Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  After a moment Shan realized there was a bundle on Winslow's legs, wrapped in black cloth. And over the cloth, clenched in the American's hand, was a note. Shan gently lifted the paper out of the lifeless fingers. It was nearly illegible. The American had written it at the very end, in English, with trembling fingers, in the dark. Shan studied it for several minutes before he could decipher the words.

  By all that's holy, leave me here to watch over them. Tell no one but Melissa. Let the others wonder, my last little joke on the world. It's not so bad, Shan. I think I'm getting the hang of this impermanence thing. This is where I belong this time. Every lama needs a cowboy.

  Shan sat a long time, fighting the dark, hollow thing he felt inside. Death was an old acquaintance. Death didn't scare him, it just intimidated him, it made him feel so unprepared, so incomplete, so wasteful of what his Tibetan friends called the precious human incarnation.

  He sat until the dark thing lifted from his heart, until he could bear to look into Winslow's eyes, until it seemed they were just friends silently watching the night fall. He studied the American once more, read the note again, and he knew that in his own way Winslow had found what he had been looking for.

  At last he rose, pulled the bundle from Winslow's lap, crossed the American's lifeless hands over his legs, and pushed his eyelids closed. He hesitated a moment, then searched the American's pockets to find the tiny pouch of salt prepared by Jokar. He placed the pouch in Winslow's hand, closed his fingers around the true earth, then climbed down.

  Winslow had realized what was behind the long thangka, where Jokar was going. He wanted to watch over the old ones. He wanted to stay by all that's holy.

  Shan found himself wandering back inside the mountain with the bundle Winslow had been holding when he died, the bundle taken from Padme's satchel, switched by the American for the accounts that had proven Khodrak's lies. He felt as though he were being led, walking like a blind man toward the tomb chamber to deliver the bundle. It was Winslow's spirit, Lokesh would have said, asking Shan to show him the way to the lamas, to deliver a final offering. In that moment Shan would not have disagreed.

  On the altar the candle still flickered, almost at the end of its wick. He set the book at the bottom of the ledge, studying the lamas again. The flickering light seemed to give movement to the faces of the old men.

  "He decided not to leave you," Shan whispered to Jokar. "That American, he came far," he added, remembering the lama's words to Winslow at the mixing ledge. Afterwards Winslow, shaken by the lama, had told Shan of his dream, of flying through the air with Jokar. Maybe that's where they were now, floating over the mountain, laughing at the surprise they had dealt those below. Shan thought of the two geese he had seen soaring over the mountain.

  "It's such a perfect place to finish," a deep, disembodied voice observed suddenly.

  Shan gasped and stepped backwards, as though struck, his heart racing as he gaped at Jokar.

  Then a tall, gaunt figure stepped through the door, his face so weary, his eyes so wide, so much emotion on his features, it took Shan took a moment before he recognized Tenzin.

  The abbot of Sangchi pulled a candle from his pocket and silently stepped to the altar to light it from the dying wick of the one already there. Placing the candle on the altar, he turned and surveyed the figures on the ledge. "You found the chair," he whispered in an awed voice, and slowly walked down the line of dead lamas, pausing before each one, his lips moving in silent prayer, until he reached the far end, the oldest of the old ones, the one with the grinning skull and the sackcloth robe.

  "What do you mean?" Shan asked as Tenzin studied the oldest of the dead lamas.

  "Siddhi was the first," Tenzin replied, "the first teacher at Rapjung. Lepka told me something at the mixing ledge, after he heard those purbas talking about Jokar as a leader of rebellion. He said the purbas misunderstood, that Siddhi was a teacher who embraced the Medicine Buddha, that he didn't organize the people to fight the Mongols, he organized groups to be missionaries among the Mongols, to spread the way of compassion." He looked back at Shan. "Jokar would never allow his name to be used for violent means. When he said he would take the chair of Siddhi, this is what he meant."

  The chair of Siddhi. They were standing before the chair of Siddhi, and Siddhi's descendants, the chair of the gentle old men who had spent their entire lives keeping humans connected to the earth inside them.

