The Dream Widow (28 page)

“It is the same as I have always known it,” said the boy.

He pushed Wilson and Reed to a side street lit by a bright yellow sign––the outline of two naked female dancers hugging each other. Strange pink writing glowed above a glass door.

“What’s this place?”

The boy pointed at the writing. “A place to eat, of course!”

A large poster had been hastily glued on the wall nearby, and featured an older man with a set of curved golden tubes in his hands. Large letters below the man proclaimed: “Chamran Knebter––Last Concert Of 2037!”

Wilson ran back to the main street and pushed through the crowd. He crossed an intersection and stopped at the corner.

The boy raced after him. “What are you doing?”

Wilson pointed at a blue and white poster on the brick wall.

The image of a pale woman filled the poster. She wore a short skirt and a top that revealed most of her chest. Below lay a curving English script: “Cherpi for Senator 2024.”

Wilson rubbed the slick, gleaming surface of the paper. “What year is this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Today’s date. What is today?”

“I think it is middle of October.”

“What. Year.”

The boy whistled through his teeth and shook his head.

“This word––I don’t understand.”

Wilson pointed at “2024” on the poster. “You see the numbers, don’t you?”

“Please, come back to the cafe. It is not safe to speak here.”

The boy pointed to a pair of men across the street. Both wore light green uniforms, tan belts, and folded fur caps. Each carried a short rifle over his shoulder with a polished wooden stock. The soldiers stood as solid as if they’d been planted right in the sidewalk, but their black eyes twitched back and forth over the passing crowd.

Wilson followed the boy back to the alley where Reed waited below the glowing yellow women.

As the boy opened the door Wilson inhaled the smell of strong spices, potatoes, and frying meat. Diners in all manner of clothing packed the tables and ate with thin wooden rods in one hand. Each table held dishes Wilson had never seen before: Long green vegetables in pungent sauces, chopped sections of cooked meat, red tomatoes cooked with eggs.

A tall young woman bowed from the waist. “Please follow me,” she said in the boy’s language. She wore a tight vermillion sheath that was embroidered in gold.

All three followed the mesmerizing swish of her dress beside a bar and the noisy conversations of ruddy-faced men. The woman pushed through a beaded curtain into a windowless room that simply contained a table covered in blue cloth and four chairs.

The boy gave the chair that faced the door to Reed and motioned for Wilson to sit.

“Tell me what year this is,” said Wilson.

“I’ll do that in a moment. What would you like to eat?”

As Wilson sat, he thought about the last time he’d tried strange food. “Anything, just have it cooked well and with fewer spices than normal.”

“As you wish.” The boy spoke rapidly to the tall woman in red. She wrote in a small book and left through the rattling beads.

“What is this place?”

Reed cleared his throat. “You mean the city? Rogspo here calls it Tawang.”

“On the street you asked about something you call a ‘year,’” said the boy. “I’m just a poor shepherd and don’t understand these things. Just stay away from the invaders.”

“The men in green?”

The boy nodded and Wilson looked at him closely.

“Do you have parents?”

“I’m just a poor shepherd and don’t understand these things.”

Wilson didn’t know if it was his lack of fluency in the language Reed and the boy spoke, or if the boy was simply a small, repeating subprogram.

“I need to talk to someone about this city. Is there a priest in charge?”

The boy nodded. “At the monastery up above. They will answer your questions.”

“Let’s go now.”

Shepherd Reed grabbed Wilson’s arm. “ Calm yourself and eat. It’s late and the doors will soon be barred.”

Wilson reluctantly sat down.

Soon the woman in red brought a half-dozen wide plates covered in fried and breaded meat, green-spiced potatoes, leafy vegetables in clear broth, fish with red chilies, tomatoes mixed with soft yellow squares, and white rice.

Reed and the boy ate with wooden sticks and Wilson scooped up his food with a spoon. He knew it wasn’t real, but enjoyed stuffing himself anyway. When everyone had finished, the boy laid a handful of gold and silver coins in the center of the table.

Wilson examined the pile of money. The strange coins varied in language, year, size, and color. He couldn’t find any consistency or pattern other than the fact that all were round and metallic.

They left the cafe and joined the people strolling in singles and pairs through the cool evening streets.

“If this is just a dream, what’s happening in the real world?” asked Reed.

“Our home is under attack by an army,” said Wilson. “If I can’t save you in time, they’ll destroy everything I care about and turn our people into slaves.”

“Slavery? I’ve never heard of such thing.”

“Trust me, it’s true.”

“I understand what you said about dreams earlier, but how can we be having the same one?”

     “It’s hard to explain.” Wilson pointed to an electric light on a tall streetlamp. “That light exists because of electricity, the lifeblood of our home. You and I are linked together somehow, just like all the lamps on this street share the same electricity. There’s a sickness with the lifeblood––the electricity––back in our real home, and if I can’t cure the problem both of us will die and our friends will suffer.”

“How will you cure the sickness?”

“I have to find someone called Twitch. He has a password––a secret word or number. That’s the key to saving my people. Our people.”

WILSON SLEPT ON a straw-filled mattress. It felt like years since he’d laid his head on anything more than a blanket and packed earth.

In the morning they breakfasted on hard-boiled eggs and brown bread with salted butter made from goat’s milk. An old man with exploded gray shrubbery for hair brought the eggs.

“This is my neighbor, Onpa,” said the boy.

The old man bowed his head.

“He cannot speak, from a disease when he was a child,” said the boy.

“Will he go with us to the monastery?”

The boy shook his head. “He watches the sheep.”

