Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “A new way?” Shan asked. “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know. It troubled me. I think now that maybe he had been without the gods earlier in his life and now he wanted to change that.”

  “What exactly was he looking for?”

  Yara looked to Tserung, who nodded. “The words,” she said. “The prayers forgotten in time, the prayers that might let Gekho know not all have forgotten him. He didn’t find any, said they are probably all lost now.”

  “Lost to the black years, he meant,” Tserung added, his voice bitter now. The black years were one of the many terms Tibetans had for the apocalyptic period of the initial Chinese invasion and the bloody Cultural Revolution that followed. He hesitated, with a nervous glance at Shan, as if just realizing what he had spoken in front of the Chinese constable, but Shan only nodded to him.

  “What does it mean, Shan,” Tserung asked in a mournful voice, “when all the prayers have been taken from us? Prayer is the lifeblood of a god. When no one prays to a god, my grandmother told me, the god will eventually shrivel up and die. I would pray for a Bonpo god, if only I knew what to say.”

  Yara broke the heavy silence. “There aren’t too many Bonpo left,” she said, “and almost no Bonpo monks. Many of the few who truly understood the old ways are unregistered, always moving about and hiding because they know Religious Affairs has informers everywhere.”

  “Are you saying Lhakpa was a Bonpo monk?”

  Tserung sipped his tea. “More like an educated man who needed to urgently study the ways of a Bonpo monk.”

  “A very educated man with a goat niece,” Shan observed.

  Yara shrugged and cast a sympathetic glance at Tserung. “In this age the path to becoming a monk is not well charted.”

  “Lhakpa’s is a complicated spirit,” Tserung said. The mechanic himself was speaking more and more like a learned man. “Some days I had the impression he had been trained as a scientist, others as a historian. The goat was not make-believe, not a prop for a man pretending to be a hermit. I think she played an important role in his changing, in his taking the role of snow monk so seriously. I was in the hall one night and I came upon him sitting here, stroking her head. He didn’t know I was behind him. ‘Who knew this would be your journey,’ he said to Tara, then added, ‘Transmigration of the soul. You are the proof of the unproveable.’” Tserung shrugged, and he touched the gau that hung from his neck. “Not entirely sure what he meant, but those were his words, to his niece the philosophical goat.” The mechanic looked at Shan as if for an explanation.

  “One thing I have learned in the Tibet we live in,” Shan offered, “is that everyone has their own unique path to enlightenment.”

  * * *

  Shan left Yara and Tserung energetically reviewing more dusty manuscripts and ventured onto the cobbled alley behind the junkyard. Seeing a light on in the rooms inside, he knocked then opened the door, on which was painted a sun cradled in a crescent moon, surrounded by a number of small protector demons.

  The astrologer was sitting at her easel, working on one of her elegant horoscopes. A broad smile lifted her wrinkled countenance as she saw him. She made a clucking sound, and with a blur of motion a furry brown creature hopped from a nearby table onto her shoulder. “Look who’s here, Uncle Kapo!” she exclaimed. “Our friend the constable!”

  Shan put a hand out and the gerbil leapt onto it and climbed to his own shoulder, where it began making a purring sound. He and the gerbil were well-acquainted. Kapo had once been a renowned lama.

  “There’s tea,” Shiva said, gesturing with a paintbrush to the small brazier by the window.

  Shan poured two cups and pulled a stool to Shiva’s side as she painted a tortoise, the foundation of many horoscopes, on the heavy paper set in the easel. She was devoted to her work and as one of the last of the traditional astrologers was in great demand, receiving many of her commissions by mail.

  “I remember the day last month when I followed the snow monk’s goat through your open door,” Shan said. “I thought she would wreak havoc with your charts and paints but she just came in and laid down beside Uncle Kapo’s cage.”

  Shiva nodded. “Tara’s a sweet girl, very respectful. She was too feisty before, Lhakpa says, so this goat life has been good for her.”

  “She was so comfortable because she was familiar with your rooms,” Shan ventured. “She had been here before, more than once, I think. Because Lhakpa was here more than once.”

  Shiva glanced warily at Shan then went back to painting her tortoise. “A snow monk is owed charity. It is the obligation of the devout.”

  “I know how you work, Shiva. Special charms require much discussion with the person requesting them, so they can be tailored to the person and the place he is going to.”

  “Or the demon he is going to encounter when getting there,” Shiva added in a professional, matter-of-fact voice.

  “What charm did you give him, grandmother?”

  Shiva lowered her brush and weighed his words. “In the old days astrologers were almost always monks or nuns. Words shared with a monk or nun are personal and confidential. What can be more personal than a horoscope?”

  “But he wasn’t looking for a horoscope,” Shan suggested. “He wanted a charm. It would have been an old one, a Bonpo charm. The deity he was going to meet was Gekho the protector god.” He pointed to a spatter of paint on her easel. “You would have needed that blue paint for it.”

  Her eyes flared for a moment, and she looked around as if worried someone might be listening. “Speak softly of such things,” she said in a low voice, then slowly nodded. “The Wrathful Demon Destroyer, they called him. I hadn’t heard his name spoken for years. They say he was one of the original gods, from when the mountains and humans were still being shaped. People say they are dead, but we don’t believe it. They are just sleeping. But it is very difficult to wake them,” she added in a troubled voice.

