In the end, Shan knew, it wasn't simply that the abbot of Sangchi had been blind to the atrocities of the Chinese but that he had been blind to the inconspicuous, but profound, faith and courage of men like Lokesh and Gendun and Jokar, of prisoners who chiseled away the interior of a mountain knowing all along it would entomb them.
"When Drakte told me about the Lotus Book I asked him if he could get me the names of those brave Tibetans from the mountain. After a week he brought me the names." Tenzin sighed heavily. "I asked him if he could get me one of the Lotus Books, to borrow it so I could write the names of those people in and sign my name to it." He stared into his hands. "I only wanted to prove myself, to declare to the world that I was finished with those who made slaves of others. It was a prideful thing to do. I got Drakte killed. Since that night at the hermitage I see him in my nightmares. Sometimes when I meditate, his face comes to me. It was never worth his life."
"Drakte didn't die for you. He died for the truth."
"Finding the truth is supposed to be a struggle of the spirit, not of the flesh," Tenzin said heavily.
The words seemed to echo down the cavern. In the dim flickering light it seemed to Shan some of the long-dead lamas in front of them were sighing.
"I remember what Drakte said that night. He kills the thing he is, he said of the killer. That monk who calls himself chairman," Tenzin said, as though he would not speak Khodrak's name, as though he still could not believe what had happened at Amdo, "he destroyed everything an abbot is supposed to be. And then that night he killed them both. Over the ledger."
"I don't think Drakte was there just to give Chao the ledger. I heard Gendun speak with Drakte once. He told him, if you really want to change the howlers, just read them the Lotus Book. I think he was going to do that, before bringing it to you. I think he was teaching himself to put down weapons, reaching out to his deity."
"What do you mean?"
"Somo gave me a message from Gendun about Drakte. She didn't think it was important. But Gendun thought it was very important, and I know now it was. He said Drakte carried the deity in a blanket and was learning to unwrap it. Somo thought it was about the stone eye. But Gendun meant Drakte, that Drakte was struggling to use the ways of compassion. He was opening up his own deity, and he chose to deal with Chao the way that Gendun would have, not the way a purba would."
The silence in the cave tomb had the texture of the night sky.
An image floated through Shan's mind of Drakte sitting in the night with the Religious Affairs officer, speaking to him of the Tibetans' suffering, trying to convert him to the ways of compassion. Like the missionaries Siddhi had once sent against an enemy. But the scene continued to unfold in his mind, taking him where he had been trying not to go. For in his heart he now knew what had happened in the garage. Khodrak had appeared. Take a moment, he probably said, and encouraged Chao and Drakte to sit on the floor to pray their beads, walking around them as he had in the stable at Norbu. The two Tibetans would not have refused an abbot. That was when Khodrak had stabbed Chao in the back with his mendicant's staff. He kills prayer, Drakte had said.
"What would you think," Tenzin said after another long silence, in a voice full of despair, "if you saw what we have made of the world?" He was speaking to the dead lamas.
The silence washed over them again, like a physical force, somehow holding them there. Shan's mind cleared, and he probed his awareness, finding his meditation mind for the first time since they had sat at the mandala. Time passed, perhaps a quarter hour or more. Suddenly the pungent smell of ginger swept over them, and his father was there beside him, for the first time in months, and then his father was talking, not with Shan, but with Jokar, and the two men were standing at the far end of the chamber like two old friends, waving at Shan, before stepping into the blackness beyond.
When he became aware of his surroundings again Tenzin was staring at a sheet of paper in his hands. It was a long list of names.
Something pulled Shan to his feet and he found himself stepping to the cloth bundle, which he retrieved and extended toward Tenzin. "You asked Drakte to let you record them," he said, and unwrapped the bundle. It was a heavy leather-bound book, on the cover of which someone had worked a lotus flower.
Tenzin stared at the book, then at Shan, and solemnly accepted the volume. "Winslow took it," Shan explained. "He switched it for that account book. It is the one Drakte was bringing to you. Khodrak took it that night in Amdo."
Tenzin hefted the book in his hands, and stared at it again before opening the cover. He slowly leafed through the pages to the first empty page, near the end, then pulled a pencil from his pocket and began to write. He worked for nearly an hour, at first with Shan reading the names of the dead prisoners for him to transcribe, then alone, sometimes looking up, studying the dead lamas. When he finished he stood and laid the book on the altar, staring at the little golden Buddha. Finally he looked at Shan expectantly. "It is written," he said quietly.
"It would be foolish to try that trail at night," Shan said slowly, looking back at the book. Tenzin studied him a moment, then pulled another three candles from his pocket, placed them beside the solitary candle on the altar, and took up the book again.
The two men settled beside each other in front of the altar, under the candle, facing the lamas, and Tenzin handed the book to Shan.
The Lotus Book was written in many hands, in several languages, in pencil and ink and even, Shan saw, in watercolor. He turned to the first of hundreds of entries, glanced at Jokar, and cleared his throat.
"The first writing is dated fifteen years ago this month," Shan declared in a gentle tone, and began to read. "I was not always this frail old woman without a family, without a house, without a monk to pray with, without children to laugh with, even a dog to lick my hand," the first line said. "But this is the story of how it came to be, beginning on the day the Chinese killed our sheep…"
And so they read, for hours they read, passing the book back and forth, replacing each candle as it sputtered out, their voices cracking, pausing sometimes to wipe away tears. Gompas were scoured off the earth by the Red Guard. Monks died under torture. The populations of ancient mountain villages were transported to the jungles to make way for Chinese open-pit mines. Five-hundred-year-old Buddhas were melted down to make bullets for the army. Parents were executed in front of their children, and Tibetans were sent to prison for celebrating the Dalai Lama's birthday.
Shan lost all track of time. He had to pass the book to Tenzin when he came to entries about the 404th Peoples Construction Brigade, his lao gai prison, and the names of the many Tibetans who had died there. At last, incredibly, they were at the final pages and Shan recognized Tenzin's handwriting. He took the book from Tenzin to finish reading.
"The enslavement of our land and people remains unabated after five decades," the entry began. It continued with a description of the mountain fortress and the way the slaves conspired to destroy it, and at last the names of those who had died in it. The words were strong and fierce, although not as strong and fierce as those of the very last entry.
"Thirty years ago a young Tibetan graduated as the top student at the only school in his county that allowed Tibetans to study beside Chinese children. Because his parents had joined the Communist Party, he could speak Chinese well and was sent to university in China, even promised a lucrative job when he returned. The job was with the Bureau of Religious Affairs, and one day they brought a robe to him and told him he was to become the political officer of an important gompa. He found much about that gompa that appealed to him and when they asked him to transfer to another five years later he asked to stay to continue his monastic training.