Beautiful Ghosts (23 page)

“You mean at Zhoka?”

“This is a special land, where the hands of deities can work uninterrupted. Those who come from down in the world must be careful in ways they have never been careful before.”

Shan hastily translated, in a whisper, for Yao and Corbett, offering no explanation for her words, for he had none.

The woman’s blind eyes were strangely expressive, filled not with fear but with a sad wonder. Lokesh filled her bowl again, sitting close, reciting the mani mantra with her. The old Tibetan had a special reverence for the blind. More than once he had told Shan how those without eyes were not distracted by all the meaningless activity of the world around them, that those with reverence could learn to use unknown senses to see the movements of deities.

“I am sorry you lost your home,” Lokesh said quietly, after several minutes.

The woman’s hand reached out and without hesitating found Lokesh’s own hand and closed around it. Lokesh had been there the day before, he had said mantras with the village. Shan watched as the two sat in silence, remembering the woman’s words. I was not always with the ragyapa. She was not one of the fleshcutters but, incredibly, she had chosen to live with them.

“It was a long time ago,” she said to Lokesh. “I had brought my father’s body here, and had promised his spirit I would stay to perform one hundred thousand mantras to the Compassionate Buddha. While I was here there were many explosions and guns firing in the north and west, from the valley. Two days later a shepherd came with five yaks, carrying more bodies. My mother. My husband and three children. The army had passed through,” she added, as if reporting a violent storm that had randomly struck her home.

“Grandmother,” Shan said. “Where did you learn your English words?” He switched to English. “I met another woman in the hills who knows some.”

“Give you joy,” she said again, in the Western tongue.

“Her name is Fiona,” he said, still in English.

She gave no sign she understood anything he said except the name of the sturdy, enigmatic woman Shan had met. A smile grew on the blind woman’s face. “Fiona,” she whispered, with sudden excitement. “Give you joy,” she repeated, and when Corbett echoed the words over her shoulder she dabbed at her eyes, suddenly moist, then slowly rose from the ground and, incredibly, began to dance. Hers was a slow, stiff gait, and it took only a glance at Lokesh’s confused expression for Shan to know the dance was not one of those from Tibetan tradition. As fragments of a tune came from her throat, however, Corbett seemed to recognize it, coming forward hesitantly, an uncertain grin on his face as he warily touched his fingers to the blind woman’s hand. Her breath caught, but then as Corbett began humming the tune loudly, she gripped his hand tightly and they danced together.

The entire village stopped, the ragyapa gathering close in the fading light, parents calling children, Lokesh, then others, softly clapping their hands in rhythm, Dawa quietly laughing, the goat standing, softly bleating, an old man in the shadows beating time with a wooden spoon on a clay jar as he hummed the same tune. Time itself seemed to stop. Shan, surprised by joy, watched with the others as the American and the old Tibetan woman danced by the fire, below the rising moon. The gait grew faster but the woman seemed to have no difficulty following. Indeed, the years seemed to drop from her face and in the dimming light Shan glimpsed a much younger woman laughing, eyes gleaming, overflowing with life.

“We have to go,” Yao interjected uneasily, pulling Shan’s arm. “We have to call a helicopter. We have to…” Then Yao, too, was captured by the magic of the moment, seeming to forget his thought as he watched the two dancers silhouetted by the moon.

At last, spent, the two collapsed into each other’s arms, Corbett embracing the woman tightly before releasing her.

“God save the queen!” the woman cried out in a final rush of excitement, then she let one of the children guide her back to her blanket.

Corbett cocked his head, as if wondering if he heard correctly, then took a bowl of tea proffered by Shan, mixed in the Indian style with milk and sugar. The American sipped cautiously, grinned, and drained it before speaking. “My grandparents used to do that dance when I was knee high,” he explained. “Though there should be bagpipes and fiddles. It was a Scottish reel.” He seemed to consider his words a moment. “Damn me. A Scottish reel,” he said again, in disbelief, then wandered out into the darkness, wonder on his face.

“We need to call Tan,” Yao said. “We need to make the fire brighter so the helicopter can find us.”

Shan still studied the blind woman, who seemed to have fallen into a deep reverie now. “No. We still need to understand Lodi.”

“It’s the living I want to know about,” Yao protested. “Lodi’s accomplices.”

