‘Not a clue,’ said Bill, and they strolled on together past the market stalls. From behind each came shouts of ‘Cheapie! Cheapie!’ as yak-bone dominoes, jade necklaces and ceremonial knives were thrust in front of them with encouraging grins.
‘So what are we going to do about our visas?’ Bill asked, as they approached one of the stalls. ‘I thought you said you had it covered?’
‘I had the border covered,’ Luca corrected, ‘but we’re just going to have to figure something out for heading further east.’
‘You know what they’re like, Luca. Once an area goes on the restricted list, there’s no way in hell they’ll change our permits. And if we do try and leave, they’ll definitely assign us one of those idiot interpreters who’ll do nothing more than spy on us the whole time.’
‘We’ll find a way,’ Luca said absent-mindedly, shaking his head as a vendor pressed on him what looked to be a human skull emblazoned with a silver swastika. He turned the skull over in his hands slowly, running a finger over the tiny indentations where the brain had been.
‘Listen, Luca, I’m serious,’ Bill said, taking him by the wrist. ‘I’m not about to waste three weeks kicking my heels in Lhasa, waiting for a bit of paper. I don’t have time for this.’
‘Neither do I, but I’ve already arranged…’
As he tried to speak, the vendor has moved round to the front of the stall, beaming a well-practised smile. She started listing prices enthusiastically, using her right hand to count the numbers off, bartering herself down from an outrageous starting point without Bill or Luca having said a word. Eventually, Luca spoke a few words of his limited Tibetan to her and she slowly retreated behind the stall, her expression instantly darkening.
They moved off again, back into the flow of human traffic.
‘What I was trying to say is that I’ve already arranged a meeting with René,’ Luca explained. ‘He’ll be able to think of something. He always does.’
Bill stopped in his tracks. ‘René? You’re serious?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he is a disaster waiting to happen and I don’t think we should have anything to do with the man! How the hell he hasn’t been kicked out of Lhasa yet, God only knows.’
‘Yeah, but if there’s one person who knows how to get visas and deal with the bastard Chinese roadblocks, it’s him.’
Turning down one of the side streets, Luca headed in the opposite direction from the main temple and away from the Tibetan quarter.
‘Come on,’ he said, quickening his pace. ‘Or we won’t get a table.’
A few hundred yards later they found themselves on Lhasa’s main high street. The wide strip was flanked with modern shops, the fluorescent signs and electric lighting clearly marking the transition from the Tibetan quarter into the rest of the city run by the Chinese.
Dusty cranes towered over half-finished buildings in every direction, and at the end of the high street they could see the golden roof of the Dalai Lama’s former residence, the Potala.
Up on its hill and carved into the living rock, the palace of a thousand rooms remained aloof from the urban development below, its vertiginous walls shielding it from the hasty expansion all around. But what was clear to see was that, the ‘peaceful liberation’ by the Chinese had not just been an external assault on the city of Lhasa and its temples. Inside, the pulse of the Dalai Lama’s former residence was slowly fading.
The Chinese had forbidden monks from worshipping in the temple. Its hollow rooms and deserted corridors were now bereft of their presence. Stone steps, worn in the middle from centuries of footsteps, were now barely used. The deserted shell of the building conveyed little of the teeming life that had once made its chambers, murals and thousands of figures of the Buddha seem to actually breathe. Now, the Potala stood silently at the end of the high street and was little more than an empty shell — a tourist attraction for anyone but Tibetans.
At the end of the street, Bill and Luca passed rows of shop windows with new posters glued on top, showing a picture of a pale Chinese man, about twenty years old and with a shaven head. He stared out impassively, his expression neither welcoming nor hostile. Thick bold characters were printed below. By the sheer number of posters visible, it was obviously important news.
Luca bent forward, peering at the newly pasted posters. At the bottom of every one was a single sentence printed in English: His Holiness the eleventh Panchen Lama’s inauguration, 1 June 2005.
‘Looks like we’re going to miss the big event,’ Luca said, pointing to the date.
‘He doesn’t look very Tibetan to me,’ Bill said, frowning slightly.
‘Well, whoever he is, with the Dalai Lama gone, he’s going to be the man in charge.’ Luca glanced up from the poster. Twenty yards along he spotted the turning he’d been looking for.
‘Hey, that’s the one,’ he said, slapping Bill’s shoulder.
Leaving the poster, they cut down the street and within a few paces the shining stores and paved roads gave way to mud tracks and ramshackle houses. Following the trail a bit farther, they threaded through a maze of twisting back streets and, after a few dead ends, came across the familiar open porch of a wood-built restaurant. Bill looked at Luca, anxiety creeping back into his face.
‘Let’s just get in and out as fast as we can.’
Luca turned to reassure him before going through the doorway.
‘Relax, Bill. It’s just René. Trust me on this.’
Bill grimaced, shaking his head as he followed his friend inside into the din of the restaurant. Trusting Luca was exactly what his wife had warned him not to do.
Chapter 18
The restaurant was brightly lit and packed with tourists. Waiters in traditional Tibetan dress wound their way around tables serving mo-mos and yak burgers. Misplaced as it was down a dusty side street in Lhasa, it also felt surreally suspended between cultures.
As soon as Luca and Bill stepped into the room, they could hear René. He had a deep, booming voice that was usually accompanied, as it was now, to a string of expletives. A tour operator who had been working in Lhasa for nearly eight years, René, with his stubbled, red face, swollen midriff and crumpled clothes, made it clear how oblivious — or blind — he was to the subtleties of Eastern culture.
Right now he appeared to be delivering a monologue to a meek-looking tourist sitting at one of the tables on the far side of the room. As René’s vast belly quivered only inches away from the man’s face, it looked extremely likely he was regretting having asked a question in the first place. Fragments of the restaurant owner’s impassioned diatribe floated across the room, culminating in René pointing a thick digit directly at the man’s nose and bemoaning ‘every one of the dull-witted layabouts who passes through Lhasa these days’.
Luca started to laugh. Catching sight of him across the room, René did a double-take and then bellowed across the rows of tables: ‘What do you think you’re laughing at, you skinny Englishman?’
The patrons curled their toes and sank lower in their seats, anticipating yet another outburst.
‘At you, you old bastard!’ Luca shouted back as René began to scythe his way through the seated diners, jolting some into their plates and scaring others into hurriedly scraping forward their chairs.
Beaming at them with bloodshot eyes, René pulled them both into a bearlike hug before slapping them on the back several times and herding them over to a table near the rear of the restaurant. Once they were settled with a shot of cheap brandy in front of them, Luca spoke.
‘So how are things going, René? Still battling bureaucracy?’
René rolled his eyes and slugged back the contents of the shot glass.