Tulku

by Peter Dickinson

  He walked at random through the maze. The monastery was a series of interlocking courtyards, mostly small and irregular, and often at different levels imposed by the underlying mountain. Dark archways, ramps or stairs connected the ground levels, and the upper storey was a second maze of wooden galleries, where the russet-robed monks went to and fro. It was all built of anything that had come to hand, white-washed stone, flaking plaster stuck with cobbles, wood, woven bamboo, tiles, with here and there billowing swags of creeper clothing whole walls. Each courtyard had its own character, like a village; one might be tumbledown and untidy, with a yak tethered against a wall, a dung-pile in one corner, a couple of women pounding something in a tub near by; then, through the next arch Theodore would come out into a smooth-paved rectangle, neat walls hung with banners and all freshly painted since the winter, with a half-formal procession of monks walking across the space, carrying ritual objects.

  The exhilaration Mrs Jones had whipped up in him had dwindled by now, but obediently he greeted everyone who seemed free to speak to him. Some smiled, some made signs, some ignored him entirely. He began to realize that the sensible thing would have been to ask Tomdzay to find him a teacher, rather than looking for one at random. Yes. And that would put it off for another day. Perhaps Mrs Jones might even have changed her mind by then . . .

  He reached this conclusion just as he came up a shallow ramp to a larger arch than most. Beyond it lay yet another courtyard, but quite different from any he had so far seen. This one was huge. On its further side rose the building with the gold-roofed dome which had dominated the monastery on their first sight of Dong Pe; below that glittering curve and spike was a heavy, plain wall of pale stone, almost undecorated and with no opening except for a pair of large doors which stood wide open. This square black hollow and the slablike wall around it contrasted strongly with the exotic dome, and indeed with all of the rest of the monastery, which seemed to Theodore to have a frilly, tinselly, almost rubbishy quality about it, with the gaudy paintings and the flapping flags and the rows of battered prayer-wheels and the general lack of any obvious plan in its building.

  Along the eastern side of this courtyard ran an arcade, supporting a balcony rather grander than most but otherwise quite in keeping with the temple architecture. Opposite it, however, was a surprise, for here the mountain suddenly showed itself, natural rock rising towards the snows in a series of shelves and inclines. The rock had a naked look, like the skeleton of a dead beast that had been scoured clean by birds and insects. It became steeper as it rose, and where the true cliffs began it was pocked with caves, some of them mere openings and some extended into walls and roofs. Stairs, hewn into the rock, zigzagged up to these dwellings – if dwellings they were. Theodore saw three russet-robed monks moving among them, two carrying a large hamper-like basket from which the third took something when they reached each cave and passed it through a slot in the stonework or settled it on the floor of the opening.

  Lower down the cliff, only a little above the roof-line of the monastery, was a wider shelf than most, and here was another oddity. Two houses occupied this site, side by side, each the mirror image of the other. A month ago Theodore might have thought they were perhaps shrines, or tombs, but he had slept in too many Tibetan villages to mistake them now. They were slightly plainer than Tibetan farms and more solidly built, and the upstairs windows with their heavy yellow shutters were much bigger than a farm would have afforded, but they were clearly houses. The steps between them and the courtyard were wider and more ornate than the ones that climbed on up to the caves.

  Like a mouse creeping round the skirting of a room Theodore walked along below the rock wall and round the far side to the big doors. Peering into the dark he found it was, as he had suspected, a temple. The air here was full of incense and the heavy, greasy smell of the butter lamps. He didn’t cross the threshold, partly from fear of doing anything that might offend these pagan worshippers, and partly from a deeper-seated fear of being in any way involved with the powers they worshipped; but he stood for a while at the door, gazing at the enormous statue of the Buddha which dominated the twinkling dark. There must have been some cunningly arranged skylight to cause the gold mask, with its too-calm and too-sweet smile, to glow as if with inner light, making the dark around it seem thicker than ordinary dark, so that the flames of the hundreds of lamps were weak yellow spots and the clutter of idols and ritual objects were veiled as if by smoke, their true shapes undiscernible, but showing themselves here as the glimmer of a jewel and there as the flash of a staring white eyeball. The darkness and the richness and the closeness seemed to reach out into the mountain brightness infecting it in the same way that the smells of incense and burnt grease infected the clean thin air with their sick weight. Theodore would have turned away at once, but that would have been to acknowledge the power, to accept that it was something he was not prepared to face; so he stood there, staring bluntly at the Buddha.

