“Chodron?”
“His father.”
“How?”
“Gold.” The woman spoke with a strange mix of pride and melancholy. “Our gold has always been our great protector.”
The words hung in the air. It was like a village prayer. Drango sat on a gold mountain watched over by a golden deity. It had been preserved not because of the virtue of its inhabitants but, he was beginning to suspect, because of greed.
Shan found Gendun seated in the stable as if he had never left, his legs crossed under him, his eyes focused on the stranger’s face, his fingers on the prayer beads in his hand, Lokesh on the other side of the man. As Shan lowered himself to the floor beside Lokesh, he saw the discolored flesh on Gendun’s arm again. His mouth went dry. The wave of emotion that surged through him almost made him physically sick. He clamped his hands together, staring into them, forcing himself to focus, to find the calm within, as Gendun would want. Anything to keep his mind away from the catastrophe ahead.
Gendun did not seem to notice when Shan lifted the stranger’s wrist. The man’s pulse seemed stronger. Shan immersed his fingers in a bowl of water beside Lokesh, then held them over the man’s mouth, letting the water drop onto his open lips. The man’s tongue slowly reacted, seeking the liquid. Shan immersed his fingers again. He continued the process for some time, pausing when he caught himself staring at the marks on the lama’s arm.
A voice abruptly spoke behind him, “Yangke is being punished. You may not use him as your servant.”
“My servant?” Shan asked Chodron “You forced him to guide you to the scene of the crime.”
Shan faced the angry headman. “I envy Yangke. It must be a relief to know so exactly the dimension of one’s burdens.”
“You are closer to that luxury than you think, Prisoner Shan.” Two sturdy farmers stood in the shadows behind Chodron, one holding a length of rope similar to that which had bound Gendun.
“Have you ever visited a hard-labor prison camp?” Shan asked.
“I had the honor once of attending a camp for May Day events,” Chodron replied. “I remember a banner. KNEEL TO THE ALL-POWERFUL PARTY.”
“You date yourself,” Shan said, shuddering. He recalled sitting under such a banner, many years earlier, as one of the privileged guests watching a prison parade outside Beijing. “The verses are more subtle today. Think of advertising slogans for some global enterprise. PERSIST FOR PROGRESS. BILLIONS SERVED.”
Chodron’s eyes narrowed. “Yangke defies me. You are making matters worse.”
“You don’t understand Gendun.”
“I understand he is made of flesh and bone.”
“There’s your mistake. After my first year in prison with Tibetan lamas,” Shan related, “I realized many of them did not really see their guards. It was as if they were undergoing a long meditation in which constant suffering was a method for focusing the mind. What they expected of a man like you was little different from what they expected from the natural elements. A beating was like sitting in a hailstorm. A bullet in the head,” he said, trying to keep the sorrow out of his voice, “like a bolt of lighting.”
“What a pathetic creature you are, Shan. Enslaved by worthless old men who live in the past. A trained dog for a crew of scarecrows.”
“If you mean Gendun, I can only aspire to be his dog.”
Chodron muttered something over his shoulder in a low voice. The men behind him laughed. “Where is Yangke?” the headman demanded.
“He is attached to his sheep almost as closely as to his collar.”
Shan saw a flash of nervousness in the headman’s eye and replayed in his mind’s eye his last minutes with Yangke. He had been sitting with the sheep scattered on the slope above. But he had been gazing at a trail that wound through the flock and continued higher.
Chodron glared at Shan a moment, then motioned with his hand. The two men stepped forward, one holding a short stave that looked like an ax handle. They moved behind Shan.
“What is the yellow beetle?” Shan asked Chodron.
“He must declare that it should go back to the mountain god.”
“Where is it now?”
For a moment Chodron studied Shan, then gestured toward an inverted bowl lying on a plank. Shan warily stepped past the two farmers, then kneeled and lifted the bowl.
