The Ninth Buddha (24 page)

Late on the sixth day, Christopher saw that they were approaching a broad pass.
 
The air felt incredibly thin and he had difficulty breathing.
 
Even the monks, he noticed, were labouring.
 
They stopped just short of the pass to rest.

“Our journey will be over soon,” the lama whispered to Christopher.

“That is our destination.”

He pointed upwards in the direction of the pass.
 
Fading sunlight beaded the edges of a curved ridge.
 
A lammergeyer swooped effortlessly down through the opening, then rose again, catching the sunlight momentarily on its wings.
 
Beyond the light, at the head of the pass, a bank of mist moved lazily.

“I see nothing,” Christopher said.

“Look more closely,” the lama told him.

“Up there, just to the left of the mist.”
 
He pointed again.

Christopher saw something fluttering.
 
It took him a few moments to make out what it was a tarcho, the traditional pole bearing down its length a cotton flag printed with prayers and the emblem of the wind-horse.
 
Somewhere nearby, there would be a habitation a small village or a hermit’s cell.

Suddenly, as though Christopher’s discovery of the tarcho had been a signal, the valley reverberated with sound.
 
From high above came the deep notes of a Temple prayer-horn.
 
It was no ordinary trumpet but a giant dung-chen.
 
Low and deep-throated, the voice of the great horn penetrated every corner of the pass and the valley below.
 
In that dreadful silence, in that vast solitude, its bellow filled Christopher with something akin to terror.
 
He felt his flesh creep as the sound echoed and re-echoed over everything.

And then, as suddenly as it had come, the sound ceased.
 
The last echoes died away and silence flooded back.

They began to climb towards the pass.
 
The ascent was steep and treacherous.
 
Wide patches of ice forced the men to crawl part of the way.
 
Although the head of the pass had seemed near from below, now it appeared to tease them, receding and receding ever further into the distance as they climbed.
 
It was some sort of optical illusion, caused by a curious combination of shadow and the light of the setting sun.

Finally, they reached the top and rounded the corner of the pass.

The monks shouted “Lha-gyal-lo Lha-gyal-loV loudly.
 
It was the first sign of anything approaching exuberance Christopher had ever observed in them.

Tsarong Rinpoche came up close beside Christopher and grasped his arm.
 
There was a look of intense excitement in his eyes.
 
The rest of his face was hidden by his scarf.

“Look up,” he said in a sharp whisper that sounded exaggeratedly loud in the crisp air.

Christopher looked.
 
At first, he could see nothing out of the ordinary: just a rock face that rose up and up into a curtain of swirling mist.
 
The mist seemed to fill the region ahead of them, rising like a wall into a bank of freezing cloud.
 
On either side of them, ice and mist formed a cradle in which they were gently rocked.

“There’s nothing,” Christopher murmured.

“Stones and mist.

That’s all.”

Suddenly, the trumpet sounded as before, but nearer this time.

Much nearer.
 
Its deep, throbbing notes travelled through the mist like the blasts of a foghorn at sea.
 
But wherever he looked, Christopher could see nothing but rocks covered in ice, rolling mist, and low cloud.

“Wait,” whispered Tsarong Rinpoche “You will see.”

The other monks were busy whirling their prayer wheels, adding the tinny whirring sound to the reverberations of the unseen trumpet that blared out from behind the mist.

And then, quite remarkably, as though the trumpet had wrought a miracle in the heavens, a portion of mist parted, revealing a golden roof and a terrace below it on which an orange-clad figure stood motionless against the dying light.
 
The man blew into a large trumpet resting on wooden blocks.
 
Obliquely, the sun’s rays caught the bowl of the instrument, turning it to fire.
 
Then, it fell abruptly silent once more, and across the silence, like the murmur of waves falling on a pebbled shore far away, the sound of chanting voices came faintly to their ears.
 
The figure on the terrace bowed and vanished into the mist.

As Christopher watched, the mist parted further, revealing bit by bit the clustered buildings of a vast monastery complex.
 
The great edifice seemed as though suspended between earth and sky, floating impossibly on a cushion of mist, its topmost pinnacles lost among clouds.

At the centre stood a vast central building, painted red, to which a variety of lesser buildings clung like chicks about a mother hen.

The main edifice was several storeys tall, with brightly gilded roofs and pinnacles that burned in the light of the setting sun.
 
Its windows were already shuttered against the evening wind.
 
Icicles hung from eaves and lintels everywhere, like decorations on a giant cake.

Christopher was awed by the sight after so many days of unrelieved whiteness and desolation.
 
The colours of the place dazzled him.
 
He had forgotten how much life there could be in colour.
 
Like a hungry man, he feasted on the golden vision in front of him until the sunlight turned violet and began to fade, taking the warm colours with it.
 
His vision turned to darkness and he wondered if it had really been there at all.

“What is this place?”
 
he whispered, to no-one in particular.

“Our destination,” said Tsarong Rinpoche.

“The pass we have just climbed is Dorje-la.
 
The monastery in front of you is Dorje-la Gompa.
 
But its proper name is Sanga Chelling: the Place of Secret Spells.”

Christopher looked up again.
 
In a window high up near the roof, someone had lit a lamp.
 
Someone was watching them.
 
Someone was waiting for them.

Dorje-la Gompa, southern Tibet, January 1921 They entered the monastery the following morning after dawn.

The sound of the temple-horn had awakened them, braying high up on the wide terrace, calling in the darkness for the light to return.
 
