CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The temple at the front of the Institute was already attracting a steady flow of visitors when Shan settled onto the stone flags of its floor the next morning. Tibetans and a few Chinese on the way to work in shops and offices were lighting sticks of incense and lowering themselves in front of altars beside a handful of monks who had been there when Shan arrived. Along a wall half a dozen other monks sat, some twirling handheld prayer wheels. A handful of Tibetans, in the rough clothing of farmers and herders, moved along the shrines that lined the opposite wall.

He glanced toward the door. Meng had been gone when he had awakened, had been all business when he had seen her briefly in the lobby of the guesthouse. She had greeted him with only an awkward smile and he had realized she was feeling the same uncertainty about the night before. He was stunned by the tenderness that had welled up within him, unbidden, unknown for so many years that he had thought he had lost all capacity for it. But as much as he was attracted to who she was, something inside could not help but be repulsed by what she was. He knew too that, for the knob inside her, he was a former convict, a stigma, a chain around her neck, a guarantee that she would never leave her exile within the Bureau. It was no doubt best for both of them to think of the night before as just a fleeting, intimate detour in the crooked paths that were their lives.

Staying in the shadows, he watched the monks at the wall as much as the worshipers, noting the pinched, unsettled expressions on the men in maroon robes. Were they being punished? Were they being brainwashed? Or were they the watchdogs of the temple?

An old man settled nearby and began a mantra in a low, dry voice. The sound invoked fond images of Lokesh and the lamas they knew, and he soon found himself drifting under its spell.

He was so focused on the mantra that the movement did not register at first. It seemed to be just another pilgrim adjusting his position as he paid homage to one more deity. But then the man, wearing a hat low on his head and mumbling a low mantra, seemed to stumble against one of the seated figures in the shadows, a monk. As he bent over the monk his mantra changed to a curse and he slammed his fist into the robed figure. The monk rolled away, trying to escape.

“Bastard! Murderer!” the pilgrim shouted in Tibetan, and leapt over the monk, blocking his path then pummeling him with his fists.

The monk moaned and covered his head with his arms, then pushed up, knocking the pilgrim back. The man staggered forward, landing another blow on the monk, before shoving him down, slamming his head on the stone flags.

“Jigten!” Shan shouted as he recognized the attacker. He shot up and began pushing his way through the crowd of shocked worshipers

The young monk cried out in pain but offered no resistance. “Killer!” Jigten shouted as he began kicking him. As he bent to slam his fist into the monk’s jaw, Shan broke free of the crowd and leapt forward to grab his arm.

But other arms reached Jigten first. Four monks were suddenly pulling the two men apart, then a moment later uniformed knobs appeared from the shadows of the corridor. A big man in one of the grey uniforms viciously kicked Jigten, propelling him across the floor. As the knobs placed manacles on the shepherd, Shan knelt over the bruised, whimpering monk, wiping away blood with his sleeve, and gasped. It was Dakpo.

One of the knobs noticed Shan’s reaction and eyed him suspiciously. Shan retreated, joining the throng of frightened worshipers fleeing the chamber.

He stood in the courtyard, numb with despair. Somehow he had begun to believe Dakpo knew more than any of them about the murders, that his mysterious quest in the north would hold a key to the puzzle of the valley and its monastery. But all that was lost. A monk involved in a civil disturbance was guaranteed incarceration, and probably loss of his robe.

Police vans with flashing lights rolled up, followed by an ambulance. As he backed away someone gently pulled his arm. He let Meng guide him across the street to a table in the shadows of the café. He watched forlornly as uniformed men and women swarmed into the courtyard. Dakpo was limp as two knobs carried him out of the temple. Jigten had hit him hard, knocking his head on the stone flags.

Shan found himself rising from his chair as the officers hauled the monk into the ambulance. Meng pulled him down. “It’s not what you think,” she said, and he watched, confused, as the ambulance drove away without a police escort.

“I don’t understand,” he said to Meng, but she was calling the waiter, ordering tea.

“I bought you something,” she said after he had sipped his cup. He noticed now a small parcel wrapped in brown paper at his elbow.

“Where’s the hospital?” he asked.

“It won’t be hard to find.” She nodded toward the package with an awkward smile.

“Why wouldn’t the police go with Dakpo?”

Meng ignored his question. “I passed a little shop that sells souvenirs. The man said this was an old one. You don’t have yours anymore.”

