Beautiful Ghosts (26 page)

They were red discs, bearing computer-printed labels.
Nei Lou,
the labels warned. Classified, a state secret. Below the legend were a series of numbers, ten digits all the same, followed by a hyphen and a single digit. Number one on the first disc, two on the second, through six. He handed the last disc to Yao, who inserted it into the computer.

“This computer may be all I need,” the inspector said, then blinked in confusion as the photograph of a familiar building from Beijing appeared on the screen. “The Museum of Antiquities,” he said in a puzzled tone. “Ming’s museum.” The photo faded and the words Nei Lou appeared, in huge figures that filled the screen. A moment later the screen was filled with dense, tiny ideograms under the heading Chapter Forty-five.

“Another
neyig,
” Shan said in confusion. “A pilgrim’s guide.”

Shan gazed at the discs with the emblem of Ming’s museum, then as Yao continued to scroll through the files, he probed the room again. On a small table by the bed was a cigar box, filled with photographs. He quickly leafed through them, seeing none that showed Zhoka or the village, then returned to those on top. People were gathered in front of a house, all Westerners except for Lodi, who stood in the center. His English cousins, including a younger Elizabeth McDowell. There were tourist shots from England, capturing castles and cathedrals.

In a separate envelope on the bottom were photos of a different set of people, taken in a sandy, windblown place. It appeared to be an archaeological excavation. He saw Elizabeth McDowell kneeling in the dirt, Director Ming beside her. Shan stared at the next photo a long time, not believing his eyes, looking toward Yao, then back at the photo. It was a group picture that included McDowell, Ming, and a number of Chinese who had the air of scientists, some wearing aprons, some holding hammers and chisels. At Ming’s side was Lodi, and in the center of the group, more photogenic than the others, was a well-dressed Western man. At one of his shoulders was a huge man with the features of a Mongolian, a short cigar jutting from his mouth. At the other shoulder was a thin-faced Han who was looking at the Westerner, not the camera, highlighting his crooked nose. Shan put the photo in his pocket, then added the next one, which showed the same group lifting glasses in a toast, inside a large tent at a banquet table on which stood small flags of the People’s Republic and the United States.

A deep bellow broke the silence in the cottage. Yao’s head shot up and he slammed the top of the computer down. Shan darted out of the room, through the central chamber and onto the porch. From the next level someone was blowing a
dungchen,
one of the long telescoping horns used to summon monks at a gompa.

As Shan and Yao jogged up the rock steps, the horn stopped blowing, and jubilant cries came from a handful of villagers who bounded down the steps from the upper levels, toward the long frame building beyond the gardens. Shan paused, stopping Yao behind him, and watched as the Tibetans ran inside the building.

By the time Shan and Yao reached the gardens everyone else except a man who stood like a guard at the stairs to the fifth level, was inside the elegant building. They stepped into a small chamber with a workbench holding a nearly completed statue of a deity with the head of a horse. Beyond the workshop was a large chamber, its arched passageway flanked on both sides with large prayer wheels handsomely worked in bronze, with the mani mantra inscribed in gilt lettering near the top rim on each and small images of the sacred symbols worked into the sides. Shan paused at the first, realizing he had seen a nearly identical wheel before, bent and corroded, lying half buried at Zhoka.

The building appeared to be divided into two great halls, the first of which had the air of a temple except it had no altar. The Tibetans had apparently gathered in the second hall but Shan paused, studying the first room. Incense burned in several small samkang. Along the edge of the room, lining the walls, were bronze statues on pedestals. Shan had seen similar statues before, in temples and gompas, even in museums, but never had he seen so many. Through the haze of the incense he counted forty of the bronze images, some only a few inches high, others two feet or more. He saw Lokesh standing, seemingly entranced, in front of one of the statues. Inside the perimeter of statues were tables, defining a central square in the chamber, and inside the square were a dozen stretching frames used for painting thangkas, cushions in front of each frame for an artist to sit, pigments and brushes by most of the cushions. But only one cushion was occupied.

