Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  Shan turned and silently stepped out of the doorway and around the corner of the house, where he found Lhandro on a roughhewn bench set against the wall studying his map. As he approached the rongpa Nyma rushed around the corner. "It was him!" she cried. "That dobdob! He says he was meditating when a huge man appeared, a crazy man dressed like a demon, with blackened cheeks. He began beating him for no reason with his long staff, and threw fire at him." The nun stared at Shan with a confused, frightened expression.

  Lhandro called out to one of the Yapchi men, who darted to one of the horses and rode away. Even here, in the wild, remote Plain of Flowers, they needed to guard the chenyi stone.

  "How would he know?" Lhandro asked. "That demon follows the eye as if it speaks to him."

  Not follow, Shan thought. The dobdob had come from the hermitage to the Plain of Flowers ahead of them, as though he had known they would come this way. Had he caused the avalanche that blocked the pass, to be sure they would detour across the plain? Had he attacked the monk and burned the plain in an effort to stop them, or slow them? Or had he been waiting and felt the need to slake his appetite by attacking another of the devout?

  "Lokesh said a dobdob enforces virtue," Nyma said in a low voice, as if scared of being overheard. "But this one attacks the virtuous. It's like he's the opposite of a dobdob, or some dobdob crazed with evil."

  She looked from Lhandro to Shan for an answer, then sighed when both men stayed silent. "At least he's going to be all right," she said as Shan sat down on the bench. "His eyes are clear. He is hungry. His name is Padme. He told us where his gompa is," she added, as Lhandro produced his map and she pointed to a dot labeled Norbu at the end of a road that extended east to the north-south highway. Lhandro traced his finger from the dot to a point a few miles below them on the plain, then outlined a trail that led east along the high slope above them, north into Qinghai Province, toward Yapchi Valley. "We have heard of this Norbu, one of the gompas permitted to open five years ago. My father wants me to go there some winter, to bring back blessings. It would be only ten miles off our path. Five of us will take him tomorrow- four to carry the blanket, one for relief." He fixed Shan with an uncertain gaze. "We can't leave a monk in the wilderness," he added in a plaintive tone.

  "We can't," Shan agreed, and looked over the ruins. Tenzin had not emerged from the reconstructed buildings where he had been turning the prayer wheel. It was the first time the mute Tibetan had not departed with his leather dung sack as soon as they made camp.

  "You take him," Shan said, "let me go on to the Yapchi Valley alone. Lokesh and I."

  "Impossible," Lhandro protested. "The chenyi stone- the caravan. We are entrusted to escort you."

  "I fear what could be there waiting," Shan said. "The Colonel. His mountain commandos. They know where the eye came from originally. They must know that is where it will return."

  "It is our home," Lhandro declared with a determined glint. "I live in the house built by my family generations ago. I will not let soldiers keep me from my home."

  "You must understand something," Shan said in a sober tone. "Bringing the eye back now is more likely to cause your people harm than good."

  "No," Lhandro insisted, the doubt gone from his voice. "Of all the paths that are possible, that is not one of them. We must take the stone back, at any cost, even if it means facing the army, or that dobdob. We will get rest tomorrow, then-"

  Lhandro was interrupted by the appearance of a Tibetan woman in a frayed red tunic with a long yak hair belt and several heavy turquoise and coral necklaces around her neck. She cast a worried glance at Shan, then looked back toward the house. "You should go tend those sheep," she said in a low, hurried voice.

  Lhandro stood, looking with alarm toward the flock. The sheep lay peacefully on the banks of the stream, a hundred yards away.

  The woman glanced back at the fire, where two children tended a small bellows. She lived here, Shan realized, was probably the caretaker's wife.

  "I'll go with you to your sheep," the woman offered. "We should go now."

  Lhandro took a step forward, staring at the animals again.

  "Not you," the woman said to Lhandro pointedly. She was wringing her hands.

  Shan stood, not understanding either the woman's words or her nervousness. "Do you need to speak with me?"

  "No," the woman began, then groaned as the caretaker appeared around the corner of the house. He was a big-boned man, slightly taller than Shan, wearing a broad-rimmed brown hat and one of the wool fleece vests favored by the dropka. He froze, glared at Shan with a look that seemed to be something like horror, then came at him like a bull, not speaking, giving no warning as he abruptly shoved Shan back into the bench, slamming him against the wall so hard the wind was knocked out of him.

