The Breath of God (14 page)

Issa's thoughts were interrupted by a baritone roar that froze him to his sleeping mat.

The merchants around him jumped from their slumber. The sounds that followed terrified the teenager. A guttural snarl clashed with the camels' roaring. When his temporary paralysis subsided, Issa sat and strained to see, but he couldn't make out the struggle. Then a noise followed that Issa hoped never to hear again: a shriek that sounded neither human nor animal. The wail pierced the crisp air and vibrated through to his bones.

Manu, the first of the merchants on his feet, grabbed a half-lit log from the fire in one hand, drew his knife in the other, and raced toward the camels. As soon as he could will his legs to move, Issa followed the other men. When they reached the roaring camels, Issa slowed, expecting to find the source of the animals' distress where they were tied, but the terrible scream originated from ahead. He heard the porters' shouts from the same direction. Confused,
Issa followed the merchants. When he pulled to a stop beside the others, his breath heaved in his narrow chest. Then an involuntary gasp caught in his lungs. His eyes locked onto a sight that would be imprinted in his memory for years to come.

Issa had never seen a tiger before, only heard tales, but he knew instantly from the faded stripes on its white coat what it was. Three of the porters waved their arms and yelled at the beast. Manu stepped into their midst. Growling, the tiger backed away from the crowd, eyeing the flaming torch in the large man's hand. Issa glimpsed what looked like a tattered log in the tiger's powerful jaws as it retreated to the desert shadows. The fur around its face appeared matted and wet. The beast had stolen something from their camp.
Will Manu retrieve it?
he wondered. But the largest merchant stood his ground, watching the tiger carry its prize to its lair in the mountains that defined the horizon. The tiger gone, Issa looked at Manu's wide, dark face, whose deep crevices seemed canyonlike in the glow from the torch. He showed none of the fear that Issa felt.

Although the danger had passed, Issa realized that the shrieks continued. He focused on the semicircle formed by the men. Then he saw the source of the inhuman cries. The fourth porter, a boy, no more than a year or two older than he, lay clutching a mangled stump just below his right hip. The rest of his leg was missing. In its place, a thick pool of blood soaked into the dirt.

Issa's stomach turned. In a moment of awful clarity, he realized that the tiger, targeting the smaller prey, must have grabbed the porter while he slept next to the camels and dragged him a short distance. The porter's leg had been torn from his body.

As abruptly as the terrible sound had begun, the porter's screams stopped; his mouth now moved wordlessly. Issa looked to Manu, who watched the scene with a grimace on his face, or could it have been a smirk? The boy needed immediate help to stop the bleeding, or he would die within minutes.
Why is his countryman just standing there?
Issa scanned the other faces in the group. No one moved.

Unable to speak from the shock of the attack, the boy began whimpering like a fox caught in a trap. His right hand, covered in blood thickened by the
dusty red dirt, grasped at the remains of his leg; his fingers searched through the torn flesh.

Issa could no longer contain his anxiety. “You've got to help him!” he pleaded in a voice that came out higher-pitched than he wanted. Speaking Greek, the common language of the traders, presented a challenge for him. Manu cocked his head in Issa's direction and raised the makeshift torch in the direction of the boy's voice. Confronted by the grimace of the large man, Issa stretched up to the full extent of his awkwardly growing frame and held Manu's gaze without blinking.

“Who are you, boy, to tell me what to do?” rumbled the voice out of the massive chest in a jumbled Greek worse than Issa's. Breaking the teenager's defiant stare, Manu glanced toward the porter. “He's just a
Shudra
. In two days' time, we pass through a village where we pick up another one.” Cutting his eyes back to Issa, his lips formed a wide smile that showcased his twisted and missing teeth.

The hollowness in Issa's gut grew. He searched the faces of the other merchants. “Will no one help this man?” he asked.

None moved.

Issa tried again. “He's traveled with us for months, carrying our bags and cleaning our camp. We cannot let him die on the side of the road like an animal.”

