The old Tibetan pulled a thread tight, then looked up at Shan. “I remember years when there was so much sawdust in the porridge we could burn it. We made little torma and lit them for the gods.”
Shan offered a melancholy grin in acknowledgment. Winters in their gulag camp had been hellish, with every prisoner just trying to endure the cold and starvation for one more day. Despite their empty bellies Lokesh and several of the older lamas had used their sawdust-laden porridge to shape little offering statues and burned them on makeshift altars, as they would have with the torma butter figures at the temples of their youth. There had been many nights when the lamas had sat with one of their companions as he lay dying of malnutrition or typhus, often clutching his belly in pain, and watched the little flickering deities. The fact that prisoners sometimes died when the last of the flames sputtered out had been taken as a sign that the gods had not forgotten them.
Shan watched Lokesh as he walked back toward the makeshift hospital, reminding himself how much he had missed him. It had taken years to understand that there was an empty place inside him that could only be filled by the old man’s presence. For Shan, memories of their sawdust winters in the gulag came back in nightmarish visions of frozen bodies stacked like cordwood, gentle old lamas covered with painful chilblains and work crews dying in avalanches. But when Lokesh reached back to those days, it was to remind him that they had always been able to keep the deities alive.
They sat in silence. Shan forced himself to eat the gruel, studying the prisoners as he did so. Many walked in a circuit inside the wire fence. Some wandered in and out of the decrepit barracks that served as prisoner housing. Others sat alone, working their beads. The structures of the army camp had been laid out in a U-shape, with the mess hall at the base and rows of barracks along each side, facing what had been the parade and training ground. Behind the mess hall, past fields of weeds, along the back wire were rows of dirt mounds that had served as ammunition bunkers. On the doors of half a dozen of the bunkers were yellow rags similar to that of the quarantine barrack. Beyond the wire, down a track that led from the rear gate, was a dump and a wide, freshly dug trench over which vultures circled.
Shan followed the worn path along the fence. Sacred mountains had their pilgrim paths. Inmates always had their prisoner paths. He well understood the natural instinct of the caged animal to pace along the barrier that contained it, and the track along the fence was already worn to a hollow. He fell in line with other solitary prisoners, many of whom looked longingly toward the green slopes of the surrounding mountains. They were shepherds, and knew they belonged with their flocks on the summer grass.
Banners had been hung over the fence. EMBRACE THE SOCIALIST MIRACLE said one. Another, part of its adage torn away by the wind, said only PROGRESS AGAINST. Guards struggled in the breeze to fasten a new slogan to the wire. ONE PARTY, ONE PEOPLE.
He paused to study the complex outside the wire. A long administration building sat near the main gate, beside the guard barracks. Beyond them, at the end of the road, were two square buildings with loading docks, the camp warehouses where Lung’s trucks called.
A horn sounded, a screeching air horn that seemed to send a collective shudder through the Tibetans in front of him. A plump Chinese woman in a crisp brown tunic held the horn with its canister of air over her head, shouting at the prisoners, herding them toward the mess hall. Shan, not daring to let the woman get closer, lost himself in the gathering throng and was pushed toward the building. More brown-clad figures, some carrying batons, appeared on the opposite flank of the converging prisoners. Shan pressed into the middle of the crowd and let it carry him into the mess hall.
Rows of plain plank tables and benches were jammed closely together, pads of paper and pencils arranged on each table. More political banners lined three of the walls, large posters bearing the images of party heroes the fourth. Shan sat and found himself between two middle-aged Tibetan women who nervously watched the stage at the front of the hall, where half a dozen young Chinese men and women sat at a table beside a podium. The instructors seemed barely out of their teens. The sons and daughters of the Party elite often took such jobs for a year or two after graduating college. In Beijing they referred to it as missionary work.
The first speaker read a chapter from a book on the heroes of the Revolution, as the Tibetans listened with wooden expressions. Then a woman pulled a cover from a chalkboard and with a ruler pointed to each character of a slogan written there, shouting out the words. CHINA IS MY MOTHERLAND. THE MOTHERLAND PROVIDES FOR ALL. Then she spoke in a squeaky, impatient voice, demanding that the prisoners repeat each word after her. Fearful whispers rose around Shan. He studied his companions at the table, then the others at nearby tables. Some were so frightened their hands trembled. They were farmers and shepherds, rounded up, he suspected, not for something they themselves had done but for the transgressions of someone in their families or neighborhoods. Those who committed overt dissent were sent to hard-labor prisons to be broken. Those in danger of picking up the contagion were sent to be treated by shrill young Chinese in crisp brown tunics.
The woman ordered the prisoners to lift their pencils and write the first character of the slogan. Shan wearily lifted the pencil in front of him, then realized no one else at the table had done so. He suddenly realized they spoke no Chinese.
He quickly translated into Tibetan as other political officers began marching down the aisles with long wooden paddles. Shan wrote the first character on his paper then, as a Tibetan across the room cried out from being struck, quickly grabbed the papers of those around him and inscribed it on theirs as well.
“Thuchay chay,” the woman beside him whispered as an officer walked by with an approving nod. “Thank you.”
“Lha gyal lo,” Shan replied and touched the small amulet box that hung inside his shirt.
Two hours later he stepped out of the building, blinking at the brilliant setting sun. He walked about the prisoners’ path, lingering to study the earthen bunkers behind the mess hall and the graveyard beyond the rear gate. Lokesh was not with the sick when he searched for him, but in the shadow of one of the crumbling huts, sitting against a wall. Shan was not sure his friend even noticed when he sat down beside him. Lokesh was gazing at the compound, watching the ranks of gentle, innocent Tibetans being herded by Beijing’s hounds. With a wrench of his heart Shan suddenly knew exactly what Lokesh was thinking. This was how the end of the world looked.
Lokesh said nothing as Shan pulled him to his feet and led him to the long line where a watery noodle soup was being served for supper.
After eating he helped Lokesh with the sick in the makeshift hospital until sunset, then they settled onto a pile of straw at the end of the building. Moments later his exhausted friend was snoring. Shan moved to the deep shadows at the edge of the parade yard, watching the guards as they circuited the grounds. They walked slowly, talking to each other, often stopping to light a cigarette. The guard towers were not manned, although the patrols sometimes climbed up them to briefly scan the grounds with searchlights. It was indeed, as Lokesh had said, only a practice prison. Most of the guards avoided the bunkers, turning and retracing their steps when they reached the mess hall, though some patrolled toward the rear wire, lifting their guns from their shoulders. The bunkers held the dying, and were uncomfortably close to the open hole where the dead lay. He waited until a pair of guards passed along the rear of the mess hall, then darted toward the earthen mounds. If he did not find the American in the next few hours he might as well not find her at all.