Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Tenzin hefted the book in his hands, and stared at it again before opening the cover. He slowly leafed through the pages to the first empty page, near the end, then pulled a pencil from his pocket and began to write. He worked for nearly an hour, at first with Shan reading the names of the dead prisoners for him to transcribe, then alone, sometimes looking up, studying the dead lamas. When he finished he stood and laid the book on the altar, staring at the little golden Buddha. Finally he looked at Shan expectantly. "It is written," he said quietly.

"It would be foolish to try that trail at night," Shan said slowly, looking back at the book. Tenzin studied him a moment, then pulled another three candles from his pocket, placed them beside the solitary candle on the altar, and took up the book again.

The two men settled beside each other in front of the altar, under the candle, facing the lamas, and Tenzin handed the book to Shan.

The Lotus Book was written in many hands, in several languages, in pencil and ink and even, Shan saw, in watercolor. He turned to the first of hundreds of entries, glanced at Jokar, and cleared his throat.

"The first writing is dated fifteen years ago this month," Shan declared in a gentle tone, and began to read. "I was not always this frail old woman without a family, without a house, without a monk to pray with, without children to laugh with, even a dog to lick my hand," the first line said. "But this is the story of how it came to be, beginning on the day the Chinese killed our sheep…"

And so they read, for hours they read, passing the book back and forth, replacing each candle as it sputtered out, their voices cracking, pausing sometimes to wipe away tears. Gompas were scoured off the earth by the Red Guard. Monks died under torture. The populations of ancient mountain villages were transported to the jungles to make way for Chinese open-pit mines. Five-hundred-year-old Buddhas were melted down to make bullets for the army. Parents were executed in front of their children, and Tibetans were sent to prison for celebrating the Dalai Lama's birthday.

Shan lost all track of time. He had to pass the book to Tenzin when he came to entries about the 404th Peoples Construction Brigade, his lao gai prison, and the names of the many Tibetans who had died there. At last, incredibly, they were at the final pages and Shan recognized Tenzin's handwriting. He took the book from Tenzin to finish reading.

"The enslavement of our land and people remains unabated after five decades," the entry began. It continued with a description of the mountain fortress and the way the slaves conspired to destroy it, and at last the names of those who had died in it. The words were strong and fierce, although not as strong and fierce as those of the very last entry.

"Thirty years ago a young Tibetan graduated as the top student at the only school in his county that allowed Tibetans to study beside Chinese children. Because his parents had joined the Communist Party, he could speak Chinese well and was sent to university in China, even promised a lucrative job when he returned. The job was with the Bureau of Religious Affairs, and one day they brought a robe to him and told him he was to become the political officer of an important gompa. He found much about that gompa that appealed to him and when they asked him to transfer to another five years later he asked to stay to continue his monastic training.

"That monk became me, someone different from the political officer who started at that gompa, but still a favorite of the government, which saw to it I became the youngest abbot ever appointed in Tibet. I made that gompa a showcase for assimilated Buddhism, and by way of example taught the country how socialism could empower Buddhism. I tried to embrace the Buddha but first, for many years, I embraced the Chinese government as my protector. When they asked me to preach against resistance, I did so at the top of my lungs, because the government was the great benefactor of Tibet. When they launched a campaign for economic emphasis in religious affairs, I suggested it be called the Serenity Campaign, and I launched that campaign with a speech at my gompa.

"Then one day I saw an old man who was supposed to be painting a chapel and I criticized him for working so slowly. He smiled and said he did the best he could. He showed me his hands, which had no thumbs. He had been a lama once, he said, but the Chinese soldiers had cut off his thumbs with pruning shears so he could not say his beads. We talked for hours that day and the next day he brought a young woman who told me more, about her brother who was imprisoned for having a photograph of the Dalai Lama, and the next day that woman brought a man she called a purba."

The passage continued for several pages, with Tenzin's recollections and confessions about revered teachers he had helped send away to Beijing for political instruction after speaking in support of the exiled government, of helping the government redraw maps to eliminate reference to pilgrimage sites, even of how he had learned from two old lamas named Gendun and Shopo that compassion could be shaped out of sand. They had showed him how to start over, Tenzin wrote, by learning to respect yak dung.

"I sinned against my people and my soul," the last paragraph read. "My government lied to me and I lied to my inner deity. I used up much of my human incarnation to help make others' lives miserable. When you speak of enemies of Tibet speak of the abbot of Sangchi. When you speak of lower creatures trying to burrow through darkness to light speak of a pilgrim named Tenzin."

Shan stared at the closing words a long time before he closed the book. When he finally rose he laid the book beside the Buddha, in full view of the Rapjung lamas. "I think it is dawn," he said quietly.

Tenzin, looking gaunt and hollow again, followed him along the line of the old men, paying homage to each with a prayer, then they climbed out of the chamber, leaving Jokar in his beloved mountain, resting at last on the chair of Siddhi.

When Shan and Tenzin crested the ridge above Yapchi three hours after sunrise they stopped, staring in confusion. The valley had been transformed. Not only had Jenkins's levee failed, water was still pouring down the slope in a long, steep cascade. It had washed the soil away until it found bedrock, creating a new riverbed down the slope. The little pond around the derrick had become a huge body of water, nearly a mile long.

Shan paused, leaning on the staff in his hand, Jokar's staff. He had not intended to bring the staff away from the burial cave but without conscious effort his hand had closed around it as he stepped back in front of the large thangka, as though the staff had willed itself into his hand. He had paused uneasily, studying the weathered staff that had served the medicine lama for so many decades, then he had hefted it and carried it out. Jokar and Shan knew someone who needed a staff.

"The valley is being made again," Tenzin said in a tentative, perplexed tone.

Shan sat on a rock, a sense of unreality washing over him. The army and the venture were surely going to stop the water, to plug the cascade on the mountainside. But a war had been waged in the valley, and they had been defeated by the mountain. Workers drifted toward the camp, dragging tools behind them like broken soldiers leaving a battlefront. A bulldozer lay on its side near the bottom of the slope, half submerged in the new riverbed where the bank must have collapsed. The derrick was in the middle of the little lake, listing nearly thirty degrees, the valley floor underneath it destabilized by the water.

The only work underway seemed to be at the camp itself. The field where the celebration had been planned was a chaotic mass of men and equipment. The rope for the banner had broken loose so that the tattered Serenity slogan flew high in the sky, like a kite. Workers were frantically throwing ropes, barrels, buckets, and tools into the cargo bays of trucks. Half the trailers were gone. As Shan watched, a heavy truck gunned its engine and eased one of the trailers up the road that led out of the valley. The venture was retreating.