Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  When they had finished their evening meal, everyone stepped back to the lake, sitting beside it until the sun set. Other Tibetans began to arrive, the remnants of those who, misunderstanding, had gone to the upper slopes to wait for the old lama. They touched the water and spoke excitedly, some cupping it in their hands to drink, others filling bowls and tipping the water over their heads.

  Shan sat near the dying embers of a fire beside Lokesh as a new silence overtook the camp. A dog barked and he looked up to see a purba, one of the hardened young men he had seen with a gun at Norbu. The purba nodded first to Shan, then to Tenzin, and stepped aside. In the shadows behind him stood the man with the striped face, the Tiger.

  "It's time," the purba general announced to Tenzin in a terse voice. "On the other side of the hills there is a truck waiting to take you north."

  Tenzin studied the hard features of the purba's face. "I've gone far enough," he said quietly. Shan followed his gaze into the shadows. There were others with the Tiger, five or six others waiting in the night.

  The rough, guttered tissue of the Tiger's face moved up and down as he repeatedly clenched his jaw. He shot an accusing glance at Shan. "People need the abbot of Sangchi on the outside. We have plans."

  "The abbot of Sangchi no longer exists," Tenzin declared, then slowly surveyed the ragged group. Nyma, who had not stopped crying since the burial. Gyalo, who silently stroked Jampa's nose. Dremu, sitting in the shadows, staring uncertainly at the fire. Dzopa, the big dobdob, lying on a blanket, his horse-like face downturned, still filled with the pain of losing Jokar. "People need me here," Tenzin said. "We-" he embraced those around him with a sweep of his arm. "We are going to rebuild a gompa. We are going to build a place where Tibetans can learn to heal." He glanced toward Shan then turned back to the purba. "I made a vow to some old men in the mountain."

  "Rapjung?" the purba asked in an impatient, disbelieving voice. "That old place can never-"

  "If there is going to be a new Tibet," Tenzin replied, "it must be built on the old."

  "But the army will come," the Tiger protested. "The howlers will come. Anyone trying to build a gompa will be arrested."

  "No," Lokesh said brightly, "that colonel, he has made Rapjung a hidden land."

  Tenzin grinned at the old Tibetan. "With strong backs and strong hearts we can build anything," he said. As if to emphasize the point Jampa took a step forward and snorted. "Rapjung gompa was never destroyed, only its buildings. Jokar Rinpoche taught us that. It was just a treasure that had to be uncovered again."

  "The government will still look for you. The army. The howlers, they hate you now. They will seek you out as a political enemy now."

  "No," Shan interjected. "They will not." He pulled out the paper Lin had given him. "Anya's Chinese uncle wrote a report." Shan read it to them. It was dated the evening before, when he and Tenzin had been in the lama's cave. It explained that while in the mountains looking for reactionaries, Colonel Lin had encountered the abbot of Sangchi, had even captured him and confirmed his identification. But the abbot had tried to escape. There had been a struggle and before Lin's own eyes the abbot had fallen off a high cliff into a gorge. Colonel Lin was writing to certify that the abbot was dead.

  "That Zhu filed a false report about Melissa Larkin dying," the purba leader pointed out. "They know he lied."

  "This is a colonel in the army," Shan said. "A decorated colonel from an elite unit."

  The purba sighed and nodded, conceding that no one was likely to challenge Lin's report. He surveyed the Tibetans who stood by Shan. "All our plans," the Tiger said in a dark voice. "All the people," he added, looking at Somo now. "Drakte," he said pointedly.

  "Drakte," Somo said slowly, as she stepped to Tenzin's side, "would have said he and I should build a gompa."

  The purba leader stared at her in silence. He studied each of them, then gave a final nod to Shan. "Lha gyal lo," he said quietly, and slipped away into the shadows.

  But one of his followers lingered, and stepped to the edge of the firelight. It was Melissa Larkin, wearing a fleece cap and a herder's vest. "I'm staying," she said to Shan, with a new glint in her eyes. "There is much more to understand about how the earth works in Tibet." She began to turn, then paused. "Someday Beijing will discover there is a new headwater for the Yangtze," she added, before she followed the Tiger into the night.

