Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  The roof terrace of the Red Palace, the maroon-colored core of the complex, was nearly empty when he arrived, and he turned to the astounding view over Lhasa and beyond, gazing out toward the river, the train station, and the snow-covered mountains in the far distance. In the few years since Shan had begun visiting Lhasa, the city had become unequivocally Chinese, but here and there a few traditional neighborhoods survived, and the Jokhang Temple in the old Barkhor district stood like a defiant symbol of the Tibetans, surviving the onslaught of the centuries. The Dalai Lamas, whose personal living quarters had been only a few steps from where Shan now stood, doubtlessly had enjoyed this same perspective over a different, simpler world. At least here in the austere stone palace, some of that world endured.

  The woman he had known as Metok’s wife appeared at his side a quarter-hour after he arrived. Her hair was pinned in a tail behind her neck. She wore makeup and gold earrings. She had become more stylish, even attractive, looking more like the tour guide that was her cover story. It could well be her work when not on special assignment, Shan realized, for appealing young guides were often used to troll for information from Western tourists, sometimes even tempting them into overnight trysts. Shan unexpectedly recalled a tour guide from when he had first arrived in Beijing years earlier as a naive twenty-year-old. She had not really explained anything of historical interest, only spouted scripted observations about the hordes of slaves who died building the structures and the unforgivable, wasteful greed of the aristocrats. Her name had been Jiang, he recalled now, remembered because it was the same as Mao’s ruthless wife, who then dominated the government as part of the Gang of Four. Now, staring out at Lhasa, Shan decided to think of the treacherous woman beside him as Madame Jiang.

  “The Red Palace was started during the life of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century,” Madame Jiang abruptly declared, “though there had been fortresses and temples here for a thousand years before that.”

  “Spoken like a savvy tour guide,” he observed.

  The woman nodded and used the push of a crowd of tourists to press against him, apparently following the instincts of her training. “It was still under construction when the Fifth died, but the Regent kept the Fifth’s death concealed until the work was completed twelve years later. The fiction was kept up by saying the Dalai Lama was on a retreat or a pilgrimage or in spiritual consultations. A fraud on the Tibetan people, for twelve long years.”

  Shan considered whether the words were part of an official script, and decided they were because it made the Buddhist leaders sound devious. “I always wondered about the reason for the lie,” he said. “A conspiracy by the Regent to maintain power? Perhaps by the builders’ union to maintain their contract? And where was his body all that time?”

  The woman looked up and summoned the sad smile he had seen at Metok’s apartment. “Ever the curious investigator.”

  “Tibet is built on layers of mysteries,” Shan replied. “More so today than ever before.” He turned to her. “Did they return your husband’s body?” he asked.

  “Cremated him,” she said. “A box of ashes is all I have.”

  Shan recalled the crematorium director who had cooperated with Huan. Had she actually been provided with a box of ashes to bolster her cover? He leaned against the half-wall of the terrace to watch as more tour groups arrived on the roof, one of them all Westerners. Cato Pike wore a long coat and had pulled a hat so low Shan barely recognized him among the tourists. Stay in the sun, the American had requested, for the camera’s sake.

  “The Sixth Dalai Lama lived here as well,” Shan said. “The wastrel lama. They say there were brothels at the bottom of the ramp maintained solely for him. One night he disappeared, never to be seen again. Some say the gods took him away for punishment.”

  Madame Jiang smiled. “My husband would have liked that tale. Except I would say the Sixth was taken to his just reward.” She looked out over the crowd, taking no notice of Pike, who now seemed to be very interested in the sculpture of a serpent. “Your message said you know where my husband’s things are.”

  “With a friend he met at work.”

  “You mean at the Five Claws.”

  “At the mountain above Gekho’s Roost, yes.”

  She weighed his words. “Are you saying his things are up on that mountain?”

  “A backpack of his. With some papers, some engineer’s tools, a phone, and a compass. There’s a camp where he apparently met with his Tibetan friends, by a stone formation called the Talons.”

