Tulku (24 page)

‘Now, that’s amazing!’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Just what I been thinking myself. I’ll know, won’t I? He’ll tell me, somehow, if he’s . . . what the oracle said he is, and then I can bring him back.’

‘So you
are
coming,’ whispered Theodore.

‘What do you mean, ducky?’

‘I’ve been scared to ask, and so’s Lung, I guess. You’ve been taking Buddhism so seriously. I mean, your clothes, even.’

She laughed, and her fingers flicked dismissively at her habit.

‘You’re forgetting I’m an actress,’ she said. ‘I like to get myself into a part and play it proper. Not that I ain’t serious about what old Amchi’s been telling me – fact, it makes more sense to me than anything I’ve heard from all the other holy bodies what have tried to make a decent Christian of me. But look at it another way – I’ve got to take it serious, haven’t I? Old Amchi would spot at once if I didn’t.’

‘But you’re coming, all the same?’ insisted Theodore.

‘Course I am. I told you as I nearly died having my other kid. I’m not risking that again, any more than I can help. I’m getting myself to where there are proper doctors, whatever old Amchi says.’

‘Good,’ said Lung. ‘Now, Sumpa make this plan . . .’

‘No, don’t tell us, love,’ interrupted Mrs Jones, ’or Amchi’ll smell it out. Don’t you think so, Theo?’

Theodore nodded. In the glimmering room at the top of the Lama’s house the odour of conspiracy would have reeked about them like incense.

‘I guess you’re right,’ he said. ‘Only how long have we got to wait?’

‘Five weeks,’ said Lung. ‘Then is big festival. Plenty people come to Dong Pe. Everybody most busy. We go then.’

As those weeks dragged by, Lung and Theodore discussed this conversation many times. Mrs Jones usually managed to turn the subject aside, but
when
Lung tried to insist on talking about the escape she refused to listen.

‘You know,’ she said once, ‘I’m like an old hank of wool what’s got itself all of a tangle, and now I’m sorting myself out and rolling me up into a proper ball what I can knit with.’

She seemed to find the days of waiting no trouble at all, and Theodore endured them well enough, but they were a trial for Lung. He took to visiting Major Price-Evans with Theodore, helping to clean the temple and arguing, very formally and politely despite his inadequate English, for Confucianism against Buddhism. Theodore paid little attention to these debates, which were not very satisfactory even to Lung, because the Major was such a difficult opponent, tending to agree with everything Lung said and then somehow to incorporate it into his own side of the argument. One morning Lung, exasperated but still needing distraction, offered to mend the little windmill which was supposed to drive the second line of prayer-wheels. The Major was delighted, and Lung set about the job with his usual self-mocking competence, borrowing tools from somewhere and then – as if to spin the project out through the weeks of waiting – cutting every strut and joint as if he were making fine furniture.

So, slowly, the moment for escape neared, with increasing tension, like the felt approach of thunder. The monastery began to pulse with a sense of quickened life as the time of the great Festival came nearer. To Theodore’s relief the Lama Amchi announced a holiday from the lesson-periods, as it was his duty to meditate for three days before the start of the Festival, and first
he
wanted Mrs Jones to take part in the next ceremony of her initiation. He paused when he had made this announcement, and after Theodore had finished translating continued to stare at her with his misty but luminous gaze. She nodded.

‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘If that’s the form, I’ll do a bit of meditating too. Ask if he can find me a cell or something, where I’ll be alone.’

‘The cell is already waiting,’ said the Lama. ‘Tomorrow morning we will hold the ceremony, and then the Mother of the Tulka can retire to her cell. For six days after that we will meet here each morning, so that I may teach her the exercises to follow when she is alone, and then we will both withdraw into silence.’

For a moment Theodore was horrified. This seemed to end all hope of escape. Then the thought struck him that perhaps Mrs Jones knew what she was doing – if she was supposed to be shut in her cell, and in fact they started their escape on the first night, then with luck it would be three days before she was missed. If that was in her mind, she gave no sign, but when Theodore looked at the Lama he found the old man watching him with an intent, half-amused stare, as though he had read every detail of his thought.

