“Yes, I remember.”
“Now it is time for you to put all its counsels into practice. You have not come among us to learn. You have come to remember all you knew before. The Rinpoche will instruct you how to do that.”
There was a pause. Snow had begun to fall again. It would be a cold night. The boy’s voice sounded faint in the darkness.
“Was there danger at Dorje-la Gompa?”
Unseen, the old monk stiffened.
“Why do you think there was danger, my lord?”
“I sensed it. When the stranger came. I sense it now. Am I right?”
There was silence for a moment, then the old man answered.
“You are not mistaken, khushog. There is danger.” He paused.
“Great danger.”
To me?”
“Yes. To you.”
“Is that why we are fleeing to Gharoling? Is that why we left at night?”
The old man sighed.
“Yes We will be safe there. Khyongla Rinpoche understands. If if anything should happen to me, lord, make your way to Gharoling. They will expect you there. Do not attempt to return to Dorje-la. Do not go anywhere but Gharoling. Do not trust anyone but Khyongla Rinpoche and those he advises you to trust.”
Silence fell again as the boy digested what he had been told The world was proving to be a harder place than he had once thought it. Then his voice broke into the old man’s thoughts again.
“Is it my other body” he asked.
“Is he responsible for this?”
Tobchen shook his head.
“No, my lord. I am sure he knows nothing of you. At least I think not. When it is time, he will be told.”
“Would he try to kill me if he knew?”
The lama did not answer immediately. So many incarnations, he thought. They began as children and grew old and died. And were born again. An endless cycle.
“Yes,” he said.
“I think so. I think he would have you killed ‘
Kalimpong
Kalimpong, northern India, January 1921 Kalimpong dozed in the thin January sunshine. It dreamed of wool and cotton and bright Kashmiri shawls, of Chinese silks, deer antlers and musk, of Indian sugar, glass, and penny candles, of long, jangling caravans coming down from the Chumbi valley out of Tibet, of traders bringing their wares in gunny sacks from the plains of India. But on the high passes to the north, snow fell in easy splendour, thick and white, falling in a trance like the substance of dreams on rocks as cold as sepulchres. For two weeks now, no-one had dared to venture over the Nathu pass. Trade had been brisk with the arrival of the last caravan from Gyantse, but now it had fallen off again, and the tiny market town waited for word that the large consignment due from Lhasa was at last on its way.
Christopher Wylam let the clear air fill his lungs. He felt better in Kalimpong. The town itself was little more than a trading-post on the outskirts of an empire, an entrepot for traders coming down from Tibet with wool and yak-tails to exchange for cheap manufactured goods and more expensive fabrics. But it stood on the edge of mystery. In the air, Christopher could already taste the snow and ice of the Himalayas. They lay on his tongue like a flavour remembered from childhood, at once familiar and exotic, conjuring up memories of silent journeys in the dim, falling snow.
He had only to lift his eyes to see the mountains themselves standing silently in the distance beyond green foothills. They rose up like ramparts barring access to the great Tibetan plateau beyond, a forbidden kingdom jealously guarded by its protector deities. And, more prosaically, by armed Tibetan border guards.
As he stepped down from his pony, the spices and perfumes of the bazaar brought back to him vivid memories of his father. He remembered walking here with him, followed by their chaprasst, Jit Bahadur. And behind would come his mother dressed in white, carried in an open dandy on the shoulders of four impeccably dressed servants. That had been in the days when his father was stationed nearby as British Resident at the native court of Mahfuz Sultan.
Arthur Wylam had been an important man, appointed to his post by the Viceroy himself. The Wylams had been Anglo-Indians for three generations: Christopher’s grandfather William had come out with the Company just before the Mutiny and had stayed on afterwards as an ICS District Magistrate in Secunderabad. Young Christopher had been brought up on stories of the great Raj families the Rivett-Carnacs, the Maynes and the Ogilvies and had been told repeatedly that it was his duty, as it would one day be that of his own son, to add the name of Wylam to that illustrious roll.
