Tulku

17

THE MONASTERY HAD a hospital. Theodore lay on his cot there with his eyes closed, relaxed and waiting for whatever might happen next. His headache was not so bad since he had persuaded the hospital monks to stop saying mantras over him and send somebody to fetch the medicine-tin from the baggage-pile. He had taken two of Mrs Jones’s headache-powders, which seemed to have worked, though their sour-sweet taste hung like vomit in the back of his throat. But in any case he now seemed to have the power to push the pain outside himself, and let it ache away in the void without troubling him. Footsteps shuffled by his bed.

‘Are you awake, my friend?’ said the voice of the oracle-priest.

By the weak light of the butter-lamp at his bedside Theodore looked up at the solemn, sturdy features, half-expecting them to contort into the monster of the morning. The prospect didn’t frighten him any more. He waited.

‘They wish you to come to the Council,’ said the oracle-priest.

‘Why?’

‘How should I know? I am not a member of the Council. They were questioning me, because I had been speaking with you at the start of the Festival. But I do not remember what was said. Perhaps a power visited me . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it is vital to know what the power said. They seldom come uninvoked, and when they do, it is for matters of great importance.’

‘It told me to go to my room. That’s all.’

‘You must come. We must know the exact words, so that the Master of Protocol may interpret them.’

‘I don’t know the exact words. When it happened I thought you spoke to me in English, but now I’m not sure.’

‘In any case you must come. Are you well enough to stand, or shall I send for a litter?’

‘I can walk. What’s happened to Lung? Is he all right?’

‘The Chinese? I do not know.’

Theodore sat up carefully. The movement filled his head with a shrill whine, and his shoulders were very sore. He seemed to have a big, wincing bruise on his left thigh. Watched anxiously by the hospital monk who had been looking after him he eased himself free of the blankets and into his boots. The oracle-priest put a strong arm round his shoulders and led him limping out into the night.

The Festival was still going on as if nothing had happened. A group of performers was swirling through the small courtyard below the hospital gallery, carrying orange-flaring torches which made the shadows dark and flicker across their masks – these were of animals, mostly lions and deer. They swept in silence out under the further arch, from beyond which came the endless throb and tinkle of Tibetan music. The oracle-priest led the way towards the gallery above the main courtyard. The air was full of sharp smells, something like scorched hair mixed with bitter spices. From the corridor before the long gallery Theodore could see that something was burning on the courtyard floor, throwing an unsteady, bluish, chemical light through the long vista of arches; the light glinted off pillars and the watchers along the balustrade and cast their shadows waveringly on the wall behind. There seemed to be still a huge crowd watching. Theodore heard, and almost felt, their response of horror and excitement as the animal-dancers burst with demon-screams onto the stage, but he never reached a point from which he could see into the courtyard because the oracle-priest stopped in the darkness of the corridor and tapped at a door on the left. It opened a crack. A password was exchanged, and it opened fully.

Inside was a fair-sized room containing several idols and hung with Buddhist symbols and pictures. A dozen monks were standing around in patient silence. The two who were guarding the door wore their rosaries wound round their arms to show they were soldier-monks, and carried ornate swords which looked like ritual objects but could clearly be used as weapons. Two more of them guarded a larger door in the left-hand wall. Without a word to anyone the oracle-priest led Theodore to this second door. One of them opened it a crack, and waited. A voice was murmuring beyond. Another voice joined in, arguing against the first, then two more. A bell rang sharply, followed by instant silence. The guard swung the door open and the oracle-priest led Theodore through, still with his arm round his shoulders.

For a moment Theodore thought he had walked into another temple. There, at the far end of the longish room, was the idol of the Buddha, twice life-size, gilded and jewelled, gazing at him out of the gloom with its blank eyes and uninterpretable smile; the room was heavy with glitter and richness and mystery, all made stronger and stranger by the light of the erratic little lamps. Two of the wheel-backed thrones stood in front of the idol; four benches, two on each side, faced each other across a central aisle – these were occupied by about thirty monks, mostly elderly. The Lama Amchi sat on the left-hand throne. The other was empty, waiting as it had waited these past twelve years, for the Tulku.

