Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  "This Golok is not welcome," Lhandro said stiffly.

  "You would welcome me…," Shan said in confusion, not needing to ask the obvious question: Why would Lhandro welcome a Chinese but not another Tibetan?

  "I don't mean all Goloks," Lhandro explained in a heavy voice. "But this man's clan were bandits. Once that band raided many camps and villages between here and the ranges in Amdo the Goloks call home. They attacked many innocent clans, stole many herds and bags of barley."

  "Those bandits died a long time ago," Dremu muttered. "Caught by Public Security and executed."

  "Is this man still a bandit?" Lhandro demanded of Shan.

  Dremu gave a grunt-like laugh, as though to say, if only he could have it so good.

  "You don't need this man," Lhandro said when Shan did not reply. "You are going to Yapchi with us."

  "But the purbas arranged it," Nyma interjected. "I think they wanted someone who knows the mountains, knows the hiding places, knows where patrols look. We aren't used to knobs. Drakte arranged it," she whispered soberly, as if it settled the matter.

  "I don't understand," Shan said. "Who else is going to Yapchi Valley?" Their trip was supposed to be a secret.

  "We have been waiting for you," Lhandro said, sweeping his hand toward the white tent where the men had begun sewing a mound of the filled salt pouches shut. "Those from my village who came to the salt camp. Five of us from Yapchi, and forty sheep. We leave at dawn." As though to ease Shan's doubt, the rongpa produced a tattered map from his pocket and unfolded it, showing Shan the lake, a large oval blue shape at the edge of the changtang. Then he traced a route east along the shore and north through the mountains into Amdo, the part of Tibet that Beijing called Qinghai Province. Shan studied the map. It was surprisingly rich in detail, including a fifty-mile-wide sector of red hash marks along the far shore of Lamtso. Along the top of the map was a large legend. Nei Lou. It meant classified, a state secret. He glanced up at Lhandro, who returned his gaze with challenge in his eyes, then pointed to the red marks. The legend over the marks said Toxic Hazard Zone.

  "An army base?"

  "No," Lhandro sighed. "Worse. There are places in this region where special weapons were tested. Things that caused disease, or killed everything with chemicals. Some say they were used on herds of wild animals. Some say on bands of nomads who refused to be registered. But no one goes in the places with red marks, not even the army. Sometimes people find things, canisters on the ground, or a herd of sheep that has died for no clear reason, and the army comes and declares a new zone. The army puts signs up, and fences sometimes."

  Shan looked at Nyma, then the sturdy farmer. "You planned this with the purbas? The salt caravan?"

  Lhandro smiled. "My village has always done a caravan to Lamtso, every spring. The purbas learned about it," he said with a glance toward Nyma. "They said it would be a way of making you and the stone inconspicuous." He stepped away to help sew the salt bags shut.

  Nyma began to move among the other tents, speaking in gentle, reverent tones, straightening prayer flags that had been strung from tent lines. She sat by the old dropka woman with cataracts and began reciting her beads. Dremu stared warily at the people walking about the camp, who either refused to acknowledge him or glared at him with obvious resentment. He cursed, then stepped toward his horse. Shan assumed the Golok was going to groom the animal, but suddenly he was mounted. He ran his horse out of camp and disappeared into the hills. The man had been paid already. Shan doubted they would see Dremu again.

  Shan and Lokesh wandered about the camp, Shan watching for any sign of a man with a fish, or anything to explain the monk's cryptic warning. They lingered by a fire where a woman was frying sweet dough for the dropka children until Lokesh decided he should join the search for tonde. His old friend was always seeking the little treasures and, like many older dropka they had met, he tried to keep nine in his possession at any one time, a number that was said to bring powerful luck.

  Shan watched as Lokesh walked toward the slope where the man in the fox hat dug, then he circled behind the tents, intending to approach the back of the tent where the old man stood guard with his staff.

  But Tenzin stood at the water's edge, looking forlornly across Lamtso, his new beads dangling from his fingers. Shan paused, stepped to his side, and sat on a boulder. The grief the mute Tibetan had shown in Drakte's death hut seemed to have returned to his face.

