The Skull Mantra (52 page)

There were words Choje would want him to say, but he could not recall them. There were
mudras
he could make in offering, but his fingers seemed paralyzed.

He did not know how long he stood, hypnotized by the creature he had hunted. Finally he jammed the torch between two rocks and moved slowly around the costume, in awe of its power and beauty. On the front, rows of disk-shaped emblems had been sewn. He pulled the disk found by Jilin from his pocket. Just below the waist there was a gap where the disk fit perfectly.

A shudder came from behind him. Yeshe had entered, and was feeling the power of the demon. He dropped to his knees and offered a prayer.

Behind the costume was a flat, tablelike rock which held Tamdin's ritual instruments. The nearest was a large, curved flaying blade with a handle on top. He touched the blade; it was razor-sharp, certainly sharp enough to sever a human head. Special boots over which were mounted gold-plated shin plates stood under the rock. The arms were arrayed on another rock near the wall, one mangled and missing a hand. Merak had reverently placed the broken hand below it.

Shan touched his
gau.
Oddly, it seemed hot. He slipped a trembling hand into the worn leather sleeve of the functioning arm. It was fitted with elaborate levers and pulleys. He pushed a lever near the wrist and a line of tiny skulls along the upper arm turned. He pushed another and claws extended from the fingers. Another set of arms, small false limbs mounted near the shoulder of the real ones, could be manipulated with rings that fit over the fingers of the dancer. It was a wondrous machine, a vast technical feat even in
modern times. Certainly it would take hours to learn to use it. But not weeks, not months. The months of training for the Tamdin dancers, Shan realized, must have been for the ceremonial motions, for the coordination of the machine with the complex rituals for which it had been designed.

Shan pulled Tamdin's arm snugly to his shoulder. It felt surprisingly comfortable, almost natural. The silk lining allowed almost unfettered movement. He extended the claws and found himself staring at them with a feeling of immense power. He worked them in and out. This was Tamdin.
This was the way one became Tamdin.

A feeling of great satisfaction began to swell within him. With this arm, with these claws, with this power, accounts could be settled.

A startled gasp from behind him pushed the spell back. Yeshe leapt forward and began to pull the thing from Shan's arm. Then suddenly Shan, too, felt the darkness and ripped it from his body. The two men stood over it, then in unison looked up. The two black dogs were sitting at the mouth of the cave, staring at Shan with a silent but chilling intensity.

His hand shaking, Shan pointed to three large rosewood boxes in the shadows. They quickly discovered that the boxes had been designed to transport the costume, one fitted with a post for the headdress. There was an envelope fastened inside the chest with yellowed tape. From it Yeshe pulled several pages of paper, some brittle with age.

The top pages were the missing audit report from Saskya gompa, completed fourteen months earlier and recording the discovery of the boxes in the quarters of an old lama who had once been the Tamdin dancer.

“But who took it?” Yeshe asked. “Who stole the costume and brought it here? Director Wen?”

“I think Wen knew, but it is only part of the puzzle. Wen didn't use the costume. Wen didn't take the prosecutor's head to the shrine.” He didn't
believe
enough, is what Shan meant. Whoever had used the costume and severed Jao's head was a zealot.

“You mean you think now a monk did steal it?”

“I don't know,” Shan said, feeling his frustration rise like a great lump in his chest. He had expected the end of his
long search for Tamdin would have brought him the answers he needed. “Maybe only the lama they took it from knows.”

Yeshe turned to the older pages. “A report,” he announced after scanning the first page. “An anthropologist from Guangzhou. History of the costume. Details of the ceremony, as he witnessed it in 1958.” He paused and looked up. “At Saskya gompa. Saskya was the only gompa in the county to perform the dance.” He began reading out loud. “The knowledge of the ceremony was a sacred trust,” he read, “passed from a single monk in one generation to one in the next. The Tamdin dancer in 1958 was considered the best in all of Tibet.”

“But who,” Shan thought out loud, “had the costume last year? The old dancer, if he were still alive. Or his student. He would know who took it. That's the proof we need. That's the link to the murder.”

Yeshe read on silently for a few more paragraphs, then lowered the papers and stared at Shan in confusion. Shan pulled the page from his hand and read it. The dancer in 1958 was Je Rinpoche.