The Lama Amchi gave an order in Tibetan, and the monk who had let them in brought a stool and set it in the middle of the aisle between the benches. The oracle-priest eased Theodore gently on to it.

‘Welcome to the Council Room of Dong Pe,’ said the Lama Amchi. ‘Are you fit to answer questions?’

‘Where is Lung?’ said Theodore.

‘The Chinese? That need not concern us now. He is well guarded. He cannot harm you.’

‘What have you done to him? Is he all right?’

‘We have more important matters to consider. It seems to us that as the Festival began this morning the oracle spoke to you. We must know what he said.’

‘I won’t tell you anything till I’ve seen Lung.’

Most of the monks in the room must have understood Mandarin, for Theodore heard a murmur of anger from the benches. The Lama Amchi seemed unmoved. His eyes turned towards the oracle-priest, who spoke for a short while in Tibetan. Theodore caught the word for ‘room’.

‘Is this so, child?’ said the Lama, gentle as ever. ‘The oracle, speaking in your own tongue, told you to go to your room?’

‘When I’ve seen Lung,’ said Theodore.

There was a short silence. A monk rose on one of the benches and started to speak in tolerable Mandarin, no doubt for Theodore’s benefit. Theodore thought it was the old man who had held the slate at the ceremony of the oracle.

‘If this word is true,’ he said, ‘it could be interpreted simply. Only this child, who is the Guide, could recognize the signs to show that the Chinese had gone into the monastery, taking a weapon with him. Only he could know where to look for him and prevent the crime. But he would need to go to his room to recognize the signs. But this is mere speculation without the exact words.’

‘This is unimportant,’ said someone else. ‘The most necessary thing is to know what the Chinese in Pekin are planning for Dong Pe. They have sent this agent to attack our great Lama . . .’

‘That is not known for sure,’ said someone else.

‘Then let us ask the oracle.’

‘The oracle ceremony cannot be held for at least ten days. First there is the Festival, then the stars are ill-placed.’

‘Yet the oracle spoke only this morning. The child must be made to tell us . . .’

The acid note of the bell cut through the clamour of voices and silence fell. The Lama Amchi said nothing but sat gazing at Theodore with that strange half-seeing gaze, as though all the solid material of the room – flesh and bone, wood and stone – were so much mist, through which he was gazing on something more truly there. Theodore stared back. He was aware of a web of tensions around him, a network which quivered to the touch of a hundred different motives and impulses; he could hear in the whispered exchanges at one side something that was more than mere discussion, something which held a challenge to the Lama Amchi’s authority; he guessed the Sumpa had not been the only monk willing to help the Chinese, and that some secret sympathizers might even be present in this room. But for the moment none of those complexities mattered at all to Theodore. He had one clear and simple aim – to find out what had happened to Lung and to do his best to protect him.

‘You don’t even know that Lung fired the shots,’ Theodore said suddenly. ‘Perhaps it was me. I’m a Christian. Perhaps I wanted to stop the dance of Yidam Yamantaka, because I think it’s wicked.’

He could hear the disbelief in the murmurs around him. The Lama Amchi smiled.

‘You do not have such a thought in your soul,’ he said. ‘You are a friend. You are the Guide. Against your own inmost wish you have striven to help us, and now you have fought, as if with demons, to preserve my poor life. You have done well, and more than well, and our blessing is on you . . . No, it was the Chinese who fired the shots, though one indeed struck the shoulder of Yidam and one broke a lamp in front of the Buddha in my own room . . . Now I am at a loss. I do not see which way to turn if you will not help us.’

‘Let me see Lung.’

‘No.’

Before the silence could really settle again a new noise rose, a voice from beyond the doors, quiet but urgent, its owner, even through the muffling timber, unmistakable.

‘It is the Mother of the Tulku,’ said the Lama Amchi. ‘Do we admit her, my brothers?’

‘A woman? In the Council Room?’ said an appalled voice. Grunts of agreement followed the protest.

‘She is the Mother of the Tulku and no mere woman,’ said the Lama. ‘And besides, she will come in whether we like it or no.’

