Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  "North," Shan said, like a plea. "People are waiting outside for you," he said to Tenzin. "In America."

  The lama kept gazing at the mist. "There is no path to the north today," he sighed.

  "How could it be better for both you and Jokar to be lost?" Shan asked in his pleading tone.

  "Going north and leaving Jokar with soldiers, when I had not tried to stop it, if that happened then I would surely be lost," Tenzin said with a small smile.

  Shan looked into the swirling waters. Maybe any hidden world would be beautiful, and better, because this one was so painful. They had no chance against the soldiers and howlers. But for the Tibetans it would still be better, for their souls, to be prisoners in the gulag, or dead, than to walk away and abandon Jokar.

  "How," Tenzin asked slowly, "can you insist on going while denying us the same opportunity?"

  Because, Shan wanted to say, I am the only one with nothing to lose, the only one who will not be missed, the only one with such a huge debt to repay to the lamas. But then Somo grabbed the pouch off his shoulder and ran up the trail.

  The purba had gone almost a mile before Shan and Nyma caught up with her. She was standing alone, on a ledge that looked north and west over the rolling, starkly beautiful ridges that led to Yapchi Valley. In one hand she clutched the turquoise stone given to her by Drakte. She was wearing a look he had not seen before, the look of a fierce warrior, the look of a protector demon. A chill went down his spine. Somo seemed to be saying goodbye to something. Was it to the mountains that would forever be changed when the oil started flowing? Or was it to life itself? She was descending to do battle with the Chinese soldiers. He looked at the stone in her hands. Drakte had wanted to be a monk, but Beijing had prevented it. She had wanted to be a teacher, but Beijing had prevented it. Then, because they had both been cast away by Beijing, they had met and fallen in love. But they could not stay together, not in this life, because Beijing had prevented it.

  Somo turned with a forced smile, then glanced back up the trail where the figures of Lhandro, Winslow, and Tenzin could be seen in the distance.

  An hour later they were walking silently, grim-faced, through the ruins of Chemi's village, toward the chorten where they had promised to meet Anya. When the crumbling chorten came into view, Nyma pointed, relief flooding her face, toward a small figure walking around the chorten, then quickened her pace. Shan and Nyma were less than a hundred yards away when Shan stopped and held up his hand.

  "It's her, I know it is," Nyma exclaimed, and began waving to get the girl's attention. She followed Shan's gaze and her hand slowly dropped. Lin sat on the ground forty feet from them, a chuba arranged under him like a blanket. The colonel was watching Anya with a melancholy smile. He wore his uniform, except a small piece of heather extended from his breast pocket. As Shan approached he glanced up and the smile disappeared.

  "They say oil should come today or tomorrow," Shan said as he squatted beside Lin. "A delegation of venture officials are on the way."

  Lin nodded slowly.

  "I remember those snow caterpillars," Lin said suddenly, in a reluctant, hollow voice, as if compelled to continue the conversation Shan had offered the day before. "Suddenly last night I just remembered, how those women swept the snow, like you said. Sometimes little sparrows would be numb with cold and get swept up in the snow. My father would go down to the street sometimes when the caterpillar passed, to check for sparrows. If he found one he would put it in his pocket and we would take it home, then release it in the afternoon when it warmed.

  "One day the block captain called a meeting," he continued, referring to one of the watchers who kept political order in residential units. "She had a burlap bag which she dumped on the table. It was dead sparrows, maybe twenty dead sparrows. She said from now on it would be our patriotic duty to collect the sparrows from the gutter after the sweepers passed, and eat them. Because the Chairman insisted that all resources be put to use for the cause of socialism. Then she gave us instruction on the approved methods for killing sparrows."

  Shan stared sadly at Lin. He remembered children from his own youth filled with revolutionary zeal, stoning pigeons and seagulls, parading with the carcasses of mice. It was how the Chairman shaped good little soldiers, his father had said bitterly.

