“I said ‘not exactly,’ ” the Navajo replied. “Some of the very old prayers spoke about mining gold for the gods.” He paused, cocked his head, and looked out over the pile of rocks.
Shan thought he heard an insect at first, singing in the languid heat. Then, for a moment, he thought it was something on the tape. He touched the power button of the recorder. The sound came from just over the high rim of the rocks that had trapped them and grew louder as they listened, resolving into a familiar pattern. Someone was energetically reciting a mantra.
Moments later a scalp of shaggy black hair appeared, then a small surprised face, then shoulders draped in reddish rags. The chant faltered as the man peered at them over the edge, then ducked down. He repeated the motion several times, bobbing up and down, disappearing then returning, as if to get a better idea of the creatures trapped below. He disappeared and the mantra picked up again, this time with the rhythm of a cheerful song.
“Rapaki!” Yangke exclaimed. “Stay here or you’ll frighten him away,” he warned, then began scaling the loose, treacherous pile of rubble.
Shan and Hostene, sitting beside Lokesh’s prostrate form, waited as Yangke spoke in encouraging tones, gesturing as if to a skittish dog. When his words had no effect on the singsong mantra, he began pulling rocks from the top. They would have to clear a path if they were to carry Lokesh safely over the rubble.
After several minutes the strange ragged figure reappeared, veering in and out of view as he lifted and moved stones, gradually approaching Yangke, still chanting, until finally the two men were working side by side. He had the wild appearance of one who lived exposed to the elements, his skin leathery, his hair long and uneven. The rags on his back had once been a robe, though it now bore so many patches of different colors and fabrics that it appeared as if he had tied a quilt around himself.
When Rapaki finally noticed that Shan was slowly advancing toward him, he ducked behind Yangke, then tilted his head to peek around Yangke’s back, grinning, his eyes wide. He ducked in and out as before, using Yangke as his shield. Then he froze, his carefree expression becoming solemn. He had seen Lokesh. He advanced without fear, seeming not to notice Shan, until he stood before Lokesh, studying him, his head tilting one way then the other. Then he spun about and disappeared behind the rocks.
Yangke gazed after him, then with one hand made a corkscrew motion next to his temple. “Totally crazy. I guess we’d be like that too if we’d lived in a cave for nearly forty years.”
But the action of the hermit was not crazy at all. Yangke and Shan were still clearing rocks when Rapaki returned, clutching the stems of a plant that he crushed and placed under Lokesh’s nose. The old Tibetan sneezed, snorted, and woke up. His eyes lit with pleasure at the sight of the ragged figure before him. Rapaki was a figure directly out of the old tales, the hermit beggar with brambles in his hair.
“Rapaki, Rapaki, Rapaki,” the hermit said as Lokesh was propped against the rock wall. Rapaki paused, gazing at Hostene as though for the first time, then abruptly he jammed a finger into Hostene’s chest, repeating his own name again several times, as if it were a protective mantra. He then studied Shan with the same intense gaze, jumped toward him, jammed a finger into Shan’s chest, jumped back to Lokesh, and began whispering something very quickly under his breath. He rose warily as Yangke approached.
“What is he saying?” Hostene asked.
Shan paused for a moment, confused. Yangke was trying to question the hermit about the avalanche, about whether he had seen anyone on the slope above but Rapaki seemed unable to hear him. “He seems only to speak in song and mantra,” said Yangke.
Soon they had cleared a path sufficiently that they could carry Lokesh across the rubble.
“He has to be taken back to the village, to Gendun and Dolma,” Shan told Yangke.
“We can make a litter, with poles and shirts, then the four of us can carry him.”
“No. Hostene and I must remain here. The murderer must be up here. And his niece, too.”
“It will take all day,” Yangke said with a sigh.
Rapaki materialized at Shan’s side and put his hand on Shan’s arm as he pointed in the opposite direction from the village. Lokesh looked up. Shan recognized the words the hermit now sang, in ever-louder tones, as he pointed with increasing vigor up the slope. It was a healing mantra. Rapaki might have lost all capacity for human conversation but he knew how to convey his meaning to the deities.
Rapaki had not been the first to use the cave they reached an hour later. The soot of butter lamps was heavy on the ten-foot ceiling and stained the upper half of a vast mural on one wall portraying protector demons. They were in an ancient shrine, intended for more than a hermit’s dwelling. Despite his injuries, Lokesh would not settle onto the pallet offered by Rapaki. First he hobbled along the walls, greeting with low exclamations of delight the small statues standing in niches carved in the living rock and the altar made of a heavy beam set on rock pedestals.
“It’s Bon,” Lokesh declared as he gazed at the once-vivid painting. “Very old. For the mountain deity. I do not even recognize some of the demons,” he added as he gazed in confusion at one in the corner. He had once been a monk official in the Dalai Lama’s government and was as intimate with the pantheon of Tibetan deities as any lama. He might not be able to name the crimson-faced deity but Shan had seen it before, on one of the open-air rock faces in Abigail Natay’s video. Below the painting, on a roughhewn block of juniper, was an unbound book, a peche. Loose pages were strewn on the floor around it. Shan kneeled to study the pages. They were old, illuminated in still-brilliant colors.
It was not the old but the new that Shan was seeking. He had begun to wonder how the hermit survived. In the summer, the slopes might be full of berries, even wild grains, but winter in such a place would be brutal. He supposed that like the yaks and goats the hermit must migrate in the winter to a lower altitude. Then he saw a sliver of shadow in a corner. As Rapaki and the others helped Lokesh onto his pallet he picked up a butter lamp and slipped into the narrow opening.
The chamber beyond, adorned with more dim paintings on the walls, had once held butter, barley, and water in orderly arranged ceramic pots, the shards of which could be seen along the far wall. Rapaki’s arrangement was much more modern, and chaotic. The floor was littered with empty cans of beans, fruit, and soup, as well as empty sacks of plastic and muslin. Along one wall were unopened cans, and sacks of rice, not stacked but carelessly tossed in a pile, on top of which was a small round tin. Shan lifted the tin and opened it. It had once held hard candy and was edged with little yellow flowers. Lemon Freshies, it said in English.
There was crumpled paper in the trash heap, thirty or forty pieces, most of them labels from cans, most of those with writing on the white reverse side. Shan flattened one across his knee. At first he thought it was a sketch for a tangka, a sacred painting, for there were figures of deities and sacred symbols along the edges. But most of the paper was taken up by Tibetan words. He struggled through the first half, some of which was crossed out. He could not read all the cramped words but many phrases were familiar. It was a letter addressed to Tara, signed your secret Rapaki. Or more exactly, it was a draft of a letter to the deity. He unfolded five more of the labels. They were all similar to the first with minor changes. Some of them, he judged, were many years old.
“I always wondered how he fed himself,” a voice said from the shadows. “He’s gone,” Yangke added. “He took a bag and ran as if he were leaving for good. He suddenly seemed to be afraid of us.”
“Did these supplies come from Chodron?”
“Not a chance. Chodron hates him and would be pleased if he starved to death. He is a symbol of all that Chodron cannot abide.”