Authors: Eliot Pattison
“Do those doctors come often?” Shan asked.
The monk frowned. “Not these, these are special,” he said, and leaned on his shovel, studying Shan again. “Where did you learn to speak Tibetan so well? Only Chinese I’ve known who spoke Tibetan worked for the government.”
“I did work for the government. Building roads. I carried one of those,” Shan said with a gesture toward the stack of baskets.
The monk winced then pointed toward the clinic at the opposite corner of the compound. “This region was once full of medicine lamas. Famous for healers. It meant people were slow to change their ways, slow to retreat from religion, slow to embrace the Chinese doctors. The government wants to be sure people don’t get sick.”
“You mean don’t get healed the wrong way.”
Gyalo fixed Shan with a pointed gaze.
Shan considered the monk’s words again. “So you mean those people waiting aren’t sick?” He had seen sick people, he recalled; one hiding from doctors in the salt camp, the other waiting on the trail—the woman who had refused Lokesh’s offer of help.
“They were told to come down from the mountains to be checked. For innoculations. For papers.”
“Papers?”
“Those doctors arrived two weeks ago, and just stayed. Mostly they have meetings in the offices. Sometimes a knob officer with a pockmarked face comes, a man with dirty ice for eyes. And they all have radios like soldiers. Not everyone wearing one of those blue suits is a doctor,” Gyalo warned in a low voice. “And even the real doctors are issuing new health cards, like identity cards. Everyone has to record exactly what doctors they have seen in the past five years, including Tibetan healers. And they have to sign papers that come from the office. When that knob comes he makes people read.”
“Read? Read what?”
“Anything. A paragraph from a Serenity Campaign pamphlet. A line from the medical forms.” Gyalo frowned toward the far corner, where several of the Han in blue could still be seen. “Some people came willingly at first. But now, most don’t come on their own. Soldiers provide trucks. Or men like soldiers, wearing white shirts,” he said, with a meaningful glance at Shan.
Shan stared at the monk. Howlers wore white shirts sometimes, but howlers were not soldiers, howlers were the political officers of modern Tibet. “You mean there are Public Security soldiers posing as howlers? As doctors?”
“Norbu gompa is like a border post, at the edge of the wilderness, hidden from the rest of the world. A place for experiments.”
Shan eyed the monk closely. “You mean this county is experimenting somehow? With politics?”
“The authority that controls us is the Bureau of Religious Affairs. The county council ignores us. Norbu District of the Bureau, that’s who we are, a district bigger than the county, running north across the mountains even, into Qinghai Province. All run by Religious Affairs in Amdo town and by those who sit in those offices,” he said, nodding toward the first of the two-story buildings.
Shan worked in silence for several minutes. “If those doctors came two weeks ago, then they’re not here because the Deputy Director was killed.”
Gyalo nodded, rubbing the yak’s head. “That Tuan, most people just know him as head of Religious Affairs. But he spent twenty years in Public Security first. The perfect credential for running Religious Affairs in such a tradition-bound district,” Gyalo said bitterly, then looked up at Shan. “Not all the people they want to bring here will come. Some just hide and wait. I used to go and help the herders and the farmers when I could. Now they seldom give me permission to leave without an escort.”
“But Padme was far away, by himself,” Shan said slowly. “A day’s walk from here, without even a water bottle.”
“Padme doesn’t need permission,” Gyalo said into the yak’s ear, in a loud whisper. “And he never walks far.”
“But we found him. No horse. No cart. Like a hermit, we thought.”
Gyalo, grinning, seemed to think Shan had offered a good joke. He stopped looking at Shan, and conversed only with the yak now. “If you study enough, and find the right awareness, an old lama told me, you can learn to fly,” he said to the animal, and flapped his arms like a bird’s wings.
Shan looked at him uneasily. “Was he also looking for that man with a fish?”
Gyalo bent over the yak’s head. “Maybe this one doesn’t know about dropka and sacred lakes. Maybe he doesn’t know what swims in sacred waters.”
Shan looked skeptically from the monk to the yak, wondering about the man’s mental condition.