Kalimpong had scarcely changed. The main street, a rambling affair of little shops, rang to the sound of hawkers and muleteers as it had always done. Here, Bengali merchants rubbed shoulders with little Nepali Sherpas and fierce-looking nomads from Tibet’s eastern province of Kham; pretty Bhutanese women with their distinctive short-cropped hair collected glances from young trap as making their first pilgrimage to Buddh Gaya; cheerful Chinese traders argued with sharp Marwari merchants and made a profit out of it. On a flat stone in the middle of the bazaar, a blind man sat begging, his eyes running sores, his fingers bent into an attitude of perpetual entreaty. Christopher tossed a coin into the upturned hand and the old man smiled a toothless smile.
Christopher’s father had always preferred the bustle and anarchy of Kalimpong to the stiff formality of Darjeeling, the British administrative centre some fifteen miles to the west. How many times had he told Christopher that, if he was to live in India, he must learn to be an Indian? Arthur Wylam had in many ways despised his own caste the Brahmins, the heaven-born of the Indian Civil Service and Indian Political Service for their insularity and prejudice.
The Civil List, with its tedious enumerations of precedence, the clubs
with their ridiculous rules of etiquette and protocol, the effective
apartheid that made even high-born and educated Indians outsiders in
their own country all had at one time or another drawn his wrath. His
love for the Indian people, for their languages, their customs, their
religions, their foolishness and their
wisdom, had made him an effective and eloquent intermediary ‘ between the Government of India and the various native rulers to whose courts he had been assigned. But his scorn for convention in a society riddled by it the way a chest of drawers is riddled by worms had earned him enemies.
1 Christopher left his pony at a stable and took his bags to a small t rest-house run by an old Bhutanese woman near McBride’s Wool Depot. The rest-house was noisy and smelly, and it teemed with energetic little Kalimpong fleas whose great-great-grandparents I had come to town in a particularly noxious sheepskin from Y Shigatse; but it was the sort of place where no-one would ask too many questions about who a person was or what he was doing in town.
i He could have stayed in the Government guest-house, a small dak-bungalow just outside town, complete with potted plants and f ice and servants. But that would have involved getting chitties in Calcutta and travelling as a Government official the last thing either Christopher or Winterpole wanted. As far as the Governt ment of India was concerned, Christopher Wylam was a private , citizen visiting the hill country merely to relive some pleasant childhood memories and recover from his wife’s death. If there was trouble and questions were asked, Mr. Wylam would not officially exist.
When Christopher came downstairs, the rest-house was in turmoil. A
party of Nepalese had arrived after a journey of almost three weeks
from Kathmandu. They had come to find work in
India, in the tea-plantations round Darjeeling. There were about a dozen of them, poor men in ragged clothes, farmers whose barley had failed that year, leaving them without enough food for the winter. They had come to the rest-house on the recommendation of a Nepalese trader whom they had met on their way, but now the bossy little landlady was telling them there was no room for so many.
There was little likelihood of the scene turning genu
inely ugly such outbursts seldom went beyond words or, at the most, some harmless pushing and shoving. But Christopher felt sorry for the men. He had lived with peasants just like them in the past, and had travelled widely in Nepal: he could understand what it was that had forced them to leave their homes and families at this time of year to make such a hazardous and uncomfortable journey, carrying their provisions on their own backs.
What a contrast there was with his own journey to India.
Winterpole had arranged for Christopher to fly there in a Handley Page biplane by way of Egypt, Iraq and Persia. While these men had been trudging through snow and ice, buffeted by high winds and in constant danger, he had flown like a bird across the world, his worst discomforts cramp and a little cold.
He felt an impulse to intervene, but checked himself just as he was about to step forward. Instinct gave way before training: the rules of his trade said ‘do not draw attention to yourself, merge into the background and stay there, do nothing curious or out of character’. He had come to Kalimpong in the guise of a poor English box-wallah from Calcutta a trader down on his luck and desperate for a new venture away from the scenes of his failure.
