Beautiful Ghosts (22 page)

Inside the large clay pot was a small black radio-cassette player, a battery-powered razor, and a blow dryer.

“Like you said, nothing’s changed in a thousand years,” Yao observed in an acid tone.

Shan lifted the cassette player. It was covered with dust. He turned it over. The batteries inside were corroded. He set it back in the basket and lifted the hair dryer. It had a cord, to be plugged into an electrical outlet. But there were no outlets for at least twenty miles. As he lowered the dryer back into the jar he noticed for the first time a small shape that dangled from a roof beam directly over the jar. It was made of twigs, fastened in a diamond shape, with colored yarn interwoven around the frame to form a series of diamonds, ending in a small red diamond in the center.

“What is it?” the American asked.

“A spirit trap,” Shan explained, “to catch demons.” He stepped closer. It seemed new.

“There’s another,” Corbett said in a nervous tone, pointing to one more of the traps hung unobtrusively under the eaves. They quickly surveyed the other buildings. Every house had one or two of the traps hanging in the shadows under their eaves. “If you’re a ragyapa, doing what they do,” the American said in a contemplative voice, “what demon could you possibly be frightened of?”

Yao had stepped away and was staring down the slope, toward a small wood plank structure fifty yards away. It stood in the shadow of two old wind-twisted junipers. A ragyapa girl stood in the doorway, looking not at the three strangers but inside the hut. Shan jogged to join her, followed closely by the American.

The girl did not notice their approach until they were only a few steps from the shed. Fear clenched her face as she spun about. She stood, mouth open, gulping air, then bolted toward the cover of the nearest outcropping. As she reached it a woman in a red dress appeared and swept the girl into her arms.

Shan ran past his companions to the crude plank door of the shed, which hung ajar a few inches. Someone inside was chanting. The sweet acrid scent of incense wafted through the cracked door. He pushed it open. The single chamber of the hut was dimly lit with four butter lamps, three of which stood in front of an open peche. An adolescent girl sat against the wall in one corner, apparently asleep. The man who read the book paused only a moment as Shan reached his side, turning to offer a sad, familiar grin and returning to the book. It was Lokesh. Shan glanced back at the girl, finally recognized a dirty, haggard Dawa with tangled hair, her dress torn, her hands caked with dirt. Her jaw was moving, clenching and unclenching. Perhaps she wasn’t asleep, he realized, perhaps she was just frightened. For Lokesh was reading the Bardo, the death rites, and in front of him, in the center of the rear wall, was the shadow of a dead man.

A hand closed around Shan’s forearm. It was Yao, squeezing tightly. Shan started to pull away resentfully, thinking Yao was again worried Shan would flee. But then Shan saw Yao’s face. The inspector was looking at Lokesh and the effigy in front of them with a tight, worried expression. For the first time Shan saw uncertainty in Yao’s eyes.

The five-foot-high shape hanging over the rear wall was a crude representation of a man, a brown shirt stretched over a frame of sticks, with the top stick extending eighteen inches from each shoulder to represent arms, two vertical sticks extending below the shirt as legs. An expensive watch and a string bearing three gold rings hung from one stick arm. The face was a piece of beige cloth stretched across a smaller frame of sticks lashed above the shirt, with eyes, ears, and mouth drawn in charcoal. Colors had been added by what may have been wax crayons. Brown hair. Red circles on the cheeks. Brown eyelashes.

There was movement behind them. Shan did not turn but heard the American’s startled groan.

The crude effigy had a macabre power about it, a haunting presence that seemed to be warning them away. Shan understood why Dawa was keeping her eyes closed. He had learned of such a practice from the old lamas in the gulag, but never had he seen one of the effigies. It was one of the very old customs that still lingered in isolated pockets of Tibet, probably dating from before Buddhism came to the country.

“When a body isn’t available for the customary three days of preparation,” Shan explained in a whisper, “or when mourners chose to observe the full forty-nine days of traditional death rites, a likeness of the dead might be substituted for the body, to be the focus of those who would talk the departed spirit through his transition.”

“The manuscript is very old and faded,” someone suddenly said, in a quiet voice. Shan realized Lokesh had stopped reading and was speaking to him. “Written in the old style,” he added. “They have difficulty with it, and asked if I could read it, at least the early chapters.”