The monk turned his back and Shan returned the shovel to the stable wall. But as Shan stepped away the monk spoke once more. “He shouldn’t let that nun go upstairs,” Gyalo said to the yak. When Shan turned the monk was bent over the yak, straightening a tangle of the animal’s long black hair, as if he had said nothing, as if Shan had already gone.
Shan moved slowly back toward the chapel and found it empty. Don’t let Nyma go upstairs. Shan wandered toward the first of the two-story buildings, the one nearest the gate, the one with the banner. There were wooden plaques he had not read before along the front of the building. They weren’t religious teachings, he saw now with a chill, although they were done with the graceful embellished Tibetan script used for such quotes. Use Buddha to Serve the People, one said. Endow the Words of Buddha with Chinese Socialism, read another.
He circled the building slowly, examining the two ropes of prayer flags that connected it with the adjacent structure. One line were mani flags, inscribed with the mantra to the Compassionate Buddha. But he had been mistaken about the second line. It consisted of minature red flags bearing one large star in the upper left corner, with an arc of four stars beside it. The flag of the People’s Republic of China. He paced slowly along the western wall of the compound and watched as four dropka entered one of the decrepit buildings in the center of the western wall. He followed them through a door of dried cracked wood down a corridor of creaking floorboards into a small chapel, no more than twelve feet long and eight wide. The room was crowded with over a dozen Tibetans, sitting worshipfully before a small bronze statue of the teacher Guru Rinpoche. On the wall, on either side of the statue were old faded thangkas of Tara, eight in all, the eight aspects of the deity, which offered protection from eight specific fears. Shan recognized several. There was one that protected the devout from snakes and envy, another that shielded them from delusion and elephants, one more that provided protection from thieves. Above the statue was a much smaller thangka, also old and faded, of a deity Shan did not recognize at first. A dropka woman made room beside her and he sat, studying the thangka. Suddenly with a start he recognized it. It was not an old thangka, only cleverly crafted to look old to disguise it. It was a representation of a lama with a peaceful smile, mendicant staff over his shoulder, hand raised with the index finger and thumb touching in what was called the teaching mudra. It was the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatse, the current Dalai Lama.
After half an hour he moved back into the courtyard, toward the front of the administration building, his gaze surveying the yard in confusion, trying to reconcile the mani prayers over the side doorways and the doctors who acted like knobs, the giant prayer wheel and its admonishing rules, the reverent paintings of deities and the red emblems of Beijing.
He stepped into the entry hall of the building to find it empty, adorned only with two large, modern paintings, stylized imitations of thangkas, and another Serenity campaign banner. Below the banner was a printed notice pinned to a large bulletin board. It was a chart for a scoring system. Religious Affairs districts would be graded according to the economic advancement made as a result of each district’s efforts to turn religious inclinations to economic activity. There was a table of economic criteria, with current statistics and averages for the five years ending the year before: number of sheep; number of domesticated yaks, goats, horses; acres of barley; number of children enrolled in approved schools; number of vehicles; and production of felt, wool, and dairy products. Shan quickly scanned the column listing prior years’ activity. The local district had to be one of the poorest in Tibet, judged by such standards. Or judging by Drakte’s own ledger. Surely Drakte hadn’t been compiling data for the campaign?
There was a handwritten note at the bottom of the notice, in a careful, practiced script. We will have serenity, and we will have it now, it said. It was signed by Chairman Khodrak. Beside the notice was a smaller note, stating that all monks were expected to attend the upcoming Workers Day celebration on May first.
Shan ascended the simple wooden stairway at the end of the hall, not knowing what to expect. The atmosphere of the upstairs corridor was of a government office. A door at the top of the stairs opened into a chamber where a monk sat beside a man in a business suit, both of them typing rapidly on computer keyboards below monitors displaying Chinese ideograms. Above them were two photographs, one of Mao Tse Tung and another of the chairman who currently sat in Beijing. On a table beside the men was a facsimile machine and a large telephone with buttons for multiple lines. On one wall was a map, with the familiar words
Nei Lou
boldly printed at the top. Below the map was a typewriter with a letter in it. His eyes lingered on the machine. He and Lokesh had seen a typewriter in a herder’s hut when traveling with Drakte. The purbas had grown quite agitated when they realized Shan had seen it. Typewriters were still treated like secret weapons by the knobs. More than one dissident had been convicted simply on the evidence he or she possessed their own typewriter.
