The seeds of the night sky grew in Tibet. There the stars were the thickest, the dark blackest, the heavens closest. People looked up and cried without knowing why. Prisoners sometimes stole from their huts, under threat of the stable, to lie on the ground silently watching the heavens. The year before at the 404th an old priest had been found in such a position one morning, frozen, his dead eyes fixed on the sky. He had written two words in the snow at his side. Catch me.
Shan leaned his head on the window as the truck climbed out of the valley on its long trip north, farther and farther into the sky. There was a test for novices at some gompas. Go out in the night and lie at a place of sky burial. Contemplate the heavens beside the bird-picked bones. Some did not come back.
"Everyone talks about this prisoner Lokesh." Yeshe's voice came out of the darkness behind Shan. "You did something for him."
"Did something?" Sergeant Feng interjected gruffly. "Kicked us in the ass, that's what."
"Just a harmless old man. A tzedrung," Shan said, using the Tibetan term for a monk official. "He had been a tax collector in the Dalai Lama's government," Shan explained. "It was long past time for his release."
Feng snorted. "Right. We just let the prisoners decide when we should open the gate."
"But how could you-" Yeshe leaned forward. Having built up the courage to ask, he was not going to let go.
"I had seen a decree from the State Council ten years before. In honor of Chairman Mao's birthday, amnesty was declared for all members of the former Tibetan government. The decree had been overlooked by Warden Zhong."
"So you just instructed the warden about his duties?" Yeshe asked with disbelief.
"I reminded him."
"Shit," Sergeant Feng groused. "Reminded him! Like a grenade down his pants he reminded him." He slowed the truck and leaned toward Yeshe. "What Prisoner Shan does not say is that he couldn't remind anyone. Would have broken discipline. So instead he asked the political officer for materials to make a banner in honor of Mao's day."
"A banner?"
"Big damned banner for all the world to see. Showed patriotic spirit, Lieutenant Chang bragged. Families were coming. Townsfolk were coming. Guards were on parade. Out comes the banner, on the roof of their hut. All honor to Mao, it said, in whose honor the State Council reprieved all former officials. Even showed the month and year of the decree, so no one would be confused. Political officer, he spent lots of time with Shan that week."
"But this old man got released?"
"A petition was presented to Colonel Tan. It wasn't just a violation of law, it was a violation of a gift from Mao. Threat of demonstrations. So the colonel admitted to the world that Warden Zhong had made a mistake."
On they drove, mile after mile, mingling with the stars. They were so high now the road seemed to have lost all connection to the planet. Only a few black patches along the edge of the sky showed they were still among the mountains.
"Why were you scared of Director Wen?" Shan heard himself asking Yeshe, unaware the question was even on his tongue.
"I did not intend to be scared," came the disembodied reply a long time later. "But he is the kenpo. For all of Lhadrung."
The earnest young Director Wen an abbot? Then Shan understood. "A priest would be scared of Wen." Wen's chop made priests, or ruined priests. His chop ruined gompas.
"I am not a priest."
"You were a priest." Shan remembered Yeshe's haunting mantra in the skull cave.
"I don't know." Yeshe's voice was hesitant, and pained. "It was just a stage of my life. It was over long ago."
You have no long ago, Shan almost said. Don't dare to speak of long ago, not until like the rest of us you have endured your ration of nightmares, not until you have memories so brittle they snap like twigs when the political officers scream for you to confess them. "Then you went to school in Chengdu," Shan said instead. "But you were sent back for reeducating. Why?"
"It was a misunderstanding."
"You mean a miscarriage of justice?"
Yeshe made a sound that may have been meant as a laugh. "Someone replaced a picture of Mao with a photo of the Dalai Lama in one of the classrooms. When no one would confess to the act, all six Tibetan students were sent home."
"You mean it wasn't you?"
"I wasn't even at school that day," Yeshe said forlornly. "I skipped to get tickets for an American movie."
"Did you get them?" Feng asked after a moment. "The tickets."
"No," Yeshe sighed. "They were sold out."
The silence of the sky overwhelmed Shan again. A ghost appeared in the headlights and seemed to hover as it watched them. Feng gasped. Only as it slipped over the side of the mountain did Shan see its wings. An owl.
"My old man was a carpenter." The words suddenly floated into the air, like an uncontrolled thought. It took a moment for Shan to realize it was Feng. "They took away his shop, his tools, everything. Because he owned them. Landlord class. Dug irrigation ditches for ten years. But at night he made things." There was something new in Feng's voice. He had felt it, too. The darkness.
"Out of cardboard. Out of dried grass. Sticks. Beautiful things. Boxes. Even cabinets."
"Yes," Shan said uncertainly, not because he knew such a carpenter but because he had known many such heroes.
"I asked him why. I was just a stupid kid. But he looked at me, all wise. Know what he said?"
A meteor shot across the sky. No one spoke.
"What he said," Feng continued at last. "He said you must always step forward from where you stand."
Shan watched the stars for several more moments. "He was very wise," he said. "I would have liked to have known your father."
He heard Feng suck in his gut in surprise. Then he made the low gurgling noise that was his laugh.
Another meteor streaked by. "Some of the old yaks say that each shooting star is a soul attaining Buddhahood," Shan observed languidly.
"The old yaks?" Yeshe asked.
Shan didn't realize he had spoken aloud. "The first generation of prisoners. The oldest survivors." Shan smiled in the darkness. "My first winter at the 404th we had snow removal duty in the high passes. Bitter cold. The winds, they would do strange things with the snow. Thirty-foot drifts in one spot, bare earth in the next. Boulders sculpted with ice and snow to look like huge creatures from your dreams. One day after a new snow we're digging out the road and there's a big boulder where there never was one before. Brought down by an avalanche, someone said.
"We shoveled snow. It blew back. We shoveled again. Later, behind us, one of the guards screams. The boulder's staring at him." Shan smiled again. He had forgotten how fond he was of the memory. "It was an old yak, letting the snow cover him to avoid the cold of the storm. He just stood there, like he was part of the mountain, watching the insanity of the world around him. On the way back one of the prisoners said it reminded him of the old monks in the 404th. Ageless, indestructible, like a mountain with legs, at peace in the most tormenting environment. The name just stuck."
