It was a new pair of military boots and work gloves.
Shan said nothing, but sat and began unlacing his shoes. "What about the American?"
Tan hesitated. "Not a problem anymore. The U.S. embassy has already been contacted."
"Deported already?"
Tan lit a cigarette. "Last night Mr. Kincaid climbed the cliff over the skull cave. He secured a rope to his neck and leapt off. The work crew found him there this morning, hanging above the cave."
Shan clenched his jaw. So many lives had been wasted. Because Kincaid had been too hard a seeker. "Fowler?"
"She can stay if she wants. There's a mine to run."
"She'll stay," Shan said as he eased off his shoes and tied the laces together to carry them. He would wear the boots for Madame Ko, and give them to Choje later.
Tan stared at a folded sheet of newspaper with an indecisive air. As Shan pulled on the boots, Tan shoved the paper across his desk.
It was a press report dated ten days earlier. A full-page obituary. Minister Qin of the Ministry of Economy was mourned as the last Eighth Route Army survivor in active government.
"I called Beijing. He left no instructions about you. Big housekeeping already done in his office. Seems lots of people wanted his records destroyed, fast. Files all gone. The new staff, no one's heard of any instructions about you."
Shan folded the sheet into his pocket. It wasn't necessarily good news. With Qin alive, there had at least been someone who remembered him, someone with authority over his tattoo. He wouldn't be the first person to be forgotten in a Chinese prison.
Tan fingered the small brown folder Shan had seen on his first visit. "Right now this is the only official evidence of your existence." Tan closed the folder.
"There was something in Beijing, though." Tan lifted a parcel wrapped in oilskin. "They didn't find a file, but they found this on his desk, like some kind of trophy. Had your name on it. I thought you would-" The words drifted away as he opened it. On the cloth lay a small, worn, bamboo cannister.
Shan stared in disbelief. His eyes moved slowly from the familiar cannister to Tan, who was gazing at it. "I used to watch the Taoist priests," Tan said solemnly. "They would throw the sticks and recite verses to groups of children."
Shan's hand trembled as he reached for it and opened the lid. Inside, the lacquered sticks were still there, the throwing sticks of yarrow used for the Tao Te Ching, passed down from his great-grandfather. Because they had been the only physical possession Shan had valued, the Minister had made a show of taking them away. Slowly, making his hand remember the motion that once had been reflexive, he scattered the sticks in a fanlike movement. He looked up, embarrassed.
"It makes you remember," Tan said with an odd, haunted tone. He looked at Shan, his face narrowed in question. "Things were different once, weren't they?" he asked with sudden emotion.
Shan just smiled sadly. "The set is an heirloom," he said very quietly. "You are kind. I had no idea they had been preserved."
He rolled them in his fingers, surprised by the pleasure of their touch. He gripped them tightly, with his eyes shut, then returned them to the cannister and cradled it in his hands. For the most fleeting of moments there was a faint scent of ginger and he felt his father was near.
"Perhaps," Shan said, "I could ask a great favor."
"I have spoken to the warden. You are to get light duties for a few weeks."
"No. I mean about this." He reverently set the cannister back on the cloth. "It will be confiscated. A guard will throw them in a fire. Or sell them. If you or Madame Ko could keep them, I mean until later."
Tan looked at him with pain in his eyes. He seemed about to speak, then awkwardly nodded and covered the cannister with the cloth. "Of course. They will be safe."
Shan left him there, staring at the sticks.
Madame Ko was waiting, tears in her eyes. "Your brother," Shan said to her, remembering her devotion to the sibling lost so many years ago in the gulag. "I think you have honored him by what you have done."
She embraced him, like a mother would embrace a son. "No," she said, her lip quivering. "It is you who have honored him."
Shan was halfway down the corridor when Tan called out from behind him. He walked slowly, uncertainly, toward Shan. The cannister was in one hand, Shan's official folder in the other.
"I can't do anything officially about a Beijing file," Tan said. "Not even a lost file."
"Of course," Shan said. "We made a deal. It has been honorably concluded."
"So you'd have no travel papers. Not even work papers. You'll be in jeopardy anywhere outside this county."
"I don't understand."
As he spoke Tan's eyes began to shine with a light Shan had never seen in them. He handed the folder to Shan.
"There. You no longer exist. I'll call the warden. You'll be removed from the rolls." Tan slowly extended the cannister, and their eyes locked as though for the first time.
"This land," Tan sighed. "It makes life so difficult." He nodded, as though in reply to himself, then dropped the cannister into Shan's hand and turned back toward his office.
***
Dr. Sung asked no questions. She gave him the fifty doses of smallpox vaccine without a word, then made him wait for a booklet on its administration. "I hear they're gone," she said impassively. "The Bei Da boys. As if they never existed. They say a special clean-up squad came from Lhasa." She found a small canvas bag for the medicine, then followed him into the street as though unable to say good-bye.
She stood, the wind tugging at her smock, while Shan shrugged a farewell. At the last moment she produced an apple. As she stuffed it into his bag he offered a small smile of gratitude.
It would be a long trek to Yerpa.
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The Skull Mantra is-1 Page 42
