Soul of the Fire (31 page)

Hannah did not respond to his suggestion. “I was here before, with Dawa and her father. On the last night, Xie saw I was sad over leaving. He said whoever visits Takhtang is lifted by it forever, that it would be part of me always.” She pulled her hand away and winced, holding her belly.

“Can I help?” Shan asked.

She smiled again through her pain. “My spirit delights in this place, but not my body. You know. The altitude. Maybe you can help me back to the stream. It does seem to help.”

Hannah leaned on Shan, and for a moment seemed a frail old woman. But when they reached the water, her eyes were clear of pain, and she bent to moisten her face. As he backed away, she paused. “You need to let the spirits have their way, Shan.”

It sounded like a warning.

*   *   *

His slumber was disturbed by dreams of demons and burning monks who sat in the library calmly reading manuscripts as flames roared around them. After awaking with a thumping heart for the third time, he rose and wandered outside into a predawn haze and sat against a juniper tree. Sleep overtook him again, and when he awoke, sheep were grazing beside him. Larks sang overhead, and from somewhere below came the metallic thumping of one of the large bells that were struck by swinging beams. On the bench by the river he saw to his surprise that Tuan was sitting in the dawn with Yosen. As he watched, the nun rose, placed her palm on Tuan's head, and returned to the temple. Tuan remained sitting on the bench, looking into the water. When he did not move for several minutes, Shan joined him.

“That old nun Pema asked me to walk at midnight,” the Religious Affairs officer said when Shan sat beside him. “She took me up near where we entered the valley, and we sat where we could see that little
chorten
on the cliff. I asked why we were there, and she just said to pray and wait. After a few minutes, it appeared. That white yak. But it was different.” Tuan glanced up uneasily. “It was glowing, Shan, I swear it, and it seemed to be floating in the air. It dropped its head to the
chorten,
moved all around it like a pilgrim might, then stood at the cliff edge and surveyed the valley like it was its lord. She said it was only a lesser earth god, but a very old one.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Pray.”

Tuan gave an amused snort. “Sure, sure. In Religious Affairs, we always know how to pray, to fit in with those in robes. You know.
Om mani, om mani, om mani Mao.
We used to sing it to the tune of one of those American rock songs.”

“So you didn't pray.”

Something new had entered Tuan's features since he learned of his mother's poetry, and it flickered on his face now, a confused expression that held a hint of shame. “I saw it, damn it. Like nothing else before. I think there must be some minerals it eats that make it glow. And there was a full moon. One of our trainers used to tell us about the sleight of hand of the old lamas. Some kinds of incense are proved to cause hallucinations.”

“You're trying very hard not to be who you are.”

Tuan's laugh was forced and shallow.

“You don't have to go back.”

“What, stay with a bunch of old women in a stone house?”

“Stay with a brave band of holy people who risk their lives to keep vital things alive. You know things that could be useful to them. Sometimes the best monks are those who take the robe later in life.”

“He needs me. I'm not sure he can get by without me.”

Something cold settled in Shan's gut. “You mean Pao.”

“The Emperor. We have a big future. We're both young. He will get a huge job in Beijing, and I'll be at his side. We'll get one of those big Party houses. He says I can run it, like the steward of an old castle. I'll buy a convertible.”

“Sounds like you need him more than he needs you.”

“He's complicated. Very intelligent. But naïve in some ways. He can't even drive a car. When we are on the road, he listens to Western symphonies to calm himself, but if he sees a dog on the pavement, he orders me to run it down and laughs, saying it is a reincarnated monk, and now the monk can be a cockroach. When he's drunk, I swerve at the last moment to miss it and he doesn't even know. He can get very angry. He can be very generous. He'll give me a bag of cash this time.”

Shan's heart sank. “You can't betray them.”

“I told you before. I have rules. Fifty percent. Supply and demand. The Chairman himself says we live in a socialist economy with capitalist features. That's me. Otherwise, he might decide he's done with me. He gets dangerous.”

It was Shan's turn to stare into the river.