Later a strange sound arose, the buzz of a stadium filled with people. On the platform in the center were three austere figures, seated at a table equipped with microphones. Behind them, off the platform, was an old woman with a mop and bucket. Shan jerked his head up. It was a dream. No, he realized with distress, it was a memory. He stared into the stars, but five minutes later was back in the stadium. A young, frightened man was on stage now, his eyes dull with drugs. A shrill, urbane woman behind him was reading a statement for him, an apology to the people.
Shan willed himself awake, shuddering at the recollection of the last murder trial he had attended. He forced himself to count the stars. He pinched himself. But in his fatigue he returned to the stadium. It was hushed now, and the defendant was on his knees before a Bureau officer. At the last minute, as the officer fired a bullet through his skull, the face changed to that of Sungpo. The old woman climbed the stairs and began mopping away the blood and tissue.
Shan groaned and was instantly in heart-pounding wakefulness. He did not drift off again.
Somewhere, much later, Sergeant Feng spoke again. "That soldier, Meng. He was on assignment to guard the cave. But not on that night."
"You asked?"
"You needed to know, you said. He probably traded duty hours. Happens all the time without the records being changed."
"Could we see him? Back at the barracks."
"Don't know," Feng said uncomfortably. "I'm assigned to the 404th. Those officers at Jade Spring- I don't know. They're tough as tiger's teeth," he muttered, then leaned forward as though he had to give full attention to the road.
"Sergeant," Yeshe ventured from the backseat. "Comrade Shan says the warden is deceiving me. That he plans to detain me again, to work on his computers."
A strained chuckle was Feng's only reply.
"Is it true?"
"Why ask me? The warden and I, we don't live on the same planet, you know what I mean? How would I know?"
"Just then, you laughed like you believed it."
"What I believe is that Zhong is one prick of a son of a bitch. He's paid by the people to be a son of a bitch. He doesn't talk to sergeants about his plans."
"But you could find out. Ask the staff. Everyone talks to the momo gyakpa."
Feng slowed the truck. "What the hell did you say?" he barked, suddenly surly.
"I'm sorry. Nothing. Just if you could ask. Maybe I could do something for you in exchange."
"Momo gyakpa? Fat dumpling?" Bitterness seemed to overtake his rage. "I heard it before," he said after a pained silence, much quieter. "Behind my back. Thirty-five years in the People's Liberation Army and that's what I get. Momo gyakpa."
"I'm sorry," Yeshe muttered.
But Feng was no longer listening. He rolled down his window and reached into the bag of dumplings that was to serve as their breakfast and lunch. "Momo." He picked up a dumpling and squeezed it as if it were something he was trying to kill. He hurled it out the window, then another, and another, throwing one with each protracted syllable. "Momo! Fucking! Gyakpa!" he yelled, with a choke of pain at the end. He stared out the window after the last momo. "Used to be called the Axe, for the way I could break things in two with my hands. The Axe. Watch out boys, the Axe is coming, they would say. Colonel Tan remembers those days. Run, the Axe is on leave tonight."
As soon as the light was strong enough to read by, Shan reached into the canvas bag that Madame Ko had left at the barracks. Three files, the files of the cases which had resulted in the executions of three of the Lhadrung Five. Lin Ziyang, Director of Religious Affairs, killed by the cultural hooligan Dilgo Gongsha. Xong De, Director of Mines for the Ministry of Geology in Lhadrung County, killed by the enemy of the people Rabjam Norbu. Jin San, agricultural collective manager, killed by Dza Namkhai, leader of the infamous Lhadrung Five.
He read the records for nearly an hour. At the end of each file, pages had been ripped out. Witness statements.
Blushed with dawn, the peaks seemed to hover, more a part of the sky than the shadowy earth. Are the only religious people on the planet those who live near mountains? Trinle had asked him once. "I don't know," Shan had replied, "but I know Tibetans would not be Tibetans without their mountains."
They began descending into the head of a long valley. Below them, down a mile of winding road, a complex of stone buildings surrounded by long empty pastures could be discerned through the dim morning light. Shan tilted his head as he realized what it was, and that although he had spent three years living with Tibetan monks he had never until this moment seen an active Tibetan monastery. So few were left.
Yet countless monasteries had been constructed in his mind. On the most bitter winter days, when the trucks did not leave the compound and the prisoners huddled back to back under their thin blankets to conserve body heat, with words the old yaks guided the others through the gompas of their youth. As the prisoners shivered, sometimes so violently that teeth were broken, Choje and Trinle or one of the others began the journey, describing how the dawn played on the distant stone walls of the gompa as the traveler approached, or how the sound of a particular bell resonated within the pilgrim long before the structure came into sight. The smell of jasmine on the path, the flight of a snowgrouse, the rustle of the musk deer that roamed unafraid in the gompa's shadow were not overlooked, nor the cheerful call of the watchful rapjung, student monk, who first spied the visitor and opened the gates.
With the prisoners' gompas long ago annihilated and few memorialized in photographs, the only traces left were in the memories of a handful of survivors. But by the time the tale was told- and a visit to a single gompa could be days in the telling- the gompa had been rebuilt in the hearts and minds of another generation. Not just the visual images, for the old yaks reveled also in the sounds and smells of their former homes. Not just the physical, for the human rhythm, too, would be recreated, down to the rheumy eyes of the blind lama who rang the bell or how novices, with wads of horsehair, scrubbed the stone floors that had grown too slippery from the butter offerings. There was a huge prayer wheel in a gompa that once stood in the southern mountains whose squeak reminded everyone of a flock of hungry magpies, Shan recalled, and its kitchen mixed the flowers of a certain heather with barley for a fragrant tsampa.
Sergeant Feng slowed the truck. "Probably got hot tea," he suggested, nodding toward the buildings. "Maybe we'll get better directions to Saskya. I don't know this road-"
"No." Yeshe interrupted with unusual bluntness. "Not enough time. Keep going. I know Saskya. Down the road twenty miles, up against the high cliffs at the end of the valley."
Feng grunted noncommittally and drove on.
Nearly an hour later Yeshe directed Feng onto a dirt road that led into a forest of rhododendron and cedar. After a few minutes a long mound of stones became visible, running perpendicular to the road and disappearing into the thickets. Shan raised his hand for Feng to stop, then leapt out, ran to the pile of stones and halted. There was something he recognized, though he had never been there before. From somewhere nearby came the tiny ring of a tsingha, the small hand cymbal used in Buddhist worship.
