Neon Lotus (32 page)

Pema touched
him lightly on the hand. “You cannot blame all the Chinese people for the policies
of their government. The power, as always, has devolved into the hands of a
few. The new guard has become the old guard,
just as the liberal
experiment became a conservative prison. But the Chinese people are as trapped
as the Tibetans by these events. And the Tibetans are not themselves free of
stain. . . .”

Dhondub
growled. “Rato is drenched in the blood of his countrymen.”

“Governor
Rato?” asked Marianne. “I have heard strange things about him recently.”

“He is one
full-blood Tibetan who doesn’t deserve the name, let alone the ancestry. Unless
you consider him a descendant of those squabbling petty officials who let Tibet
fall into Chinese hands two hundred years ago because they were more concerned
with their own precious egos than with the fate of our nation.”

“Well, let’s
see if we can’t undo some of the harm they did,” Marianne offered. “We’re here
to find the fifth ornament, aren’t we? When the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel is in our
hands—or in Chenrezi’s hands rather—who knows what might be possible?”

“You’re not
ready to start looking already?” asked Pema with motherly concern.

“Not
tonight,” Marianne assured her. “But tomorrow I hope we can learn our way
around Lhasa and begin to ask the right questions.”

* * *

Marianne
hardly slept that night. The streets were full of noise that only increased at
dawn. At first light she rose and went out alone to explore the neighborhood.
She borrowed an old bicycle, not wishing to display the sailing bikes in the
busy streets. There was little reason for anyone—Chinese or Tibetan—to look at
her twice. And that was the way she wanted it.

Her initial
impression that Lhasa had lapsed far past its glory and now lay mired in its
own decay, proved all too valid in the light of day. The clear blue Tibetan sky
was blurred by smoke and smog that had become trapped in the Kyichu valley. The
wind rose to blow some of it away, but most of the pollution merely swirled
overhead like ashes rising from a heap only to sift down again nearby. She went
to the main street by which they had entered the city; it at least was paved.
Following the flow of traffic toward the center of the town, she looked up and
saw the immense gray bulk of the Potala slowly lumbering into view.

The old
palace had been covered in layers of dark gray paint, a shade that blotted out
all the glorious memories she had gleaned from photographs. Once it had been
gleaming white, with gold-trimmed rooftops, golden spires, and a few sections
left a vivid earthen red in color. As she came around the front of the palace,
she saw broad staircases zigzagging up its face, leading toward either wing of
the broad building. Hundreds of windows swallowed the sunlight in the heights
of the facade. She thought she saw the dull black lines of iron bars in those
vacant rectangles. She was surprised to see, gleaming like golden coins along
the rooftops, a few stylized Dharma wheels, themselves imprisoned behind snarls
of barbed wire. The jailers must have left these in place to torment their
captives. The Tibetans had never relinquished Buddhism, and to the Communist
authorities they must have seemed like prisoners of religion; thus they
desecrated the ancient faith and mocked all those who followed it.

Approaching
the
Potala
she
found that the foot of the
structure was surrounded by a sculpted plaza, once lovely perhaps, now scarred
and burned. It looked as if a battle had been fought here. Beyond the plaza,
the streets of Lhasa continued; but these were nothing like the narrow,
congested, twisting avenues through which she had just passed. These were so
straight that she could see for miles down their lengths—not that there was
much to see. Here were white walls like those that had once graced the Potala,
flanking featureless corridors broken only by tall metal gates. Cameras and gun
emplacements topped the stainless barriers. A few signs swung in the wind along
those streets, marking the location of an occasional store or warehouse.

This was
Reformed Lhasa, she realized: the Chinese compound. It looked self-contained,
unbreachable, its walls whitewashed daily while the rest of Lhasa fell below
the reach of whatever meager aid the authorities extended. She had not thought
much of the ruinous condition of the rest of the city—Old Lhasa—until she saw
these sterile
avenues.
She had seen enough poverty and sickness in
India
to know that it was anything but rare
;
but
what sort of

contamination did the Chinese fear,
that they erected and lived behind such walls? The Communists held their wealth
to their chests, they walled themselves within it. Despite their worthy
principles of social equality, they had let the
majority of the people—the
people who lived and belonged here—go to hell.

Or to
prison, which might be only marginally worse.

Standing
there on the middle ground between two worlds, as if in a pocket of time,
Marianne felt incredibly ancient. And weary.

She felt her
predicament with an intensity she had never experienced before. It was as if
she had lost all hope, surrendered completely to the course of nature; and
having done so had found something solid to take hold of beyond the gauzy
allure of her ideals.

This was why
she had come to Lhasa, wasn’t it? These were the walls she was meant to scale,
if not tear down. If she were to give birth to a revolution, then here was
where it should be conceived.

Tashi
Drogon’s memories floated just beneath the surface of her thoughts. Neither she
nor Tashi had ever seen Lhasa, but both of them had dreamed of it, studied
photographs, fantasized. She was surprised by how closely Tashi’s fantasies had
resembled her own; perhaps the imagination was one thing that passed intact
from life to life.

But now that
she saw the real Lhasa—Lhasa as it had become—she felt an overwhelming, sad
bitterness at how far short of her dreams this vision fell.

Within
moments she could no longer remember how she had once envisioned Lhasa. All her
fancies died in the face of this reality.

