Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

Shan studied the map again, tracing with his finger an alternate route, a detour that would connect with Chenmo’s mysterious track farther up the slope. He turned the wheel and followed the tracks left by the truck that had brought the abbess’s body.

“No,” Chenmo protested. “Please, Shan. Those men scare me.”

“Just a quick look, that’s all,” Shan assured her.

When he pressed on she began saying her rosary.

At last the truck crested a hill overlooking the Jade Crow compound. Chenmo gasped. A column of dark smoke was rising from the farm. He eased the truck back, out of sight from below, and darted to the crest with the binoculars.

A sentry was posted on the road leading to the camp, armed with what looked like a pitchfork. The little stone stable above the compound had something new, a solitary prayer flag fluttering from its roof. The little grain crib Shan had seen in ruin was entirely gone now. Its salvaged timber had been used for a new structure of crossed planks, from which the smoke now rose. At least half a dozen figures were arranged in a circle around the intense fire. The Jade Crows were burning the body of their leader.

* * *

The sun was low on the horizon by the time they reached the long grassy plain that straddled the two counties. Shan looked uncomfortably behind him. At the crest of the ridge above them was the county line, where the meager protection he enjoyed would disappear. On the other side he would just be an ex-convict without travel papers.

Chenmo had stopped speaking. She simply pointed onward, toward the crest, more than two miles away.

They had nearly reached the top of the ridge when she signaled for him to stop and jumped out of the truck, running up the slope. She was standing on a ledge that overlooked the wide plain behind them when he caught up with her, looking out over the grassland with fear in her eyes. She pressed a fist against her mouth as if to stifle a cry. A chill began rising up Shan’s spine. What was it that so terrified her?

“We climbed quickly, using the road at first,” she suddenly explained. She pointed toward the end of the plain where the land rose steeply into more fields of rocks. “We were nearly at the trail that leads to the high country when we saw them. They were running toward us. There was no time to react.”

Shan’s mouth went dry. “You mean soldiers.”

Chenmo shrugged. “They wore uniforms. They had guns. We had so little time. Uncle Lokesh said the abbess had to escape. Three of us went with the horse, running up the trail. When Lokesh ran out into the open to distract the soldiers, the American followed and ran past him as if to help him. Cora was strong, very fast, too fast. She fell. Uncle Lokesh went to her and Ani Ama ran to the two of them. They tried to carry Cora away but the soldiers caught up with them. We watched from the rocks above. When they were gone I was sent back to tell the hermitage.”

Shan collapsed onto a rock, holding his head in his hands for a moment. “I don’t understand,” he said when he looked up. “Where did the soldiers come from? Where did they go? Did they have trucks? A helicopter? What else did you see? Anything that could help me find where they were taken.”

“But I know where. I watched. I followed. I had seen it before with Cora and Rutger.”

Shan watched, more confused than ever, as the woman hitched up her robe and began to climb over the short, steep slope that led to the crest of the ridge. He did not catch up with her until she was nearly at the top.

“The Chinese think they are so secret,” she declared, “as if we are all blind. Rutger and Cora wanted everyone to think they had come to film the restoration of the convent but this is why they came with their cameras, to show the Chinese that not everyone is blind. I helped them sometimes, and they let me look through their long lenses. Old men and women being beaten with sticks. Monks tethered to poles and left outside with no shelter, even in storms. They started digging graves last month.” She bit her lip again and looked back down on the plain. “My mother used to tell me of a hell where humans were transformed into animals. This is it.” She took the final step to reach the crest and pointed down to the remote valley below.

The sight hit Shan like a physical blow. With a long groan he collapsed to his knees.

The complex lay less than a mile below them, a sprawling labyrinth of crude barracks surrounded by walls of razor wire and short towers that were no doubt equipped with machine guns.

As the numbness left him Shan felt nothing but the desperate, overwhelming need to save Lokesh. The gentle old Tibetan would never survive another term of imprisonment. He had to find him, had to get him away from the wire and the guns. He rose unsteadily and took one step, then another, down the slope, scanning the camp with a prisoner’s eye, looking for soft spots in the security.

He became vaguely aware of Chenmo calling to him, protesting, pleading with him. “The soldiers!” she cried. “They were the guard patrol that sweeps the area. They will see us too. No one is allowed this close.”

He stumbled on the thick grass and when he rose she was at his side, pulling on his arm.

“No!” he cried as he shrugged her off. “Lokesh will die! Everything I have done will be worthless if I let him die like that!”

She was sobbing now but she did not try to restrain him as he took another step. It was only an internment camp, he told himself. Security would not be as severe as at a gulag prison. It would be dark soon. Surely he could find a way through the wire at the rear of the huge camp.

“I saw him last summer!” Chenmo shouted to his back.

Shan kept moving.

But then she spoke again. “I saw Jamyang on the highway from Golmud! He was not a lama then.”

Shan halted and slowly turned toward the nun. “Say that again.”

“Some of us went to the Golmud highway to help with those convoys of relocated shepherds. There was a truck station where they stopped for rest.” Chenmo cast another worried glance toward the internment camp. “We can’t linger here. They will see us and send soldiers.”

Shan gazed forlornly back at the camp but let her pull him back over the crest. “Jamyang was helping with the shepherds too, you mean,” he said when they were out of sight of the camp.

“No. He was in a big black car, like the government uses. He and others, mostly Chinese, got out and went inside for tea. They were wearing suits, like on a business trip.”

He searched her eyes, trying to understand the trick she was playing. “Chenmo, you are mistaken.”

“He had that mark on his cheek. The abbess said it was the sign of the lotus flower, a bud of the flower, and that it must mean he was a reincarnated teacher.” She spoke of the little birthmark over Jamyang’s jaw. The lotus was a symbol of purity. It was believed that those spiritually advanced lamas whose reincarnations could be traced more than hundreds of years, the tulku, often had prominent birthmarks to aid their identification as infants.

He struggled to focus on what she said, considering the meaning of her words. “You told the abbess about seeing him?”

“There was no point. She spoke often about how such a tulku had to be treasured by all of us. She would not have believed me. I am just a novice. She liked to say I still had the wildness of my clan in me.”

“But you are certain?”

“I was at a water spigot filling some of the cans from the back of the trucks. A can spilled and splashed water on one of the Chinese men, who cursed at me and raised an arm like he was about to strike me. This tall Tibetan with him rushed forward and calmed him, saying it was only an accident, then picked up the can for me. He helped me refill it. He laughed when he got splashed himself, then he squeezed my hand and offered a prayer before he rushed to the others. I saw his face plain, saw that mark. When I looked into my hand there was a folded currency note in it. Ten yuan. I bought incense to put in the back of each of the trucks so the gods would follow and know where those poor shepherds were going. It was Jamyang, Shan, I know it was.”