A middle-aged woman sat at a frame, contemplating her unfinished work, on which the images had been outlined in pencil. The woman gave no acknowledgment as Shan and Yao approached. She was completely absorbed in her painting, though her brushes were at her side. She seemed deeply troubled, and repeatedly glanced past the stretched cotton cloth toward another, completed thangka that sat ten feet away, still in its frame, surrounded by burning butter lamps.

“Did you see?” an excited voice asked from behind Shan. Lokesh had found Shan. “Did you see?” Lokesh repeated, gesturing toward the completed thangka.

Shan stepped closer, recognizing the style. “Impossible,” he gasped. “It’s Surya’s. But it can’t be.”

“It can only be,” Lokesh said in a confident, yet wondrous tone.

“My children and I found him on a mountain when we were visiting our cousins who herd above the valley,” a soft voice interjected. “He was painting a Buddha on a rock.” The painter spoke from where she sat, still staring at the unfinished face of her deity. “We were scared at first. My children had not seen a red robe their entire lives. I had not seen one for decades. Some would have said it was a ghost. We crept closer, not thinking he saw us as we hid under a ledge thirty paces away. But then he turned and he had the end of a brush balanced on his nose, and spread his arms like bird wings. My children could not stop their laughter. He came and sat in front of us. He called us rock pikas, and began squeaking like one.”

The woman rose with a sad smile and approached the finished thangka. “When we crawled out he asked us to meet the deity he had painted. I started to cry. I don’t know why. I cried like a little girl, then after a long time he took my hand and placed it on the deity. Something seemed to shoot through my arm, a strange tingling, and then it seemed like what was crying was not part of me anymore.”

“But when did he come here?” Shan asked.

“We brought him nearly a year ago, for his first visit. Most of us had stopped painting years ago, working only in the metal shops. He helped us discover what was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

The woman wrung her hands. “For centuries our people had helped make paintings for the earth temple. The living god paintings. There are old books here that speak of how a lama once came here and said he had entered one of the heavens where blessings fell off the tips of brushes and homes for gods were made of cotton and pigment.” She looked at her hands as she spoke, as if embarrassed.

“But we lost the way,” she continued after a moment. “We could make the things collectors wanted, even museums, but not the ones that could serve in temples. We lost the ways of spreading fire onto the cloth. Lodi said it didn’t matter anymore, because there were no more temples, that we made no money from temples. But we knew better. My father was one of our best painters in generations and he spent half his time praying. Then we had terrible winters, three in a row, when all the old ones died. I think we forgot how to pray.” She turned and nodded a greeting to Liya, who was standing by Surya’s painting now.

“When Surya came to us that first day, it was like the sun had come out after years of storm. He put a hand on all our heads—everyone, even the children—then he came inside the workshops. He spent two hours inside, alone, studying our work. Afterwards he told us to take everything away, to empty this entire chamber. Then he put a little stool in the center of the room with a little bronze Buddha on it, saying after he left we had to meditate on that Buddha, do nothing but meditate on that Buddha, and the Buddha inside us, night and day, stopping only to eat and sleep, until he came back.

“When Lodi found out he was furious because we had stopped working, because his order was not ready on time. But we did not stop the meditation. Two weeks later Surya returned and began teaching us how to paint, starting with us as if we were children. He painted this for us, finished it on his last visit. He said soon the world would change.…” Her voice fell away and she looked up, blinking away tears. “Liya told us what happened. He labored to help us find our deities and then lost his own.”

There was a long silence as they stared at Surya’s painting. Something opened in the back of Shan’s mind and he heard Surya’s voice reading one of the old sutras. When he finally walked away, Lokesh at his side, Yao still stood staring, not at the painting, but at the painter.

The second chamber of the long building seemed to hold most of the population of the village. The woman who had served them tea was there, half a dozen children, and perhaps twenty more adults, standing in a tight knot at the center of the wood-paneled chamber, quiet murmurs of excitement rippling through the assembly. Shan and Lokesh eased their way to the side of the group. The villagers were gathered around Corbett, some of them venturing to pat Corbett on the back, a woman offering him fresh berries, another tea.

