Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  Kate nodded. “India exasperated me, too. But Dharamsala was a very special place. My life changed there.”

  He smiled sweetly. “Mine, too. I went to Dharamsala as an activist. The Tibetan Youth Congress attracted me. For months I kept busy agitating and arguing politics with new friends. But then something happened. It was gradual. I think it was the town—some presence there, the ghost of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the power of Chenrezi. I fell out with my companions and began frequenting the temples, praying as I had not prayed since I was a child, searching for some understanding that my political sophistication could not give me. I found an old monk willing to miss a few pujas in order to argue with me. Not long after that, I took my vows.” He shrugged. “I am still an activist, but I have found different ways of working with my mind and heart. Fighting China is like beating one’s head against a mountain. I’m convinced that suicidal campaigns will never liberate Tibet.”

  Kate could not find the list she sought, so they had to turn back in search of someone who might have a copy. On their way to the reception room, they met Lama Nyinje. He was carrying Marianne in his arms and regarding her with a delighted expression.

  “Let me take her,” Kate said. “She’s getting too heavy to carry around.”

  As the Lama handed her over, he said a few words to Chokyi. A brief, incomprehensible conversation ensued.

  “She wasn’t any trouble, I hope,” said Kate.

  Chokyi looked puzzled. “Lama Nyinje asks where she learned to speak Tibetan.”

  Kate didn’t answer for a moment. The hall was full of noise and she thought she had heard him incorrectly.

  “I’m sorry?” she said.

  Lama Nyinje spoke another, slower string of musical syllables to Chokyi, whose eyes widened steadily.

  “He says that Marianne has been speaking to him in Tibetan, asking some very pointed questions.”

  “I don’t understand.” She looked at Marianne and for a moment she found herself looking at someone unfamiliar, someone utterly strange and remote. It was only after staring for a full minute that she saw her daughter again, the face she knew so well.

  “Marianne, what did you say to Lama Nyinje?”

  Marianne giggled, blushed, and hid her face against her mother’s shoulder.

  “Marianne, please tell Mommy. This is very important.”

  Her daughter leaned back, gazed into her face, and spoke a few words of nonsense.

  Kate laughed in relief. They were the same nonsense syllables that Marianne always sang to herself. There had been times when it sounded more like a language than a child’s babble, but wasn’t it true that nonsense was a language in its own right?

  “She speaks like a native,” Chokyi said.

  “A native?” said Kate. “What are you . . . oh, no. Are you serious? But it’s nonsense!”

  Chokyi said a few words to Marianne, who reached out and touched his nose with her finger before answering in kind. It all sounded like nonsense to Kate—Chokyi’s words as well as Marianne’s.

  “I asked her where she learned to speak. She says she’s always known.”

  Lama Nyinje held up a finger before Kate could protest. Something in his eyes calmed her. He made her believe that although this was impossible and could never be explained, there was nothing to fear—that in fact it might be a great thing.

  “He wants to ask her one question,” Chokyi said. “With your permission.”

  Kate nodded, numb.

  Lama Nyinje asked his question and Marianne grew sad. Tears welled from her eyes as she spoke. Now she was the Marianne that Kate knew. She drew the child against her breast, patting her hair and speaking softly to calm her.

  “What did he ask?” she whispered.

  “He asked if she remembered where she was born.”

  “And?”

  Chokyi bowed apologetically and hesitated before replying. “She says she does not remember that, although she does remember where she died.”

  “Died?”

  Chokyi looked at Lama Nyinje. The old man lightly touched Marianne’s crown.

  “Dharamsala,” he said.

  ***

  “No one,” Peter said. “There’s no one we know, aside from you, Chokyi, who could have taught her. We’ve never spoken of Dharamsala in front of her, as far as I can remember. It strikes me as a hoax. But what would anyone have to gain from it? Especially Marianne?”

  The dedication ceremonies had ended; the church was quiet now. Lama Nyinje and Chokyi sat in the Strausses’ small room. Marianne slept at her mother’s side.

