by Tom Martin
On the other side of the bridge, the path was clearly marked and well used – prayer flags were dotted here and there before it split in two, one fork heading into the thick of the old-growth wood and straight for the Su La pass, the other following the river back downstream for a quarter of a mile before coming out on the lawn of the Bhaka gompa.
Despite the drizzle it was a pleasant day for walking; it wasn’t too cold and there were no mosquitoes or midges. In this reasonable weather, it didn’t seem long to Nancy before they stepped on to the monastery lawn and found themselves eye to eye with a willowy lone monk.
The original old gompa, a sixteenth-century structure, was little more than a ruin, but around it stood a collection of more recently constructed buildings. The monk, a thin-faced, tall man dressed in orange robes, his grey hair shaved to stubble, welcomed them all, and immediately began to talk to Gunn and Jack in Tibetan. Then they were shown into a building which Nancy guessed was where the monks ate their meals, and were given seats at a table in front of a roaring log fire. Another monk appeared with a large urn of soupy butter tea. Nancy drank it because she was thirsty, though the taste was still alien and unpleasant. Like tea made with milk that’s been in the sun all day, she thought. Shortly afterwards, three sherpas appeared through the door. Jack and Gunn engaged them in what was clearly a protracted haggle. Neither party would move, that was clear, and it took half an hour of intense negotiation before they clinked mugs and sealed the arrangement.
‘Everything OK?’ Nancy said then to Jack, and he nodded. ‘Fine, don’t you worry your big New York brain.’ She smiled sardonically back at him, Jack winked slowly, deliberately, and then he turned back to Gunn and the sherpas. There was a lot to be done; they wanted to leave as soon as possible.
Bowls of tsampa were served. Nancy tried her best to swallow as much as possible, knowing that it was a long march before they even reached the edge of the forest and began the steep ascent to the frozen heights of the Su La. Whilst they were eating, an elderly-looking lama came in and began an earnest conversation with Gunn and Jack. His shaven head was covered in white stubble and his wrinkled forehead and face bore testament to a hard life; perhaps he had been here in 1959, thought Nancy, when she had been told the old monastery was sacked.
She waited patiently to learn what they were talking about, and after a few minutes the lama shook hands with Jack and left. A dark frown now distorted Jack’s face.
‘Was that the Abbot?’ said Nancy.
‘No. The Abbot’s in exile in Nepal for interfering with the loggers who operate round here. The Chinese booted him out.’
‘Who was that man then?’
‘The senior lama. Not a very inspiring man, I have to say. It is a damn shame that there is no proper leader to replace the Abbot.’
He was beating about the bush, thought Nancy; he must have learnt some bad news.
‘So what did he say?’
Jack looked at her and sighed.
‘A contingent of Chinese soldiers passed this way yesterday,’ he said. ‘A big well-armed group, about eighty men, on their way to Litang gompa.’
‘What were they doing?’
‘The lama doesn’t know. But he said it’s unusual. The garrison at Metok isn’t due to be replaced until early September, so they’re obviously on some kind of mission.’
There was a worried pause, while Gunn shook his head.
‘Did you ask about Anton?’ Nancy asked.
‘Yes. He was here, two and a half months ago, with the Terton Thupten Jinpa. They were headed for Rinchenpung gompa, which is halfway down the Yarlang Tsangpo, on the other side of the Su La – but the lama thinks they never reached it. One of the monks from Rinchenpung gompa came by six weeks ago on his way to Lhasa and said that they had never seen Anton or the terton.’
‘Maybe he was travelling under a different name?’
‘No. There would be no point. Everyone in Rinchenpung already knows him. He’s a famous yogi.’
For a moment Nancy thought she must have misunderstood. ‘Who, Anton?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack with a shrug. ‘Anton is a holy man, it would appear.’
Jack was wearing a strange expression on his face. He raised his eyebrows as if he wanted to dissociate himself from what he was saying, as if he found it as disquieting as she did.
