Bone Mountain (72 page)

“But surely just a little water can make no difference,” Ma said.

Shan stared up at the snow-covered peak in the distance. “No, just a delay. But perhaps over time it may not be a little. That depends on the mountain,” he said, and realized his words sounded like he was speaking of a deity.

Jenkins certainly did not dismiss the threat. He could see the American in the binoculars, standing on the back of a truck near the village ruins now, shouting out orders as the bulldozers crawled toward the end of the valley. The venture manager was going to build a dam, to divert the water from his derrick. But a small river was already pouring down the slope near his truck, spreading across the barley fields in a dozen small rivulets.

When Shan turned back Nyma was tending to Professor Ma’s torn hand as his assistant poured water over it. Lepka kept staring at the water covering the fields of barley. “Sometimes it’s hard to know what deities want,” he heard the old man say.

Suddenly a hand covered with streaks of red was raised in his face and he looked into Somo’s gleaming eyes. “I saw Winslow,” she said. “He said our Drakte can move on now. He said you did it.”

Winslow. “Where is he?” Shan asked.

“On the slope, jogging back up.” Somo pointed to the saddle of land. Gyalo and Jokar were halfway up it now, and as he watched the unmistakable form of the American joined them. Winslow was leaving, fleeing at last.

“I wanted to thank him,” Shan said. “For putting that ledger in Padme’s satchel.” He had last seen the account book in Larkin’s cave, but he remembered how the American had come with his backpack, and how Winslow had darted into the crowd when Padme had left his satchel on the ground. He watched Winslow moving up the slope, then saw more figures scattering over the saddle of land. The Tibetans who had been with Larkin.

“Where wall they go?” he asked Somo.

“To that meeting place,” she said. “Where the people wait for Jokar.”

Shan stared with new despair at the retreating figures. She meant the chair of Siddhi, the rebellious monk, where, after what had happened in the valley, the Tibetans would be more inclined than ever to resist the government. “Jokar would never abide violence,” he said with a sinking heart and turned. But Somo had vanished.

He took a step toward the saddle of land and another, filled with dread again. Nothing had really changed. The authorities would not only capture Jokar, they would take many Tibetans with him. He took a deep breath, and began jogging. Then the drumming began.

Lhandro was at Shan’s side as he began running toward the slope opposite the saddle, toward the sound, toward what Shan hoped was the deity stone. But the rongpa slowed as they reached a small ledge that overlooked the valley floor, a hundred feet up the slope. The water had reached the derrick, forming a small muddy pond around it. The workers had stopped and were staring at the water. One man jumped off and ran toward the source of the water, splashing in the rivulets that coursed through the fields, then stopped, sank to the earth, arms upraised, kneeling in the mud, his hands clenched in fists.

Lhandro hesitated, looking with anguish at his precious valley, which was in chaos. Shan put a hand on his shoulder. “The water will stop,” he assured the rongpa, “it is letting Jokar and the others have one more chance, that’s all,” he said, as though a deity had planned it all along. Confused by his own words, he turned and continued running as Lhandro headed toward the ruins of his village. The sound of the double beat, the heart drumming, seemed close now, almost directly above the center of the valley, not far from where Shan had begun chasing the runaway khata on his first day there. But he ran at an angle, parallel to the valley floor, as if he were another of the workers dashing toward the floodwaters. After a few hundred yards he edged close to the wooded tier on the slope, then darted into the shadows of the trees and began quartering back and up the slope.

He climbed above the source of the sound and worked his way down. It was muted now, because the drummer had again chosen a position in front of large flat rocks facing the valley, so muted Shan began hearing voices. They were high pitched, and seemed to be laughing. Suddenly he slipped on loose scree, and tumbled headlong, stumbling, righting himself as he hurtled between low shrubs. He found himself on his knees before two playful children, a boy and a girl of nearly the same age, the girl with crude bandages on her hands. They seemed familiar somehow, and at first he thought he had seen them at Yapchi Village. But then they both gasped at him, clearly recognizing Shan, and looked toward a figure ten feet away, squatting in the rocks, staring down at the valley. The boy darted to the man, who turned and stared at Shan with wide, surprised eyes, then his gaze shifted to a flat rock near where the children had been playing. On the rock sat the eye of Yapchi.

The man stood. It was Gang, the Chinese caretaker of Rapjung. He looked ragged, and exhausted, his hand also still bandaged from his burns. He offered no challenge, and said nothing as Shan stepped past him to look at the rocks below.

