Beautiful Ghosts (42 page)

“It’s not Tibetan,” Corbett said.

But Lokesh pointed to the saint in the center, with his hand to his ear. It was without a doubt Milarepa, the famed ascetic, flanked by other Tibetan saints.

“Tibetan but not Tibetan,” Shan said. “The background is in the Chinese style.” He pointed to a small group of five curving marks in the lower right corner, like commas, all rising from the top of a small arc. “This I don’t know.”

Corbett confirmed that the marks were in the corners of the other two paintings in the chamber. “It’s like a painter’s mark, a signature. But you said Tibetans don’t sign their paintings.”

“Almost never, except sometimes a handprint or word on the back of the painting.”

“Who is at the side?” Yao asked, pointing to the two robed figures who stood behind another Tibetan saint, one robed figure at each shoulder, their faces drawn in painstaking detail. He pointed to one of the men. “His face is not Tibetan,” the inspector said. “He looks somehow familiar.”

Shan and Lokesh lingered behind the others, still gazing at the strange paintings. Though they departed from the traditional form of Tibetan art, the artist had been skillful, had created a different form with its own simple, stirring beauty. When Shan finally stepped into the corridor he saw the others standing in front of the next wooden door, gazing at its frame. Several pegs hung from the frame, and from them hung at least twenty khatas, ceremonial offering scarves. At the base of the door were several dust-encrusted bronze figures, rolled prayer papers tied in vines, and shriveled brown shapes that may once have been butter offerings.

“It’s some kind of altar,” Punji said. “These were put here a long time ago, before the bombing.”

At first, in the beams of their lights, the interior seemed like the others, with a spare plank bed, a small, low writing table with a chair, a shelf with peche manuscripts, a wooden trunk, and an altar under a thangka. But the pallet was tied with a length of silk, and on top of the trunk was a small stone statue of a dragon.

No one seemed willing to step over the offerings in the entryway. Finally Yao sighed and stepped inside. As the others waited he walked to the bed, rested his hand on the rolled pallet a moment. He paused, gazing at the dragon, then he turned to sweep his light along the other walls. Suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, he dropped his light. He did not bend to retrieve it, but stared at the wall around the door, the wall that could not be seen by the others. After a moment he recovered and took a tiny step, then seemed to stumble, dropping to one knee but not recovering, just staring at the wall, forgetting his light, supporting himself on one knee.

Shan stepped inside, followed by the others, and turned to follow Yao’s gaze. For a moment Shan thought his knees were about to buckle.

“Ai yi!” Lokesh cried.

“It’s him!” Punji gasped.

“It’s who?” Corbett asked in confusion, staring at the two magnificent Chinese scroll portraits on the wall.

Shan instantly recognized the elegant middle-aged man in a fur hat who stared down from the throne in the painting on the right. It was the Qian Long emperor.

“He brought a picture of his uncle from Beijing,” Punji whispered.

“And of himself,” Shan said. On the opposite side of the door was a matching painting, of the same size, with the same silk brocade border, of another man in a fur cap, seated on a bench, his kind intelligent face a younger version of the emperor’s own.

“The saints we didn’t know,” Lokesh said. Shan suddenly realized why one of the men in the murals had seemed familiar.

“It was the emperor,” Punji said in an awed voice, “painted as a lama. And the other was his nephew.”

“Not the amban,” Shan corrected. “By then he had become the other.”

“The other?” the British woman asked.

“The reincarnate abbot.” Shan gestured to the dragon statue on the trunk. “The Stone Dragon Lama.”

“Killed by order of the Stone Dragon,” Punji uttered in a surprised whisper, and looked up at Lokesh and Shan. “The lama Kwan Li ordered the death of the amban Kwan Li.” The handwriting on the bounty poster had been something like a joke, a taunt, written by members of the lama’s own flock.

“He signed his work,” Lokesh whispered, his voice still full of wonder. His finger rested on one of the stone dragon’s outstretched feet.

McDowell, opening the trunk by the bed, looked up from a neat work tray of brushes and dried pigments that sat inside. “What do you mean?”

“The paintings with the marks. They were his,” Shan said. He realized none of them were speaking above a whisper. “The five marks. It’s the footprint of the imperial dragon. Five claws.”

