The Skull Mantra
   Eliot Pattison
  1999 St. Martin's Minotaur
    ISBN: 0312204787


When a headless corpse is uncovered by a prison work gang on a windy Tibetan mountain, veteran police inspector Shan Tao Yin would seem the perfect man to solve the crime -- except Shan himself has been a prisoner there for three years. More at ease with his fellow Tibetan inmate monks than with the Chinese officials who run the work camp.

Shan was given the sobriquet of “The last honest cop” in Beijing until his investigatory skills & integrity put him on the wrong side of the Party & he was packed off to a gulag for some torturous re-education to keep him quiet. Then they shipped him to a work prison in Lhadrung County, on the borders of China's colony formerly known as Tibet.

If you've ever wondered what it's like living in Tibet under Chinese occupation, you should pick this one up. If you've ever wondered what life in a Chinese gulag is like -- you'll find out.

That The Skull Mantra is a mystery is even more entertaining. That it shows how brash & naive are Americans & how many layers of political lacquer the Chinese operate under -- with the mystical Tibetan monks in between, struggling with being re-habilitated, re-educated -- is icing on a feast from a different culture.

Talk about playing Checkers in a Go world!

Even though The Skull Mantra is fiction -- there's a lot to be learnt about how the Chinese military & bureaucracy think (that is not an oxymoron as nothing is done without excruciating thought as to consequences -- both political & corporal) & what makes them tick.

The Skull Mantra is about how the spiritual society of Tibet still exists under the Chinese version of Communism & how Americans come striding into the landscape, bright with their righteous indignation, their financial uncouthness, their under-developed sense of protocol, & their ignorance of the intrigue that infests both the political & spiritual realms at the top of the world.

In the People's 404th Construction Brigade, a work prison & Shan's home for the past three years, he is housed with a group of monks who have welcomed & taught him, Chinese though he be. His bruised & wary soul had begun to know a semblance of peace. Even admitting to a soul is dangerous in Communist China's farthest colony. Learning about Tibetan Buddhism from his cellmate monks is not only seditious, it is inescapable.

One day he is called away from his cellmates & with a familiar dread he approaches the commander's office. To say that Colonel Tan & prisoner Shan spar, is to say that day & night fight! Much of the tortuous Oriental Mind we Westerners stumble over & find incomprehensible is summed up in the conversations these two men have over the course of the next six days.

This is a different kind of story about a Chinese County Colonel in charge of Tibetan prisoners who go on a religious strike. It is about underground monasteries & above ground murders. It's about a bureaucrat who loses his head over some shady dealings involving a cabal of Han old guard with some dirty pasts. It is about scapegoats & a demon from the past who is very much alive in the minds of many & who must be placated. It's about hidden valleys & vast scenery & the yearning for transfiguration.

It is also about American mining interests, a different kind of ore to be brought out from the Himalayas, just 100 miles east of Chomolungma -- Goddess Mother of the World -- which we Westerners dubbed Mount Everest. The Americans, of course, have brought newfangled equipment to the crumbling far reaches of China's empire & it is the satellite topographical pictures that become the catalyst for the ensuing chaos of betrayals & murders. The Skull Mantra is also about what happened 60 years ago & why so many elderly bureaucrats are dying of unnatural causes. The story of how both Westerners & Chinese have incised the mystical, magical & spiritual from the Land of Snows is a sorry one. Crass shenanigans to placate tourists & callow genocide to rid the land of its holy men.

In The Skull Mantra Inspector-cum-political prisoner Shan Tao Lun is given the chance to redeem his soul from purgatory. Of course, Shan can't quite believe he's not going to simply solve a murder case & then be incarcerated once again, perhaps even executed should he unearth the “wrong” solution.

The one constant is the distrust everyone has for everyone, Han & Tibetan alike & how, by each action & decision, a sense of honor, even trust, develops between former foes even as the carapace of the Dragon in Beijing weighs down upon everyone's neck. Maneuvering through the shadows, the mountains & the paperwork; watching & listening to the Americans, Shan & his team of a dishonored young acolyte & a hapless old soldier, must hurry before an innocent man is sacrificed in a public execution, as others have been before.

Eliot Pattison has taken us into the highest reaches of this world, into the rarified realm of petty, absolute bean-counters with pasts to hide & greeds to satisfy. Mixed in with centuries-old rituals & stories, are modern day mischief & manipulations. Hidden tunnels & monasteries; helicopters & Chinese armed forces; faxes & demons.

I found The Skull Mantra an awesome blend of past & present, everyday hardships & enlightening epiphanies. A grand read on many levels! It made me think about the plight of Tibetans who could not get out before being swallowed whole by the Chinese Dragon; it appalled me with the way life is so casually yet ceremoniously snuffed out & it excited me with the many insights into Tibetan Buddhist history & teachings! Reminded me much of Tuesday Lopsang Rampa's The Third Eye.

In the end The Skull Mantra is only a murder mystery, a mere novel yet it aroused my wonder, raised the hairs on the nape of my neck & deeply satisfied. Good stuff! You really should buy yourself a copy!

You might be interested in learning more about the 50 year struggle of the Tibetan people to maintain their faith & integrity in the face of extreme adversity & genocide. Eliot Pattison recommends the following:
A Strange Liberation: Tibetan Lives in Chinese Hands by David Patt.
In Exile from the Land of Snows by John Avedon.
Ama Adhe: The Voice That Remembers by Adhe Tapontsang & Joy Blakeslee.
The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk by Palden Gyatso with Tsering Shakya.
(08/05/01)

Rebecca