A man sat with the big drum, pounding it with two sticks with leather pads at the end, watching the valley with a wild gleam in his eyes. Shan slid down the side of the rock and had sat by the drum before the man noticed him. The pounding faltered, then stopped.

“It’s Shan,” Dremu said, as if someone else was there. The Golok’s mouth hung open and he looked at the rocks above him.

“You found them,” Shan observed. “The drum and the eye.”

Dremu nodded soberly. “This is what we needed, when I was in the mountains with my father all those years ago.”

“I think you lied when you said you were taken by the venture work gang,” Shan said. “Those two Goloks tried to steal from us.”

Dremu seemed to shrink. He hunched his shoulders forward and wrapped both arms around the drum as if he were going to fall. “That was before,” he muttered.

“Before what?”

The Golok just hugged the drum, looking at Shan’s feet. “They’re not my friends,” he said after a long silence. “They are wild, like leopards. At first I thought if we worked together we could make enough money for the next winter. It was okay when we just stole from the oil company. But when they met me here and said they were going to steal from the Yapchi farmers I tried to stop them. They beat me and took everything I had, even my horse.”

Shan reached into his pocket and pulled out the leather pouch, the lapis bracelet, and the knife with the spoon, and placed them one by one on the rock in front of Dremu. The Golok stared at them, then with a reverent expression picked up the pouch. “I had nothing left but the rags on my back. That was before…”

Before what? Shan almost asked again, but somehow he knew the answer. Dremu meant before the deity began speaking to him through the drum.

There was movement around the edge of the high rocks, and Gang approached them, supported by his son. In Gang’s bandaged hand, extended toward Shan, was the chenyi stone.

“This man,” Dremu said, “was almost dead. First I found his family looking for him, crying, thinking they had lost him forever, thinking he had gone to kill you. Then we found him, beating the drum, looking crazy, not able to talk. By then the drum was drumming him.” Dremu looked at Shan uncertainly. “I couldn’t … I didn’t…”

“You did well,” Shan offered. “You kept the deity.”

Gang pushed his son away and stumbled toward Shan. He held out the stone in both hands, appealing to Shan with his exhausted, glazed eyes, and was wracked by a sob. He began crying, convulsing with tears, able to control himself only enough to step forward and drop the chenyi stone into Shan’s hands.

Shan gazed at the stone, then surveyed the chaos in the valley below. He felt empty, drained, uncertain where to go, what more he could do. After a long time he raised Gang’s hand in his own and returned the stone to him. Then Shan picked up the two drumsticks, exchanged a solemn look with Dremu, and began pounding the deity drum.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

Dremu stared in disbelief, twisting his head from side to side as if to better see Shan. A smile gradually broke across his weary face and he showed Shan how to make the quick one-two beat, the heart sound. They watched, the drum pounding, the children laughing, as more derrick workers jumped off, splashing, into the huge puddle of water that was growing around their machine. Shan watched his hands pounding the drumskin without conscious effort, and found himself drifting to a place he did not recognize, watching his hands as though they belonged to someone else. He had heard of monks in old Tibet using such sounds, not just in ritual but in meditation exercises. The throbbing of the drum became the throbbing of his own heart and the echo that came back to him seemed to come not from across the valley but from somewhere else, a faraway place where something huge was stirring to the sound, rolling over as though to awaken, the way a mountain sometimes rolls over.

It was as if one of Lokesh’s karma storms was roiling the valley, as if everything that could happen was happening, changing too fast to be understood, too sudden for the pain of it all to be fully sensed. He could not stop beating the drum. The drum was beating him.

He lost track of time, but eventually became aware of Gang standing close to him, staring with his head cocked, his eyes not bitter or angry, only empty and pleading. Shan handed him the sticks and stepped back. An hour or more had gone by. The speaking platform below was empty, and the dignitaries were gathered at the tables, having their banquet as though unaware of the water that still flooded their derrick or, more likely, unconcerned, because they knew the water would soon recede and the derrick would resume drilling.

The derrick itself was empty, and the muddy pond at its base was perhaps three hundred feet across. But the waters seemed to have stopped flowing. A new pond had appeared at the end of the valley, where Jenkins had built a rough levee by bulldozing the surface soil of the barley fields into a long, low bank.