  Tenzin dropped to his knees, then lowered his chest to the floor, prostrating himself, praying with his mouth an inch from the floor. After more than a minute he rose and gently kissed the edge of the ancient sackcloth. Then he rose and repeated the action in front of each of the remaining figures, until he joined Shan in front of Jokar.

  "The purbas said we would just go north," Tenzin said quietly, staring at Jokar's split, tattered black canvas shoes. "They said they had it all planned. I would escape through Russia and go on to America, where people would give me a house and ask me to give speeches sometimes." Self-revulsion echoed in his words. A single tear rolled down his cheek. "The stone eye was my cover. A party of purbas stealing north, escorting me would eventually be noticed. But the eye, traveling with ordinary Tibetans…," Tenzin glanced at Shan, "… that man Tiger said with them I could go north and no one would suspect.

  "I never planned to take those papers from Lin. Drakte had taken me there, Drakte had stayed at my side all that week during the Serenity conference, wearing a monk's robe, keeping me safe from all the howlers, making sure I did nothing to inadvertently reveal my intention. That Khodrak kept coming up to me, saying he was the most fervent supporter of the Campaign, that he thought it was the work of genius. He must have known about my being in his district because he saw Drakte with Chao that night." Tenzin fell silent a moment and stared at the lamas. "That report was there on Lin's desk when Drakte and I went for the stone and I began reading it. The month before, Religious Affairs had given me a speech to read before a youth congress in Lhasa. I told those youths that there were no Tibetans in slave labor camps, that such stories were made up by the Dalai Cult to poison the minds of Tibetans. Then there was the paper in Lin's office, proving me wrong. I just kept reading that paper as Drakte pulled at me, when we had the eye in our mop bucket and we were supposed to flee. Finally, to get me to leave, he told me to keep it. He said, what did I expect, it was what the purbas had been telling me."

  Tenzin searched Shan's face. "They made me lie to those children. I had never believed the stories about slave labor, of old lamas still in prison, or of monks buried alive in their gompas. I knew I had to leave when they told me I was to become a director of Religious Affairs for all of Tibet, because they would never again let me be an abbot, or a monk. But even then, even when I had decided to leave, I never believed so many horrible things could have…" His voice drifted off, and he looked back at Jokar, apology in his face.

  "At that hermitage, with Gendun and Shopo, we spoke of things, and more purbas came. Drakte showed me how all the numbers at the back of Lin's report were registration numbers for people: one set for soldiers; one set for prisoners, mostly old monks who had been imprisoned for twenty years and more, the Tibetans who had dug out that mountain, knowing they were going to die in it." Tenzin gazed down the row of lamas and lowered his head, as if in shame.

  In the end, Shan knew, it wasn't simply that the abbot of Sangchi had been blind to the atrocities of the Chinese but that he had been blind to the inconspicuous, but profound, faith and courage of men like Lokesh and Gendun and Jokar, of prisoners who chiseled away the interior of a mountain knowing all along it would entomb them.

  "When Drakte told me about the Lotus Book I asked him if he could get me the names of those brave Tibetans from the mountain. After a week he brought me the names." Tenzin sighed heavily. "I asked him if he could get me one of the Lotus Books, to borrow it so I could write the names of those people in and sign my name to it." He stared into his hands. "I only wanted to prove myself, to declar
e to the world that I was finished with those who made slaves of others. It was a prideful thing to do. I got Drakte killed. Since that night at the hermitage I see him in my nightmares. Sometimes when I meditate, his face comes to me. It was never worth his life."

  "Drakte didn't die for you. He died for the truth."

  "Finding the truth is supposed to be a struggle of the spirit, not of the flesh," Tenzin said heavily.

  The words seemed to echo down the cavern. In the dim flickering light it seemed to Shan some of the long-dead lamas in front of them were sighing.

  "I remember what Drakte said that night. He kills the thing he is, he said of the killer. That monk who calls himself chairman," Tenzin said, as though he would not speak Khodrak's name, as though he still could not believe what had happened at Amdo, "he destroyed everything an abbot is supposed to be. And then that night he killed them both. Over the ledger."

