Soul of the Fire (18 page)

Someone nudged him. He had not realized he had stopped at a window, unable to take his eyes off the haggard prisoners. Amah Jiejie pushed him on, then hesitated at the window herself. She had a brother in the desert gulag.

They arrived in an antechamber that had been constructed against the wall of a massive stone building. Beyond the inner door came hissing and metallic rumbles, sounds of machinery. The Deputy Warden waited until their small group had gathered beside the door before opening it with a dramatic flair. “The pride of the entire system!” he repeated as a wave of heat and acrid chemical smells washed over them.

A man wearing a white lab coat over a white shirt and tie greeted them. His smile faded as he saw the Americans, but as the Deputy Warden whispered into his ear, his smile, now forced, returned. “Ask about production rates,” their stout guide urged his guests before excusing himself to finish arrangements for lunch. “Every unit is blessed by patriotic fervor.”

They were led past mixing stations where buckets of chemicals were poured into large vats that fed into stainless steel pipes. The prisoners who handled the chemicals—Tibetans whose clothes and skin bore dark stains—did not look up.

“What the hell is this place?” Judson muttered to Shan, who had no answer.

The antechamber, Shan realized, had been the entry hall to a spacious sanctuary. No effort had been made to erase the murals that once adorned its high walls. Pipes supported by steel struts penetrated the eye of a magnificent ten-foot-high painting of the Compassionate Buddha. A pipe extending from the wall pierced the abdomen of a fading
dakini
goddess.

Shan was vaguely aware of the guide's commentary as he gazed at a line of protective deities who appeared to be fighting against the struts and bolts that pinned them to the wall. The equipment had been recycled from a plant in Chengdu, he heard their guide say, trucked in a special convoy straight to Longtou. A web of pipes divided and fed into great metal blocks positioned on carts under valves, hoses, and instrument dials. They followed such a cart with its block into the next, even larger chamber. Shan realized the blocks were molds, and with a look of smug anticipation, the man in the lab coat hurried them to a workstation where the mold was being opened. A human figure cast in fiberglass emerged.

Shan's gut turned to ice.

“Fuck me,” Judson whispered. Amah Jiejie cast an anxious glance at Shan. The old monks and lamas, imprisoned by Beijing, were being forced to produce fiberglass statues of Chairman Mao.

There had been speeches on town squares all over Tibet—always the same speech—in which local officials solemnly proclaimed that the Party was Tibet's new Buddha, then unveiled such a statue of Mao, usually on the same spot where the town's traditional image of Buddha had sat for centuries. An old Tibetan stepped forward, holding a large file to smooth out the rough edges of the molded statue. He had the kind, open face of a lama, but it was scarred and stained from the hot fiberglass that spilled out of the molds. Shan wanted to weep.

Judson appeared at his shoulder again. “You couldn't make this up,” he said. “What a country.”

“At lunch,” Shan reminded him. They had reviewed his plan the night before. “I have to disappear for a while. Keep them thinking this is about you, about impressing our American guests.”

A mischievous grin crossed Judson's face, and he nodded.

Shan let himself be pushed along, past prisoners who polished away all blemishes on the face of the Great Helmsman, into the final production chamber, where still more prisoners painted the statues with airbrushes. Some of the figures were coated with textured paint for the appearance of granite, others bronzed, still others painted with shades of flesh, hair, and clothing for a more lifelike rendition. Their guide motioned them to follow a forklift through a set of double doors. They were in a warehouse where plastic Maos stared unblinking from row after row of shelves.

Amah Jiejie put her arm on Shan's and led him away as if she sensed he might collapse.

The private dining room where their lunch awaited was on the far side of a huge mess hall where at least five hundred prisoners ate bowls of gruel. Not one of the prisoners looked up. The unsettling silence, enforced by guards wielding truncheons, was broken only by the rattle of spoons on bowls. As soon as the door to their dining chamber closed behind them, Amah Jiejie nudged Shan to look at the clock. He paused at the waiting buffet long enough to furtively grab a
momo
dumpling, then met her at the door. Twenty steps down the long hall, he turned to see the stone-faced commando officer from Lhadrung following them.