  "So we killed the sparrows," Lin continued. "We ranged far beyond our block when the snow came, just to find and kill sparrows. One day I caught my father with a live one in his pocket and I told the block captain. I thought it was a joke I played on my father. But that afternoon I came home and there was a meeting. A tamzing. My father was in the middle, with welts on his face, and a sign pinned to his shirt that said reactionary pig. They wouldn't stop until my father killed that sparrow, in front of everyone. He was crying when he did it. The only time I ever saw my father cry."

  They were silent a long time.

  "Why," Lin said, looking at his hands, deeply perplexed. "Why would I have forgotten that until yesterday?" He glanced at Shan awkwardly, as if he had not intended to speak the thought out loud, then gazed toward Anya in the distance. "She's getting one more tonde," the colonel said. "Said that sometimes old chortens attract good tonde. Says I need one to keep rocks off my head." He spoke in a sober voice, as if he had come to fervently believe in tonde.

  Lin turned to Shan and frowned. "I still have orders," he said, as if to correct himself. "People can't be allowed to do things to the government."

  "Duties," Shan acknowledged with a small nod, still watching Anya.

  The sound of heavy engines echoed up the narrow valley that led to the Yapchi road.

  "There was something she did," Lin said, "when we were coming today. There was one of those rock rabbits, a pika she called it. It ran away and stopped about forty feet away. Then she sat and sang a song. She said, sit, Aku Lin." The colonel frowned again, as if displeased with his confessional tone. "She sang this song like I have never heard before. In Tibetan. I couldn't understand. But the words weren't important. It was like- I don't know, like what it would be if an animal could sing. And that pika came right up and sat in her lap. She picked up my hand and put it on top of the pika. I felt it breathing, like those sparrows when I was a boy." He cut his eyes at Shan. "A silly thing," he added, in a new, gruff tone. "A thing for children."

  "A deity song," Shan said. "Anya calls them deity songs."

  The machine sound was louder now. "A tank," Lin said in a weary voice. "And two or three trucks. Coming this way."

  Shan looked at Lin. Was the colonel warning him, so he and Nyma could flee?

  Anya straightened from where she was digging, and waved at them. Shan and Lin both waved back.

  "You and I," Lin said awkwardly, "we're the same age I think." He sighed. "I had a letter from my mother before she died. She said two generations had been lost, but that the next one would be ready, the next one had the chance to put it all behind them and find a new way."

  Shan stared at the man. They were not the words of an army colonel. He was saying that the turmoil brought by the party and politicians had ravaged men like Shan and himself, and their parents. But Anya was of the new generation.

  "A good doctor could fix that leg. I promised to meet her at that resettlement camp in a week or two. I have some leave coming. I am going to take her to a good hospital." Lin spoke in a rush, as if he had to get the words out quickly or they might not come at all. With a strange sensation Shan realized that there was no one else Lin could speak them to, that Shan had somehow become his confessor. "If she wants I will take her to a real school. There are private schools now. I could pay-" Lin spun about. Three figures stood behind them, barely ten feet away. Nyma with Winslow and Tenzin, his dung bag on his shoulder. Lin glared at Shan, as if Shan had tricked him.

  "Please," Shan said to them. "You should stay back. Soldiers may be coming-"

  "Tenzin has an offer to make," the American announced as Nyma approached and knelt in the grass. "The papers the colonel has been looking
for. Tenzin wants to return them."

  As he spoke Tenzin lowered the dung bag from his shoulder, knelt, then accepted a pocket knife from Winslow, which he quickly used to cut the threads at the top of the bag. He ripped the double layer of thick leather apart, reached inside, and pulled out a thin sheaf of paper, perhaps ten pages in total.

  As Lin stared at the paper a sound like a growl came from his throat.

  "It's a report on a disaster," Tenzin said to Lin, as if he had to remind the colonel. "A unit of the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade was inside a mountain on the Indian border, a secret command center, still under construction. The mountain collapsed. Everyone inside was lost, with several million dollars of computer and surveillance equipment. Forty soldiers died. And the Tibetan workers who were being forced to hollow out the mountain. The last part is very sensitive. It says all the workers died. But one old monk survived for a few hours. He was laughing a lot. They thought he was delirious at first. He said the prisoners did it, that they had gradually dug away the support columns, that they had destroyed one of the army's crack units. That none of them minded taking four because it had become the right thing to do." Taking four. It was a gulag term, for choosing to commit the sin of suicide- and the incarnation as a lower life-form that would follow, a life on four legs- instead of continuing the misery of the gulag.

