Bone Mountain (39 page)

They stood in silence, looking about the sleeping forms on the blankets.

“He’s not here,” Chemi said softly, apologetically, and suddenly Shan understood. The sick were coming to Yapchi. They must have walked through the night to find the medicine lama. The herder carrying the woman lowered her to a blanket and rubbed his eyes. Shan thought he saw tears.

“But I met him,” Chemi added in a hopeful tone. “He healed me.”

The crippled woman looked up in disbelief. “The one we seek is from the old days. There were stories from the mountains. But all those … they died a long time ago. Sometimes all we can do is follow the stories.…” Her voice drifted away and she stared at the ground. “Some people are saying he came to take the chair of Siddhi. Some say he came from a bayal, just to ease our suffering.”

“I met him,” Chemi repeated, more urgently. “He healed me.”

The woman on the crutch stared at Chemi as if just hearing her, her mouth open. “Lha gyal lo,” the woman said in a dry, croaking voice, then she began to sway. Chemi leapt forward as the woman collapsed into her arms.

Shan stepped to the small fire at the rear of the canyon and brought Chemi a bowl of tea for the woman. “What did she mean the chair of Siddhi?” he asked as he handed her the bowl.

“It’s an old thing,” Chemi said in a worried voice, cutting her eyes at him, then looking away.

“Resistance,” Lokesh whispered as he suddenly appeared to kneel beside the sick woman. “I heard the purbas talking about it, very excited. They say in this region centuries ago a lama named Siddhi organized resistance against Mongol invaders. He rallied the people like no one ever had and made sure the Mongols never came back to their lands.”

“There was a place he stayed in the mountains,” Chemi continued, “a small meadow high on the upper slope of the mountain. There is a rock like a chair where he would sit and speak to the people. People have been going there for years to pray. Some say he was a fighter. Some say he was a healer who just gave hope and strength to the people.”

Lokesh seemed to recognize the disbelief on Shan’s face. “They want to believe in such things,” the old Tibetan said, and nodded to another group of new arrivals who sat speaking with the older purba. “They say everyone is talking about Yapchi, for many miles. They say if a real lama would take the chair of Siddhi they could make the Chinese leave Yapchi, could make the Chinese leave the whole region.”

Shan returned alone to the village heavy with a strange sense of guilt that had crept upon him during the night, unable to look at the haggard faces that searched his own for explanations. The faces of the sick Tibetans haunted him. He was wrong to have come, for to come had meant giving the people of Yapchi hope, and there was no hope. Beijing had discovered the beautiful valley, and given it to the petroleum company and their American partners. It may as well have been seized by the army for a new missile base, for such a venture would never be dissolved, never be moved. There was only one thing in China more inexorable than the march of the army, and that was the march of economic development. When the venture found oil it would seize the entire valley, drain it of its life force, strip it of everything of value and leave it, years later, soiled and barren. Shan had spent his four years in prison building roads for the economic forces deployed by Beijing, roads to penetrate the remote valleys that had been overlooked in the first wave of Chinese immigration. One of the worst cruelties inflicted on the prisoners had not been forcing them to pound the rocks of high mountain passes into shards, so trucks could traverse the high slopes, but to be forced to watch, from another new road site, as every tree in a newly opened valley was cut down, every seam of coal blasted open.

Yapchi Village was even emptier than the day before. The only sign of life seemed to be the lambs which pranced about in their earthen-walled pen, as though wildly excited that the sun had risen. Then he noticed faces in some of the windows watching him, and watching the path up the valley. The rumble of the drilling rig echoed off the valley walls in the still air, accompanied by the distant whine of chain saws. At the door of the last house, the simple timber house he had admired the day before, an old woman appeared. She offered Shan a quick bow of her head, then slowly, shyly, still standing in the doorway, extended a bowl of tea toward him. He stepped hesitantly through the open gate of the low wall that surrounded the house and nodded, accepting the bowl. The woman retreated silently into the shadow of her house, beckoning him inside.

