Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “Someone on that Institute team that came to Yangkar recognized you from Larung Gar,” Shan suggested after a moment.

  “The photographer had worked with Jiao there, and one of his assignments was to photograph all those who Jiao branded as troublemakers. Yes, he recognized me. He was confused, because he must have known I had been driven away to prison. Your deputy saved me that day.” Lhakpa sighed. “You do know why they were there, don’t you, Shan?”

  “To begin planning for Yangkar to be the project’s administrative headquarters,” Shan said.

  Lhakpa gave a forlorn nod of his head. “It will be the end of Yangkar as we know it. They poison everything they touch.”

  * * *

  In the valley below, Huan’s men had mounted a large searchlight on a truck bed and its beam was sweeping the workers compound. Little by little the valley was taking on the air of a prison.

  “We can’t stop the dam, Professor,” Shan said.

  “Just Lhakpa. That life is over. And we must stop the dam. The young ones are talking about a night of violence, about burning the equipment and the buildings.”

  “They will be killed,” Shan said. “And their families will be punished.” New directives had made it a crime to simply have a family member who had engaged in acts of dissent or sabotage.

  Lhakpa gave a melancholy nod of agreement. “No one will win,” he conceded.

  “Sometimes in Tibet,” Shan whispered, “winning is just enduring.”

  They watched the wispy line of smoke from the incense reach up toward the stars. Lives hung by such threads.

  “But it is the wrong site,” Lhakpa said after a long silence. “The geology isn’t right, too many fractures in the valley rock structure. There were seismic tests that confirmed that but all those maps have disappeared, all traces of the tests are gone.”

  “Which is why Sun Lunshi was bringing more maps back on the train,” Shan said.

  Lhakpa nodded. “Even the economics are wrong. The investment needed for the transmission lines and the loss of power along the lines will make recovery of costs impossible. But this area has nagged the government for decades. Too Tibetan. Too religious. Too suggestive that we are not who we think we are.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Tibetans didn’t sprout from seeds planted here. Long ago they came from somewhere to the west and north, from the horse tribes of central Asia, not from China. The cavern and those standing stones were proof of that but…” Lhakpa shrugged and stared into the glowing ember of his cigarette. “I tried science. I tried reasoning. I tried compassion. What’s left?”

  “Prayer?” Shan wondered out loud.

  In the moonlight he saw the hint of a smile on the professor’s face. “The old herders in the cavern you found, they were praying for months before the explosion in the cave, from the first time those Institute surveyors were spotted in the valley. Now they pray nonstop, all night and all day, in shifts, pray for the valley, pray for Gekho, pray for the American woman. We don’t know how long it will be before Public Security discovers them. They won’t flee. Public Security will arrest them. That Lieutenant Huan will call them saboteurs and traitors.”

  “Is that what the others from Larung Gar were charged with?”

  Lhakpa sighed. “I hear the 404th is a terrible place.”

  “There was a meeting at the prison last week. Jiao was there, with Lieutenant Huan and a man named Major Xun, deputy to the governor of the county. Afterward all the Larung Gar prisoners were put in solitary confinement. It means they intend to do individual interrogations of them now, probably brutal interrogations.”

  The news seemed to strike a painful blow. Lhakpa lowered his head into his hands for a moment. “Our world is such a broken place, Shan. Sometimes I feel like my soul is so withered it will just blow away in the next strong wind. Maybe we should all become snow monks and lose ourselves in the mountains.”

  “I’ve tried that. All I got was cold.”

