The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  "Comrade Director, I have been talking about the murder all along," Shan said.

  Wen stared at Shan with new curiosity. "There is a committee. Jao, Colonel Tan, and myself. Each has a veto power over any decision."

  "For rebuilding only."

  "Permits. Rebuilding. Authorization to accept new novices. Publishing religious tracts. Inviting the public to participate in services."

  "Did Prosecutor Jao reject any such applications?" Shan asked.

  "We all have. Cultural resources need to be allocated to avoid abuse. The Tibetan minority is only part of China's population. We cannot rubber-stamp every request," Wen declared with a fuller, practiced voice.

  "But recently. Was there any particular one that Jao refused to support?"

  Wen looked up at the ceiling, his hands tucked behind his neck. "Only one in the last few months. Denied a rebuilding petition. Saskya gompa."

  Saskya was Sungpo's gompa. "On what grounds?"

  "There is another gompa in the lower end of the same valley. Larger. Khartok. It had already applied for rebuilding. Much more convenient for visitors, a better investment."

  Shan stood to go. "I understand you are new in this job."

  "Nearly six months now."

  "They say your predecessor was killed."

  Director Wen nodded his head sadly. "They consider him something of a martyr back home."

  "But don't you fear for your life? I saw no guards."

  "We cannot be bullied, Comrade. I have a job to do," Wen declared somberly. "The minorities have a right to preserve their culture. But unless there is balance, there is danger from reactionaries. Just a few of us have been trusted by Beijing to stand in the middle. Without us there would be chaos."

  Chapter Nine

  The seeds of the night sky grew in Tibet. There the stars were the thickest, the dark blackest, the heavens closest. People looked up and cried without knowing why. Prisoners sometimes stole from their huts, under threat of the stable, to lie on the ground silently watching the heavens. The year before at the 404th an old priest had been found in such a position one morning, frozen, his dead eyes fixed on the sky. He had written two words in the snow at his side. Catch me.

  Shan leaned his head on the window as the truck climbed out of the valley on its long trip north, farther and farther into the sky. There was a test for novices at some gompas. Go out in the night and lie at a place of sky burial. Contemplate the heavens beside the bird-picked bones. Some did not come back.

  "Everyone talks about this prisoner Lokesh." Yeshe's voice came out of the darkness behind Shan. "You did something for him."

  "Did something?" Sergeant Feng interjected gruffly. "Kicked us in the ass, that's what."

  "Just a harmless old man. A tzedrung," Shan said, using the Tibetan term for a monk official. "He had been a tax collector in the Dalai Lama's government," Shan explained. "It was long past time for his release."

  Feng snorted. "Right. We just let the prisoners decide when we should open the gate."

  "But how could you-" Yeshe leaned forward. Having built up the courage to ask, he was not going to let go.

  "I had seen a decree from the State Council ten years before. In honor of Chairman Mao's birthday, amnesty was declared for all members of the former Tibetan government. The decree had been overlooked by Warden Zhong."

  "So you just instructed the warden about his duties?" Yeshe asked with disbelief.

  "I reminded him."

  "Shit," Sergeant Feng groused. "Reminded him! Like a grenade down his pants he reminded him." He slowed the truck and leaned toward Yeshe. "What Prisoner Shan does not say is that he couldn't remind anyone. Would have broken discipline. So instead he asked the political officer for materials to make a banner in honor of Mao's day."

  "A banner?"

  "Big damned banner for all the world to see. Showed patriotic spirit, Lieutenant Chang bragged. Families were coming. Townsfolk were coming. Guards were on parade. Out comes the banner, on the roof of their hut. All honor to Mao, it said, in whose honor the State Council reprieved all former officials. Even showed the month and year of the decree, so no one would be confused. Political officer, he spent lots of time with Shan that week."

  "But this old man got released?"

  "A petition was presented to Colonel Tan. It wasn't just a violation of law, it was a violation of a gift from Mao. Threat of demonstrations. So the colonel admitted to the world that Warden Zhong had made a mistake."

  On they drove, mile after mile, mingling with the stars. They were so high now the road seemed to have lost all connection to the planet. Only a few black patches along the edge of the sky showed they were still among the mountains.

