The Ninth Buddha (5 page)

The undertow had him firmly in its grip at last, and he could feel himself going under.
 
Thin hands flailing, tearing the sunlight out of the sky.
 
He said nothing.

“Three weeks after that,” the other man went on, inexorable now he had begun, ‘we got hold of a signal from Calcutta to Mishig.
 
It said they had tracked you down in a place called Hexham in England.
 
There was a request for further instructions.”

He paused.

“I’m afraid that’s where things went a bit wrong,” he said.

“We thought Mishig would send another message to Calcutta later the same day.
 
He was due to despatch one of his routine signals.
 
But he never made the broadcast.
 
He took the next train from Siliguri to Calcutta.
 
We’re certain he carried the instructions to his control in person either orally or in writing, it doesn’t matter.
 
That was six days ago.”

Christopher looked at Winterpole.

“You knew about this and you didn’t notify me.
 
You knew something might happen, but you kept quiet.”

“Try to understand, Christopher.
 
We needed to know what Zamyatin is up to.
 
We had to let them show their hand.
 
I was afraid you might do something to prevent them if you knew.
 
I’m sorry.”

“They might have killed him.
 
For all I know, he’s dead now.

And they did kill Father Middleton.
 
For what?”

“We still need to know, Christopher.
 
What Zamyatin is doing in Tibet.
 
What he wants with your son.
 
I’d like you to go to India, to Kalimpong.
 
And if it’s necessary, to Tibet.
 
I think that’s where they’re taking your son.”

“I know,” Christopher replied.
 
He looked away from Winterpole.

Outside, the shadows of night were descending on grey and mottled wings that troubled the snow-filled air.

“I know,” he said.
 
And the snow stopped falling and there was only darkness.

Nedong Pass, southern Tibet, January 1921 He was cold.
 
There had been more snow that morning, white, blinding snow that had whipped at his face and hands.
 
It had blotted out everything: the road, the rocks, the footprints they left behind.
 
It was impossible to tell whether they were still in the pass or not; he thought they might have lost their way.
 
Tobchen was frightened, he could tell.
 
Once, the pony had almost slipped on a ledge over a steep precipice.
 
Since then, Tobchen had made him walk, holding the animal’s bridle, stiff with frost.
 
The old man went in front, repeating mantras endlessly, spinning his prayer wheel like a madman.

Since early afternoon, the snow had given way to a fierce wind, a wind so sharp it threatened to tear the skin from a man’s bones.

It rose to gale force like this every afternoon.
 
The day before, they had passed a group of travellers wearing masks, dark masks of leather painted with the features of demons.
 
He had been frightened and had called out.

“Tobchen, Tobchen who are those men?
 
Why are they dressed like that?”

The old man had looked up and shouted back.
 
The wind snatched his words away and he waited until the boy came alongside him.

“Don’t worry, my lord.
 
They are only travellers.
 
They wear the masks to protect their faces from the wind.
 
And they paint them to frighten the demons.”

The men had gone past without a word, silent and incurious, harried by the wind, dark figures driven remorselessly into the void.
 
He and Tobchen had been left alone again to battle on against the elements.

They stopped just after sunset.
 
The old man found dried yak dung

somewhere and lit a fire.
 
There was tea and tsampa as always, but

Samdup did not complain.
 
And if he had, Tobchen would not have

listened to him.
 
He was a trulku, but he was still a child, and

Tobchen treated him with a mixture of awe and sternness that allowed for no lapses in discipline.
 
He was worried that the old man was growing tired.
 
He wondered how much longer the journey would last.

“How much farther to Gharoling?”
 
he asked.

The old monk looked up, his tea cup clasped in frost-bitten fingers.

“Soon, my lord, soon.”

“But how soon, Tobchen?
 
Tomorrow?”

The lama shook his head.

“No, not tomorrow,” he said.

“But with the help of your prayers and the grace of Lord Chenrezi, it will not be long.”

“Will it be the day after tomorrow, Tobchen?”
 
the boy insisted.

“Drink your tea, khushog, and don’t ask so many questions.
 
When you have finished, I will light a lamp and we will study the Kangyur together.
 
Your education must not be neglected just because you are travelling.”

The boy fell silent and sipped his tea, lifting out from time to time the balls of tsampa that provided the only real nourishment in his meal.
 
The wind was still high, but they sat in the shelter of an outcrop of rocks, listening to it pass.
 
The heavens were invisible behind acres of heavy cloud.

“Why are we going to Gharoling, Tobchen?”
 
Samdup asked.

“I have told you before.
 
To visit Geshe Khyongla Rinpoche.
 
The Rinpoche is a great teacher, greater than I. It is time for you to study the Sutras.
 
Then you will be ready to undertake the study of the Tantras.
 
You must know both to fulfill your destiny.”

“But there are teachers at Dorje-la Gompa.”

“Yes, there are good teachers there.
 
But none as great as Khyongla Rinpoche.
 
Do you remember when we studied the Lama Nachupa together, how it described the duty of a disciple towards his guru?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Now it is time for you to put all its counsels into practice.
 
You have not come among us to learn.
 
You have come to remember all you knew before.
 
The Rinpoche will instruct you how to do that.”

There was a pause.
 
Snow had begun to fall again.
 
It would be a cold night.
 
The boy’s voice sounded faint in the darkness.

“Was there danger at Dorje-la Gompa?”

Unseen, the old monk stiffened.

“Why do you think there was danger, my lord?”

“I sensed it.
 
When the stranger came.
 
I sense it now.
 
Am I right?”

There was silence for a moment, then the old man answered.

“You are not mistaken, khushog.
 
There is danger.”
 
He paused.