  Lhakpa gave a grunt of acknowledgment and sighed. “The seeds of this battle didn’t sprout in the valley below, but at Larung Gar. It was only the two of them at first, Jiao and Xun. Jiao came in from some high political office in Lhasa, claiming to be the expert at subduing Tibetans. Xun was from some paramilitary unit that targeted social unrest. They showed up one day at our morning prayers, pushing their way through the assembly of monks and nuns, and announced they headed the new Committee of Reconstruction and Safety. The chief lama, our abbot, offered them a blessing and placed prayer scarves around their necks. They laughed, and Jiao blew his nose on the scarf. The next morning they drove up in a limousine in front of a line of cranes and bulldozers. They sounded a siren, though none of us knew what it meant. It became a fixture of our lives for weeks. It was the five-minute warning, after which the bulldozers and wrecking cranes went to work. They ripped right through classroom buildings without even bothering to check if they had been evacuated. Several of our students suffered terrible injuries. The abbot and I went to Jiao and Xun to complain, and they said we should be thanking them for they were going to create a new, sanitary community where everyone would be much healthier. They even showed us their plans, with new cinder block buildings that looked more like one of those reeducation camps than a Buddhist school. I tried to keep my temper and just remarked that the compound in the drawings was not nearly big enough. They laughed again and said several thousand would be leaving, for their own safety. They even offered us jackets with that ridiculous slogan of theirs.”

  “Safety in Serenity,” Shan said.

  Lhakpa nodded. “I said they had no right to attack a peaceful community. They called me by my Chinese name and said I was lucky, that I was a traitor who had been allowed to go into exile instead of prison, but the government could always change its mind.

  “I didn’t care. What they were doing was wrong, like what was done to those poor people in Heilongjiang Province was wrong, and what they were doing at the Valley of the Gods was wrong. I had to find new places for my classes, but the new Committee always knew and disrupted them no matter where I went, saying they were too crowded, or my classroom had no inspection certificate, or my students were not officially registered. One night when we were gone, they leveled the building I had used that day. The next night, when I was giving a class under the moon, they leveled my home. Then Xun and Jiao came to me and ordered me to leave. I said what they were doing at Larung Gar and the Five Claws was illegal, and that if they persisted I would hold a press conference to announce that none of the proper tests for the new Five Claws dam had been done. We thought putting a spotlight on the dam gave us leverage, that it could be an indirect weapon against them. They backed off for a few days. We formed our own committee, separate from the abbot and managers of the school, who could not risk polarizing their Chinese overseers. We staged sit-ins, surrounding the demolition equipment with hundreds of monks and nuns reciting mantras. We held a prayer vigil with over a thousand people, blocking a key crossroads for forty-eight hours. Metok brought in workers from nearby hotels to join us, shutting down the hotels.”

  A chill crept down Shan’s spine. “Metok? But Metok was here, at the Five Claws.”

  “Not until eight months ago. He had been working on a highway project west of Lhasa that was abruptly suspended, so he was assigned as engineer for the Committee of Reconstruction and Safety at Larung Gar. He was Jiao’s man, or Jiao thought he was. But he changed at Larung Gar. He would come sit with us at prayers. One night he declared that he wanted to help. Tara said he could make maps for us, for retreats and hiding places in the mountains. He became a great friend, and even saved some of our buildings from the bulldozers.”

  Shan’s mind raced. He had to rip apart the puzzle pieces he had thought he had assembled and start over. “But why would Jiao bring him to this valley?”

  “Jiao got him the job. A big promotion. But it was because Jiao wanted to keep a close eye on him. I think now it was because Jiao meant to find a
way to eliminate him.”

  “For sympathizing with fellow Tibetans?”

  “For seeing Jiao and his accomplices murder my niece Tara.”

  Shan could not speak for a moment. “You mean she was lost in the demolition of one of the buildings?”

  Lhakpa looked at the glowing stub of his cigarette and reached for another, then reconsidered. He reached into a different pocket and produced another cone of incense and lit it with his cigarette. “Their committee published a list of agitators and cautioned them against further activity,” he continued. “They used all the favorite terms from the propaganda mills. Antisocialist hooligans. Reactionaries. Hotheads. Outsiders, even, though the gods only know what that meant at Larung Gar. Everyone was an outsider there. Some of those on the lists took the warning and left. But Tara redoubled her efforts, holding more meetings, printing her own notices about freedom of religion and freedom of speech, passing them out in the shelters where more and more people slept at night. She never spoke a harsh word directly about Jiao and Xun, or even their leaders in Beijing. It was always about praying and abiding steadfastly to the Buddhist way of compassion. She encouraged people to distribute flowers to the soldiers, and with each flower people were supposed to say a prayer for the soldier. She developed a following, and her meetings kept growing in size. Jiao loathed her but had to be careful because Beijing officials kept visiting and there were so many tourists coming that new hotels were being built. Larung Gar was becoming a business proposition that just had to be managed responsibly, that’s how Jiao put it. There was talk of human rights observers secretly entering the town as well, and they also had to be managed. Public Security started playing a bigger role. Huan arrived.

