The Skull Mantra (43 page)

“Waking up every day for fifty years, for a hundred years, is no great accomplishment, after all,” Choje said with a serene smile. “It is like arguing that your mote of dust is bigger than my mote of dust. They are the arguments of an incomplete soul.”

They would bring others to build the road, Shan wanted to say. But he did not have the courage.

“We have talked. All of us. Everyone has agreed. Except for a few. Some with families. Some who have another path to follow.”

Shan looked around. The
khampa
was gone.

“They have received our blessings. They were accepted across the line this morning. Those of us who are left . . .” Choje said with his peaceful smile. He shrugged. “Well, we are the ones who are left. One hundred eighty-one. One hundred eighty-one,” he repeated, still smiling.

The whistle for exercise blew, then another, and another, in relays through the camp. The men began to stir, without talking, toward the door.

“It is time, Trinle,” Choje called with new strength, and the figure in the blanket rose. Not taking his eyes off Choje, Shan sensed Trinle struggling to his feet. With a shudder he realized that Trinle must have been in the stable. From the corner of his eye he saw the stooped figure wrap the blanket around his makeshift robe and over his head like a hood, then shuffle to the door.

Only Shan and Choje remained in the hut. They sat in silence amid the brilliant shafts of light that leaked through the loose boards of the walls and roof.

“What happened to that man? The one who didn't believe?”

“One day part of the mountain above him collapsed. It destroyed everything. The man, his children, his wife, his sheep. And worse.”

“Worse?”

“It was strange. Afterward, no one could remember his name.”

Suddenly there was a peculiar swelling of sound from outside—not a shout, but a rapidly rising murmur that carried through the camp. Shan helped Choje to his feet.

They found the prisoners in the small yard behind the hut, or rather around the small yard, packed two and three deep around an empty space twenty feet in diameter.

“He's gone!” exclaimed one of the monks as they approached. “The magic . . .” he began, but seemed unable to complete the sentence.

“Like the arrow! I saw it. Like a blur!” someone shouted.

The line parted to let Choje through, Shan at his side.

“Trinle!” one of the young monks gasped. “He's done it!”

There was nothing in the clearing but Trinle's shoes, sitting side by side as if he had just stepped out of them.

No one breathed. Shan stared, stunned. It had the quality of a strange, poorly timed joke at first. He looked up with alarm as it sank in. Trinle was gone. Trinle had escaped. He had spirited himself away, after all the years of trying.

The monks stared reverently at the shoes. Some dropped to their knees and offered prayers of gratitude.

But the spell did not last long. From somewhere the whistle began to blow, signaling the end of the exercise period. From the back a man with a deep baritone voice began to chant.
Om mani padme hum.
He continued, solo, for perhaps thirty seconds, then was joined by another, and another, until soon the entire group joined in, drowning out the angry whistles.

The prisoners began to move into the central yard, celebrating the miracle with their mantra. Shan found himself moving with them, beginning the chant. Suddenly a hand seized his elbow and pulled him to the side. Sergeant Feng.

They stayed there, watching, as the prisoners arranged themselves in a large square and sat, still chanting loudly.

Instantly the knobs were among them. Shan could see the soldiers shouting, but their voices were lost in the reverberating mantra. He tried to pull away but Feng held him with an iron grip. The batons were raised and the knobs began
slowly, methodically, to beat the prisoners on their shoulders and backs, swinging their batons up and down as if cutting wheat with sickles.

The batons had no effect.

A Public Security officer appeared, his face a mask of fury. He screamed into a bullhorn, but was ignored. He grabbed a baton from one of his men and broke it over the head of the nearest monk. The man slumped forward, unconscious, but the chanting continued.

He threw the stump of the baton to the ground and moved along the ranks. The scene unfolded as if in slow motion.

“No!” Shan shouted and twisted in vain against Feng's grip. “Rinpoche!”

The officer paced around the entire square, then ordered two knobs to drag a monk to the center. It was one of the younger men, from another hut. The monk had shaved his head and wore a red band on his arm. He continued chanting, still kneeling, seeming not to notice the knobs. The officer stepped behind him, drew his pistol, and fired a bullet through his skull.

