But no, Shan thought, he could not drift. There was someone out there for whom time was important. Someone racing to kill young boys.
He became aware in the distance of the large blunt cliff face with two outcroppings on top. There was a thin line of shadow on its lower slopes that was the path into the tunnels, snaking along the side of the lion. Below them the huge gully dropped hundreds of feet to a dark tumble of rocks below, splinters that had sloughed off the mountain. They stood for a moment together at the edge, in the last dim light of dusk, the wind blowing hard against their faces. A large bird flew past and Lokesh cocked his head to watch it as it moved over the lion-shaped mountain and appeared to settle on one of the outcroppings, a small shadow on one of the lion's ears.
Without looking back at Shan the old man started walking toward the bird.
As they moved along the slope Lokesh led at an increasingly brisk pace, until Shan almost had to trot to keep up. It was indeed as though time had become something different for Lokesh, as though there was an old, weak Lokesh time and a stronger, younger Lokesh time and the two didn't proceed in any particular sequence or with any predictability. No, maybe it was predictable, Shan thought, remembering how energized Lokesh had been in the old dzong. Lokesh the younger was moving toward Gendun Rinpoche and Senge Drak. Shan had to find a way to keep him there, deep in the dzong or hidden elsewhere in Tibet, for that was the land of Lokesh the strong. If he went back to Xinjiang where the frail, weak Lokesh seemed to reside, the old man might not survive.
The dzong was empty as they entered. The brazier in the large room where they had eaten was cold. There was a half-eaten plate of tsampa on the table. They stood at one of the open portals, silently looking out over the vast empty plain until Shan became aware of a presence behind him.
It was Jowa, but not the proud purba he had known. This was a subdued, haggard Jowa, looking half-dead with fatigue.
"You came back," Shan said. "You didn't go with the purbas." He remembered the boasting that last night they had been together, how Jowa the warrior had taunted even Gendun. And he remembered the confused Jowa on an earlier night when Gendun had first disappeared, the Jowa who had said fighting was futile if the lamas didn't survive.
Jowa seemed not to hear him. "I've seen them like this," he said in a haunted tone. "Three days and two nights now. Someone's got to stay with them when they're like this. He could try to fly out the window. His spirit wouldn't know what his body had done until it was too late."
Shan found a ladle of water on the table and handed it to Jowa, who seized it and swallowed the liquid in huge gulps that somehow seemed like sobs. Shan led him to a pallet in one of the cells. When the purba dropped his head to the floor he fell asleep so fast it seemed he had simply lost consciousness.
Lokesh was not in the hall when he returned. But Shan knew where to look. He stepped over the sleeping form of Bajys, sprawled across the threshold of the doorway to the fragrant room, and found Lokesh sitting beside a single oil lamp. With Gendun. The old lama had anchored himself with a
gomthag
strap, a strip of cloth used by hermits that ran around the knees and the back to prevent the body from toppling over while the spirit was elsewhere.
For Gendun was indeed not there.
Shan had seen deep meditation, had meditated himself for hours at a time, but never anything like this. The man's eyes were open, but he saw nothing. He seemed to have stopped breathing. Shan bent low with a lamp and watched his wrist. There was almost no pulse, only the barest of flickers every few seconds. The danger in talking to mountains, Shan thought, was that you could become one yourself.
They waited for an hour. Lokesh lit more incense and began a mantra.
"Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhih svaha,"
he chanted. Shan had been taught the ancient mantra in prison, though he had almost never heard it used. "Gone, gone completely, totally crossed over to enlightenment," Lokesh was saying. Gendun, like Shan, was seeking the truth.