And it did return, lingering briefly on the broad peaks of the Eastern Himalaya before sliding reluctantly down into the dark valley below Dorje-la.

The ascent to the building was made on a long wooden ladder that threatened to give way at any moment and send them spinning back on to the rocks below.
 
Christopher climbed without emotions of any kind; dread, anticipation, even triumph at having reached this place all had deserted him.

The first morning assembly had finished by the time they entered the building.
 
They came in through a small red gate, but the monks were still in the Lha-khang taking tea before resuming their devotions.
 
The travellers were met by a fat little monk dressed in the robes of a steward.
 
The two trap as mumbled greetings and at once scuttled off down a dimly lit corridor, like rabbits returning to their warren.
 
The lama entered a doorway on the left and closed the door behind him without a word.
 
Christopher was led in a different direction, along a passage lit by rancid butter-lamps that gave off a jaundiced, almost sulphurous glow.
 
The all-pervasive smells of ancient dri-butter and human sweat were doubly noxious to Christopher after so long in the fresh and rarefied air of the mountains outside.

The steward showed Christopher to a small room on the first floor and asked if he wanted food.

“No, thank you,” he said.

“I’d like to sleep.
 
I’m very tired.”

The monk nodded and backed out, closing the door behind him.

Against one wall was set a low pallet bed.
 
Without pausing to inspect the rest of the room, Christopher threw himself on to the bed.
 
The last thing he thought of before sleep overpowered him was Lhaten’s reaction when he had asked the boy if he had ever heard of Dorje-la.

“I think it is time for sleep, sahib.”

And it was.

When Christopher awoke, he could not tell how much time had passed. The butter-lamp left by the steward still burned steadily on a little table near the door, but it had been full to begin with.

The comfort of the bed and the profundity of his sleep had only served to accentuate the depth of Christopher’s tiredness and the aching he felt in every joint and muscle.
 
He could have lain there forever, he thought, neither sleeping nor waking, but in a state between.

From somewhere far away came the sound of voices, many voices, rising and falling in a dirge-like chant, whether of celebration or lament he could not tell.
 
The chanting was punctuated by the sounds of a variety of musical instruments.
 
A large drum was being struck in slow, steady beats; a conch-shell wove in and out of the deeper notes raised by a shawm; from time to time, small cymbals clashed with a tinny sound.
 
Christopher recognized the tight, nervous sound of a damaru, a small drum fashioned from a human skull and used in the lower Tantric ceremonies.

Slowly, as he lay in the darkness listening to the sound of the monks at prayer, the reality of his situation was borne in upon Christopher.
 
It still made little sense: though all the separate parts seemed to connect, there was a lack of logic to their connection that made him despair.
 
But of one thing he was absolutely certain now his son William was here, within these walls.
 
Whatever madness lay behind his being here, that was all that mattered.

The music and chanting stopped abruptly, and the monastery was returned to silence.
 
Nothing stirred.

Christopher glanced around the room.
 
A draught from the window teased the flame of his lamp and sent speculative little shadows here and there.
 
Above the bed hung a large thangka depicting the Buddha surrounded by eight Indian saints.
 
Opposite, an old lacquer chest had been transformed into a private altar, adorned with paintings of lotuses and various sacred emblems.
 
On the wall over the altar hung a wooden cabinet with glass doors: inside were painted images of Tsongkhapa and his two disciples.
 
Near the window stood a small table and a chair, and on the wall above them a narrow wooden shelf holding bound copies of scriptural texts.

He stood up and went to the window.
 
Tibetan monasteries did not as a rule have glass in their windows, so the heavy wooden shutters were kept permanently closed throughout the long winter months.
 
He found the latch and pushed one half of the shutter open.
 
Outside, it was night again.
 
A sharp wind had whipped the clouds away, and in the black expanse just visible above three distant peaks, the sky groaned with the weight of innumerable stars.
 
From somewhere outside Christopher’s range of vision, moonlight fell like icing on the crystal landscape of the pass below.

He closed the shutter, shivering, and sat down on the chair.
 
He was feeling hungry now and wondered how he could get hold of someone to bring him food.
 
Perhaps they were waiting for him to give some indication that he was awake.
 
He stepped across to the door and pulled on the handle.
 
It was locked.
 
His monastic cell was to serve as a prison cell as well.

In the morning, he found food waiting for him on a low table: some lukewarm tsampa, a few barley-cakes, and hot tea in a covered cup.
 
It was plain enough fare, but after days of nothing but cold tsampa, its warmth alone was delicious.
 
After he had eaten, he opened the shutters and looked out of the window.
 
Sunlight had grown out of nothing overnight, spreading itself across the valley below.
 
He could just make out the path he and his companions had followed the day before.
 
Patches of grey mist still clung to the rocks at the foot of the monastery, like small pools of colourless water left on the seashore by the departing tide.
 
If he craned his neck upwards, he could just make out the shapes of distant mountains through gaps in the cliffs surrounding the small valley.

There was a light tap on the door.
 
Christopher closed the shutters and called.

“Who’s there?”

There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, then the door opened and the steward of the day before entered.
 
He held a tall staff in one hand, less for support than as a token of his office.
 
In the other, he carried a flickering butter-lamp.

“You’re to come with me,” he said.

“Why am I being kept locked in this room?”

The steward ignored his question.

“You have been summoned.
 
Please follow me.”

“Who is summoning me?
 
Where am I being taken?”

“Please,” the steward said, fixing his abrasive eyes on Christopher.

“Don’t ask questions.
 
There is no time.
 
You have to come with me now.”