Neon Lotus (18 page)

He raised
one eyebrow. “You have no idea?”

“I told you
before—”

“'You have
the most unusual green eyes, Sonam Gampo.”

She
stiffened, touching her face. Sometime in the night she had lost her tinted
lenses. “My grandmother also had green eyes,” she said quickly. “Unusual but
not impossible.”

“I didn’t
say that. A mistake that many Chinese make—and I sometimes must distinguish
myself from my people in certain respects—is to take the attitude that the
Tibetans are a single race of people, completely pure, descended entirely from
one bloodline down through the ages. The thought of such purity terrifies them,
because it makes the Tibetan claim to this land seem all the more potent. At
the same time, it comforts them that they may one day control this ancient
strain and ensure that it never gains power. These are all mistaken notions,
yet they have a strong influence. I see the fruit of such prejudices every day.”

She finished
her soup. Her fascination with Mr. Fang had just exceeded its previous bounds.

“But you
don’t subscribe to them yourself?” she asked.

“Hardly. If
I become interested in the surface of a thing, I try to learn more about its
inner nature. I have studied a great deal of this land’s history—and not merely
the approved People’s texts, which class Tibetan history as ‘legend.’”

“You sound
like a bit of a renegade, Mr. Fang.”

He smiled,
obviously pleased. “I will take that as a compliment, coming from a Tibetan.”

She laughed
aloud. “And you should. We are a great race of rebels—”

“But not a
pure race, Sonam. Your green eyes might once have looked out upon the Aegean
sea from the skull of one of your ancestors. This land has had many visitors
over the ages. It has always had a special appeal to the people of this
planet.”

“No one
loves it like a Tibetan,” she said.

“Perhaps
true. But who, now, is Tibetan? First generation? Second? Third? Do you include
people of Chinese descent, or only of that fabled pure bloodline?
^”

She chewed
slowly, feeling as if there were a sadness in him, some hidden thing that he
was close to revealing. She did not wish to offend him and lose his trust; nor
did she wish to compromise herself and betray her cause.

“I love
Tibet,
^”
he whispered, surprising her with the urgency in his voice.
“I sought this post when I was young, worked hard for it. I always wanted to
live in this country, to see it with my own eyes. I wish that I could have been
born here. As it is, the climate sometimes gives me great difficulty. But I
won't go home to Beijing. As long as I can do some good here, I will stay.
^”

She lowered
her eyes, afraid that he would see through her. She nodded, however, to show
that she was listening.

“It makes me
sad,” he went on, “to know that I will never be a Tibetan, no matter how long I
stay. My own people discourage such thinking—not to mention talk of such
things. And no Tibetan would have me. There is such an old enmity between the
Chinese and the Tibetans. It is a purely political thing, from my perspective,
born of ruthless social pressures and the momentum of campaigns that have long
since expended their energy. Yet this enmity has us in its grip. Neither side
can release its hold on the other. I fear it may be a battle to the death. I
fear that your people are too few and too weak to survive. Every day I do what
I can, but it seems like so little. I am so alone here—so alone with my . . .” He
chuckled. “My beliefs.
^”

She glanced
up and realized that he was not even looking at her now. He was staring at his
own hands, turning them over and over in his lap, rubbing them together as he
shook his head.

Was it a
trick? Dare she trust him?

There was no
easy way to tell, but she knew that she must do something—make some gesture,
say some word. She could push him away or draw him near. A misjudgment might be
deadly. But to do nothing . . . that would be the worst crime of all.

She put out
her hand and touched him on one wrist. “Mr. Fang, why do you tell me this?
^”

“Because you
are the one,” he replied.

For that,
she had no answer. She kept her face blank, her breathing steady and even. It
was easy to keep up a look of incomprehension because she could not quite
believe what he had said.

“You are the
one, aren’t you?”

“The one?”
she repeated.

He nodded.
“Yes. The Great Mother. I could not believe my great fortune when you fell into
my hands. Yet I felt it the instant I saw you.”

The hair
prickled on the back of her neck as she thought of the danger to her friends.

“I was
terrified that you had come to some harm inside the city.”

“Why?” she
asked.

It seemed
pointless to deny his suspicions, but she did not intend to confirm them
either.

“Because I
wished to tell you that you are not alone; your struggle will not go unaided.
Because there is something of the spirit of Tibet incarnate in you, and I felt
that if I could speak to you, I would be able to speak to the soul of the land
itself.”

His lips
trembled, his eyes flooded. She caught his hands and he put them on her cheeks,
sobbing now—but silently, as if he were aware how strange this would have
sounded to anyone passing outside the tent.

“I love
you,” he said.

She knew
that he was talking not to Marianne Strauss, but to something deep inside her.
She felt a moonwhite stirring in her soul; a thousand hands turned their palms
outward; a thousand and twenty-three eyes looked through her two, reading this
man’s soul.

“Don’t be
afraid,” she said. “Wipe your eyes.”

“Your nomad
friends may be in trouble. They are not truly your family, are they? I know
that you come from outside Tibet.”

She gritted
her teeth, worried that he knew so much. She no longer feared him, however.

