“Of course, she can sit with you in the cab,” Shan said. “Just ask her not to use the siren this time.”
“But you know she’ll smoke her cigar all the way. You’ll smell it for a week.”
Shan acknowledged her warning with a small bow of his head. “My penance for being late.”
Yara smiled again then extracted a folded paper from her shirt pocket and handed it to Shan. “While I was waiting I wrote a letter,” she said. “I’ll leave the truck behind the station as usual,” she added and then sped off to the rug factory where her grandmother worked.
* * *
As he walked the five blocks from the cinder block school to the town square, Shan studied the squat, windblown houses on either side of the street. Nearly all had lotuses, conchs, fish, or other auspicious symbols painted by their entries. One, that of the new Chinese barber, had a poster of the Chairman tacked to its door. An old man on a bicycle, a terrier in his handlebar basket, gave Shan a nearly toothless grin as he sped by. A woman kneeling at the small chorten shrine at the edge of the square nodded in his direction. A pigeon landed on the oversized bust of Mao the Great Helmsman at the opposite side of the square. As he turned toward the police station, a goat ran out the door, encouraged by a boot flung in its direction.
Shan sagged for a moment, then straightened his uniform and walked across the dusty street into the station. Two Tibetans were in the outer office, locked in brisk argument. As Shan loudly pushed the door closed behind him, they abruptly stopped and gasped in surprise. The older man darted through the adjoining door. The younger man, in his early thirties, stood up straight and tapped his forehead in a gesture that may have been a salute.
“Constable Shan,” his deputy ventured, with a nervous glance at the goat droppings on the office floor.
“Deputy Choden,” Shan coolly acknowledged. “Is that your boot out on the street?”
“A winter boot, I am taking them home,” Choden said uneasily.
“But what will you wear when I assign you to the sheep counting station in the high passes? The snow may be deep up there.”
The young deputy’s face turned pale. “I will fetch it, sir, at once.”
Shan stood at the window and watched his assistant as he darted outside, wondering if he should send the form he had completed requesting Choden’s transfer. His prior deputy had proven to be a ruthless murderer, had even killed Shan’s predecessor, so Colonel Tan had paid special attention to his replacement. Choden had had the highest exam score of any Tibetan in his class on the law enforcement exam but he seemed incapable of asserting the authority of his office.
“I told Lhakpa the goat had to go an hour ago,” Choden groused as he returned with his boot.
“You mean because you knew I would be returning later.”
“Yes,” Choden replied, then hesitated, as if sensing a trap. “I told him family can only visit for an hour a day. Rules of the jail.”
“It’s a goat,” Shan pointed out.
“Well…” Choden began in a tentative tone, as if about to argue the point. He had been raised only a few miles away in one of the many families who not only fervently believed in reincarnation but also knew that most of the prior generation had died with terrible burdens on their everlasting spirits, meaning they had come back as lower life-forms. Nearly all of the traditional households in the township included animals who were believed to be relatives. “He’s convinced she’s his young niece, who took a terrible fall off a mountain last year. He says that’s why she came back as a goat, to learn to pay better attention on the trails.” Choden fixed Shan with a hopeful gaze, as if he believed he was winning the argument. “I tied her in a stable on the far side of town this morning. But she always finds him, no matter where he is. Very clever, that girl. He says she has his niece’s eyes,” he added uncertainly.
Shan sat at his desk and stifled a yawn. “No animals in the jail,” he said, then noticed the short typed report on the center of his desk. He read it out loud. “Incident One. A yak was reported to be knocking down road signs near milepost 200 on the highway.” It was an event that occurred nearly weekly somewhere in the township. “Incident Two,” he continued. “Mrs. Lu reported that three onions were stolen from her windowsill. Incident Three. Mr. Xing reported that a vandal chalked a sun and moon symbol on his back wall.” Shan cocked his head at his deputy.