  Winslow put his hand on the report and Tenzin released it to the American. Shan stared at the papers. "Old monks destroyed the army's most advanced listening post. This is the secret that the colonel couldn't bear the world to know," Winslow said, looking with wonder at the pages. "Take the report, colonel," he said after a moment, in a plaintive tone, "and give us the lama."

  It didn't seem that Lin had heard. His eyes drifted back toward Anya. For a moment it seemed he wanted to ask the girl's advice.

  "The report for the lama," Winslow pressed.

  When Lin did not reply, Tenzin stood. "Not just the report," he said to the colonel. "You can have the abbot of Sangchi, as well, if you wish. Just release Jokar."

  Winslow cursed under his breath, and put a hand on Tenzin's arm as though to pull him away. Nyma moaned and reached out to hold Tenzin's leg.

  Lin's eyes slowly shifted back to Tenzin. He seemed about to speak when Anya called out. She was waving at him with something in her hand. Lin leaned forward anxiously. Anya was climbing on the old chorten, as if maybe to better see the machines that were coming.

  Beyond the chorten, perhaps half a mile from where they sat, Shan saw soldiers moving up the slope in a tight line. Suddenly there was a whoosh of air, a whining sound, and the slope above them, a hundred yards away, exploded. Shan turned in alarm. Had Somo been there, watching? Surely she would have gone over the ridge by now. Perhaps the tank was sending a warning shot for any Tibetans lingering in the hills, clearing the approach to the valley for the arriving officials. Or had the soldiers heard about the gathering in the high meadow, those waiting for the old lama to lead them in resistance?

  Anya was standing now, facing the smoldering patch of earth in confusion.

  "Damned fool," Lin muttered, and slowly rose as another shell screeched through the air.

  But this one was not aimed up the ridge. It connected with the chorten. There was a thunderous explosion, and the chorten was no more.

  Nyma screamed and ran toward the ruins.

  "Noo- ooo!" Lin moaned, and clenched his chest as if he had been shot. "No- ooo!" he repeated in an agonized voice. He rose, took a step forward and fell to his knees.

  Shan, staring in horror at the smoking ruins, found himself helping Lin to his feet. The colonel, his face drained of color, lashed out at Shan with his fist, then stumbled down the slope. "Anya!" he called. "Anya come here! Xiao Anya, did they hurt you?"

  Shan followed him, his feet leaden, his heart a lump of ice.

  Nyma was first to reach the small, limp body lying on the spring blossoms. She seemed not to even notice when Lin pushed her away and knelt beside Anya. She was not bleeding much, Shan told himself, but then he saw the splinter of rock embedded in the base of her neck. The girl's eyes were opened in surprise, but there was no light in them. She had died instantly.

  "Xiao Anya," Lin said in a feeble voice, stroking the girl's cheek. "Little Anya," he repeated, again and again. In her hand, clenched almost shut, was a piece of green stone, a tonde for Uncle Lin.

  Soldiers approached, then halted a hundred feet away as they saw their colonel. One of them called out excitedly, and began running back toward the tank, which was now visible below. Lin seemed not to notice the soldiers. He lifted Anya's shoulders, pressing her lifeless check against his for a moment, blood oozing out of her wound now. His eyes fixed on the green stone in her hand, and he wrapped his own hand around her limp fingers and the stone. He seemed to have trouble breathing for a moment, and he collapsed, his head buried in her shoulder, his back arching in a long, wrenching sob.

  No one moved. No one spoke. Slowly Lin rose to his full height, stiff, his face sagging, and carried the dead girl cradled in his arms, down to his troops.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Who will sing for me when the songbird dies? Who will sing? The words of the oracle echoed in Shan's mind until, numbed with pain, he realized Nyma was speaking them.

  "Did she know?" Nyma asked again and again, then grabbed Shan's arm and burst into tears. "Blessed Buddha, she knew. Our little Anya knew this would happen," Nyma sobbed.

