Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  “Well, excellent! Isn’t that wonderful!” His face and the top of his bald head went red from merriment. He cast his smile around the room until the people at the other tables began to laugh as well. This had the effect, Marianne noticed, of drawing attention away from them. Once the laughter had reached its peak, it died down rather swiftly and they no longer attracted the stares of the other patrons.

  “I’ll be right back with fresh hot mapa for all of you!” he said. “Why don’t you come with me, Gyan Phala? I have a new stove. Come and see!”

  Gyan and the innkeeper disappeared through a door at the back of the room. Marianne sipped her tea and took a cautious glance around her. She happened to meet the eye of a young man at the next table; he nodded and gave her a huge grin. She smiled briefly then let her gaze continue on. Apparently he was unsatisfied with this response for he rose and came to their table.

  “Hello,” he said brightly, nodding to Jetsun and Marianne in turn. “Are you new to Golmud? I can see that you are.”

  “We’re traveling to Shaanxi,” Marianne said. “Looking for work.”

  “Oh, you’re not staying in the Tsaidam?” Despite his persistent smile, he seemed disappointed. “That’s too bad. This is such a pleasant place. Really, who could ask for better?”

  “Is there work here?” Jetsun inquired politely.

  “Oh no, not lately, very little—not unless you work for the Labs. But still, it’s really very wonderful. This is the land of bliss—our paradise on earth. I love the Labs, don’t you? They really have improved our lot greatly.”

  “I can see that,” Marianne said. “Everyone we’ve met seems quite happy.”

  “Oh, we are happy indeed. Happy to be alive, happy to live in the Tsaidam, to be part of the great experiment. We are the happiest people on the face of the earth, that’s certain. And it’s all because we’re lucky enough to live so near the Labs. You know, if you settled down in Golmud you could be part of the great experiment, too. You’d get a daily ration like the rest of us.” He licked his lips with a tongue that Marianne thought looked oddly dark and swollen. “Yum-yum!”

  She experienced a shiver, thinking of the black-tongued demons of myth. This young man smiled nicely yet his manner was frightening. He seemed somehow out of control.

  “I don’t think we’ll be staying,” she said, “though it’s very nice of you to invite us.”

  “That makes me very sad,” he said, although he looked happier than ever. “You know, I’ll bet I could get you to change your minds about staying here. I’ll bet that I could do it in less time than it takes you to finish that cup of tea.”

  Jetsun quickly drained his cup. She knew that he mistrusted this man as much as she did.

  “You see,” said the young man, leaning closer, “I still have most of my daily ration left. I only take a few drops at a time, to make it last. I would be more than willing to let each of you have a sip. Just a small sip, that’s all you’d need. I’m sure you’ll be persuaded how wonderful it is to live here. You won’t want to go anywhere else once you’ve tasted it.”

  Marianne asked, “What is it, exactly?”

  He reached into an inner pocket of his coat. “How can I explain? You must taste for yourself. Please!”

  He set a small opalescent bulb on the table before her. It was shaped like a teardrop with a cap on the tapered tip, and it was about half full of some liquid thick as honey. The young man uncapped the vessel and held it toward her. She caught a scent sweet as sugared roses and her mouth began to water. Her hand shot up to accept the soft bulb.

  “Drink,” he said. “Only a little.”

  “Sonam,” Jetsun said, catching her arm.

  The bulb was tipped to her lips when she heard the voice of the innkeeper: “My goodness, what are you doing?”

  The innkeeper came rushing through the back door, laughing wildly, followed by Gyan Phala. Marianne vaguely realized that she was putting a great deal of her strength into the attempt to drink, while Jetsun was straining to wrestle her hand away from her face.

  “You don’t want to do that,” the innkeeper said, laughing and snatching the bulb from her fingers and replacing the cap. She sniffed after the sweet scent but it had already faded. Jetsun released her arm and she sat in a stupor for a moment, wondering what had happened.

  The innkeeper turned to the young man and handed the bulb back to him.

