The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense (5 page)

The sky darkened, and a sudden rainstorm beat against the glass. Crouching in front of the urn, Jac sat on her heels and listened to the drops hitting hard on the roof and pounding the windows. Usually she was impatient to get to the next appointment. To change the scenery. Not to linger. Anything to avoid the boredom that invited excess contemplation of the wrong kind. But here, in this crypt, once a year, Jac felt a kind of sick relief in giving in to her fear, grief and disillusionment. Here, in this abyss, in the sad blue light, she could just be still and care too much instead of not at all. She could allow herself the visions. Be frightened by them but not fight them. Just once a year. Just here.

When I was a little girl, I used to believe this light was a bridge that let me walk from the living to the dead and back again.

Jac could almost feel her mother stroking her hair as she spoke in that soft whisper she’d used when putting her to bed. Jac shut her eyes. The sound of the storm filled the silence until Audrey spoke again.

That’s what it is for us, isn’t it, sweetheart? A bridge?

Jac didn’t speak. Couldn’t. She listened for her mother’s next words but instead heard the rain and then the whine of hinges as the heavy wrought-iron and glass door opened. She turned as a gust of wet cold wind blew in. Jac saw the shadow of a man and for a moment wasn’t sure if that was real, either.

Three

NANJING, CHINA
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 9:05 P.M.

The young monk bowed his head for a moment, as if in prayer, and then lit a wooden match. His stillness and calm were almost beatific, a moment of profound inner peace. His expression hardly changed, even as he touched the lit match to his ceremonial dress, doused in kerosene. Flames, the same color as his saffron robe, engulfed him.

Xie Ping turned away from the website and looked into Cali Fong’s eyes, not surprised to see them bright with tears.

“It’s an outrage,” she whispered, her lower lip trembling. At just under five feet tall, twenty-three-year-old Cali could pass for a teenager. She seemed the most unlikely creator of her sophisticated, oversize paintings—sometimes twenty feet tall. And the passion with which she discussed human rights and artistic freedom likewise belied her tiny frame. Someone that outspoken wasn’t Xie’s smartest choice for a close friend, but he’d decided long ago that avoiding the relationship would be just as suspect as entering into it.

“You should get off the computer,” Xie said. “And don’t cry, please. Not in public.”

Although many students and teachers were discussing their feelings about the newest spate of unrest in Tibet, it could be especially dangerous for him to attract attention.

“But this is important, and—”

“Cali, I need to get back,” he said, trying to focus her. “I have a project due and am going to have to work half the night as it is. Why don’t you wipe your browser now so we can go?”

Every PC bought in China came with preinstalled Web-blocking software to ensure no one could visit the BBC, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, and blogger sites. The government claimed that the effort was instituted to ban pornography, but everyone knew it was to stop the public from getting news about democracy, Tibet or members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Surfing politically subversive or pornographic websites was a crime, as was taking advantage of any of the ways around the internet policing.

Ways that Cali had become expert at. While she erased her history, Xie closed his eyes and traveled inside his mind to find a place of stillness and silently intoned a mantra that he’d learned when he was just six years old.

Om mani padme hum.

He did this slowly, four times, and the bustle of the internet café disappeared for the few seconds Xie allowed himself. He was more shaken up by the footage than he could afford to show Cali or—worse—anyone else who might be watching.

Cali touched his arm and brought him back to the present. “How much more tragic is this going to get before the international agencies step in?”

“They can’t step in. There are too many financial ramifications. They all owe us too much money. China holds everyone hostage.” Xie sounded rational. He felt anything but. The travesty playing itself out in his homeland was exacerbating daily. It was time to get involved. He had no choice. Not any longer. No more hiding. No matter how hard the path ahead would be. No matter how dangerous.

Through the window, he spied a group of police in blue drab headed their way. There were regular crackdowns and searches for subversives, and he didn’t want to get caught in one. “Let’s go,” he said, standing.

“Already in the last six days, a hundred and three monks have set themselves on fire.”