  She would not leave the ruined chorten. Nyma planted herself in the patch of flowers where Anya had been thrown, scrubbing away her tears, reciting a mantra, not seeming to notice when the soldiers milled about, only staring at the spot among the flowers where the girl's blood had mottled the blooms.

  Shan watched, still paralyzed with grief, while the commandos searched the rubble as though looking for more bodies. Several seemed hesitant, looking at the anguished woman, or down the slope at their colonel who had refused to let go of the dead girl, whose blood now ran down his arms and legs. One soldier seemed to recognize Shan, and hung by him, as though waiting for orders to drag him down to the trucks.

  Who will sing for me when the songbird dies, Shan heard again.

  Then came the shrill call of a whistle, and the soldiers seemed to melt away, jogging down the slope as first the tank and then the trucks retreated in a cloud of dust.

  "It may not be safe here," Shan pleaded with Nyma. "I can take you to one of the caves at least." But she gave no sign of hearing. Tears streamed down her cheeks again, and her invocation of the Compassionate Buddha grew louder.

  "It doesn't matter," Nyma said in a brittle voice. "Don't you see? Tibetans have no reason to hope. This is what happens to those who hope. We've been abandoned," she said in a haunting tone.

  "I have to go to Yapchi," Shan said. He repeated the words, and when she did not respond he turned away and began walking toward the valley, feeling painfully alone, suddenly deeply regretful that he had left Lokesh. Tenzin and Winslow had fled. Perhaps they would reach Lokesh and keep him safe. He kept telling himself that as he climbed, until he stopped, his legs wobbling strangely, and collapsed onto a rock. No one was safe. The army was in the mountains and it was shooting at Tibetans. Gentle Anya, who spoke with lambs, lay dead, because she had wanted to find a charm to attract a deity to the leader of the soldiers who had killed her.

  He emerged at the top of the ridge, at a high point between the oil derrick and the village, then found a game trail and began to descend into the valley. Five minutes later he heard someone conversing loudly and crouched behind a rock.

  It was Gyalo, speaking with Jampa, briskly walking down into the valley on an adjacent trail, several steps ahead of a long single-file line of grim-faced Tibetans. It looked like a column of soldiers, Shan thought with a start, but then he saw that the implements they carried on their shoulders were shovels and axes and picks. There were at least forty men and women, some of whom he recognized as the refugees he had seen in the cave the night be
fore. Some of them sang songs. Scattered among them were helmets of green, as though Gyalo had found defectors from the venture. Except that they were heading back toward the valley.

  Maybe, Shan realized with a sinking feeling, they were soldiers of a sort. He stepped out of his hiding place and the monk greeted him with a warm grin. "The army is still down there," Shan warned.

  The monk smiled, and gestured the other Tibetans to pass around him as he stood with Shan and Jampa.

  "Please," Shan said, "there's been enough suffering." He explained what had happened to Anya.

  The outlawed monk shut his eyes a moment, then looked at Shan and nodded gravely. "That oracle spoke of it." The big yak, who had been studying Shan, gave a massive sigh and looked off into the distance. Gyalo fingered one of the braids twined with bright beads which Anya had tied at Norbu.

  "Even if you could undermine the derrick," Shan said, thinking he may have understood the purpose of Gyalo's party, "they would never let you close enough to try."

  Gyalo gave Shan a long, slow look, then stepped off the trail toward a ledge that overlooked the southern end of the valley and pointed. Shan followed Gyalo's finger, shielding his eyes with his hand, toward a place perhaps two hundred feet from where the painted rock had been. He pulled out his binoculars. There seemed to be movement in the shadows under the trees.

  "We have to release the deity that's trapped," Gyalo explained in an earnest tone. He looked at Shan with a bright expression. "They say you found it, that you solved the puzzle," he declared gratefully, and without another word continued down the trail, pointing out a bird to Jampa as they walked.

  Shan looked after the monk and his yak in confusion. He had solved nothing, but he had no time to worry about the monk's strange words. At least, he told himself, the Tibetans would be out of reach if they stayed on the upper slopes. The soldiers might not care if the displaced Tibetans wanted to pass their time digging out boulders from the mountainside.