Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  Beyond the compound of modular units that comprised the administrative center of the huge project was the equipment yard. The fence had been completed around the equipment and in one corner, two more walls of wire had been added to create a square perhaps two hundred feet on each side. Inside the wired-off corner, canvas tarps had been spread overhead and cots placed underneath, creating what looked like temporary living quarters for a few dozen men, some of whom were lying on the cots while others played cards or walked along the perimeter of the wire. They were all Tibetans.

  “New rules,” came a voice over his shoulder. “Gotta’ sign in at the office if you need any laborers and register each name and identity card number.” A sturdy, square-shouldered Chinese man was at his side, casting an appraising eye over the Tibetans. He wore a red safety helmet, which Shan took to be the sign of a foreman. “Took me almost an hour just to get six ditch diggers this morning,” the man groused. “Deputy Director Jiao tells us in all his speeches that we’re on the urgent business of the Chairman, then he puts more damned obstacles in the way.”

  “Only the Tibetans?” Shan asked.

  “Right. Suddenly Jiao doesn’t trust them. Too much talk about the blue god and such. He says all the troubles we’re having can’t be coincidence. But the Tibetans are the hardest workers we got and trying to bring in others from the east could take weeks.”

  “More troubles?” Shan asked. “I just got back,” he added, trying to cover his curiosity.

  “Yesterday the brakes on a truck failed and it drove right into the lake at the end of the valley. Into Gekho’s belly, one of the Tibetans said. Today a bulldozer broke down with dirt inside the engine. Could be a bad gasket, could be someone put dirt in the fuel tank. Either way, it’ll take days to strip the engine and get it running again. And more of those Tibetan prayers materializing out of the sky. They just drift down out of the clouds. That spooks people the most. Anyway, Deputy Director Jiao ordered the fence erected and ordered most of the Tibetan laborers to stay inside it when not assigned to work crews. For their own good, he told them. They’ll take meals in the mess hall with the rest of us but are kept under watch by one of us foremen until the real guards arrive. He called Public Security in Lhasa.”

  Shan tried to push the worry from his voice. “He can’t just arrest people,” he said.

  A guttural sound that might have been a laugh came from the foreman’s throat. “I guess you haven’t crossed Jiao yet. He’s the one with the real power. One step out of line and he becomes like a scolding schoolmaster. ‘Would you defy the Chairman?’ he’ll demand. That’s his response to anyone who even hints at not agreeing with him. ‘Why would you add another reinforcing rod to that new wall, would you defy the Chairman? Why are you digging that foundation so deep, would you defy the Chairman?’” The foreman lit a cigarette. “Never knew the Chairman had an engineering degree,” he muttered, then walked toward the gate that led into the pen of Tibetan workers.

  Shan was about to follow, to talk with the Tibetans, when he saw someone darting toward the white utility vehicle. It was the driver, coming from a side door in the administration building, who now climbed back behind the wheel as several men emerged from the main entrance. Snippets of loud conversation came from the group. The director was using his public voice, boasting proudly of his project to a Westerner in a business suit, who was replying in perfect Mandarin. Shan froze as the man turned toward him. It was Cato Pike.

  He watched from the shadow of a truck as the director helped Pike into his own car, driven by Deputy Director Jiao, and they pulled away, apparently on the same tour Shan had received the week before. The white utility vehicle followed. The driver was Natalie Pike’s friend Cao.

  As they disappeared down the valley, Shan moved toward the administrative complex, casting nervous glances toward the twisting road on the slope above that connected the project to the outside world. Public Security was coming, and soon there would be jackbooted guards stationed in the complex. He paced along the long message board outside the mess hall, reading notices about work shift schedules, meal hours, meetings of a Patriotic Workers Alliance, and sun-bleached photos of the ceremony that had launched construction months earlier. On October 1, the first caption read, the provincial Party chairman had come with a small brass band to celebrate the glorious event. The photos showed the first few modular units of the administrative compound, the first busload of joyful workers who would work on site preparation during the winter, and included a staged image of the provincial chairman at the controls of a bulldozer. The first step in the historic event happily coincided with the destruction of the feudal remnants that blighted the valley, boasted the caption. The bulldozer was plowing down the ancient standing stones. Shan paused, trying to understand several tiny tear-shaped blue objects in the photo, then realized that someone had deposited a line of blue paint along the top that had dripped below. Blue was the color of Gekho’s blood.