Sergeant Feng had stopped speaking. As they drove out of the base onto the Dragon's Claw he gripped the wheel with both hands, a distant, desolate look on his face. He only granted when they pulled into the turnout above the ancient suspension bridge. He did not argue this time, nor did he try to follow as Shan and Yeshe crossed over the span, each carrying small drawstring bags with a day's provisions.

The air was unusually still, without the wind that almost always rose with the sun. Shan surveyed the slope ahead with the binoculars. He still was not certain what to look for or where to go, only that the mountain still held a vital secret. There was no sign of the sheep that might have led him to the enigmatic young herdsman. Perhaps he needed to return to the ledge with the chalk symbols. Then, at the southern end of the ridge, he spotted a patch of red among the early morning shadows. Once he had the pilgrim in the lenses, he could see the man was moving along the track at a remarkably fast pace, rising, standing, kneeling, and dropping in the act of
kjangchag,
the prostration of the pilgrim, as though the movements were calisthenics.

“I still don't know what it is we seek,” Yeshe said at his side.

“I don't either. Something out of the ordinary. The pilgrim, maybe.”

Yeshe shrugged. “Each time we've been here we've seen a pilgrim. In Tibet it's ordinary as rain.”

“Which makes it a perfect camouflage.” Shan suddenly saw what had been eluding him. “Let's go,” he called out, still not certain of anything except that he wanted to know where the pilgrim was going.

They moved at a half trot along the ridge, keeping the pilgrim in sight. After an hour they had nearly caught up,
and rested as they watched the figure begin its descent of the ridge toward the valley beyond.

The red robe arrived at the bottom of the ridge and disappeared behind a long formation of rocks. Shan and Yeshe shared a bottle of water and waited for the pilgrim to reappear on the other side of the rocks.

“My mother made a pilgrimage,” Yeshe said. “After my sister died. I was away at the monastery already. She went to Mt. Kalais,” he continued. “The sacred mountain. It was a bad time. Late blizzards in the mountains. Troop movements because of the uprising.”

“Such challenges add to the accomplishment.”

“We never saw her again. Someone said she became a nun, others that she tried to cross the border. I think it was probably simpler.”

“Simpler?”

“I think she just died.”

Shan didn't know what to say. He offered Yeshe the bottle and picked up the glasses. “He hasn't come out,” he observed. Feng had loaned him his wristwatch for the day, which Shan stared at in confusion. “How long since he went behind that rock?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

Shan leapt up and began trotting down the slope, leaving Yeshe still holding the bottle in his outstretched hand.

He intercepted the pilgrimage trail, worn by centuries of use, as it wound its way through the boulders and emerged into the rolling heather of the high valley. By the time Yeshe caught up, Shan had scouted past the rocks and retraced the route looking for a second trail, a cutoff, to no avail.

Minutes later Yeshe called out and pointed to a small hole, a low, six-foot-long tunnel created by a slab that had collapsed between two sheer rock walls. It was barely wide enough to crawl into. But by the time Shan arrived and bent to look into it, Yeshe had disappeared.

The hole, he discovered, did not end in six feet, but jogged at a sharp right angle to the left. Shan squeezed inside, following Yeshe's dim shape for fifty feet before the roof rose, then disappeared entirely. They were in a narrow,
twisting passage between the rock walls, which they followed into a small canyon.

“We are not supposed to be here,” Yeshe whispered nervously. “It is a holy place. A very secret place. It is protected. . . .”

His words drifted away, his tongue silenced by the power of the scene before him. A sheer rock face, five hundred feet high, rose opposite them, a stone's throw away. Diamond-bright blades of sunlight cut through the canyon shadows, heightening the sense of elevation. A hundred feet up the wall were five large rectangular holes, windows, carved out of the rock. Three other smaller openings, obviously man-made, were arrayed above the five, leading to a final smaller opening nearly three hundred feet above them. Brilliantly colored horse-flag banners, thirty feet long and emblazoned with sacred symbols, hung from poles extended from the five windows, flapping in the wind.

The Dragon Claws, Shan realized, were about to give up their secret.

“Into the shadows!” Yeshe cautioned, stepping behind a rock as though to hide. “There is someone at the water.”

