Bible of the Dead (38 page)

Chapter 48

‘How do you feel?’

‘The same. Different.
I don’t know.
’

Jake was awake. Sipping a hot drink. He had been awake for an hour, in the dark, but now the lights were on, and Fishwick was gazing at him with a quizzical expression.

‘Perhaps you need to see . . . to go outside. To assess your reactions.’

Jake knew what this meant: go and look at the world, go and see Chemda. Find out whether his guilty soul had been retrieved from erasure.

He stood. Again he felt an odd composure, a sweet stability; not the quailing weakness he expected, following serious surgery. Did this mean the surgery had worked? Or simply done nothing?

At least he could talk. He wasn’t a drooling fool.

A loose jacket slung over his shirtsleeves, he stepped out of the room. At the end was that dazzling silver oblong: the glass door that gave onto the terrace, the door that opened to the truth.

He walked and pressed the glass and he breathed the thin light air of Balagezong. Julia and Chemda were seated at the tables and staring his way. In a crushing second he realized: he felt the same, he felt nothing. He felt nothing for Chemda.

The truth was so anguished he couldn’t bear to describe it. His face must have spoken eloquently enough: Chemda turned away, she put a hand to her eyes, disguising her emotions. Jake didn’t know if she was crying or not. He didn’t especially care. The sun shone down. No one said anything. There was nothing to be said; nothing was ever going to be said, ever again. Faint cirrus clouds striped the sky beyond White Buddha Mountain.

Within hours of the surgery’s completion Jake was able to confirm this cold realization – the operation had totally failed: the sense of detachment remained just as before, the feeling that he existed in a world where all music had been subtly removed.

But at least he hadn’t died; or been calamitously lobotomized. And the guilt about his mother and his sister, that was still gone.

The first days of his recovery he spent lying in bed or sitting quietly on the terrace, with Chemda, feeling awkward. Sometimes Chemda tried to smile, to touch him, to kiss him. But his inert reactions eventually dissuaded her. And in time she simply retreated to her room.

And left him alone.

Next day the soldiers came. The Chinese army, and then the Chinese police. This was less alarming than they had feared. As Julia had promised, Rouvier had done a politic and convincing job, through the French, Canadian and UK governments, in ensuring that they were saved from custody; and in neutralizing the complexities.

Rouvier was apparently aided by the attitude of Beijing. The Chinese surely wanted to cut a deal; they were evidently embarrassed by the whole business. Jake even suspected the Chinese had actively held off from taking over the lab complex – so as to let events play out; so that Beijing was ultimately untainted by the whole scandal. With that outcome the authorities could plead a plausible ignorance – and flush the whole unsightly business down the latrine of history.

Jake saw this desire in the way the officials behaved. The police were brisk and efficient – yet eerily detached, un interested. They questioned them several times, and questioned Fishwick, they took photos of the ‘crime scene’ – and they took away equipment for tests, but it was all rather cursory. Jake was sure that the photos and interviews would be simply trashed, at a convenient moment.

And then the specialists and the soldiers departed and it was just the ordinary police. One of them was particularly friendly.

Jake was sitting alone on the terrace, sipping his fine puer-cha tea. The young, smiling, English-speaking Chinese policeman came over and looked at Jake’s scar and said that Jake was allowed to stay a few more days in Balagezong, for ‘rehabilitation and recuperation’ – two words the man found very difficult to pronounce. But then, the policeman implied, it was definitely expected that Chemda and Jake and Julia would make themselves strangers anyway. Go back to Bangkok. Go home. Go anywhere. Just go a long way from China.

Then the policeman made the first and only reference, albeit oblique, to the unspoken deal. He gestured across the mountainscape and smiled and said ‘You are a photographer no? Maybe you should do some photographs of the beautiful gorges here. Publish them. This is the only reason to come here. This is all people need to know, yes?’

Jake had a blanket over his knees, like an invalid by the beach. He nodded. He knew what this remark meant. Their silence was indeed being bought. The Chinese wanted the troublesome foreigners gone, but they would only let them go – in return for silence. The policeman smiled again.

‘People do not want to know about the Old China. They need to know about the new China! No? And the National Park of Shangri-La Gorge is coming! That is what you must tell people.’

‘Shangri-La?’

‘Yes. Xiengeli-la.’ He laughed. ‘Shangri-la. The name is taken from the book by a British man I believe? The secret Himalayan paradise. It is good idea – good brand. It will change the lives of these peasants.’

‘They’ll build a proper road?’

‘Yes yes! And many toilets, and cafe. Shops! And why not? This is most beautiful place in the world so there must be toilets and cafes and buses and shops. It will be wonderful. This is progress!’

