Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

After six blocks he emerged back into the sunlight and began walking not toward the street of the museum but parallel to the street, still testing the pavement.

Suddenly there was a loud crack behind him, as though from a pistol. Shan spun about and froze. There, not ten feet away from him amidst the throng of Chinese shoppers and rush of bicycles, was a ragged, unkempt Tibetan with a filthy leather apron over a felt coat. His hands were thrust into the straps of wooden clogs, which he was now clapping together over his head. Someone beside Shan, a plump Chinese woman carrying a jar of yogurt, hissed an expletive at the man. "Latseng!" she added. Garbage.

But the Tibetan seemed unaware of anyone on the busy street as he left the curb. He brought the clogs down in one liquid motion and stretched himself full-length on the pavement, his arms extended in front of him. With a murmured mantra he pulled himself forward, moved back to his knees, stood, and clapped the clogs in front of him twice before clapping them over his head and repeating the process. Traditionally, Shan remembered, pilgrims did three five-mile circuits around the Potala. But he also recalled that the government had obliterated most of the pilgrim's circuit, known as the Lingkhor, constructing apartment buildings and shops squarely to block the route after monks had invited Tibetans to protest their Chinese government by creating an endless chain of pilgrims around the circuit.

Emotion overtaking him again, Shan stared helplessly at the Tibetan, who gazed fixedly ahead. Trinle had laughed heartily about the route being blocked. "The government will never be able to see what the pilgrim sees," he had said with absolute conviction. He had repeated the phrase for Shan like a mantra again and again with his huge smile until, not knowing why, Shan had laughed, too.

An angry shout rose from the street. A youth on a motorcycle was yelling for the pilgrim to get out of his path. A car pulled up behind the man and began honking its horn. The pilgrim was entering an intersection, oblivious to the traffic light. A truck approaching down the cross street added its horn to the chorus.

Pilgrims were sometimes run over by vehicles. Shan had heard guards at the 404th joke about such roadkills. The pilgrim kept moving. But there was something new in the man's eyes. He was aware of the vehicles now. He was afraid, but he would not stop.

Shan looked back to the crowd. Was someone there? No. But did he still have the rhythm of the crowd? No. He took a long look at the Sublime Fortress and stepped into the street.

He moved past the angry drivers, still pounding their horns, to stand beside the solitary pilgrim. With tiny steps he escorted the Tibetan as the man struggled through the intersection. Up on his knees. Up to his feet. Arms in front. Clap the clogs. Arms overhead. Clap the clogs. Arms down. Stop. Kneel. Drop to his belly. Extend the arms. Recite the mantra to the Buddha of Compassion. Retract the arms. Up on his knees.

People were shouting louder, infuriated at Shan now. But he did not hear their words. He watched the pilgrim with great satisfaction, and in the pilgrim saw Choje, and Trinle, and all the old yaks. An odd thought flashed through his mind. Perhaps this was the most important thing he had done in three years. Choje might have suggested that everything that happened before was so Shan could be there in that moment to protect the pilgrim.

They reached the curb and the safety of the sidewalk. Without breaking stride or diverting his eyes, the pilgrim spoke in an emotional, uncertain voice. "Tujaychay," he whispered to Shan. Thank you.

Shan watched the pilgrim move on another thirty feet before the world crept back over him. He glanced up and realized he had no hope of regaining the rhythm of the crowd. Twenty faces were watching him now, most of them resentful. There was no time left to watch and elude. He moved straight to the museum.

He entered along with a tour group, then moved in the cover of the crowds through the exhibits, willing himself not to linger at the exquisite displays of skull drums, ceremonial jade swords, altar statues, rich thangka paintings, crested hats, and prayer wheels. He paused only once, in front of a display of rare rosaries. There in the center was one of pink coral beads carved like tiny pinecones, with lapis marker beads. He stared at it sadly, then wrote down the collection inventory number and moved on.

Suddenly he was at the exhibit of costumes for demon protectors. There was Yama, the Lord of the Dead, Yamantaka, Slayer of Death, Mahakala, Supreme Protector of the Faith, Lhamo, Goddess Protector of Lhasa. And in the last case, Tamdin the Horse-headed.

The magnificent costume was there, its face a savage bulging mask of red lacquered wood, four fangs in its mouth, a ring of skulls at its neck, a tiny, ferocious, green horse head rising above its golden hair. Shan shivered as he studied it, his hand clamped on the gau around his neck that now contained the Tamdin summoning spell. The arms of the demon lay beside the mask, ending in two grotesque clawed hands, identical to the smashed one found at the American mine.

It was small comfort to confirm that the hand was indeed that of Tamdin, for the costume in the museum was intact, and in Lhasa, not in Lhadrung. There was a second costume but if it did not belong to the museum Shan had no way to trace it, no way to link it to Jao's killers.

He stared at the exhibit in deep thought, waited for the room to empty, and opened a door. A janitor's closet. He began to shut it, then paused and pulled out the broom and a bucket. He moved slowly through the building, sweeping as he watched the interior doors. Suddenly, and with a wrench of his gut, he saw someone new, a Chinese with bullet-hole eyes trying quite futilely to look interested in the exhibits. The man surveyed the room, not noticing Shan, then gave a snort of impatience and moved with a military gait into the adjoining hall. Shan stayed in the shadows and watched, to his horror, as the man conferred with two others, a young woman and a man dressed as tourists. They left the room at a trot and Shan stepped inside the first door that was not locked.

He was in a short corridor that opened into a large office chamber divided into cubicles. Most of the desks were empty. On a bench in the hall was a white technician's coat. Abandoning the bucket and broom, he put on the coat, then picked up a clipboard and pencil from the first desk.

"I lost my way," he said to the woman at the first occupied desk. "The inventory."

"Inventory?"

"Exhibits. Artifacts in storage."

"It's usually the same," she said in a superior tone.

"The same?"

"You know. Two of each piece. One on display, one in storage. In the basement. Parallel collection, the curator calls it. Makes cleaning and examination easier. One upstairs. One downstairs, arranged by their inventory number sequence."

"Of course," Shan said, with renewed hope. "I meant the organization charts. The location of artifacts."

"In notebooks. On the library table."

In the small library at the back of the corridor he found a thick black binder, its vinyl covers worn through to the cardboard at the edges. He had already located a section entitled Costumes when an older woman appeared at the door.

"What is it?" she snapped.

Shan started, then settled back into the chair before looking at her. "I'm from Beijing."

The announcement bought him another thirty seconds. He kept searching as the woman lingered at the doorway. Ceremonial headdresses. Demon dancer costumes.

"No one informed me," the woman said with a suspicious tone.

"Comrade, certainly you realize audits are not nearly so effective when advance warning is given," Shan said curtly.

"Audits?" She paused, then slowly entered and walked around the table.