The merchants stared at Issa in silence, as if he were now a greater curiosity than the porter with the missing leg.
Why does no one care?
For a moment, Issa thought he recognized a glimpse of something in the faces of the three uninjured porters. Hope? But they remained uncomfortably silent.

Only the eyes of the boy, whose tear-streamed face contorted in agony, would meet his. Issa made his decision. Ripping off his tunic, he tore the right sleeve from the garment. He knelt next to the porter and placed a shaky hand on his clammy forehead. Issa's touch seemed to provide strength to the boy, and a clarity appeared in his eyes that had been absent before. “Be strong. I will help you,” Issa assured him, sounding more confident than he felt.

He had no experience in medicine, but he had once watched his father dress the broken leg of a sheep that had fallen into a ravine. Stopping the bleeding was the first priority. Next, he would have to clean the wound to
prevent the rot that would certainly kill the porter even if he were to survive the blood loss. With uncertain but determined hands, Issa wrapped his torn sleeve around the stump where the leg had been. Blood quickly soaked through the cloth with no sign of slowing. Technically this man's blood was unclean, but there was no way Issa could stop the bleeding without dirtying his hands in it. Taking a breath, he grabbed the cloth and pressed it into the bleeding flesh. Everyone in the group, except Manu, Issa noticed, jumped at the shriek that came from the dying boy. Startled but undeterred, Issa kept his hold firm.

“You will live,” he reassured his patient, although again he was not as confident as he tried to sound. The bleeding slowed, but every time Issa let go, the blood started flowing again. He didn't know how much blood a man held in his body, but too much had spilled on the ground. Then an idea came to him. He quickly removed the makeshift bandage from around the torn flesh and retied it a couple of inches above the end of the stump. After a few attempts, he perfected his tourniquet, stopping the flow of blood. The porter was now unconscious but still breathing.

Sweating from his effort, Issa gestured his blood-soaked hands at the other porters. “Bring me some wine and oil to pour on the wound.” The strength in his voice propelled one of the men to run to their supplies, returning in a minute with two flasks. Together they cleaned the wound. Issa then ripped off his other sleeve and wrapped it around the end of the stub. He admired his handiwork. The boy would live.

“Help me carry him back to the camp,” he commanded the other porters. “We must move him carefully.”

The three porters gathered around the injured boy. The one who had helped to clean the wound caught Issa's eye and smiled shyly. When they prepared to lift their patient, a baritone voice called to them, “And what happens in the morning, when we leave camp?”

Manu towered over Issa.

Issa hadn't thought that far ahead yet. He'd just saved this man's life. Certainly they could find a way to transport the porter to a village where he could recover.

Manu continued, “Anyway, what use is a one-leg
Shudra
? How will he carry our sacks?”

Confident in his rightness, Issa stood. “How can you speak of this man as if he were no more than one of your camels? He lives now. We can save him.”

“He's no better than a camel, if he cannot work.”

“He's one of your countrymen, your kin.”

“Boy, you understand nothing. This servant isn't my kin. He's nothing but a
Shudra
, the lowest caste. His place in life is to serve, to carry, to clean: to do jobs that are unfit for higher castes. I'm
Vaishya
. It's not a merchant's responsibility to care for a servant. Nor is it your concern what happens to him.” Manu leaned so close to Issa that the teenager could almost taste his foul breath. “You paid us to take you to the city of the great sages. Until we get there, keep your ideas to yourself. I've grown tired of listening to your mouth every day.”

“But he is a human!” Issa shouted, his voice cracking.

“A man who will die here in desert.”

“He will not die. I have saved him tonight and will again tomorrow.”

“We're two days' walk from the next village. How will this man get there if he cannot walk? Villagers will not care for him. He has no way to pay for food or shelter if he can't work.”

The solution came to Issa after a moment's contemplation.
Men can be so shortsighted
, he thought.
If only they would learn to open their minds
.

“Simple,” he said. “We tie him on one of the camels and divide the camel's load among us. The empty sacks,” he continued, pointing in the direction of the camp supplies, “we can use to spread the weight around. When we get to the village, I have a few silver pieces left I can give them to care for the man.”

