The Ninth Buddha (47 page)

There were mists, white and cold and clinging, through which they and their ponies passed like ghosts.
 
Chindamani’s black hair gleamed with bright droplets of half-frozen air.
 
Christopher watched her ride ahead of him, a dim figure passing from visibility to invisibility and back again.
 
The edges of their world were blurred.
 
Nothing was defined: not speech, not thought, not memory.
 
They walked or rode in a silence of their own making, apart from the world, travellers without a destination, voyagers through a timeless, formless space.

Everywhere they saw signs of faith, reminders of the presence of the gods: prayer-flags and chortens, long mam-walls, and once, two pilgrims making their way across the freezing ground, prostrating themselves full length time after time.

“Where are they going?”
 
Christopher asked.

“To thejokhang,” she said.

“The great temple at Lhasa.
 
They are going there to pay respect to Jovo Rinpoche.”

Christopher looked puzzled.

“It’s a great statue of the Lord Buddha when he was a child,” she explained.

“It’s the holiest image in the whole of Tibet.
 
People come from all parts of the world to visit it.
 
Some travel hundreds of miles, measuring the ground by their own bodies just like these two.
 
It takes months, even years.
 
Sometimes they die before they reach the holy city.
 
It’s a very good way to die.”

“Why do they do it?”
 
he asked.

“To wipe out bad karma they have acquired in previous lives.
 
To acquire good karma for their next life.
 
So that they may be reborn in a condition nearer to the Buddha nate.
 
That is all any of us can do.”

He looked at her.

“Is our journey worth any merit?”
 
he asked.

She nodded, serious.

“Yes,” she replied.

“He is the Maidari Buddha.
 
Our aim is to find him and bring him to his people.
 
We are his tools: you will see.”

“Do you really think we’ll find him again?”

She looked at him a long time before replying.

“What do you think?”
 
she said finally.

Christopher said nothing.
 
But as they rode on, he wondered what sort of karma he would acquire if he rescued the boy from Zamyatin only to put him on the throne of Mongolia as a British puppet.

They caught their first whiff of Zamyatin at a small village near Nagchu Dzong, about one hundred and sixty miles from Lhasa.

The nemo at their rest-house there remembered a man and two boys who had come through about ten days before.
 
They had been travelling by pony, hard.
 
Zamyatin had been forced to risk visiting the rest-house in order to obtain much-needed provisions and fresh ponies.

“They came here with three of the scraggiest animals I’ve ever seen,” the woman said.

“All but dead they were.
 
They’d driven them into the ground, riding them hell for leather, I could tell.
 
It was the Mongol’s doing, I could see that.
 
He was desperate to move on.
 
Nervous he was, jittery, but I could tell he wasn’t the sort to argue with.
 
The children were worn out, poor things.
 
I said they should rest, but he swore at me and said he’d have none of it.

They had to be up and going; not even time to take tea.”

She scowled at the memory of such impolite ness

“I sold them new ponies, but I wouldn’t give much for the ones they

left.
 
They’ll fatten up in time, no doubt; but one’s no use for riding

any longer he’s broken-winded and fit for the butcher.
 
I

asked five hundred trangkas for the two I sold them, and he paid it over without so much as a whimper.
 
That’s forty Hang in Chinese money.
 
I said to my husband he must be up to no good I was half of a mind to send someone after them, to see were the little boys all right.
 
But my husband said we’d best not interfere, and maybe he was right.”

“Did either of the boys try to get your attention at all?”
 
asked Chindamani.

“Well, now you mention it, I think one of them did.
 
I think he wanted to speak to me.
 
But the man would have none of it and whisked him out of the room as quick as a flash.”

“Didn’t you try to do something?
 
Protest to him?”

The nemo looked at Chindamani hard.

“If you’d seen him you’d understand.
 
I’d no wish to cross him.

Perhaps I should have done, I don’t rightly know.
 
But if you’d been in my shoes, if you’d seen him .. . But then, perhaps you have, my lady.”

Chindamani said nothing.

“Were the ponies you sold them healthy?
 
Strong enough to take them far?”

The old nemo looked offended.

“Of course they were.
 
Do you think I would sell anything but a sound animal?
 
Would I cheat, would I pass off a sprained horse as fit for the road?”

He fancied she would, and for an inflated price as well.

“I meant no offence,” he apologized.

“But you had seen what happened to the beasts they came on.
 
Perhaps you were reluctant to let your best animals into his hands.”

Somewhat mollified but only somewhat she snorted.

“I might have thought that,” she said.

“But he looked over all the ponies I had and chose three for himself.
 
They were the best in my stable and worth a pretty penny too.
 
He’ll do for them what he did for the others.
 
But they’ll get him a distance.
 
They’ll be twenty shasas or more away by now.”

A shasa was a full day’s march, between ten and twenty miles.

At Zamyatin’s rate of progress, they’d very likely be thirty full shasas ahead of them.

“They’re beyond our reach now, Ka-ris,” said Chindamani in a crestfallen voice.

“They’ll get to Urga before we do, that’s all,” he said.
 
But he felt disadvantaged by his rival’s easy lead.