“I know, Cali. I know. Let’s go.”

“A hundred and three monks,” she repeated, not being able to process the number.

He grabbed her arm. “We have to go.”

As they walked out the door, the four policemen he’d seen from the window crossed the street and headed toward the café. Safely clear of the threat, Cali asked the question that Xie had been thinking but wouldn’t voice. “How is any of this going to help that poor little boy? Will anyone ever find him? Why crack down on Order Number Five now? Didn’t they know it would just stir up more trouble? And how could they be so obvious about how they handled it? How dangerous can one little boy be?”

“When it’s a little boy like Kim? Very dangerous.”

Order Number Five was a regulation that came into effect in 2007 and gave the government the right to regulate the reincarnation of living Buddhas by requiring everyone to register in order to be reincarnated.

Approving incarnations was not the endgame. Disallowing incarnations that interfered with China’s oppression of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism was. The order required that “living Buddha permits” be registered with the state and at the same time banned any incarnations from taking place in certain delineated regions. Not surprisingly, the two most holy cities in Tibet, Xingjiang and Lhasa, were on that list.

Xie remembered his grandfather telling him about hearing the news when the present Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and head of state, had been identified in 1937. The toddler had been only two years old when he was found by a search party looking for the reincarnation of the thirteenth Lama, Thubten Gyatso, who had been Dalai from 1879, when he was three, until he died in 1933.

Their first clue as to the whereabouts of the child came to light when the head of the embalmed lama’s body turned. The corpse that had faced south was suddenly facing northeast.

Next a senior lama saw a vision of buildings and letters in the reflection of a sacred lake. These hints led them to a specific monastery in the Amdo region where monks helped them find the child.

And then they administered the final test used to reveal the veracity of a possible reincarnate: a group of objects, some belonging to the dead lama, some not, were given to the boy.

“This is mine, it’s mine,” he said as he selected only the relics that had belonged to the dead lama, ignoring the others. First prayer beads, then the dead leader’s glasses.

Thirteen years later, in 1950, the Communist Party of China invaded Tibet and took control of the government. Nine years after that, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, still only twenty-four years old, fled his homeland to live in exile in India. Since then—more than fifty years later—the unresolved conflict had grown more violent. This latest incident had led to a spate of aggravated restlessness and brutality.

The action that had sparked this newest and tragic rebellion had occurred in Lhasa two weeks ago, when a three-year-old child went missing twenty-four hours after being identified as an incarnated lama.

Since then, there had been rioting in the streets of all of Tibet’s cities, and heavy-handed and merciless police tactics had pushed the situation into a full-scale crisis more violent than any since the horrific protests and killings during the 2008 Olympics.

“This is the same thing that happened before, isn’t it?” Cali asked.

“Yes, almost exactly.”

More than twenty years before, days after a four-year-old Tibetan child was identified as the new Panchen Lama, the boy, along with his entire family, had disappeared.

For hundreds of years, the Panchen Lama helped to identify the next Dalai Lama. The Chinese government still officially claimed that boy was alive and well and was working as an engineer in Beijing. Unofficially, most people assumed that he’d been killed. Only a few held out hope that, one day, he’d resurface.

The two friends were quiet as they walked the last few blocks back to the Nanjing Arts Institute, where both were graduate students and teaching assistants.

At the entrance to the building, Xie kissed Cali good-bye on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She nodded.

He took her arm gently, speaking in a low and determined voice. “I know how upset you are, but please don’t talk to anyone about what you saw. It’s dangerous, and I want you to stay safe.”

“I wish you were just a little bit brave.”

There was so much he wanted to say. Of all the sacrifices required of him, none made him ache more than not being able to explain the truth to Cali.

“I need you to stay safe,” he repeated.

Four

SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY, NEW YORK
9:30 A.M.

Jac was shocked to see her brother standing in the doorway. It was a long trip from the Rue des Saints-Pères in Paris to a limestone mausoleum in a cemetery thirty miles outside of New York City.

