Beautiful Ghosts (25 page)

“My great-grandfather built this house and raised his family here,” Liya explained. “There is a photograph of him holding my mother in that rocking chair outside.”

Shan stepped to the framed photographs, and quickly found the black and white picture of a Western man, large whiskers on the side of his face, proudly holding a baby, one arm around a beaming Tibetan woman who stood at his side. The man’s expression was jovial, almost impish. In another picture the same man appeared, much younger, attired in a uniform, holding an elongated helmet in the crook of one arm. In the center were separately framed images of two nearly bald men, each seeming to wear the same enigmatic grin. One Shan recognized as the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who had died over sixty years earlier. The second man, a Westerner in a suit and tie, he remembered from pictures in his father’s history books. Winston Churchill.

Under the photo on the fireplace mantel was a box with a glass lid, displaying several medals and a calling card. “Major Bertram McDowell,” Shan read out loud, “Royal Artillery.”

“McDowell!” Yao repeated in a surprised whisper, and stepped to his side.

“The major was stationed at a trading post in Gyantse for a year,” Liya said over their shoulders. “He had always been a painter and a writer. In Tibet he began to compile material for a book, the first English book on Tibetan art. When he asked to be taught as Tibetan artists would, a lama told him to sit in a meditation chamber with nothing but a Buddha for a week, that he had to expand his deity, let it reach his fingers.”

“A lama from Zhoka,” Shan suggested.

Liya nodded, still facing the photographs. “He never turned back after that week. He declined home leave, requested extended tours of duty. Eventually he resigned and the lama brought him here, where artists had helped the Zhoka monks for centuries.”

“Why would this place be so hidden?” Yao inquired.

Liya turned, not toward Yao but toward the little Buddha on the altar. “Study Only the Absolute,” she said.

“Major McDowell lived in this house,” Shan said.

Liya nodded. “He became a great artist.” She gestured toward a line of framed sketches surrounding the door to the first bedroom. “He had a teacher, the daughter of a metalsmith. They married after the first year, had six children. Two of the boys became monks of Zhoka, the other children had many children themselves and populated the hill country.” She moved to a table by the door and picked up an object Shan did not recognize at first, a small wooden bowl with a stem attached. Liya stroked it affectionately. “He was beloved by all the people. Each December he would have a festival and give gifts to everyone. He played a violin and taught everyone dances from his youth.”

She put the bowl to her nose, then set it back on the porcelain tray where it had lain. It was a tobacco pipe.

Outside, a boy went by the cottage with a bundle of juniper sticks for burning.

“Are they mourning Lodi?” Shan asked.

Liya nodded again, then looked out the window in the direction of the temple. “He was our provider, he kept us protected. When he was sixteen Lodi left, to go across the border. We were suffering terribly. More and more people abandoned the village every year, some to the hills to farm and herd, some to Nepal and India. When I was young there were winters when some of the children and old ones starved to death. William took some of our art to sell, and sent new friends from Nepal with food for us. Then we didn’t hear from him for a long time, more than a year, until a letter came from England. He had gone to meet our relatives.”

“Elizabeth McDowell,” Shan said.

“She had studied Asian art, was an advisor to a number of museums. She and Lodi said it was predestined that they work together. When he came back she was with him, bringing medicine, bringing orders.”

“Orders?”

“For art. Things they could sell in Europe and America.”

Liya’s eyes brimmed with emotion and she turned away, stepping out onto the porch. Shan followed.

“I am sorry about William,” he said. “But I need to understand what happened at Zhoka. For Surya’s sake.”

“His body had been carried down the tunnel. After I found it, I convinced some of the hill people, my cousins, to help me carry him away.”

“But who killed him?”

Liya looked down, one hand twisting the fingers of the other.

“The ones who attacked you at the fleshcutters?”

“I don’t know. If Surya had found Lodi in the tunnels, with that fresco stolen … I don’t know.”

“Who were those two men?”

Liya shrugged. “There are others who work with Lodi sometimes, from the outside. They were angry because Lodi was supposed to give them that statue.”

“Then why would they destroy it?”

