Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

He surveyed the landscape, searching futilely for any sign of Lokesh or Gendun. He could travel to the east, beyond the head of the gorge three miles away, across the next ridge, and be at the hidden entrance to Yerpa before the moon set. He looked west. He could return to the strange, comfortable home of the woman called Fiona and pass the night reading English novels to her. Then he looked to the south, toward the rugged treacherous lands between Lhadrung and the border with India, nearly fifty miles away. He had last seen Lokesh hurrying in that direction, looking for the terrified girl.

He was about to rise, to head south, when the faint hint of incense touched his nostrils. Five minutes later he was back in the ruins, and in five more had followed the scent to its source.

The lama sat below the largest of the standing walls, the one with the jagged hole in its center. Shan lowered himself to Gendun’s side, struggling to keep his fear for the lama out of his voice. “There are men here like those who took Surya,” he said when Gendun acknowledged him with a nod.

“I was just going to go speak with them about how beautiful the sky is today,” Gendun said, then seemed to recognize the reaction in Shan’s eyes. “A temple is for disseminating truth, Shan. Not hiding it.”

“Should we not understand the truth first?” Shan asked. “Have you found the truth of what Surya did, of the prayer he gave you to keep him away?”

“It was a prayer to keep a demon away,” Gendun corrected him.

Shan quietly explained what he had learned in town. “What troubled him so, Rinpoche? What happened to him in the tunnel wasn’t the beginning of his pain, it was the end. You knew him better than anyone.”

Gendun folded his hands into his lap and stared at them. “I had never seen him happier than when he found that old chronicle from Zhoka. It was an old record book, hidden two hundred years ago, but it explained all we needed to know about Zhoka and its founders. He said all his life had been a preparation for this, for living here. He began leaving the hermitage during the day to come here, to learn about it. Then two days ago I found him in his cell shaking, unable to speak. It was the evening after he had slashed his painting. He would not say a word. I stayed with him all night. He recited prayers with me but never spoke to me.”

“Did you know he was meeting outsiders here?”

“A week or more ago, he said people from all the world were embracing Zhoka, nothing more. I thought he meant the hill people.”

“He said he met a great abbot.”

The lama considered Shan’s words a long time before replying. “There have been no great abbots in these mountains for decades.” He searched Shan’s face, as if looking for answers. But Shan had none to give. He knew the conversation was difficult for the lama. It was the most Gendun had ever spoken about a flesh and blood dilemma, about one of the mysteries that Shan tried to resolve. It was because, Shan knew, Gendun, like Shan, could not grasp whether Surya’s mystery was one of the flesh and blood or one of the spirit.

“I met policemen in the tunnels,” Shan said, glancing in the direction of the stairs that led underground.

Gendun looked into the coil of smoke rising from the incense. “If they are looking for evidence against Surya you should give it to them,” he said quietly.

Shan stared at him, dumbfounded.

“It is what Surya would want.”

“I cannot, Rinpoche,” Shan said. The pain of defying the lama was like a vise on his heart. “I am going to save Surya from himself.” He looked and met Gendun’s gaze. Words said could not be taken back. He would protect the monks, even if it meant he could never live with them again.

“Save Surya, save the people from the godkillers, save the little girl who ran away, save Yerpa and its monks,” Gendun said in a level voice. “Not even you can do all these things.”

“No,” Shan admitted. “But what would you have me do?”

“The only important thing. Save Zhoka.”

They sat in silence as Shan considered the words. “That book about Zhoka,” he said. “Where is it?”

“It was too dangerous to keep. Surya took it back where he found it. Only he knows the cave.”

As he studied the ruins once more, Shan saw two figures climbing the slope above. Yao and the American were leaving, walking back toward the stone tower.

A dozen new questions leapt to Shan’s tongue, but when he looked back, Gendun’s eyes were closed. He had begun a meditation. “Lha gyal lo,” he said softly, and rose. Perhaps not all his tasks were impossible. He was not sure where to look for demons and sacred books, but Lokesh and Dawa could be found in the south.

* * *

A quarter hour later Shan jogged along the southern path, cresting the ridge above Zhoka, when he stumbled, falling hard against a boulder, landing on his belly. As he wiped dirt from his mouth he saw a yak hair rope which had been stretched across the path, and a worn pair of boots. Shan pushed himself up on his hands, and looked into the eyes of the ox-like herder who had tried to seize Shan the day before. As the man’s boot swung at him Shan turned, easily evading the blow, then rose slowly, sitting on the boulder, wary of inviting further violence.

“Once I got a bounty for killing a wolf,” the big man growled. “The price they’re paying in the valley makes you worth fifty wolves.”

“I’m sorry your prayers were interrupted yesterday,” Shan said in an even tone. “I wanted to ask you about the godkillers.”

“I said I’m taking you in,” the man said, stepping forward, raising a fist. As he did so Shan saw a piece of knotted twine hanging from a button and a piece of rolled paper tied to a cord around his neck. The man was wearing protective charms.

Shan reached out and grabbed a handful of dirt from where the man had stood, from his bootprint. He spat into his hands and began to roll the earth into a ball. “Did you see them, did you see the godkillers?”

The man glanced uneasily at Shan’s hands. “Don’t do that,” he said, scraping his foot along the ground, obliterating his other bootprints.

“Have you?” Shan opened his palm, began pressing the moistened earth into the shape of a man.

“I’ve seen strangers, three or four times, these past two weeks. I don’t get close enough to see who they are. Expensive clothes. Backpacks. Binoculars. They make a lot of noise. Laugh a lot. You can smell their cigarettes a mile away.”

Shan kept working the earth. It was a very old thing from pre-Buddhist Tibet. He was making an effigy of the man, which could be manipulated to cause injury to him. Usually a piece of hair or scrap of clothing would be used, but soil from a footprint would suffice.

“You can’t know…” the man said uncertainly as he stared at Shan’s hands. He took a step back. “Damn you! Don’t!”

“Where?” Shan asked.

“The last time, four, maybe five miles from here. Closer to the valley. A pasture past small gullies, rough terrain. No one but herders go there. So when one of my dogs barked I figured it was Jara or one of the others with a herd. But it was a party of ten or twelve, Chinese and Tibetans, with colorful jackets, acting like tourists. I sent my dog back and got closer, thinking I might earn some money guiding them. I got close enough to hear them reading to each other out of a pilgrim book, enough to see they already had a guide, that bastard with the bad hand from town.”

“Were they praying?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why a pilgrim book?”

“It’s how you get to the old pilgrim places, to the things inside the old shrines,” the man said. “If you don’t come to pray, you come to do the opposite.”