The house consisted of one large room with a sleeping platform built into the north end and an alcove for preparing and eating food on the opposite side. The finely worked planks that made up the walls and floor bore a rich patina of age. A small wooden altar stood against the rear wall, near the sleeping platform, bearing the seven traditional offering bowls, and a framed photograph of the Dalai Lama, a single smoking stick of incense beside it. The carpet at the center of the room, though worn almost threadbare near the altar, depicted the endless knot, symbol of the unity of all things, and the other eight sacred emblems in rich reds and browns. Everything in the room seemed to be made of wood, or clay, or wool. The chamber was like a clearing in an ancient forest, radiating a natural, soothing tranquility.

The woman smiled awkwardly and sat on a squat stool near the sleeping platform, assuming a somber expression. Shan followed her uncertainly, and saw a figure in the shadows, leaning against the wall, on one of the two pallets unrolled on the platform. The figure turned, rising very slowly, his hand on the wall for support. The aged man moved with obvious effort toward Shan, one hand still on the wall. He sat on the edge of the platform, near the woman, and studied Shan as he smacked his cracked, dried lips together. Silence, Shan suspected, prevailed in the room, a fixture as real as the little altar and the simple benches that lined the wall. In the stillness he became aware of quick, shallow breathing and his eyes fell upon a small shape lying on a blanket in the corner of the platform. A lamb.

“We just wanted to thank you,” the man said. His voice was hoarse, nearly a whisper, as though it had not been used in a long time. “I am called Lepka.”

Shan lowered himself to the floor in front of the man, balancing the bowl between his legs. “I have done nothing. I lost the eye.”

“But you came anyway,” the man said, in a lama’s voice. “Already things happen. You got the eye closer than it has been for a hundred years.”

Things happen. Shan could not bring himself to question the aged Tibetan. What things? The destruction of Chemi’s village? The gathering of knobs and army troops in the valley, probably for the first time since the terrible day when the eye was stolen? The distant rumbling of the oil derrick, scraping and grinding deep in the earth? The reckless talk of opposing the Chinese in the valley?

He offered a sad smile and studied Lepka. He had learned to think of such aged Tibetans as one of the treasures that the hidden parts of Tibet offered up, men and women who seemed to defy time, or at least to resist aging, who might live a century or more, and whose most vibrant memories were not of the times since Beijing had arrived, but before. The man’s skin was like ancient parchment. He was very old, perhaps old enough to have been alive when the eye was taken from Yapchi. His gnarled fingers, Shan saw, were formed into a mudra, his thumbs pressed together, the knuckles of the first joints above the hands joined, the middle fingers extended and pressed together. With a blush of shame, Shan recognized the gesture. It was an offering mudra, the offering of water for the feet, used for initiating monks or receiving sanctified visitors.

“I went down to that place,” Lepka declared. “I leaned on my staff and went down to that Chinese machine.” He smacked his lips again and the woman handed him a bowl of water from the side of the platform, which he sipped from before speaking again. “I threw a stone at it.” A thin line of water dribbled from his mouth as he spoke. “Sometimes demons make people have visions, make them see evil things that are not really there. But the stone hit metal, and bounced back. The workers laughed and said, ‘look at the crazy old man.’” Lepka looked at Shan and grinned. He was missing most of his teeth. “But I can throw rocks good. When I was young I kept wolves away from the herds, with rocks and my sling. I threw another rock, and another, at different places. They laughed some more. But you know what?” he asked, then coughed and made a long wheezing sound before continuing. “I found a place that was a bell,” he said with a meaningful gaze. “It didn’t look like a bell, because it had been hidden in a different shape. But it sounded like a bell,” he declared with a grin. “It was the essence of a bell, hiding there.”

Bells, in traditional Tibet, were sometimes used to frighten demons away.

“And they didn’t even know,” Lepka said, and made the wheezing sound again. Shan realized it was a laugh.

Shan answered with a solemn nod and drank some tea. “Your home,” he said, searching for something to say, “is so peaceful. Like a temple.”

The woman smiled, and the old man surveyed the chamber slowly, as though seeing it for the first time. “The grandfather of my grandfather built this house,” he said. “In the first year of the Eighth.” He was speaking of the eighteenth century.

“It has heard many prayers,” the woman added quietly. “Our son likes to bring the village here to meet with him on important decisions because he says no one ever speaks rudely in this house, for all the prayers that live in the wood.”