‘It turns out that round here he has quite a reputation. You should have heard that old lama going on about what a wise man Herzog is. Apparently, he can work miracles.’
Nancy found her mouth was open, like an astonished child, so she closed it. Herzog was like a shape-shifter, she thought, constantly evolving into something else. Just when she thought she might have an idea about who he was, some new piece of information caused her to think again. In New York he had been a legend, but this legendary status had been based on familiar notions: the maverick, the brilliant mind, the unconventional journalist tolerated by his superiors because of the genius of his stories. In Tibet, too, myths had been woven around him, but of a completely different order. She looked across at Jack, saw he was inviting her to mock the lama with him, but she couldn’t quite do it. So she nodded and drank down the last of her butter tea.
The general mood had been darkened by the news of the soldiers. Gunn was unsmiling and taciturn, and wouldn’t be drawn when Nancy asked him what he thought. They went to join the sherpas outside on the lawn, Jack explaining as they went that there were always soldiers in Pemako now since the Sino-Indian war over the still disputed border, but normally they stayed put in Metok, or stuck to one or two well-known patrols down near the Doshang La. In the garden they handed their belongings to the sherpas, and then bade farewell to Gunn, who was going to wait another night and catch a lift back to Lhasa the following morning. He wished them good luck, shaking hands with Nancy and slapping Jack on the back.
‘Good luck,’ he said to both of them. ‘You will need it.’
They passed across the lawn, and on the other side Nancy turned and saw Gunn standing still as a sentinel, his palms together, his eyes closed, as if he was giving them a blessing.
By dusk they had climbed out of the wood, and they pitched camp on a mossy clearing alongside the path. There were two tents, one for the sherpas and one for Jack and Nancy, an arrangement that made Nancy slightly uncomfortable, though she was hardly in a position to argue. A small stream bubbled between the rocks at the edge of the clearing and there was a long, beautiful view back down to the forest and the valley below. With the light fading, Nancy wrapped herself in the folds of a sheepskin coat and tried to swallow one more cup of yak-butter tea. When Jack had finished talking to the sherpas, he walked over to where she was sitting.
‘I was just going through the menu options with our chef,’ he said jokingly.
‘Oh. I would like the smoked salmon starter and the linguini for my main.’
‘I’m afraid, madam, they’re both off tonight. Only yak-based products. We’re having an authentic Tibetan nomad evening.’
‘Great, I can hardly wait,’ said Nancy.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, sitting down next to her. ‘It’s not far to go now. Are you feeling OK?’
It was the first kind thing he had said to her on the whole trip, and Nancy was almost too surprised to reply. Feeling almost awkward, she said quickly, ‘Yes thanks, fine.’
‘I had been thinking,’ said Jack, ‘that we should head for Litang gompa, but if Anton never made it there, then there’s little point.’
‘What towns are there in Pemako?’
Jack laughed grimly.
‘In Pemako, just Metok, if you can call it a town, which would be stretching it. But we don’t want to go there. There’s a couple of other villages, but they’re so close to Metok that I’d rather not risk them either.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I suspect Anton would have wanted to avoid Metok and the surrounding area.’
‘Where else then?’
‘Let’s start wit
h Mandeldem hermitage. I know he liked it there. I remember him waxing lyrical about it on a couple of occasions. It sounded like a ghastly place, a pile of bricks and a leaky roof, lost in the jungle, surrounded by rhododendron bushes. But I suspect someone will have seen him there, so let’s just nose around, see what we can find. The sherpas know the way and it’s relatively easy walking to get there: down the river, except when you want to climb the valley sides to one or another dreadful little hovel that is used for transcendental meditation and Tantric retreats. Remember, one night spent in a trance in Pemako is worth one hundred nights of meditation anywhere else, so they say . . .’
Nancy didn’t think that sounded so very absurd. Even here, on the borderlands, the landscape was already having a strange effect on her; the ancient forest and the monumental scenery seemed to exaggerate her feelings of smallness and fragility. Yet she also felt part of the very immensity that cowed her: staring around at the rocks and trees she understood that she had been created from the landscape specifically to admire it; she was nature looking back on itself.
