Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

"They're good people," Shan said.

Dremu frowned. "There's something," he said, "someone-" He glanced over his shoulder. "I don't know what to do with her," he said in a low voice, as though he did not want the rongpa to hear. He pulled his horse about and stepped behind the boulder onto a game trail that led toward the top of the low ridge. Shan turned to see Lokesh climbing the slope toward him, then slowly followed Dremu up the trail. He caught up with him just beyond the crest, where Dremu was kneeling beside a short, stunted juniper growing in the lee of a boulder.

Shan stepped past Dremu and discovered a small, frail-looking woman sitting against the rock. Perhaps fifty years of age, she wore a ragged grey wool scarf on her shoulders, over which hung several necklaces of coral and turquoise. Two small, tough hands extended from her heavily patched chuba, one clutching a mala, a rosary, the other a prayer scarf. On the ground beside her, resting on a piece of cloth, was a small copper prayer wheel.

Shan bent over the woman. "Ku su depo yinbay?" he asked in Tibetan. How are you?

"La yin, la yin," she replied with a weak smile. I'm fine.

But she wasn't fine. Her eyes had a sickly yellow cast, and Shan saw now that the hand with the khata, the prayer scarf, was pressed against her side, as if trying to touch the scarf to a pain in her abdomen. The woman gazed past Shan with a determined glint, as if trying to will him away.

"She was sitting here when I rode by," Dremu said. "Didn't even seem to notice me. She just kept staring down the trail," he said, gesturing toward the trail that climbed along the far side of the ridge, coming from the south.

Shan looked down the trail. "As if she's expecting someone." It was a remote, inhospitable landscape. Weeks could pass without a human entering the small, high valley the woman was looking into. He sensed movement behind him, and Lokesh appeared, his face creased with worry, his palm extended to touch the woman's head. He lifted her hand with the beads and placed three fingers, spread apart, inside the wrist. Once Shan had heard Lokesh bemoan how little he knew about healing despite his years with medicine lamas, but Gendun had rejoined that the most important aspect of healing was the moral quality of the healer, and in that aspect Lokesh was an adept.

After listening to the woman's pulses at both wrists Lokesh straightened and placed his fingertips on her cheek. "We must restore you," he said quietly.

The woman stared a long time at Lokesh, studying him, as if perhaps trying to recognize him, then she offered her weak smile again. Her hand with the mala reached out and touched the prayer wheel.

"Come with us," Lokesh said. "We can make you comfortable."

"Are you truly one of the old ones?" she asked, still studying Lokesh intently.

Lokesh rubbed the white stubble of whisker on his chin and looked at Shan as though uncertain how to reply. "We have horses," he said. "You could ride a horse."

The woman shielded her eyes with one hand and stared at Lokesh's face. She offered another strained smile, then settled her gaze on the trail again. It was as if she were expecting a healer, but had decided that Lokesh was not the healer she was waiting for.

"How long have you been here?" Shan asked.

The woman shrugged, without moving her gaze from the slope. "Two days I think." She slowly turned and searched Shan's face a moment as though she were about to ask him what day it was.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course," she said with a slightly impatient tone, then was seized by a fit of coughing. "I got here," she added hoarsely when the coughing had passed.

Shan sighed and exchanged a frustrated glance with Lokesh. "You should have a hat for the sun. What happened to your hat?"

"It blew away," she stated flatly and watched the trail again. Some Tibetans clung steadfastly to the old belief that once a hat blew off it was bad luck to retrieve it.

Shan removed the brown, broad-rimmed hat he had been wearing for the past three months and placed it on the woman's head, tugging it down for a tight fit. The woman slowly lifted her hand and touched the brim, as though about to pull it off.

"A monk gave me that hat," Shan said, "near the sacred mountain, Kailas. He said I looked cold. I'm not cold anymore."

The woman's yellow eyes blinked at him, as if to express gratitude, and the hand dropped into her lap.

Shan left her with Lokesh, passing Dremu, who still hung back watching nervously, and retrieved a bag of tsampa and a water bottle from the caravan. When he returned no one seemed to have moved, except Lokesh was holding his own beads now, reciting a mantra.