The two-inch-long object inside was unmistakably an insect, an exquisitely worked image of a long scarab. Its bent legs glittered brightly, and the shifting flames of the lamps gave them an illusion of motion. The head was smooth, the thorax dimpled, its eyes made of polished turquoise. He lifted it, feeling the weight of solid gold. Two jointed antennae folded back along the carapace. It was beautiful. It had a look of great age. It was not Tibetan.
“Why must this leave the village?”
“People are saying it protects the killer. It encourages dangerous speculation.”
Shan glanced at Lokesh, who gazed at the beetle with wonder in his eyes. “You mean you originally found the beetle at the murder site?”
“One of my men tried to move it. Your lama put a hand on his arm to stop him. By protecting it, your lama protects the killer.”
Shan met Chodron’s icy gaze. “Gendun is not your puppet.”
Chodron seemed to welcome the comment. “He is an old man, exhausted from lack of sleep and food. But, more important, he is an outlaw, in need of an active tamzing. Surely one with your experience in the world understands this. We gave him just a taste of the main event.” The headman leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I need to know I have your undivided attention.”
Shan fought down a shudder. Tamzing. Though it sounded like one of the demon names Tibetans are loath to utter, it was entirely a creation of Beijing. It was a ritual of another generation, a favorite tool of the dreaded Red Guard, in which many innocents had died. A tamzing was a struggle session, where correct socialist thought was pounded into the unreformed, usually with words but sometimes, Shan well knew, with batons, boots, hammers, or lead pipes. An unfamiliar fog seemed to envelope him for a moment. He found himself between Gendun and Chodron.
“You were about to say something?” Chodron chided.
Shan gazed forlornly at the floor, gradually becoming aware of the headman and his bullies staring expectantly at him. It had taken his prison commanders months to discover what Lokesh called his flaw, the weakness the officers had learned to use against him. Chodron had grasped it in a day. Shan would not lie, would not let himself be used, would not jump at the bidding of men like Chodron, except to protect the old Tibetans.
“The beetle must be returned to the god of the mountain,” Shan whispered in Chinese.
“I can’t hear. We must all hear what the lama says, so the rest of the villagers can be told by each of us. In Tibetan.”
“The lama says this jewel of the mountain deity does not belong here, that it must be returned.” Shan felt his lips move but the thin hollow voice that spoke the words seemed to come from far away.
“And the lama says this unconscious man may be the killer,” Chodron added.
Shan looked at the dirt floor. “And the lama says this man may be the killer,” he repeated.
Chodron, a victorious gleam in his eyes, flicked his wrist and one of the men grabbed the beetle and dropped it into the bowl, then covered it with the overturned bowl as if it might fly away. Chodron muttered something, his men laughed again, and the trio left the stable.
Shan looked at the empty door, looked at the lamps, looked at the comatose man, looked everywhere but at Gendun’s face. He knelt and extended his fingers into the water bowl again, then quickly withdrew them. They were trembling. When he glanced at Lokesh, his old friend wore an expression Shan had never seen before. He would never openly reprimand Shan but Lokesh could not hide the look of betrayal in his eyes.
Shan left the building, quickly walking beyond the end of the village to the edge of the high cliff. The wind rushed against him as he tried to lose h
imself in the emptiness that stretched below. Chodron did not begin to fathom the nightmare he was creating for Shan. To stop the headman’s torment of Gendun and the comatose stranger it might be necessary to use outright violence. But if Shan lifted a hand against Chodron to save Gendun, Shan would never be able to sit at the old lama’s side again. Already Shan had been forced to lie in Gendun’s name, in front of him, to save him from Chodron’s cruelty. He had left that morning desperate to find an answer to the murders. Now all he wanted was to save Gendun and Lokesh. Drango village was not the rustic enclave it had first appeared to be. It was a strange gray place in which the worst of both worlds was combined.
When he turned back, he went straight to the granary where Gendun had been imprisoned, then he returned to the cliff, bent under the weight of the heavy battery. It flew in a low arc as he heaved it over the edge, like a small boulder ejected by the quaking of the mountain.
