Bone Mountain (44 page)

The small canyon behind Yapchi was deserted when he reached it. In the village he discovered Winslow on a bench against one of the pressed-earth walls, writing in a tablet of paper, a line of villagers beside him.

“Names and identity-card numbers,” he announced when he noticed Shan’s inquiring gaze. “If people disappear this goes to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The venture at least has to be accountable for the people it dispossesses.”

Shan watched as villagers began filing out of the old wooden house, Lhandro at the door clasping hands with each of them as they departed. He walked to the gate of the house and waited until, the last of the villagers gone, Lhandro joined him. The village headman did not know who had painted the rock and was not aware of any red paint in the village. “Our people are saying it is a sign,” he said with a flutter of hope, as if he were not certain himself.

“A sign, at least, that the thief may have brought the eye to the valley,” Shan observed.

The headman brightened momentarily, then nodded solemnly.

“There was a sound up there, not the drum,” Shan said. “Not the drum. A rushing like wind, but not wind.”

Lhandro nodded again and began studying the slopes “People say there are portals on Yapchi Mountain, to the bayal. Maybe that is what happened to Gyalo and Jampa,” he added pointedly, as though they may have disappeared into one of the hidden lands.

After a few minutes he invited Shan into the quiet house, where they drank tea and ate cold dumplings with Lhandro’s parents as Shan explained Professor Ma’s project. None of the villagers had known of an old temple, not even in legends. “Dig anywhere in Tibet and you will find something eventually,” Lepka said with a sigh. He was stroking the tiny lamb, which lay cradled in his lap.

“Could it be,” Shan wondered, “that the deity resided there once? In a small gompa?”

“There has never been a gompa here,” the old man said again, in a stern tone. He turned to contemplate the photograph on the altar.

Shan studied the old man. Had he been told the words the oracle had spoken on the mountain?
In my mountains, in my heart, in my blood,
the strange hollow voice in Anya had said.
Bind them, bind them, bind them,
the voice had said, as though speaking of wounded people.
So many dead, so many to die.
What would the words mean to Lepka?

But the old man was no longer listening, no longer part of the conversation. He had joined his wife at the altar, where they had begun chanting their beads.

Shan stepped outside to find a small cluster of people at the far end of the village, past Winslow’s bench. Some were on the ground beside an open blanket of yak hair felt, and villagers were dumping baskets of barley grain into the blanket. Some dropped khatas onto the blanket with the grain, and others dropped pots and kettles near the blanket. As the villagers noticed Shan they greeted him with hopeful expressions and stepped back from the blanket. Lokesh sat helping Nyma tie the handles of the pots together. On his old friend’s lap was a pencil stub and a long sheet of paper bearing several lines in Lokesh’s hand.

His old friend grinned and patted the ground beside him. “I have begun it,” Lokesh said in a satisfied tone as he noticed Shan’s interest in the paper. “My message to the Chairman in Beijing.”

Shan clenched his jaw and stared at the paper. He had begun to think Lokesh had forgotten about his strange pilgrimage to the capital.

“I will read it to him, to that supreme chairman,” the old man said with an uncharacteristic edge of stubbornness in his voice. “We will drink tea together and I will explain the way of things in Tibet. I am sure he does not understand.”

Shan returned his friend’s gaze. It was a new side to Lokesh, the challenge in his eyes, the resistance in his voice. He was warning Shan in his way, for he feared Shan might argue. But Shan turned away and surveyed the landscape, listening to the rumble of the derrick and the distant, defiant beating of the drum. “I am sure he does not understand,” Shan agreed.

Shan joined in the packing of the supplies, which were doubtlessly for those who had fled into the mountains. One of the Yapchi women started singing a soulful song. Another knelt behind a young girl and began braiding her hair. From where they sat on the lower slope the village appeared serene and the sound of the derrick was obscured by the song. It had the air of a festival outing, of a picnic.

Suddenly the serenity was shattered by a loud boom, like thunder, and an odd whistling noise in the sky. The woman stopped singing, looking up with a puzzled grin at first, as though someone was playing a prank, or lighting fireworks. Then, several hundred yards away, the slope exploded. “Anya!” Nyma cried out, and ran toward the village.