Without waiting for further argument he gave an order to the guard at the door, and at the same time rose to his feet. The door swung open and Mrs Jones came quietly through. Theodore realized that everyone else in the room was standing. He rose swayingly to his feet, turning to watch her come. She had the monks’ walk to perfection now, and glided just far enough into the room to let the doors shut behind her, then knelt and bowed her head to the floor. Rising again she came forward in silence until she stood beside Theodore.

‘What’s up, Theo?’ she whispered. ‘I heard a couple of shots this morning, and I knew they must of come from my gun, but no-one won’t tell me what happened. I been looking for you and old Lung all day, and in the end I got it out of someone as you was here. I was going to wait till you come out, but then I got it into my head as how you needed me, so I went and argy-bargied my way in.’

‘They won’t tell me what they’ve done with Lung,’ said Theodore.

‘Why should they of done anything with him?’

‘He tried to shoot the Lama Amchi this morning. I stopped him. On the roof of the temple of the oracle. I got knocked out in the fight. They’ve been trying to make me tell them what the oracle said to me this morning, and I’ve been saying I won’t tell them till they let me see Lung. I’m afraid . . .’

The clink of the bell cut him short.

‘Let us do everything in order,’ said the Lama. ‘Child, we must now talk in Tibetan, so that the Mother of the Tulku can answer us.’

Theodore nodded. At a sign from the Lama another stool was brought for Mrs Jones. Everybody sat. The Lama spoke for a short while. Theodore, from what Major Price-Evans had taught him, picked out enough of the words to guess that the Lama was asking Mrs Jones to persuade him to answer the question about his meeting with the oracle. He was preparing himself to refuse when instead of turning to him she replied to the Lama in Tibetan. She started easily enough, but then, to his surprise, stumbled and faltered, searched for a word, got going but almost at once came to a halt once more.

‘This won’t do,’ she said in English. ‘Trouble is, all the Tibetan I’ve learnt is about chants and meditation and such, which ain’t much cop for talking about this kind of thing. I’ll have to do it in English, and you put it into Chinee for them. All right?’

Theodore nodded, remembering his own difficulties with Major Price-Evans. Mrs Jones turned once more to the Lama Amchi.

‘Now see here,’ she said earnestly. ‘Things ain’t been going too bad this far, spite of old Lung trying to take a pot-shot at you this morning – not that he had a hope in heaven of hitting you at that range. But apart from that, I done everything you wanted, and more. When I first come here my idea was to scarper, soon as poss, and we set it up and four nights ago we was all ready to go, and you’d never have caught us, neither, with three days’ start. Only who stopped it? I did. I’d changed my mind and decided I was going to stick it out here, and have the baby here whatever happens. And what’s more, I been doing my level best to do it all the way you want, so as your Tulku can have a proper start in his next life, with a Mum what’s really up to the job. I been meditating like nobody’s business. I been learning every blind scrap I can about the sort of thing he’s got to know – all right, I been doing it for my own sake, much as his, but you can’t say as I’ve done one thing what you didn’t want. Now you look like mucking it all up. Lung’s the Father of the Tulku, ain’t he . . .’

She was speaking at a slower pace than her usual rush, and had dropped into the slurred and twanging accent which Theodore had heard only once before, when she had been talking in the cave in the rock pillar about her childhood in the Thames-side slums. It was as though the years of her life between those old days and this had been an almost meaningless interlude. She spoke quietly but with great emphasis, and paused at the end of almost every phrase for Theodore to translate. When he reached this point there was a gasp and a mutter. Clearly most of the Council were not aware that Lung was the father of the unborn child. The Lama Amchi must know – yes, of course, Mrs Jones had told him very early on when they were discussing the signs announced by the oracle – but presumably he hadn’t told the others. They wouldn’t quite so easily accept a Tulku of half-Chinese parentage, perhaps.

‘Is he still alive?’ said Mrs Jones.

‘His body lives,’ said the Lama.

‘I want to see him.’

‘It is better not.’

