Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  Almost immediately she found herself flying along the edge of a precipice. The old truck sped away below, passing Jetsun and leaving them in silence. She looked out through the darkening air onto a long, broad valley; in the shadows far below she saw a glint of gold.

  The Potala has golden roofs, she thought. Could that be it?

  She had to pay strict attention to the winding road; she couldn’t distract herself with sightseeing. As the sun set, the golden flames dimmed and then vanished. The evening sky was reflected for a bit longer in the ribbon of the Kyichu river. She had frequent glimpses of the city below but no fine details emerged until she had descended a thousand feet. Then she saw the gray shapes of buildings, bare plazas, headlights drifting along the outer roads of the city. Soon she was so low that the shapes of buildings began to blend with the mountains rising on the far side of the valley.

  Lhasa, for a time, had been Tibet’s one cosmopolitan city. Signs of its former affluence were still apparent on the outskirts of the city. Several tall modern hotels, once world-class, now appeared dark and dangerous with broken windows; trails of smoke drifted from the rooftops. A few souls gawked at them from the roadside as they sped toward the city. They passed other bicyclists, though none rode cycles as sophisticated as their own. Changchup’s clan had built a fleet of the sailing bikes, basing them on stolen plans downloaded from a French industrial satellite.

  Marianne sought out the Potala again, but with the sun gone there was no golden gleam to betray it. It should have towered above the city, its white walls rising like the steep slopes of a hand-carved mountain, a fortress. She thought she saw something that might have been the Potala—a gray hulk looming like a battleship over the city—but it looked so drab and mistreated that she could not believe it was the former residence of the Dalai Lamas.

  Lhasa had been the site of much rioting during the early years of the Chinese civil war, by which time all foreign tourists had been sent home or turned away at Tibet’s borders. Consequently there had been no one but native Tibetans to protest when the holy Potala—originally modeled after the legendary cloud-palace of Chenrezi—had been converted to a prison for holding activists and prisoners of conscience. In any case, for decades prior to this final indignity the palace had been mainly a department store selling replicas of Tibetan relics at astronomical prices.

  Briefly a searchlight lanced out from the ramparts of the monstrous structure Marianne feared might be the new Potala. As it swept through the hidden depths of the city, she felt a wave of revulsion and sadness.

  It was the Potala, but seen from behind. Once a citadel for the god-kings, now it was a prison for political offenders.

  She remembered Chenrezi saying that the signs of doom were on the land. At the point where heaven met earth, the new keepers of the holy city had committed an elaborate and deliberate blasphemy, imprisoning Tibetans in the very building that symbolized their national religion. It seemed as if there were nothing left in Lhasa worth protecting, nothing the government feared to lose, no defilement that wouldn’t suit their ends.

  She had to remind herself not to judge the Chinese too harshly. They, too, were motivated by the inevitable pressures of history and geography. There was goodness in each of them, just as there was evil in herself. Liberation must reach all humanity, not a chosen few. Enemies—as the Last Dalai Lama had remarked—taught patience.

  She waited to be stopped at a checkpoint. Instead, the city lay wide open, completely vulnerable. It engulfed them. That was when she knew that nothing the Chinese considered worth protecting remained in Lhasa.

  Jetsun signaled to her a few minutes later. They braked and extricated themselves from the sailing bikes. The streets were too dark and crowded to permit easy passage. Marianne was anxious to hear his voice. She felt that she could not absorb all the impressions Lhasa offered without his support and companionship.

  It was unnerving to be surrounded by people after weeks in the wilds and wastes of Tibet. The streets were as crowded as any she had walked in India. A familiar claustrophobia took hold of her.

  A searchlight passed over the avenue, briefly glaring on the faces of the Lhasans. She looked up and saw that it was the same beam she had noted before. She could no longer see the Potala. The light seemed to hang by itself against the dark silhouette of the southern mountains. Above that jagged natural wall the stars were burning, but they seemed to cast no light on the city.

  “It’s around here somewhere,” Jetsun said. “The street we want.”

  “Do you need the map?”

  “I memorized it. Can you read that sign?”

  There was a post at the side of the street, bearing a dark sign. She drew a flashlight and aimed it at the plaque.

  “Avenue of the People’s Bliss,” she read.

  “That’s it.”

  “I had imagined something different.”

  They peered together down the avenue. Bodies jostled in the darkness, but there was no evidence of their bliss. A few lights filtered through lattice windows, offering faint illumination. As they advanced she discovered that the walls of the narrow alley were lined with people huddled over tiny fires or curled up in rags, sleeping with their eyes half open. The street smelled of filth, sewage, and sickness. Had the climate been warmer, it would have been as bad as anything in India. She gagged several times, trying not to question the muck that clung to her shoes.

  They had gone a short distance when Jetsun stopped to ask directions of an old man. He seemed too weak to answer with words, but he feebly swung his tin prayer wheel at the wall across the street.

  Marianne found a door in the wall. She knocked on it and discovered that it was solid wood. She was surprised it hadn’t been burned for fuel long since. Certain that her knocking had not been heard, she raised her fist to strike again.

  The door opened.

  “We’ve nothing else to spare,” said a woman in the doorway, gently. “I am sorry. . . .”

  “Pema!” Marianne said.

  Pema threw open the door and spread her arms, shrieking with delight. As she embraced Marianne, the doorway filled with shapes and shadows. She stumbled in, seeing the faces of her old friends, the nomads. She whirled around to see if Jetsun needed help with the cycles;

  he had pushed one through the door and a nomad boy was helping him with the other. Still clinging to Pema, she looked around for Dhondub Ling and Reting Norbu. They were nowhere to be seen.

  There was hardly time to ask after them. The single room was crowded and everyone in it had questions for her. She reached out for Jetsun’s hand, felt his warm squeeze in return. He slipped an arm around her as Pema cleared a path for them and fluffed several cushions near the stove in the center of the room.

  “Sit, sit! You must be exhausted.”

  They dropped gratefully to the floor, taking cups of tea and bowls of warm, moist tsampa.

  “I’m sorry there’s nothing more to offer you,” Pema said. “It’s been hard to find anything to eat in the city. We’re cut off from our supplies. Dhondub has been trying to arrange—”

  “What have I been doing?” asked a gruff voice from behind Marianne. She turned to the door through which they had just come, then jumped to her feet. Dhondub stood there grinning. Behind him, hurrying into the room, came Reting Norbu. The doctor beat Dhondub to her embrace.

  “Ah, Reting,” she said. “Have you been well? You look better than the last time I saw you.”

  “Physically, I am in great health; the nomadic life suited me, I suppose. But mentally, things are not so good. The city is in a sad state.”

  She released him for a moment in order to hug Dhondub.

  “Your journey went well?” he asked.

  “From the Changthang to Lhasa was the easiest leg of the trip.”

  “My brother said he’d seen you safely off.”

  “You’ve talked to him?” asked Jetsun. “What of the ornaments?”

  “They’re on their way to Chenrezi even now
,” Dhondub replied. “Four out of five. We’ve had a great success. Only the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel remains, but I’m confident it is somewhere nearby. It’s just as well Mr. Fang brought us here, though I would rather have taken my chance on the plains if it came to that.”

  “I don't think you would have fared too well,” said another voice. “Not so near the Mines of Joy.”

  Marianne looked past Dhondub and saw this last speaker shutting the door behind him. He turned and bowed to her, smiling. “Gyayum Chenmo.”

  “Mr. Fang! You’re here in Lhasa, too?”

  “I would never send a friend anywhere I’m not willing to go myself. Besides, this is my home. I have a remarkable amount of freedom here. It’s the least secure spot in all Tibet, the only place where I can safely mix with the natives without arousing the least bit of suspicion.”

  “But why the relocation?” she asked.

  Mr. Fang shook his head gloomily. “It was forced upon us. The rioting in the Mines of Joy did not die down. The embers of discontent smouldered for many days. As soon as things seemed calm again and the soldiers had begun to retreat, the rebellion started up in earnest. Tibetans seized a military encampment, taking a number of copters and prime stores of munitions. They began to bomb the Mines. The government authorized complete withdrawal from the city, followed by neutron demolition. I don’t know how many tens or hundreds of thousands died there. I did what I could to evacuate those around the city, though I was helpless to assist anyone still inside. Since I feared that the slaughter might spread in the aftermath, I came looking for you and discovered that you had already gone on. So I did what I could to save your friends.”

  “He was right enough to do it,” Dhondub admitted. “The soldiers have been hunting on the plains, I hear.”

  “Hunting what?” Marianne asked, puzzled.

  Reting Norbu took her arm gently. “Niche-runners, my dear. And those nomads who didn’t join the airlift.”

  Jetsun’s face was livid with rage. “Why don’t they nuke the Tibetan plateau and be efficient about it? It’s the same old campaign: pure genocide. The Chinese won’t be satisfied until there’s not a single racial Tibetan left on this plateau. And then they’ll sing of how they gloriously defeated the demons of internal dissent, of how they ‘liberated’ the downtrodden Tibetans.”

  Pema touched him lightly on the hand. “You cannot blame all the Chinese people for the policies of their government. The power, as always, has devolved into the hands of a few. The new guard has become the old guard, just as the liberal experiment became a conservative prison. But the Chinese people are as trapped as the Tibetans by these events. And the Tibetans are not themselves free of stain. . . .”

  Dhondub growled. “Rato is drenched in the blood of his countrymen.”

  “Governor Rato?” asked Marianne. “I have heard strange things about him recently.”

  “He is one full-blood Tibetan who doesn’t deserve the name, let alone the ancestry. Unless you consider him a descendant of those squabbling petty officials who let Tibet fall into Chinese hands two hundred years ago because they were more concerned with their own precious egos than with the fate of our nation.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can’t undo some of the harm they did,” Marianne offered. “We’re here to find the fifth ornament, aren’t we? When the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel is in our hands—or in Chenrezi’s hands rather—who knows what might be possible?”

  “You’re not ready to start looking already?” asked Pema with motherly concern.

  “Not tonight,” Marianne assured her. “But tomorrow I hope we can learn our way around Lhasa and begin to ask the right questions.”

  * * *

  Marianne hardly slept that night. The streets were full of noise that only increased at dawn. At first light she rose and went out alone to explore the neighborhood. She borrowed an old bicycle, not wishing to display the sailing bikes in the busy streets. There was little reason for anyone—Chinese or Tibetan—to look at her twice. And that was the way she wanted it.

  Her initial impression that Lhasa had lapsed far past its glory and now lay mired in its own decay, proved all too valid in the light of day. The clear blue Tibetan sky was blurred by smoke and smog that had become trapped in the Kyichu valley. The wind rose to blow some of it away, but most of the pollution merely swirled overhead like ashes rising from a heap only to sift down again nearby. She went to the main street by which they had entered the city; it at least was paved. Following the flow of traffic toward the center of the town, she looked up and saw the immense gray bulk of the Potala slowly lumbering into view.

  The old palace had been covered in layers of dark gray paint, a shade that blotted out all the glorious memories she had gleaned from photographs. Once it had been gleaming white, with gold-trimmed rooftops, golden spires, and a few sections left a vivid earthen red in color. As she came around the front of the palace, she saw broad staircases zigzagging up its face, leading toward either wing of the broad building. Hundreds of windows swallowed the sunlight in the heights of the facade. She thought she saw the dull black lines of iron bars in those vacant rectangles. She was surprised to see, gleaming like golden coins along the rooftops, a few stylized Dharma wheels, themselves imprisoned behind snarls of barbed wire. The jailers must have left these in place to torment their captives. The Tibetans had never relinquished Buddhism, and to the Communist authorities they must have seemed like prisoners of religion; thus they desecrated the ancient faith and mocked all those who followed it.

  Approaching the Potala she found that the foot of the structure was surrounded by a sculpted plaza, once lovely perhaps, now scarred and burned. It looked as if a battle had been fought here. Beyond the plaza, the streets of Lhasa continued; but these were nothing like the narrow, congested, twisting avenues through which she had just passed. These were so straight that she could see for miles down their lengths—not that there was much to see. Here were white walls like those that had once graced the Potala, flanking featureless corridors broken only by tall metal gates. Cameras and gun emplacements topped the stainless barriers. A few signs swung in the wind along those streets, marking the location of an occasional store or warehouse.

  This was Reformed Lhasa, she realized: the Chinese compound. It looked self-contained, unbreachable, its walls whitewashed daily while the rest of Lhasa fell below the reach of whatever meager aid the authorities extended. She had not thought much of the ruinous condition of the rest of the city—Old Lhasa—until she saw these sterile avenues. She had seen enough poverty and sickness in India to know that it was anything but rare; but what sort of

  contamination did the Chinese fear, that they erected and lived behind such walls? The Communists held their wealth to their chests, they walled themselves within it. Despite their worthy principles of social equality, they had let the majority of the people—the people who lived and belonged here—go to hell.

  Or to prison, which might be only marginally worse.

  Standing there on the middle ground between two worlds, as if in a pocket of time, Marianne felt incredibly ancient. And weary.

  She felt her predicament with an intensity she had never experienced before. It was as if she had lost all hope, surrendered completely to the course of nature; and having done so had found something solid to take hold of beyond the gauzy allure of her ideals.

  This was why she had come to Lhasa, wasn’t it? These were the walls she was meant to scale, if not tear down. If she were to give birth to a revolution, then here was where it should be conceived.

  Tashi Drogon’s memories floated just beneath the surface of her thoughts. Neither she nor Tashi had ever seen Lhasa, but both of them had dreamed of it, studied photographs, fantasized. She was surprised by how closely Tashi’s fantasies had resembled her own; perhaps the imagination was one thing that passed intact from life to life.

  But now that she saw the real Lhasa—Lhasa as it had become—she felt an overwhelming, sad bitterness at how far
short of her dreams this vision fell.

  Within moments she could no longer remember how she had once envisioned Lhasa. All her fancies died in the face of this reality.

  She gazed up at the Potala, thinking of the days when it had been full of monks and attendants of the Dalai Lama; when enormous banners had hung from the high windows on festival days, emblazoned with vast images of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, while the streets were full of dancing, masked figures, and the growl of bone trumpets. At night, crowds had moved down the avenues with lanterns softening the shadows. Idols sculpted of dough and lacquered with colored butter would be arranged in the city squares for all to admire.

  But then military staff-cars had arrived. The names of the streets had been changed. And the bloodshed had begun.

  All histories of the last two hundred years had been chronicles of uprisings and suppressions, with interludes of deceptive tranquillity when only the Tibetans themselves knew the extent of turmoil throughout the land. The nation’s troubles were mirrored in miniature and concentrated here in Lhasa. When the recent civil wars had raged on the Chinese mainland, many Tibetans had seen it as their chance to oust the Chinese from the land of the snows. But with an almost casual series of backhanded blows—like that which had converted the Potala to a prison in the clouds—the Tibetans had been kept at bay until the Chinese could summon the forces and attention to deal with them directly. And then they had been dealt with harshly indeed.

  Marianne saw a row of kiosks at one end of the plaza, where mendicants dozed in the morning sun while curly-tailed stray dogs nosed among them. Public video monitors perched atop the columns, though most had been shattered and the few intact screens were dark. Her attention was drawn by several flapping white announcements tacked to the pillars. She drew closer and saw that they were inscribed in both Chinese and Tibetan script. Most official proclamations were given strictly in Chinese, for the native language had been declared reactionary and would no doubt soon be outlawed. But in this case, the officials had swallowed their pride in order to send a message to as many Tibetans as possible.