The Rose of Tibet

by Lionel Davidson

  Wasn’t a trulku, Houston asked, smiling, by way of being a sacred, a supernatural person?

  Yes, the duke said, unsmiling; he was. Houston was spot-on there. It would have to be looked into.

  It was looked into the following day. Houston returned the one after. Two days later, he was painting the monastery.

  5

  It came about so easily, he found he could use their logic so naturally, that all that happened in the next week or two had about it the bewitched quality of some fable. He explored the possibilities open to him with caution and cunning. He

  made no requests that he knew might be refused. He ventured no farther than the second monastery. He saw Ringling only once – and this at the abbot’s suggestion rather than his own, for he knew he must appear to put the past behind him.

  The boy’s burns had improved a good deal but he was still unable to walk. Houston, closely supervised, was taken to his cell. He said little to him: there was little he could say yet. But he had fallen into the useful habit of blessing all who came in contact with him, and as he blessed Ringling, managed to wink at him. He doubted if the boy understood: his eyes were still wide with shock and amazement as he left.

  Two monks were accompanying him everywhere at this period, artists nominally, who supplied his materials and carried them for him. They were little grinning men, alike as two peas: Houston thought of them as Miny and Mo and grew very fond of them. Neither could speak anything but Tibetan. Houston did not wish it otherwise. He improved his grasp of the language instead.

  He mastered other skills also: the use of the writing brush, the mixing of vegetable colours, and became so engrossed in the work that for hours on end he could almost forget why he was doing it.

  He didn’t forget entirely.

  In the second week he asked to go to the island.

  He asked so innocently, from motives so obviously artistic, that the abbot, after a thoughtful glance, offered no demur.

  The shrine was closed between festivals, but its door, Houston was glad to see, kept unlocked. Twice a day, morning and afternoon, he visited it with his faithful attendants. He sketched it from the banks. He sketched it from the bridge. Then he went to sketch it inside.

  He was hard put to it to find expedients for getting rid of both monks together, but when he managed it worked very quickly for minutes at a time. He tested with his hands every stone within reach on floor and walls. He tested in particular the area round the murals and the area round the monkey. In the course of three days he found nothing at all.

  He brooded in his cell at night.

  Somewhere in that hollow obelisk there was the mouth of a tunnel. It was a mouth that would open freely at a woman’s touch. It could be a false panel in the wall or a false slab on the floor. It could be worked by a lever or by simple pressure in the right place. He was quite certain it was in there somewhere. He was just as certain he must find it quickly. He had already sketched every angle of possible interest in the shrine. Unless he meant to make a life’s work of it he could not stay there very much longer.

  The idea of re-touching the murals came to him in a moment of inspiration. He tried it tentatively on his artistic companions.

  Ah, no, they said, this was not a good idea. It was in fact a most dangerous idea. For the murals, though in a dilapidated state, were none the less of divine origin. No mortal hand could restore them. It would indeed be a sacrilege of the first degree even to try.

  Sacrilege for a trulku to do so?

  Miny and Mo looked at each other. They didn’t know. It was a question that had never arisen in the entire history of the monastery. It was a question far above Miny and Mo.

  It was a question, in fact, for the she-devil herself.

  While it was passed to her, Houston stopped sketching. He wandered about the village instead, accompanied by Miny and Mo. He did a good deal of wandering and a good deal of blessing. He became very popular. He also, feeling that a long enough interval had elapsed, visited Ringling again.

  Miny and Mo were somewhat bothered when during this visit he lapsed into English, but he smiled at them so jovially while he did so that they could not think anything was amiss. Houston told the boy to smile, too, which he did, in a sickly and rigid fashion, astonished at the turn the conversation had taken, so that in no time, with Houston and the boy smiling, and Miny and Mo smiling back, the cell was fairly flashing with good humour.

  The she-devil’s responsum (formulated as a matter of course by the abbot after consultation with the Oracle) was two days in coming. Aware of the tide of goodwill washing all about him, Houston was in small doubt as to the result; and was not proved wrong.

  Very shortly after, with gold leaf and gum and linseed and vegetable dye, he was installed once more in the shrine. He worked industriously, manipulating wherever he wished – and after several days was brought once more to the point of defeat. It seemed incredible that this bare little building, not thirty feet across, could hide its secret from so persistent a seeker. And yet, he reflected, it must have hidden it for several hundred years. He had noticed that the stones here were very much smaller than in his cell – there were many hundreds of them – and had come to the conclusion that the trapdoor must be worked by multiple pressure on certain of them at the same time or in a given order. He saw he was unlikely to hit on this order except by luck; and at length gave up.

  With Miny and Mo he set the shrine to rights. He cleared the debris. He collected his pots. He gave a final lick here and there; and with a last lick to the monkey stumbled on something strange.

  The gold in the division of the monkeys buttocks was worn away. There was no reason for any wear at this point. The crease was set in; the fingers of the faithful would scarcely penetrate here.

  Houston set down his paint and brush. He took the monkey’s buttocks between both hands. He tugged them gently. The buttocks moved.

  He sent Miny off to the monastery for more paint. He sent Mo out to brew more tea. He returned to the monkey.

