Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (36 page)

“Perhaps my father will honor us by
reincarnating in our first son,” said Prince Dil Bahadur.

Pema's teacup rattled in her hand, betraying her emotion. She was wearing silk brocade, soft leather shoes, and gold jewelry at her wrists and ears, but her head was bare because she was proud of having contributed her beautiful hair to a cause that was just. Her example helped the other four girls with shaved heads escape a complex over being bald. The long, hundred and fifty-foot strand they had woven from their hair had been placed as an offering before the Great Buddha in the palace, where people made pilgrimages to see it. There had been so much talk about the girls, and they had been seen so often on television, that a kind of mass hysteria had resulted, and hundreds of girls had shaved their own heads in imitation. Dil Bahadur had to appear in person on the screen to assure his people that the kingdom did not need such extreme expressions of patriotism. Alexander commented that in the United States shaved heads were fashionable, along with tattoos and noses, ears, and belly buttons pierced to display rings, but no one believed him.

They were all sitting in a circle on cushions on the floor, drinking
chai
, the sweet, aromatic tea of India. They tried to swallow bites of an inedible chocolate cake the nuns who were the palace cooks had invented to honor the foreign visitors. Tschewang, the royal leopard, had stretched out beside Nadia, completely relaxed. Following the death of the king, its master, the handsome feline had been depressed. For several days it hadn't wanted to eat, until Nadia convinced the great cat that it was the leopard's responsibility to guard Dil Bahadur.

“As my honorable master Tensing left to go fulfill his mission in the Valley of the Yetis, he gave me something for you,” Dil Bahadur said to
Alexander.

“For me?”

“Not exactly for you, but for your honorable mother,” the new king replied, handing Alexander a small wooden box.

“What is it?”

“A dragon dropping.”

“A what?” Alexander, Nadia, and Kate asked in unison.

“It has the reputation of being a very potent medicine. Possibly if you dissolve it in a bit of rice liquor and give it to her, your honorable mother might be cured of her illness,” said Dil Bahadur.

“How can I ask my mother to swallow such a thing?” cried Alex, offended.

“Possibly it would be better not to tell her what it is. It is petrified. Which is not, I believe, the same as fresh excrement . . . In any case, Alexander, it has magical powers. A small piece saved me from the daggers of the Blue Warriors,” Dil Bahadur explained, pointing to the tiny rock hanging from a leather cord around his neck.

Kate could not help rolling her eyes, and a mocking smile danced briefly on her lips, but Alexander, moved, thanked his friend for the gift and put it in his shirt pocket.

“When the helicopter went up in fire, exploded, Golden Dragon melted. Very serious. Our people believe golden statue keeps borders safe for us. Many years it defends our borders and keeps our nation prosperous,” said General Kunglung.

“Perhaps it isn't the statue but the wisdom and prudence of your rulers that has kept the nation safe,” Kate replied. She surreptitiously offered her chocolate cake to the leopard, who sniffed it, wrinkled its muzzle with distaste, and went back to lie beside Nadia.

“How can we make people understand that young King Dil Bahadur is good man—is honorable man, strong even without the sacred
dragon?” asked the general.

“With all respect, honorable General, possibly your people will have another statue before long,” said the writer, who finally had learned to speak as the courtesy of the country required.

“Does the honorable Little Grandmother wish to explain what she is saying?” Dil Bahadur interrupted.

“Possibly a friend of mine can resolve the problem,” said Kate, and went on to explain her plan.

After a few hours' battle with the primitive telephone company of the Forbidden Kingdom, the writer had succeeded in speaking directly to Isaac Rosenblat in New York City, and had asked him if it would be possible for him to craft a dragon similar to the one that was destroyed, based on four Polaroid photographs, some rather fuzzy video film, and a detailed description given by the bandits of the scorpion sect, who were hoping to please the nation's authorities.

“Are you asking me to make a statue out of gold?” Isaac Rosenblat shouted from the other side of the planet.

“Yes, Isaac. More or less the size of a dog. Plus, set it with several hundred precious stones, including diamonds, sapphires, emeralds—and, of course, a pair of identical star rubies for the eyes.”

“And who, for God's sake, is going to pay for all this?”

“A certain collector who has an office very near yours, Isaac,” replied Kate, howling with laughter.

The writer was very proud of her plan. She had had a special recorder sent from the United States, one that was not sold commercially but that she had obtained thanks to her contacts with a CIA agent with whom she had become friends while reporting in Bosnia. With that gadget she had been able to listen to the miniaturized tapes
Judit Kinski had hidden in her handbag. They contained the information needed to identify the client called the Collector. Kate intended to use that evidence to trap him. She would leave him alone only if he replaced the lost statue; it was the least he could do to repair the harm that had been done. The Collector had taken precautions to prevent his telephone calls from being intercepted, but he didn't suspect that each of the agents the Specialist had sent to close their deal had taped the negotiations. For Judit, those tapes were life insurance she could use if things became ugly. That was why she carried them with her at all times—until she had lost her handbag in the struggle with Tex Armadillo. Kate Cold knew that the second wealthiest man in the world would not allow his connection with a criminal organization, which included kidnapping the monarch of a peaceful nation, to appear in the press, and that he would have to give in to her demands.

Kate's plan caught the court of the Forbidden Kingdom off guard.

“Perhaps it would be wise for the honorable Little Grandmother to discuss the matter with the lamas. Her plan is well intentioned, but possibly the course she means to follow is slightly illegal,” Dil Bahadur suggested amiably.

