The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Shan surveyed the scene with unexpected joy. The buildings were familiar to him from the 404th's oral reconstructions, but nothing prepared him for the stark, powerful presence of a working gompa.

  In the center of the yard was a huge bronze caldron, so battered and dented the face of Buddha forged on its side had the appearance of a scarred warrior. Two monks were painstakingly polishing the vessel, which was one of the largest incense burners Shan had ever seen. Wisps of smoldering juniper rose from it as they worked.

  On either side of the gate, following the wall halfway around the courtyard, were low structures with roofs made of overlapping flat stones, the quarters of the monks. Assembled of salvaged stone and scrap lumber, they looked suspiciously like unlicensed construction. What was it Director Wen had told them? Jao had denied Sungpo's gompa its building permits, cutting it off from official sources of material.

  The buildings beyond were just as patchwork but somehow more majestic. On the left, up a small flight of stairs and past a porch of heavy timbers, was the dukhang, the hall of assembly where the monks took their lessons. To the right lay a parallel structure in front of which, under the overhanging roof, stood an upright prayer wheel as large a man. A monk was slowly spinning it, each rotation completing the prayer inscribed on its side. Behind the wheel, past a pair of brightly painted red doors, was the lhakang, the hall of the principal deity. On the outer wall above the hall was a circular mandala painting depicting the sacred path, the Wheel of Dharma, with a deer painted on either side, signifying Buddha's first sermon in India.

  Between the two structures was a large chorten shrine, consisting of a plaster dome built over a square base, flattened at the top with a series of slabs of decreasing size. Above the slabs was a barrel-shaped stage capped by a conical steeple. Trinle had once constructed a tiny chorten of wood scraps for Loshar, the new year holiday, and had been able to explain its spiritual symbolism to Shan before it had been seized and stomped to splinters by Lieutenant Chang. There were thirteen levels to a chorten, representing the traditional thirteen stages of advancement to Buddhahood. The top of the chorten was crowned with sun and crescent-moon shapes worked in iron. The sun represented wisdom, the moon compassion. On the round, barrel-shaped level were two huge painted eyes, symbolic of the ever-watchful Buddha.

  Shan stepped into the courtyard as the truck rolled to a halt behind him. The novices in the yard stopped and bowed low as they spotted their three visitors. Shan followed the gaze of one of the monks toward a door in the assembly hall. A middle-aged lama appeared.

  "Forgive the intrusion," Shan said quietly as the lama approached. "May I speak to someone about the hermit Sungpo?"

  The lama did not seem to consider the question worth answering. "What is your purpose?"

  "My purpose is to find the teacher of Sungpo."

  The man's face tightened. "And what is his guru accused of?"

  Yeshe stepped to Shan's shoulder. "He is not the kenpo," he whispered without moving his head. "He is the chotrimpa."

  Shan looked up, trying to hide his surprise. The kenpo, the abbot, had chosen not to talk to Shan. He had sent the lama responsible for monastic discipline.

  Shan looked back at the lama. "Sungpo is with us. His tongue is not. I respectfully request an audience with his guru."

  The lama surveyed the curious young monks who were gathering beside the truck. A censuring sweep of his hand scattered them. In the same moment a deep-throated bell sounded from somewhere inside the hall. The courtyard cleared.

  "Will you join our instruction in sunyata?" he asked Shan and Yeshe. There was a small smile on his face, but he made the words sound like a taunt. Sunyata was one of five required studies of every monastic student; it was the study of voidness, of nonexistence. Shan watched the lama as he disappeared into the nearest door. He had answered each of Shan's questions with another question, then turned away without waiting for a response.

  Shan looked about the now empty courtyard. Without looking back to Feng or Yeshe he climbed the stairs into the lhakang. Inside was a small passage leading up another flight of stairs, which he followed into a large, empty chamber lit by butter lamps. He lit a stick of incense and sat at the altar, lotus fashion, before the life-size bronze statue of Maitreya Buddha, known as the future Buddha, that dominated the chamber. Before the statue were the seven traditional offering bowls, three filled with water, one with flowers, one with incense, one with butter, and one with aromatic herbs.