  It had been only the slightest of movements, and he tried it again. The gold buttocks moved again. But it was plain they would not move further by harder tugging. There must be a lever here, some outstanding projection within reach of a quite small woman.

  Houston walked all round the monkey. There was only one outstanding projection within reach. It was however quite outstanding: the handsome phallic one the crowds had so admired during the festival. Recollecting suddenly the origins of this festival, and the entire ambience of Tibetan society as he had found it, Houston shook his head and swore quite cheerfully to himself. How could he have overlooked it, this symbol of all that was so hilarious, and proud, and somehow benign in the national character, this key to so many Tibetan mysteries?

  Reasons of delicacy had prevented him from giving it full attention while Miny and Mo were in attendance. They were not in attendance now.

  Houston quite gaily gave the monkey’s projection his attention. The gold buttocks sprang open at his third tug.

  Houston closed them without looking inside.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1

  IT had been 12 May when Houston had arrived at Yamdring, and 18 June when he had found the tunnel. He went down it thirty-six hours later at about a quarter to twelve on the night of the 19th.

  Most of the time in between had been spent in planning how to get out of his cell and back into it again. This was not the simple operation it sounded because the cell was bolted. It was bolted at half past nine at night and not unbolted again until six in the morning. He could see the bolt through the grille in the door, but he couldn’t reach it.

  The solution, a highly ingenious one, was arrived at with the help of the invaluable snuffer cord. They had given Houston his possessions back by this time, and among them was a little silver knife with his name on it: he had carried it with him since the age of 14. With the knife he took down a length of the cord, unravelled it to provide a longer piece, and with a slip k
not lassoed the bolt through the grille. It came out quite easily if somewhat squeakily (a fault he rectified the next day with a lump of butter) but still left him with the problem of locking it again once he was inside.

  This one took rather longer to solve, but he was so pleased with the way he did it that he later with his left hand drew a little picture to show the method. The method was to double the cord, run the doubled end through the ring and the shaft and place it round the bolt head (he did all this in the passage). The loose ends he then fed through the grille in the door, and went back inside and pulled. The bolt was pulled into its ring. He then dropped one end of the cord and pulled the other. The whole lot snaked back through the bolt, through the grille and back into the cell.

  Two guards were nominally on duty at the end of the passage, but he had seen them both snoring in their cloaks and lost to the world, and so he went in and out of his cell, unlocking and locking it again for most of what was left of the night, until he thought he had got the hang of it.

  The following night he went out in earnest.

  He went out via a sewage trap which was left unlocked (it was the method used by Ringling on his romantic assignations, and the one the boy had told him about during the conversation that had troubled Miny and Mo). The trap lifted to reveal an open channel, a slippery sewage pipe so disgusting that he was almost sick in it. He held his breath and sloshed through it, however, and presently when it reached a walled cesspit was able to climb out.

  He found himself in a small compound, in bright moonlight. There was a wall, the monastery wall, with a herbal border running beside it, and he looked for the rock garden the boy had mentioned that climbed up to the top of the wall, and taking his time, let himself out that way. He dropped gently, on to turf, and worked his way round the side of the monastery to the lake. He had to wait here for some minutes while a guard ambled up and down the bottom step, but as soon as the man turned, he ran – past the steps, past the jetty, and did not stop till he was almost at the village.

  A number of boats were tied up at the point where the village lane met the lake, and, after washing his boots in the water, he took one, and, keeping low in the boat cast off and drifted out upon the glittering water. He used the single paddle sparingly, aware that any sudden movement would be visible in the drenching moonlight, and steered himself to the far point of the island. Here, screened by low scrub, he beached and made for the shrine.

  Little spectral bushes and white-flowering broom dotted the island, all ashen in the moonlight. He picked his way through them, and came out to the shrine, and waited for a minute or two, watching the monastery, and opened the door and went in.

  He found his knees knocking a bit in the paint-smelling blackness, but there was no time for second thoughts, and he fumbled for the tinder in his pocket and lit a lamp and saw the monkey come leaping amiably out of the blackness.

  Houston attended to it without formality.

  2

  He heard the midnight gong go after he had been in the tunnel a quarter of an hour, but couldn’t be sure whether it was reaching him from across the water or directly from the monastery. He had gone down into the rock for fifty feet, as near as he could judge, and was now on level ground. He thought he might actually be rising; he was moving with his head bent double and his shoulders brushing the sides and could not tell exactly.

  The air was flat and dead and the butter lamp had begun to gutter. There was a strong, stale smell of musk, and realizing from whom it must have come, Houston felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. How many times had she been here before him, the ageless she-devil; and how many times in her seventeen former bodies? There was an air of old evil, of cult evil, so oppressive about the narrow stone gallery that he could scarcely nerve himself to continue. He thought that what he needed was a rest, and he stopped to have one.

  He stopped with his head bent like an old horse and his breath whistling out like bagpipes. The air seemed to be getting less. He thought there might be more of it nearer the ground, and clumsily lowered himself backwards on to his haunches. Immediately, the lamp brightened. Houston brightened with it.