Corbett stepped to Shan’s side, staring intensely at the effigy, then shook his head, hard, as though struggling to pull his gaze away. He moved to Dawa, lifted the girl into his arms, and carried her outside.

“Who was it?” Shan asked Lokesh.

“A man who was not prepared, is all they said,” his old friend replied.

Not prepared. The Tibetans usually used the term to describe a devout Buddhist who had died unexpectedly, but it could mean anyone who had not prepared his spirit to pass on. Someone, for example, who had been murdered. Shan took a step forward, toward the effigy. Near the side wall he saw two more butter lamps, unlit. He tipped them into the flame of a lit lamp to ignite them and set them by the effigy.

Yao squatted at the legs of the figure, to which were attached thick black woolen socks, then poked tentatively at a blanket which lay on the floor below the stick feet. As Shan lifted the blanket Yao’s breath audibly caught. Exposed in the dim light was a row of what must have been the dead man’s possessions: A portable compact disc player with earphones, an expensive Japanese model that showed signs of heavy use. A small magnifying lens that swung out from a hard plastic case. A pair of hiking boots. A compass. A complicated pocketknife with perhaps a dozen blades. Three short bristled brushes, bundled together with a rubber band. A roll of American currency. A clay tsa-tsa image of a saint, identical to those Shan had seen at Fiona’s house.

Yao pushed at the items with his fingertips, as though uneasy about lifting them. Shan gazed at the brushes a moment, realizing they were not for painting but for cleaning dust from delicate objects, then lifted one of the lamps toward the effigy’s head. Yao followed his gaze, emitted a small cry of surprise. He darted outside, where he had left his small pack, and returned a moment later with his hand lantern, fixing its beam on the crudely drawn face. An instant later he ran back to the door, calling the American. The eyes of the effigy were blue.

The discovery seemed to ignite something inside Yao. He forgot his wariness about the effigy’s belongings and began lifting them, pointing with them toward Shan as if accusing him of something. After a moment Yao growled he was going to call the soldiers to arrest the entire village. Corbett’s breath caught as Yao lifted the disc player. Underneath was a passport, a British passport. Corbett grabbed it, scanning the inside cover, and angrily slammed it down. Shan lifted it and read the name. “The bastard!” Corbett spat. He seemed to take it as a personal affront that William Lodi had gotten himself killed.

Shan sat silently, letting his companion’s anger burn away, then calmly introduced them to Lokesh, explaining the death rite, reminding them again that if they brought soldiers into the mountains there would be no more Tibetans to speak with, no evidence to follow. The two men stared at him grimly, Yao fidgeting with the radio, which he kept in his hand. Then Shan directed them to gather firewood.

“We are going to make a meal for the village,” he explained when Yao hesitated.

“It will take all the supplies we brought,” the inspector protested.

Shan nodded. “And money. I will need money, too. You owe it to them, to apologize for disturbing them, for being so rude. If they accept the apology we may learn some answers to our questions.”

Corbett reached into his pocket.

A quarter hour later they were boiling water at the edge of the village. Shan, having purchased butter and tea and borrowed a churn and kettle from a curious villager who had materialized between two of the houses, was laying their supplies out on a blanket: A bag of raisins, a bag of walnuts. Half a dozen apples. A bag of rice. Four cans of peaches, three of tuna fish.

“It’s not enough,” Shan said as ten, then fifteen Tibetans materialized from the rocks.

“We have no more food,” Yao protested.

“Anything,” Shan said.

Yao tightened the top of his pack and held it to his chest. Corbett stared into his own then withdrew a small black leather case and handed it to Shan. It was the American’s evidence kit. Shan opened it, extracting one of the little rubber syringe bulbs that held the powder used for highlighting fingerprints. He upended the bulb and squeezed it, shooting powder into the air. The nearest Tibetans gave an exclamation of surprise, then pressed closer as Shan handed it to an old man. They thought, Shan realized, it was a device for shooting flour into the air, a technology for celebrating.

A woman appeared with a pot of barley flour, for which Shan offered the remainder of the money Corbett had produced, and as Shan helped with the fire she began roasting the flour in a pan, chatting with Shan.

