The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Yeshe retreated a step, as though frightened. "Where is Balti?" he asked. A pleading tone had entered his voice.

  "A boy like that, he goes up. Or he goes down." She chuckled as she considered her words, and looked at the herdsman. "Up or down," she repeated to him with another laugh. She turned back to Yeshe. "If they took him, he'll still come back. As a lion he'll come back. That's what happens to the meek ones. He will return as a lion and rip us all to shreds for failing him."

  Shan knelt in front of the woman. "Show us the hiding place," he whispered.

  She did not seem to hear. "Show us," Yeshe asked. She fidgeted with her wares, confused.

  "We need to see it," Shan pressed. "Balti needs us to see it."

  "He was so scared," she said.

  "I think he was brave."

  She acknowledged him at last. "He cried at night."

  "Even a brave man can have reasons to cry."

  She kept her eyes from him. "What if you are the ones he feared?"

  "Look at us. Is that what you think? Would they come and talk to you this way?" He pressed her arm. She slowly looked up, as if it were painful to see Shan's eyes.

  "Not him," she said, nodding to Yeshe. "He isn't one of them."

  "Then do it for him," Shan said.

  She moved quickly now, as if eager to be rid of them. The herdsman with the staff came also, following them into the garage. They moved into the shadows at the back of the structure, past their truck. Feng was snoring loudly.

  A rough wooden rack had been built to hold large parts salvaged from vehicles. On the bottom was a row of long, narrow gas tanks removed from cars and trucks.

  She put her hand on the third tank. "He was small enough to go behind," she said. Shan and Yeshe manhandled the tank from the rack. The rear had been neatly cut away, the edges bent so it could be pushed back into place. A ribbon of grease covered the seam. Shan found a screwdriver and pried it open.

  Inside there was no briefcase, only a soiled envelope with several sheets of onionskin paper.

  The woman helped them return the tank to the rack, then turned to Yeshe once more. "Your powers are not destroyed," she said again. "They have only lost their focus."

  Yeshe seemed paralyzed by the words. As Shan pulled him to the truck, calling for Feng to wake up, Yeshe was unable to take his eyes from the woman. He held his rosary as they drove to the opposite side of town. He did not count the beads, but only looked at it. "In Sichuan," he said suddenly. "I could have my own apartment."

  Sitting behind Feng, Shan studied the papers from the tank. They had been ripped out of an investigation file, the file on the murder of Jin San, manager of Long Wall agricultural collective, the crime for which Dza Namkhai of the Lhadrung Five had been executed. At the bottom of the last sheet was a long series of Arabic numbers, five groups of five digits each.

  "Powers," Yeshe said in a haunted tone. "What a woman. Great powers. The world bears witness to my great powers."

  Shan looked up. "Don't be so quick to condemn yourself. The greatest power, I think, is the power to tell right from wrong."

  Yeshe considered Shan's words. "But it never feels like right or wrong," he said at last. "It seems more like deciding which devil is least destructive."

  "What did she mean," Shan asked, "when she said a groan that could reach the next world?"

  "Sound is like a thought with legs, some of the old gompas taught. If you can put the right focus in your thought you can see beyond this world. If you put the right focus in a sound you can actually reach and touch the other world."

  "Touch it?"

  "It is supposed to create a rift between worlds. Like a lightning bolt. The rift has incredible energy. Some call it the thunder ritual. It can destroy things."

  Shan looked back at the papers. The woman had said someone would come for him, meaning someone other than Jao. Balti had trusted Jao, as Jao had trusted him. An old file, a closed file, yet so secret Jao could not trust it in his own office. Or perhaps especially in his office.

  "She said Balti would go up or go down," Shan recalled distractedly. "She thought it was a good line."

  Yeshe still spoke in his haunted voice. "Go back to the Kham plateau, which is so high everywhere there is up compared to the rest of the world. Or stay and go down the chain of life forms."

