Authors: Eliot Pattison
Shan paused at the last panel, half of which was taken up by a single announcement from Norbu gompa and the council that administered the township. A May Day festival would be conducted at Norbu, where the economic progress of the township would be celebrated in coordination with the holiday activities held in Beijing in honor of the global proletariat. Citizens were expected to participate, and a sheet with numbered lines was stapled below the proclamation for families or work units to sign up to display the fruits of their labors. The date was ten days away. Only one line had been filled in. Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje, it said, in the hurried scrawl of a prankster. It was the name of a Tibetan who, over a thousand years before, had killed a king who had almost extinguished Buddhism with campaigns of terror so severe they had not been seen again until the communists arrived. The hero was coming to Norbu, the writing said, and would bring one stale dumpling to honor the Chairman. No one else had subscribed to the May Day celebration. Shan studied the weary Tibetans who sat outside the gate. It was as though some of the local population were trying to embarrass the gompa, and others were scared of it.
“If we left now, we might reach the sheep by dark,” Nyma suggested in a near whisper, as though she suddenly had doubts about receiving the blessings of the lamas. But before anyone could reply a middle-aged monk in an elegant gold-fringed robe emerged from the gate, smiling, his arms open in greeting, followed closely by two boyish monks.
Shan froze for a moment, and glanced with worry at Nyma. He recognized the monk, whose nose was long and hooked. It was Khodrak, the one who called himself abbot.
“Forgive us,” Khodrak said. “We were so overjoyed at the return of our Padme that we neglected you.” Shan looked over the monk’s shoulder, past the gate. Over the ornate front door of the central building was a small banner in elegant Chinese script. Serene Prosperity, it proclaimed. “Those who saved our Padme are welcome in Norbu gompa,” Khodrak proclaimed in a gracious tone, gesturing them toward the gate.
As Khodrak and his nervous young attendants escorted them across the neatly raked earth of the courtyard it became obvious that the rebuilding effort had been confined to only certain elements of the gompa. The three central buildings appeared to be of sturdy new construction but along both sides, parallel to the outer walls, were several long single-story buildings of wood and pressed earth, most of which were neither new nor well-maintained. They would have been built to house the monks, Shan knew, and for the many meditation cells and minor deity chapels common to traditional gompas. They were all framed in wood, with small, empty porches where rows of prayer wheels would have traditionally hung. The first of these buildings on each side of the main courtyard had been restored to resemble the newer central buildings, giving an elegant atmosphere to the entry courtyard, and each had a long red plank bolted over its doorway, bearing the mani mantra in recessed gold letters.
The abbot led them under the sign of the low building on the left, then excused himself, announcing that one of the young novices would guide them around the compound. The nervous novice showed them pegs where they might hang their belongings and explained that Norbu was the main gompa of the region, with thirty-five monks and novices, boasting one of the highest Religious Affairs scores in all of Tibet.
“Scores for what, exactly?” Shan asked the novice as he led them outside, past the first two central buildings, the first of which he had quickly identified as the administration building, the second as the site of the dining hall and instruction rooms.
The youth gave a short grimace. “Proper conduct,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Serenity,” he added in a strangely somber tone, and quickened his pace. In the southeast corner of the high wall stood a long wooden building and a stable, both in severe disrepair. They seemed to be huddling together, the last survivors of an older, different monastery, resisting the bigger, more modern construction in the center of the gompa. Shan studied the buildings, which were made of planks joined with pegs. Shovels and rakes were laid against them. A pile of tattered baskets, with thick shoulder straps and padded loops extending out of their tops were stacked against the stable. Shan knew such baskets, for he had carried one nearly every day for four years, the long loop on his forehead, hauling rocks and gravel for government road builders. Past the buildings in the corner of the outer wall was a four-wheeled wooden cart and a huge pile of dung, more than ten feet high. Towering above the dung pile in the shade of the poplar trees that grew outside the wall was a tall, thin pole on which were fastened a long radio antenna and a satellite dish.