  "When I was in prison," Shan said after a long silence, "there was a man in my barracks for hitting a Public Security officer. His spirit was so troubled he could barely speak and everyone feared he would take his own life. Finally the lamas were able to get him to speak about the burden he carried inside. He confessed that he had killed a Chinese whom he had caught stealing sheep. The Chinese had beaten his wife unconscious and drawn a pistol on the man. No one, not even his wife, knew that they had struggled and that the Chinese had been killed. He had hidden the body and it was later that he hit the knob, when the man refused to give a ride to his injured wife."

  The only sign that Tenzin heard him was a lowering of his gaze to the ground by Shan's feet.

  "A lama gave the man a pebble and had him focus on it." Shan lifted a large pebble in his palm. "He told the man to push his guilt into it. Then he had the man throw the pebble into a river. The man was healed after that."

  Tenzin looked at the stone, fixed Shan with a brittle gaze, then stepped several feet away to retrieve a heavy rock nearly a foot in diameter. He paused, looked pointedly at Shan, threw the rock into the water, and turned back to stare at him.

  Shan returned the stare for a moment. Shaken, he turned away. What had it been, to cause such anguish? Something had been pulling at his memory. The dropka woman said that Tenzin had been away the night before Drakte died. The night Chao had been murdered. He looked at the ripples where the heavy rock had fallen. A pebble had been enough for a single killing.

  Shan backed away from Tenzin and turned toward the yurt. The old herder squinted at him as he approached the entrance, then raised the staff threateningly.

  "The girl brought you a tonde," Shan said tentatively.

  "Not me. Go away. This is my family's tent. People are sleeping."

  "You guard them when they sleep?"

  From the corner of his eye Shan saw several more figures approaching in haste.

  "There is fresh tea!" the woman in the bright apron called from a hundred feet away, gesturing Shan toward her fire. But Shan quickly put his hand on the man's staff to deflect it and stepped inside.

  An old woman with no teeth, the sole occupant of the tent, groaned as he appeared. "No!" she cried and rose, lowering the prayer wheel she had been spinning. "Chinese!"

  Shan sensed figures moving behind him. He tensed, expecting to be dragged away, until a soft voice called out from the shadows at the back of the tent. "He is a friend of the lamas," a woman said, and the man behind Shan halted, lowering his raised staff.

  "Nyma?" Shan asked, stepping toward the shadows, where two felt blankets had been strung to create dressing chambers inside the tent. A hand appeared between the blankets, pushing one aside, and Shan bent to enter the dark, cramped space.

  Nyma sat in the dim light of a single butter lamp beside a pallet, holding the hand of a woman of perhaps thirty years. The woman's face was beaded with sweat, her breathing labored. She seemed to be trying to smile through a mask of pain.

  "Lokesh," Shan said, "he studied with medicine lamas."

  "She fell from a ledge three days ago, running from a patrol in the night. I think she broke ribs," Nyma said.

  "Then she needs a doctor," Shan said urgently. Arranged along the pallet was a dirt-encrusted bell and several dirty beads.

  "No doctor!" shouted the old woman, now standing over them, her hands holding back the blankets.

  "Some herders from the east of here rode in last week and told everyone to beware of new doctors, to hide the sick, and not speak of any Tibetan doctors to any Ch
inese." Nyma raised her eyebrows toward Shan as though to express her frustration. "I don't know why. No one really does."

  "But you can't hide someone injured so badly," Shan said. "What if her organs are bleeding? A hospital…"

  "We don't need those doctors. They aren't real," the woman said, then bent and wrapped the injured woman's fingers around the little bell.

  The woman on the pallet stared up at Shan, pain and confusion in her eyes. Shan sighed. "Lokesh knows medicine teas," he said and turned away, striding past the old woman and four grim-faced herders.

