Mandarin Gate (14 page)

Chenmo renewed the tea in their cups and the two men spoke as friends might, of the weather, of the lammergeiers gracefully soaring overhead, of the probable origins of the little hermitage as a fortress manned by archers.

“You speak Tibetan better than any Chinese I have ever known,” the abbot observed.

“I spent a few years living only with Tibetans,” Shan replied. “The solitary Chinese with twenty Tibetans in the same barracks.”

Norbu studied him with new interest. “In Lhadrung?”

“The Four hundred and fourth People’s Construction Brigade.”

Norbu offered a solemn nod. The man of reverence was also a man of the world. He was quiet for a long moment, sipping his tea in silence. “Life can be difficult for former Chinese convicts in Tibet,” he observed.

“Life can be difficult for a Tibetan abbot in Tibet,” Shan rejoined.

Norbu offered a gentle smile in reply.

“I had a dream,” the younger of the two attendants, Dakpo, suddenly declared. “A nightmare really. The ghosts of the abbess and Jamyang were in a deep pit, unable to rise out of it. They were blind. They were weeping, asking me to help.”

For a moment Shan saw torment in the abbot’s eyes. When Norbu spoke there was a plaintive tone in his voice. “The nuns are very scared. My monks are scared. I am without understanding of these things, of violent killings. It is not part of our world.”

“It is not part of the world we wished we had,” Shan said. “And for these deaths there is no understanding.”

“I don’t follow.”

“There are people trained to understand such things. They look for motive, for patterns, for evidence of what happened. But all hinges on motive. There could be those with motive to kill a foreigner. There could be motives to kill the leader of a criminal gang. There could be a motive even to kill an abbess. Taking each victim, the police could make a list of suspects. But the lists would all be different. There is nothing linking the three. It is like they were three different murders that just happened at the same place.”

Norbu fingered the prayer beads on his belt. “Perhaps when a demon takes over a man,” the abbot said looking at his beads with sadness in his eyes, “there is no motive, there is only the demon.” He sighed. “But that’s not how the government will see it. They will announce a motive, so they can make an arrest,” he declared, looking at Shan now.

Shan had no reply.

Dakpo shook his head back and forth. “And how can I tell Jamyang and the abbess the truth the next time they come to me?” he asked in despair. “How do I tell them they must wander blind and frightened forever?”

The abbot hung his head a moment. “I want to weep,” he said in Chinese, as if the words were only for Shan, “but I am the abbot.” He opened his mouth again after a moment, then just shook his head, as if speaking had become too great a burden, and took up his beads with a whispered mantra.

Shan rose and paced along the courtyard, surveying the high slopes again. A demon was loose and Lokesh was unprotected. The knobs were seeking the American woman and Shan’s misdirection to Liang would only buy her another day or two. When the major turned his attention back to the valley he would be releasing his hungriest dogs.

He turned to see the abbot speaking in soft tones with Chenmo. Norbu touched his gau, as if offering the woman a blessing, then nodded a farewell to Shan, and with Dakpo and Trinle at his side slowly descended the steep stairs that led down from the hermitage. A great weight seemed to have settled on his shoulders.

Chenmo too had noticed. “He has become a man much loved in this valley since he arrived last year,” she said, the worry deep in her voice. “He brought with him a silver dragon bell that had belonged to the monastery for centuries, until it was taken by the government. He persuaded some museum to return it to its true owners. He speaks up when the government pushes too hard, even though he knows the last abbot was sent to prison. He is very troubled by what happened to the abbess, worries the government will use it as an excuse to put more Tibetans in prison. He stays up far into the night praying for her, praying for justice. A man like that is important to this valley if it is to survive. But there is more and more talk about how he might be arrested. If the government’s anger builds to a storm he will be the lightning rod.” The novice continued to stare down the stairs as the robes of the abbot and his attendants faded into in the shadows.

“The American woman is in great danger,” Shan said in a low voice. “She has to be warned. She has to be hidden.”

“She is not here,” Chenmo replied. “She—”

“Enough!” The stern nun who had greeted him emerged from the shadows, motioning Chenmo toward the tower. The novice swept past Shan with her head down, but not before a long glance toward the slope above the compound, at one of the small stone huts that were used by hermits and those on retreat. The nun stepped between Shan and the tower as though to block any attempt to follow the novice.

