Soul of the Fire (28 page)

“I don't belong here,” Tuan said in a frightened whisper as they approached, speaking Chinese now. “When they find my identity card, I won't have a chance. I have to run.”

“You think you are faster than my bullet?” growled the
khampa
leader, also in Chinese, and he tapped his baton against Yuan's ribs. The blow wasn't hard, but it took Tuan off balance, dropping him to his knees. “Tie them with the milk yaks,” he ordered, pointing toward a tunnel beyond the temple whose entrance was surrounded by piles of dung.

Lokesh ignored the gestures of their captors, just kept staring at the front of the cave temple. At the bottom of the wall, partially obscured by juniper and rhododendron bushes, were shards of old statues. A
dakini
's graceful arm seemed to wave at them from the ground, the eye of a Buddha stared at them, a dismembered foot rose up as if from a sleeping god.

The
khampa
leader cursed at Lokesh. As the warrior tensed his arm for another swing of his club, Shan sprang forward to intercept the blow.

But, impossibly, Lokesh was faster. He grabbed the club's end and held it in a tight fist. “Do you have any idea what this is?” he asked in the voice of a patient teacher. “I know such carved clubs. It is a baton made for a
dob-dob,
a monastery enforcer.”
Dob-dobs
were, Shan knew, the policemen of the old
gompas,
charged with keeping discipline among the novices. “They were stern,” Lokesh observed, “but they were monks. This club was crafted as a symbol of discipline, not an instrument of violence. You dishonor it.”

For a moment, the
khampa
seemed chastised, but then with a burst of movement he twisted the club out of Lokesh's grip and shoved the old man to the ground.

Shan bent over Lokesh, shielding him from the next blow as robed figures emerged from the cave temple, no doubt bringing more torment. It had been a terrible idea to come to the valley, Shan realized now, a reckless hope that was only bringing more suffering. The
khampas
survived in a harsh, merciless world. It wasn't compassion that kept them alive.

Two of the men roughly seized Tuan and began dragging him away. Shan tried to block the other guards from reaching Lokesh, but the
khampas
just shoved both of them to the ground. Shan struggled toward Lokesh on his hands and knees but was kicked back to the ground. He forced himself up and was kicked again. More Tibetans were streaming out of the temple entry, following those in the robes, who now approached Lokesh and Shan. Lokesh pushed himself up, looking at them in surprise, but was shoved back down. He lost his balance and fell back into the dirt. As Shan crawled toward him, Lokesh began moaning, but tried yet again to rise, extending his splinted finger toward the strangers from the temple, who now stood before them.

Shan froze. It was not a sound of pain coming from his friend, it was hoarse laughter.

“Sing a thousand praises!” Lokesh exclaimed toward the strangers. The
khampas
hesitated, looking toward the robed figures, and did not stop the old Tibetan as he rose on shaky legs and approached the tall, handsome woman in brown at the center of the group, whom Shan had last seen at her father's funeral. Lokesh knelt before her, took her hand, and pressed it to his forehead. “Ten thousand Buddhas rejoice!”

The graceful woman who was the leader of the
purbas
turned to her companions in confusion, revealing the little lotus tattooed on her temple. Yosen and Pema were at her side. “Do I know you?”

“I have dreamt it!” Lokesh cried. He turned to Shan, his face lit with joy. “She is the one, Shan!”

Shan eyed his friend uncertainly. “She is Dawa, the daughter of Xie, yes.”

“No, you don't understand! I have seen it!” Lokesh exclaimed. “She is the mother of the next Dalai Lama!”

*   *   *

“I am honored to be in your dreams, Grandfather,” Dawa said to Lokesh in a gracious tone as they sat sipping tea in a small chamber off the temple's entry hall an hour later. “I too have dreamt of many things. Spaceships and dancing yaks. I remember, as a girl, dreaming of a talking spoon that complained when I ate too much.” The old Tibetan had been doting on her, arranging her cushions, even insisting on refilling her cup. Although his announcement about Dawa had sent ripples of excitement through her followers, it clearly made her uncomfortable.

