Bones of the Earth
Page 36
Shan shot a grateful glance toward Shiva. She had not included the full wording, which referred to the young man and young girl. Her horoscope, moreover, simply predicted great happiness for Shan and Meng instead of the traditional prediction of many years of happiness. He knew Meng had been feeling spasms of pain during the ceremony, but she had simply gripped his hand more tightly and with obvous effort kept the smile on her face.
Amah Jiejie gave each couple a bottle of rice wine and before pouring, she linked each of the pairs of glasses with red thread, another tradition of old China. Tan too had a gift for Shan and insisted Choden come forward to listen. “You must help me with this one, Deputy,” Tan stated to Choden, who nervously saluted the colonel. “Your boss has gotten married.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He has even more responsibilities now.”
“Yes, sir,” Choden repeated.
“Which means you have more responsibilities.”
“Sir?”
“Constable Shan is being given three months’ paid leave,” Tan announced, and turned to Meng. “That is, if you can stand to have him around for so long.”
Meng squeezed Shan’s hand again. “I will try my best to endure him,” she said, then completely unsettled the colonel by giving him an embrace.
The sun had set and several tubs of beer had been emptied before guests began to drift away. The pilot approached Tan, pointing to clouds that were beginning to cover the moon. Tan nodded and retrieved his uniform tunic, which Amah Jiejie helped him into. He stepped to the gate then paused, growing more sober, and Shan followed his gaze toward Dr. Anwei, who was escorting Ko through the crowd. The colonel studied Ko as he finished buttoning his uniform. “You know you are on medical parole, prisoner Ko,” he declared.
“It’s his wedding night, Colonel,” Shan inserted.
Tan ignored him. “The prison system is responsible for your medical attention until your doctor releases you.”
“And then my parole ends,” Ko replied in a brittle voice. Yara appeared at his side, desperately gripping his arm.
Tan turned to Anwei. “I release him,” the doctor stated.
The words stabbed at Shan. Tan meant to take his son back to the gulag.
Amah Jiejie pushed a thick file into the colonel’s hand. Tan hefted it. “Everything the government knows about you is right here. To the bureaucrats this file is more real than the flesh and blood Ko.” He held it in front of him and looked at it, shaking his head. “A chronic offender. Hooligan gang leader. You were arrested once for knocking down streetlights. A very difficult prisoner in those early years. Mess hall fights, escape attempts, assaults on guards. It’s all there. One of the old files, not yet entered into the new computer systems. This file makes you more real to the government than your own flesh and blood, son. Now that Amah Jiejie has adjusted certain other records, it is the only evidence of your existence as an inmate. Everything about you, up to this night.” Tan corrected himself, “Or rather, up to the day you nearly died saving my life.” The colonel gave an exaggerated sigh. “This is Tibet. To live again you have to die,” he said, and dropped the file into the brazier.
Shan and his son stared in stunned disbelief as the papers began to curl and burst into flame.
“As of this afternoon there is no longer a record of you at the 404th. You are dead to them. If ever asked, the doctor and I will confirm that you died of injuries received on that mountain. We shredded your hospital file before we left Lhadrung.”
Ko leaned on Yara as if he might fall. “You’re not taking me back to the 404th, Colonel?” he asked.
“Never again,” Tan replied. “But you will have to persuade your constable to issue you a residency permit,” he added. The colonel began to follow the pilot up the darkened hill, then paused and turned. “Lha gyal lo,” he said, and disappeared into the shadows.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If anywhere on our planet could be described as the landscape of the soul, it must be Tibet. This remote, rugged land, closer to the heavens than any place on earth, became the home to scores of thousands of temples, shrines, monasteries, and convents, with a culture and social structure uniquely focused on spiritual pursuits. It has long been a treasure unappreciated by the world that still offers lessons for us today.
Some of those lessons relate to respect for the earth and the extraordinary sustained efforts by Tibetans to populate their land with structures of reverence. While Gekho’s Roost is the product of a novelist’s imagination, Gekho was an important earth deity worshipped long before Buddhism arrived in Tibet, and his Roost is an amalgam of many authentic sites, encompassing even the fields of standing stones left by the devout forebears of modern Tibetans. Many of these prehistoric patterns of stones have been identified, mostly in western Tibet, and have intriguing links to the ancient horse warrior cultures of central Asia, as further examined in John Vincent Bellezza’s valuable book The Dawn of Tibet. What was it about these high ranges that caused so many to linger and build monuments to that which they held sacred? What was the process by which the devotion of fierce warriors evolved into the complex cosmology of compassion that became Tibetan Buddhism?