“I've been thinking about it. I'll tell him about the procedure leading up to the immolations, mostly just confirming what they already know. The
purbas
are very fastidious about it, you know. They could write it up like a ritual in one of those
peches.
Of course, many make the sacrifice on their own, but if you go to the
purbas
to say you have decided to die, you meet with a nun. Then you sit in a circle and recite that old prayer from the Panchen Lama about being released from fear. They have copies of it they hand out like flyers. They tell you that if it's done with a pure heart, it becomes a holy act. If you still want to burn, you cut your identity card in half. It's their ticket, their way of saying they are done forever with the Chinese government. Then everyone knows for sure it will happen. They all weep and embrace, then encourage you to write your poem, your death poem. If you are still committed, they will do what they can to keep the police away. They promise they will try to recover your body for a sky burial. But in any event, they promise to do the full forty-nine days of death ritual for you. Sometimes it's done right here. That's what those nuns were doing in those little chapels we saw when we first arrived. Higher up the mountain, there's a vulture ground they use.”

They were silent a long time.

Tuan picked at a piece of loose bark on the bench. “You could stop me,” he said in a strangely apologetic voice. “I'm not much of a fighter.”

“Neither am I.”

They watched one of the huge mountain raptors, a lammergeire, circle over the valley, riding the current of wind that poured out of the snow mountains. “This is a sacred place.” Shan said. “If troops come, they will burn all those old books.”

“I told you what I will report. No need for more. I don't know about this valley or how to get here. I'll say I was blindfolded. I just saw a bunch of mountains and caves. I won't say anything about Lokesh's prophecy that she will be the mother of the next leader. She'd become the most wanted criminal in all of China. Dawa won't be here anyway. I'll just tell Pao she is on the move. No need to bother with this place.”

Shan looked up. “Why do you say that?”

“Some of the nuns were talking about it while I was reading those poems. She's leaving. They're very upset. They act like she will never return. I think maybe learning from Pema and Yosen about how the families of the victims are being tortured and imprisoned changed something inside her. I saw Dawa and the American woman in the middle of the night, walking along the stream. Yosen said I couldn't disturb them, that Dawa just has unfinished business with Pao and the Commission. She said something about a rally near Zhongje. That's the kind of opposition they prefer. Gather a couple hundred farmers and shepherds and chant and sing songs. Some of those nuns have a dozen scars from baton blows. They wear them like badges of honor. I don't know why they don't just leave, or hole up here for months. It's like they prefer a direct confrontation. They want to be martyrs.”

A fist seemed to close around Shan's heart. If Pao would bargain, he had no doubt Dawa would give herself up to save those families.

Tuan stood and threw a pebble into the stream. “They probably won't let me walk away anyway. That sergeant will put a bullet in me when I leave the valley.”

“They trust you more than you trust yourself.”

“Then they are fools. I will disappoint them every time.”

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Shan slept most of the way back to Zhongje. The hike to the truck was no more than ten miles, but it had been an exhausting ordeal. Sergeant Gingri and his men had accompanied Shan, Lokesh, and Tuan, and from the way the
khampa
stared at the Religious Affairs officer, Shan had been half convinced that indeed the sergeant was going to shoot Tuan. Gingri carried one of the old rifles in his hand the entire time, and more than once the
khampa
had conspicuously worked the bolt and gestured with the gun toward Tuan. Shan had nervously walked close to Tuan, trying to keep between him and Gingri. Even when their escort had turned back as their truck came into view, Tuan still nervously watched the outcroppings above them.

“You're skittish as birds,” Lokesh had chided them when they reached the truck. “Stop looking up the slope. Public Security is down below.”

“You saw the way the
khampas
looked at me,” Tuan groused. The Religious Affairs officer opened a door of the truck and stood behind it as if for protection.

Lokesh gave one of his hoarse laughs. “Dawa told me about those rifles. The
khampas
feel better carrying them. But she never lets them put any bullets in them. That would be offensive to the gods of the valley. They are just ritual rifles, like ritual daggers.”

Tuan somehow seemed offended. He climbed behind the wheel of the truck and slammed the door.

