The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  The group continued up the stairs, climbing in silence for at least five minutes. Twice Shan had to stop and lean against the wall, not from fatigue but from a strange overwhelming sense of passing through something, of straining against a barrier. He seemed to be hearing something but there were no sounds. He seemed to be seeing swarms of shadows shifting on the wall but there was only one steady lamp, carried far ahead. It was as though each step took them not toward another part of the mountain but toward another world. Each time he paused, Trinle was waiting with his serene smile.

  They reached a landing with a thick wooden door, intricately carved with faces of protective demons and fastened with a heavy wrought-iron latch. Tsomo waited for them to gather on the landing and form a single-file procession, then opened the door, and led the way into the chamber with a low prayer.

  There was no one inside. It was a sparse, square room, perhaps thirty feet to a side, furnished with one rough-hewn table and two chairs, a large iron brazier for holding coals, and several shelves of manuscripts. One wall was covered with an intricate mural of the life of Buddha. The opposite wall was of cedar planks, with a central wooden panel that seemed to match the door but it had no hinges or latches. It was held fast with huge hand-wrought bolts, fastened with nuts nearly the size of Shan's fist. On the floor beside it was one of the illuminated manuscripts, just below a black rectangular panel, perhaps ten inches high and twenty inches long.

  Trinle silently lit more butter lamps and turned to Shan. "Do you know the term gomchen?" he asked, as casually as if they were together in their hut at the 404th. "It is little used these days."

  Shan shook his head.

  "A hermit of hermits. A living Buddha, on a lifetime hermitage," Trinle said.

  "It was the Second who decided the gomchen had to be protected," Tsomo continued. "A sacred trust. A small remote holy place had to be selected, to shelter his home so deeply that the secret would always be kept."

  "The Second?" Shan asked in confusion.

  "The Second Dalai Lama."

  "But that was nearly five hundred years ago."

  "Yes. There have been fourteen Dalai Lamas. But only nine of our gomchen." Trinle's voice, almost a whisper, was filled with uncharacteristic pride.

  Tsomo was at the manuscript now. He opened it to a page marked with a strip of silk. The serene smile returned to his face as he read.

  The nuns uncovered the tray and set bowls of tsampa and tea beside the manuscript. It wasn't a black panel on the wall, Shan realized. It was a hole in the wall, an access to a room beyond. He remembered the small solitary window high in the face of the cliff.

  "You care for a hermit here," he said in a whisper.

  Trinle put his finger to his lips. "Not a hermit. The gomchen," he said, and silently watched as Tsomo and the nuns prepared the food. When they were done, Trinle joined them in kneeling on the floor and prostrating themselves toward the cell, chanting as they did so.

  No one spoke until they had climbed down the long flight of stairs and reentered the small chapel where Shan had discovered Trinle.

  "It is hard to explain," Trinle said. "The Great Fifth, he said the gomchen was like one brilliant diamond buried in a vast mountain. Our abbot, when I was young, said the gomchen was all that was trying to be inside us, without the burden of wanting."

  "You said there was a trust. A gompa that protects the gomchen."

  "It has always been our great honor."

  Shan looked up, confused. "But this place. It is not exactly a gompa."

  "No. Not Yerpa. Nambe gompa."

  Shan stared. "But Nambe gompa is gone." Choje had been the abbot of Nambe gompa. "Destroyed by army planes."

  "Ah yes," Trinle said with his serene smile. "The stone walls were destroyed. But Nambe is not those old walls. We still exist. We still have our sacred duty to Yerpa."

  Shan, numbed by Trinle's announcement, thought of Choje back at the 404th, performing his own sacred duty to protect Yerpa. He became aware that Tsomo was sitting beside him. "He writes very beautifully, when he is not meditating," Tsomo said. "About the evolution of the soul."

  Shan remembered the manuscript in the antechamber. The gomchen communicated with them by writing religious tracts in the manuscript. "How long has it been?" Shan asked, still awed. "Since the bolts were tightened."

  Trinle seemed hard-pressed to answer. "Time is not one of his dimensions," he said. "Last year he recorded a conversation with the Second Dali Lama. As if he were there, as if it had just taken place."