Dolma was standing in the entry of her house when he left the cliff. She beckoned him as she glanced nervously up the street. So as not to be noticed he circled behind the buildings, approaching indirectly. By the time he reached the door she had disappeared. When he climbed up the ladder stair, her quarters were empty. He quickly surveyed the modest room. It was simple and tidy, all of wood, lit only by its solitary window. Feeling like an intruder, he had started to descend when he noticed how uneven the shadows on the far wall were. He hesitantly approached it, finding a large piece of black felt suspended from wooden pegs. He lifted the felt. Behind it was a tangka, a very old painting on cloth of a deity, richly colored, under which was a small incense burner. The widow, who as an elder supported Chodron in his campaign to deny the village its traditions, actively prayed to Tara, the mother protectress of Tibet.
He was about to descend when muffled voices rose from below. The big man, the first guard in the stable, appeared on the stairs, his beefy face apprehensive. He glared at Shan, who backed away. Then two more figures rose behind him: the elder with the wispy white beard and Dolma, who hustled her two companions forward like an impatient shepherd. She positioned herself like a sentry at the head of the stair.
“The investigator desires to know about the bodies,” Dolma declared.
“He’s a convict,” the big man spat. “He deceived us.”
“He’s the answer to our problems,” Dolma replied with strained patience.
The big man looked at the elderly man. Then he uttered a low curse and began speaking, looking at Dolma, not Shan. “We were moving a flock of sheep up the mountain to a new pasture. The dog found the one in the stable first. He was all bloody, with those signs near him. The other two were inside a circle of tall rocks, what was left of them.”
“What was left?” Dolma repeated in a quivering voice.
“Their hands were gone, chopped off. We ran and sent for Chodron.”
A chill settled along Shan’s spine. He had seen the evidence, but having the butchery described aloud was still unsettling. “The camp,” he said after a moment, his tongue dry as tinder. “What did you see in the camp, by the trees?”
“Blood. Ashes. Some equipment, though it was gone when we went back. Pots and pans. A blue pack. A red pack with a rising sun on its flap. Sleeping bags.”
“Could vultures have taken the hands?”
“No. It was too early for vultures. They come when the stench starts.”
The old man started to sway. Dolma helped him to a chair and fetched him a cup of tea.
“Where did you take the bodies?”
“Tibetans know what to do with bodies.” Resentment was building in the big man and his voice betrayed it. “There are the fleshcutters. . ”
“Where did you take the bodies?” Dolma repeated reproachfully. “You did not take them to the ragyapa. That would have meant at least a three-day trip.”
The elder with the beard looked at the man again. “We never touched the bodies,” he admitted. “They were there the first day and gone when we returned the next. Only white lines were on the ground where they had been. Someone said that the lightning had taken them, leaving only the white dust of their bones. Chodron said not to tell anyone.”
“What about the colored sand,” Shan asked, “the mandala?”
The man looked up in surprise. “There was something like that, I almost forgot. It was there the first day. I only glanced at it.
We were scared. It was gone the next. Like the bodies.”
Shan studied the man. If that was true, he now knew something about the killer’s priorities. Taking the hands had come first. Then the removal of the bodies and the obliteration of the mandala. “Can you describe what was drawn in the sand?”
The man knitted his brow, then shook his head. “You are speaking of old things. We are forbidden to learn those things.”
“Could you draw it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you recognize the dead men?”
The man gazed into his hands. His hesitation brought Dolma’s head up. “Who were they?” she demanded. “Chodron said they were strangers. Tell Trinle. Tell your father and me the truth.”
“Strange people in a strange place,” the man said. Then, with a single bound, he leaped into the stair hole and was gone.
Dolma and the old man named Trinle exchanged a silent worried glance.
“Who is missing from the village?” Shan asked.
“No one,” Dolma replied, puzzled.
When Shan returned to the stable, Dolma followed with a bucket of water. Neither Gendun nor Lokesh acknowledged him. As he settled to the earthen floor Dolma handed him a moist cloth, and together they began washing the comatose stranger’s arms. Shan let himself be drawn into the silent rhythm of the task, sometimes washing the man himself, sometimes wringing out the cloth for the Tibetan woman, aware that what they were doing was usually done for the dead. He paused only once, to check under the overturned bowl. The beetle was gone.
