disciplined, refusing to respond to the Chinese name assigned to him, protesting when they punished him for speaking Tibetan. But he had the best grades in all his class, and they are always looking for Tibetans to go to the universities in China. Chodron announced that he had arranged for Yangke to attend university in Sichuan Province, that our village was honored to have one of its own selected by the government. But at the celebration Chodron held for him, Yangke announced he had already been accepted somewhere else, as a novice in a monastery near Lhasa. Chodron was furious but the next day Yangke left for the
“And he got into trouble there?”
“He was never happy. He loved drawing. He always kept his pen case with him. He would have become a great painter of tangkas if. . if things had been different. When he left all he took with him was that old silver pen case. They say he committed a crime that had something to do with the black market, with shipping stuff across the border. He was found guilty of falsifying export documents and sentenced to three years in prison.”
“What prison?”
“In the west, near Rutok,” the old woman said. Rutok was the largest city in remote western Tibet, home to many hidden military bases and gulag prisons.
“And when was he released?”
“I don’t know exactly. He sent us postcards once every few months to let us know he was still alive. He was driving trucks for a factory, he said. The last time I saw him was on the anniversary of his mother’s death, two years ago. He brought me something from far away.” Dolma rummaged for a moment on her shelf, pushing jars aside, finally producing a little porcelain reproduction of the Taj Mahal. Tashi had been in India. But as a convicted felon, he would never have been legally permitted to drive trucks in and out of the country.
“How well did he know the upper slopes?” Shan asked.
“It was his world, when he was young. He and Yangke tended the sheep there.”
“Would he have spent time with your first son, Rapaki?” Shan asked.
“Rapaki was born a few months after the temple was destroyed. My sister was certain he was the reincarnation of one of the monks because of the way he would sit for hours in the bombed-out foundation, even as a young boy.” When she looked up, tears filled Dolma’s eyes. “He was a good boy. Some people sent their children to schools far away, long before Chodron required it. I wouldn’t do it. I had lost my husband in the war and couldn’t lose Rapaki too. It was hard because we had no real teachers. The monks had always taught our children. When he first put on a robe, people thought Rapaki was playacting. They laughed at him. Day after day he would sit in one of the granaries, reading scraps of old scriptures we had saved from the flames. Finally the headman, Chodron’s father, demanded that he stop. Monks were illegal and planes would come again if anyone heard. The next day Rapaki disappeared up the mountain. It was two years before we saw him again. By the time Yangke and Tashi were old enough to go up the slopes with the sheep, people were calling my son the saint of the mountain. When they got into mischief they said all they had to do was touch Rapaki to redeem their sins.
“Now he lives on the pilgrim’s path, where men are being murdered. What do you know about the path?” Shan asked.
“Not enough. I always intended to learn more about it. I had begun helping at the temple. But then those Chinese airplanes came. I remember a lama speaking with some pilgrims who arrived at our village once seeking an escort to the path. He wouldn’t let them follow the path. He said it wasn’t what they thought, that it was the opposite of what they expected.”
“What did he mean?”
“His words haunt me when I think about Rapaki. This kora was Bon, a remnant, very ancient. Not like other sacred paths constructed after our lamas adopted the way of Buddha. The Bon lived in a violent world. They were not reluctant to help the weak find a new incarnation.”
“What does your heart tell you about it?”
“I don’t know. You think I have not tried to understand? I wandered the slopes every summer for years, hoping for a glimpse of my son Rapaki, for a chance to talk him into coming home. Maybe it’s a place where people must die. Maybe the mountain is killing them.”
Shan turned to see Hostene, sitting cross-legged at Gendun’s feet. Dolma gasped, and Shan opened his mouth to whisper an assurance that the Navajo would not harm Gendun when he saw the dim figure beyond, standing in the shadows of the ladder stair. Gao was there too, watching silently.
“In the old ways of my people,” Hostene said when Shan approached, “it was necessary to summon deities for a healing.”
“That is what Lokesh is doing,” Shan explained.
“But we also worry about demons entering someone who has been weakened. When I was young I had rheumatic fever. My father brought a doctor but my mother painted my face with soot, to make me invisible to demons. Every door or window facing east-but only those-was kept open, because that is where the good deities live. All their lives my parents argued about which cured me, the white man’s medicine or the Navajo prayers.”
Hostene produced his feathered stick from inside his vest and stirred the air over Gendun.
Shan translated for Dolma. She cocked her head a moment, studying him with an expression of wonder. “My grandmother spoke of having her face painted in such a way when she was sick.” She rose, retrieved a small, cold brazier from below the window shelf, then rubbed soot onto two fingers and began painting Gendun’s face.
Shan rose to intercept Gao, who stepped forward.
“My nephew lies mutilated and murdered. I don’t even have all his body to bury and you indulge in this-this sorcery session.” Gao spoke in Chinese, thinking no one else could understand. “Chodron is right. At heart you are the worst kind of reactionary.”
Lokesh halted his mantra. “He is wandering aimlessly right now, deeply afraid, unwilling to accept that he has crossed over so early, not mindful of the terrible dangers that lurk about him.” Lokesh spoke in such a calm voice, in such perfectly articulated Chinese, that Gao looked about him, as if to identify the source of the unexpected words. Lokesh gazed at him inquisitively.
“What-who are you speaking of?” Gao asked hesitantly.
“The boy. Your nephew. I am very sorry he was taken away. But there are words that must be said or he may become an angry ghost, doomed to roam the slopes forever.”
“He was a scientist,” Gao rejoined. “From a family of scientists. We don’t believe. .” He paused, frowning, as if wondering why he was debating with the old Tibetan. “My nephew needs nothing now that a firing squad can’t provide.”
“You are speaking of the murderer,” Lokesh said. “I am speaking of your nephew, and of you. I think being a scientist is something that is in the body. I am speaking of what happens to the kernel when it rises from that husk.” The old Tibetan groped in his pocket a moment, then extracted a
Gao stared at the little clay image in confusion, as if trying to understand how it had appeared in his hand. Shan thought he was going to pocket the tsa tsa but then, with a look of revulsion, Gao threw it against the back wall, shattering it into a dozen shards.
“If you prefer,” Lokesh offered in the same level tone, “I could teach you some of the words.”
“Be quiet, you damned fool! It’s this kind of nonsense that lured my nephew to his death.”
Shan was about to protest, to point out that the lamas had never even met Thomas, when he realized Gao meant Abigail Natay’s particular form of nonsense. Abigail had fled the safe side of the mountain to continue her work on the ancient shrines. Thomas had followed her.
“Your shining consciousness has no birth, no death.” Lokesh spoke the opening words from the death rite facing the shadows, where the deity lay shattered on the floor.
Anger flared on Gao’s face, followed by despair. He retreated. Shan followed him to the foot of the stairs. “I am only able to search the mountain,” Shan said.
“What do you mean?”
“Something is finishing here. It didn’t start here. There are men up there who are hiding things.” Shan quickly wrote a name on a scrap of paper and handed it to Gao. “He was in Public Security and was stationed somewhere