  “Now you don’t want to go wasting your ration,” he scolded satirically. “You know what a sad sight you’ll be this evening if you go giving away your nectar like that.”

  The young man chuckled. “I hadn’t thought of that. I just wanted them to be happy.”

  “I’m sure we can get nectar for them if they want it, but there’s no reason for you to give yours away. Although it was certainly a generous thing for you to do,” he hastened to add. “An act worthy of a bodhisattva.”

  The young man laughed. “We must extend help to all sentient beings, mustn’t we?”

  “Quite true. But never forget that you are also such a one and hence must care for yourself as well.”

  The young man rose and bowed to Marianne and Jetsun. “I hope that you will soon enter the realm of bliss. Good day.”

  “Thank you,” Marianne said, returning to her senses. She felt an odd sense of gratitude to the young man, although his attempt to convert her had been frustrated.

  Jetsun Dorje whispered, “What got into you? You fought me like a demon.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. One whiff of that nectar and . . .” She could feel her eyes widen as the blood rushed from her face. “The nectar!”

  “I know it,” he said. “But hide your astonishment. Laugh if you can. That’s the only thing that won’t seem suspicious around here.”

  The innkeeper came up behind them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Loudly he said, “Gyan Phala tells me you’ll be needing rooms for the night. Why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll get you settled in?”

  Gyan leaned close to Marianne and said, “He’ll take care of you till I return. He’s not as crazy as he sounds—you’ll see. Follow his advice.”

  “You lucky girl,” the innkeeper said to Gyan. “If you only knew what most of us would give to be invited into the Laboratories.”

  “I can imagine,” she said.

  When she was gone and the hovertruck had hissed away on the road out of town, the innkeeper rubbed his hands together and said to Jetsun and Marianne, “Care to come up?”

  He took them to a room overlooking the square; it was cold despite the sunlight that came slanting in. It contained two beds.

  “Will one room suit the three of you?”

  “Why not?” said Marianne. “We’ve been sharing the same seat for days now.”

  “I can bring in a third mattress.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

  The innkeeper laughed then leaned out into the hall. He came back in looking somewhat subdued and shut the door. His face was serious, even grave.

  “I can’t say how glad I am to see you,” he said, dropping his merriment and revealing a great weariness underneath. He sat down on one of the beds, shaking his head. “I get so sick of laughter.”

  “You don’t drink that nectar, do you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I never have and I never will if I can help it. I’ll not be an addict like the rest of these poor fools. It happened so quickly. The first rations were distributed before anyone knew what to expect. We didn’t learn about the experiment until somewhat later, when it was much too late. I was sick the day they came around with the first batch; I certainly didn’t feel like drinking anything unusual. But now I’m the only one who isn’t sick.”

  “It comes from Golmud Laboratories?”

  He nodded. “Yes, but you won’t see the Lab workers smiling like the rest of us idiots. When I noticed that, I became really afraid. The people at the Lab all know better than to drink the stuff.”
>
  “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “About a month ago. It’s nearly driven me crazy; I find it almost impossible to function at times. Of course, if I drank some nectar myself, I wouldn’t care so much what happened. I’d think I was doing all that needed to be done. I’d feel like a regular bodhisattva. But from what I’ve seen, this nectar hasn’t brought enlightenment or liberation to anyone. It’s brought nothing but insanity. They call it the nectar of bliss, as if the gods had dispensed it. But there are no gods working in Golmud Labs; of that, I’m certain.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Marianne. “The nectar might well have come from Chenrezi—but long ago and in quite a different form.”

  The innkeeper looked shocked. “Chenrezi would never visit such a curse on us!”

  “Perhaps it was a blessing until Golmud Labs twisted it into a curse.”

  “But why has it appeared now?” Jetsun said. “The nectar was hidden away for ages, and the lotus was in the mountains for just as long. Why does this laboratory dispense the nectar only now? How did the agents come to the blossom just as we chanced upon it?”

