The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

"Meaning what?" Shan asked.

  "Meaning the most productive members of the proletariat must be supported first."

  Shan stared at her in disbelief. She was quoting something, as warily as if this were a tamzing session. "The most productive members, doctor?"

  "There is a memo from Beijing. I can show it to you. It states that Tibetans suffer permanent brain damage by spending their childhood in oxygen-deprived altitudes."

  Shan wouldn't let her get away with it. "You're a graduate of Bei Da University, doctor. Surely you know the difference between medical science and political science."

  She returned his stare for a moment, then her gaze drifted to the floor.

  "This must be difficult," Shan offered. "An autopsy on a friend."

  "Friend? Jao and I talked sometimes. Mostly it was just the investigations. And government functions. He told jokes. You don't often hear jokes in Tibet."

  "Like what?"

  Sung thought a moment. "There was one. Why do Tibetans die younger than Chinese?" She looked up expectantly, her mouth in a crooked shape that may have been a grin. "Because they want to."

  "Investigations. You mean murders?"

  "I get dead people. Murder. Suicide. Accident. I just fill out the forms."

  "But you wouldn't fill out our form."

  "Sometimes it's hard to ignore the obvious."

  "And the others? You're never curious?" he asked.

  "Curiosity, Comrade, can be very dangerous."

  "How many traumatic deaths have you investigated over the past two years?"

  "My job is to tell you about this body," Sung frowned. "Nothing else."

  "Right. Because that's what your forms are for."

  Sung threw her hands up in surrender. "Anything to shut you up. Okay. I remember three who fell off mountains. Four in an avalanche. A suffocation. Four or five in auto accidents. One bled to death. Record-keeping is not my responsibility. And that's mostly the Han population. The local minorities," she said with a meaningful glance, "do not always rely on the facilities provided by the people's government."

  "Suffocation?"

  "The Director of Religious Affairs died in the mountains."

  "Altitude sickness?"

  "He didn't get sufficient oxygen," Sung acknowledged.

  "But that would be death from natural causes."

  "Not necessarily. He lost consciousness from a blow to the head. Before he recovered someone stuffed his windpipe with pebbles."

  "Pebbles?" Shan's head snapped up.

  "Touching, really," Sung said with a morbid smile. "You know it was a traditional way to kill members of the royalty."

  Shan nodded slowly. "Because no one was allowed to commit violence on them. Was there a trial?"

  Sung shrugged again. It seemed to be her defining mannerism. "I don't know. I think so. Bad elements. You know, protestors."

  "What protestors?"

  "Not my job. I don't remember faces. If asked, I attend and read my medical reports to the tribunal. Always the same."

  "You mean you always read your reports. And a Tibetan is always condemned."

  Sung's only response was a sharp glare.

  "Your dedication to duty is an inspiration," Shan said.

  "Someday I'd like to return to Beijing, Comrade. How about you?"

  Shan ignored the question. "The one who bled to death. I supposed he stabbed himself fifty times."

  "Not exactly," Sung said with a dark gleam. "His heart was cut out. I have a theory on that one."

  "A theory?" Shan asked with a flicker of hope.

  "He didn't do it himself." On the way out she threw open the door so hard Sergeant Feng had to jump out of the way.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later he was in Tan's office. He had passed Yeshe in the waiting room, ignoring his agitated whispering.

  "You, Prisoner Shan," Tan declared, "must have balls the size of Chomolungma."

  "Do you know for certain the cases are not related?"

  "Impossible," the colonel growled. "They're closed cases. You're supposed to be filling in one hole, not digging others."

  "But if they are related-"

  "They are not related."

  "The Lhadrung Five, the people call them. You mentioned them yesterday. I didn't understand when you said the protestors keep proving your point, that you were too easy on them after the Thumb Riots. It's because they are being arrested again. For murder."

  "The minority cultists have difficulty complying with our laws. Possibly it has not escaped your attention."

  "How many of the Five have been arrested for murder?"

  "It only proves it was a mistake to release them the first time."

  "How many?"

  "Sungpo is the fourth."