Shan studied Gang, who seemed to have drifted to the same place the drum had taken each of them before. His eyes lost their focus. His hands gripped the drumsticks despite his still-healing burns, gripped so tightly his knuckles were white, as if he wasn’t holding sticks but a lifeline. The embittered Han had attacked Shan, he knew now, had attacked him and taken the eye.

But why? Because he thought Shan had not earned the right to return the eye? Because he simply could not believe there could be another Han who was virtuous? More likely, because he had spent most of his life trying to redeem himself, to prove himself to the Tibetans, then seen the most visible proof, his reconstructed shrines, go up in flames.

Shan wandered to the valley floor, mingled with the workers who still seemed to be running everywhere with shovels and hoes. A truck sped by carrying logs from the camp stockpile. Soldiers in mud-caked uniforms jogged toward the base camp and were being herded into two troop trucks that waited below the derrick. Shan watched as the first of the trucks sped away, racing through the camp and out of the valley.

“Too late to beat the knobs,” Shan heard someone say with an air of amusement. A broad-shouldered Tibetan in grease-stained coveralls stood ten feet away, speaking to no one in particular.

Shan ventured closer to the man. “Those knobs already left?” he asked.

“Their prize isn’t the oil well,” the man observed in a bitter voice. “For them a hundred resisters will beat an oil well every time.”

Shan closed his eyes and fought down a wave of fear. There was a meadow somewhere; a small, high meadow where Tibetans waited for Jokar, where they expected to find new strength in resisting Beijing—a leader who could be respected like no other, who would become a new symbol, a modern-day Siddhi. Somo and many of the purbas must be going there now, waiting for Gyalo to bring Jokar. Some of the purbas had guns.

When he reached the trees on the far side of the valley, Shan ran. He did not know where the meadow was. All he could do was go up, east toward the highest spines of the huge mountain, praying he would see a sign or meet Tibetans on the way who might lead him to Jokar. He jogged until his side raged with pain then stumbled into a stream.

As he knelt in the water, he looked about, gasping. The distant drumming from Yapchi began to seem hollow, and he began to hear it as a sound of frustration, not hope. No deity had come, no compassion had been found. And now, he thought as he splashed the frigid water on his face, when the soldiers or knobs found Jokar at a secret rally against Beijing, they would show no mercy.

“Lokesh!” he heard someone shout, again and again, until he realized it was himself. No matter how urgently he wanted to find Jokar, another part of him was still desperately thinking of Lokesh, who would soon begin hobbling toward Beijing, where he would be killed or imprisoned.

He launched himself out of the water, following one goat path, then another, always seeking the paths that would take him still higher. An hour passed, then another, and he began to recognize trails. He had circled far below Larkin’s birthing water cave and was climbing again, near where Chemi had brought them over the mountain on their first day in Qinghai. Rounding an outcropping, he froze. A huge black drong stood in a clearing a hundred feet away, staring warily at him. But then he took a step forward and saw the red ribbons in its neck hair, some of which Shan and Anya had tied.

“Jampa,” he called softly, and stepped to the animal’s side. Why was the yak here, and alone?

Then with a chill he saw craters in front of the yak. Jampa’s large black eyes seemed to be studying the craters, and for a terrible moment Shan thought Gyalo and Jokar had been attacked. But then he recognized the terrain. There were three craters, evenly spaced, in a straight line, and directly above them towered the snow-capped pinnacle of Yapchi Mountain. It was where they had first met Zhu, where the seismic charges had killed a flock of birds.

Shan stroked the yak’s neck and surveyed the landscape. The high meadow where the Tibetans waited for Jokar must be near. The yak must have delivered Jokar and wandered away. But there was no sign of anyone, no sound of equipment, no shouting from soldiers, no cracking of rifles. Nothing but the wind. And two geese flying high over the ridge, toward the south, over the massive backbone of the mountain, toward the sacred salt lake. He watched the geese until they were out of sight, then walked along the edge of the clearing. A tapering rock column, perhaps twenty feet high, rose from the northern edge, and on its base was a shadow of the mani mantra, the vaguest remains of words painted there many decades before. Like a signpost in a way, or a greeting. As he touched the ancient script he thought of the Rapjung lamas. They had come across the mountain to Yapchi for herbs, to debate with the Chinese monks. Yapchi Valley, as isolated as it seemed from the south, was even more cut off from the north, and so had become part of Rapjung’s flock, a garden of herbs in a way for the lamas. And the Tibetans on this side of the mountain had inscribed a greeting to the lamas who came down to them. All that had ended on a terrible day a century earlier.