Shan brought more lamps. Still, Gendun did not stir. Three days, Jowa had said. As strong as Gendun's spirit might be, his body was not young, and Shan feared for it. He rose and brought a ladle of water from the stone cistern at the back of the corridor of cells. But Gendun's mouth was closed, his head perfectly perpendicular to the floor, so Shan could not drip water into it. He dared not push Gendun's head back, dared not to touch his body, for a body in such a state sometimes had its own kind of fear. It could react to the slightest touch with spasms or flinch so violently it could harm itself. Imagine he is a ceramic pot, a monk had once said to him of a hermit in deep meditation, and your finger the sharp point of a nail.
Shan let the ladle drip on Gendun's hands. At first they did not react. Then slowly, like tendrils seeking a spring, his fingers unraveled and, as if with their own consciousness, searched the back of the hands for more. Shan let a few more drops fall, and the fingers found the moisture and brought it to the lips, which quivered at the sensation of the liquid. The fingers lowered and Shan repeated the process. Gendun's eyes did not move. He dripped the water a third time and finally there was a blink. He heard an audible sigh of relief from Lokesh, then raised the dipper to the lama's lips. At its touch they opened to receive the water. He offered a quarter of the ladle, then leaned back, sharing Lokesh's relief. It might still be an hour before Gendun returned but the water was bringing him back, reminding him that at least part of him was still bound to the earth.
They sat in the fragrant room until there was a sharp, audible exhalation from Gendun, the kind of sound monks trained in the old gompas often made when awakening from deep sleep. His respiration rose and his eyes began to flutter into focus. He gazed upon Lokesh and Shan for a moment as though he did not recognize them, then a serene smile rose on his face.
"You know," he said in a, hoarse but casual voice, as if they had been speaking all the while, "I have an exquisite hunger."
They found barley kernels in a sack, lit the brazier, and roasted the kernels for tsampa. Lokesh brought water from the cistern in a clay jar and Bajys, revived but as frail and exhausted as Jowa, found a ceramic pot filled with pickled turnips. They ate the simple fare with relish as a gibbous moon inched across the open portal, brilliant as a flame. At the far end of the table, where no one sat, Lokesh had arranged the items from Khitai's sack. The battered cup. The pen case, the iron chain, the beads.
When they had finished, Shan cleaned the pan and boiled water for tea. Lokesh discovered a bundle of incense and lit three sticks as Shan explained the death of Khitai to Gendun.
The lama sighed. "It is so difficult for a child to find its way," he said. His shoulders sagged, and he seemed a frail old man.
"I am going to talk with Jowa tomorrow, Rinpoche," Shan said to the lama as Bajys wandered out of the room. The diminutive Tibetan had frozen, barely breathing, as Shan had explained about Khitai's death. But he had not taken his eyes from the floor, had not shown any sign of grief, or even surprise. For him Khitai had already died, at Red Stone camp, where Bajys had found a dead boy and concluded that his world was ending. "The soldiers are looking for Tibetans," Shan continued. "Jowa knows the way of soldiers. You must let him take you somewhere safe." He heard the low rumble of the hallway. Bajys was turning the ancient prayer wheel. "You and Lokesh must go deeper into Tibet, away from the border." So difficult for a child. The words echoed in Shan's mind. Gendun meant, difficult for a dead child to make the progression to the next incarnation.
The lama looked at the patch of the night sky visible through the open portal. "I talked to a monk once who had spent years down below," he said, meaning the world outside the high ranges of Tibet. "He had gone away lighthearted and came back full of sad news. He said to me that many people had lost the way, that they ignored what was in their hearts because it was the safe way. He thought, incredible as it sounds, that there were millions of people down below who just wanted to live to be old, as if they were enslaved to their bodies."
Gendun lifted one of the sticks of incense and waved it slowly in the space over the table. "So instead of human beings fighting the wrong, he told me, they just say it is for governments to do so. And governments say we must have armies to be safe, so armies are raised. And armies say we must have wars to be safe, so wars are fought. And wars kill children and devour souls that have not ripened. All because people just want to be old, instead of being true."
"The history of the world," Lokesh sighed.
Shan poured the tea into three chipped mugs and they drank in perfect silence.
