22

ABACUS

Gaddi Baithak Palace, Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal

Sir Jack was waiting for Henrietta at the entrance to the Royal Palace, newly garlanded with two bright strings of orange marigolds. “Bit of a scrum, wasn’t it?” he asked, smiling. “See you also received some offerings. Shall we go in?”

Henrietta was still stunned by her encounter, struck by that name from her past as if it had been a blunt instrument. For a moment she didn’t reply, she couldn’t. Instead she just looked back at the crowd seeking some explanation.

“Henrietta?” Sir Jack asked with a growing concern. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost . . .”

She scrambled for an excuse. “Sorry, Jack . . . not so good in crowds these days.”

Sir Jack nodded with understanding and gently took Henrietta’s arm to guide her into the palace and up to the terrace. Effortlessly switching into his well-practiced diplomatic persona, he led her through the tight islands of politicians, ambassadors, NGO representatives, and local businessmen. There was a greeting here, a handshake there until they arrived behind a tall man with parted black hair, a good foot higher than the ring of Chinese he was talking to in quick-fire Mandarin.

Anthony Green was wearing a well-tailored dark-blue pinstripe, more suited to St. James Square in London than Kathmandu. The blond assistant close at his side was dressed as if she had been transported directly from some glazed office tower as well. The Chinese to their front were also besuited, but gray, ill-fitting—except for a pair wearing the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army. From the golden insignia on their pine green jackets, Henrietta knew they were generals, the shorter of the two looking at Green’s assistant as if she were a plate of Peking duck.

Despite Sir Jack’s gentle tap on Green’s elbow to announce their arrival, the younger man continued to talk, without urgency, until he eventually said goodbye to the generals and turned. With a glance at Sir Jack, the new British ambassador carefully looked Henrietta up and down, and asked, “Cultural relics?” Henrietta, mind still elsewhere, instantly prickled, missing the interrogative despite the items she was indeed holding. Green’s sharp eyes noticed her reaction with a faint smile that hovered on the disputed border between charm and superciliousness. “From what I’d heard I didn’t expect you to be a Buddhist, Ms. Richards. Are those things for me?”

“No,” Henrietta replied curtly.

Green continued regardless. “Sir Jack has told me that you know everything about this region: the places, the peoples, the religions. So why don’t you start by telling me about this ‘Ku . . . ma . . . ri . . . Ja . . . tra’ we have been assembled here for?”

Trying to focus for Jack’s sake even though her thoughts were still scrambled, Henrietta began to explain to Green the story of Kathmandu’s Royal Kumari.

Of how a young girl was selected from amongst the city’s Newari community by form, horoscope, and portent to be raised as a living goddess, a human incarnation of the Hindu divine female energy, a protector spirit for the city.

Of how that evening’s jatra, or festival, was one of the rare occasions when the tiny deity was permitted to leave the seclusion of her holy rooms to be seen in public and worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists alike in that strange intersection of religions the city specialized in.

Of how—

Green’s cellphone rang loudly. The man instantly took the call, pausing only to say, with a desultory hand draped across the phone’s face, “Sorry. Absolutely must take this. Do carry on though. Cassie is clearly fascinated.” He winked at his assistant. “She can type it all up for me later.”

With a smug grin, the British ambassador-in-waiting to Nepal returned his attention to the call, saying loudly, “Yes, in a few weeks, but thoroughly immersed in local history already,” before deliberately moving away from the others and lowering his voice to talk more.

Henrietta looked down at the prayer wheel in her right hand. With every rotation a Tibetan prayer wheel was said to release compassion and understanding, much as prayer flags did on every gust of wind. It seemed a suitable moment to conjure such feelings, so she gave the wheel a spin and walked away herself.

Green’s assistant, seeing her leave, called after her, “But what about the Kumari?”

“Google it, my dear.”

Below the terrace, Durbar Square was now full to capacity. The staggered steps of the surrounding temples were so tightly crammed with onlookers that they resembled human pyramids. The lamps of the streetlights and the spotlights angled to illuminate the ancient buildings were now shining brightly, the burning air around their bulbs alive with fluttering insects. Looking out on it all, surrounded yet alone, Henrietta’s left hand squeezed on the mala, the Buddhist rosary the masked figure had given to her. She repeated to herself that first name that had accompanied its delivery.

“Christopher Anderson.”

Her eyes, heavy with the memories it conjured, dropped to the smooth cylindrical bead she was clutching, a tassel of red threads projecting from one end. It was the guru bead, both the beginning and the end of the loop. With her thumbnail she hooked it down into the palm of her hand, the action automatically calling the next bead up onto the top of her index finger.

This one was smaller, rougher edged. It was fashioned as a tiny human skull. Henrietta pressed the pad of her thumb onto its tiny, yellowed temple and pushed. Hard as marble but not as cold, it too obediently rode the string down into her hand.

“One,” she counted.

Her thumb pushed forward again, searching for the next tiny cranium.

“Two.”

The beads of the mala began to click quickly through her cupped hand like an abacus.

“Three. Four. Five.”

Each skull was as exquisitely crafted as the one before, the workmanship too fine for the secular needs of the Kathmandu tourist, too intricate for the discarded bones of a yak or a goat. In the Kenyan savanna, Henrietta told herself, they would have been made of ivory. In the Arctic, walrus tusk or perhaps the tooth of a luckless sperm whale, but here, she knew beads such as these were made from something else. For they were kapala, carved from human bone, each one originating from a different skeleton.

