The Skull Mantra (44 page)

The nun rose and wandered toward them. “The history of every gompa in Tibet,” she said, gesturing to the far wall. Her voice was rough, as though from lack of use. “There
are letters from the Great Fifth to the
kenpos
announcing funds for new chapels. There are the original plans for the rope bridge across the Dragon Throat.”

Tsomo pulled Shan by the arm as the nun led an awestruck Yeshe along the manuscripts, away from the door. They moved up more steps to an inner chamber deep inside the mountain. It had the air of a classroom. There were only two lamps in the room, both on a small altar. At the far end were shelves of pottery, most of which was broken; above the pottery were symbols painted on the wall. There was a carpet on the floor, and seat cushions on which two monks sat.

One of the monks was facing away from them toward the altar. The other, an older, austere man with twinkling eyes, greeted them with a slight bow from his waist. “You are most persistent, Xiao Shan,” the monk said in Mandarin. There was the sound of bare feet scampering behind him. Three boys in the robes of students moved inside and sat behind the monk who spoke. They looked at Shan with round, bewildered expressions.

“You have presented us with quite a dilemma, you know,” the old lama continued.

“I am only investigating a murder.” Shan's eyes moved back to the symbols above the pottery. With a start he realized he had seen them before, made in chalk at the ledge above the Dragon Throat Bridge.

“Yes. We know. The prosecutor was killed not far from here. Sungpo the hermit is detained. The 404th is on strike. Seventeen priests have been tortured. A prisoner has been executed. The Public Security Bureau is poised for another atrocity.”

“You know more about the 404th than I do,” Shan said in wonder. “Are you the abbot of this place?”

The man's smile seemed to cover his entire face. “There is no abbot here. My name is Gendun. I am just a simple monk.” As he spoke his fingers worked rosary beads carved of dark reddish wood. “Will they send you back there, when it is done?”

Shan paused, considering the man, not the question. “Unless they choose a worse place.”

Another boy appeared with a pot of buttered tea and filled bowls in silence. From somewhere came the sound of
tsingha,
the tiny, chimelike cymbals of Buddhist worship.

“You said I was a dilemma,” Shan said as he accepted one of the bowls.

“Yerpa is the secret room of a house never seen, built in a land of shadow. Three hundred years ago one of our scholars wrote that in a book.” Gendun paused and smiled at Shan. “We write books for each other sometimes, since no one else can see them. He said we were between worlds here. A stopping-over place. Not of the earth, not of the beyond. He called it the mountain of dreams.”

“The eye of the raven,” the other priest said, still with his back to them. Something in his voice sounded familiar.

Tsomo smiled. “In the library there is a poem, about the dead of winter. Among a hundred snowy mountains, it says, the only thing moving is the eye of the raven.”

Shan realized that Gendun was looking at Feng's wrist-watch. Shan extended his arm.

“What do you call this?” the monk asked.

“A watch. A small clock.” Shan removed it and handed it to him.

Gendun looked at it with wonder in his eyes and held it to his ear. He smiled and shook his head. “You Chinese,” he grinned, and handed it back.

Tsomo left his side with a small reverent bow, and knelt beside the second monk, who still faced the altar.

“Even before the armies came from the north this place was known only to the few who needed to know,” the old monk continued. “The Dalai Lama. The Panchen Lama. The Regent. It is said to be one of the caves of the great Guru Rinpoche,” he said. “It is a world in itself. Usually those who come never leave. It was as you see it five hundred years ago. It will be like this five hundred years from now,” he said with absolute confidence.

“I am sorry. But if we do not go back soldiers will come. We mean no harm.”

“The tunnel can be sealed against searchers. It has been done in the past. For years at a time when necessary.”

“He could teach us the way of the Tao,” Tsomo interjected.
“We could better understand the books of Lao Tze.”

“Yes, Rinpoche. It would be wonderful to have such a teacher.” Gendun turned to Shan. “Are you able to teach these things?”