  "No one asked you here, Chinese," the man spat with cold fury. "You're not welcome."

  Shan stood on wobbly knees, trying to regain his breath. The man slammed him back against the wall. Shan felt dizzy. He became aware of the woman running away toward the fire. He heard the sound of a horse cantering and saw movement in the direction of the trees.

  Lhandro put a hand on the man's arm but the caretaker twisted and hit the rongpa with an elbow, in the process knocking his own hat off. Shan stared at him in confusion. The caretaker was Chinese.

  "Take your murdering ways and leave!" the man spat. "There is no room for blasphemers!" As he stepped toward Shan with his fist raised, a horse wheeled to a halt in a cloud of dust and in a blur of speed its rider launched from the saddle onto the caretaker's back. It was Dremu, throwing his arm around the man's neck, pulling him backward, twisting, forcing him to the ground.

  The woman screamed. The caretaker pulled a chisel from his belt and, still sitting on the ground, lashed out at Dremu as the Golok leapt back and crouched, hands floating in the air, as if about to spring again. As Shan stood Nyma appeared, then Anya, crying out in alarm. Suddenly Dremu's knife was in his hand.

  "It is not the way, father," a patient, youthful voice called out. The boy who had first run to bring the caretaker from the reconstruction site repeated the words as the woman pushed the boy forward, as though the boy were the only means she had to stop Shan's attacker.

  The hand holding the chisel seemed to droop. The caretaker seemed unaware of Dremu now. He looked venomously at Shan then back at the boy.

  "These two men," a calmer voice declared from behind Shan. "They found me when I lay wounded on the plain." Shan turned to see the monk at the corner of the building, leaning on Lokesh.

  The caretaker seemed to go limp. He looked at the monk, the woman and the boy, and folded his arms around his knees, dropping the chisel to the ground. He pressed his head into his knees. After a moment he looked up with a sullen, resentful expression at Shan, then turned to Lhandro. "You should have told me a Chinese was coming," he spat, but there was more sorrow in his voice than anger.

  The boy stepped cautiously to the man's side and extended an arm to help him up. For a moment, as he rose with the boy's help, the caretaker seemed old and unsteady, then his eyes flared again and as he retrieved the chisel and replaced it in his belt he fixed Shan with a baleful stare.

  "He's not one of-" Lhandro began, searching for words. "He's like you, Gang."

  The man reacted with a resentful snort, as if to say no one was like him, but, as his son took his hand, he seemed to deflate again. His gaze drifted toward the ground and he let the boy lead him back across the compound.

  Shan staggered to the bench and sat down, then watched as the man walked toward the shrines. Gang. It meant steel, a name given by members of what his father would have called the Mao Cult during one of the Chairman's fanatical campaigns for steel production more than four decades earlier.

  "My husband is not-" a strained voice started near Shan. He turned to see the woman with the child beside him. "Gang isn't like that…" Shelooked toward the strange angry man and seemed about to cry. "My husband built those shrines," she o
ffered in his defense, then asked the boy to bring Shan a bowl of tea. "It's taken him nearly ten years."

  Lhandro stepped past Shan to help the monk back inside. "Gang has bad memories," the farmer said in an apologetic tone, looking at Shan, then the monk. "I'm sorry. I had not seen him in years. I had forgotten that." Bad memories. It was a catch phrase, another part of the odd language developed by all those who had lived under the shadow of Beijing, a way to explain the torment suffered by those who had been caught up in the bloody terror that nearly annihilated their world.

  The caretaker Gang had bad memories. But of what? Shan had never heard Tibetans speak of Chinese having bad memories.

  "I've read reports of the rumor in the mountains, about a Chinese who builds temples," the monk said in a weak but smooth, well-educated voice. He looked across the field of ruins at the caretaker, who was nearly at the reconstruction site. "But up here," he said in a quizzical tone, shaking his head. "We never thought the rumors were true. No one comes up here. The winds are so cold. We thought this was just ruins and wilderness." He put his hand against the wall, as if suddenly dizzy, and Nyma helped him back to his pallet.