“Then forget the helicopter,” Shan said. “We keep going south.”

“Not without soldiers. Death has become too commonplace in these mountains.”

“Don’t go south unless you are ready,” a voice said behind them. It was the woman who had helped Shan prepare the meal, cleaning the pans now.

“Ready for what?” Shan asked.

“The south is not a place for strangers. It is a hard place with long memories. A terrible battle was fought there hundreds of years ago. Thousands of soldiers died. None of them prepared. None with anyone to keep vigil. Wandering souls. Thousands.”

“But the south is where I will find the clan of Lodi,” Shan said. No one seemed able to speak of the south except in words like code.

The woman frowned. “If you get lost there will be no way out.”

“Nonsense,” the blind woman said, from across the fire. Lokesh was sitting next to her now, handing her more raisins. “People don’t really get lost in these mountains. This is the land of the earth temple. There are places here that seek people out. The right people.”

The words seemed to build a new resolve on Yao’s face. He disappeared into the shadows, toward the packs they had left near the mourning shed. Moments later loud shouts broke the quiet, and Yao reappeared, his pack in his hand, a snarl on his face. “They took it!” he declared. “They stole my radio and my map! They must be searched!”

Shan studied Corbett, who sat gazing into the fading fire. “You won’t find them,” Shan said.

Yao glared at him. “Why not?”

“Because I took them,” Shan declared in a wooden tone. “I threw them away. Destroyed them.”

“You’ll be back in jail for this!” Yao hissed and seemed to about strike Shan with his pack.

Suddenly Corbett was between them, turning to Shan. “Why the hell would you say that?”

Shan returned his steady stare. “Because none of these Tibetans would have stolen anything.”

Corbett studied the frightened villagers and turned back with an apologetic glance at Shan before addressing Yao. “He thinks he should protect me for some reason.”

“You?” Yao barked.

“When I was dancing with her the old woman said something,” Corbett said, suddenly very solemn. “She said in these mountains you either fight demons or you become demons.”

“You’re speaking the same gibberish as these people. I must have my radio and map.”

The American stared at Yao for a long time before replying. “I threw them off the side of the gorge. Gone.”

“Why?” Yao demanded, his voice flat, his eyes forlorn.

“Because you were talking yourself into turning around.”

“We’re helpless without that radio,” Yao said.

“You haven’t been listening to Shan,” the American said in a somber voice. “He’s been trying to explain that we’re helpless
with
it. I’m not sure who you’re after anymore. But I know who I want. And we’ll never catch godkillers with soldiers.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

A hand reached for Shan in the darkness, a small trembling hand that found his arm and pulled. It was his son, and they were going to watch the dawn from one of the sacred mountains. They would throw the Tao sticks, speak of the old verses, and eat sweetened rice cakes made by Shan’s grandmother.

“Aku Shan,” a tiny voice called, and the hand pulled again. “Uncle Shan, he is dead.”

The words stabbed him awake. He sat up. He had been asleep on a blanket outside the mourning shed. The hand and the voice belonged to Dawa, whose face he could barely see in the shadows. Behind her stood a boy, one of those who had pummeled Yao and Corbett with bones, and behind the boy the horizon held the first blush of dawn.

“Who died?” he asked as he rose, anxiously surveying the landscape. Corbett and Yao lay wrapped in heavy felt blankets by the fire, the blind woman sitting between them like a sentinel. He could hear the low drone from inside the shed that meant Lokesh was still speaking to Lodi.

Dawa did not reply, but pulled him away from the shed onto one of the paths that led to the main southern trail. The ragyapa boy followed hesitantly, seeming more afraid of Dawa than Shan.

They walked, then trotted, Dawa leading him more than a quarter mile down the main trail then halting, hand up in warning. She picked up a short stick that had been left leaning against a boulder and advanced on a low slab of rock that jutted over several smaller boulders. A cairn, no more than a foot high, had been erected on the slab. Several freshly painted mani stones, the mantra depicted with soot in crude, poorly formed strokes, were arrayed on the ground around the front of the slab, before a burrow under the stone.

“He won’t touch it,” Dawa said. “He just said a deity was killed here two days ago. I told him to prove it.” She bent and fished out a large twisted piece of metal with the stick.