  Marianne thought of Mr. Fang’s warning that there were enemies in China or Tibet who suspected her mission. Perhaps they knew more than Mr. Fang guessed. She regretted that Dhondub Ling was such a perfect nomad, with a nomad’s thorough distrust of cities. Wide as his net was flung, it had missed picking up important events developing in more populous parts of Tibet.

  “I don’t know, Jetsun,” she finally replied. “But I don’t think any of this is coincidental.” She looked up at the innkeeper, who had listened to their last words with interest but without understanding. “Did Gyan Phala tell you anything of why we’ve come here?”

  “She said that you were warriors, that you had come to seek Tibet’s independence. I fear you won’t find it here. The people of the Tsaidam have lost what little freedom they had. But if there is any way to free them again, rest assured that I will give you all the help I can. We’ve been cut off from the rest of the world—and even from ourselves. You don’t know what I would give to see someone cry, to hear a sour word about my cooking. Speaking of which, I forgot the mapa! You must be starving.”

  Jetsun laughed wearily. “That’s hardly the word for it after two days of living on stale bread and hard cheese.”

  “It’s hot, with lots of fresh butter. You two relax for now. I’ll bring it right up.”

  The innkeeper rushed out of the room. Marianne walked to the window and looked out over the square. A mangy brown dog with a curly tail loped across the street, passing a smiling man. As he leaned to pet the cur it rounded on him with a snap and a snarl, the first display of honest hostility that she had seen in the Tsaidam basin. She found it only slightly reassuring.

  * * *

  After devouring two bowls of mapa, the buttered barley flour, Marianne and Jetsun lay down with their arms around each other. A sunbeam fell across one end of the bed, warming her feet while the mapa warmed her insides. Although the bed was hard and lumpy, it seemed luxurious

  simply because it didn’t continually jolt and jump beneath her like the seat in Gyan Phala’s truck.

  She expected to doze off immediately, and in fact Jetsun was soon snoring. But sleep did not come for her. The sunbeam traveled up her legs, approaching her face, and as it traveled she found her thoughts drifting down an ever darker path.

  The coincidences that Jetsun had pointed out began to seem completely improbable. She was convinced that the three-eyed men could not have found that tiny valley in the Kunlun without some recourse to information that only Marianne and the nomads should have known. And the only way such information could have reached the assassins was by way of a spy or spies among the nomads.

  A spy in the cavern of Chenrezi could have copied the mandala map years ago. She had no idea how many Tibetans might have seen the map over the ages. But to have learned the lotus’s whereabouts with such precision, they would have had to hear the Voice of the Lotus speaking through Marianne; and only once had she named that location in front of others.

  Was there a spy in Dhondub’s camp, perhaps in his very family?

  She wished that her reasoning would encounter a wall at this point, a dead end that could cut her worries mercifully short. Unfortunately, her fears turned the key in a hitherto unseen lock, and now a series of doors began to open ahead of her. She hated to pass through them but she could not stop her mind from moving forward.

  A spy must have dispatched the assassin who murdered Tashi Drogon. Only a spy could have signaled the moment to strike—the precise moment when the Bardo device was complete and Tashi could be dispensed with.

  That spy must have been very close to Tashi Drogon to have selected the moment so carefully.

  Very close indeed.

  Unwillingly, she remembered the face of Reting Norbu as she had last seen him. It was an image that she had resisted recalling ever since she’d lain down with Jetsun. Her hands went cold, as though drained of blood; the sunbeam shone directly on her fingers, but they felt like ice all the same.

  A spy in Tashi’s presence. His closest friend.

  A spy in Dhondub’s camp. A trusted emissary.

  “No,” she murmured.

  He was her oldest friend, her mentor. Dr. Norbu had guided and cultivated her all through her life; he seemed like a part of herself. She could not doubt him; she would not do it!

