Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

“Yes,” she said readily. “In all my life I have not said it. No one has, since that day.”

“But now outsiders come and ask for it. I think they were asking Surya about how it looked, how it was to be painted. Why?”

“You must not speak of those things, not in these hills.”

“Not even to help Surya?”

“Not even Surya would-”

Stones rattled on the trail above the camp. Dawa moaned and huddled closer to Lokesh. A figure tumbled into the small circle of light cast by the fire, falling headfirst toward the ground, barely avoiding slamming his skull onto a rock by throwing his hands out.

“Buddha’s teeth!” Lokesh muttered, then grabbed a flaming stick and stepped over the fallen man, toward the trail. The sound of gravel being kicked by running feet came down the slope.

Shan darted to the stranger’s side, pulling on his shoulder, helping him into a sitting position. The left side of the man’s face was heavily bruised. Blood trickled from his mouth and from several small cuts on his cheeks. A rivulet of blood had run down his neck, and now was dried and cracked.

Shan grabbed another burning stick and ran to Lokesh’s side. Someone had brought the injured man to them and fled. He remembered the American’s handlamp still in his pocket, and pulled it out to illuminate the slope above.

“Oh,” the stranger said as he saw the anxiety on their faces, “it’s all right. There’s no one.” His voice was small and quivering, though somehow assured. The man stood and leaned against a boulder, turning his face away from the fire as if shamed by his wounds. He glanced at Shan. “He saw it was you and left.”

As Liya threw more wood on the fire, and Lokesh began dabbing at the man’s wounds with a cloth, Shan suddenly recognized the man. “Is Surya safe?” he asked quickly. It was the angry beggar from town who had taken Surya’s apple. The informer. There was new movement at the edge of the camp. Liya was quickly loading her pack.

“He stopped speaking, except for his mantras.” The man pushed Lokesh’s hand away. “He keeps getting smaller.”

“Smaller?” Shan asked.

“It’s what happens when things inside dry up,” the man said with a knowing tone. “My mother knew a man who killed his wife. The police didn’t do anything, but he kept getting smaller and smaller until one day he just disappeared.”

Dawa appeared at Lokesh’s side, holding the metal plate, now filled with warm water. Lokesh rinsed the cloth, and the man frowned. “I don’t need that. I need food.”

As Shan stepped toward the pot with the tsampa, he looked for Liya. She had disappeared.

A minute later, as the man began gulping down tsampa, Shan squatted by his side. “Who did this to you?”

“You’re the one called Shan?” the man inquired.

Shan nodded. “Who hurt you?” The man had not been seriously injured. It was more like he had been slapped repeatedly.

“It’s okay. Just what herders do when they find me,” the man said.

“Someone in town sent you,” Shan suggested. “From the government.”

The man nodded, then squatted by the fire with his plate, looking into the flames. “I have to help them. My name is Tashi.” He spoke as though it was just another job, as if it were his expected role in life to regularly inform for the government, and be regularly beaten for it by other Tibetans.

“Why?” Shan asked. “Why do you have to?”

“My mother is old and sick. I have to stay close to town. I have no other way to make money to help her. Once I worked in a factory. Now this is what I do.”

As he set the plate down Shan saw that two fingers were missing from his hand. “You have been guiding the groups into the mountains for Ming,” he said.

“Not anymore. They got angry when I couldn’t find a cave.”

“A pilgrim’s cave.”

Tashi nodded.

“If you found it, what would they have done?”

“I found others before. They are scientists. They have special procedures. First they call Director Ming. He must be the first inside, because he is the most expert on how to preserve old things.”

“What did he do when he went inside?” Shan asked.

“Once he came out with an old book. Another time there was only an old Buddha painted on the wall, and a sacred well. The army came and sealed it with explosives.”

Shan cast a worried glance at Lokesh. Ming wasn’t seeking shrines for his research. He was searching for something and then preventing others from seeing the shrines he investigated. “Was Ming in the mountains two nights ago?”

“Ming and the beautiful one with red hair. Punji. I help her find the children who need help. I watch her sometimes when she doesn’t know.” Tashi seemed compelled to tell all his secrets.

“What made it so urgent that he take Surya the next day, why send soldiers to look?”

“Because he didn’t find one that night, but he learned that someone else had.” Tashi extended his plate for more roasted barley. Shan opened his mouth to press him but suddenly understood. In her sudden, unexpected encounter with them, Liya had told Ming and McDowell that monks would be at Zhoka, and they had assumed that someone else had access to monks, was somehow using Surya or another monk. He recalled Ming’s reaction to the cigar stub. Ming seemed to think he had competition in his quest in the mountains. A competition of godkillers.

“You said you came to see me?” Shan asked.

Tashi nodded, but he grew silent and distracted. “I don’t like leaving town. I hate those helicopters. First time up, I wet myself. I never would have found you if that herder hadn’t ambushed me. And at night, too. So I couldn’t see his face. Then he agreed to take me to you for only half the money Ming gave me for the purpose. For me,” he declared in an oddly whimsical tone, “it has been a lucky day.”

It was Shan’s turn to stare into the fire. The man was a self-confessed informer but grateful he could not report on the identities of the hill people. He had arrived in the helicopter Shan had seen, the one that had taken Yao and the American. “Did you tell the message, the one you brought for me. Did you tell the herder?” Shan asked.

Tashi shrugged. “I tell everyone everything if they ask. It’s how I stay alive. My mother needs me. He didn’t ask.”

“And what was so important that they would bring you into the mountains?”

“The helicopter was coming anyway, to pick up those policemen. It goes out every day now, into the mountains in the morning and back to pick up the teams at night.”

“What was so important?” Shan asked again.

“I was outside the colonel’s office, because they wanted to know if the old beggar had said anything. Colonel Tan was speaking on his radio with that Yao, arguing. Yao was at the ruins and sounded furious about something you did. Director Ming was with him. They don’t know I heard. Ming said the reward would mean you were brought back to Lhadrung soon. The colonel said no, that you would know to stay away now, that you had buried yourself deep in the mountains by now. Then Yao said something on the radio I couldn’t hear and the colonel got on the phone with someone for a long time. After a while Director Ming appeared and took me to a conference room. He said I had not been helpful enough to him, that to show him I could be helpful I had to get you.”

“Why would he think you could do that?”

“Because of the words I was to speak.”

“What words?”

Tashi looked up with an uncertain grin. “That if you come back down into the world to help them, they will bring you your son.”

* * *

For the first quarter hour Shan ran in the darkness toward Lhadrung, slipping, falling on the loose sharp gravel. His pants tore. He felt blood trickling down his shin. Then he halted, catching his breath, trying to calm himself, leaning against a rock as he looked toward the stars, thinking he should say something to his father but not knowing what.