The Rose of Tibet

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘No,’ the abbot said slowly, ‘no, it was not. … A change has come over him lately. He appears dazed. He is like a sleepwalker. There are shadows under his eyes and his step is heavy.’

  ‘It is the burden of knowledge descending upon him,’ said the deputy abbot confidently. ‘The symptoms are classic, I assure you, Excellency.’

  The governor decided to sit back and let others discuss these classic symptoms. They discussed them a good deal. He saw that the abbot and the deputy abbot and the Mistress of Ceremonies were very impressed with them; that Little Daughter was less impressed. Recalling how strongly she had urged trulku status for Houtson, he regarded her with some interest; and when the discussion had run its course leaned forward again.

  ‘Are we not,’ he said mildly, ‘to have the benefit of the views of Little Daughter?’

  He saw the flush that came instantly to her round cheeks, and the way her hands went nervously to her tricorn. She said, ‘My views, Excellency. … Why, I think – that is, I believe the Mother would think – that there is now no reason why the trulku should not see the other Westerners. After all, since he now knows. …’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the deputy abbot.

  ‘Of course,’ said the Mistress of Ceremonies.

  ‘Yes,’ said the governor, neutrally.

  The abbot was looking expectantly at him. ‘Do we take it, Excellency,’ he said, ‘that this would be your view also?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ the governor said absently. ‘You may take it so, Abbot.’

  But he was not looking at the abbot. He was looking at Little Daughter. She knew something, he thought. He wondered what it was.

  Little Daughter was wondering also. She wondered as she laboured back, up the seven flights to the top monastery. She had not meant to give anything away. She hoped she had not given anything away. But she had observed before the uncanny ability of the governor to pick something up out of the air. She was greatly troubled.

  It was Little Daughter’s belief that she knew the Mother as intimately as it was possible for one soul to know another. She bathed her and shaved her and painted her and anointed her; she had had her in her sole care since the age of 6. She did not merely love the Mother as she was bound in duty to do: she adored her. She regarded her as (and called her sometimes in moments of special tenderness) her little rose. If the Mother had asked her to fly like a bird from the topmost golden roof of the monastery, she would willingly have done so. There was nothing the Mother could ask her that she would not do; and nothing that the Mother could do that would strike her as anything other than perfectly reasonable.

  None the less she was troubled.

  In her daily ministrations she had observed certain things that indicated that the Mother was not spending her nights alone.

  Although herself a virgin and bound to a vow of lifelong chastity (as had been all her predecessors), Little Daughter found nothing shocking in this. Tradition had established that while the Mother was in the world she was entitled, at her will, to the usages of the world; so long as discretion was observed. She could remember all too well the increasing appetites of the Seventeenth. As she had aged, so she had become more insatiable. It had been a part of Little Daughter’s duties to bring men to her, blindfold and with their hands tied behind them; sometimes four or five men in a night. One to whom she had taken a fancy in her old age had indeed become a little deranged by his experiences; and towards the end there had been the minor scandal involving the abbot himself. …

  It had been the change from this old ravening creature to the delicate flower-like little Eighteenth, and at a time of her life when she was most susceptible to change, that had rooted in Little Daughter her special feelings with regard to the Mother.

  That the adored young woman should wish to experiment tentatively with the ways of the world did not, therefore, cause her more than a passing uneasiness; what confounded her was how she was managing to do it.

  Little Daughter slept outside the Mother’s room. She knew that no one had come in that way. There was only one other way: she had taught it to the Mother herself (as some day, the Mother would teach it to a new Little Daughter: so the secret was preserved, in a straight line). Only two other people in the monastery knew this secret, the abbot and the deputy abbot: they, too, passed it from one to the other. Only one other person had ever known the secret. This was Hu-Tzung, and the Thirteenth had told him it while under his spell.

  Little Daughter had spent many tormenting hours with the problem. She knew she could discount both the abbot and the deputy abbot. This seemed to leave only the unconscious trulku. … But if the unconscious trulku had divined the secret then he was no longer unconscious, and moreover no longer a trulku but a yidag; for such a secret was not proper for a trulku; and if by some freak of fate he had been given it then he would most certainly not have used it.

  But if he were a yidag, the Mother was bound to reveal him. And if she had not revealed him, then he could not be a yidag. … Little Daughter’s poor brain reeled.

  ‘Little Daughter?’

  ‘I am coming, Mother.’

  Little Daughter panted into the room and lowered herself, holding her heart, on to a stool.

  ‘Oh, Little Daughter, tell me quickly – what has been decided?’

  Little Daughter got her breath back. ‘That the trulku be allowed to see the Westerners,’ she said.

  ‘And what questions were raised?’

  Little Daughter told her, observing at the same time the child’s fatigue, the droop of her mouth, the anxiety in her eyes. Her heart went out to her.

  ‘Was that all?’

  ‘Yes, that was all,’ Little Daughter said; and then, greatly daring, ‘Dear Little Mother, if there is something worrying you – some special problem. …’

  ‘No,’ the Mother said. ‘No, no. What do you mean? I don’t understand you, Little Daughter.’

  ‘You are so tired lately.’