  Shan watched the fire with the others for a few more minutes, then wandered into the night himself along the water, watching the stars, until suddenly he saw a flicker of light halfway up the slope. A small campfire. He searched the landscape around him, making sure no one followed, then walked quickly toward the light.

  When Shan rose at dawn, he found a dozen Tibetans standing at the edge of the village ruins looking down into the valley. Dremu had appeared and was pacing back and forth as if, like the others, he had grown wary of approaching the water. Shan walked along the line of Tibetans, searching the faces of Nyma and Lhandro, who stood at the front, then Nyma sighed and he followed her gaze to the water. In the rapidly brightening light he began to understand. The making of the lake was finished. During the night the waters had risen above the gap at the end of the valley and were flowing out, past the saddle of land. The lake had reached its natural level, and the buried river was still pouring out of the side of the mountain. The derrick had fallen, disappearing under the water, and the burial mound was now submerged. The debris at the camp had been covered. The lake was serene. The sediment had rapidly settled, so the waters seemed made of deep blue crystal.

  Strangely, Shan remembered Larkin's words about meeting Winslow at the sacred lake. He had thought she'd meant Lamtso. But she, above all, had known the water and the rocks and the contour of the land. She had known it would shine like a blue star in the mountains, like one of the lakes the Tibetans called sacred.

  They gathered around their cooking fire and spoke of what it meant, then watched solemnly as Shan brought a small object wrapped in felt to the fire. With a knowing look Lokesh extended his open palms and Shan laid the object on them and opened the bundle.

  "Victory to the gods," Nyma murmured.

  Lepka and Lokesh smiled and nodded, as if they had always known Shan would return the eye in the end.

  "Who was it?" Lhandro demanded. "Who attacked you?"

  "The eye has come back," was all Shan would say. "It has been watching over the valley for many days."

  "Yes," one of the villagers whispered. "We heard it."

  The Tibetans gathered close to touch the chenyi stone with tentative fingers, and offer it prayers.

  Then Nyma stepped away from the group and stared at Shan. "But here we are," she said with eyes suddenly round and wide. "It's been the biggest mystery all along."

  The words hushed everyone. All eyes turned to Shan, who stared at Nyma. Oddly, he realized he was grinning. Something in her words seemed wonderful to him. Despite the murders, the lies, the destruction- the real mystery for Nyma still was where to seat her deity.

  "But I know the place now," Shan declared. "The mountain has made the kind of place where deities like to live," he said, and asked Lhandro if he knew where poplar saplings might be cut.

  Two hours later a small procession moved to the water's edge, where a coracle had materialized, hastily made of poplar boughs and skins. Two narrow paddles, carved from planks saved from the houses, were in the little boat. Shan unwrapped the eye's felt blanket for the last time and held the jagged stone over his head. Excited murmurs rippled through the assembled Tibetans.

  "The virtuous Chinese," someone in the crowd said admiringly. The words caused Shan to pause a moment, reflecting on all that had happened in Yapchi Valley. Perhaps, in the end, the virtuous Chinese who had saved the valley had been Colonel Lin. Or perhaps the virtuous Chinese had been found in pieces of Lin and Gang, Ma and Shan.

  As Shan bent to pick up a paddle the crowd fell silent. Confused, he studied the expectant faces, then realized that they did not expec
t him to go alone. He handed the first paddle to Tenzin, and lifted the second, surveying the faces, then stepped to the side of the small crowd and extended the paddle to a small gaunt man who hovered in the shadows with his wife and children. Shan had found them the night before, huddled with the drum and the stone, and convinced them the time had come to end their hiding.

  Gang accepted the paddle without speaking and the three of them stepped into the coracle, the assembly solemn and silent.

  "It's like a precious jewel," Tenzin said of the beautiful water.

  Gang repeated the words.

  They paddled to the center of the lake to a spot between the derrick and the burial mound, now under many feet of water, then Shan motioned to Gang. The sullen man's face seemed to change, and he took the eye from Shan with a joyful expression. He extended it toward the people on the shore, then lowered the chenyi stone into the water and released it. Shan watched the stone, tumbling downward in the sparkling crystal water, turning blue in the filtered light, then it was gone. Deep is the eye, the oracle had said, brilliant blue eye, the nagas will hold it true.

