“I just want to speak with you!” Shan called out in Chinese, then Tibetan, as he took another step forward. A ball of shadow exploded from under the overhanging ledge, colliding with Shan, knocking him off his feet before bounding down the path.
Shan was up in an instant, in frantic pursuit, stumbling on the loose gravel, running with his arm slightly extended to warn him of the outcroppings hidden in shadow, then sprinting forward as he spotted the thief in a patch of moonlight a hundred feet ahead of him.
He sensed the fist a moment before it connected, just as he rounded a column of rock. It would have pounded his eye but he twisted so it bounced off his ear, feeling like someone had taken a mallet to his head. As he fell he swung wildly, grabbing a booted foot, jerking his assailant off his feet but inviting a kick that sent an explosion of pain into his ribs. He rolled, thinking he had knocked the man down, then realized it was not the man’s body he clutched but the nylon bag of figurines.
The two men began a treacherous tug of war. Shan suddenly sensed that they were at the cliff’s edge, with a thousand feet of void less than a yard away. He reached for his flashlight and hammered with it on the man’s knuckles until it was wrestled from Shan’s grip and tossed away. The bag caught on a rock and began to rip. The ancient figures tumbled out, rolling on the ground. The man gasped, losing interest in Shan as he desperately reached for them, grabbing the last one just as Shan’s own fingers closed around it. It was one of the very old bronze Yamas, its jeweled eyes lit with moonlight. Shan jerked it onto his shoulder, the intruder wrenched it back. The deity seemed to watch their struggle in disappointment.
Shan found a handhold on a boulder and heaved backward. The Yama broke out of the man’s grip but the force of Shan’s effort sent the statue tumbling backward, out of Shan’s hand. A choked cry left the thief’s throat as the bronze disappeared over the cliff. Then a boot slammed into Shan’s chest, and he lurched backward, sprawling on the ground, gasping for air as he clutched at his heart. When he could breathe again he saw the shadowy figure running in another pool of moonlight a hundred yards below.
Shan crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down, overcome with desolation. He hadn’t just lost the thief. He had killed a god.
Shan stayed bent, his head touching the ground, at first because it relieved the pain in his chest and then because of his shame. When at last he rose it was not to stumble downhill but toward the altar, gathering a small bundle of dried grass which he lit to examine the thief’s work. The intruder had started at the end opposite the crucifix, had been stopped by Shan before he reached the Buddha in the center of the altar. But five of the bronze Yamas, the largest ones, were gone.
As his makeshift torch sputtered and died he glanced at the stars and the shadow-black trail. It was only a few hours until dawn. He gathered more wood and lit a fire a few feet in front of the altar, then retrieved his blanket and pack, withdrawing the pouch of food he had brought. Ignoring his hunger pangs, he emptied all his food onto the altar and divided it into seven portions and distributed them along the front of the altar, adding a smoldering, fragrant juniper twig to each offering. He murmured prayers of apology then placed another smoldering twig by the crucifix. It was as out of place as a fish in a tree but it seemed the most significant discovery he had yet made.
Although it was only an hour after sunrise when Shan reached her house, Ama Apte was not at home. He settled against the frame of the doorless front entry, pushing to one side the copper pot of milk someone had left beside a worn butter churn, then shifted to pull his shirt away from the blood matted on his ribs. The only thing he knew for certain about the thief was what he wore on his feet. Where the stranger had kicked him his skin had been torn and bruised in the clear pattern of a cleated climbing boot. Pulling his hat low over his face, he watched the villagers go by for several minutes, glancing at the women who sat at several doorways working their own churns before exploring the chamber that comprised the first floor of the astrologer’s house. A pallet with a folded blanket still lay on the packed earth by a stall, as if she waited for her mule in the night. Two buckets, one of water and one of fresh grain, stood by the pallet. Ama Apte was conducting the traditional Bardo death rites for the lost mule, during which food and drink were left for the departed.
At a small bench by the solitary window at the rear, squares of yellow cloth lay under a spool of red thread beside the sheets of handmade paper on which fortunes were recorded. He opened the door of a small wooden cabinet above the bench, finding more spools of thread and old nibbed pens with a bottle of ink. On the inside of the door, yellowed tape held a photo of a young Dalai Lama on a horse, with armed men escorting him. Leaning on the back of the cabinet was a tattered book of Mo divination tables and several worn pairs of the astrologer’s dice.
His gaze drifted back to the photo. Though they were considered contraband and were regularly burned by the Bureau of Religious Affairs, images of the Dalai Lama were secretly kept by many, probably most, Tibetans. But he had never seen one like this. He studied it closely, swinging the door into the sunlight, considering the teenaged countenance of the reincarnate leader, the fur-capped soldiers with old British Enfield rifles. All the faces were tired and travel worn. One soldier could be seen on a slope in the distance, watching the trail behind them. He suspected it had been taken during the Dalai Lama’s secret flight across the border, while the Chinese army had been trying to kill him by shelling his living compound in Lhasa.
He returned to the entryway, watched the women at their chores, then bent and poured the milk into the fortuneteller’s churn and began to work the plunger. It was a daily ritual performed for centuries by millions of Tibetans, still very much part of life for nomads and remote villagers.
When Ama Apte finally arrived, leading a goat, she offered neither complaint nor greeting, but uttered a grunt of satisfaction as she lifted the lid to the churn and saw that the morning chore was almost complete. Dropping in a palmful of salt from a small crock near the door, she disappeared into a neighbor’s house and returned moments later with a steaming kettle, two tin cups, and one of the tall, narrow churns used for mixing buttered tea. Whether he was invited or not Shan was a guest and she would serve him buttered tea.
She did not speak as she prepared the tea, nor as she arranged two low milking stools just inside the house and finally handed him his steaming cup, straightening her colorful apron before sitting down.
“What happened here?” Shan asked. “I mean before, when the Yama temple was still used. Were there priests from far away?” He knew no Tibetan word for missionaries.
“People used to say we were the most faraway of any place in all the world,” the woman replied. “We were proud of that. The Himalayas protected us. What I remember most of all was the peacefulness. Villagers sang songs at the well. There was a village loom where everyone worked on rugs to sell to the caravans that came across from Nepal. Monks were always in the square, prayerflags on every house. ”
“From the Yama temple?”
“They say before that temple there was another, to earth deities and the mountain spirits. Before that, the gods played there.”
“I was thinking more of the past century.”
“In 1924 Westerners began driving nails into our mountain,” Ama Apte declared, her voice growing distant as she referred to the first expedition to climb Everest.
Shan sipped his tea in silence. “Kypo said his grandfather took climbers up. You knew some early climbers?”
“None of us called it climbing. Monks had gone up the mountains for centuries, not to reach new heights but to visit the gods. We called it paying homage, or said we were going to speak with the goddess. The Westerners mostly climb her because she happens to be a few feet taller than other mountains. Put a pole on the peak and they would climb that too.”