He felt something inside, a flutter of excitement. He had been there before, or somewhere much like it, in the winter tales of the old yaks. Slowly his knees collapsed and for a moment he knelt, his hands on the stones. Then he began cleaning the detritus from the pile of rocks. He picked up one, then another, and another. They had been squared off by human hands, and each had a Tibetan inscription, either painted or crudely chiseled on its surface. He was in the middle of a mani wall, one of the walls of stones inscribed with prayers constructed over the course of centuries by devout visitors and pilgrims. Each stone was carried from far away, one at a time, for the glory of Buddha. A mani stone was said to continue the prayer after the pilgrim left. He looked at them, stretching into the forest as far as he could see, the moldering, moss-covered prayers of generations.
Once Trinle had taken a beating for breaking from a work line to grab such a stone, abandoned on the slope above them. "Why risk the batons?" Shan had asked as Trinle rubbed away the moss to release the prayer.
"Because this may be the prayer that changes the world," Trinle had cheerfully replied.
Shan carefully rubbed away the dirt from the prayers of five stones and laid out three, then stacked two and one on top. The beginning of a new wall.
Ignoring Feng's scowl, he walked along the road in front of the creeping truck. The tinkle of the tsingha floated through the air again, and a high wall came into view. The cracks and seams and patchwork paint on the wall told of ordeal and survival. It had been battered and rebuilt and broken and patched more times than Shan could trace. Half a dozen shades of white and tan had been painted over the uneven surface, which here was stucco, there plaster, and elsewhere exposed rock.
Flanking the wall on either side were ruins, jagged piles of rocks overgrown with vines, shattered and charred timbers covered with lichens and mosses. The wall, he realized, had formed the inner courtyard of what once had been a far bigger gompa. The gate hung open, revealing several novices sweeping the courtyard with brooms of rushes tied to long sticks.
Shan surveyed the scene with unexpected joy. The buildings were familiar to him from the 404th's oral reconstructions, but nothing prepared him for the stark, powerful presence of a working gompa.
In the center of the yard was a huge bronze caldron, so battered and dented the face of Buddha forged on its side had the appearance of a scarred warrior. Two monks were painstakingly polishing the vessel, which was one of the largest incense burners Shan had ever seen. Wisps of smoldering juniper rose from it as they worked.
On either side of the gate, following the wall halfway around the courtyard, were low structures with roofs made of overlapping flat stones, the quarters of the monks. Assembled of salvaged stone and scrap lumber, they looked suspiciously like unlicensed construction. What was it Director Wen had told them? Jao had denied Sungpo's gompa its building permits, cutting it off from official sources of material.
The buildings beyond were just as patchwork but somehow more majestic. On the left, up a small flight of stairs and past a porch of heavy timbers, was the dukhang, the hall of assembly where the monks took their lessons. To the right lay a parallel structure in front of which, under the overhanging roof, stood an upright prayer wheel as large a man. A monk was slowly spinning it, each rotation completing the prayer inscribed on its side. Behind the wheel, past a pair of brightly painted red doors, was the lhakang, the hall of the principal deity. On the outer wall above the hall was a circular mandala painting depicting the sacred path, the Wheel of Dharma, with a deer painted on either side, signifying Buddha's first sermon in India.
Between the two structures was a large chorten shrine, consisting of a plaster dome built over a square base, flattened at the top with a series of slabs of decreasing size. Above the slabs was a barrel-shaped stage capped by a conical steeple. Trinle had once constructed a tiny chorten of wood scraps for Loshar, the new year holiday, and had been able to explain its spiritual symbolism to Shan before it had been seized and stomped to splinters by Lieutenant Chang. There were thirteen levels to a chorten, representing the traditional thirteen stages of advancement to Buddhahood. The top of the chorten was crowned with sun and crescent-moon shapes worked in iron. The sun represented wisdom, the moon compassion. On the round, barrel-shaped level were two huge painted eyes, symbolic of the ever-watchful Buddha.
Shan stepped into the courtyard as the truck rolled to a halt behind him. The novices in the yard stopped and bowed low as they spotted their three visitors. Shan followed the gaze of one of the monks toward a door in the assembly hall. A middle-aged lama appeared.
"Forgive the intrusion," Shan said quietly as the lama approached. "May I speak to someone about the hermit Sungpo?"
The lama did not seem to consider the question worth answering. "What is your purpose?"
"My purpose is to find the teacher of Sungpo."
The man's face tightened. "And what is his guru accused of?"
Yeshe stepped to Shan's shoulder. "He is not the kenpo," he whispered without moving his head. "He is the chotrimpa."
Shan looked up, trying to hide his surprise. The kenpo, the abbot, had chosen not to talk to Shan. He had sent the lama responsible for monastic discipline.
Shan looked back at the lama. "Sungpo is with us. His tongue is not. I respectfully request an audience with his guru."
The lama surveyed the curious young monks who were gathering beside the truck. A censuring sweep of his hand scattered them. In the same moment a deep-throated bell sounded from somewhere inside the hall. The courtyard cleared.
"Will you join our instruction in sunyata?" he asked Shan and Yeshe. There was a small smile on his face, but he made the words sound like a taunt. Sunyata was one of five required studies of every monastic student; it was the study of voidness, of nonexistence. Shan watched the lama as he disappeared into the nearest door. He had answered each of Shan's questions with another question, then turned away without waiting for a response.
Shan looked about the now empty courtyard. Without looking back to Feng or Yeshe he climbed the stairs into the lhakang. Inside was a small passage leading up another flight of stairs, which he followed into a large, empty chamber lit by butter lamps. He lit a stick of incense and sat at the altar, lotus fashion, before the life-size bronze statue of Maitreya Buddha, known as the future Buddha, that dominated the chamber. Before the statue were the seven traditional offering bowls, three filled with water, one with flowers, one with incense, one with butter, and one with aromatic herbs.
He sat for several minutes in silence, then picked up a broom at the back of the hall and began sweeping.
A silver-haired priest appeared and lit an offering of butter shaped into a small spire. "It is not necessary," he said, nodding toward the broom. "This is not your gompa."
