Prayer of the Dragon (26 page)

“What particular truth am I missing, Comrade Chodron?” Gao asked.

“Your nephew would still be alive but for Shan. He may have been a Beijing investigator once, but not now. Once a criminal, always a criminal. People like you and me are his enemy. He stirs things up, he breeds instability. He cares nothing about the laws of Beijing anymore. He does not intend that the murderer be sent before a Chinese judge.”

“Deny these things,” Gao demanded of Shan.

Shan looked toward the distant mountains. “I am not your enemy,” he said.

“Would my nephew still be alive if you had not gone up the mountain?”

“I don’t know,” Shan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Probably. I went up the mountain to find answers. The killer was feeling pressured. If Hostene and I don’t go back, his niece will certainly die.”

Chodron said, “Shan may have murdered your nephew.” He leaned toward Gao. “I could easily write a report for Public Security. Shan was in the area, had access to heavy blades, had a simple motive. He had been found out. Was this killing an unreformed convict’s last desperate attempt to keep from spending the rest of his life in prison? Was there a conspiracy between Shan and this Hostene? Perhaps Shan took a bribe to cover up the evidence that Hostene killed his two companions. Then he had to silence your nephew because he was conducting his own investigation and had discovered the terrible truth. A convict and an illegal foreigner—the kind of solution Public Security welcomes.”

Chodron turned to Shan. “A simple confession will prevent unnecessary suffering by your two old goats.”

Shan searched Chodron’s face. He saw movement behind the stable. Two of the headman’s men were carrying Gendun, who was limp as a sack of rice.

Shan took a step toward the lama.

“The other one, Lokesh,” Chodron added, “his turn comes next. I recall that he was quite rude to me that night you arrived.”

Shan was unable to speak. He jerked the chain tight between his manacled wrists, his fists clenching and unclenching. He had thought when he discovered Thomas’s corpse that things could not get worse. But now he stood in chains as Chodron demanded that he confess to murder to save Lokesh and Gendun.

Someone moved between Shan and Chodron. Gao. “We will allow Shan and the American to go up the mountain again,” the scientist declared. “They can have seven days, no more. Put the manacles on the two old men who are his friends. Treat them as prisoners awaiting Public Security.

“If anything happens to me or to Kohler, or if they are found on the eastern side of the mountain again, or if Shan does not return in a week, the two old men are to be surrendered to Public Security. Major Ren is touring the district. He is responsible for Ax to Root in this region. He will know what to do with them.”

“Ren,” Chodron muttered with a grunt that seemed part satisfaction, part fear.

Gao did not look at Shan as he continued. “When Shan returns, he will be given a choice. He can surrender to me and I will send him to Beijing, where he belongs, to learn how to serve his government once again. Or he can surrender to you and return to prison.”

Shan’s throat went dry as a stone. “You won’t call Public Security for a week?”

“Not unless Kohler or I am endangered.” Gao exchanged a glance with the headman. “Or Chodron.”

A delicate, treacherous bargain was being struck between Chodron and Gao. Shan was the prize.

“No,” Shan said.

“No? It is not
your
decision!” Chodron said.

“I will not sign a confession. And I will not go after the killer unless Lokesh and Gendun are unchained and put under Dolma’s care and provided with whatever she says they need. And no more tamzing.”

Shan braced himself as Chodron swung back his open hand. But Gao caught the headman’s arm. “It will take a criminal to catch this criminal,” he said.

Chodron replied, “The manacles stay on the lama. A guard stays at the door. They may not leave Dolma’s house.” He glared at Shan, then accepted the key extended by Gao. “Three sessions of tamzing are sufficient for now,” Chodron added with a satisfied air as he released Shan from the handcuffs. “Come back without the murderer and there will be three more sessions.”

Shan gazed at Gendun. Three more sessions would kill the old lama.

Chodron announced in a suddenly cheerful voice, “In another week, we celebrate the annual harvest festival. This year’s is our best harvest ever. We will also celebrate the solution of the murders. We will celebrate the compassionate power of our elders in Beijing.”