"Who is coming here?" Shan asked as he stuffed the food and water between the woman and the rock. "Who do you expect?"

"The one who understands it all," she said in a new, serene voice. Her gaze still did not leave the trail.

Shan touched Lokesh on the shoulder and the old man reluctantly rose, fumbled in his pocket, then placed the fossil rock in the woman's lap. "It's a powerful tonde," he said, "from Lamtso."

But she did not seem to hear, did not acknowledge the gesture, or shift her gaze from the trail as they stepped back over the crest of the ridge.

"Right," Dremu said. "The one who knows it all. Uncle Yama, that's who she expects, he's the one who knows." Dremu meant the Lord of Death, Yamantaka. "Waste of food and water," he groused. "Just her way of ending things. Hell, with the leopards and wolves in these hills, she won't even need to be taken to the body cutters." He mounted his horse and trotted away to the north, still keeping the caravan at a distance.

The image of the feeble woman alone on the side of the mountain haunted Shan most of the day as they wound their way toward the pass over the second of the four ranges of mountains that separated them from Yapchi. The woman had been waiting for someone coming from the south, coming along the difficult, unlikely trail that followed the crest of the ridges. But the ones most likely to come from the south were not healers.

As they stopped for lunch, Lhandro unfolded his tattered map on a flat stone and with his finger traced the course they would take for the seventy miles remaining to Yapchi Valley. It was not the most direct route, but a remote path that kept them far from the north-south highway and even away from the few low valleys at the edge of the changtang that held farming settlements. It would take two or three days longer than the traditional route of the salt caravans, Lhandro explained, but it would almost guarantee they would not be observed. Shan had seen Nyma speaking with Lhandro on several occasions, pointing south, scanning the horizon. As Lhandro folded his map Shan saw a solitary figure on a ledge, also looking south. Lokesh joked sometimes that Tenzin must be worried about leaving behind all the yak droppings they were passing in their travels. But Shan saw the worry etched on the mute Tibetan's face, and remembered the anguish he had evidenced over Drakte's death.

Tenzin turned at Shan's approach and began to step off the ledge, but Shan stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Did Drakte help you escape from your prison?" Shan asked. Tenzin tried to pull away with a resentful glance but Shan would not let him go, fixing him with a level stare until the emotion left the Tibetan's face. Tenzin nodded soberly, then pulled from Shan's grip.

After another hour on the trail they rounded a bend to find Dremu squarely in the path, sitting in his saddle with his left leg on his horse's neck, lazily cutting an apple with the elaborate knife the purba runner Somo had given to him.

Shan hurried to the front of the column.

"Pass is blocked!" the Golok called out loudly, as if he preferred that they keep their distance. "Snow avalanche."

"Not likely," Lhandro called back, just as loudly. "It was clear when we came through. Supplies are hidden there. Food for the sheep. There is no grass that high in the mountains."

"Spring melt shifted the slopes. That pass is under twenty feet of snow now," Dremu declared, and pointed toward the pass, still miles away. Its outline was visible, but its details obscured under the shadows of low clouds. But when Shan handed Lhandro his field glasses the rongpa studied not the pass but the alternative trail that could be seen leading toward the east, circumventing the tallest of the peaks. He suspected the Golok's motives, Shan realized, and was studying the trail for signs of unwelcome strangers. After a long moment the village headman gazed at the Golok with a sour frown, then motioned for the caravan to continue north.

Dremu pulled his horse to the side of the trail, watching with a sullen expression as the column of animals passed him, then wheeled his horse and galloped to the top of a small hill that overlooked the junction with the eastern trail, where he dismounted and made a conspicuous show of throwing his blanket onto the grass, languidly stretching upon it.

An hour later the sky cleared over the mountains and Lhandro examined the range once more with Shan's glasses. He stared hard, constantly shifting the focus, then handed the glasses to Shan, pointing between two peaks. The pass was gone, replaced by a large wall of brilliant white, at the top of which were great ragged blocks of snow that indicated an avalanche.

"The bastard," Lhandro growled, as if Dremu had caused the avalanche. He called for the caravan to reverse its course.

