When he turned back to Patrul the big shaggy mastiff was by the old lama, gazing at Shan. “You were serving ten strings, Rinpoche,” Shan said after a long silence. “No one gets early release when they’ve opposed loyalty oaths. Trinle said it was because you went blind.”
Patrul offered a sad grin. “He’s a good boy. Always looks for the best answer, if not the true one. He forgets I was nearly blind when they arrested me.”
“Bringing back the silver bell to Chegar would have made Norbu welcome but arranging for you to be at his side made him a hero.”
“They called it a humanitarian release,” Patrul said with a bitter laugh. There was pain in the teacher’s voice. He had already realized that he too had been a puppet.
“But still you are here,” Shan replied. “Perhaps there was the hand of a deity in this.”
“No matter what happens my Chegar suffers.”
“I don’t think so. You are its protector. You have always been its protector. No matter what happens there will be no abbot from Beijing here for many months, probably a year or more.”
“A gompa needs an abbot.”
“They have one, the best they ever could hope for. In a way he never left.”
“I am old and blind.”
“You are wise and shrewd. If Tibet can have a shadow government, then surely Chegar can have a shadow abbot.”
“Lha gyal lo.” The words came in a whisper from the shadows.
Shan lifted a butter lamp and stepped to the storage room behind them, the door to which was open. Dakpo sat propped up on a bed of straw. He bent over the monk, feeling his forehead, then his pulse.
“I am well enough, Shan,” the monk said bravely. “A few cracked ribs are worth the cure you have given us. But I worry,” he added. “Trinle came last night to say Norbu has the monks stirred up, talking about their duty to the Dalai Lama. I can’t confront him. I am not sure I would be believed. And now the full moon comes. The tentacles will reach across to Dharamsala. I can’t.…” The monk’s voice faded away.
“I understand, Dakpo. It is nearly over. You need to continue being his student so he does not suspect. Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.”
Shan grinned. “Exactly.”
Suddenly the calm of the dawn was disturbed by the ringing of a bell. It was not a call to worship. Shan stepped to the shadows of the entry to see monks emerging into the courtyard of the gompa, trotting toward the row of bicycles along one wall. He called out a hurried farewell to Patrul and Dakpo, then ran out the back of the barn.
Minutes later he was standing in the back of his truck, watching the monks through his binoculars. They made a thin line of maroon along the flat road, an arrow aimed down the valley. Shan followed the path of the arrow, trying to understand its target. It could be the convent ruins. It could be Baiyun. It could be some pilgrim’s path selected for clearing.
By the time he drove back onto the main road he saw that others were traveling toward the center of the valley. Figures on bicycles, on tractors and donkeys, were converging not on the ruins or the town but on a crossroads that marked the intersection of the main road with a dirt track that led to farms in the hills. He sped up as he reached the pavement, soon passing the monks, noting several familiar faces, including Norbu near the front.
A small crowd was already at the intersection as Shan coasted to a stop in front of a newly erected mileage sign. His heart sank as he read it. The sign was only in Chinese. A farmer was standing on the seat of his tractor haranguing the assembled Tibetans about how he didn’t live on a Chinese road, he lived on a Tibetan road.
“Just because you call a leopard a mule doesn’t make him one!” a man brandishing a scythe shouted.
More vehicles arrived, mostly bicycles and tractors, some pulling wagons with families. A cargo truck approached, blaring its horn at the crowd that blocked its passage. An aged tractor pulling a cart with goats and several more farmers arrived. Shan opened the door of his truck, well aware of the angry stares aimed at him.
The first monks who appeared were younger ones, who began to fuel the anger with calls for Tibetans to remember what it meant to be Tibetan. Sirens rose in the distance. One of the figures with the goats emerged and Shan looked in alarm at the man.
“Yuan!” he called out. The professor and his daughter with three other Baiyun exiles were threading their way through the crowd.
“You should go,” Shan said. “These people are furious.”
“I promised the goats a trip in the country,” Yuan said with a spark in his eyes. Shan looked back at the tractor, the beat-up old community vehicle kept in the Baiyun market ground, then saw the defiant glint in Yuan’s eyes. They were more than five miles from the town. The professor had not come in reaction to the disturbance, he had set out before it had started. “You knew about this?”
“Jigten drove past the police crew that was installing this last night. Each one that’s been installed in the past three months has brought a demonstration by Tibetans. The valley doesn’t need more disturbances.”
“Police crew? Not a road crew. Are you sure he said that?”
Yuan offered a pointed nod as Norbu mounted one of the wagons.
“We must not give them cause to make more arrests,” the abbot implored the Tibetans. The police cars were visible now, an Armed Police troop truck led by two grey vehicles. The driver of the cargo truck, now stopped, got out and stood on the hood. It was one of Lung’s men.
While the attention of the Tibetans was fixed on Norbu, Yuan moved through the throng, his daughter close behind, holding a small pail. The professor extracted a brush from his jacket, dipped it in the pail and began writing with yellow paint on the blank back of the sign, carefully consulting a piece of paper held up by his daughter. The letters were in Tibetan and though his hand was unsteady the letters were legible.
Shan gasped. A Tibetan boy gave a startled laugh. At the end of the word Yuan painted an arrow, pointing south.
As Norbu climbed down he called on the Tibetans to rally behind him, so he could be their shield against the police, now climbing out of their vehicles. But another Tibetan, and another, stepped behind the sign to look at Yuan’s handiwork. Each gazed for a moment then laughed. “Lha gyal lo,” a woman called, smiling at Yuan. Shan’s alarm changed to fear as a bullhorn crackled.
“Unless you have a permit to assemble,” came Liang’s voice, “you are committing a crime. Disperse now or you will be arrested.” Shan studied the major, and the uneasy way the police looked at him. There was no official reason the special officer from outside the district should be supervising what for them was a routine security detail.
Norbu’s voice at first rang out clearly. “We are but farmers going about our business,” he called back. “The police have nothing to fear from us. We seek only your respect as the original inhabitants of this valley.”
A woman beside Shan groaned. “No, he mustn’t,” she cried. “Not our blessed abbot. We can’t let them throw another abbot in prison.”
Norbu spoke again but the growing murmur of the Tibetans who hurried to look at the back of the sign swelled over the abbot’s words. Yuan stepped back so all could see his work.
Dharamsala, he had written by the arrow, first in Tibetan then in Chinese. He had pointed the way to the capital of the free Tibetans in India.
An old Tibetan woman grabbed Yuan as he tried to go to Shan and embraced him. Shan could not hear Liang’s words but the anger in his tone was unmistakable. Four policemen with truncheons left the major’s side. A Tibetan farmer grabbed Sansan and pulled her into the crowd. The Tibetans were in trouble enough, but if Liang grasped what had happened his venom would be directed at the exiles.
Shan eased back into his truck. He turned on the ignition and pressed the accelerator so that the old engine sputtered loudly, then he fumbled with the shifter and clutch, noisily grinding the gears. Those around the truck cleared away. Liang roared out angry orders. Truncheons were being raised. Shan caught Norbu’s gaze and held it with cool intensity. Then he shoved the truck into gear and shot forward.