“The people of the valley say we are their anchors,” Norbu explained, “my Chegar at the head of the valley and the convent at its foot. The hermitage,” he said, correcting himself. “Our beloved abbess often reminded us that this place was but an outpost of the old convent, a station for nuns on retreat. She said it had been the convent that gave meaning to this place.”
“Which is why she was trying to make the old convent live again,” Shan said. He glanced at the two other monks, who watched their abbot like dutiful attendants. “But why now after all these years?” The question had not occurred to him before.
“She saw it as her sacred duty.” Norbu replied, nodding to Chenmo as she brought tea.
“Even though the restoration had not been approved,” Shan ventured.
The abbot paused, studying Shan, as if trying to decide if his words were a warning. He offered a small smile and gestured to his companions. “Dakpo, Trinle, and I have to deal with mountains of forms from Religious Affairs. There is no form for the requisition of hope and faith. Our valley is a special place, remote enough to keep traditions alive longer than other parts of Tibet. The government seems jealous of what we have here. With the new town, the new relocation camp, the abbess and I thought it was time for the convent to live again.”
Shan sipped his tea, weighing not just the abbot’s words but his careful tone. Serving as abbot of any monastery in Tibet was like navigating a minefield. The inhabitants of the gompa, and all the devout living nearby, expected spiritual leadership from such a man. But Beijing expected political leadership. Norbu was no doubt painfully aware that many abbots had been stripped of their rank, often their robes, for failing to kowtow to Beijing. He offered a respectful nod of his head and drained his cup.
Chenmo renewed the tea in their cups and the two men spoke as friends might, of the weather, of the lammergeiers gracefully soaring overhead, of the probable origins of the little hermitage as a fortress manned by archers.
“You speak Tibetan better than any Chinese I have ever known,” the abbot observed.
“I spent a few years living only with Tibetans,” Shan replied. “The solitary Chinese with twenty Tibetans in the same barracks.”
Norbu studied him with new interest. “In Lhadrung?”
“The Four hundred and fourth People’s Construction Brigade.”
Norbu offered a solemn nod. The man of reverence was also a man of the world. He was quiet for a long moment, sipping his tea in silence. “Life can be difficult for former Chinese convicts in Tibet,” he observed.
“Life can be difficult for a Tibetan abbot in Tibet,” Shan rejoined.
Norbu offered a gentle smile in reply.
“I had a dream,” the younger of the two attendants, Dakpo, suddenly declared. “A nightmare really. The ghosts of the abbess and Jamyang were in a deep pit, unable to rise out of it. They were blind. They were weeping, asking me to help.”
For a moment Shan saw torment in the abbot’s eyes. When Norbu spoke there was a plaintive tone in his voice. “The nuns are very scared. My monks are scared. I am without understanding of these things, of violent killings. It is not part of our world.”
“It is not part of the world we wished we had,” Shan said. “And for these deaths there is no understanding.”
“I don’t follow.”
“There are people trained to understand such things. They look for motive, for patterns, for evidence of what happened. But all hinges on motive. There could be those with motive to kill a foreigner. There could be motives to kill the leader of a criminal gang. There could be a motive even to kill an abbess. Taking each victim, the police could make a list of suspects. But the lists would all be different. There is nothing linking the three. It is like they were three different murders that just happened at the same place.”
Norbu fingered the prayer beads on his belt. “Perhaps when a demon takes over a man,” the abbot said looking at his beads with sadness in his eyes, “there is no motive, there is only the demon.” He sighed. “But that’s not how the government will see it. They will announce a motive, so they can make an arrest,” he declared, looking at Shan now.
Shan had no reply.
Dakpo shook his head back and forth. “And how can I tell Jamyang and the abbess the truth the next time they come to me?” he asked in despair. “How do I tell them they must wander blind and frightened forever?”
The abbot hung his head a moment. “I want to weep,” he said in Chinese, as if the words were only for Shan, “but I am the abbot.” He opened his mouth again after a moment, then just shook his head, as if speaking had become too great a burden, and took up his beads with a whispered mantra.
Shan rose and paced along the courtyard, surveying the high slopes again. A demon was loose and Lokesh was unprotected. The knobs were seeking the American woman and Shan’s misdirection to Liang would only buy her another day or two. When the major turned his attention back to the valley he would be releasing his hungriest dogs.
He turned to see the abbot speaking in soft tones with Chenmo. Norbu touched his gau, as if offering the woman a blessing, then nodded a farewell to Shan, and with Dakpo and Trinle at his side slowly descended the steep stairs that led down from the hermitage. A great weight seemed to have settled on his shoulders.
Chenmo too had noticed. “He has become a man much loved in this valley since he arrived last year,” she said, the worry deep in her voice. “He brought with him a silver dragon bell that had belonged to the monastery for centuries, until it was taken by the government. He persuaded some museum to return it to its true owners. He speaks up when the government pushes too hard, even though he knows the last abbot was sent to prison. He is very troubled by what happened to the abbess, worries the government will use it as an excuse to put more Tibetans in prison. He stays up far into the night praying for her, praying for justice. A man like that is important to this valley if it is to survive. But there is more and more talk about how he might be arrested. If the government’s anger builds to a storm he will be the lightning rod.” The novice continued to stare down the stairs as the robes of the abbot and his attendants faded into in the shadows.
“The American woman is in great danger,” Shan said in a low voice. “She has to be warned. She has to be hidden.”
“She is not here,” Chenmo replied. “She-”
“Enough!” The stern nun who had greeted him emerged from the shadows, motioning Chenmo toward the tower. The novice swept past Shan with her head down, but not before a long glance toward the slope above the compound, at one of the small stone huts that were used by hermits and those on retreat. The nun stepped between Shan and the tower as though to block any attempt to follow the novice.
“They will come looking for the American,” Shan declared to the nun. “They will interrogate. They will search, search very roughly. Is everyone here registered? Do you have documentation that they have all taken loyalty oaths?
“Spoken like a true patriot of Beijing.”
“Spoken like one who wishes no more suffering on the nuns of Thousand Steps,” Shan shot back. “The knobs probably already know that the abbess was coordinating the restoration at the convent. They know about the foreigners. It will not seem possible to them that the foreigners would be secretly visiting the convent ruins without the abbess knowing.”
“I cannot say what knowledge the abbess took to her grave.”
“I lived in a hermitage once, Abbess. There were no secrets among the monks. It was like one family.”
“I carry no whisk,” the nun corrected him, referring to the yak tail whisk that was the traditional sign of office for abbots and abbesses. “The new abbess, Ani Ama, was called away. While she is gone I have responsibility for the others.” The nun grew quiet as a dozen others emerged from various buildings and moved into a small building with prayer wheels flanking its door. A nun appeared on the tower and began ringing a handbell.