Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  “'You have the most unusual green eyes, Sonam Gampo.”

  She stiffened, touching her face. Sometime in the night she had lost her tinted lenses. “My grandmother also had green eyes,” she said quickly. “Unusual but not impossible.”

  “I didn’t say that. A mistake that many Chinese make—and I sometimes must distinguish myself from my people in certain respects—is to take the attitude that the Tibetans are a single race of people, completely pure, descended entirely from one bloodline down through the ages. The thought of such purity terrifies them, because it makes the Tibetan claim to this land seem all the more potent. At the same time, it comforts them that they may one day control this ancient strain and ensure that it never gains power. These are all mistaken notions, yet they have a strong influence. I see the fruit of such prejudices every day.”

  She finished her soup. Her fascination with Mr. Fang had just exceeded its previous bounds.

  “But you don’t subscribe to them yourself?” she asked.

  “Hardly. If I become interested in the surface of a thing, I try to learn more about its inner nature. I have studied a great deal of this land’s history—and not merely the approved People’s texts, which class Tibetan history as ‘legend.’”

  “You sound like a bit of a renegade, Mr. Fang.”

  He smiled, obviously pleased. “I will take that as a compliment, coming from a Tibetan.”

  She laughed aloud. “And you should. We are a great race of rebels—”

  “But not a pure race, Sonam. Your green eyes might once have looked out upon the Aegean sea from the skull of one of your ancestors. This land has had many visitors over the ages. It has always had a special appeal to the people of this planet.”

  “No one loves it like a Tibetan,” she said.

  “Perhaps true. But who, now, is Tibetan? First generation? Second? Third? Do you include people of Chinese descent, or only of that fabled pure bloodline?”

  She chewed slowly, feeling as if there were a sadness in him, some hidden thing that he was close to revealing. She did not wish to offend him and lose his trust; nor did she wish to compromise herself and betray her cause.

  “I love Tibet,” he whispered, surprising her with the urgency in his voice. “I sought this post when I was young, worked hard for it. I always wanted to live in this country, to see it with my own eyes. I wish that I could have been born here. As it is, the climate sometimes gives me great difficulty. But I won't go home to Beijing. As long as I can do some good here, I will stay.”

  She lowered her eyes, afraid that he would see through her. She nodded, however, to show that she was listening.

  “It makes me sad,” he went on, “to know that I will never be a Tibetan, no matter how long I stay. My own people discourage such thinking—not to mention talk of such things. And no Tibetan would have me. There is such an old enmity between the Chinese and the Tibetans. It is a purely political thing, from my perspective, born of ruthless social pressures and the momentum of campaigns that have long since expended their energy. Yet this enmity has us in its grip. Neither side can release its hold on the other. I fear it may be a battle to the death. I fear that your people are too few and too weak to survive. Every day I do what I can, but it seems like so little. I am so alone here—so alone with my . . .” He chuckled. “My beliefs.”

  She glanced up and realized that he was not even looking at her now. He was staring at his own hands, turning them over and over in his lap, rubbing them together as he shook his head.

  Was it a trick? Dare she trust him?

  There was no easy way to tell, but she knew that she must do something—make some gesture, say some word. She could push him away or draw him near. A misjudgment might be deadly. But to do nothing . . . that would be the worst crime of all.

  She put out her hand and touched him on one wrist. “Mr. Fang, why do you tell me this?”

  “Because you are the one,” he replied.

  For that, she had no answer. She kept her face blank, her breathing steady and even. It was easy to keep up a look of incomprehension because she could not quite believe what he had said.

  “You are the one, aren’t you?”

  “The one?” she repeated.

  He nodded. “Yes. The Great Mother. I could not believe my great fortune when you fell into my hands. Yet I felt it the instant I saw you.”

  The hair prickled on the back of her neck as she thought of the danger to her friends.

  “I was terrified that you had come to some harm inside the city.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  It seemed pointless to deny his suspicions, but she did not intend to confirm them either.