  When they returned to shore Lepka and Lhandro waited with bowls of tea. They stepped past a small circle of men and women chanting a mantra to sit on a blanket in one of the barley fields as Tenzin asked Gang about his construction work at Rapjung. Shan lay back in the warm morning sun and gradually slipped into sleep.

  It was more than two hours later when he became aware of movement along the lake, the laughter of children. He sat up and looked, rubbing his eyes, at a scene so surprising it took a moment for him to understand. Strands of prayer flags had materialized near the lake, suspended between poles and rock cairns. Logs were moving along the valley floor from the venture stockpile, each carried by three or four Tibetans, men and women alike. There were new faces, many new Tibetans. As he watched, a small group appeared on the saddle of land and began running down the slope toward the lake. A chain of people carrying logs moved along the shore of the lake. At the water's edge each team stopped as a woman, an unfamiliar nun, dipped a bowl in the lake and spilled water on the log, like a baptism.

  He tentatively approached the nun, but halted thirty feet away. It was Nyma. She had found a robe, and cut her long braids, cropping her hair close to the scalp in the fashion of a convent. Her eyes sparkled as she saw Shan. She had decided she could be a real nun after all. He offered a small wave, and with a smile she pointed to the south end of the valley.

  The logs were not going to the ruins of Yapchi village, as he had assumed, but beyond, to the trail up the mountain. A child laughed and Shan turned to see Gang's daughter, riding one of the logs like a horse, as three sturdy Tibetan men joyfully carried it. The trees taken by the venture were all going to Rapjung. They were being carried over the mountain to build the new gompa.

  "We held the last circle," Nyma said excitedly when he reached her. "The prayer circle we started in the canyon. They never stopped, they said. They went to a cave high above the valley and continued, night and day. With the eye back they knew they could finally stop. I joined them at the edge of the water, and when they had finished I asked them to help me cut my hair," she declared serenely.

  Below the lake, near the village, Shan found Lokesh sitting on a rock, speaking with Lhandro. Lokesh was pointing to the fields as Lhandro listened attentively.

  "No more barley," Lhandro announced as he saw Shan. "Now it is going to be like the old days, just medicine herbs for Rapjung. And Lokesh gave us drawings," Lhandro exclaimed, "so they can rebuild the herb gardens at Rapjung the way they used to be. People will bring in new soil, in baskets, from the valleys. We will send some from here."

  "Drawings will help," Shan said hesitantly, "but it would be even better for them to have someone there who knew the old gompa."

  Lokesh fixed him with a level stare. "That is where you will find me, in a year's time. Maybe less."

  "We have little money but we offered to give it all to him," Lhandro said, "for buses to Beijing, to bring him back quickly. But he refused. He said he must journey as a pilgrim to Beijing. When he gets hungry he says he will beg. He says monks used to beg and it is an honorable thing to do."

  Shan turned toward the lake, trying to calm himself. In all the years he had known the gentle old man this was the only thing that had ever come between them. But there was no room for argument, for Lokesh had been spoken to by his inner god. "It's going to be difficult," Shan said quietly, "with that bad foot."

  "I have Jokar's staff." Lokesh pointed to the length of weathered wood at his side.

  "The road to Golmud is treacherous," Shan said in a tentative voice. "Let me at least go with you that far, old friend." He sensed an odd taste of fear on his tongue, fear that Lokesh would say no. "Then I will leave, I will go find Gendun. I need to get him some new boots."

  The old Tibetan smiled. "Of course. You can help me improve my Chinese on the way. I will need to speak better Chinese when I reach the capital. I will be ready to leave in the morning."

  "So soon? Surely there are many diagrams to make for Gang and Lhandro."

  "Which is why I did not leave this morning," Lokesh said stubbornly.

  Shan saw the challenge in the old man's eyes. "Tomorrow morning," he agreed.

  More and more Tibetans arrived, herders and farmers who had come to see the miracle for themselves. Tents were erected, and Lokesh sat in front of one with Lhandro, making drawings from his memory, drawings of gardens, of buildings and the special joinings of wood used in the roof eaves, even the details he remembered from the carving on the door to the printing room. Nyma appeared, cradling a long bundle, which she unwrapped on a blanket. It was the peche from the secret room at Norbu.

