Mandarin Gate (26 page)

Norbu took up the chant himself now, but not as a leader. He made his way to the rear of the little hall, reached the other side of the blind man, and lowered himself to the stone flags like the rest of the devout, looking up to the blind man.

The old man Shan had helped into the chapel was more than some energetic worshiper. The abbot was paying him homage. The blind man’s vest had fallen open and Shan saw now the gau that hung from his neck. A band of maroon cloth was tied around the amulet, the sign of a former monk, or an illegal monk. As he gazed into the man’s serene face and listened to the quiet fire in his voice, Shan knew he had been more than a monk. He had been a lama, a teacher, a leader who was now healing the wounds of the monks.

Shan ventured a glance toward Norbu. He understood now the affection, the fierce loyalty, the monks felt toward their abbot. He knew the words to say to appease Public Security, but alone with his flock he dropped his pretense. He nurtured the old ways, kept alive the spark that Beijing tried so hard to extinguish. He did so, moreover, in a village that was obviously under close scrutiny by the knobs. What he did was reckless but it clearly endeared him to his flock. They would tolerate a Chinese flag and loyalty oaths in the open because they knew what happened when the chapel door was locked.

As the ritual concluded the abbot rose, hid the bell, the demon, and the flag, then led the monks outside. Shan lingered until the chamber was nearly empty, then approached the altar where Norbu’s attendant Trinle was lighting fresh butter lamps. Shan silently began to help.

“I thought I was leading the blind man,” he said after a few moments. “But now I know he was leading me.”

Trinle glanced outside before replying. “It is very brave what he does,” the monk offered. “Just coming back here was brave.”

“Back here?” Shan asked, confused.

The monk kept working as he explained. “He got ten strings for opposing the loyalty oaths. Some would have just lost their robes. But they have to make an example when it’s an abbot. They let him out early.”

Shan stared at Trinle in confusion. Ten strings. When an imprisoned monk left followers or loved ones behind they would try to send a new rosary each year. But no one got early release for opposing loyalty oaths. “How early?”

“He went blind. It was a grand day for us when Norbu first appeared, with the dragon bell in one hand and old Patrul in the other.”

“Patrul was the abbot of this gompa?”

The monk paused and nodded. “It’s not enough to just say abbot. Patrul was one of the old ones. One of the original ones,” he said, meaning the blind man had been a holy man in old Tibet, before the Chinese came. “The only one most of us have ever met.”

There was much more to Chegar gompa than met the eye.

“I am called Shan,” he said. “You are Trinle. I met you and Dakpo with Abbot Norbu at Thousand Steps.”

The monk nodded again. “I saw you sometimes with Jamyang at the old convent. Is it true he has thrown his face?”

“He died the same day as the abbess and the others.”

Trinle gave a small sigh of despair. “Truly the gods were looking elsewhere that day.”

“It was a bad day,” Shan agreed. “None of those who died were prepared. They are owed the truth about why they died.”

Trinle studied Shan a moment. He recognized the invitation in Shan’s words. “That is government business. Monks are taught to stay away from government business.”

“For a place that stays out of government business you have a lot of government visitors.”

Trinle straightened and fixed Shan with a sober expression. “The best way to deal with evil demons is to bring them among demon protectors.”

Shan returned his gaze. “The demon who killed the abbess and the others won’t come willingly. Help me find him.”

Trinle cast a worried glance toward the door. “This is a place of reverence. Why would you look here?”

“Because someone in a monk’s robe was there that day. He was the killer.”

Trinle stared in disbelief. “No. I could put on one of those grey tunics. It wouldn’t make me a knob.”

“Fake monk or real monk, all the gompas and convents will take the blame when the government discovers it. It was someone convincing, someone who looked at ease in a robe. A Tibetan with the close-cropped hair of a monk. Tell me, Trinle, has anyone left the gompa in the past year?”

The question seemed to trouble Trinle. “One went across.”

“You mean he died?”

“Across to India. He is safe now, has a job in the Dalai Lama’s government.”

Shan reminded himself that Chenmo had spoken of purbas in the valley, the resistance fighters who came from India. Chegar had a monk now in the exile government. The close scrutiny of Public Security was beginning to make more sense.

