Tulku

by Peter Dickinson

  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.

  ‘You must not look at that one without due preparation,’ he muttered.

  ‘What is it? Why?’

  ‘Yidam Yamantaka. Death and slayer of death. That he should encounter one at the start of an enterprise . . . walk with me, and if we meet anyone I shall be expounding to you the meanings of Yama and Yamantaka . . . in two nights you must leave.’

  ‘I know. Lung told me. I don’t know if Mrs Jones knows. I only see her now when we’re at the Lama Amchi’s house. I don’t even know which is her cell . . .’

  ‘I will show you. But you are fully ready?’

  ‘Some other people have moved into our guest-house, so we’ve had an excuse to pack most of our things away.’

  ‘Good. Now listen. At dusk the day after tomorrow the Steward of the Guest-houses will send fresh guests to your house. The honoured Lung will protest that there is no room, and the steward will say that there is nowhere else available. I will then come and suggest that you and the honoured Lung move to a cell in the monastery, and you will accept this. Thus your disappearance from the guest-house will be accounted for. You must tell some story to your friend Achugla.’

  ‘Major Price-Evans? All right,’ said Theodore reluctantly. Deceiving the old man would be unpleasant.

  ‘What about the horses?’ he asked.

  ‘It is arranged. Your guide, whose name is Tefu, will take a paper to the groom who has looked after them, authorizing him to buy them. He will give the groom, who cannot in any case read, some money for himself. All that is not important, or if it is I shall have taken care of it. There is no time to discuss it now. Lean on the rail here and listen.’

  They had reached by this time the gallery on the south side of the courtyard, and a little way along it Sumpa halted and leant his elbows on the rail. Theodore fell in beside him, as casually as he could.

  ‘You see the hermit-caves?’ said Sumpa.

  ‘Yes.’

  Major Price-Evans had told Theodore about the hermit-caves. In each of them lived a monk who had vowed to endure total isolation while he performed spiritual exercises. Most of them were walled in, with only a slit left open through which food could be passed. At the end of his time the monk would emerge purified, and gifted with strange powers. Apparently the Lama Amchi had achieved this, living alone, Walled into one of the caves, for seven years. It was to this he owed his spiritual authority. Seven years!

  ‘Follow the left-hand stair up, then,’ Sumpa muttered, ‘and you will see a ledge branching off to left and right. Three caves on the right-hand branch and one on the left. The woman is in that single cave on the left.’

  ‘Walled in?’ whispered Theodore.

  ‘Of course not. There is a token stone at the entrance. Now, immediately we have left the guest-house I will take you to a side-door to the monastery – the one you used when you came to the ceremony of the oracle. Go there on the night and behind the door you will find a monk’s robe, folded. Take that with you and go to the cave. You will meet no-one of importance. All the senior monks will be in the temple for the ritual that starts the days of meditation before the festival. The woman will be there also for a while, but at a certain point in the ceremony she will leave and return to her cave. She will find you there and not be alarmed. You will explain what is happening. She must dress in the robe you carry and raise its cowl, so that in the dark she may pass for a monk. You will lead her back by way of the door through which you entered the monastery, and turn west, along beneath the wall, until you come to the place where there are many shrines on either side of the path, above and below. You know it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At the third shrine turn left and climb straight up the hill. In thirty paces you will come to a platform which was made for a shrine not yet built. Tefu will be waiting there, with the honoured Lung, and your horses. He will have yaks and men. If you leave at once, travelling in the dark, you will be able to camp by the edge of the Stone Lake and cross it next day at dawn. You can do all this? It must be you, because you speak the woman’s language, and moreover you are the Guide, so no-one will question or stop you.’

  ‘I think I can do it. I don’t see why not. I’ll make sure I know my way through the monastery so that I can find it in the dark. I’m much more worried about the journey.’

  ‘No difficulty there, provided you leave unnoticed. You will have three days’ start, and before the end of that time you will be among friends. I am only the furthest finger-tip of the strong hand that will take you to safety.’