  Lokesh paused and touched the top page with a trembling hand as he scanned the words printed there. "A history of Rapjung," he said in a quivering voice, and squeezed Nyma's hand as she showed him pages with maps and plans of buildings.

  In the frenzy of activity Shan lost sight of Tenzin. He finally found him in the small canyon behind the ruined village, sitting in a large circle of Tibetans with Dzopa, his leg bandaged, on one side, and Gang on the other. Dremu sat on a rock above them, like a sentry. Below him was Somo, staring at two objects in her hands, a pocketknife with a spoon, and a lapis and silver bracelet. Dremu had returned the payment she had made at the hermitage.

  The Tibetans in the canyon were speaking of work parties and supplies. Shan sat on a rock behind Tenzin and studied the group. All of the others were older, most sixty years or more. One man said he had been a stone mason, another a painter of thangkas, another a maker of incense. Three were carpenters, two metalworkers who once had worked full time making prayer wheels.

  "You can work full time once more," Tenzin observed in a tentative voice. "But we have no money to pay wages."

  "Money?" an old man quipped. "We heard about that howler's report. They said we were wealthy already." The laughter that erupted around the circle suddenly died as a stranger appeared at the edge of the circle, a tall lean Han with long white hair. Several of the Tibetans shot accusing glances at Shan.

  "I am no good at woodworking," the Han said in a strained voice, using Tibetan. "The only time I built a stone wall it came out crooked. But I can make books. That gompa once made books, important books." It was Professor Ma, looking greatly fatigued. "I left the valley," he said, looking at Tenzin and Shan, "but after five miles I climbed out of the truck. Jokar, he said I must do something about my heart wind." The words brought a sudden stillness to the canyon.

  "I will come if you will have me," Ma said after a moment. "I have no home in China anymore." An older Tibetan woman made a place for him in the circle. "It's just that when I make books," he said as he sat, "I would like to make them in both Tibetan and Chinese. And sometimes," he added, pulling a familiar bamboo canister from his pocket, "I would like to talk about the Tao."

  Lokesh and Shan left before dawn, while the others still slept. As they left the vall
ey the last stars of the night were twinkling on the surface of the lake, and the reflected blush of dawn made it seem as if the water were glowing. In the dim light he made out two figures at the far side of the lake, watching them. Even from the distance Shan knew it was Tenzin and Lhandro. The former abbot of Sangchi, who had died and been re-born, and the farmer who had lost his valley and found it again. The two men raised their hands in farewell, and lifted a long pole with a prayer flag attached to its end, as if in salute.

  Tenzin had knelt by him when Shan had settled into his blanket the night before, and stared at him in silence so long Shan had asked if he needed to grow a new tongue again.

  "I do not know if ever again I will have a journey such as that we have been on," Tenzin had said at last, closing both his hands around one of Shan's, pressing hard. "But if I do, I pray you will be with me."

  When they stopped to eat cold tsampa on a flat ledge lit by the early rays of the sun, Lokesh was buoyant, speaking first of how Rapjung would look when he returned in a year's time, and then of how Somo had told him of a noodle shop in Beijing where he could get tsampa.

  "There is a place I used to go," Shan said in a tentative voice. "A Taoist temple. The monks there will give you food and a pallet if you have no money. They may remember my name."

  Lokesh looked at Shan warily.

  Shan sighed. "I will draw you a map."

  Lokesh uttered a sound like a laugh that echoed off the rocks, and Shan sensed the wall that had risen between them was melting away. They spoke in eager voices about Shan's old neighborhood and the dangers of walking in a city with so many automobiles.

  Finally they packed away the food, and Lokesh lifted himself on the staff. "I am going to Beijing!" he shouted out, for no apparent reason. But when he took his first step the staff would not move. He pulled it, hard, but it did not budge. It was stuck in a fissure in the rock.

  Lokesh stared at Shan, his eyes wide as he rubbed his white whiskers. "Was that crack in the rock there before?" he asked in a whisper. "I did not see it before."