Soul of the Fire (16 page)

Shan pushed the straw back into his mouth and waited while the Tibetan sipped again. “But that was before you came here, Rikyo. Now the report has been made and you have done your duty. Was it in Lhasa?”

The peeling skin of the man's forehead creased for a moment. “Okay, okay. In Lhasa.”

“What did the man in Lhasa look like? Did he wear a uniform?” he asked again.

“A white shirt and yellow tie. He said a great honor had fallen on me. He said afterwards, I would be flown in one of those fast Party jets to Chengdu for skin grafts. I will get all the morphine I want. I am to be a new man.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

Rikyo seemed to have trouble keeping his eyes open. He ran his finger across the ruined skin of his cheek in an odd checkmark motion then his head drooped into unconsciousness.

 

CHAPTER SIX

Shan hesitated at the stairwell. He knew he would not be able to sleep, and the shifts for the night janitors would be ending soon. The lights in the corridor of the sublevel were extinguished when he reached it. Not knowing where the switch was, he lit a match and proceeded cautiously down the hallway. After three matches, he reached the janitors' room and hit the switch inside the door. The tattered wide-brimmed hat that Tserung wore was still on a peg, above his threadbare jacket.

He ventured farther down the corridor, to the infirmary storeroom, pausing as he recognized the faint scent of incense. The dollies holding the beds had been pushed into the center of the floor, creating a makeshift barrier to the far side of the room. He stepped to the wall and edged his way around the obstacles. The narrow door in the back wall was ajar, revealing three figures silhouetted by flickering altar lamps. Shan did not recognize the prayer spoken by a feminine voice. He inched forward, seeing old Tserung, who sat not facing the altar but with his shoulder toward it, to face his two companions. The woman beside him handed the third figure a book and he took up the recitation. “‘Though our outer body may waste away,'” the man intoned in English, “‘our inner self is renewed day by day. For the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.'”

Suddenly all three were staring at him. Benjamin Judson closed the book in his hand. Hannah Oglesby gasped and shot up. She seemed about to flee when Judson put a hand on her leg.

“Good morning, comrade,” the American man said. “You're welcome to join our services. You'll do a better job of translating than we can.”

Oglesby began inching away. Judson seemed only amused at Shan's appearance, but she was clearly frightened.

“From the Japanese Buddhists?” Shan asked. He was unable to make sense of the scene. The Americans should not know Tserung. And it was impossible that the Americans would know about the secret underground chapel.

“One of those other saints,” Judson said, then saw Shan's puzzled expression. “From a letter written to some Corinthians a long time ago,” Judson said, and held up the book. It was a Bible. You might say I have two gods,” the American added, “one in the East and one in the West. My sister says having two gods means I have none at all. My brother just says I need all the help I can get. I tend to think of them as the same god in different clothes.”

“My father raised me in the ways of the Tao,” Shan offered. “My mother and aunts would take me to Confucian temples. I had a teacher once who would read the Old Testament to us and compare it to the
Tao Te Ching.
In Tibet, the Buddha embraced me. An old lama once told me it is not about the light at the far end of the tunnel, it is about the journey to the light. Do you have room for another?” He looked at the skulls overhead, an unexpected ache in his heart.

The American woman followed his gaze. “Is it true they were here first?”

“Many monks died in the prison, but even more died earlier, when the Red Guard invaded. These probably died more than forty years ago in the attack on the abbey. The Red Guard fought with machine guns. The monks fought with prayer beads.”

Oglesby visibly shuddered.

“We are honored by their presence,” Judson said, turning toward the door. The American woman had disappeared. “Please,” he said with a sigh, gesturing Shan to the place where she had sat.

Judson pulled a slip of paper from his Bible and read again. “‘The prayer of a monk is never perfect until he no longer recognizes he is praying.'”

Shan translated for Tserung, who cocked his head. “It has the sound of the early lamas,” the old Tibetan suggested.

Judson smiled. “Saint Anthony, a Christian hermit.”

