Exiles (16 page)

He told her it was probably mild asthma. “This place is cold and damp,” he said. “When I know for sure she doesn’t have TB we’ll give her an inhaler.”

Devi relayed this, and Ani Dawa rewrapped herself. Peter looked at Devi again, the question in his eyes, and Devi nodded, just slightly. “She may not want to talk about it,” she said quietly.

“I’d like to know what happened.”

Devi spoke and, for a moment, Ani Dawa shrank back. She said a few words, her eyes going from Devi to Peter.

Devi said, “She’s afraid you’re a spy for the Chinese.”

Devi and Ani Dawa spoke at length, then, and the nun was evidently reassured. “She says that when the Chinese came to her
gonpa
in Tibet, she was still very young, about fourteen. The Chinese soldiers would take the nuns into a room, one by one, and do things to them there.”

“What kinds of things?”

“The pretty ones they raped, and if the nuns got pregnant they would force them to have abortions. But the abortion doctors were careless, and several nuns died from bleeding. They also tortured them in various ways. Ani Dawa was burned with cigarettes, and one time with a hot iron; that’s how she got the scars. They kept asking her, ‘Where is your Buddha now? Why doesn’t he come save you?’ ”

Peter looked at the nun, who seemed a little agitated. She stopped and quietly recited a mantra for a few moments, then finally spoke again.

“She says they wanted to get the nuns to renounce the Buddha, but the soldiers didn’t understand anything about it,” Devi said. “She tried to explain to them that you cannot renounce what is inside you, but she quickly realized it was useless. The soldiers had very little schooling, and most were completely ignorant.”

“This happened to all the nuns?”

Devi spoke, and Ani Dawa nodded. “She says yes,” Devi continued. “Many died. One girl about her age was raped with an electric cattle prod over a period of two or three hours and later died from her injuries. That really upset Ani Dawa, because she and this girl had been particularly close friends.”

“What about the monks?” Peter asked.

“She says the Chinese brought the monks down from the neighboring
gonpa
. All the soldiers would crowd into a room, where they’d put a mat on the floor, and they would get drunk and their commander would start picking couples, one monk and one nun. They would force them to have sex on the mat; all the soldiers and all the other monks and nuns had to watch. If a monk was too frightened, or for some other reason couldn’t get his penis hard, they would make him wait and try again later, and if it happened again they would take him out and shoot him. They shot eight monks in one night because they either couldn’t or wouldn’t break their vows.”

Alex stood by the door, her hands in her pockets, looking at the floor.

“She says do you want her to go on?” Devi said. “She says there is much more she could say, but she knows there are other nuns waiting, and she doesn’t want to take all your time.”

“I just want to know how she is now. How her mind is, I mean.”

Devi asked her, and Ani Dawa thought about it a little while before she spoke.

“She says the hardest thing for her was that she began to hate the soldiers, especially after they killed her friend,” Devi said. “She had fantasies of taking one of their rifles and shooting them all. She knew she could do it if she had a chance. And when she realized she was dreaming of this, actually planning it if an opportunity presented itself, that was when she knew they’d broken her, and then she was really troubled.”

“I don’t understand,” said Alex. “It seems pretty natural.”

Devi spoke to Ani Dawa. “She says of course it is natural; it is
samsara, but she does not wish to remain in samsara. It did not break her vows to be raped, because this she could not control. But when she found herself planning to kill them,
this
broke her vows. The soldiers had stripped her of what was most valuable, her compassion for other beings. Then she knew she had to escape, because if she didn’t, she would be just as bad as they were; she would be of no benefit to anyone.”

Peter took her hands in his. He felt an unsettling mix of emotions, sorrow for her, anger at the soldiers. He didn’t know what to say.

“Is there anything else I can do for her?” he asked.

Ani Dawa bowed slightly and spoke to Devi.

“She says no,” Devi said. “She says thank you, American doctor.”