Outside, a loudspeaker interrupted the quiet of the courtyard, first with a burst of static, then with a repetitive call for a monk to report to the gatehouse. Shan recognized the name. Dakpo.

Trinle stepped to the entry and edged his head around the doorway to glance furtively into the courtyard. The voice on the speaker grew impatient as it called again for the monk. Trinle’s face clouded.

“Dakpo is missing?” Shan asked.

“He isn’t here.”

Shan considered the monk’s worried tone. “You mean he left without permission.”

As Trinle watched the activity in the courtyard he gripped the door frame as if to steady himself. Monks were hurrying into buildings. “He has duties elsewhere. If the abbot doesn’t calm them down, they will search every room.”

“And they will find contraband,” Shan asserted.

Trinle turned to Shan with challenge in his eyes. “We of Chegar gompa are true monks.”

There was something in his tone that unsettled Shan. Every gompa harbored secret, illegal photos of the Dalai Lama. Now he knew Chegar sometimes even displayed a flag of independent Tibet. Trinle seemed to be speaking of something else.

Shan looked back to where the demon protector was hidden. It was very old, very valuable. “If they come searching, put that protector deity on the altar and drape it with prayer scarves. They won’t know what they are looking at.”

Trinle considered Shan’s words a moment, then nodded. Shan stepped back out into the courtyard.

Norbu was speaking urgently with another monk near the gate. Shan slipped along the shadow of the opposite wall, keeping his head down, mingling with the handful of villagers who were paying homage, pausing as they did at the shrine stations along the wall. He heard only snippets of the abbot’s conversation. Norbu was clearly upset.

“How long?” the abbot demanded. “How long has he been missing?”

“He left two nights ago. After midnight.”

Shan ventured a glance toward the monk. He was clearly frightened. Norbu kept the gompa safe from Public Security by maintaining tight control. One errant monk could tip the balance.

Shan stepped closer.

“Perhaps he went on a pilgrim’s path, to visit the shrines,” the monk suggested.

Norbu muttered something like a prayer under his breath. “He is on a mediation retreat in the mountains,” the abbot declared more loudly, as if rehearsing the line. “When he returns he will gladly renew his loyalty oath.” Norbu straightened his robe and stepped back to the waiting knobs.

Shan kept his head down as the officers converged upon the abbot, slipping out the gate and into the village.

As in many such gompa villages, the old pilgrim paths converged near the gate. Without thinking Shan found himself pausing at the small stations along the main road, many of them nothing more than cairns of mani stones. It was what he and Lokesh would do, and he realized again how much he missed the old Tibetan. The past few months, when they had been together nearly every day, had been a blessing and he guarded himself against expecting he could go back to that simple, peaceful routine when the turmoil in the valley subsided. The troubles might never subside. The valley as it had been for centuries was not going to survive, and its demise would widen the gap between Lokesh and himself.

As he reached the edge of the hamlet he became aware of a low steady rattle coming from the long timber structure that had no doubt once been a barn for the gompa. With cautious steps he entered, following the sound to a stall at the back where the Tibetan woman who had been grinding flour now spun a handheld prayer wheel. She faced the deeper shadows at the rear of the stall. It took Shan a moment to make out the old man. Patrul sat cross-legged on a low table, his sightless eyes cast downward, looking like an altar statue more than a living human. Before him, like an offering, lay an aged brown mastiff.

Shan said nothing, did not move, did not want to cause the woman to break the rhythm of her wheel. Patrul’s hand left his mudra long enough for him to gesture Shan to sit.

“Your Tibetan is good,” the old man declared. “I have always been able to sense a Chinese. But not you. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I have been immersing myself in good Tibetan mud for the past few months.”

The blind man’s smile was serene.

“Rinpoche,” Shan said. “I had a friend, a hermit who passed over suddenly last month. He needs my help.”

Shan knew better than to expect a quick reply. The old man looked down as if studying his fingers with his blind eyes, then rested his hand on the head of the big brown dog, who instantly opened its eyes to stare at Shan. He had the uncanny sensation that the old lama was looking at him through the animal’s eyes.

“Jamyang was my friend too,” the old teacher said. “First came the news of his death. Then the others. It was a storm of death that day.”

“They still need us,” Shan said. He found himself addressing the dog.

“We still need them.”

Shan paused over the words. They were the perfect words, the exact thing that needed to be said. “I think the deaths were connected,” he offered.