  "Why were you scared of Director Wen?" Shan heard himself asking Yeshe, unaware the question was even on his tongue.

  "I did not intend to be scared," came the disembodied reply a long time later. "But he is the kenpo. For all of Lhadrung."

  The earnest young Director Wen an abbot? Then Shan understood. "A priest would be scared of Wen." Wen's chop made priests, or ruined priests. His chop ruined gompas.

  "I am not a priest."

  "You were a priest." Shan remembered Yeshe's haunting mantra in the skull cave.

  "I don't know." Yeshe's voice was hesitant, and pained. "It was just a stage of my life. It was over long ago."

  You have no long ago, Shan almost said. Don't dare to speak of long ago, not until like the rest of us you have endured your ration of nightmares, not until you have memories so brittle they snap like twigs when the political officers scream for you to confess them. "Then you went to school in Chengdu," Shan said instead. "But you were sent back for reeducating. Why?"

  "It was a misunderstanding."

  "You mean a miscarriage of justice?"

  Yeshe made a sound that may have been meant as a laugh. "Someone replaced a picture of Mao with a photo of the Dalai Lama in one of the classrooms. When no one would confess to the act, all six Tibetan students were sent home."

  "You mean it wasn't you?"

  "I wasn't even at school that day," Yeshe said forlornly. "I skipped to get tickets for an American movie."

  "Did you get them?" Feng asked after a moment. "The tickets."

  "No," Yeshe sighed. "They were sold out."

  The silence of the sky overwhelmed Shan again. A ghost appeared in the headlights and seemed to hover as it watched them. Feng gasped. Only as it slipped over the side of the mountain did Shan see its wings. An owl.

  "My old man was a carpenter." The words suddenly floated into the air, like an uncontrolled thought. It took a moment for Shan to realize it was Feng. "They took away his shop, his tools, everything. Because he owned them. Landlord class. Dug irrigation ditches for ten years. But at night he made things." There was something new in Feng's voice. He had felt it, too. The darkness.

  "Out of cardboard. Out of dried grass. Sticks. Beautiful things. Boxes. Even cabinets."

  "Yes," Shan said uncertainly, not because he knew such a carpenter but because he had known many such heroes.

  "I asked him why. I was just a stupid kid. But he looked at me, all wise. Know what he said?"

  A meteor shot across the sky. No one spoke.

  "What he said," Feng continued at last. "He said you must always step forward from where you stand."

  Shan watched the stars for several more moments. "He was very wise," he said. "I would have liked to have known your father."

  He heard Feng suck in his gut in surprise. Then he made the low gurgling noise that was his laugh.

  Another meteor streaked by. "Some of the old yaks say that each shooting star is a soul attaining Buddhahood," Shan observed languidly.

  "The old yaks?" Yeshe asked.

  Shan didn't realize he had spoken aloud. "The first generation of prisoners. The oldest survivors." Shan smiled in the darkness. "My first winter at the 404th we had snow removal duty in the high passes. Bitter cold. The winds, they would do strange things with the sn
ow. Thirty-foot drifts in one spot, bare earth in the next. Boulders sculpted with ice and snow to look like huge creatures from your dreams. One day after a new snow we're digging out the road and there's a big boulder where there never was one before. Brought down by an avalanche, someone said.

  "We shoveled snow. It blew back. We shoveled again. Later, behind us, one of the guards screams. The boulder's staring at him." Shan smiled again. He had forgotten how fond he was of the memory. "It was an old yak, letting the snow cover him to avoid the cold of the storm. He just stood there, like he was part of the mountain, watching the insanity of the world around him. On the way back one of the prisoners said it reminded him of the old monks in the 404th. Ageless, indestructible, like a mountain with legs, at peace in the most tormenting environment. The name just stuck."

  Later a strange sound arose, the buzz of a stadium filled with people. On the platform in the center were three austere figures, seated at a table equipped with microphones. Behind them, off the platform, was an old woman with a mop and bucket. Shan jerked his head up. It was a dream. No, he realized with distress, it was a memory. He stared into the stars, but five minutes later was back in the stadium. A young, frightened man was on stage now, his eyes dull with drugs. A shrill, urbane woman behind him was reading a statement for him, an apology to the people.