“They said they were taking over for Lodi, they said the terms had changed. They said the only chance to save the hill people was to help them. I didn’t know them. A short Chinese with a crooked nose, and a big man, a Mongolian I think. William kept his dealings down in the world secret from us. It was safer for everyone that way, because he had to keep Bumpari secret. They ruined that beautiful thing, that old statue, because of what I said to them.” She lowered her head into her hands a moment. “I am so afraid, Shan,” she said abruptly. “It is the end for us. They will find us and will make us their slaves. They know we have no registrations, that one call to the authorities will destroy us. Our people are so scared. Most of them speak of fleeing across the border.”

“Why didn’t those two follow you from the fleshcutters?”

“I don’t know. They acted like they had urgent business elsewhere.”

“It would make no sense for them to kill Lodi without knowing how to find you.” He paused. “But you said Elizabeth McDowell already knows this place.”

“Punji would never tell. She is part of our family. All we want is to live in peace here, and make our art. She would never work with those two men … they were like animals. Nothing makes sense.” Liya looked up as if suddenly remembering something. “The little Chinese demanded that I give him what Lodi had from the emperor.”

“What emperor?”

“I don’t know. I told him so, and he slapped me.”

Shan looked out over the tiered village. “Did the emperors have art from Bumpari or Zhoka?”

“What we make has always been for Tibetans, for Buddhists.”

“The emperor Qian Long revered the Buddhists. He had lamas in his court. He collected Tibetan treasures.”

“If those men wanted more of our art they would have followed me.”

“Perhaps they had to leave because they needed to obtain new supplies,” Shan ventured. “After you destroyed what they had at Zhoka.”

“When I found Lodi’s body in that supply room I sat with it a long time. I was so sad at first, then angry. I had never felt such anger.”

“If it was their supplies you destroyed, then they are the ones who are taking frescos from Zhoka.”

Liya closed her eyes a moment. “Lodi would never harm Zhoka,” she insisted. “He only sold things we made here. He would never loot the old shrines.”

“That night at the camp with Lokesh and Dawa, did you leave because of Tashi?”

“Everyone who is smart stays away from informers.”

“You were going north again, but then you came back here.”

“I listened to Tashi from the shadows. I knew they had found a way to make you help them. I knew that eventually you would find this place.”

“I am sorry,” Shan said.

Liya shrugged. “You didn’t start this.” She began watching Corbett now, on the stairs to the next level, playing with Dawa and the children of the village.

“Why did Lodi come back to Lhadrung?” Shan asked.

Liya shrugged. “He wasn’t due back for weeks. He just appeared, very excited and scared. He went into the room he kept here—” she nodded toward the room with two beds—“to search for something, then left for Zhoka the next morning.”

Corbett now had one of the children on his back, climbing the stairs. The sight seemed to intrigue Liya, and without another word she stepped off the porch and walked toward the next level.

Shan turned back inside, entering the first bedroom, which had the air of a shrine. The framed sketches there seemed to match those of the main chamber. They showed a light, subtle hand that perfectly captured the smiles of playing children in one, the powerful energy of a harnessed yak in another. But the first of the frames held not a sketch but a piece of paper, letterhead printed with the caption Royal Artillery, flanked by crossed cannons. Under it, in an elegant hand, was a verse in English. He read it several times before he found himself grinning:

In a letter I have written, my mama’s

I report I did outwit the lamas

They said we’re not here, you’re not there

’cause we’re made of thin air

then why says I, wear red pajamas?

He paused and pulled out the peche leaf he had found in the cell at Zhoka. The haunting script matched that of the limerick about the red robes of the monks. It had been written by Bertram McDowell, the primogenitor of the strange clan in the southern mountains.

Shan found Yao in the second bedroom, sitting on one of the beds, sketching in his notebook. The inspector was drawing a map.

“Ming has lied to you,” Shan said. Yao kept drawing as he explained what Liya had revealed. “You don’t know that these people are involved,” Shan said.