  On top of an announcement about evening entertainments someone had pinned a photocopy of an aerial photo of the project. Shan took it down, puzzling over the annotations that had been made on it. Buddhist symbols were drawn along the top in a crude hand, then lines had been drawn along the edges of the valley and what looked like eyes drawn in the lake above the waterfall that dropped into the valley. More drops of blue paint had been added to the bottom. Seeing that two more identical images had been pinned elsewhere on the board, he folded the paper into his pocket.

  * * *

  Shan returned the tunic he had borrowed to the peg he had taken it from, tossed his hard hat into the bin, and marched into the administrative offices. The director’s secretary fortunately recognized him and expressed chagrin that he had not arrived in time to join the director and their distinguished foreign visitor.

  He feigned surprise. “A foreigner?”

  “Our first of many to come, the director told us,” she exclaimed. “We didn’t really expect him, although a woman from the United Nations office in Lhasa did call this morning to leave a message for him to call some ambassador, so we had a couple hours’ notice. At least he brought a copy of the letter he had sent, which we haven’t even received yet. We apologized and said in the future email would be sufficient.” She lifted the letter with a proud, excited expression. “The United Nations!” she exclaimed.

  “May I?” Shan asked and accepted the letter with a respectful nod. It explained that the global director of Hydrogeology Development, Mr. Constantine Speare, was in Lhasa on official business and would be visiting the project to witness its remarkable construction and see if the director would be interested in speaking at a global sustainability conference in Kuala Lumpur. “The director must be very proud,” Shan said as he handed the letter back. Pike had known how to get his foot in the director’s door

  The woman gave a vigorous nod. “Director Ren was disappointed in his offer to host a banquet tonight in honor of Mr. Speare, but the gentleman has to return to Lhasa today.” She gave a sigh of relief. “As if such an important personage would care to eat in our simple executive’s hall,” she added in a whisper, then she brightened. “But maybe we can get a photo of him for our wall,” she said, pointing to the wall of framed photos between the empty offices of the director and deputy director.

  Shan paced along the wall, offering polite exclamations over the distinguished visitors in the images. At Jiao’s door he pushed aside a windbreaker with Jiao’s name, ostensibly to view another photo, making sure it dropped to the floor. He was out of sight of the woman as he bent to retrieve it, and quickly searched the pockets. He found them empty, but he paused over the embroidered badge over the breast pocket. It showed a red hammer over a white chorten, encircled by the words Safety in Serenity. The secretary noticed his interest in it as he hung the jacket back on its peg.

  “From an old job,” she explained.

  Back outside, Shan walked along the perimeter of the compound and found himself facing the caged Tibetans. None of th
em would make eye contact with him. He took out his gau and murmured the mani mantra several times. Heads snapped up. Three men darted to the wire in front of him.

  “We didn’t do anything!” the nearest said in a plaintive tone. “We just want work! I need to feed my family!” Another man produced a little red book as if to prove his loyalty. He was, no doubt, a graduate of a reeducation camp.

  “Don’t argue with them,” Shan said. “The director will soon realize he can’t treat his best workers this way.”

  “The director?” asked the third, older Tibetan. “It wasn’t the director, it was that damned deputy of his. At least the director overrruled him when he said we would have to take all our meals in here.”

  “Tell me,” Shan said, with a worried glance toward the high road again, “were any of you here on that first day, when they leveled the standing stones?”

