by Charales W. Warren
WATERS flinched as the officer across the table leant closer."Have you any more of these pictures Mr Water?" He was holding a small grey photograph of a monk.
"No, I told you, you have them all."
Over the officer’s shoulder Waters saw two men unzip his rucksack and begin pulling out his clothes.
"Please be sure we will find them Mr Water."
"My name is Waters, Waters. You have all the pictures."
The officer only grunted. He smiled a little as he crushed the photograph in his fist and dropped it. Behind him one of his men giggled. Some of Waters’s clothes had fallen on the concrete floor.
"Why do you come to China to make trouble Mr Water?"
"I didn’t, I just gave a child a photograph." For a moment he saw the little girl’s face again, the tangle of black hair, the coppery shine of her cheeks and that uncertain smile. He remembered too her clothes: a tattered jacket held together by string, and grey cotton trousers, slit front to back at the crotch.
"Hey . . ."
The soldiers had found his film. Four precious reels of diamond mountains, monasteries and the parched faces of Tibetan monks. One by one they prised open the little yellow cylinders and cast the dying snakes of film into a steel bucket.
"You didn’t have to do that." Waters heard his voice tremble.
"We do not know what you have taken pictures of Mr Water," said the officer.
"I’m just a tourist, a backpacker."
"Tibetans are not supposed to talk to tourists," said the officer, and stood up. He walked to the door and gestured at Waters’s rucksack. "You pack it now," he said. His two men threw down the last of the clothes and followed him out.
The iron door banged shut. Waters stared for a moment at the coils of film in the bucket and then walked to his bag.
"Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama." It was the tiniest of whispers and it came from around his knees."Dalai Lama picture."
Waters looked down. The face of a Tibetan girl, bright like a new coin, stared up at him.
That was how it had started; he had been on his way to look at the ruins of a monastery. The cloudless skies and thin air was perfect for his camera. His hotel had been crowded with other Britons, members of a trade delegation. He was glad to escape their talk of markets and the clumsy banter with their Chinese opposites.
Nobody seemed to be watching him. Waters smiled at the child and put his hand into his trouser pocket. She watched as he pulled out a pack of small photographs. On each was the benign face of the Dalai Lama. He slid one out.
He had bought them in Kathmandu before crossing the border into Tibet. Twenty five for a few rupees. It was what his guidebook told him to do but he was still surprised to be asked.
The girl – Waters thought she must be about five years old – took the picture and kissed the illegal, bespectacled old face of the exiled god king. Waters wondered at the strength of an affection that had outlived 45 years of occupation.
She bobbed in the tiniest of bows. Then, still holding the photograph in front of her face, she trotted to one of the squat Tibetan houses that lined the wide dusty road.
Waters shrugged and quickened his step towards the monastery at the end of the road. Most of it was a ruin. Shattered walls rose from the rubble like ranks of decayed teeth. His guidebook said it had been destroyed by the Chinese in 1968. Most of the monks had been tortured, imprisoned or killed the same year.
As Waters prepared his camera, the wind stirred among the broken masonry and pitched a ball of dust at him.
The girl was waiting for him two hours later at the monastery gate. Again she ignored Waters’s smile and fell in step beside him, trotting now and then to keep up.Waters wondered what his new companion wanted, but the child avoided the blank stare of his sunglasses. Only when her curiosity got the better of her did he risk a glance up.
"Hello," said Waters awkwardly and bobbed down. "Hello, what’s your name?"
The child halted and watched Waters uncertainly. She said nothing. Then a hand, timid and filthy, rose and touched the Englishman’s face. Waters froze. It was as if he did not want to startle some rare animal.
The child’s hand found the bridge of his sunglasses. and gently lifted them off. Waters squinted in the sudden glare. Then he saw the girl smile, a hesitant, carefully guarded smile that shimmered for a second and then vanished.
Waters stuffed the last of his clothes back into his pack and tugged the zips home. He wondered what they would do to him. He knew they didn’t like backpackers.He wondered too what they would do to the girl. Or her family. The thought dragged a hard sigh from his knotted stomach and he cursed himself. The child had followed him all the way back to the hotel, the two of them buoyed along by the sudden joy of new companionship. At the door, she had waved and begun to trot away.
