“Tibet should be for Tibetans,” Shan declared. “If my leaving improved the chances of Tibetans achieving their own country again I would pack my bag tomorrow.”
The words hung in the air. Kypo stepped in front of his daughter as if to protect her, nervously watching his mother.
“Easy for you to say,” Ama Apte replied. “Just words.”
Shan returned the woman’s steady gaze then looked down at the packed earth floor between his feet, fighting an unexpected feeling of melancholy. “In the yeti factory,” he stated, each word like a spasm of pain, “my son is a prisoner. If I cannot find the truth of the killings by the day after tomorrow they will use his brain for a medical experiment.”
Not even the goat moved.
“Jesus, Shan,” Yates gasped. “You never. . ” His words drifted away.
Kypo uttered a curse under his breath. His daughter clutched his leg, pressing her head into his hip.
“It is time for the truth,” Shan said, gazing pointedly at Ama Apte. “It is time for all the truth. No fortunetelling. No dice. No hiding in the future or behind the fates. You were searching Megan Ross’s tent at the base camp. You didn’t find what you wanted.”
“You don’t know that,” the woman replied in a brittle voice.
Shan reached inside his shirt, extracted the notebook and dropped it on an empty stool. “This is what you wanted.”
Ama Apte sighed, her eyes wide as she stared at Megan Ross’s journal. “We shall have tea.”
As the astrologer stepped to the doorway to work her churns, Shan scanned the last few entries in the notebook. Anticipation was in the words, even excitement, starting with a visit to a particular curve in the mountain road.
Nathan says it is all too dangerous but he showed me how to rig the site so no one would have to be there. He must think I am some kind of engineer. Began to lay out the new route up the North Col. Nathan wants a private route up, so we won’t keep running into the other expeditions. When Tenzin arrives we will start scouting.
Next came a poem about mountains in the moonlight, like silver steps to heaven, then sketches of birds and a hairy seated figure that might have been a meditating yeti. The next day brought a reference to the road, and the reason Ama Apte had been looking for the book.
Ama Apte and I walked the slope today. Bless her, she says I should not worry, that she will do this for me and the mountain, and the monks, that there will be enough moonlight for her to set it up the night before. Then, after a sketch of a ritual dagger, Tenzin arrived! followed by a matter-of-fact entry about the new route above the base camp and calculations of the number of oxygen bottles needed for the first expedition, ending with Nathan and I are insisting that every bottle be carried back down and that any customer who leaves litter on the top slopes will never climb with us again!
The last entry was short. Went up to inspect the first advance camp. I found Tenzin there alone, separated from the others by the heavy blow on the slope above. He agrees with the whole plan, will organize the sherpas to hold up a banner supporting the Compact at the minister’s picnic at Rongphu. Had to leave him before dawn to catch an unexpected ride to town. Have to ask Tsipon why we are leaving so much money in the Hong Kong accounts. I told Ama Apte we will rewrite the future of Chomolungma! They were the last words.
When he looked up, Ama Apte was staring at him, holding the hot water kettle. “She told Tenzin,” he explained. “She told him everything. It got him killed.”
Ama Apte’s eyes filled with moisture. “But he wasn’t anywhere close. He wasn’t going to do anything but hold up a banner.”
It was Yates who explained. “There was another person who knew, an invisible one who couldn’t leave Tenzin alive to say he had used Megan’s plan as a cover for murder.”
The fortuneteller said no more until she had handed her visitors mugs of tea. “Let us go to the yeti factory,” she announced. “Let us find a way to rescue your son.”
Shan replied with a small, sad smile. “Thank you but no. That is something only I can do.”
“They are the new gods, you know,” she said into her cup of tea. “What they write down a thousand miles away becomes our truth, like the old lamas who once wrote our sutras. They hung a new slogan on the municipal building. The Party Is Our Buddha.”
Kypo bent to his daughter and pointed to the door.
“No,” his mother said, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “She must hear this. She has no choice but to live with the new gods. There is no going back. The old gods and the old Tibetans, all we can do is to find ways to fade away with dignity.”
Kypo’s face drained of color. He knelt and tightly embraced his daughter, as if it was his turn to be frightened.
“So is that what this is about, Aunt Ama?” Shan asked in a flat voice as he rose. “It’s your way of giving up?”
A tear ran down Ama Apte’s strong, handsome face. She bent to the kettle and poured more tea.
“Last summer, at the end of the season,” the astrologer said, “Megan came to me, and said she wanted to stay here with me for the winter. It was illegal, I told her. It would endanger Kypo, because the authorities would assume as a local climbing manager he was behind it. She didn’t argue, she just asked me to go with her up one of her mountains. A hard climb, but not one needing ropes. We were gone five days. On the last night she watched the stars for hours, like a meditation. She said the universe was different in Tibet. She said she was going to die here again.”
“Again?” Yates asked.
Ama Apte offered a sad smile. “That’s what I asked. She said she had a sudden realization on her last ascent of Chomolungma, as she stood on the summit, that she had lived here in another life.”
“You’re trying to make it appear I was involved with her, in the ambush,” Yates said after another long silence.
“No. Only I was involved, with a little help from a tarchok ghost,” Ama Apte confessed with a glance at the notebook. She did not look at Yates, just stared into one of the flickering lamps by the kettle.
“You tried to get me arrested by Public Security,” Yates accused, “by putting a robe in my trash and those snaplinks with beads under my bed.”
“Not arrested,” Shan said, “only deported.”
Ama Apte was biting her lip like an anxious girl.
“I never did anything to hurt you,” Yates said to the woman.
“You don’t understand,” the fortuneteller said, her gaze not shifting from the flame. “You could never understand. Just know it is a killing season on the mountain. Go home. Even if you try the ascent, the mountain will push you back.”
“Without the climbers,” Kypo said in a near whisper, “I can’t put food on my family’s table.”
Ama Apte replied only with her eyes, which held a sad, soulful expression that Shan saw on old lamas, the look that said the only answers that meant anything were the ones you found for yourself.
As he studied her Shan began to sense that all the mysteries, all the questions about the killings, the strange behavior of so many Tibetans had begun with the mystery of who Ama Apte really was.
“We should eat,” she announced in a new, spirited voice, and clapped her hands to rouse everyone from their trance.
The mood quickly shifted as the astrologer returned to the role of mother and grandmother, instructing Kypo to bring a larger brazier, her granddaughter to retrieve water, Shan and Yates to carry trestles and planks outside into the rear courtyard of her house for a makeshift table. They ate thick thanthuk noodles and mutton, making quiet, casual conversation, Kypo and Yates at last laying a map of Chomolungma on the table to discuss the always complicated task of staging supplies at advance camps.
Kypo’s daughter leaned on the table beside the two men, listening attentively, her eyes wide with a sense of adventure. After a few minutes Yates searched his pockets, producing a metal ballpoint pen that he presented as a gift to the girl, who accepted with blushing thanks.