“Wisdom comes from hermits on both sides of the mountain,” Tserung said with a gentle smile in return.

Judson pulled another slip from the Bible and handed the paper to Shan. “Tserung likes this one,” he said.

“‘I am only one,'” Shan read, “‘but still I am one. I cannot do everything. But still I can do something.'” He looked up. “From your saints?”

“From an American named Edward Everett Hale, a writer and man of God who died a hundred years ago.”

“It has a sense of invitation about it,” Shan observed as he returned the paper to Judson. “What are you doing here, Mr. Judson? Major Sung's shouts would be heard all the way to Lhasa if he discovered you.”

“Our lama,” Judson replied, gesturing to Tserung, “tells his flock we are living at the end of time. Humanity seems to have failed, he tells us, but individual humans still have a chance to shine. I would have laughed at that five years ago, but—” The American shrugged. “—now I don't know.” He looked up at the skulls. “There always seemed to be wise old leaders when I was young. The innocents of the world seemed safe enough in their hands. But then my career led me to become acquainted with those in governments, the ones society considers our wise ones,” he declared with a bitter grin. He looked expectantly at the old Tibetan, as if hoping he would join in, but Tserung just silently stared at Shan.

“Tserung says the innocents are left to immolate themselves and the ones who should have become wise have been turned into puppets. And the wisest of all have been reduced to bone,” he said, and gestured to the skulls. “The more I know about Tibet and the rest of the world, the more I think what happened to them was indeed the beginning of the end of time. For all of us. What happened in Tibet was a test. And we all failed it. The soul of humankind is being hollowed out here, and the world ignores it.”

“There is always despair to be found if you seek it,” Shan suggested. “Our challenge is to rise above it.”

“Still,” Judson added after a moment, “hiding in a dank cellar, looking at the skulls of massacred holy men, feels a lot like the end of time.”

“I still don't understand why you're in Tibet, Mr. Judson,” Shan said.

The American looked up at the skulls again. “Why have foreigners ever traveled to remote Tibetan temples? Salvation.”

Shan felt a hand on his knee and found the old Tibetan leaning closer.

“Mr. Judson speaks a lot for one who came to meditate,” Tserung said. “We have not heard from you.”

It was Shan's turn to gaze at the skulls. “I think it is good to be reminded that from the hour of our birth, our time is ending,” he said.

The silence that followed was interrupted only by Tserung's soft mantra. Shan gazed at the Buddha and fell into the spell of the chant. When at last the words stopped, Judson was gone. Tserung silently took Shan's hand, squeezed it, and rose. When the lama was gone, Shan looked down to see an old bronze key lying in his palm.

*   *   *

Shan was summoned from the Commission meeting in midmorning by Miss Lin, who wore an amused smile as she handed him a note.
Your appointment is here,
was all it said. When they reached the Commission offices, she motioned Shan into the outer lobby.

He had expected to find Major Sung or someone else in a knob uniform, perhaps even the grim Madam Wu of Religious Affairs. There was only an elderly Chinese woman in a blue business suit, knitting what looked like a scarf. He looked back in confusion at Lin, who grinned and shut the door behind her.

“You look thin, Xiao Shan,” the stranger said.

Shan stared at the woman with the greying hair and knitting needles, not recognizing her as she stood and adjusted the military medal she wore as a necklace. He found himself making a short, awkward bow. Then he glanced back at the knitting needles. “Amah Jiejie!” he gasped.

Shan had seldom seen Colonel Tan's assistant in recent years, never more than once every few months, but she had always shown him kindness, especially in the difficult, dangerous days after he was released from prison without official papers. The antidote to his hopelessness was almost as painful as the disease itself, and she had slipped him ration cards and warned of knob raids on the Tibetan villages where he often stayed. She was a stern woman with a generous heart, something others had also seen, reflected in her peculiar nickname.
Amah
meant a “nanny,” but behind the colonel's back, many called her his
jiejie,
“older sister.”