“Great danger.”

To me?”

“Yes.
 
To you.”

“Is that why we are fleeing to Gharoling?
 
Is that why we left at night?”

The old man sighed.

“Yes We will be safe there.
 
Khyongla Rinpoche understands.
 
If if anything should happen to me, lord, make your way to Gharoling.
 
They will expect you there.
 
Do not attempt to return to Dorje-la.
 
Do not go anywhere but Gharoling.
 
Do not trust anyone but Khyongla Rinpoche and those he advises you to trust.”

Silence fell again as the boy digested what he had been told The world was proving to be a harder place than he had once thought it.
 
Then his voice broke into the old man’s thoughts again.

“Is it my other body” he asked.

“Is he responsible for this?”

Tobchen shook his head.

“No, my lord.
 
I am sure he knows nothing of you.
 
At least I think not.
 
When it is time, he will be told.”

“Would he try to kill me if he knew?”

The lama did not answer immediately.
 
So many incarnations, he thought.
 
They began as children and grew old and died.
 
And were born again. An endless cycle.

“Yes,” he said.

“I think so.
 
I think he would have you killed ‘

Kalimpong

Kalimpong, northern India, January 1921 Kalimpong dozed in the thin January sunshine.
 
It dreamed of wool and cotton and bright Kashmiri shawls, of Chinese silks, deer antlers and musk, of Indian sugar, glass, and penny candles, of long, jangling caravans coming down from the Chumbi valley out of Tibet, of traders bringing their wares in gunny sacks from the plains of India.
 
But on the high passes to the north, snow fell in easy splendour, thick and white, falling in a trance like the substance of dreams on rocks as cold as sepulchres. For two weeks now, no-one had dared to venture over the Nathu pass. Trade had been brisk with the arrival of the last caravan from Gyantse, but now it had fallen off again, and the tiny market town waited for word that the large consignment due from Lhasa was at last on its way.

Christopher Wylam let the clear air fill his lungs.
 
He felt better in Kalimpong.
 
The town itself was little more than a trading-post on the outskirts of an empire, an entrepot for traders coming down from Tibet with wool and yak-tails to exchange for cheap manufactured goods and more expensive fabrics.
 
But it stood on the edge of mystery.
 
In the air, Christopher could already taste the snow and ice of the Himalayas.
 
They lay on his tongue like a flavour remembered from childhood, at once familiar and exotic, conjuring up memories of silent journeys in the dim, falling snow.

He had only to lift his eyes to see the mountains themselves standing silently in the distance beyond green foothills.
 
They rose up like ramparts barring access to the great Tibetan plateau beyond, a forbidden kingdom jealously guarded by its protector deities.
 
And, more prosaically, by armed Tibetan border guards.

As he stepped down from his pony, the spices and perfumes of the bazaar brought back to him vivid memories of his father.
 
He remembered walking here with him, followed by their chaprasst, Jit Bahadur.
 
And behind would come his mother dressed in white, carried in an open dandy on the shoulders of four impeccably dressed servants.
 
That had been in the days when his father was stationed nearby as British Resident at the native court of Mahfuz Sultan.

Arthur Wylam had been an important man, appointed to his post by the Viceroy himself.
 
The Wylams had been Anglo-Indians for three generations: Christopher’s grandfather William had come out with the Company just before the Mutiny and had stayed on afterwards as an ICS District Magistrate in Secunderabad.
 
Young Christopher had been brought up on stories of the great Raj families the Rivett-Carnacs, the Maynes and the Ogilvies and had been told repeatedly that it was his duty, as it would one day be that of his own son, to add the name of Wylam to that illustrious roll.

Kalimpong had scarcely changed.
 
The main street, a rambling affair of little shops, rang to the sound of hawkers and muleteers as it had always done.
 
Here, Bengali merchants rubbed shoulders with little Nepali Sherpas and fierce-looking nomads from Tibet’s eastern province of Kham; pretty Bhutanese women with their distinctive short-cropped hair collected glances from young trap as making their first pilgrimage to Buddh Gaya; cheerful Chinese traders argued with sharp Marwari merchants and made a profit out of it.
 
On a flat stone in the middle of the bazaar, a blind man sat begging, his eyes running sores, his fingers bent into an attitude of perpetual entreaty.
 
Christopher tossed a coin into the upturned hand and the old man smiled a toothless smile.

Christopher’s father had always preferred the bustle and anarchy of Kalimpong to the stiff formality of Darjeeling, the British administrative centre some fifteen miles to the west.
 
How many times had he told Christopher that, if he was to live in India, he must learn to be an Indian?
 
Arthur Wylam had in many ways despised his own caste the Brahmins, the heaven-born of the Indian Civil Service and Indian Political Service for their insularity and prejudice.

The Civil List, with its tedious enumerations of precedence, the clubs

with their ridiculous rules of etiquette and protocol, the effective

apartheid that made even high-born and educated Indians outsiders in

their own country all had at one time or another drawn his wrath.
 
His

love for the Indian people, for their languages, their customs, their

religions, their foolishness and their

wisdom, had made him an effective and eloquent intermediary ‘ between the Government of India and the various native rulers to whose courts he had been assigned.
 
But his scorn for convention in a society riddled by it the way a chest of drawers is riddled by worms had earned him enemies.

1 Christopher left his pony at a stable and took his bags to a small t rest-house run by an old Bhutanese woman near McBride’s Wool Depot. The rest-house was noisy and smelly, and it teemed with energetic little Kalimpong fleas whose great-great-grandparents I had come to town in a particularly noxious sheepskin from Y Shigatse; but it was the sort of place where no-one would ask too many questions about who a person was or what he was doing in town.