Moments later Shan found Lhandro at the northern entrance to the village. The headman stared forlornly toward the vehicle now sitting halfway between the village and the derrick. It spat fire, the thunder erupted again, the whistling returned, and the slope exploded again. The tank had advanced and was attacking the deity stone.

“They told us some young officer is training his men,” Shan said, as though it might give comfort. But there seemed to be no other words to say. Two more shells were fired, and when the smoke cleared on the slope the deity stone was gone. Not just the stone—an entire patch of the slope was gone, the trees and lichen rocks replaced by a patch of smoldering, shattered earth. The tank spun about and began its slow course back toward the oil camp.

No one spoke of the incident, although some of the older villagers seemed unable to move, and only stared mournfully at the smoking patch of earth. With a stab of pain Shan realized they might have concluded another deity had tried to join them, and been killed by the Chinese. Slowly the village went back to its work. Shan watched, perplexed, as Lhandro’s mother and Nyma began hanging scraps of cloth from the sills of windows across to the pen walls or to the ground, anchored with stones. Some were khatas, others small prayer flags. Several villagers were sweeping the entrances to their houses, some even washing the walls. One man held a can of black paint and was painting in huge script, inscribing the mani mantra along the front of his house. Between two houses Shan found a dozen of the villagers in a circle, offering mantras. It was a familiar scene to Shan, sad and uplifting at the same time, the way battles were fought between the Chinese and the Tibetans. Prayer flags and mantras against battle tanks.

As if to complete the festive air, Lhandro ordered a large fire to be ignited in the center of the path, near the entrance to the village. His mother and wife brought a large pot and an urn of butter and set about to make tea for the entire village. They would use the new salt, Lhandro proclaimed, and his mother brought out an old dongma that had been used to churn tea when Lepka was a boy.

As they drank the tea the headman’s father told a story, passed down through many generations, of how their house had been built—a long story replete with details of how the strongest trees had been chosen, with prayers spoken to each tree before it was cut; and how the clan members had gone high in the mountains, above the trees to where glaciers lived, to bring rocks back for the foundation, because they had lived so close to the sky deities and knew the language of the wind and could tell it to blow gently over the valley.

A remote sort of happiness settled over the village, a contentment edged with anticipation. Shan saw more than one of the villagers wipe away tears, and several more joined in the cleaning of the houses. The group that lingered by the fire began a new song, softly at first, then growing vigorous, even loud. Lokesh looked at Shan with puzzled eyes. It was, Shan realized, one of Lokesh’s traveling songs, a pilgrim’s song, a song of lonely wanderers.

When the army trucks appeared again, winding their way slowly up the valley, no one in the village seemed surprised. Lhandro sighed, and helped his father back into the house. “They will search in earnest this time,” the headman said to Shan and Lokesh, handing Shan his drawstring bag. “You must go up the slope. You have done all you could do here. Take the trail Anya brought you on, from Chemi’s village. Someone will find you.”

Above them, already on the trail, Winslow waved and turned away at a jog. But they didn’t follow. Shan and Lokesh stopped in the shadow of the first large tree above the village and watched as the trucks arrived. The first vehicle turned around, so its rear cargo bay was facing the village path. A soldier pulled back the canvas cover, revealing a dozen soldiers in combat gear. Shan took a step forward, a chill creeping down his spine. Colonel Lin climbed out from the cab of the truck and up into the bay, the soldiers still sitting, as though waiting for a command, and raised a bullhorn to his mouth.

“Citizens of Lujun Valley,” he began, and with a sinking heart Shan saw that Lin was reading from a prepared script. “You have been honored to participate in the great economic opening of these lands by the people’s government.” Lin paused and even from his position two hundred feet away Shan saw a frown on his face. “A new sun is rising, and all the peoples of China embrace you today.” Shan remembered his bag, and pulled out his battered field glasses.

