Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

They called it taking four. The tall, gaunt monk hovered at the lip of the five-hundred-foot cliff, nothing restraining him but the raw Himalayan wind. Shan Tao Yun squinted at the figure to see better. His heart clenched. It was Trinle who was going to jump- Trinle, his friend, who just that morning had whispered a blessing on Shan's feet so they would not trample insects.

Shan dropped his wheelbarrow and ran.

As Trinle leaned outward, the updraft pushed back, ripping away his khata, the makeshift prayer scarf he secretly wore around his neck. Shan weaved around men swinging sledgehammers and pickaxes, then stumbled in the gravel. Behind him a whistle blew, followed by an angry shout. The wind played with the dirty scrap of white silk, dangling it above Trinle's reach, then slowly twisting it skyward. As it rose, the prisoners watched the khata, not in surprise but in reverence. Every action had a meaning, they knew, and the subtle, unexpected acts of nature often had the most meaning.

The guards shouted again. But not a man returned to his work. It was a moment of abject beauty, the white cloth dancing in the cobalt sky, two hundred haggard faces looking upward in hope of revelation, ignoring the punishment that would surely come for even a minute's lost time. It was the kind of moment Shan had learned to expect in Tibet.

But Trinle, hanging at the edge, looked downward again with a calm, expectant gaze. Shan had seen others take four, all with the same anticipation on their faces. It always happened like this, abruptly, as if they were suddenly compelled by a voice no one else could hear. Suicide was a grave sin, certain to bring reincarnation as a lower life form. But opting for life on four legs could be a tempting alternative to life on two in a Chinese hard labor brigade.

Shan scrambled forward and grabbed Trinle's arm just as he bent over the rim. Instantly Shan realized he had mistaken Trinle's actions. The monk was studying something. Six feet below, on a ledge barely wide enough to accommodate a swallow's nest, lay a glittering gold object. A cigarette lighter.

A murmur of excitement pulsed through the prisoners. The khata had scudded back over the ridge and was plummeting to the slope fifty feet in front of the road crew.

The guards were among them now, cursing, reaching for their batons. As Trinle moved back from the edge, now watching the prayer cloth, Shan turned back to his upset wheelbarrow. Sergeant Feng, slow and grizzled but ever alert, stood beside the spilled rocks, writing in his tally book. Building roads was in the service of socialism. Abandoning one's work was one more sin against the people.

But as he plodded back to accept Feng's wrath, a cry rang out from the slope above. Two prisoners had gone for the khata. They had reached the pile of rocks where it had landed but were on their knees now, backing away, chanting feverishly. Their mantra hit the prisoners below like a gust of wind. Each man dropped to his knees the instant he heard it, taking up the chant in succession until the entire brigade, all the way to the trucks at the bridge below, was chanting. Only Shan and four others, the sole Han Chinese prisoners in the brigade, remained standing.

Feng roared in anger and shot forward, blowing his whistle. At first Shan was confused by the chant, for there had been no suicide. But the words were unmistakable. It was the invocation of Bardo, the opening recitation for the ceremonies of death.

A soldier wearing four pockets on his jacket, the most common insignia of rank in the People's Liberation Army, trotted uphill. Lieutenant Chang, the officer of the guard, spoke into Feng's ear, and the sergeant shouted for the Han prisoners to clear the stack of rocks discovered by the Tibetans. Shan stumbled forward to where the khata lay and knelt beside Jilin, the slow, powerful Manchurian known only by the name of his province. As Shan stuffed the scarf up his sleeve, Jilin's surly face took on an air of anticipation. With a surge of new energy he shoved aside the rocks.

It was not unusual for the lead work team, assigned to clear the largest boulders and loose surface rocks, to encounter the unexpected. A discarded pot or the skull of a yak was often discovered along the routes surveyed by the engineers of the PLA. In a land where the dead were still offered to vultures, it was not uncommon even to encounter the shards of human beings.

A half-smoked cigarette appeared in the rubble. As Jilin snatched it with a purr of delight, a pair of brightly polished boots appeared beside them. Shan leaned back on his haunches and watched as Lieutenant Chang's expression changed to alarm. His hand jerked to the pistol at his belt. A shrill outburst died on his lips, and he stepped behind Feng.

This time, the People's 404th Construction Brigade had beaten the vultures. The body lay outlined by the rocks that had covered it. Its shoes, Shan saw at once, were of real leather, in an expensive Western fashion. Under a red V-necked sweater, a freshly laundered white shirt glistened.

"American," Jilin whispered with awe, not for the dead but for the clothing.

The man wore new blue jeans- not the flimsy Chinese denim for which street vendors sold pirated Western labels, but the real thing, made by a company in the United States. On the sweater was an enamel pin of two crossed flags, American and Chinese. The man's hands were folded over his belly, giving the impression of someone lying in repose at a guesthouse, waiting to be called for tea.

Lieutenant Chang quickly recovered. "The rest, dammit," he snarled, shouldering Feng forward. "I want to see the face."

"An investigation," Shan said without thinking. "You can't just-"

The lieutenant kicked Shan, not hard, but with the motion of one accustomed to dealing with troublesome dogs. Beside Shan, Jilin flinched, reflexively shielding his head with his hands. Lieutenant Chang impatiently stepped forward and grabbed the exposed ankles. With a peevish glance at Feng, he jerked the body away from the remaining rocks. Instantly the color drained from Chang's face. He turned away and retched.

The body had no head.

"Idolatry is an attack on the socialist order," a young officer barked into a bullhorn as the prisoners were marched toward a line of decrepit gray troop trucks long ago retired from army service. "Every prayer is a blow against the people."

Break the Chains of Feudalism, Shan silently bet to himself, or Honoring the Past Is Regression.

"The dragon has eaten," called out a voice from the ranks of prisoners.

A whistle blew for silence.

"You have failed to make quota," the political officer continued in his high-pitched drone. Behind him was a red truck Shan had never before seen at the construction site. MINISTRY OF GEOLOGY, it said on the door. "You have shamed the people. You will be reported to Colonel Tan." The officer's amplified words echoed off the slope. Why, wondered Shan, would the Ministry of Geology need to be there? "Visiting rights suspended. No hot tea for two weeks. Break the Chains of Feudalism. Learn the will of the people."

"Fuck me," an unfamiliar voice muttered behind Shan. "Lao gai coffee again." The man stumbled into Shan's back as they waited to climb into the truck.

Shan turned. It was a new face to the squad, a young Tibetan whose small rugged features marked him as a khampa, from the herding clans of the high Kham plateau to the east.

As the man saw Shan his face instantly hardened. "You know lao gai coffee, your highness?" he snarled. The few teeth he had left were blackened with decay. "A spoonful of good Tibetan dirt. And half a cup of piss."

The man sat on the bench opposite Shan and studied him. Shan turned the collar up on his shirt- the tattered canvas that covered the rear of the truck did little to shield them from the wind- and returned the stare without blinking. Survival, he had learned, was all about managing fear. It might burn your stomach. It might sear into your heart until you felt your soul smoldering. But never let it show.