Nyma darted toward a huge cylinder hung in a scaffold near the center of the rear wall, a beautifully-crafted prayer wheel. But as she reached to touch it the novice called her away, and quickened his pace again to lead them past a row of vehicles parked along the wall, one a large van with the markings of an ambulance. A stern Han man in a sky blue uniform stepped around the end of the van, studying them intensely as he lit a cigarette.
“A special medical team from Lhasa,” the novice explained in his nervous boyish voice. “They travel the countryside to help the local people. They have been on an extended assignment for weeks, coming from the south, near the Indian border, visiting local villages and camps. Seldom do the people get to see real doctors.”
Real doctors. Lokesh looked back at Shan. Once there had been a college for real doctors, on the Plain of Flowers.
Tenzin had lingered by the mound of dung. As he approached, Shan saw that he had spread some of the mound’s dry, dusty contents on his cheeks and pulled his hat low.
As they continued around the southwest corner a line of perhaps twenty Tibetans came into view inside a line of wooden stanchions threaded with rope. Half a dozen more men and women, mostly Han, all wearing the light blue uniforms, were grouped at the door of a small building, studying the Tibetans in line. The rongpa and dropka in line all wore the same anxious look as the young monk. They did not look sick. They just looked worried.
A man wearing a fleece vest called Lhandro by name, gesturing him closer as though he feared stepping out of line. But when Lhandro took a step toward the man the novice touched his arm to restrain him. “The doctors don’t like anyone interfering,” he said in an earnest tone. Shan heard one of the men in blue remind the Tibetans to have their papers ready for inspection.
The third of the central buildings was a longer lower structure that did not share the polished look of the first two structures. Patches of stucco were falling off the rear wall. Two red pillars straddled a thick wooden door, ornately carved with images of the Historical Buddha’s life, that appeared to have been salvaged from an older building and set into a metal frame. They stepped into an entry way of rough plank flooring into a large chamber with a concrete floor. Half a dozen monks sat on cushions on the cold, hard floor, facing an altar topped with yellow plastic laminate on which sat a four-foot-high plaster statue of the Historical Buddha, Sakyamuni, painted in garish colors. Beside the Buddha was a small table with offering bowls and a smoldering cone of incense.
“Our lhakang,” their guide explained. The gompa’s main chapel.
Lokesh took one look at the statue and sat down among the monks. Their escort raised his hand as though to protest, then Nyma sat, and Tenzin.
“There are so few temples in the mountains,” Shan observed pointedly.
The monk studied Shan and opened his mouth with an inquisitive glint, then, as Lhandro, too, joined the others on the floor, he shrugged. “Please be with us for the evening meal,” he said. “Listen for the bell.” He turned and stepped out of the chapel.
Shan sat with his friends for half an hour, breathing in the fragrant incense, studying a row of freshly painted thangkas on the wall, folding and unfolding his legs. But he could not find the mindfulness of meditation and finally stood and stepped outside, walking along a low abandoned wall that ran between the second and third buildings. It had once been a thick wall of stone, the foundation of a substantial building. He slowly circled the other two central buildings, noting with satisfaction the ropes of prayer flags that connected the upper corners of the first two buildings, then found himself before the prayer wheel at the rear of the grounds. It was beautifully crafted, six feet high and nearly three across, made of finely worked copper and brass. He touched it and, to his surprise it spun freely, turning almost an entire revolution. It was hung with heavy ball bearings, as though an engineer, not a monk, had designed it. Under it he noticed a plaque in Chinese and Tibetan. He had sometimes seen similar plaques, declaring that a wheel or statue had been donated by a youth league, or the friends of a gompa. But this one, like the giant wheel itself, was unlike any he had seen before. Operating hours 8
A.M.
to 8
P.M.
, it said. He stared at it, not understanding, then heard someone at the old stable by the giant pile of dung. Stepping tentatively toward the sound he discovered a stocky monk speaking to a huge shaggy black yak that stood beside the wooden cart. The monk was shoveling dung from the pile into the cart, addressing the yak in a conversational tone as he worked.
After a moment Shan realized he had seen him before. He slipped into the shadow along the wall of the stable and watched the man, who was so absorbed in his work and discussion with the yak that it was five minutes before he noticed Shan. He acknowledged Shan’s presence only by pausing a moment, ceasing to speak to the yak, then continuing his labor of transferring the dung to the cart.