The woman did not reply but led him to an adjoining conference room.

“Is the colonel progressing well?” he asked awkwardly as they settled on opposite sides of the table.

“Some days are better than others,” the woman said with a strained smile. “He has me visiting him three times a week now to catch up on work. I think two days is the longest a nurse has lasted with him before demanding reassignment.” She set a large envelope on the table.

“He follows your rehabilitation with great interest, Xiao Shan. It was kind of you to visit him.”

Shan felt an unexpected tightening of his throat.
Xiao Shan.
It was a traditional form of address for younger members of a family, something an aunt would use with her nephew.

Before she continued, Amah Jiejie cast a glance toward the ventilation vent. Shan made an effort to hide his surprise. The very proper, very correct woman who worked for Tan was warning him about the surveillance camera. “Since you represent Lhadrung County, he wants you to have as much information as possible.” She pushed the envelope across to him. “You need full class background on victims who had family in our county. The Chairman taught that socioeconomic context explains all human behavior, did he not?” she added in a schoolteacher's tone, then lowered her voice and fixed Shan with a meaningful stare. “Colonel Tan says you are a man who understands criminals and their victims like no other. Troubling times are tests for all of us.” She was speaking in code, he realized, offering a cover story for their meeting.

“You took him his cigarettes,” Shan said after a moment, not sure if he should open the envelope. He stood and walked restlessly to the window. On the street below was a Red Flag limousine, the bulky, obsolete model that Tan could have replaced years earlier but kept because it reminded him of his beloved days as one of the army's true lions.

“And yesterday I took him a bottle of whiskey. He has developed a taste for Scotch. I have to drive into Lhasa to buy it.”

“Maybe it is time for him to let go.”

Amah Jiejie shrugged. “I suspect many would have said that of you years ago.”

Shan looked at the envelope again. He was being used once more by Tan and didn't even know how or why. “Tan doesn't understand things sometimes. He thinks in absolute terms, but we no longer live in an absolute age.”

“I asked them to give him double rations for a month. I didn't like his color.”

Shan stopped breathing. They were no longer talking about the colonel. He lowered himself into a chair by the wall and fought the flood of emotion. “You … you saw my son.”

“The colonel sent me after you were assigned here. The family resemblance is strong.”

“Ko was in solitary confinement the last time I visited. They wouldn't let me in. I just sat outside the fence for hours.”

“I took him a little box of rice cakes. He didn't know what to say. I told him I had a brother in a prison in the northern desert. They're allowed visitors once a year. I went once. It took me four days to travel there. But when I got there, he was being punished and I couldn't see him.”

“The important thing was for him to know you tried.”

“He wrote me a few months later and said they had just told him I was there. He was very grateful.”

Shan gazed at the austere woman who reminded him of the sober but compassionate aunts he had known as a boy, many lifetimes ago. He could not imagine what Ko would have thought to have her visit. She would have intimidated the guards, since all would know she acted for Tan. He smiled and wiped at the moisture in his eyes, then studied her with new interest. Amah Jiejie wasn't just Tan's assistant, she was also his surrogate.

She rose and retrieved the envelope from the table, then sat beside him along the wall. They were in a blind spot from the camera, which recorded video but no sound. As she handed him the envelope again, there was an unexpected challenge in her eyes.

It wasn't a file on immolation families. It was an accident report. Captain Lu Fangsha, adjutant to Colonel Tan, had died while driving to Lhasa. His car went off the highway in the night, a common danger on the mountain roads. Lu had been missing for two days before his body was found in the charred wreckage. Shan leaned over the file and leafed through it. Attached to the report were press releases and photographs. Captain Lu at an official banquet. Captain Lu receiving an award from the provincial Party. Lu was a high-potential Party member, a protégé of Tan on a track for high office.

“He was on his way to a meeting with the General Secretary of the Party,” Amah Jiejie said pointedly. “The General Secretary.”

“You mean Pao's superior.”

She gave a slow nod of affirmation. “He had asked for a private meeting.”