  "I don't think Drakte was there just to give Chao the ledger. I heard Gendun speak with Drakte once. He told him, if you really want to change the howlers, just read them the Lotus Book. I think he was going to do that, before bringing it to you. I think he was teaching himself to put down weapons, reaching out to his deity."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Somo gave me a message from Gendun about Drakte. She didn't think it was important. But Gendun thought it was very important, and I know now it was. He said Drakte carried the deity in a blanket and was learning to unwrap it. Somo thought it was about the stone eye. But Gendun meant Drakte, that Drakte was struggling to use the ways of compassion. He was opening up his own deity, and he chose to deal with Chao the way that Gendun would have, not the way a purba would."

  The silence in the cave tomb had the texture of the night sky.

  An image floated through Shan's mind of Drakte sitting in the night with the Religious Affairs officer, speaking to him of the Tibetans' suffering, trying to convert him to the ways of compassion. Like the missionaries Siddhi had once sent against an enemy. But the scene continued to unfold in his mind, taking him where he had been trying not to go. For in his heart he now knew what had happened in the garage. Khodrak had appeared. Take a moment, he probably said, and encouraged Chao and Drakte to sit on the floor to pray their beads, walking around them as he had in the stable at Norbu. The two Tibetans would not have refused an abbot. That was when Khodrak had stabbed Chao in the back with his mendicant's staff. He kills prayer, Drakte had said.

  "What would you think," Tenzin said after another long silence, in a voice full of despair, "if you saw what we have made of the world?" He was speaking to the dead lamas.

  The silence washed over them again, like a physical force, somehow holding them there. Shan's mind cleared, and he probed his awareness, finding his meditation mind for the first time since they had sat at the mandala. Time passed, perhaps a quarter hour or more. Suddenly the pungent smell of ginger swept over them, and his father was there beside him, for the first time in months, and then his father was talking, not with Shan, but with Jokar, and the two men were standing at the far end of the chamber like two old friends, waving at Shan, before stepping into the blackness beyond.

  When he became aware of his surroundings again Tenzin was staring at a sheet of paper in his hands. It was a long list of names.

  Something pulled Shan to his feet and he found himself stepping to the cloth bundle, which he retrieved and extended toward Tenzin. "You asked Drakte to let you record them," he said, and unwrapped the bundle. It was a heavy leather-bound book, on the cover of which someone had worked a lotus flower.

  Tenzin stared at the book, then at Shan, and solemnly accepted the volume. "Winslow took it," Shan explained. "He switched it for that account book. It is the one Drakte was bringing to you. Khodrak took it that night in Amdo."

  Tenzin hefted the book in his hands, and stared at it again before opening the cover. He slowly leafed through the pages to the first empty page, near the end, then pulled a pencil from his pocket and began to write. He worked for nearly an hour, at first with Shan reading the names of the dead prisoners for him to transcribe, then alone, sometimes looking up, studying the dead lamas. When he finished he stood and laid the book on the altar, staring at the little golden Buddha. Finally he looked at Shan expectantly. "It is written," he said quietly.

  "It would be foolish to try that trail at night," Shan said slowly, looking back at the book. Tenzin studied him a moment, then pulled another three candles from his pocket, placed them beside the solitary candle on the altar, and took up the book again.

  The two men settled beside each other in front of the altar, under the candle, facing the lamas, and Tenzin handed the book to Shan.

  The Lotus Book was written in many hands, in several languages, in pencil and ink and even, Shan saw, in watercolor. He turned to the first of hundreds of entries, glanced at Jokar, and cleared his throat.