  “Because I wished to tell you that you are not alone; your struggle will not go unaided. Because there is something of the spirit of Tibet incarnate in you, and I felt that if I could speak to you, I would be able to speak to the soul of the land itself.”

  His lips trembled, his eyes flooded. She caught his hands and he put them on her cheeks, sobbing now—but silently, as if he were aware how strange this would have sounded to anyone passing outside the tent.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She knew that he was talking not to Marianne Strauss, but to something deep inside her. She felt a moonwhite stirring in her soul; a thousand hands turned their palms outward; a thousand and twenty-three eyes looked through her two, reading this man’s soul.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Wipe your eyes.”

  “Your nomad friends may be in trouble. They are not truly your family, are they? I know that you come from outside Tibet.”

  She gritted her teeth, worried that he knew so much. She no longer feared him, however.

  “How do you know these things?” she asked.

  He dried his face on a sleeve. “I snoop,” he said. “I take bits and pieces from secret files. I am enough of a bureaucrat to cover my tracks; I know how to vanish in a crowd.”

  “And these secret files—whose are they? How much do your superiors know?”

  “I wish I could tell you. I think their information is fragmentary—they lack the proper objectivity to put all the pieces in order. Their prejudices blind them to the obvious.”

  “One thing is certain,” she said. “Others know of me.”

  He nodded. “You are feared as widely as you are revered. Governor Rato has declared you an evil remnant of Tibet’s feudal past. Rumors that you would one day enter the country have been common for years.”

  “I am grateful for this information,” she said. “You must understand that I don’t dare tell you anything about myself—beyond confirming what you already know.”

  He raised a hand. “It’s better that I don’t know, for your sake. I feel transported, simply knowing that I was right about you. I hope that I can do something, however small, to help you.”

  She hesitated to ask what he had in mind, but he volunteered it a moment later.

  “I filed a report,” he said, “in which I stated that you were discovered riding in the direction of the Mines of Joy on an errand to purchase parts for technical repairs. We intercepted you, searched and interrogated you thoroughly, corroborated your story, and found no reason to suspect anything else. I then filed a request to return you to your family without delay. I am expecting a reply in the morning. If your disappearance was the main reason your people are being held suspended, then my reports should lift all suspicion from them. I fully expect my request to be granted.”

  “Unless your superiors truly know who I am, in which case you will have put yourself into great danger.”

  “I am confident that is not the case. If they suspected you were already in Tibet, Rato himself would have come to investigate. But after years of treating all Tibetan activities with equal suspicion, even actions of great importance tend to be treated as routine infractions. There was the matter of an unidentified aircraft several weeks ago; I thought it highly intriguing, yet as far as I can tell no one else suspect
ed that you were in that plane. Generalized paranoia blinds my superiors to specific insight.”

  “You must be quite sure of yourself to risk so much,” she said.

  “Even if I’m wrong, I believe it worth the risk.”

  He grinned, his good humor restored, and suddenly rose to his feet. “May I show you something?”

  “Certainly.”

  She followed him out of the tent. It was dark now and the wind had come up. Clouds covered the stars. A ruddy glow danced behind the black wall of the city, where an occasional spotlight stabbed the sky. He led her across the clerical camp to another small tent.

  Inside, a single candle burned, its flame flickering in the depths of a black jar that rested on a battered metal chest. Behind the candle was a narrow, locked cabinet. Mr. Fang took a ring of keys from his pocket.

  “In Lhasa, where I live, I have a large collection of forbidden things. They are, not uncommonly, found in the possession of the wealthier administrators; in fact, the rarer antiques are prized for their monetary value. My traveling collection, however, is quite unorthodox. That’s why I’ve disguised it as an ordinary toiletry case.”

  The key twisted in the lock. Crouching, she leaned closer as he swung the two doors open.