“You frightened me,” she said instead of telling him how happy she was he’d come.

“I’m sorry,” Robbie said as he stepped inside. He was smiling at her in spite of her greeting.

Water dripped off the extravagant bunch of apple blossom branches he cradled in his left arm and streamed off the burl-handled umbrella that had once belonged to their grandfather. Despite the rain, he was wearing his signature handmade leather shoes. Her brother was always meticulously dressed but wore his clothes with a lack of concern. Robbie was comfortable with himself in a way that Jac had always envied. Too often she felt as if she wasn’t living in her own skin.

Like Jac, Robbie had almond-shaped light green eyes, an oval face and wavy mahogany hair, but he wore his slicked back in a ponytail. In his left ear, an emerald stud sparkled, and raindrops glinted on the platinum rings he wore on nearly all of his fingers except his thumbs. When Robbie entered a room, something magical always happened. The light took notice. The air became redolent with new smells.

They never used to fight, but that had changed in the last few months, and she hadn’t forgotten the argument they’d had on the phone three days ago—their most serious to date. She watched her brother, whose presence had filled up the small space. From the smile still on his lips, she knew he wasn’t thinking about the fight any longer. He just looked quietly pleased to see her.

She waited for him to say more. But like their father, Robbie often preferred to communicate with gestures rather than words. It sometimes frustrated her as much as it had Audrey. Jac glanced over at the marble bench. The apparition was gone. Had Robbie chased Audrey away? She looked back at her brother.

Jac used to resent that of the two of them, she was merely handsome, while Robbie was beautiful. They had similar features, but his were too refined for a man, and hers, she felt, were slightly too coarse for a woman. Looking at him was like looking into a mysterious mirror and seeing another version of herself. Their androgyny, she thought, made them closer to each other than most brothers and sisters. That and their shared tragedy.

“I’m surprised you came,” she finally said. Instead of being glad that Robbie was here now, she was resenting all the times he’d left her to do this alone. “Aren’t you the one who always tells me that we shouldn’t commemorate the anniversary of anyone’s death? That you don’t even believe Maman is really dead?”

“Oh, Jac, of course I believe she’s dead. Of course I do. The mother we had is gone. But what I believe . . . what I know . . . is that her spirit isn’t gone and never will be.”

“It’s a charming sentiment,” she said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “It must be comforting to have such a life-affirming belief system.”

For a few seconds, he searched her eyes, trying to communicate something that she couldn’t read. Then Robbie walked over to her, bent down, and gently kissed her on the forehead. “I thought I’d keep you company. It’s always a sad day, isn’t it?”

Jac closed her eyes. It was a relief to have her brother here. She took his hand and squeezed. It was hard to stay angry at Robbie for long.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Robbie spoke to her in French, and Jac automatically responded in the same language. Both were bilingual—with an American mother and a French father—but she preferred English, and he, French. For better, but mostly for worse, she was her mother’s daughter, and he was his father’s son.

“Fine.”

She’d never told him about hearing their mother’s voice, though for most of her life she’d shared everything else with him. Despite being so different, they’d always been desperately connected, the way children of damaged parents can be.

Robbie tilted his head again, and Jac saw the doubt in his eyes. He didn’t believe her, but she knew he wasn’t going to press her. It wasn’t her brother’s style to push. He was the patient one. The calm one. The one who never argued.

Or at least he had been until recently.

Jac was fourteen and Robbie was eleven when Audrey died. The next year was the lost year, when her delusions had become even more serious and she’d been shuffled from doctor to doctor, first diagnosed as delusional by one, then as schizophrenic by another. Finally, she’d gone to a clinic in Switzerland that did help, and a year later, she emerged almost whole. After that, at fifteen, she’d come to live in America with her mother’s sister and her husband, while Robbie had stayed in Paris with their father. But every summer, brother and sister each traveled to Grasse in the south of France and spent twelve weeks together at their grandmother’s house, where their bonds were renewed.