  Kate watched Peter carefully. He didn’t seem confused or frightened. Instead he looked curious, excited.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said to Chokyi. “She’s the reincarnation of some Tibetan.”

  Chokyi narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. There are many possibilities. Perhaps, in some way you’re unaware of, she was exposed to Tibetan speech.”

  “But how could she have understood it well enough to converse with a native speaker?”

  “A young savant? A linguistic genius?”

  Kate managed a smile. “Naturally, I’d like to think that’s the case.”

  “Kate,” Peter said, suddenly solemn. “What about that funeral in Dharamsala? Remember? The man who was killed in our hotel?”

  “I remember,” she said, wishing that she had not.

  “Do you remember how the body jerked about? It even pointed at us—a coincidence, of course, but perhaps a meaningful one. I read that after the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, his body kept twisting toward the east. Attendants would move it back into the proper position, but it would always turn east again. It was in the east that they found his reincarnation, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.”

  “Who was this man in your hotel?” said Chokyi. “A Tibetan?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter said. “He was murdered—by a man with three eyes.”

  Chokyi started. “Three eyes?”

  Peter nodded. “It was the strangest thing. Some sort of freak—”

  Chokyi looked pale, his eyes remote. Kate drew her sleeping daughter closer to her.

  “The police never said a thing about it,” Peter continued. “As if a three-eyed assassin were the most natural thing.”

  “Unnatural,” Chokyi said softly, “but not unknown.”

  “You mean there have been others?”

  The Tibetan nodded. “A few. Their origins are as mysterious as their motives. They strike only religious targets, and then take their own lives before they can be questioned. This man who was killed in your hotel, was he a priest?”

  “We never saw him,” Kate said.

  “Could you possibly remember the date this occurred?”

  “Certainly,” said Peter. “It’s in my diary of the trip. I’ll find it, if you wish.”

  “Please set it down for me, along with any other details that seem relevant. I would like to forward this information to the appropriate bureau in Dharamsala. You see, we try to keep records of genuine Tibetan incarnations when they occur. There are rather stringent ways of testing such claims, but it would help if we had some idea of whose incarnation she might be.”

  Peter glanced at Kate. “What’s wrong?”

  “All this makes me feel . . . I don’t know. As if Marianne were some sort of freak, as if she’s not our daughter at all.”

  Chokyi moved closer to her. “Of course she is your daughter. Even if we were to demonstrate a connection to someone who lived in the past, that would not change her parentage.”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “I wouldn’t like it.”

  Chokyi frowned, though his eyes remained good-humored. “Lama Nyinje is such an incarnation. The Dalai Lamas were also incarnations, born to ordinary parents.”

  “Ordinary Tibetan parents.”

  He shrugged. “Many Tibetan souls have been born to non-Tibetans in the past century. I know of several European children traveling in
India who recognized old friends from previous lives and could recount intimate details of the past. This may sound unlikely to you, but to a Tibetan it is not so unusual. We know that nothing is lost on the wheel of life. Matter converts into energy and back into matter again. Energy is exchanged from the dead to the living. You die, you become fertilizer, and from you grows something new. The only way to break the chain is to step off the wheel—nirvana. You are blown out like a candle. Many excellent souls possessing the ability to leave the wheel choose to be reborn again and again and again, so that they may help all sentient beings to reach perfect enlightenment. These are the bodhisattvas. Kate, what if your daughter were such a noble soul?”

  “It would terrify me. I want my daughter to be . . . ”

  “What? How can you say what you want her to be? She is so young that she does not yet know herself.”

  “Exactly! And if she grows up thinking of herself as some—some Tibetan ghost, she’ll never have a chance to discover who she is.”

  “Kate,” Peter said, putting his hand on her wrist. “If she’s ever to make wise decisions in her life, we must tell her the truth as far as we know it. No one’s saying she is an incarnation. We’re only saying we owe it to Marianne to investigate.”