Shan studied the pass and the steep forbidding mountains that flanked it. "You came through there on the way to the lake?"

"Supplies were hidden there."

Shan examined Lhandro's face. "Are you saying someone else put supplies there?"

The rongpa did not reply.

"Purbas," Shan ventured.

"He liked climbing the high lands," Lhandro said after a moment. "He said he had a friend he would bring back and they would run up the mountain together."

"Drakte? Drakte was there?"

"He said everything was secret, that it was dangerous to speak about him or anything he did." Lhandro looked back into Shan's eyes. "But I guess now the danger for him is over. He was at Yapchi over two months ago. He said lamas were preparing for the return of the eye, but he had to find a safe way to get it north, a way no one would suspect. When we agreed on the salt caravan Nyma went away with him."

Drakte had been here, or near here. Shan began surveying the landscape. It was as though Shan was retracing the last days of Drakte's life, in reverse. "Did he travel with you and the sheep?"

"No. But he came to our village three times. Once, just after it was recovered in Lhasa, after Nyma told about the oracle's words. Then that time two months ago, and again last month, when he asked about details of the salt caravan, and he gave me his map so we would know the places where he left supplies, so we could avoid going near any settlements. He said when you came you would be on horses. He said we could keep the horses." Horses were prized possessions, beyond the reach of many herders and farmers.

"At the lake the herder spoke about the purba general the knobs are hunting. The Tiger. Did he help? Is he involved with the stone?" It might explain much. Perhaps the army and knobs were not after them at all. The scent of such a senior resistance leader would make the soldiers ravenous.

"I don't know. Maybe. One night Drakte met someone in the rocks above our village. I followed, to help keep guard. Drakte would not let me close. But I could hear a voice like I have never known. Deep like a growl but not exactly. Like someone roaring in a whisper. Drakte wouldn't say who it was, but later I found out that this Tiger had something broken in his voice box once, by a knob baton."

Dremu was sitting on his blanket as they approached the eastern trail. He did not greet them, did not pause to gloat, but simply tied his blanket to his saddle and trotted toward the east, ahead of the caravan.

It was midafternoon when a cluster of houses, animal sheds, and ragged fields came into view, a small rongpa village at the head of the narrow gravel road that the caravan would need to follow for several miles to reach the next pass to the north. Both the Tibetans and the animals seemed to quicken their pace as they approached the village, as if in anticipation of a warm meal and perhaps shelter from the steady, chill wind that had begun to blow.

But the village was abandoned. Tables in front of two houses held bowls of cold tea and tsampa. A blanket was spread on the dirt track in front of another, littered with the remnants of walnut shells. A small fire smoldered by the door of another of the decrepit buildings, its sheep dung fuel left to smolder when someone had dropped the crude leather bellows at its side. A large mastiff tied to a post barked loudly, not at the strangers arriving in the village but toward the eastbound road.

Lhandro halted the caravan, his eyes filled with alarm, then quickly ordered them back up the trail, behind the cover of the hillock they had just crossed, until he and Shan explored the empty village. At the first house, Lhandro stopped and called out a greeting, then stepped into its open door when no one answered. He moved into its shadows and reappeared a moment later wearing a grim expression, staring at a frame of sticks, ten inches square, that hung from the door-frame. Yarns of many colors had been stretched across the sticks, and it twisted in the wind. It was a spirit catcher, meant to trap evil spirits that wandered too near the house.

"No one," Lhandro said, as he scanned the remaining houses, then the surrounding hills. "Not even that damned Dremu," he added, as if now he blamed the Golok for emptying the village. "Bandits could do this, take the people until they ransom themselves."

The sudden sound of footsteps from behind caused Lhandro to spin about, crouching as if to meet an attack. Lokesh emerged from between two houses, followed a moment later by Nyma. Lokesh walked past them silently, his head cocked in curiosity.

"Not bandits! Don't you recognize it?" the young nun cried. "It's what the knobs do sometimes," she added in a tormented tone. "If they suspect someone of subversive activity, they just round up all his neighbors and question them, keep them locked up while their animals are starving and crops are dying. Eventually someone remembers something to implicate the suspect, true or otherwise."

