Grants Pass (5 page)

But he just stared at her, looking
wild and cold.

Finally, she forced herself to speak
again. “Even if the roads hadn’t been swallowed up by the landslides, do you
think that Beijing wouldn’t send the first sick Chinese right into the Tibetan
quarter to finish the job for them?”

Sonam recoiled slightly, his
shoulders slumped.

Pema knew damn well that this was
playing dirty, reminding him about why they had to stick together — not just
their family, but their people. But it wasn’t half as dirty as his game.

He started forward, hands then knees
on the foot of her bed. She pulled her legs up underneath her to make room for
him. He sat, knees touching hers, and looked her in the eye.

He didn’t look right, she thought.
Didn’t look like Sonam. Something was wrong…although that should be fairly
obvious, by then. If something wasn’t
wrong
, he wouldn’t be acting like
this.

“
He’s going
to be dead in the morning,” he said. He didn’t look or gesture toward Tenzin.
He didn’t need to. “And so will the rest of this city. But we’re not sick. We
need to go somewhere safe.”

“
We can’t
leave him. Sometimes people get better—”

“
One in a
billion.”

This was an invented statistic and
Pema knew it, but it was probably close enough that it didn’t matter. So all
she said was, “Nowhere is safe.”

He closed his eyes, shook his head.

She reached out, pushing his hair
out of his eyes, her fingers brushing his forehead. Her heart stopped. He was
burning up. Even with that smallest touch, she could tell. “Oh my god,” she
said it in English, like they always did. “Sonam.”

He opened his eyes. He didn’t look
like he understood.

“
You’re…”
but she couldn’t make herself say it. Her thoughts were frozen, this new
revelation rattling around in her head uselessly.

But it didn’t explain why he would
want to leave Tenzin. And, she suspected, why he’d been about to leave her,
too.

He shook his head and swatted at her
hand, which hung in the air between them. One last look at her, and he was on
his feet, swooping down for the purse and backpack.

“
Don’t leave
us,” she said, almost without thinking. It just came out, and her eyes started
to burn for what felt like the twentieth time today.

He didn’t turn back though.

“
Sonam,
don’t leave me.”

But even before he walked out the
door, she knew there was no point. She thought about going after him, dragging
him back, hitting him and kicking him until he
listened
…but she didn’t.

Her eyes overflowed, and she buried
her face in her hands.

****

Tenzin’s frail figure convulsed
again; this time, he coughed something like blood onto the sheets. Something
like
blood because it was blacker and thicker than blood should’ve been.

Pema wiped it up — first off his
graying lips, then from his chin, and finally the bed. He winced slightly at
her touch. There was no light behind his eyes when he opened them.

It wouldn’t be long now.

The coughing died out after that,
and Tenzin seemed to fall asleep, his shallow breaths growing further and
further apart, his body relaxing under the sheets. Pema laid a new cold cloth
on his head and peeked out the window.

The rain had stopped for the moment.
Now was probably the last chance she’d get today — and there was nothing in the
flat but biscuits. She’d better save those for when it got
really
bad —
those things could survive a nuclear holocaust, let alone a plague.

Another glance at her little
brother, to make sure he was asleep, and she grabbed a bottle of water and
slipped out the door, down the pale lime green hallway, into the cramped
stairwell, and out the door onto the stupa-circle.

Silence. Not even the thin, frantic
gathering from yesterday. There were a few dead beggars against the stupa
walls, but all the brown, blue, and green doors were sealed against them.
Whether there was anyone inside to care, Pema didn’t know.

She’d seen death before — it
happened a lot near the stupa. The sick and poor came to beg, and once in a
while they died there. Her mother had passed away in the flat upstairs, not
long after Thinley had gotten his visa to go to the US. Bodies were paraded
around the stupa in covered palanquins before being taken down to the ghats, in
normal circumstances. Bodies in the street and on the sides of the road were
almost common.

That was what she told herself, as
she picked her silent way over gray cobblestones, the faded eyes of the stupa
looking down on her blankly. But she couldn’t fool herself into thinking this
was
normal
death, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe, if Sonam was
still there to smile and pretend with her, she could’ve done it. But Sonam had
left them a long time before last night, really.

The only open door was the
monastery’s — the same one they’d stopped at yesterday. Pema approached on
squelching-sneakered feet, eyeing the doorway suspiciously. Every corner could
hold a new and horrific sight for her, and numb though she was today, she
didn’t think she could handle something ghastly. Not here. Not where her mother
used to take her for puja in the mornings. She’d fall asleep against her,
listening to the monks chant and ring bells, breathing the smell of butter tea…

But there was nothing ghastly, as it
turned out. Two monks sat on the marble entryway now — an older man, in a fit
of coughing, and a younger. The latter was the same monk from yesterday, who’d
had his head symbolically crushed. He patted the old monk on the back and
muttered something to him.

They both looked up when Pema
approached. The old man blinked and smiled. The younger just stared, as if he
were surprised to see her. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen
— he still had baby fat in his cheeks.

“
Lama-la,”
she bowed her head to them. “Tashi delek.”

It felt odd to greet him like that,
almost like a bad joke. Like nothing was wrong.

The older monk smiled, his eyes
crinkling in the most charming way, and returned the greeting. “Are you
hungry?”

She nodded, tried to return the
smile, but failed. It made her eyes start to burn — but they were still red and
raw from last night. That was the last thing she needed, to cry more. “I was
looking for something, but I didn’t think any shops would be open.”

It hadn’t been a very good plan, now
that she thought about it. Why had she thought she could get anything — without
breaking into the stores, anyhow?