  He sat for several minutes in silence, then picked up a broom at the back of the hall and began sweeping.

  A silver-haired priest appeared and lit an offering of butter shaped into a small spire. "It is not necessary," he said, nodding toward the broom. "This is not your gompa."

  Shan leaned on the broom for a moment. "When I was young," he said, "I heard about a temple high in the mountains along the sea, where all the wisdom of the world was said to reside. One day I decided I must visit the temple."

  After a few strokes of the broom he paused again. "Halfway up I began to lose my way. I met a man carrying a huge burden of wood on his back. I said I was looking for the temple of the saints, in order to find myself. He told me I didn't need the temple, he would show me all I needed to know. Here is what it takes," he said, and he set his burden on the ground and stood straight.

  "But what do I do when I go home, I asked. Simple, he said. When you go home you do this- and he put the burden back on his shoulder."

  The old priest smiled, found another broom, and joined Shan in the sweeping.

  ***

  When Shan emerged he walked to the gate and moved along the track that followed the outer wall. Halfway around he found a dirt path leading onto the slopes above the gompa. The grass on either side of the path had been crushed recently by the tires of a heavy vehicle.

  Ten minutes later he reached a clearing where the vehicle, unable to navigate the rocky terrain above, had been parked. He kept climbing. The path became tortuous, winding around wind-sculpted rocks, hugging the side of a precipitous cliff. It traversed a steep chasm across two logs which had been lashed together. At last the track opened into a large meadow. A carpet of tiny yellow and blue flowers led to a small stone structure built against a rock face. A raven screeched. He turned to see the black bird, a sign of wisdom and luck, gliding in the void barely a hundred feet away. Below the bird lay the entire world. A waterfall cascaded from the opposite slope into the conifer forest; beyond it a small lake gleamed like a jewel. To the south the valley stretched for miles with no visible sign of man. Beyond it, brushing a solitary cloud, was the pass they had driven through at dawn.

  Footsteps broke the spell. Feng and Yeshe were not far behind. Shan approached the building.

  The door, painted with a small ideogram surmounted by the sun, a crescent moon, and a flame, swung open with a light touch. The entry chamber had the air of an austere but lovingly tended cabin. Fresh flowers stood in a can below a window. The second chamber had no windows. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness Shan discerned a straw pallet, a stool, writing implements, and several candles. Lighting a candle, he discovered he was not in a chamber, but in a cavern.

  There was a noise outside. He extinguished the candle and moved back through the structure. The meadow was empty. A murmur of surprise came from overhead. He looked up to see a small squat man lying on the roof, his mouth stuffed with nails. The man's head jerked to the side, with the dull, inquisitive look of a squirrel. Suddenly he spat out the nails, grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled himself over, landing in a pile at Shan's feet.

  He didn't rise, but extended his finger and poked at Shan's leg as though to test if he were real.

  "Have you come to arrest me?" he said as he rose. There was a strange hopefulness in his tone.

  His flat, light-colored features were not Tibetan.

  "I've come about Sungpo."

  "I know that. I prayed." The man held his wrists together, as though for handcuffs.


  "This is Sungpo's hermitage?"

  "I am Jigme," the man said, as though Shan should know him. "Is he eating?"

  Shan studied the strange creature. He seemed stunted somehow. His hands and ears were oversized for his body. His eyelids drooped, like those of a sad, sleepy bear. "No. He is not eating."

  "I didn't think so. Some days I have to switch broth for his tea. Is he dry?"

  "He has straw. He has a roof."

  The man named Jigme gave an approving nod. "He has trouble remembering sometimes."

  "Remembering?"

  "That he's still just a human."

  Yeshe and Feng appeared beside Shan. Jigme muttered a greeting. "I am ready," he said with an oddly cheerful voice. "Just have to close up. And leave a little rice for the mice. We always leave food for the mice. Master Sungpo, he loves the mice. Maybe he can't laugh with his mouth but he laughs with his eyes when the mice eat from his fingers. Right from the heart. Have you seen him laugh?"

  When no one replied, Jigme shrugged and began to move back to the hut.

