Beautiful Ghosts (36 page)

“Not much of a plan,” Yao said, then shrugged. “I have weak ankles,” he offered quietly.

But a quarter hour later the soldier in the front of the column halted and raised a hand in warning. A figure was frantically running down the trail above them, stumbling one moment, leaping over rocks the next, pausing to look behind him then lurching forward at a desperate pace. One of the herders, Shan assumed, it must be one of the hill people trying to avoid the soldiers. The soldier at the front of their column studied the solitary figure with binoculars, cursed, then motioned them into the rocks by the trail.

Shan hid with the others for nearly a minute then ventured a look. The figure, nearly upon them now, wore a black wool cap pulled low over his head and a dirty green army jacket. He was fifty feet from Shan when the soldier leapt out of the rocks and slapped the stock of his rifle against the man’s lowered head. As the figure swayed and crumpled to the ground, the cap dropped from his head. It was Ko.

Shan was not aware of leaping forward, of scrambling over the loose rocks on the trail, only of being at the boy’s side, cradling his head, dabbing at the blood where the rifle had struck.

“Damned escapee,” the soldier growled, and reached for his radio.

Ko’s eyes fluttered open. They looked about wildly, unfocused, then settled on Shan a moment. He seemed to recognize Shan, and pushed away Shan’s hand with a look of revulsion.

“You’re bleeding,” Shan said in a tight voice.

Ko’s lips curled into his familiar sneer. He pushed himself up on his elbows and crawled away, then started to rise. The soldier gave an exaggerated sigh and thrust a boot onto Ko’s leg, pinning him to the ground as he lifted his radio.

Shan stared numbly at his son, his fingers reaching out toward Ko, then retracting, the boy glaring at him hatefully, as if Shan had been the one who had hit him.

“You don’t know anything,” Ko snarled at Shan.

Shan became aware of voices arguing and looked up to find Yao pushing the soldier’s radio down. “Not what you think,” Yao was saying. “No need to overreact.”

“He’s a criminal,” the soldier growled. “One of those trusties, escaping from his team. A little too much trust. Should never have used them. They’re like animals after a year or two behind wire. I could shoot him and no one would question it.”

Shan stood and stepped between the soldier and Ko. Yao glanced at Shan nervously. “He’s not from Lhadrung, not from the 404th,” Yao told the soldier. “He was brought here from Xinjiang just to help us. And he’s not escaping.”

Shan watched as Ko’s fingers wrapped around a sharp stone he seemed about to slam into the soldier’s shin.

“I asked him to meet us,” Yao announced. Ko stopped moving. “I lost my navigation unit and I asked him to bring me one from the stockpile.”

“We wouldn’t trust the likes of him with that kind of equipment,” the soldier grunted, shifting his eyes back and forth from Shan to Yao.

Yao pulled out the small leather folder with his identification card, and held it in one hand, flipping it open. “I did,” Yao said, and extended his other hand, palm open, toward Ko.

The rock slipped from Ko’s hand. He stared at Yao, jaw clenched, glancing at the rifle, then the hand reached inside his jacket, extracted a palm-size plastic instrument, and handed it to Yao.

The soldier seemed to deflate. He looked at the navigational device, then at the leather folder in Yao’s hand. “Yes sir,” he said, then pulled his boot from Ko and signaled the others to continue up the trail. “He’s your problem now, Comrade Inspector,” the soldier said in a resentful tone. “I’ll let the other team know. They’ll be glad to be rid of him. Criminals,” the man spat, staring not at Ko this time, but at Shan, then slung his rifle onto his shoulder and turned to follow the column.

As Ko turned in the opposite direction, Yao stepped in front of him, blocking the trail down the slope. “Like he said, you’re my problem now,” he said, and pointed to the party moving above them. “I saved you because of your father,” he said, indicating Shan. “Only once. Run from us and I’ll not stop them from shooting.”

Confusion passed over Ko’s face. He studied Shan silently with squinting eyes. “Bastards,” he snapped, then turned up the trail.

An hour later, just after they passed a trail that led to the south, Yao cried out in pain and Shan looked up to see him sprawled on a rock, holding his ankle as the soldier jogged back to investigate. Shan darted forward to reach the inspector’s side before the soldier. He lifted Yao’s pant leg and quickly began wrapping it with his rolled up handkerchief.

“Sprained,” he explained to the soldier as he tied the makeshift binding in a tight knot. “Won’t be walking much more today.”

