Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

“Yao said you went to the other side of the world. To America,” Ko said, looking at the shards at his feet.

“For a short time.”

“Why would you come back?” Ko asked, disbelief in his tone.

Shan took another step forward, so that he was but an arm’s reach away.

“It rained a lot.” Shan reached into his pocket and extracted a roll of hard candy and a chocolate bar. He could not understand why he had such difficulty speaking. “I brought these for you, from the United States.”

Ko stared at the candy, emotion suddenly coloring his face. “I thought they were taking me back. But then Yao came and stopped them.” Ko picked at a callus on his palm. “Once on National Day,” he said abruptly, “family visitors were allowed into our camp. Some of them gave candy to their husbands or sons or fathers.” He looked up and slowly lifted the candy from Shan’s hand. “Candy is a good gift for a prisoner.” He shrugged, pushing the long hair from his face.

They stared at the shards beneath Ko’s feet. Shan struggled for words, any words. He was having a conversation with his son. “Are you well, Xiao Ko?” he asked clumsily, and chastised himself for using the familiar form of address, which his son hated.

He took a halfstep toward his son and shards broke under his foot. He had broken the head off a little clay Buddha.

“One of those Tibetans told me that after the prayers are taken out of these things, that they become only objects again,” Ko said, “that it doesn’t matter what happens to them.” Shan looked at his son in surprise, and Ko grimaced, as though regretting his words.

Shan bent and fixed the head back on the little Buddha and leaned the little figure at the base of the wall. As he did so, Ko swung the hammer again. “It’s just a bunch of clay,” his son said. “Dirty old clay. When I’m done I’m supposed to dump all the pieces in the parking lot and rake them into the gravel.”

“We’re going back into the mountains, Ko,” Shan said. “I want you to come with us.”

His son looked at Shan uncertainly. “Not inside the mountain,” he said, worry in his voice.

“Probably,” Shan admitted. “You have to tell me you won’t try to escape. No soldiers. Just Yao and Corbett and me.”

Ko put both hands on the hammer handle, twisting them. “Do you remember her face when she was in that man’s arms, Khan’s arms? Looking at us like a child, not understanding she was being killed, not knowing enough to struggle. It wasn’t her anymore, it was just something that had been her. Every time I try to sleep I see her face like that, alive but dead. Will he be there? The Mongolian?”

When Shan nodded, Ko clenched his jaw and nodded. He looked back at the wall, then dropped the hammer and picked up a large flat rock, which he leaned in front of the little broken Buddha. He was protecting it. “I am a prisoner,” he said, looking at his hands now, as if not understanding what they had just done. “Why should I promise not to escape?”

“Being a prisoner is just something other people do to you,” Shan said. “Being a thief or a liar, or becoming a fugitive, that is something you do to yourself.”

Ko slowly stood and searched his father’s face a moment, then looked away again. “They have many cars in America, I hear. Fast cars. Did you see fast cars?”

Shan was not sure he understood. “I saw fast cars. I drank coffee. They drink much coffee there.”

Ko nodded solemnly then lifted the hammer to his shoulder again. “I have never drunk coffee,” he said in a distant tone.

“I saw planes bigger than an army barracks,” Shan said. “There was a little white box that opened cans by electricity.”

A tiny smile flickered on Ko’s face a moment, then, with the look of a weary old man, he began pounding the shards again.

As Shan turned, Ko spoke to his back, in a small anguished voice. “I gave him a piece of gold, one of those little statues, gave it to that Khan,” he said. “Just before he killed her I gave him gold. He laughed when he took it and said I was just like him.”

Shan turned to look at his son but Ko would speak no more, would not bring his head up from his work. He kept smashing the shards, not looking anywhere but the ground in front of him.

* * *

Inside, Shan found Corbett sitting with Yao at the conference table, explaining what had happened in Seattle.

“Dolan called Ming from his plane,” he heard Yao say as he sat beside them. “By the time Dolan got here Ming had more equipment organized. He sent half his workers home, most of the others deep into the mountains to get them out of the way. A truck came from Lhasa with small machines in boxes. By the time Dolan arrived there was an official greeting party, an agenda. You would have thought the Party Secretary was coming.”

“Agenda?” Shan asked.

Yao grimaced and handed each of them a sheet of paper, with words in English and Chinese. Arrival at the Museum Compound, it said first, then Welcoming Ceremony in Town, followed by speeches and a presentation by Dolan.

“Presentation of what?” Corbett asked.

“He gave a check to Punji McDowell’s clinic. Ten thousand American. He said he was very sorry to hear that Miss McDowell was missing in the mountains, that he knew her and had long admired her work.”

Yao sighed. “When they arrived back here there was a helicopter waiting. They were in the mountains before dusk yesterday.”

“All we can do is be driven into the foothills,” Shan said. “With packs, it will be another few hours to Zhoka.”

Yao nodded. “I’ve done what I could to prepare, without being conspicuous.”

“I want Ko to go with us,” Shan said.

“It’s too dangerous,” Yao protested.

“He won’t do anything to hurt us,” Shan insisted.

“Lu and that Khan are up there. They know we were eyewitnesses to McDowell’s murder. You, Corbett, me. And Ko.”

“But you filed a report,” Shan ventured, wary, remembering what the informer had told him. “You explained everything. Corbett can testify that the phone call by Lu was to Dolan, that Dolan told Lu to kill her.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Yao said in a tentative tone, as if experimenting with a new version of his report. He sighed and stared into his hands. “I have heard nothing since my report was filed. Ming is nervous about Dolan being here. Dolan called people in Beijing. Ming heard from the Minister himself. Afterwards he was on the phone with Public Security, saying they had to find Surya. Then when Dolan arrived and Ming showed what he had found in the valley tomb Dolan was furious. I couldn’t hear everything. They were in the meeting room, behind a closed door. I think Dolan was upset Ming told people about what he had found, that the newspapers knew about the old robe and that jade dragon.”

“Because he wanted them for himself,” Corbett said in a bitter voice.

Shan had only half heard Yao’s description of the argument. “Surya. Did they find Surya?”

“I think soldiers are still searching.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later Shan was watching the cluster of nightsoil sheds from across the street. Half a dozen of the haulers had returned from their morning circuits and were unloading huge clay jars into rusty metal tanks on wheels, which would be driven to the fields south of the town. A woman in tattered clothes approached, walking along the rutted road, holding the hand of a small boy, three or four years old. When she reached the sheds the boy started pulling away, hand to his nose, but she scooped him into her arms and, with nervous glances toward the men at the tanks, stepped into the cluster of sheds. Shan followed, feeling the harsh stares of the men unloading the jars. When he reached the little courtyard in the center of the buildings no one could be seen. There was something new since his last visit, a hint of incense that mingled with the fetid odor wafting from the jars. He stepped into the stone-walled stable, pausing, unable to see into the dim interior. There were sounds of soft voices, and the incense hung more heavily in the air, but bundles of straw and a heap of broken clay jars were all that he could see in the dim light cast from the door.