by M. J. Rose
She stood on the threshold and peered inside.
The midmorning light that passed through the two stained-glass windows of purple irises saturated the interior space with a melancholy cobalt wash. It spilled over the stone angel who lay prostrate on the altar. Her face was hidden, but her grief was visible in the way her delicate marble fingers hung over the pedestal and how her wings drooped down, their tips brushing the floor.
Under each of the two windows, alabaster urns contained Jac’s offerings from last year: long-dead branches of apple blossoms now withered and dried out.
In the center of the small enclosure, on a granite bench, a woman sat waiting, watching Jac, smiling a familiar, sad smile. Blue light passed through the woman’s form and splashed on Jac’s legs.
I was worried you weren’t coming. The soft voice seemed to come from the air around the translucent specter, not from within it.
She’s not real, Jac reminded herself as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Her mother’s ghost was an aberration. A delusion of her imagination. A holdover from her illness. The last relic of those terrible times when the face Jac saw in the mirror wasn’t her own—but belonged to someone unrecognizable looking back. When she’d been so sure the crayon drawings she made weren’t imaginary landscapes but places she’d lived that she went searching for them. When she could hear the screams of the people she saw being buried alive . . . burned alive . . . even though no one else could.
Jac was fourteen the first time her dead mother spoke to her. Often in the hours after she’d died. Then daily, then less frequently. But after Jac left France and moved to America, she only heard her voice once a year. Here in the sepulcher on each anniversary of her mother’s internment. A mother who, in essence, had abandoned her daughter too early and with too much drama. Literally in essence—because Audrey had died in the perfume workshop, surrounded by the most beautiful smells in the world. It would remain for Jac, who found her, a gruesome and shocking sensory memory. The scents of roses and lilies, of lavender, musk and patchouli, of vanilla, violets and verbena, of sandalwood and sage, and the image of those dead eyes open, staring into nothingness. Of an always-animated face now stilled. Of one hand outstretched in her lap—as if, at the last moment, Audrey had remembered she was leaving something important and reached out for it.
Still hugging the fresh apple blossoms she’d brought with her, Jac crossed the vault and put down the flowers on the marble floor beside the antique urn. She had a job to do here. As she lifted out last year’s dead branches, they fell apart, making a mess. Kneeling, she used the edge of her hand to sweep the debris into a pile. She could have hired perpetual care for things like this yearly ritual of cleaning up, but it kept Jac occupied and tethered to something tangible and concrete during her annual visit.
She wasn’t an only child, but every year she was alone in the crypt. She always reminded her brother of the date, hoping—but never assuming—that Robbie would come. Expectations lead only to disappointments. Her mother had taught her that, cautioning the little girl not to fall prey to life’s tempting promises.
“Survivors,” she used to tell her, “face facts.” It was a tough lesson—and possibly a poisonous one—to inflict on a child who wasn’t yet old enough to consider from whence the advice came: a woman who wasn’t able to follow her own counsel. You come from a family of dreamers, but there’s a difference between real and pretend. Do you understand? This will help. I promise.
But there was a difference between Jac’s childhood dreams and everyone else’s. Hers were full of nasty noises and ugly visions. Threats that were impossible to escape. Robbie’s were fantastical. He’d believed that one day they would find the book of fragrances that their ancestor had brought back from Egypt, and use its formulas to create wonderful elixirs. Whenever he talked about it, she’d smile at him in the condescending way that older siblings have and say: “Maman told me that’s just make-believe.”
“No, Papa said it’s true,” Robbie would argue. He’d run off to their library to find the antique leather-bound history book that by now fell open to the right page. He’d point to the engraving of Pliny the Elder, the Roman author and philosopher. “He saw Cleopatra’s book of fragrance formulas. He writes about it right here.”
She hated to disillusion her brother, but it was important he understand that it was all just an exaggerated story. If she could convince him, then maybe she could believe it herself.
“There might have been an inventory of the perfumes Cleopatra’s factory had manufactured, but we don’t have it. And there’s no such thing as the Fragrance of Memory. There can’t be a perfume that makes you remember things. It’s all a fairy tale our ancestors made up so that the House of L’Etoile would seem more exotic. For over two hundred years, our family has created and manufactured perfumes and sold them from our store. Just perfumes, Robbie. Mixtures of oils and alcohol. Not dreams. Not fantasies. Those are all made up, Robbie. To entertain us.”
Her mother had taught her all about stories. The ones you made up on purpose. And the ones that came unbidden. “Even when they are frightening and hold you in their grip, you can control them,” Audrey would say with a knowing look in her eye. Jac understood. Her mother was giving Jac clues. Helping her deal with what made the two of them different from the others.
Despite her mother’s advice, make-believe had still nearly driven Jac insane. As bad as her visions had been when Audrey was alive, they intensified with her mother’s death. And there had been no way Jac could convince herself they weren’t real.