Yao quickly ordered the party on, saying he and Shan would meet them at the cave the next day.

“We’ll need help,” Shan called out as the soldier pulled away. “He may need to be carried.”

Without hesitating the soldier jerked his thumb toward Ko, ordering him to help rearrange supplies for the three into the packs Shan and Yao had been carrying. In ten minutes the main party was over a ridge and out of sight. Yao was bending to untie Shan’s handkerchief when Ko dropped one of the packs at Shan’s feet.

“You lied to them.” There was a glimmer of curiosity in his voice.

“We decided to take a different route,” Shan said.

Yao picked up the pack and shoved it toward Ko. “Here’s how it is. You run and I won’t trouble over you. I’ll just call in troops. Not prison guards, mountain troops. They’ll use helicopters with infrared. If you’re lucky a snow leopard will get you first. If the soldiers find you they will put you in a helicopter. Then they will throw a party. Do you know what that means?”

From the grim way Ko studied the barren, rocky landscape Shan knew he understood. Ko shouldered the pack and, his face taut with anger, gave a mock bow then gestured for Shan to lead the way.

They reached Zhoka an hour before dusk, approaching in a wary silence. The ruins seemed unusually cold. A steady wind moaned through the broken walls. Ko hung back, uncertainty on his face. He removed the pack and held it in front of him, as though he would need to defend himself.

“It’s an old prison,” Ko said when they stopped at the edge of the ruins. “I can tell, I can feel it. Just look at it,” he said in a voice that had suddenly gone cold and hollow. His words stopped Shan. Shan studied the ruins again, looking as if for the first time at the maze of rock walls, the dust that swirled in the chill wind, making shifting, foreboding shadows, the patches of blackness that marked entrances into the subterranean passages. “They’ve always had prisons, always killed thousands,” Ko said. “You can feel it.” He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular. When he looked and saw that Shan was listening, his sneering expression returned. He shouldered the pack and pushed past Shan.

“Not a prison,” Shan said to his back. “A monastery. A place of lamas.”

He did not think his son had heard. But Ko called back. “You’re a fool, not to know it’s a place of death,” he muttered, then kept walking.

They circled through the outer rim of the ruins, watching, pausing often to listen. They walked through eerie pools of silence, where old walls blocked the wind. When a pika scurried along a wall Shan looked up to see Ko crouching, one hand clenched in a fist, nervously watching the walls. Ko seemed to sense Shan’s stare and he cut his eyes resentfully, straightened, then pushed on to the lead. “There!” he warned when he reached the next wall. “People are waiting in the shadows. An ambush!” There was a new sound, faint but regular, a quiet murmuring.

Shan stepped ahead, staying in the shadows, until two figures came into view, hovering by a dim yak dung fire: a big man in a brown felt hat and dirty fleece coat, holding a girl on his lap, comforting her, patting her back. As Shan approached he realized the man wasn’t speaking or crying but humming.

“Do you need help,” Shan called softly, in Tibetan.

“If you’re asking if I’m okay,” came the reply in English as Shan stepped forward, “I could do with a pizza and a beer.” It was Corbett, holding Dawa.

Yao darted to the American, handed him one of their water bottles.

Dawa seemed in a state of exhaustion. She murmured a greeting, then rolled over in Corbett’s arms, her head on his shoulder. As he drank Corbett seemed to notice how Shan’s eyes searched the shadows. “I had to come back here, to understand why Lodi died here. Lokesh said he understood, but he said I was wrong about why, that I came for the same reason he was coming, because of the sleeping deities. He said imagine a house full of slumbering saints, and people trying to kill them in their beds.”

For a moment, as Corbett looked at Shan there was helplessness in his eyes. “Lokesh isn’t here,” he said. “I mean he’s here but not with us. The three of us arrived yesterday. He said he had to find an old lama here. When Lokesh couldn’t find him in any of the surface ruins he said he had to find the way underground. It’s been over ten hours,” he added in a worried whisper.

“Into the place with the blood,” a small muffled voice said from the American’s shoulder, “into the blackness where death waits.”

“Fiona,” Shan said, “is she—”

“She is safe,” Dawa said, lifting her head. “But when she learned I had not had time to understand Zhoka she sent me back with Uncle Jara. She said if I have only a limited time in the mountains this is where I should be. But as soon as we arrived Liya appeared and took Aku Jara away. When I asked him why, he just said it was the Mountain Buddha.”

“You mean he was frightened of it?” Shan asked.