  As he turned at last, feeling that he had neither acknowledged the powers nor refuted them, his eye was caught by a movement. The arch through which he had entered the courtyard lay towards the mountain end of that side, and so far he had never really looked at the rest of it. Now he saw that it was mainly occupied by another temple, smaller and much more ornate than the one on whose steps he stood. There was a frivolous little dome and spike, also covered with gold; a pair of closed doors painted with red and orange and green demons; several banner-like streamers hanging from poles along the parapet; and two rows of large prayer-wheels on either side of the doors, the ones on the right still but the ones on the left twirling vigorously, though there was no monk near enough to have recently spun them. At roof-level, behind the banners on the left, a small windmill was turning, but on the right the sail of a similar mill pointed monotonously at the sky. It was something to look at, a change from Buddhas and idols, a mystery which reason might solve. Almost eagerly Theodore strode across the courtyard to inspect the mechanism.

  It turned out to be as he had guessed. The windmill drove the prayer-wheels through a series of cords and pulleys. Each of the pulleys was itself a miniature prayer-wheel, but despite this there was something about the whole device which struck Theodore as oddly un-Tibetan. It was so ingeniously simple, and also efficient. With a very little adaptation it could have been made to do something useful. It was just the sort of thing Father might have invented, with its use of native techniques and western ideas to achieve something which neither could do alone.

  The thought of Father shook him with an appalling, savage pang, as if the healing of the past weeks had been all suddenly ripped away, and the wound was yesterday’s. He stood dazed and sick, swaying to the steady tinkle of the prayer-wheels, thinking The Buddha did this to me. The Buddha did this to me. He shook his head violently, trying to drive the nonsense notion away, and for further distraction turned to climb the temple steps in order to cross and find out why the other set of wheels wasn’t turning. He was still dazed, and perhaps staggering slightly, for though he must have seen the monk come out of a small wicket in the main doors he still managed to bump into him. The monk appeared not to have noticed him till the collision.

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ he muttered automatically.

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ said the monk. ‘Ought to have been looking where I was going – not that I can very well these days.’

  It took Theodore a moment or two to grasp that they had both spoken in English. The monk was peering at him with pale, opaque blue eyes. His head was quite bald, but a frizz of stiff white beard stood out all round a reddish-brown face. He was only an inch or two taller than Theodore, and looked as though nature had designed him to be plump, which he was not.

  ‘How d’ye do?’ he said. ‘Fine morning.’

  He was smiling with great sweetness, almost eagerness, which contrasted with the snappy bark of his voice.

  ‘Yes, it’s lovely,’ said Theodore. ‘Uh, my name’s Theodore Tewker. I came
here yesterday.’

  ‘Good. Good. Excellent. My name’s Achugla. Used to be Price-Evans.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Price-Evans.’

  ‘Major Price-Evans. Not that it matters. You’re American, by the sound of you. Care for a cup of tea? Come in. Come in.’

  Without waiting to hear whether his invitation was accepted, the old man turned and led the way through the wicket. Theodore followed him into the near-dark, into the reek and richness, where the face of another Buddha gleamed half way to the roof. Left to himself Theodore would have backed out, but the monk who called himself Major Price-Evans was shuffling away to open a door into a small bright cell. Following him Theodore found that this was lit by a skylight. There was just room in it for a cot and shrine and a stove. The walls were covered with gaudy hangings, some of them showing pictures of the Buddha, others that might have been demons or might have been gods, and yet others which were merely patterns of huge letters.

  ‘Sit down, sit down,’ said the Major, waving a hand at the cot. ‘Come here to study under the Lama Amchi, have you? Sound a bit young for it – none of my business, of course.’