‘Now, look here. This is what I mean when I say you’re beginning to muck things up. For a start, it ain’t right if the Father of the Tulku don’t get proper respect, whatever he might of done in a moment when he was a bit off his rocker. And next, I am very fond of that young man. I ain’t fond of him in quite the same way as what I was four months back, but I want to see as he’s all right. I want that almost as much as I want to see that you get your Tulku born proper. Matter of fact, the one goes with the other. If I start thinking as how Lung got into trouble ’cause of what I did, then I won’t be able to do my meditating and all, will I? That bit of guilt will be like a ruddy great mountain, bang in the middle of my road to enlightenment. I’ll put it stronger. Unless I see as Lung’s all right, and going to stay all right, then I’m going to turn round. I’m going to walk all the way back down the road as I’ve come so far along, and be what I was before I became your chela. ’Cause of why? ’Cause you’ll of shown me, by the way you treated my friend Lung, that none of what you been teaching me matters. Perhaps it’s true – fact I still think it is – but it still don’t matter one blind bit if it lets you do that to a fellow like Lung. No, wait. I got something else to say. It’s no use you thinking fair enough. She can go back and be what she was before, and have the baby, and after that it don’t matter what she thinks or feels. It ain’t true. I’m old for child-bearing. What’s more I’ve only had one kid before, and that time I wasn’t happy and I near as a toucher died, spite of the best doctors in England, and so did the baby. And I can tell you now it’ll be worse this time. Oh, I can have your Tulku, soft and easy, with hardly a pang, spite of my age, ’cause of what you’ve taught me. But you know as well as I do it’ll only work if I’ve got faith in it. Absolute, stark, unquestioning faith, body and soul. And if you ain’t careful, that’s not going to happen. So, now, let’s have him up here and see what you done to him.’

‘He is a profaner of holy things,’ said the Lama. ‘He cannot come to this place.’

‘No he ain’t,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘He was off his rocker, so it don’t count. And what’s more he’s the Father of the Tulku. So this is where we start. If you say he’s a profaner of holy things and I say he ain’t, that means I’m turning back along the road you shown me. Don’t it?’

‘It is strange when the chela begins to teach the guru,’ said the Lama, mild as ever.

‘I’m not teaching you. I’m just stating facts. And I’m not threatening you neither. If any of this happens, it won’t be because I want it. I don’t. I want the Tulku to be born, here in Dong Pe, safe and sound. I want to follow on the path you shown me. But it looks like you’re not going to let it happen.’

There was a short silence.

‘Let us ask the Council what it thinks of this matter,’ said the Lama.

Theodore had been aware, during all this exchange, of other voices straining to speak, but held back by the two powerful personalities at the focus of the argument. Now the pent waters burst. One monk started to argue sedately enough, but almost at once three others joined in. Angry shouts rose. An old man was on his feet, yelling the same short phrase over and over until his neighbours pulled him down. There was no mistaking the surge of intense hostility and hatred, not for anybody in the room, but for poor Lung, an invisible presence, at whom the monks shook their fists and screamed as if he had been standing there. There was a terrifying note in the tumult, as though the demons whose roles were being enacted outside by the masked dancers had been summoned to this room in their real selves, invisible powers of cruelty and rage and ignorance, occupying the bodies of the Council members in much the same way as the other powers had occupied that of the oracle-priest. Not all those present were shouting for vengeance on Lung. Perhaps almost half of them seemed to be arguing on the other side, but it made no difference – the contorted faces were the same, the gestures of violence, the bellows and screams. They were all possessed, beyond reason, whatever their original impulse.

The Lama Amchi waited with his bell poised, judged his moment and shook it vigorously. The noise was like a whiplash, but the shouting barely faltered. He had to shake the bell twice more before the yelling diminished into a tingling silence. Theodore saw for the first time how thin was the old man’s control, for all his prestige. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps only he could command and save Dong Pe. Perhaps it was not only love of power which had forced him into some of his actions.

‘The Council is divided,’ said the Lama with a smile.

‘So it’s between you and me,’ whispered Mrs Jones.

