Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

The five-foot-high shape hanging over the rear wall was a crude representation of a man, a brown shirt stretched over a frame of sticks, with the top stick extending eighteen inches from each shoulder to represent arms, two vertical sticks extending below the shirt as legs. An expensive watch and a string bearing three gold rings hung from one stick arm. The face was a piece of beige cloth stretched across a smaller frame of sticks lashed above the shirt, with eyes, ears, and mouth drawn in charcoal. Colors had been added by what may have been wax crayons. Brown hair. Red circles on the cheeks. Brown eyelashes.

There was movement behind them. Shan did not turn but heard the American’s startled groan.

The crude effigy had a macabre power about it, a haunting presence that seemed to be warning them away. Shan understood why Dawa was keeping her eyes closed. He had learned of such a practice from the old lamas in the gulag, but never had he seen one of the effigies. It was one of the very old customs that still lingered in isolated pockets of Tibet, probably dating from before Buddhism came to the country.

“When a body isn’t available for the customary three days of preparation,” Shan explained in a whisper, “or when mourners chose to observe the full forty-nine days of traditional death rites, a likeness of the dead might be substituted for the body, to be the focus of those who would talk the departed spirit through his transition.”

“The manuscript is very old and faded,” someone suddenly said, in a quiet voice. Shan realized Lokesh had stopped reading and was speaking to him. “Written in the old style,” he added. “They have difficulty with it, and asked if I could read it, at least the early chapters.”

Corbett stepped to Shan’s side, staring intensely at the effigy, then shook his head, hard, as though struggling to pull his gaze away. He moved to Dawa, lifted the girl into his arms, and carried her outside.

“Who was it?” Shan asked Lokesh.

“A man who was not prepared, is all they said,” his old friend replied.

Not prepared. The Tibetans usually used the term to describe a devout Buddhist who had died unexpectedly, but it could mean anyone who had not prepared his spirit to pass on. Someone, for example, who had been murdered. Shan took a step forward, toward the effigy. Near the side wall he saw two more butter lamps, unlit. He tipped them into the flame of a lit lamp to ignite them and set them by the effigy.

Yao squatted at the legs of the figure, to which were attached thick black woolen socks, then poked tentatively at a blanket which lay on the floor below the stick feet. As Shan lifted the blanket Yao’s breath audibly caught. Exposed in the dim light was a row of what must have been the dead man’s possessions: A portable compact disc player with earphones, an expensive Japanese model that showed signs of heavy use. A small magnifying lens that swung out from a hard plastic case. A pair of hiking boots. A compass. A complicated pocketknife with perhaps a dozen blades. Three short bristled brushes, bundled together with a rubber band. A roll of American currency. A clay tsa-tsa image of a saint, identical to those Shan had seen at Fiona’s house.

Yao pushed at the items with his fingertips, as though uneasy about lifting them. Shan gazed at the brushes a moment, realizing they were not for painting but for cleaning dust from delicate objects, then lifted one of the lamps toward the effigy’s head. Yao followed his gaze, emitted a small cry of surprise. He darted outside, where he had left his small pack, and returned a moment later with his hand lantern, fixing its beam on the crudely drawn face. An instant later he ran back to the door, calling the American. The eyes of the effigy were blue.

The discovery seemed to ignite something inside Yao. He forgot his wariness about the effigy’s belongings and began lifting them, pointing with them toward Shan as if accusing him of something. After a moment Yao growled he was going to call the soldiers to arrest the entire village. Corbett’s breath caught as Yao lifted the disc player. Underneath was a passport, a British passport. Corbett grabbed it, scanning the inside cover, and angrily slammed it down. Shan lifted it and read the name. “The bastard!” Corbett spat. He seemed to take it as a personal affront that William Lodi had gotten himself killed.

Shan sat silently, letting his companion’s anger burn away, then calmly introduced them to Lokesh, explaining the death rite, reminding them again that if they brought soldiers into the mountains there would be no more Tibetans to speak with, no evidence to follow. The two men stared at him grimly, Yao fidgeting with the radio, which he kept in his hand. Then Shan directed them to gather firewood.

“We are going to make a meal for the village,” he explained when Yao hesitated.

“It will take all the supplies we brought,” the inspector protested.

Shan nodded. “And money. I will need money, too. You owe it to them, to apologize for disturbing them, for being so rude. If they accept the apology we may learn some answers to our questions.”

Corbett reached into his pocket.

A quarter hour later they were boiling water at the edge of the village. Shan, having purchased butter and tea and borrowed a churn and kettle from a curious villager who had materialized between two of the houses, was laying their supplies out on a blanket: A bag of raisins, a bag of walnuts. Half a dozen apples. A bag of rice. Four cans of peaches, three of tuna fish.

“It’s not enough,” Shan said as ten, then fifteen Tibetans materialized from the rocks.

“We have no more food,” Yao protested.

“Anything,” Shan said.

Yao tightened the top of his pack and held it to his chest. Corbett stared into his own then withdrew a small black leather case and handed it to Shan. It was the American’s evidence kit. Shan opened it, extracting one of the little rubber syringe bulbs that held the powder used for highlighting fingerprints. He upended the bulb and squeezed it, shooting powder into the air. The nearest Tibetans gave an exclamation of surprise, then pressed closer as Shan handed it to an old man. They thought, Shan realized, it was a device for shooting flour into the air, a technology for celebrating.

A woman appeared with a pot of barley flour, for which Shan offered the remainder of the money Corbett had produced, and as Shan helped with the fire she began roasting the flour in a pan, chatting with Shan.

As more ragyapa warily appeared, Shan returned to Yao and Corbett, who sat together on a nearby rock, both wearing the same uneasy, suspicious expression.

“The body arrived early yesterday,” he reported. “It was taken right to the charnel ground, right to the birds.”

“Destruction of evidence,” Yao said.

“It doesn’t figure,” Corbett said. “They made that effigy. That’s not a cover-up.”

“I think those who brought the body wanted the birds to begin immediately,” Shan said. “But the people here knew Lodi, and had to mourn him as well, in the best way they knew how.”

“The gifts, those electric devices in the basket,” Corbett said.

Shan nodded. “I think they are from him.”

“He looked Tibetan,” Yao said, “but he had a British passport.” Yao, like Corbett, had studied the passport, even looked as though he were going to take it as evidence. But just as he had seemed about to stuff it in a pocket he had glanced at Lokesh then returned it to the makeshift altar.

“Tibetan but not Tibetan,” Shan said. If Lodi’s killing still made no sense, at least some of the evidence left where he had died now did. There had been something else in the hut, an old thangka of a blue figure with the head of a red-eyed bull bearing two pairs of horns, its head surrounded by a red halo, standing, holding a spear and a sword in its front hooves, its back legs trampling humans and animals in the cosmic dance of death and rebirth.