“It was a god,” the boy said in a voice full of warning. “But now it died. You must leave it in peace.

Shan knelt by the metal. It had been an old sculpture, an exquisite image of Manjushri, one of the Buddhist saints, its bronze glowing with the patina of age. In the rising light he could discern a serene face, with an oval beauty mark above the nose, a slender arched body, finely detailed fingers, one hand holding the mythical sword that dispelled ignorance, the other the stem of a lotus wrapped around a manuscript. Behind him sat a lion, the saint’s mount. Until recently, it had been perfect but for a patch of corrosion along the figure’s left shoulder. But now the saint had been brutalized, its head smashed nearly flat and bent back at the neck, the upraised sword arm twisted and folded back at the elbow, the finely wrought lotus flowers hacked and splintered with something sharp. The entire body had been pounded so, the metal stretched and cracked, it lay almost flat. It had been a beautiful piece of art, probably rendered centuries earlier, but here, at the durtro, the day after Lodi had been killed, it had been destroyed beyond repair. Yes, Shan almost said in despair, the deity is dead.

“You saw this happen?” Shan asked the boy, who seemed emboldened by Shan’s lifting of the sculpture from the ground. Shan turned the statue over. Unlike the others neither its back nor its base had been cut open.

The boy nodded. “From a distance. I sit and watch the trail sometimes, see the people who pass the village, see where the people go after they leave bodies. I try to imagine what the world is like.”

“You followed the ones who brought Lodi?”

“Two others were waiting in the rocks here. A big one and a small one. With Chinese faces. The big one had a rifle. The others ran away, all except her. She yelled at him, and he acted like he would kill her. He forced her to give him the sack she carried. They took the statue out and attacked it. With their boots at first. Then the butt of the gun. I thought the big man was going to shoot it, but the little one stopped him. Then they got rocks and hit it. They laughed and threw it against the boulders like a ball. She cried.”

“Who cried?”

The boy grew quiet, looking worried.

“Did you know the Chinese?”

“They weren’t Chinese,” the boy whispered. “Just godkillers using Chinese faces. The little one was in charge. He put a boot on it when he was done and told her to go home, and tell everyone how things had changed now. I didn’t know what to do. I brought my grandmother and we buried it. Our birds can’t eat the metal.”

“You did right,” Shan said, and shot up as footsteps rose behind him. Yao emerged from the shadows, gesturing to Shan, silently taking the statue from him. He sighed heavily at the sight of the wanton destruction, then set the twisted metal on the rock beside the cairn, studying it intensely in the first rays of sunlight.

“If there are words that must be said for a dead man,” Dawa said quietly, “what must be done for a dead god?”

The question hung in the air.

“It is only the image of a god,” Yao said after a moment. Shan looked at the inspector in surprise.

“In the hut,” Dawa said, “it is only the image of a man.”

The words seemed to confuse Yao. He just turned and gazed toward the south.

“We need to pack,” Shan said.

“I’ll wait here,” Yao offered, reaching for his pad. “I’m not going back to that place.”

For an hour they walked southward in silence, as they had left in silence. The villagers had kept apart as Shan and Corbett had gathered their packs, watching no longer with resentment, but with something like worry, as if they feared for Shan and his companions. Corbett had silently gathered flowers and set them in the blind woman’s hands. “Give you joy,” she had whispered.

Shan saw that Lokesh had strayed off the trail, up the slope of a small ridge with a long flat top. He urged the others on, promising to rejoin them with Lokesh soon. The old Tibetan sat at the crest of the ridge facing a small half-mile-wide plain at the top. A familiar expression had settled over Lokesh, the odd, sad joy he showed when walking through the ruins of gompas or watching aged herders labor over their beads with arthritic fingers.

“It’s taken a long time,” Lokesh said as Shan approached, sweeping his hand toward the plain.

The plain was filled with rock cairns, hundreds of cairns, some covered with lichen so thick it bound their stones together. Shan slowly stepped among the cairns at the edge of the field. The ones with the thickest lichen were all tall, over six feet high. Where the lichen had not covered them he could see carvings, not just of the mani mantra but of elaborate images of Buddhist teachers and deities. The oldest and tallest were arranged in a circle around a small chorten of white stone, eight feet high, that itself was beautifully carved with the faces of protector deities.