Mandarin Gate (2 page)

The lama was out of the truck before Shan brought it to a stop, an energetic bounce in his long stride as he stepped to the rim of the ledge, throwing his arms out as if to embrace the mountain. As Shan watched he spoke in a low confiding voice toward the peak, then turned to visit each of the cairn shrines.

It was a day of rare beauty, the mountain’s snowcap shimmering under the cobalt sky, its slopes alive with the hues of early summer. Shan’s anxiety began to fall away, giving way to a new contentment as he watched the lama. It was not the first time they had saved Jamyang from detection by the authorities, and today had been the closest yet. Each time it happened, Lokesh would later explain that the lama was not destined for bonecatchers, that he and Shan had been chosen by the deities to help save Jamyang for a greater destiny, to help keep the old ways alive.

Shan plucked a sprig of heather and set it on the cairn next to Jamyang. He wasn’t certain the lama knew he was at his side until Jamyang suddenly spoke. “I read once about the age of the planet. It has taken us four billion years to get to where we are,” he said with a melancholy smile.

Shan had grown to deeply care for the lama in the months since he and Lokesh had first encountered him, restoring a wall of mani stones along a lonely track in one of the high side valleys. Jamyang was in his late fifties, a few years older than Shan, not nearly so old as Lokesh. Like many of the lamas he would never speak of his background but it was obvious he was highly educated, not only in the Buddhist scriptures but in history and literature and the ways of the world. Shan knew his old friend had begun to regard Jamyang as something of a bridge, as one of the rare independent, untainted teachers who would survive another generation after Lokesh and the others of old Tibet were gone. Jamyang never joined in when others spoke about the end of time. He still nurtured hope, Shan knew, even though that seed was beginning to dry up and die in so many other Tibetans.

“Lokesh and I climb up the slopes some nights,” Shan offered, “just to sit with the sky. Last month we watched showers of meteors. They all seemed to land on Yangon, as if they were being called in to the sacred mountain.”

Jamyang nodded. “The mountain and its deity have always been there. They will always be there, long after all of us. Man cannot change that, can we?”

Shan studied the lama a moment, not certain if he understood. “No,” came his tentative reply, “we can’t.” He watched in silence as Jamyang walked to the truck and retrieved a copper tube, one of the trumpet sections the thief had taken. He pulled away a plug of wood and extracted a small roll of cloth tied with string. It was a line of prayer flags, handmade flags, each bearing a sacred image and an inscription in Jamyang’s own hand. He gave Shan one end and silently they fastened the line between two of the rock cairns, anchoring the ends under the cap rocks. Each flap in the wind would renew the prayers.

The lama offered a grateful nod when they were done, then gestured toward a cluster of crumbling structures in the distance, on the floor of the main valley. “There are probably signs of visitors on such a day,” he said. It took Shan a moment to realize there was inquiry in Jamyang’s tone. He retrieved his binoculars and trained them on the ruins. The local farmers and shepherds had begun restoration work on the ancient, abandoned convent a few months earlier, working in their spare time. Others, like Lokesh and Jamyang, usually worked there under the cover of night.

“Yes,” he reported, “I see a truck.”

The lama offered another silent nod. “I will join you in a moment,” he said, motioning Shan to the truck. Shan climbed behind the wheel and watched as the lama paced along the prayer flags, touching each in turn, murmuring the words to empower them in their task, then turned to the mountain and abruptly dropped to the ground, prostrating himself to Yangon as a pilgrim might.

It was late afternoon by the time they had parked the truck and climbed the half-mile trail to the lama’s hut. The little structure where Jamyang slept, originally a shepherd’s shelter, was as spare as a hermit’s cell. The lama spent most of his time in the shallow cave above, where he had restored an ancient bas-relief depicting several deities and sacred signs.

Shan coaxed the smoldering embers in the hut’s brazier back to life, adding some of the dried yak dung the lama collected for fuel. They silently shared some tea, then Jamyang filled a small wooden pail with water and they moved up the trail to the shrine.

Jamyang had arranged two crude benches like altars below the old rock sculptures, which were now covered with offerings. No special prayers would be offered, no celebration begun, until all the offerings were cleaned. Jamyang returned the items recovered from the thief before filling an offering bowl with water. Then he produced a rag and began reverently wiping the objects on the altar. Shan emptied the ashes from a small ceremonial brazier and walked down the slope to collect some of the fragrant juniper wood whose smoke attracted the deities. As he worked he puzzled over the somber, unsettled mood that had settled over the lama on the drive back. Jamyang had seemed eager to say something to Shan yet he had never found the words. But now the lama was home, at his secret shrine, and serene once more.

