Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

“If those men wanted more of our art they would have followed me.”

“Perhaps they had to leave because they needed to obtain new supplies,” Shan ventured. “After you destroyed what they had at Zhoka.”

“When I found Lodi’s body in that supply room I sat with it a long time. I was so sad at first, then angry. I had never felt such anger.”

“If it was their supplies you destroyed, then they are the ones who are taking frescos from Zhoka.”

Liya closed her eyes a moment. “Lodi would never harm Zhoka,” she insisted. “He only sold things we made here. He would never loot the old shrines.”

“That night at the camp with Lokesh and Dawa, did you leave because of Tashi?”

“Everyone who is smart stays away from informers.”

“You were going north again, but then you came back here.”

“I listened to Tashi from the shadows. I knew they had found a way to make you help them. I knew that eventually you would find this place.”

“I am sorry,” Shan said.

Liya shrugged. “You didn’t start this.” She began watching Corbett now, on the stairs to the next level, playing with Dawa and the children of the village.

“Why did Lodi come back to Lhadrung?” Shan asked.

Liya shrugged. “He wasn’t due back for weeks. He just appeared, very excited and scared. He went into the room he kept here-” she nodded toward the room with two beds-“to search for something, then left for Zhoka the next morning.”

Corbett now had one of the children on his back, climbing the stairs. The sight seemed to intrigue Liya, and without another word she stepped off the porch and walked toward the next level.

Shan turned back inside, entering the first bedroom, which had the air of a shrine. The framed sketches there seemed to match those of the main chamber. They showed a light, subtle hand that perfectly captured the smiles of playing children in one, the powerful energy of a harnessed yak in another. But the first of the frames held not a sketch but a piece of paper, letterhead printed with the caption Royal Artillery, flanked by crossed cannons. Under it, in an elegant hand, was a verse in English. He read it several times before he found himself grinning:

In a letter I have written, my mama’s

I report I did outwit the lamas

They said we’re not here, you’re not there

’cause we’re made of thin air

then why says I, wear red pajamas?

He paused and pulled out the peche leaf he had found in the cell at Zhoka. The haunting script matched that of the limerick about the red robes of the monks. It had been written by Bertram McDowell, the primogenitor of the strange clan in the southern mountains.

Shan found Yao in the second bedroom, sitting on one of the beds, sketching in his notebook. The inspector was drawing a map.

“Ming has lied to you,” Shan said. Yao kept drawing as he explained what Liya had revealed. “You don’t know that these people are involved,” Shan said.

“She would lie to save herself. Do I believe her or a ranking party member? This entire village is a nest of criminals. They gave aid to William Lodi, the thief and murderer. Illegal weapons are here. They admit smuggling across the border. No registrations, no taxes. Tan and Ming will be so pleased they will probably let you go back into hiding.” He paused, and looked at the wall, as if consulting something unseen to Shan. “With so many to arrest, it will take a month for the interrogations alone.”

Shan looked at Yao’s crude map. It was worthless. Yao had no idea where they were.

The inspector opened the closet door. Stacked on shelves inside were boxes, apparently for the devices arrayed over the second bed, most bearing glossy labels in English and Japanese. A portable air freshener. An emergency desk lamp. An electric nose clipper. A metallic model of a car called a Ferrari. A pen with a lightbulb in its top. Something called an atomic alarm clock. A television remote control, though there was no television. An entire shelf of pharmaceuticals with English labels. Antibiotics. Sleeping pills. Pain relievers.

Shan looked back at the beds. The shelf over the second bed was an altar of sorts for the puzzling man who had been killed at Zhoka. In the shadows beyond was another altar, a traditional one, with a small brass Buddha, a paint brush, and a faded photograph of a young Major McDowell, posing by a cannon, a sword raised over his head as if he were about to lead a charge, his mouth obscured by a huge moustache.

On top of a short bookcase were perhaps two dozen elongated beads, the brown dzi beads prized as protective charms, the kind Lodi had given away in Seattle, each bead with a different pattern of white lines etched into it. Below the beads were several bound books, dusty, apparently neglected for years. Shan lifted one. It held heavy paper, blank, bound as a sketch book. On the first page, in a child’s hand was written, in Tibetan, the name Lodi. The sketches that followed were crude but somehow confident, images of flowers, of the faces of dogs and yaks, of the sacred emblems. Like all the children of the village, no doubt, William Lodi had started at an early age to hone the skills of his clan. Shan lifted another of the books. It, too, was a sketchbook, with many of the same subjects, though drawn with a more mature hand. The human faces had become sadder, some gaunt and emaciated. New images appeared, sketches of airplanes and automobiles. Photographs from magazines were pasted onto some pages, images of Western women, sleek cars, Western food, even of telephones. The last of the books contained drawings of women’s faces with deep alluring eyes, of Gurkhas and Gurkha’s blades, of Chinese war machines being blown apart. In the last pages a new series of faces appeared, all Western, all sharing certain features as if of the same blood, including one Shan recognized. Elizabeth McDowell. Confirming that Yao was engrossed in some new discovery on the other side of the room, Shan tore the sketch of the English woman out of the book and placed it inside his pocket.

As he returned the book to the shelf he realized his hands were shaking. He had been wrong about everything. He had struggled to be led by his compassion, as Gendun would have wanted. He had been so certain Surya was an innocent who could not possibly kill. He had thought anyone trying to excavate at Zhoka must be doing so out of reverence. He had taken what he had seen at Bumpari as a sign of hope, a stirring symbol of how the Tibetans could still find ways to shield themselves in their Buddhist traditions to maintain their spirit, and identity. But it wasn’t compassion driving events. It was greed. Lodi had been supporting the art colony not to keep traditions alive but for reasons that had to do with the things he worshiped on the altar over his bed. Liya might not believe Lodi capable of looting Zhoka, but she did not know of the murder he had committed in Seattle.

A small chirping sound behind him pulled Shan’s gaze from the bottom of the closet. Yao had opened the hinged top of a flat box on his lap, which was now glowing. It was a laptop computer. As Shan stared over his shoulder, the inspector began quickly opening and shutting files, making small guttural sounds of satisfaction. Bank account records. Travel records. Inventory records, showing long lists of art objects, classified in categories of thangkas, sculpture, ritual implements, and masks. Everything was in English.

As Yao scrolled through the files, glancing nervously at the closed door, Shan stepped back to the chest which had contained the computer. Shan put his hands down along the edges of the chest, probing. From beneath the blanket that bore the rectangular imprint of the computer he retrieved a small felt bag. Inside were half a dozen computer discs. He studied the labels on the discs a moment then extended them toward Yao, fanned out in his hand like playing cards.