“Just looking for lavatories,” he tried.

The lieutenant frowned as if disappointed in Shan's excuse. “I have my orders. Colonel Tan said to see you safely inside and assure your safe return. Which means I stay beside you. I couldn't care less about the bastards who run this chemical factory. Do what you want. I am here to get you out when it is time.” The officer looked to Amah Jiejie, who nodded her approval, then motioned Shan forward.

Dolma waited where she had promised, inside the open door of a utility closet at the end of the corridor. The former nun shrank away when she saw the soldier.

“Please,” Shan said. “I have only one chance.” He tried to force more confidence into his voice than he felt. “The lieutenant does not work here. He is a ghost. Ignore him.”

Dolma instead studied the officer, then Amah Jiejie whispered into her ear and a sly smile crossed her face. “We won't ignore him. We will do the opposite,” she said, then from her apron extracted a small
tsa tsa,
one of the little high ceramic saints made in Yamdrok. The officer's stony expression did not change as she tucked it inside his tunic pocket. She began urgently speaking to the man. After a minute, she gestured Shan inside the closet, where he changed into prisoner garb, stuffing the dumpling into his shirt, while she found an empty bucket and began tossing objects into it from the shelves. Pliers. A hammer. Wire. A rubber tube. A small bottle of bleach.

The lieutenant said nothing as Dolma guided them down the two flights of stairs that led to the isolation cells. They had made a terrible mistake! a voice shouted inside Shan.
Never trust a soldier.
A quick word from the lieutenant could send Shan into the prison population with no record to account for him. He paused at the last flight of stairs, leading into musty shadows. He had never been so reckless, but he had also never been so desperate. He turned to Amah Jiejie. “If something happens to me you have to tell my son.”

She replied with a small somber nod, then stood in the hall as they proceeded toward the cell blocks.

When they reached the iron bars of the entrance to the isolation cells, Dolma patted the lieutenant on the arm as if in encouragement. He stepped to the gate. “Cell Fourteen. Now,” the officer snapped to the guard inside.

The guard opened the gate but blocked their progress. “I will need to see your orders.”

“My orders come from Colonel Tan, Governor of Lhadrung County,” the lieutenant growled. “They are not the kind you write down.” Shan kept his eyes on the floor, not having to conceal his worry.

“What do you want with the old man?”

“This one”—the lieutenant jerked a thumb toward Shan—“is not cooperating. We discovered the old man is a friend of his.”

Dolma extended the bucket to the lieutenant. “Please. I cannot. I am just on the cleaning crew.”

“And there will be much to clean up,” the lieutenant snapped, and pointed her toward the cells.

A thin smile grew on the guard's face as he looked into the bucket and saw the familiar tools. Collateral manipulation might be the new euphemism for it, as Tan had explained, but surrogate interrogation had been part of Public Security manuals for years. For many Tibetan prisoners, direct torture was unsuccessful, but they almost always broke down when someone they cared about was tortured in front of them. The guard stepped aside then, as if in afterthought, extracted an electric cattle prod from a wall rack and handed it to the lieutenant.

The only light in the cell came from the naked bulb hanging in the corridor. The lieutenant, still showing no expression, spun about and positioned himself as a sentry by the heavy wooden door.

Lokesh lay on his side, facing the rear wall. Shan steadied himself against the stench and stepped inside. On the walls were images Shan had seen in many isolation cells in Tibet—crude drawings of deities and mantras inscribed in blood, porridge, sometimes even feces.

He dropped to his knees and with a trembling hand touched his friend's shoulder. For a brief, horrible moment he thought the worst when Lokesh did not respond, then the old man slowly sat up, blinking, and then staring with an empty expression. He jabbed Shan with a finger to confirm he was no ghost.

Shan's heart leapt. Despite his nightmares, Lokesh was alive. His teacher, his confessor, the bedrock of his life was alive. Shan desperately needed the steady soothing voice that had become a salve to his battered soul.

But when Lokesh spoke, his voice was cracked and hoarse. He leaned into Shan's shoulder. “I am ashamed of my life,” the old Tibetan groaned. “What have I done with it?”