  How ill he had been in Dhondub’s tent. The fever had taken hold of him, had weakened and turned him pale. But what if . . . what if he had grown sick not from some unnamed germ, but because of his own betrayal? What if he had trained her from a child, merely because she would serve as the greatest weapon that could be used against Tibet? After all those years, no matter his intentions, no matter his ulterior motives, mightn’t he have genuinely come to love her like a daughter? And then, upon bringing her into Tibet for the ultimate betrayal of his country, mightn’t his body turn against him, striking him down with illness to keep him from further treachery?

  Could he have contrived somehow to send explicit instructions to someone in the Tsaidam basin?

  Who would suspect him?

  Who would ever suspect Reting Norbu?

  No, she told herself again,

  I know him better than anyone, she thought. I know that Reting is to be trusted utterly. Utterly!

  And unbidden into her thoughts came her yidam, Rainbow Tara,

  “I know it pains you, Marianne, for all the evidence is in your mind; it’s circumstantial. You cannot prove a thing against him, nor can you truly defend him. You will have to wait and see. Meanwhile, follow the safest course. Put your trust in no one but yourself.”

  The sunbeam had almost reached her face. She opened her eyes and watched Jetsun sleeping peacefully next to her. She recalled the sensation of his phallus sliding into her. Tears started from her eyes.

  “No one?” she whispered.

  She searched for Tara but her yidam was gone. All that remained was a trace of the flame burning deep in her belly, white and hot and true.

  * * *

  The room was so quiet and still, so much more peaceful than the hovertruck’s cabin, that they both slept past sunset. What finally aroused Marianne was the sound of laughter echoing in the square below. Such sounds had been often in her dreams, matched with ominous images, but none had frightened her quite as much as this laughter from the waking world.

  She threw herself out of bed and gained the window before she was fully awake. In a heightened state that felt much like dreaming, she searched the dark square until she discerned the huge shadow of the hovertruck, returned from Golmud Labs.

  Beside the truck, laughing as she stumbled toward the inn, was Gyan Phala.

  Gyan stopped at the door, threw back her head, and howled up at the window where Marianne stood. Then she bent over, gasping for air, choking on her laughter.

  “Jetsun,” Marianne said. “Wake up!”

  T
he door to the inn opened wide and the keeper rushed out into the courtyard. He took Gyan by the shoulders but she pushed him back into the inn.

  “It’s too late!” she cried, filling the square with her voice. “I drank—drank deep! They made me do it, Sonam Gampo! They forced it down my throat! I had to be made trustworthy, after all. I’ll be carrying tons of the stuff across Tibet!”

  Gyan Phala hesitated, trying to catch her breath. Taking a step backward, she caught sight of Marianne in the window above. Jetsun had just reached her side,

  “There you are,” she said. “There!”

  Gyan glanced back at the dark side of the square while pointing up at Marianne.

  “I thought you’d want to get into the Labs,” she said. “You should see what they’re up to in there. Well, now you will—now you will!”

  Shapes moved into the square: silent cars with headlamps extinguished. Suddenly a glaring spotlight caught Marianne and Jetsun in the window. They threw themselves down to the floor, hearing Gyan Phala’s laughter growing still louder.

  “I told them where you were,” she called. “I told them who you were! I’m sorry, Gyayum Chenmo. I only wanted to help.”

  Jetsun threw open the door and they bolted into the hall. At the top of the stairs, the innkeeper stood furiously kneading his hands,

  “Is there another way out?” Jetsun asked.

  “Quickly,” said the innkeeper, rushing ahead of them down the stairs.

  As they ran through the kitchen, Marianne heard footsteps in the dining room. The innkeeper opened a door into darkness and they rushed out under the stars. He pointed at the deepest black shadows directly ahead of them.

  “There’s the ravine,” he said.“Go uphill and it will take you out of Golmud, into the mountains.”

  “Thank you,” Marianne said. She caught Jetsun’s hand and they hurried forward, blindly searching for the edge of the ravine. She had just put her foot on the steep slope when she heard a noise in the pit.