“The deities needed them all elsewhere, all at once.” It was the old abbot’s way of agreeing.

“A monk was at the convent when the abbess and the other two died.”

The dog blinked.

“Are you some kind of policeman?” the blind man asked. The woman stopped moving her wheel.

“I am a pilgrim.”

“He is the one who digs ditches with Lokesh, Rinpoche,” the woman interjected.

The old man’s face brightened. “You almost died saving that lamb trapped in quicksand. They say the mud was nearly up to your shoulders.” A strange wheezing noise came from his throat. It took a moment for Shan to recognize it as a laugh.

“That lamb and I weren’t meant to die that day.”

“You gain much merit in doing such things.”

“Lokesh said in time I will find that the lamb saved me.”

The former abbot slowly nodded. “A man can easily put on a robe. It could mean many things.” They were talking about the murders again.

“Where is the monk Dakpo?”

The dog raised its head.

“Dakpo has gone beyond the mountains. He knows he must return before the full moon.”

“You mean India?” Dakpo had family with the exile government, Trinle had said.

“The other direction.”

Shan puzzled over the words. The other direction was north, or east, deeper into Tibet. The full moon was in five days. Dakpo had confided in Patrul, but not Norbu.

“Why,” he asked hesitantly, “would he leave without the abbot’s permission?”

“Without the government’s permission,” Patrul said, as if correcting him. Some monasteries, Shan reminded himself, had to secure government permission for its monks to travel. Dakpo had not wanted the government to know. Or was it that he didn’t want Major Liang to know?

“Rinpoche,” Shan asked, “you said Jamyang was a friend. Was he a new friend or an old friend?”

“We weren’t sure, he and I.” It was a very Tibetan answer. “When he came to the valley he traveled all the pilgrim’s paths and found me on one up on the mountain. He spent the day with Dakpo and me, praying, cleaning old shrines along the paths, and I invited him to come to the gompa. He declined, said he had become a creature of the high paths, like the wild goats. He said he felt a great affinity for our valley, as if he had been here before. I reminded him that over the centuries many gentle spirits like his had lived at our gompa. He wasn’t certain that day but as time went by he seemed to be convinced he had been here previously, that he had some duty from another time that he still owed the gompa.”

“He said that? A duty?”

The old man offered another serene smile as he turned to stroke the dog. “I told him the devout owed a duty to all of Tibet.”

“To all of Tibet, wherever it is located,” Shan ventured after a moment.

Patrul turned back with surprise on his face. It seemed his eyes were alive again. They fixed Shan with an intense gaze, fixed not on his face, it seemed, but something behind his face. “Once in Tibet there were earth-taming temples to subdue the demons that threatened it. They are lost to us today, but there are new ones, secret counterparts to the old.” When he leaned forward the woman stopped spinning her wheel. His final words came in a low plaintive whisper. “Are you the demon tamer we have prayed for, Shan?”

*   *   *

Shan left the motorbike hidden among rocks and made the long climb to Jamyang’s shrine. The visit to the monastery had been strangely unsettling. Patrul had been trying to tell him that Chegar had a secret connection to Dharamsala. The trail of a murderer had led him to Tibetan freedom fighters. He had no heart for exposing a killer if it meant also exposing more dissidents. But Liang would relish the opportunity. Revealing a killer in a nest of dissidents would earn him another promotion.

He paused at the intersection of two trails, recognizing the old pilgrim’s path. His last hours with Jamyang continued to haunt him. Words had been spoken that he had not understood, then or now. From where he stood he could just glimpse the little flat where Jamyang had asked him to stop, where the lama had prostrated himself to the mountain. Shan put his hand on a cairn of mani stones, lingering for a moment as if to consult them, then turned onto the path.

When he reached the flat he stepped to the nearby road, trying to reconstruct each of Jamyang’s movements when he had asked Shan to stop his truck there. The lama had warned Shan that he did not understand the dangers of the valley, echoing Shan’s own words. He had asked to stop at the cairns where pilgrims communed with the powerful mountain that protected the valley. The old abbot had said Jamyang felt a connection to the valley, as if he owed it something. He had prayed at each of the cairns and … Shan froze. As the wind lapsed for a moment he heard a new sound, a low, quick murmuring coming from over the edge of the drop-off.