Bone Mountain (23 page)

They sat a long time, silent, listening to the wind. Shan let his awareness float, experiencing the holy place, thinking more than once that he heard the deep, spine-pinching sound of a mantra recited by monks in assembly. He closed his eyes and imagined the smell of fragrant juniper burning in a
samkang,
one of the ceremonial braziers that would have been scattered across the grounds of such a gompa, then became aware that he was alone and stirred back to full wakefulness to see Lokesh walking slowly toward the three restored structures.

Five minutes later Shan caught up with his friend, standing inside the small three-sided courtyard formed by the buildings, wearing his lopsided grin. Shan had not imagined the scent of juniper. A four-foot-high, four-legged iron samkang sat at the open end of the courtyard, juniper smoldering inside it. Under the overhanging roof of the center building was mounted a keg-sized prayer wheel crafted of copper and silver. A young Tibetan girl, no more than six, her cheeks smeared with red doja cream, stood at the wheel, turning it with a solemn expression. The building had a heavy door of expertly joined wood, painted a dark ochre enamel. As Shan watched, Lokesh gave the door a tentative push and stepped inside. He followed him into a small assembly room, a
dhakang,
lined with smooth flag stones and containing three tattered old thangkas, cloth paintings, depicting scenes from the life of the revered teacher Guru Rinpoche. One of the paintings was ripped and crudely sewn back together. Another was so faded the images were almost impossible to discern.

Shan thought of the barren land surrounding the ruins. Small as the buildings were, their erection had constituted a mammoth task. Every board, every stone flag, every nail had to have been brought in, from outside, from down in the world, probably from one of the towns on the northern highway, if not farther.

They explored the two adjacent buildings and found one to be a
gonkang
shrine, for a protector deity, the other a small lhakang, a chapel. Both structures were built with the same fine attention to detail as the dhakang. In the chapel was an altar made of split logs, bearing an eight-inch-high bronze statue of the Compassionate Buddha and the seven traditional offering bowls, all different, all carved of wood except one of chipped porcelain. At the back of the gonkang was a half-completed statue of Tara, the protectress deity, one of her hands resting on a lotus blossom. Wood chips were on the floor beside it, and a mallet and several chisels lay on a nearby bench. Shan remembered the man who had been brought from the building by the boy when they had arrived. The caretaker.

As they left the building they discovered a new visitor. Tenzin was standing in the smoke of the samkang, his eyes closed, as if trying to be washed by the purifying smoke. They watched as his eyes opened and he stepped toward the child, who showed signs of exhaustion. With a gentle motion of his hand Tenzin offered to take over, and the tall silent Tibetan took up the repetitive motion as the girl stepped away with a grateful nod, not letting the wheel miss a single rotation. Shan and Lokesh had passed by a remote house in western Tibet where an old man and his wife turned a similar prayer wheel, salvaged from a ruined gompa, spinning it in four hour shifts, twenty-four hours a day. They had been doing so for ten years because, they solemnly explained, when they had turned the wheel for twenty years the deities would become so pleased they would bring the Dalai Lama back to Tibet.

Lokesh touched Shan’s arm and nudged him away, around a corner of the building, so as not to disturb Tenzin. They left him spinning the wheel, the girl sitting against the wall of the lhakang, the solemn Tibetan exchanging a tiny smile with her.

The sheep of the caravan were lying contentedly along the bank of the small stream that flowed through the juniper grove, watched over by the mastiffs and Anya, sitting beside Winslow, who lay napping in the thick grass. They found the Yapchi villagers by the small house built against the wall, standing by the open door with bowls of tea. To Shan’s great relief the monk was sitting upright on a straw pallet inside the simple structure, a bowl in his hands, attended by Nyma and the caretaker, who stood with his back to Shan, speaking in low, gentle tones as Nyma washed the monk’s wounds.

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.…” She looked toward the strange angry man and seemed about to cry. “My husband built those shrines,” she offered 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.