Neon Lotus (7 page)

“He wants to
ask her one question,” Chokyi said. “With your permission.”

Kate nodded,
numb.

Lama Nyinje
asked his question and Marianne grew sad. Tears welled from her eyes as she
spoke. Now she was the Marianne that Kate knew. She drew the child against her
breast, patting her hair and speaking softly to calm her.

“What did he
ask?” she whispered.

“He asked if
she remembered where she was born.”

“And?”

Chokyi bowed
apologetically and hesitated before replying. “She says she does not remember
that, although she does remember where she died.”

“Died?”

Chokyi
looked at Lama Nyinje. The old man lightly touched Marianne’s crown.

“Dharamsala,”
he said.

***

“No one,”
Peter said. “There’s no one we know, aside from you, Chokyi, who could have
taught her. We’ve never spoken of Dharamsala in front of her, as far as I can
remember. It strikes me as a hoax. But what would anyone have to gain from it?
Especially Marianne?”

The
dedication ceremonies had ended; the church was quiet now. Lama Nyinje and
Chokyi sat in the Strausses’ small room. Marianne slept at her mother’s side.

Kate watched
Peter carefully. He didn’t seem confused or frightened. Instead he looked curious,
excited.

“I know what
you’re thinking,” he said to Chokyi. “She’s the reincarnation of some Tibetan.”

Chokyi
narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. There are many
possibilities. Perhaps, in some way you’re unaware of, she was exposed to
Tibetan speech.”

“But how
could she have understood it well enough to converse with a native speaker?”

“A young
savant? A linguistic genius?”

Kate managed
a smile. “Naturally, I’d like to think that’s the case.”

“Kate,”
Peter said, suddenly solemn. “What about that funeral in Dharamsala? Remember?
The man who was killed in our hotel?”

“I
remember,” she said, wishing that she had not.

“Do you
remember how the body jerked about? It even pointed at us—a coincidence, of
course, but perhaps a meaningful one. I read that after the death of the Thirteenth
Dalai Lama, his body kept twisting toward the east. Attendants would move it
back into the proper position, but it would always turn east again. It was in
the east that they found his reincarnation, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.”

“Who was
this man in your hotel?” said Chokyi. “A Tibetan?”

“I don’t
know,” Peter said. “He was murdered—by a man with three eyes.”

Chokyi
started. “Three eyes?”

Peter
nodded. “It was the strangest thing. Some sort of freak—”

Chokyi looked
pale, his eyes remote. Kate drew her sleeping daughter closer to her.

“The police
never said a thing about it,” Peter continued. “As if a three-eyed assassin
were the most natural thing.”

“Unnatural,”
Chokyi said softly, “but not unknown.”

“You mean
there have been others?”

The Tibetan
nodded. “A few. Their origins are as mysterious as their motives. They strike
only religious targets, and then take their own lives before they can be
questioned. This man who was killed in your hotel, was he a priest?”

“We never
saw him,” Kate said.

“Could you
possibly remember the date this occurred?”

“Certainly,”
said Peter. “It’s in my diary of the trip. I’ll find it, if you wish.”

“Please set
it down for me, along with any other details that seem relevant. I would like
to forward this information to the appropriate bureau in Dharamsala. You see,
we try to keep records of genuine Tibetan incarnations when they occur. There
are rather stringent ways of testing such claims, but it would help if we had
some idea of whose incarnation she might be.”

Peter
glanced at Kate. “What’s wrong?”

“All this
makes me feel . . . I don’t know. As if Marianne were some
sort of freak, as if she’s not our daughter at all.”

Chokyi moved
closer to her. “Of course she is your daughter. Even if we were to demonstrate
a connection to someone who lived in the past, that would not change her
parentage.”

“I don’t
know,” Kate said. “I wouldn’t like it.”

Chokyi
frowned, though his eyes remained good-humored. “Lama Nyinje is such an
incarnation. The Dalai Lamas were also incarnations, born to ordinary parents.”

“Ordinary
Tibetan parents.”

He shrugged.
“Many Tibetan souls have been born to non-Tibetans in the past century. I know
of several European children traveling in India who recognized old friends
from previous lives and could recount intimate details of the past. This may
sound unlikely to you, but to a Tibetan it is not so unusual. We know that
nothing is lost on the wheel of life. Matter converts into energy and back into
matter again. Energy is exchanged from the dead to the living. You die, you
become fertilizer, and from you grows something new. The only way to break the
chain is to step off the wheel—nirvana. You are blown out like a candle. Many
excellent souls possessing the ability to leave the wheel choose to be reborn
again and again and again, so that they may help all sentient beings to reach
perfect enlightenment. These are the bodhisattvas. Kate, what if your daughter
were such a noble soul?”

“It would
terrify me. I want my daughter to be . . . ”

“What? How
can you say what you want her to be? She is so young that she does not yet know
herself.”

“Exactly!
And if she grows up thinking of herself as some—some Tibetan ghost, she’ll
never have a chance to discover who she is.”

“Kate,” Peter
said, putting his hand on her wrist. “If she’s ever to make wise decisions in
her life, we must tell her the truth as far as we know it. No one’s saying she
is an incarnation. We’re only saying we owe it to Marianne to investigate.”