“There are rituals and signs and long examinations of the evidence before the reborn leader is identified,” she continued. “And our precious Fourteenth has many long years left to live.”

Lokesh only smiled.

Dawa looked up at Shan with an inquiring gaze. Her eyes were bright and intelligent, uplifted by frequent smiles. She had removed her heavy outer robe when she entered the temple complex, and wore blue jeans, Western hiking boots, and an old embroidered vest over a shirt the color of a nun's robe. She had listened attentively as Shan explained who they were. “I was there,” he said, “when the Maos burned. You have a video that could be used against Major Sung.”

Dawa's patient smile suggested she already knew much of Shan and why he was there. “Major Sung is a thorn in our side that grows more embedded and painful the more we try to twist it out.”

“He is no friend of Deputy Secretary Pao.”

Her brown eyes fixed on him without expression.

“You left that
lingam
for a reason.”

“You are very clever, Commissioner Shan. But you are Chinese. I was hoping for a Tibetan ambassador.”

“Kolsang's family is held hostage by Public Security.”

Dawa did not know. She looked away, her face twisting with pain, and murmured a prayer.

“It's true Shan was from Beijing,” a quiet voice injected.

Dawa turned toward Lokesh.

“But he was cured of bad habits in prison. It was the will of the gods that he replaced your father on the Commission.”

A smile lifted Dawa's cheeks, sad this time. “Because he complains? Because he was a prisoner? Because he can name some Tibetan deities?”

Shan met her questioning gaze. “Because Colonel Tan, the hammer of Lhadrung, hates Deputy Secretary Pao.”

The announcement quieted Dawa. The
purba
leader and the handful of Tibetans who sat behind her stared in mute surprise. “We seem to keep talking about Emperor Pao.”

“I could argue that everything you do is about Pao.”

Dawa leaned toward Shan with new interest. “You can never expect to destroy him.”

“Of course not,” Shan agreed. “I aim only to destroy the Commission. He's had many campaigns against Tibetans. They don't all have to succeed.” Tuan, at Shan's side, gave a small, exasperated gasp. “If I am not mistaken, that was your father's goal as well.”

“Many eyes in Beijing are upon the Commission. They think they may have found a formula for dealing with all dissidents in China.”

“It is an experiment that deserves to fail.”

Dawa shrugged. “I would have thought you had learned not to aim so high.”

“Your father tried.”

“And I lost him. We do not know each other well yet, Shan, but I suspect we would be better off not losing you too.”

Shan became aware of movement behind him. The
khampa
leader and three of his men were positioning themselves on either side of the door. Dawa noticed his worried glance. “Sergeant Gingri is a cautious man.”

“Sergeant?” Shan asked.

“He served in the army, driving trucks at a base in Lhadrung, but he came back to us when he finished his tour. He and his men are our cats. Very quiet. Very clever. Content as kittens when there is no danger. But they lash out like tigers when disturbed.” Dawa turned and waved the
khampas
away. “You are our guests. We will eat together.”

They were taken down a passage that led deeper into the mountain. Lokesh hesitated as they passed several small chapels where nuns chanted before photographs of individual Tibetans. As Dawa gently pulled Lokesh away, Shan recognized the words. They were all reciting the Bardo, the death ritual.

The rebel leader drew them into a cozy room hung with tapestries where a fire blazed in a large brazier and food was laid out on old brass trays. Dawa asked of Lokesh's earlier days and soon their small company was engrossed in tales of his years serving in the Dalai Lama's government. When asked why he had not fled, the old Tibetan laughed and explained that he had volunteered to be part of the decoy group of officials who pretended to be meeting with the Dalai Lama while the boy leader was in fact fleeing across the Himalayas.

“You paid for that,” Dawa suggested.

Lokesh's smile was serene. He had been imprisoned for decades. “I would gladly do it again. The 404th offered much fresh air.”

Dawa's smile disappeared. “The 404th Construction Brigade?” she asked. “Tan's death camp?”

Lokesh's smile did not fade. “It took me years, but I grew to realize it was an honor to be among so many great lamas. I never would have met them otherwise.”