  Shan nodded slowly, trying to connect the words to the file. The scent was so strong it felt almost tangible. Who wanted the file? Someone would come, Balti had said. It wasn't the purbas. They hadn't known who he was. Even if they did, they wouldn't terrify Balti. Who would? The knobs? A criminal gang? Soldiers? Criminal soldiers? Whoever it was would not fret over killing Balti. They would have taken him that night, and would have made him talk, made him sing out every last detail of every secret, every hiding place. If the tank still held at least some of its secrets, Shan suddenly realized, then Balti was alive, and free.

  Chapter Eleven

  The road to the ragyapa village had been deliberately built to terminate two hundred feet short of the village, culminating in a large clearing where flat rocks were arranged as unloading platforms. As Sergeant Feng edged into the clearing, a small flatbed truck pulled out with unnecessary speed. Shan glimpsed a woman at the window. She was weeping.

  Along the path to the village a donkey pulled a cart with a long thick bundle wrapped in canvas.

  Yeshe, to Shan's surprise, was the first out. From the back he pulled a burlap sack of old apples and with a look of somber resolution began moving up the trail. As Shan stepped out, Feng took one look at the long bundle on the cart, then immediately locked the doors and raised the windows. As his last defense, he lit a cigarette and began filling the interior with smoke.

  Shan was an alien to the ragyapa. They weren't accustomed to Han, dead or alive. They weren't accustomed to anyone but each other. Even other Tibetans seldom ventured near, except to leave the body of a loved one and a pouch of money or basket of goods in payment. In a cutter's village near Lhasa two soldiers had been killed for trying to film their work. Near Shigatse Japanese tourists had been beaten with leg bones when they got too close.

  Shan quickly caught up and stayed one step behind Yeshe. "You look like you have a plan," he observed.

  "Sure. To get out as quickly as possible," Yeshe said in a low voice.

  An unwashed boy with long ragged hair sat on the earth near the first hut, stacking pebbles. He looked up at the visitors and shouted, not a warning cry but a cry of abrupt pain, as though he had been kicked. The sound brought a woman from the inside of the hut. With one hand she carried a dented teapot and with the other balanced a baby on her hip. She glanced at Shan, not looking into his eyes, but slowly surveying his body, as though measuring him for something.

  Beyond the hut was the central yard of the camp, around which several structures were arrayed. Some were makeshift huts of sticks, planks, even cardboard. Several, to his surprise, were small but substantial stone buildings. A knot of men worked in front of one, sharpening an assortment of axes and knives.

  They had an apelike quality, short men with thick arms and small eyes. One of them detached himself and took a step toward Shan, brandishing a light axe. He had a disturbingly vacant stare, as if borrowed from the dead. Noticing the sack in Yeshe's arms, his face softened. Two other men stepped toward Yeshe, and solemnly extended their arms. As Yeshe handed the sack to them, they gave a nod of sympathy, then confusion appeared on their faces. One of the men looked inside the bag and laughed as he displayed an apple from inside. The others joined in the joke as he tossed the apple to the circle of men. It was not the kind of small burlap package the ragyapa usually received, Shan suddenly realized, not one of the small bundles of death that even the flesh cutters must hate to receive.

  Yeshe's action broke the tension. More apples were thrown, and the men produced pocketknives- their longer blades being reserved for their sacred duties- and began distributing pieces of the fruit. Shan looked at the tools. Small knives whose
blades ended with hooks. Long flaying knives. Rough handaxes that could have been forged two centuries earlier. Half the blades could easily have severed a man's head.

  Children appeared, eager for the fruit. They stayed apart from Shan, but circled Yeshe, wide-eyed and happy.

  "We came from the bookstore in town," Shan announced.

  The words had no effect on the children, but the men instantly sobered. Words were muttered among them, and one man split away and ran up the hill behind the village.

  The children began to poke at Yeshe, and suddenly he seemed very interested in them. He knelt to tie one of their shoes, studying the youth's clothing, then they leapt on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Some of the older boys produced toy blades of wood and, laughing hysterically, made sawing motions over his joints.