Kate closed
her eyes and held her daughter as tightly as she could without waking her.
Unbidden, an image came into her head, a soaring vision of colored cells,
frames of light, vivid as a stained-glass window with the rising sun beyond it.
She saw Mary holding the infant Jesus. How had she told him that he was the Son
of God? What would have become of Jesus if he’d had no sense of destiny?

He might
have lived. . . .

Marianne’s
skin was soft beneath her hands; it felt like pure light given flesh.

Tears ran
down Kate’s cheeks.

“I don’t
want to hide anything from her,” she said. “Or from myself.”

“You have
nothing to fear,” said Chokyi. “The truth is a wonderful thing.”

***

Chokyi
stopped by frequently for several weeks but then his visits fell off. No word
came from Dharamsala. The events of the dedication night had almost faded from
Kate’s mind when she entered the reception area one morning and heard Chokyi
greeting her. He was accompanied by a thin, dark man
—
a Tibetan, but not a monk—who wore
old gray clothes and carried a suitcase.

It took her
only a moment to recognize him. He had changed little in four years.

“Kate,” said
Chokyi, “I would like to introduce Dr. Reting Norbu. He arrived from India only
yesterday.”

She put out
her hand, watching his mouth as he smiled. She had never forgotten his jumbled,
blackened teeth nor his pinched features. He did not look as thin as he had in
Dharamsala; in fact his eyes were bright, expectant.

“You must be
the child’s mother?” he said. She was surprised to hear him speak English.

“Kate
Strauss,” she said. “We’ve met before.”

He nodded.
“Under terrible conditions.”

“Is Marianne
here?” Chokyi asked.

“She’s out
with Peter; they should be back any minute. Would you like some tea?”

Dr. Norbu
picked up his suitcase and they followed her to the dining room. As they sat
sipping hot black tea, she asked, “Who was shot that night?”

Dr. Norbu’s
face saddened. “My dearest friend.”

“Can I ask
why?”

“We should
not speak of this until after the examination,” Chokyi cautioned.

“You must
understand my concern,” she said. “If my daughter were claimed to be the
reincarnation of someone of importance, she might be the target of whoever
killed him—those three-eyed assassins. In that case, I would not want her
officially recognized.”

Dr. Norbu
pressed his hands together until they trembled, “My friend’s funeral, as you
remember, was very small. Our government did not wish to acknowledge that any
aim had been accomplished by the assassin. He was always an inconspicuous
figure; his importance was known only to a few.”

She slammed
down her teacup. “But that secret got out, didn’t
it?
And now you want to drag
my
daughter into this.”

“Not drag
her, Kate,” said Chokyi. “This is simply the world she has been born into.”

“I won’t let
you—”

A musical
cry echoed through the dining room: “Reting!”

Kate turned
to see Marianne rushing across the room toward the Tibetan who should have been
a stranger to the child. She threw herself into his long arms, shrieking with
laughter.

Dr. Norbu
simply stared at her, his lips trembling, perhaps not daring to believe that
she recognized him.

Peter sat
down beside Kate.

“I guess
this is it,” he said. “The test.”

“Why
bother?” Kate said miserably.

“So that we
can be sure,” Chokyi said. “Dr. Norbu, we should begin.”

Nodding, he
wiped his eyes and helped Marianne off his knee. She ran around the table and
climbed up next to her parents.

“Are you all
right, Marianne?” Kate asked.

The girl
nodded. “Reting has come!”

Dr. Norbu,
meanwhile, had opened his suitcase. Kate could not see into it. He rummaged out
of her sight and produced three dark garments. One by one, he laid them on the
table.

They were
astronautics jackets, all worn thin by time and the elements. As far as she
could tell, they were identical. None of them would fit Marianne. They were the
right size for a small man.

Dr. Norbu
leaned toward Marianne and said something in Tibetan.

“What did he
say?” Kate asked Chokyi.

“He asked
her to pick the one that belongs to her.”

“But none of
them—”

“Sh,” said
Peter.

Marianne’s
hand ran over the jackets. She felt the seams and inspected the seals, and
finally dragged the middlemost jacket toward her. She pressed it to her face
and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

Dr. Norbu
smiled at Chokyi and pushed the other jackets aside.

Next he laid
out four battered silver electronic slates. Marianne took her thumb out of her
mouth and wadded up the jacket. Sitting on her knees, she leaned over the table
and looked at each slate. Her finger wavered between two of them, then pressed
a button on the keypad at the bottom of one screen. The slate came to life.

Dr. Norbu
laughed. Kate felt as if she were falling down a bottomless shaft.

Marianne
pulled the slate toward her and continued to poke the buttons, seemingly at
random. Kate saw images appearing on the screen. Numbers flashed past,
equations and geometrical figures. There was a lotus with each petal labeled
and the angles defined. A white figure appeared, having numerous faces and a
thousand arms. Where had she seen it before? A glowing rainbow sphere sprang up
around the white god.

Marianne
giggled and touched the slate again, again, again, as if she had known how to
use it for years.