The Ninth Buddha (30 page)

“And William will I be allowed to see him?”

“Please be patient, Christopher.
 
Eventually, when it is time.
 
But you must understand that you cannot be allowed to take him away.
 
You must reconcile yourself to that.
 
I know it will be hard, but I can teach you how.
 
You may stay in Dorje-la indefinitely.
 
I would like it if you stayed.
 
But you can never leave with your son.

He belongs to us now.”

Christopher said nothing.
 
He went to the curtains and pulled them aside.
 
Outside, the sun had set and darkness had taken hold of the chortens.
 
He could feel the knife in his boot, the hard metal against his skin.
 
It would be so easy to hold the blade against his father’s throat, force him to give William up to him.
 
No-one would dare to stop him while he held their abbot hostage.
 
He wondered why he was unable to act.

“I want to be taken back to my room,” he said.

His father stood and came to the doorway.

“You can’t go back there.
 
Zamyatin has tried to have you killed once:

he won’t make a mistake the next time.
 
I’ll give instructions for you to be housed on this floor, near me.”
 
He looked out at the darkened chamber beyond.

“It’s already dark.
 
I have my devotions to attend to.
 
Wait here: I’ll send someone to show you to your new room.”

The abbot turned and went back into the little room.
 
Christopher watched him go, his hair white, his body bent.
 
His father had come back from the dead.
 
It was like a miracle.
 
But if it meant he could take William out of this place, he would gladly wipe out the miracle and send his father back to the grave.

The room to which Christopher was shown was larger than the cell in which he had first been confined.
 
It was square and finely furnished, with high walls that were finished with brightly glazed tiles that had come all the way from Persia.
 
Peacocks strutted and sloe-eyed maidens cast alluring glances over brimming bowls of wine.
 
On a blue sky, the silhouettes of nightingales and hoopoes formed patterns elaborate as birdsong.
 
It was a place of riches, hardly a monastic room at all; but for all that, it was as much a prison as the tiny chamber below had been.

He lay awake afterwards in a tight darkness that smelled to him of childhood.
 
His butter-lamp had extinguished itself, leaving him to relive his past in the sudden knowledge that his father had been alive all along.
 
While Christopher had mourned, his father had been here in Dorje-la, perhaps in this very room, assuming the contours of a new identity.
 
Did it make any difference at all?
 
he wondered.
 
Nothing could change what had been.
 
He fell asleep uneasily, just as he had gone to sleep that first night long ago, on the day news of his father’s death had reached him during a passage of the Aeneid.

He was awakened by a small sound, and at once saw a light flickering in

the room.
 
Someone was standing near his bed, watching him silently. At

first he thought it was his father, come to watch over him while he

slept; but then he saw that the figure with the light was smaller and

un stooped

“Who’s there?”
 
he called out; but he knew.
 
“ “Shshsh,” the intruder hissed.
 
In the same moment, the small light was lifted higher and he saw her, captured for him in its glow.

How long had she been standing in the half-darkness, watching him?

She came over to his bedside, without a sound.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” she whispered.
 
Close by, he could at last make out her features perfectly.
 
He had not imagined it: she was extraordinarily beautiful.
 
Her face bent out of the darkness towards him with a look of concern.

“I came to see if you were awake,” she continued, still in a whisper.

He sat up.
 
Even though he was fully dressed, the room felt cold.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“I don’t think I’ve been asleep long.
 
To tell the truth, I’d rather stay awake.”

She put her lamp down on a low table and moved back into the shadows.

He sensed that she was frightened of him.

“Why did they move you to this room?”
 
she asked.

He explained.
 
She was very subdued when he finished.

“How did you know I was here?”
 
he asked.

She hesitated.

“My old nurse Sonam knows everything that goes on in Dorjela,” she said.

“She told me you had been moved here.”

“I see.
 
How did you get here?
 
The monk who showed me to this room said the door would be watched all night.”

He thought she smiled to herself.

“Dorje-la was built to hold secrets,” she whispered.

“And you?”
 
he asked.

“I don’t understand.”

“Are you one of its secrets?”

She looked down at her feet.
 
When she looked up again, her eyes seemed darker, but full of stars.

“Perhaps,” she answered in a small voice.

Christopher looked at her.
 
Her eyes were like pools, deep pools in which a man could drown if he were careless enough.

“How do you come to be here?”
 
he asked.

“I have always been here,” she said simply.

He looked at her again.
 
It seemed impossible that such grace could belong in a place like this.

“There has always been a Lady at Dorje-la,” she went on.

“A Lady?”
 
he said, not understanding.

“Someone to represent the Lady Tara,” she answered.

“The goddess Drolma, Avalokita’s consort.
 
She has always dwelt here in Dorje-la, in the body of a woman.”

He gazed at her in horror.

“You mean you’re a goddess?
 
That they worship you?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“Tara is the goddess.
 
Or Drolma, if you prefer she has many names.
 
I am a woman.
 
She incarnates herself in me, but I am not she; I am not the goddess.
 
Do you understand?”

He shook his head.

“It’s simple,” she said.

“We are all aspects of the eternal Buddha.

My aspect is Tara.
 