After the meal was over they wrapped in sheepskin robes and walked through the cold streets. High above the city lay their goal: the white-walled fortress of the monastery.

The road carved through the city streets like an arrow. At the base of the mountain it curved left and climbed through the trees in a series of sharp zig-zags. Wilson saw the tiny figure of a single villager on the winding road, in contrast to the packed buildings and noisy crowds that surrounded him in the city streets.

A tall man with long blond hair and a beard crossed the road in front of Wilson. A brown leather belt cinched his white robes together.

“Father!”

The man kept walking through a crowd of red-cheeked locals and Wilson ran after him. He touched the man’s shoulder and jerked back from a crackling shock of static.

His father looked at him with wide eyes then ran down the street. Blue-white lightning popped and flickered over his entire body.

“Who was that?” asked Reed. “I think I know his face.”

Wilson shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

Halfway up the slope of the mountain they stopped to rest. The granite peaks of a mountain range framed the valley on two sides and a narrow river flowed beside the town. A haze of noise and smoke hung over the crazy quilt of streets as if it were an overcooked stew of vehicle engines, bellowing shopkeepers, frying sausage, and bleating sheep.

“This is the largest collection of people I’ve ever seen and it’s not even real,” said Wilson.

Reed nodded. “Amazing sight, even so.”

A pair of monks in red and yellow robes passed them, heading down the mountain toward the town. The heads of both men were shaved and each held small rods with a clicking cylinder at one end.

A five-meter brick wall covered in bleached plaster surrounded the monastery. A guardhouse with massive crimson doors broke the clean lines of the wall. Vertical lines of gold knobs as big as a man’s fist covered both doors.

The boy pulled back a circular metal knocker and slammed it into the strike-plate three times.

A narrow slit opened in the door and two wrinkled eyes appeared.

“Nan owa ga de-le?” asked an old woman’s voice. “Ie ngei shatu ha goi-duwa?”

“We would like to speak with the abbott,” replied the boy in the same language.

“Iek meng silo?”

The boy bowed his head. “Ngok menh Rogspa yin.”

“Why do you seek abbott?”

“My two friends have questions.”

“Very well.”

The opening cracked shut. After a moment of thumps and rattling metal, a single door began to open with the speed of an approaching ice age. After it had opened a foot or so, a bony hand waved them inside. Wilson, Reed, and the boy squeezed inside and met an ancient old woman wearing an embroidered but cavernous emerald robe.

She pointed at Wilson. “To enter is fine, but not with metal. Leave all the evil things here.”

He unbuckled his pistol belt. He placed it and his knives inside a large jade box with sinous inscriptions. Rogspo and Reed also dropped knives and a bag of coins into the box.

“Wear these and leave your shoes here,” said the old woman.

Wilson and Reed slipped sandals made from dried and plaited grass onto their feet and followed the boy out of the gatehouse.

A narrow lane of paved stone led up to the three-story monastery. A monk dashed out of a doorway and up the street toward it, his sandals flapping loudly.

Wilson gestured at the white buildings on both sides. “What are these?”

“Houses for the monks,” said the boy. “Do not tarry.”

A formidable square beam hung over the street like an entrance without a door. The beam and supporting posts were painted mustard yellow and decorated with flower symbols.

“This is a spirit-gate,” said the boy. “Breathe deep and purify your thoughts before you pass through.”

Wilson didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he imitated the boy. All three bowed heads and clapped palms together as they walked through the open gate.

A massive white structure with deep-set windows towered above a plaza paved in gray stone and lined with galleries of bronze cylinders. An old woman turned an inscribed cylinder with one hand and nodded her head repeatedly.

Wilson leaned close to the boy and whispered, “Is that for exercise?”

“No. A prayer verse is written on each cylinder. Spinning is the same as praying.”

The scent of spiced smoke flowed from an open doorway and male voices chanted low and prolonged in a pitch Wilson didn’t think human voices could produce. A drop of rain splashed on his cheek and he stared up at the red and yellow roof that hung over the street.

Inside, a wooden gallery soared three stories and a hundred red-robed monks sat on lines of yellow cushions. A golden, fifteen-meter-high statue accepted the deep-throated chants with serenely closed eyes and crossed legs. Red-painted columns supported walkways around the second and third levels, and light entered through small windows under the roof. Bright-hued art featuring giants with pointed teeth and red eyes hung on the walls.

No one came to shoo away the three visitors or to ask questions, so they sat against the wall.

After interminable variations of what sounded like the same song to Wilson, an elderly monk stood up at the front and clapped hands once. The monks filed silently out of the entrance, their shaved heads glistening in the daylight.

Wilson, Reed, and the boy scrambled to their feet. The old monk who had dismissed the others was the last in line. He bowed in front of Wilson and the brown beads around his neck clicked softly.

“How may I serve you?”

Wilson bowed and replied in the same language. “We want to talk with your leader.”

The elderly monk smiled widely and revealed missing teeth. “There’s no leader. All monks are equal in Tawang.”

“We have questions for the abbot,” whispered the boy.

The smile left the monk’s face and he stared at each of them in turn. With a snap of cloth he waved both arms like the visitors were a swarm of bothersome insects.

“Not all of you––only the outlander. What is your name?”

Wilson bowed. “Ngoc menh Wilson yin.”

“Follow me. The others may wait here.”

Wilson padded barefoot after him, past the huge golden man and up two flights of a wooden stairwell. On the inside of each step were narrow paintings of flowers, people, or animals. The third floor stood higher than the golden statue. When he’d climbed that high, Wilson glanced down at the tiny figures of Reed and the boy.