“We’ll catch up with them there, not before.
 
Slow and steady does it.
 
They still have a long way to go.
 
There won’t always be fresh ponies when they need them.
 
And they have to face the Gobi desert or go round it.”

“And so have we,” she said.

Dispirited at first, they continued their journey.
 
They rode a little faster, rested less often, rose earlier to set off before dawn each morning.
 
At least, Christopher reasoned, they were thus far on the right track.
 
Zamyatin and the boys had passed this way; however much they deviated from the road, they would ultimately return to it there was only one destination for all of them.

They travelled across the broad steppe regions to the east of Chang Tang, the great central plateau of Tibet.
 
Beyond the northern reaches of the Yangtse River, they passed into Amdo.

Always north-east, always towards Mongolia.

Each day, they passed small nomad encampments low black tents quite distinct from the round Mongol yurts of the north.

Shepherds grazed small herds of yaks in the valleys: they watched Christopher and Chindamani ride by, then turned back to their endless vigil.

Ten days after leaving Nagchu Dzong, they reached the southern shores of Koko Nor, the great lake that stands guard over the north-east border of Tibet.
 
A few miles further and they would enter China’s Kansu province.

Christopher was nervous.
 
The Chinese were on edge, feeling the pinch in Mongolia and toying with Tibet as a possible recompense should the former territory slip out of their hands again.
 
If he were caught by Chinese guards and identified as an Englishman crossing into Kansu, he doubted very much if his captors would observe the diplomatic niceties.
 
In all probability, his head would soon adorn a sharp, pointed stick on the battlements of Sining-fu.

These were the days of the great war-lords.
 
China was torn by civil war, and no central authority was capable of returning the country to normal.
 
The Manchus had gone, the Republic was little more than a name, and in the provinces chaos and bloodshed reigned.
 
Armies of peasants marched and fought and were wiped out.
 
And in their place, new armies were raised up.
 
It was one of Death’s finest hours.

The steppe sloped down gently to the dark waters of the lake.

Thin waves moved across its surface, making Christopher think of home and the sea.
 
To the north, the mountains of the Tsun-ula range stretched east and west out of sight.
 
On several peaks, white caps of snow nestled against the sky.

In the centre of the lake lay a rocky island on which a small temple stood, cut off from the world now that the winter ice had melted.
 
Chindamani sat still in her saddle for a long time, gazing out at the little temple, watching the dark waters tremble against the rock on which it stood, listening to the waves falling lifeless to the shore. A stiff breeze came down from the mountains suddenly and flattened the waves.
 
Clouds scudded across the sky.

“Let’s ride on,” said Christopher.

But still she sat, unmoving, gazing out at the island.
 
The breeze moved her hair, raising it like a dark prayer-flag, then lowering it again.
 
She did not seem to notice.
 
Then, abruptly, she shivered and looked round at him.

“I have been here before,” she said.
 
She looked out at the temple once more.

“And I shall come here again.”

That afternoon, they stumbled across Zamyatin’s trail again.

Leaving the lake behind them, they turned east towards Sining-fu.

In spite of the risks, Christopher had decided to head for the town in order to obtain provisions and a guide to cross the Gobi: any other course of action would be suicide.
 
A little before the Haddaulan Pass, they came upon a small encampment of black yak-hair tents.

It was strangely quiet.
 
No dogs rushed out to snarl and snap about their heels, as was normal at nomad camps.
 
No smoke rose from a dung fire.
 
No children squealed.
 
Nothing moved.
 
Christopher took his revolver from his belt and cocked it.
 
Bandits were a common feature of life here.
 
Bandits and sudden death.

He saw the first body or what remained of it -just outside the nearest of the four tents.
 
The vultures had picked it clean, leaving white bones and strips of tattered clothing.
 
A black rifle one of the long, forked variety carried by all Tanguts and Mongols in the region lay near the bones.

A second skeleton stood out stark and white against the earth a few yards away, and beside it a third, that of a child of perhaps five or six.
 
The breeze played with the hair on their skulls, lifting and dropping it nervously.
 
A thin cloud of dust blew forlornly between the silent tents and disappeared.

There was a sudden flapping sound, loud and terrifying in the stillness.
 
Christopher swung round and saw a single vulture lift itself up awkwardly from the ground and stumble into the air.

There was an indistinct bundle of clothing where it had been feeding.
 
The banquet had not yet ended.
 
As at any meal, there were late arrivals.

They found half a dozen skeletons outside the tents and almost twenty cadavers inside.
 
The ones under cover had not been picked clean, and the cold Tibetan air had so far kept decomposition at bay.
 
The bodies were mainly those of women and children, but several men lay among them.
 
It was immediately apparent how they had died a single bullet, usually in the forehead or temple.

Why would bandits have done this?
 
Christopher wondered.
 
Had China’s civil war spilled over into Amdo?

The girl was hiding behind a large chest in the fourth tent.
 
They found her by chance, when Christopher went to pick up a piece of cloth with which to cover one of the bodies.
 
She was ten or eleven years old, shivering with cold, dirty, hungry, and terrified.