When they’d seen all the
anis
, they went up the hill to the main
gonpa
to treat the monks. The stories were much the same. Several told of being soaked with water and forced to stand outside all night in freezing cold. Others were locked for days at a time in nearly airless boxes so small that they had to sit hunched over inside, with their knees up near their ears. Reports of cattle prods, bones broken by truncheons, and various other tortures were commonplace.

What amazed Peter most about these stories, though, was how they were told. Many of the monks would recount unbelievable horrors with the detached good humor of a fond uncle relaying an amusing prank pulled by a couple of unruly nephews. One, who’d been shut up for weeks in a dark box, said the soldiers had inadvertently helped him, because of a secret meditation practice he did that benefited from such confinement. Others, though, clearly had more trouble coming to terms with what had happened, and they seethed as they described what had been done to them and their friends.

Late in the day, shortly after they’d finished, a frigid wind blew in from the north, bringing low gray clouds and the smell of rain. Peter could see the translucent curtain descending as the front approached,
so they packed up quickly and started back to the jeep. Just then he saw a familiar face.

“Lobsang!” he called. The monk looked up, and a broad smile burst across his face. They walked toward each other, then Lobsang opened his arms and wrapped them all in a bear hug. Peter asked what he was doing there.

Lobsang explained that Lama Yeshe, the abbot, had asked Lama Padma to come down and help conduct a long, multiday ceremony. Lama Padma had also agreed to teach.

“I have medicine for him,” Peter said. “I was going to drive up to see you tomorrow.”

“Oh, road very bad,” said Lobsang. “We almost slide off mountain two, three times.” He laughed a little ruefully and suggested they wait until spring.

“I have it with me,” Peter said. “I’ll go get it and give it to you before we leave.”

Just then the first sleet pelted them. Lobsang looked up and appeared concerned. “I wonder …” he said. He then spoke to Devi in Tibetan; she translated that he was worried about them driving on with the weather changing. He said Lama Padma was planning to speak to the monks and nuns that night, and they would be welcome to attend if Devi could translate for them.

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In the shrine room, Lama Padma sat cross-legged on a dais while several other lamas sat on slightly lower platforms along the wall on both sides of him. The room itself was large, about forty feet square, with high ceilings. Everything looked fresh and well maintained, unlike Lama Padma’s dilapidated place. All the woodwork was painted in bright colors, and the walls were covered almost completely by huge, intricately detailed
thangkas
. Long, low benches held the monks’ texts, bells, and
dorjes
, as well as a few small hand drums of the type Peter had seen at Lama Padma’s. There were sections for larger instruments as well: long horns whose broad mouths rested on stands in front of the benches; shorter, handheld horns
with intricate silver trim; and large, flat drums with green-dyed skins on both sides, which hung from floor-standing frames and were played with a long, curved stick.

The room was lit by hundreds of butter lamps along two sides, and incense smoke filled the air. The monks and nuns had crowded in, segregated by sex on the right and left sides of the room. Even though it was cold out, with the lamps and all the bodies, the room quickly grew warm. Peter and the girls sat in the back. Lobsang brought Lama Padma a cup of tea, then sat down on a pad on the floor at his feet.

Lama Padma lifted the lid of his mug, sipped, then set the cup down and began to speak. Devi translated quietly as he spoke, using “I” when he said “I” instead of her usual interpretive “he.” Only occasionally did she hesitate, and Peter found that it was almost like having subtitles.

“I would like to thank you for inviting me,” said Lama Padma. “It is a slightly unusual circumstance this evening; only recently have I begun to teach a few Westerners, and now I’m worried that if I go off into some story about yaks, they won’t understand and the real meaning will be lost.”

The monks and nuns chuckled at this. Lama Padma smiled and sipped his tea.

“I think tonight I will just cover some basics, and if the older monks start snoring, we’ll poke them,” he said. “Please be sure you are coming to this teaching with the proper motivation. This is the desire that, above all else, we will reach Enlightenment not just for our own benefit but for all beings. Without this, you might as well go work on a road crew, where at least your sweat will do some good.” He paused for a moment, looking mischievous. “In fact,” he added, “I have a road in mind!”