The words left a deep, melancholy silence in the air. Dawa wiped a tear from her cheek and embraced the old man as Pema appeared with a fresh kettle of tea. She was pouring Tuan a cup when she suddenly gasped and grabbed his wrist. “What is this?” she asked, indicating a patch of color on the inside of his forearm that appeared to be a smudge of ink.

Tuan shrugged. “Some old thing. A mark put on me when I was a boy. I tell people it's a birthmark.”

But Pema seemed not to be listening. With a strange excitement, she called Yosen over, then the other nuns. Yosen pulled his wrist closer to the light of a candle.
“Ai yi!”
she cried, and quickly murmured to one of the other nuns, who hurried away.

“Who, boy?” Pema asked. “Who placed this mark on you?”

“My—my mother.” Tuan was growing uneasy. He looked at Shan, as if for help. Shan eased through the women gathered around the Religious Affairs officer. He had seen the mark himself, but never looked at it closely. On closer examination, he now saw it was a small bat with outstretched wings, a symbol depicting happiness on the old
thankgas.

The young nun who had disappeared returned, out of breath, holding a thick
peche,
a traditional Tibetan volume of long narrow leaves bound by ribbons between carved wooden covers. As she carefully untied the book, Shan saw that the covers and the pages were worn from frequent use. The pages were not printed but hand-inscribed. It was a tattered, well-loved manuscript.

“The poetry of Ani Jinpa,” Pema explained. “Printed copies of this used to be in every convent I ever visited. I met her once at a festival. She had a strong and beautiful face, like our Dawa, but her eyes were like those of an old lama. At my convent, we novices would gather after classes and read them. Sometimes even here we sit in a circle around a fire with Dawa and recite them far into the night.”

“I don't understand.” Tuan began eyeing the dark corridor, as if thinking again of escape.

The nun lifted the title page. “In honor of the happiness that so unexpectedly flew into my life,” it said. Beside the words was a little bat identical to the one on Tuan's forearm. “On almost every page there appears a bat. It was like her signature, the symbol of Jinpa. It was always a mystery to us and now you have solved it. You were her happiness.”

Tuan stared at the page unblinking for several breaths. “It means nothing. A favorite symbol of some old nuns.”

“Not really,” replied Pema in a patient voice. “Your mother had been a nun?”

Tuan gave a reluctant nod.

“Her name?”

Tuan's face clouded. “Jinpa. It was Jinpa. But there must have been many with that name.”

“No, there weren't,” Pema replied, then read the first verse:

The Buddha is the mountain

Our stream is his tongue

My son stops playing to listen

Pure words from the lama earth

“This style of poetry seemed very strange to us in those days,” the old nun continued. “But it always drew us even then. We realized later it was more like the poetry of the Japanese masters. It is beautiful, Tuan. It lifts our souls.” As Tuan stared at her with a haunted expression, Pema began another:

Under lines of northward geese

We search for signs of spring all day

And laugh when we reach home

“‘To find a peach blossom over our hut,'” Tuan said without looking at the book. He had finished the poem.

The silence was serene. The nuns beamed. Tuan looked like he wanted to weep, not for joy but from the rising up of emotions long suppressed.

“We look for artifacts among ruins all over Tibet,” Pema continued. “Dawa has helped organize the efforts, creating records of what is found. We watch for Jinpa's books. So far, only one of the printed copies has been found, partially burned. But before the
gompa
where it was printed was destroyed, mule trains carrying thousands of printing blocks fled into the snow mountains. We keep seeking the high caves, hoping to find the old plates, any plates. But some of us pray especially to find your mother's plates.”

“You must be mistaken,” Tuan said. “Surely it is not possible.”

“Her convent was near Chamdo.”

“I grew up fifty miles away from there.”

“She had to leave when she became pregnant. There was a raid by Chinese soldiers. They impregnated over twenty nuns, all of whom had to leave their robes behind. It was hard for them. Some became beggars. But you were the happiness that flew into her life.”

“We lived in a goat hut at the edge of our village,” Tuan explained in a near whisper. “She did laundry to keep us fed. We would make little
tsa tsas
of mud and dry them in the sun to sell in the street.”