As in many such gompa villages, the old pilgrim paths converged near the gate. Without thinking Shan found himself pausing at the small stations along the main road, many of them nothing more than cairns of mani stones. It was what he and Lokesh would do, and he realized again how much he missed the old Tibetan. The past few months, when they had been together nearly every day, had been a blessing and he guarded himself against expecting he could go back to that simple, peaceful routine when the turmoil in the valley subsided. The troubles might never subside. The valley as it had been for centuries was not going to survive, and its demise would widen the gap between Lokesh and himself.
As he reached the edge of the hamlet he became aware of a low steady rattle coming from the long timber structure that had no doubt once been a barn for the gompa. With cautious steps he entered, following the sound to a stall at the back where the Tibetan woman who had been grinding flour now spun a handheld prayer wheel. She faced the deeper shadows at the rear of the stall. It took Shan a moment to make out the old man. Patrul sat cross-legged on a low table, his sightless eyes cast downward, looking like an altar statue more than a living human. Before him, like an offering, lay an aged brown mastiff.
Shan said nothing, did not move, did not want to cause the woman to break the rhythm of her wheel. Patrul’s hand left his mudra long enough for him to gesture Shan to sit.
“Your Tibetan is good,” the old man declared. “I have always been able to sense a Chinese. But not you. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I have been immersing myself in good Tibetan mud for the past few months.”
The blind man’s smile was serene.
“Rinpoche,” Shan said. “I had a friend, a hermit who passed over suddenly last month. He needs my help.”
Shan knew better than to expect a quick reply. The old man looked down as if studying his fingers with his blind eyes, then rested his hand on the head of the big brown dog, who instantly opened its eyes to stare at Shan. He had the uncanny sensation that the old lama was looking at him through the animal’s eyes.
“Jamyang was my friend too,” the old teacher said. “First came the news of his death. Then the others. It was a storm of death that day.”
“They still need us,” Shan said. He found himself addressing the dog.
“We still need them.”
Shan paused over the words. They were the perfect words, the exact thing that needed to be said. “I think the deaths were connected,” he offered.
“The deities needed them all elsewhere, all at once.” It was the old abbot’s way of agreeing.
“A monk was at the convent when the abbess and the other two died.”
The dog blinked.
“Are you some kind of policeman?” the blind man asked. The woman stopped moving her wheel.
“I am a pilgrim.”
“He is the one who digs ditches with Lokesh, Rinpoche,” the woman interjected.
The old man’s face brightened. “You almost died saving that lamb trapped in quicksand. They say the mud was nearly up to your shoulders.” A strange wheezing noise came from his throat. It took a moment for Shan to recognize it as a laugh.
“That lamb and I weren’t meant to die that day.”
“You gain much merit in doing such things.”
“Lokesh said in time I will find that the lamb saved me.”
The former abbot slowly nodded. “A man can easily put on a robe. It could mean many things.” They were talking about the murders again.
“Where is the monk Dakpo?”
The dog raised its head.
“Dakpo has gone beyond the mountains. He knows he must return before the full moon.”
“You mean India?” Dakpo had family with the exile government, Trinle had said.
“The other direction.”
Shan puzzled over the words. The other direction was north, or east, deeper into Tibet. The full moon was in five days. Dakpo had confided in Patrul, but not Norbu.
“Why,” he asked hesitantly, “would he leave without the abbot’s permission?”
“Without the government’s permission,” Patrul said, as if correcting him. Some monasteries, Shan reminded himself, had to secure government permission for its monks to travel. Dakpo had not wanted the government to know. Or was it that he didn’t want Major Liang to know?
“Rinpoche,” Shan asked, “you said Jamyang was a friend. Was he a new friend or an old friend?”
“We weren’t sure, he and I.” It was a very Tibetan answer. “When he came to the valley he traveled all the pilgrim’s paths and found me on one up on the mountain. He spent the day with Dakpo and me, praying, cleaning old shrines along the paths, and I invited him to come to the gompa. He declined, said he had become a creature of the high paths, like the wild goats. He said he felt a great affinity for our valley, as if he had been here before. I reminded him that over the centuries many gentle spirits like his had lived at our gompa. He wasn’t certain that day but as time went by he seemed to be convinced he had been here previously, that he had some duty from another time that he still owed the gompa.”
“He said that? A duty?”
The old man offered another serene smile as he turned to stroke the dog. “I told him the devout owed a duty to all of Tibet.”
“To all of Tibet, wherever it is located,” Shan ventured after a moment.
Patrul turned back with surprise on his face. It seemed his eyes were alive again. They fixed Shan with an intense gaze, fixed not on his face, it seemed, but something behind his face. “Once in Tibet there were earth-taming temples to subdue the demons that threatened it. They are lost to us today, but there are new ones, secret counterparts to the old.” When he leaned forward the woman stopped spinning her wheel. His final words came in a low plaintive whisper. “Are you the demon tamer we have prayed for, Shan?”
* * *
Shan left the motorbike hidden among rocks and made the long climb to Jamyang’s shrine. The visit to the monastery had been strangely unsettling. Patrul had been trying to tell him that Chegar had a secret connection to Dharamsala. The trail of a murderer had led him to Tibetan freedom fighters. He had no heart for exposing a killer if it meant also exposing more dissidents. But Liang would relish the opportunity. Revealing a killer in a nest of dissidents would earn him another promotion.
He paused at the intersection of two trails, recognizing the old pilgrim’s path. His last hours with Jamyang continued to haunt him. Words had been spoken that he had not understood, then or now. From where he stood he could just glimpse the little flat where Jamyang had asked him to stop, where the lama had prostrated himself to the mountain. Shan put his hand on a cairn of mani stones, lingering for a moment as if to consult them, then turned onto the path.
When he reached the flat he stepped to the nearby road, trying to reconstruct each of Jamyang’s movements when he had asked Shan to stop his truck there. The lama had warned Shan that he did not understand the dangers of the valley, echoing Shan’s own words. He had asked to stop at the cairns where pilgrims communed with the powerful mountain that protected the valley. The old abbot had said Jamyang felt a connection to the valley, as if he owed it something. He had prayed at each of the cairns and … Shan froze. As the wind lapsed for a moment he heard a new sound, a low, quick murmuring coming from over the edge of the drop-off.
Shan warily approached, seeing now how one end of the prayer flags Jamyang had left had blown out of its anchor and was dangling over the edge. He stared for a moment in disbelief as he saw the white-haired figure huddled on the steep slope at the end of the strand of flags, then carefully climbed down to join him.
Lokesh was tightly clutching the last of the flags in the strand. He nodded as Shan sat beside him. Shan had come to view the silence that often preceded Lokesh’s words as something of a benediction, a way of building reverence before speaking.
“It was always going to be the way of his life,” the old Tibetan said at last. “There was never a chance you could change that.” He spoke as if Shan needed comforting. “Chenmo and Ani Ama came. They are with the American,” he added, acknowledging the question on Shan’s face.