GENDUN LAY ON a pallet, Lokesh at his side, as Dolma heated tea on a brazier by the open window. Gendun’s cheeks were discolored in several spots, his forehead was creased, a sign of the lama’s silent battle to control his pain. He seemed weak and fragile. He appeared, Shan realized, with a wrench of his gut, exactly like the Tibetan prisoners he had lived with in the gulag, the old lamas who had slowly withered before his eyes. He had buried so many of them he had lost count.

“Chodron found two shepherds counting prayer beads,” Dolma reported in a tormented tone. “A family had mounted an old rusty prayer wheel at their front door. He was furious. He burned the beads, smashed the wheel, then dragged Gendun out into the street, saying it was all his fault.”

As Shan lowered himself beside the lama his hand reached out of its own accord and cradled Gendun’s, a chain around it now. He recalled with a numbing sense of defeat the way his father had lain dying after he had been beaten by the Red Guard. Shan had sat helplessly, squeezing his father’s hand for hours, until with a terrible rattle that still echoed in his nightmares the professor had breathed his last.

“We are brewing teas used by the old healers,” Dolma said with a nod toward Lokesh, who chanted a mantra for the medicine deity. The widow busied herself among the small crocks and jars that lined a shelf below the window. At first Shan thought her preoccupation was with the teas, then saw that she fidgeted with a cleaning rag, twisting it in her fingers, casting nervous glances out the window. Shan rose and stepped to Dolma’s side. “I need to understand your nephew, Tashi,” he said in a low voice. “What did he do when he left the village?”

She scrubbed her eyes with her apron. “He was a good boy, Yangke’s best friend. Ten years ago, Yangke came back from the Chinese school Chodron had sent him to. He had many problems there, always being disciplined, refusing to respond to the Chinese name assigned to him, protesting when they punished him for speaking Tibetan. But he had the best grades in all his class, and they are always looking for Tibetans to go to the universities in China. Chodron announced that he had arranged for Yangke to attend university in Sichuan Province, that our village was honored to have one of its own selected by the government. But at the celebration Chodron held for him, Yangke announced he had already been accepted somewhere else, as a novice in a monastery near Lhasa. Chodron was furious but the next day Yangke left for the
gompa
. Only later did we discover that he had persuaded Tashi to go with him. But being a monk didn’t suit Tashi. After a few months he left for a job in a factory.”

“And he got into trouble there?”

“He was never happy. He loved drawing. He always kept his pen case with him. He would have become a great painter of tangkas if . . . if things had been different. When he left all he took with him was that old silver pen case. They say he committed a crime that had something to do with the black market, with shipping stuff across the border. He was found guilty of falsifying export documents and sentenced to three years in prison.”

“What prison?”

“In the west, near Rutok,” the old woman said. Rutok was the largest city in remote western Tibet, home to many hidden military bases and gulag prisons.

“And when was he released?”

“I don’t know exactly. He sent us postcards once every few months to let us know he was still alive. He was driving trucks for a factory, he said. The last time I saw him was on the anniversary of his mother’s death, two years ago. He brought me something from far away.” Dolma rummaged for a moment on her shelf, pushing jars aside, finally producing a little porcelain reproduction of the Taj Mahal. Tashi had been in India. But as a convicted felon, he would never have been legally permitted to drive trucks in and out of the country.

“How well did he know the upper slopes?” Shan asked.

“It was his world, when he was young. He and Yangke tended the sheep there.”

“Would he have spent time with your first son, Rapaki?” Shan asked.

“Rapaki was born a few months after the temple was destroyed. My sister was certain he was the reincarnation of one of the monks because of the way he would sit for hours in the bombed-out foundation, even as a young boy.” When she looked up, tears filled Dolma’s eyes. “He was a good boy. Some people sent their children to schools far away, long before Chodron required it. I wouldn’t do it. I had lost my husband in the war and couldn’t lose Rapaki too. It was hard because we had no real teachers. The monks had always taught our children. When he first put on a robe, people thought Rapaki was playacting. They laughed at him. Day after day he would sit in one of the granaries, reading scraps of old scriptures we had saved from the flames. Finally the headman, Chodron’s father, demanded that he stop. Monks were illegal and planes would come again if anyone heard. The next day Rapaki disappeared up the mountain. It was two years before we saw him again. By the time Yangke and Tashi were old enough to go up the slopes with the sheep, people were calling my son the saint of the mountain. When they got into mischief they said all they had to do was touch Rapaki to redeem their sins.