The people of the village had stopped their work, stopped their singing and their mantras to gather in the central path, several moving to stand at Lhandro’s back as the headman positioned himself between the trucks and the village. A figure emerged from the first house, leaning on a staff, a burlap sack over his shoulder. It was Lepka, walking straighter and with more strength than Shan had seen before in the man. He stepped to his son’s side as the soldiers from the second truck produced a folding table and chair and set them up near the entrance to the village, forty feet from Lhandro. A man in one of the green nylon jackets appeared, carrying a clipboard, and settled into the chair. Two men in white shirts appeared and unfolded a small banner fixed to two poles. Serene Prosperity it said in red letters.

“There are new communities, with water pipes and electricity, waiting for you. You may cast off the last chains of feudalism.” Lin lowered the paper with an impatient scowl. “You people are being relocated,” he barked. “The village is being requisitioned by the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade on behalf of the oil venture. Some of you may obtain jobs in the venture and live in company housing. The others will be moved to one of the new cities.” Lin meant the soulless complexes of cinderblock housing with tin roofs that Beijing built around factory complexes. There would be no barley fields, no livestock, no caravans to Lamtso, no elegant wooden houses infused with prayer.

“You did not ask us,” Lhandro called back. Strangely, his father bent and lifted a thick flaming branch from the fire and held it at his side, like a weapon.

“Of course we did,” Lin shot back. “The venture asked the District Council. They approved on your behalf. They are your political representatives.”

The wind had died. Lhandro’s words came as clearly as those Lin spoke though his bullhorn. “The District Council is all Chinese. They have never been to Yapchi Valley,” the headman shouted. “We demand to speak to the Council.”

Lin smiled icily. “Be careful what you ask for, comrade.”

“No one asked the land,” a thin but strong voice called out. “No one asked the land if it wanted to give up its blood, so Chinese could run their cars in Beijing.” It was Lepka. Other villagers reached into the fire and lifted burning sticks, like torches. They had no weapons. Surely, Shan thought, they didn’t believe they could rid themselves of the army simply by burning two trucks. Even if they tried the soldiers would cut them down. He lowered the glasses and took an anxious step forward.

Lin glared at Lepka, turned and snapped out a command. The soldiers on the benches beside him leapt out and instantly formed a tight rank in front of their colonel.

“You will assemble in a line by that wall,” he commanded the villagers. “Have identity cards ready. You will approach the table one at a time.”

The villagers did not move.

“You will form a line!” Lin shouted, throwing down the bullhorn. He unsnapped the cover on his holster and his hand settled over the butt of his automatic pistol.

Lepka slowly moved, not toward the table but back toward his house. He began to sing again, in a loud, reedy voice that carried up the slopes. The lonely pilgrim’s song. Shan was confused. What was in the bag at his shoulder? It had the shape of a thin box with sharp edges. Other villagers joined in the song and began wandering back among the houses. A woman ran forward and wiped a window clean. Another woman appeared at a doorway, paused to hang a long brown cloth on a peg by the door, and darted around the house.

Two soldiers stepped along the wall near Lhandro, as though to rush past him to grab one of the villagers.

Lhandro raised his hand, and stepped forward to the wall to block the soldiers. Shan saw that he had one hand wrapped around his gau. “Yapchi Village,” Lhandro proclaimed in a loud, calm voice, “returns your embrace.” And his father threw his torch inside their precious wooden house.

“No!” Shan moaned, and lunged forward as the other villagers threw their torches inside the remaining houses. “We have to stop—”

But Lokesh’s hand gripped his arm so tightly it hurt. “Because you and I,” his old friend said, the pain obvious in his voice, “have no home, we may long too much for others to keep theirs.” Lokesh had understood, not at first, but before the torches were thrown. “It is the only way they can speak with those Chinese,” he added in a softer, quiet tone.

“That house is so old,” Shan said, in a choking breath. “It is their temple.” He pulled again, and Lokesh pulled back, with both his hands now. It was already too late. The dry ancient wood was like tinder. Flames were already leaping out the door. Lepka was hobbling up the path, not looking back. The sack still hung at his side. Shan knew what was inside now. There was one thing, out of all the treasured belongings in the house, that he would not leave behind. The photograph of the Dalai Lama.