“Yes. I don’t know. What is it, Uncle Shan? What is the Mountain Buddha?”

“I don’t know, Dawa,” Shan admitted uneasily.

As they made camp around a small fire in the sheltering corner of two crumbling walls, Corbett explained that when he had regained consciousness he had found his clothes stripped off, replaced with Tibetan homespun. They had taken his passport, wallet, notes, and put a prayer box around his neck. He spoke of the events without rancor, in a strange, distant tone. “They wanted me to think you were dead. I think some of them thought you were dead. But Liya came back by the next afternoon and confided in me, said you would be safe. She said she knew I would have to leave, but that I should please try to understand the importance of the words spoken about me, about the rainbow, because they were one of the true things about my life. She said even if I didn’t believe them everyone in the village did, and it had given them great hope. She said she was sorry, that they must seem like barbarians, that she kept my things in a sack. She gave it to me, asking only that I wear the clothes of Bumpari until I left, she begged me, to let the people there keep believing. I could go anytime and just think of my time there as a little Tibetan vacation.”

“You’re still wearing the clothes,” Shan observed.

The American offered an uncertain grin. “They’re just getting comfortable.” Corbett abruptly turned at the sound of running feet behind them. Ko appeared, back from looking for firewood with Yao, walking now, trying, but not succeeding, to hide his alarm. “There is blood,” he announced, turning to point in the direction he had come.

Ko led them to an intersection of two ruined alleyways, where Yao waited, studying the bright crimson drops that stained a flat rock. “Boots here,” the inspector said, pointing to imprints in the dry soil. “Soft shoes here,” he said, pointing to nearby indentations. “The boots waited for the soft shoes, and leapt out. There was a struggle then the one in shoes broke away,” he concluded, and pointed over the wall, at the top of which were more drops of blood. “Impossible to follow.”

They ate in wary silence, and Yao was laying out blankets as Shan read the pilgrim’s guide for Zhoka, when Ko muttered a low, frightened curse and pressed his back against the nearest wall. Shan turned to see a figure in the shadow, curling up against a rock. As Corbett coaxed the fire brighter, and Yao found one of the battery lamps, Shan stepped to the newcomer with a blanket.

“We missed you,” he said.

Lokesh gave only a small murmur of acknowledgment. Shan brought him tea, but he would not drink. Corbett brought him an apple but he would not eat. Finally Dawa just sat with him, holding a hand, until both were asleep.

“That bounty for me,” Shan said as he and the American studied the pair. “I presented myself. You should pay me a hundred dollars.”

“I suppose…” Corbett began uncertainly.

“I will give it to Lokesh, for bus fare for Dawa’s parents. They should come home.”

Corbett smiled. “The American taxpayers would be honored.”

When Shan awoke at dawn Lokesh was sitting cross-legged on one of the walls surveying the ruins. Not surveying, Shan saw as he approached his old friend. Praying. His hands were wrapped in a ritual gesture Shan stopped to study. It was not a mudra Lokesh used often. The right hand was crossed over the left, the middle finger and thumbs touching as if he were about to snap his fingers. It was a warrior mudra, meant to invoke a wrathful deity.

Shan sat beside his old friend and tried to find words, starting to speak more than once but stopping short, the sound hanging on his tongue like a small groan.

“Where did you journey inside the rock, all those hours?” Shan asked at last.

“I saw no one. I visited old paintings. I sat in every chamber I could find. It was very dark. It is hard sometimes in such darkness to know if you are moving or the world is moving about you.”

Shan studied his friend. Lokesh was still investigating, seeking in a different way, trying to sense the true nature of the enigmatic gompa.

“Gendun is in there,” Lokesh said.

“We don’t know that for certain.”

Lokesh sighed. He seemed disappointed in Shan’s words. “Not the way that inspector knows things. But he is in there. He is doing what Surya was going to do. He is putting Zhoka back in its place. If it is not too late,” the old Tibetan added.

Shan looked back over the ruins. The words might have had the air of witchcraft to some, senile ramblings to others. Shan didn’t entirely understand himself what Gendun was doing in the dark recesses of the old Buddhist power place. He suspected that putting Zhoka back in its place had something to do with changing the people in the lands that surrounded it. Perhaps restoring it was little different from what the monks who had originally built the earth taming temple had done. It was as if Gendun had gone inside to find an old furnace whose coals had been stoked and banked decades earlier, to revive the last dim spark before it died. But how did anyone, even the holy men of Yerpa, restore such a place?