This time the silence was longer. Mrs Jones and the Lama faced each other, as they had in their first meeting on the mountainside, and energies flowed between them as they had seemed to then, like the lines of force between the poles of a magnet. The other souls in the room were constrained and held in place by the flow of energies until the Lama smiled again, raised his head and gave a longish order in Tibetan. One of the soldier monks at the door left the room.

‘It will take a little time,’ said the Lama. ‘Perhaps now the child will tell us what happened in his encounter with the oracle this morning.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I think you won your point, Theo. You might as well let ’em see you mean to play fair by them.’

‘All right,’ said Theodore in Mandarin. ‘I’ll tell you what I thought happened, though later I wasn’t so sure. It began after breakfast, when Lung told me to leave our room because he wanted to be alone . . .’

He told the story carefully, in the right order, leaving nothing out, not even the fact that he had thought the oracle spoke to him in Father’s words and tone, nor the fact that he had to all intents and purposes accused the Master of Protocol of cheating over the oracle’s messages. They listened closely, but questioned him only about the exact words he had used before the oracle-priest became possessed and the exact words of the reply. These the Master of Protocol wrote down on a slate which he drew from the folds of his robe. As Theodore finished he heard a shuffle and murmur at the door.

‘We will consider these meanings later,’ said the Lama Amchi. ‘Let the Chinese be brought in.’

Theodore twisted on his stool in time to see the doors swing open and a shape outlined against the light from the further room. Though the shape was clearly composed of three people standing close together there was something inhuman, something monstrous about it. The shape split as the two men on the outside let go of the central figure and pushed it forward. It came at a slow, dragging walk, which still had that inhuman look, as though the figure were an automaton which would walk like this for ever. Even when it reached the area lit by the lamps in the Council Room Theodore was unable to recognize it as Lung. It was not just that the side of the face was puffy with a huge bruise and that dried blood had dribbled from the corner of the swollen lips. The face was not a man’s face at all. It was expressionless. The eyes stared like an idol’s, round as marbles, unfocused and unblinking. The head was unnaturally stiff on the neck, and the arms, held close to the side of the body, looked as though they were clamped rigid.

As this figure came up the aisle between the benches Mrs Jones rose from her stool, took two paces towards it and clutched it to her side. For a moment its legs tried to continue walking, but then they stilled. Lung, if it was Lung, showed no sign of knowing her.

‘Oh, what have you done to him? What have you done to him?’ she cried.

‘If we hadn’t protected him from the crowd in the courtyard,’ said one of the monks, ‘they would have torn him to fragments as we tear the dough giant.’

‘That ain’t what I meant,’ she snapped. ‘And you know it. What have you done to him?’

‘He was questioned and he would not answer,’ said the Lama Amchi. ‘That accounts for his having been beaten a little. Then, while we are considering the proper punishment for a breaker of idols, we locked his soul within him, as you see.’

‘Can you unlock it?’

‘It can sometimes be done. But the Mother of the Tulku must understand that the Chinese is not now, so to speak, a person. He is in abeyance. Once he is himself again, with his soul guiding his body, he becomes again responsible for all that he has done. It is impossible that such a one should remain within the holy valley of Dong Pe, at the height of our great festival. He would be as it were a corruption, infecting all our rituals and ceremonies.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Give him his soul back and he can leave tomorrow morning. First thing. Theo can go with him.’

The Lama seemed about to agree when somebody spoke angrily from among the monks.

‘He cannot go back to China,’ explained the Lama. ‘There are those here who still believe that he is an agent of Pekin.’

‘It’ll have to be Inja then. You can cope with that? They’ll need an escort as far as the border. I’ve got enough money to see them through . . .’

‘We will provide for such needs,’ said the Lama.

‘It won’t be cheap,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Theo’ll need a ticket to England and then to America, and Lung’ll want a bit too . . .’

‘Dong Pe is rich. It will be done. Now let us perform the ritual, for the longer a man’s soul stays thus locked up the harder is his return.’

He gave orders in Tibetan. The monks rose and rearranged themselves. A pair of small drums and a silver incense-lamp were fetched from a curtained niche. The butter-lamps were collected and lined up in a single row at the feet of the Buddha, making the statue seem to float, gold and warm, in the darkness of the rest of the room.