Shan did not hear until he was asked the second time. The monk had called the boy Rinpoche, the term for a venerated lama, a reincarnated teacher. “An old abbot once said to me, ‘I can recite the books. I can show you the ceremonies. But whether you learn them is up to you.' ”

Tsomo gave a small laugh of victory, then rose and poured Shan more tea. ‘They say in parts of China it is impossible to separate the Tao from Buddha's way.”

“When I lived in Beijing I visited a secret temple every day. On one side of the altar sat a figure of Lao Tze. On the other sat Buddha.”

Tsomo's eyes grew round again. “Things always seem so far away from the top of a mountain. We have much to learn.”

The moment was magical. No one spoke. The sound of the
tsingha
grew closer. A boy appeared, the small cymbals dangling in front of him. Behind him came two women, nuns, one carrying a tray with two covered bowls and the second a large pot of tea. They set the objects before the altar, and the monk who knelt there, his back still to Shan, began a ritual of blessing.

Shan knew he had heard the voice before, but there were so few monks he knew outside the 404th. Had he seen this man at Saskya? At Khartok, perhaps? He strained to see the man through the dim light as the nuns and monks spoke in turns, ceremonial words that Shan did not understand. When it was over the monk at the altar stood and straightened, then turned to face Shan.

“Are you ready?” he asked. It was Trinle.

They studied each other in silence. Shan felt strangely overwhelmed. For some reason he felt unable to ask how Trinle had spirited himself out of the camp, or why he had laboriously masqueraded as a pilgrim to reach Yerpa. Instead he followed them, Trinle and Tsomo and the two nuns, as they began climbing still another set of steep stairs, a narrow twisting passage worn, like the others, from centuries of use.
After a minute's hard climb they reached a landing. The stairs continued ahead, but a dimly lit passage led to the left, toward the heart of the mountain. Along its sides several heavy wooden doors could be seen before the passage curved out of sight.

The group continued up the stairs, climbing in silence for at least five minutes. Twice Shan had to stop and lean against the wall, not from fatigue but from a strange overwhelming sense of passing through something, of straining against a barrier. He seemed to be hearing something but there were no sounds. He seemed to be seeing swarms of shadows shifting on the wall but there was only one steady lamp, carried far ahead. It was as though each step took them not toward another part of the mountain but toward another world. Each time he paused, Trinle was waiting with his serene smile.

They reached a landing with a thick wooden door, intricately carved with faces of protective demons and fastened with a heavy wrought-iron latch. Tsomo waited for them to gather on the landing and form a single-file procession, then opened the door, and led the way into the chamber with a low prayer.

There was no one inside. It was a sparse, square room, perhaps thirty feet to a side, furnished with one rough-hewn table and two chairs, a large iron brazier for holding coals, and several shelves of manuscripts. One wall was covered with an intricate mural of the life of Buddha. The opposite wall was of cedar planks, with a central wooden panel that seemed to match the door but it had no hinges or latches. It was held fast with huge hand-wrought bolts, fastened with nuts nearly the size of Shan's fist. On the floor beside it was one of the illuminated manuscripts, just below a black rectangular panel, perhaps ten inches high and twenty inches long.

Trinle silently lit more butter lamps and turned to Shan. “Do you know the term
gomchen?
” he asked, as casually as if they were together in their hut at the 404th. “It is little used these days.”

Shan shook his head.

“A hermit of hermits. A living Buddha, on a lifetime hermitage,” Trinle said.

“It was the Second who decided the
gomchen
had to be protected,” Tsomo continued. “A sacred trust. A small remote holy place had to be selected, to shelter his home so deeply that the secret would always be kept.”

“The Second?” Shan asked in confusion.

“The Second Dalai Lama.”

“But that was nearly five hundred years ago.”

“Yes. There have been fourteen Dalai Lamas. But only nine of our
gomchen.”
Trinle's voice, almost a whisper, was filled with uncharacteristic pride.

Tsomo was at the manuscript now. He opened it to a page marked with a strip of silk. The serene smile returned to his face as he read.

The nuns uncovered the tray and set bowls of
tsampa
and tea beside the manuscript. It wasn't a black panel on the wall, Shan realized. It was a hole in the wall, an access to a room beyond. He remembered the small solitary window high in the face of the cliff.