Shan reached for the door handle, then paused, noticing how Lokesh stared into the shadows of a nearby outcropping. Suddenly the old Tibetan ran to the rock. By the time Shan caught up with him, Lokesh had joined Judson in helping Hannah Oglesby to her feet. Another of the
khampas
was at her side, holding not a gun but a heavy backpack.

“She's feeling low,” Judson said. “You know. Altitude sickness. We pushed too hard these past few days. Started before dawn to be sure we could catch a ride.”

Hannah gave Shan a weak smile. “Too close to the heavens,” she whispered. He had witnessed the debilitating effects of mountain sickness, had watched a friend die of it. He darted to the car and retrieved a water bottle from his pack.

“Just needs rest and hydration,” Judson said as he opened the bottle for Hannah.

Two hours later, they entered Zhongje through the utility gate and left the truck at the municipal equipment lot. The rubble of the fire station had been cleared away. A large bulldozer sat on a trailer. The American woman, having slept for the entire return journey, seem much recovered, and she hurried away with Judson at her side.

Shan wearily shouldered his pack and headed for his quarters. He and Lokesh would wash up and have a meal before Shan took Lokesh to Yamdrok to stay with Dolma and Tserung. He was nearly at the street when he realized Lokesh was not at his side. The old Tibetan stood at the front of the bulldozer, strangely paralyzed.

When Shan reached him, he was on the trailer pulling debris from the teeth of the blade. A shard of plaster was stuck on a tooth. On it was painted the eye of a god looking up as if in surprise. Lokesh pulled away the plaster, then a torn piece of cloth from another tooth. It bore the image of a dancing
dakini.

Lokesh dropped to his knees and began a mantra. Shan lowered his pack and ran. When he reached the street, he grabbed a bicycle leaning on a lamppost and sped back out of the compound and up the road to Yamdrok. When he reached the wind fangs, he tossed the bike down and ran up the slope toward the little orchard.

He passed a sobbing woman sitting on a rock, then an old man carrying a basket filled with shards of carved stone and crushed metal cylinders. Then he was out of the trees and facing the knoll with the ring of junipers.

The ancient chapel of Yamdrok, the vessel of the town's spirit, was gone. The elegant arching entry with its joyful dancers, the painted chronicle of long-ago pilgrims, were dust. Where the little chapel had stood, there was nothing but the track marks of the bulldozer. All that remained was a pile of rubble pushed against the roots of one of the ancient junipers, which had also been toppled.

The sight slammed into Shan like a physical blow. He found himself on his knees. The little chapel had stood for centuries like a gem in the corroded landscape. It had withstood wars, ancient and modern alike, storms of ice and snow, and the battering winds of the mountain. But it had not withstood Emperor Pao.

Several villagers sat before the rubble, chanting the
mani
mantra. A solitary, big-boned woman in black sorted through the debris that had not made it to the rubble pile. Shan joined Dolma and began to help her. Neither spoke for several minutes. As he picked up each stone, each shard of plaster, he looked for signs of paint. Every piece of a broken god, every faded symbol, would still be sacred to the villagers. On planks raised on square rocks, Dolma was arranging pieces. Painted clouds were in one group, lotus flowers in another, graceful fingers and feet in still others. Shan paused by the old woman as she stared at a painted mouth in her hand, seemingly locked in a scream. Tracks of tears stained her soiled cheeks.

“Sometimes big trucks come and just dump things over the cliff,” she said in an unsteady voice. “When we heard the heavy engine that's what we thought. A boy ran shouting from the orchard, but by then it was already too late.”

Shan set a chip of plaster with an ear on the plank before them. Many of the shards would probably be taken home to the personal altars of the villagers.

“Tserung and I were praying when it happened. We both felt it. We weren't the only ones.”

“You mean the ground shook.”

“Not that. Something twisted inside us. Like a blade piercing us at the moment the first wall collapsed. I've never known a pain like it. We were already running to the square when we heard that boy.” She lifted the small head of a
dakini
dancer and stroked it, as if to comfort the goddess. “This place was woven into our souls. Now,” she said with a sob, “the gods won't know what to do with us. They have no home. It may be years before they return. Maybe never.”