Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  The special medical team was still at Norbu, its technicians looking fatigued as they wandered out among the Tibetans. It meant that the manhunt for the medicine lama had not stopped, and was staying in the area. Why, Shan wondered? What evidence about Jokar kept them at the gompa? Surely if they had known his destination they would have not wasted so many weeks tracking him in the mountains from India.

  Less than an hour after the letter was delivered, Tibetans began forming a line at the gate, some of them holding their abdomens, two purbas wearing arms in slings. The guard would not let them inside. They waited patiently, nearly an hour, before one of the men in the light blue uniforms noticed them and instructed the sentry to allow the sick Tibetans to enter, not noticing the single Han among them, wearing a dirty bandage on his hand and his new broad-brimmed hat pulled low around his forehead.

  When he arrived at the rear of the compound, Shan was relieved to find none of the discipline he had seen on his first visit. A rope had been strung along on portable wooden posts outside the makeshift clinic, to shepherd the sick into a line. The medical team worked through the first few patients quickly, with an absent air, giving all of them some form of medication. Those released from the doctors milled about the rear of the compound, speaking with those in line, marveling over the large prayer wheel, even admiring the huge pile of yak dung, apparently untouched since Gyalo had left.

  Shan and Nyma drifted away from the line and wandered toward the stable where they had been trapped on their first visit. They stopped at the stable and confirming that no one was watching, stepped into the adjacent structure as Shan slipped off his bandage. The low, decrepit wooden building was old, perhaps older than the stable. Its meditation cells, three on either side, and two at the back, were musty, the air stale. Shan remembered Gyalo saying that the gompa had only a third the number of monks it had been built for.

  Of all the human-built places Shan had experienced in the extraordinary lands of Tibet none moved him more than the simple wooden cells he sometimes, rarely, discovered in the country's remote regions, in the few structures remaining from earlier centuries. Here men and women had sat through the centuries, engaged in exactly the same pursuit, with the same feelings, the same yearning for awareness that Shan and his Tibetan friends felt. He had awkwardly described to Gendun one of his first encounters with such a cell as visiting a time machine, for somehow he had sensed the presence of monks who had sat there, three or four hundred years before. But no, Gendun had said, not a time machine, for that implied too much difference between us and them, as if the centuries changed those who sought awareness. It was a bridge, he said, a way of stepping beyond time, eliminating time, reaching for the same plane of awareness that enlightened beings inhabited, without regard to time. He paused, remembering Gendun's words, and for an instant wanted nothing more than to sit and meditate in one of the cells.

  "Jokar Rinpoche said it was from the time of the Sixth, when they came for him," Shan said, stepping past Nyma to the rear cells. He was still struggling to see through Jokar's words, still trying to separate those words meant for this world and those meant for another.

  "Lhabzang Khan," Nyma said in a distracted tone as she stepped into one of the rear cells. She raised a finger and tentatively touched the old cedar, as if it might crumble. "Lhabzang Khan from Mongolia invaded Tibet and kidnapped the Sixth Dalai Lama. His army came through Amdo on the northern road."

  It had been three hundred years earlier, Shan remembered, when the young Sixth had been kidnapped by the Mongolians, with the notion of presenting him as a gift to the Manchu emperor in Beijing. But the Mongols and the Chinese had been cheated when the Sixth had died en route to China.

  "Places like Norbu, near the northern road, would have been looted," Shan said, and stepped into the second cell. He began pushing the rear wall along its edges. Nothing moved. He pressed his finger along the length of each seam in the planks. Nothing. No gap in the finely crafted construction. He stepped out of the cell and saw Nyma was doing the same in the first cell. "Someone could come," she said, nervously glancing over her shoulder.

  He stepped into the cell with the nun. "Jokar," she sighed, "could just have been speaking about something he saw when meditating, a vision."

  Shan nodded in disappointment. There was a little ledge made of two narrow planks built into the side of the cell, where a monk might place a butter lamp and incense burner. He ran his hands along the planks and under them. There was no lever, no switch hidden underneath, no place to hide anything. Finally he ran a finger along the top of the planks, lightly at first, then harder. As his hand approached the rear corner, the end of the back plank dropped half an inch, and the rear wall swung open.