“He was outside in the garden,” a small voice whispered. Dawa had found Shan. “There was a tablet of parchment, a brush, and some ink. I saw it happen. He dipped the brush in the ink and made a few strokes, smiled, and did it again. It was a flower on a branch, a perfect little flower with only six strokes. He saw me and motioned me to sit by him, then an old woman came to him and gasped when she saw the flower, saying it was as if it was growing from the paper. She laughed for joy, and started giving prayers of thanks. She cried out that this one is born of the rainbow. People started running. Soon someone starting blowing that long horn.”

“What old woman?”

Dawa pointed to a woman in a brightly colored apron who sat at Corbett’s side, showing him a collection of old paint brushes.

“The head of our painting halls,” Liya said over Shan’s shoulder. “The oldest of our painters.”

“What did she mean, Corbett was born from the rainbow?”

She welcomed the question with a broad smile. “Many saints were said to have passed through here in the early centuries, going on to live at Zhoka. They taught that art was a spiritual practice, that the best artists, like the best lamas, were those who had benefited from many prior lives.”

“Surely you don’t mean he says Corbett is reincarnated from one?”

“Not exactly. It is more like art is a spiritual power, Corbett has the power of many prior artist lives focused in him. Not one specific artist. Our old teachings say the rainbow is the vehicle for passing the power, that where a rainbow touches down, an artist is born in that spot.”

Shan looked at Corbett. “And he’s been told this?”

“Oh yes. It pleases him. He is part of the prophecy, that the world is changing,” Liya said. She glanced at Shan and flushed with color. “I mean people are saying that.”

“He is an agent of the United States government,” Shan pointed out.

Liya shrugged. “He is an artist, a translator of deities. The rest is unimportant.”

Shan watched Corbett and the villagers, the American awkwardly accepting gifts of food and paint brushes, the lama grinning, the children singing.

“When I met you, you were with the purbas,” Shan said. “I never saw you with a paint brush.”

Liya offered a smile that was somehow grateful. “I was going to be an artist, as all of us are brought up to be. But after my mother died and Lodi left there was no one to watch out for everyone. He calls me—he called me—the village business manager.”

“That’s not what I would have called you when you were helping the monks with the festival.”

Her smile seemed sadder now. “That seems like a long time ago. That was when Surya was going to open Zhoka again, and I was going to bring new art for the temples.”

“What was Lodi’s business with Ming?” Shan asked abruptly.

“We make art and Lodi sells it. Punji introduced him to Ming, who helped him learn about art markets. She got him assigned to some of Ming’s expeditions.”

“Was Ming buying art from Lodi?”

Liya frowned, and did not answer.

“Was he stealing from Ming?”

“Lodi was no thief.”

“Yes he was, Liya.” Shan explained what he knew about the theft of the Dolan collection, and murder of the young American woman.

Liya stared at a row of lotus flowers carved into the wall near the ceiling, her eyes growing moist. “I don’t believe it. He was no killer, no thief. He had reverence for our art, he would not steal sacred things, it would be disrespectful.”

“People change. He had money. He traveled, he had friends in the West. Bumpari was part of his life, but not all of it.” What would she say, Shan wondered, if he told her that Corbett had proof that Lodi visited casinos? She would not even understand what a casino was. And stealing from a rich American might not seem disrespectful, especially if Lodi was indeed bringing the artifacts back to Tibet.

A lonely despair grew on Liya’s countenance. “All I want is for things to be the way they were, the way they are supposed to be.” She gazed at the children playing at Corbett’s feet as she spoke. “We spoke about looters, Lodi and I. There have always been thieves looking for treasure. He always thought he could protect Tibetan things while still—” Liya searched for words, “still conducting his business in the West. But then I saw him at Zhoka before dawn on the festival day. He was upset. More than upset. Remorseful. He said nothing that was about to happen had been his idea, he wanted me to believe that. He said we should seal some of the old shrines and he vowed that he would find something that would make up for everything, something wonderful for the people of the hills, something Surya had been seeking for months. He had that statue of Manjushri with him, and gave it to me before dawn the day of the festival, to protect it. I hid it in the ruins and brought it back with his body.”