  Gang's wife collapsed onto the bench beside Shan. "He came with the People's Liberation Army, a teenager then, in 1964." The woman quickly explained that Gang had arrived as a young corporal with the occupation forces and after serving his term had accepted land from the army, and won a bonus for marrying a Tibetan woman. "It was my sister he married," the woman explained in a sad tone, "and they settled near the northern road to Amdo. They had a son and there was much happiness. Gang became a Buddhist. Once, when his son was very sick, a medicine lama from Rapjung gompa came and saved the boy's life. After that, Gang came to help the lamas with the special herb plantings whenever he could, always a week or two in spring to ready the earth and a week in the autumn to help with the harvest and drying.

  "But then those children came" the woman continued, "after they had destroyed Rapjung. The Red Guard," she said ominously. "Gang's wife had feared for our father and went with their son to help the family flee into the mountains. But the Guard caught up with them. They held a trial on the spot and condemned the family for being members of the oppressive landowner class." She glanced at Shan and looked toward the ground. "Those judges pronounced sentence and made my nephew carry it out," she said in a near whisper.

  Shan's head slumped down. He held it, elbows on his knees, fighting a choking sensation in his throat. The woman meant the Red Guard had forced the young boy to execute his mother and grandfather.

  "Then they took that boy away," she added in a hollow voice.

  Such survivors of political undesirables, if not killed immediately, had often been sent back east to special political indoctrination schools, so they could join the Chinese proletariat. "We never saw him again."

  "They say Gang went crazy," Lhandro continued the story, "that he started ambushing and killing Red Guard. No one knew for certain. But the Red Guard became scared of certain places in the mountains and began pulling back from the area. The sister of his wife returned," he said with a sad glance at the woman, "and was assigned to the collective that took over their old family estate. Gang came down from the mountains after a couple of years and worked there. Eventually they became husband and wife. When the collective broke up they came here, to be alone and because of the debt Gang felt he still owed the healers who had lived here." Lhandro cast his look of apology toward Shan again. "I forgot about Gang and his problem with the Chinese. We never…" His voice drifted away.

  Nyma completed the sentence for him. "In Yapchi we never had a Chinese friend before."

  By the next morning Padme was alert and talkative, hungry enough to eat two bowls of tsampa.

  "You saved my life," the injured monk said to Shan and Lhandro several times. He sat by the fire, a blanket over his shoulders against the chill morning wind, sometimes intensely studying the reconstructed shrines, making notes in a pad he kept in his belt pouch, sometimes staring at the flock of sheep that grazed by the stream. "But I don't understand why you bring your herd here," Padme said to Lhandro. His gaze fell upon Winslow, who was walking along the stream.

  "We were going north when we found you," Lhandro said. "You could not travel so we sought water and shelter."

  "That young girl with you, she said those bags the sheep carry are filled with salt." Padme kept staring at the American as he spoke.

  Lhandro nodded. "From Lamtso."

  The young monk searched Lhandro's face. "That is a very old thing," he said in an odd, uncertain tone. It almost sounded like he was chastising Lhandro. "It could be contaminated if you just take it from the soil."

  Lhandro looked at the monk, perplexed, even worried, wondering, Shan knew, if in all their years without monks the Yapchi farmers had forgotten something important. "It is good salt," the rongpa said. The monk shrugged, and accepted another bowl of tea from Gang's wife.

  "But there are rules about salt. There is a government monopoly on salt," the monk said in his tentative voice. "I would hate to see you accused of-" he paused, then shrugged and did not complete his sentence. "If there was no caravan I may not have been found for many hours." He turned and gazed at Shan.

  "Why?" Shan asked. "Why were you on the plain? Were you expecting to meet someone?"

  Padme explained that he and a group of monks from Norbu sometimes roamed the lands neighboring their gompa looking for religious artifacts. They had not visited this remote plain before and when they arrived upon it they had realized that they would need to split up if they were to explore it all. Padme had walked to the far end of the plain and had just come upon a small cairn and was examining the area when he was attacked by the giant with the staff.

  "Did you see who left this?" a deep voice interjected in Mandarin. Winslow appeared in front of them, holding the yellow vest left by the American woman. "Did you see an American?"

  "No," Padme replied slowly. "It was just there. By that little cairn."

  The American sighed and handed it to the monk. "Take it. Might as well do someone some good."

  Padme extended his arm hesitantly, dropped his blanket, and pulled on the vest. "Has this foreigner been gathering salt, too?" he asked Lhandro in Tibetan.

