Tulku

by Peter Dickinson

  He stood back, panting. The russet cloth was pinned to the beam and hung limp from the blade, but the hilt still quivered from the force of the blow. Lung gazed at it, uttered a sobbing groan, flung his arms wide and collapsed face down on his cot.

  16

  WHO KNEW ABOUT the failed escape? Everybody? Nobody? It was impossible to tell. Sumpa had vanished – but had he run away? Was he hiding? Was he prisoned in one of the hermit-caves? Was he dead? Again there was no clue. Tomdzay came to their room next morning to ask if they were comfortable and apologize for their treatment at the guest-house. Then, still speaking as though it were an ordinary matter, he said that as soon as the festival was over Lung and Theodore would be given money for their journey and escorted to either India or China, whichever they might choose. Lung lay face down on his cot throughout the interview and gave no sign that he had heard a word, but Tomdzay didn’t seem at all put out, though Theodore noticed that his eye was caught by the monk’s robe, still pinned to the beam by the sword. An unreadable expression flickered across his face but his voice didn’t falter. When he had left Lung groaned, raised his head and let it fall back again on to his pillow. His misery so filled the room that Theodore could not bear it for long, and left to wander round the monastery.

  The whole great maze was humming with preparations. In the main courtyard the steps of the great temple were being extended to left and right with wooden staging at various levels; new banners and hangings fluttered from archways or dangled in gaudy streams down the fronts of buildings. It was all very well for Major Price-Evans to claim that the dances were unrehearsed, but now there was hardly an open space that didn’t swirl with troupes of performers or echo with strange music; passing one of the kitchens Theodore saw through an open door a rickety scaffolding at whose centre was a weird grey bulbous mass, over ten feet high. Two men were perched on the scaffolding painting the object, which seemed to Theodore wholly out of place in a kitchen until, some time after he’d walked on, he realized that what he’d seen had been an early stage in the creation of the dough-giant which in a few days’ time Yamantaka, Death and Slayer of Death, would hack to pieces and fling to the attendant worshippers to eat. An echo of human sacrifice, Major Price-Evans had said, and also an echo of the Lord’s Table. Theodore shuddered, not at the blasphemy but at the dough giant itself, cretinous, cold, grotesque, a parody of flesh. He decided to go early for his call on Major Price-Evans.

  Usually Theodore didn’t argue with the Major about Buddhism – it didn’t seem polite, for one thing; for another, as Lung had found, there was no way of winning such arguments; and for a third, till now Theodore had felt ashamed to pretend he held his beliefs with the through-and-through simplicity of the Major’s faith. There was always that numbness and emptiness at the centre, which had been there since the Settlement had been destroyed and Father had died. He was not in his heart sure that he had been doing any more than acting his belief, in the way Mrs Jones had said she was acting hers, or that his prayers and Bible-reading had been anything other than habits. But in the last week, since that spurt of faith when he had answered ‘Yes’ to the Major’s question about the gods, he had changed. He felt he was moving, just as the whole life of the monastery was moving, towards a turning-point. Of course until last night this turning-point had seemed to be the escape from Dong Pe, but though that had come to nothing the sense of movement was still there. Perhaps it was this which made him tell the old man not simply that he had seen the dough giant but what he had felt about it.

  ‘See what you mean, me boy,’ said the Major affably. ‘You’ve got to remember that flesh is illusion, so old Yidam’s only an illusion of illusion. Perhaps that’s what you really felt.’

  ‘No it isn’t. And anyway flesh isn’t an illusion. My Father said that everything God made is holy, so how can it be illusion?’

  ‘Ah, well, perhaps that’s true too – only another way of looking at it.’

  ‘Something’s either an illusion or it isn’t. To say anything else is nonsense – the words don’t mean anything.’

  ‘Now that’s where we differ. I don’t like saying anything’s nonsense, because when you think about it a bit more it often turns out to be sense. A lot of what you’re saying is just what I used to think, but then I found I was wrong about one thing, and then another thing, and so on, and now I’ve given up judging. Judge not that you be not judged, don’t you know.’