No-one would give such a man a second glance: he was a common enough sight in the doss-houses of the big cities and the flop-downs of the frontier bazaars.
Christopher turned away from the shouting peasants and went into the rest-house’s common room. This was the centre of the house’s activities, where guests cooked their own food during the day and where those without bedrooms slept by night.
The room was dark and grimy and smelt of sweat and old food.
In the corners, bales of wool and gunny sacks filled with rice or barley were stacked up high. By one wall, an old man and woman were cooking something over a small iron tripod. Near them, under a greasy-looking blanket, someone else was trying to sleep. A fly buzzed monotonously as it toured the room, out of season, dying, finding nothing of interest. A girl’s voice singing came through the half-shuttered window. She sang in a dreamy, faraway voice, a Bengali song about Krishna, simple but possessed:
Bondhur bdngshl bdje bujhi bipine Shamer bdngshi bdje bujhi bipine.
I hear my lover’s flute playing in the forest;
I hear the dark lord’s flute playing in the forest Christopher imagined the girl: pretty, dark-eyed, with tiny breasts and hair pulled tight in long plaits, like the images of Radha that hung on the walls of so many homes. For a moment, he wondered what she was really like, singing in the alley outside as if her heart would break. Then he called out, breaking the spell of her voice, and a boy came.
“Yes, sahib. What do you want?”
“Tea. I’d like some tea.”
“Ystrang?
“No, not bloody ystrang! Weak tea, Indian-style. And get me a chotapeg to go with it.”
“No whiskey here, sahib. Sorry.”
“Then bloody get some, Abdul. Here,
take this.” He tossed a grimy rupee to the boy.
“Step lively! Juldi,juldi.”
The boy dashed out and Christopher leaned back against the wall. He hated the role he had chosen to play, but he played it because it made him inconspicuous. That sickened him more than anything that it was possible to be inconspicuous by being rude and that politeness to a native would have made him stand out like a sore thumb.
The fly buzzed and the girl’s voice continued outside, rising and ,
falling as she went about her chores. Not since his arrival in “
Calcutta had Christopher had time to sit and think. The journey had
been all rush and bustle: the hurried preparations for departure, the
clumsy, rushed farewells, the staggered flight from staging post to
staging post across the world, the hot, sleepless railway journey from
Calcutta to Siliguri, and finally the trek by pony to
Kalimpong. No time to reflect on what he was doing. No time to reconsider. Just the world rushing past beneath him, water and sand and silent green valleys where time stood still. And yet always a growing realization of what it was he had embarked on, a tight knot of fear in his chest that grew tighter and larger with every stage he travelled.
He had thought about William constantly, trying to understand how the
kidnapping could possibly fit into Zamyatin’s plans, whatever they
might be. Apart from his own expedition to Kailas in search of Russian
agents, he could see no link between himself and this man. Was William
no more than bait, intended to bring
Christopher to the Russian, for reasons he could not begin to guess? That seemed unnecessarily elaborate and clumsy. Not for the first time, he reflected that Winterpole might not be telling him the whole story, or even that what he had told him was largely fabrication.
The boy returned carrying a tray on which stood a cheap, battered teapot, a cracked cup, and a small glass of whiskey coloured liquid that Christopher took to be anything but whiskey.
There was a low wooden table nearby; the boy set the tray down and poured tea into the germ-laden cup. It was strong, the way all Indians imagined Europeans liked to drink it. Christopher shrugged: he would soon be drinking Tibetan tea made with salt and butter why turn up his nose at Darjeeling’s finest?
“It’s quiet outside,” he said.
“Have the Nepahs gone?”
“Yes, sahib. Not nice people. Very poor. No room here for them.”
“Where will they go?”