Shan leaned on the broom for a moment. "When I was young," he said, "I heard about a temple high in the mountains along the sea, where all the wisdom of the world was said to reside. One day I decided I must visit the temple."
After a few strokes of the broom he paused again. "Halfway up I began to lose my way. I met a man carrying a huge burden of wood on his back. I said I was looking for the temple of the saints, in order to find myself. He told me I didn't need the temple, he would show me all I needed to know. Here is what it takes," he said, and he set his burden on the ground and stood straight.
"But what do I do when I go home, I asked. Simple, he said. When you go home you do this- and he put the burden back on his shoulder."
The old priest smiled, found another broom, and joined Shan in the sweeping.
When Shan emerged he walked to the gate and moved along the track that followed the outer wall. Halfway around he found a dirt path leading onto the slopes above the gompa. The grass on either side of the path had been crushed recently by the tires of a heavy vehicle.
Ten minutes later he reached a clearing where the vehicle, unable to navigate the rocky terrain above, had been parked. He kept climbing. The path became tortuous, winding around wind-sculpted rocks, hugging the side of a precipitous cliff. It traversed a steep chasm across two logs which had been lashed together. At last the track opened into a large meadow. A carpet of tiny yellow and blue flowers led to a small stone structure built against a rock face. A raven screeched. He turned to see the black bird, a sign of wisdom and luck, gliding in the void barely a hundred feet away. Below the bird lay the entire world. A waterfall cascaded from the opposite slope into the conifer forest; beyond it a small lake gleamed like a jewel. To the south the valley stretched for miles with no visible sign of man. Beyond it, brushing a solitary cloud, was the pass they had driven through at dawn.
Footsteps broke the spell. Feng and Yeshe were not far behind. Shan approached the building.
The door, painted with a small ideogram surmounted by the sun, a crescent moon, and a flame, swung open with a light touch. The entry chamber had the air of an austere but lovingly tended cabin. Fresh flowers stood in a can below a window. The second chamber had no windows. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness Shan discerned a straw pallet, a stool, writing implements, and several candles. Lighting a candle, he discovered he was not in a chamber, but in a cavern.
There was a noise outside. He extinguished the candle and moved back through the structure. The meadow was empty. A murmur of surprise came from overhead. He looked up to see a small squat man lying on the roof, his mouth stuffed with nails. The man's head jerked to the side, with the dull, inquisitive look of a squirrel. Suddenly he spat out the nails, grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled himself over, landing in a pile at Shan's feet.
He didn't rise, but extended his finger and poked at Shan's leg as though to test if he were real.
"Have you come to arrest me?" he said as he rose. There was a strange hopefulness in his tone.
His flat, light-colored features were not Tibetan.
"I've come about Sungpo."
"I know that. I prayed." The man held his wrists together, as though for handcuffs.
"This is Sungpo's hermitage?"
"I am Jigme," the man said, as though Shan should know him. "Is he eating?"
Shan studied the strange creature. He seemed stunted somehow. His hands and ears were oversized for his body. His eyelids drooped, like those of a sad, sleepy bear. "No. He is not eating."
"I didn't think so. Some days I have to switch broth for his tea. Is he dry?"
"He has straw. He has a roof."
The man named Jigme gave an approving nod. "He has trouble remembering sometimes."
"Remembering?"
"That he's still just a human."
Yeshe and Feng appeared beside Shan. Jigme muttered a greeting. "I am ready," he said with an oddly cheerful voice. "Just have to close up. And leave a little rice for the mice. We always leave food for the mice. Master Sungpo, he loves the mice. Maybe he can't laugh with his mouth but he laughs with his eyes when the mice eat from his fingers. Right from the heart. Have you seen him laugh?"
When no one replied, Jigme shrugged and began to move back to the hut.
"We didn't come to take you," Shan said. "I just have questions."
Jigme stopped. "You have to take me," he said. He studied Shan in alarm. "I did it," he said in a new, desperate tone.
"Did what?"
"Whatever he did, I did it, too. It is the way we are." He lowered himself to the ground and put his arms around his knees.
"How often does Sungpo leave the hut?"
"Every day. He goes to the edge of the cliff and sits, two or three hours every morning." Jigme began rocking back and forth.
"I meant away from here, out of your sight."
Jigme looked confused. "Sungpo is on hermitage. He started nearly a year ago. He can't leave." He looked up, understanding his mistake. "Not of his own will." He seemed about to cry. "It's okay," he said apologetically. "Grandfather says we'll start over when he returns."
"But you aren't with him every hour. You sleep. He could go and come back before you wake."
"Not me. I know. I always know. Is my job to know, to watch over him. Hermits can concentrate like-" his search for words seemed almost painful, "- like a lump of coal in a wood fire." He shrugged. "They can fall off cliffs. It's happened. He belongs to me. I belong to him." He looked into his hands. "It's a good world." But Shan knew he wasn't speaking of the world at large. He was speaking of a tiny plateau in a remote township in a forgotten corner of Tibet.
"There is one man he may speak with," Shan suggested.
"Grandfather. Je Rinpoche." Jigme spoke almost in a whisper.
"Is Rinpoche here?"
"The gompa."
"The day they came for Sungpo. Tell me about it."
Jigme began to rock again. "They were six, maybe seven. Guns. They brought guns. I had been told about guns."
"What color were their uniforms?"
"Gray."
"All of them?"
"All but the young one. Had a slice in his face. His name was Meh Jah. Everyone called him Meh Jah. He wore a sweater, and glasses with dark lenses. He sent for the abbot. He wouldn't do anything until the abbot arrived."
"They said they found a wallet."
"Impossible."
"They didn't find it?"
"No. I mean they found it. I was there. In this cave. Meh Jah, he brought in the abbot. They had flashlights. He turned over a rock and there it was. But it was impossible it could be there."
"How long did they look for it?"
"The soldiers searched everywhere. Turned over my baskets. Broke my flowerpots."
"But how long after this man named Meh was in your cave?"
"He took the abbot into the cave. Someone called out right away, all excited. Then Meh Jah is here and put chains on Sungpo's hands."
"Show me the rock."