  "But in years," Shan persisted. "When did he-"

  "Sixty-one years ago," Tsomo said. A flash of joy lit his eyes.

  "It was a very different world," Shan observed reverently.

  "It still is. For him. He does not know. It is one of the rules. Outside is irrelevant. He only considers Buddhahood."

  "At night," Tsomo said with a strangely longing tone. "He can watch the stars."

  "You mean he doesn't know about…" Shan struggled to find the words.

  "The troubles of the secular world?" Trinle offered. "No. They come and go. There has always been suffering. There have always been invaders. The Mongolians. The Chinese, several times. Even the British. Invasions pass. They do not affect our good fortune."

  "Good fortune?" Shan asked, his voice breaking with emotion.

  Trinle seemed genuinely surprised at Shan's question. "To have been able to pass the current incarnation in this holy land." He studied Shan. "The suffering of our people is unimportant to the work of the gomchen," Trinle said with new concern in his voice as he studied Shan. It was as though he felt a need to calm his visitor. "He must not be burdened with the world. That is why there was so much concern, the first time you met Tsomo."

  "When I met Tsomo?"

  "Consultations were made. Had he been contaminated? we asked."

  "If it is unimportant inside, it must be kept unimportant outside, I told them," Tsomo offered.

  Suddenly, with painful clarity, Shan understood. "He could die soon, the gomchen."

  "At night we can hear him coughing," Trinle said heavily. "There is blood sometimes in his basin. We offer more blankets. He will not use them. We must be ready. Tsomo is the tenth."

  The announcement sent a shiver down Shan's spine. He stared, speechless, at the vibrant, wise youth who soon would be locked into the stone forever. Tsomo returned his stare with a broad smile.

  They walked Shan back to the library where Yeshe, still wide-eyed, was poring over the manuscripts. As Trinle and Tsomo joined Yeshe, Gendun appeared at the door.

  "I believe Prosecutor Jao was killed to protect Yerpa," Shan said abruptly, before they entered the room.

  "The prosecutor had many enemies," the old monk observed.

  "I mean, I believe his murder was committed on the Dragon's Claw to protect the gomchen."

  Gendun shook his head slowly. "Every morning we have a prayer. A blessing of the wind, to be gentle on the birds. A blessing of our shoes, to keep them from treading on insects."

  "What if there were other Tibetans who wanted to protect you, who cared less than you about killing insects?"

  The old man looked very sad. "Then the trust imposed on us by the Second would have been broken. We could not accept being protected by a violation of a holy vow."

  Shan moved around the room and paused at the row of windows, Gendun joining him a moment later. The small pool was lit by the sun now. Near the water, lying in the sunlight, were four figures on blankets. They were not meditating, but lay as though debilitated, without the strength even to sit.

  "You have sickness here?" he asked the monk.

  "It is the price we pay. In recent years there have been new diseases which our herbs cannot cure. Sometimes we get pockmarked faces and fevers. We sometimes move to the next life at an early age."

  "Smallpox," Shan said in alarm.

  "I have heard that name, from the valley," Gendun nodded. "We call it rotting cheek."

  He stud
ied the frail forms below him with a sense of helpless horror. What was it Li had said when he mocked Dr. Sung? Sometimes in the mountains they contract diseases that had disappeared in the rest of the world. He had a sudden, waking nightmare, in which all the monks had died of disease, and left the gomchen sealed in his chamber. He blinked away the vision and turned back to the room. Gendun had stepped to the table beside Yeshe. Shan was unattended for the moment. The monks were all with Yeshe now, who was firing a barrage of excited questions at them as he studied another ancient manuscript. Shan quietly moved out of the room.

  The hallway was clear. He ran up the first flight of stairs to the landing and stepped into the dimly lit passage. He pulled one of the butter lamps from its niche in the wall and opened the first door.

  It was a small room, not much more than a closet. Its shelves were filled with folded tapestries. A huge cedar trunk held nothing but four pairs of worn sandals.

  The next room was bigger, but its only contents were clay jars of herbs and boxes of ink brushes.