The old man gave the younger monk a
slap on the leg, and the boy took off in a shot of red and yellow into the
monastery. “Are you alone?” he asked.

“
No. My
brother…he’s sick.”

The monk nodded, looked like he was
about to say something else, but started coughing into his robe instead. Pema
saw that his eyes glowed bright with fever, and his high cheekbones made him
look sunken. Too sunken for an old lama living in a rich monastery. She held
out her water bottle to him and he accepted gratefully, chugging it. By the
time his coughs had calmed, the boy had returned with round, flat bread for
her.

Pema accepted it, and caught herself
smiling when she met the boy’s eyes. He was only a little younger than Tenzin,
three years at most. They looked nothing alike, with the little monk’s bald
head and round face…

But Tenzin used to have pink in his
cheeks like that.

“
I’ll come
back tomorrow, to check on you,” Pema promised, before she could start crying.

The old monk nodded, raising the
water bottle as if to thank her for it. The little monk tried to smile back,
but he couldn’t seem to manage. He’d lost the composure of the boy who’d had
his head symbolically cracked for vultures yesterday evening.

Pema decided to do some kora around
the stupa. Just three rounds. Maybe she’d feel better then.

****

It took Tenzin one more day to
die.

Pema held his hand for an hour, even
after he took his last painful, rattling breath. Not because she wanted to
pretend he wasn’t gone — she was glad for him, she only wished it hadn’t taken
him so long to be free. But she held his hand because she didn’t know what else
to do, and that was what she’d been doing when he’d stopped breathing.

There was nothing left. Yesterday
she’d wandered Boudha — winding alleys that used to be lined with booths
selling cuts of meat, piles of garbage that needed to be burned, restaurants
advertising everything from momos to apple pie, glass-windowed shops with
turquoise jewelry and Newari-made bronzes of Chenrezig and Thankgas painted
with Green Taras. But now prayer flags fluttered over empty carpet factories
and monasteries, streets were clogged with abandoned autos and the bodies of
people who didn’t have anywhere better to die. Packs of dogs fought over the
leftovers of the neighborhood. Flies were everywhere, encouraged by the lack of
humans to whisk them away.

The smell was awful. She’d thought
she’d get used to it, but no matter how much incense she burned in the flat, it
was everywhere. In her hair, in her clothes, in her nose.

She wondered, letting her brother’s
hand go, why she hadn’t gotten sick. She’d kissed Tenzin’s forehead, she’d
talked to the sick monk yesterday, when he’d looked like he was on his own
deathbed. She hadn’t tried to keep from it. She
wanted
it. Now that
Tenzin was gone—

She covered her brother with a
sheet, took a bottle of water and some of Sonam’s drawings from the wall, and
left. Wishing she could set the whole building on fire, knowing that she never
could. It was home.

The monastery door was open, a few
candles burning in the dark depths of the front chamber. She left her sandals
at the entryway, noticing vaguely that they looked lonely there, all by
themselves. When she went inside, the smell of butter lamps and juniper warded
off the cloying death-smell that coated Boudha like a film.

She stopped, put her water down, and
began her prostrations. Hands together — first at the head, then the throat,
then her heart — and then down on her knees, head to the floor. Three times,
offering herself body, speech, and mind, almost without thinking.

Only when she stood did she look at
the massive statue at the far end of the hall: Shakyamuni Buddha in his robes,
sitting as if under the bodhi tree at the moment of his enlightenment, shining
and golden even in the dark. One hand reached over his thigh, to touch the
ground. Calling the mother earth to bear witness for him; to show he wouldn’t
be swayed by Maya, the illusions of this world. He was serene, for someone
being threatened by a demon. She’d never thought it was odd before, but now she
did.

Had he really just laid down and
died calmly? Did he come back, like these monks swore to do when they devoted
themselves to the Dharma? Or had he simply disappeared, freed himself, and
never had a thought for anyone else?

He’d died from bad pork, that much
she knew.

The thought, inexplicably, made her
laugh.

It wasn’t that it was funny — in
fact, it was awful. It didn’t matter. She laughed so hard she couldn’t stop
herself, until she couldn’t remember why she was laughing. Until her stomach
hurt and she sank to her knees in front of the statue, rocking gently back and
forth.

“
Pema?”

She looked up, trying to get herself
under control. She was hysterical, she realized, but it wouldn’t stop.

“
Pema
Tsering.” The young monk — his name was Tashi, of course his name was Tashi,
everyone who wasn’t named Tenzin or Pema was named Tashi — hit his knees beside
her, giving her a shake.

She looked at him, his wide dark
eyes and expression of fear — not for himself, for her. Poor little monk. What
had he seen of life before this plague? The boys sent to the monasteries lived
better than the families who sent them, generally. And here he was, lighting
the lamps, doing the puja, burning incense, and sweeping the floors. All by
himself.

“
Where’s…?”
She gained control of herself and started to ask after the older monk, but the
boy’s expression told her everything. She sat up straighter, on her knees.
“He’s dead.”

Tashi nodded.

“
Why aren’t
we?” she asked.

He shook his head. “We’ll all be
dead, some day. But they went before us.”

Her head cleared suddenly, looking
at him. Remembering him whispering to the marble outside. He radiated calm.
Acceptance. The boy from yesterday was gone.

She took a deep breath — astringent,
beautiful juniper and warm, burning butter smells filled her lungs. It cleansed
her senses for the first time in forever. There was silence for a moment, where
she watched his eyes. Then, “I haven’t seen anyone else in Boudha.”