  "Jao prosecuted them?"

  "Of course."

  "The connections can't be ignored. The Ministry would not ignore such connections."

  "I see no connections."

  "The five were all here in Lhadrung. Convicted and imprisoned together. A connection. Then, one after another, four are charged with murder. A connection. First three prosecuted by Jao. The fourth charged with Jao's murder. A connection. I need to know about those three cases. Proving a conspiracy might finish the case."

  Colonel Tan eyed Shan suspiciously. "Are you prepared to attack a conspiracy by the Buddhists?"

  "I am prepared to find the truth."

  "Have you heard of the purbas?" Tan asked.

  "A purba is a ceremonial dagger used in Buddhist temples."

  "It's also the name taken by a new resistance group. Monks mostly, though they don't seem to mind violence. A different breed. Very dangerous. Of course there's a conspiracy. By Buddhist hooligans like the purbas, to kill government officials."

  "You're saying all the others were officials?"

  Tan lit a cigarette and considered Shan. "I'm saying don't let your paranoia conceal the obvious."

  "But what if it's something else? What if the Lhadrung Five themselves were the victims of a conspiracy?"

  Tan gave an impatient wince. "To what end?"

  "Covering a larger crime. I could not suggest anything specific without analyzing the other cases."

  "The other murders were all solved. Don't confuse the record."

  "What if there is another pattern?"

  "A pattern?" When he exhaled smoke Tan had the appearance of a dragon. "Who cares?"

  "Patterns can't be seen in just two deaths. Sometimes not in three. But now we have four. Something may have been invisible that could be seen now. What if it were obvious to the Ministry, which will have access to the files? Four murders within a few months. Four of the five most prominent dissidents in the county are tried for those murders, but no effort is made to link the cases. And the victims include at least two of the most prominent officials in the county. Two or three, you might explain as a coincidence. Four murders feels like a crime wave. But five, that might seem negligent."

  ***

  A pattern, Shan repeated to himself as he followed Yeshe and Feng into the clutter of the market square. There was a pattern, he was certain. He knew it instinctively, the way a wolf might smell prey on the far side of a forest. But where was the scent coming from? Why did he feel so sure?

  The market was a jumble of stalls and peddlers selling from blankets arranged on the packed earth. Shan's eyes opened wide as he absorbed the scene. Here before him was more life than he had seen in three years. A woman held out yak-hair yarn, another shouted prices for crocks of goat butter. He reached out and touched the top of a basket full of eggs. Shan hadn't tasted an egg since leaving Beijing. He could have stared at the basket for hours. The miracle of eggs. An old man tended an elaborate display of torma, the butter and dough effigies used as offerings. Children. His gaze settled on a group of children playing with a lamb. He fought the urge to walk over and touch one, to confirm that such youth and innocence still existed.

  Sergeant Feng's hand on his shoulder brought Shan
back to his senses, and he moved through the stalls. The questions flooded back, the scent of a pattern. Was it simply that he knew a man like Sungpo did not kill? No. There was something else. If it was not Sungpo then it was a conspiracy. But whose conspiracy? That of the accused? Or of the accusers? Would he show the world that the monks were guilty, for which he would punish himself forever, or that they were innocent, for which the government would punish him forever?

  Feng bought a stick of roasted crab apples. A man with a milky eye whirled a prayer wheel and offered jars of chang, Tibetan beer made from barley. Yak cheese, hard, dry, and dirty, stood stacked beside a forlorn girl with waist-length braids. A boy offered plastic bags stuffed with yogurt, an old man some animal skins. Shan realized that most of the Tibetans wore sprigs of heather, tied or pinned to their shirts. A girl with one arm called for them to buy a scrap of silk to use as a khata. The air was filled with the pungent traces of buttered tea, incense, and unwashed humans.

  A squad of soldiers was checking the papers of a wiry, restless-looking man who wore a dagger in his belt in the traditional khampa style. As the soldiers approached he gripped not the dagger but the amulet around his neck, the gau locket which probably contained an invocation to a protective spirit. They let him walk on. As the man gave his gau a pat of thanks, Shan suddenly remembered. The local inhabitants had complained about the blasting because it angered Tamdin. Fowler had said no, she started blasting only six months earlier. She meant Tamdin had been seen more than six months earlier. Tamdin had been angry earlier. A pattern. Had Tamdin killed earlier?

