The Book of Lost Fragrances

Fifty-six

Xie bowed his head and whispered his name to the Dalai Lama. He felt the venerable man’s hand under his chin. He lifted up Xie’s face, smiled brightly, and put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. His Holiness turned, whispered something to the guard closest to him. In seconds, the cadre of guards had closed ranks around them.

Suddenly the room exploded. First there was a popping sound. Not too loud. But ugly. Screams. The bodyguards tightened even more. Xie heard someone shouting his name. He peered through a sliver of space in the human shield and saw Lan rushing toward him. At first he thought she was worried. Then he saw the flash of the ceramic knife in her hand, slashing her way through the crowd.

A melee had broken out. Visitors screamed. Museum security guards shouted. Held guns up in the air. Fought to control the hysteria, to hold the crowd away from the Dalai Lama’s guards.

Xie watched as Ru, the student he’d suspected was spying on him, grabbed Lan by the hair and efficiently threw her down in one expertly executed martial arts move.

As the Dhob guards pushed Xie and the Dalai Lama toward the exit, Xie was able to look back once more. The students he’d traveled with were watching-some in shock, others in horror. Only Professor Wu was observing the scene with equanimity, his face impassive except for the single tear slipping down his weathered cheek.

Outside, along with the Dalai Lama, Xie was hustled into a waiting limousine. From the backseat, through the window, he saw the dark-haired woman with the bright green eyes who’d spoken to him. There was a red stain on her white shirt. More red-the color of the ink he used on his stamps in his calligraphy-dotting the scarf around her neck. Her skin was as white as its fabric. Ghostlike, she moved as if in a trance, following a stretcher.

She wasn’t crying, but her face was ravaged with grief.

Xie wanted to get out of the car. Talk to her. See if he could help her. Soothe her. Then he remembered the packet and her desperate plea.

Please give it to His Holiness. Please?

Xie felt strange. Not pain. Not confusion. Not fear. It seemed as if he could see further and more deeply than he’d been able to see since he was a child. When he’d remembered things that hadn’t happened to him as Xie. But before this life. When he was a ninety-year-old monk living by a waterfall in the shadow of a tall mountain. And the man he’d been before that. Remembered a whole dreamscape of beings. Past embodiments.

Reincarnation was part of the fabric of what he had been taught. But there was a difference between learning and doing. Between imagining and knowing.

As the car took off, the Dalai Lama took Xie’s hands in his and told him how glad he was to welcome his spiritual son back.

“How long it has been. How much you have suffered. But you have been brave and done well, and we’re very proud of you.”

Xie was too moved to speak.

“The last time I saw you, you were just six years old.” His Holiness smiled. “A very impetuous six, with the soul of a much more educated man than me.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I think it is.” The holy man’s smile was expansive. “Do you have something for me?”

Xie nodded. Took the packet out of his pocket. “There was a woman at the gallery; she wanted me to give you this.”

The Dalai Lama looked at it. “I’m so pleased both efforts proved a success.”

“What is it?”

“I think you already know. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Something to help you remember?”

“So it is said. You are remembering, aren’t you?”

Xie, who now, for the first time in twenty years, didn’t have to hide what he knew and felt and saw, nodded. “Are you?”

“No,” replied the Dalai Lama. “But that doesn’t worry me very much. One of us is remembering. You are. And you are enough.”