Shan studied her a moment. She seemed to have grown younger. There was a light in her eyes he had not seen before. Leave her, a voice inside shouted. She’s a knob. She’ll always be a knob. You loathe knobs. He opened the package.

It was a strand of Tibetan prayer beads.

“A mala?” he asked in surprise. He glanced back at the disappearing ambulance, then felt the touch of the beads. It was not simply a mala, it was a very old and rare sandalwood mala, each bead exquisitely carved with the head of a deity. “I can’t,” he protested. “It’s a treasure.”

“Don’t be silly. They’re being sold to tourists.”

He watched as his fingers began working the beads as if of their own accord. They had a warm, natural feel, with a patina of long use.

“You wear that well,” Meng offered.

Shan looked up. “I’m sorry?”

“Your smile. I haven’t seen it before. When’s the last time a woman brought you a present?” Her question was as much a surprise as her gift.

His ran his hand over the stubble of his hair, painfully conscious of his shabby clothes. It had been nearly thirty years. “A long time,” he answered softly.

She too wore her smile well. For a moment he forgot about Jigten and Dakpo, then his gaze drifted back to the beads. “The shop,” he asked, “can you take me there?”

The little store was tucked between a noodle stand and a bicycle repair garage, its front window lined with little plastic busts of Mao labeled in Tibetan and Chinese, soapstone snow leopards and genuine yak tail fly whisks. Inside, at the back, was a display case filled with malas, ritual purba blades, temple bells, and gaus, all of them finely worked antiques. They were being sold as if they were just more cheap trinkets.

Shan glanced in confusion at the shopkeeper, who was busy with a Chinese family. “I don’t understand. These should be in museums.”

Meng shrugged. “They say the vaults are full. If it’s gold or silver it’s melted down, but otherwise they allow for disposal locally.”

Shan felt a growing unease. “What are you saying?”

“There’s bins at the entrance to the camps. We take them. Sell them by the kilogram at auctions.” Her grin quickly faded as she saw the pain on Shan’s face. “We don’t get them all,” she offered awkwardly. “Some get hidden.”

Shan looked away. The Chinese boy began demanding that his father buy him a temple bell with an elegant tiger engraved around it.

He found himself on the street, strangely short of breath. The crowd buoyed him down the pavement. Minutes later he was standing at the entrance to the temple again, telling himself to forget Meng, that Jigten was somewhere inside the complex, under arrest and needed his help.

Suddenly his arm was pushed down to his side.

“Don’t show it,” a Tibetan woman warned. It was the noodle vendor he had seen the day before. She gestured him toward her stall.

“Show what?”

The middle-aged woman nodded toward his arm, then stepped between Shan and a passing policeman. He had forgotten about the bloodstains on his sleeve. Dakpo’s blood.

“They are looking for you. They think you may have been part of the attack on that monk.”

“But I was trying to stop it,” he protested. The woman shrugged.

“The other one,” Shan said in an urgent whisper. “The Tibetan who jumped on the monk. I have to find him.”

The woman shook her head. “You won’t see him. Not for a year or two. The knobs will interrogate him, then the police will take him away.”

“Where?” Shan pressed.

The woman frowned. “Are you deaf? I said they are looking for you. They will take you away too.”

“That police station behind the Institute?”

“They have special treatment for Chinese who help Tibetan hooligans.”

Shan clenched his jaw and stepped away from the gate. As he reached the corner another hand pulled him back. “Don’t do it, Shan.”

When he turned he saw the pain in Meng’s eyes. “I’m sorry about those beads. I just thought…” Her words trailed away and she took a deep breath. “There’s no need for you to go.”

“I have to.”

“No. I have to.” Meng began tying her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. “Like you said yesterday, I couldn’t go into that station or down that corridor because I had no way to account for my visit. Now I am on the trail of a suspected criminal, a known thief, who has to be returned to Lhadrung County.” She backed away from Shan and pointed him toward a bench.

Ten minutes later she reappeared in her uniform. She shot him a quick, worried glance as she silently marched past.

*   *   *

The heavy truck pitched and rolled as it sped along the highway. Meng, driving her car in front, seemed as anxious as Jigten to get out of Chamdo. Shan bent over Dakpo, who was in obvious pain, wiping his brow, tapping the dim battery lantern that was their only light in the hollow they had built into the sacks of rice in the cargo compartment

“He can’t be moved,” the nurse had insisted when Meng and Shan had arrived at the hospital for him. “Cracked ribs,” she warned. “A concussion.”

“We will accommodate him.” Meng had offered.