In the shadows by the altar a match flared. Lokesh was lighting a stick of incense, setting it in a stone holder on a low table Shan had not noticed before. Beside the holder was a large wooden tray, holding an odd assortment of objects: Several little tsa-tsas, the traditional clay images of deities, painted in brilliant colors. Over twenty rolls of paper, tightly bound with silk threads. What may have been a piece of bone. And a round piece of brass in a small dome shape, with a short shaft on its back. The collection appeared to be another makeshift altar.

Another soft gasp came over Shan’s shoulder. Punji pushed the brass object with a finger, turning it over, her hand hanging over it. It was a button, an ornate military button, with two cannon barrels, crossed, on its front surface.

McDowell’s face seemed to swirl with emotion, then she folded her arms across her chest and turned to face the picture of the amban, approached it as if about to ask him a question, then slowly stepped back into the hall, and walked into the darkness.

When Shan followed, a light was shining into the next doorway, thirty feet away. Corbett stood in the opening. Shan watched as the British woman reached the American, stared into the chamber a moment, then darted inside as Corbett laughed.

The only thing about the chamber that matched the others was the fragrant wood walls. The bed was higher, elevated on wooden blocks, and three trunks were arranged along the wall straddling the door. The wall opposite the bed consisted of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Shan stepped to the shelves. Most of their contents were unbound peche, but one shelf was packed with Western books. On a finely worked table beside the bed were several candle stubs, pieces of paper, and two images in matching frames. Shan stepped closer to examine them. One was of the Dalai Lama, as a boy of perhaps ten. The other was a photograph of a large Western woman, in a dark dress with a lace collar buttoned tightly at the neck, sitting in an ornate chair. Shan recalled seeing her face in another photo, at the cottage in the village. As Corbett lit the candles another laugh escaped his lips. Punji appeared and lifted the frame with the woman.

“It’s his queen,” she said, still in her tone of awe. “The queen of his boyhood. Queen Victoria.”

On the wall along the side of the bed was a peg holding a wooden tube suspended on a leather thong, open at the top end. Inside was a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. Above the peg was a space on the wall where something large and rectangular had hung, its shape made visible by a lighter layer of dust within the five-foot-long rectangle.

Yao appeared and began opening the trunks. The first had robes and underrobes, incense, and socks—heavily darned woolen socks. There were paintings hung along the entry wall, above the trunks, paintings like Shan had never seen before. They were skilled works, painted as thangkas but without the formal structure used by the Tibetans.

The first was the future Buddha riding a magnificent white horse, bearing a lance like a warrior, facing dim shapes on horseback at the edge of a forest. There was a monk standing on the ramparts of a British-looking castle, the wind whipping his robe. Shan looked back at the first painting and smiled. The figure on the white charger was Buddha, as Ivanhoe.

In the corner was a huge painting that looked like a European battle scene, with Western soldiers in tan helmets, some urging hordes that pulled cannon, some wearing bandages over bloody wounds, a group of officers apart, on a hill, their faces very detailed, as if based on actual men the artist had known. But all of the soldiers, including the officers, wore the maroon robes of monks.

Corbett called out and lifted a long object from one of the trunks. It was a violin, worn from heavy use.

Shan sat on the stool, staring at a peche leaf, blank except for a sketch of a flower on the margin. It had been waiting under Brother Bertram’s pen, about to capture a thought that was now lost forever.

Corbett opened another trunk and pulled out a pair of red trousers with gold trim, part of an officer’s dress uniform. Shan stepped to the bound books. There was a Bible, several British novels, a guide to the birds of Asia, and a thick untitled leather-bound book. He opened it and discovered that it was a journal, written in English in a careful, elegant hand.

December 10, 1903, read the first entry.

We have redefined the word chaos today by taking four thousand mules over the snows of the Jelap La mountain pass, altitude 14,000 feet, with three hundred handlers speaking four different languages.

It was a description of the progress of the Younghusband expedition over the Himalayas. He leafed through the pages. The entries were weekly for the first year, the early ones short factual descriptions of the work of soldiers, the later entries speaking of Tibetan art and monk artists. The major had been posted at Gyanste, established by treaty as one of the British trading centers. A long period passed without entries, over a year, until there was an entry marked Lhasa 1906, then more entries about a magical secret place his teacher had taken him, from which he wanted never to leave. Shan paused, and read a joyous passage about the birth of a daughter.

