With what appeared to be a well-practiced motion, the man twisted the collar, breaking the woman’s grip, and turned toward Lokesh with a friendly expression, nodding toward the boulder, speaking in a voice too low for Shan to hear. The woman gathered the spilled nuts in her apron and scurried away. The dog advanced, sniffed Lokesh, wagged its tail, and settled between the two men as they sat in the shade of the solitary tree.
Shan pulled the bundle of sticks that the intruder had hurled at the unconscious man from his pocket. Stickman. And another name had been spat out by the intruder. Bloodwalker. The thing that had been burned in his memory surfaced. Years earlier, when he had shuttled through prisons in western China, before being finally transported to Tibet, that epithet was used by hard-core gulag criminals to describe assassins within their ranks. With new foreboding, he rose.
Lokesh and the canque-bearer were so deeply engaged in conversation that neither took notice when he sat beside them. The man seemed to have discovered that Lokesh had a healer’s knowledge, and was discussing the herbs used to strengthen orphaned lambs. Shan noticed a pot and a fire pit with a small pile of twigs and dried yak dung for fuel nearby. In the shadow of the wall was a rolled blanket and a stout stick, two feet long, peeled of its bark and carved with lotus blossoms. A slab of wood had been wedged into the stones halfway up the wall, and on it lay several hollow reeds. On the grass beneath the slab was a large, flat stone on which lay a rectangular sheet of paper weighed down with pebbles, a sheet from a peche, a traditional unbound Tibetan book.
Shan realized that the two men had stopped speaking. He met the silent gaze of the villager. “I did not mean to invite myself into your home,” he apologized.
The man’s eyes smiled as the fingers of one hand gestured toward the objects by the wall. “ ‘This fine stone mansion of meditation was built by me, a beggar.’ ” He was reciting from Milarepa, Tibet’s great hermit poet. “ ‘When the wind blows, my students, the sheep, offer me their fleece blankets,’ ” he added amiably. Before Shan could reply, he added, “And you are the Chinese wizard who dissolves prison bars and reaps truth from crow-picked fields.”
Shan searched the man’s face, expecting but not finding signs of mockery. “My father always said I was burdened by too much curiosity,” he offered. “When I was a boy I was given a small clock. By the next day I had unfastened every screw, every pin, every spring to discover the magic that made it work.”
“At an early age breaking through the illusions of time and reality,” the man in the collar observed.
“At an early age,” Shan corrected, “never being trusted with another timepiece.”
The man’s laughter was subdued, and Shan did not miss the wary way he glanced toward the buildings.
“I am named Yangke,” he offered. “Poet shepherd of Drango.” He studied Shan a moment, leaning forward to look under the brim of his hat. “Once I, too, aspired to be a monk. I had heard of the old one with the joyful eyes who helps the hidden lamas,” he said, “and of the elusive lama who is seen in the moonlight above Lhadrung Valley with a phantom from the gulag at his side. Even of the exiled Chinese inspector who sometimes does impossible things to help Tibetans. But I did not realize the phantom and the exile were the same. The herders sent by your friend to Lhadrung thought they were fetching one more outlawed lama, which terrified them. But a former investigator from Beijing, that scared them even more. You are from a different place altogether,” the man observed. “I have read about oracles from other worlds who walk among us to explain things the rest of us cannot fully comprehend.”
“I have heard much about oracles, too,” Shan said. “They are melancholy, sickly souls whose heads are filled with too many voices. They are consumed by the miracles they reveal.”
Yangke made a motion with his shoulders, curtailed by the canque, that Shan took to be a shrug. “But unlike the inhabitants of Drango, you will not shy away from miracles,” he said.
As Shan and Lokesh exchanged a glance, images flashed through Shan’s mind. Aged lamas, imprisoned most of their lives, nursing Shan’s broken mind and body back to health after he had been discarded, sent to the gulag. A Tibetan in their prison losing his foot after leaping into the path of a truck to save an injured bird. Gendun and his outlawed monks secretly working in their caves to illuminate prayer books for future generations, risking imprisonment or worse, when they could be safe in India. “Ever since I arrived in Tibet,” Shan rejoined, “I have lived from one miracle to the next.”