  Shan willed himself awake, shuddering at the recollection of the last murder trial he had attended. He forced himself to count the stars. He pinched himself. But in his fatigue he returned to the stadium. It was hushed now, and the defendant was on his knees before a Bureau officer. At the last minute, as the officer fired a bullet through his skull, the face changed to that of Sungpo. The old woman climbed the stairs and began mopping away the blood and tissue.

  Shan groaned and was instantly in heart-pounding wakefulness. He did not drift off again.

  Somewhere, much later, Sergeant Feng spoke again. "That soldier, Meng. He was on assignment to guard the cave. But not on that night."

  "You asked?"

  "You needed to know, you said. He probably traded duty hours. Happens all the time without the records being changed."

  "Could we see him? Back at the barracks."

  "Don't know," Feng said uncomfortably. "I'm assigned to the 404th. Those officers at Jade Spring- I don't know. They're tough as tiger's teeth," he muttered, then leaned forward as though he had to give full attention to the road.

  "Sergeant," Yeshe ventured from the backseat. "Comrade Shan says the warden is deceiving me. That he plans to detain me again, to work on his computers."

  A strained chuckle was Feng's only reply.

  "Is it true?"

  "Why ask me? The warden and I, we don't live on the same planet, you know what I mean? How would I know?"

  "Just then, you laughed like you believed it."

  "What I believe is that Zhong is one prick of a son of a bitch. He's paid by the people to be a son of a bitch. He doesn't talk to sergeants about his plans."

  "But you could find out. Ask the staff. Everyone talks to the momo gyakpa."

  Feng slowed the truck. "What the hell did you say?" he barked, suddenly surly.

  "I'm sorry. Nothing. Just if you could ask. Maybe I could do something for you in exchange."

  "Momo gyakpa? Fat dumpling?" Bitterness seemed to overtake his rage. "I heard it before," he said after a pained silence, much quieter. "Behind my back. Thirty-five years in the People's Liberation Army and that's what I get. Momo gyakpa."

  "I'm sorry," Yeshe muttered.

  But Feng was no longer listening. He rolled down his window and reached into the bag of dumplings that was to serve as their breakfast and lunch. "Momo." He picked up a dumpling and squeezed it as if it were something he was trying to kill. He hurled it out the window, then another, and another, throwing one with each protracted syllable. "Momo! Fucking! Gyakpa!" he yelled, with a choke of pain at the end. He stared out the window after the last momo. "Used to be called the Axe, for the way I could break things in two with my hands. The Axe. Watch out boys, the Axe is coming, they would say. Colonel Tan remembers those days. Run, the Axe is on leave tonight."

  As soon as the light was strong enough to read by, Shan reached into the canvas bag that Madame Ko had left at the barracks. Three files, the files of the cases which had resulted in the executions of three of the Lhadrung Five. Lin Ziyang, Director of Religious Affairs, killed by the cultural hooligan Dilgo Gongsha. Xong De, Director of Mines for the Ministry of Geology in Lhadrung County, killed by the enemy of the people Rabjam Norbu. Jin San, agricultural collective manager, killed by Dza Namkhai, leader of the infamous Lhadrung Five.

  He read the records for nearly an hour. At the end of each file, pages had been ripped out. Witness statements.

  Blushed with dawn, the peaks seemed to hover, more a part of the sky than the shadowy earth. Are the only religious people on the planet those who live near mountains? Trinle had asked him once. "I don't know," Shan had replied, "but I know Tibetans would not be Tibetans without their mountains."

  They began descending into the head of a long valley. Below them, down a mile of winding road, a complex of stone buildings surrounded by long empty pastures could be discerned through the dim morning light. Shan tilted his head as he realized what it was, and that although he had spent three years living with Tibetan monks he had never until this moment seen an active Tibetan monastery. So few were left.