  “Tara heard that some minister from Beijing was coming so she began planning a peaceful demonstration to greet him. She intended to stop his limousine by surrounding it with praying Tibetans and drape prayer scarves over his neck in the hope that the Compassionate Buddha would help him understand. It would have been a deep embarrassment to Jiao, who had told us more than once that when Beijing gave him a task no one was allowed to interfere. He was furious. ‘The motherland will not tolerate obstructionism!’ he often shouted at her.

  “My niece called for a planning meeting on a ledge above the wreckage of a building. Jiao and Xun had an informer inside her group. I was suspicious of one of the nuns who befriended Tara, because she did not seem to know many of the prayers. It was that young nun who told Tara about the ledge that she said was a good meeting place. She led Tara there as we watched from above. We were praying at an old pilgrim shrine with Metok and a friend before going down to join them. Jiao, Xun, Huan, and an army officer came out of hiding when Tara arrived early, alone. It happened so fast. They suddenly started pushing her toward the edge of the cliff, shouting at her. Then there were little flashes and Tara clutched her belly and collapsed. Xun and Huan both had pistols out. They had shot her. Then Jiao kicked her over the edge into the debris of concrete slabs. Bulldozers and trucks began clearing it out minutes later. It took us nearly a day to locate her body at the dump where they took the rubble.”

  Lhakpa turned at the sound of footsteps. Jaya joined them, sitting beside the snow monk. As she sat the little goat appeared and lay beside the woman, snugging against her leg.

  It’s all about the goat. The words that had nagged Shan suddenly had meaning. They had misunderstood the death chart. It had not invoked the Mother Protectress, had not set forth the name of a goddess and the hail chaser. The Tibetan names had not been two but one, that of a young vibrant woman who had been named for the Mother Protectress, the niece of Lhakpa and the hail chaser. The inquisitive goat who stayed at Lhakpa’s side was Tara. In human form, the one who had been murdered, she had been Tara Namdol, the name written on the haunting death chart given to the fourth man, the army officer who was now the warden of the 404th.

  Shan found himself clutching at the gau under his shirt. “So it was the word of a few Tibetans against two senior officials,” he whispered.

  “Metok and his friend wanted to confront them right away. But the rest of us said no, that we had to wait for the right time, for the right official, for the right leverage.”

  “But it would always be Tibetan undesirables speaking against two of Beijing’s favorite sons.”

  “Not exactly. We had a video.”

  Surely Shan had not heard correctly. He turned toward Lhakpa. “You’re not suggesting there was a recording of the murder?”

  “Not suggesting. It is a fact. Tara had told people that whenever possible we should record all interchanges with the government, because there might be a chance of getting the recording to the outside world, so all the world could then witness the atrocities at Larung Gar. So our visitor had her phone out and had started recording from our vantage point. She thought they might try to beat Tara.”

  “Visitor?”

  “Metok’s American friend. A strong woman who smiled a lot, very interested in history.”

  Shan’s head seemed to spin. How could he have missed this? She had written to her father that she had seen something terrible but that she was learning Tibetan ways to fix things. “You mean Natalie Pike.”

  Lhakpa nodded. “It was her idea, after we convinced the others to hold the video back. There had been an announcement the next day that Jiao was leaving to become deputy director at the Five Claws, based on his success at Larung Gar. She said we might be able to use the video to stop the project somehow. But the six of us were arrested by Huan.”