“Lha gyal lo, Victory to the gods,” Lokesh whispered, his habitual exclamation of joy. The old Tibetan extracted a small worn pocketknife from his pocket and began slicing pieces of the apple to feed to Yangke. As he worked, a little girl appeared, stepping sideways to keep Lokesh and Shan in front of her, and set a bowl of buttered tea on the slab of wood that was anchored to the wall. She placed one of the hollow reeds in it, then backed away before scampering off. Yangke looked uncertainly at his guests. At an encouraging gesture from Lokesh, he hobbled to the tray on his knees and began drinking through the reed straw.
“Tell us of the miracles of Drango village,” Shan said when he had drained the bowl.
“A sturdy, shining ferry across the ocean of existence,” Yangke declared. His playfulness was genuine but so too was the melancholy that hung over him. “The biggest miracle is our abandonment,” he continued. “Everywhere people try to forget the world but seldom does the world forget a people. We have lost all our chains.”
“Not every chain,” Shan observed.
Yangke grinned. “My imprisonment has released me. I have become a tree, and the tree has become rooted in the teachings. I watch the sheep and memorize sacred texts. On the day I am able to prostrate myself again, my body will open up like a ripened fruit and a ball of fire will shoot out.”
Shan gestured toward the shabby little village. “The temple where you acquired your learning is well hidden.”
“My temple and I,” Yangke replied acidly, “had no further use for each other.”
And that, Shan suspected, was the closest to the mark any of their arrows had landed. Although Beijing was allowing Tibet to slowly rebuild a few monasteries, one of the ways it kept control was by periodically purging the ranks of monks who threatened dissent.
“This paradise of yours had no need of a lama until a murderer struck?” Shan asked.
“This paradise I returned to,” Yangke corrected, “can barely grasp the notion of one man killing another, let alone the horrible thing that they discovered. These are things not of our making but they will be our unmaking. For all its many faults, Drango is worth preserving.”
“Just as Gendun is,” Shan declared. “We must get him away from here.” Perhaps Drango might be worth preserving but it felt like a trap to Shan.
Yangke looked toward the stable. “I have known of him for years. They call him the Pure Water Lama because he was ordained before the Dalai Lama left.”
“He is unregistered,” Shan said, “like Lokesh and me. But as a senior lama, defying the government, he is in greatest danger. A bounty has been placed on him,” Shan added with a guilty glance toward Lokesh. The only time Gendun ever chastised Shan was when Shan expressed concern for him. Before Shan had introduced him to the mysteries, and suffering, of the outside world, Gendun had not left his hidden complex of caves where he was safe. “He will not leave here of his own will now, and when Public Security comes they will seize him and make him disappear forever.”
Yangke’s face sagged.
“None of us know anyone here,” Shan continued. “Why did someone send for Gendun and Lokesh?”
“You just said it. He is an outlaw.” Yangke turned to Lokesh, who was stroking the dog’s back. “For Drango it is only safe to deal with outlaws. Is it not true that in the old days the monasteries had their own police and judges who dealt with monks who performed criminal acts?”
Lokesh leaned forward, suddenly very interested. “Senior lamas, so
metimes abbots, would sentence sinners among them to penance,” he confirmed.
“The ones who died so terribly last week, they were like holy men. And they too were outlaws. Just like the one in the stable.”
The big dog rose, growling. Yangke glanced back toward the village, his muscles tensing.
“Apricots!” an eager voice called. “Fresh from the orchard!” A compact man in a tattered fox cap jogged toward them, shouting as if trying to drown out anything Yangke might be saying.
“Chodron,” Lokesh muttered. It was the genpo, the village headman, carrying a small basket.
Yangke struggled to his feet and turned his back on the approaching man. “Forgive me for what I have done to you,” he said to Shan and Lokesh. “And all I am going to do. Lha gyal lo,” Yangke added. Then, the dog at his side, he hurried toward the grazing sheep, staggering as he tried to keep his heavy collar balanced.
