The Ninth Buddha (31 page)

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Christopher could make out vague shapes around them: the golden cupolas and finials, prayer-wheels and gilded statues that he had seen from a distance on the day of his arrival at Dorje-la.
 
Chindamani knew her way across the roof from long experience.
 
Together, they moved through the gale until they came to the very edge.
 
Chindamani pulled Christopher close and put her lips to his ear.

“This is the hard part,” she said.

He wondered where the easy part had been.

“What do we have to do?”
 
he asked.

“There’s a bridge,” she shouted.

“It goes from the roof to another shelf of the mountain.
 
It isn’t far.”

Christopher looked into the darkness beyond the roof.

“I can’t see anything!”
 
he yelled.
 
His lips brushed her ear; he wanted to kiss her.
 
Now, in the darkness, in the storm.

“It’s there,” she called back.

“Believe me.
 
But in this wind we have to go on our hands and knees.

There are no rails.
 
Nothing to hold on to.”

“How wide is it?”
 
This did not sound like a very good idea.

“As wide as you want it to be,” she said.

“Ten miles wide.
 
As wide as Tibet.
 
As wide as the hand of Lord Chenrezi.
 
You will not fall off.”

He looked into the darkness again.
 
He wished he had her confidence.

“Don’t be so sure,” he said.

She let go of his hand and dropped down on all fours.
 
He could just make her out, a small dark figure ahead of him, crawling into the night.

He followed suit.
 
The chuba made him feel huge and awkward, an easy target for the wind to snatch and bowl over.
 
He felt acutely anxious for Chindamani, fearful that her tiny figure would be no match for the fierce gusts, that she would be taken like a leaf and thrown into the void.

The darkness swallowed her up, and he crawled forward to the spot where he had last seen her.
 
He could just make out the first few feet of a stone bridge jutting out from the roof.
 
He had asked how wide it was, but not how long.
 
As near as he could judge, it was less than three feet wide, and its surface seemed as smooth as glass.
 
He preferred not to think about what lay beneath it.

His heart beating uncomfortably, he held his breath and moved out on to the bridge, gripping the sides with his hands, keeping his knees close together, praying that the wind would not gust suddenly and tear him off.
 
In spite of the freezing air, he felt hot beads of sweat form on his forehead and cheeks.
 
The chub a kept getting in the way, threatening to entangle itself with his legs and trip him.
 
He could not see Chindamani in front.
 
There was only wind and darkness darkness that had no end, wind that kept on coming, blind and inexhaustible.

He moved a limb at a time: left hand, right hand, left knee, right knee, progressing in a shuffling motion, certain his balance would go and the bridge slip from his grasp in a single, irretrievable instant.
 
Twice an up draught took him from below and started to lift him, using the chuba as a sail, but each time he hunkered down, flattening himself against the surface of the bridge until the gust had moved on.
 
His fingers were freezing, so much so that he could scarcely feel to grip the bridge.
 
He could not see or hear or feel: his whole passage over the bridge was an act of will and nothing more.

It seemed to him as though the crossing took several lifetimes.

Time stood still while he crawled endlessly through space.
 
His former life was nothing but a dream: this and this alone was reality, moving in darkness, waiting for the wind to take him into its arms and play with him before finally breaking him like a doll on twisted rocks.

“What took you so long?”
 
It was Chindamani’s voice coming to him out of the darkness.
 
He was on the opposite ledge, still crawling as though the bridge would never come to an end.

“We can stand up here,” she said.

“It’s more sheltered than the roof.”

He noticed that the wind was quieter here and that it fell less heavily on his face when he turned into it.
 
She was standing beside him again, small and absurdly bulky-looking in her outsize chuba.

Without thinking, driven only by a desperation born in him while he crossed the bridge, he stepped towards her and held her to him.

She said nothing, did nothing to repel him, but let him hold her, the thick chub as holding their bodies apart as much as the darkness or her dozen lifetimes.
 
She allowed him to hold her, even though she knew it was wrong, that no man should ever hold her.
 
A great fear began to grow in her.
 
She could not give it a name, but she knew it was centred somehow in this strange man whose destiny had so cruelly been joined to hers.

“It’s time,” she said finally.
 
He had not kissed her or touched her skin with his skin, but she had to make him let her go before the fear became too great.
 
She had never understood before that fear and desire could lie so close together, like a god and his consort, entwined in stone forever.

He let go of her gently, releasing her into the night.
 
She had smelt of cinnamon.
 
His nostrils were inflamed by the smell of her.

Not even the wind could take her perfume away.

She led him across an expanse of bare rock pocked with slivers and pools of ice.
 
Above them, the mountain rose up into the darkness, huge and invisible, its mass more felt than seen.
 
In spite of the shelter, it seemed almost colder here on the rock, against the grim flank of the mountain.

“They call it Ketsuperi,” she said.

Christopher said he did not understand.

“The mountain,” she explained.

“It means “the mountain that reaches heaven”.”

Suddenly, they were standing right against the mountain wall.

Chindamani put her hand to the rock face and pushed.
 
Something moved, and Christopher realized that it had not been rock at all but a door set in the side of the mountain.
 
Light streamed out from lamps hanging behind the doorway.
 
Chindamani pushed again and the door swung all the way open.

