Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

He approached the town quickly, jogging through the long dawn shadows along the dirt road that led from the mountains, stopping every few minutes in the cover of thickets to survey the valley. There was no sign of helicopters overhead, nor of the dust plumes raised by troop trucks when they patrolled the valley. At the edge of town he mingled with Tibetans arriving with produce for the market, entering the market square with them, then dropping into the shadows of the maze of alleys surrounding it.

Shan had heard descriptions of the Lhadrung that had existed fifty years earlier, a thriving Tibetan community of simple, small houses, each with its own courtyard, each with its own little shrine, arrayed around a small gompa that served the people of the central valley. By the time the People’s Liberation Army arrived in the valley, scarred and vengeful from months of guerrilla fighting, the residents expected the gompa to be leveled, as others throughout Tibet had been. The army leveled not just the gompa but nearly the entire town, first with aerial bombs, then with bulldozers. The Chinese town that had grown in its place was a grid of lifeless grey buildings over which towered the four-story structure that served as headquarters for the county administration.

Since leaving prison Shan had carefully avoided the government center, had confined his few town visits to the market on the east side of the town. Much had changed at the building since he had walked out of it, unexpectedly freed, the year before. The front of the structure, but only the front, had been painted bright white, which seemed only to highlight the dirty grey of the other sides. No one had bothered to remove the splatters of paint from the windows. The first-floor windows surrounding the metal entry doors, however, had all been covered with posters fastened inside the glass, filled with images that were familiar fixtures of public places throughout China. On one poster smiling Chinese girls with ribbons in their hair drove tractors past rows of cotton, the red flag of the People’s Republic flying from each tractor. On another an old woman looked out over a mountain range, a rifle on her shoulder, a commemoration of past heroes. On a new concrete pedestal beside the entrance was a statue cast of marble chips, the head and shoulders of Mao, in the young, cheerful aspect that had become popular in Party circles. Two trees with the shape of gingkos had been placed on either side of the doors. They were already dead, a stark reminder about Beijing’s efforts to transplant things Chinese into a world where they could find no roots. Incredibly, beside one of the dead trees three beggars sat against the wall of the building. Shan slipped along the perimeter of the small square in front of the building, studying the three figures. There should be no beggars. Colonel Tan did not tolerate beggars, certainly would not permit them in front of the seat of county government.

He stepped into the shadowed doorway of a closed restaurant and studied the scene warily. Two cars were parked in the alley at the side of the building. One, a black Red Flag limousine at least twenty years old, appeared to be the vehicle used by Colonel Tan. In front of the Red Flag was a silver sedan, a recent model of Japanese manufacture. He looked back at the beggars. Two of them, a figure whose face was obscured with burlap sacking and the man beside him, draped in a tattered blanket, sat with heads tilted toward the dry cracked earth in front of them. The third, an old woman whose left eye was milky white, tapped a stick against a traditional metal alms bowl. Near the edge of the square, a small knot of Tibetans stood at the rear of a truck, watching the three uneasily. They were not accustomed to seeing beggars. Buddhist teaching would tell them to offer alms. Government teaching insisted they did not.

Shan watched the scene with growing unease. It was still early. The government building was quiet, appearing almost unoccupied. He studied the windows of the top floor, where the senior officers worked. Drapes were drawn in several of the offices. He could discern no movement.

Two men in grey uniforms appeared a block away, semiautomatic weapons slung from their shoulders. Another new feature of life in Lhadrung. He pushed deeper into the shadows and watched, futilely twisting the doorknob of the restaurant, looking for a hiding place should the soldiers approach. They turned at the corner before the square and disappeared down a side street. A moment later one of the Tibetans at the truck advanced hesitantly to the old woman, knelt beside her, and began speaking in low, urgent tones, gesturing toward the street in the opposite direction of the patrol, trying to pull her up.

Suddenly two men burst out of the front doors of the government center. The man kneeling by the woman froze, the color draining from his face, then he stood, turned his back to the doors, and stiffly walked away.

The men on the steps were both Han Chinese, with the air of senior officials. One, a tall sleek man in his thirties wearing neatly pressed black trousers, blue dress shirt, and red tie, extracted a wide roll of paper from what appeared to be a map case and began speaking rapidly, unrolling it in a pool of sunlight on the low wall beneath the Mao bust. The shorter man, perhaps ten years older than his companion, was clad in a brown sweater vest over a white shirt, without a tie. His uncombed hair, showing signs of grey, was long, hanging over his ears, and as Shan watched he used a silver pen to point at the map, a question in his eyes as he spoke. Not a map, Shan saw in surprise as the younger man lifted it from the wall. It was a thangka, a traditional Tibetan cloth painting, an old one judging by its faded colors.

The older man seemed to listen to his companion with thin tolerance, and appeared about to interrupt, when a Western woman with curly russet colored hair stepped outside to join them. She made repeated, vigorous gestures toward the thangka, as if emphatically explaining something about it, then took it and reversed it, pointing to something on the back. Her action quieted the men, both of whom offered her reluctant nods. Shan took a step forward to see the woman better. She was in her thirties, dressed in blue denim jeans with a short, stylish brown jacket over a white blouse. Something hung from her neck on a black cord. A magnifying lens.

The tall man uttered a few syllables, shrugged, rolled up the painting, packed it back in its case, and stepped back inside, followed a moment later by his older companion. The woman lingered, moving to the edge of the steps, putting her hand on Mao’s shoulder to lean over, studying the beggars. Worry seemed to cross her face. She rolled a finger in a lock of hair that dangled at her shoulder and spoke. Shan could not hear the words, but the man in the center, wrapped in the blanket, looked up, seeming to understand. Had she spoken Tibetan? The man’s face was in shadow, but he seemed to shake his head as though in answer. The woman glanced toward the door then darted down the stairs, reaching into her jacket pocket as she ran. She produced an apple, dropped it onto the lap of the beggar closest to the door, the one draped in burlap, then ran back inside.

As she disappeared, a helicopter burst into sight, flying low and fast over the town center toward the north, in the direction of the prison camp. It was gone in an instant, leaving a cold, fearful silence in the square. When Shan looked back the apple was in the hands of the second beggar, the one draped with the blanket.

Shan stared at the empty doorway, then the beggars. He was certain the two Han men had been government officials, senior officials. They had seen the beggars and done nothing. They had been discussing a Tibetan painting, perhaps arguing over it. Then the woman had appeared and seemed to settle the argument. Had they not acted against the beggars because of the Westerner? He waited another ten minutes, then approached the beggars, walking along the perimeter of the square. He dropped his only coin in the bowl of the old woman, who offered a grateful nod. The other two figures, their faces still obscured, seemed not to notice him, but then the man with the blanket over his head pushed his leg out as Shan approached, as if to trip him. Shan carefully stepped over the leg, squatted by the man who wore the burlap hood, and looked into the shadowed face.