Shan stepped past the open door and paused at a large poster on the wall, printed in Chinese only, with the words Bureau of Religious Affairs in bold type across the top. Qualifications for admission, it stated at the top, with ten criteria listed. Shan clenched his jaw and read.
The candidate must be at least eighteen years old, said the first. Tibetan families had practiced a centuries old tradition of sending their oldest boy at a much earlier age to be educated at gompas, for the formal education process could easily last more than twenty years for those aspiring to the ranks of geshe, the highest rank of monastic training.
The candidate must love the Communist Party, said the next line. Shan read it twice to make sure he had not mistaken the words. Love the Party. The Candidate’s parents must be identified, said the third, and demonstrate their approval.
The Candidate’s work unit must approve the transfer to the monastery unit, meaning not only were gompas considered just another type of work unit but also that young men had to embark on a different life, a different job, before applying to the political leaders of their work units, who more likely than not would be Chinese immigrants.
Local authorities must consent, and the county authorities must consent. Then, both the candidate and the candidate’s parents must have an acceptable political background.
The candidate must come from an approved geographic area. There were still areas, where Tibetan resistance had been greatest, where local citizens were prohibited from taking a robe under any circumstance.
Finally there were two brief standards. Committee Approval, the poster said, and approval of the Public Security Bureau.
Shan stared at the poster, fighting an acrid taste on his tongue that seemed to be spreading to his belly. Beijing’s Bureau of Religious Affairs established a strict cap on the number of monks at each gompa, usually a fraction of the original population. Gompas where two thousand monks once served might have only fifty authorized by the howlers. Even when an opening arose, a candidate could take years to satisfy all the necessary approvals. Once applicants might have sat with lamas and recited scriptures learned at home or spoken of how a growing awareness of the Buddha within was calling them to put on a robe. Now for the best chance of winning a robe, an applicant should sit with a commissar and recite scripture from little red Party books.
Past the poster, on the opposite wall, was a sheet of paper whose handwritten words were almost as large as those of the poster. Never Again a Monk, it said, with five names below it, each with a date from the past two years. On the wall, in chilling proximity, hung five robes with names on labels pinned over each. Above them was another sign.
Walked Away from Buddha,
it read, and under it a quote,
Once you walk away Buddha will not embrace you again,
over the embellished signature of Chairman Khodrak. The line of pegs continued down the corridor with another dozen pegs, all empty, except for the last two, from which hung lush fox-fur caps. Past the caps, at the end of the hall, was a set of double wooden doors, one of which hung partially open.
Shan heard voices and stepped toward the gap in the doors to see Nyma, Lokesh, Lhandro, and Tenzin seated in front of a heavy wooden table in rigid straight-back chairs. On the far side of the table were three much larger chairs, wooden but with padded backs, upholstered in red silk. Two of the chairs were occupied, by Khodrak and the Han with long thinning hair Shan had seen at the lake. Director Tuan of Religious Affairs, who had qualified for his job by having a prior career in Public Security. An elegant set of porcelain tea cups sat on the table, and a young monk was refilling those in front of Shan’s friends. The monk disappeared from view and a moment later the door flung open. The monk gestured Shan toward one of the empty chairs beside his friends.
“Excellent, excellent,” Khodrak said. “Take a moment with us, Comrade Shan.” Behind him, leaning against the wall, was a long ceremonial staff, a mendicant’s staff with an ornate head of finely worked white metal ending in a point. “We were expressing our gratitude and our pleasure that you will be able to join us tonight for a meal with the assembly.”
Shan stole a glance at his friends. Only Lhandro returned it, with a small, forced smile. The others stared uncertainly at the dainty, steaming cups in front of them. Shan hesitantly took a seat beside Nyma. Khodrak had learned his name. What else had he asked about?