“How do you
know these things?” she asked.

He dried his
face on a sleeve. “I snoop,” he said. “I take bits and pieces from secret
files. I am enough of a bureaucrat to cover my tracks; I know how to vanish in
a crowd.”

“And these
secret files—whose are they? How much do your superiors know?”

“I wish I
could tell you. I think their information is fragmentary—they lack the proper
objectivity to put all the pieces in order. Their prejudices blind them to the
obvious.”

“One thing
is certain,” she said. “Others know of me.”

He nodded.
“You are feared as widely as you are revered. Governor Rato has declared you an
evil remnant of Tibet’s feudal past. Rumors that you would one day enter the
country have been common for years.”

“I am
grateful for this information,” she said. “You must understand that I don’t
dare tell you anything about myself—beyond confirming what you already know.”

He raised a
hand. “It’s better that I don’t know, for your sake. I feel transported, simply
knowing that I was right about you. I hope that I can do something, however
small, to help you.”

She
hesitated to ask what he had in mind, but he volunteered it a moment later.

“I filed a
report,” he said, “in which I stated that you were discovered riding in the
direction of the Mines of Joy on an errand to purchase parts for technical
repairs. We intercepted you, searched and interrogated you thoroughly,
corroborated your story, and found no reason to suspect anything else. I then
filed a request to return you to your family without delay. I am expecting a
reply in the morning. If your disappearance was the main reason your people are
being held suspended, then my reports should lift all suspicion from them. I
fully expect my request to be granted.”

“Unless your
superiors truly know who I am, in which case you will have put yourself into
great danger.”

“I am
confident that is not the case. If they suspected you were already in Tibet,
Rato himself would have come to investigate. But after years of treating all
Tibetan activities with equal suspicion, even actions of great importance tend
to be treated as routine infractions. There was the matter of an unidentified
aircraft several weeks ago; I thought it highly intriguing, yet as far as I can
tell no one else suspected that you were in that plane. Generalized paranoia
blinds my superiors to specific insight.”

“You must be
quite sure of yourself to risk so much,” she said.

“Even if I’m
wrong, I believe it worth the risk.”

He grinned,
his good humor restored, and suddenly rose to his feet. “May I show you
something?”

“Certainly.”

She followed
him out of the tent. It was dark now and the wind had come up. Clouds covered
the stars. A ruddy glow danced behind the black wall of the city, where an
occasional spotlight stabbed the sky. He led her across the clerical camp to
another small tent.

Inside, a
single candle burned, its flame flickering in the depths of a black jar that
rested on a battered metal chest. Behind the candle was a narrow, locked
cabinet. Mr. Fang took a ring of keys from his pocket.

“In Lhasa,
where I live, I have a large collection of forbidden things. They are, not
uncommonly, found in the possession of the wealthier administrators; in fact,
the rarer antiques are prized for their monetary value. My traveling
collection, however, is quite unorthodox. That’s why I’ve disguised it as an
ordinary toiletry case.”

The key
twisted in the lock. Crouching, she leaned closer as he swung the two doors
open.

The candle
flame lit the shallow recesses of the cabinet, playing over the polished bronze
body of a small four-armed image of Chenrezi.

“This is my
shrine,” he said. “As I say, it is quite irregular. In fact, for someone in my
position, it is illegal. It’s not expensive enough to qualify as a collector’s
item.”

“Mr. Fang,”
she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for showing me this. You
have opened my eyes in more ways than you know.”

He looked at
her, perhaps not understanding completely.

Dhondub would say he is the enemy
,
she
thought.

He is Chinese
.

But China has shown me another face.

***

From the
air, the nomads’ tents looked like bits of tattered cloth caught in the rock
and scrub of the plains. They had reached the mouth of the long valley before
making camp, and here the Chinese must have intercepted them and ordered them
to stay until they could track down the lost “Sonam Gampo.”

The story
Mr. Fang had filed with the authorities must have closely matched the one given
by Dhondub Ling. Permission to return and an escort had been granted immediately.

Half a dozen
nomads stood at the edge of the camp, watching the plane come down. When she saw
their faces, she realized that they hadn’t been forewarned of her return. No
doubt they expected this to be yet another interrogation. She did not see Dr.
Norbu, but Jetsun Dorje stood at Dhondub’s side; the two men seemed to be vying
for the most hostile expression.

When the
plane touched down, Marianne pushed the door open and rushed out ahead of her
escort. Remembering her daughterly disguise, she ran first to Dhondub, whose
face had gone pale with shock and disbelief.

As she threw
her arms around him, Jetsun Dorje let out a whoop and pulled her away from the
chieftain. His embrace nearly crushed her.

“I don’t
believe it,” Dhondub said. She heard him calling the others from the tents.

In the
meantime, Jetsun kissed her on the cheeks and ears, pressed his face into her
hair, and squeezed her until she gasped. There was nothing brotherly about his
attentions, nor any lingering trace of the remote courtesy he had begun to
show her.

“Marianne,”
he whispered. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. And Dr. Norbu! He’s been
sick because of you. Why did you do it?”