"I have never expected to grow old, Rinpoche," Shan said at last.
Gendun gave a small laugh. He studied Shan over the steam of his mug, then looked towards the open portal. "Sometimes I wonder, have I just been hiding all these years? Did I take the easy path, while so many have suffered?"
"There is no easy path in Tibet, Rinpoche," Shan said. With an ache in his heart he recognized, for the first time since he had met Gendun, something like regret in the lama's voice. "You were not hiding. You were being true." The old lama still stared out the portal. "There are people who are treasures, people who are irreplaceable. You are so vital to all of us that the right thing for me, for Jowa, and many others, is to protect you."
"I have lived in caves for many decades," Gendun said. "It never felt like hiding until now."
Shan wrapped his hands around his mug and looked at Gendun. "Auntie Lau was hiding, and what she was doing was the right thing."
Gendun turned to face him. "But she wasn't fleeing."
"No," Shan agreed. "She was protecting someone. The boy. Protecting him and teaching him."
Gendun and Lokesh did not respond immediately. Lokesh rose and filled their mugs again.
Shan moved to the portal and looked out into the night sky.
Lokesh began singing the old spirit wedding song in a hoarse whisper.
"The boy Khitai was not aware. He didn't know she was dead," Gendun said suddenly. "He is still looking for her."
He was. He is. Shan was there for the dead boy. Gendun and Lokesh were there for the living spirit, the thing that survived Khitai. A small boy spirit.
"The boy," Shan said tentatively. "The boy who was not a boy." He thought of the strange words uttered by Bajys.
That was the one I loved. That was the one I was to keep safe. He'll be dead again. But that was the one I knew,
Bajys had said.
Gendun slowly approached, carrying a stick of incense.
"It is a way of saying it," Gendun agreed. "But words of the tongue are not made for such things. I have searched, and I can find no words to explain it. All we knew was that Lau's death was of this world. All we wanted to do was protect the boy. We thought if you would find the truth about the killer of his teacher, then the truth would protect him." Gendun moved so close to the open portal that he seemed in danger of falling out.
"And the rest was—" Shan struggled to find the words. They hadn't intended to mislead him. They had not misled him. They had been unable to translate between worlds.
"Not secret," Gendun said, "just—" He sighed as he looked at a star. "Just not a thing of the world below." The wind tugged at his robe, giving it the appearance of a great rippling prayer flag.
Shan stepped to the portal and put his hand on Gendun's shoulder. "Rinpoche, I am trying to see to the other world, I must see to it. Because the answer lies where the two worlds intersect."
Gendun looked out into the night. A shooting star burst across the horizon below them.
"He was a friend of mine," Lokesh said in his distant voice. "Once, when I was a small boy, he saved me in a snow avalanche. He pulled me in and held me behind a rock as the snow tumbled over a cliff." He smiled. "After that we walked and found high places where we recited the sutras." He reached out and placed his hand around the battered cup from the boy's bag. "He carried this cup, and we would drink with it from mountain springs. We played with dogs and looked for caves. Sometimes we found things left by hermits."
"Khitai?" Shan said in a helpless voice.
Lokesh nodded and sighed with a strange dreamy expression. "Once on the Dalai Lama's birthday we climbed a mountain and threw paper horses into the sky," he said, referring to the old custom of sending paper horses into the wind. When they were found by needy travelers they would turn into flesh and blood creatures. Lokesh drifted back to the brazier and dropped in several juniper splints, then saw the confusion on Shan's face. "He wasn't called Khitai then. He was Tsering," Lokesh spoke with a satisfied smile, as if he had explained everything. "Tsering Raluk."
"And before that," Gendun prodded.
Lokesh shrugged. "Before that he was born in Kham, with the name of Dorjing." He looked at Gendun, who nodded for him to continue. "Before that his incarnation name was Ragta, born in Amdo. Before that, my brain is in shadows. In a long ago time I remember there was a boy in Nepal."
