Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

"I thought you were in the mountains."

"Been there," Feng replied soberly.

As Shan moved toward him, Feng stepped forward, as though to block him. Shan put his hand on Feng's shoulder and pushed him aside. There was a priest on the ground behind him, saying a mantra with an old woman. He stopped and stared. It was Yeshe, he suddenly realized, wearing a red shirt that gave the impression of a robe. He had cropped his hair to the scalp.

Yeshe grinned awkwardly when he saw Shan. He patted the woman's hand and stood.

"I was asking about the prisoners," Shan said.

Yeshe gazed toward the wire. "They fired over their heads. No one injured yet." There was a self-assurance in his eyes which Shan had not seen before.

"Damn the fool!" the sergeant suddenly spat from behind them. He began running through the crowd to a cooking fire where a woman was arguing with someone. It was Jigme.

"She won't give me anything," Jigme said as soon as he saw Shan. "I told her, it's for Je Rinpoche." He looked at Shan, then to Yeshe. "Tell her," he pleaded, "tell her I'm not Chinese."

"You were at the mountain," Shan said. "What happened?"

"I need to find herbs. A healer. I thought maybe here. Someone said priests would be here."

"A healer for Je?"

"He's very sick. Very weak. Like a leaf on a rotting stem. Soon he will just float away," Jigme said with a forlorn tone, his eyes hooded and moist, like those of a mourner. "I don't want him to go. Not Rinpoche too. Don't let him go. I beg you." He grabbed Shan's hand and squeezed it painfully tight.

A whistle blew. The knobs snapped to attention as a government limousine appeared. Li Aidang jumped out and threw a jaunty, abbreviated salute to the major, then strode over to Tan. They spoke a moment, then Li joined the major along the line of knobs, as though inspecting a parade.

Shan pushed Sergeant Feng aside. "Go to town," he said urgently. "Get Dr. Sung. Get her to the barracks."

Colonel Tan stood as if waiting for Shan, silently watching the civilians.

"Why do the lessons come so hard?" the colonel asked quietly. "Nearly fifty years and still they don't understand. They know what we have to do."

"No," said Shan. "They know what they have to do."

Tan showed no sign of having heard him.

Shan turned to him, fighting the temptation to run back to the fence. "I have to go inside."

"In front of the commandos' guns? Like hell."

"I have no choice. These are my- we can't let them die."

"You think I want a massacre?" Tan's face clouded. "Forty years in the army and that's how I will be remembered. For the massacre at the 404th."

The limousine honked its horn. Tan sighed. "Li Aidang wants me to follow. We must go. I will drop you at Jade Spring. There is a reception for the American tourists. Then final planning for the Ministry delegation. A special banquet. Comrade Li apparently expects to be installed as prosecutor after the trial."

They stopped above the turnoff to Jade Spring Camp. Two soldiers manned a new barricade across the road, restricting access to the prison and the base. On it was a sign, in English only. It said ROAD CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. Shan puzzled over it, then remembered. The American tourists.

Before Shan climbed out of the car Li appeared at the window and dropped an envelope onto Tan's lap.

"I have completed my report and the murderer's statement," he announced. "The trial is set for the day after tomorrow, ten in the morning. At the People's Stadium." He looked at Shan with a new chill in his eyes. "Ninety minutes have been scheduled. It must not interfere with lunch."

The top page in the file was a handwritten list of names. Shan pulled it out for closer inspection. Honored guests for the event at the stadium, to be seated on the stage. Members of the visiting Ministry of Justice delegation topped the list, followed by Colonel Tan and half a dozen local officials. Shan saw Director Hu of the Ministry of Geology listed, and Major Yang of the Public Security Bureau. A shiver moved down his spine as he saw an ideogram near the bottom. No name, no title, just the inverted Y with the two bars.

As Shan pointed to the mark, Tan saw the question in his eyes. "Just the nickname," he said with disgust. "He likes his friends to use it. Thinks it's funny."

"Sky?"

"Not sky. Heaven. You know, god in heaven. All the priests pay homage to him."

Shan lifted the paper and stared at it with grim determination. The other guest on the podium was the man who had signed the confirmation on the index card bearing Jao's chop he had taken from the museum, and the same man who had signed the note to Prosecutor Jao, the note that Shan believed, but could not prove, had lured Jao to his death.

Wen Li, Director of Religious Affairs.

Sungpo was moving for the first time. He held the old man's head in his lap, wiping it with a wet rag, sometimes pausing to drop rice into his mouth, one kernel at a time.

"We tried to get a doctor," Shan said. He felt helpless. "A town doctor." But Dr. Sung had refused. When he had called to beg her to change her mind she had offered an abundance of excuses. She had clinic hours, she said. She had surgery, she said. She wasn't authorized for a military base, she said.

"They told you, didn't they?" he had said to her. "That it was an old lama."

"Why would that make a difference?"

"Because of what happened at the Buddhist school."

In the silence that had followed, Shan wasn't sure if she was still on the line. "An old man is dying," he had pleaded. "If he dies we will have no way to speak to Sungpo. If he dies it may mean another will be wrongly executed. And a murderer will go unpunished."

"I have a surgery," Dr. Sung had said, almost in a whisper.

"Don't give me excuses," Shan had replied. "Just tell me you don't want to." She did not respond. "I realized something the other day in your office," he pressed. "You're not bitter about the world, like you want everyone to think. You're just bitter about yourself."

The line had gone dead.

"Rinpoche," Shan said softly. "I could get tsampa. Tell me what you need to eat." He felt the old man's pulse. It was slow and faint, like the occasional rustle of a feather.

Je's eyes flickered open. "I am not in need," he said with a strength that belied his appearance. "I am looking for a gate. I found doors, but they are locked. I am looking for my door."

"It's only another day. We will have you home after tomorrow."

Je said something, so softly Shan could not hear. It was for Sungpo, who understood, and guided Je's hand to the rosary on his belt. Je began a mantra.

Jigme had been allowed to enter the guardhouse, at Shan's insistence. He had instantly retreated to the darkest corner of the cell. When he returned the rice cup was empty. Shan moved toward the corner. For a moment Jigme blocked his way, looking back and forth from Sungpo, to Je, then relented.

He had constructed a tiny spirit shrine by pushing two headrest stones against the wall and stacking a third on top. Between the bottom stones were half a dozen balls of rice, the pliers from the desk and the wire. They rested on several small bright white papers.

Shan reached to touch the papers and Jigme slapped his hand away.

"The guard, he had them at the desk when I came. Laughed and showed them to Sungpo. Sungpo meditated. The guard threw them into the cell. I gathered them before anyone could see. I must burn them. They are disrespectful."

They weren't papers, Shan saw as he turned them over. They were photographs. They were a dozen photographs, of three different monks with Public Security officials. With a wrenching chill Shan recognized the monks from the pictures in Jao's files. Each of the first three members of the Lhadrung Five was the subject of a series of four frames. First, standing between two officers at his trial. Kneeling on the ground. Then a pistol held eighteen inches behind his skull. Finally, sprawled on the ground, dead, his head at the center of a pool of blood.