Next morning Theodore came out of the temple of the oracle with the tang of the Major’s greasy tea on his lips, and heard the tinkling bells on his right echoed by a new set on his left. He looked and saw that the line of prayer-wheels that had been motionless were twirling like the others. He wondered whether it made any difference that Lung, who had brought them back into meaningless motion, didn’t believe in them at all.
Presumably
not. His function was like the wind’s function – it didn’t believe in them either. Still, Theodore was glad for Lung’s sake that his work had been successful so he went back into the temple and climbed through the series of rooms at the back to the roof. The rooms were tiny, and empty except for the one on the ground floor. They were connected to each other by ladders like the one he used to clean the Buddha and the taller statues. He found Lung out on the roof, making final adjustments.

‘Well done,’ he said in English. ‘You’ve got them turning faster than the other lot now.’

‘Perhaps I mend that also,’ said Lung. ‘Happy you come, Theo, for you help me. This rope not good, fall off in strong wind, and my arms not long to hold two end.’

His readiness to talk English showed he was in a cheerful mood, but he slipped into Mandarin to give more detailed instructions. Theodore held, pulled and twisted as he was told, but when they set the windmill going again it turned out that this latest adjustment had unbalanced other elements, so that it now quivered alarmingly at each revolution.

‘The thing is full of demons,’ said Lung with a laugh. ‘No wonder in this place. Now how shall I exorcise them?’

He slipped a cord from a pulley and stopped the juddering, then paced around the mechanism, fingering struts and ropes. In the silence a bell clanked and was answered by another, sounds that made Theodore aware of a noise that he had heard for some time without noticing, the deep drone of temple music, joined now by the fluting and tinkling of lighter instruments. He moved to
the
parapet and looked over the edge.

The doors of the main temple opposite were open, but the mountain brightness was too strong for him to see anywhere into the dark, square hole from which the music came. Now he could distinguish the deep gargling chant of the choir-leader and the boom of response from the choir. He thought he could see the blue shimmer of incense streaming below the lintel and up into the glistening air. The courtyard itself was empty.

He was about to turn back to the trap-door when two monks, wearing the ceremonial gold cockscomb helmets, emerged from under the right-hand arch, followed by Mrs Jones and then four monks. It was a tribute to the vigour of her personality that he knew her at once, because she was wearing the full costume of a Tibetan nun, the heavy, belted robe and the ungainly pointed cap, even the yellow boots. Theodore must have gasped or made some movement that showed his surprise for in a second Lung was at his side, silent at first, then speaking in a voice that was like a groan of anguish.

‘She is shameless! Look how she walks, and yet she is but five months pregnant! It is my child, my child!’

He made a movement, as though to rush down into the courtyard and confront her, but then turned back to the parapet and stood quivering, whispering to himself or groaning aloud, while Mrs Jones, escorted by her small procession, crossed the courtyard. At the temple door she knelt with all her usual grace and touched her forehead on the paving, then rose and was swallowed by the dark square. Lung was in the
middle
of a long, relaxing sigh when he stiffened again and pointed at the mountainside. The Lama Amchi, unescorted and wearing his plain russet robe, was coming down the stairs from his house.

‘He is a sorcerer,’ said Lung. ‘Look, he is flying!’

Of course it wasn’t true, but even to Theodore’s eyes it seemed that the Lama was coming down the zigzag flights in a series of slow swoops with only the hem of his robe touching the steps. Once he was on level ground they could see his feet pacing beneath the robe, but still that sense of supernatural gliding remained.

‘He is a sorcerer,’ repeated Lung. ‘He is stealing her soul!’

‘No-one can do that,’ said Theodore. Not against her will, he added to himself.

They watched while the Lama performed the same ritual of prostration at the temple door and, welcomed by bells, floated into the dark. Lung groaned again.

‘She is not coming,’ he said.

‘She promised she would.’

‘Then why all this?’

‘She’s acting.’

‘She believes.’

‘What did she tell you last night? I woke up once, and you were still talking.’

‘She said she will come with us, but only because she is frightened about the birth of the child. If it were not for that she would stay.’

‘Well, that sounds certain enough, doesn’t it? And she hasn’t much time to change her mind.’

‘Six days,’ said Lung.