“Now he lives on the pilgrim’s path, where men are being murdered. What do you know about the path?” Shan asked.

“Not enough. I always intended to learn more about it. I had begun helping at the temple. But then those Chinese airplanes came. I remember a lama speaking with some pilgrims who arrived at our village once seeking an escort to the path. He wouldn’t let them follow the path. He said it wasn’t what they thought, that it was the opposite of what they expected.”

“What did he mean?”

“His words haunt me when I think about Rapaki. This kora was Bon, a remnant, very ancient. Not like other sacred paths constructed after our lamas adopted the way of Buddha. The Bon lived in a violent world. They were not reluctant to help the weak find a new incarnation.”

“What does your heart tell you about it?”

“I don’t know. You think I have not tried to understand? I wandered the slopes every summer for years, hoping for a glimpse of my son Rapaki, for a chance to talk him into coming home. Maybe it’s a place where people must die. Maybe the mountain is killing them.”

Shan turned to see Hostene, sitting cross-legged at Gendun’s feet. Dolma gasped, and Shan opened his mouth to whisper an assurance that the Navajo would not harm Gendun when he saw the dim figure beyond, standing in the shadows of the ladder stair. Gao was there too, watching silently.

“In the old ways of my people,” Hostene said when Shan approached, “it was necessary to summon deities for a healing.”

“That is what Lokesh is doing,” Shan explained.

“But we also worry about demons entering someone who has been weakened. When I was young I had rheumatic fever. My father brought a doctor but my mother painted my face with soot, to make me invisible to demons. Every door or window facing east—but only those—was kept open, because that is where the good deities live. All their lives my parents argued about which cured me, the white man’s medicine or the Navajo prayers.”

Hostene produced his feathered stick from inside his vest and stirred the air over Gendun.

Shan translated for Dolma. She cocked her head a moment, studying him with an expression of wonder. “My grandmother spoke of having her face painted in such a way when she was sick.” She rose, retrieved a small, cold brazier from below the window shelf, then rubbed soot onto two fingers and began painting Gendun’s face.

Shan rose to intercept Gao, who stepped forward.

“My nephew lies mutilated and murdered. I don’t even have all his body to bury and you indulge in this—this sorcery session.” Gao spoke in Chinese, thinking no one else could understand. “Chodron is right. At heart you are the worst kind of reactionary.”

Lokesh halted his mantra. “He is wandering aimlessly right now, deeply afraid, unwilling to accept that he has crossed over so early, not mindful of the terrible dangers that lurk about him.” Lokesh spoke in such a calm voice, in such perfectly articulated Chinese, that Gao looked about him, as if to identify the source of the unexpected words. Lokesh gazed at him inquisitively.

“What—who are you speaking of?” Gao asked hesitantly.

“The boy. Your nephew. I am very sorry he was taken away. But there are words that must be said or he may become an angry ghost, doomed to roam the slopes forever.”

“He was a scientist,” Gao rejoined. “From a family of scientists. We don’t believe . . .” He paused, frowning, as if wondering why he was debating with the old Tibetan. “My nephew needs nothing now that a firing squad can’t provide.”

“You are speaking of the murderer,” Lokesh said. “I am speaking of your nephew, and of you. I think being a scientist is something that is in the body. I am speaking of what happens to the kernel when it rises from that husk.” The old Tibetan groped in his pocket a moment, then extracted a
tsa tsa
, a small clay tablet bearing the image of a deity. “Take this,” he said, handing it to Gao. “There will come a time soon when you feel your nephew close by. Hold this in your hand when you do, and let him know we are working to help him find his way. When Gendun awakens we will recite the death rites for him for the next seven days.”