The four of them walked uneasily down the track that led out of the village, moving in shadows when they could, following the rough road around a huge outcropping where they discovered a red utility vehicle parked, empty, at the side of the road. It was the kind of truck few Tibetans could afford, the kind primarily used in government service. As they stared uncertainly at the vehicle a scream echoed over the rocks. Shan hesitated, not certain where the sound had come from, then saw Lokesh jogging toward a narrow, two-foot-wide gap in the huge rock ledge that lined the road. Shan quickly followed as another loud cry split the still air, Nyma and Lhandro close behind.

The short passage opened into a natural, grassy bowl where slopes intersected at the base of the ledge. They had found the inhabitants of the village, and Shan realized the cries had not been from fear or pain, but excitement. Nearly fifty people sat on the slope or stood along the edge of the small flat clearing at the bottom of the bowl. Someone shrieked in surprise, another laughed. Not at Shan or his companions, for no one had seemed to notice their arrival. The population of the village was watching a man mounted on a huge, angry yak, one hand in the air, the other clutching a leather strap that had been fastened around the belly of the creature. The animal was bucking and twisting and, as Shan watched, it reared its broad head with a loud bellow that caused several children to run toward the back of the crowd. The animal was magnificent, probably not far removed in its breeding from the drong, the massive wild yaks that still roamed the Tibetan wilderness.

But Shan's eyes did not linger on the powerful creature, for as surprised as he was to see the rampaging yak, he was even more startled to see its rider. The man was long-boned and lean, with straw-colored hair that hung over his ears. The rider seemed to be conversing with the yak, for each time the animal bellowed the man yelled out strange syllables. "Ya! Ya!!!!" the man called for no apparent reason, then "Yi ha!" and "Yo!"

"Listen to him," Lhandro said at his side. "The man must be in great pain. Who would make a goserpa do such a thing?" he asked in alarm, as if it were a form of torture. "Goserpa." Nyma repeated the word twice, gaping at the man. It meant yellow head, one of the terms Tibetans used for Westerners. To most of those in the region, Shan knew, seeing a Westerner would be as rare as seeing one of the nearly extinct wild yaks.

Suddenly the Westerner was thrown clear of the furious animal, his legs flying in the air in front of him, as if he were sitting. But somehow his hand still clutched the strap, and when he dropped he found his seat on the yak again. Three large men stood anxiously at the front of the crowd with ropes, as if trying to find a way to capture the yak. A small pale Tibetan in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie stood by a large boulder at the far side of the clearing, every few seconds scrambling behind the rock then slowly reappearing, staring at the rider with a terrified expression, timidly raising his hand every few seconds as though to get the foreigner's attention.

With a sudden mighty heave the yak arched his back and the rider was off, shooting in a long arc through the air, arms and legs still working frantically as if the Westerner expected to return to the animal. But as the crowd watched in abrupt silence he soared across the little bowl and slammed into the ground with a loud groan. He lay flat on his back, without sign of life, as the three men with the ropes frantically closed around the yak. The little man in the suit produced a pair of spectacles from his pocket and slowly stepped forward to retrieve a black cap from the ground. Shan took a hesitant step toward the limp Westerner as Lokesh rushed past him.

The Westerner began convulsing. His hands clutched his belly and his chest began heaving. The little Tibetan in the suit shouted angrily at the three men with ropes, not in Tibetan but in Chinese. "Public Security will know about this!" he screeched, suddenly assuming an important air, shaking the black hat toward them. "You fools! People from Lhasa will have to come! You'll see what happens when a foreigner-" the man stopped as he stared at the blond man on the ground. Lokesh, too, stopped, the worry on his face evaporating. The Westerner was laughing.

"Yeee– esss! Oh mama, yes!" the man shouted in English, the first words from him Shan understood, and his hands shot up in the air as if in celebration. He sat up, laughing so hard one hand returned to his belly.

The biggest of the Tibetans with the ropes, a burly man with three front teeth missing, hesitantly approached and pulled the Westerner to his feet. Immediately the Westerner embraced the Tibetan, then studied the man's companions, who had the yak secured with two ropes around its thick neck. The tall, lean man pushed back his long hair, and grinned at the crowd.