  The candle flame lit the shallow recesses of the cabinet, playing over the polished bronze body of a small four-armed image of Chenrezi.

  “This is my shrine,” he said. “As I say, it is quite irregular. In fact, for someone in my position, it is illegal. It’s not expensive enough to qualify as a collector’s item.”

  “Mr. Fang,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for showing me this. You have opened my eyes in more ways than you know.”

  He looked at her, perhaps not understanding completely.

  Dhondub would say he is the enemy, she thought.

  He is Chinese.

  But China has shown me another face.

  ***

  From the air, the nomads’ tents looked like bits of tattered cloth caught in the rock and scrub of the plains. They had reached the mouth of the long valley before making camp, and here the Chinese must have intercepted them and ordered them to stay until they could track down the lost “Sonam Gampo.”

  The story Mr. Fang had filed with the authorities must have closely matched the one given by Dhondub Ling. Permission to return and an escort had been granted immediately.

  Half a dozen nomads stood at the edge of the camp, watching the plane come down. When she saw their faces, she realized that they hadn’t been forewarned of her return. No doubt they expected this to be yet another interrogation. She did not see Dr. Norbu, but Jetsun Dorje stood at Dhondub’s side; the two men seemed to be vying for the most hostile expression.

  When the plane touched down, Marianne pushed the door open and rushed out ahead of her escort. Remembering her daughterly disguise, she ran first to Dhondub, whose face had gone pale with shock and disbelief.

  As she threw her arms around him, Jetsun Dorje let out a whoop and pulled her away from the chieftain. His embrace nearly crushed her.

  “I don’t believe it,” Dhondub said. She heard him calling the others from the tents.

  In the meantime, Jetsun kissed her on the cheeks and ears, pressed his face into her hair, and squeezed her until she gasped. There was nothing brotherly about his attentions, nor any lingering trace of the remote courtesy he had begun to show her.

  “Marianne,” he whispered. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. And Dr. Norbu! He’s been sick because of you. Why did you do it?”

  “I had to,” she said. “And I got what we needed, so it’s all for the best.”

  He held her by the shoulders so that he could look her in the face. He shook his head. “Never do that again. Will you promise?”

  She laughed. “No, Jetsun. If the need arises, I will go without warning. But you mustn’t fear for me.”

  He looked both stricken and chastened. “Don’t you know how I love you?”

  She remembered Mr. Fang’s declaration of love and the offerings of scarves with which the nomads had met her when she first landed in Tibet. Love was such a strange word; she mustn’t take it too personally.

  “You and the rest of Tibet,” she said, trying to summon back the laughter in his eyes. She had missed his jokes in the Mines of Joy. “You love me because I am the Gyayum Chenmo.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not why. Even before I knew—”

  “Sonam!” shouted Dhondub, from the entrance to his tent. He beckoned to her. “Come greet your grandfather.”

  The plane was lifting again, and with it would go the restrictions that had been placed on the nomads.

  She squeezed Jetsun’s hand, then let it fall. “Come with me,” she said.

  Brushing past Dhondub on her way into the tent, she said, “I have it, Dhondub. The way to the lotus.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder, joining her as she went in. “I’m glad your journey wasn’t wasted. That will please Dr. Norbu.”

  At the far end of the tent, on a low bed, Reting Norbu lay wrapped in blankets. As she approached, her blood grew cold. His face was white and thin; he looked like one on the edge of death.

  “Oh, Reting,” she said, sinking down beside him. Placing her hand on his forehead, she found that he was feverish. “Did I do this to you?”

  His eyes opened but at first he did not seem to see her. He reached up with one bony hand and took hold of her wrist; then he drew her hand down to his mouth and kissed it lightly.

  “Marianne . . . you’re safe?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “But how are you?”

  “He needs rest,” said Pema, moving close to Marianne. “The fever is coming down. I think he took ill even before you left, but he’d hidden it from us.”

  She kissed Reting on the brow. “I’ll let you rest,” she said.