“Not without a doctor’s order,” the nurse had snapped and retreated to her workstation. She seemed to be surprised when she turned to find Meng hovering over her.

“I am a lieutenant in the Suppression Brigade,” Meng growled, “and I am the most pleasant of all of those in my squad. You don’t want me to call my superior. But if I am not out of here in five minutes with this monk I will have no choice. We will start by demanding all the papers of everyone in this unit.” She pointed to an image on the wall of a blond couple in a sports car, torn from an American magazine. “When was the last time you were examined for loyalty, Comrade?”

The color drained from the nurse’s face and she quickly pulled out a clipboard. “Someone will have to sign,” she said. Meng had scrawled an indecipherable character at the bottom of the proffered page and pointed to a wheelchair.

Dakpo moaned as the truck lurched over a pothole. Shan tried to speak with him but he lapsed into unconsciousness. When his eyes were open they seemed unable to focus.

Two hours later the truck stopped and the rear door opened. They were at a crossroads village, parked behind a decrepit stable. An old Tibetan couple, owners of the rundown roadhouse on the corner, helped ease the monk out onto a stack of straw in the stable. The woman brought a small pot of soup and seeing the fatigue on the faces of Shan and Meng, gestured them toward the roadhouse as she sat and began spoon-feeding Dakpo.

The only other customers wandered out as they glimpsed Meng’s uniform. She unbuttoned her tunic and hung it on the back of the chair. In her pale grey blouse she almost passed for one more weary traveler. They silently ate the soup brought by the old man, then she reached back into a pocket of the tunic and produced two folded sheets of paper. She pushed the first in front of Shan.

It was a copy of a page from an official Public Security file, marked STATE SECRET. He scanned it quickly, his face clouding in confusion. “It’s just a personnel file,” he observed. “For some Tibetan named Pan Xiaofei. Fifty-eight years old. Early assignments with security units. Assigned to special operations, which could mean a hundred different things.”

Meng nodded soberly. “He’s from a village called Chimpuk, only an hour off the highway. A Tibetan with a Chinese name.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know what the Peace Institute does.”

“It promotes cross-cultural friendship,” Shan said in a tight voice.

“Don’t be such a damned fool! You know what it does!”

Shan stared at her. He tried to convince himself that the knot in his stomach was from hunger. He looked down at the paper. “They produce politically indoctrinated monks,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“And? You damned well know what else they do. They wouldn’t need a platoon of senior Public Security officers just to teach quotes from the Chairman.”

“You tell me, Lieutenant. I want to hear you say it.”

Meng’s eyes flared. “There’s an inner office there, closely guarded. I waited for an hour for the chance to slip in. They keep a special drawer of files in there, a single copy, one card for each agent. A Tibetan name and a Chinese name. That’s how I found this.” She tossed another sheet onto the table. It was a photocopy of a card bearing many lines of numerals and personnel codes, with a record of advancement through bureaucratic grades and Party ranks. In the corner there was a photo with the same Chinese name under it. Pan Xiaofei. Except the photo was of Jamyang.

Shan went very still. His hand trembled as he picked up the first sheet again and read the detailed entries. University in Sichuan, then three special government academies in the east, followed by short duty tours at several monasteries in Tibet, marked as training missions, then finally a year at the Institute. The Institute was the finishing school to which only the elite were admitted. He forced himself to read the rest, then looked away out the window for a long moment.

“Why,” he asked in a shaking voice, “would they send a highly trained undercover officer to become a hermit in Lhadrung?”

“I don’t know. It makes no sense. I don’t think he was sent to Lhadrung. At the bottom there is a note that says Drepung. That’s the big monastery outside Lhasa. Hundreds of monks. The government would have political watchers there. Agents like that, Shan, would be trained in personal defense, in fighting with improvised weapons, or weapons disguised for other purposes. You saw those monks on the street. That fire striker Lung Ma had when he died, it wasn’t the murderer’s. Jamyang had an identical one, issued by the Institute. He showed it to Lung Ma to convince him that he told the truth about his son’s murder, to help explain who the murderer was.”

He pressed his fist tightly against his forehead, as if he could force out the pain that was rising inside.

“Whatever Jamyang may have been is just a distraction, Shan,” Meng said. “We have murders to solve.”

He met her worried, earnest gaze, knowing that she had taken a grave risk by venturing into the inner offices of the Institute.

A movement at the corner of the building caught Shan’s eye. Jigten, who had been napping in the cab of the truck, was walking toward the stable. As he reached the entry he picked up a pitchfork leaning against the wall. Shan gasped and leapt up, running to the stable.

