The White Mirror (22 page)

“One of Doso's,” observed Li Du, “from the collection in the barn. Anyone could have taken it. We must go inside—if we are quick then we will at least know with certainty who could
not
have done this.”

“No,” said Sera, for a second time. “Do not alarm the family and scare the children. This was a message for me. I understand it clearly, and I know who sent it.”

“Who?” Li Du asked the question. Hamza emphasized it with an expression of impatient inquiry.

She looked from one of them to the other. “It is a personal matter,” she said. “I would prefer to address it myself.”

“A personal matter?” Hamza's tone was incredulous. “Two arrows just flew through the trees with you as their mark, and you ask us to behave as if you had a visit from a tiresome neighbor?”

There was a stubborn set to Sera's chin. “Do not scold me. You know nothing of the circumstances.” Still holding the arrow, she gestured with it toward the woodpile. “That was the target,” she said. “The intent was to frighten me, not kill me.”

Hamza scowled. “Who is trying to frighten you?”

She ignored the question. “Tomorrow the weather will be warmer and the snow will melt. When the way is clear, we will each of us carry our separate problems to our separate destinations.”

“I urge you to reconsider,” said Li Du, quiet and serious. “You yourself saw Dhamo on the bridge. If you know something—”

“I don't know anything about Dhamo,” she said. “If you really think that he did not kill himself, then pursue the matter at your discretion. But from what I saw, he took his own life.”

Li Du tried again. “What problems belong to a traveler on her way to visit her sister?”

Sera knelt and gathered the logs she had collected into a rough canvas sling, which she hefted onto her back. “Please do not pry into my business,” she said, and left them there staring after her.

Li Du looked up at the trees. “I will go up,” he said. “I am sure that whoever loosed the arrow will not be there, but perhaps something was left behind.”

“I will go with you,” said Hamza.

“No—you should go after her,” Li Du said. “Whatever she is hiding, it is not a safe secret. We must assume now that she knows more of Dhamo's death than she has yet told us.”

“But it is clear now that she is not the killer,” said Hamza.

“We cannot be certain,” Li Du replied.

“But we just saw—” Hamza stopped.

“We saw someone shoot two arrows at her. We do not know whether that was the same person who killed Dhamo.”

Hamza looked ready to argue, but Li Du spoke first. “I am only encouraging you to be careful.”

Hamza's expression cleared. “You are right,” he said, “though I still do not believe that she is a murderess.” He lifted his chin and added, with unself-conscious arrogance, “I am sure I can persuade her to reveal more of what she knows. I have been told many times that I have an aptitude with words.”

 

Chapter 17

Li Du climbed to where he thought the arrow must have originated. It did not take him long to locate the boulder. The snow around it was trampled. A set of footprints led away into the forest and downward, suggesting a route roughly parallel to the stairs. The trees, with the exception of the old hollow oak, were relatively thin and sparse, which reassured Li Du that there was no attacker lurking nearby.

His gaze rested on the bulbous, decaying trunk, around which the stone stairs curved. It looked back as if to ask him why he had returned.
With questions,
he said to it silently. Then, struck by an idea, he circled around to the other side of the tree. Through a hole in the rotten wood, he looked into the hollow trunk. There, thrust down into the dry leaves and snow that had collected inside the tree, was a bow.

Li Du reached in and drew it out. It was luxuriously made. The limb of the bow, he noticed, was coated with frost where moisture had condensed and frozen onto it. The grip, however, was darker, the frost interrupted by the print of a warm hand.

He looked inside the tree again. Beside the fissure from which he had pulled the bow, there was another place where the snow was broken.
Which means,
he thought,
that the bow was here already, ready to be used when an opportunity presented itself. An opportunity to do what?
Li Du looked at the bow.
An opportunity to kill Sera-tsering. Or, as she claims, to frighten her. But why? And why was she so quick to dismiss the attack?

