Tulku (28 page)

‘But when the child is born . . .’ he muttered.

‘He will be a child for many years,’ said the oracle-priest. ‘A Tulku does not come into his powers at once, so the Lama Amchi will guide him. And even when the child is a man . . .’

He gave a cynical little chuckle, and shrugged as if to show he was not a monk through and
through
, but had once been a yak-driver and seen other lands. It was a relief to hear him speak so, to share a moment of disbelief at the centre of this factory of appalling faiths. Perhaps Theodore’s feelings showed on his face, because the oracle-priest smiled and shook his head reprovingly.

‘The Lama Amchi is a truly spiritual person, and of great wisdom and power,’ he said. ‘And the child that is born will be the Tulku. Through my mouth the oracle spoke.’

‘How do you know?’ cried Theodore. ‘How do you know it isn’t all made up? You can’t remember anything you said!’

The oracle-priest looked at him for a moment with the same reproving smile and was just about to answer when a change came over him. He seemed to be having a fit. He shook. The smile became a snarl, and his coppery clear skin suffused red and purple, while the veins of his forehead swelled until they were like knotted roots of trees. He took one staggering pace towards Theodore and towered above him.

‘Go to your room, Theodore,’ he whispered. ‘Go to your room and wait.’

The voice was not human, a rasping sigh coming from a great distance, but it seemed to Theodore as he flinched back that the words were English. Once only in his life, when Theodore had offended, Father had used those exact words; and the voice, through all the distortion of distance, spoke with Father’s exact tone.

Theodore’s cringeing movement away from the swollen creature became a stagger and collapse as the shock struck him. He picked himself up and scuttled, cowering, until he collided with the back wall of the gallery. There he turned and ran,
hunching
his shoulders, not daring to look behind him; he twisted through a dark opening, scuttled down a corridor and out on to the gallery of a small courtyard, thronging with folk below him. Two more turns and he was lost. Yesterday he had known almost every winding of this maze, but suddenly all that knowledge was wiped away; his flight became like a journey in a dream, a panic rush through familiar country whose parts no longer fit together. He stopped at the entrance to another dark corridor and stood shaking his head, as though trying to clear the chaos from it, but all the time he heard the rasping whispered words. A monk glided out of the dark and spoke to him in Tibetan.

‘My room. My room,’ whispered Theodore.

He spoke in English, but the monk seemed to guess his need and took him gently by the elbow and guided him like a blind man through the maze until they reached a familiar gallery and a familiar door. At the touch of the latch Theodore’s wits came back to him, enough to make him mutter his thanks to his guide before darting through the door and heaving it shut. He drew a deep breath and turned to face Lung, but the room was empty.

Perhaps even in his terror Theodore had been unconsciously bracing himself to face his friend’s snarl of fury and rejection, and now, finding there was no need, he let a long sigh shake his body as that strand of tension slid away. The process did not stop, but ran on and on all through the web of fear, and self-pity, and self-distrust, loosing first the tautness of the morning’s nightmare and then ravelling on through ancient knots and cords that had shaped his nature.

The process was timeless, his whole life, two or three breaths drawn a pace inside the door. There had been a pool in the ravine in which Father baptized his converts. Out of a place like that Theodore stepped into the middle of the room, where he stretched and sighed, as if waking from a dream.

I am re-born, he thought. He said the words aloud.

‘I am re-born.’

Ideas came to him, fully shaped, not needing to be thought out but already solid in their rightness, things he could hold in his mind and inspect and accept like an object held in the hand. The words which the oracle had spoken had been Father’s, but they had not been spoken in anger. He had been sent back to this place to receive this blessing. The whole prodigious landscape centred on this point, this hidden room. Mountain, forest, meadow, the packed maze of the monastery, the Lama Amchi, Mrs Jones – they were all waiting for a birth, and perhaps it would come. But for Theodore it had happened now and here. If only he had had more faith he would have known it would be so – he too had been given signs, but he had failed to read them, confused by his own fears and longings, and the passions and expectations around him. Only a few days back, when he had given that vehement ‘yes’ to the Major’s question about the gods he had at once felt that it had meant much more than he could grasp; no wonder, since it had been a signal as sudden and strong as the kick Mrs Jones had felt from the child in her womb . . . He remembered the many times in the past weeks when he had been conscious of the hovering presence of the expected
soul
, the being for whom the peasants and the monks, Lama Amchi and Mrs Jones all waited. Perhaps it had been the weight of their longing which had made him aware of it; but all the time the soul had been his own. The birth had happened here.