  “It was very brave, what you did,” Pema said.

  “And she was successful, too,” Dhondub said proudly. “I hope you had less trouble than we did. The morning after you left, inspectors came to count heads. I told them you’d gone to the Mines of Joy in search of supplies, and for some reason that made them suspicious. We were ordered to stay in this spot, although we would not have moved anyway with Dr. Norbu so sick. I expected we’d be brought to the Mines and put to work.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that now,” Marianne said. “The Mines are in trouble. They won’t be out looking for laborers anytime soon.”

  “Trouble?” Dhondub said. “What kind of trouble?”

  She walked over to the huge pot of tea warming in the center of the tent. Beside it was a bowl of tsampa, roasted barley flour, that made her mouth water.

  “Let’s sit down,” she said, moistening her fingers in a teacup and rolling them in the flour to make a moist dumpling. “I’ll tell you what I learned.”

  As she told her story, she felt a stirring in her mind. Tara rose to the surface along with the madwoman, the Voice of the Lotus. It grew more difficult to speak because of the nearness of these internal personalities. Were they part of herself, or were they separate entities—invaders? She stammered and heard Tara say, “Marianne, may we speak for a moment?”

  Silently, she gave her permission.

  “This is Tara speaking,” she said. Her voice had changed to approximate that of a preadolescent girl. “The lotus revealed itself to me. It. showed me the place where it blooms, high in the mountains to the northwest—the Kunlun. Marianne possesses the memories of the woman who found the lotus, although she can touch them only through me. We must make haste to reach the flower, for its bloom will not last much longer. Now quickly, bring me a map.”

  Pema produced a topographic map of Tibet. Marianne spread it across the floor and watched her finger move over the contours of the land—tiny lakes, vast arid expanses, the contorted shapes of mountains and valleys. Leaning closer, she read aloud the names of some of the settlements. Each time she said a name, Tara echoed it
, and she sensed that the Voice of the Lotus either shook her head or affirmed that she knew the place from her travels.

  Gradually, in this manner, they retraced the route taken by the Voice of the Lotus.

  “Bushengcaka . . . Zapug . . . Domar . . . Chang Changmar . . . Quanshuigou.” Marianne stabbed at the map with a finger. “Here,” she said. “It was near here.”

  “That’s in the Uygur region,” Jetsun Dorje said.

  Tara asked, “How quickly can we get there?”

  Dhondub shook his head. “It would take us months. Six hundred kilometers, with winter coming on and a provincial border to cross . . . we could never make it in time.”

  “Not on foot,” Rainbow Tara said. “But you still have the jet, do you not?”

  Dhondub sat back, taking the map from her and scowling. He looked at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Marianne?” he said.

  “I’m here,” said Marianne. “But that was Tara’s suggestion.”

  “We’re under too much scrutiny.”

  “We must break out of it,” Tara said. “We must take a chance.”

  “I will fly the plane,” Jetsun said eagerly, as if he had spent far too long plodding along on horseback.

  “And what if the Chinese come counting heads again?” Dhondub demanded.

  Pema put a hand on his wrist, quieting him. “I have an idea,” she said.

  9. Ice Harmonics

  The plane came down in darkness, several miles from the nomad camp. A man and a woman climbed down from the cabin and met Marianne and Jetsun halfway between the jeep and the jet. In the dark, the woman offered Marianne a scarf. Marianne gave the woman her identification card.

  “You’re Sonam Gampo now,” she said.

  “But not the Gyayum Chenmo,” the woman answered in a hushed tone.

  “Hurry up!” cried Dhondub Ling from the jeep, where he sat impatiently waiting at the wheel.

  Jetsun gave his card to the man who was to take his place, then he scrambled up the ladder into the plane. Marianne came close behind. She locked the hatch and dropped into the copilot’s seat. A look of delicious anticipation appeared on Jetsun’s face as he surveyed the control panel.