  It was the lack of air – that and his bent posture. With his head upright and his shoulders straight he was as right as rain. There was no call for a fit of the horrors here. He was in a man-made tunnel. It went from A to B. He had very cleverly found the entrance at A and now it was simply a matter of finding where it exited at B. If one thing was more certain than another, it was that no one would bother him on the way.

  This reflection was so heartening that after a minute or two he got to his feet again and went on.

  The ground was quite certainly rising – and rising steeply. He thought he must by now have emerged from the lake; he would be following the upward slope of the steps. If that were so, the tunnel should presently level out.

  The tunnel levelled out.

  Houston found this very cheering. He thought he could place himself now with fair accuracy. He was directly below the courtyard. Somewhere upon the rock above him, the guard would be pacing in the cool night air. Very shortly, the tunnel should rise again for the second flight of steps.

  The tunnel rose again.

  It went on rising. It went on rising for so long that he became utterly bewildered. He saw that he must have mistaken his position. The first gradient had marked only his emergence from the lake. It was this second one that followed the line of the steps – and of both flights at once.

  But could even two flights of steps go on so long? Perhaps they could. He was tired and lost; and other factors had to be taken into account. The monastery was built on rising ground: the tunnel would have to rise to meet it. Then, the exit would be placed at the far and less accessible end: that would account for a further rise.

  Houston took account of all these factors. He told them over in his mind like so many beads. They did nothing to allay a growing uneasiness. He had been in the tunnel now for half an hour, and it would take him just as long to get back. He had still to face the problems of the boat and of re-entry into the monastery. It would be light in a couple of hours. If he were forced to wait, if he were forced to hide, if one of the guards in the passage should chance to wake. …

  Houston stopped. He stopped because the tunnel had stopped. It had stopped at a flight of steps.

  Houston went up the steps.

  The lamp suddenly brightened. Air coming in. He could feel it moving gently about his head. He was rising steeply, out of the tunnel, into a kind of pill-box, a structure of such irregular shape that he couldn’t for the life of him make out what it was. He raised the lamp above his head. Of course! It was an idol. He was inside another huge idol. The tunnel ended as it began.

  The idol was every bit as large as the monkey. He couldn’t remember seeing another such monkey in the monastery. He thought he must be in one of the chapels at the rear. He knew that butter lamps burnt night and day in these chapels, and he blew out his own and looked about him for cracks of light in the darkness. He saw one immediately, a long vertical hairline a couple of feet above his head.

  He went up two steps and felt it with his hands. It was set in a convex bulge. The bulge did not seem to represent buttocks. He couldn’t make out what it represented. There was a little hollow in the middle. He set his ear to it and listened.

  Nothing. No snore, no breath, no creak.

  Wherever he was, he seemed to be quite alone. He felt with his fingers for the catch and released it. One of the doors jumped open with a small ping. Houston peered through.

  Butter lamps burned steadily in a lofty chamber. The room was perfectly still. The lamps stood in a semi-circle around the idol from which he watched. There seemed to be other, smaller lamps glimmering in the background, and when his eyes were accustomed to the light he saw that they burned before a line of smaller idols.

  He waited for several minutes, and very cautiously went up two steps more. He opened the doors fully. He stepped out.
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  There were rugs on the floor, and more hanging from the walls. It was an extraordinarily large and handsome chapel, and he realized presently why he had not been in it before: it was a chapel devoted to the cult of the she-devil herself. The large idol from which he had emerged represented evidently the First Body: he had stepped out of her belly. The later bodies, life-sized, sat cross-legged in a row facing her; devil-headed, unclothed, supporting their breasts with their hands.

  In the presence of so many devils, Houston felt his flesh beginning to crawl. He had been holding his breath, and he let it out slowly and tiptoed along the line of devils, looking for the gates.

  He counted seventeen she-devils in the row, the seventeen Former Bodies of the Good Mother, and had passed the last of them when he received his first jolt. There were no gates to the chapel. There was a large wooden door. He couldn’t recall a chapel in the monastery that had a door instead of gates. He paused uneasily.

  But he had come so far, he thought he might as well go a bit farther. He thought he might open the door.

  He found he couldn’t open the door. The door was locked.

  Well; that was to be expected. The chapel was evidently in the nature of a holy of holies. A lock would not make his future attempt at escape any easier, but so long as it was operated by a simple bolt and not a key, it wouldn’t make it actually impossible, either. He felt with his hands along the edge of the door; and thus received his second jolt.

  The door was not locked with a key. It was locked simply enough with a bolt. The bolt, however, was on the inside.

  The implications of this were not slow to strike him; he turned from the door as if it had caught fire; and just as suddenly stopped again. In counting the Former Bodies in the room, he had not included the giant First. The she-devil had occupied only seventeen Former Bodies. Eighteen of them sat watchfully in this room.

  Something very peculiar was going on here, and Houston knew suddenly that he had no desire whatever to learn what it was. He wished with all his heart that he had not attempted the lunatic exploration, that he was fast asleep in his cell and snugly awaiting the morning gong; and as abruptly as he had stopped, now moved again, very rapidly, back to the welcome belly of the giant First. He had actually got one foot in it, he could remember later, when the final jolt came.