  (The Major was a great quoter from the Bible, which he knew just as well as Theodore. But he also knew the Koran, and the Talmud, and a lot of other sacred books.)

  ‘Jesus was talking about judging people,’ said Theodore.

  ‘Quite right, me boy, but all these things mean more than just one thing, you know.’

  ‘Look, if you’re not allowed to say something’s nonsense – not allowed to think it even – it means you can believe anything you want to. The Earth’s flat! The moon is green cheese! Pigs fly!’

  ‘I heard about a lady the other side of Tibet who could turn herself into a pig. Abbess of one of the great nunneries. I don’t know whether she could fly, but some of them can levitate, you know.’

  ‘Oh, sure!’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘In any case, supposing it’s true, what’s it all for? These tricks they say they do are all so useless. Floating about in the air, or sitting by a frozen lake drying out towels with your body, just to prove you can do it!’

  ‘Jesus walked on the water.’

  ‘He had to. His disciples were scared. They thought the boat was sinking. He didn’t like doing miracles, and he didn’t do them to show off. They were useful. He fed people. He healed people.’

  ‘Lot of Lamas do healing, you know. But it’s interesting, isn’t it – shows a difference in attitude. Wheels, now. In the west we talk about the invention of the wheel as a great thing because it’s so useful. Here you aren’t allowed to use it at all. Same with miracles – I don’t think the Lamas would want to do them if they were useful. They are spiritual exercises, you know. They prove the Lama’s mastery over illusion. That’s one of the reasons we know we can believe what the Lamas tell us.’

  ‘My father saw men walking on live coals,’ said Theodore. ‘Do you mean he ought to have believed them if they told him the moon was cheese?’

  ‘I don’t know about that – seen that trick meself, you know, in Java. Wish I’d had the nerve to try it, too. But if a fellow like that started talking about the way the mind and the body fit together, I’d be interested to hear what he had to say, at least. Hey?’

  The argument rambled on for a while, getting nowhere near any conclusion but covering all the amazing feats the Major had heard of Lamas achieving – prodigious marches over pathless country in impossible times, vast leaps, healings, trances – and then on to other countries, rope tricks, year-long burials, strange digestive feats, water-walking, and so on. The visit fell into its usual routine, and Theodore left as soon as the oracle-priest came to perform his morning ritual.

  Having nothing better to do, Theodore took the trouble to cook the midday meal with special care, but Lung would not touch it; he lay huddled on his cot, groaning from time to time, and once or twice beating his clenched fist against his thigh. In the afternoon Theodore took Sir Nigel for a ride along the mountainside; the superb creature, fully rested now and used to steep places, moved with a sprightly energy and took Theodore further from the monastery than he had ever been, down among the tiny meadows where men and women toiled stripped to the waist in the surprising warmth, and right to the steep woods which clothed the lower flanks of the Dome of Purest Light. But all the time Theodore could feel Dong Pe calling him back; it was not safe to be so far away; something had still to happen.

  Once back he longed to be away. Lung’s fury and grief filled the little room like smoke, and that night the monster Yidam Yamantaka blundered through Theodore’s dreams. At one point he woke, convinced that the dough giant was actually in the room
, and saw a weird shape, dim in the moonlight, against the far wall. It took several frozen seconds before he recognized the thing as the monk’s robe which Lung had pinned to the beam with his sword. He tiptoed across the room and took it down, but when he returned from exercising the ponies next evening he found that Lung had summoned the energy to replace it.

  The third day followed much the same. A visit to the Major in the morning, a long ride in the woods in the afternoon. All this time Lung ate nothing – didn’t even stir from his cot while Theodore was in the room, and appeared not to notice when, that evening, two monks brought a large basket of food in and explained in broken Mandarin that it would have to last until the festival was over.