It was fifty feet inside the cave, a flat rock large enough to serve as a stool. Shan asked Yeshe to take Jigme outside. He sketched the cave in his notepad then bent over the rock with a candle. He ran his fingers around the stone, and paused. On the side facing the entrance there was a stickiness, a small rectangular patch that pulled at his skin. He called for Feng to light three more candles. He found what he was looking for ten feet further in, where it had been thrown from the rock after it served its purpose. A wad of black electrician's tape. The rock had been secretly marked to assure it could easily be found by those who came for the arrest.
"Were there other visitors?" Shan asked. "Before the day Comrade Meh came."
"None. None that I saw. Except Rinpoche."
"Rinpoche. Where in the gompa will I find him?"
Jigme was looking away, toward the edge of the cliff. A raven was there again, this one with an odd patch of white on the back of its head. Jigme began waving. "Visitors!" he shouted at the bird. "Hurry up!"
Jigme shielded his eyes to study the bird. "He's coming now," he announced. "The raven says he's coming now."
Je Rinpoche was not coming. He was waiting. Shan found him on a ledge a hundred yards down the path. He was paper-frail. His head was nearly hairless, and his skin rough, as if covered with dust. But his eyes, wet and restless, were brilliantly alive. The effect was as though someone had set two jewels into corroded stone.
Shan pressed his palms together and bowed his head in greeting. "Rinpoche. If I could ask-"
"There are so many things to consider," the ancient one interrupted. His voice was surprisingly strong. "This mountain. The dogs. The way the mist falls down the slopes, different each morning." He turned to Shan. When he shifted his body the robe barely moved. "Some days I feel like that. Like mist sliding down the mountain." He looked back down the valley and pulled his robe tighter, as if cold. "Jigme brings a melon sometimes. We eat it and Jigme will watch."
Shan sighed and stared out over the landscape. He would never have a chance to speak with Sungpo. Je, his lama, had been Shan's only hope for an intermediary. "When we climb to the top of the mountain, you know what we do?" the lama asked. "Just as I did when I was a novice. We make little paper horses and fly them away in the wind." He paused as if Shan required an added explanation. "When they touch the earth they become real horses to help travelers through the ranges."
There was movement beside Je. The raven had landed an arm's length away.
"They are praying, my friends and teachers," Je began again. "All of them, and the bombs are beginning to fall. There is time to leave but they will not. I must take the young ones into the hills. The ones who stay are dying, just saying their rosaries and dying in the explosions. As I am leaving with the boys something is hitting me in the face. It is a hand, still holding its rosary."
It was 1959, Shan calculated, or at the latest 1960, when the PLA bombed the gompas from the air.
"Was it right?" Je continued. "That is always the temptation. To ask if it was right. It is the wrong question, of course."
Suddenly Shan realized that the old man knew exactly why Shan was there.
"Rinpoche," he said slowly, "I would not ask Sungpo to break his vow. I only ask him to join me in finding the truth. There is a murderer somewhere. He will kill again."
"The only one who can find the murderer is the murdered," Je said. "Let the ghost take its revenge. I am not worried about Sungpo. But Jigme. Jigme is lost."
Shan realized he had to let the old man lead the conversation. The wind increased. He fought the temptation to grab Je's robe, lest he be lifted into the clouds. "Jigme does not study at the gompa."
"No. He abandoned studies to go with Sungpo. He never belongs. Being a gompa orphan, it is like being a small bird forced to live all its life in a rainstorm."
A shiver of realization moved down Shan's spine. During the occupation of Tibet and again during the Cultural Revolution, monks and nuns had been forced, sometimes at bayonet point, to break their vows of celibacy, sometimes with each other, sometimes with soldiers. In some regions the offspring had been gathered into special schools. Elsewhere they formed gangs. There were several of the mixed-blood gompa orphans in the 404th, who had followed their priests to jail.
"Then for Jigme, help me bring Sungpo back."
The old man's eyes were closed now. "After the gompa was destroyed," he murmured, "I could see the rising moon better."
The truck had already begun the long climb toward the pass when Shan asked the name of the gompa at the head of the valley, the compound they had passed at dawn. Yeshe did not reply.
Feng slowed and read the map. "Khartok," he said impatiently. "They call it Khartok."
Shan grabbed one of the files provided by Tan, glanced at it, and threw his hand toward Sergeant Feng. "Stop. Now."
"There isn't time," Feng protested.
"You would rather leave before dawn tomorrow and come back here?"
"It is late. They will be preparing for last assembly, lighting the lamps soon," Yeshe said insistently. "We can try a telephone interview."
Feng turned, looked into Shan's eyes, and without another word turned and moved back down the valley.
Yeshe groaned and covered his eyes with his hand, as if he could not bear to see more.
It wasn't pastures he had seen in front of the buildings. It was ruins, fields of stone that began half a mile from the gompa. There was no order to the stones. Some were in piles, others scattered as though they had been thrown from the overhanging mountains. But every stone had been squared by a mason.
Closer to the gompa the foundations of several buildings had been turned into gardens. A dozen figures in red robes leaned on their hoes to gaze at the unexpected vehicle. As they eased to a stop Shan saw that new construction lay beyond the foundations. The main wall was being rebuilt and extended. Stacks of fresh lumber and pallets of cement wrapped in plastic were arrayed along the treeline.
Yeshe lay on the back seat, an arm thrown over his eyes.
"You know gompas. You know the protocols," Shan said impatiently. "I need you."
Feng opened the rear door. "You're not sleeping, Comrade." He pulled on Yeshe's arm. "Hell, you're panting like a cornered cat."
Shan ventured into the courtyard alone. The same structures he had seen at Saskya were there, but freshly painted and on a much larger scale. Not one but five chortens were arranged about the grounds, capped by suns and moons of newly worked copper. A better investment, Shan remembered. Director Wen of the Religious Affairs Bureau had said Saskya was not permitted to rebuild because the gompa in the lower valley was a better investment.
A middle-aged monk with a row of gold embroidery on his sleeve appeared on the steps of the assembly hall. He threw his arms out in a gesture of welcome and trotted down the steps. Shan watched as the other monks looked up at the newcomer. Some nodded deferentially, others quickly averted their eyes. The man was a senior lama, probably the abbot. But why, Shan wondered, didn't the man seemed surprised to see him? The lama interrupted a young student who was raking the gravel and dispatched him into the hall, then pointed toward an herb garden in the shelter of the wall. Shan silently followed him into the garden. Wooden benches were arranged in rows between the plant beds, as though for students receiving instruction. At the end of the garden an old monk was on his knees, pulling weeds.