After months of doctors who prescribed treatments and drugs that not only didn’t help but sometimes made her feel even crazier, one finally saw inside her and understood her. He taught her to distill the terrors the way perfumers took flowers and extracted their essences. Then he worked with her to make sense of all those droplets of screaming, bleeding hallucinations. He showed her how to find the symbolism in her delusions and to use mythological and spiritual archetypes to interpret them. Symbols, he explained, don’t have to relate to a person’s actual life. More often, they are part of the collective unconscious. Archetypes are a universal language. They were the clues Jac needed to decipher her torment.
In one of Jac’s most horrific recurring delusions, she was trapped in a burning room high above an apocalyptic city. The fourth wall was all windows. Desperately, as the smoke threatened to overwhelm her, she tried to find a way to open the casements. If only she could get out, she knew she could use the great translucent wings strapped to her back to fly to safety.
Somewhere beyond the room, she could hear people—albeit impossible over the roar of the fire. She screamed for help. But no one came to her rescue. She was going to die.
With the doctor’s help, Jac examined her unconscious and was able to identify threads of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. An important difference—that proved to be the clue to understanding the significance of the dream—was that in her nightmare she was alone. Both her father and her mother had forsaken her. Even if Icarus ignored his father’s advice, his father was there, offering it. But no one was warning Jac not to fly too close to the sun or to the sea. She was abandoned. Imprisoned. Doomed. Fated to burn to death.
Learning about archetypes and symbolic imagery was the first step in a long road that led her to writing Mythfinders and then to producing the cable television show. Instead of becoming a perfumer like her brother and her father and his father before him, Jac had become an explorer, tracing the origins of ancient myths. She brought myths to life so that she could bring them down to earth. Traveling from Athens to Rome to Alexandria, she sought out archaeological landmarks and historical records, searching for proof of the people and events that had grown into myths.
Jac wanted to help people understand that stories existed as metaphors, lessons and maps—but not as truths. Magic can be dangerous. Reality was empowering. There were no Minotaurs. No monsters. There were no unicorns or fairies or ghosts.
There was a line between fact and fantasy. And as an adult, she never took her eyes off of it.
Except when she came here, each year, on the tenth of May, on the anniversary of her mother’s death.
The light shifted. Jac knew it was the clouds moving, but the impression it created was that the angel was breathing. How lovely it would be to believe a stone angel could come to life. That there were heroes who never disappointed. That her mother really did speak to her from the grave.
Ah, but I do, came the whispered response to Jac’s unspoken thought. You know I do. I know how dangerous you think it is for you to believe me—but talk to me, sweetheart, it will help.
Jac stood and began to unwrap the apple blossoms she’d brought. She never spoke to the specter. Her mother wasn’t actually here. The manifestation was caused by an abnormality in her brain. She’d seen the MRI on her father’s desk and read the doctor’s letter.
Jac was fourteen at the time—but she’d have to look up some of the words in the dictionary even now. The scan showed what they called a very slight reduction of volume in frontal white matter, the area where evidence of psychotic disease was sometimes found. Proof it wasn’t her overactive imagination that made her feel as if she was going crazy but an abnormality doctors could see.
Although, it wasn’t one they could treat with any certainty. The patient’s long-term prognosis was uncertain. The condition might never become more pronounced than it was already. Or she could develop more severe bipolar tendencies.
The doctor recommended immediate therapy along with a cycle of psychopharmaceuticals to see if it relieved Jac’s symptoms.
Jac tore off the cellophane packaging and crumpled it, the crackling loud but not loud enough to drown out her mother’s voice.
I know this is upsetting for you, sweetheart, and I am sorry.
Once the branches were nestled in the urn under the stained-glass window on the west wall, they began to scent the air. Jac usually preferred shadowy, woodsy scents. Sharp spices and musk. Moss and pepper with only a hint of rose. But this sweet-smelling flower was her mother’s favorite, and so she brought it year after year and let it remind her of all that she missed.
The sky darkened, and a sudden rainstorm beat against the glass. Crouching in front of the urn, Jac sat on her heels and listened to the drops hitting hard on the roof and pounding the windows. Usually she was impatient to get to the next appointment. To change the scenery. Not to linger. Anything to avoid the boredom that invited excess contemplation of the wrong kind. But here, in this crypt, once a year, Jac felt a kind of sick relief in giving in to her fear, grief and disillusionment. Here, in this abyss, in the sad blue light, she could just be still and care too much instead of not at all. She could allow herself the visions. Be frightened by them but not fight them. Just once a year. Just here.
When I was a little girl, I used to believe this light was a bridge that let me walk from the living to the dead and back again.
Jac could almost feel her mother stroking her hair as she spoke in that soft whisper she’d used when putting her to bed. Jac shut her eyes. The sound of the storm filled the silence until Audrey spoke again.
That’s what it is for us, isn’t it, sweetheart? A bridge?
Jac didn’t speak. Couldn’t. She listened for her mother’s next words but instead heard the rain and then the whine of hinges as the heavy wrought-iron and glass door opened. She turned as a gust of wet cold wind blew in. Jac saw the shadow of a man and for a moment wasn’t sure if that was real, either.
Three
NANJING, CHINA
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 9:05 P.M.