“This will end!” he shouted as he grabbed the pitchfork from the shepherd.

“When there is justice for the boy it will end!” Jigten snapped. The eyes of the wiry dropka held the same wild gleam Shan had seen when he had first cornered him in Baiyun. Shan paused, not sure if he had heard correctly. “The boy?”

“Lung Wi. He was my friend. He died because of this one!”

“Surely you are mistaken, Jigten. Surely you can’t know that.”

“I know! It’s why I made sure Genghis didn’t drive. I heard you say this bastard was in Chamdo.”

Dakpo had pushed himself against the wall, his face twisted in pain and fear. Meng appeared as Shan stepped in front of the monk, facing Jigten.

“You are wrong, Jigten. I didn’t say it was Dakpo. And this is Tibet. Monks don’t kill.”

The shepherd greeted the words with a sneer. “This is Chinese Tibet. Everything is backward,” he said, and gestured to Shan and Meng as if they somehow proved his point.

“Real monks don’t kill,” Shan amended, and pointed Jigten to a milking stool. “Sit down. Tell me about the boy.”

The shepherd muttered a curse, still glaring at Dakpo, but complied. The Jade Crows had laughed when Jigten had first appeared, he explained, asking if he could help with their trucks. But he had persisted, coming back to the garage again and again, cleaning up, washing trucks, letting them treat him like their slave. The son of the gang’s chieftan had taken to lingering in the garage when the others left, and began to take him for rides in the trucks. They had discovered they were only a few years apart in age, discovered a like interest in mahjong and the mechanics of the truck motors. Before long the boy was teaching Jigten how to drive.

“Sometimes we would sneak away and shoot at marmots with his slingshot. That’s what happened the day his father told him to drive the small truck to meet with someone, to deliver a message. He picked me up on the other side of the hill and we raced over the road, bouncing in the ruts, laughing. He liked to pretend he was running away from the police, like in some movie. We got to his meeting place early and walked up the ridge to shoot at marmots. We were stalking a big one through some rocks when over the rise we saw two men on the dirt road below. One was a knob and the other was a monk with a bicycle.

“I backed away, and told him to hide but he said it was no problem, that the monk was the one he was doing business with and he stood up and waved at the monk.”

Shan shut his eyes a moment. “Genghis was suddenly sick. You did that.”

“There’s a little red root that grows up on the ridges. I put some in his tea. He’s fine by now.”

“But why wait all this time?” Meng asked.

“Because he didn’t know that the boy was murdered,” Shan said heavily. “Not until he eavesdropped on Lung Tso and me.”

“A monk did the killing you said. I saw that monk with the bicycle. I went back there,” Jigten explained. “I went back to see if I could find something more about that monk and the knob.” Jigten pointed at Dakpo. “And I saw him there, on the bicycle again.”

Dakpo murmured something, holding his ribs.

Shan stepped closer. “I’m sorry?”

“There’s a dozen.” The monk’s mouth twisted in pain as he spoke. “The gompa has a dozen bicycles. Any monk can take one when he needs it. I borrowed one to go back along that trail where the Lung boy died.”

“To do what?”

Dakpo gazed at Jigten. “To find something more about that monk and the knob,” he said, repeating the dropka’s words.

“It was you I saw that day at the convent,” Shan said.

The young monk nodded. “I know Chenmo.”

Shan considered his words. “You mean she told you a monk was a killer, because the American had told her.”

Dakpo grabbed the gau around his neck and nodded again. “I found a gun,” he whispered, glancing fearfully at Meng. Shan looked up at her and she nodded and left the building. “Tell me about it,” he said.

It had been hidden inside a prayer wheel on a pilgrim path that was seldom used, the monk explained. But Jamyang had convinced him that all such paths needed clearing, and Dakpo went up the slope to do so whenever he could get away. “The wheel made a terrible clatter when I finally got it moving. I pushed on it, and the top came off. I didn’t want to touch it.”

“What happened to it?”

“I didn’t do anything that day, nothing until Chenmo told me what the American said about the killer. Then I went up in the night and threw it into a crevasse.”

“But why go to Chamdo so abruptly?” Shan asked.