He grinned. ‘And now I say goodbye to you. There is last village truck leaving for Zhongdian in four days. You must take that. We need to begin the demolishing of this . . .’ He winced with distaste. ‘This laboratory. The army will return to do this job. So we can build the park.’

‘Yes,’ Jake said, sensing the resignation in his own voice. ‘We’ll go on the last truck. Thankyou.’

The man turned and briefly saluted and the hollowness returned.

But another person was hovering.

Fishwick.

He pulled up a seat besides Jake. He poured himself a glass of puer-cha.

‘I’m also leaving this afternoon. With the authorities.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘As I hoped, they have agreed to let me work . . . with epileptics.’

Fishwick stirred his long spoon in his tea.

‘Jake. I just wanted to say something. Do you recall . . . the last question you asked me, just before the surgery?’

‘Yes. I do. Why are we meant to believe?’ Jake squinted at the American. ‘You have an answer?’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’ He hesitated, then pointed with his long steel spoon and said: ‘Look at that mountain. The beauty of it. It is eloquent, is it not?’

‘Sorry?’

Fishwick momentarily closed his eyes. And he spoke quietly:

‘The answer to your question only came to me a few weeks ago. I was standing by the stupa, Bala stupa, under the Holy Mountain, and somehow it dawned. I saw. I realized that perhaps the God module evolved for the most profound and obvious reason of all.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s not a byproduct, it’s not a spandrel or a parasite or a trick, it’s not even something to keep us chatty and cheerful and healthy . . . it’s . . .’

‘It’s what?’

Fishwick gazed at Jake. ‘We evolved eyes to see the sunlight. We evolved ears to hear the wind. And our minds are wired for faith . . . because?’

‘You mean: we are meant to believe because there really is a God? You have become a believer?’

The surgeon shrugged, and gestured, once again, at the sublimity of the landscape around them.

‘You know, the villagers here, they were once so isolated, just sixty years ago, they thought they were the only people in the universe. Imagine that?’

But Jake didn’t want to imagine that, he didn’t want to imagine anything. He didn’t want to think of his own cold withered future, grey as the sands in Sovirom Sen’s Japanese garden. So he stared at the gorges and at White Buddha Mountain. He stared at the nothingness.

Fishwick was sighing. ‘I do really have to go. I am so sorry the surgery proved irreversible. All I can say is – have a little hope. Sometimes neurones can heal spontaneously, we don’t know why. The mind retains its many mysteries. Goodbye Jake.’

Jake watched him descend the steps, and disappear down a path that led to the rear of the laboratories.

The wind from the forests was mild. But his tea was cold. And the hollowness inside him was profound. Like a silenced bell.

Chapter 49

The days passed, the nullity abided. Jake dreamed of nothing. He stared at the sky. The day of their departure approached.

On the seventh day following the failed operation, Jake woke early and looked across the bed.

It was empty.

There was a note on Chemda’s pillow, in an envelope.

He took out the notepaper and read.

He put the note back in the envelope; he dressed. Trying not to think. The very last truck was due to leave Bala this afternoon. He wanted to run outside and race down the valley. He didn’t know what to do.

Julia was sitting on the terrace.

‘Chemda has gone,’ he said.

She stared at him, and her gaze was searching. ‘I know. She told me last night. A villager was taking his fruit to Zhongdian market – at dawn. She went with him in the pickup. I’m sorry, Jake.’

Jake remembered his mother, abandoning him in the night. So this was another woman – abandoning him in the night. And he couldn’t blame her.

He sat down. Staring at his own hands, then at Julia.

‘What are
you
going to do? When we finally get . . . away?’

The Canadian woman sighed. Her expression was strained.

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Not any more.’

Jake said nothing. But the silence seemed to embarrass Julia, so he stood, straightened his chair, and continued his walk past the terrace tables.

The day was bright and clear, sharp and mountainous. The villagers were tilling their steep brown fields. One old woman gave him a broken smile as he walked the path to the stupa.

Positioned on a large high promontory of rock, the stupa overlooked one of the most spectacular stretches of the canyon. Down there were the heaven villages, much further down was the cascading river, a juvenile tributary of the Mekong.

The Mekong
. The very concept threw up a kaleidoscopic series of recent memories. It seemed to Jake as though he had been following the great Mekong all these weeks, from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh to Yunnan. The mighty Mekong. And now he was near the source, where the crystal waters tumbled: violent and tragic.

He climbed the last steps and placed a hand on the stupa. Silence enveloped him.

The only noise came from the windhorses – the prayer flags fluttering in a stiff sunlit breeze. Each flag, of red and blue and faded yellow, was written with the wishes of the villagers, praying to the holy mountains.