“I hope you didn’t get stuck again that day,” Shan ventured.
The monk turned and grunted as he studied, first Shan, then the empty grounds beyond him. He offered an uncertain nod. “Twice more,” he replied. “They canceled the schedule and came back here.” The words caused Shan to turn and study the gompa grounds himself. “The Bureau of Religious Affairs is here?”
“Everywhere,” the monk replied in a reluctant tone, shoveling more dung into the cart. People didn’t talk about the howlers, just as they didn’t talk about knobs or other demons.
“Someone worked hard to bring all that fuel here,” Shan observed.
“Someone did,” the monk agreed once more, eyeing Shan warily. He turned away and continued shoveling. “Local farmers, and herders. Sometimes it is all they can afford to give. Once they would go without their hearthfires to bring fuel to the gompa.”
“You said you came from Khang-nyi gompa,” Shan recalled.
“Right. Second House, it’s the old name, the original name for this place. There was a big gompa, the First House, up on the high plain to the north. This was a station for those traveling there, or those waiting for lamas to come down.”
Shan found a shovel leaning against the stable, an old handmade implement with a wooden blade, and began helping the monk. “I did this once before, only wet,” he said after a few minutes.
The man paused with his shovel still in the pile. “Wet?”
“Rice paddies,” Shan said. “In Liaoning Province. I wasn’t given any choice.”
The man nodded and kept working. “You mean they forced you?”
Shan threw another shovelful on the cart. “Soldiers,” he confirmed. “They mostly stayed away because of the smell. Just came close to beat us with bamboo canes when we stopped working.”
They labored on in silence. From somewhere came music, the singsong strains of Chinese opera.
“The smell?” the monk asked, after he seemed to have considered Shan’s words for several minutes.
“The soldiers were from the city,” Shan said with a sigh.
The monk contemplated Shan, resting his shovel, one hand stroking the back of the big black animal. “Yak dung doesn’t smell bad.”
“This was human. Night soil, from the cities, too.”
The man worked a moment and stopped again. He slowly put his hand on the handle of Shan’s shovel and pushed it down. “I am called Gyalo. I am just a rongpa at heart. They wanted some monks from the local farm laborer class two years ago, and my grandmother had always wanted me to be a monk. They gave me a license. They like to take me to see other laborers now.” He looked at Shan expectantly. It was Shan’s turn to explain.
“It was an agricultural reform camp, when I was only a child. My family was sent because my father was a professor. A small army of workers brought the night soil in big clay jars on bicycle racks. Usually we just poured it into the rice fields. But there would be times when the jars stood in the sun and dried, so they would dump it in long piles, or make us scrape it out with our hands. What I remember most of all was how, when it rained, everything turned wet and smelly and too soft to put on a shovel.”
The monk contemplated Shan a long time. “This isn’t like that at all,” he said, very seriously. Shan stared back, and the man’s stern expression slowly warmed to a grin.
“Is the gompa delivering this to the villagers?”
“The gompa is just getting rid of its stockpile. Too old-fashioned they say, reminds them of the olds. Doesn’t set the right example. We must show the people what prosperity means,” he said in the tone of a political officer. Gyalo gestured toward the shadows where the stables abutted the outer wall. Several large metal gas cylinders were lined up along the wall.
“The medicals brought you in?” he asked Shan after throwing a few more shovelfuls on the cart. He made it sound as if the doctors were arresting their patients.
Shan shook his head. “I was still in the mountains with my friends. We found a monk named Padme on the Plain of Flowers. He had been attacked by someone and needed our help.”
Gyalo studied Shan carefully again and seemed about to ask him something. “May the blessed Buddha watch over Padme Rinpoche,” he said instead, quickly, in his stiff tone. “Prayers were offered for him in the chapel.” Shan looked at the monk, and wondered why he, and he alone, was shoveling the dung. Was it a punishment? Gyalo didn’t say he had offered prayers for Padme, only that prayers were offered. And why did he and the monks at the gate call the young monk Rinpoche, a term usually reserved for older, venerated teachers?