"We will have the plans finished soon," the lama announced as soon as Shan sat on the front bench.
"Plans?" The young monk appeared with a tray of tea, poured it for them, and retreated with a hurried bow of his head.
"For the first restoration of the college buildings. Tell Wen Li that the plans are almost finished." There was something odd about the lama's demeanor. Shan searched for a way to describe it. Social, he decided. Almost urbane.
"No. We are here about Dilgo Gongsha."
The lama did not relent. "Yes, the plans are nearly complete," he said, as though the topics were connected. "The Bei Da Union is helping, you know. We are helping each other with our reconstructions."
"The Bei Da Union?"
The lama paused and looked at Shan as though for the first time. "Who are you, then?"
"An investigation team. From Colonel Tan's office. I am reviewing the facts of the Dilgo Gongsha matter. He was a resident here, was he not?"
The lama's eyes slowly surveyed Shan, then shifted to Feng and Yeshe, who were inching along the shadows of the walls. As the two passed a small gathering of monks, someone called out in surprise, as if in greeting. Someone else called, in a tone Shan didn't recognize at first. Anger. Yeshe moved behind Feng.
"The last time we saw Dilgo," a gentle voice announced from behind Shan, "he was passing into that peculiar hell for souls taken by violence." Shan's host stood and put his palms together in greeting. It was the old monk who had been tending weeds. His robe was stained from garden work, his fingernails filled with dirt. "We performed the rights of Bardo. By now he is an infant. He will grow to bless those around him once again." He had a twinkle in his eyes, as though the memory of Dilgo caused him joy.
"Abbot," the lama said with a bow of his head. "Forgive me. I thought you were in your meditation cell."
Abbot? Shan looked in confusion at the first lama.
"You have met our chandzoe," the abbot offered, noticing Shan's glance. "Welcome to Khartok."
"Chandzoe?" It was not a term Shan had heard in any of the winter tales.
"The manager of our secular affairs," the abbot explained.
"Secular affairs?"
"Business manager," the first lama interjected, pouring a cup of tea for the abbot and gesturing for him to sit.
"Why would you speak of our Dilgo?" The abbot asked the question the way a child might, with wide, innocent eyes.
"He was found guilty of killing a man by stuffing his throat with pebbles. The man happened to be the Director of the Religious Affairs Bureau."
The chandzoe frowned. The abbot looked into his teacup.
"In the old days it was the traditional method for killing members of the imperial family," Shan said. "Even in battle they could only be taken and later suffocated."
"Forgive me," the chandzoe said. "I do not understand your point." He seemed to be expressing not confusion, but disappointment with Shan.
"Only that it was a very traditional sort of murder for a senior government official."
"And as they said at trial," the chandzoe said with a hint of impatience. "Khartok is a very traditional gompa. You cannot execute Dilgo twice." A murmur among the monks in the courtyard caught Shan's attention. He followed their stares toward Feng and Yeshe, in the shadow near the edge of the garden.
"If I were going to murder someone I would be sure not to use a method that would be associated with me or my beliefs."
Suddenly the chandzoe stood. "Yeshe?" he called out. "Is it Yeshe Retang?"
Yeshe cowered a moment at the corner of the garden, then saw the enthusiasm in the chandzoe's face and stepped closer. "It is, Rinpoche. I am honored you remember."
The chandzoe threw out his arms again, in the expression Shan had seen when he first appeared on the stairs, and moved to pull Yeshe out of the shadow. Yeshe stood stiffly, glancing uneasily at Shan.
The chandzoe shifted his eyes from Shan to Yeshe, obviously confused.
"My detention has recently concluded, Rinpoche. I am on this assignment now. Temporarily."
Yeshe cast a pleading glance at Shan, which the chandzoe seemed to follow with great interest. The chandzoe watched Shan now, waiting for Shan to speak. The Chinese in charge.
"His commitment to reform was exemplary," Shan heard himself say. "He has unusual qualities of-" he searched for a word-"dedication."
The chandzoe nodded with satisfaction.
"I can get a job in Sichuan, I think," Yeshe said uneasily.
"Why not return here?" the chandzoe asked.
"My record. I cannot be licensed."
"Your reeducation is completed. I could talk to Director Wen." He spoke as though he were somehow obligated to Yeshe.
Yeshe's eyes grew round with surprise. "But the quota."
The chandzoe shrugged. "Even if it's a problem, we have no quota on workers for the reconstruction." He pulled Yeshe's hands open and squeezed one. "Please come see the new works," he said, and pulled Yeshe toward the assembly hall. Slowly, with tiny steps that made it seem he was fighting an invisible force, Yeshe moved toward the hall. As he did so, Shan saw another monk on the steps, facing Yeshe. His hands formed a mudra that seemed aimed at Yeshe.
Yeshe looked to Shan in confusion. Shan nodded, and the two men moved across the courtyard.
The abbot watched the chandzoe without expression, then sighed and turned to Shan. "You assume that murderers lie," he said, as if he had not noticed the interruption. "Dilgo would not lie. It would violate his vows."
"Did he do the killing, then?" Shan asked.
The abbot would not answer.
"Taking a life would have been a far more severe violation of his rules," Shan pointed out.
The abbot finished his tea and dabbed his mouth with the sleeve of his robe. "They are both prohibited by the 235 rules," he said, referring to the rules of conduct prescribed for an ordained priest.
"I am confused," Shan said. "Those who break their vows are reincarnated as lower life forms. You have already said you believe him to have returned as a human."
"I, too, am confused. What exactly do you want of us?"
"A simple answer. Do you believe that Dilgo killed the Director of Religious Affairs?"
"The government exercised its authority. Dilgo did not protest. The case was closed."
Why did it surprise him, Shan thought, to find that the head of a thriving gompa was also a politician? "Did he do it?"
"Everyone has a different path to Buddhahood."
"Did he do it?"
The abbot sighed and looked into a passing cloud. "It would have been more likely for Mt. Kailas to collapse into the earth from the weight of one bird than for Dilgo to commit such an act."