Such questions led me to suggest in this tale that these lands might be characterized as the Rosetta Stone of the soul. If so, then perhaps it is inevitable that they encompass extremes of the human journey. The Tibetans spent several centuries reverently constructing their temples, eschewing technological advancement and economic progress so they might focus on the mysteries of the human spirit. The Chinese have spent several decades dismantling those buildings and the peaceful society that erected them so they might advance a more secular, intolerant political agenda. Over ninety percent of Tibet’s holy buildings, numbering in the tens of thousands, have been destroyed over the past sixty years in a relentless campaign of cultural annihilation. Another lesson of Tibet, often reflected in Inspector Shan’s saga, has been that it is darkness that defines the light, and suffering that gives meaning to compassion.
The roots of the Tibetans still run deep, and from time to time significant new Buddhist institutions do emerge, such as the teaching center of Larung Gar. While I overlaid a novel’s plotline upon that academy, it is a real-life microcosm of Tibet’s struggle. Larung Gar remains a rare ray of hope for Tibetans, despite Beijing’s wrenching initiative to reduce its size and importance to the Buddhist community. As reflected in these pages, thousands of monks and nuns were abruptly expelled from the school and forced to abandon their monastic careers by officials who seemed to equate spiritual pursuits with acts of political rebellion. Larung Gar endures, however, keeping ancient traditions alive.
One of those venerable traditions that have always fascinated me is that of the hailchasers. For centuries these weather charmers, who were often trained as rigorously as Tibet’s acclaimed medical doctors, roamed the land, consulting and placating the earth deities to protect farmers and herders. Elaborate festivals, with roots in pre-Buddhist Tibet, were often staged in monastic centers to honor those deities in the hope of avoiding the land’s violent, sometimes fatal, hailstorms and earthquakes. Some in Tibet suggest that the failure to keep harmony with such deities is why its landscape has been so ravaged in recent decades. Mountain ranges have been stripped of their fertile forests, huge mines have depleted their minerals, and the land’s unique wildlife decimated. Major new dams are being built at a frantic pace to power Chinese cities in the east, without meaningful environmental assessment. Some Tibetans in remote regions have been abruptly introduced to the twenty-first century by the arrival of clearcutting timber crews and bulldozers that scrape away the mountain that had always been home to their protective deity.
As I immersed myself in these modern Tibetan realities while writing the Inspector Shan series I came to see Tibet as a vital barometer of our own humanity. The rest of the world too often turns a blind eye to the oppression that occurs there and in neighboring Xinjiang Province, preferring to focus its mora
l outrage on issues that pale in comparison to the abject human rights abuses of this struggling region. Those abuses diminish all of us. We can’t fight for human rights in one place, in one political context, and not fight for them everywhere. The most profound lesson of all from Inspector Shan is that the Tibetan journey has become our journey too.
:Lha gyal lo, Eliot Pattison
ALSO BY ELIOT PATTISON
THE INSPECTOR SHAN NOVELS
Skeleton God
Soul of the Fire
Mandarin Gate
The Lord of Death
Prayer of the Dragon
Beautiful Ghosts
Bone Mountain
Water Touching Stone
The Skull Mantra
ALSO
Bone Rattler
Eye of the Raven
Original Death
Blood of the Oak
Savage Liberty
Ashes of the Earth
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIOT PATTISON is the Edgar Award–winning author of nine previous Shan novels. A frequent visitor to China, he has written books and articles on international policy issues that have been published around the world. He lives on a colonial-era farm in Pennsylvania. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Eliot Pattison
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BONES OF THE EARTH. Copyright © 2019 by Eliot Pattison. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: flags © Ron Koeberer/Arcangel; mountains © HelloRF Zcool / Shutterstock.com
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ISBN 978-1-250-16968-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-16969-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250169693
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First Edition: March 2019