Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

Trinle turned back to the khampa as the man chewed his leaf. "I am sorry," he said. "Shan Tao Yun sleeps there."

The khampa looked about and settled his gaze on Shan, who sat on the floor near Choje.

"The rice eater?" he snarled. "No khampa lets a damned rice eater beat him." He laughed and looked around. No one joined.

The silence seemed to inflame him. "They took our land. They took our monasteries. Our parents. Our children," he spat, studying the monks with growing impatience.

The monks looked at each other uncomfortably. The hatred in his voice was like an alien presence in their hut.

"And that was just the beginning, just giving them the time they needed for the real fight. Now they take our souls. They put their people in our cities, in our valleys, in our mountains. Even in our prisons. To poison us. To make us like them. Our souls shrivel up. Our faces disappear. We become nobody."

He turned abruptly to face the opposite bunks. "It happened at my last camp. They forgot all their mantras. One day they woke up, their minds were blank. No prayers left."

"They can never take the prayers from our hearts," Trinle said, with an anxious look toward Shan.

"Shit on them! They take our hearts. No one passes on then, no one goes to Buddha. They only go down, drifting from one form to a lower one. An old monk at the last camp, they fed him politics. One day he woke up and found he had been reborn as a goat. I saw him. The goat got in line for food, just where the old priest had been. I saw it with my own eyes. Just like that. A goat. The guards bayoneted him. Roasted him on a spit in front of us. Next day they brought a bucket of shit from the latrine. Said look what he's become now."

"You do not need the Chinese to lose your way," Choje said suddenly. "Your hate will be enough." His voice was soft and fluid, like sand falling on a stone.

The khampa shrank back. But the wildness stayed in his eyes. "I'm not waking up as a damned goat. I'll kill someone first," he said, glaring again at Shan.

"Shan Tao Yun," Trinle observed quietly, "was reduced. He will return to his bunk tomorrow."

"Reduced?" the khampa sneered.

"A punishment," Trinle replied. "No one explained the system?"

"They pushed me out of the truck and just gave me a shovel."

Trinle nodded to one of the young monks sitting nearby, a man with one milky eye who instantly dropped his prayer beads and moved to the khampa's feet.

"Break one of the warden's rules," the man explained, "and he sends you a clean shirt. You appear before him. If you are lucky, you are reduced. The immediate elimination of everything that provides comfort except the clothes on your back. The first night is spent outside, in the center of the assembly square. If it is winter you will leave your body that night."

In Shan's three years he had seen six of them, carried away like altar statues, frozen in the lotus position, clutching their makeshift beads.

"If it is not winter, the next day you may return to the shelter of your hut. The next your boots are returned. Then your coat. Next your food cup. Then the blanket, the pallet, and finally the bed."

"You said that's the lucky. What about the others?"

The young priest suppressed a shudder. "The warden sends them to Colonel Tan."

"The famous Colonel Tan," the khampa muttered, then abruptly looked up. "Why a clean shirt?"

"The warden is a fastidious man." The priest looked back to Trinle as though uncertain what more to say. "Sometimes those who go are sent to a new place."

The khampa snorted as he recognized the hidden meaning of the priest's words, then warily circled Shan. "He's a spy. I can smell it."

Trinle sighed and picked up the khampa's kit, moving it to the empty bunk by the door. "This one belonged to an old man from Shigatse. It was Shan who got him out."

"I figured he took four."

"No. Released. He was called Lokesh. He had been a tax collector in the Dalai Lama's government. Thirty-five years, then suddenly they call his name and open the gate."

"You said this rice-eater got him out."

"Shan wrote some words of power on a banner," Choje interjected with a slow nod.

The khampa studied Shan with a gaping mouth. "So you're some kind of sorcerer?" The venom was still in his eyes. "Gonna work some magic on me too, shaman?"

Shan did not look up. He watched Choje's hands now. The evening liturgy would soon begin.

Trinle turned with a sad smile. "For a sorcerer," he sighed, "our Shan hauls rocks well."

The khampa muttered under his breath, and threw his boot to the bunk by the door. He was conceding not for Shan, but for the priests. To be certain, he turned to Shan. "Fuck your mother," he grunted. When no one took any notice, a gleam entered his eyes. He moved to the bare planks of Shan's bunk, untied the string at his waist, and urinated on the boards.

No one spoke.

Choje slowly rose and began cleaning the bunk with his own blanket.

The sheen of victory left the khampa's face. He cursed under his breath, then, nudging Choje aside, pulled off his shirt and finished the job.

There had been another khampa in their hut two years earlier, a tiny, middle-aged herder jailed for failing to register with one of the agricultural cooperatives. Alone for nearly fifteen years after a patrol picked up his family, he had finally wandered into a valley town after his dog died. He had been the closest thing to a caged animal Shan had ever seen, always pacing back and forth in the hut like a bear behind bars. When looking at Shan his face had been like a small fist clenched in fury.

But the little khampa had loved Choje like a father. When one of the officers, known as Lieutenant Stick for his affinity for the baton, had taken his stick to Choje for spilling a barrow load, the khampa had leapt on the Stick's back, pounding him, screaming profanity. The Stick had laughed and pretended not to notice. A week later, released from the stable with a limp from something they did to his knee, the khampa had ripped strips from his blanket and begun sewing pockets to the inside of his shirt. Trinle and others had told him that even if he stored up enough food in his new pockets for a flight across the mountains, it was futile to consider escape.

One morning, when he had finished his pockets, he asked Choje for a special blessing. At their mountain worksite he began filling the pockets with rocks. He kept working, singing an old herder's song, until Lieutenant Stick moved near the edge of the cliff. Then, without a second's hesitation, the khampa had charged, hurling himself at the Stick, locking his arms and legs around the officer, using the extra weight to convey them both over the cliff.

Suddenly the night bell rang. The single naked bulb that lit the room was extinguished. No talking was permitted now. Slowly, like a chorus of crickets claiming the night, the liquid rattle of rosaries filled the hut.

One of the young monks stealthfully moved to keep watch by the door. From a hiding place under a loose board Trinle produced two candles and lit them, placing them at either end of the rectangle of chalk. A third was placed in front of Choje. The flame was too dim even to reach the kenpo's face. His hands appeared in the light, and began the evening teaching. It was a prison ritual, with no words and no music, one of the many that had evolved since Buddhist monks began filling Chinese prisons four decades earlier.

First came the offerings to the invisible altar. Choje's palms were pressed together facing outward, his index fingers curled under his thumbs. It was the sign for argham, water for the face. Many of the mudra, the hand symbols used to focus inner power, still eluded Shan, but Trinle had taught him the offering signs. The bottom two fingers of Choje's disembodied hands withdrew into the palms and the hands aimed downward. Padyam. Water for the feet. Slowly, gracefully, Choje deftly moved his hands to offer incense, perfume, and food. Finally he closed his fists together, the thumbs extended upward like wicks from a bowl of butter. It was aloke. Lamps.