  The man with the book turned and called out, summoning a compact middle-aged man in a herder’s coat. “Where are the old stones they pushed down last October?” Shan asked him.

  “Gone. Back to the gods, sir,” the man explained.

  “To the gods?”

  “There was a great long crack in the ground that led toward the cave shrine from the standing stones, a half-mile long and who knows how deep. My grandmother said such things were openings to the bayal, to the land of bliss where the gods waited for the human world to improve. But the director said that was to be our first task, to fill it in and cover all traces since it would be a distraction to the engineers. So he had all those stones pushed into it, even the ones that had old writing and images cut into them. Then he ordered more big boulders to be pushed in and block the crack and used all the gravel that had been brought in for the roads, so the bulldozers could drive right across. All gone now.”

  “The cave is gone too,” Shan observed.

  The Tibetan replied in a forlorn whisper, “If the cave is truly gone, the gods are trapped.”

  Shan found himself unable to answer. He reached into his tunic pocket and searched for the cones of incense he often kept there, then handed the man all he had, six cones, and his box of matches. “You are not forgotten,” he said, feeling painfully inadequate.

  “Maybe we should be,” the worker said. “Maybe we shouldn’t light incense to call in protecting spirits. I’m not sure we deserve it.”

  Shan cocked his head in question.

  “Because of what we’re doing,” another man explained. Half a dozen Tibetans had now gathered near Shan. “We’re destroying the gods’ home.”

  “The gods’ home isn’t a few feet of soil on the valley floor,” Shan said, and gestured toward the surrounding mountains. “You haven’t destroyed their home. You haven’t trapped them, at least not for long. You’ve just confused them. Let them know you are here.”

  The man who had taken the incense considered Shan’s words and began to nod, joined by others. Someone brought a flat rock and put a cone on it as another struck a match.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Shan asked.

  “Yeshe,” a man said, and reached inside his shirt to produce a small copper gau on a strand of braided leather. “He was attacked. We worry about him.” The Tibetan nodded toward a small building behind the mess hall, fifty yards away, that Shan had not noticed. A sign on the path leading to it said Infirmary. Shan accepted the gau and the man backed away with a grateful nod.

  The well-fed Chinese woman at the desk inside the infirmary door was watching a movie on a laptop and gave only a disinterested glance as Shan walked past her. Behind the screen that separated her desk was the ward, with six beds. Only two were occupied, one by a sleeping Chinese man with his ankle in a fresh plaster cast. The second patient was a Tibetan in his thirties who shuddered as Shan drew near. He closed his eyes as if pretending to sleep.

  “My name is Shan,” Shan said in Tibetan. “I come from Yangkar. The monastery town.” It was the first time he had given voice to the description, but it was how he was beginning to think of the town. “Hold the dagger in your heart,” he added after a moment.

  The man’s eyes snapped open. Shan had spoken one of the secret signs of the purba, the resistance. The purba was a ritual dagger meant to pierce the demons of fear and confusion. Shan extended the gau, which the man instantly snatched away, pressing it in both hands over his heart. As he did so, Shan saw the healing bruises and scrapes on the back of his hands and forearms and saw fading bruises on his face. The young Tibetan seemed about to speak but as he opened his mouth he grimaced in pain. He had cracked or broken ribs.

  He tried again. “I fell off some rocks,” he said with a wince.

  Shan was familiar with the pattern of the man’s injuries. “No, Yeshe. Someone beat you.”

  Yeshe looked down at his gau and slowly nodded, then held up four fingers.

  “Four people beat you.”

  He nodded again and gestured Shan closer. “The cleanup crew they call them. Special janitors, though you never see them actually cleaning anything.”

  Shan was not sure he heard right. “Janitors?”

  Whispering apparently did not cause Yeshe as much pain, and Shan bent to listen. “That’s what they call themselves, because they wear the gray coveralls and gray windbreakers that the custodians wear. They drive a pickup with a mop stained with red paint like blood hanging off the tailgate. It’s like their banner. The cleanup crew they may be called, but my bet is that they are soldiers.”