Shan peered toward the end of the canyon, where a shimmering pool of water reflected the images of the flags. Under a solitary willow tree at the end of the pool sat a lone figure, his back to them.

“We are not supposed to find this place,” Yeshe warned again. “We should go. We can ask permission from the old—”

“There is no time for permission,” Shan said, and moved toward the pool. There were small irises growing among the rocks, and a flock of birds at the water's edge.

“Not everyone is glad that you came,” the figure said when Shan was ten feet from its back. It did not turn. The water and the rock gave a strange resonance to what was the voice of a child. “But I had hoped we would meet again. They say things about you I do not understand. Now we can speak once more.”

“Your sheep have lost you again, I see,” replied Shan.

The youth turned about slowly, wearing a grin. “Welcome to Yerpa.”

Shan gestured to Yeshe, who stood behind him. “This is—”

“Yes. I have been told. Yeshe Retang. You may call me Tsomo.”

He rose and silently led them back toward the passage they had just left, then veered to the canyon wall where he entered a narrow cleft obscured by the shadows. Tsomo led them for twenty paces through the darkness, until they reached a dim butter lamp at the bottom of a winding stairway carved out of the living rock.

They climbed the steps until Shan's feet ached; they rested, then climbed further. Along the corridor were several low doors leading to darkened chambers. From one came the sound of a solitary prayer, from another a fetid smell and an abject groan. At last they reached a large chamber lit by a single long window and dozens of candles.

The walls were covered with murals, paintings of guardian deities and the past and future Buddhas. It was not the chapel Shan had expected. It was far smaller, and he began to understand that he was not in a gompa at all, but in another type of holy place he did not recognize. A solitary man in the robe of a monk was on the floor, tapping a tapered metal tube from which vermillion sand fell. He sat at the edge of a six-foot-wide circle, most of which had been filled with intricate shapes and geometric designs composed of colored sands. The unfinished portion where he sat was inscribed with chalk.

“This is the Kalachakra mandala,” Tsomo explained. “A very old style.”

The sand painting was in concentric rings which led to square lines depicting the walls of three palaces, one inside the other. Inhabiting the palaces were scores of deities presented in minute detail.

“It is about the evolution of time,” Tsomo continued, “the folding of time, because Buddha cannot bear to abandon a single soul, so that time continues in a great circle until all beings are enlightened.”

Shan knelt reverently at the edge of the sand. The monk bowed his head toward him and continued working, building the mandala one particle at a time.

“Seven hundred twenty-two deities,” Yeshe said behind him in a hushed tone. “They used to do this in Lhasa every year, for the Dalai Lama.”

“Exactly,” Tsomo said enthusiastically, pulling Yeshe forward for a closer look. “Dubhe trained with an old lama from the Potola. When it is completed it will have all the traditional deities, each one different, each in the prescribed position. Dubhe has worked on it for three years now. In four or five months he will finish. We will consecrate it, and celebrate its beauty. Then he will destroy it and start again with fresh sand.” Tsomo gestured to shelves of rough-hewn timbers that lined the lower walls. They held scores of small clay jars. “Some of the sand from each mandala ever made here has been kept. It is very sacred, very powerful.”

They continued along a corridor to a bigger room lit by four windows, more of the rectangular openings they had seen from below. The chamber held wide, sloping tables of rough wood along its perimeter, most of which were empty. Three monks and a nun were at work, each surrounded by butter lamps and containers of brushes and ink stones.

Shan saw the look of deference from those at the tables as Tsomo approached, and the nervous way they studied Shan and Yeshe. They had been prepared to receive strangers, but clearly were uncertain how to react. They chose silence, letting Tsomo explain the elegant manuscripts they were transcribing, writing from ancient bamboo tiles and tattered prayer books onto long narrow pages that, in the traditional style, would not be bound but covered with silk wrappers. Above the tables were shelves holding scores of similar silk packages. They were called
potis,
Trinle had told Shan once, books wrapped in robes. At one table a monk sat not with brushes but with long chisels and gouges. He was carving the long boards between which the
potis
were tied. Shan paused at the table, surprised not by the intricate detail of the birds and flowers the monk was carving, but because the man could create such beauty despite the fact that one of his thumbs was missing.