  He found his old friend near a freshly turned pile of earth, explained about the injured woman, and watched as Lokesh rose and hurried to the tent. Then Shan turned and studied a grassy hill half a mile away. Ten minutes later he stood at the five-foot-high cairn Drakte had made with the children. Shan walked around the stack of rocks several times, then sat before it. Drakte had been on urgent business, in the middle of making final arrangements for the chenyi stone, but he had taken the time to build a cairn for the local deities. And he had planned to return to the salt camp with Shan and the stone. Shan stood and studied the wide, flat stone that covered the top. He lifted it and lowered it to the ground. The narrow openings between the stones underneath were so dark he almost missed the piece of brown yarn wedged between two of them. He pulled on the yarn and a small felt pouch rose out of the shadows. Inside was a mala, a rosary of exquisite ivory beads carved in the shapes of animal heads. It was a valuable antique worthy of a museum. Why, he wondered, as he slipped the rosary back into the pouch, would Drakte have wanted it hidden? Because it was too dangerous to carry the week between his visits to the camp? Or because he had meant for someone else to retrieve it? Shan pocketed the pouch.

  "This is how Chinese help the deities?" a flat voice called out from behind him.

  Shan slowly turned to see Dremu, sitting on his grey horse thirty feet down the slope, on the side opposite the camp. There was no surprise on the Golok's face, only a sinister amusement. He lifted a leg and rested it on his horse's neck.

  Shan silently replaced the capstone. "I want to ask you something. Where did you meet Drakte? Where did he hire you?" he asked.

  "In a city."

  "Lhasa?"

  Dremu's eyes half closed as he examined Shan. "Lhasa," he confirmed in a low voice. "I learned things there not even the purbas knew."

  "What kind of things?"

  "You can die in this country for telling too many secrets."

  "Or for being too secretive," Shan shot back. Had the Golok seen the priceless rosary? "Why? Why did Drakte select you to help? You're no purba. You're not welcome among the people of Yapchi."

  Dremu's lips curled up as if he took satisfaction in Shan's words.

  Shan studied the Golok, who returned Shan's stare inquisitively, running his finger along his moustache, his other hand on his knife. Abruptly Shan stepped away, dropped to his knees by a large rock, and pulled it up on one edge. He pointed to Dremu, then to the cairn. The Golok frowned, but silently dismounted and helped Shan carry the rock to the top of the stack. Shan offered a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha and the Golok hung his head with a deflated expression, as if Shan had earned himself unexpected protection. He marched to his horse and rode away. Shan fingered the rosary in his pocket, suddenly remembering that Drakte had brought nothing to pay the Golok. Had the beads been intended for Dremu?

  As Shan approached the camp he found Lokesh back at his excavation. "She is sleeping now. I told them of a tea they can make, for the pain. I will check her later," the old Tibetan explained.

  "Did they explain why suddenly they want no doctors?"

  Lokesh and Shan exchanged a knowing glance. Every Tibetan knew stories of Chinese doctors performing unwanted surgeries on Tibetans, usually sterilizations, and even of Tibetans dying mysteriously when under Chinese medical care. But the woman's fear was more urgent, more directed. Riders had come to camp to warn about doctors.

  Lokesh shook his head. "They are scared. The howlers in this district are ruthless." They worked in silence for several minutes, Shan digging with a flat stone.

  "I heard you speaking with Lhandro and that woman about Drakte dying," Lokesh said abruptly. "And that man Chao."

  Shan looked into the old man's eyes, which did not show inquiry, but frustration.

  "We know how to work in storms," Lokesh said quietly. It was a phrase from their gulag days, when the lamas exhorted the prisoners to ignore suffering and other distractions, and only work on their inner deities.

  Shan's mouth went dry. "You and I saw monks die in prison because they decided to do nothing but work on their inner deities," he said after a moment.

  Lokesh replied with a disappointed frown.

  "What if Drakte's killer is following us?" Shan asked. "How can we avoid the killer, how can we get safely to that valley with the chenyi stone if we do not understand this killer?"

  Lokesh shook his head. "By appealing to our deities. When there is a deity to repair there is nothing more important. All that work we did at the hermitage, it was like a vow. I am bound. And if that stone wants a piece of my own deity to help it heal, I will gladly give it."

  Shan recognized his friend's words as a challenge. Although Lokesh usually supported Shan's quest for truth in all its forms, this time everything was different. There were no rules for healing deities, but Lokesh knew that trying to understand a killer was probably the opposite of trying to understand a deity. He conceded by bowing his head. "I am bound," Shan said in a solemn whisper. "I can work in storms."