“She would lie to save herself. Do I believe her or a ranking party member? This entire village is a nest of criminals. They gave aid to William Lodi, the thief and murderer. Illegal weapons are here. They admit smuggling across the border. No registrations, no taxes. Tan and Ming will be so pleased they will probably let you go back into hiding.” He paused, and looked at the wall, as if consulting something unseen to Shan. “With so many to arrest, it will take a month for the interrogations alone.”

Shan looked at Yao’s crude map. It was worthless. Yao had no idea where they were.

The inspector opened the closet door. Stacked on shelves inside were boxes, apparently for the devices arrayed over the second bed, most bearing glossy labels in English and Japanese. A portable air freshener. An emergency desk lamp. An electric nose clipper. A metallic model of a car called a Ferrari. A pen with a lightbulb in its top. Something called an atomic alarm clock. A television remote control, though there was no television. An entire shelf of pharmaceuticals with English labels. Antibiotics. Sleeping pills. Pain relievers.

Shan looked back at the beds. The shelf over the second bed was an altar of sorts for the puzzling man who had been killed at Zhoka. In the shadows beyond was another altar, a traditional one, with a small brass Buddha, a paint brush, and a faded photograph of a young Major McDowell, posing by a cannon, a sword raised over his head as if he were about to lead a charge, his mouth obscured by a huge moustache.

On top of a short bookcase were perhaps two dozen elongated beads, the brown dzi beads prized as protective charms, the kind Lodi had given away in Seattle, each bead with a different pattern of white lines etched into it. Below the beads were several bound books, dusty, apparently neglected for years. Shan lifted one. It held heavy paper, blank, bound as a sketch book. On the first page, in a child’s hand was written, in Tibetan, the name Lodi. The sketches that followed were crude but somehow confident, images of flowers, of the faces of dogs and yaks, of the sacred emblems. Like all the children of the village, no doubt, William Lodi had started at an early age to hone the skills of his clan. Shan lifted another of the books. It, too, was a sketchbook, with many of the same subjects, though drawn with a more mature hand. The human faces had become sadder, some gaunt and emaciated. New images appeared, sketches of airplanes and automobiles. Photographs from magazines were pasted onto some pages, images of Western women, sleek cars, Western food, even of telephones. The last of the books contained drawings of women’s faces with deep alluring eyes, of Gurkhas and Gurkha’s blades, of Chinese war machines being blown apart. In the last pages a new series of faces appeared, all Western, all sharing certain features as if of the same blood, including one Shan recognized. Elizabeth McDowell. Confirming that Yao was engrossed in some new discovery on the other side of the room, Shan tore the sketch of the English woman out of the book and placed it inside his pocket.

As he returned the book to the shelf he realized his hands were shaking. He had been wrong about everything. He had struggled to be led by his compassion, as Gendun would have wanted. He had been so certain Surya was an innocent who could not possibly kill. He had thought anyone trying to excavate at Zhoka must be doing so out of reverence. He had taken what he had seen at Bumpari as a sign of hope, a stirring symbol of how the Tibetans could still find ways to shield themselves in their Buddhist traditions to maintain their spirit, and identity. But it wasn’t compassion driving events. It was greed. Lodi had been supporting the art colony not to keep traditions alive but for reasons that had to do with the things he worshiped on the altar over his bed. Liya might not believe Lodi capable of looting Zhoka, but she did not know of the murder he had committed in Seattle.

A small chirping sound behind him pulled Shan’s gaze from the bottom of the closet. Yao had opened the hinged top of a flat box on his lap, which was now glowing. It was a laptop computer. As Shan stared over his shoulder, the inspector began quickly opening and shutting files, making small guttural sounds of satisfaction. Bank account records. Travel records. Inventory records, showing long lists of art objects, classified in categories of thangkas, sculpture, ritual implements, and masks. Everything was in English.

As Yao scrolled through the files, glancing nervously at the closed door, Shan stepped back to the chest which had contained the computer. Shan put his hands down along the edges of the chest, probing. From beneath the blanket that bore the rectangular imprint of the computer he retrieved a small felt bag. Inside were half a dozen computer discs. He studied the labels on the discs a moment then extended them toward Yao, fanned out in his hand like playing cards.