“I clean out files all the time in the office at the monastery, because of the auditors who come. I found a message from weeks ago with nothing but a date on it, the date of the full moon next week. It had been sent electronically to an address that said CTPI, with numbers after those letters like a code. The Bureau of Religious Affairs has been trying to train us to use computers better. I was able to investigate on the computer and found the message had been sent to the Institute.” There was fear in the monk’s voice now. “I had never heard of it. I had to find out what it meant, why it was sent.”

In the silence that followed more trucks went by, groaning with full loads. “Tell me this, Dakpo,” Shan asked, “who at Chegar does business with the Jade Crows? Who works with the purbas?”

Dakpo would not look at Shan. He gripped his gau tighter. “There are three of us,” he said in a hollow voice.

“Who other than you? The purbas knew of the foreigners. Did they tell you about them?”

“There are three of us,” Dakpo repeated, and would say no more.

*   *   *

It was nearly midnight before he lowered himself onto a pile of straw opposite Dakpo. Much later he woke to the sound of straining engines. He did not have to rise to know from the repetitive movement of headlights across the back wall that another convoy was passing by. Beside him on the straw was Meng, asleep, nestled against his body.

He turned and through the open door could see the trucks, at least twenty, climbing up the mountain pass. It was another prisoner convoy, curling around the mountain like a serpent. The demon that was eating Tibet.

Meng rolled over, resting her hand on his chest. She had put her tunic on against the chill air and the red enamel star on its collar caught the moonlight. The demon he slept with.

*   *   *

The moon had risen when he stirred again, then abruptly sat up. Jigten sat on the stool staring at Dakpo, asleep on the straw.

The shepherd felt Shan’s gaze. “I will take him to Lung Tso. Lung will make him tell us about the killer.”

“I don’t think he knows. There are three, he said. It’s why he went to Chamdo, to try to discover why one of the others would be communicating with the Institute.”

“Three, but not him. That leaves two. He can tell us and Lung will get the truth from them.”

“With bamboo splints and barbed wire batons? No. That’s your anger speaking. You would not torture an innocent monk.”

“If I told Lung, he would. One of them killed his nephew and his brother.”

“One of them didn’t.”

Jigten’s anger had not faded. It was just directed at Shan now. “I told you,” he growled in a low voice. “This is Chinese Tibet. One Tibetan commits a crime and ten get punished.”

“No,” Shan said. “That is not my Tibet. It not Dakpo’s Tibet. It is not the Tibet of your mother, or of your clan.”

Jigten hung his head. “My mother would say one of those hailstorms will come again from the mountain and take the killer. Is that what you mean?”

“Something like that.”

The shepherd studied Shan in silence, then stepped to Dakpo, pulled up the monk’s blanket and left.

There was movement at his side. Meng was also studying him. “You amaze me, Shan. All you have been through and still so innocent. You told me yourself this case will never go to trial. Yet you think somehow justice will be done. There is only one way it gets done in this case.”

“I’m not sure what you are suggesting.”

“I’m saying there are cases where the only justice is a quick bullet.”

Shan spun about to face her. “No! Never! Don’t you understand? It would be against everything the old Tibetans believe.” Lokesh’s admonishment had shaken him, had never been far from his consciousness since they had spoken on the mountainside. “If I killed someone or arranged someone’s death there would be a gap between them and me I could never bridge. Lokesh wouldn’t live with me. I would never again have the confidence of the lamas. If I couldn’t live with them I don’t know if I could live with myself. You have to promise me. No bullets. No killing. I will never be involved in another killing, no matter how deserved it might be.”

Meng leaned over and traced a finger along his cheek. “You’re a complex man, Shan. If you corner the killer he will try to kill you.”

“Promise me, Xiao Meng.”

She smiled sleepily. “What did you call me?”

He blushed. The affectionate term of address had left his lips unbidden. He had not spoken it to a woman in decades. “Promise me.”

She was still smiling. “Of course. I promise. No bullet.”

“Never a bullet.”

“Never a bullet,” she confirmed, then nestled closer to him.

*   *   *

He found her at dawn, studying the road map on the hood of her car. Her cell phone was in her hand. “I called for the convoy schedule,” she explained with a worried expression. “There’s a steady flow all day.” She gazed at the truck. “If a security detail took an interest in the truck there would be no way to explain the injured monk.” She pointed to the map. “There’s a back road. It will come out on the highway just north of Lhadrung. No military bases. No police stations. Just two little villages. But the old man doesn’t know if the bridge at the second town is strong enough for the truck.”

“It’s gone,” came a voice over her shoulder. Jigten stepped between them. “Washed out five months ago.” He traced a finger along a dotted line that circled the last town. “There’s an old dirt track with a ford across the stream. We just loop around and come back just above Chimpuk.”