  The fourth morning began with the steady beat of a slack-skinned drum, parading through galleries and courtyards, a noise more like the pulse of a large but bloodless creature – Yidam Yamantaka, for instance – than any music. Voices called, feet padded and scurried, and the drum thudded into the distance, returning and fading as it wandered through the maze. As Theodore lay and listened to it, he came face to face with the fact that he was frightened. It was no use saying that he had seen the masks being painted and the dough-giant being constructed, and knew quite well that they were only wood and cloth, flour and water and coloured dyes. He also knew that at times something breathed power into these stupid things, so that their stupidity began to live and became horrible. He did not want to be there when it happened, so he decided that this morning, at any rate, he was going to stay in the cell. Even Lung’s misery would be more tolerable than the things outside.

  He rose, lit the primus and started to make his breakfast. To his surprise Lung heaved up on his cot and stared, hollow-eyed, at the purring violet flame beneath the kettle.

  ‘It is the day,’ he croaked.

  ‘Yes. Did you hear the drum? I guess that means the Festival is starting.’

  ‘She will come down from the mountain. She has had three days to consider. All that time she has not seen the soul-stealer.’

  ‘Honest, I don’t think . . .’

  ‘No. If he had not been sure of her he would not have left her so. I must eat.’

  Lung seemed to have lost all his fastidious neatness. He slurped his tea so hot that it must have burnt him, spilling much of it but instantly gulping again. Crumbs of the dark, sour bread strewed his cot, but the moment he’d finished eating he threw himself back on the mess and lay staring at the ceiling. Theodore started to tidy the food away.

  ‘Leave me, Theo,’ whispered Lung.

  ‘I’d sooner . . .’

  ‘I must be alone. Now. Alone.’

  Lung seemed to sense Theodore’s intention to refuse, because now he half-rose from the cot, glaring at Theodore with a suddenly focused madness, as though Theodore were the cause of all his misery.

  ‘Go!’

  The word was like the grunt of a wounded animal. Lung was still rising when Theodore picked up his rough Tibetan coat and backed through the door. For a moment he stood hesitating, wondering what to do, how to get help. It was as though one of the horrible powers of Dong Pe had come and instead of giving weird life to a masked dancer had actually invaded the body of his friend. He moved a pace along the gallery and standing on tip-toe peeped over the sill of the small window into the cell. Lung was lying on his cot, face down now, apparently exhausted with the effort of driving Theodore from the room. Perhaps he was right, and all he needed was to be alone. The fact that he had eaten was encouraging . . . Theodore moved away, shaking his head. He decided to go and check that the old groom hadn’t forgotten to feed and water the horses in the morning’s excitement. Then he could weed Mrs Jones’s garden for a while – a dreary and disconsolate task without her – and then come back in an hour or so and see whether Lung was all right.

  The quiet courtyard where they lived was full of sudden life, as monks thronged through the arch that led towards the temples. Theodore turned against the flow of men hurrying in the same direction along the gallery and made his way to a stair that would bring him out in the courtyard by the monastery gate, but reaching the gallery above it he saw that he would not get out that way. The crowd at the entrance was like hunched waters pressing to pass a sluice; anyone trying to move against it would be in for a battering, and might even get trampled underfoot. So he turned back and, moving with the stream now, made his way through the maze of galleries towards the little side-gate; he had meant to avoid the gallery that ran along the east side of the main courtyard, but a door that would have let him through by a back way was for some reason closed and bolted, so he had to retrace his steps. To his surprise the gallery was almost empty. Monks were lined up along the balustrade, but there was plenty of room to pass behind them, and gaps through which it was possible to see the scene below. This was so amazing that despite his intentions Theodore stopped at one of the gaps to watch for a moment.

  When the people of the valley had gathered in that courtyard for the ceremony of the oracle, Theodore had thought it an immense crowd, but compared to the crush he saw now it was little more than a sprinkling. It seemed impossible that there could be room for more, but still men and women, monks and peasants, were jostling in through several archways, setting up pressures in the mass below which made it move in ponderous eddies.