  A monk came pacing along the gallery. Sumpa started telling Theodore the names of the demons who inhabited the mountain peak, but as soon as the monk was out of earshot, led him away to show him where he would hide the robe Mrs Jones was to wear. Theodore by now knew the monastery well enough to notice that they were making a longish detour to avoid the courtyard where Yidam Yamantaka – Death and Slayer of Death – stared at the sky.

  There was one more meeting at the Lama Amchi’s, and Theodore, despite his new nervousness, could not see that it differed at all from any of the other recent meetings. The pattern had changed from that of earlier days. Nowadays Mrs Jones wore her nun’s robe and barely seemed to notice Theodore, speaking directly to the Lama in Tibetan, stumbling but happier to communicate like this. The Lama answered her questions in short, repetitive sentences, and only called on Theodore to amplify some idea that could not be treated in simple terms. So Theodore spent most of his time at the window, reading or drawing; and even when he was taking part in the lessons, the ideas he was asked to translate were so strange and rarified that there was no need for him to shut his mind to them – he could not have begun to grasp them, however hard he had tried.

  This made the lessons less tiring, but he was distressed by the increasing gulf that had opened between Mrs Jones and himself. It was she, now, who treated him as a mechanical device, while the Lama became increasingly polite and kindly. At the end of one meeting he had said, ‘Theodore, a guide exists by virtue of the path he has to show. Once the journey is made and the path known, he is a guide no more. A bowl of life-giving food does not itself give life. Once the food is eaten, the bowl is only a bowl.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I didn’t want to be anyone’s bowl.’

  ‘But you have served honestly, my child. I think well of you, for what my poor thoughts ar
e worth.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  An odd little part of Theodore’s nerves rose from the prospect of resuming the old life with Mrs Jones, the songs and the teasing and the rush of energy flowing out of her which was now all turned inward. Would it be like that again? He didn’t dare wonder. Luckily at that last lesson he was hardly called on to take part at all. It consisted largely of silences, repetitions of sacred formulae, hummings in the throat or single syllables exploding, while Theodore stood at the window and neither read nor drew, but stared at the majestic skyline he hoped he would not see again.

  The scene at the guest-house went like a well-rehearsed play. For some days the over-decorated little room had become increasingly crowded and smelly and noisy as visitors began to gather for the festival. Tibetans seemed to have no sense of privacy at all, so wherever there was a spare patch of floor they thought it natural to spread out their flea-ridden blankets and bed down. Lung, now triply fastidious in his loneliness, fought against these invasions, using a screen and a barrier of baggage to mark out the area which belonged to him and Theodore, but even these frontiers of civilization contracted daily under pressure from the alien horde. On the evening marked for the escape there were already eight Tibetans – two of them boisterous small girls – using the guest-house when the door heaved on its frame, the latch gave, and a squat woman backed in, dragging a loose pile of baggage. Two thin little men, so alike that they were certainly brothers and therefore probably her husbands, followed laden with pots and food. Several children seemed to be hovering in the dusk beyond the door-frame.

  The woman, bewildered but cheerful, stared round the room, spotted the last empty space between Lung’s cot and Theodore’s, and marched towards it. Lung rose to fend her off, but her technique for getting through the gap between the screen and the baggage was the same as the one she had used at the doorway – she reversed, pulling her belongings behind her, moving with enough momentum to knock Lung on to his cot when she collided with him. By the time he was on his feet the children – there were only two of them after all – were climbing across the baggage pile, the men were halted in the gap, and three of the other inhabitants of the guest-house were crowding behind them to watch the upheaval and explain to the woman that the space between the foreigners’ cots was sacred ground, or something of the sort. At the same time the two little girls came shrilling across to tell the new children about the wickedness of climbing on foreigners’ baggage, a lesson they themselves had only learnt two days ago. In the end Lung had to move the screen to reach the door where the Steward of the Guest-houses, a middle-aged monk, stood gap-toothed and blinking.