The villagers were laughing now, some pointing with derision at the man in the suit, who stood with a surly expression, arms akimbo, staring at the Westerner as though deeply disappointed the man had not died. The blond man's gaze settled on Shan a moment, his head cocked in curiosity, then he pushed another strand of his hair from his eyes and looked toward the man in the suit, the Tibetan who had shouted in Chinese at his countrymen. The Westerner paused for a moment, frowning, as if about to speak to the nervous little man, then his eyes drifted toward the yak and the joy returned to his face. Strangely, the animal returned the man's gaze, its wide brown eyes seeming full not only of wild energy but also inquiry. The Westerner stepped in front of the animal and suddenly, before the yak could react, reached out, grabbed its head, and kissed the animal on its wet nose. The villagers broke into a cheer. The Tibetan in the suit lowered his head and covered his face with one hand.

"How much would it take, to buy this king of beasts?" the Westerner asked the three men loudly, in perfectly intonated Tibetan.

The men stared at him in confusion but after a moment quickly huddled to confer. "A thousand RMB," the tall one announced solemnly. The animal was clearly a prized possession. The price, though not much more than a hundred American dollars, was probably more than many of the villagers earned in a year.

To the obvious astonishment of the three men the stranger produced a wallet and counted out the asking price. When he had finished he studied the assembled villagers and approached a young woman. In a loud voice that carried through the hushed crowd he offered to buy one of the two red ribbons that bound her braids. She blushed, then nodded excitedly. He filled her palm with coins, accepting the ribbon with a small bow, then tied the ribbon tightly to a lock of the yak's mane. With the ease of one accustomed to working with animals he slipped the ropes off the yak's neck, then slapped its flank with one of the rope ends. The animal burst away, shooting through the shocked crowd and galloping up the slope like a young stallion. It did not stop until it reached the top of the first ridge where it turned and gazed defiantly over the hushed villagers, who suddenly burst into another wild cheer. The Westerner had not only given the magnificent beast its freedom, the ribbon meant that he had marked the animal as one ransomed, a mark of protection to honor the deities. Typically ransoming was for beasts marked for slaughter and such a ribbon would free them from the butcher, assuring them a long life. The ribbon on the yak meant it was freed from labor and could not be used by men again without offending the gods.

Half the villagers gathered excitedly around the three men who stood staring at the vast bounty they had suddenly received. Many of the others ran to the Westerner, some just reaching to touch him, some thanking him for his act of homage, others praising his riding of the yak. Still others held back, working their beads as they watched the foreigner with round, awed eyes.

After a few moments the stranger took a tentative step toward Shan.

"If you are hurt," Shan ventured, "we could look to your injuries."

The man reacted with an amused smile. He studied Shan, and Lokesh, with the same cocked head and curiosity as before, then turned to gaze back at the yak, which still surveyed them from above. "With an animal like that, I could get rich back in Oklahoma," he observed, in his perfect Tibetan, his blue eyes sparkling.

"I don't understand what you were doing," Shan said.

The man smiled again and surveyed Nyma, Lokesh, and Lhandro, nodding at each one as they returned his gaze with looks of bewilderment. "It's that impermanence thing," the stranger declared, extending his right hand to each of them. "Shannslow," he repeated, and when he took each of their hands he covered it with his left hand, not shaking it but squeezing it like a tiny embrace as he heard and repeated each of their names.

"Why would you ride that animal?" Shan tried again.

Winslow ran his hand through his hair. "I told you," he said, and spoke toward Lokesh. "It's just like your chod ritual," he said matter of factly, "except that cowboys do it by riding bulls."

Shan stared at the man in astonishment. Chod was one of the rituals Gendun had often discussed with him. It was usually conducted only late in a monk's training; the monk sat for hours alone with the bones at a sky burial site, often overnight, to experience and contemplate the frailty of human existence. It was a brutal ordeal for most, from which some returned babbling incoherently.

"Cowboys?" Nyma asked slowly. Winslow had used the American word, for which there was no Tibetan equivalent. "What is cowboys?"

"Mostly you ride horses around mountains, looking for cows and singing," Winslow said with another grin.