  Shan saw a flicker of victory in the woman’s eyes, then she sobered. “I’ve been meaning to go see his place of work,” she said. “As a way of saying goodbye. Getting his things might give me some degree of comfort. It’s been so difficult.” Her voice cracked, and she put a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. “His phone would have his friends’ information. Maybe if I could speak with some of them it would ease the pain. I will go.”

  “You mustn’t,” Shan said. “Too dangerous. Public Security is on the mountain, including Lieutenant Huan, who framed your husband. Now that I know where the pack is I can retrieve it when I go there next. It’s the kind of errand a constable does. Public Security will not suspect, I will just be retrieving the effects of a dead man for his family.”

  Jiang slowly nodded. “Talons. Like the foot of a hawk.”

  “Once a great garuda bird protected the mountain and the valley below. When the gods summoned him, he left behind his claws. The Tibetans say it means he is still watching, waiting for the right time to protect them.”

  “But would you know how to find these bird claws, Inspector? It can be difficult to find your way on those mountain slopes.”

  “On the western slope of the split mountain, above the big field of outcroppings,” he explained.

  She repeated his words with a slow nod, then offered the sad smile again before pressing his hand and departing.

  * * *

  Pike waited to approach him until the woman could be seen on the steps below the wall. “Quite the conversationalist, Constable,” he muttered, then held up his phone, showing a photograph of the woman he had taken as she stood beside Shan. “Clever bitch. A versatile asset, as they would say in the trade.”

  Shan shot him a quizzical glance.

  “She was on the train that day. Sat beside him and struck up a conversation.”

  The words slowly sank in. “You’re saying she was speaking with Sun before he died?”

  “They seemed to hit it off. After a couple hours she went forward and brought back food for them both to eat. I remember because I had been watching from a seat three rows back, hoping the spot beside him would stay vacant so we might chat. But then at the last minute she appeared, just as the train was pulling out. Seats are assigned on the sky train. She had a ticket for that particular seat. So I had to wait until he got up then followed him.” Pike scrolled through the photographs he had taken of the woman. “Sun never came back. She stayed in her seat. When I got back to my seat an hour later, she was going through an overnight bag. Only later did I recall that she had arrived without baggage. It was his. She didn’t expect him to return.”

  Shan turned toward the city and gazed out toward the squat fortresslike structure on the far side of the river, then glanced at his watch. “I have lunch with an aging cobra. The train arrives in four hours. Meet me at the station.”

  * * *

  The colonel hesitated as they reached the heavy iron gate of the compound on the outskirts of Lhasa. He was more nervous than Shan had ever seen him, and for a moment he thought Tan was going to tell his driver to turn around. But then Tan opened his door and, confirming that no one sat in the decrepit gatehouse, unfastened the latch himself and gestured the car inside as he pushed the gate open.

  “There was a time,” Tan said when they began driving through a grove of trees, “when people called that a one-way gate, because so many visitors left in a van out the back, either dead or wishing they
were dead. The Commissar had one of those wide-brimmed hats the Tibetans wear but he decided it was a cowboy hat, like in the American movies, and he got a long revolver with a leather holster that he liked to use. If you were one of his confidants and he wanted you to get rid of someone for him, he would talk about the intended victim in a disappointed tone then hand you a bullet. That’s all. He never said, ‘I want him dead’ or ‘get rid of him.’ Just the bullet.”

  Shan sensed an unusual tension in the colonel’s voice.

  Tan lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke with a rasping breath. “Years ago, I went to see him here with the quartermaster from my regiment,” the colonel continued. He seemed to think Shan was not sufficiently fearful of the old serpent. “The Commissar had invited us to dinner. We had a good meal, just the Commissar and the two of us. Sat with cigarettes and brandy afterward. We finally rose to go and he walked a few steps from us and said, ‘I’m calling you out, you thief!’ and drew his pistol. He shot the quartermaster through the heart, right there, in his house. Then he laughed and offered me another drink. ‘Better this way,’ he said, and then, ‘You’ll sign a statement that it was a suicide.’ It was only the next day that I found out that a special investigative unit had sent him a report proving that the quartermaster had been selling army supplies on the black market for years. He was going to be executed in any event, though I always wondered if his real crime had been not sharing his takings with the Commissar. It was never corruption for him to get a piece. He just called it a gate fee because he was the gatekeeper of Tibet. That was one of his names for himself. The Gatekeeper, or the Avenging Dragon, for a while even Buddha’s Fist, when he was purging senior lamas,” Tan recounted as life-sized statues of Tibetan gods and saints began appearing on both sides of the driveway.