  It was a narrow space, no more than three feet wide. As they stepped inside Nyma lit a match. They had no candle, no butter lamp, no electric light. But they also had no time to linger. Nyma extended the match in one direction, then the other. The musty closet ran for twenty feet. At one end was a bench, on which cushions were stacked, at the other shelves.

  They had no time to look further. Nyma blew out the match and stepped back into the cell with Shan. He pushed the opposite, raised end of the trigger plank and the rear wall groaned softly and settled back into place, the plank snapping back into position.

  Outside, several dropka were turning the huge prayer wheel. An excited dropka asked a passing monk if they could keep turning it past the posted hours, in honor of the holiday. The monk nervously replied he would relay the request to the Committee.

  As he walked back around the compound Shan realized there was no sign of the Committee, no sign of Khodrak or Padme. No sign of Tuan. Despite the glimmer of hope he had felt when Lin's letter had been delivered, it now seemed impossible that Tenzin and Lokesh could be there, that the presence of an important prisoner like Tenzin would not be evidenced somewhere in the gompa. There could be other places, he realized in despair, secret places the purbas did not know. The guard at the gate could be there simply because of all the Tibetans camped outside the gompa.

  He leaned against one of the old wooden dormitory buildings and slid down the wall to settle onto the earth. Other Tibetans were scattered around the grounds, some saying their beads, others just basking in the sun, perhaps taking a rest from prayers in the lhakang. He watched the windows of the two large buildings. In the center of the floor above the dining hall a man in a white shirt appeared periodically, sometimes looking outside, usually standing a few minutes with his back to the glass. Two pairs of men in white shirts patrolled the grounds, talking energetically, like monks engaged in religious debate. A man in an apron sat on the steps that led to the kitchen, holding a broom upright. Shan studied him. He was younger, more athletic-looking, than the other kitchen workers. His apron was unstained and he seemed little interested in helping with the kitchen labors.

  A line of monks streamed out of the rear of the first building, each carrying a small notebook. The wind caught a piece of paper extending from one of the notebooks, sending it tumbling down to the ground. Without thinking Shan rose and grabbed it for the monk. It was a piece of lined paper. Imprinted at the top were the words Feudalism is Regression, and below were handwritten notes, in Chinese. He extended the paper to the monk, who took it from him with an awkward smile.

  Out of the corner of his eye Shan spotted a similar piece of paper, crushed and trodden, half-buried in the earth. Something about the peculiar way it was folded drew him to it, and as he bent to lift it from the ground his heart leapt. It was a spirit horse.

  He stuffed the paper into his shirt and ventured closer to the kitchen. A worker appeared at the door with a mug of tea for the man sitting outside, who stood and shouldered the broomstick like a rifle. The Tibetan with the tea cowered, and scurried away as the man laughed and took the tea.

  Shan wandered the grounds, trying to keep an eye on the central building without appearing conspicuous. In front of him a middle-aged dropka woman gave an exclamation of joy
and bent to retrieve another of the paper horses where it had blown against the building. She held the horse in the wind, laughing as it fluttered like a tiny banner.

  At the center window on the top, the howler peered out again. Fearing he would be noticed, Shan bent his head and joined a group of dropka, trying to will them to move slower as they passed the building. He chanced another look at the second floor, as they passed the end of the building, studying the distance to the ground. A young man might be able to lower himself from a window at the top and run away. But Lokesh would probably break a bone.

  In the front courtyard preparations for the next day's festival began in earnest. A huge flag of the People's Republic had been hung on the front of the administrative building, suspended by ropes from two upper windows. The ropes were not secured inside but on a series of small hooks he had not noticed before, small iron hooks that ran along the sills of all the windows. On traditional Tibetan holidays special thangkas would have been hung from such hooks. At some large gompas special towers had been built solely for the purpose of displaying holy paintings on such occasions. But Chairman Khodrak had chosen a banner of a different kind.

  "Special guests," Gyalo reported excitedly when Shan reached the purba truck. "One of the workers in the kitchen was at the archery range. An old man, a carpenter, knew him, and he learned that they have been preparing meals for two special guests who are confined in one of the rooms upstairs." Shan held out the paper horse for Nyma and the others to see, and explained how the military men in white shirts were watching over the second building.