Shan nodded slowly, then paused, pointing to the second town on the map. “You mean Shijingshan.”

“The Chinese renamed it years ago. Chinese maps have to have Chinese names, so for Chinese travelers it’s Paradise Hills. Shijingshan. To Tibetans it’s still Chimpuk.”

Shan reached into his pocket and unfolded the paper Meng had given him the day before. They were going to Jamyang’s birthplace.

*   *   *

It was nearly noon when they crossed the shallow ford and pulled the vehicles to the side of the gravel track. The rough ride had been painful for Dakpo, and when the rear door was opened he appeared to have been beaten again. His prayer beads were pressed into his palm, his knuckles white. Without being asked, Jigten went for water as Shan changed the bandage on the monk’s head. They washed his wounds and gave him cold soup before leaving him resting peacefully on his makeshift bed.

Half an hour later they stopped on a low hill over Chimpuk village. The rundown little settlement was so remote that it showed little evidence of China other than its signs. On the faded board announcing the town’s Chinese name the final character had been scratched out so that it said just Shijing. Paradise.

“Who are we?” Meng asked as they parked the truck by a goat pen at the edge of town, discomfort obvious in her voice. She had left her car outside of town and changed into civilian clothes. “Not a place that gets many strangers.”

Dogs began barking. An old woman cutting the long skirt hairs of a yak, which the Tibetans braided into rope, stopped and stared at them. A man sitting on a stool with a tea churn was stroking a huge black mastiff that bolted toward them, barking. They had no hope of being inconspicuous.

“We are friends of the lama Jamyang,” Shan called out, then stood still as the mastiff reached them. It lunged and bit his ankle.

A hearty laugh rose from the man on the stool as Shan grabbed his ankle. “Stay in the truck,” he said as he pulled himself up, leaning on a staff. “That’s what everyone else does when they’re lost. Stay in the truck and yell. Safer that way.” He limped forward and dispersed the dog with a shake of his staff.

“We’re not lost,” Shan ventured. “We’re looking for the family of lama Jamyang.”

The old man eyed Meng suspiciously before turning to Shan. “Then you’re lost and don’t even know it.” He sighed and pointed with his staff to Shan’s ankle. Blood was oozing from the dog bite. Gesturing Shan to his stool, he exposed the wound, rinsed it first with water then, despite Shan’s protests, with chang, barley beer. Before he spoke he dabbed the wound with some honey and rolled down the pant’s leg. “She won’t have much to do with strangers,” he declared, and pointed to a modest one-story house at the far edge of town that sat back from the others.

It was a well-kept traditional farmhouse, with faded mantras painted under the window and a traditional sun and moon sign over the entry. By the open door stood a small loom where someone had been weaving the heavy fabric used for cargo sacks in yak caravans. An aged woman stepped out of the shadows. Her face was as frayed as the black apron she wore. The reluctant nod she offered shamed Shan. She did not want them but the traditions of Tibetan hospitality would not allow her to turn them away.

“You are of Jamyang’s blood?” he asked as she gestured them to sit on a carpet in the center of her living quarters. The tidy little house had a half wall dividing it. Come autumn her livestock would take shelter on the other side.

“I am his mother’s sister. Everyone else.”—she made a vague gesture toward the window, or perhaps the sky—“everyone else is gone.”

“My companion is Meng,” he explained. “I am called Shan.”

She tossed a few pieces of dried dung on her brazier and set a kettle on it. “A friend of Jamyang’s you said.”

Shan hesitated, looking around the chamber. Opposite its small kitchen area was a kang, a wide sleeping platform. On one side of the kang was a rolled sleeping pallet. The other side was covered with a faded rug woven to resemble the skin of a tiger, before a small altar that held a bronze Buddha and an old gau.

“I met him when he settled in Lhadrung County last year,” Shan explained. “He was teaching shepherds and restoring an old shrine. He was a gentle man, a good teacher.”

“No,” she shot back. “Never on our rug.”

As she bent to pour them tea, Shan strained to make sense of her words. Lokesh would have known how to speak with the woman. His gaze drifted back to the tiger rug and his recollection stirred. Once, Lokesh had told him, tiger skins had been reserved for revered lamas, who sat on them while teaching. “Jamyang taught me things from the old ways,” Shan ventured.

The woman ignored him, gesturing to a string of white squares hanging from a rafter. “There’s cheese,” she stated flatly. Such dried cheese was a staple of many farming households.