  ‘I am sleeping badly.’

  ‘Then take a little rest now.’

  ‘No. Yes. All right,’ said the Mother pettishly. ‘If you wish it.’

  ‘It will restore you,’ said Little Daughter, quickly helping her off with her robe and turning back the covers.

  The Mother got into bed and lay there, her face so like a pale china rose against the pillow that Little Daughter could not refrain from kissing her.

  ‘Try and sleep now.’

  ‘It is too light to sleep.’

  ‘I will close the shutter. Try.’

  ‘Very well.’

  She went to the shutter.

  ‘Little Daughter!’

  Heart bounding, Little Daughter turned and came quickly back to the bed.

  ‘What is it, little Mother?’

  ‘Nothing. … Nothing.’

  ‘If there is something you wish to tell me – anything at all. …’

  ‘It was nothing. … I am thirsty.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Little Daughter quietly, and went out and poured a mug of lime juice in her own apartment. She made it freshly every day. The chief medical monk had advised that it was good for the little rose’s complexion.

  2

  Houston’s first meeting with his brother in the monastery of Yamdring took place on 30 June 1950, seven weeks exactly after he had first arrived in the village. It took place in the third monastery, and was between them alone, for this was what he had requested.

  (Although he wrote fully of later meetings, when others were present, Houston wrote curiously little of this one: it appears to have been an emotional occasion.)

  He found that the party had been able to keep together – all with the exception of Wister who had to be taken away, raving, to the hospital every few days.

  Wister was the ‘mad’ man of the priestess’s story, and the ‘sick’ one of Ringling’s. It was he who had wandered into the emerald ceremony during the second festival, still concussed from his earthquake experiences (which was why his cell had
been left inadvertently unlocked). In the general confusion he had been able to get back to his own corridor, had managed to unlock and let himself into Hugh’s cell, and had even been able to give a rambling account of what he had seen before the guards, hastily summoned by the deputy abbot, had found him. He had been very badly beaten-up, then, and had never recovered from it.

  They had escaped in December, after bribing their guards; they had got out at night down a rope-ladder direct from the third monastery, and had managed to put several miles and two days between themselves and Yamdring before the blizzard had caught them on the Portha-la. The caravan had been a godsend, and they had followed its tracks hurriedly, carrying Wister. But the attempt had been a forlorn one. The guards had caught up on their first night with the caravan, and that had been the end of it.

  Since then the guards had been changed at weekly intervals, to preclude the possibility of further bribing. But they had been well-treated, with a comfortably furnished cell each, and a common room to themselves during the day, and ample opportunity for exercise in the courtyard of their monastery. They had two pairs of binoculars between them, and were occasionally allowed up to a vantage point from which they could observe the life in the village; and this, since December, had been the nearest they had got to escaping from the monotony of their surroundings.

  They had been kept locked up during the ceremonies of the Spring Festival, and had thus not observed the fracas in which Houston had been involved. But they had received hints during the upsets to routine brought about by the canonization ceremonies, and gradually, over the weeks, had learned what was happening. The abbot had himself told Hugh what to expect the previous day; but he still found it perfectly unbelievable.

  Houston found it unbelievable himself.

  He didn’t know what to say to his brother. They sat and grinned at each other a good deal.

  Houston’s days were passing at this time in a curious manner. The weather had grown hot in the valley and he found it hard to stay awake in the afternoons. It was unbearably steamy beside the lake, unbearably odorous in the village. He stayed in his cell and slept. He slept every afternoon, an arrangement which proved entirely satisfactory to Miny and Mo, who brought a couple of rugs into the cell and slept with him.

  These were dreamy days. They were intoxicating nights. For he was never wholly free of her now, sleeping or waking. He felt as if he were in a kind of trance, and less and less as the airless days of July drifted into August did he want to come out of it. A number of things were working, however, to bring him out of it.

  ‘Chao-li, Chao-li, you’re not listening.’

  ‘To every word, little rose.’

  ‘Little Daughter knows – she knows something.’

  ‘What does she know?’

  ‘I don’t know. And they are worried how you came to hear of the greenstones. … Oh, Chao-li, you’re not thinking.’

  ‘I am thinking.’

  ‘You’re not thinking hard.’

  ‘I can’t think hard when I am with you.’

  ‘Then go away from me. … Ah, no, Chao-li, don’t go. … Think when you are away from me.’

  He thought when he was away from her.

  He went to see the abbot.

  ‘Yes, trulku, you have asked to see me?’

  ‘I am troubled in my mind, Abbot.’

  ‘You have dreamed again?’ said the abbot, loweringly.

  ‘I have dreamed again. I cannot understand my dreams.’

  ‘Tell me them.’

  Houston did so. There was a surprising similarity about his dreams, for in each the Mother either nodded to him or beckoned or called. He thought sometimes that he spoke to her, and that she answered; but he couldn’t tell, when he awoke, whether it had been a dream or a real meeting, so clear was the apparition. Was it possible, he asked the abbot, for one to project himself physically to another place while he slept?

