Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

Liya stepped to the woman’s side. “We can hide and be safe,” she said. “Shan and his friends will help us.”

Strangely, the words silenced the crowd. Liya gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth, then exchanged an alarmed glance with Lokesh.

“Shan?” the big herder shouted at her, then stepped to Shan and knocked off the wide-brimmed hat that had been obscuring his features. “Damn me!” he spat, then turned to those behind him. “This is the one? The Chinese who always intrudes in Tibetan things? She’s right, Shan will help us get out of this,” he said with a cruel grin, his scarred face looking wild and hungry.

“Shan is going on retreat,” Lokesh declared in a plaintive tone and stepped between Shan and the herder.

“Right,” the man growled. “With a chain and a pickax.” He turned to address the Tibetans gathered behind him. “He’s the one they’re looking for. There’s cash money on his head,” he declared, raising his voice. “One hundred American dollars. Enough to keep all of us fed for months.”

Gendun began a mantra.

Shan stared, his throat suddenly bone dry, looking from his friends to the fiery herder. “Who is paying?” he heard himself ask. Bounties were not uncommon in modern Tibet, whose communist masters had developed their own peculiar twists on market economies.

“Only a rumor,” Liya said in a tight voice. “It’s Tan. People say you’re to be taken to Colonel Tan.” She looked up into Shan’s eyes. “You never go to town. Even if it were true we thought you would be safe staying up here. These people don’t know you. Didn’t know you,” she corrected herself, pain in her eyes.

“It’s no rumor,” the herder snapped. “There’re papers in shop windows now.”

“I’m sorry,” Liya said to Shan. “Tan must want you back. You just have to go deeper into the mountains. Your retreat. Go now,” she said, gesturing toward the bag.

Shan’s release from prison had never been official. Liya meant back in hard labor prison, back to the 404th People’s Construction Brigade.

Shan’s gaze drifted toward the bag bearing the mani mantra. He knew his friends had not been trying to deceive him by not revealing the bounty, nor trying to protect him. Bombs fell, bullets were fired, bounties were levied. To Shan, like his Tibetan friends, such things had become little different from hailstorms and winds, part of the harsh environment that had evolved in the world they inhabited. They might pull their hats down and quicken their pace, but they would not step off their path. The bounty would have as little significance to Lokesh or Gendun. What mattered to them was that Shan completed his month’s retreat.

“Soldiers like that, if they get angry they’ll burn our houses, kill our herds,” the huge herder growled.

Liya stepped beside Lokesh, in front of Shan. “We would not give up Shan any more than we would give up one of these monks,” she declared sternly.

“You understand nothing!” the scar-faced herder shouted, glaring at Liya. “You never told us about what you planned here. It is the wrong time for monks and festivals. So naive!” he spat. “You brought this on by luring everyone here with false hope! The only chance to keep the soldiers away now is to give up Shan.”

Jara’s wife appeared, holding the hands of their two sons, looking at her husband with an intense, searching expression. Jara took a step toward his wife, then looked down at his chest, seeming surprised to find one hand closed tightly around his gau. His head slowly rose as he looked at Lokesh and his sons, then he turned and sat cross-legged in front of Gendun. Two more herders, tough middle-aged men with bone-hard faces, pushed past Jara’s wife to join the big herder, eyeing Shan with hungry expressions. But the woman seemed not to notice them. She stared in wonder at her husband, still clasping his gau, and the joy slowly returned to her face.

“A hundred American!” the scar-faced herder spat. “They want him in prison!” The man turned to those behind him. “When did we ever have a chance to put a Chinese in prison?” he asked with a laughing snort. “We can make this a day for celebration after all!”

“No!” Liya barked. “He is one of us! He is protected by our clan!”

“You just run and hide in the south when danger comes,” the herder shouted at her. “It’s easy for you to appear for a day, then leave. We cannot hide. We have to live here. Atso was murdered. Isn’t that warning enough? We must be rid of the Chinese and their godkillers,” he growled, pointing at the monks.

Shan did not move. He sensed Liya tense as if she were about to spring on the man, but instead she closed her hand around his arm, as though to keep them from dragging Shan away.

“Not murdered,” Shan said. “It was an accident.”

“You don’t know that,” the herder spat.

“I do. Atso has told us.”

The herder’s face darkened. “We don’t make light of the dead.”

“But you would make light of the truth?” Shan asked soberly, surveying the Tibetans. “Why was Atso at the foot of that cliff?”

“That’s where the godkillers found him, that’s where they beat him, a hundred feet from his hut.”

“His boots were wrapped in jute but they were not falling apart. His hands were scratched and gouged.”

“He fought back,” the herder snapped. “They probably beat that little Tara in front of him, to torture him.”

“No,” Shan said. “She was attacked elsewhere.” He glanced at Liya, who nodded then darted out of the yard. “What did Atso do, all these years since his wife died?”

The Tibetans glanced uneasily at each other, the oldest keeping their eyes from Shan.

“There were no strands of wool on his clothes, none of the lanolin in his hands that he would have if he worked with sheep. I’ll tell you what I think,” Shan said. “He tended the old shrines, the hidden ones. He had a prayer box, he had beads. He had a pouch of flowers in his pocket, another of wood chips. And water. It’s what you put on altars in the old days. He still believed. He was going to an altar.”

Liya reappeared, holding the little silver statue. Shan set it on a flat rock in the bright sun. “I think I know that high valley where Atso lived,” he continued. “It is very dry, all rocks and heather. Why was the hut there? Who would build in such a place?” When no one answered he pointed to the gash in the back of the goddess. “If you look carefully you will see something trapped in a fold in the metal, because whoever did this cut the statue open first then turned it over and smashed the head. A piece of grass was trapped in the folded metal. There is no grass where he lived.”

Liya extracted a folding knife from her pocket and pried back the fold in the metal. She reached into it and pulled away a green blade, holding it up for all to see.

“It proves nothing,” the herder growled.

“Why was the hut there?” Shan demanded again, very slowly.

“The cliff above faced south with a small spring below,” Lokesh offered in a contemplative tone, referring to two of the attributes of a traditional place of spiritual power. The old Tibetan turned toward the others and repeated Shan’s question.

“A cave,” the old woman by Gendun said, nearly in a whisper. Someone near her cursed, another shouted for her to be silent. Instead she spoke more loudly, turning to speak to Gendun, as if he had asked the question. “High up on the cliff,” she cried out, “an ancient place where gods dwell. The hut was built for those who protect the cave, who serve the gods.”

Shan looked at Gendun, and realized that the lama’s glance at Atso’s body and brief words should have told Shan everything he needed to know about the dead man. The lama had known that Atso was engaged in sacred work. “When he found the goddess somewhere else, on a grassy slope, he decided he had to protect it,” Shan said, “maybe heal it, by taking it to the holy cave.”