The Skull Mantra (37 page)

By the time they returned the rain had stopped and Yeshe was exactly as Shan had left him, seated in front of Balti's pallet, repeating his mantra of protection. There would be no stopping now until it was done. And no one, not even Yeshe, knew when that would be.

They gathered firewood and cooked a stew as the sun set, then ate in silence as the heavens cleared and Yeshe droned on inside the tent. Shan sat with Pemu and watched the new moon climb across the eastern sky. A solitary nighthawk called from the distance. Wisps of mist wandered down the slope. Feng lay down with a blanket and in a moment was snoring. Yeshe droned on. Pemu found a fleece and curled up in it, staring at the fire. At the edge of the flickering circle of light Harkog sat with Pok, the dog, facing the darkness. Yeshe was in his sixth hour of chanting.

Everything felt so distant to Shan. The evil that lurked in Lhadrung. The gulag he would return to. Even the ever-present tentacles of Minister Qin and Beijing seemed part of a different world for the moment.

From his bag Shan pulled the rice paper and ink stick he had purchased from the market. It had been a very long time. So many festivals had been missed. He rubbed the stick and with a few drops of water made ink in a curved piece of bark. He practiced, making small strokes in the air with the brush, composing the words in his mind before laying out the sheet and beginning to draw. He used the elegant old-style ideograms he had learned when he was a boy.

Dear father,
he began,
forgive me for not writing these many years. I embarked on a long journey since my last letter. Famine raged in my soul. Then I met a wise man who fed it.
The strokes had to be bold yet fluid, or his father the scholar would be disappointed. Written properly, his father would say, a word should look like wind over bamboo.
When I set out I was sad and afraid. Now I have no sadness left. And my only fear is of myself.
He used to write letters often, alone in his tenement in Beijing. He read the ideograms over, unsatisfied.
I sit on a nameless mountain, honored by mist and your memory,
he added, and signed it as his father would call him.
Xiao Shan.

Folding the second sheet into an envelope for the first, he pulled a smoldering stick from the fire and stepped into the darkness. He walked in the moonlight until he reached a small ledge that overlooked the valley, then made a small mound of dried grass between two stones and laid the letter on top. He studied the stars, bowed toward the mound and
ignited it with the stick. As the ashes rose toward heaven, he watched reverently, hoping to see them cross the moon.

He lingered, covered in stars. He smelled ginger and listened to his father, certain now that he could remember joy.

Halfway back to the camp his heart leapt to his throat as a black creature appeared on the path in front of him. It was Pok. The huge dog sat and blocked his way.

“They say it was a riding accident but it wasn't,” a voice rang out from the shadows beside the trail. It was Harkog. He had a strange new determination in his voice. “It was a land mine. Running from the PLA. Suddenly I was in the air. Never heard the explosion. My leg flew past me while I was still in the air. But the soldiers stopped. The bastards stopped.” He stepped from the shadows and looked up into the sky, just as Shan had been doing.

“You still stopped them?”

“Three of them came charging after me, to finish me. I shouted a curse and threw my leg at them. They fled like puppies.”

“I am sorry about your leg.”

“My fault. I should not have run.”

They walked back together, slowly, silently, Pok leading the way.

“We could take you both back if you want,” Shan offered.

“No,” the man said in a slow, wise voice. “Just take his Chinese clothes. Everything else from Lhadrung. He must wear a fleece vest again. This has happened to him because he tried to be someone he is not. I got a truck ride there once. To Lhadrung. Good shoes. But that Jao, he was bad joss.”

“You knew Jao?”

“I rode in the black car with Balti once. That Jao, he had the smell of death.”

“You mean you knew Jao was going to die?”

“No. I mean people around him died. He had power, like a sorcerer. He knew powerful words that could be put on paper to kill people.”

They were close enough to see the glow of the campfire when Pok growled. There was a shadow against the rock, waiting. Harkog muttered an order to the dog and the two
had already moved on toward the camp before Shan recognized Sergeant Feng.

“I know what you were doing,” Feng said. “Sending a message.”

Shan clenched his jaw. “Just walking.”