  "We didn't come to take you," Shan said. "I just have questions."

  Jigme stopped. "You have to take me," he said. He studied Shan in alarm. "I did it," he said in a new, desperate tone.

  "Did what?"

  "Whatever he did, I did it, too. It is the way we are." He lowered himself to the ground and put his arms around his knees.

  "How often does Sungpo leave the hut?"

  "Every day. He goes to the edge of the cliff and sits, two or three hours every morning." Jigme began rocking back and forth.

  "I meant away from here, out of your sight."

  Jigme looked confused. "Sungpo is on hermitage. He started nearly a year ago. He can't leave." He looked up, understanding his mistake. "Not of his own will." He seemed about to cry. "It's okay," he said apologetically. "Grandfather says we'll start over when he returns."

  "But you aren't with him every hour. You sleep. He could go and come back before you wake."

  "Not me. I know. I always know. Is my job to know, to watch over him. Hermits can concentrate like-" his search for words seemed almost painful, "- like a lump of coal in a wood fire." He shrugged. "They can fall off cliffs. It's happened. He belongs to me. I belong to him." He looked into his hands. "It's a good world." But Shan knew he wasn't speaking of the world at large. He was speaking of a tiny plateau in a remote township in a forgotten corner of Tibet.

  "There is one man he may speak with," Shan suggested.

  "Grandfather. Je Rinpoche." Jigme spoke almost in a whisper.

  "Is Rinpoche here?"

  "The gompa."

  "The day they came for Sungpo. Tell me about it."

  Jigme began to rock again. "They were six, maybe seven. Guns. They brought guns. I had been told about guns."

  "What color were their uniforms?"

  "Gray."

  "All of them?"

  "All but the young one. Had a slice in his face. His name was Meh Jah. Everyone called him Meh Jah. He wore a sweater, and glasses with dark lenses. He sent for the abbot. He wouldn't do anything until the abbot arrived."

  "They said they found a wallet."

  "Impossible."

  "They didn't find it?"

  "No. I mean they found it. I was there. In this cave. Meh Jah, he brought in the abbot. They had flashlights. He turned over a rock and there it was. But it was impossible it could be there."

  "How long did they look for it?"

  "The soldiers searched everywhere. Turned over my baskets. Broke my flowerpots."

  "But how long after this man named Meh was in your cave?"

  "He took the abbot into the cave. Someone called out right away, all excited. Then Meh Jah is here and put chains on Sungpo's hands."

  "Show me the rock."

  It was fifty feet inside the cave, a flat rock large enough to serve as a stool. Shan asked Yeshe to take Jigme outside. He sketched the cave in his notepad then bent over the rock with a candle. He ran his fingers around the stone, and paused. On the side facing the entrance there was a stickiness, a small rectangular patch that pulled at his skin. He called for Feng to light three more candles. He found what he was looking for ten feet further in, where it had been thrown from the rock after it served its purpose. A wad of black electrician's tape. The rock had been secretly marked to assure it could easily be found by those who came for the arrest.

  "Were there other visitors?" Shan asked. "Before the day Comrade Meh came."

  "None. None that I saw. Except Rinpoche."

  "Rinpoche. Where in the gompa will I find him?"

  Jigme was looking away, toward the edge of the cliff. A raven was there again, this one with an odd patch of white on the back of its head. Jigme began waving. "Visitors!" he shouted at the bird. "Hurry up!"

  Jigme shielded his eyes to study the bird. "He's coming now," he announced. "The raven says he's coming now."

  Je Rinpoche was not coming. He was waiting. Shan found him on a ledge a hundred yards down the path. He was paper-frail. His head was nearly hairless, and his skin rough, as if covered with dust. But his eyes, wet and restless, were brilliantly alive. The effect was as though someone had set two jewels into corroded stone.

  Shan pressed his palms together and bowed his head in greeting. "Rinpoche. If I could ask-"

  "There are so many things to consider," the ancient one interrupted. His voice was surprisingly strong. "This mountain. The dogs. The way the mist falls down the slopes, different each morning." He turned to Shan. When he shifted his body the robe barely moved. "Some days I feel like that. Like mist sliding down the mountain." He looked back down the valley and pulled his robe tighter, as if cold. "Jigme brings a melon sometimes. We eat it and Jigme will watch."