  Yet countless monasteries had been constructed in his mind. On the most bitter winter days, when the trucks did not leave the compound and the prisoners huddled back to back under their thin blankets to conserve body heat, with words the old yaks guided the others through the gompas of their youth. As the prisoners shivered, sometimes so violently that teeth were broken, Choje and Trinle or one of the others began the journey, describing how the dawn played on the distant stone walls of the gompa as the traveler approached, or how the sound of a particular bell resonated within the pilgrim long before the structure came into sight. The smell of jasmine on the path, the flight of a snowgrouse, the rustle of the musk deer that roamed unafraid in the gompa's shadow were not overlooked, nor the cheerful call of the watchful rapjung, student monk, who first spied the visitor and opened the gates.

  With the prisoners' gompas long ago annihilated and few memorialized in photographs, the only traces left were in the memories of a handful of survivors. But by the time the tale was told- and a visit to a single gompa could be days in the telling- the gompa had been rebuilt in the hearts and minds of another generation. Not just the visual images, for the old yaks reveled also in the sounds and smells of their former homes. Not just the physical, for the human rhythm, too, would be recreated, down to the rheumy eyes of the blind lama who rang the bell or how novices, with wads of horsehair, scrubbed the stone floors that had grown too slippery from the butter offerings. There was a huge prayer wheel in a gompa that once stood in the southern mountains whose squeak reminded everyone of a flock of hungry magpies, Shan recalled, and its kitchen mixed the flowers of a certain heather with barley for a fragrant tsampa.

  Sergeant Feng slowed the truck. "Probably got hot tea," he suggested, nodding toward the buildings. "Maybe we'll get better directions to Saskya. I don't know this road-"

  "No." Yeshe interrupted with unusual bluntness. "Not enough time. Keep going. I know Saskya. Down the road twenty miles, up against the high cliffs at the end of the valley."

  Feng grunted noncommittally and drove on.

  Nearly an hour later Yeshe directed Feng onto a dirt road that led into a forest of rhododendron and cedar. After a few minutes a long mound of stones became visible, running perpendicular to the road and disappearing into the thickets. Shan raised his hand for Feng to stop, then leapt out, ran to the pile of stones and halted. There was something he recognized, though he had never been there before. From somewhere nearby came the tiny ring of a tsingha, the small hand cymbal used in Buddhist worship.

  He felt something inside, a flutter of excit
ement. He had been there before, or somewhere much like it, in the winter tales of the old yaks. Slowly his knees collapsed and for a moment he knelt, his hands on the stones. Then he began cleaning the detritus from the pile of rocks. He picked up one, then another, and another. They had been squared off by human hands, and each had a Tibetan inscription, either painted or crudely chiseled on its surface. He was in the middle of a mani wall, one of the walls of stones inscribed with prayers constructed over the course of centuries by devout visitors and pilgrims. Each stone was carried from far away, one at a time, for the glory of Buddha. A mani stone was said to continue the prayer after the pilgrim left. He looked at them, stretching into the forest as far as he could see, the moldering, moss-covered prayers of generations.

  Once Trinle had taken a beating for breaking from a work line to grab such a stone, abandoned on the slope above them. "Why risk the batons?" Shan had asked as Trinle rubbed away the moss to release the prayer.

  "Because this may be the prayer that changes the world," Trinle had cheerfully replied.

  Shan carefully rubbed away the dirt from the prayers of five stones and laid out three, then stacked two and one on top. The beginning of a new wall.

  Ignoring Feng's scowl, he walked along the road in front of the creeping truck. The tinkle of the tsingha floated through the air again, and a high wall came into view. The cracks and seams and patchwork paint on the wall told of ordeal and survival. It had been battered and rebuilt and broken and patched more times than Shan could trace. Half a dozen shades of white and tan had been painted over the uneven surface, which here was stucco, there plaster, and elsewhere exposed rock.

  Flanking the wall on either side were ruins, jagged piles of rocks overgrown with vines, shattered and charred timbers covered with lichens and mosses. The wall, he realized, had formed the inner courtyard of what once had been a far bigger gompa. The gate hung open, revealing several novices sweeping the courtyard with brooms of rushes tied to long sticks.