They worked in silence. Then Dolma, distracted, failed to grasp the cloth Shan extended toward her. He followed her gaze. The stranger’s hand had closed around her arm.
“Lha gyal lo!” Lokesh whispered in joy.
“Lha gyal lo,” the old woman repeated and began stroking the man’s hand. They watched as the man’s other hand was slowly lifted. Its fingers started moving, pointing into the shadows as if through his eyelids he sensed things they could not see, pointing here, pausing, pointing there. No, not pausing, Shan decided. Drawing. He was drawing something in the air. When the hand finally settled back onto his chest, the man sighed deeply. And whispered something.
Shan leaned forward, cradling the man’s head now, desperately trying to understand the words.
“Dsilyi neyani. Dsil banaca.”
The words meant nothing to Shan. They were not Tibetan, not Mandarin, Cantonese, neither English, Russian, nor any of the dozen other languages Shan thought he could recognize.
The words continued, still whispered, though in a stronger, even an urgent tone. “Tsilke nacani! Nigel icla, nace hila!”
Dolma and Shan exchanged a confused look. Gendun had reminded him that there were obscure ancient dialects still alive in remote areas of the mountains. Dolma cupped her other hand around the man’s, cradling it the way a mother might that of a sleeping child.
The man’s eyes opened. Shan feared he was blind for they seemed dull and unfocused. Then they settled on the worn, kind countenance that hovered above him, mouthing prayers. The stranger’s eyes grew round and he hastened his strange, urgent chant, twisting about to face Gendun, a hand reaching out as if to touch the lama. Then it stopped as if he was afraid to test whether Gendun was flesh and blood.
“Qojoni qasle, quojoni qasle!” he whispered, fear in his voice as he bowed to Gendun. “Qojoni qasle,” he repeated weakly, then collapsed, dropping back on the pallet, unconscious again.
When Shan turned the man over, his unseeing eyes were filled with tears.
Chapter Three
Shan leafed through the wondrous parchment book the now-conscious man had given him, trying make sense of the stick figures that matched the one on the man’s arm, the ancient poems written in Chinese, the prayers in Tibetan, trying to grasp why it displayed a photograph of a young Shan standing proudly in a tight-collared Mao jacket with his newly graduated class of investigators. Why did his foot itch so terribly? he wondered. The man sat across from him, smiling serenely, counting Tibetan beads in one hand, holding a bloody rock hammer in the other.
“Take the book with you,” the man said in a voice that matched Gendun’s for its quiet gentleness. “You will need it where you are going.”
Shan shook his head. “I am not leaving.”
“It is you they have come for. On this mountain your life will end. Tell me this-do you prefer we leave your corpse for the birds or shall we use fire?” There was snow in the saint’s hair, mixed with yellow powder. Behind him in the shadows, two other men appeared, wearing red robes, waving the stumps of arms without hands. As they advanced he saw their faces-Lokesh and Gendun.
The itching in his foot became a terrible burning. Shan pulled up his trouser leg. There was nothing but bone below the knee. A swarm of golden beetles was devouring his flesh.
He awoke gasping for breath, his heart pounding, not aware he had leaped up from his pallet and dashed outside until he stumbled on a rock in the yard behind Dolma’s house. It took him several minutes to recover from his nightmare. He steadied himself by holding onto the flat stones that formed the top of the rear wall. The sky shimmered with stars, lending an eerie glow to the pale houses. A nightjar called. The bleat of a lonely lamb echoed off the slope. All else was as still as death. Shan retrieved his boots from the doorway, and began walking.
Though it was well after midnight, the gibbous moon and the light of a thousand stars illuminated the path. He paused on a ledge overlooking the slumbering village. Only one structure showed any life-the stable where Lokesh had relit the one hundred eight butter lamps whose light leaked between the wind-withered boards. The old Tibetan would not follow him this time. When Shan had left the stable the night before, the door had been barred from the outside by Chodron, locking in Lokesh, Gendun, and Dolma. And a guard had been posted by the entry as well.
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