Eliot Pattison - Soul of the Fire

Shan finally understood how the end of time felt. He sat on a boulder-numbed, broken, useless-as a new team of knobs arrived. They sprayed the corpse with fire extinguishers and waited as a second team placed the charred, unrecognizable remains in a body bag. Pao’s goal from the beginning had been to destroy Dawa. The dismantling of the Commission, the deaths of Xie and Deng and Sun would soon be forgotten, minor embarrassments lost in the glow of this victory. His victory over the dissidents would make him the official Party leader in Tibet, and would soon elevate him to Beijing’s inner circle.

Shan’s heart was a frigid lump in his chest. He could not bear to go to Yamdrok, could not face the Tibetans who had seen their last hope immolate before them.

Dawa had said she would do anything to stop the Commission, to save Yamdrok and honor her father. He should have explained things better, should have made her see how important she was to all of them.

A horn sounded from the town gate, where knobs were gathering in a celebratory mood. Pao began to address the crowd with a megaphone. Above them, the solitary figure in the infirmary still stared at the slope. Shan became aware of someone standing beside him and looked up to see Tuan. His face was desolate. “Colorado,” he said in a haunted voice, and dropped onto the boulder.

Shan was not sure why he went to the infirmary. He needed to have his stitches removed before returning to the ditches of Lhadrung, he told himself, but he said nothing about the stitches when he found Dr. Lam. She was still at the window, staring transfixed at the little darkened patch of earth on the opposite slope. Tonte lay on a pile of blankets, gazing with a worried expression at the doctor.

She did not acknowledge Shan when he approached. Her face was pale. She had been weeping.

“It was jet fuel again,” he whispered. “Very hot and fast. I think it was over quickly.” Lam did not respond. He studied her, confused, as more tears rolled down her cheeks.

“We do not choose our births,” Lam said in a hoarse voice. “But we can choose our deaths. That was one of those death poems,” she declared. “At least the bravest can choose.” She scrubbed at her eyes, then turned and left the room.

Shan stared after her, more confused than ever. He faced the window himself, looking at Longtou now, then Yamdrok, then at Tuan, still on the boulder by the blackened earth. He had offered one inexplicable word: “Colorado.” Shan stared for a long time before turning away.

He found Lam in her office. “The night I brought the dog, when you stitched my head, Hannah Oglesby was on an intravenous tube. I thought it was for hydration.”

The doctor stared at a paper on her desk. She did not resist when he reached for it. It was one of the clandestine death-poem compilations. “These appear on my desk from time to time. I need to warn my assistant not to be so obvious. This new one came this morning.”

Shan studied the page. A new poem had been added at the bottom. I never knew what it was to be alive, it said, until I started to die.

He read the words again and again, then he turned and walked to the rolling table with the chess game, still uncompleted. “That night when I saw Hannah, this chess game was in her room.” He lifted the queen, which had stood defiantly alone as one of the last pieces in play. “Ever since I started visiting you, the table has been with you, with a game in progress. You were playing with Hannah, always with Hannah.” When Lam did not argue, he continued. “She was ill, something more than altitude sickness.”

Lam buried her head in her hand. As she looked up she wiped an eye. “I found her in a bathroom the night after she arrived in Zhongje, vomiting, with four kinds of pills scattered on the counter. I gathered up the pills, said I would confiscate them if she didn’t speak to me about her condition. She started crying.” Lam pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob of her own.

“It was cancer, at a very advanced stage. She never should have left America. She lied about her health, submitted a false medical form to us. She had a few weeks left at most, maybe only days.”

As Shan lowered himself into the chair by Lam’s desk, images swirled in his mind’s eye. The package with bandages, scissors, and makeup. A key chain with an image of American mountains had been one of Xie’s prized, secret possessions. More than once, Shan had confused the tall, graceful Tibetan woman with the high cheekbones with the tall, graceful American woman with the high cheekbones. Even their hair had been nearly the same brunette shade, and though Dawa’s was longer, a few minutes with scissors would have matched them. The signs had been in front of him all along. The medical records of the Commissioners had been erased. Judson’s strange melancholy, and his reluctance to have Shan be there when they departed for the airport. Hannah’s goading a knob into striking her, precisely on the left temple, where Dawa’s little tattoo was. A deep shudder racked his body, and he lowered his head into his hands as the dark worm of the truth finally gnawed through him and was released. It was so impossible, so dreadful. So brilliant.

“How could she have withstood…?”

Somehow Lam understood. “A bottle of morphine went missing. Pavri probably thought Hannah would need it. I doubt she used it. She despised any medicine that dulled her senses.”

They looked at each other. I never knew what it was to be alive, / until I started to die. It was Hannah’s death poem.

Another tear rolled down Lam’s cheek. The dog limped in, dragging its splinted leg.

* * *

Shan did not know how to face Yamdrok. His pace slowed as he approached the village. He was terrified that he might find Lokesh preparing to die, was painfully confused about what Tserung and Dolma knew, and about whether the villagers still loathed him. Prison had hardened him to hardship and tragedy, but he did not know how to deal with this new desolation. He was halfway across the channel of the wind fangs when he halted. It was sundown, and the wind was blowing as fiercely as he had ever seen it. For a moment, he lost balance and it pushed him several feet toward the cliff. He recovered, turned into the wind, stepped to the mouth of the chasm, and sat.

This was the maul of the mountain, this was how the mountain, witness to so much inhumanity, expressed its rage. From his jacket pocket, Shan extracted his Commission armband, held it overhead, and let the wind take it. He stripped off the jacket with the Commission logo and released it into the wind. He ached to be scoured, to be flayed, to bear the wrath of the mountain as it reduced him to bone. Maybe then he would stop feeling the pain.

He did not know how long he sat with the wind screaming around him, but suddenly a hand was on his shoulder and someone bent close to his ear.

“It is time for supper,” Dolma said simply.

Shan’s hand shook as he reached up, but the former nun gripped and steadied it, pulling him up and holding him as though he were a frail old man as they walked out of the savage wind.

They did not speak until they reached the worn red door of the farmhouse. They both knew Pao would now feel unrestrained in destroying the village. “Yamdrok has lived on borrowed time for fifty years,” Dolma said. “We had no right to expect to survive as long as we have when so many other old villages have disappeared.” She had known all along, he realized, known they would lose their beloved village.

“What will you do?” Shan asked.

Dolma’s smile was serene. “We will eat and we will pray. Just like every night.”

Inside, Tserung tended a pot over a brazier. Lokesh sat at the altar, working his beads. Shan no longer had to wonder whether the old Tibetans knew the truth. On the altar, beside the photographs of their son and the Dalai Lama, was a new photograph. It was of Hannah Oglesby. He recalled how the American had arranged for a new passport photo. Dawa had gone to the consulate instead, so her image would have been on the new travel papers.