Since his presence seemed only to exacerbate the child’s terror, Christopher left her with Chindamani and went outside.
 
Even in the clean air, a stench of death seemed to hang over everything.

He wondered if his nostrils would ever be free of the smell.

He found the remains of several ponies just beyond the tents.

They had clearly been tethered together and most had died of hunger only a day or two earlier.
 
One was still alive: he put it out of its misery with a single shot.
 
When that was done, he walked away from the tents for a while.

At the head of the valley, there was a cairn built from loosely piled flat slates.
 
It was an obo, built to propitiate the local gods.

Pieces of cloth fluttered from it, the offerings of travellers.
 
The slates themselves were inscribed in Tibetan characters and propped against one another at all angles, with four laid flat across the top as a sort of roof.
 
Christopher made out the man trie formula of om mam pad me hum inscribed again and again across the dark green stone.
 
He had an urge to tear down the stones, to smash the obo and scatter the pieces.
 
What use were gods if they slept?

When he got back to the little camp, Chindamani had succeeded in calming the girl.
 
She was still distressed, but outright terror had begun to give way to grief, an unstaunchable torrent that filled the tiny tent.
 
This time, she did not react to Christopher, so he sat by Chindamani while she soothed and comforted the child.

A little later, the girl fell into a heavy sleep, the first she had known for days.
 
They decided it would be better for her if she did not waken in the camp or near it.
 
Christopher lifted her carefully and put her on Pip, flat across the panniers the pony carried.
 
A nomad child, she would be accustomed from birth to sleeping on the move.

Before leaving, they brought the remaining corpses out of the tents and exposed them for the vultures.
 
Chindamani recited prayers in a quiet voice, then they rode on before the girl should awaken and have her grief renewed or redoubled by the sight of the open burial.

They spent that night in the broad valley just beyond the pass.

The child woke briefly once.
 
She ate a little, then returned to sleep.

They took turns to stand guard over their tiny camp.
 
It was a cold night, and the stars kept watch with them until dawn.

In the morning, over breakfast, the girl told them what had happened.
 
Her name was Chodron and she thought she was ten years old.
 
The victims at the camp-site had been her family father, mother, brothers, sisters, grandmother and grandfather, two uncles, two aunts, and six cousins.

Several days earlier Christopher guessed about a week a Mongol had come riding into their camp.
 
He had been accompanied by two boys a Tangut or Tibetan and one that she said looked like Christopher.
 
The boys wore fine clothes that had been caked in mud and dirt, but they looked unhappy.
 
She had come out of her tent with her mother to see the strangers.

The man had demanded a change of ponies, offering to exchange those on which he and the boys rode for better mounts, along with a sum in cash.
 
Her uncle had refused the offer with the coming of spring, the men all needed their ponies and could ill afford to be left with two worn-out animals.
 
In any case, the man’s manner had been brusque and peremptory, and she had sensed that her uncle had refused out of dislike for the stranger as much as anything.

There had been angry words, she remembered, then someone had fired a shot.
 
She could not be sure whether her uncle or the Mongol had fired first.
 
But the stranger’s rapid-firing pistol had made light work of men armed with single-shot muskets.

She could neither explain nor remember with any clarity the massacre that had followed; nor had Chindamani or Christopher any wish to make her relive those insane moments.
 
Her mother had somehow contrived to hide her in the chest behind which they had found her hiding, and she had escaped the notice of the Mongol.
 
There had been no room in the chest for her mother, no room for anyone but her.

Christopher described Zamyatin to her, though he knew what her answer would be.
 
She shivered and said it was the same man, no other.
 
He asked about the boys, and she said they had seemed pale and unhappy, but unhurt.

On the following day, they continued east towards Sining-fu.
 
At Tsagan-tokko, a small village of clay houses, they enquired about Zamyatin.
 
Neither he nor the boys had been seen there.

They had just passed out of sight of the village when they heard the sound of hoofbeats behind them.
 
A Mongol horseman came cantering towards them and drew up alongside.
 
He was a big man, dressed in furs and equipped with a breech-loading rifle slung across his shoulders.

“They tell me you are looking for a Burial riding with two boys,” he said.

Christopher nodded.

“I saw them five days ago,” the horseman said.

“I was riding in the Tsun-ula, the mountains north of Koko-nor.
 
We spoke briefly.

I asked the man where they were headed.

“We must be in Kanchow ten days from now,” he told me.
 
When I asked him why, he said he had to meet someone there.
 
That’s all.
 
The Tibetan boy tried to say something to me, but the man told him to be quiet.”

“Is it possible,” Christopher asked, ‘to make it to Kanchow that quickly?
 
Won’t they have to go through the Nan-shan mountains?”

The Mongol nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

“But they can make it if there are no delays.
 
All the passes are open.

I told him the best route to take.”

He shifted awkwardly in his saddle.

“The Tibetan boy,” he said.

“He was pale, frightened.
 
I dreamed of him that night.
 
He came to me smiling.
 
He wore the robes of a buddha.
 
There was light all round him.”
 
He paused.

“Who is he?”

he asked.

Chindamani answered in a low voice, with an authority Christopher had never heard in it before.