The jovial air of the headman seemed to increase when he learned Shan’s name. He pushed his square, fleshy face under the brim of Shan’s ragged hat as if to confirm that there were indeed Chinese features in its shadow. Forcing some of the fruit into Shan’s hands, gesturing for Lokesh to follow, he escorted them down, into a small shed behind the main street where three pallets were arranged on the rough plank floor. Beside Shan’s frayed backpack rested a familiar canvas sack embroidered with sacred signs that Lokesh used for journeys, and the tattered work boots Gendun wore under his robe when traveling.
“There is another house that would be better for you,” the headman said to Shan. “Bigger. You would be more comfortable there. Dolma, the widow who lives there, will see to your needs.”
“We need only a floor for our blankets,” Shan said. At his first encounters with Tibetans, Shan was often feared, sometimes reviled. But the rare occasions when he was doted upon because he was Chinese made him much more uncomfortable.
“I insist,” pressed the genpo.
“Only if my friends can join me,” Shan replied.
“Of course,” Chodron agreed hesitantly. “It’s the house next to the stable. I will see that your bags are moved.”
Outside, a woman worked at the loom Shan had admired earlier, and a man had begun applying new whitewash to the walls fronting the street. “Are you preparing for a festival?” Shan asked, gesturing toward the pile of juniper wood.
“Two great events at once,” Chodron confirmed. “First the barley harvest, then the First of August,” he said. “There will be singing all night. And many jars of chang,” he added, the Tibetan barley ale. For the first time Shan saw several men by the granaries, working with stones on steel, sharpening sickles. Soon they would work in the fields, loading sheaves onto carts pulled by broad-backed yaks. Against the granary walls were stacked wooden flails and the wide, flat baskets that would be used to thresh and winnow the grain. To a village like Drango nothing was more important than the harvest, nothing more dangerous than a bonfire while the paper-dry barley still stood in the fields.
As Shan followed the genpo toward the largest of the structures along the short, dusty street, he glanced at Lokesh, seeing in his friend’s troubled eyes confirmation that he had heard correctly. August the First. The little village, so remote it seemed to have escaped the notice of the government since the day it was bombed from the air, was preparing to celebrate one of Beijing’s most patriotic holidays, the day set aside for praise of China’s military.
In the sparsely furnished sitting room on the second floor of his house, Chodron’s wife silently served them more buttered tea while the headman boasted of the accomplishments of his village. Most of the families had lived in Drango for eight or more generations, he explained. Once they had been renowned for their finely woven carpets like the one that adorned the room they sat in. Shan’s gaze drifted over the headman’s shoulder to a shelf heavy with books, all hardbound printed books, all in Chinese, then finally to a framed photo on the wall of a much younger Chodron in the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army.
As they walked back outside, a bell rang somewhere. Lokesh smiled. It was a way of summoning deities, a way of accompanying the rhythm of mantras. But these peals quickly became frantic, and from the slopes men began shouting. Sweet, acrid smoke wafted around the houses. The headman gasped and darted toward the street, Shan a step behind him. Someone had set the pile of juniper wood alight.
The village exploded with activity, some villagers running to the stream with buckets, others toward the fields with brooms and blankets. Every flying spark threatened their precious harvest. Shan ran with them toward the thick column of smoke, then saw Lokesh headed for the stable at the other end of the settlement. Shan paused only long enough to see the headman confer with the big farmer who had been guarding the stable door. The man began to run up a track along the stream at the side of the fields, pausing only to lift a heavy harvest knife from a bench by a granary.
A minute later, Shan was at his friend’s side. The guard at the door was gone, the chamber emptied of everyone but Gendun and his charge. Lokesh approached the pallet and lifted the man’s hand, taking his pulse at his wrist, then his neck, and temple. Shan brought tea from the kettle by the door.
Lokesh raised a hand. “It might revive him. Water, not tea. I have given him water every few hours.”
