He leaned against one of the old wooden dormitory buildings and slid down the wall to settle onto the earth. Other Tibetans were scattered around the grounds, some saying their beads, others just basking in the sun, perhaps taking a rest from prayers in the lhakang. He watched the windows of the two large buildings. In the center of the floor above the dining hall a man in a white shirt appeared periodically, sometimes looking outside, usually standing a few minutes with his back to the glass. Two pairs of men in white shirts patrolled the grounds, talking energetically, like monks engaged in religious debate. A man in an apron sat on the steps that led to the kitchen, holding a broom upright. Shan studied him. He was younger, more athletic-looking, than the other kitchen workers. His apron was unstained and he seemed little interested in helping with the kitchen labors.
A line of monks streamed out of the rear of the first building, each carrying a small notebook. The wind caught a piece of paper extending from one of the notebooks, sending it tumbling down to the ground. Without thinking Shan rose and grabbed it for the monk. It was a piece of lined paper. Imprinted at the top were the words Feudalism is Regression, and below were handwritten notes, in Chinese. He extended the paper to the monk, who took it from him with an awkward smile.
Out of the corner of his eye Shan spotted a similar piece of paper, crushed and trodden, half-buried in the earth. Something about the peculiar way it was folded drew him to it, and as he bent to lift it from the ground his heart leapt. It was a spirit horse.
He stuffed the paper into his shirt and ventured closer to the kitchen. A worker appeared at the door with a mug of tea for the man sitting outside, who stood and shouldered the broomstick like a rifle. The Tibetan with the tea cowered, and scurried away as the man laughed and took the tea.
Shan wandered the grounds, trying to keep an eye on the central building without appearing conspicuous. In front of him a middle-aged dropka woman gave an exclamation of joy and bent to retrieve another of the paper horses where it had blown against the building. She held the horse in the wind, laughing as it fluttered like a tiny banner.
At the center window on the top, the howler peered out again. Fearing he would be noticed, Shan bent his head and joined a group of dropka, trying to will them to move slower as they passed the building. He chanced another look at the second floor, as they passed the end of the building, studying the distance to the ground. A young man might be able to lower himself from a window at the top and run away. But Lokesh would probably break a bone.
In the front courtyard preparations for the next day's festival began in earnest. A huge flag of the People's Republic had been hung on the front of the administrative building, suspended by ropes from two upper windows. The ropes were not secured inside but on a series of small hooks he had not noticed before, small iron hooks that ran along the sills of all the windows. On traditional Tibetan holidays special thangkas would have been hung from such hooks. At some large gompas special towers had been built solely for the purpose of displaying holy paintings on such occasions. But Chairman Khodrak had chosen a banner of a different kind.
"Special guests," Gyalo reported excitedly when Shan reached the purba truck. "One of the workers in the kitchen was at the archery range. An old man, a carpenter, knew him, and he learned that they have been preparing meals for two special guests who are confined in one of the rooms upstairs." Shan held out the paper horse for Nyma and the others to see, and explained how the military men in white shirts were watching over the second building.
"Who takes the meals?" Shan asked.
"The guards," the monk said in a disappointed voice. "But the guards won't go in to take out the night soil. They want Tibetans to carry it."
They joined in the preparations that afternoon, Shan with his hat pulled low, helping to raise ropes with paper streamers from the administrative building to the wall, then carrying juniper wood to the large samkangs that flanked the gate inside the wall. A loudspeaker announced that the chairman had graciously suspended the rules for the prayer wheel and furthermore the chairman had decided to allow the visiting families to take as much of the yak dung as they might carry, even to the extent of taking loads to their home hearths. Shan greeted the news with a grin, and spent most of the afternoon carrying baskets of the dung with the Tibetans, his face covered in its dark dust, the guards moving away from him as he approached. He passed the kitchen building half a dozen times before he found the guard at the steps bent in slumber, and he paused, futilely watching for movement at the upstairs corner windows. When Shan reported that the guard was napping, Gyalo, who had not dared to enter the gompa since deserting it, picked up a handful of the dung from Shan's basket and powdered his own face with it, then joined Shan with an empty basket. He wore a heavily patched vest, and a necklace of the blue beads favored by many of the dropka, with a broad-brimmed hat that kept his face in shadow.
As they reached the kitchen door, where the guard still slept, the old Tibetan carpenter appeared on the steps and gestured for them to follow him into the kitchen. He pointed to two buckets of fresh water by the inner door, then whispered to a middle-aged Tibetan man in an apron, who picked up a mug of tea and quickly arranged half a dozen sweet biscuits on a plate. They followed the kitchen attendant, each carrying a bucket of water, through the empty dining hall, and up the stairs at the center of the building. The attendant greeted the guard affably, extended the cookies toward him, and nodded Shan and Gyalo toward the door at the end of the corridor over the kitchen, the only door on the hallway that was closed.
There was no lock on the door. They stepped inside quickly and Gyalo closed the door behind them. A small table sat in the center of the chamber, with a pad of paper and two pencils. Two figures lay on straw pallets leaning against the wall under the windows.
"Lha gyal lo!" Gyalo whispered.
Tenzin was in the lotus position, his face drained of strength and color, doing his beads with a weary helpless expression. Lokesh was beside him, his eyes closed, his legs sprawled in front of him, under a blanket. Tenzin stared uncertainly at them, studying Shan slowly, as if he had a hard time focusing his eyes. When he recognized Shan anguish filled his face. "They don't understand," he groaned. "They refuse to believe I have left that life behind. They-"
Shan raised his palm to silence Tenzin. "I know, that man suffocated, and a new man was born."
"But I caused so much sorrow," Tenzin said, and he seemed about to weep. "You can't be caught… Not you, too. There're guards," he warned."You will be-"
Shan cut him off by gesturing to Lokesh. "What happened to him?" he asked as he studied Lokesh's slumped figure. His friend's hands clutched his beads. He seemed asleep, his breath making a dry rattling sound each time he exhaled.
Tenzin gestured weakly toward Lokesh's left foot. "They had a big clamp," he moaned. "A carpenter's clamp. But that Tuan is no carpenter." He looked up at Shan with a forlorn expression. "I never knew men could do such things," he croaked, with the voice of a much older man. "They made me watch."
Shan lifted the blanket over Lokesh's foot. The ankle was swollen and purple. Something was broken inside it.
"Lokesh didn't say anything, just did his mantra as they turned the clamp. He warned me before it happened that they would do something to him, and that I should not worry, that I should understand it was just a test of faith, nothing more, and he was used to such tests. But the test was for both of us he said."