  Yeshe stopped at the far end of the market, beside a shop whose door was a filthy carpet supported by two spindly poles. Sergeant Feng eyed the dark interior of the shop and frowned. More than one Chinese soldier had been ambushed in such places. He pointed toward a stall selling tea near the center of the market. "I'll have two cups, no more." He reached into his shirt and pulled out a whistle on a lanyard. "After that I'll call the patrol." He pulled an apple from the stick with his teeth and walked away.

  There was no window in the building, no doorway but the one they entered by. The interior was lit only by butter lamps, their meager light made even dimmer by the smoke of incense. As his eyes adjusted Shan discerned rows of shelves covered with bowls and jars. It was an herbalist's shop. An emaciated woman sat behind a wide plank laid across two upended crates. She cast a vacant stare at Shan and Yeshe. Three men sat on the earthen floor against the wall to the right, apparently in a state of stupor. He followed Yeshe's gaze to the left, into the darkest corner of the room. On a rough-hewn table sat a short, dirty conical hat with the bottom folded up. Behind it was a deeper shadow which had the shape of an animal, perhaps a large dog. "An enchanter's cap," Yeshe said with a nervous whisper. "I haven't seen one since I was a boy."

  "You said nothing about Chinese," the old hag barked. As she spoke one of the men on the floor sprang forward, grabbing a heavy staff that leaned against the shelves.

  Yeshe put a restraining hand on Shan's arm. "It's all right," he replied nervously. "He's not like that."

  The woman fixed Shan with a frigid stare, then pulled a jar of powder from the lowest shelf. "You want something for sex, eh? That's what Chinese want."

  Shan shook his head slowly and turned toward Yeshe. Not like what? He took a step closer to the table in the corner. The shadow at the table seemed to have shifted. It was clearly a man now, who appeared to be asleep, or perhaps intoxicated. Shan took another step. The left half of the man's face had been crushed. Half his left ear had been cut away. A brown bowl sat in front of him, lined with silver. Shan studied the peculiar pattern on the vessel. It wasn't a bowl. It was the top half of a human skull.

  Suddenly a second man leapt forward to hover at Shan's elbow. He muttered a threat in a dialect that was unintelligible to Shan. Shan turned and saw to his surprise that the man was a monk. But he had a wild, feral quality, a raw look that Shan had never seen in a monk.

  "He says"- Yeshe looked at the sleeping man as he spoke-"He says that if you take a photograph you will be sent immediately to the second level of the hot hell."

  No matter where Shan turned, people wanted to warn him of the great suffering that awaited him. He turned his palms outward to show that they were empty. "Tell him," he said wearily, "that I am not acquainted with that particular hell."

  "Don't mock him," Yeshe warned. "He means Kalasutra. You are nailed down and your body is cut into pieces with a burning hot saw. These monks. They are from a very old sect. Almost none left. They will tell you it is real. They may tell you they have been there."

  Shan studied the monk with a chill.

  Yeshe grabbed his arm and pulled. "No. Don't anger him. This drunkard cannot be who we want. Let us leave this place."

  Shan ignored him and moved back toward the woman.

  "I could read your omens," the woman said in a voice like that of a hen.

  "Not interested in omens," Shan said. There was a brass piece, a plate the size of his palm on the table. It was inscribed along the perimeter with small images of Buddha. The center was brilliantly polished.

  "Your people like omens."

  "Omens just tell facts. I am interested in implications," Shan said. He reached for the plate.

  Yeshe's hand snapped up and grabbed his wrist before he touched it.

  "Not for you," the woman said with a chiding glance at Yeshe, as though she wished Shan had reached the disc.

  "What is it?" he asked. Yeshe turned with his back to Shan, as though Shan needed protection.

  "Much power," the woman cackled. "Enchantment. A trap."

  "Trap for what?"

