Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

The three men stood with the cool wind washing over them. It was mingled with the vaguest hint of flowers, like a subtle incense wafting over the plain. The Tibetans used incense to attract deities. Perhaps it was simply something in the air, Shan thought, that had caused first Winslow, then Dremu to speak of their tragedies. Shan was certain the Yapchi rongpa knew nothing of Dremu's story- and he had no idea of how they would react if they did know. He suspected that Winslow seldom shared his tale with anyone, even other Americans.

"What do you mean the eye?" Winslow asked Dremu. "You said something about an eye. And the Lujun?"

The Golok gestured at Shan, who winced. He began to explain about the eye and the valley. But it seemed the closer he got to Yapchi the less he understood about the eye.

The story brought the sadness back to Winslow's face. He gazed at each of his companions in turn, and seemed about to speak, to ask something, but finally he turned and began slowly walking down the slope toward the horses.

"How did the purbas find you?" Shan asked Dremu as they began following the American. "They chose you not just as a guide, but because you know about the eye."

"Find me? I found them," Dremu said in a low voice, leaning close to Shan as if wary of the rocks overhearing. "Others knew the fifty-fourth had it, but I was the one who discovered exactly where. I found the Tibetan worker the soldiers paid to clean their damned toilets and sometimes he loaned me his identity card. I found it on that colonel's desk. That bastard Lin. I made plans, careful plans, but one night some purbas caught me outside the army headquarters and asked me what I was doing. When I told them I was going to steal the stone they laughed, but kept me in a house for two days. That Drakte came and said no, don't steal it, not if you really want to hurt the Chinese. Just tell us how to get inside Lin's office then meet the eye at that hermitage and help get it to Yapchi. Drakte said they would pay me for what Goloks always did best, watching in the mountains and avoiding troops. They didn't want me in Lhasa. Because they had someone else who had to steal it."

As if it had been listening, Yapchi Mountain replied with another of its ominous rumbles.

They rode at a brisk trot over the high plain, their horses seeming eager to catch up with the caravan. Perhaps, Shan thought, the animals were unsettled by the plain, experiencing the same sensations he did, a vague presence, an expectation in the air. He could find no words to describe the feeling. It wasn't fear, although Dremu frequently rose in his stirrups to look about as if wary of pursuit. There were moments when Shan even felt an unexpected exhilaration as they loped across the wild, remote plain. The high ridges that bounded it on three sides gave it a remote, secret air, a sense of being a world untouched and apart.

As they closed with the caravan he slowed his horse and dismounted, letting Dremu and Winslow catch up with the others as he walked behind. He studied the column of animals and people stretched out over the windblown plain and realized how, during the more peaceful moments of the past few days, he had come to think of their journey as a pilgrimage. He considered the odd assembly. The young girl who spoke for the deities. Nyma the uncertain, illegal nun. The rongpa who thought a jagged piece of stone would protect them from the Chinese. Dremu the bitter warrior, who searched for a way to restore dignity to his family. Perhaps they were more like fugitives than pilgrims. Tenzin the escapee. The American, fleeing from a life and career of disappointment. Perhaps even the Yapchi villagers themselves, now that Colonel Lin had glimpsed Lhandro and Nyma and confiscated Lhandro's papers.

As the caravan entered the little grove of trees, Nyma and Anya, at the back of the line, paused to study a pattern of stone shapes visible on the slope beyond the trees. They trotted into the shadows as if eager to investigate further. Lhandro waited as the sheep and horses gathered around the small stream that coursed through the grove, then gestured Shan and Winslow down a path that led to the far side of the grove. Shan looked for Lokesh, found him helping the villagers untie the packs from the sheep, then followed the two men through the trees.

Shan had seen many ruined gompas in Tibet, the work of the army and, later, the Red Guard, who together had destroyed all but a handful of Tibet's six thousand monasteries and convents. But as he stepped out of the grove he realized that never- except for the huge complexes near Lhasa and Shigatse that had been the most conspicuous symbols of traditional Tibet- had he seen such total annihilation. Dozens of large buildings had once extended up the slope and out onto the floor of the plain to the edge of the stream. Nothing was left of them but ragged shards of foundations and, in a few piles, the shattered remains of stone walls. A line of stones extended around the perimeter, along the line of a thick high outer wall that survived only at the nearest corner, where a section nearly ten feet high towered over the ruins.

"Someone's planning to build something?" Winslow asked at his shoulder.

Shan glanced in confusion, then understood. Scattered among the old foundations were rectangles of small, precisely laid rocks. To the casual observer it might not appear to be so much a ruined gompa, but someone's plan for a new gompa.

"I forgot what it was like. I was just a youth last time I was here," Lhandro said in a hushed tone as he joined them. The village headman walked slowly along the line of the outer wall, as if frightened of crossing the line of rocks. "The army came with big cannons, led by Mao's children."

Mao's children. It was a euphemism for the Red Guard, the fanatical waves of Chinese youths unleashed by Mao Tse Tung during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guard had destroyed libraries, universities, hospitals, and any other establishment identified with the reviled four "olds"- old cultures, old customs, old thought, and old habits. Sometimes they had commandeered entire units of the military for their campaigns of political cleansing.

"We all thought there must be rebel soldiers hiding in the mountains. Even the monks came out and stood on top of the walls as though curious to see how far into the mountains the guns would shoot. But the soldiers turned the guns on the gompa. They didn't warn the monks. Just began shelling. Soldiers set up machine guns and shot into the gompa. Like a war, though no one was fighting back. Some of the old buildings had cellars, temple rooms carved into the rock below them. It took two days before the soldiers decided no one could still be alive in the cellars. Then the Chinese conscripted everyone they could find for miles to work. Every man, woman, and child."

"Even the monks?" the American asked.

"The monks?" Lhandro asked, looking at the American with a melancholy expression. "That day, when they started shelling, was the last time I saw a monk for years. When they destroyed the gompas in this region they never gave the monks a chance to flee. Many here went to the lhakang, the main temple, and prayed until the end. Some went to the shrines underground. I was with the first group of workers sent here. We were slaves really, slaves for the army." He stared at the ruins with a hollow expression. "There weren't any whole bodies left, just body parts. But they made us put all the parts, all that was left of the monks, in two of the big holes that were the remains of the underground shrines. Then we had to cover them. There were no machines to use. We had shovels and hoes only. We buried the monks, then for six months we burned all the timbers and hauled away the rocks."

"The rocks?" Winslow asked.