As more ragyapa warily appeared, Shan returned to Yao and Corbett, who sat together on a nearby rock, both wearing the same uneasy, suspicious expression.

“The body arrived early yesterday,” he reported. “It was taken right to the charnel ground, right to the birds.”

“Destruction of evidence,” Yao said.

“It doesn’t figure,” Corbett said. “They made that effigy. That’s not a cover-up.”

“I think those who brought the body wanted the birds to begin immediately,” Shan said. “But the people here knew Lodi, and had to mourn him as well, in the best way they knew how.”

“The gifts, those electric devices in the basket,” Corbett said.

Shan nodded. “I think they are from him.”

“He looked Tibetan,” Yao said, “but he had a British passport.” Yao, like Corbett, had studied the passport, even looked as though he were going to take it as evidence. But just as he had seemed about to stuff it in a pocket he had glanced at Lokesh then returned it to the makeshift altar.

“Tibetan but not Tibetan,” Shan said. If Lodi’s killing still made no sense, at least some of the evidence left where he had died now did. There had been something else in the hut, an old thangka of a blue figure with the head of a red-eyed bull bearing two pairs of horns, its head surrounded by a red halo, standing, holding a spear and a sword in its front hooves, its back legs trampling humans and animals in the cosmic dance of death and rebirth.

“It means you can go home,” Yao said in a hopeful tone as he handed the American some of the buttered tea.

“Home?” Corbett muttered. “Now I can never go home.” He lifted the bowl of salted tea to his lips, sipped, and seemed to gag. He stared doubtfully at the bowl, then looked at the Tibetans, as if he couldn’t believe they were drinking the same brew. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Never have I not recovered the art that was stolen in my cases. I don’t close incomplete files. Not once in my career. If I could have arrested Lodi, I would have found the art eventually. But now…” He shrugged. “Now I have to follow his trail. Where the evidence leads—” he paused and looked doubtfully at the village“—is where I go.”

Yao reacted to the news with a weary expression. He set his bowl of tea on a rock without attempting to taste it, watched as the old blind woman slowly approached their fire. Shan saw him lean forward as if to rise and go to her and placed a restraining hand on Yao’s arm. They watched as the other villagers greeted her and assisted her to a seat, a place of honor on a blanket by the fire, then Shan poured her a bowl and Lokesh handed her a handful of raisins, which she began to consume one at a time, working each one with her gums.

“Grandmother,” Shan said in Tibetan. “I have never before seen the deity on the thangka in the mourning hut.”

She raised a hand in warning. “Its name may not be spoken.” She grinned, as if Shan had attempted mischief and been caught. “I am the only one of the village who may touch the painting, because I was born away from the hills and it has no power over me.”

She had not told him the terrible name but she had told Shan enough. It was the image the godkillers sought. It was why Ming snatched Surya from Zhoka, to understand the shape of this particular four-horned dancing bull god. “William Lodi was still very young,” Shan said. “How did he die?”

“A terrible wound in his side, they said.” She was stroking the back of the goat which lay at her side. “He will be missed by his clan.”

“He was stabbed?” Shan asked.

She did not respond. She had warned him about speaking of the dead. “All these years, no Chinese has ever come to these mountains,” she said after a long silence. “Soldiers were in the distance once but they were frightened of our birds and fled. Now two come, and another
goserpa
from far away,” she said, using one of the Tibetan words for a Westerner. “Some of us are scared, some confused.” She drank deeply from her bowl. “You have good raisins.”

“Where was his family, his home?”

“Treasure vase, in the south,” she said. “I visited as a child. We sang the queen’s birthday.”

Shan glanced at Lokesh, who listened attentively. His old friend had the same frustration in his eyes Shan felt. She was speaking true words, Lokesh would say, but they did not have the listening.

“Was it people from there who brought Lodi to the birds? Were they with him at Zhoka?”

“There are no monks here, haven’t been these forty years. We have to be monks and nuns in our own way. People trust us like they would a monk.”

Shan cast a wary glance toward Yao and Corbett.

“I wasn’t always blind,” the woman explained suddenly. “I was not always with the ragyapa. I saw more beautiful things while my eyes were alive than most see in a lifetime. Sometimes I think it is why I went blind.”