It was indeed a day for celebration. Now that rehabilitation of the simple, elegant shrine was complete, Shan knew Jamyang and Lokesh would begin bringing local Tibetans to worship there, to show them that the old ways were not forgotten. The risk to the lama would become ever greater. Shan would have to make them understand that they should never bring more than a handful of worshippers at a time. To assemble more would risk attracting the authorities. Beijing worked hard to scour all vestiges of Tibetan tradition from the land but it would never succeed as long as men like Lokesh and Jamyang existed. In recent weeks devout Tibetans elsewhere in the valley had taken to defying the police by holding impromptu prayer gatherings, marking them by sounding the long, deep-throated
duncheng
horns that once had summoned worshippers to temples. The daring group that was doing so would no doubt come to Jamyang’s shrine and no doubt taunt the authorities with their horn from the site. He found himself studying the landscape like a soldier, considering where he might stand as an unseen sentinel when worshippers came, marking routes where Tibetans might flee when police began climbing the mountain.

Half an hour later, as the fragrant smoke drifted upward into the calm, clear sky, Jamyang sat, legs crossed under him, and began reading scriptures to the stone-carved deities. As he spoke all vestiges of worry left the lama’s face. Shan sat beside him in the position of the novice, keeping the long loose pages in order, holding them down when the breeze freshened. His eyes wandered along the makeshift altars. Jamyang was an accomplished artist in the traditional style, and he had taken to adorning everyday objects with religious signs. Along the rim of a tea churn he had painted a conch, a leaping fish, a vase, and the other Eight Auspicious Signs of Tibetan ritual. A large eye stared out from a copper pitcher. The handle of a small barley scythe sported a vine with lotus flowers.

Suddenly Shan froze. At the center of the bench nearest Jamyang was something new, a black and alien object. A small automatic pistol. It was impossible that Jamyang would have such a weapon, but then he saw that it too had been adorned with a flower and the mantra to the Compassionate Buddha was painted along its barrel. Shan struggled with the urge to leap up and fling the treacherous, ugly thing down the slope. He told himself that this was just another of Jamyang’s ways of pacifying the world, that to the lama the gun was one more of the everyday objects that could be purified with sacred words. Once purified, the old ones believed, such a weapon would never cause harm again.

Shan fought against his impulse, tried to quiet his pounding heart. More than once in his imprisonment he had seen a monk executed with just such a pistol, kneeling and reciting mantras as the executioner hovered over him. He reminded himself that others would be visiting the shrine, others who knew possession of such a weapon was a serious crime, others who might not understand Jamyang’s ways. Where could the lama have found the weapon? Shan pushed down his fear, reminding himself that Jamyang’s naïveté was in its own way a gift, part of the pureness of the teacher. He settled back, deciding not to disturb the ritual but resolving to return in the small hours of the night to dispose of the pistol.

They sat in the pool of late-afternoon sunlight, watching as the shifting shadows gave movement to the deities on the rock, the sweet smoke wafting over them, the only sound now that of Jamyang’s low mantra and the occasional song of a lark. Shan relaxed again, letting his consciousness embrace only the reverent words as the lamas had taught him. A door in the back of his mind opened and he began hearing the chanted prayers of the monks of his former prison barracks, the sound once more soothing his troubled spirit. For the moment it did not matter that there were brigades of Chinese police seeking to ferret out men like Lokesh and Jamyang, two of the gentlest, kindest humans he had ever known. It did not matter that bonecatchers roamed the hills, that outsiders were settling in the valley, pushing out Tibetan families who had been rooted there for centuries. He could forget for now the nightmares of death that increasingly disturbed his sleep. He would not even let thoughts of his son, locked in a gulag camp thirty miles away, cloud the day. Shan had been learning from his friends to accept that what mattered was the here and now, the experience of this moment. And this moment, in the company of the prayerful lama, his heart filled with anticipation of Lokesh’s arrival and more reverent hours to follow, was perfect.