  The third contained huge ceramic jars of barley and, on a central table, a four-foot-long wrought-iron wrench. He stopped in frustration. There should be costumes. He had been certain there would be costumes. Someone had broken the trust and used a costume from Yerpa to kill Jao. He followed the curve of the passage at a jog, passing four more doors until he reached the end, where a large tapestry of the lives of Buddha was hung. He pushed it aside. It concealed a door.

  The room was larger than the others, mustier, heavy with the scent of incense. He held up the lamp with a sigh of satisfaction. Gold brocade flickered in the light. The costumes were there, eight in all, laid out on deep shelves along each wall. His hand closed around the gau on his neck and he stepped forward. The skeletal leatherbound arms of the creatures hung out of the sleeves. He stepped to the nearest, raised the lamp to the head and groaned in horror.

  He fell to his knees. A dry heave wracked his belly.

  "It is a very special place," someone said behind him. It was Tsomo.

  Shan slowly looked up, filled with self-revulsion. "I didn't-" he croaked. "I had to know. If there were costumes. For demon dancers."

  Tsomo nodded, forgiveness already in his eyes. "It is understandable. But this is a poor hermitage. We do not celebrate many festivals. We have no such costumes."

  Shan stood and lifted his eyes. "I was afraid you had Tamdin here. I had to…" He did not finish the sentence.

  "Not here. Here-" Tsomo extended his hand reverently toward the silent forms on the shelves. "Here it is just a few old men asleep in their mountain."

  Shan backed out, the scene of the mummified hermits of Yerpa forever seared into his brain.

  As he closed the door, Tsomo smiled serenely. "Sometimes I visit them, to meditate. I am very peaceful when I am with them."

  When they met Yeshe at the door to the mandala room, Gendun handed Yeshe and Shan each one of the small jars from the shelves.

  "A hundred years ago there was a very great mandala, done by a monk who was soon to become our gomchen. These are the last of his sands."

  Yeshe gasped and pushed the jar back. "I cannot take such a gift."

  Gendun smiled. "It is not a gift. It is an empowerment."

  Shan saw that Yeshe understood. The gift was their trust. The old monk put his hand on the back of Yeshe's head and uttered a small prayer of farewell.

  They spoke no more until they were at the rock maze that led out of Yerpa. Yeshe had already disappeared into the rocks when Tsomo put a hand on Shan's shoulder.

  "Why do you do this?" Shan asked. "Why endanger your secrets with me?"

  "I would be saddened if you thought them a burden."

  "Not a burden. An honor. A responsibility."

  "Trinle and Choje, they decided it was no longer honorable not to let you know."

  "But will it help me find the murderer?" Shan said in a near whisper, his hand clasped around the jar of sand in his pocket. They had given him empowerment. Could the secrets of Yerpa empower him to save Sungpo?

  Tsomo shrugged. "Perhaps it will just make it easier when you do not find him. You must remember what you told me that first day. From Lao Tze. To know that you do not know, that is best." The youth gave a small smile that seemed almost mischievous.

  "There is something that puzzles me about you," Shan said. "The gomchen knows nothing about the world outside. But you are the future gomchen. You know about it. Invaders. Murder. Massacre."

  Tsomo shook his head. "I do not know those things. I am trained not to look beyond the mountains. I have heard of such possibilities. Like our ninth heard of the Great War and that the Emperor Pu Yi had been dethroned in Beijing. But they are only words. Like hearing of the atmosphere of a distant planet. Like fables. Not one of my realities. I have not encountered them." He studied Shan in silence for a moment. "I have encountered you. You are the most outside I have ever been."

  Shan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I'm not much to judge the world by."

  "There is no need to judge. I only celebrate what the great river of life pushes toward us. One day in his book, our gomchen drew a picture of a Buddha with long flat wings. It is what he saw when an airplane flew over."

  Shan looked up at the high, tiny window, barely visible in the afternoon shadows. "I am envious," he said.

  "Of the gomchen?"

  Shan nodded. "I think it is best," he said heavily, "to know of not knowing."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rebecca Fowler was at her desk, her head propped up on one arm, a haggard expression on her face.