  That such a phenomenon was not only possible, but indeed most comprehensively documented was an elementary part of every young monk’s training: the abbot gazed at him searchingly. He wished most keenly that he had the benefit of the governor’s advice, but the governor had come and gone.

  He decided to employ one of the governor’s methods: he changed the subject.

  He said, ‘Well now, trulku, how did you find your – your compatriots?’

  ‘Very well, Abbot, thank you,’ Houston said, cautiously. ‘They have no complaints.’

  ‘The one who is mad – it was an unfortunate accident.’

  ‘Quite unavoidable.’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ the abbot said, bewildered by this ready understanding. ‘And you have quite lost your desire to return home with them?’

  ‘I have not lost it,’ Houston said carefully. ‘I still have it. It’s very strange. … I want to go and yet I want to stay. I have a feeling there is something for me to do here.’

  The abbot looked at him, and changed his tack.

  He said slowly, ‘Tell me, trulku – you have seen the abbess only once, during the festival.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘It was for you a most unusual sight.’

  ‘Most.’

  ‘Perhaps you think of it again sometimes.’

  ‘Frequently. I’ve even tried to sketch it once or twice from memory.’

  ‘Then isn’t it possible,’ the abbot said, with an attempt at a smile, ‘that you think of it also while you sleep – that your mind goes on making these – these sketches?’

  Houston shook his head. He said, ‘It’s an explanation that has occurred to me, naturally. But the dreams are so real, Abbot. … One has the strangest feeling sometimes. … And yet, what other explanation is there? Perhaps you are right. You might be.’

  ‘But still – wait. Wait a moment,’ the abbot said hastily, as he rose. ‘Dreams after all are sent to guide us. Perhaps we should examine other aspects. You think that in your dreams the abbess calls to you and that you go to her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it that you go?’

  Houston frowned. ‘To an unearthly place … a tomb … a place I have never seen before. There are candles and effigies. … I can’t describe it.’

  ‘Where do you think it is, this place?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Houston said. ‘Perhaps, as you say, in my head. Perhaps in a picture I have seen and remembered. What other explanation is there?’

  The abbot, who could think of several, gazed at him sombrely. ‘Trulku,’ he said at last, ‘I must take counsel on these dreams. It may be that the Mother has need of you. It may be that she is herself unaware of it. We will talk of it again.’

  They talked of it three days later. Houston spent the intervening nights in his cell. He talked a good deal in his sleep during these nights; and he knew that Mei-Hua did the same, for so they had planned it.

  And the news the governor brought him at length was not unexpected.

  3

  Houston had been granted the free run of the monastery towards the end of July: it was just over a month before the Second Festival. He looked back on it later as, literally, the most marvellous month of his life, for every day brought him something to marvel at. He had ready access, day or night, to the abbess, and was utterly and entirely infatuated with her. He could see his brother and the other members of the party whenever he wished, and did so every day. And he was regarded with awe, if not indeed veneration, by all but one of the monks and priestesses in the monastery. (This one, alas, he was to encounter later in circumstances rather less marvellous.)

  Ringling was better now, too, and accompanied him everywhere. Miny and Mo were no longer in attendance, although some supervision was maintained over the other Europeans, and guards were sent out with them on the outings that they took with Houston.

  The outings were frequent. They spent a two-day trip collecting orchids and herbs in the hills; they spent three days with the Duke of Ganzing; and many days more working with the priestesses in the
fields.

  The monastery owned much land, several times as much as could be worked even by its large free labour force, and yet – apart from little prayer wheels and flags – it produced nothing at all for outside consumption. It was, in a sense, a vast hospice, dispensing service. It gave a medical service to half the province; it gave a ‘burial’ service, a mobile corps of priestesses always out on their dismembering and occult assignments (they stayed some days after the dismemberment to see that the newly freed soul was properly directed to its destination); and it gave a spiritual service. Although it was, in one sense, a government institution, its hierarchy was by no means government-appointed. From the abbess downwards, every departmental head was self-perpetuating; ‘recognized,’ as children, they took over from Former Bodies.

  Because of the presence of the she-devil and the establishment’s supernatural origin, pure State lamaism was not practised (a dispensation it enjoyed with some half-dozen other major monasteries, Houston learned from the abbot); there were traces of an earlier religion in the dogma and the form of worship, and local deities supplemented the national ones.

  Houston was fascinated by these details. He pried at will, and though he came up occasionally against some reserve, no mystery was denied him.

  His relations with Ringling and with his brother were less successful. The boy didn’t know what to make of him; he was uneasy in himself with a suspicion that someone or something was being made a fool of. He didn’t want the fool to be himself, or Houston, or the occult powers of the monastery; he didn’t know what to think. But Houston had hired him, and had gone through much with him, and he gave him therefore a certain wistful devotion.

  Houston thought he could cope with this, but he didn’t know how he was going to cope with his brother. He had the strangest aversion to explaining his relations with Mei-Hua, and when Hugh asked him he gave him guarded replies. It had brought an awkward duality to their relations.

  Hugh said to him one day, ‘Look here, Charles, what the hell is going on? Why can’t we talk together properly?’

  ‘When we get away we’ll talk properly. Be patient, Hugh.’