 

A tent had materialized in front of the barracks, a yurt-style structure of yak-hair felt. Four monks were quietly waiting at the gate. Feng pulled the truck to a stop as they watched.

Four knobs approached the gate, carrying a litter. The gate opened, and the monks took the litter, walking in tiny, painstaking steps, wary of their fragile burden. The tent flap opened and they were admitted. An ancient truck, its engine sputtering loudly, approached, brakes screeching, and parked beside the tent. Shan recognized some of the men who climbed out. Monks from Saskya gompa.

Inside, the tent was hazy with the smoke of incense. The old priest Shan had met in the temple at Saskya was bent over Je, washing Je for the ceremony. A second older monk with a brocaded sleeve—he must be the
kenpo
of Saskya, Shan realized—presided at the head of the litter, which was raised on bales of straw. As Shan and Yeshe approached, two younger priests stepped before them. Yeshe pushed forward, as though to protect Shan.

“We must speak with him,” Shan protested.

They did not speak, but pointed to a space beside a group of monks who sat before the pallet, spinning prayer wheels and softly reciting mantras.

“One question,” Yeshe said urgently. “Rinpoche would not begrudge one question.”

The priest glared at Yeshe. “Where did you study?”

“Khartok gompa. I can explain,” Yeshe pleaded. “It is about saving Sungpo. Maybe even saving the 404th.”

The priest looked at Shan. “The Bardo ceremony has been started. The transition has already begun. His soul. Already it is lifting out. It requires all his concentration. He can see a small light now, in the far distance. If he breaks away, if he loses it for an instant he could be sent somewhere that was not intended. He may never find it. He may drift endlessly. This monk from Khartok knows that,” he said with a scornful glance at Yeshe.

They sat and waited. Yeshe began saying his rosary, but as Shan watched he slowly lost count and began twisting his fingers, turning the knuckles white. Butter lamps were brought in and lit.

“You don't understand!” Yeshe suddenly blurted. “He could save Sungpo! We can protect the 404th!”

The
kenpo
turned and stared icily. One of the younger monks angrily stepped toward Yeshe as though to physically restrain him, but was interrupted by a sudden stirring at the door. Low, urgent protests could be heard. The flap was thrown open and Dr. Sung appeared. She glared at Shan and ignored everyone else, then stepped to the pallet. The moment she opened her bag the abbot called out and clamped his hand over her arm.

She did not speak. Their eyes locked. With her free hand she pulled a stethoscope from the bag, slung it around her neck and then, one finger at a time, peeled away the abbot's hand. He did not move but did not stop her examination.

“His heart isn't beating enough to keep a child alive,” she said. “I suspect a blockage.”

“Is it treatable?” Shan asked.

“Perhaps. But not here. Need to run tests at the clinic.”

“Just one question,” Yeshe pressed, looking at his watch. “We need to know. He is the only one who can tell us.”

Sung shrugged and filled a syringe with a clear fluid. “This will wake him,” she said. “At least briefly.” She scrubbed Je's arm.

As she bent with needle the abbot placed his hand over the prepared patch of skin. “You have no idea of what you are doing,” he said.

“He's an old man in need of help,” Yeshe pleaded. “He doesn't have to die here. If he dies now, Sungpo may die, too.”

“His entire life was dedicated to this moment of transition,” the abbot warned. “It cannot be stopped. He has already begun to cross over. He is in a place none of us are allowed to disturb.”

Dr. Sung looked at the priest as if for the first time, then slowly lowered the syringe and looked to Shan, who moved to the platform. “You're the one who asked me,” she said. But her confused tone made it sound more like a question than an accusation.

“If he dies today, Sungpo will die tomorrow,” Yeshe said in a desolate voice over Shan's shoulder. “It will all be for nothing. If we don't have the answer now, we will never have it.”

Shan gestured toward the entrance. The doctor dropped her instruments on the pallet and followed him.

“If it is sickness we should take him back,” Shan said quietly. “If it is just a natural passing—”

“What do you mean, natural?” Dr. Sung asked.

Shan looked outside, past the barbed wire to the long building where Sungpo sat. “I guess I don't know anymore.”

“If I could do tests,” Sung suggested, “maybe we could—”

She was interrupted by a horrified shout. They spun about. The priests were jumping to their feet. The old abbot was flogging Yeshe on the head with a ritual bell.