  “We?” Shan asked. When she did not reply, he looked about the room, wondering if he had missed something. He discovered it on her little altar, a reversed swastika sign behind her little bronze Buddha, and realized he should not be surprised. Shiva herself respected the old Bonpo ways.

  “You know that Gekho’s valley has been overrun by machines,” he said. “They are scouring everything from the surface.”

  “We are taught that surfaces can be misleading,” the astrologer observed.

  Shan was no longer sure what they were talking about. “I need to find Lhakpa, which means I need to find the path to Gekho.”

  “Some things are more likely to come to those who don’t seek them.”

  “I fear he is in grave danger.”

  “The dangers, as the joys, of this life are fleeting. What endures is the truth.”

  Shan was beginning to feel like he was participating in a Bonpo teaching. He tried a different approach. “I want the same charm you gave to him,” he said.

  Shiva’s eyes went round. “No! You mustn’t ask! A charm for one man can be a curse for another. I told him so, especially for an outsider.”

  Shan hesitated. “How would Lhakpa be an outsider?”

  “When he asked, he was so detached, I think a little ashamed in the asking. Sometimes he seemed to be more like one of those scholars who come and speak with me, like they don’t really believe in what I do but still have to record it all in their books.” She shrugged. “But his heart was pure, and he embraced the Buddha.”

  “I don’t have time to argue, Shiva,” Shan pressed. “I am leaving for the valley at dawn, with or without that charm.”

  There was pain in her eyes as the astrologer gazed at Shan. “That path could be your death, Shan.”

  “Death already stalks that valley. I can’t stop more death unless I put myself in front of it. Am I better doing that with or without the charm?”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “You’re a witch.”

  Shiva gave a cackling laugh that seemed to co
nfirm his assertion. She gazed in silence, first at Shan then at the gerbil, who returned her gaze with his huge questioning eyes. “I don’t want you to die, Constable. That valley is full of old demons and new demons. The worse lies ahead.”

  “Surely there must be room for a good demon. That’s what my friend Lokesh calls me. A good demon.”

  “How is my favorite old rebel?”

  “I wrote him to invite him to come when the passes clear of snow. Hopefully one of his young aides will join him. He is finally beginning to show signs of his age.”

  “It would give me joy to see him again,” the astrologer said. “We always have so much to speak about.” Kapo climbed back onto her shoulder and she sighed, then lifted the half-completed horoscope off her easel. “Come back at dawn.”

  Shan rose, then realized Shiva might be the only one in town who could answer another question that had been nagging him since his last trip to the secret archives. “The old books speak of patrols of black bulls leaving each spring for the Valley of the Gods.”

  “The bulls were dob dobs,” she explained, using the nickname for the monastic police who served at the large monasteries of old Tibet. Once Yangkar had held the largest monastery in the region. “They wore black robes, and some would always spend the warm months keeping the sacred valley protected and helping the pilgrims who came from afar.”

  Shan considered her words. “You make it sound like Yangkar was the protector of Gekho’s valley.”

  Shiva solemnly nodded. “But we are down to only one dob dob. Should I find you a black robe?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Shan went from his truck back to the door of his quarters three times, each time tearing up the note he had left and replacing it with another. Although he had buried his sentiments for years, he had genuine affection for Meng, more than he had ever felt for any woman, but their lives had no overlap. They had almost nothing to share, and now he was not even able to share time with her.

  I’m very sorry, he finally wrote. I am glad that you sought me out, but my work demands I be elsewhere. Now that you know where I am, come again, but give me some notice. Be safe.

  Shan felt ashamed to leave Meng such a cold, meager note, but he could settle on no other words and his foreboding about Gekho’s Roost would not let him linger.

  He sped down the highway, twice dodging antelope in the gray light of early dawn, then slowing after half an hour to find the rough dirt track that Lhakpa had marked on his map. He drove faster than he should on the rutted, uneven road, then realized he was raising a long cloud of dust that could be seen for miles and slowed. After crossing the first of the long ridges that ascended like stairs toward the high mountains, he pulled over and unfolded the charm Shiva had given him in the dark alley outside her door.

  The astrologer had looked not simply exhausted but somehow drained, almost battle-weary, as if she had spent the night locked in some war to empower the ancient symbols and words on her paper. He was not surprised that he did not entirely understand the images and shapes she had rendered. Gekho the blue god was in the center. Each of his eight arms on either side extended one of the weapons or tools used in aid of the sacred earth. Along the top right border were goats on a grassy slope, then, in a clockwise sequence were three small hills with a white chorten on the center one, and one of the long woolen caps pilgrims sometimes wore. Next was a pair of what looked like stone pillars with little balls on them with one of the auspicious signs, a parasol, inked below them. In several places on the heavy sheet were bharal, the rare blue sheep of Tibet’s high alpine slopes, and Shan surmised that meant to follow the paths of the bharal. Blue sheep lived on the blue god’s mountain. At the apex, above the god’s head, was a garuda, a sacred bird known to protect the gods, and though it had its wings extended for flight, its talons seemed rooted in the mountain, as if made of stone. To the left of the great bird was a line of yaks, each with a tiny glowing Buddha riding on its back.

