white, head bent low, unable to control the dry sobs that wracked his chest. The day that had begun so reverently, so serenely, had turned into a waking nightmare. Jamyang had not simply died, he had killed himself, a grave sin for the devout. The old convent that had become a symbol of hope for the battered Tibetans had been turned into a butcher’s ground, and was in the hands of the knobs.
Jamyang had died. Then the nun and two men had died. No, he forced himself to admit, the bodies he had seen had been dead at least four hours. Those at the convent had died first. A new wave of despair swept over Shan as he considered the horrific possibility that Jamyang had done the killing then had been driven to suicide by his guilt. He frantically tried to reconstruct the day, hour by hour. The murders had occurred perhaps two hours before they had seen Jamyang on the slope chasing the thief. He recalled now that Jamyang’s appearance there had been unexpected, even perplexing. If he had been chasing the limping thief all the way from his shrine the lama should have caught him long before reaching the slope.
Shan climbed out of the truck and stepped to the ledge where Jamyang had lingered, strangely emotional, hours before. Shan had thought he had stopped to gaze on the sacred mountain, but there were many overlooks that afforded a view of the mountain. What made this one unique was that it also overlooked the old convent. Jamyang had asked whether Shan could see signs of visitors there. No, a voice inside shouted, it was impossible. The lama had spoken prayers, had prostrated himself before the mountain, and gone back to clean the offerings. Shan had tried to ignore the melancholy tone in his words. Jamyang had been saying farewell to the deities. He had somehow known about the murders.
Lokesh was alone with the lama’s body when Shan reached the hut, sitting at Jamyang’s head, still intoning the words of the death rite. He fed the coals in the small brazier and made tea, then placed a cup at his friend’s side, dropped some juniper on the brazier, and waited.
When at last the old Tibetan paused in his recitation, he had trouble rising, as if his grief were too big a burden. Shan helped him to his feet and handed him his tea. The hot brew revived Lokesh, and as he sipped it he cocked his head this way and that at the dead man, as if listening for something from Jamyang. He was, like Shan, still totally perplexed about what had happened at the shrine.
“We can’t stay with him here for three days,” Shan said, referring to the traditional period observed by most Tibetans for the rites. “There are police in the valley. There will be many more.”
Lokesh nodded solemnly. “Shepherds were here.” His voice was dry as sticks. “They will return with horses and a mule before midnight. It is nearly a day’s ride to the bone flats,” he said, meaning the clearing secreted high in the mountains where the ragyapa, the traditional flesh cutters, readied bodies for consumption by the vultures. The ancient tradition of sky burial, reviled by the government, had, like so many other Tibetan practices, been pushed into the shadows.
“You must go with them,” Shan said. “Stay up there to finish the rites.”
But Lokesh was not listening. He was wiping at the bullet hole in Jamyang’s forehead. “It isn’t the way of things,” the old Tibetan said, wiping again, watching the wound expectantly. “We should send for some of the wise ones. They would know how to call him out.”
Shan studied his old friend, who had been an official in the Dalai Lama’s government before the Chinese invasion. Lokesh communicated more in not speaking than any man he knew, and when he did speak it often seemed to be in riddles. As he watched Lokesh cup some of the fragrant juniper smoke and hold it over the bullet hole he finally understood. The old Tibetans believed that when a man died his soul lingered inside the lifeless husk,
Heidi Hunter, Bad Boy Team