“He taught me to look beneath the appearance of people.”

The woman gave a snort of derision. “He taught death and betrayal. He taught us about damned appearances well enough.”

“Jamyang is dead,” Shan declared.

The woman hesitated only a moment. “There’s yogurt in a jar in the stream out back.”

“I need to know about him. About what happened to him when he was young.”

She eyed the teacups as if trying to decide if she had fulfilled her obligation, then fixed him with a hard stare. “What happened to him happened to us all.”

Meng tugged on Shan’s sleeve, trying to pull him toward the door.

Shan drained his teacup, then pushed the empty cup toward the kettle.

The woman frowned. “If you desire more tea, you will need to get me some more dung,” she said icily.

The silence hung heavily about them. Shan was increasingly certain the old woman held a vital piece of the puzzle that was Jamyang, and just as certain she would not share it with two Chinese strangers.

Suddenly a shadow filled the doorway. The woman’s eyes went round and with a gasp leaned forward, nearly touching her forehead to the floor.

Dakpo was in the door, his face clenched in pain, blood seeping from the bandage on his head.

“These two were sent by the deities,” the monk said. He was breathing heavily. “They saved me. Shan is a friend of the old lamas.” He clutched his rib cage and sank to his knees. “They are truth seekers,” he moaned, and collapsed in the doorway.

The old woman moved with surprising speed, springing up so quickly she was able to catch Dakpo’s head before it hit the stone flags of the floor. For a moment she silently held the monk as if embracing a lost family member.

“His name is Dakpo,” Shan explained. “He is from Lhadrung County, from Chegar gompa. He has cracked ribs. He was attacked in Chamdo. We could not leave him there.”

It was Meng who broke the silence. “I will get more dung,” she said, and disappeared out the door.

Shan and the woman worked wordlessly, unrolling the pallet and laying Dakpo on it as Meng coaxed the brazier into a bright fire. While Shan wiped at the monk’s wounds the woman made more tea then put on a pot for soup, which she asked Meng to watch over as she disappeared out the back door. When she returned she carried a wooden box of salves and ointments. A rolled-up piece of cloth was in one hand, a large black dog was at her heels. As Shan relieved her of the box the dog growled. Shan backed away. It was the same bearlike creature that had bit him. The woman leaned over the animal, whispering into his ear. The dog seemed to frown, then turned to examine Dakpo, and began sniffing the monk’s body with slow deliberation. Wherever he paused the woman applied salve.

“I am Leshe,” the woman declared when she and the dog were done. She unrolled the cloth she had carried in and hung it over Dakpo. It was a small painting of a familiar blue deity, a well-worn thangka that could have been centuries old.

“Tadyatha om bekhandzye,” Shan intoned.

He saw the look of disbelief on Leshe’s face as he continued the invocation of the Medicine Buddha.

The tension seemed to fall away from the old woman. She nodded, and joined him in the mantra.

When they had finished Shan looked up to see that Jigten had joined them and was quietly helping Meng prepare their meal. As they ate Shan explained how he had met Jamyang, and described his sudden death.

Leshe did not respond until she had lit incense at the little altar and murmured prayers to its bronze Buddha. “We had beautiful farms once,” she finally began, “my family and that of Jamyang’s father. For as long as memory could reach each generation gave a son who became a great lama. We had many happy years. Even after the Chinese entered Lhasa it was years before they found us. When they did it was just a lot of Chinese teenagers in military trucks. They put all the fathers and mothers on trial, accusing them of being landowners. The Chinese said that was a crime against the people. In some places landowners just lost their lands and became laborers, but here our people were proud. They declared the trial a sham. They said they were free Tibetans who could not be judged by Chinese children. The Chinese laughed and said see if our bullets are a sham. They executed them all. Jamyang’s parents. My husband. I was sick in bed or they would have killed me too.

“Jamyang came to live with me then. For a few years we were happy enough. My brother Ugen was a lama at a gompa near Lhasa. When he visited he sat on the tiger skin, as generations before had done, and Jamyang seemed entranced as Ugen spoke of the old ways and of how the Dalai Lama would come back one day. All Jamyang ever wanted to do was be a lama like his uncle. But his Chinese teachers said he was too bright to stay here. They sent him away, gave him a Chinese name. After college he visited, very excited. They were going to let him become a monk after all, to work in the Bureau of Religious Affairs.”