  "You look like hell," she said, as Shan walked in.

  "I have been on the South Claw," Shan replied, trying to fight the exhaustion of his day. "Exploring." Sergeant Feng was sharing cigarettes with workers outside. Yeshe was asleep in the truck. "I need to ask you something."

  "Just like that," she said, the bitterness returning. "Something came up while you were strolling over the Dragon Claws." She ran her fingers through her mop of auburn hair and looked up, not waiting for an answer. "I took his hand up there. Your demon's hand. They wanted me to recite mantras with them. Something began howling up on the mountain."

  "Something?"

  She didn't seem to hear him. "The sun went down," she recounted with a haunted expression. "They lit torches and continued the mantra. The moon came out. The howling began. An animal. Not an animal. I don't know." She put her head in her hands. "I haven't slept much since. It was all so- I don't know. So real." She looked up apologetically. "I'm sorry. I can't describe it."

  "There was a man from Shanghai in my hut last year," Shan said quietly. "He scoffed at the monks at first. But later he said sometimes at night when he heard the mantras he held his hand over his mouth for fear his soul would pop out."

  The American responded with a small, grateful smile.

  "I need to see maps. Satellite maps."

  She winced. "When Public Security approved my satellite license they made us agree to a protocol for access. Only eight authorized people. Software generates a log for every printout. The major was quite insistent. So they can be sure we're not looking at something we're not supposed to see." She was growing distant, suddenly wary of Shan. His request seemed to have scared her.

  "That's why I came to you."

  She sighed but did not reply.

  "I'll need the sections that cover the South Claw. More than one date. But including the date of Jao's murder and one month before."

  "I was supposed to be at the back ponds an hour ago."

  "I need your help."

  "The tourists arrive in Lhadrung in three days. My monthly report is already a week overdue. Faxes came from California, demanding to know if I resolved the permit suspension. I have a job to do. My shareholders expect me to do it. The Ministry of Geology expects me to do it. Beijing expects me to do it. The ninety families that depend on this mine for survival expect me to do it." She stood and lifted the hard hat that sat on her
desk. "You, Mr. Shan, are the only one who doesn't expect me to do it."

  "I thought it was a simple request."

  "It's not. I just told you. Somehow I think you never make simple requests."

  "I think Jao was taken to the South Claw to be killed because of something seen on one of your maps."

  "Seen by Jao?"

  "Maybe. Or by the murderer. Or both."

  "Ridiculous. We're the only ones who see the maps."

  "You said eight people. With eight people secrets can be difficult to keep."

  "If you think I'm going to invite half the Bureau to climb all over us for some security violation, you're crazy." She took a step toward the door. "I thought you and I, we were-" She shook her head and sighed. "When we first got the satellite license Kincaid said Colonel Tan might try to trick us into giving up the maps."

  "Why would Colonel Tan do that?"

  "To catch us in a security violation, then use it against us."

  "Do you think I am trying to trick you?"

  Fowler sighed. "Not you. But what if you are being used?" She took another step toward the door. "Get someone to put it in writing."

  "No."

  She looked back over her shoulder.

  "Because then you would be caught in a security violation," he observed.

  She shook her head slowly and moved toward the door again.

  "I knew a priest once. When I lived in Beijing. He used to help me." Shan spoke to her back. "Once I had a similar dilemma. About whether to seek justice or to just do what the bureaucrats wanted. Do you know what he said? He told me that our life is the instrument we use to experiment with the truth."

  Fowler stopped and slowly turned again. She looked at him in silence, then tore herself away to pour a cup of tepid tea from a thermos. She sat and studied the cup. "Damn you," she said. "Who the hell are you? Every time things are calming down, you…" She didn't finish the sentence.

  "We want the same thing. An answer."

  She rose, threw the tea in the sink, and stepped into the computer room. Unlocking a large cabinet with long narrow drawers, she quickly sifted through the top drawer and laid a sheet on the table. "We only print them once a week, sometimes only twice a month. This is two weeks ago. Twenty-mile grid. Best for our purposes. We also have a hundred miles and five miles."