  Kate closed her eyes and held her daughter as tightly as she could without waking her. Unbidden, an image came into her head, a soaring vision of colored cells, frames of light, vivid as a stained-glass window with the rising sun beyond it. She saw Mary holding the infant Jesus. How had she told him that he was the Son of God? What would have become of Jesus if he’d had no sense of destiny?

  He might have lived. . . .

  Marianne’s skin was soft beneath her hands; it felt like pure light given flesh.

  Tears ran down Kate’s cheeks.

  “I don’t want to hide anything from her,” she said. “Or from myself.”

  “You have nothing to fear,” said Chokyi. “The truth is a wonderful thing.”

  ***

  Chokyi stopped by frequently for several weeks but then his visits fell off. No word came from Dharamsala. The events of the dedication night had almost faded from Kate’s mind when she entered the reception area one morning and heard Chokyi greeting her. He was accompanied by a thin, dark man—a Tibetan, but not a monk—who wore old gray clothes and carried a suitcase.

  It took her only a moment to recognize him. He had changed little in four years.

  “Kate,” said Chokyi, “I would like to introduce Dr. Reting Norbu. He arrived from India only yesterday.”

  She put out her hand, watching his mouth as he smiled. She had never forgotten his jumbled, blackened teeth nor his pinched features. He did not look as thin as he had in Dharamsala; in fact his eyes were bright, expectant.

  “You must be the child’s mother?” he said. She was surprised to hear him speak English.

  “Kate Strauss,” she said. “We’ve met before.”

  He nodded. “Under terrible conditions.”

  “Is Marianne here?” Chokyi asked.

  “She’s out with Peter; they should be back any minute. Would you like some tea?”

  Dr. Norbu picked up his suitcase and they followed her to the dining room. As they sat sipping hot black tea, she asked, “Who was shot that night?”

  Dr. Norbu’s face saddened. “My dearest friend.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “We should not speak of this until after the examination,” Chokyi cautioned.

  “You must understand my concern,” she said. “If my daughter were claimed to be the reincarnation of someone of importance, she might be the target of whoever killed him—those three-eyed assassins. In that case, I would not want her officially recognized.”

  Dr. Norbu pressed his hands together until they trembled, “My friend’s funeral, as you remember, was very small. Our government did not wish to acknowledge that any aim had been accomplished by the assassin. He was always an inconspicuous figure; his importance was known only to a few.”

  She slammed down her teacup. “But that secret got out, didn’t it? And now you want to drag my daughter into this.”

  “Not drag her, Kate,” said Chokyi. “This is simply the world she has been born into.”

  “I won’t let you—”

  A musical cry echoed through the dining room: “Reting!”

  Kate turned to see Marianne rushing across the room toward the Tibetan who should have been a stranger to the child. She threw herself into his long arms, shrieking with laughter.

  Dr. Norbu simply stared at her, his lips trembling, perhaps not daring to believe that she recognized him.

  Peter sat down beside Kate.

  “I guess this is it,” he said. “The test.”

  “Why bother?” Kate said miserably.

  “So that we can be sure,” Chokyi said. “Dr. Norbu, we should begin.”

  Nodding, he wiped his eyes and helped Marianne off his knee. She ran around the table and climbed up next to her parents.

  “Are you all right, Marianne?” Kate asked.

  The girl nodded. “Reting has come!”

  Dr. Norbu, meanwhile, had opened his suitcase. Kate could not see into it. He rummaged out of her sight and produced three dark garments. One by one, he laid them on the table.

  They were astronautics jackets, all worn thin by time and the elements. As far as she could tell, they were identical. None of them would fit Marianne. They were the right size for a small man.

  Dr. Norbu leaned toward Marianne and said something in Tibetan.

  “What did he say?” Kate asked Chokyi.

  “He asked her to pick the one that belongs to her.”

  “But none of them—”

  “Sh,” said Peter.