Then, after an entry in 1934, there was a blank page, with a single word. Zhoka, followed by the first entry by Brother Bertram.

My dear friends and teachers have insisted I occupy honored quarters adjoining those of the Twelfth Stone Dragon, whom they speak of as they might a cherished grandfather, and revere now as a protector deity. They say he, too, was a traveler from another part of the world who came to translate things for the spirits of men. They have let me read his correspondence. I never knew the emperor read Tibetan.

Before laying the book on the table Shan went to the final entry, dated May 24, 1959.

We celebrated the queen’s birthday today. I played the fiddle in the fore-gate, and helped the lamas dance a jig. We threw flour in the air and drank a spot of brandy. Victory to the gods.

“Lha gyal lo,” a soft voice said over his shoulder. Elizabeth McDowell had been reading too.

“Is that true, Miss McDowell?” Shan heard Lokesh whisper. “Do you wish victory to the gods?”

The question seemed to disturb Punji. She looked away, but her gaze slowly drifted back to the open journal. “I’ve seen letters my great-grandmother wrote about Bertram. He was full of mischief. Girls’ pigtails in inkwells, that sort of thing.” She produced a pencil, then leaned over the open book, at the last entry, and wrote for a minute, then straightened and walked toward the empty bed.

Dear Uncle Bert,
Shan read. Then she had written the mani mantra in Tibetan, and added,
We will make the gods victorious. Give you joy, Punji.

Shan joined Corbett, who was at the third chest now. The American lifted out several bundles. A peche wrapped in silk, another wrapped in fur. On the bottom was a long piece of cotton, unadorned, folded, and sewn along the bottom like a pouch. As Shan lifted it out and laid it on the table, Punji was suddenly at his side. She reached into the pouch and pulled out a piece of yellowed cotton, with two handprints in the corners, the back of a thangka. With a gasp Punji pointed to the edge of the cotton. It was jagged from being torn. She did not move, did not speak as Shan reached over and turned the cotton over, revealing four pairs of hooved legs trampling humans and animals.

“Zhinje!” Punji whispered, then she clamped her hand over her mouth, her face draining of color. She had spoken the name which had not been heard in nearly fifty years. After a moment’s stunned silence Punji began rolling up the thangka. “The monks must have brought it back from the north, when he died. With this,” she said in a suddenly urgent tone, “we can beat them. Go to the first level,” she said in English. “Past the eastern gate there is a meditation cell with a piece of grey felt draped over the back of an altar. The chapel has a shelf of old peche, some of them open for reading. The felt covers a hole. Lu and Khan found air flowing through a crack in the rock and chipped out a small tunnel. I’ll say you ran into the maze, that you’re lost. Go. Go now. I don’t want more people hurt. Lodi and I, we never meant for people to be hurt.” She looked up for a moment at the journal, then grinned at Shan, excitement in her eyes, and stepped toward the packs they had dropped in the corner, holding the precious thangka.

But as she slipped into the shadow of the far corner, a figure hurtled through the doorway, falling, landing heavily beside the bed. It was Liya, holding her belly as if she had been struck. Two figures entered the room. Lu, the cruel-faced plasterman, holding a hammer in one hand like a weapon, and Ko, holding a staff, wearing a victorious smile.

“She was trying to run,” Lu spat. “But our new friend stopped her. He’s fast with that stick. I didn’t know he was an escaped prisoner.” As he spoke Dawa appeared behind him, following closely, tears on her cheeks. Lu shoved her forward and she ran into Liya’s arms.

Shan felt something strange course through him as he returned his son’s cool gaze, an odd heat that was unfamiliar at first. Anger.

Ko pulled something from a back pocket and extended it toward Punji with a businesslike air. It was a small gold statue.

The British woman, shouldering her pack, hesitated, then offered a weak smile. She glanced at Shan, took the gold figure, then closed her fingers around Ko’s hand. The action seemed to pleasantly surprise Ko. The perpetual sneer left his face as she squeezed his hand, for a moment replaced by an awkward grin. Then he gestured for Liya and Dawa to stand.