“My father tried to teach me when I was young,” Feng said, in a voice that seemed to ache. Shan realized he had misread Feng. “To speak to my grandfather. But I lost it. Up here, so far away. It makes you think about things. Maybe—” He was struggling. “Maybe you could show me how again.”

Trinle had once told Shan that people had day souls and night souls, and the most important task in life was to introduce your night soul to your day soul. Shan remembered the talk of Feng's father on the road to Sungpo's gompa. Feng was discovering his night soul.

They moved back to the ledge where Shan had sent his letter. Feng lit a small fire and produced a pencil stub and several of the blank tally sheets from the 404th. “I don't know what to say.” His voice was very small. “We were never supposed to go back to family if they were bad elements. But sometimes I want to go back. It's more than thirty years.”

“Who are you writing to?”

“My grandfather, like my father asked.”

“What do you remember about him?”

“Not much. He was very strong and he laughed. He used to carry me on his back, on top of a load of wood.”

“Then just say that.”

Feng thought a long time, then slowly wrote on one of the sheets. “I don't know words,” he apologized and handed it to Shan.

Grandfather, you are strong,
it read.
Carry me on your back.

“I think your words are very good,” Shan said, and helped him fashion an envelope from the other sheets. “To send it you should be alone,” he suggested. “I will wait down the trail.”

“I don't know how to send it. I thought there were words.”

“Just put him in your heart as you do it and the letter will reach him.”

 

When they returned to camp, Harkog, Yeshe, and Balti were sitting at the fire. Pemu, speaking in the low comforting tones that might be used with an infant, was feeding Balti spoonfuls of stew. The gauntness seemed to have been lifted from Balti and transferred to Yeshe, who studied the flames with a drained, confused expression.

“We visited your house,” Shan began. “The old woman married to the rat showed us the hiding place. It was made for a briefcase.”

Balti gave no sign of having heard.

“What was in there that was so dangerous?”

“Big things. Like a bomb, Jao says.” Balti's voice was thin and high-pitched.

“Did you ever see these things?”

“Sure. Files. Envelopes. Not real things. Papers.”

Shan shut his eyes in frustration as he realized why Jao had trusted him with the papers. “You can't read, can you?”

“Road signs. They taught me road signs.”

“That night,” Shan said. “Where were you driving?”

“The airport. Gonggar. The airport for Lhasa. Mr. Jao trusts me. I'm a safe driver. Five years no accidents.”

“But you took a detour. Before the airport.”

“Sure. Supposed to go to airport. After dinner he told me different. All excited. Go to the South Claw bridge. The new one over the Dragon Throat built by Tan's engineers. Big meeting. Short meeting. Won't miss the plane, he said.”

“Who did he meet?”

“Balti just the driver. Number one driver. That's all.”

“Did he take his briefcase?”

Balti thought a moment. “No. In the back seat. I got out when he got out of the car. It was cold. I found a jacket in the back. Prosecutor Jao gives me clothes sometimes. We're same size.”

“So what happened when Jao got out of the car?”

“Someone called out to him from the shadows. He walked away. So I sat and smoked. On the hood of the car I smoked. Half a pack almost. We're going to be late. I honk
the horn. Then he comes out. He's plenty mad. He's going to eat me like a pack of wolves. I never meant it. Maybe it was the horn. He was plenty angry.”

They weren't talking about the prosecutor anymore, Shan realized.

“You saw him?”

“Sure I saw him. Like a yak stampede I saw him.”

“How close?”

“At first I thought it was Comrade Jao. Just a shadow. Then the moon came out of the cloud. He was golden. Beautiful. At first that's all I could think, like a trance. So beautiful, and big like two men. Then I see he is angry. Holding his big blade. Snorting like a bull. My heart stops. He did that. He stopped my heart. I kept telling it to beat but it wouldn't. Then I'm down in the heather. Running. I'm wetting myself, I'm crying. In the morning I found the eastern road again. Truck drivers stop for me. Between rides I run, always running.”

“Tamdin,” Shan said. “Did he chase you?”

“One angry son of a bitch, Tamdin. He wants me. I hear him in the night. If I stop the mantras he will have me. He will bite my head off like a sweet apple.”

“What was in the car?”

“Nothing. Suitcase. Briefcase.”