Leshe sipped her tea and offered a bitter smile. “I told him to be a monk you have to go to a monastery, have to study many years. He said he would be going to monasteries, to explain about the new order of things. I said he had become a puppet of those who had killed his own parents and he yelled at me, said I was just a backward old hag who knew nothing of the way of the world.

“My brother visited him, tried to get him to leave the Bureau, to go to his gompa and become a real monk. A few weeks later my brother was thrown into prison, one of those gulag camps. They said he was a traitor to China. The Motherland they called it,” she added in a melancholy tone.

“It was nearly three years before Jamyang visited again. He was troubled. He kept staring at the tiger rug. He couldn’t sleep. I found him up in one of the pastures. We sat in the moonlight and he confessed his shame. Not long after his last visit he had been offered a big promotion, but they had required him to prove his loyalty. So he had turned in his uncle. Jamyang had assumed he would be sent to some reeducation camp for a few months at most. He had only just found out that Ugen had been sentenced to twenty years hard labor.” Leshe looked down, wiping at a tear. “He begged my forgiveness but I would not give it to him.

“It was many years before I heard from him again. He had been made administrator of this, director of that, always wearing a robe, always paid by the Chinese. He told me he was corresponding with Ugen, that his uncle was doing well, that his uncle had forgiven him and had become a model prisoner. Jamyang would send me a letter every few weeks then, telling me how he was living in this monastery or that, learning more of the scriptures the way Ugen had taught him from the tiger rug, telling me he was getting reports that Ugen was doing well, that he was being rehabilitated, whatever that meant. I never wrote back. He began sending letters to the headman of the village to make sure I was still alive. He would send gifts for the headman to give to me. Little Chinese cakes and tea. I told the headman to keep the tea. I fed the cakes to the pigs.”

Leshe paused and looked at Dakpo. Their patient was awake, and listening intently. Before she continued she braced a cushion behind him so he could sit and drink tea. “Then a few months ago my nephew appeared in my doorway. He wore a lama’s robe over a business suit and tie. He said he was traveling to a new assignment and had asked the driver to turn off the highway. A big black car was waiting for him in the village.

“I gave him lunch. We walked up in the pastures. He had a big secret to tell me. He said he had arranged for Ugen to receive light trusty duties two years before, told me how he had been negotiating for his release, that if he performed well in his new assignment his uncle would finally come home. He showed me letters from Ugen, in Chinese, that proved he was in good health and contented. He grew upset with me, asked me why I did not feel joy from the news. I took him inside to the altar,” she said with a nod toward the bronze Buddha. “I told him I would sit in front of the Buddha so he would know my words to be true. I explained to him that Ugen did not speak Chinese, did not write Chinese. I lifted the gau, that one you see there on the altar, and told him to study it.

“He stared as if he had seen a ghost. I told him the truth then, for he knew that gau had been in the family for centuries, that it had been Ugen’s. It had been sent home to me six years before when Ugen killed himself in prison.

“He stared and stared at the gau, then finally pressed it to his head and wept. I gave him tea. He would not speak with me. He just held the gau and stared at it. His hands trembled like those of an old man.

“Then the car horn started calling him. The other one, his companion, grew impatient, and was standing at the driver’s window, pressing the horn.”

“The other one?” Dakpo asked in a whisper.

“Another man in a robe over a suit, very tall, carrying what looked like a silver bell. They were being driven like they were Chinese royalty.”

An anguished moan escaped Dakpo’s throat. He sagged and Leshe helped him lie back on the pallet.

Shan studied Dakpo in confusion, then asked Jigten to bring the truck up. The young monk needed to return to his bed in Chegar gompa, where he could be properly looked after.

“Your foot,” Leshe said to Shan. “Pick up your trouser leg.”

The Tibetan woman murmured something and the big dog stepped forward. Shan forced himself not to react as the animal sniffed at Shan’s ankle. “He apologizes for biting you,” Leshe said, then made a clucking sound as she studied the bite. “That old fool put on honey, didn’t he?” She made a gesture and the mastiff licked away the honey. She lifted one of her wooden tubes and began applying a salve to the wound. The dog watched with bright, intelligent eyes. “He only bites Chinese,” Leshe explained in a matter-of-fact voice, then paused. “He appeared as a pup six years ago, waiting at my door.”

Shan offered an awkward grin and touched the dog’s head as it turned to contemplate him with its big, moist eyes. “I didn’t hear his name.”

The old woman cast an impatient glance at Shan, as if he hadn’t been listening. “It’s Ugen, of course.”