Soul of the Fire (15 page)

He desperately needed the old man's calming presence, wanted to hear his advice, even though he knew what it would be. Shan was too interested in forcing events, in seeking to influence outcomes in the pursuit of what he considered justice. The old man distrusted human notions of justice and believed Shan should stop getting in the way of destinies determined by the gods.

Shan had been so focused on the prison that only now did he notice the long, low mound in front of him. The entire slope was like one mass grave. There were many more dead on the mountain than living.

He found himself on his knees. When he was a boy, his extended family would make a solemn procession to the graveyard each spring to spend the day sweeping ancestors' graves and burn paper offerings to the dead. They would kowtow seven times at each grave, always in order of age, meaning Shan was always last. His aunts had taught him the proper form of prostration when he was only three years old. He extended his arms now and bent to the ground. Seven times he kowtowed to the dead monks, the crow watching attentively. When he finished, it gave a caw of approval.

Lokesh would be fascinated by the crow that was lingering so close, would speak to it and wonder out loud if it held the spirit of an old acquaintance. More than once, Shan had watched a bird or one of the small alpine mammals light on Lokesh's leg and listen with cocked head as the old man spoke to it.

“Were you a monk here, then?” Shan asked the bird.

The crow flapped its wings as if to fly, but only jumped down and walked along the rough gravel surface. Suddenly Shan realized the bird was walking over footprints. He knelt, examining the soil. The prints were of the soft-soled boots and shoes worn by Tibetans. Others were watching the prison, no doubt some of those who had been on the slope the day before the immolation. He stood, stirring the bird into the air, then followed the prints and the bird over the rolling slope. It was how Lokesh would search for lost shrines or sacred treasures concealed in mountain caches, following birds or marmots or squirrels. One day, they had followed a dragon-shaped cloud for miles.

Shan found himself entering the orchard above Yamdrok, then the grove of junipers that surrounded the ancient chapel. He cautiously stepped inside, worried that he might disturb villagers at worship. There was only one worshipper. As Shan knelt by a small altar in the back corner, Kolsang lit a stick of incense on the front altar, beside three identical sticks that had already burned out. When Shan turned to the corner altar, which bore a likeness of Tara, he discovered a folded paper left under the goddess. He begged the mother protector's pardon and lifted the paper.

It was another list of the death poems, although one more had been added since the last:

Coming and going, paths get entangled

Let my lightning clear the way.

At the bottom of the paper, someone had drawn the oval intersected by the crescent.

Shan tried to focus on the little Tara to clear his mind, but to no avail. He retreated outside and reverently spun each of the cylinder prayer wheels mounted on the side of the building. The
mani
mantra, invoking the Compassionate Buddha, was elegantly inscribed on each bronze wheel, and with each rotation, the prayer was sent to the gods.

He let the wheels wind down, then spun them again and sat on a rough-hewn bench to watch them. Some old Tibetans would keep such wheels spinning for hours.

The rhythmic stroking of the priest's rake on the gravel of the temple garden was always hynoptic to Shan. Once a month, his uncle would take him to an old Taoist temple at the edge of the city. They would pray with the aged priests, then help clean the crumbling temple. Afterwards, his uncle would test his progress in memorizing the
Tao Te Ching
by tossing his sticks and asking Shan to recite the verse their pattern represented. Only at the end of the day would they relax, drinking tea and eating rice cakes. His uncle, much older than his father, would speak of long-dead poets and, if Shan was lucky, of the precious tame pigeons, his prized possession, which were trained to fly overhead with tiny whistles fastened to their tailfeathers, descendants of birds that had performed in the imperial court.

“My father worries about those communists who give loud speeches on the radio,” Shan offered during a lapse in conversation.

The gentle old man tousled his hair. Shan could smell sandalwood and cardamom when he leaned over him. “My brother worries too much,” his uncle assured Shan. “They are like children at a party. They will wear themselves out and we will all get back to normal life. Tell him to turn his radio off.”