  "Who takes the meals?" Shan asked.

  "The guards," the monk said in a disappointed voice. "But the guards won't go in to take out the night soil. They want Tibetans to carry it."

  They joined in the preparations that afternoon, Shan with his hat pulled low, helping to raise ropes with paper streamers from the administrative building to the wall, then carrying juniper wood to the large samkangs that flanked the gate inside the wall. A loudspeaker announced that the chairman had graciously suspended the rules for the prayer wheel and furthermore the chairman had decided to allow the visiting families to take as much of the yak dung as they might carry, even to the extent of taking loads to their home hearths. Shan greeted the news with a grin, and spent most of the afternoon carrying baskets of the dung with the Tibetans, his face covered in its dark dust, the guards moving away from him as he approached. He passed the kitchen building half a dozen times before he found the guard at the steps bent in slumber, and he paused, futilely watching for movement at the upstairs corner windows. When Shan reported that the guard was napping, Gyalo, who had not dared to enter the gompa since deserting it, picked up a handful of the dung from Shan's basket and powdered his own face with it, then joined Shan with an empty basket. He wore a heavily patched vest, and a necklace of the blue beads favored by many of the dropka, with a broad-brimmed hat that kept his face in shadow.

  As they reached the kitchen door, where the guard still slept, the old Tibetan carpenter appeared on the steps and gestured for them to follow him into the kitchen. He pointed to two buckets of fresh water by the inner door, then whispered to a middle-aged Tibetan man in an apron, who picked up a mug of tea and quickly arranged half a dozen sweet biscuits on a plate. They followed the kitchen attendant, each carrying a bucket of water, through the empty dining hall, and up the stairs at the center of the building. The attendant greeted the guard affably, extended the cookies toward him, and nodded Shan and Gyalo toward the door at the end of the corridor over the kitchen, the only door on the hallway that was closed.

  There was no lock on the door. They stepped inside quickly and Gyalo closed the door behind them. A small table sat in the center of the chamber, with a pad of paper and two pencils. Two figures lay on straw pallets leaning against the wall under the windows.

  "Lha gyal lo!" Gyalo whispered.

  Tenzin was in the lotus position, his face drained of strength and color, doing his beads with a weary helpless expression. Lokesh was beside him, his eyes closed, his legs sprawled in front of him, under a blanket. Tenzin stared uncertainly at them, studying Shan slowly, as if he had a hard time focusing his eyes. When he recognized Shan anguish filled his face. "They don't understand," he groaned. "They refuse to believe I have left that life behind. They-"

  Shan raised his palm to silence Tenzin. "I know, that man suffocated, and a new man was born."

  "But I caused so much sorrow," Tenzin said, and he seemed about to weep. "You can't be caught… Not you, too. There're guards," he warned."You will be-"

  Shan cut him off by gesturing to Lokesh. "What happened to him?" he asked as he studied Lokesh's slumped figure. His friend's hands clutched his beads. He seemed asleep, his breath making a dry rattling sound each time he exhaled.

  Tenzin gestured weakly toward Lokesh's left foot. "They had a big clamp," he moaned. "A carpenter's clamp. But that Tuan is no carpenter." He looked up at Shan with a forlorn expression. "I never knew men could do such things," he croaked, with the voice of a much older man. "They made me watch."

  Shan lifted the blanket over Lokesh's foot. The ankle was swollen and purple. Something was broken inside it.

  "Lokesh didn't say anything, just did his mantra as they turned the clamp. He warned me before it happened that they would do something to him, and that I should not worry, that I should understand it was just a test of faith, nothing more, and he was used to such tests. But the test was for both of us he said."

  For a moment a fire raged inside Shan. They had tortured his friend, they had slowly tightened the clamp until a bone had snapped. In a gompa. For what? To find out about Shan? No. It was about Tenzin. To find out about the purbas helping Tenzin. To persuade the abbot of Sangchi to return to the prescribed path.