It made her want to walk for ever in the misty vales and dark woods, journeying from gompa to gompa in the hope that one day she would reach union with the energy around her. She knew that this was what the yogis hoped for when they undertook their extended pilgrimages, dependent on alms and the benevolence of strangers, sleeping on the hills and valleys and in dilapidated hermitages. It suddenly all made sense to her now: the landscape demanded this kind of devotion and attention; it deserved to be trodden for ever by pilgrims’ feet.
But where, she thought, where in all of this beauty and mystery was Anton Herzog?
42
The Abbot’s deputy sat by Herzog’s side, transfixed by the story he was hearing, whilst the fire cast its flickering light into the rustling leaves above. Was it true? Could it really be possible that this ruined man had actually made it to the sacred kingdom? And if so, was his description correct? To his mind, Shangri-La was no fable, but the Abbot’s deputy had never imagined that it would be as the Westerner described. The lamaistic traditions were obscure and they conflicted in their descriptions of the place. The stranger had been so precise in his descriptions, so minute in his details – and yet these sorts of precise details could equally derive from vision or dream.
Nothing was certain. The Abbot’s deputy studied Herzog’s glassy eyes – the eyes of a madman, perhaps, a man who had fallen into darkness – or maybe this was merely the effect of the opium. That too was a growing concern: the pipes they supplied him with to maintain his lucidity would eventually tip him over the edge into the abyss of the lotus-eaters, where it was impossible to untangle fantasy from reality. For all his doubts, the deputy couldn’t help returning to the vividness of the stranger’s story, which had made him think as he listened that he too had seen this place, he too had visited the ambiguous kingdom of Shangri-La.
The doctor poured some water into Anton Herzog’s dry mouth. His wrinkled neck contracted as he swallowed painfully until he gasped for breath and the doctor took the water bottle away from his lips. Patiently the Abbot’s deputy waited, and then when he thought that Herzog had recovered enough strength he began again to probe.
‘So what happened next? What did you do?’
Herzog coughed his dry, painful cough and turned his mesmerizing blue eyes back on to the deputy.
‘I don’t know exactly how long I remained curled up on the floor of my room in the evil tower, unable even to think, rocking gently back and forth. I was in shock, you see.’
‘Yes. I am sure you were,’ consoled the Abbot’s deputy.
Herzog coughed again and then recommenced.
‘I was paralysed by despair, I thought that this was the end of all my years of searching and aspiration. And I saw now quite clearly the vast gulf of experience and disposition that lay between me and Felix Koenig and his companions. They had come to Tibet from Germany as Teutonic knights marching into battle. They had been brutalized by the horrors of World War One and by the severity of the times; they would not have cared a damn about a battlement bedecked with human heads. And I asked myself, what had I been thinking of all these years? I had been deluded; I had imagined that I, a lone individual, little more than a dilettante scholar, could recreate the trials of one of the most powerful and driven groups of men in modern European history, whose only ethical measure was their unquenchable desire to build a better Fatherland.’
The Abbot’s deputy was desperate to learn what happened next. He did not want to hear Herzog’s speculations. Talk of Fatherlands and Teutonic knights was incomprehensible to him.
‘Tell me what happened. You said you were lying curled up on the floor of the tower.’
‘Yes. I was. And I was beyond despair. Never have I experienced such terror before or since. Then suddenly there was a knock on the door. Trembling with nerves and a determination to survive, somehow, I sprang to my feet. A well-groomed oriental man stepped into the room.
‘“I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said, with a thin smile. “My name is Yuen – I am the Abbot’s assistant. You must be hungry? Perhaps you would like to eat.” ’
The Abbot’s deputy’s eyes were wide as saucers.
‘Were you not afraid they were going to kill you then and there? Why didn’t you try to hide? Or attack him?’
