Beautiful Ghosts Read Free

is Colonel Tan’s county,” he added with a shudder, referring to the iron-fisted officer who ran the county, one of the few still under military rule.
    “No. You are at Zhoka now,” Lokesh said, as if the windswept bowl constituted a different place, a sanctuary not part of Tan’s county. “There is so much to be thankful for.”
    Jara surveyed the ruined gompa, without a single building left intact, and the frightened, impoverished group of Tibetans in the courtyard, then looked at Lokesh as if the old man were crazy. “I know what day it is,” he said, whispering again. “A man with a tea shop in town was arrested for marking this day on the calendar in his window.”
    “Then call it something else. A festival, because the monks have returned.”
    Jara swept his arm toward the ruins that filled the barren landscape. “From where? From the dead? In the country I live in monks don’t return unless the Bureau of Religious Affairs says so.”
    “Then call it a festival for the choice.”
    “Choice?”
    Lokesh gazed somberly at Jara, then at his gau. “From this day forward you can choose the place you live in.”
    The herder gave a dry, bitter laugh. As he looked at the old Tibetan, Lokesh’s features became distant, as if looking past Jara’s eyes, into another part of him. The herder soberly returned the stare then tentatively raised his hand as though to touch the taller Tibetan’s white stubbled jaw, the way the others, disbelieving, had first touched the chorten.
    “You will change forever the country you live in,” Lokesh said softly, “by taking back a prayer in your gau.” As he spoke another figure in a robe appeared, a tall, graceful man with a face worn smooth as a cobblestone. Gendun, the head of Yerpa, the hidden hermitage that was home to Surya and Shan and Lokesh, looked serenely at Jara, then gazed with a sad smile at Atso’s body. “Lha gyal lo,” he said in a quiet, reverent tone toward the dead man. Victory to the gods.
    A strange excitement seemed to flash in Jara’s eyes at the sight of the lama. No one could look into Gendun’s open, serene face, and suspect subterfuge. As the lama stepped back toward the courtyard Jara slowly followed, gesturing toward the body again. “There is a still a killer out there,” he said in a tentative voice, as if arguing with himself.
    “Not here. Not today,” Lokesh said for the second time that hour.
    To Shan’s surprise, Lokesh did not follow as Jara joined his wife and children in the courtyard, but motioned Shan back toward the shadows. When they stopped a few feet from Atso’s body Lokesh turned toward the courtyard and planted his feet apart like a sentry. Shan studied him in momentary confusion, then realized that none of the other Tibetans could see Shan or Atso.
    He pushed back the broad-brimmed hat he wore then knelt by the dead man, working quickly, compiling a mental list of his discoveries. One of Atso’s hands was wrapped around a gau that hung on a worn silver chain, the fingers of the other hand entwined about a mala, a strand of prayer beads. The back of the hand with the prayer box was split open, a jagged wound that could have come from fending off a club or a rifle butt. The palms of both hands were scratched and abraided, the ends of his fingernails split and broken. At his waist a small plastic bottle half filled with water hung from a piece of rope. Pulling back the blanket, Shan exposed the left foot, revealing a tattered leather boot with a two-inch-wide band of heavy jute cord wrapped around the sole.
    In his trouser pockets Atso carried two small pouches, one of freshly picked flower heads, the other of chips of juniper wood. A small pocket sewn inside his felt vest held a tightly folded paper, a printed announcement about a free children’s health exam in the valley. On the back of the paper was inscribed the mani mantra, the prayer for compassion, in tiny cramped writing, row after row of miniscule Tibetan