The young monk bowed his head for a moment, as if in prayer, and then lit a wooden match. His stillness and calm were almost beatific, a moment of profound inner peace. His expression hardly changed, even as he touched the lit match to his ceremonial dress, doused in kerosene. Flames, the same color as his saffron robe, engulfed him.
Xie Ping turned away from the website and looked into Cali Fong’s eyes, not surprised to see them bright with tears.
“It’s an outrage,” she whispered, her lower lip trembling. At just under five feet tall, twenty-three-year-old Cali could pass for a teenager. She seemed the most unlikely creator of her sophisticated, oversize paintings—sometimes twenty feet tall. And the passion with which she discussed human rights and artistic freedom likewise belied her tiny frame. Someone that outspoken wasn’t Xie’s smartest choice for a close friend, but he’d decided long ago that avoiding the relationship would be just as suspect as entering into it.
“You should get off the computer,” Xie said. “And don’t cry, please. Not in public.”
Although many students and teachers were discussing their feelings about the newest spate of unrest in Tibet, it could be especially dangerous for him to attract attention.
“But this is important, and—”
“Cali, I need to get back,” he said, trying to focus her. “I have a project due and am going to have to work half the night as it is. Why don’t you wipe your browser now so we can go?”
Every PC bought in China came with preinstalled Web-blocking software to ensure no one could visit the BBC, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, and blogger sites. The government claimed that the effort was instituted to ban pornography, but everyone knew it was to stop the public from getting news about democracy, Tibet or members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Surfing politically subversive or pornographic websites was a crime, as was taking advantage of any of the ways around the internet policing.
Ways that Cali had become expert at. While she erased her history, Xie closed his eyes and traveled inside his mind to find a place of stillness and silently intoned a mantra that he’d learned when he was just six years old.
Om mani padme hum.
He did this slowly, four times, and the bustle of the internet café disappeared for the few seconds Xie allowed himself. He was more shaken up by the footage than he could afford to show Cali or—worse—anyone else who might be watching.
Cali touched his arm and brought him back to the present. “How much more tragic is this going to get before the international agencies step in?”
“They can’t step in. There are too many financial ramifications. They all owe us too much money. China holds everyone hostage.” Xie sounded rational. He felt anything but. The travesty playing itself out in his homeland was exacerbating daily. It was time to get involved. He had no choice. Not any longer. No more hiding. No matter how hard the path ahead would be. No matter how dangerous.
Through the window, he spied a group of police in blue drab headed their way. There were regular crackdowns and searches for subversives, and he didn’t want to get caught in one. “Let’s go,” he said, standing.
“Already in the last six days, a hundred and three monks have set themselves on fire.”
“I know, Cali. I know. Let’s go.”
“A hundred and three monks,” she repeated, not being able to process the number.
He grabbed her arm. “We have to go.”
As they walked out the door, the four policemen he’d seen from the window crossed the street and headed toward the café. Safely clear of the threat, Cali asked the question that Xie had been thinking but wouldn’t voice. “How is any of this going to help that poor little boy? Will anyone ever find him? Why crack down on Order Number Five now? Didn’t they know it would just stir up more trouble? And how could they be so obvious about how they handled it? How dangerous can one little boy be?”
“When it’s a little boy like Kim? Very dangerous.”
Order Number Five was a regulation that came into effect in 2007 and gave the government the right to regulate the reincarnation of living Buddhas by requiring everyone to register in order to be reincarnated.
Approving incarnations was not the endgame. Disallowing incarnations that interfered with China’s oppression of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism was. The order required that “living Buddha permits” be registe
red with the state and at the same time banned any incarnations from taking place in certain delineated regions. Not surprisingly, the two most holy cities in Tibet, Xingjiang and Lhasa, were on that list.
Xie remembered his grandfather telling him about hearing the news when the present Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and head of state, had been identified in 1937. The toddler had been only two years old when he was found by a search party looking for the reincarnation of the thirteenth Lama, Thubten Gyatso, who had been Dalai from 1879, when he was three, until he died in 1933.
Their first clue as to the whereabouts of the child came to light when the head of the embalmed lama’s body turned. The corpse that had faced south was suddenly facing northeast.
Next a senior lama saw a vision of buildings and letters in the reflection of a sacred lake. These hints led them to a specific monastery in the Amdo region where monks helped them find the child.
And then they administered the final test used to reveal the veracity of a possible reincarnate: a group of objects, some belonging to the dead lama, some not, were given to the boy.
“This is mine, it’s mine,” he said as he selected only the relics that had belonged to the dead lama, ignoring the others. First prayer beads, then the dead leader’s glasses.
Thirteen years later, in 1950, the Communist Party of China invaded Tibet and took control of the government. Nine years after that, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, still only twenty-four years old, fled his homeland to live in exile in India. Since then—more than fifty years later—the unresolved conflict had grown more violent. This latest incident had led to a spate of aggravated restlessness and brutality.
The action that had sparked this newest and tragic rebellion had occurred in Lhasa two weeks ago, when a three-year-old child went missing twenty-four hours after being identified as an incarnated lama.