She can be seen in me and through me.
 
But I am not Tara.
 
I am Chindamani.
 
I am just a vehicle for Tara, here in Dorje-la.
 
She has other bodies in other places.”

Christopher shook his head again.

“None of this makes sense to me.
 
I could believe you are a goddess, that’s not hard.
 
You’re lovelier than any statue I’ve ever seen.”

She blushed and looked away.

“I am only a woman,” she murmured.

“I have known nothing but this life, this body.
 
Only Tara knows my other bodies.
 
When I am reborn, Tara will have yet another body.
 
But Chindamani will be no more.”

Outside a gust of wind clattered briefly and was still.

“I’m sorry this is hard for you,” she said.

“I’m sorry too.”

She looked at him again and smiled.

“You should not be so sad.”

But he was sad.
 
Nothing would turn him from that now.

“Tell me,” he said, ‘what does the name Chindamani mean?
 
You said Tara had many names.
 
Is that one of them?”

She shook her head.

“No, it’s a Sanskrit word.
 
It means “the wish-fulfilling jewel”.

The jewel is part of an old legend: whoever found it could ask for all his wishes to be fulfilled.
 
Do you have stories like that where you come from?”

“Yes,” said Christopher.
 
But to himself he thought that they all ended in tragedy.

“You have not told me your name,” she said.

“Christopher,” he replied.

“My name is Christopher.”

“Ka-ris To-feh.
 
What does it mean?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” he said.

“One of the names of the god my people worship is “Christ”.
 
“Christopher” was the name of a man who carried him on his shoulders when he was a child.
 
It means “the one who carried Christ”.”

He though she looked at him oddly, as though his words had struck a chord in her.
 
She was silent for a while, lost in thought.

He studied her face, wishing it were daylight so he might see her better.

“Chindamani,” he said, changing the subject, “I know who the Dorje Lama is.
 
I know why he brought my son here, why he wants to keep him here.
 
You said you could help me take William away.

Are you still willing to do that?”

She nodded.

“Why?”
 
he asked.

“Why do you want to help?”

She frowned.

“I need your help in return,” she said.

“I can find a way out of Dorje-la for you and your son.
 
But once we are outside I am helpless.
 
I was brought to this place as a little girl: the world is just like a dream to me.
 
I need you to help me find my way in it.”

“But why should you want to leave at all?
 
Help me to get William out and I will take him the rest of the way.”

She shook her head.

“I told you there was danger here,” she said.

“I have to leave.”

“You mean you’re in danger?”

She shook her head again.

“No.
 
No-one would dare harm me.
 
But others are in danger.

One in particular: his life is in great danger.
 
I have to help him escape.
 
I want you to help me.”

“I don’t understand.
 
Who is this person?
 
Why is his life in danger?”

She hesitated.

“It isn’t easy to explain.”

“Try.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“It will be better if you see for yourself.
 
Come with me.
 
But be quiet.
 
If we are discovered, I won’t be able to help you.
 
He will have you killed.”

“Who?
 
Who will have me killed?”

“A Mongol.
 
They say he comes from a distant place called Russia.
 
His name is Zamyatin.”

Christopher nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

“I know about him.
 
Is he the source of the danger here?”

“Yes.
 
Zamyatin and those who support him.
 
He has followers in the monastery.
 
The man who brought you here, Tsarong Rinpoche, is one of them.”

It was still unclear, but Christopher could see the beginnings of a pattern.

“Where are we going?”
 
he said.

She looked at him directly for the first time.

“To see your son,” she said.

“I promised I would take you to him.”

They left Christopher’s room through a hidden door in the wall, behind a heavy hanging.
 
There was a long, musty passage that led them to a second door, through which they entered a public corridor.
 
Chindamani knew her way impeccably.
 
He watched her glide ahead of him, a mere shadow blending with other shadows.

They remained on the upper storey, passing along curiously shaped corridors and through dark, freezing rooms.
 
Finally, they came to a spindly wooden ladder that led up to a hatch set in the roof of the passage.
 
On hooks near the ladder several heavy sheepskin coats were hanging.

“Put one of these on,” ordered Chindamani, passing a chuba to Christopher.

“We’re going outside?”

She nodded.

“Yes.
 
Outside.
 
You’ll see.”

She slipped into a chuba that was several sizes too big for her, drew its hood over her head, and without another word turned and scrambled dexterously up the ladder.
 
At the top, she used one hand to raise the hatch.
 
It was like opening a door into a maelstrom.
 
A freezing wind came down like a breath from a northern hell.
 
Chindamani’s lamp was snuffed out instantly, leaving them in total darkness.
 
Christopher climbed up after her.

“Stay close to me!”
 
she shouted.

The wind drove into her face with a brutal force that almost toppled her from the ladder.
 
She crawled out on to the flat roof, bending low in order to avoid being caught by the wind and tossed aside.
 
The darkness was not darkness, but a mass of indecipherable sounds: the howls and whimpers of lost souls in a wilderness of pain.

Christopher clambered out beside her and replaced the hatch with difficulty.
 
He reached out and found her in the darkness.
 
She took his hand, gripping it tightly with cold and frightened fingers.