In front of them, a narrow passageway stretched out for perhaps seventy or eighty feet.
 
It had been cut down through the solid rock, but the walls had been smoothed and plastered over.
 
Ornate lamps hung on fine gold chains from the ceiling, flickering gently in the draught from the open doorway.

Chindamani closed the door and threw back her hood.
 
The air in the passage was much warmer than that outside.

“What is this place?”
 
asked Christopher.

“A lab rang she said.

“This is the residence of the incarnations of Dorje-la.
 
This is where they live when they are first brought to the monastery from their families.
 
The present abbot your father never used it.
 
He lived from the beginning on the upper floor of the main building.
 
To my knowledge, he has never set foot here.”

She paused.

“When you held me then, outside,” she said hesitantly, ‘what did you feel?
 
What did you think of?”

The questions frightened her, coming as they did from a part of her consciousness that had been dormant until now.
 
Before this, she had never needed to ask what anyone thought of her.
 
She was Tara, not in the flesh, but in the spirit, and that took care of that.

Her own flesh was unimportant, a vehicle, nothing more.
 
She had never even thought of having an identity of her own.

“I thought of the cold,” he said.

“Of the darkness.
 
Of the years I had spent on the bridge, thinking you were gone forever.
 
And I though how it would be if there was warmth.
 
If there was light.
 
If you were just a woman and not some sort of goddess.”

“But I told you, I am a woman.
 
There is no mystery.”

He looked at her, finding her eyes and holding them with his.

“Yes,” he said, ‘there is mystery.
 
I understand almost nothing.

In your world I’m blind and deaf, crawling in darkness, waiting to fall into nothingness.”

“There is only nothingness,” she said.

“I can’t believe that,” he protested.

“I’m sorry.”
 
She turned her face away, reddening.
 
But what she had said was true: there was only nothingness.
 
The world was a dragonfly shimmering in silence over dark waters.

He stepped towards her, aware that he had hurt her.
 
It had not been his intention.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Your son is waiting.
 
He will be sleeping.
 
But please, whatever you do, do not try to waken him or speak to him.
 
Promise me that.”

“But..
 
.”

“You must promise.
 
If they know you have seen him, they will make it impossible for us to get to him again.
 
Promise.”

He nodded.

“I promise,” he said.

At the end of the passage, a door opened to the left.
 
It led into a temple-room filled with statues and painted figures.
 
From here, three more doors led into further rooms.

Chindamani motioned to Christopher that he should be silent, and opened the door on the right.

He saw at once that it was a bedroom.
 
Only a dim light gave it any illumination, but he could see the small bed covered in rich brocades and the figure in it, etched by shadows.

Chindamani bowed low, then straightened and, putting a finger to her lips, slipped inside.
 
Christopher followed her.

It was as though Dorje-la and all the vast wilderness of snow and ice that circled it had been swept away.
 
Christopher imagined he was in Carfax again, looking down at his son sleeping in a quiet bedroom filled with toys and books.
 
The only nightmare was in Christopher’s head.
 
He, not the child, was the dreamer who could not awaken, however hard he tried.

Cautiously, he went up close to William.
 
The boy’s hair had fallen over one eye.
 
Gently, Christopher straightened it, touching his son’s forehead.
 
The boy stirred and mumbled something in his sleep.
 
Chindamani took his arm, afraid he might waken the child.

Christopher felt his eyes grow hot with tears.
 
He wanted to pick William up and hold him, tell him that all was well, that he would take him away from this place.
 
But Chindamani drew him away and out of the room.

It was a long time before Christopher could speak.
 
Chindamani waited patiently, watching him.
 
She was destined never to have children of her own, but she could understand some of the emotions he was feeling.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

“There’s no need,” she told him.

“When the moment comes, you may speak to him.
 
But it’s best he doesn’t know you are here just yet.”

“You said you were going to show me something else.
 
You said there was someone in danger from Zamyatm.”

“Yes.
 
We are going to see him now.”

“Zamyatin came here in search of something.
 
When I was with” Christopher hesitated ‘my father, he said he had done a deal with Zamyatin: my son in exchange for what Zamyatin wanted.
 
Has this other person something to do with all this?”

Chindamani nodded.

“Yes,” she said.

“Zamyatin came here to find him.
 
I want you to help me get him away from him.”

She led the way to one of the other doors.
 
Another dimly lit chamber,

another bed covered in gorgeous fabrics.
 
A child was sleeping in the

bed, hair tousled, eyes shut against the darkness,

one hand loosely curled on the pillow as though about to clutch or relinquish a dream.

“Here,” she whispered.

“This is what Zamyatin was looking for.

This is what brought you here.”

A boy?
 
A child wrapped in shadows?
 
Was this really all?

“Who is he?”
 
Christopher asked.

“Who would you like him to be?”
 
asked Chindamani in reply.

“A

king?
 
The next Emperor of China, perhaps?
 
The surviving son of the murdered Tzar?
 
You see, I’m not entirely uninformed about your world.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“He could be anyone.
 
I didn’t expect something like this.”
 
But what had he expected?
 
Had he expected anything?

“He’s just a little boy,” said Chindamani quietly, but with feeling.

“That’s all he is.
 
That’s all he wants to be.”
 
She paused.