  ‘We came here by accident. The Lama Amchi helped us to escape from some brigands, and brought us here.’

  ‘If Lama Amchi’s in it, it’s not an accident.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m a Christian.’

  ‘Are you now? Good. Good. Excellent.’

  The Major beamed at him as though this was the most interesting news he had heard in years, then turned to the stove and before Theodore could think of a polite way to stop him had ladled out two mugs of tea from the pot that stood murmuring there. The smell told Theodore what it was.

  ‘First-rate brew, this,’ said the Major happily. ‘Nothing like it for keeping you going in the mountains. Often strikes me that if we could have persuaded Thomas Atkins to drink the stuff we’d never have had all that trouble getting him to Kabul and back. Hey?’

  ‘I guess you’re right, sir,’ said Theodore, taking the copper mug. He had little idea what the Major was talking about, but there was a warmth, an eagerness, an innocence about the old man that made you want to please him. Even, it turned out, to the extent of drinking Tibetan tea and getting it down without gagging.

  Meanwhile the Major talked. His story was difficult to follow because he rambled to and fro in time and space, and because the people and campaigns he had known forty years ago seemed no more and no less real than the pagan demons he now served. At one moment he would be talking about a miraculous fact achieved by some Lama, and the next he would have slid into an account of getting a famine train through southern India, only to find the people he had come to save lying dead in their tens of thousands round the railway head with the kites wheeling above the almost fleshless bodies. As far as Theodore could make out he had been a soldier in the British Army in India, an engineer concerned to build the bridges and roads for the campaigns of the British Empire.

  He seemed to have dabbled in a lot of religions and superstitions but had gone on with his soldiering until something had happened . . . ‘Just came to me, me boy, like Paul on the road to Damascus – not so sudden as that, quite, didn’t fall off me horse or anything – been brewing up inside me for a long while without me knowing – but there I was, one week sitting at me desk, supervising me coolies, dining in mess, all that, and next week I’d chucked it all up and was tramping along a dusty red road, barefoot, with nothing in the world but me begging bowl.’ He seemed to have wandered right down into Ceylon, where he had finally been converted to Buddhism, and then come rambling back towards the hills, further and further, settling at last in this final cranny in Dong Pe. It didn’t seem to him at all extraordinary – nor had Theodore’s sudden greeting on the temple steps in a language he hadn’t spoken for twenty years, nor did anything else that had happened or could possibly happen. He was almost blind.

  ‘Finished your tea?’ said the Major suddenly. ‘Come and have a look at the temple, hey? Worth seeing, you know. Well worth seeing.’

  It didn’t cross Theodore’s mind to refuse. The dark was no longer ominous in his company, the pagan powers no longer dangerous. At the cell door the Major slipped a pair of thick felt pads onto his boots and began to walk with a movement like a skater’s.

  ‘Might as well give the floor a bit of a polish while I’m going my rounds,’ he said.

  ‘That’s clever,’ said Theodore.

  ‘Not my own idea. Copied it from a lama I met at Ghoom.’

  ‘Did you make the windmills that drive the prayer-wheels outside?’

  ‘Yes, yes indeed. Lamas weren’t all that keen on it. Wheel’s sacred, you know. Never see a barrow in Tibet. Bit uneasy about using wheels, even when it’s to drive prayer-wheels, and some of them not that keen on having the prayer-wheels turn of their own accord – can’t acquire virtue by turning them yourself, hey?’

  ‘One side has stopped turning.’

  ‘I know, I know. Storm last winter, you know, and my old eyes aren’t up to mending it. Never mind. All material endeavour must fail, you know. It’s all illusion. Not that I wouldn’t like to get it mended. Dear me. Now this fellow here, he’s one of the chos-skyong – that means Spirit Kings . . .’