  "Just along to enjoy the fresh air," Winslow quipped in Tibetan, and the monk stared at him, his eyes wide with wonder.

  "An American who speaks Tibetan?" he exclaimed, and looked back, with intense curiosity, at Lhandro and Shan, as though the news somehow changed his perspective on the party.

  They would stay at the ruins until the next day, Lhandro announced, while the Yapchi men probed the surrounding land by horseback. The next morning the caravan would continue north while some of the party returned Padme safely to his gompa. The monk expressed his gratitude and led the Yapchi villagers to the base of the wall, out of the wind, where he sat to lead them in mantras to the Compassionate Buddha.

  A quarter of an hour later the Yapchi riders trotted away, each in a different direction. Nyma stepped to the door of the house, speaking to someone inside, then bent to tighten the laces of her shoes. Gang's wife appeared and pointed to a worn dirt path that ran along the outside edge of what had been the outer wall of the old gompa. No, not to the path, but to someone on the path: Tenzin, walking at a slow, contemplative pace toward the far end of the ruins.

  "A kora," Lokesh said as recognition lit his eyes. It was a pilgrim path. Many old shrines and gompas had such a kora, for circumambulation by pilgrims as a way of acquiring merit and paying homage to those who resided there, or had resided there.

  "Past the wall at the north, to an old hermit's cave," Gang's wife explained, gesturing past the reconstructed buildings as if the wall still existed, "then up past the drup-chu shrine," she said, meaning a shrine by a spring of what the old Tibetans called attainment water, believed to impart blessings and health on those who drank from it. Lokesh bent and tightened his own laces, looking up expectantly at Shan. Shan
grinned and stepped away to retrieve a water bottle from the stack of blankets by the wall, where the caravan party, except Dremu, had slept. The Golok, as usual, had chosen to sleep apart, hidden somewhere, but close.

  When he returned Lokesh was staring in confusion at Lhandro, Nyma, and Anya. The three Yapchi villagers had begun to walk down the kora path, but to the east, to the right, in a counterclockwise direction. Lokesh twisted his head in curiosity. From behind Shan heard a disappointed sigh and saw Padme in the doorway, bracing himself with an arm on the frame, staring after the trio.

  "Why didn't we know this?" Shan wondered. Only as Lokesh turned to him did he realize he had given voice to his question.

  Lokesh smiled. "There are many paths," he said, with a satisfied tone. Many paths to enlightenment, he meant. Traditional Tibetan Buddhists, no matter which of the major orders of Buddhism they worshiped with, always conducted themselves clockwise along a kora circuit. It was part of the tradition, meaning part of the reverence to be shown.

  But there was another faith in Tibet, older than Buddhism, based on animism. The Bon faith, though it had been largely subsumed into Buddhism and followed most of its teachings, still had its distinctive practices; one of which was that kora pilgrims walked counterclockwise.

  "We should have known," Shan said, answering his own question. It might explain much, especially why the farmers of Yapchi clung so fervently to their hopes for the stone eye and their land deity, why they had been so forlorn for four generations over its fate.

  As Shan and Lokesh started the clockwise circuit, Lokesh began quietly reciting one of his pilgrim's verses. Minutes later they heard footfalls behind them and turned to see Winslow running to catch up. He extended the bottle he kept for water, now empty. "I need attainment." He grinned. "Boy, do I need attainment."

  Two hours later they had completed three-quarters of the path and stood at the drup-chu shrine on the slope above the gompa, Winslow filling the water bottle after each of them knelt and drank deeply from the tiny spring of sacred water. Shan and Lokesh had passed many pleasant hours at such springs in their travels, pursuing Lokesh's burning interest in understanding the particular reason each of the springs was special. Lokesh was fond of pointing out that just understanding such reasons would tell much of the story of Tibet. Like many, he believed the land was not sacred just because devout Buddhists had inhabited it for so many centuries. The land drew them to such springs, Lokesh often declared, and every spring had a tale not just of the devout Buddhists who had identified it, usually centuries earlier, but of the ancients who had come before. At a spring in central Tibet that had been surrounded by crushed rock and gravel amid what were otherwise slopes of solid granite, Lokesh had decided that thousands of years earlier, when air deities traveled in the form of giants, the giants had favored the spring and crushed the earth by landing beside it so often.