The audience, apparently aware of the state of the track up to Lama Padma’s place, laughed heartily at this. Peter had always imagined the monastic life to be ascetic and humorless, and the bonhomie took him by surprise.

The lama considered his next tack. “We Buddhists always talk
about suffering,” he said. “What we mean is obvious to many people, but I sometimes worry that Westerners won’t get it, because in many ways their lives are easy. But some come here with pure intention; they are generous and want to do good. They travel, and they see the profundity of human troubles, and their minds open to how things are. People everywhere are afflicted by old age, disease, and death. Those in prosperous countries may be shocked because much of their lives they are insulated from these things. They have good doctors, good jobs, clean water, and they think, What’s all this talk of suffering? Isn’t it very morbid?”

A few of the monks turned and glanced shyly at Peter and the girls.

“Then they go to the doctor one day and learn they have cancer,” Lama Padma went on. “Or maybe their wife is killed in a car accident. Or they lose their job and their money disappears, and soon they are living alone by the road. Everything that gave them comfort is stripped away. No one is spared from impermanence.”

Lobsang got up and filled the teacup, then returned to his seat.

“So, then, what to do?” Lama Padma asked. “We are caught in this cycle. It is as if we are strapped to the tire of a truck, and one moment we see the sky and think, How lovely the world is! and the next moment we are crushed into the mud, and we think, How terrible the world is! It just goes around and around.”

Devi looked at Alex and smiled.

“This wheel of suffering arises from the mind. We talk about being in samsara, but really it’s the other way around: Samsara is in
us
. Our responsibility is to loosen the grip of attachment and aversion, and you do that through meditation practice. You train the mind to see through this masterpiece of illusion we call existence, and you do it with love in your heart for all beings. So this is good, because most of you are already doing what you should be doing. And for those of you who aren’t—why are you living in a monastery? You could be having much more fun someplace else!”

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That night Peter lay on his bed in the monastery’s guesthouse, listening to the wind blowing outside. Sleet hit the windows in little ticks, as if someone were tossing sand against them. Devi was sawing logs, as usual, but Peter sensed an alertness in Alex, in her bunk against the opposite wall.

“You awake?” he whispered.

She sat up. “I feel like I just drank about eight cups of coffee.”

It was something about the place, or the people in it, an ambient energy. Alex came over and sat on the edge of Peter’s bed. He asked how she was doing, with the relocation and the cramped quarters and life in general.

“I’m okay,” she said. There was a pause. “You’re going to think this is weird.”

“It takes a lot to shock me these days.”

She hesitated. “I kind of miss Mom.”

It did shock him, but he didn’t say so. “You feel what you feel,” he said.

“What if what you feel is weird, though?”

He smiled. “Everybody thinks what they feel is weird.”

She went back to bed and eventually relaxed into sleep. Peter lay awake, watching a blue patch of moonlight crawl along the wall, incrementally changing its dimensions as it moved. When it reached the corner of the room it flowed through it, over the course of a half hour or so, then continued on.

He was thinking about Ani Dawa. Who were these people, that they could forgive such atrocities? He wondered if he understood human nature at all. Only a few days ago he’d lain in bed, just like this, contemplating his pathetic life, all his defeats and fiascoes. Yet his petty sufferings weren’t even on the same scale with those of these people. He didn’t have much money, but he always had a way to make more. He wasn’t healthy, but he had the means to go somewhere and
get
healthy. He wasn’t homeless, he hadn’t been raped or tortured or shot, he hadn’t been imprisoned, and he hadn’t lost toes to frostbite in a desperate attempt to escape. He felt idiotic and self-indulgent in his unhappiness.

Now Devi stirred. She crawled gently over Alex and sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you still up?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” mumbled Peter.

“We should take a walk.”

“It’s freezing out.”

She got up and started dressing. “I think it may be important.”

He’d grown to trust her instincts, so he got up too. They pulled on their coats and shut the door behind them as quietly as possible.

The worst of the storm had passed, and hoarfrost blanketed the ground in the moonlight. They crunched across it in the direction of the main shrine room.

“What’s this about?” Peter asked, his breath ghostly before his face.