Shan nodded heavily. "Another such bird has been set into flight."
The abbot looked with a new sadness into Shan's eyes.
"Do you ever think about it, about where the sin lies?" Shan asked.
"I do not understand."
"It is easy for them; it is the way they stay in power. Danger is part of power, like shadow is part of light. Sometimes, if no one threatens it, it must invent threats. It is just as easy for you, to justify what happened to Dilgo. You probably decided that it is as much the nature of things as the tidal wave of soldiers that washed over the gompas in 1959. It was his destiny, you can say, and besides, Dilgo is reincarnated in a better life. But it is not so easy for those in between."
The abbot no longer looked into Shan's eyes.
"Did you expel Dilgo?"
"He was not expelled."
"He was convicted of murder but you did not expel him. Instead you performed the rites of Bardo for him."
The abbot looked into his hands.
Shan consulted his notebook. "They found his rosary at the murder scene. A very special rosary. Beads carved like tiny pine cones, made out of pink coral, with lapis marker beads. Very old. Must have been brought from India. The file said it was unique, the only one of its kind."
"It was his rosary," the abbot confirmed. His voice grew very still. "It was the proof against him."
"Did he explain how it got there?"
"He could not explain it."
"Had he lost it?"
"No. He did not miss it. In fact, he said he had it when he was arrested, when he was taken from his pallet, still sleeping. It was a miracle perhaps, that it could have been transported somewhere and returned that way. Dilgo said maybe it was a message."
"Why did he not protest?" Shan said. "Why did he not argue his defense? If you knew he was innocent, why did you not defend him?"
"We did everything we could."
"Everything?" Shan slowly pulled the case file from the canvas bag he was carrying and dropped it on the bench between them. Shan had read the statement prepared for the abbot. The abbot had condemned the act of violence and apologized on behalf of the gompa and the church.
The abbot stared at the file, then looked up without blinking. "Everything."
He was wrong to expect any of them to feel guilty, Shan realized. Everyone in the drama of Dilgo, from the abbot to Prosecutor Jao, even to the accused, had played his role correctly.
The abbot rose and began to move back to his weeds.
"Then tell me this," Shan said to his back. "Have you heard that a Buddhist demon was at the site of the murder?"
The abbot turned with a frown. "Traditions die hard."
"So you did hear such a rumor?"
"Whenever a public figure dies there will be those who say it was this demon or that spirit who took revenge."
"And there was such a report that night?"
"There was a full moon that night. A herder reported that he saw the horse-headed demon on a hill above the highway, doing something like a dance. The one called Tamdin. Among the pebbles that suffocated the Director of Religious Affairs was one bead, a rosary bead in the shape of a skull. The kind that Tamdin carries." Shan had touched such a rosary. The rosary of a demon.
"A shrine was built by the local people, on the spot, to praise their protector."
Doing a dance on a hill by the highway. Under a full moon. As though, Shan considered, Tamdin wanted to be seen.
"Shrines were built after the other murders, too. People say a truck driver saw Tamdin when the Director of Mines was killed. As I said, there're always such rumors when an official dies. Tamdin is a favorite of the people. Very fierce, no mercy in defending the church. A very old demon, one of those they call a country god, from the old Tibetan shamans before the days of Buddhism. As the people evolved to Buddha they brought Tamdin with them."
From the other side of the courtyard a sudden uproar of animals interrupted them. A gate had been opened and a huge pack of dogs was entering. Priests were feeding the dogs, more dogs than Shan had ever seen gathered in one place. He saw at least thirty and more were trotting through the gate.
Segeant Feng cursed and dropped onto the bench beside Shan, not taking his eyes off the animals. Three large black mastiffs, of the kind herdsmen used to patrol against wolves, lingered in the shadows, as though sensing that Feng and Shan were intruders. Feng's hand moved to his gun.
"Ai yi!" cried one of the monks as he saw Feng's reaction. He rushed to stand in front of the dogs. "They are under our protection," he said in a pleading tone. "They are part of Khartok gompa. They come from all over Tibet to be with us."
"Damned mongrels," Feng growled. "Where I come from they are raised for the pot."
The monk could not hide his horror. "They are part of us. The ones who remember. It is why they come here."
"Remember?" asked Shan.
"Priests who failed," the monk explained. "The dogs are reincarnations of priests who broke their vows."
As the monk spoke Yeshe appeared on the steps with the chandzoe. From the far side of the courtyard someone else shouted angrily toward Yeshe. The chandzoe put his hand on Yeshe's shoulder as though to calm him. The monk on the steps was still there, still aiming his mudra at Yeshe.
At last Shan recognized the mudra. It was to bestow forgiveness. A cold wave of realization swept through him as he looked back at Yeshe, as though for the first time. He had been so blind. He had asked Yeshe everything about himself except the most important question of all.
Two hours later they were at the top of the pass, so high that the stars on the far horizon were below them. Shan, in a drowsy haze, wanted the feeling of drifting through space to continue, until he floated into a world where governments did not lie, where jails were for criminals, where men were not killed with pebbles.
He became aware of a liquid rattle in the back seat. Yeshe had a rosary.
An hour later, as they moved into the crossroads at the head of Lhadrung valley, Shan put his hand on Feng's arm. "Go left."
"Lost your track, Comrade," Feng grunted. "The barracks are to the right. Sixty minutes more and we'll be in our bunks."
"To the left, to the 404th worksite."
"That's miles out of the way," Feng protested.
"That's where we are going."
Feng pulled the truck to a stop as it passed the intersection. "It will be nearly midnight by the time we get there. It's empty."
"Improves the odds."
"The odds?"
"Of meeting the ghost."
Feng shuddered. "The ghost?"
"I want to ask who killed him."
Feng turned on the cab light and stared at Shan, as though hoping for evidence that this was a joke.
Shan returned the stare without expression. "Scared of a ghost, Sergeant?"
"Damned right," Feng shot back, too loudly. He slammed the truck into gear and turned around.
A half mile from the bridge Shan instructed Feng to turn off the lights. The 404th worksite was as empty as death as they rolled to a stop near the bridge. Feng climbed out and immediately produced his pistol. Shan said nothing but began walking toward the mountain. After thirty paces he looked back to see Feng circling the truck, as if on sentry duty.
