Eliot Pattison - Water Touching Stone

Xu turned to put the sunset wind in her face. "In that book," she started, as if trying to explain something.

"Know this," Shan interrupted, for he would not deceive her. "I read nothing about you in the book." But he remembered the strange look on her face when she had stared at the Kunlun, and how Tibetans worried her.

She seemed relieved for a moment and turned toward the stairs. But when she reached them she sat on the bench again. He worked on the grave a few more minutes, until it was clean, and still she just sat, staring over the weed-bound tombs.

Shan walked out of the graveyard and stepped past her. He was on the first stair when she spoke. "There're three hundred forty-seven graves here," she said, in her whisper again. "I counted them once."

He sat on the stairs. A large bird soared over the graveyard and roosted on a far tomb. An owl. Keeper of the dead.

"I was only sixteen," she blurted out, almost a sob. "We made a truck convoy from Shanghai, gathering more and more cadres as we went. They elected me officer. I never asked for it, but they said I could recite more of the Chairman's verses than the others in my unit. We traveled for weeks. We broke down fences to liberate livestock. We burned schools to liberate children. We burned libraries to liberate knowledge."

The Red Guard, Shan realized. She was talking about the Red Guard and the Cultural Revolution.

"When we got to Tibet they assigned me a district and a quota. Ten percent of all citizens were declared bad elements, and I had to identify my ten percent and submit them to struggle sessions, public criticism, violent criticism. Sometimes fatal criticism. Gompas had to be eliminated. The reactionaries had to be punished. Fourteen times our unit forced children to shoot their parents." She paused and surveyed the graves again as if she were thinking of counting once more. "We were only children ourselves. Sometimes they stripped lamas naked and made them dance in the town square."

"They?"

Xu was silent. She ran her hand over her lips. It trembled. "We," she said at last and pushed a knuckle into her mouth. She took the finger out after a moment and stared at it, as if not understanding what it had done. "I wanted to stop. I wanted to go home. I was tired of the brutality. I was worried about my family. But if you spoke about family you were criticized. Sign of a reactionary, sign of addiction to the tradition of oppression. All I could do was continue. We got awards. A model unit. I kept getting promoted. There was a gompa far in the hills, a big gompa past Shigatse. The Revolutionary Committee came with photographers from Lhasa to watch us do our job. We surrounded the gompa and sang songs of the Revolution. I gave the order to burn it. I thought the monks would come out, they had time to. But they didn't. Some of them stood in the doors and looked at us as they burned. But most just stayed inside, saying their mantras. For a long time we could hear them, louder than the roar of the flames. Afterwards we found the bodies in rows, because they had carefully sat in their sanctuary with their lamas facing them. Rows and rows, like a cemetery. We celebrated and sang our songs again. Three hundred forty-nine. The Chairman sent me a letter of commendation. It's how I got my first job in the Ministry. Because I had the letter from the Chairman. It just said I did a good job, that I was a model worker. It didn't say it was because I had killed three hundred forty-nine monks."

Shan had no words. A history teacher had once told him that the only problem with modern China was that people lived too long, that too many millions lived to old age, when they began to cultivate a conscience. For Xu the nightmares had come early, and her conscience had trapped her. It's not like that, she had said of the Lotus Book. Meaning, It was like that, but now I am a different person. She was as surely a prisoner as those she sent behind wire, self-exiled in the borderlands where she thought she might make a difference.

She seemed not to notice when he rose and climbed the stairs. He passed the car without looking at the bald man at the wheel and walked back to town, the wind throwing sand across the road, his soul so heavy he thought he might never hear a bell again.

Sand blew down the streets of Yoktian, obscuring their broken curbs and other imperfections, blurring the cracks in the walls. It was as if the entire town had been airbrushed for a cleaner, more wholesome image. Perhaps on the general's orders. But Shan was not fooled. There were still holes in the street that would break your ankle and fissures in the walls where rats waited.

A cargo truck was at the rear of the restaurant when Shan arrived. Gendun and Lokesh were asleep in the front room under two tables that had been pushed together, as if the Maos expected an earthquake. Jowa sat beside them, lotus fashion, watching them. As the stout woman extended a mug of tea and a bowl of noodles toward him, the truck's engine started.

"Rice camp," she said in response to his look of query, and he bolted out the door, jumping into the cargo bay so quickly that he did not realize until he sat down that the tea was still in his hand.

Fat Mao, sitting in the shadows behind the cab, was not happy to see him. A quick trip, he said, to pick up the order for the next week's food delivery, although Shan knew better. They were going because of Red Stone clan, because the next afternoon the clan would be disbanded, because Akzu and Fat Mao had a plan they would not explain. But Shan did not care. He was going for the waterkeeper. There was nothing else to do except wait for the dawn, wait for the meeting at Stone Lake, for the final confrontation where the killers would come to collect their last prize, where Shan had to be before the knobs, to whisk the boy away if he and the herders guarding him eluded the Maos, who would be trying to intercept the boy on the roads leading to Stone Lake.

The adminstrative compound at Glory Camp was deserted. The gatehouse itself was empty and the gate locked. But Ox Mao climbed out of the driver's seat and quickly unlocked the padlock. They parked by the warehouse and a woman followed the big Kazakh out of the front seat- Swallow Mao, wearing a severe-looking business suit. The woman carried a large envelope and marched toward the administrative building with an air of authority.

Shan stood by the inner wire, studying the barracks with the holding cells, inside the prisoner compound. He had no plan, no idea, no confirmation even that the lama was in the barracks. Even if Swallow Mao could find his hut assignment the Maos could not risk entering the second wire, which was where the real security started. He bent to a small clump of dried asters that had managed to survive in the sandy soil at the base of the inner wire. Plucking one of the stems, Shan tied it to the wire at the closest point to the holding cells. Maybe, he thought sadly, he had come just to say goodbye. The old Tibetan would not last long once Bao, or Rongqi, discovered he was a lama. He looked back at the administrative building and slowly, reluctantly, turned his head toward the small shed where he had found Nikki, then the boilerhouse.

He started walking, without conscious effort, and found himself under the boilerhouse roof. From twenty feet away he could feel the heat of the furnace and he stood there, the image of the spirited blond youth by the boiler door burning through his mind. Not much older than his own son. He walked out the far side of the building and stopped at the edge of the cemetery. In the dim light of the cloud-covered moon the graves seemed endless. With small, uncertain steps he started toward the far end, where the freshest mounds of earth had been.

Then he saw the animal. A low shadowy hulk, it moved along the graves as though following a scent. Shan looked down for a spade, a stick, anything he might use as a weapon. The creature lingered at one of the freshly dug piles of earth. With a pang of fear Shan wondered what he would do if it began to dig for the dead. Scavengers preferred rotten meat. Feebly, he stepped forward. The beast paid him no attention. It pawed idly at the earth in long motions that gave the impression of a great and reckless power.