Tulku

by Peter Dickinson

  Lung began to argue. The Steward, who had acquired a smattering of Mandarin in the course of his duties, answered mostly with gestures, designed to show that the other guest-houses were even more crowded. Angrily Lung took him by the elbow and pulled him out of the door, so that it seemed perfectly natural for Theodore to wriggle through the crush and join the discussion outside. He reached them in time to see Sumpa come strolling down the path from the monastery. Lung turned to him in despair and fury.

  Perhaps it was all a little too pat, but it seemed to Theodore quite convincing. Sumpa and the Steward argued for a little in Tibetan – perhaps for the benefit of the visitors now crowding the doorway, or perhaps because Sumpa had somehow engineered it that the Steward should bring the newcomers down, without letting him know the reason. But after a minute Sumpa turned to Theodore.

  ‘If the honoured Guide will come with me,’ he said, ‘I will show him an empty cell in the monastery which he can share with the honoured Lung. Meanwhile the honoured Lung can supervise the packing of your belongings. These peasants will bring them up to the path below the monastery wall and I will arrange for their collection from there.’

  He spoke a couple of sentences in Tibetan and turned away, striding up the path with brisk small steps. Theodore caught him up.

  ‘I went out to the shrine this morning,’ he muttered. ‘There was a camp among them, three tents and some yaks.’

  ‘That is Tefu and his friends,’ said Sumpa. ‘I will go there now and send them to fetch the baggage. You go to the small door. The robe is where I showed you.’

  When they reached the monastery wall he gave a formal little nod and hurried away, vanishing almost at once in the near-dark. Theodore followed the blank line of the wall in the other direction, noticing for the first time how noisy the evening was, with laughter and shouts from the guest-houses and the more distant throb and pulse of temple music. Below him, at the heart of the valley, a thunderstorm had brewed, and the continual flicker of its veiled lightning picked out the tree-tops and the spiky pinnacles of shrines below the path. When he came to the small side-door he found it wedged slightly open with a stone, and tied with a leather thong to prevent it from swinging in the wind. He slipped the knot by touch and slid through, kicking the stone away and latching the door from the inside. The robe was there; folded along the wall. He slung it across his shoulder and felt his way up the stair to the maze of galleries above.

  This section of the monastery consisted mostly of the quarters of senior monks. Now there was no-one about, and few lamps burnt in any cells; but from the direction of the main temple came the murmur and throb of horns and drums and the ocean-like rumble of the monks’ responses, all echoed from the valley by the growing mutter of the storm. The building was like a vast creature, the rhythm of whose life at times draws all its living cells to the centre of its system, leaving its outer parts mere lifeless shell, untenanted. Through these veins and chambers Theodore stole like an infection. He felt totally safe.

  ‘I am armoured in faith,’ he whispered several times.

  Whatever happened God would not let him be harmed, but moved beside him now so that all the demons of the mountain could not touch him. This exaltation of certainty lasted while he walked silently above the courtyards, round behind the temple of the oracle, down a stair and out into the main courtyard through the arch from which he had first seen it.

  It was full night now, with many stars, though they were smudged out to the north where the thunderstorm was rising and nearing. He picked his way along beneath the slope of natural rock to the stairs he had climbed so often, going to lessons at the Lama Amchi’s house. Almost nonchalantly he started up them, reached the ledge where the two houses stood side by side, crossed it diagonally and began to climb the steeper, more irregular stairs to the caves. Stirred by the fringes of the storm, the night wind, icy cold, slashed and whipped at the mountain, snatching his panted breath from his lips and tugging at his clothes. He slowed his pace, taking care over each step, husbanding his energy as if he had the whole mountain to climb. When he looked over his shoulder he was astonished by how far he had come; the rock-face plunged down, seeming far steeper from above than from below, and the whole monastery was mapped out beneath him. The thought struck him that he should have come up here before and looked at the whole valley from this height. But mostly he kept his eyes on the individual steps, which were often no more than scooped footholds in the rock, no larger than a dinner-plate. At the steepest places a coarse rope, greasy with use, ran beside them.