  Shan watched the melee for only a moment, then his gaze fixed on the running man. It quickly became clear that his destination was a rock outcropping at the top of the low ridge above the camp. Shan began walking up the trail, then stopped as he noticed the birds. Over a dozen, mostly vultures, were circling high in the sky. Others, birds of prey both large and small, sat perched along the path on stunted trees. They seemed strangely tame, as though the village belonged to them as much as the ragyapa. They watched the runner pass by with idle curiosity.

  It was called sky burial. The quickest remove from the physical bounds of one's existence. In some parts of Tibet bodies were set adrift in rivers, which was why it was taboo to eat fish. Shan had heard that in regions still closely tied to India immolation was practiced. But for the devout Buddhist in most of Tibet there was only one way to dispose of the flesh left when an incarnation was extinguished. Tibetans couldn't live without the ragyapa. But they couldn't live with them.

  Another man appeared at the top as the runner approached, holding a long handle like a staff with a wide blade at its end. He was middle-aged, and wore a winter military cap with its quilted side flaps hanging out at the sides like small wings. Shan, wary of the birds, sat on a boulder and waited.

  The man evaluated Shan with suspicion as he neared the boulder. "No tourists," he barked in a high voice. "You should go."

  "This girl in the bookstore. She is from this village," Shan said abruptly.

  The man stared at Shan with a grim countenance, then lowered his blade. He produced a cloth and began wiping off gobbets of wet, pink matter, watching Shan, not the blade, as he worked. "She is my daughter," he admitted. "I am not ashamed." It was a serious admission, and a brave one.

  "There is no need for shame. But it was surprising, to find one of your people working in town." He knew he did not need to mention the work papers. The realization that Shan had discovered the lie was, he expected, the only reason the man was talking to him.

  The challenge in the man's eyes dissipated to a glint of stubborn resolve. "My daughter is a good worker. She deserves a chance."

  "I am not here about your daughter. I am here about your family's business with the old sorcerer."

  "We don't need sorcerers."

  "Khorda has been supplying her with charms. I think she brings them here."

  The man pressed a fist against his temple, as though suddenly in pain. "It is not illegal to ask for charms. Not anymore."

  "But still, you are trying to hide it, by having your daughter buy them."

  The ragyapa considered this carefully. "I help her out. One day she will have her own shop."

  "A shop can be very expensive."

  "Another five years. I have it worked out. Ragyapa have the steadiest job in Tibet." It had the sound of an old joke.

  "Has Tamdin been here? Is that why you need the charms?" Shan asked. Or does Tamdin live here, perhaps he should ask. Could it really be so simple? The bitter, forgotten ragyapa must hate the world, especially its officials. And who more qualified to conduct the butchery on Prosecutor Jao? Or to cut out the heart of Xong De of the Ministry of Geology?

  The man sighed. "The charms are not for here."

  "Then where? Who? You mean you are selling them to someone else?"

  "These are not things to speak about." The man wiped the blade again, as if in warning.

  "Are you selling them?" Shan repeated. "Is that how you will pay for her shop?"

  The man looked up at the circling birds. A ragyapa village would be the perfect place for murder, Shan realized. Like shooting your own officer on a battlefield because you hated him. One body here would quickly become indistinguishable from the others.

  The man did not respond. He looked down into the village and saw the men staring at him. He barked at them and they began working on the tools again. Yeshe, strangely, was still tumbling about with the children.

  Shan looked at the man again. He was not only older than most of them, he was apparently the headman of the village. "I just want to know who. Someone must be too embarrassed, or too scared, to ask for the charms directly. Is it someone in the government?" The man turned away from Shan. "My questions may occur to someone else," Shan said to his back. "They would have other means of persuasion."

  "You mean Public Security," the man whispered. Certainly the Bureau would be more interested than Shan in his daughter's work papers. His face seem to crumble with the words. He stared into the dirt at his feet.

  Shan told the man his name.

  The headman looked up in surprise, unaccustomed to such a gesture. "I am called Merak," he said tentatively.