You've worked miracles,
Shan wanted to say,
considering that more than half your life has been spent in Beijing's prisons for the crime of being in the Dalai Lama's government.
But the emotion that welled up proved too much for speech. He wrapped his arms around Lokesh, pressing the old man's head more firmly into his shoulder, and felt tears washing his cheeks.

Shan became aware that Dolma was in the cell beside him. She took charge, setting the slop bucket outside the door, then folding the tattered blanket and setting Lokesh's tin cup and bowl on the short stool by the door. She knelt beside Lokesh and from inside her apron produced a vial of antiseptic, a swath of gauze, and a water bottle filled with a dark brown liquid. With a matronly air, she gently pried Lokesh from Shan's arms. As she leaned him against the wall in a pool of light, Lokesh and then Shan groaned.

The old Tibetan's eye was still swollen, almost shut. Blood from a dozen cuts was caked and dried on his face and arms. The finger that was splinted was discolored. On a rock that jutted out from the wall, Shan saw a tooth.

“A medicine tea,” Dolma explained as she opened the bottle of brown liquid. “A very old recipe used by the doctors of the old abbey.” Shan and Lokesh both stared at her with vacant expressions.

Dolma shook Shan's shoulder. “We've all seen worse,” she reminded him. “Time is short.”

Shan stirred from his paralysis and began unrolling the gauze as the former nun produced half a dozen pills for Lokesh to swallow with the tea. She worked efficiently, using the gauze to swab the wounds with antiseptic. She was savvy in the way of prisons. The former nun did not try to apply bandages, for Lokesh's prison handlers would consider them to be interference with their work. She invoked the Compassionate Buddha with the
mani
mantra as she worked, and Lokesh's face began to regain color, his familiar crooked smile gradually returning.

“I almost forgot,” Shan said, reaching into his shirt for the
momo
dumpling.

Lokesh bowed his head as he accepted the dumpling, but then set it on the floor in the corner of his cramped cell and clucked his tongue. The head of a mouse emerged from a hole in the mortar. It was a gesture Shan had often seen during his imprisonment. Starving lamas would choose to gain spiritual merit instead of eating.

Shan waited for the mouse to take a bite, then he lifted the
momo
and broke it in half, setting one piece on the floor. “I am sure your new friend wishes to show compassion for you as well,” he said, and extended the second half to Lokesh. The old man smiled again and began chewing.

He seemed to regain his strength quickly. He took another bite and looked up. “I didn't tell them anything, Shan. I would never tell them.”

Shan gazed at his friend in confusion. “But they hold you only to intimidate me.”

Lokesh gave a hoarse laugh and chewed more of the
momo.

It was Shan's turn to be silent. The old Tibetan was a treasure, a storehouse of tradition but also of secrets. They had spent much of the past few years together, but every few weeks, Lokesh would leave for days at a time, explaining only that he was on personal pilgrimage.

“I must know, Rinpoche,” Shan said, using the term for “revered teacher.” “What did they ask you?”

“A Chinese woman from Religious Affairs came with a lightning bolt on her collar. Wu was her name. She said it wasn't too late, that they could still open the door and I could return to my life.”

“If you told them what?”

“About nuns. About poems. About the Tiger's Lair.”

“Taktsang?”

“They have a Lotus Book there, Shan, one of the biggest ones in Tibet. Many volumes.”

Shan's mind raced. The Lotus Book was a living, ever-expanding compilation of histories and lives from old Tibetans, and testimonies about the scores of thousands who had died.

“There is a nun named Dawa who they think is organizing the immolations.”

Lokesh finished his dumpling before replying. “A good death poem,” he observed, “is the story of a life.”

Something cold touched Shan's spine. “Lokesh, how could you know anything about the immolations?”

The old Tibetan looked down at the mouse hole. “That woman Wu didn't understand when I thanked her for putting me in this cell.”

Shan hesitated, uneasy at the way Lokesh's eyes went out of focus, aimed toward the wall. “I heard it in the night. An ancient mantra, a dead mantra. Held in the stones for all these years and echoing across time. Spoken by a monk who sat in this cell centuries ago.”