Remorse fell like a silent snow. What had he done? He had lost everyone. His sister, his mother, now Chemda.

Everyone.

In a few hours the last truck would leave Bala village and take the long road to Zhongdian. And he would be on it. Running after Chemda. He was going to find her. He knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to find her, if that’s what it took. But he would find her.

A cooler wind kicked up. The little prayer flags fluttered in the silent breeze, petitioning the universe, filling the quietness. Arms of white snow embraced the rocky summit of Buddha Mountain: like a mother, folding a son in her love, and never letting go.

Chapter 50

‘What you did was very brave. Audacious!’

Officer Rouvier steered the car around a corner. Ahead of them, through the drizzle, Julia could see the distant stones of the Cham des Bondons, dark and elegiac. It was as if they had been waiting for her to return; as if they
knew
she was coming back.

‘I don’t know about bravery,’ she said. ‘I just did what I did. What I had to do. Thankyou for collecting me from the airport.’

The Frenchman smiled – and squinted at the pattering rain.

‘You have already thanked me twice, Miss Kerrigan. But I am still confused. What are you going to do now? You really want to spend the winter out
here
?’

He gestured at the bleak and rainy moors; the windlashed causse.

‘My college in London has given me another few weeks’ paid leave. Because of . . . Just
because
.’

He didn’t reply to this. They drove past a broken farmgate, where a brace of horses looked dismal and forlorn in the wet. Another lonely standing stone loomed through the mist.

Julia recalled her own ideas. Of Easter Island. The monuments to a violent and dying culture.

Rouvier spoke:

‘So you will go back to London in the spring?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. I like to think that I have choices.’

Rouvier agreed. Then he said:

‘You also have a very good brain, Miss Kerrigan. Your theory, about the caves and skulls, it was right!’

‘Ghislaine’s theory.’

‘No.’ He spoke firmly. ‘
Yours.
You do not know what he wrote, and you either discovered it again, or you made a better one. I am
sure
you made a better theory. So it is yours.’

The rain was the only sound, discreetly chattering on the car roof.

They were very near Annika’s old cottage now. With that realization she felt a reflux of fear, and grief, which she strove to quell.
This is just a place. Just an old cottage. That’s all. Just an old house.

She spoke, quickly:

‘I’ve rented a small farmhouse for about two months, it’s in the next village from Vayssiere. Les Combettes. It’s very cheap in the winter.’

Rouvier nodded. ‘I’m not surprised. Most people escape in the winter, this is not Juan les Pins in August. They should be paying you for
staying
.’ He softly smiled her way. ‘It will be lonely out here?’

‘I don’t mind loneliness.’

‘But . . . Mister Carmichael?’

She shrugged.

‘Things change.’

‘
Bien sur
.’ He nodded, slowing the car as they took the last turn for Vayssiere. ‘I know this all too well. I am now divorced myself. Ah . . . this rain
. Il pleure
. . .’

‘
Dans mon coeur, Comme il pleut sur la ville
?’

Their shared laughter was gentle. He stopped the car a few metres from Annika’s front door. Julia glanced across. Yes, her car was still there. Where she’d left it, all those weeks ago, when they had quit the place to go and see Ghislaine’s body. She’d never got round to picking it up again. And now here she was. Picking it up again.

Like a chauffeur, Rouvier came round to her side of the car, and helped her out. Then he assisted: carrying her bags to her car, and stowing them on the back seat. Neither of them looked at Annika’s cottage window as they worked. The small window that gave onto the sitting room.

When her stuff was in the car, Rouvier stooped. And kissed her hand, in an unselfconscious way. As he looked up, he said:

‘If you get really lonely, you must call me. We can drink a pastis in the excitements of Mende.’

‘Thankyou. It might be nice to do that. In the big city.’

There was another exchange of smiles, tinged with sadness. Rouvier opened his door, started his engine, and he was gone.

For a moment Julia stood, tense, in the faint drizzle; sensing the presence of the past. Then she climbed in her car and she briskly drove to the next village down the road. Les Combettes.

It took her just two hours to install all her stuff in her rented cottage. The kitchen of the little house had a good view of the stones. So did the window above her desk. Julia ignored the view: instead she sat down, took out her laptop, and put it on the desk, alongside a small bottle of water.

Her fingers were poised. She opened a new page, and typed the words:

For a second or two she stared at the words on her white laptop screen. Then she erased the sentence, and gazed at the blankness, at the drizzle on the windows, at the lawns and moors. A shaft of bleak sunlight had pierced the clouds; it shone down on the fields, making the sodden feather-grass sparkle, momentarily: a sudden harvest of jewels. She tried again.

Nodding to herself, she took a sip of water, and then she added three more words: