Girl Spins a Blade

by Jacques Antoine

  “We shall hire a taxi,” Rinpoche said.

  “But you don’t carry money, Rinpoche,” said Nawang. “And I have none.”

  “I have money,” Emily said, now resigned to bringing the Tulku to a meeting whose unknown dangers she would prefer to face by herself. “Let’s go.”

  Taxis were scarce in the early evening in Swayambhu, but Nawang spotted a tiny green Maruti a block away. By the time Rinpoche and Emily caught up, she could see it was too small for all three of them, especially if they meant to bring Sonam back in the same car.

  The sight of an ancient monk approaching his taxi made the driver shudder. He jumped out, pressed his hands together and bowed to Rinpoche, the whole time apparently trying to tell him not to get in. The old man waved him off and squeezed himself into the back, while Nawang gave him a destination. Emily understood nothing of what was said, except “eight hundred rupees.”

  “Who are we going to see, Nawang?” she asked.

  “The Manangé. They’re the one’s who took Sonam away. Dangerous people, Michi-didi. I should come to make sure nothing happens to Rinpoche-la.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll see to that. Is it far?”

  “Twenty minutes,” the driver interjected.

  Emily smiled at that estimate. She learned on her first day in Kathmandu that everything was always twenty minutes away. She turned to the driver.

  “Eight hundred rupees. But you wait there. Another thousand rupees to bring us back.”

  He grinned and nodded as she climbed into the back seat with Rinpoche. The vinyl upholstery was shredded and repaired here and there with what looked like denim iron-on patches. As if to balance out the aesthetics of the interior, the side and rear windows were festooned with lace and images of the Buddha.

  “Who are the Manangé?” she asked, as they pulled away from the curb.

  “Tibetans,” the driver called out from the front.

  “They are Tamang or Gurung people,” Rinpoche corrected him for her benefit. “They came to Lhasa from Burma several generations ago. When the Chinese came, they moved south. Manangé is their language. There are very few of them left.”

  Emily could see by the fading light of the evening that they were entering a scrubbier, less developed part of the Kathmandu valley. Gone were the elegant temples with their high-flying stupas. No more of the colorful, almost whimsical ornamentation on the side of every building. The shacks and shanties she saw passing by offered nothing to celebrate in the lives of the people who lived there.

  “The Tibetan gangs are all working for the Chinese,” the driver barked over his shoulder as if he were a welcome part of their conversation. “Before the end of the monarchy, the Maoists recruited young men from those gangs. Now all the political parties pay them to cause trouble.”

  “Ignore him,” Rinpoche said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  “What makes you say that?” Emily asked.

  “The Manangé aren’t Tibetan, and they hate the Chinese.”

  The car bucketed in and out of potholes, swerved around the largest ones, stopped occasionally for livestock wandering in the street, until some forty or so minutes later, the driver pulled to a stop and announced their arrival. It took a moment for Rinpoche to extricate himself from the back seat. Emily handed the driver three hundred rupees.

  “Wait here,” she said.

  The driver looked at the bills in his hand and leaned his head out the window to protest. Emily froze him with a stern look and he sat back with a scowl. It wasn’t hard to see the reason for his irritation. Even in the semi-darkness, the neighborhood appeared less than welcoming. Bored young men huddled in a doorway on one side of the street where several buildings leaned against each other for support. Resentful women peered out of doorways and windows. A sturdy, squat cinder block building on the corner seemed to offer the adjacent, rickety architecture an anchor to the sidewalk. A sign on the front gave the impression it might be a shop, though Emily could read none of the characters. Limited experience suggested that whatever these people needed to get through the day could likely be found in there.

  Crude wooden fencing on the other side of the street hinted at an empty lot, or perhaps some low buildings too decrepit to provide steady shelter.

  “They must be in there,” Rinpoche said, pointing to the fence.

  Emily was unconvinced, though she had no better idea where to begin looking for the boy. On the off chance he might hear, she called his name over the fence. The air hung still and silent. She called again, louder. Still no response.

  “Sonam,” she cried out once more.

  Muffled noises and the sound of running feet echoed from behind the fence. A door slammed.

  “Wait here by the car, Rinpoche,” she said.

  No gate or entrance, not even a missing plank was visible in the fence. Between a couple of boards a few feet away, a slight gap and a few protruding nails caught her eye. A ragged edge skinned her knuckle as she tore one of the boards away. Two more came away more easily now that the gap was wide. She stepped through. Several small buildings lay scattered around the yard, as well as a couple of small trucks. In the dim light, she could make out a few figures in the distance, standing in front of the largest of the buildings, a low lying brick and wood structure with no windows on the side facing her. Light escaped through a few cracks in the siding on one edge.

  As she walked toward the men, she heard footsteps behind her. When she turned, Rinpoche looked up at her and said, “We will go together, Michi-chhori.” She reached back to help him over some debris in the yard.

  “What a pair we make,” she thought. “A wizened old man and a foreign girl who doesn’t even speak the language. I’m sure they’ll be impressed.”

  At first, the men at the door to the shack looked like they wanted to shoo them away. But a closer look at the old man seemed to bring a change of heart. They bowed, hands pressed together, and said something to him she didn’t understand. The only word she caught in his reply was “Sonam.” They grunted and ushered Rinpoche in through a rough-hewn wooden door. When she moved to follow, the men stepped across to block her, but the expression in her eyes startled them, and they let her push through to the door.

  A dozen or so faces looked up at her from around the sparsely furnished room. A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling provided the only light. They were mainly young men, sallow skin still smooth, probably teenagers like her. She detected no authority in their eyes, nothing to indicate aggression either, just the usual adolescent mixture of fear and confidence—and no sign of Sonam anywhere.

  Sitting around a makeshift table off to one side, three older men, possibly in their thirties, paid her no mind. Rinpoche spoke a few words to them, but they dismissed him with a wave. Emily cleared her throat to get their attention. In their eyes she saw what she was looking for, the disdain that usually accompanies leadership in a criminal gang.

  “I’m here for Sonam,” she said. “Where is he?”

  “He is not your concern,” one of them finally snarled in heavily accented English, after an uncomfortable silence.

  “Sonam is coming with me.”

  Something in her voice, her firmness perhaps, or the intensity of her passion, seemed to catch their attention. The one whose demeanor most commanded deference from the rest stood to face her.

  “What is the boy to you?” he asked.

  “You should ask him that.”

  “I am Deepak. What is your name?”

  “Tenno Michiko,” Emily replied.

  “Just because you are Mongol does not make you Manangé. Sonam is one of us. His father was my friend. His son belongs to us.”

  A door across the room opened and a young woman entered holding a groggy Sonam by the hand. He must have been napping. In a single glance, Emily took in the resemblance, the same sallow, oval face and curly black hair, the same brown almond eyes. Sonam was unmistakably one of them. No wonder they want him. The thought flashed across her
mind that he might really be better off with his own people.

  With a glance at Rinpoche, Emily wondered what she could say that would move them. The old man nodded to her meaningfully.

  “His mother left him with Rinpoche,” she said. “She wanted a different life for her son.”

  “What a Sherpa girl might have wanted means nothing to us. The boy is Manangé. He will stay with us.”

  Sonam shook off the last shreds of sleep and recognized her.

  “Michi-didi,” he cried out, and ran to her.

  Emily bent down and scooped the boy up in her arms. He rubbed his cheek against hers.

  “I’m here for you, Sonam,” she whispered.

  “Are we going home now?”

  “If that’s what you want,” Emily replied, staring intently at Deepak. “I will honor his mother’s wishes,” she said.

  “Are you going to protect him?” Deepak asked. “Do you even know who the boys who bully him at school are?”

  She shook her head.

  “They are the little brothers of the gangsters who killed his father, Tibetans and Sherpas. The monks didn’t tell you that, did they?”

  Emily turned a searching glance on Rinpoche.

  “It makes no difference, Michi-chhori,” he said. “His mother brought him to us.”

  “They will never leave him alone,” Deepak said. “And when he’s old enough, they’ll kill him. He is safe with us.”

  Sonam’s little arms clung tightly around her neck. She felt his chest heave with a sob. Somehow she had become the arbiter of his fate, and the puzzle of what to do with him was fast becoming insoluble. Only one place offered her any promise of clarity.

  Emily closed her eyes and listened to the air enter her chest and then slowly seep out. In and out, slowly at first, and then even slower, her breath pressed outward against the walls of the room, and then found its way back to her. She heard the breathing of the others, all of them, some frantic, anxious, worried, one resolute: Deepak. Rinpoche’s chest hardly moved at all, as if he were barely even there. Only one chest really mattered, the one pressed against hers.

  Sonam’s breathing was hectic at first, then gradually calmer until it found the rhythm of her own. She could feel his heart beating against hers, almost hear the blood sloshing in his veins. The warmth of an innocent heart flooded her body. In that moment, she saw what she must do.

  “I am here for Sonam. We will honor his mother’s wishes.”

  “And if the Sherpas take him?”

  “Then I will get him back.”

  “And after you leave, what then?”

  “After I go, that duty falls to you, I suppose. But the boy will stay at the monastery.”

  Deepak stepped forward and stared closely into Emily’s black eyes, thinking perhaps to test the extent of her resolve. What would he find there? Perhaps the same darkness everyone before him had seen, almost palpable, so placid, so clear, and yet at the very bottom so turbulent, a storm of sublime immensity. He stepped back, blinked once or twice, and nodded his acquiescence.

  “As you wish, Tenno Michiko. But we will be watching.”

  Emily turned toward the door and led her little party back out to the taxi on the other side of the fence.

  Back to top

  Chapter 5: Yesh and the Mongol Girl

  “Have you come to a decision, chhori?” Mrs. Kansakar inquired innocently over breakfast.

  Steam from a large pot on the stove filled the kitchen with the smell of curry. Emily had made breakfast all week, but this morning, at least, she saw no raised eyebrow. She’d also heard of no further incidents at Sonam’s school. The bullies seemed to have lost interest in him, and perhaps the Sherpa gang had, too. Other than Mrs. Ranjeet trying to fix her up with a grandson named Yesh Malla, no other dangers appeared on the horizon.

  “I’m supposed to report in Annapolis at the end of next week,” Emily replied.

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I think it may be for the best.”

  Mrs. Kansakar clicked her tongue and shook her head.

  “What, can’t you picture me as an officer?”

  “Oh, child, there are so many better things I can picture for someone as pretty as you.”

  “Yeah, you and Mrs. Ranjeet.”

  “You could do worse, chhori. Yesh will be a good earner, and he’s not bad-looking.”

  In the relative calm of the past couple of weeks—and she would not like to admit this to Mrs. Kansakar, for fear of encouraging the two old ladies—Emily had entertained the prospect of accepting Yesh, whom she had not actually met. So far, he was little more than an abstraction, but still intriguing. What shape might their lives together take? Could she be content as a shopkeeper’s wife? Could he stomach the sort of choices she might prefer, left to her own devices?

  More importantly, could she safely diffuse the mischief her grandfather (and her mother) may have wrought in her genes among these people dwelling at the top of the world? And if her genetic materials were not sufficiently diluted, if her warrior-spirit were transmitted in its full intensity down the generations, what might her descendants make of such an inheritance? Would they eventually seek dominion over the Earth from this little cul-de-sac in the Himalayas? And what would they be willing to do to achieve it?

  A picture of her little ones, hundreds of them, thousands, charging into battle flashed before her mind, still children, armed with toys, and it brought a smile to her face. Their battle cry echoed in her ears: Jaya Mahakali—Glory to Kali. “Yes,” she thought. “That’s how they’d remember me, as the goddess of death.”

  The tone of the voices crying out to her changed under her mental gaze, deepening into the full-throated cry of mature young men and women. No longer fighting with toys, the scene in her imagination had become horrendous. A real battle now, not just child’s play, fleeting glory to be won as death stalked gigantically among the warriors. They would fight and die, or live, but they’d never know peace. She would not be there to teach them anything about serenity.

  A sudden chill shivered her whole body at the path her thoughts had taken. But did she need to pass her spirit on at all? Couldn’t she simply arrange to be the last of her line? Perhaps that would be the wisest choice, though something inside her rebelled against it.

  Almost against her will, she found herself thinking about Midshipman Hankinson, the young man who first suggested the Naval Academy to her. He planted the seed of an idea that military service might help shape the moods her extraordinary martial discipline tended to produce. He was no more prepared to marry Kali than Yesh could be, than anyone could be. But hadn’t he caught a glimpse of what violence truly is, the violence that resides at the bottom of her heart, when he sparred with her? He’d tried to fight back as none of the other midshipmen had. Was there, perhaps, the tiniest spark of some warrior demon in him, something to carry him through the dark times that were sure to come if he allied himself to her?

  “Has your family already arranged someone for you, chhori?” Mrs. Kansakar asked, after Emily took such a long time to reply.

  “Arranged someone? Why would I let anyone arrange something like that?”

  “Because your elders might be wiser than you in such things, child.”

  “I doubt that. Nobody knows my heart better than me.”

  “Of course not, but the heart is fickle, and marriage depends on other things, too.”

  How odd that Mrs. Kansakar’s explanation of arranged marriage should seem so reasonable to Emily. That it did probably said more about the changing contents of her heart than about any supposed wisdom of the elders of her acquaintance. What did she know about love, after all?

  Some of her new clothes had required alterations, and Mrs. Ranjeet sent word for them to come by in the afternoon for a final fitting. It all sounded rather suspicious, but she decided it was simpler just to go along, rather than spoil the old ladies’ fun.

  On the walk to Asan Chowk, Mrs. Kansakar was slight
ly more officious than usual. Apparently, even the smallest details of Emily’s gait required emendation.

  “Don’t slouch,” she said. “Hold your head up, child. Shoulders back. Why do you place your feet down like that when you walk? Are you trying to sneak up on someone?”

  “Just old habits, I guess.”

  “A woman can be a force in the world, if she simply presents herself in the right way. No slouching, no sneaking. When you’re wearing your new clothes, take pride in yourself.”

  Emily couldn’t help smiling at this last piece of advice. Mrs. Kansakar’s sense of a woman’s place was completely respectable, even admirable. But somehow, Emily couldn’t help thinking that a little bit of sneaking might be more suitable to her own personality. She felt forceful enough as it was.

  “I still like my old clothes.”

  “Don’t be silly, child. We can give those old things to the poor. There’s always a need.”

  Before Emily could protest, they’d arrived at the front door to the shop. The little bells jingled as they stepped inside. A plump, white-haired lady standing at the back counter haggled over the price of a shawl with Mrs. Ranjeet, who flashed a furtive little smile their way and sought to extricate herself from the negotiations. Try as she might, however, the customer was unmovable. Emily understood nothing of their conversation, but in the end the self-satisfied smile on the customer’s face told Emily who had won.

  “Come this way,” Mrs. Ranjeet said, after all the formalities had been gone through. “I have something for you upstairs. Just let me lock up down here and I’ll be right up.”

  Emily rolled her eyes as they climbed the back staircase. “Let’s see who’s waiting up here,” she thought. A dark landing at the top, Mrs. Kansakar took a moment to find the doorknob. Mrs. Ranjeet’s light and airy apartment smelled of cumin and sugar. The front room was sparsely furnished with a few caned chairs lined up neatly along one edge of a low table. Two tufted ottomans on either side of a cushioned armchair filled out the seating options. A short, stout statue of the elephant-headed god watched over the room from the far corner.