Suddenly Shan realized the wheels had stopped spinning. He was about to rise to spin them again when Kolsang appeared and did it for him.

The Tibetan Commissioner sat beside him. “The metalcraft on those drums is exquisite,” Kolsang observed. “Made centuries ago. I doubt it could be duplicated today. There is a legend that inside each is a relic of one of the ancient saints, which protects the chapel and the town. Even before I came to Yamdrok, I had heard stories of how these wheels will abruptly start spinning without the touch of a human hand. It's the ghosts of Sungpa Abbey, they say.”

Neither rose when the wheels stopped spinning. The sun was setting. From the village came the sound of mothers calling children inside.

“The poems keep appearing, even in Zhongje,” Shan said. “If they aren't careful, Pao will declare it a crime just to possess them.”

Kolsang gave a weary nod. “I think our people are tired of being careful. That's why you and I are in Zhongje.”

Shan took a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket and sketched the oval and crescent. “Now this appears. Have you seen it before?”

“May I?” Kolsang asked, and took the paper and pencil from Shan. “The
purbas
have turned it into a simplified pictogram, like many Chinese characters.” He drew, but this time the oval narrowed at one end like a nose. The crescent he made was more like a curving cone, its wide base inside the oval. Then he added an eye.

“This is what he rides. A ram.” Kolsang saw the confusion in Shan's eyes and continued. “A very old god, brought up from India. His wisdom burns away all delusion. He guards the hearth in many old homes.”

Shan suddenly remembered. “Agni.”

Kolsang nodded. “The fire god.”

Everything had started with a ride in a prison wagon. It was impossible that the simple farmer Pema would have known. But she had drawn the secret mark of the god of immolations.

A harsh caw broke their silence. The crow was on the chapel roof, looking at them. As Shan watched, the bird rose, flying toward Zhongje now. Shan understood. He had to speak with the man who had been touched by Agni.

*   *   *

The infirmary was darkened when he arrived. The doctor was in her office, on her knees with a bucket beside her, scrubbing the shadowed wall. Shan groped for the light switch. “Perhaps a little light would—,” he began as he flipped the switch, then froze.

The walls were covered with chalk drawings.

They had been drawn in obvious haste, yet with an expert hand. The biggest was of an angry god mounted on a ram, encircled by flames and flanked on either side by vengeful protector demons. On another wall were a man and woman, both seated, arms raised, surrounded by flames.

When Dr. Lam spoke, her voice was a near whisper. “Do you know who they are?”

“Gods and demons,” Shan stated, then turned to her. “Are you missing anything?”

“You mean did another body float away? No. Nothing seems to be missing. Nothing tangible. But when I arrived, my computer was warm. I had turned it off hours ago. Ghosts who know computers. How very contemporary.”

“What would you have on the computer that relates to the Commission?”

“Just the medical reports. All the Commissioners had health profiles, to confirm they could work at these altitudes. They have all been deleted.”

Shan paced slowly around the office, halting at a darkened doorway in the corner.

“Just a lab,” Lam said.

He pushed open the door and switched on the light. The lab seemed tidy and undisturbed.

Lam pushed past him and paced around the central island, studying the racks of test tubes and instruments. “Of course, they wouldn't be in here. They wouldn't have a clue how to—” Her words faded as she reached the microscope. A little paper loop bearing the
mani
mantra, prayer to the Compassionate Buddha, was hung on the tube.

Lam's face tightened. She lit a Bunsen burner and, as if fearing contamination, lifted the loop with a pair of tweezers, ignited it, and dropped the burning paper into the sink. With swift, angry motions she began opening and shutting doors on the cabinets that lined the walls, scanning the orderly rows of chemicals and supplies. Halfway down the wall, she stopped, looking at several bottles that had been left near the edge of a shelf. The doctor picked up each bottle, studying its label, then returned each to its proper row.

“Reagents and solvents,” she announced in a bitter voice, then spun about and returned to her office.