Yeshe stood over the pallet with tears running down his face. He had injected the syringe into Je.

Everyone was shouting. Someone demanded to know the name of Yeshe's abbot. Someone grabbed his red shirt and ripped it off his back. They were abruptly silenced by the rising of Je's arm.

The arm extended vertically, the hand rotating in a slow eerie motion, as if clutching for something just beyond its grasp.

Shan darted to Je's side and wiped his forehead with the wet rag. The old man's eyes fluttered open and he stared at the felt roof above him. He brought the extended hand down to his face and studied it, moving the fingers with exquisite slowness, like that of a butterfly in the cold. He turned and put his fingers on Shan's face, squinting as if he could not see it well. “Which level is it, then?” he whispered in a dry croaking voice.

“Rinpoche,” Yeshe said urgently. “You were the Tamdin dancer at Saskya. You kept the costume until last year. Who took it from you?” he pleaded. “Did you teach it to them? Who was it? We must learn who took the costume.”

Je gave a hoarse laugh. “I knew people like you in the other place,” he said with a rasping breath.

“Rinpoche. Please. Who was it?”

His eyes flickered and shut. There was a new sound, a rattle in his chest. They watched in agonized silence for several minutes.

Then the eyes opened again, very wide. “In the end,” he said slowly, as though listening for something, each word punctuated by the wheezing rattle, “all it takes is one perfect sound.” He closed his eyes and the rattle stopped.

“He's dead,” Dr. Sung announced.

Yeshe stared at the body in utter desolation. The eyes of the old man at the foot of the pallet welled with tears. A voice in the back shouted out an epithet in Tibetan. The priest who had been conducting the Bardo ceremony began to speak with a chilling ferocity, a dark chant Shan had never heard before. He was glaring at Yeshe as he spoke, his invective coming faster and louder. Yeshe stared at him mutely, his face drained of color.

Shan pulled Yeshe's arm but he seemed unable to move. The attending priest, tears pouring down his cheek, was frantically searching through the hair on the crown of Je's head. If properly prepared, Je's soul would have drifted out a tiny hole thought to be on every human's crown.

“Get him a bone!” someone yelled from the rear.

“His name is Yeshe!” another shouted. “Khartok gompa.”

Shan put his shoulder into Yeshe and pushed him out of the yurt. Something inside Yeshe had collapsed. He seemed suddenly feeble and senseless. Shan took his hand and led him to the cell block. Inside, Sungpo was chanting now, a new mantra, a sad mantra. Somehow he knew.

“It doesn't matter,” Shan said to Yeshe, not because he believed it but because he couldn't bear for Yeshe to become still another victim.

“Above all, it matters.” Yeshe was shaking now. He stepped into an empty cell and gripped the bars to steady himself. There was a fear on his face that Shan had never seen before. “What I did—it destroyed the moment of his transition. I ruined his soul. I ruined my soul,” he said with chilling certainty. “And I don't even know why.”

“You did it to help Sungpo. You did it to find justice for Dilgo. You did it for the truth.” He hadn't told Yeshe about the coral rosary in the Lhasa museum, the duplicate of
Dilgo's, the rosary that no doubt had been planted to implicate Dilgo and ensnare Yeshe in the lies. It didn't matter that Yeshe learned of the evidence, because his heart had learned of the lie long ago.

“Your justice. Your damned justice,” he groaned. “Why did I believe you?” He seemed to be getting smaller, shrinking before Shan's eyes. “Maybe it's true,” Yeshe said, with a realization that seemed to horrify him. “Maybe you did summon Tamdin. Maybe he's been lurking around us all the time. Maybe he used you to create the ruthlessness. He lays waste to everything, lays waste even to souls, in the search for truth.”

“You can go to your gompa. You want to be a priest again, you've shown me. They will help you.”

Yeshe moved to the back wall and slumped against it. When he looked up he appeared so gaunt it seemed the flesh had shriveled on his bones. His color had not returned. He was not Yeshe, but a ghost of Yeshe. “They will spit on me. They will drive me from the temples. I can never go back now. And I can't go to Sichuan. I can't be one of them anymore. I don't want to be a good Chinese,” he said. “You destroyed that for me, too.” He fixed Shan with haunted eyes. “What have you done to me? I took four. I might as well have jumped from a cliff.” Throw him a bone, the monks had said. “For nothing.”