Choden shrugged. “I told him it was intended as a protection, a good luck charm, really, and that it would help keep mice away from his grain.” The Chinese residents represented perhaps five percent of the town’s population but accounted for ninety percent of the complaints.
“Incident Four,” Shan continued. “A van with four scientists from the Institute stopped and had lunch at the noodle shop.” He looked up. “What scientists? What Institute?”
His deputy shrugged. “Four Beijing people.” The description had become the Tibetans’ code for any Chinese, after several insistent propaganda campaigns that declared that all Tibetans must call themselves Chinese. “Marpa served them lunch,” Choden said, referring to the owner of the noodle shop. “They told him they were passing through, studying mountains.”
Shan and Choden both knew no one just passed through Yangkar. It was at the end of a long spur off the highway. “What kind of scientists?”
Choden shrugged again. It was his defining characteristic. “Mountain scientists, I guess.”
Shan read the final item on the page, and a shiver ran down his spine. “What do you mean, Public Security in Lhasa wants me?”
“A Public Security officer called from Lhasa. She asked if Shan Tao Yun was the constable here.”
“You had to write that up as an incident?”
“It sounded important, sir. I can’t remember the last time Public Security headquarters called us. She asked, ‘Did Constable Shan speak Tibetan and wear a prayer amulet?’” Choden looked down into his folded hands. “I’m sorry. I had to tell her the truth.”
Shan replayed in his mind the gathering of witnesses at Metok’s execution. There had been the senior officer who read the findings against the engineer and the arrogant, oily younger officer who had smiled as he pulled the trigger. There had been no female officer there, at least not in uniform. But Tan had said the case had been handled by Public Security in Lhasa.
He rose and poured himself a cup of tea from the thermos in the narrow alcove that served as their makeshift kitchen, then found that it was cold. “Patrol for half an hour then go home,” he said to Choden, who greeted the orders with a grateful nod then frowned as Shan pointed to the goat droppings.
The deputy dutifully cleaned the floor then paused as he opened the door. “Is there really such a place in the passes?” he asked. “A sheep counting station, I mean.”
Shan emptied the cup in the sink. “You’ll find out if you persist in treating our station like a stable,” he replied and waved his deputy out the door.
He brewed a fresh pot of tea, poured two mugs, and carried them through the door at the back of the office. He set one on the table in front of the two cells then opened the unlocked door of the first cell and set the second on the stool by the cell wall before sitting at the table.
“I saw early flowers along the high mountain road today,” he declared after a few sips.
Lhakpa, the old man who sat meditating by the stool, gradually stirred to consciousness. His eyes opened, and he slowly turned his head toward Shan then lifted the steaming mug with an appreciative nod. “Spring’s slow to come in the high country,” he observed. “But I’ll start climbing in a few days.”
“I found an extra blanket you can take,” Shan offered, “and I’ll give you as much barley as you can carry.”
Lhakpa had appeared weeks earlier, sleeping in unused stables after Shan had explained that he could not camp beside the chorten in the town square. Several of the Chinese residents, represented by their self-styled Committee of Leading Citizens, had complained that the homeless man was
an affront to socialist society, as if Lhakpa had chosen not to have a permanent home as a political protest. More than one had asked if Shan had checked his residency permit. Like the Tibetans who lived in the town, Shan knew Lhakpa had no such permit, and several of them had started sharing provisions with him that they could ill afford to lose. After finding the old man sitting against a tree one morning, shivering and covered with snow, his only source of warmth the goat in his lap, Shan had found the solution. He had arrested Lhakpa, satisfying the committee, and kept him in a warm, dry, and unlocked cell for the remainder of the winter. Shan had not anticipated, however, the devotion of the goat that followed Lhakpa everywhere. “She has to stay outside, my friend,” he said now.
A low, dry laugh escaped Lhakpa’s throat. “I wish you could have met my niece Tara, Shan. Sharp as a blade, and quite beautiful. Her eyes were deep pools of intelligence and so full of life. For years she avoided those who tried to take her away to one of those boarding schools, but they finally caught her when she was fifteen. I made her promise she would do her best, and they said she showed great promise, was going to be nominated to attend one of the universities in the east.”