“Where's the car now?”

“Who knows? No driver, no more. Never again.”

“It wasn't found at the bridge.”

“That Tamdin,” Balti croaked, “he probably picked it up and threw it over two mountains.”

 

When they left at dawn Balti was back in the tent, casting fearful glances outside, rocking back and forth with a new chant. Tears streaked his face. A bundle of clothing had appeared on Shan's blanket.

“Move your camp,” Shan said quietly to Harkog after Pemu had led Sergeant Feng down the slope. “So it cannot be seen from the road. In shadows where it can't be seen from the air.”

As Harkog nodded grimly, Yeshe extended a slip of paper. “Here. A charm,” he said, “to be fastened to the tent.
Let him chant. But he must follow my prescription. All day today. Half a day tomorrow. And only one hour a day afterward. For the next month. After tomorrow he must come out. He must walk the hills. The ghost is gone from him. He must become what he is.”

Harkog replied with a big three-toothed grin. “We'll be
khampa.”

Back in the truck, Shan examined the clothing. They were caked with mud. Cheap work clothes, barely better than those issued to prisoners. But the battered shoes were wrapped in a jacket, a suit jacket. It was torn and soiled but of a very different quality, the product of a tailor's shop. In one pocket was a handkerchief and a bundle of business cards in a rubber band.
Jao Xengding,
they said,
Prosecutor for Lhadrung County.
Balti had been wearing Jao's jacket. It was cold that night, he said. He had put on Jao's jacket and sat on the hood of the car.

In the second pocket were folded slips of paper in a clip. Shan unfolded the papers. Several were receipts, the top one from the Mongolian restaurant with “American mine” scrawled across the top. Beneath it was a small square of paper on which was written two words.
Bamboo Bridge.
A square of yellow paper said
You don't need the X-ray machine.
Below the words was a symbol like an inverted Y with two bars across the stem. It could have been the ideogram for sky, or heaven. It could have been careless doodling. Another slip listed cities.
Lhadrung, Lhasa, Beijing, and Hong Kong
it said, followed by the words
Bei Da Union.
Where had he heard that? The lama at Khartok, he remembered, the one who was the business manager, had said they were rebuilding with the help of the Bei Da Union. Bei Da was Beijing University.

A fourth note may have been a shopping list.
Scarf, incense, and gold,
it said. One of the notes, he realized, was probably the one that lured Jao to his death.

Shan was still trying to make sense of the references as they drove through the narrow pass that took them out of the plateau, having left Pemu near her herds after she had placed Yeshe's hand on her head and uttered a prayer of
gratitude. A bolt of lightning erupted in front of them, igniting a bush on the side of the road. The bush roared into flame. No one spoke. They waited until the bush crumbled into ashes, then drove on.

The front gate at the Jade Spring barracks had been attacked. Boards were split, wire hanging loose. The heather was crushed for twenty yards on either side of the gate. In the light from the guard's shed Shan saw shreds of clothing hanging from the barbed wire. A somber, angry-looking squad was replacing the hinges on one of the two huge gates. Shan stared, blinking with exhaustion. He and Sergeant Feng had shared the driving for sixteen grueling hours. During his turn for rest he had been unable to close his eyes for more than a few minutes before being haunted by the vision of Balti as they had left him, rocking back and forth in the darkness of his tent.

Shan stumbled out of the truck in confusion, his eyes reflexively searching for stains of blood on the soil.

As he approached the guard's shed, floodlights were switched on, blinding him momentarily.

When his vision cleared a PLA officer was standing beside him. “We missed you,” the officer said with icy sarcasm. “They paid us a visit. You could have been guest of honor.”

“They?”

The officer snarled out orders to the squad as he explained. “The cultists. There was a riot. Or nearly one. Just after dawn. A logging truck stopped. Dropped off an old man, wearing a robe. He just sat down. Not a word. We let him do his beads. A peasant rode by on a bicycle and stopped. We should have kicked them both down the road. But Colonel Tan, he said no trouble. No incidents. Beijing is about to arrive. Americans are about to arrive. Just keep it quiet.” The officer opened the driver's door and glared at Sergeant Feng, as if he somehow shared responsibility for the incident.