She entered so quietly he was not aware of her until she stepped into a pool of moonlight ten feet from his bed. She was wearing only a sleeveless undershirt.
“What is it?” he asked, pulling the sheet up over his bare chest.
In reply she pulled the shirt over her head. “I’m not so old, Shan,” she said as she let the shirt drop on the floor.
“You-you should probably go.” He had trouble getting the words out.
“Do you have any idea, Comrade, how many years go by without my even meeting a man I respect enough?” She took a step closer.
“Surely not me,” Shan whispered. “I’m so much older.”
“You’re not so old.”
“I feel old,” he said. “That’s gone from my life.”
“You told me you couldn’t talk like a man with a woman. Then we talked for hours.”
“That was different.”
She was at the edge of his bed. “Then we will just practice for while,” she said, and lifted his covers.
“This isn’t the way we should…” The words died in his throat. Meng had her own way. His hand trembled as she raised it and placed it on her body.
Afterwards she lay in the round of his shoulder. “What happened to them?” she asked. “To those two wooden camels.”
“My mother got sick that first winter. We burned them to make her some tea.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The temple at the front of the Institute was already attracting a steady flow of visitors when Shan settled onto the stone flags of its floor the next morning. Tibetans and a few Chinese on the way to work in shops and offices were lighting sticks of incense and lowering themselves in front of altars beside a handful of monks who had been there when Shan arrived. Along a wall half a dozen other monks sat, some twirling handheld prayer wheels. A handful of Tibetans, in the rough clothing of farmers and herders, moved along the shrines that lined the opposite wall.
He glanced toward the door. Meng had been gone when he had awakened, had been all business when he had seen her briefly in the lobby of the guesthouse. She had greeted him with only an awkward smile and he had realized she was feeling the same uncertainty about the night before. He was stunned by the tenderness that had welled up within him, unbidden, unknown for so many years that he had thought he had lost all capacity for it. But as much as he was attracted to who she was, something inside could not help but be repulsed by what she was. He knew too that, for the knob inside her, he was a former convict, a stigma, a chain around her neck, a guarantee that she would never leave her exile within the Bureau. It was no doubt best for both of them to think of the night before as just a fleeting, intimate detour in the crooked paths that were their lives.
Staying in the shadows, he watched the monks at the wall as much as the worshipers, noting the pinched, unsettled expressions on the men in maroon robes. Were they being punished? Were they being brainwashed? Or were they the watchdogs of the temple?
An old man settled nearby and began a mantra in a low, dry voice. The sound invoked fond images of Lokesh and the lamas they knew, and he soon found himself drifting under its spell.
He was so focused on the mantra that the movement did not register at first. It seemed to be just another pilgrim adjusting his position as he paid homage to one more deity. But then the man, wearing a hat low on his head and mumbling a low mantra, seemed to stumble against one of the seated figures in the shadows, a monk. As he bent over the monk his mantra changed to a curse and he slammed his fist into the robed figure. The monk rolled away, trying to escape.
“Bastard! Murderer!” the pilgrim shouted in Tibetan, and leapt over the monk, blocking his path then pummeling him with his fists.
The monk moaned and covered his head with his arms, then pushed up, knocking the pilgrim back. The man staggered forward, landing another blow on the monk, before shoving him down, slamming his head on the stone flags.
“Jigten!” Shan shouted as he recognized the attacker. He shot up and began pushing his way through the crowd of shocked worshipers
The young monk cried out in pain but offered no resistance. “Killer!” Jigten shouted as he began kicking him. As he bent to slam his fist into the monk’s jaw, Shan broke free of the crowd and leapt forward to grab his arm.
But other arms reached Jigten first. Four monks were suddenly pulling the two men apart, then a moment later uniformed knobs appeared from the shadows of the corridor. A big man in one of the grey uniforms viciously kicked Jigten, propelling him across the floor. As the knobs placed manacles on the shepherd, Shan knelt over the bruised, whimpering monk, wiping away blood with his sleeve, and gasped. It was Dakpo.
One of the knobs noticed Shan’s reaction and eyed him suspiciously. Shan retreated, joining the throng of frightened worshipers fleeing the chamber.
He stood in the courtyard, numb with despair. Somehow he had begun to believe Dakpo knew more than any of them about the murders, that his mysterious quest in the north would hold a key to the puzzle of the valley and its monastery. But all that was lost. A monk involved in a civil disturbance was guaranteed incarceration, and probably loss of his robe.
Police vans with flashing lights rolled up, followed by an ambulance. As he backed away someone gently pulled his arm. He let Meng guide him across the street to a table in the shadows of the café. He watched forlornly as uniformed men and women swarmed into the courtyard. Dakpo was limp as two knobs carried him out of the temple. Jigten had hit him hard, knocking his head on the stone flags.
Shan found himself rising from his chair as the officers hauled the monk into the ambulance. Meng pulled him down. “It’s not what you think,” she said, and he watched, confused, as the ambulance drove away without a police escort.
“I don’t understand,” he said to Meng, but she was calling the waiter, ordering tea.
“I bought you something,” she said after he had sipped his cup. He noticed now a small parcel wrapped in brown paper at his elbow.
“Where’s the hospital?” he asked.
“It won’t be hard to find.” She nodded toward the package with an awkward smile.
“Why wouldn’t the police go with Dakpo?”
Meng ignored his question. “I passed a little shop that sells souvenirs. The man said this was an old one. You don’t have yours anymore.”
Shan studied her a moment. She seemed to have grown younger. There was a light in her eyes he had not seen before. Leave her, a voice inside shouted. She’s a knob. She’ll always be a knob. You loathe knobs. He opened the package.
It was a strand of Tibetan prayer beads.
“A mala?” he asked in surprise. He glanced back at the disappearing ambulance, then felt the touch of the beads. It was not simply a mala, it was a very old and rare sandalwood mala, each bead exquisitely carved with the head of a deity. “I can’t,” he protested. “It’s a treasure.”
“Don’t be silly. They’re being sold to tourists.”
He watched as his fingers began working the beads as if of their own accord. They had a warm, natural feel, with a patina of long use.
“You wear that well,” Meng offered.
Shan looked up. “I’m sorry?”
“Your smile. I haven’t seen it before. When’s the last time a woman brought you a present?” Her question was as much a surprise as her gift.
His ran his hand over the stubble of his hair, painfully conscious of his shabby clothes. It had been nearly thirty years. “A long time,” he answered softly.
She too wore her smile well. For a moment he forgot about Jigten and Dakpo, then his gaze drifted back to the beads. “The shop,” he asked, “can you take me there?”