‘Hide?’ A dry laugh escaped from Herzog’s lips. ‘Where was there to hide? And yes, I was petrified for my life, but I knew there was no point attacking him. Even if I had succeeded in overpowering him there would have been hordes of other men behind him. As I heard the knock on the door I realized there was only one course of action that I could take. At all costs I had to conceal my true fears, to claim a courage I didn’t in reality possess. I still hoped that by conducting myself as someone who expects to be treated with respect and courtesy, I might discourage them from taking any liberties with me. It seemed a desperate hope, but it was all that I could summon at that moment.
‘So I agreed with alacrity to the offer of food and then I said, ‘“Can you please confirm that I will have an opportunity to meet the head lama of this place? Or am I a prisoner in your monastery?”
‘The man smiled and answered:
‘“The Abbot will be joining you for dinner. And as to whether or not you are a prisoner, well, we are all prisoners here, though we prefer not to put it quite like that. But it is true that it is not possible to walk out of this place. The terrain offers no route out and there is no human habitation for countless miles. I do not include the settlement in the valley below in this assessment, which you have already seen. But it is against the vows of our order to visit this place. And they do not come to visit us. Indeed, we have all come to love our confinement – as I am sure you will too.”
‘I felt as if I was about to choke on my own tongue, so desperate was I to scream out questions, but somehow I restrained myself. In the most calm voice I could muster I said, “I see, well, I will take this further with the Abbot.”
‘The man smiled again, as if to agree that it would be futile to discuss anything further at this moment, and so I followed him down the stairs, through various doors and finally into a spacious dining room. He pulled out a chair for me at the table and, terrified and trying once more to mask my true emotions, I sat down and waited to see what would happen next.
‘I did not have to wait long. A minute later, the door at the far end of the room opened and a very elderly, sinewy Chinese man came in and joined me at the table.
‘“Welcome to Shangri-La,’ he said, in a very soft, dry voice. ‘You have succeeded where so many others have failed.”’
The Abbot’s deputy’s forehead was contorted by a frown. He interrupted Herzog’s flow again.
‘But what did he mean by that? Have lots of people tried to reach Shangri-La?’
Herzog was deep into his opium-inspired memory. A mere question could no longer pull him from the depths of his dream. He ignored the deputy’s questio
n and continued to describe the scene before him, as if he was there again at that moment, seated before the Abbot of Shangri-La.
‘The Abbot paused and gestured to a servant to pour jasmine tea for us both. Even though I was in a state of almost complete panic and fear, I could not help noticing that the cups and the teapot were made of priceless Ming china. How could that be, I wondered. And, stranger still, how was it that they were using this invaluable porcelain like a normal tea set?
‘The civility of the tea ritual could not remove from my mind the images of severed human heads and of the human-sized cage. I had never conceived that Shangri-La would be anything other than an oriental paradise, and now it appeared rather that I was about to become the victim of a gruesome Aztec-style ceremony. If I did not cry out and crumble altogether I suspect it was simply because I could not entirely believe what had happened. It was too far removed from all my expectations. I was in shock, I suspect, and unable to process everything that was before me. And besides it was so contradictory – the holy calm of the Abbot, the careful pouring of tea, and then outside, a pyre awaiting a human sacrifice, it seemed, and all the evidence of bloody carnage!
‘Even as I struggled to understand this, the Abbot continued. “I have no doubt that you have many questions, but first let me offer you a little explanation, as it will save us both time. Throughout the world, people dream of the myth of Shangri-La; some even wonder if it really exists; a tiny few even think that one day they will try to find it, and then there are the handful of people who actually set out to do just that. These people are possessed of extraordinary mental and physical attributes. In the first place, simply to sustain a belief in a place for which there is no proof requires great powers of intuition and will. Secondly, doing all the research that is necessary even to give yourself a fraction of a chance of reaching this place requires immeasurable effort. And finally, embarking on the journey itself requires the ability to draw upon non-material realms of knowledge, and this of course means that the initiate must be of advanced psychic development.