It was then that Waters had come staggering back out, shoved towards a lorry by a gaggle of soldiers. One of them darted from his side and swung a kick that doubled the watching girl into a ragged little ball.
Waters glanced round the room. He caught sight of his face in a mirror that hung by the door. Sun, altitude and the dry Tibetan air had tanned his face. His heavy lips were cracked and lines of lighter skin radiated from around his generous brown eyes. He noticed he was stooping.
He pulled his back straight as he heard keys rattling in the door. He turned to face his visitor.
"Good afternoon Mr Waters." The voice was Whitehall British. Its owner wore a chalk striped navy blue suit and was carrying Waters’s passport.
"Do sit down," smiled his visitor who perched on the edge of the officer’s table. His black hair was white at the temples and slicked back by some sort of scented oil. He looked like an expensive London barrister about to brief a witness.
"My name is David Stitt. I am a minister with the foreign office. I’m here with the trade delegation at the Holiday Inn. You’re lucky I saw your arrest."
Everyone had seen the arrest. Waters remembered strolling back into the foyer, beneath a banner of red block capitals proclaiming: "Tibet autonomous region of China welcomes Britain business."
Then he had spotted the four men in army green by the reception desk. He could not remember their faces, only their hands on the holsters of their tiny pistols.
Stitt was talking. "Not a very pleasant business this, is it? But I’ve managed to persuade them to let you go." He extended the passport to Waters
"Thank you, thank you very much," said Waters. He felt a rush of gratitude. "They’ve destroyed all my photographs."
"Quite honestly, I’m not surprised," returned Stitt. "If you want to stay out of trouble don’t go around handing out banned pictures."
Waters stiffened. "It was a picture of the Dalai Lama."
"So they told me. You can’t blame them for thinking you are stirring up trouble."
"Trouble? I made a little girl smile. Don’t you think the Tibetans have had some trouble? Murdered, tortured, starved, persecuted for their religion, all their jobs and businesses taken, their country turned into a nuclear dump, their way of life . . ."
"So you say," Stitt interrupted.
"So everyone says, the United Nations, Amnesty . . ."
"Oh do shut up," snapped Stitt. His urbanity had vanished. "I know all about the Chinese occupation here, but I’m not about to get into a debate with you about it. I’m here to win Chinese contracts for British business, to create British jobs. Perhaps you ought to think about that."
Waters was on his feet. He knew he sounded like an earnest teenager but Stitt’s poise angered him. "Maybe you ought to take some of your businessmen to Drapachi Prison up the road to see the nuns being tortured with cattle prods."
Stitt slowly stood up. He ran the palms of his hands down the front of his suit like he was scraping something off them. "You have two days left on your visa, Mr Waters. I suggest that’s just enough time for you to get back to Nepal on tonight’s bus."
Waters was silent as the minister walked to the door. Then the coin dropped. "An imprisoned British man would be very embarrassing for a trade delegation."
Stitt turned one last time. "Just be grateful that you are getting out. Goodbye."
Waters hoisted his pack on to his shoulder as the bus rattled into life. He joined the huddle of other backpackers and Tibetans by its door. Through the haze of evening sunlight and dust he saw children playing tag by a concrete ticket office. Two slouching soldiers who had waited with him were already strolling back to the police station.But he thought only of that grubby little face and the smile that had danced on it. And over and over again he saw the wicked swing of the soldier’s boot and the winded child scrambling to her feet, weeping and running from a stream of curses.
He sank into a seat by a window as the vehicle shuddered and began to move. Outside the children gathered to see the weekly bus begin its two day drive back to the border.
There was the girl from the monastery! She broke away from the others and ran closer to the bus. Waters laughed aloud. She was all right. For a moment the little figure of grey and brown rags swam in a film of moisture. Some other passengers turned to look as Waters wiped the back of his sleeve across his face and shifted in his seat. The girl’s eyes were on the windows of the bus, squinting into a flurry of diesel smoke and dust. Then they met Waters’s. The frown on the small face wavered and then broke. There at last was that smile again.
Waters saw a tiny hand come up to wave but then the bus rounded a corner and turned towards the mountains.
~The End~
Next Story
Previous story
Anthology Menu
About the Authors, and Authors’ Comments