  They dug again until Lokesh gave an exclamation of triumph and extracted a small grey stone. "A very good one," he said with satisfaction and handed it to Shan.

  Shan had seen the shape in the rock before. It was indeed a rare find. "A fossil," he announced. "A trilobite that lived when these lands were under a sea millions of years ago."

  Lokesh gave a patient sigh, as if Shan had missed the point. "A powerful tonde," he said, "because it took the combined action of the water and earth deities to make it."

  They were walking toward the lake half an hour later, when Lokesh paused and held his hand to his ear. "A song," he declared, "a song is coming from the earth." He firmly believed in the ability of inanimate objects to become animated when inhabited by a deity. Lokesh studied the landscape, then pointed toward a small knoll. They were proceeding toward it, pausing every few steps to listen, when Lhandro called out for them to stop.

  "Leave her alone," the Yapchi farmer warned as he trotted to their side. "She needs this time."

  When he saw their confused expressions, Lhandro gestured them forward with a finger to his lips, stopping when they could see a girl sitting in the shallow depression on the far side of the hill. It was Anya, the crippled girl with the braids and red cheeks. She had a lamb on her lap. The animal's tongue was out of its mouth, its breathing heavy.

  "Anya is an orphan, like the lamb," Lhandro said. "The lamb's mother was killed by wild dogs a few days ago. No other ewe was in milk. She tried to feed it goat's milk but it wouldn't drink. It will be dead by nightfall." He looked out over the lake. "Sometimes she speaks the words of deities."

  In the silence they listened. The girl was singing to the lamb in a high voice that came like a whisper on the wind. Shan could not understand the words, but they were strikingly beautiful, somehow eerie yet soothing, so natural it seemed to Shan that if the lamb's mother had been there and could express her sorrow, this would be her sound.

  Lokesh cocked his head toward the girl and closed his eyes. Others were listening, too, Shan saw. Tenzin sat in the spring grass at the top of the opposite knoll, gazing sadly at the girl. Near Tenzin sat one of the big mastiffs, looking just as forlorn. Shan gazed at the girl, then the sky over her head. When he looked back at Lokesh a tear was falling down his cheek, and the old Tibetan nodded knowingly at Shan as if to say yes, it was a deity who was singing after all.

  "When I was young my mot
her used to sing like that," someone said behind Shan, "just go sit out on a ledge and sing." It was Nyma, staring at the girl. "First time I heard her I thought she was crying. But she said no, she was trying to call the Yapchi deity back, to tell the deity it wouldn't be blind forever. When she died she said to me she was praying for the deity to forgive her, because she had lied to the deity, that it would have to get used to being blind."

  "But now it will be different," Lhandro said, fixing his gaze on Shan. "Now they will be made to understand about the land."

  Shan looked in confusion at the farmer. "They?"

  "All those people who lost the understanding of earth deities."

  "I don't know what-"

  "Our valley," Lhandro said with a distant gaze toward the northern mountains. "It's full of Chinese and foreigners who plan to take the blood out of our earth."

  "Blood?" Shan turned to Nyma for help.

  "The earth's blood," Lhandro said.

  "Oil," the nun offered in a hushed voice, lowering her eyes, as if the word frightened her, or she was embarrassed not to have told Shan before. "They destroyed the home of the deity and now they are drilling in our earth. They say they will find oil soon, then our valley will be destroyed." She looked into his eyes with a pleading expression. "But now, Shan, you are coming," she said, and hope lit her countenance. "You and the Yapchi deity are going to fix the land for us. You are going to make them leave."

  Chapter Four

  The crust of the earth under Tibet is twice as thick as elsewhere on the planet. Shan had heard that fact twice in his life. First from a professor in Beijing, who had emphasized that because plates of the earth had piled up on themselves in Tibet the land was constantly rising, causing many dangerous, unpredictable seismic events. But the point had also been related to Shan by an old lama in prison, who had explained that it meant the power of the land deities was more concentrated in Tibet than anywhere else on earth, that the roots that connected the land with its people ran much deeper, that the land expressed itself in more powerful ways.