Issa looked to the rest of the group for support. They in turn looked back and forth between him and Manu, as if watching a Roman athletic contest. Only from the porters did he sense encouragement. But Issa knew he would eventually talk sense into even these dim-witted merchants. His quick mind and quicker tongue may have brought him trouble among his teachers, but these gifts would serve him well in the world. He didn't expect the burst of laughter from his adversary.

“What do you think we are, boy? Camels?” Manu said through his guffaws. “You don't expect us to carry these supplies. Why do you think we have animals and
Shudras
?” The other merchants were now smiling along with him. “I think you've had your fun.”

A chill passed through Issa when he spotted Manu's fingers grasping the braided leather handle of his sharp blade. Then, handing the glowing log to one of the porters, who needed two hands to hold it, Manu pushed past Issa, nearly knocking the teenager off his feet.

Regaining his composure, Issa grabbed the thick shoulder of the man, who knelt beside the unconscious porter. “What do you think you are doing?” Issa asked, trying to lower his voice.

Manu's smile vanished. “I'm ending this game, boy, and then going to sleep.” He drew his knife and glared at Issa's hand on his shoulder. “If you want to keep that, you move it quickly.”

Issa withdrew his hand and searched the faces around him. They couldn't let this happen! But the other merchants only looked on with curious detachment, while the three porters gazed at the ground. Manu grabbed a fistful of the injured boy's hair, lifting his head off the ground. The porter's eyes fluttered open, and he gazed upward with grateful recognition at the teenager who saved his life. Issa struggled to fight back the nausea that rose to the back of his throat. He was helpless to prevent the inevitable.

In one efficient movement, Manu drew the long curved blade across the porter's throat, just as he might kill a lamb before a feast, or a sacrifice. Issa wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn't abandon the doomed boy's gaze, which widened to surprise as his last breath gurgled through the gash across his neck.

Manu stood, towering over the teenager. Issa's fight drained out of him, just as the life drained out of the porter. Manu said, “Starting tomorrow, you carry the
Shudra's
burden until we reach village and buy another one.” He then wiped the bloody knife clean across the side of Issa's pants before turning toward camp and settling back onto his mat to sleep.

T
HREE HOURS HAD passed since Grant had sat transfixed in the utse tower library as Kinley translated the stories of Issa. Before they left, Kinley had signaled to Jigme from the window to distract Dawa again while they made their escape. After they descended the six long flights of stairs, Kinley left to tend to the junior monks while Grant and Kristin caught a silver Land Rover taxi from the dzong into Punakha. The small town consisted of two-story wooden buildings with shop space on the ground floor and apartments on the top. With the wind blowing dust down the main street, Grant thought that Punakha appeared like an Old West town in the States, minus the tumbleweeds.

Kristin's dark hair, which earlier had been pulled back into a loose ponytail, fell freely around her shoulders. Again, he caught a whiff of her shampoo as the two hunched over his laptop in the cramped business office at her hotel, the Zangdho Pelri, the same hotel he'd stayed at before his kayaking accident. The office was nothing more than a windowless room that doubled as overflow storage for the adjacent gift shop. The screeching from the office's dial-up modem and the long minutes it took to log on to the Internet would have grated on Grant's nerves a month ago, but today he was thankful to have access to any kind of technology.

From the moment Kinley opened the first book in the dusty library, Grant's life had taken a new direction. He now better understood Kinley's Chinese parable about the man and his horse. A horrible accident had indeed turned out to be an incredible stroke of good fortune. Thoughts now raced through
his mind so quickly he barely had time to register them. He imagined the shock waves that would reverberate throughout the academic world when he released the Issa texts. After listening to Kinley's translation, Grant was confident that the books were indeed the primary sources that were used to compile the Tibetan version Notovitch had seen. But what moved Grant even more than he had expected was the richness of the stories about Issa. Although he'd read Notovitch's account many times, the stories that Kinley relayed contained a level of detail and a personalization of Issa that Grant had been unprepared for. The pressure on the Bhutanese government to allow the documents to be studied would be immense, and Grant felt confident that he would play the lead role in the project.