  It was the reason for the light guard. Lokesh could not walk. And the howlers would never expect Tibetans to endeavor a rescue.

  "I think I could get out the window," Tenzin said. "But I would not leave him."

  "Doctors," Shan said. "There's a medical team here who could help with his leg."

  "I asked," Tenzin said wearily. "That Khodrak and Director Tuan, they said they would think about it. First they want me to sign papers, to give a speech, to say I was on retreat to perfect the Serenity Campaign, to state that officials in Lhasa are wrong in suggesting I was fleeing. On retreat to study the integration of Buddhist thought with the characteristics of Chinese socialism." It was an idiom of political officers. Build industry with the characteristics of Chinese socialism. Strengthen education with the characteristics of Chinese socialism. "I told them I had indeed been contemplating that topic," Tenzin said pointedly, gazing forlornly at Lokesh again. "He doesn't complain. Lokesh just does his beads when he's conscious, or sings one of those pilgrim songs. But I think a break like that, it is very painful. He keeps writing a letter with the paper they gave him for self-criticism. A letter to the Chairman in Beijing. He says he is going to deliver it personally. Sometimes he folds papers and asks me to drop them out the window. He said strong horses will come and we can drop out of the window onto them and ride away."

  Shan stared painfully at his old friend. "But if they keep you here," Shan said, "they must remain hopeful that you will cooperate."

  Tenzin sighed. "Khodrak acts like I am his personal prize. Great for their careers, I heard him say to Tuan, the best thing ever. They've invited a senior delegation from Religious Affairs to the festival."

  Shan could not take his eyes off Lokesh. He lifted one of Lokesh's hands and squeezed it. The old man's eyes fluttered open. He gazed dreamily at Shan, then lifted his fingers and touched Shan's cheek, as if to determine if he were real.

  Suddenly Gyalo was pulling him away. "The guard is finishing. If he begins to pay attention to us, my friend, we will be in much trouble," he said in a desperate tone.

  Lokesh's eyes fluttered shut again.

  Tenzin grabbed Shan's arm. "You must understand something. They could come
any second," he said urgently, and looked into Shan's eyes with deep despair. "Someone must know this in case we disappear. He went there for me. He died because of me."

  Shan and Gyalo froze. The abbot of Sangchi suddenly seemed very old. "Some nights I can't sleep because I see him standing, dying, on that mandala."

  Shan swallowed hard. "You mean Drakte. You mean you sent Drakte to Amdo town."

  Tenzin nodded. "He was going anyway, but I had asked him to find me one of those Lotus Books, to bring it to me. He went there and the knobs killed him for it. He lost the book. He lost his life, because of me," Tenzin said in a desolate voice.

  Gyalo pulled on Shan's shoulder but Shan would not move. He looked from Tenzin's tortured face to Lokesh, then to the paper on the table, and slowly pulled the pouch with the ivory rosary from his pocket. "Drakte was supposed to use all your things to leave a trail in the south. But he kept one thing back." He handed the pouch to Tenzin, who opened it and stared inside.

  He heard Tenzin's breath catch, and watched the man's face sag. "My grandfather gave these to me," the Tibetan whispered. "He said they are the only valuable thing a monk should have, because they are his connection to his god."

  Shan watched as Tenzin twined the beads around his fingers. "You have to tell them," he said slowly, "tell them you'll make your speech. Tomorrow. You have to play the abbot again," he said apologetically, "for a few minutes more." Then he leaned into Tenzin's ear to explain.

  Night had fallen when Shan drifted toward the rear of the encampment, to walk among the stars. But as he passed the dropka tents by the yak herd he was distracted by a strange sound.

  "Humm, humm en da rengg," a dropka youth recited in a singsong voice. It had the sound of a mantra, but unlike any Shan had ever heard. He rounded the tent to see a group of dropka, young and old, sitting by a huge yak-dung fire, beside which Winslow was standing. Shan spun about, alarmed that the American would be so careless as to come down from the hiding place on the ridge after they had all agreed it was too dangerous for him to do so. But then he saw two lean men standing at the edge of the circle, facing the gompa. One was close enough to recognize, one of the stoney-faced purbas who had been with Tenzin at Yapchi.