‘Theo,’ whispered Mrs Jones. ‘Come here a tick. I want a word with you.’

She was still standing, clutching Lung to her side as though he would fall without her. Theodore rose achingly and joined her.

‘When this palaver is over,’ she whispered. ‘Come up to my cave. Nobody won’t stop you. We’ll have a bit of a chat, say good-bye, like. And there’s something important I want you to do for me.’

‘I’ll do anything,’ said Theodore.

‘Sorry to make you go all sudden like this,’ she said. ‘But I ’spect you’ll be glad of it, really. You’ll see Lung’s in good hands in Inja, won’t you?’

‘If I can.’

‘Course you can. Then there’s this other thing. It won’t be easy, but it’s got to be done. Laying a ghost, like. And I shan’t have the baby easy unless I know . . . shh, they’re starting. Tell you after.’

To Theodore’s surprise it wasn’t the Lama Amchi who performed the ceremony, but a gaunt, middle-aged monk wearing a black scarf across his shoulders and a black hat shaped like the prow of a ship. The small drums beat in the dark with a slow rhythm. The monks began to hum, a deep, throbbing note, enough of them keeping it up while the others paused for breath to make the hum continuous. Mrs Jones led Lung forward till she stood with him at the edge of the circle of light, but at a sign from the monk in the black hat she moved a little to one side. The smoke that rose from the incense-burner was not blue but orange, and had a heavy but acid smell that hung dazingly in the air. Now the noise from the monks’ throats seemed to be throbbing through the solid stones of the walls and timbers of the roof, waking in them stone and timber voices which answered with the same vibration. The monk in the black hat picked up a small drum and beat a pattering roll on it, which he echoed with a sort of chant, a monotonous rattle of syllables all on one note but ending with an explosion of breath as though the air had been forced from his lungs by a violent blow from within. This – drum-roll, rattle and explosion – happened several times, and as it did so the monk visibly changed, becoming taller and yet more gaunt until his face in the upthrown light of the butter-lamps was a skull with no gleam of any eye in the black sockets. When he had completed this change he put the drum down and became as still as the Buddha, though the rest of the room was now quivering to the vibrations of the noise made by the monks. Even the floor seemed to be trembling – Theodore could feel it through the soles of his boots – and Lung’s silhouette, which had before stood sharp against the smoky globe of light in which the monk was working his magic, was now shadowy in outline as though the vibrations were centred on Lung, making him quiver like a tuning-fork.

Theodore concentrated his energies. He willed the magic to succeed. He did not hum with the monks, but for Lung’s sake he joined his soul to theirs, letting it shudder to the same harmonics, so that there was nothing in the room that was not part of that single purpose. Perhaps he was praying, but if so it was not in any fashion that Father had taught him. He became pure prayer – not a boy praying to a separate God, but a single process in which boy and prayer and God were the same thing. He joined the ritual.

And now the globe of light seemed to contract, as though the magician were using the energies in the room to gather the light into himself. The shapeless hum also gathered to a focus, which was Lung. The walls became still and the floor no longer tingled beneath Theodore’s feet, but the noise rose in pitch and came from a single point above Lung’s head, and still rose and narrowed till it reached a tension where it had to disintegrate or become a new mode of sound. At that moment of breaking, the magician, motionless for so long, suddenly spread his arms wide, threw them forward at Lung’s body, and at last drew them slowly and heavily back. The noise had stopped. The globe of light widened and was ordinary. The magician, a skull no longer, stepped a pace back and said a few quiet words. As he spoke the rigid creature in front of him lost tension, slackened, became human, and at the same moment started to fall. It was Mrs Jones who caught him and eased him to the floor in front of the Buddha.

Surfacing from the daze of effort Theodore had run forward as Lung fell. He was too late to help, but stayed looking down at his friend. Lung’s eyes were open. He had his head in Mrs Jones’s lap and lay there, gazing up into her face, much as Theodore had once seen them in the valley of the lilies.

‘Missy,’ he whispered, with a smile of painful joy, and closed his eyes.