  “This is the same as you gave to Lhakpa?” he had asked the astrologer.

  “Everyone has the same destination in the end,” she had said enigmatically, then stepped inside and shut her door.

  * * *

  He studied his official public map, the military map marked by Lhakpa, and a satellite photo Zhu had given him before they had parted company in Lhadrung. Each told its own story. The public map delineated the road from the east, from Sichuan, in a long sloping line along the bottom that he knew was only a general approximation of the route. The photographic image, over a year old, showed only a flat compression of the landscape with peaks indicated by splays of white snow but clearly captured the Valley of the Gods, marked by its turquoise lake of glacial water and even a smudge of shadow where the standing stones stood. The military map showed the road in much greater, more accurate detail, had altitudes for several mountains, but its printed version showed no trails and none of the rough tracks like the one Shan now drove on. These had been carefully inscribed by Lhakpa, sometimes with tiny Tibetan annotations like antelope passage or fresh water here. He estimated he was ten miles southwest of the Five Claws project, and Lhakpa’s dotted lines over a steep saddle of land on the high mountain slope made it clear he would have to complete the last few miles on foot.

  Scanning the terrain with his binoculars, he could make out more trails that traversed the verdant slopes, made by bharal and the more common mountain goats over the course of centuries, all converging on the massive peak, as if the animals too had been making pilgrimages. The peak itself was unmistakable, the jagged tower pointing toward the heavens, its western side split by the narrow pass where the Five Claws dam was being built. Something moved on the heights and he braced the lenses against a ledge rock to focus on a line of figures. They were so distant and the slope they traversed so mottled in shadow that it took several breaths for him to make them out, then he paused in surprise and looked at them with his naked eye. He was seeing something very rare for that sparsely populated quarter of Lhadrung County, something so improbable that he bent to study the figures again with his lenses. He was looking at a yak train, a convoy of eight or ten yaks loaded with packs, heading toward the deep mountains of Kham, the most rugged and inaccessible of Tibet’s regions.

  It was an image from old Tibet, when yak convoys had been the predominant link between distant communities, when commerce depended on such convoys, and the role of caravaner was a romantic and honored profession. But this is not old Tibet, he reminded himself, then reconsidered as he recalled that Shiva had drawn a train of yaks carrying Buddhas, and realized the yaks were coming from the direction of the Five Claws project. Old Tibet was there in the valley, at least dying vestiges of it, as well as the forces of modern China. The conundrums he faced were rooted in both worlds, and he was the inadequate black bull dob dob sent to resolve them.

  He laid out his maps on the flat rock, then set Shiva’s chart beside them, for he had realized it too was a map of sorts. He had passed herds of sheep on grassy hills, then a trio of steep hills with a decrepit chorten on the center one. The signs and symbols the astrologer had painted were a guide. Each of the maps embodied the perception of the world from a different view, that of soldier, scientist, snow monk, and Shiva. Most called her an astrologer but some whispered a different name: sorceress. How could the old woman, who almost never left Yangkar, know this terrain? And what were the secrets she was trying to lead him to? He put away the map and the satellite photo, keeping only the guidance of the snow monk and the sorceress.

  Every few hundred yards along his road were lhatse, rock cairns, most so overtaken by lichen they almost seemed like misshapen ancient statues. The track he drove down had clearly been a pilgrims’ path, which aligned with the path Lhakpa had shown. There was another line on Lhakpa’s map that intersected his own track a few miles ahead. He saw now that the snow hermit had inscribed one of his tiny legends under it. Ice Ball Alley.

  His utility vehicle groaned more loudly with each slope. The c
airns became more frequent as he climbed higher, and several showed recent additions of mani stones, carved, or simply scratched, with the mani mantra on their face, invoking the Compassionate Buddha. Here and there the spars of old withered pines extended out of the heather. All those near the track held wind-battered prayer flags. He had an odd sense that as he ascended he was going backward in time, into Old Tibet.

  He halted at the intersection with the Ice Ball Alley—a wider, firmer gravel track—and got out to walk eastward, in the direction the prisoner convoy from Sichuan would have taken over a year earlier. Something yellow fluttered in the wind two hundred feet in front of him and he hastened his pace. It was a tattered length of plastic tape, anchored under a rock and printed with the bold words Public Security Crime Scene. The knobs had their own sacred flags.

  This then was where the hail chaser had called to the skies and done his dance, where two soldiers had died, where Huan had arrested the old Tibetan for murder. Shan sat on a boulder and studied the scene. It was at the crest of the highest ridge that reached out from the massive snowcapped peak above, which itself was the highest summit for scores of miles to the south, probably the highest until the mighty Himalayas, which were visible as a gray smudge on the horizon. It would be a cloud catcher, where moisture-laden clouds that had made it over the barrier of the Himalayas would pile on, colliding with the frigid air of the peak. It didn’t require sorcery to know that if hail was going to fall anywhere in the surrounding countryside, it was likely to be on this slope.