan, who was himself staring at the small black portfolio in front of Yao. Tan had asked for Shan’s assistance once before. “I am not an investigator,” Shan said in a tight voice.

“Of course you’re not,” Yao shot back. “We need someone who can guide us in the mountains, someone who can explain things there. Reliable Tibetans are difficult to find in this county, it seems.” The inspector’s casual, almost disheveled appearance was deceiving. His voice was cold and sharp—well practiced, Shan suspected, in giving orders and political criticism.

Shan found himself looking at the black portfolio. “I won’t help put Tibetans in jail.”

Tan cursed. Director Ming made a high-pitched sound that could have been a laugh.

Yao gave a disappointed sigh. “We have been briefed on your politics.” He rose and retrieved something from a chair in the shadows behind the table, shaking the object to make it jingle. Leg manacles. He extended them toward Shan for a moment, then draped them over one of the empty chairs at the table. “You are not officially an ex-convict. You are still a convict. Someone,” Yao said pointedly, “chose to grant a parole to you. Paroles may be revoked.”

Strangely, Shan realized he no longer felt fear. Like many of the prisoners released from the gulag, he had half expected to return to it one day. He studied each of the men at the table again, then silently stepped to the manacles. He lifted each foot in turn onto the chair, locking the manacles around his ankles.

“Jesus,” Corbett muttered.

Tan’s lips curled in a thin grin aimed at Yao. Yao replied with a frown, then glared at the chains on Shan’s feet. Ming, however, seemed delighted with Shan’s behavior. He rose, sprang to the door, and called out enthusiastically for the soldiers.

Shan retreated to the carpet by the door, staring at the pattern along its edge, facing the door. It was frayed and faded, but he could see its weavers had worked a line of sacred symbols along its edge. A treasure vase, a lotus flower, leaping fish. He kept staring at the carpet as two soldiers came through the door for him, each grabbing an arm. It was another of the prisoner’s reflexes that had been ingrained in him. When you’re in the outside world, imprint small, colorful pieces of it in your memory, for the dark, grey times to come. His original sentence had been indefinite. Tan had warned him if he went back inside he might never come out again.

“Director Ming was mistaken,” Tan said to the soldiers in a low, cool voice. The soldiers retreated, disappeared out the door.

“You came out of the mountains because of your son,” Tan said to Shan’s back.

As Shan turned back toward the table he recalled Lokesh’s words. Maybe in Shan’s case this was the way the father’s deity was completed, letting them use his son to inflict his final punishment. His gaze settled on the black file again. “I won’t put Tibetans in prison,” he repeated, his voice nearly a whisper.

Yao reached into the black portfolio and pulled out a yellow folder that held several pages from a facsimile machine. “Shan Ko Mei,” Yao said in a slow, sharp voice.

The name caused something to pinch in Shan’s heart. He had not heard it spoken by another voice in at least six years. He himself had only whispered it, infrequently, toward the stars, when he tried to find words to ask his father’s spirit to watch over the boy. But he had stopped even mouthing the words long ago. Shan was dead to his son. The name was a wound over which thick scar tissue had grown. Now they had jabbed a blade into the old wound and were twisting the steel.

Someone touched his arm and he recoiled with a sound like a sob.

“Sit down.” It was the American, Corbett, motioning to the chair beside him. “You should sit.”

Shan dropped heavily into the chair. Tan stared at him, clenching his jaw, anger in his eyes, but also wariness, as if Shan were laying a trap for him. Director Ming kept glancing at the others, amusement still in his eyes. Yao was angry, impatience obvious on his face. The American locked his fingers together on the table and stared at Shan, worry in his eyes.

“My son doesn’t know who I am,” Shan said.

Yao gave a satisfied sigh, as if Shan’s words signaled they were commencing with business. He spread the pages from the yellow folder in front of him. “An early opportunist,” he began, his eyes on the papers now. “Thief. Vandal. Destroyer of state property.”

Shan recognized the folder now. It was a Public Security file, the file of a convict, the record they sometimes dragged out to shame a prisoner in front of those who did not know him. But Yao was mistaken. It wasn’t Shan’s file. Reading back the file of a particularly hardluck convict for its intimidation value was a crude interrogation tactic. Shan would have expected more from Yao.

The Beijing inspector cast a satisfied glance toward Shan, then raised the front page and continued. “Those were the early years. Later, repeated charges of hooliganism,” he reported, using one of Beijing’s favored labels for antisocial behavior. “The reluctance to mete out firm discipline and instruction in the socialist imperative early on guaranteed the outcome,” he read. “In the end an assault on a Public Security officer. Fifteen years
lao gai,
” he added, referring to a sentence of hard labor. Yao dropped the paper. “One of the coal mine camps,” he said, meaning one of the massive open pit mines where malnourished prisoners excavated their own particular hell, digging coal with crude tools all year long, seven days a week, year after year. Half the coal pit inmates died before completing their sentences.

Yao leafed through the papers clipped to the file, pausing at one of the rear pages. “In the beginning it was one of those elite schools for children of party members. When a child gets in trouble they get assigned extra readings about the heroes of the people. He was caught stealing from classmates. They called a doctor. He interviewed the boy. He reported to the Deputy Mayor.”

Something icy crept down Shan’s spine.

“The doctor reported that the boy was incurably antisocial. He kept boasting his father was a famous criminal, head of a gang that robbed and killed all over China, that even the Chairman feared him.”

Shan sensed the blood draining from his face. His wife, who was assigned to a city nearly a thousand miles from Beijing after they were married, had raised their son, sometimes—not often—visiting Shan in Beijing on holidays. His wife, the Deputy Mayor, who had divorced Shan after his imprisonment.

“One night he was caught writing slogans against the party. He was expelled from school. A week later telephone poles began falling down in the night. It took another week before they found him with an ax at a line of fallen poles. He had taken down eighty poles in total. His mother was sent to a special party facility for discipline. He went to a farm labor camp, from which he escaped a month later and surfaced with a gang that sold heroin outside factory gates. He was using a new name. Tiger Ko. When he was caught that time he attacked the arresting officer, sent him to the hospital. His mother left office in disgrace.”

Yao seemed to keep talking but Shan could not make out the words. Something like a mist seemed to have settled over Shan. He felt a falling sensation, held onto the table.

“Someone get him some tea,” he heard the American say, in Chinese.

When his eyes found their focus again there was a porcelain cup of steaming green tea by his hand. “He’s not even twenty,” Shan said at last, in a hoarse voice. He lifted the cup and poured the scalding liquid down his throat.

“He needed a father’s care,” Director Ming said, in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “His mother abandoned him. Remarried, moved to the eastern coast, took a new name. She has had no contact with him for years.”

Shan shifted his legs and heard the rattle of the chains on his ankles. “You mean you’re sending me to the coal mine,” he said, looking absently into his cup. It was a thin, delicate piece, a tiny panda painted near the lip.

Yao closed the folder in front of him and stood, carrying his own cup with a little panda as he stepped toward Shan. “Surely you were not always so dense, comrade. We want to bring your son for a visit. Here in Lhadrung.” Yao pulled a small key from his pocket and set it on the table beside Shan.