Shan paused at the end of Tan's bridge and gazed skyward, still in awe of the stars. He was afraid that if he reached out he would touch them. His knees were trembling.
He walked up the roadbed to the small cairn marking the site of Jao's murder and sat on a rock. There was no wind on the mountain. This was when the jungpo would prowl. This was when demon protectors would strike. He found his hand over his pocket which held the charm that called Tamdin. What were the words from Khorda's skull mantra? Om padme te krid hum phat.
A pebble moved behind him. His heart leapt into his throat as a shadow appeared beside him. It was Yeshe.
"It was a night like this," Shan observed, trying to calm himself. "Prosecutor Jao was driven to the bridge. Someone was here. Someone he knew."
"I never understood. Why here?" Yeshe asked. "It's so far from anywhere."
"That's the reason. The road goes nowhere. No danger of being discovered by passersby. Easy to escape." But that was not all. The mountain still had not given up its secret.
"So they walked with Jao," Yeshe said. "To look at the stars?"
"To talk. In private. Someone stayed below."
"The driver."
"I am here with Jao," Shan said, switching to the view of the murderer who had lured Jao to the mountain. "I brought him up here to tell him a secret. But something happened to surprise him. A loose rock. The tingle of metal. He senses his attacker at the last minute, and turns to struggle with him, long enough for Jao to pull an ornament from the costume." Shan stood with a rock in his hand, acting out the scene. "Then I grab a rock and hit him from behind." He threw the rock to the ground forcefully. "I arrange him neatly after I empty his pockets of identity. Then Tamdin uses his blade."
"So there're two killers."
"I think so now. Jao didn't come here with someone in a demon costume. He came with a friend, who had the demon waiting." Shan took a step away, back into character. "I don't want to watch." Shan walked toward the edge of the cliff. "I don't want blood to spray on me. I come to the edge and throw away what I took from his pockets." He picked up a stone and moved to the brink of the cliff. Extending his arm over the void, he released the stone.
"You told me why you were sent back from university," he said after a moment, still facing the abyss. "But you never said why you went to the university." Investigations, meditations, careers, relationships were much the same, he mused. They failed because no one thought to ask the right question.
Shan sensed Yeshe moving toward him, and stepped to the very edge, until his toes hung out over the blackness.
"It was an honor to be invited to the university," Yeshe said in a hollow voice.
A tiny shove, a mild gust of wind would be all it took. Yeshe could just slip and fall against Shan, and he would drop. On a night like this maybe you never hit the bottom. There would only be blackness, then a deeper blackness.
"But why would Yeshe Retang be invited? An unknown monk in a remote gompa?"
Yeshe moved beside him now, as if willing himself to take as much risk as Shan.
"They didn't start reconstruction at Khartok until after you left," Shan pointed out. "The chandzoe, he treated you like his hero. Like he owed you. As if Khartok received favors after you left."
"I promised my mother I would be a monk," Yeshe said to the stars. "I was the oldest son. It was the tradition for Tibetan families, until Beijing came. The oldest son would have the honor of serving in a gompa. But I wasn't a good monk. The abbot said I had to reduce my ego. He gave me work in the villages, to see the suffering of the people. Twice a week I drove a truck to bring sick children to the gompa."
A nighthawk called out on the slope behind them.
"He was just lying there, by the road. I thought I could save him. I thought I should push him over to get the pebbles out so he could breathe. I tried. But he was already dead."
"You mean you discovered the body of the Director of Religious Affairs."
"I never understood why he was up there all alone," Yeshe whispered.
"And Dilgo of your gompa was executed for it." Shan remembered the missing sheets from the files. Witness statements.
"When I turned him over it was there. I recognized it immediately."
"You mean the rosary belonging to Dilgo?"
Yeshe didn't respond.
"So you were a witness against him."
"I told the truth. I found a dead Chinese. He had Dilgo's rosary under him."
It was such a perfect parable. Antisocial cultist condemned by the testimony of a member of the new society, who happened to belong to his own gompa. Proof of how evil the old order was and how virtuous the new could be. "They sent you to the university as your reward."
"How could I refuse? How often does a monk get offered university? How often does any Tibetan get offered university? They said it wasn't a reward. They said my actions had simply demonstrated that I belonged in university, that I was a leader who should have been there all along."
"Who gave it to you?"
"Prosecutor Jao. Religious Affairs. Public Security. They all signed the paper."
It meant nothing about who killed Jao, or who might be trying to manipulate Yeshe again. Granting such rewards was all in the course of business in administering Chinese justice. Someone might have used Yeshe, knowing he had a pattern of driving on the route. Or his involvement might have been entirely coincidental. What mattered was that Yeshe had proved himself susceptible, and someone else was seeking to influence him in the same manner now. Not Zhong. Warden Zhong was just a conduit, just cooperating to secure Yeshe's labor for another year.
"I said it first," Yeshe offered, as if it was an urgent afterthought.
"First?"
"I gave the statement long before they offered the university to me."
"I know."
"They said it was for being a good citizen." He was whispering again. "Only thing is," he added forlornly, "I don't know what it means anymore- to be a good citizen."
As they watched the stars, the pain seemed to drift out of their silence.
"After we saw Religious Affairs," Yeshe said, "after Miss Taring said artifacts were still being discovered and put in the museums, I wondered. What if someone had found a second rosary like Dilgo's? What if I had lied and didn't know it?"
Shan put his hand on Yeshe's arm and eased him back from the edge of the cliff. "Then you need to find out."
"Why?"
"For Dilgo."
They sat on a boulder and let the silence wash over them again.
"Do you think it's true what they say?" Yeshe asked.
"What is true?"
"That Jao's ghost is staying here, seeking vengeance."
"I don't know." Shan looked out into the night. "If my soul were set adrift," he said slowly, "I'd never look back."
They spoke no more. Shan had no idea how long they sat. It could have been ten minutes, or thirty. A shooting star arced across the sky. Then, just as abruptly, there was a loud sound, a wrenching, haunting half-moan, half-scream like he had never heard before. It came from below them, and seemed to pierce the skin around his spine. It was not the sound of a human.
Suddenly there were three gunshots, then dead silence.