Shan leaned closer. This was the most Lhakpa had spoken about the goat to Shan. The Tibetan was a man of many secrets, but that was true of every wanderer in Tibet, and Shan was loath to pry. Such Tibetans had many reasons not to trust law enforcement officials.
“But she hated it,” Lhakpa continued, “and ran away every two or three months to come back to us. Then her parents died. She had no one left but me and my brother. The next time she escaped and came back I told her it was her destiny to go to the Chinese university, that there was nothing else left for her. It was her chance to make a new life, away from the suffering in Tibet. She got angry, yelled at me for the first time ever, said she knew who she was and she was not a Chinese puppet. Then she left in a rage. It was the last time I ever saw her. She sent a letter saying she was sorry, that she was coming home to give me a proper apology, asking if I could just try to consider that she and I might make some kind of new Tibetan life for our family, maybe start a farm. It was a five-day trip over the mountains to reach our village. An ice storm struck on the third day.” Lhakpa sipped at his tea again then spoke in a whisper. “A herder found her body, where she had fallen off a slippery trail and over a cliff.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Shan could say.
“It’s one of the reasons I decided to become a snow monk,” Lhakpa explained. The Tibetan had made it clear weeks earlier that he was preparing to become a hermit monk but he never told Shan why. “After she died, I needed to get away, to confront the world in solitude for a year or two,” Lhakpa said, referring to one of the Tibetans who chose to be unregistered monks or nuns, living a solitary life high up in mountain hideaways. “Six months after she died I was walking down a road and heard this urgent bleating. This young goat came trotting up to me. There was no herder, no farm nearby, though I kept trying to make it turn around since I was certain it must have escaped from somewhere nearby. But she stuck close, and that night when I camped she sat in front of me and stared at me. And at last I really saw those eyes, those deep, energetic eyes that I had only ever seen on my niece’s face.” Lhakpa drank again and shrugged. “I told Tara to stay outside. Deputy Choden took her all the way across town this morning. But an hour later here she was, butting her head against the back door.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t wound up in someone’s stewpot.”
“No, no. No one would do such a thing. Tserung at the garage tied the red on her last month.” To the Tibetans the red yarn tied around the goat’s neck meant she had been ransomed, that someone had gained significant spiritual merit by paying money to keep her from ever being butchered.
Shan recalled the first day he had encountered Lhakpa and the goat. She had worn a red yarn then too. “Tell me, old man, how many times have you sold her life?”
A low wheezing laugh came from his prisoner. “It makes people feel good. I never keep the money. Last time I bought some grain for her, gave some to the woman who maintains the shrines and the rest to that Tibetan circuit nurse who rides in the mountains, to buy medicines.”
Shan dipped his mug in salute, then sat in silence for several moments before rising to bring a candle from the office. He lit it then switched off the overhead lights, knowing the meditative Tibetan preferred the soft flame to the glare of the naked light bulbs.
“I watched the execution of a man today,” he confessed to Lhakpa, who was the closest thing to a real monk in the town.
“I’m sorry,” Lhakpa said, gesturing to the worn mala, his rosary, that lay on the stool. “Tell me his name and I will say a thousand beads for him tonight.”
“They made me an official witness,” Shan recounted. His heart felt like a cold stone as he explained what he had been forced to do. “It felt like I was pulling the trigger myself.”
Lhakpa silently stared into his steaming mug. “Then I will say a thousand beads for you as well, Constable.”
Shan sipped at his tea. “Did you work in the square at all today?” On days when the weather was fair Lhakpa usually helped maintain the public square, officially on work release. “Did you see the visitors?”
“Those Chinese? Most people fled the square when they appeared. Mrs. Lu stood in front of her house and waved a little Chinese flag at them. She seems lonely.”