“Perhaps it is not, shall we say, legal, but the Collector deserves no better. Leave the matter to me, Majesty. In this case I am fully prepared to darken my karma with a little blackmail. And by the way, if it is not inappropriate, may I ask Your Majesty what will happen to Judit Kinski?” Kate asked.

The woman had been found, unconscious and stiff with cold, by one of the parties of soldiers General Kunglung had sent to search for her. She had wandered through the mountains for days, lost and hungry, until her feet were
frostbitten and she could go no farther. The cold made her sleepy, and she had rapidly lost her desire to live. Judit had abandoned herself to her fate with a kind of secret relief. After so much danger and greed in her life, the temptation of death seemed sweet. In her brief moments of lucidity it was not her past triumphs that came to mind but the serene face of Dorji, the king. What was the reason for his stubborn presence in her memory? She had never loved him. She had pretended to because she needed him to give her the code to the golden dragon, nothing more. She did, she admitted to herself, admire him. That gentle man had made a profound impression on her. She thought that under different circumstances, or if she had been a different woman, she would have inevitably fallen in love with him. But that hadn't happened, she was sure. Which was why she was surprised that the king's spirit stayed with her in that icy place where she awaited death. The sovereign's placid, caring eyes were the last thing she saw before she slipped into darkness.

The patrol found her just in time to save her life. As they spoke, Judit was in the hospital, where they were keeping her sedated after amputating several fingers and toes that had been badly frostbitten.

“Before he died, my father told me not to sentence Judit Kinski to prison. I want to offer the woman the chance to improve her karma, and evolve spiritually. I will send her to spend the rest of her life in a Buddhist monastery on the border with Tibet. The climate is harsh, and the place is isolated, but the nuns are, as you say, saintly. I've been told that they get up before sunrise, spend the day meditating, and eat nothing but a few grains of rice.”

“And you think that Judit will gain wisdom there?” asked Kate, smiling sarcastically and
exchanging glances with General Myar Kunglung.

“That depends on her alone, honorable Grandmother,” the prince replied.

“May I ask Your Majesty please to call me Kate? That's my name.”

“It will be a privilege to call you by name. Perhaps our honorable grandmother Kate, her valiant photographers, and my friends Nadia and Alexander will want to return to this humble kingdom where Pema and I will always welcome you,” said the young king.

“You bet!” exclaimed Alexander, but an elbow from Nadia reminded him of his manners, and he added; “Although possibly we do not deserve the generosity of Your Majesty and his worthy bride, perhaps we will be sufficiently bold to accept such an honorable invitation.”

Everyone burst out laughing, unable to help themselves, even the nuns who were ceremoniously serving tea, and little Borobá, who started excitedly leaping around, tossing pieces of chocolate cake into the air.

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Interview with Isabel Allende
by Eithne Farry

Author Photograph © William Gordon

J
ANUARY
8
TH
is always an auspicious day for Isabel Allende. She confides: “I get up very early and I meditate, and then I do a little ceremony that's becoming more and more complicated. I burn sage, light a candle.” There is a delicate pause and then the highly acclaimed author, whose work has been translated into at least twenty-seven languages, lets out a bark of laughter. “You know, that kind of New Age bull!”

And that's the way the interview goes. Moments of seriousness and introspection are undone with a brash statement, a flash of self-deprecating humor, a quick-fire bit of emotional honesty to help the conversation along. Isabel talks about her love of words, her family, her “outsiderness,” and her fondness for makeup and “very high heels”: “They make me feel four inches taller, which is good when you are only five feet tall.” And she talks very seriously and very intensely about her work, about the need “to be alone, for sometimes ten or fourteen hours a day. I need to be aware of memory, to sit in the quiet and recall all the details and see how they connect.”

For Isabel, writing is an almost magical process, and January 8th is always the day she chooses to sit down to work on a new book. “I'm always a little scared that maybe it won't work, that this time it won't happen. But I've been writing for twenty-five years now, and I've learned that if you have patience the words will come.” This tradition started with
The House of the Spirits
—the debut that catapulted Isabel into the literary limelight and which began as a letter to her dying Chilean grandfather. “I started writing a spiritual letter to him on the 8th January, 1981, to tell him that people only die when you forget them and that I would never forget him. But I soon realized that he would never read it, and that somehow it was turning itself into a book.”

It was a particularly poignant time for Isabel. She was living in exile in Venezuela following the 1973 coup in Chile and was unable to return home. “You know, because of all that, it is very hard for me to write a story about normal people who have normal lives sheltered by the establishment. My characters are marginal—people who have either come to a new place and don't know the rules, or they are different and therefore they are not accepted. So that's the kind of people I am interested in—the people on the fringes of society—and those are the stories I write.” She adds: “I always write from the perspective of the outsider because that is what I feel I am. Even when I write about Chile, I am an outsider because I have not lived there for many years. I am different now, I have changed, the country has changed, and I don't fit in. But I don't really fit in anywhere so it's fine, I'm used to it.”

She has lived in America for twenty years and has fallen in love with Marin County, California, though she still holds on tightly to her Chilean roots. “I look Chilean. I cook, dream, write, and make love in Spanish. My books have an unmistakable Latin American flavor.” She continues: “When I speak English, I am a different person. In Spanish I am funny. I'm smarter too.” She regrets leaving her homeland, relatives, and friends, but believes that being an exile made her the writer she is today. “It forced me to do things that I would never have done. I had to develop strengths that I didn't know I was capable of. It was traumatic, but it made me strong.”