Theodore didn’t for a moment think or hope or fear that he might himself be after all the Tulku of the Siddha Asara. That other birth might or might not happen, with results which those who longed for it might or might not expect. That was something else. But now, here, he was fiercely conscious of himself as Theodore, of the central numbness flooding with life, the broken roof rebuilt and the cold hearth glowing. He had heard Lama Amchi talk of those moments on the path to enlightenment when the soul seems to leave the body and soar free, and of the agony of its return to clogging flesh. Theodore felt the exact opposite. The return was the ecstasy. He was whole, and body and mind and soul sang at their healing.

He sat on the edge of his cot, staring at a patch of brilliant green and absorbing the greenness of it. There was no need to say prayers – it was better to sit with mind and soul spread out and relaxed, like a bather after a long swim who lies on a smooth rock and lets the sun dry him while its warmth purrs through nerve and muscle. Though he could have sat like that for hours, he felt the nature of his inner peace altering as his energies gathered to meet some as yet unknown need. The green patch stopped being only an embodiment of green and became a scroll-like leaf at the edge of a painting of the sacred lotus; the room took shape in detail so clear that to look at any object was to accept a blast of vision. He found
himself
staring at a few crumbs and a still-damp tea-stain on Lung’s cot, seeing them in a way that let him experience, without any pain but with total understanding, the depth of Lung’s desolation. Lung’s absence built itself into his vision, an emptiness as strong as if it had been a presence. With a shock of sadness he remembered that Lung needed help far more than he did. At the same moment he was aware of another absence. The hunched outline of the robe, pinned by Lung’s sword to the far wall, was no longer there. The sword had gone too.

His mind accepted the meaning of this with the same clarity as that with which his eyes were seeing. Lung was wearing the robe and carrying the sword. He had eaten that morning for the first time for three days, and as if it were a duty. He had driven Theodore from the room. Then he had disguised himself as a monk, and now he was walking through the maze of the monastery with his sword hidden beneath his robe. He was going to kill somebody. The Lama Amchi? Mrs Jones? Himself?

So Theodore must find him. Where? How? Ordinary reason began to work with agonizing slowness, but in his new calm Theodore accepted that there was no point in rushing from the room until he had made some plan. As if to appease his body’s itch for action he rose and crossed the room to inspect the place where the robe had hung, but as he passed Lung’s cot his foot touched something solid, hidden under the tumbled bedclothes; he scuffed them aside and saw the sword, and beside it the little embroidered cap Lung always wore.

Relief lasted only for an instant. He picked the
sword
up, and as he stood weighing the lean, dark blade in his hands an image sprang into his mind – this blade hanging on the wall of the guest-house, where Lung had hung it, with Mrs Jones’s rifle slung crosswise over it.

His calm was chillier as he turned to the pile of baggage. The flat rifle-case was there beneath a blanket roll. It was fastened, but as soon as he pulled it clear he knew by its weight that it was empty. Yes. A rifle could be hidden under a robe almost as easily as a sword. It was a much more dangerous weapon. There was no question now of Theodore risking lives by looking for Lung on his own. He must warn the monks. But they were all busy with the festival. The oracle-priest . . .

Theodore hurried along the galleries and corridors. His shock-trance was gone, his nightmare over, and the monastery had reassembled itself into known shapes and routes. By now the courtyards were almost empty as the promised appearance of the Lama Amchi and the dance of Yidam Yamantaka drew the inhabitants towards the central arena. He could hear drums and bells without accompanying voices, which meant that a dance or play was being performed. He had no way of measuring how long he had spent in his room – the enormous change had happened in a sphere in which time had no meaning – it could have been minutes or hours. Singing, the oracle-priest had said, then another play, then more singing, and then Lama Amchi would come down the steps to watch the Lord of Death slaying the dough-giant.