  “He’s assimilated,” Shan said in a brittle voice. The figures were trophies, looted from temples and monasteries.

  “He loves Tibet. They tried to send him to North Vietnam as senior adviser to Ho Chi Minh in the early years, but he chose to stay. He’s immersed himself in Tibetan culture, he likes to say.” Tan turned to Shan. “What’s that word for a senior teacher? Not lama, the other.”

  “Rinpoche.”

  “That’s it. Sometimes he calls himself the ‘Rinpoche with a sidearm.’”

  Their car emerged onto a small flat plain at the base of a low mountain, with a shooting range on one side of the road and a lake on the other. The small marble pavilion at the base of a dock was badly in need of repair.

  “It was built as the summer residence of the Chinese amban in the nineteenth century, then used as a retreat for the Dalai Lama’s officials for decades,” Tan said. “The Commissar had research done so he could have robes identical to those the amban wore. That’s his favorite title. He said the amban never ruled, that the amban’s job was just to strike fear in those who did publicly rule so they would obey him at critical times. ‘Tremble and obey,’ he would tell them, like it said in the decrees from the old emperors. That’s what he’s done for decades. I think he’s what they call in those movies a godfather. Even in Beijing they don’t implement a Tibetan policy without speaking to the Amban first.”

  Suddenly Shan himself was seized with fear. Surely then the Amban Council must be led by the very man they had come to see. It was a terrible mistake. What had Tan said when Shan had first suggested the visit? The old man could only kill one of them. When the car stopped Tan had to pull Shan’s arm to get him to leave the car.

  The house was built much like the residences Shan had seen at the imperial Summer Palace outside Beijing, with lacquered pillars supporting a portico centered around two enormous enameled doors, and a moongate on one side that appeared to lead into a garden. The slim, well-dressed middle-aged Tibetan woman who greeted them declared that the Commissar was very much looking forward to luncheon with them, then led them down a corridor toward the rear of the house.

  The Commissar had been a dark cloud at the edge of Shan’s sky for years. During his life in Beijing Shan had known, and reported to, many tyrannical Party operatives who behaved more like members of the imperial court than representatives of the people. His loathing of them had not started immediately, only after he had recognized among a gathering of such Party bosses one of the men who had persecuted his own family and destroyed the gentle intellectuals who had been his parents. The fact that he had gradually withdrawn, declining to kowtow to them, was probably the biggest reason he had been sent into his gulag exile. They had been frightened by him, because he did not tremble and obey. He had thought he had left them all behind, that they could not harm him in remote Tibet. But then he had heard of the godfather of Lhasa and for years had felt the old familiar fear whenever anyone had mentioned his name. The Commissar was seldom visible, but he made his presence known, the phantom planet that affected the orbits of all the others.

  Their demure guide led them past several opulently furnished rooms whose walls were hung with antique Chinese paintings. The corridor itself was lined with photographs of the Commissar with nearly every important Beijing official of the past six decades, including more than one with the Great Helmsman himself. They turned down another hall, this one lined with exquisite Tibetan thangka paintings. Some of the furnishings, like the decorations along the driveway, had obviously been provided by the Bureau of Religious Affairs. Shan did not even realize he had stopped before a breathtaking, vibrant image of Yamantaka, Lord of Death, until Tan tugged at his sleeve.