Could Sera have killed Dhamo, and drawn upon herself some private retribution for his death? It would explain her unwillingness to call attention to what had happened. Or, he thought, could she have conspired with someone else at the manor, someone who now wished to end the alliance?

He looked down at the manor walls visible below. It was clear that Sera had no intention of telling them any more than she had. It was equally clear that if Li Du did not discover the truth quickly, someone else was likely to die before the snow melted.

Li Du stretched his cold toes inside his boots and adjusted his hat. Unsure what else to do with it, he replaced the bow in the tree. Where could he begin to break the silences to which the manor and its guests clung so determinedly? What connected the events that had occurred?

It had begun with Dhamo, he thought. But what did he know about Dhamo?
Paint,
he thought.
Dhamo was a painter. Dhamo's body was painted.
Li Du looked up in the direction of the temple.
Paint,
he thought,
and paintings.

He had encountered three paintings since he had come to this valley. One was the painting that he had seen in Dhamo's studio, the incomplete thangka that had been stolen. The second was the painting that, according to Campo, Andruk had intended to commission, an intention that Andruk denied. And there was a third painting—the one that Sonam had mentioned. He had been telling Li Du about Dhamo's identification of the Chhöshe thirteen years ago.
It was something to do with a painting.

Well,
Li Du thought,
that is a question, at least, that someone should be willing to answer.
The best person to ask about the identification of the Chhöshe was the Chhöshe himself. With a last look at the manor, and a fervent hope that Hamza was exercising caution, he turned and continued up the stairs.

*   *   *

Snow had slid from the roof of the mountain temple, pulling with it a scattering of wooden shingles and the stones that had held them in place. Shingles and stones now littered a small patch of snow in front of the right-hand door.

As Li Du approached, he perceived movement from somewhere higher on the mountain. He looked up. The wind caught at the deep red and saffron clothes of a monk, pulling at the cloth and blurring the figure into a bright saturated phantom, the ghost of the painter now a painted brushstroke against the snow.

The illusion faded quickly. These were not the thin shoulders and aged face of the dead man. As the monk came closer, sliding down the steep incline through the snow with youthful strength, Li Du recognized the height and bearing of the Chhöshe. They approached each other through the snow. The Chhöshe was breathing hard from exertion, and his cheeks were red, making him look even younger.

Li Du prepared for the three prostrations, but the Chhöshe put out a hand in a gesture of refusal. “Please,” he said. “I am grateful for your respect. There is no need—not in the snow.” He raised his eyes up the slope of the mountain, from which wet, heavy clouds were sinking steadily down toward them.

“Where were you?” Li Du asked.

The Chhöshe gestured behind him. “I have duties up at the high shrine.”

Li Du was confused. “There is another shrine?”

“A simple monument—a chorten. It sits just above the mountain temple. It is the duty of the monk of the temple, if there is one, to pray there once daily and light incense.”

“Did Dhamo perform the duty before his death?”

The Chhöshe nodded. “And now I perform the task.”

“And when you leave?”

“If there is no lama, the duty cannot be fulfilled. When one comes to take Dhamo's place, if one comes, then the responsibility will be taken up once more.” The Chhöshe turned and followed with his gaze his own footsteps up through the snow. “Now it is a place where the wind batters stone and you can hear the snow on the mountain like a tiger in the forest creeping closer. But when the sun comes out—if you are lucky, you will see it. From that place you can see the holy mountain, and it looks at you with the reassurance of a thousand gods who tell you in a thousand voices that you are home.”

The Chhöshe's expression changed as he spoke. Li Du turned to see what had captured his attention. Coming toward them on the path to the temple, which zigzagged up the mountain for ease of travel with horses, were Doso and Pema. Doso was leading a mule with two baskets strapped across its back, and Pema was bent forward under the weight of another basket.

As they approached, Li Du looked from the Chhöshe to Doso and was struck again by the similarity in build and affect between father and son. The closer they came to each other, the more Li Du perceived the strength of the bond that still existed between them. The Chhöshe accepted their signs of respect in silence.

