Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

“It’s gone,” came a voice over her shoulder. Jigten stepped between them. “Washed out five months ago.” He traced a finger along a dotted line that circled the last town. “There’s an old dirt track with a ford across the stream. We just loop around and come back just above Chimpuk.”

Shan nodded slowly, then paused, pointing to the second town on the map. “You mean Shijingshan.”

“The Chinese renamed it years ago. Chinese maps have to have Chinese names, so for Chinese travelers it’s Paradise Hills. Shijingshan. To Tibetans it’s still Chimpuk.”

Shan reached into his pocket and unfolded the paper Meng had given him the day before. They were going to Jamyang’s birthplace.

* * *

It was nearly noon when they crossed the shallow ford and pulled the vehicles to the side of the gravel track. The rough ride had been painful for Dakpo, and when the rear door was opened he appeared to have been beaten again. His prayer beads were pressed into his palm, his knuckles white. Without being asked, Jigten went for water as Shan changed the bandage on the monk’s head. They washed his wounds and gave him cold soup before leaving him resting peacefully on his makeshift bed.

Half an hour later they stopped on a low hill over Chimpuk village. The rundown little settlement was so remote that it showed little evidence of China other than its signs. On the faded board announcing the town’s Chinese name the final character had been scratched out so that it said just Shijing. Paradise.

“Who are we?” Meng asked as they parked the truck by a goat pen at the edge of town, discomfort obvious in her voice. She had left her car outside of town and changed into civilian clothes. “Not a place that gets many strangers.”

Dogs began barking. An old woman cutting the long skirt hairs of a yak, which the Tibetans braided into rope, stopped and stared at them. A man sitting on a stool with a tea churn was stroking a huge black mastiff that bolted toward them, barking. They had no hope of being inconspicuous.

“We are friends of the lama Jamyang,” Shan called out, then stood still as the mastiff reached them. It lunged and bit his ankle.

A hearty laugh rose from the man on the stool as Shan grabbed his ankle. “Stay in the truck,” he said as he pulled himself up, leaning on a staff. “That’s what everyone else does when they’re lost. Stay in the truck and yell. Safer that way.” He limped forward and dispersed the dog with a shake of his staff.

“We’re not lost,” Shan ventured. “We’re looking for the family of lama Jamyang.”

The old man eyed Meng suspiciously before turning to Shan. “Then you’re lost and don’t even know it.” He sighed and pointed with his staff to Shan’s ankle. Blood was oozing from the dog bite. Gesturing Shan to his stool, he exposed the wound, rinsed it first with water then, despite Shan’s protests, with chang , barley beer. Before he spoke he dabbed the wound with some honey and rolled down the pant’s leg. “She won’t have much to do with strangers,” he declared, and pointed to a modest one-story house at the far edge of town that sat back from the others.

It was a well-kept traditional farmhouse, with faded mantras painted under the window and a traditional sun and moon sign over the entry. By the open door stood a small loom where someone had been weaving the heavy fabric used for cargo sacks in yak caravans. An aged woman stepped out of the shadows. Her face was as frayed as the black apron she wore. The reluctant nod she offered shamed Shan. She did not want them but the traditions of Tibetan hospitality would not allow her to turn them away.

“You are of Jamyang’s blood?” he asked as she gestured them to sit on a carpet in the center of her living quarters. The tidy little house had a half wall dividing it. Come autumn her livestock would take shelter on the other side.

“I am his mother’s sister. Everyone else.”-she made a vague gesture toward the window, or perhaps the sky-“everyone else is gone.”

“My companion is Meng,” he explained. “I am called Shan.”

She tossed a few pieces of dried dung on her brazier and set a kettle on it. “A friend of Jamyang’s you said.”

Shan hesitated, looking around the chamber. Opposite its small kitchen area was a kang , a wide sleeping platform. On one side of the kang was a rolled sleeping pallet. The other side was covered with a faded rug woven to resemble the skin of a tiger, before a small altar that held a bronze Buddha and an old gau.

“I met him when he settled in Lhadrung County last year,” Shan explained. “He was teaching shepherds and restoring an old shrine. He was a gentle man, a good teacher.”

“No,” she shot back. “Never on our rug.”

As she bent to pour them tea, Shan strained to make sense of her words. Lokesh would have known how to speak with the woman. His gaze drifted back to the tiger rug and his recollection stirred. Once, Lokesh had told him, tiger skins had been reserved for revered lamas, who sat on them while teaching. “Jamyang taught me things from the old ways,” Shan ventured.

The woman ignored him, gesturing to a string of white squares hanging from a rafter. “There’s cheese,” she stated flatly. Such dried cheese was a staple of many farming households.

“He taught me to look beneath the appearance of people.”

The woman gave a snort of derision. “He taught death and betrayal. He taught us about damned appearances well enough.”

“Jamyang is dead,” Shan declared.

The woman hesitated only a moment. “There’s yogurt in a jar in the stream out back.”

“I need to know about him. About what happened to him when he was young.”

She eyed the teacups as if trying to decide if she had fulfilled her obligation, then fixed him with a hard stare. “What happened to him happened to us all.”

Meng tugged on Shan’s sleeve, trying to pull him toward the door.

Shan drained his teacup, then pushed the empty cup toward the kettle.

The woman frowned. “If you desire more tea, you will need to get me some more dung,” she said icily.

The silence hung heavily about them. Shan was increasingly certain the old woman held a vital piece of the puzzle that was Jamyang, and just as certain she would not share it with two Chinese strangers.

Suddenly a shadow filled the doorway. The woman’s eyes went round and with a gasp leaned forward, nearly touching her forehead to the floor.

Dakpo was in the door, his face clenched in pain, blood seeping from the bandage on his head.

“These two were sent by the deities,” the monk said. He was breathing heavily. “They saved me. Shan is a friend of the old lamas.” He clutched his rib cage and sank to his knees. “They are truth seekers,” he moaned, and collapsed in the doorway.

The old woman moved with surprising speed, springing up so quickly she was able to catch Dakpo’s head before it hit the stone flags of the floor. For a moment she silently held the monk as if embracing a lost family member.

“His name is Dakpo,” Shan explained. “He is from Lhadrung County, from Chegar gompa. He has cracked ribs. He was attacked in Chamdo. We could not leave him there.”

It was Meng who broke the silence. “I will get more dung,” she said, and disappeared out the door.

Shan and the woman worked wordlessly, unrolling the pallet and laying Dakpo on it as Meng coaxed the brazier into a bright fire. While Shan wiped at the monk’s wounds the woman made more tea then put on a pot for soup, which she asked Meng to watch over as she disappeared out the back door. When she returned she carried a wooden box of salves and ointments. A rolled-up piece of cloth was in one hand, a large black dog was at her heels. As Shan relieved her of the box the dog growled. Shan backed away. It was the same bearlike creature that had bit him. The woman leaned over the animal, whispering into his ear. The dog seemed to frown, then turned to examine Dakpo, and began sniffing the monk’s body with slow deliberation. Wherever he paused the woman applied salve.