Nyma nodded, slowly at first, then quite vigorously, as if now she perfectly understood about cowboys. Shan realized that somehow the American had made it sound like a pilgrimage.

A young girl appeared between Lokesh and Lhandro, holding out a blue ribbon toward the American. Winslow squatted by her, a hand on her shoulder. "The yak just needed the one," he said in a gentle tone. He unfastened the button that fastened his shirt pocket and pulled out a photograph, printed on heavy stock, half the size of a postcard. He extended the photo in both hands, like a gift, and the girl accepted it with wide eyes. She cried out and turned, unable to contain her sudden joy. Those near her crowded close and called out in turn. They seemed just as excited as when the American had released the yak.

The photograph, Shan saw, was of the Dalai Lama. In years past Tibetans had suffered imprisonment for mere possession of such a photograph. The pictures were still officially banned and routinely seized by the authorities. In the campaigns of repressions that periodically surged through the land they were used as evidence of political unreliability. But Tibetans treasured such photos, and Shan had seen many displayed on the portable altars used in dropka tents.

He studied the strange American as the man lifted the girl, who called excitedly for her mother now. Shan had encountered such foreigners before, men and women who roamed Tibet looking for adventure, or enlightenment. Lokesh called them wanderers, which made them all sound lost. Shan always kept his distance from them, for they seldom had the proper travel papers and always attracted the attention of Public Security or army patrols. The real danger wasn't for the foreigner, who, if picked up would simply be deported. Those found with such foreigners would be detained and questioned, because talking with foreigners evidenced dangerous propensities.

The girl pointed toward the gap in the boulders that led to the road, as if she had decided that was where her mother had gone, and wiggled out of Winslow's arms. The American smiled as he watched her disappear. "You're not from the village," he said to Lhandro in a conversational tone, then shifted his grin toward the distant yak, which was standing at the crest of the ridge. As he did so Shan noticed movement far up the slope opposite the animal. A man on a grey horse.

"We came with a caravan," Lhandro replied.

The horseman looked like Dremu, Shan realized, and the Golok seemed to be waving at them.

The American's head snapped back toward the rongpa. "From the north? West? Not on the road?" He glanced at Shan. "All of you?" When Lhandro nodded, Winslow quickly produced a map from his hip pocket. "Show me," he said with a new, urgent tone. "Tell me who you saw, where exactly you were. I need to know if-"

A frightened cry split the air. The little girl shot back out of the gap, frantically crying for her mother. In her hand was a jagged piece of paper that showed a man's smiling mouth and chin. Someone had ripped away the top half of her treasured photograph. Shan looked back up the slope at Dremu, who had stopped and dismounted. The Golok wasn't waving at them, Shan realized with a chill, he was frantically trying to call them away, to warn them.

But in the next instant Nyma darted into the gap in the rocks, Lhandro at her heels. Lokesh pulled on Shan's sleeve as though to restrain him, to keep him from following. "Go," the old Tibetan urged, pushing Shan toward Dremu. "Get to the Golok."

People were scattering, running up the slope in every direction. When he looked back Lokesh was gone. Without a second thought Shan ran through the gap toward the road.

He stepped into the brilliant sunlight to find a body lying on the gravel. It was Lhandro, moaning, holding his scalp. Blood oozed between his fingers. Nyma knelt over him. Lokesh stood nearby, his arms pinioned behind him by two large Chinese in the green uniforms of the People's Liberation Army. A dozen more soldiers stood deployed in a V-shape facing the opening in the rock to trap anyone emerging from the far side. Two grey troop trucks were parked on the road behind them, each with a fierce looking snow leopard painted on the front door. Between the heavy vehicles, sitting on a folding metal chair, was an officer watching with satisfaction as his trap filled. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. As Shan watched the man began writing on a clipboard balanced on one knee, with the casual, amused air of a scorekeeper at an athletic event.

Someone grabbed his hand roughly and Shan suddenly realized he had been bound to Lokesh, his left wrist fastened to Lokesh's right wrist, not by manacles but by a thin piece of wire, its ends twisted tightly together so that any movement was painful.

They were prisoners again.