Shan gazed back over the sleeping platform. He saw that there was another pallet, rolled, against the back wall, and suddenly he realized whose house he was in. “It’s a long journey, to Lamtso.”

The old man smiled. “When he was three years old, I took my boy for the first time. He sat on my shoulders as we walked and we would sing. For hours we would sing. And there was a dog, a huge mastiff that let him ride on its back. Sometimes he would lie down and fall asleep on that dog’s broad back and the dog would just keep walking. I said it was too dangerous.…” The hoarseness was gone from the man’s voice, as though the memories had revived something inside.

“But you made all the other dogs work,” a voice said softly, behind Shan. “You put packs on all the other dogs when we left the lake. All but that one, so I could ride it home.”

“Son!” the woman cried and leapt up to embrace Lhandro.

The village headman looked up from his mother’s arms and smiled wearily.

“Lha gyal lo, Lha gyal lo,” Lepka intoned quietly, his eyes filling with moisture. “The salt has found its way again.”

Lhandro stepped to his father and knelt, opening his hand to reveal a mound of brilliant white crystals. He raised his father’s hand and solemnly poured the salt onto the dry, wrinkled palm and closed the gnarled fingers around it. The wheezing laugh erupted again from Lepka’s throat, and he pressed the handful of salt against his heart.

As Shan stepped to the door sheep began streaming past the outer gate, salt packs still on their backs, coming from north of the valley. Excited greetings echoed down the central path of the village, but also warnings. He stepped outside in confusion. On the slope above the village, near the trees, several of those from camp stood waiting, some waving, some pointing toward the arriving caravan. Then he saw a figure run from the group, in the opposite direction, as if to hide. He turned and saw that not all the Tibetans had been pointing toward the caravan.

Nyma appeared in the midst of the sheep, worry clouding her face. “They searched all our bags, and made us leave five sheep for them,” she blurted out, without a greeting. She looked at the rear of the caravan. Two army trucks were winding their way up their valley, just a few hundred yards behind the last of the sheep.

Lhandro appeared in the doorway behind Shan, raised a hand to warn his parents to stay inside, then swept past Shan, pushing him into the shadows. As Shan took a position just inside the door, the headman stepped out into the central path to wait for the trucks. A knot tightened in Shan’s belly as he watched the trucks stop and a dozen soldiers jump out. One of them opened the side door of the first truck, emblazoned with a snow leopard, and a man in an officer’s tunic stepped down.

“Good morning, Colonel Lin,” a voice called out with false warmth from behind Lhandro. Through the open door Shan watched Winslow walk jauntily to Lhandro’s side. The American had washed and shaved, and put on a clean shirt. “Another glorious day for youth league maneuvers.”

One side of Lin’s mouth curled up as he recognized the American. He turned and spoke to someone behind him, out of Shan’s sight. A moment later a soldier marched past Winslow and Lhandro, holding a clipboard as he surveyed the village with restless, hawk-like eyes.

“The American embassy has no authority to meddle in the internal affairs of China,” Lin growled as he took a step toward Winslow. He spoke loudly, as if to address a larger audience.

“Of course not,” the American agreed in a business-like tone. “The Qinghai Petroleum Venture has an American partner. One of its American workers is missing. Matter of international relations,” he added pointedly, in a voice as loud as Lin’s.

“Not missing,” Lin said readily, as if he had made it his business to know what the American had been doing in the mountains. “Dead. Most unfortunate.”

Through the door Shan glimpsed a pair of soldiers advancing around the back of the village, behind the animal pens on the opposite side of the path. They seemed to be searching for something.

“Our village is honored by the presence of the glorious soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army,” Lhandro said in a flat voice, casting an uneasy glance at Winslow.

“Of course you are,” Lin said in an amused tone as he lit a cigarette and shot a stream of smoke toward Lhandro. “And your honor can only increase.”

The knot in Shan’s gut drew so tight it hurt.

Lin stared at Winslow intensely, as though trying to will the American to back down. “There were others with you before. Tibetans. Two tall men.” He paused and stared at Lhandro expectantly, then shifted his gaze toward Lhandro’s feet as though reminding Lhandro that Lin had once had the headman in manacles.