  “He got himself appointed the head of Religious Affairs in Tibet for a few years,” Tan explained in a low voice, “and sent the best paintings to ministers and Party secretaries. Now he keeps the best for himself. He used to lecture at Party meetings, saying that Religious Affairs was the most important agency in Tibet, that the army might be Beijing’s hammer, but Religious Affairs was its precision scalpel.” Shan was well aware of how Religious Affairs ruthlessly used its policies to silence all dissent, since by definition any contrary word from a Tibetan was a form of Buddhist impertinence.

  They emerged into the gardens enclosed by the high walls Shan had seen from the driveway. Bamboo grew in huge ceramic pots along the inner wall. Shaggy flowering shrubs and hedges, badly in need of maintenance, delineated several smaller enclaves. The closest held a small archery range with shredded targets at the far end and a table close to the entrance with several crossbows and baskets of the sharpened metal bolts used for ammunition. In the center of the row of targets was a post the height of a man. The wood of the post was heavily punctured and showed several dark stains.

  They were admitted through a high wooden gate into a garden with a marble swimming pool beside which were a solitary chaise lounge, a bar, and a wooden hot tub on a platform. Two attractive young Tibetan women in nurses’ uniforms stood beside the tub with towels at the ready. The figure in the steaming tub had a small towel over his head, keeping his face in shadow. The man stayed seated, not moving the towel as he spoke.

  “Fuck me!” His voice was like the cackle of a hen. “You stayed alive, Tan, you stubborn son of a bitch! Bullets, bayonets, cannons, cancer. Nothing can kill you! As indestructible as one of your tanks!”

  “Almost as indestructible as you, you scrawny bastard,” Tan replied in an even voice.

  “People have tried to chew me up for years,” the Commissar rejoined. “But they always spit me out.”

  “Because you’re just a sorry sack of gristle,” Tan said.

  As if to prove Tan right, the old man stood. His naked body was shriveled in every respect. One of the nurses reached out to help him from the tub as the other readied a towel. He pulled off the cloth covering his head as she dried him. He was as bald as an egg. His face was so devoid of flesh it seemed almost skeletal. His skin was like yellowed parchment, stained with age spots.

  “You’ll stay for lunch of course,” he said as a nurse draped a robe over his shoulders.

  They dined at a small table in a large chamber that emulated an i
mperial banquet room, with faux enameled pillars and murals of peacocks and dragons on the walls. The Commissar, now dressed in a stylish version of a Mao suit, with dragons embroidered on the cuffs, studied Shan as he poured wine. He nodded and turned to Tan. “This one’s been stomped on a few times,” he observed to the colonel.

  “Inspector Shan started his career in Beijing and has served under me in Lhadrung for the past several years,” Tan replied, as if it explained much.

  The Commissar’s stern face broke into a grin. “I never trust a man who doesn’t show a few scars,” he declared and leaned over to pound Shan on the back.

  Shan pointed to a short line of raised skin above his eye. “That was the first, from the edge of a metal ruler swung by a teacher in a reeducation camp. I was seven. All downhill from there.”

  “How did you earn her wrath?” the old man asked.

  “I explained that the picture on the wall of the Chairman with a clear face wasn’t real, because the real Chairman had moles on his face.”

  The Commissar burst into cackling laughter, then raised his thin brows, in mock alarm. “Reckless behavior! Stand for the truth at all costs, eh?” he said and raised his glass to Shan. “He’ll do,” he said to Tan. “He’ll do.”

  More staff silently brought platters of spicy noodles, eggplant fried in pimentos, and chicken in peanut sauce, all dishes of the Commissar’s Hunan birthplace. Tan and their host chatted about old times as Shan watched the women who served the food. They were all Tibetan, all very young, very attractive, and very nervous. There was no evidence that the Commissar had a family. The aged tyrant lived alone with at least a dozen Tibetan servants, who seemed to be supervised by the older woman who had met them at the door. Tan had leaned into Shan’s ear while they had followed the old man back into the house. “Most of his staff are from transition families,” he stated in a low voice. It meant the women had members of their families in a prison and would be well aware of the old man’s power to send them to hard labor as well.