The gallery above the great courtyard was fuller now, with massed ranks of choristers lining the balustrade, but leaving a narrow passage where
one
could pass behind them. Theodore strode along, studying the robed backs, looking for a close-cropped dark head which wasn’t wearing one of the gold cockscomb helmets. It had been under this arch, surely. None of the backs was right. He tapped a shoulder. The monk turned, patient and unsurprised.

‘Where is the oracle-priest?’ Theodore said in Mandarin.

The monk answerd in Tibetan, then pulled at a sleeve beside him. An older monk turned and Theodore repeated his question. The monk frowned, shrugged and said, ‘I will ask.’ More heads turned. There was a brief discussion in Tibetan. ‘Gone,’ said the old monk. ‘That way. Down.’ His hands made the movements of feet descending a stair. The other monks were smiling and nodding and echoing the gesture when from the courtyard below one of the long horns began to snore, a chime of bells rippled along an erratic scale and a drum thudded. The monks turned from Theodore. He saw their backs swell as they drew breath for the first crashing syllable of the chant. So the play was over and the second lot of singing had begun.

Theodore ran now, down the gallery behind the chanting ranks, to the stair that circled down in the corner of the courtyard; he stumbled and almost fell down its dark steepness, but clutched at the railing and caught himself, then picked his way down to the hallway at the bottom. This space, lit only by the archway into the courtyard, was thronged with monsters. The dough-giant, painted and grinning, towered on its sledge by the arch, surrounded by the team of black and scarlet demons who would haul it on to the stage.
Beyond
them the voice of the solo chanter gargled its strange deep note while the bells tinkled and clanked. The oracle-priest was not here. Urgently Theodore turned to a group by the foot of the stair.

‘Who speaks Chinese?’ he said. ‘A man is going to shoot the Lama Amchi.’

A vast shape wheeled round and the monster Yidam Yamantaka glared down at Theodore. He spoke his question again, almost shouting now, to the eye-slits in the chest. The creature took a pace towards him, making shooing movements with its arms, which protruded roughly from its hips. Several of the demons came crowding round, speaking in hissing whispers, no doubt telling him not to interrupt the ceremony but producing a noise both bloodless and furious, such as a brood of snakes might make if they could talk. Theodore retreated a couple of steps up the stair and made his plea again but was answered with more hisses and gestures of dismissal. Now, round the shoulders of Yidam Yamantaka and over the heads of the demons, he could see the solid crush of watchers in the courtyard – there was no possible way through there to warn the Lama.

As Theodore climbed the dark stair the image of the monster Yamantaka and the hissing demons was strong in his mind, not as creatures of terror, but as something else, a sign, a warning. He had been appealing for help to the wrong Gods. He must find Lung himself.

This was not a conscious decision, but as he strode back down the gallery, searching the heedless backs for one that might be the oracle-priest, his reason was asking, Where would Lung go? Where? The pulse of the chant was changing now, with the rise and fall of the deep horn-notes
coming
faster, like waves clustering closer together; the pitch of the voices and the other instruments held a tension, as if the outward discipline were about to burst under the pressure of the inner excitement and become chaos – a tingle like the fringe of foam that rims a wave just before it breaks. Soon, now, soon the music would end, and then the Lama Amchi would leave his house and glide down the steps to the last platform above the crowd. A perfect target.

From where?

The answer formed in the same pulse as the question. Theodore saw the image of the Lama moving down those steps as if floating an inch above them. He heard Lung’s hiss – ‘He is a sorcerer! Look, he is flying!’ The roof of the temple of the oracle, where Lung had turned from mending the windmill and seen the Lama on the steps. There!

Theodore broke into a run, racing along to the far end of the gallery and hurling down that stair and out into the courtyard. Here, at the furthest corner from the stage, the crowd was not quite so dense and it was possible to shoulder and twist a way through. The people, inured by now to jostling, seemed barely to notice him as they craned towards the steps that led down from the mountain. The soloist was chanting a phrase which Theodore recognized as the regular formula which came at the end of many different chants. In a few seconds the choirs would answer, echoing the phrase seven times, and the chant would be over.