3

REDS

The gang of four encountered the first villagers hiding behind the drystone walls that bounded the barley paddocks. Mostly women and small children, they were huddled tightly against the rocks, the smallest almost squirming their way into the cracks as they cowered and shook. One of them was Temba Chering’s aunt. She was on her knees, rocking backward and forward, chanting the same mantra carved into many of the stones around her.

When the handsome woman saw the boys, she immediately straightened herself into a defiant anger. A group of soldiers, she said, had appeared at the northern end of the village. Without word or warning, they had set up a single green cannon and fired five shells, one after the other, into the side of the monastery’s hill. The explosions had shaken the old gompa so violently they had all feared it might crumble and fall.

Temba asked his aunt who the soldiers were.

She spat back her simple answer, “Reds.” Everyone in Amling had heard of the “Reds,” those soldiers who fought for control of the faraway land of China. The boys, just as boys do everywhere, also knew that it was a violent and bloody war, and that the Reds were the victors. They immediately wanted to see such famed warriors for themselves.

Despite the warnings of the villagers around them and the insistence of Temba’s aunt that they stay, the four ran on. At the river the boys passed Mad Namgi, sitting on a rock, stripped naked, tearing at his long, matted hair, and howling at the spiral of vultures overhead, certain that something below was dying. For once, the boys ignored him to jump the stepping-stones as a dull groan from the heavens began to accompany the wails of the madman.

The new sound grew, separating into loud blasts that filled the valley and echoed like brass waves breaking on the distant hillsides. Pema recognized the long horns of the monastery being blown from the high tower, calling for the dharma, the way of the Buddha, to defeat the ignorance of those who would fire cannons at them, to reinforce the spirit of Palden Lhamo, the goddess that protected them and those walls of stone that protected her—a Jericho in reverse.

The boys pressed on to reach the small crowd of men that had assembled opposite Hao Ping’s great doors. Before them, standing at attention in three ranks, were thirty heavily laden khaki soldiers, without insignia beyond a single red star on the fur front of their caps and red collar tabs. Despite machine guns and bayoneted rifles, full bandoliers of ammunition and stuffed packs of equipment, the Reds did not resemble mighty warriors. The men within the bulky quilted jackets and trousers were small and sallow, dusty and dirty. Many struggled just to breathe, panting although at a standstill. The heavy eyelids of others slipped shut without control, betraying the exhaustion of the journey that had led them there.

The soldiers’ captain, wiry thin, was no bigger than Hao Ping, with whom he was talking in an animated fashion. He thrust a rolled document at the old Chinaman then pushed him forward to address the small crowd.

Hao Ping reached inside his round collared jacket for a pair of tiny spectacles, letting the document unroll from his hand as he did so. All the spectators clearly saw the crimson Chinese characters at the top and the dense black orders that cascaded below but only Hao Ping could understand them. He began to read the proclamation, translating each phrase aloud as he went.

“The Advance Guard Twelve of the Eighteenth Corps of the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China greets you, the people!

“On behalf of the great helmsman, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and the victorious Central People’s Government, we bring you long-awaited freedom.

“We arrive, at last, to drive out the Kuomintang’s nationalist bandit regime . . .

“To end the barbarous feudalism of your own lords and priests . . .

“To destroy all landlords and merchants, those running dogs of capitalism, that rob you daily!”

Hao Ping stopped for a moment and swallowed, taking in the personal significance of what he was reading only as he said it. A prod in the back from the captain’s swagger stick forced him to continue.

“Captain Xi and Advance Guard Twelve apologize ten thousand times for such a clamorous arrival, but only thus can you understand the awesome power of democratic reform that has arrived at your doors. Together we, the people, will construct with you, the people, the glorious society for which you have been yearning . . .”

The speech went on and on.

The crowd listened, trying to make sense of what they were hearing, understanding the words but not the context. Only Hao Ping got the message, the already small Chinaman visibly dwindling with every word he uttered. The boys, expecting more action, grew bored, fidgeting and looking around.

Pema noticed that many of the monks from the monastery had joined the crowd. Even the Rinpoche, the monastery’s abbot, was there now and listening intently to every word.

Pema’s older brother suddenly pushed in alongside him. Without even turning to look, the young monk’s arm reached across to pat his sibling’s swollen chest.

“What have you got in there, brother? Some yartsa I can take to Geshe Lhalu?” he asked under his breath, nudging him a little and gesturing to the monastery’s great scholar, who was also standing amongst the crowd.

“Nothing,” Pema whispered in reply, suddenly remembering the skull he was bearing, momentarily forgotten in all the pandemonium and performance. Surreptitiously he tried to push his brother’s prying hand away.

“Your jacket seems very full for nothing,” his brother hissed.

“Leave me alone.”

Gritting his teeth, desperately trying not to make a disturbance, Pema twisted away but his brother grabbed at the thick sheepskin of his coat to hold him still. Pema tried again to wrench himself free, but his older brother didn’t let go. Locked together they twisted and fell forward into the street.

Hao Ping, concentrating on his reading, jumped with fright at the unexpected disturbance.

The tired soldiers’ eyes snapped open, the bayoneted barrels of the front rank instantly dropping to point at the boys who froze in the dirt.

A command issued by the captain ordered two men from the rear rank to approach the pair. They did so warily, looking down at them through the sights of their rifles until their razor-sharp bayonet tips were an inch from each boy’s face.

A slight oscillation in the blades, almost close enough to sever their noses, ordered the boys up and onto their feet. A widening of the movement amplified the instruction further to raising their hands in the air as the captain issued another high-pitched command.

Two more of the troop approached without their rifles. Each began to pat a boy down. The soldier checking Pema soon felt the bulk of the skull. In a flash he un-holstered a pistol and pushed the barrel hard against the boy’s forehead.

The steel tube seemed to suck all the air out of Pema’s chest cavity, freeing his pounding heart to beat wildly against the old skull.

The soldier, his captain, and Hao Ping exchanged terse, urgent sentences.

“Young Pema Chöje,” Hao Ping finally asked, “what have you got in there?”

“Nothing,” the boy replied. “It’s mine. I found it.”

“So it is something. What?”

The soldier, growing impatient with an exchange he didn’t understand, tentatively reached for the front of Pema’s jacket with his free hand, screwing up his broad face as if fearing the boy might explode at any moment.

The hand gently reached inside.

First it pulled out Pema’s knife. With a loud exclamation of “Ha!” it was thrown to the ground.

The fingers returned to feel inside the jacket again. Pema felt them run lightly over the curved cranium then instantly withdraw to the shout of a single word that sounded like “Zhadan!”

All the soldiers immediately pulled back as Pema was ordered to lie back on the ground again.

Other soldiers were commanded to approach. One unclipped his bayonet from the end of his rifle and knelt to slice through the rope belt that held Pema’s sheepskin coat together. That soldier then quickly withdrew as another, keeping his distance, pushed his bayoneted rifle barrel forward. The long blade delicately poked apart the two sides of the sheepskin jacket to reveal the skull rising and falling on Pema’s heaving chest.

A murmur ran through the crowd.

One of the watching monks began to chant, guttural and low.

It was Geshe Lhalu.

The soldier slowly inserted the point of his bayonet into one of the skull’s eye sockets and lifted it. Holding the skull at rifle’s length the infantryman carefully walked to offer it to his captain. But the officer wouldn’t take it. He stood back, ordering the soldier bearing the skull and Hao Ping into the merchant’s house. The great wooden doors opened then closed behind them.

The remaining soldiers gestured that everyone should go, which they did, shocked, bewildered, and uncertain. When Pema got home, he tried to explain himself, but nothing could stop the thrashing that came after.