“They will come looking for the American,” Shan declared to the nun. “They will interrogate. They will search, search very roughly. Is everyone here registered? Do you have documentation that they have all taken loyalty oaths?

“Spoken like a true patriot of Beijing.”

“Spoken like one who wishes no more suffering on the nuns of Thousand Steps,” Shan shot back. “The knobs probably already know that the abbess was coordinating the restoration at the convent. They know about the foreigners. It will not seem possible to them that the foreigners would be secretly visiting the convent ruins without the abbess knowing.”

“I cannot say what knowledge the abbess took to her grave.”

“I lived in a hermitage once, Abbess. There were no secrets among the monks. It was like one family.”

“I carry no whisk,” the nun corrected him, referring to the yak tail whisk that was the traditional sign of office for abbots and abbesses. “The new abbess, Ani Ama, was called away. While she is gone I have responsibility for the others.” The nun grew quiet as a dozen others emerged from various buildings and moved into a small building with prayer wheels flanking its door. A nun appeared on the tower and began ringing a handbell.

“If they come,” she asked in a whisper, “what will happen?”

“They will separate everyone. Each will be interrogated. The knobs will seek to divide everyone, turn each against the other. First will be those who don’t present documentation of their loyalty oaths. If you haven’t signed an oath, you do not respect Beijing. A Tibetan who doesn’t respect Beijing is a splittist. A splittist is a traitor. Traitors have no rights. Imprisonment is the usual punishment, with no right to be registered as a nun ever again. But you can avoid the punishment if you just speak about the subversive activities of the abbess or the names of the traitors who hid the American woman.

“If that doesn’t work then they will begin speaking of those among you from bad families, merchants and landowners, whose files can always be reopened by political officers. When all else fails they will find out who harbors secret photos of the Dalai Lama and prosecute them. These are unsettled times in Tibet. Local law enforcement officers had been given great discretion to inflict punishment. They have but to chant the words ‘Dalai Lama splittist’ and they can destroy your life. If the knobs so choose they could arrive here in the morning and by noon everyone here will be gone, never to see one another again.”

Desolation clouded the woman’s face but was slowly replaced with defiance. She was, Shan could tell, a Khampa, from the old Tibetan province of Kham, where men and women alike had once been fierce warriors. “
If
they come,” she said.

“There is no
if
, Mother,” Shan shot back. “Only
when
.”

“But you did not come to warn us away.”

Shan looked out over the mountains again. He was not at all certain that the path he was trying to find would bring any less pain to the nuns. “The only way to change the course of things is to find the truth.”

“We know about Chinese and their truths. We have fifty years of suffering to show for it.”

“I had a teacher when I was in prison. A lama who had helped train the Dalai Lama when he was a boy. He said the reason Tibetans remained free in their hearts was because they knew that truth was more powerful than any law, any prison, any army.” The heat in the nun’s eyes began to fade. “Why,” Shan abruptly asked, “would the abbess be in the company of a Chinese gang leader?”

The nun was looking into her folded hands now, confusion on her face. “I have to lead the prayers,” she said, then turned and hurried to the chapel.

Shan followed her and settled onto folded legs near the rear wall of the little chamber. The only light came from the open door and the butter lamps that flickered on the altar below a small bronze Buddha. As the mantras began Shan closed his eyes and tried to push away his nagging fears. The soft chorus of the nuns was a salve to his aching spirit. He found himself beginning to mouth the familiar words, then joined his voice with the others.

He did not move as the nuns filed out, but searched their anxious faces. None of them looked at him. Only the senior nun stayed in the chapel, rising to go to the altar where she added more incense to the censers before turning to him.

“A few months ago some Chinese started appearing at the remote camps and farms, the ones high on the slopes,” she suddenly declared, “hitting people with sticks, breaking their tools, stealing whatever they wanted, sometimes burning feed saved for the livestock. It wasn’t so much like they were looting, for those people had little of value. More like they were trying to scare people away. They always left a black feather. Chinese, but not in uniform. Shorter and darker than most of those in that Pioneer town. When we heard they had tattoos we thought they must be escapees from prison. The abbess first went to one of the Tibetan constables to report it. The constable said he could do nothing, that it was a matter for those Armed Police.”