  "The first writing is dated fifteen years ago this month," Shan declared in a gentle tone, and began to read. "I was not always this frail old woman without a family, without a house, without a monk to pray with, without children to laugh with, even a dog to lick my hand," the first line said. "But this is the story of how it came to be, beginning on the day the Chinese killed our sheep…"

  And so they read, for hours they read, passing the book back and forth, replacing each candle as it sputtered out, their voices cracking, pausing sometimes to wipe away tears. Gompas were scoured off the earth by the Red Guard. Monks died under torture. The populations of ancient mountain villages were transported to the jungles to make way for Chinese open-pit mines. Five-hundred-year-old Buddhas were melted down to make bullets for the army. Parents were executed in front of their children, and Tibetans were sent to prison for celebrating the Dalai Lama's birthday.

  Shan lost all track of time. He had to pass the book to Tenzin when he came to entries about the 404th Peoples Construction Brigade, his lao gai prison, and the names of the many Tibetans who had died there. At last, incredibly, they were at the final pages and Shan recognized Tenzin's handwriting. He took the book from Tenzin to finish reading.

  "The enslavement of our land and people remains unabated after five decades," the entry began. It continued with a description of the mountain fortress and the way the slaves conspired to destroy it, and at last the names of those who had died in it. The words were strong and fierce, although not as strong and fierce as those of the very last entry.

  "Thirty years ago a young Tibetan graduated as the top student at the only school in his county that allowed Tibetans to study beside Chinese children. Because his parents had joined the Communist Party, he could speak Chinese well and was sent to university in China, even promised a lucrative job when he returned. The job was with the Bureau of Religious Affairs, and one day they brought a robe to him and told him he was to become the political officer of an important gompa. He found much about that gompa that appealed to him and when they asked him to transfer to another five years later he asked to stay to continue his monastic training.

  "That monk became me, someone different from the political officer who started at that gompa, but still a favorite of the government, which saw to it I became the youngest abbot ever appointed in Tibet. I made that gompa a showcase for assimilated Buddhism, and by way of example taught the country how socialism could empower Buddhism. I tried to embrace the Buddha but first, for many years, I embraced the Chinese government as my protector. When they asked me to preach against resistance, I did so at the top of my lungs, because the government was the great benefactor of Tibet. When they launched a campaign for economic emphasis in religious affairs, I suggested it be called the Serenity Campaign, and I launched that campaign with a speech at my gompa.

  "Then one day I saw an old man who was supposed to be painting a chapel and I criticized him for working so slowly. He smiled and said he did the best he could. He showed me his hands, which had no thumbs. He had been a lama once, he said, but the Chinese soldiers had cut off his thumbs with prunin
g shears so he could not say his beads. We talked for hours that day and the next day he brought a young woman who told me more, about her brother who was imprisoned for having a photograph of the Dalai Lama, and the next day that woman brought a man she called a purba."

  The passage continued for several pages, with Tenzin's recollections and confessions about revered teachers he had helped send away to Beijing for political instruction after speaking in support of the exiled government, of helping the government redraw maps to eliminate reference to pilgrimage sites, even of how he had learned from two old lamas named Gendun and Shopo that compassion could be shaped out of sand. They had showed him how to start over, Tenzin wrote, by learning to respect yak dung.

  "I sinned against my people and my soul," the last paragraph read. "My government lied to me and I lied to my inner deity. I used up much of my human incarnation to help make others' lives miserable. When you speak of enemies of Tibet speak of the abbot of Sangchi. When you speak of lower creatures trying to burrow through darkness to light speak of a pilgrim named Tenzin."

  Shan stared at the closing words a long time before he closed the book. When he finally rose he laid the book beside the Buddha, in full view of the Rapjung lamas. "I think it is dawn," he said quietly.

  Tenzin, looking gaunt and hollow again, followed him along the line of the old men, paying homage to each with a prayer, then they climbed out of the chamber, leaving Jokar in his beloved mountain, resting at last on the chair of Siddhi.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Shan and Tenzin crested the ridge above Yapchi three hours after sunrise they stopped, staring in confusion. The valley had been transformed. Not only had Jenkins's levee failed, water was still pouring down the slope in a long, steep cascade. It had washed the soil away until it found bedrock, creating a new riverbed down the slope. The little pond around the derrick had become a huge body of water, nearly a mile long.