15

THE FESTIVAL WAS
due to last for several days, during which the monks performed a series of dances, or plays – Theodore found it hard to tell which – acting out different bits of their faith. As usual it was difficult to get a coherent account from Major Price-Evans, because his enthusiasm kept reminding him of extra details, or of other parts of other ceremonies which could be compared with what he was describing. For instance he was trying to explain a dance in which somebody wearing the mask of a three-eyed bull and carrying a sword and a bowl of blood attacked an image made of coloured dough and cut it to bits, which were then scattered among the spectators, who ate them.

‘He’s the Lord of Death, of course,’ explained the Major. ‘Used to be a real human sacrifice, I shouldn’t wonder – lot of that sort of thing in Tibet before the Buddhists took over. Never seen a human sacrifice meself, though I’ve seen some rum things in my time. Suppose I would have had to try to stop it, in any case – British officer can’t just sit through a thing like that. All a bit like Communion Service, hey?’

He had sounded so far off and wistful, discussing the proper behaviour for a British officer who found himself in the audience at a human sacrifice, that it took Theodore a moment or two
to
grasp the meaning of the last sentence, especially as the Congregation’s name for the central Christian ritual was ‘The Lord’s Table’.

‘No!’ said Theodore explosively, ‘it’s nothing like.’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . but I didn’t mean to put you out, me boy. My fault for describing it badly, hey? Wish I could tell you how stirring it all is, with the music, and the colour, and the masks and all that. No set places for the audience – not like a theatre, hey – happens right in among you, and suddenly you find it’s happening inside you – see what I mean?’

‘No. Don’t the people watching get in the way?’

‘Not at all. Fact I’ve seen ’em join in once or twice, become part of the show. Seen a scrawny little chappie stalk into the middle of a dance with a dagger stuck through both cheeks – no blood, of course – and tell them he was some demon they’d affronted, somehow. Not invited, I dare say, like the witch in Sleeping Beauty. All they did was put a bit into the dance apologizing to the demon, and the demon would leave the chappie, who’d take the daggers out of his cheeks and go and sit down and watch the rest of the dance as though nothing had happened. You can’t get away from it. The Gods are very close to us up here. Don’t you feel that, hey?’

‘Yes,’ said Theodore.

The energy of his own assent shocked him like a blow. The single syllable had exploded out of him with even more force than his rejection a minute or two ago of the Major’s idea that sacrifice of the dough giant had anything to do with the Lord’s Table. He startled the Major, who tried to peer at him, blind-eyed, then nodded thoughtfully
in
silence before he broke once more into rambling talk.

Theodore barely heard. He was thinking
God is very close. He does not answer me, but he is very close
. He felt a strange sense of movement towards a crisis, like the silky tension in a river’s surface as it flows into the last still reach above a fall.

During the next few days the memory of this almost violent moment of assurance came and went, but the sense of coming crisis endured, fed not only by the approaching flight but by the feeling of excitement that filled the valley, like a liquid brimming up to the jagged rims. The preparations for the festival produced a tauter rhythm in daily life, full of sudden little turbulences. The very day of his talk with the Major, Theodore came into one of the minor courtyards to find a team of monks there, prancing like frogs to the beat of a small drum. Evidently the Major was mistaken when he said the dances were performed without rehearsal.

Later still Theodore was passing along one of the balconies when he looked over the rail and saw that the paving of the small courtyard below was covered with monstrous faces, fresh-painted and laid out to dry, snarling or grinning, staring at the sky with huge, round, unwinking eyeballs. Most of them were much more than masks, structures like the shell of a lobster, made to cover the performer almost to the ground; eye-slits cut in their chests showed that when they were worn they must stand nine or ten feet high. Largest of all was a three-eyed monster, dark blue, crowned with a ring of little white skulls. Its mouth was made to move, and now it hung open at its
widest
, displaying clashing white teeth and a scarlet gullet. Theodore could just make out that it was supposed to represent a bull, presumably the one who would cut the dough-giant to pieces in the dance the Major had described. He told himself it was only a mask, stupid and ugly, but all the same he shivered. As he turned, a monk came and leaned on the railing beside him as if to see what he had been looking at, then grabbed his arm and drew him away from the railing. It was Lung’s friend, Sumpa.