The understanding made the rosary’s one hundred and eight beads immediately hang heavier on her hand with extinct life, their rotation posing unanswerable questions.

“Six.”

Who were you?

“Seven.”

When did you live?

“Eight.”

How did you die?

“Nine.”

Where?

It was an abacus of death. Yet, Henrietta also understood that those tiny, hand-carved skulls also thoroughly signified life. To the adept, each was its own mantra, a circular devotion of affirmation, of positivity, of the continuity of the very life force itself through the cycle of rebirth: the samsara.

The little skulls continued to click through her hand, uniting with that name she had not spoken aloud for years to question Henrietta about her own life, but numerically, linearly, bead by bead, with one beginning and one end, unknown but inevitable.

“Twenty-two.”

Her age when she first came to Kathmandu to work at the British Embassy.

“Thirty-four.”

Her age when Christopher Anderson, the only person she had ever truly loved, didn’t return from the mountain of Makalu.

“Forty-five.”

The number of years she had lived in that ancient city.

On and on they went, the beads plucking out her memories until a loud blast of horns shattered her reverie and instantly energized the crowd below.

The kumari was finally arriving.

A squad of policemen in blue shirts and beet-red berets immediately pushed outward from the foot of the Royal Palace. Their line forced itself against the crowd to clear an area they held open with linked arms like a human perimeter fence. Above their heads, other arms raised, not in salute but to lift cellphones in twisting, searching anticipation of filming the goddess-child’s arrival.

To a new cacophony of piercing whistles, squealing oboes, clashing cymbals, and banging fireworks, an immense wagon was slowly pulled into the cleared area by a team of straining men. Before the great cart, a vanguard of masked figures, Ganesha the elephant-headed god, the eagle-beaked Garuda, others, ran, dancing, circling, leaping. Whenever one neared the crowd, people screamed in mock fear and cowered back in exaggerated panic, whistles and trumpets blowing.

Amongst the masked dancers, Henrietta searched for the blue-faced deity that had given her the beads and the prayer wheel, but it was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes turned instead to the golden pagoda on the cart, a three-tiered miniature of the same temples that surrounded the square. Within sat a small child dressed in impossibly fine red-and-gold robes. Her large eyes were further emboldened by thick lines of kohl. Her rosebud lips were painted blood red. The child’s tiny head was swaying gently from side to side as if she was hovering on the very edge of consciousness, human or otherwise.

The wagon carrying her was slowly turned to face the terrace of the Royal Palace as burly attendants climbed aboard to ready the little princess for the coming ceremony. Curls of smoke from the incense bundles tied to the wagon caught the same breeze faintly rippling the fringes of red material hanging from the square’s tiered temple roofs. The sweet, spicy scent drifted up to perfume the terrace of the Royal Palace. Henrietta inhaled deeply as she continued to click through the beads and take everything in.

“Ninety-six. Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ten beads to go . . .” she told herself just as a scuffle broke out in the crowd to her right.

The disturbance buckled then broke the blue wall of policemen.

A solitary person pushed through the gap to run into the space between the chariot and the palace terrace just as one more bead dropped into Henrietta’s hand.

“Ninety-nine.”

The figure stopped in the center of the open area. Its head was covered, bound with a khata scarf but it seemed to have vision through the tight silk skin. The amorphous white face turned from side to side to scan the terrace above. The unseen eyes within seemed to lock onto Henrietta’s as the gloved hands unrolled a tube of white material the figure was holding.

A sign was held open for all to see.

long live the dalai lama

long live tibet

Henrietta sucked in her breath at the sight of the small banner, the distinctive moth symbol immediately taking flight to settle in her mind next to the name, the memory of Christopher Anderson. This further shock of recognition made her shudder.

From the surrounding crowd, the sign inspired loud shouts and screams. Some began to chant the words displayed. Fists punched the air in support. Others gripped and held back the policemen struggling to break up the demonstration. Alert to the disturbance, the men on the Kumari’s wagon huddled around their small charge, blocking her vision as others below strained to push the heavy wagon away, leaving the figure to stand alone silently displaying its message. Lights flashed all around the lone demonstrator. With every burst, the figure and its white sign, seemed to glisten in reply. The air above shimmered, vaporous.

A more pungent smell began to corrupt the incense as another bead slowly clicked through Henrietta’s hand. The hundredth small skull brought with it a terrible explanation for the new odor.

Gasoline.

Henrietta squeezed the bead as hard as she could, pinching her own flesh and bone until it hurt. Shaking her head in horror and disbelief, she shouted at the stationary figure, “No!” But the silken face remained fixed on her even as more policemen tried to cut through the crowd, whipping at the onlookers with long lathi sticks until they could burst through and make a grab for the protester.

Their reach met an intense flash. The nearest policemen were thrown back onto the flagstones as the stationary figure in front of everyone transformed into a blazing pillar of orange fire. The crowd began to scream in panic and shock, stampeding in every direction. Blinded by the sight, nauseated by a sweeter, sicklier odor overpowering that of the gasoline, Henrietta felt her thumb rest against not another skull but the guru bead, once more.

Eight beads missing . . .

Henrietta Richards immediately understood.

Eight beads missing.

Quickly she pushed the prayer wheel and the beads deep into her handbag, checking to see if anyone was looking. She needn’t have bothered. They were too busy watching a man burn beneath a spiraling, dancing swarm of moths, ghostly against the pale smoke rising into the black night sky.