  Shan studied the Tibetan. “What do you mean?”

  “I just left the army five months ago. They’re all in good shape, all follow a strict discipline. And I heard them call their leader sergeant. They sing an old battle song sometimes, about holding the flag high as the bullets fly.”

  The news struck a nerve. Shan had heard the song often, sung by guards in his former prison. “But why attack you?”

  “Fireworks.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I worked in demolition in the army. Ten years, then I came home.”

  “You mean you worked with explosives.”

  “Right. When the construction company heard that, they hired me right away. Good pay. Blast a ledge here, a stubborn boulder there. Shatter a rock face so it can be straightened.”

  Shan cast a glance toward the entrance. He could see the back of the nurse, still watching her laptop. “Why assault you for blasting rocks?” he asked

  “More like for not blasting,” Yeshe said. “The deputy director told me to destroy that old cave and I said I couldn’t, that I would have to ask a monk before doing so, because it was a holy place. That night the cleanup crew pulled me from my bunk.”

  Shan saw the torment in the Tibetan’s eyes. “But the real reason you wouldn’t help was that you knew there were probably people inside.”

  Yeshe looked away, staring at the wall. “So the deputy director did it himself,” he said toward the wall. “He could have sent men to clear it, to check it to be certain there was no one inside. The deputy engineer argued with him, said people might die. Jiao struck him, then had him escorted to his room. Then Jiao managed the detonations himself. The next day the deputy engineer was gone, summoned away on urgent business, Jiao said.”

  The Tibetan stared forlornly at his prayer amulet. “Later, some of the hill people came down and told us a man and a woman had been inside. Such a terrible way to die. I have nightmares every night now, like I was one of those trapped inside. I am lingering for hours, slowly suffocating, dying with the agony of broken bones and pierced organs, alone in the total darkness with the trapped gods screaming all around me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The valley was washed in shadow as Shan planted himself in the road between two boulders, just beyond where the road leveled off at the top of the ridge. He had watched the white utility vehicle slowly mount the long switchbacks that led out of the valley, and now stood in its path with folded arms. As the car approached he took off his hat. He could see Cato Pike in the pass
enger seat, muttering to Cao as they skidded to a stop.

  “Constantine Speare,” Shan said when Pike approached him. “Another Roman name and another pointed weapon.”

  “Glad someone here appreciates my subtle wit,” Pike replied with a peeved grin. The American glanced in the direction of the valley, out of sight below. “I’d rather not linger.”

  “Afraid someone will discover there is no UN office of Hydrogeology Development? Or that you don’t even work for the UN? Back in America that might just be considered a prank. Here it is suicidal.”

  “Think of it more as vengeful curiosity,” the American said. The glint in his eye made Shan uneasy. Once again he became aware of the beast that seemed to hover behind Pike’s gaze. “And you’re the one who told me about this valley. Did you honestly think I would stay away?”

  “I thought I would eventually find a way to bring you here, to pay respects to where…” Shan searched for words. “Where the deaths actually occurred.” He nodded to Cao as the Chinese student climbed out, standing behind the car to watch the road below. “You probably think you know China, Pike, that you probably would just be deported if they found you out. But not here, not in Tibet, not if you interfere with this project. They will shoot you and drop your body where no one will ever find it but the vultures.”

  “They? Give me their names and you and I don’t have to cross paths again.”

  Shan gestured to Cao. “Think about him. If they didn’t kill him outright, they would ruin his life if he were caught aiding a foreigner in some illegal activity. Assuming false credentials sounds like espionage. Beijing is ravenous for American spies.”

  “Actually, today was mostly Cao’s idea. I was just the decoy, although I did want to see the place and meet the men responsible for it. I made an interesting discovery. Director Ren is a figurehead. It is Jiao who runs this place.”