As if reading Shan’s mind, Jamyang looked up from his meditation. “The gods are content enough,” the lama declared with a serene smile. He reached through the fragrant smoke and squeezed Shan’s hand. “I take strength from you being here now,” Jamyang whispered, and wrapped his rosary around his fingers.

Then the lama picked up the pistol and shot himself in the head.

CHAPTER TWO

The nightmare of death had seized Shan once more. He had to be having one of his soul-splitting visions that haunted his sleep with images of tortured lamas and executed monks. A low sobbing moan echoed in the shallow cavern and he glanced frantically about for its source before realizing it came from his own throat. Then he saw the crimson rivulets rolling down his hand where blood had sprayed on him. He leapt to Jamyang’s side.

The lama’s eyes were open, aimed at the carved deities above the altar. But he was beyond seeing. The bullet hole in the center of his forehead was neat and round, like a third eye. The place where the bullet had torn out the back of his skull was a bloody knot of bone and tissue.

Tears ran down Shan’s face as he cradled the dead lama in his lap, “Recognize the radiant light that is your death.” He had heard the words of the Bardo, the traditional Tibetan death rite, so often that they left his tongue unbidden. Jamyang’s soul would be confused, would be terrified at the difficult journey it was so abruptly beginning, and the living had to comfort it. “Recognize that your consciousness is without birth or death.” The words came in tiny choked breaths, lower and lower until finally they died away.

He did not know how long he sat, paralyzed with his grief, did not know how long Lokesh had been there, but when he looked up his friend was standing a few feet away, staring at the dead lama with a stricken expression.

“We had cleaned the offerings,” Shan explained in a forlorn whisper. “I had never seen this pistol before. I was going to get rid of it tonight. But he picked it up and pulled the trigger so suddenly I couldn’t—” Lokesh stepped forward and knelt by the body. Shan’s question came out in a hoarse croak. “Why, Lokesh? Why? We were going to celebrate his gods…”

With a trembling hand the old Tibetan lifted Jamyang’s head from Shan’s lap and they laid the dead man out on the earth before the shrine. Lokesh stood motionless, staring at the body, then, as if the reality finally struck him, he sagged and fell onto his knees. Shan’s heart wrenched as he watched his friend press the dead man’s head to his breast and rock back and forth. Backing against the stone face he slid to the ground, numb with the horror before him, as he began reciting anew the words of the Bardo chant. The old Tibetan did not bother to wipe at the tears that flowed down his leathery cheeks.

At last Shan rose and stepped to the pail, splashing cold water on his face before stepping away, out into the cool wind, lifting his face toward the sky. The souls of the purest lamas were said to ascend toward the sky in a rainbow stream of light. But there would be no rainbow for Jamyang. At the end of his pure life he had committed a grave sin, an impure act that would condemn his soul to be reincarnated among the lowest of life-forms. In their prison the old Tibetans had called it “taking four,” finding release from the agony even though it meant reincarnation as a four-legged creature. Shan choked away another sob. What had been Jamyang’s agony? He had had so much to live for. Impossibly, inexplicably, Jamyang had taken four.

He had to push his fear and grief away, he knew. There was much to be done, and grave risks to be taken.

“The farmers and shepherds could come anytime,” he said to Lokesh. “It will be impossible to hide this.” Word of an unregistered monk dying of a bullet in his head would attract too much attention. “The knobs will learn of it,” he said, referring to the dreaded Public Security bulldogs, the elite of Beijing’s many enforcement arms. They both knew that if the knobs discovered that one of the monk outlaws had been living here protected by the local Tibetans they would use it as an excuse to round up two or three dozen and ship them to one of Beijing’s new pacification camps.

Lokesh looked up from his task with query in his tear-soaked eyes.

“We have to carry him to the hut so he can be cleaned,” Shan continued. “I will go and bring back help from the hermitage.” The hermitage of nuns, five miles away, was tiny but he knew its inhabitants had shared Jamyang’s secrets. “We have to remove him quickly, before word leaks out. If the knobs discover the shrine they will destroy it.” Shan looked at the little bas-relief deities with new torment. Only a week ago Jamyang had said they had to treat every such shrine as if it were the last in Tibet, the last in all the world, for someday one of them would be. Beijing did not abide such secret places of worship. The knobs had special teams, godkiller squads, who used dynamite, even portable air hammers, to destroy them. “Jamyang would not want that. He was the opposite of a godkiller.”