The boy shrugged. What did it matter where they went? He had already consigned them to the nothingness his mind reserved for everyone of no immediate use to him. He turned to go.
“Just a moment,” said Christopher.
“Can you tell me how to find the Knox Homes the orphanage” A shadow seemed to pass briefly across the boy’s face, then it was gone and he was smiling again. Yet not really smiling.
“The orphanage, sahib? What would you want with the orphanage? There is nothing there, sahib, nothing but children.”
“Listen, Abdul, I asked for directions, not advice. How do I find the place.”
Again that curious expression in the boy’s eyes, then he shrugged.
“It’s very easy, sahib. Have you seen the tower of the church?”
Christopher nodded. It was the most prominent landmark in Kalimpong.
“The orphanage is a red building beside the church. A big building.
With many windows. You will see it, sahib, once you are at the church.
Will that be all, sahib?”
Christopher nodded absently, and the boy turned again to go.
Then, in the doorway, half of his body caught in a pale shaft of sunlight, half in shadow, he turned back.
“Are you a Christian, sahib?”
Christopher hardly understood the question Just as all Indians were Hindus or Muslims to the uninitiated European, so all white people were Christians to all but a few Indians.
“I’m not sure,” Christopher replied, wondering if it was the right answer to give.
“Should I be?”
“I don’t know, sahib. You don’t look like a missionary.”
Christopher frowned, then understood.
“You mean the orphanage?”
“Yes, sahib.”
Christopher shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I’m not a missionary.”
“But you are going to the Knox Homes.”
“Yes. Do only missionaries go there?”
The boy shook his head.
“I don’t think so, sahib. All sorts of people go there. It’s a very ‘ important place. Important people go there.” Again that odd look.
“And you don’t think I look important enough or Christian enough to go there is that it?”
The boy shrugged. He felt he had spoken out of turn. It was never good to cross a European.
“I don’t know, sahib. It’s none of my business. Sorry, sahib.”
&
nbsp; He turned and slipped into the waiting shadows.
“Boy,” called Christopher. The boy returned.
“What’s your name, boy?”
, “Abdul,” the boy replied, mumbling the word as though it had a bad taste.
i “No, it isn’t. You’re not a Muslim. And even if you were, Abdul’s not a proper name. Even I know that. So what’s your name?”
“Lhaten, sahib.”
“Laten, eh?” Christopher mispronounced the name deliberately.
“Very good, Laten. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Thank you, sahib.”
Lhaten glanced curiously at Christopher once more, then left.
Christopher sipped his tea. It tasted vile. He put the cup down and quaffed the cholapeg in a single swallow. It wasn’t much better.
Outside, the girl had stopped singing. The sound of men and animals from the bazaar had grown duller. An afternoon silence had fallen over Kalimpong. Christopher sighed as he put down the chipped whiskey glass. He was back.
Mishig, the Mongol trade agent who had sent the messages to Calcutta, had disappeared. According to George Frazer, the British Agent, he had returned to Kalimpong briefly, then left without warning about ten days earlier. Frazer told Christopher what he could about the monk who had brought the original message out of Tibet.
He was called Tsewong. It seemed that he had battled his way over the Nathu-la pass, down through Sikkim, and almost to the outskirts of Kalimpong before collapsing from exhaustion. According to the report received by Frazer, he was found on the roadside by a passing farmer on the fourteenth of December feverish, delirious, and near to death.
The farmer had brought him on his cart to the orphanage, where the Reverend John Carpenter and his wife had cared for him until the Mission doctor returned from a visit to a nearby village. The doctor had advised against Tsewong’s removal to the Presbyterian Hospital and had remained at the orphanage all that night. The monk had died the next morning, apparently without saying anything intelligible.
Before handing the body over to the Tibetan agent, who was to arrange for his cremation, the doctor had searched the man’s pockets or, to be precise, the pouch formed by the fold of his robes, in which Tibetan men carry their personal possessions.
The Ninth Buddha Page 4