  ‘You have come to watch?’ said a voice in Mandarin beside him. ‘To be part of the ceremony you must be down there.’

  Theodore turned and saw the oracle-priest. He answered with a grunt – he was only watching. He was not part, and never would be. His eye was caught by a rush of movement on the staging at the temple steps to his right – a monstrous figure, surrounded by demons, was swaggering about while a dancer all in black and riding a black hobby-horse, came tittupping on. The dancer abandoned his horse, took a bow from his shoulders and began to perform his dance, moving in wide swoops, with arms stretched so that his black robes fluttered round him. The monstrous figure, who wore a green mask and a towering crown, came nearer to the dancer, who suddenly stopped his fluttering swoops, stood straight and mimed with the bow. Imaginary arrows sped towards the monster. At this point Theodore recognized the story, which Major Price-Evans had told him – it was about a King of Tibet a thousand years ago who had tried to suppress the Buddhists; and how a Buddhist hermit had appeared in front of the palace riding a black horse and wearing the dress of a black magician, and there had performed a magical dance, which the King had come out on to his balcony to watch; then the hermit had taken his ritual bow, shot the King dead and galloped off towards the river; the King’s guard had rushed in pursuit, but no-one on either bank had seen a black rider on a black horse because the hermit had turned his cloak inside out as he rode through the river, which had washed the black paint off his horse, so all any witness had seen was a white magician suitably mounted on a milk-white steed.

  Theodore was inquisitive to see whether the dancer would change colour, and if so how, so he stayed, telling himself he was only watching. The monster-king danced his death; a line of men in blue-green robes, waving a long blue cloth to make the waves, appeared on the other side of the stage; the hermit picked up his hobby-horse and sped towards them, pursued by demons; the dancers in blue closed round him for a moment, hiding him completely, then opened out and there he was all in white on the far side, beginning to dance his triumph while the demons prowled for their prey, unable to see him. It was cleverly managed, but Theodore was surprised to notice that the crowd below scarcely responded – indeed many were not even looking in that direction.

  ‘Why don’t they watch?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that why they’ve come?’

  ‘They are waiting for the Lama Amchi to appear,’ said the oracle-priest.

  ‘Is that more important than the dances?’

  ‘To these simple people, yes. It was he who found the Lama Tojing Rimpoche, and now it is he who has found the Mother of the Tulku. He was already a great one in their minds, and now he is greater still.’

  �
��When will he come?’

  ‘When the dance of Yidam Yamantaka is about to begin. First there will be some singing, then another dance, then more singing and then the dance of Yidam Yamantaka.’

  Now, knowing what to look for, Theodore could indeed perceive that the crowd was thickest at the foot of the steps that zigzagged up to the two houses and the caves beyond. The sense of patient waiting, of adoration, of awe, struck him like a wave. All for this one man . . .

  ‘But when the child is born . . .’ he muttered.

  ‘He will be a child for many years,’ said the oracle-priest. ‘A Tulku does not come into his powers at once, so the Lama Amchi will guide him. And even when the child is a man . . .’

  He gave a cynical little chuckle, and shrugged as if to show he was not a monk through and through, but had once been a yak-driver and seen other lands. It was a relief to hear him speak so, to share a moment of disbelief at the centre of this factory of appalling faiths. Perhaps Theodore’s feelings showed on his face, because the oracle-priest smiled and shook his head reprovingly.

  ‘The Lama Amchi is a truly spiritual person, and of great wisdom and power,’ he said. ‘And the child that is born will be the Tulku. Through my mouth the oracle spoke.’

  ‘How do you know?’ cried Theodore. ‘How do you know it isn’t all made up? You can’t remember anything you said!’

  The oracle-priest looked at him for a moment with the same reproving smile and was just about to answer when a change came over him. He seemed to be having a fit. He shook. The smile became a snarl, and his coppery clear skin suffused red and purple, while the veins of his forehead swelled until they were like knotted roots of trees. He took one staggering pace towards Theodore and towered above him.