  At last came a change, a step that was wider than the others, and broader too, a place to rest and recover breath without feeling that the wind would scour him off the mountain. But it was too cold to stand still for long, and Theodore was about to climb on when his eye was caught by a dim yellow light to his left and he realized with a shock that he had reached the first line of caves. His eye was now trapped by that light and could see nothing else, so he had to feel his way, trembling suddenly with the knowledge of the sweep of rock below him, till he reached the cave mouth. Heavy curtain was stretched across it just inside. Eagerly he slipped through.

  ‘Hullo, Theo,’ said Mrs Jones.

  She was sitting cross-legged on a prayer-mat on the floor, opposite a place where the cave wall had been roughly plastered and then whitewashed. Elsewhere it was naked rock, but hung with the usual banner-like pictures and patterns that decorated all the monks’ cells. The butter-lamp on the stool beside her cast slant shadows upward across her face. Her eyes were open but they looked heavy with sleep, and she was smiling dreamily, a smile that reminded Theo of the remote sweet smile of the Buddha in the temple.

  ‘I thought you’d still be in the temple,’ he said.

  ‘Gracious me! I’ve missed it! I was having a vision – ’salright, you didn’t interrupt nothing. I think it was finished.’

  ‘It’s time to go. They’ve sent me to fetch you. Everything’s ready. We couldn’t get a message to you earlier, but . . .’

  ‘I know, ducks. Listen, I’m afraid you’ll have to go back and tell them I ain’t coming.’

  ‘Not . . . But the baby! Proper doctors! India!’

  ‘It wasn’t never going to be India, love, not if that Sumpa had anything to do with it. He wanted the Tulku born where the Chinese could get their hands on him. But it’s no odds either way, ’cause I’m staying here. We’ll be all right, me and him – that’s one of the things I seen in my vision.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No more do I. I was just sitting here, humming one of me hums, when all of a sudden that wall there started a-glowing, all kinds of colours and shapes, real beautiful, like nothing I never seen, and I sat where I was with my eyes on stalks, and somehow the patterns became a lotus, and it opened and opened, and there he was at the heart of it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tojing Rimpoche, the Siddha Asara.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t that sort of seeing. The lotus was, but I seen him somehow different, in a way as won’t go into words. But he was there, right enough.’

  ‘I thought he was supposed to be . . .’

  She chuckled like her old self and slapped her belly.

  ‘In here. Not really. It ain’t like that, far as I can make out. Matter of fact, I don’t think any of them’s proper clear how it all works – you see they don’t usually find a Tulku till he’s four years old, about, when he can talk and tell ’em things about his old life, so as they can be sure they’ve got hold of the right kid . . . Do you know, couple of nights back he gave me a great kick from inside – funny how they do that – but it’s early, innit? Shows the little beggar’s going to be strong . . . bit of a shock for you, young fellow, climbing all the way up here and finding I’m going to cry off.’

  ‘No,’ said Theodore slowly. ‘I guess I’ve known for a long time that you weren’t coming. I guess Lung’s known too . . . Oh, Mrs Jones,
won’t you come and tell him yourself? I can’t! I just can’t!’

  She nodded briskly.

  ‘Quite right. ‘Course it’s up to me. I s’pose I wasn’t proper come to after my vision, trying to put it on you . . .’

  She had learnt the Lama’s trick of rising so that she seemed to float to her feet.

  ‘Sumpa gave me a monk’s robe,’ said Theodore. ‘In case anyone tries to stop you.’

  ‘They won’t . . . it’ll be funny going out without my escort. Wonder where they got to. Probably they come to take me to the temple and found me having my vision, and they understood what was up and cut along without me. You go first, young fellow. Heavens, hark at that thunder!’

