At these words, a pain of disappointment stabbed at Wen’s heart.
Seeing the sadness in her face, the general tried to comfort her. He assured her they would continue to look for new information and would look as far afield as possible.
“I do not believe that you will lose heart,” he said. “No ordinary person could have spent half a lifetime searching for a husband-only true love can produce determination like that.” His words brought tears to Wen’s eyes. He suggested that Wen and her two friends move to the guesthouse of the military headquarters, which would be more comfortable for them.
Suddenly Wen was overwhelmed by a physical exhaustion unlike any she had known before. She struggled to her feet.
“Are you all right?” the general asked in concern.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she replied. “Just so very tired…”
“Please believe me,” said the general. “I understand your weariness.”
THE MILITARY guesthouse was equipped with all manner of strange modern devices. There were television sets, electric kettles, flushing toilets, and hot running water. Tiananmen was particularly unsettled by their surroundings. Wen sensed that, had they not been treated with such great warmth by Chinese and Tibetans alike, he would not have wanted to stay.
In the days that followed, Wen sat and waited for news. In all her years of living with Gela’s family and wandering with Zhuoma and Tiananmen she had learned to renounce desire-to let come what would come.
While she waited, Tiananmen talked to the Tibetan soldiers stationed at the headquarters. They regarded him as a walking bible of horsemanship and would come and ask his advice about how to handle their animals. One of them even invited Tiananmen to visit his parents, who lived in Lhasa. That evening, when Tiananmen returned to the strange guesthouse that so bemused him with its televisions and kettles, he told Wen about how the couple he had met spent their day. In the morning they attended to the family shrine, placing fresh yak butter and water on the altar in the courtyard. Then they climbed onto the flat roof of their house, where they burned scented juniper wood, dedicating the smoke to the spirits of the mountains, waters, and home, and asking for protection. After that, they joined their neighbors to walk the “scripture circuits.” Residents of Lhasa and pilgrims from all over Tibet would walk these holy routes, telling their rosary beads and praying. The outer circuit took them around the whole city and was walked early in the morning; the inner circuit took the worshippers around the Hall of the Buddha inside Jokhang Temple, another of Lhasa’s imposing and sacred buildings. Tiananmen had been told that you could accumulate several times more merit from walking a scripture circuit than from reading the scriptures elsewhere.
During their stay at the guesthouse, Wen had further opportunities to talk to the general about what had happened to her. She was particularly adamant that Zhuoma and Tiananmen should be allowed to travel with her to China. She explained to him that Zhuoma was the head of an important Tibetan family. She showed him some of Zhuoma’s family jewelry as proof of her story. The general promised to do what he could to find documentary evidence of Zhuoma’s identity. One afternoon, he came to Wen and Zhuoma in a state of excitement, saying that he had found written records of Zhuoma’s clan.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, though,” he said hesitantly. “I have been told that their estate burned down many years ago.”
Zhuoma didn’t explain to him that she had witnessed the burning of her house. Wen looked at her, but said nothing. She knew that Zhuoma’s former home had long ceased to exist for her in any meaningful sense.
Two days later, the general came looking for them again. This time his face was wreathed in smiles.
“Someone in Beijing remembers reading a report that described Kejun’s death exactly as you have told it to me,” he said, “and one of them recalled that there was mention of a wife who lived in Suzhou. I think this is enough evidence for us to confirm your identity and grant you permission to travel to Beijing. There you can apply for resettlement and an army pension. As for Zhuoma, we have learned that there was indeed a female heir to your clan’s estate, and the uniqueness of your jewelry proves that you are her.”
Wen and Zhuoma were filled with happiness, as if for the first time in decades they had been told who they really were. But there was still something that troubled Wen.
“If there were records of Kejun’s death,” she asked, “why then didn’t his death notice mention how he had died, or accord him the status of a revolutionary martyr?”
The general looked at her gravely. “I cannot answer that,” he said.
WITHIN A week, Wen, Zhuoma, and Tiananmen found themselves on an airplane to Beijing, equipped with all the paperwork they needed. Zhuoma had been given an official letter of introduction that would allow her to find teaching work at the Minorities Institute in Beijing should she wish it. Tiananmen possessed a document which said that he was on an official visit to China and would then return to his monastery.
Wen didn’t say a single word during the flight. Before her eyes passed scene after scene of her life in Tibet. The faces of Gela’s family filled her mind. She took out Kejun’s creased photograph and battered diaries, and poured a silent stream of tears over them. Kejun would never see his wife again, her face now deeply etched with the spirit of Tibet. He would remain forever on the plateau, beneath the blue sky and white clouds.
Her heart was full of trepidation. Would her parents be alive? Where was her sister? Would her family recognize her?
She unfolded the paper crane, kept prisoner for so many years inside her book, and gently smoothed out her sister’s letter. Time had erased all trace of the characters. Her half book of essays felt heavy, as if weighted down with the water and soil of the plateau.
Wen was shaken out of her reveries by the voice of a child asking her mother in Chinese, “Mummy, why does that Tibetan lady smell so bad?”
“Shh, don’t be rude,” her mother said. “Chinese and Tibetans have very different ways of life. You shouldn’t say thoughtless things like that.”
Wen looked down at her threadbare and faded clothes. If she was no longer Chinese, who was she? But perhaps that question did not matter. What was important was that her soul had been born. Wang Liang had been right: just staying alive was a victory.
THERE COULD be no comparison between Wen’s first-class sleeper compartment on the journey from Beijing to Suzhou and the stuffy sardine can of a train that had carried her to Chengdu all those years ago. It was like the difference between heaven and hell, not to be mentioned in the same breath. In contrast to the Tibetan plateau, the scenes that flew past her window were full of life. She sat and watched the red-brick and gray-tiled houses of Beijing give way to the familiar white houses of the Yangtze delta.
Zhuoma and Tiananmen had not accompanied Wen on her return to Suzhou. She had asked them to wait for her in Beijing. She wished to see her family alone.
Throughout the journey, Wen’s tears fell in a constant stream over her robe. Whenever the train guards or her fellow passengers asked what was wrong, she just shook her head. So concerned was one of the guards that he made a request on the train’s loudspeaker for someone who knew sign language or Tibetan to come forward and help.