“Deputy Choden says they ate lunch and left.”
“Not before shooting the mountains.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They took an instrument out of the truck and put it on a tripod, up on the old gate tower. Sort of like a telescope but not exactly. Sort of like a camera but not exactly. I think it was one of those devices that shoots laser beams for measurements.” Not for the first time, Shan wondered about Lhakpa’s background. Not many Tibetans, and certainly almost no snow monks, would know about such devices. “One man aimed it at each mountain surrounding the valley then read out numbers as another wrote them down on a clipboard. Then another man who did have a camera took photographs from the top of the gate tower, many photos, turning a little every few seconds until he completed a circle of the town. When he came down, he saw Tara and me watching and laughed, then took our photo too.”
Shan remembered the letter Yara had given him. He had to write a letter of his own to his son Ko to go with it as a cover, for Tan had seen to it that Shan’s letters to Ko would not be opened by the prison staff. He drained his cup and stood.
“The dead man’s name?” Lhakpa asked. “For my prayers.”
Shan hesitated. He felt a strange bond with the man who had been executed. “Chou Folan,” he said, using the man’s Chinese name. He instantly felt a pang of guilt, yet he sensed that he had secret, unfinished business with Metok Rentzig and was not ready to share that business with others.
“I shall pray that his soul finds harmony,” the snow monk declared. Although he had said he would pray for Shan as well, it seemed he did not have much hope that Shan would find harmony.
* * *
Shan awoke before dawn and sat on the edge of his bed, looking at his scattered belongings in the dim light that streamed in from the pole lamp in the courtyard behind the station. He, like Lhakpa, had taken winter quarters, moving into the apartment that was set aside for Yangkar’s constable, but he longed for the solitude of his little farmhouse above the town. The cracks in the walls of the long-abandoned building made it impossible to keep the frigid winds at bay, however, and the roof leaked in heavy rainstorms, but still it was his home. In the sterile quarters of the building behind the station compound, he felt like an intruder, just as he increasingly felt like an intruder in the constable’s uniform.
He washed then stepped outside. Tara, Lhakpa’s goat, was lying on the step to the back door of the jail. Shan filled a bucket of water for her then sat and rubbed her back as she looked up with her moist, strangely beseeching eyes. After several minut
es he walked around the building and onto the town square. It had once been the courtyard of the huge monastery that had dominated the town, and in the grayness before dawn he often fancied he could hear the morning prayers from ranks of chanting monks echoing across the empty square.
The kitchen of the noodle shop was already filled with the steam of boiling pots and the scent of the cardamom Marpa used in his spiced momos, Tibetan dumplings. Shan poured himself a cup of tea and sat at the little table along the back wall where the proprietor usually took his own meals. Marpa left his young nephew to watch the pots and brought two bowls of porridge to the table.
“The snow monk still with you?” Marpa asked as he lifted a spoonful of porridge.
Shan hesitated. His duty, they all knew, was to turn an unregistered monk over to Public Security. “Why wouldn’t he be?”
“After what happened yesterday, I thought they were going to haul him away.”
Shan lowered his spoon. “The visitors took some photographs and left.”
Marpa gave a tentative nod. “Mostly took some photographs and measurements of the mountains, of the square, of your station.”
“My station?”
“Yes, and then the man who took the photos ran over to the oldest member of the team and they had a long discussion, with the photographer pointing at Lhakpa. They started to approach him, but then he made a mudra in their direction and they halted,” Marpa explained, referring to the symbolic hand positions used sometimes in Buddhist worship. “It was like they thought it was some kind of dark magic. While they stood there, staring at him, as if summoning the courage to approach him, Choden ran out of the station and put handcuffs on Lhakpa then marched him back to the jail.”
Choden and Lhakpa had both been very selective in reporting on what had happened that afternoon. “You saw all this? Who were they?”
“Served them lunch and watched through the window when they left.” He shrugged. “Officials from outside.”
Bones of the Earth Page 3