Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

“You are the Chinese who gloated over our abbess’s mutilated body at the ruins.”

Shan’s hand folded, losing the mudra. These were not the gentle words he had hoped for. He rose and straightened his clothes. “I was but the first to mourn her. I closed her eyes.”

“You stole her gau.”

Something inside Shan sagged. Once he had always been welcomed by nuns and monks. “Public Security likes to open such amulets. They would photograph it and catalog its contents. Often they find evidence that leads to investigation of the owner’s friends and family.”

The nun glared at him. She seemed ready to shove Shan back down the steps. The oldest of the monks, a man in his late forties, stepped forward as if to intervene. His voice was more level, almost friendly. His face was strong and intelligent. “There are stories of a white-haired uncle who wanders the upper valleys like an ancient yak. They say he has a Chinese companion.” The monk wore a pale yellow belt loosely around his robe. Hanging from it was an ornate pen case, a traditional trapping of a Tibetan teacher.

Shan offered a hesitant grin. “I have learned much from that old yak.”

“I have heard those two stand in ditches covered with mud sometimes.”

“Lokesh says cleaning ditches is purifying. He says the magic of the earth gods begins with soil and water.”

The monk turned to the nun, who still studied Shan with cool disapproval. “Surely, Mother,” the monk said, “we could all join in some tea.”

The nun moved only a single hand, a gesture to Chenmo. The young novice darted toward a door where a brazier stood and disappeared inside.

“My name is Shan,” he offered.

“I am called Trisong Norbu.”

Shan looked at him in surprise. He recognized the name. “Abbot Norbu,” he acknowledged with a slight bow of his head. What was the abbot of Chegar gompa doing at the remote hermitage?

The abbot seemed to have read Shan’s mind. “You and I may have different questions but I think perhaps we seek the same answers. The valley will never find peace again until those terrible deaths are reconciled.” Norbu gestured to a group of stools in a sunlit corner of the little courtyard, overlooking a vista of jagged ridges and slopes that blushed with flowers. The nun sat silently with them, the reluctant hostess. Another nun appeared and began spinning a heavy prayer wheel mounted on the opposite wall, warily watching as if the hermitage would need protection from Shan.

“The people of the valley say we are their anchors,” Norbu explained, “my Chegar at the head of the valley and the convent at its foot. The hermitage,” he said, correcting himself. “Our beloved abbess often reminded us that this place was but an outpost of the old convent, a station for nuns on retreat. She said it had been the convent that gave meaning to this place.”

“Which is why she was trying to make the old convent live again,” Shan said. He glanced at the two other monks, who watched their abbot like dutiful attendants. “But why now after all these years?” The question had not occurred to him before.

“She saw it as her sacred duty.” Norbu replied, nodding to Chenmo as she brought tea.

“Even though the restoration had not been approved,” Shan ventured.

The abbot paused, studying Shan, as if trying to decide if his words were a warning. He offered a small smile and gestured to his companions. “Dakpo, Trinle, and I have to deal with mountains of forms from Religious Affairs. There is no form for the requisition of hope and faith. Our valley is a special place, remote enough to keep traditions alive longer than other parts of Tibet. The government seems jealous of what we have here. With the new town, the new relocation camp, the abbess and I thought it was time for the convent to live again.”

Shan sipped his tea, weighing not just the abbot’s words but his careful tone. Serving as abbot of any monastery in Tibet was like navigating a minefield. The inhabitants of the gompa, and all the devout living nearby, expected spiritual leadership from such a man. But Beijing expected political leadership. Norbu was no doubt painfully aware that many abbots had been stripped of their rank, often their robes, for failing to kowtow to Beijing. He offered a respectful nod of his head and drained his cup.

Chenmo renewed the tea in their cups and the two men spoke as friends might, of the weather, of the lammergeiers gracefully soaring overhead, of the probable origins of the little hermitage as a fortress manned by archers.

“You speak Tibetan better than any Chinese I have ever known,” the abbot observed.

“I spent a few years living only with Tibetans,” Shan replied. “The solitary Chinese with twenty Tibetans in the same barracks.”

Norbu studied him with new interest. “In Lhadrung?”

“The Four hundred and fourth People’s Construction Brigade.”

Norbu offered a solemn nod. The man of reverence was also a man of the world. He was quiet for a long moment, sipping his tea in silence. “Life can be difficult for former Chinese convicts in Tibet,” he observed.

“Life can be difficult for a Tibetan abbot in Tibet,” Shan rejoined.

Norbu offered a gentle smile in reply.

“I had a dream,” the younger of the two attendants, Dakpo, suddenly declared. “A nightmare really. The ghosts of the abbess and Jamyang were in a deep pit, unable to rise out of it. They were blind. They were weeping, asking me to help.”

For a moment Shan saw torment in the abbot’s eyes. When Norbu spoke there was a plaintive tone in his voice. “The nuns are very scared. My monks are scared. I am without understanding of these things, of violent killings. It is not part of our world.”

“It is not part of the world we wished we had,” Shan said. “And for these deaths there is no understanding.”

“I don’t follow.”

“There are people trained to understand such things. They look for motive, for patterns, for evidence of what happened. But all hinges on motive. There could be those with motive to kill a foreigner. There could be motives to kill the leader of a criminal gang. There could be a motive even to kill an abbess. Taking each victim, the police could make a list of suspects. But the lists would all be different. There is nothing linking the three. It is like they were three different murders that just happened at the same place.”

Norbu fingered the prayer beads on his belt. “Perhaps when a demon takes over a man,” the abbot said looking at his beads with sadness in his eyes, “there is no motive, there is only the demon.” He sighed. “But that’s not how the government will see it. They will announce a motive, so they can make an arrest,” he declared, looking at Shan now.

Shan had no reply.

Dakpo shook his head back and forth. “And how can I tell Jamyang and the abbess the truth the next time they come to me?” he asked in despair. “How do I tell them they must wander blind and frightened forever?”

The abbot hung his head a moment. “I want to weep,” he said in Chinese, as if the words were only for Shan, “but I am the abbot.” He opened his mouth again after a moment, then just shook his head, as if speaking had become too great a burden, and took up his beads with a whispered mantra.

Shan rose and paced along the courtyard, surveying the high slopes again. A demon was loose and Lokesh was unprotected. The knobs were seeking the American woman and Shan’s misdirection to Liang would only buy her another day or two. When the major turned his attention back to the valley he would be releasing his hungriest dogs.

He turned to see the abbot speaking in soft tones with Chenmo. Norbu touched his gau, as if offering the woman a blessing, then nodded a farewell to Shan, and with Dakpo and Trinle at his side slowly descended the steep stairs that led down from the hermitage. A great weight seemed to have settled on his shoulders.