  “I had just arrived, with friends from the mountains,” Jaya inserted. “I found horses for Natalie and Metok and we fled.”

  “So where is the video now?”

  “Everyone is too frightened to transmit it,” Lhakpa explained, “because Public Security monitors most transmissions in Tibet. When we saw her again she said it was safe, in the hands of a nameless friend in Lhasa. She said before they began pouring the foundations for the dam we would confront Jiao with it.”

  “So Jiao didn’t know about it.”

  “He must know now,” Jaya said. “After Metok’s arrest they searched his room. Metok wouldn’t have willingly given up the information but they use drugs in interrogation.”

  “They use drugs that wring the last drop of truth from a prisoner,” Shan confirmed. “So they must know that the American woman took the video, and that it is in Lhasa somewhere. How long did Metok know Natalie?”

  “A few weeks. Before arriving in Larung Gar he had been assigned to that bridge project that was stopped when they found the remains of that Green Standard Army camp she was working on. That’s how they met. Metok invited Natalie to Larung Gar so she could see a Buddhist teaching institution, to show her that Buddhism still thrived among Tibetans. Natalie and Professor Gangfen even visited his home in Lhasa.”

  As the words sank in, a terrible realization struck Shan. An image of the frightened woman with the teenage daughter he had met in Lhasa flashed through his mind. “Then someone has to warn her!” he exclaimed. “The secret Tibetan in Lhasa has to be Metok’s wife!”

  Lhakpa turned to Shan, then to Jaya, who cocked her head in confusion. “But Metok never had a wife, Shan,” she said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The long, winding trail glowed silver in the moonlight as the horses galloped down the mountain. Shan, swallowing his fear that his mount would stumble, pushed the horse harder and harder into the darkness. Zhu crouched low in his saddle at Shan’s side. Jaya sang a song to her horse and their khampa guide laughed with joy.

  Shan had struggled to sleep when they had returned to the camp, then had suddenly bolted upright. “Amah Jiejie,” he gasped, then desperately shook Zhu awake. “We have to go, now!”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Zhu had protested.

  “Amah Jiejie has to be warned! The satellite phone is in the truck!”

  “Constable?” Zhu rubbed sleep from his eyes.

  “Metok never had a wife!
The woman pretending to be his wife is a spy! Metok’s wife is a spy. An imposter nun led Tara to be killed. It must be the same woman. The spy is taking Amah Jiejie into the mountains to kill her!”

  Lhakpa too had awakened. “You are not making sense,” he said.

  “Metok’s wife asked the colonel’s assistant to go with her to a remote shrine. I thought Tan was invulnerable. But there is a way to destroy him. They want to kill Amah Jiejie.”

  Zhu cursed as he grasped Shan’s meaning, and began pulling on his boots. Jaya rose and began poking the embers of the fire.

  “You’ll never find the trail in the dark,” Lhakpa warned.

  “The moon is rising,” Shan said.

  “No, wait,” Jaya said. “Get packed and wait here.” The Tibetan woman darted up the slope. Ten minutes later she appeared with the khampa and four horses.

  They had not reached Amah Jiejie before she had left but the helicopter sent by Tan intercepted her before she met Metok’s widow, allowing her to call in with her apology for being ordered to a last-minute meeting and promising to set a date soon for their trek.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours later Shan paused at the little shrine on the stone ramp he was climbing to once more give thanks that Amah Jiejie had been saved. He always entered the Potala Palace in the traditional manner, the way it had been done for centuries, up the long steep ramp that rose up to the south entrance. As he climbed he considered why Pike had insisted he tell Metok’s wife to meet him in the Potala. Halfway up, pausing to catch his breath, he recalled the photograph Pike’s daughter had sent to her father. She had visited the Potala with Professor Gangfen, and in the photo she had been smiling with great contentment as she looked out over the huge Buddhist palace. It meant that the Potala wasn’t so much a place of beauty for Cato Pike, it was a place of his daughter, perhaps one of the last places on earth where she had been happy.