  Marianne’s hand ran over the jackets. She felt the seams and inspected the seals, and finally dragged the middlemost jacket toward her. She pressed it to her face and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  Dr. Norbu smiled at Chokyi and pushed the other jackets aside.

  Next he laid out four battered silver electronic slates. Marianne took her thumb out of her mouth and wadded up the jacket. Sitting on her knees, she leaned over the table and looked at each slate. Her finger wavered between two of them, then pressed a button on the keypad at the bottom of one screen. The slate came to life.

  Dr. Norbu laughed. Kate felt as if she were falling down a bottomless shaft.

  Marianne pulled the slate toward her and continued to poke the buttons, seemingly at random. Kate saw images appearing on the screen. Numbers flashed past, equations and geometrical figures. There was a lotus with each petal labeled and the angles defined. A white figure appeared, having numerous faces and a thousand arms. Where had she seen it before? A glowing rainbow sphere sprang up around the white god.

  Marianne giggled and touched the slate again, again, again, as if she had known how to use it for years.

  Dr. Norbu recaptured her attention with a handful of white silk scarves.

  He laid them out across the table, five of them, all exactly alike.

  She set the slate aside, growing very solemn now. She looked at Dr. Norbu but then her eyes wandered up toward the ceiling. Kate wondered what she could be thinking, or remembering. She seemed to see something falling from above.

  Marianne reached out and touched the scarf at her far left. For a moment she brought it to her face, feeling its softness, smelling it. Then she stood up in her seat, leaned over the table, and held it out to Dr. Norbu.

  Eyes closed, he bent his head and allowed the child to drape the scarf around his neck. When he raised his head, his eyes were full of tears.

  “Cheer up, Norbu,” Marianne said.

  He kissed the scarf, then the child’s hand.

  Kate felt a fierce envy of the bond between them. Marianne had never looked at her with such longing, such determination, such intensity. What was this emotion that reached out of the past, stronger than the love of a child for her mother?

  “Three out of
three,” Chokyi said.

  Kate could not take her eyes off Dr. Norbu. She saw his gaze drop to the slate that Marianne had chosen. He let out a gasp and reached out to bring it toward him.

  For a moment, he looked to be in shock.

  “What is it?” Peter asked.

  Dr. Norbu didn’t seem to know how to answer. He stared at Marianne.

  “The equation of emptiness,” he said. “A problem we’ve wrestled with since Tashi’s death. The last step in programming our device. He was on the verge of it when . . .”

  “Wait a minute,” Peter said. “She was a scientist? I thought the assassins struck only religious targets.”

  “His work had spiritual significance. This was his personal slate. It still contains the last problem he was working on, in the form he left it—unfinished. But she’s solved it!”

  Marianne sat smiling at them, as if hardly aware of what she had done.

  Dr. Norbu said something to her in Tibetan but she continued to rock back and forth in her seat. She grasped Kate’s hand and pulled closer to her mother.

  Dr. Norbu repeated his words.

  Marianne stood up and hugged Kate. “Mommy, why is he talking like that?”

  Chokyi and the doctor exchanged glances.

  “Let me try,” Chokyi said. He asked Marianne a question in Tibetan. She simply stared at him, then looked to Kate for answers.

  “Tashi?” Dr. Norbu asked urgently.

  But something had changed in Marianne. She regarded him as if he were legitimately a stranger.

  “Thank God,” Kate breathed. Her daughter had returned.

  Marianne began to whimper, then to cry.

  “She’s tired,” Kate apologized. “Come on, honey, you can take a nap.”

  Before Kate could carry her away, Marianne reached for the slate in Dr. Norbu’s hand. The doctor smiled. “One moment. Let me copy your work.” He briefly connected the slate to another, then broke the connection and returned it to the child.

  Marianne played with the slate as her mother carried her to bed. This time there were no numbers, no complex geometries. She had accessed a photograph of snowy mountains rising into an azure sky.