  "You must be very proud of your daughter."

  Merak stopped and considered Shan. "When I was a boy," he said, "I never understood it, why none of the others would let me near. I would go to the edge of town and hide, just to watch the others play. You know who my best friend was? A young vulture. I trained him to come to me when I called. It was the only thing that trusted me, that accepted me as I was. One day when I called an eagle was waiting. It killed my friend. Snatched him right out of the air, because he was watching me, not the sky."

  "It is hard to be trusted."

  "We're vultures, too. That's what the world thinks of us. My father used to laugh about that. He'd say, 'That's the advantage we have over everyone else. We know exactly who we are.' "

  "Someone has asked you to buy a charm. Someone who thinks they offended Tamdin."

  Merak swept his hand toward the buildings below. "Why would we need them?"

  "The ragyapa do not believe in demons?"

  "The ragyapa believe in vultures."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  "First you tell me."

  "Tell you what?"

  "You're from the world," Merak said, nodding toward the valley. "Tell me you don't believe in demons."

  The sound of scuffling arose further up the trail. Shan looked up, and instantly regretted it. Two vultures were engaged in a tug of war over a human hand.

  Shan gazed down into his own hands a moment, his fingers rubbing his calluses. "I have lived too long to tell you that."

  Merak gave a knowing nod, then silently led Shan back to the village.

  "The American mine," Shan told Feng. There was another ragyapa, he remembered, one who climbed the high ranges that were the home of Tamdin.

  Yeshe, in the back seat, extended a child's sock toward Shan as if it were a trophy. "Didn't you see?" he asked with a meaningful grin.

  "See what?"

  "The missing military supplies I had been cataloging for Warden Zhong. The hats, the shoes, the shirts. And everyone wore green socks."

  "I don't understand," Shan confessed.

  "The lost supplies. They're here. The ragyapa have them."

  ***

  "No," Shan said as they turned from the highway onto the access road to Jade Spring. "The American mine."

  "Right," Sergeant Feng said. "Just one stop. Not long."

  He pulled up next to the mess hall and, to Shan's surprise, opened Shan's door, waiting. "Not long," he repeated.

  Shan followed, confused, then remembered. "You were talking to Lieuten
ant Chang."

  Feng grunted noncommittally.

  "Has he been reassigned? He isn't spending much time at the 404th."

  "In a lockdown? With two hundred border commandos camped there? What's the point?"

  "What did he want?"

  "Just talking. Told me about a shortcut to the American mine."

  In the mess hall soldiers were gathered in small groups, drinking tea. Feng surveyed the room, then led Shan toward three men playing mah-jongg near the rear.

  "Meng Lau," he called out. Two of the men jerked their heads up and stood. The third, his back to them, laughed and set down a tile. The others fell back as Feng put his hand on the man's shoulder.

  Startled, the man cursed and turned. He was young, a mere boy, with greasy hair and hooded, lightless eyes. Headphones, turned upside down under his chin, covered his ears.

  "Meng Lau," Feng repeated.

  The sneer on the man's face faded. He slowly lowered the headphones. Shan unbuttoned his pocket and showed him the paper provided by Director Hu. "You signed this?"

  Meng glanced at Feng and slowly nodded. There was something wrong with his left eye. If drifted, unfocused, as if perhaps it were artificial.

  "Did Director Hu ask for it?"

  "The prosecutor came and wanted it," Meng said nervously, rising from the table.

  "The prosecutor?"

  Meng nodded again. "His name is Li."

  "So you signed one for Li and one for Hu?"

  "I signed two."

  So it was true, Shan realized, Li Aidang was compiling a separate file. But why go through the trouble of providing Shan a duplicate statement? To ensure that he finished as quickly as possible? To deceive Shan? Or maybe to warn him that Li would always be one step ahead?

  "They said the same thing?"

  The soldier looked at Feng uncertainly before he answered. "Of course."

  "But who put the words on the paper?" Shan asked.

  "They are my words." Meng took a step back.