  The storm had drifted closer now and was rubbing against the lower slopes of the mountain, the glare of its flashes making the landscape jump into being, sharp as cut paper, and then float dazingly on the retina when all was darkness again. The wind threshed among the many-faceted roofs below and thudded against the rock-face. If the monks were still singing in the temple, their voices were drowned by the voice of the storm. Clutching the hand-smoothed rope Theodore started down the first slant of steps, feeling for each foothold in the dark.

  ‘You ain’t scared?’ called Mrs Jones. ‘Want me to go first?’

  ‘No. It’s all right,’ called Theodore.

  He had in fact hesitated at the first step, full of a sudden horror of falling, but then he remembered the assurance of safety that had surrounded him as he had come up this way, and he went down confidently, flight after flight, until he reached the platform where the Lama Amchi’s house stood beside the one that had belonged to Tojing Rimpoche. He was only half surprised to find that Mrs Jones had followed close on his heels, as if there were neither night nor storm.

  ‘That’s where he’ll get born,’ she said, flicking a thumb towards the empty house. There was something not exactly false about the gesture, but still not quite right. Indeed, since she had first spoken her manner had jarred. If he hadn’t come to know her so well in the past months he would never have noticed, but now he realized that she was play-acting. The role of Mrs Jones – the exuberant, warm, resourceful, crude-spoken horsewoman, who had worn her make-up so thick and her clothes with such an air – no longer quite fitted her. She had changed. She was somebody new and different, trying to fit herself back into the old role for the moment and getting it subtly wrong, too boisterous, too coarse-grained. He shook his head, unhappy at the distances that had stretched between them, and led the way down to the main courtyard.

  As they reached the paving there came another change in her. She put her arm round his shoulders and held him close against her side, so that the folds of her robe flapped around him as they walked. Warmth seemed to flow out of her, and not simply warmth but a deep, quiet contentment.

  ‘Mind you, that was some vision I had,’ she said, speaking in a quite new voice, very soft and even. ‘I wonder if it’ll ever happen again. I hope so. Or perhaps once is enough.’

  Still holding him she started to make the humming noise which the Lama had produced the night he had first told them about his search for the Tulku, a noise like the purr of a great cat, dreaming. She let go of him as they climbed the stairs, but was still humming as they moved through the network of galleries towards the little door. An old monk, tottering along with a lamp, met them, peered astonished through the dimness and stood reverently aside. Mrs Jones said a few words to him in Tibetan, perhaps a blessing, but didn’t pause in her stride. Theodore noticed that she was actually walking in a different manner, as though she was conscious every instant of the treasure she now carried.

  ‘Do you believe everything the Lama Amchi says?’ he asked. ‘You used to say he was sly.’

  ‘Oh, he’s that all right, sly as a coach-load of politicians. Everything we said about him at the start, wanting to keep his hands on Dong Pe and all that, it’s true. But it don’t make no difference to him being holier than all the saints in the calendar and wiser than the Three Wise Men. But I ain’t doing what I’m doing for him, you know. I ain’t even doing it for the Tulku. I’m doing it for me.’

  They met no-one else as they crossed the final galleries, crept down the narrow stair in the outer wall and through it into the night. Theodore wedged the stone back into the jamb and lashed the door tight with the thong, then started along the path. The valley was like a cauldron now, boiling with thunder. The cloud-layer hid the lightning-flashes, but the glare of them filled its surface with sudden luminosities, so that a cloud-tower would glow white for a moment, seeming to float by itself in the dark, and somehow to belong for that moment to the same order of creation as the monastery, with its towers and spires and ramparts. Though it felt as if huge rain-drops should have been clattering down, the air was desert-dry, whipping to and fro in fierce gusts. Theodore discovered that he was still carrying the monk’s robe, slung over his shoulder, and the wind flogged it against his ribs as though it held a wiry but boneless body. The thunder drowned any noise the wind might make, so that its violent movements came unheralded, like willed onslaughts.