“You care for a hermit here,” he said in a whisper.

Trinle put his finger to his lips. “Not a hermit. The
gomchen,
” he said, and silently watched as Tsomo and the nuns prepared the food. When they were done, Trinle joined them in kneeling on the floor and prostrating themselves toward the cell, chanting as they did so.

No one spoke until they had climbed down the long flight of stairs and reentered the small chapel where Shan had discovered Trinle.

“It is hard to explain,” Trinle said. ‘The Great Fifth, he said the
gomchen
was like one brilliant diamond buried in a vast mountain. Our abbot, when I was young, said the
gomchen
was all that was trying to be inside us, without the burden of wanting.”

“You said there was a trust. A gompa that protects the
gomchen.”

“It has always been our great honor.”

Shan looked up, confused. “But this place. It is not exactly a gompa.”

“No. Not Yerpa. Nambe gompa.”

Shan stared. “But Nambe gompa is gone.” Choje had been the abbot of Nambe gompa. “Destroyed by army planes.”

“Ah yes,” Trinle said with his serene smile. “The stone walls were destroyed. But Nambe is not those old walls. We still exist. We still have our sacred duty to Yerpa.”

Shan, numbed by Trinle's announcement, thought of Choje back at the 404th, performing his own sacred duty to protect Yerpa. He became aware that Tsomo was sitting beside him. “He writes very beautifully, when he is not meditating,” Tsomo said. “About the evolution of the soul.”

Shan remembered the manuscript in the antechamber. The
gomchen
communicated with them by writing religious tracts in the manuscript. “How long has it been?” Shan asked, still awed. “Since the bolts were tightened.”

Trinle seemed hard-pressed to answer. “Time is not one of his dimensions,” he said. “Last year he recorded a conversation with the Second Dali Lama. As if he were there, as if it had just taken place.”

“But in years,” Shan persisted. “When did he—”

“Sixty-one years ago,” Tsomo said. A flash of joy lit his eyes.

“It was a very different world,” Shan observed reverently.

“It still is. For him. He does not know. It is one of the rules. Outside is irrelevant. He only considers Buddhahood.”

“At night,” Tsomo said with a strangely longing tone. “He can watch the stars.”

“You mean he doesn't know about . . .” Shan struggled to find the words.

“The troubles of the secular world?” Trinle offered. “No. They come and go. There has always been suffering. There have always been invaders. The Mongolians. The Chinese, several times. Even the British. Invasions pass. They do not affect our good fortune.”

“Good fortune?” Shan asked, his voice breaking with emotion.

Trinle seemed genuinely surprised at Shan's question. “To have been able to pass the current incarnation in this holy land.” He studied Shan. “The suffering of our people is unimportant to the work of the
gomchen
,” Trinle said with
new concern in his voice as he studied Shan. It was as though he felt a need to calm his visitor. “He must not be burdened with the world. That is why there was so much concern, the first time you met Tsomo.”

“When I met Tsomo?”

“Consultations were made. Had he been contaminated? we asked.”

“If it is unimportant inside, it must be kept unimportant outside, I told them,” Tsomo offered.

Suddenly, with painful clarity, Shan understood. “He could die soon, the
gomchen.”

“At night we can hear him coughing,” Trinle said heavily. “There is blood sometimes in his basin. We offer more blankets. He will not use them. We must be ready. Tsomo is the tenth.”

The announcement sent a shiver down Shan's spine. He stared, speechless, at the vibrant, wise youth who soon would be locked into the stone forever. Tsomo returned his stare with a broad smile.

They walked Shan back to the library where Yeshe, still wide-eyed, was poring over the manuscripts. As Trinle and Tsomo joined Yeshe, Gendun appeared at the door.

“I believe Prosecutor Jao was killed to protect Yerpa,” Shan said abruptly, before they entered the room.

“The prosecutor had many enemies,” the old monk observed.

“I mean, I believe his murder was committed on the Dragon's Claw to protect the
gomchen.”

Gendun shook his head slowly. “Every morning we have a prayer. A blessing of the wind, to be gentle on the birds. A blessing of our shoes, to keep them from treading on insects.”