  The temple was quite small, and filled with the presence of the gold-faced Buddha. The gold was real gold, Theodore decided, and the glitter of the idol’s ornaments sparkled from real jewels. Though the temple was packed with objects – so much so that there seemed little room for worshippers – these all had the air of being precisely placed in relation to the central statue and became part of the Buddha’s presence. Even the line of hideous, grimacing, weapon-waving demons in front of which the Major had halted were part of the grammar of the place, with a meaning of their own in the context of the smooth metal face and the eternal smile. Theodore could sense that, though he didn’t know the grammar in question and didn’t want to.

  ‘Could you teach me Tibetan?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said the Major. ‘Why do you want to learn it?’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . . I like to be able to talk to people, I suppose.’

  ‘Much better keep silence. Much better. Still, I dare say I could. Started writing a dictionary when I first came here . . . Tell me something, me boy – have I got this fellow clean?’

  Theodore inspected the Spirit King with different eyes. Parts of the monster gleamed with steady polishing, but elsewhere a cranny held a cobweb or the whole surface of a dishlike object which the monster carried in one of his several hands was mildewed with ancient dust. There had been a note of anxiety in the Major’s voice.

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Theodore. ‘Just a couple of places . . . would you like me to give them a rub?’

  ‘If you would,’ said the Major, gruffly. ‘Don’t mind telling you I’ve been fretted about this since my eyes began to go. Worked out a routine, you see, a system of work so I can keep everything spick and span as a gun-carriage, but I’m not such a fool that I don’t know I’m bound to miss places. Oracle-priest, he’s very nice about it, pretends not to notice . . .’

  ‘Aren’t you the priest in charge?’

  ‘Dear me, no. Dear me. I’m not the oracle-priest. Shouldn’t care to have that happen to me. No, no, I’m only the cleaner . . . Now, you’ll find a ladder under that hanging on the back wall and I’ll get you my brush . . .’

  For an hour or more Theodore climbed about among the idols brushing and polishing, while the Major pottered around on the floor, muttering prayers, commenting on the attributes of the idols, filling the innumerable little lamps that glowed on almost every flat surface, or pulling from a shelf a loose-leafed sacred book to show Theodore its intricate strange pictures and patterns. Far off, like a clock striking, a gong began to boom with a steady beat.

  ‘We’ll pack it in now,’ said the Major. ‘He’ll be here any moment and I like things shipshape when he comes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oracle-
priest. First rate young man – would have made a good soldier, I sometimes think. Can’t say how grateful I am to you, young fellow.’

  ‘Shall I come back tomorrow and do some more? And you could start teaching me Tibetan.’

  ‘Have to think about that. Now, stow that ladder where you found it and come and give me a heave on the other door . . .’

  The sun did not shine into the temple, but the mid-morning brightness was strong enough to lay a gleaming path across the polished floor as the doors opened. The gleam darkened with a shadow, and through the widening gap paced a monk wearing the usual russet robe and a tall pointed hat made of silvery cloth. The monk knelt before the Buddha and bowed till the tip of his hat touched the floor. The Major and Theodore, each standing by a leaf of the doors, watched him in silence for a full two minutes until he rose, removed his hat and turned. He gave some sort of blessing to the Major, who answered him in Tibetan, beaming and anxious; then he turned to Theodore.

  ‘Welcome to my temple,’ he said in Mandarin.

  He was a square-built man of about forty, smooth-faced and athletic-looking.

  ‘Thank you for letting me see it,’ said Theodore awkwardly. ‘It is very interesting.’

  ‘Of course. But there are times when I’d be glad to be somewhere else. I hear you were attacked in the valley of the Jade River. There are notorious bandits all along that way – Lolo, very unreliable. We never travelled through there in groups of less than ten, all armed. But that track leads up to Starve-all Pass and through the ranges well north of here. How did you come to be right down on the Jade River gorge again?’

  Theodore explained. The priest nodded and asked more questions. He spoke Mandarin in a quite different way from the Lama Amchi, with a better accent but much more erratic grammar. The Lama Amchi spoke as though he had learnt the language systematically, from books, whereas this man had evidently picked it up in a series of smatterings. Once or twice he used earthy idioms, or words that didn’t belong to Mandarin at all but to Miao or languages Theodore didn’t know. He was very friendly and easy to talk to.