  Shan sighed and stared out over the landscape. He would never have a chance to speak with Sungpo. Je, his lama, had been Shan's only hope for an intermediary. "When we climb to the top of the mountain, you know what we do?" the lama asked. "Just as I did when I was a novice. We make little paper horses and fly them away in the wind." He paused as if Shan required an added explanation. "When they touch the earth they become real horses to help travelers through the ranges."

  There was movement beside Je. The raven had landed an arm's length away.

  "They are praying, my friends and teachers," Je began again. "All of them, and the bombs are beginning to fall. There is time to leave but they will not. I must take the young ones into the hills. The ones who stay are dying, just saying their rosaries and dying in the explosions. As I am leaving with the boys something is hitting me in the face. It is a hand, still holding its rosary."

  It was 1959, Shan calculated, or at the latest 1960, when the PLA bombed the gompas from the air.

  "Was it right?" Je continued. "That is always the temptation. To ask if it was right. It is the wrong question, of course."

  Suddenly Shan realized that the old man knew exactly why Shan was there.

  "Rinpoche," he said slowly, "I would not ask Sungpo to break his vow. I only ask him to join me in finding the truth. There is a murderer somewhere. He will kill again."

  "The only one who can find the murderer is the murdered," Je said. "Let the ghost take its revenge. I am not worried about Sungpo. But Jigme. Jigme is lost."

  Shan realized he had to let the old man lead the conversation. The wind increased. He fought the temptation to grab Je's robe, lest he be lifted into the clouds. "Jigme does not study at the gompa."

  "No. He abandoned studies to go with Sungpo. He never belongs. Being a gompa orphan, it is like being a small bird forced to live all its life in a rainstorm."

  A shiver of realization moved down Shan's spine. During the occupation of Tibet and again during the Cultural Revolution, monks and nuns had been forced, sometimes at bayonet point, to break their vows of celibacy, sometimes with each other, sometimes with soldiers. In some regions the offspring had been gathered into special schools. Elsewhere they formed gangs. There were several of the mixe
d-blood gompa orphans in the 404th, who had followed their priests to jail.

  "Then for Jigme, help me bring Sungpo back."

  The old man's eyes were closed now. "After the gompa was destroyed," he murmured, "I could see the rising moon better."

  ***

  The truck had already begun the long climb toward the pass when Shan asked the name of the gompa at the head of the valley, the compound they had passed at dawn. Yeshe did not reply.

  Feng slowed and read the map. "Khartok," he said impatiently. "They call it Khartok."

  Shan grabbed one of the files provided by Tan, glanced at it, and threw his hand toward Sergeant Feng. "Stop. Now."

  "There isn't time," Feng protested.

  "You would rather leave before dawn tomorrow and come back here?"

  "It is late. They will be preparing for last assembly, lighting the lamps soon," Yeshe said insistently. "We can try a telephone interview."

  Feng turned, looked into Shan's eyes, and without another word turned and moved back down the valley.

  Yeshe groaned and covered his eyes with his hand, as if he could not bear to see more.

  It wasn't pastures he had seen in front of the buildings. It was ruins, fields of stone that began half a mile from the gompa. There was no order to the stones. Some were in piles, others scattered as though they had been thrown from the overhanging mountains. But every stone had been squared by a mason.

  Closer to the gompa the foundations of several buildings had been turned into gardens. A dozen figures in red robes leaned on their hoes to gaze at the unexpected vehicle. As they eased to a stop Shan saw that new construction lay beyond the foundations. The main wall was being rebuilt and extended. Stacks of fresh lumber and pallets of cement wrapped in plastic were arrayed along the treeline.

  Yeshe lay on the back seat, an arm thrown over his eyes.

  "You know gompas. You know the protocols," Shan said impatiently. "I need you."

  Feng opened the rear door. "You're not sleeping, Comrade." He pulled on Yeshe's arm. "Hell, you're panting like a cornered cat."