“You mean the Chinese gang from Baiyun was raiding the farmhouses.”

“You heard Abbot Norbu. For centuries the convent and Chegar gompa were the two anchors of the valley, one at each end, assuring its tranquility. It was always the duty of the abbot and the abbess to know of the troubles of the people, and to find ways to ease them. After the convent was destroyed the few nuns who survived came here, and the head of the hermitage became the abbess. We are responsible for the people of the valley. If a farmer’s family takes sick in the autumn, we nuns will go and take in the barley for them.”

“And so she arranged a meeting with the head of the gang. Lung Ma.”

“She just went to that old farm of theirs, with the oldest of our nuns, Ani Ama. The abbess just pushed open the door and went upstairs to see their leader. Ani Ama said his men laughed but not him. He seemed disturbed to see her. He just listened as she berated him and demanded he leave our people alone. Some of his men pulled out knives, but he spoke sharp words and they lowered the weapons.”

“You mean just before she was murdered?”

“No. Many weeks ago. Two or three months. Then last month he came for her. All the way up the stairs, gasping for breath when he reached the top.”

“To go with her to the convent.”

“No. That was later. He came because of his dead son.”

Shan looked up in surprise. “The son of the gang chief died?”

The nun nodded. “A driving accident. He wanted her to prepare the body in the old way.”

“The Jade Crows had threatened her with knives and she still went?”

“Of course she did. It was for the dead boy. His father was a different man, very shaken. Afterwards all those raids stopped.”

Shan considered her words. “So she followed him home that once,” he said, “and he followed her again later to the convent where they both died.”

The nun shook her head. “You misunderstand. She did not go to the convent for Lung, or Lung for her. They went because of Jamyang. Jamyang told her a demon had crawled out of the earth and had to be destroyed.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Halfway down the worn stone steps, Shan slipped into the steep field of rock outcroppings that flanked the stairs. Using the cover of the rocks, he moved slowly back up the slope, hoping not to attract attention. He could not be certain that Chenmo had deliberately directed him toward the little meditation shelter above the compound, and was even less certain when he reached it.

The hut was empty, devoid of furnishings other than two straw-stuffed pallets, two worn cushions, a low stool, and a bucket. On the wall was a ten-year-old tourist calendar with a glossy photo of Mount Kalais, the most sacred of pilgrimage peaks. He stood in the doorway of the decrepit, windblown structure, finding himself again looking toward the higher slopes, realizing that he would never be able to concentrate on the murders while Lokesh remained missing.

A gust of wind rattled the door on its wooden pintles, then whipped at a line of prayer flags tied to a nail on the corner of the building. Most of the line had blown away. Only half a dozen flags remained, suspended for the moment by the wind. Four of the flags were on faded cotton, but the last two were of a brilliant red material, breaking the traditional pattern of colors. They were not of the same fabric as the other flags.

Shan grabbed the line and pulled in the red flags. They bore the customary mani mantra, the invocation of the compassionate Buddha, inscribed in Tibetan. But on the reverse the mantra had been written out in English, with what looked like a ballpoint pen.
Om mani padme hum,
the letters said. The cloth was nylon, its edges hemmed with narrow strips of medical tape. Someone had cut pieces from a windbreaker or a tent to make prayer flags.

With a new determination he stepped into the hut and began systematically searching it, lifting the pallets and the small bags of yak-hair felt stuffed with fleece that served as cushions. Under one pallet was a tattered pair of leather sandals and a comb, under the other ten pages of Tibetan scripture. He looked back at the first pallet. A comb. Nuns kept their hair close-cropped, if not shorn altogether. He held the small black comb to his nose. It had a strangely cloying scent to it, too vague to be identified. Taking the cushions outside, he unfolded the flaps of cloth covering the stuffing. The first held only the familiar washed wool used in such cushions. The second held wool as well, but at the bottom there was something more, something that sent up an odor of citrus and coconut. He pulled out handfuls of wool, then a long silky skein which he carried into the sunlight. It was dark hair, brunet hair, more than eighteen inches long.