Shan noted the name of each of the bottles that had been moved, and then, remembering the clandestine photocopies of death poems, stepped to the copier at the back of the lab. It was still warm. He gazed back at Lam's office. Had he heard her correctly? Why would the
purbas
care about Commissioner health records?

Lam was already back on her knees, scrubbing her wall. As Shan began to roll up his sleeves, he realized there was another question, just as important. “Why haven't you reported this, at least asked for help?”

“I'm done with Public Security ransacking my offices. And my own staff would be too frightened. My Tibetan assistant had her prayer amulet out yesterday, the one she always keeps inside her blouse. Some of my Chinese staff asked to touch it, for protection. Some asked for words to mantras.” She lifted her scrub brush again. “I take it these are flames,” she said, indicating the swirled patterns on the wall.

“The blaze of awareness,” Shan confirmed. “When used around demons like this, it is called
kalagni.
‘Fire at the end of time.'”

“This one is going to be extinguished by the end of night,” Dr. Lam vowed, and energetically applied her brush.

Shan lifted another brush.

When they finished their task, dawn was only two hours away. Exhausted, neither spoke as they turned out the lights and headed with the buckets for the stairwell door. Shan took several steps before realizing Lam had stopped at the glass wall where the Commission gathered two days before.

Lam cursed under her breath, then led him through the side door into Kai's room. She checked the instruments attached to the comatose man before stepping to a cabinet, where she filled a syringe from a small bottle. Shan reached into his pocket and checked two lists of names, one his original note of names from the burn trauma units and the second the names Tuan had given him that morning. There had been something new in Tuan's eye since they spoke of his dead friend, an uneasy trust that hadn't been there before. He reported only half of what he knew.

Lam's hand was shaking when she injected the contents of the syringe into a port on the intravenous tube. “I just want this to be over,” she said.

For a horrible moment, Shan misunderstood. Kai began choking, and Shan was about to rip the tube away from his arm when Kai opened his eyes and cleared his throat. The doctor held a cup with a straw to his lips. He drank deeply and nodded his thanks.

“This is—” She hesitated, not certain how to explain their presence. “—this is Commissioner Shan. He has some questions for you,” she said, then leaned toward Shan. “Five minutes before he slips away again,” she whispered, then stepped outside the door and took a position by the front glass where she could see both the corridor and the stairwell.

“I drove through Gyantse once,” Shan said conversationally. “There was a complex of factories on the outskirts. Kilns and boilers and furnaces. How does a man not get burned?” He glanced at his lists. The name missing from Tuan's note was Rikyo Dolge.

It was fear that twisted the man's face now, not pain. “I failed to attend citizenship classes. I allowed myself to drift from the motherland. When criminals from India came and offered my family money, I forgot my duty. Reactionaries told me…” Kai faltered. “Reactionaries tried to … I was a puppet.”

“Reactionaries poisoned your mind,” Shan said, reciting the report back to him, “then made you a puppet for their act of terrorism.”

Kai brightened. “Yes. Like you said.”

“It must have been torture, that ambulance ride from Gyantse to Lhasa.”

“In Gyantse, my body screamed with pain for two days. Those Chinese doctors from Lhasa had better medicine. With morphine, I just floated.”

Shan helped him drink again. “You must miss your family.”

“They are going to get a new house.” Kai's face clouded. “Am I supposed to say that?”

“Better leave that out, Rikyo,” Shan suggested, using the man's Tibetan name. The man on the bed nodded as if grateful to know Shan was in on the conspiracy. “Who brought you here, Rikyo? Was it Major Sung?”

The Tibetan began a shrug that ended with a grimace. “Soldiers came. I thought I was being taken to one of their prisons. They just took me to see a man who asked if I knew my duty to the motherland.”

“That was in Lhasa?”

“He said forget about our meeting, forget it ever happened. He said it wasn't real, that it was real only if he said so.”

Shan considered the words, not certain he'd heard correctly. “What was his name? Did he wear a uniform?”

“He wore a big gold watch. A very important man. He said forget we met.”