Doso raised an appraising eye to the damaged roof, then turned to Pema. “You said there is a ladder?”

Pema nodded. His old goatskin coat was flecked with wood dust and splinters, and his breath puffed clouds into the freezing wind. He greeted Li Du with the apprehensive, nervous bow that Li Du had already come to expect from the timid young man. “It is just behind the temple.”

Li Du watched Doso trace the shape of the temple with his eyes. He noticed Doso's gaze linger on a patch of charred wood beneath the row of prayer wheels. Then Doso turned away and walked purposefully toward the corner of the building. Pema hurried after him.

While Doso and Pema went around to the back of the temple, Li Du followed the Chhöshe inside. Li Du stared at the golden Buddha. The butter lamps appeared fresh, their flames strong and reflected across the curving shins, knees, and fingers of the seated statue.

The Chhöshe turned to face Li Du. “You say you are not a religious man,” he said, “and yet this is the second time today that you have come to the temple.” The words were spoken lightly, and Li Du had a momentary glimpse of what he must have been like as a boy. From the back of the temple came the thump and scrape of the ladder being dragged along the outside wall. The levity vanished from the Chhöshe's face.

“You and Pema were children together,” Li Du said.

“That was a long time ago,” said the Chhöshe. He spoke with a weariness that did not match his age.

Li Du permitted himself a smile. The man before him was an incarnated spirit, but he was also a young person and a student. “When I instructed scholars in double meanings and allusions, they often began to speak like the tired exiles of our classical period, just as students of medicine think themselves to be afflicted by whatever ailment they are currently studying. You are not old enough, I think, for anything to be a long time ago.”

The Chhöshe raised his eyes to meet Li Du's. All the humor in them was gone. “I do not speak only of time,” he said. “At home, thirteen years can pass like one season. But distance has its own effect on memory. At Drepung we wake up when the stars are still in the sky, but we do not know the animals there. We do not wake up to the wind coming down from the mountain or the low bells of the yaks. We wake up and we pray. We study the middle path, logic, the six perfections. We sit in lines like beads on a string.”

“Rinzen says that you have excelled in your studies.”

The Chhöshe looked down. “I have applied myself.”

A hollow impact vibrated through the chapel as something, presumably the ladder, settled against the roof. Li Du heard Doso's voice and a jingle of bells from the bridle of the mule.

“I was told,” Li Du said to the Chhöshe, “that there was a painting associated with your identification here at this temple.”

The Chhöshe's face became very still, and the stillness emanated from him as if he had commanded the whole room to hold its breath and turn its face away. His voice was very quiet. “Yes. There was a painting.”

Li Du persevered. “A painting by Dhamo?”

The Chhöshe drew in a deep breath. When he raised his eyes to Li Du's again, Li Du saw that through great effort, they were now calm. “Dhamo painted his vision in Lhasa. The mountains were the mountains of this place, and I was the boy in the painting.”

“That is a great miracle. Rinzen said that the painting is still here.”

“It
was
here.”

“What happened to it?” Li Du asked the question even though he had guessed the answer already.

“It was destroyed in a fire nine years ago.”

Li Du remembered Doso's mention of the fire that had damaged the temple. He looked again at the traces of burnt wood on the statues and columns, and the smoke-blackened thangkas among the bright, new ones. “A sad loss,” he said.

The Chhöshe cleared his throat. “I must return to the prayers,” he said.

“Of course.” Li Du bowed and left the temple. He made his way through the snow to where Pema was just descending the notched ladder.

“I heard your conversation,” said Pema. “You wanted to see the painting?”

Li Du nodded. “Old habits of a librarian. I am always interested in records, and by all accounts this painting was very unusual. I have never seen a painting of a vision before.”

Pema hesitated. “The painting is gone,” he said. “But I saw it every day before it was destroyed. If you want to know what it looked like, I can draw it for you.”