  "Death."

  "It catches the dead? You mean ghosts?"

  "Not that kind of death," she said enigmatically, and pushed his hand away.

  "I don't understand."

  "Your people never understand. They fear death as an ending of life. But that is not the important one."

  "You mean it catches the forces that lay waste to the soul."

  The woman gave a slow nod of respect. "When it can be focused correctly." She considered him for a moment, then pulled a handful of black and white pebbles from a bowl and tossed them on the table. She solemnly arranged them in a line, then extracted several after careful deliberation. She looked at Shan sadly. "For the next month you must not dig in the earth alone. You must light torma offerings. You must bow before black dogs."

  "I must speak with Khorda."

  "Who are you?" the woman asked.

  Shan weighed his words. "Right now," he whispered back, "I only know who I am not."

  She stepped around the table and took his hand as if he might lose his way if he tried to reach the corner alone. The monk moved to intercept him again, but was stopped with a sharp glance from the woman. He retreated to sit squarely in the entrance, facing outside. Yeshe squatted beside him at the doorframe, facing Shan, as if he might need to spring to Shan's rescue at any moment.

  Shan sat on a crate in front of the table and studied the old man.

  As he did so the man's eyes burst open, instantly alert, the way a predator wakens.

  Shan had the fleeting impression of looking into the face of an idol. The eye on the ragged side of the man's face looked at him with a supernatural intensity. The eyeball was gone, replaced with a brilliant red glass orb. The right eye, the living eye, seemed no more human. It too gleamed like a jewel, lit from the back.

  "Choje Rinpoche suggested I speak with you."

  The eye seemed to turn inward for a moment, as though searching for recognition. "I knew Choje when he was nothing but a brown-robe rapjung, an apprentice," Khorda said at last. His voice was like gravel being rubbed against a rock. "They took his gompa many years ago. Where does he study now?"

  "The 404th lao gai brigade."

  Khorda nodded slowly. "I've seen them take gompas." The right side of Khorda's face twisted into a hideous grin. "You know what it means?" the sorcerer asked. "They
eliminate it. They take it stone by stone. They eradicate its existence. They pound the foundation into the earth. Reclamation, they call it. They take the stones and build barracks. If they could dig a hole deep enough they would bury all of Tibet." Khorda stared at Shan. No, he stared at a point behind Shan that he seemed to see through Shan's skull. After a moment his eyelids shut.

  "I touched a dead body," said Shan.

  Slowly the left eyelid opened. The red jewel stared at him. "A common enough sin. Ransom a goat." Khorda spoke with what seemed a shadow of a voice. It was hoarse and distant and gasping.

  The penance was common among the herding people, who would buy a goat out of the herd to save it from the pot. "Where I live there are no goats."

  The cheek curled in another half grin. "Ransoming a yak would be even better."

  "The killer was wearing this."

  The sorcerer's face tightened. His good eye opened and transfixed the disc that Shan held out. He pulled it from Shan's hand and held it closer.

  "Once he was awakened," Khorda nodded knowingly, "he could not be expected to sit idle. When he sees everything he will have no more rest."

  "Everything? You mean the murders?"

  "He means 1959," the woman snapped from behind Shan. The year of the final Chinese invasion.

  "I need to meet him."

  "People like you," Khorda said, "people like you cannot meet him."

  "But I must."

  Half of Khorda's face curled into a hideous smile. "You will take the consequences?"

  "I will take the consequences," Shan said. He felt a tremor in his lips as he spoke.

  "Your hands," Khorda rasped. "Let me see them."

  As Shan laid them on the table, palms upward, Khorda bent over each one, studying them a long time. His eyes rose to meet Shan's. As he did so, he pressed Shan's hands together and dropped a rosary into them.

  The beads felt like ice. They seemed to numb his hands. They were made of ivory, and each was intricately carved in the shape of a skull.

  "Repeat this," Khorda said. There was something new in his voice, a bone-chilling tone of command that caused Shan to look into the sorcerer's eye. "Look at me with the beads in your hands and repeat this. Om! Padme te krid hum phat!" he barked.