  Theodore led the way along the path until they reached the area of shrines. At the third one – he saw its spire, topped with a crescent, outlined against the higher clouds which flickered continuously with reflected light from the storm – he turned and began to climb the slope in paces only a few inches long. Mrs Jones came effortlessly behind him. Now a different light showed, faint but yellow and steady – a lantern. Theodore climbed panting over the rim of the platform and saw in the dimness men and horses and loaded yaks, but before he could advance a pace Mrs Jones seized his elbow.

  ‘Why’d you bring me here?’ she gasped.

  ‘It’s where Sumpa told us to . . .’

  ‘But he must of known! This is the place where they’re going to build his shrine – Tojing Rimpoche’s, when his body comes home!’

  Before Theodore could answer Lung rushed out of the group of men, no doubt having heard her voice.

  ‘You come, Missy!’ he said. ‘I think all these long days . . .’

  ‘No, sweetie, I ain’t coming,’ she answered. ‘Listen . . .’

  The rest of the sentence was drowned in thunder. She led Lung aside, and in the next glare Theodore saw the pair of them outlined right at the edge of the levelled ground, Lung with his head bowed and Mrs Jones facing him, holding both his hands in hers and looking up into his eyes. Lightning came and went and came again, and each time they were still in the same pose. A man grunted close at Theodore’s side.

  ‘When we go?’ he said in harshly twanging Mandarin. ‘This most bad night. Go soon.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Theodore. ‘Wait. The woman is not going.’

  ‘Ho! Monk Sumpa say woman must go! Say if woman no want to go, then we bind woman and carry!’

  ‘No . . .’ began Theodore, but the man – presumably he was the one called Tefu – turned and called to his companions. One of them was holding the lantern, so Theodore could see their surge across the levelled space towards where Lung and Mrs Jones stood. He called a warning, probably inaudible against a great bellow of thunder, but Mrs Jones turned and as the rumbles died started to speak in Tibetan. The men stopped in their tracks.

  That last thunderclap was like a signal for the storm to end. Though it still muttered a little at its further fringes, and though the wind still hooted and flapped among the shrines, her voice rang clear. Theodore heard the word ‘Tulku’ repeated several times. A man, perhaps Tefu, made a lunge towards her but the others caught him and dragged him back. One actually whimpered out loud. Mrs Jones didn’t shout or rage, or even raise her voice more than was necessary to pierce the wind, but from her tone it was clear that she was telling them what penalties would be inflicted, by god and man and demon, on any who dared to touch the Mother of the Tulku. She faced them as confidently as she had faced her rebellious porters on the day Theodore had first seen her, though armed with other weapons. In some ways she
had changed less than he had thought.

  ‘Fair enough,’ she said, switching suddenly back to English. ‘I’ve told ’em to bring our clobber back down to the monastery gate, and we’ll all go home and have a good night’s sleep. I’ll see as nobody gets into hot water over any of this.’

  Theodore never clearly remembered walking back along the path to the monastery. He retained a dream-like image of several monks, including Tomdzay, at the gate, courteous and unsurprised, and then at last he was sitting exhausted on a cot in a fair-sized upper room in the monastery and watching some junior monks carry in the baggage and stow it against a wall. And then Lung stood framed in the doorway, wild and unfamiliar in Tibetan clothes, with the bandit’s sword stuck through his belt. He stared at Theodore, opening and closing his mouth as if trying to speak, but no words came. Instead Lung rushed suddenly forwards. Theodore tried to rise and dodge the attack, but had hardly moved before Lung’s arm was swinging at him, snatching at the robe he still carried slung across his shoulder, dragging it free so violently that he pulled Theodore to his feet. Theodore began to edge towards the door but Lung glared round the room, moving his head in savage jerks, until his eye was caught by the beam running up the far wall. He strode towards it, holding the robe at arm’s length in his left hand, while with his right he drew his sword and swung it back. The moment the robe touched the beam he struck, crying like a demon.