She gazed up
at the Potala, thinking of the days when it had been full of monks and
attendants of the Dalai Lama; when enormous banners had hung from the high
windows on festival days, emblazoned with vast images of Buddhas and
bodhisattvas, while the streets were full of dancing, masked figures, and the
growl of bone trumpets. At night, crowds had moved down the avenues with
lanterns softening the shadows. Idols sculpted of dough and lacquered with
colored butter would be arranged in the city squares for all to admire.

But then
military staff-cars had arrived. The names of the streets had been changed. And
the bloodshed had begun.

All
histories of the last two hundred years had been chronicles of uprisings and
suppressions, with interludes of
deceptive tranquillity when only the Tibetans
themselves knew the extent of turmoil throughout the land. The nation’s
troubles were mirrored in miniature and concentrated here in Lhasa. When the
recent civil wars had raged on the Chinese mainland, many Tibetans had seen it
as their chance to oust the Chinese from the land of the snows. But with an
almost casual series of backhanded blows—like that which had converted the
Potala to a prison in the clouds—the Tibetans had been kept at bay until the
Chinese could summon the forces and attention to deal with them directly. And
then they had been dealt with harshly indeed.

Marianne saw
a row of kiosks at one end of the plaza, where mendicants dozed in the morning
sun while curly-tailed stray dogs nosed among them. Public video monitors
perched atop the columns, though most had been shattered and the few intact
screens were dark. Her attention was drawn by several flapping white
announcements tacked to the pillars. She drew closer and saw that they were
inscribed in both Chinese and Tibetan script. Most official proclamations were
given strictly in Chinese, for the native language had been declared
reactionary and would no doubt soon be outlawed. But in this case, the
officials had swallowed their pride in order to send a message to as many
Tibetans as possible.

She tore one
of the bulletins from the board and spread it between her fingers:

NOTICE TO ALL CITIZENS

OF THE TIBETAN AUTONOMOUS REGION

Dangerous elements even now conspire to overthrow the Great Red
Future and so plunge the T.A.R. into an abyss of ignorance far deeper than that
seen in the prehistoric period before the liberation of the Tibetan peoples by
Mao Zedung. False gods, prophets of reactionary doom, now invade our great
country sowing seeds of superstitious fear meant to paralyze the freethinking
people who are so close to achieving the goals of their revolutionary parents.
The agents of enemy nations seek to reverse the course of our shining destiny!
They must be revealed for what they are,
and uprooted from this
precious soil before they can poison it. Important projects held dear to the
heart and spirit of the Common Dream have been subject to attack by these
foreign agitators. Fortunately no harm has been done. We are stronger than
ever before. Now we rise to defend our country by stamping out the cancers that
grow within. Under the name of the “Great Mother,” there now moves in the
T.A.R. a spy of great deviousness, who pretends to serve the progressive needs
of the Tibetans while actually throwing them into a pit of blind despair. Do
not be taken in by this false mother, who pretends to supersede the true Mother
of the mainland. If you hear of such a one—no matter how slim the rumor—report
your knowledge immediately to the office of the Governor of Tibet. Let this
matter go no further! Do your part to save your country from the only true
devils: foreign agents, reactionary capitalists, and fascist technicians!

“I’ll be
damned,” she whispered, reading the message again. “They’ve actually admitted I
exist. . . .”

* * *

When she
returned to the house on the Avenue of the People’s Bliss, the broadside was
already under discussion, Jetsun grabbed her with a shout when she entered the
room. “Where were you? We feared they’d already—”

She laughed.
“They don’t know I’m in Lhasa.”

“I wouldn’t
be so sure of that,” said Dhondub. “Mr. Fang thinks they might suspect
something of the sort. You’ve had plenty of time to travel from the powerplant
to Lhasa, even by conventional roads. They probably suspect that your path
leads to Lhasa. Somehow they have learned of the mandala map.”

“But how?”
she asked, again frustrated by the question that had troubled her in Golmud.
“How could they know unless there were spies among us?”

“Like that
Fang,” Jetsun said. “Why do we trust him? He’s Chinese.”

Dhondub
grinned. “We’ve already been over Mr. Fang, Jetsun Dorje. You missed our
interrogation.”

“Yes,” said
Dr. Norbu. “We doubted him when he came
to warn us of trouble in the
Mines of Joy. He voluntarily submitted to a test of his honesty. Remarkable
drugs the nomads have invented.”

“We know he
can be trusted,” Dhondub said.

“Have you
used the drug on anyone else?” Marianne asked.

“Yes, on
everyone associated with the project at one time or another. Except you two.”

Jetsun Dorje
laughed. “I suppose we’re next, eh? Well, let’s get it over with.”

Dhondub
waved him off. “You’ve proven your intentions, Jetsun Dorje. Your life has
been in greater peril than any of ours.”

Jetsun gave
Marianne a sideways glance and she wondered what was in his mind.

“Still,” he
said, returning his eyes to Dhondub. “I don’t want any lingering doubts. You
should treat me as you would anyone else. I saw that mandala map. I learned the
location of the lotus just before those three-eyed spies turned up looking for
it.”

“Jetsun,”
she said, “don’t be ridiculous.”

He turned on
her. “You especially should allow me to be tested. Or else who knows how your
doubts might grow? A seed is always small at first.”

“All right,”
she said, “then test me as well. Because I would be the perfect spy, wouldn’t
I? Above suspicion, above reproach—”