Lokesh tipped the man’s head back as Shan filled a ladle from a bucket and began dripping water into his mouth. Long bony fingers reached out and closed around the man’s lifeless hand. Gendun had stopped his mantra. Lokesh straightened the man’s legs and began massaging the limbs, pausing twice to press his ear to the stranger’s chest and check his pulse. “His flesh cannot endure without nourishment,” Lokesh declared in a worried tone.
“This particular life,” came a voice like rustling grass, “is not rounded.”
Lokesh and Shan looked up. Except for his prayers, these were the first words Gendun had spoken since Shan’s arrival. Gendun’s words were used between monks of their hermitage or by the monks of Shan’s former prison to describe a strong stumbling spirit that had failed to resolve itself before death.
“The mountain,” Lokesh said. “He may have come to learn from the mountain.”
“A pilgrimage,” Shan added, completing the thought. Devout Tibetans sometimes made secret pilgrimages to remote shrines, to give thanks to a deity, seek absolution, be cured, or fulfill a promise to a loved one. To wear down the rough edges that cut at a troubled soul.
“Lha gyal lo!” Lokesh exclaimed. He’d seen the man’s tongue appear between his lips in response to the trickle of moisture. As Shan cradled the man in his arms, Lokesh stroked the stranger’s throat. He swallowed. They gave him half a ladle more of water mixed with honey from a jar by the door, a few drops at a time, then returned him to the pallet. Shan went to the door. The villagers had extinguished the fire by pulling the logs from the pile and soaking them, and were now beating out small patches of flame in the fields. They’d saved nearly all their crop.
“Someone is asking for help,” Lokesh declared when he returned to the pallet. He saw the confusion on Shan’s face. “Don’t you see? It is like a desperate prayer. Someone is willing to lose the crop in order to summon the deities.”
Perhaps his friend was right, Shan thought, though the fire could just as easily have been a distraction, even a warning.
He checked the invalid’s pockets and found them empty except for a few Chinese coins and a stick as thick as his index finger and half as long. The bark had recently been peeled from the little piece of wood and it had been carved at one end, with three holes cut into the rounded surface, arranged like two eyes and a mouth. The other end, where its waist and legs should have been, was broken off. He stared at the stick on his palm for a moment, then slipped it into his own pocket. The man wore no ring, no watch, no amulet, no adornment of any kind except for a very strange tattoo on his forearm, a thick blue line that extended nearly from his wrist to his elbow, the body of a stick figure with a rectangular he
ad, arms and legs made of jagged lines like lightning bolts, and a long triangle arranged like a skirt low down.
Shan, like his friends, cocked his head at the image. Stickman. The intruder had pronounced the name like a curse. The tattooed image was unfamiliar, as was, for most Tibetans, the concept of the decoration of the skin with ink. The stranger was not just from down in the world but from far away. Shan probed the man’s clothing, running a fingertip over the fabric, pausing over each button, each stain. He said nothing about the thin line of tiny rust brown spots across the front of his shirt or the fanlike pattern of similar spots on his denim trousers that ran from the knee up his thigh, or the faint line of spots along his chest. They were dried blood that had sprayed onto his clothing from a severed blood vessel less than an arm’s length away.
He gazed a moment at the man’s unseeing face, then ran his finger over the inside of his vest, looking for a hidden pocket. “Something is sewn inside,” he announced, trying to make sense of the three shapes he felt. Neither Lokesh, massaging the man’s legs, nor Gendun, still holding one of his hands but reciting his prayers again, took notice. Shan rose, darted out the door, and returned with a small wooden tube retrieved from his pack. He extracted the cork from the top and withdrew a long needle and thread, then with his knife opened the seam of the vest’s lining. Tucked into small, tight pockets, expertly sewn, were the feather of a large bird, a small leather pouch bound by a drawstring, and a long plastic vial of yellow powder.
They stared at the unexpected, inexplicable objects in silence, the pace of Gendun’s recitation slowing as the lama reached out, one thin finger touching not the objects but the space just above them. Lokesh’s jaw opened and shut silently. When the old Tibetan looked up at Shan he knew his friend too was recalling Yangke’s description of the comatose man and his dead companions.
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