The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  In the pouch, apart from the normal accompaniments of a lama - a wooden teacup (also used as a bowl from which to eat tsampa), the traditional metal water-bottle, normally hung from the sash, a yellow wooden rosary of one hundred and eight beads, a small gau or talisman-box and some medicinal herbs the doctor found a letter written in excellent and idiomatic English, asking ‘whomsoever it may concern’ to provide the bearer, Tsewong Gyaltsen, with every facility, since he travelled as the personal emissary of a Tibetan religious dignitary identified only as the “Dorje Lama’.

  A second paper had been folded into the same packet as the letter: it contained only five lines of writing, but was in Tibetan and could not be deciphered by the doctor. He had thought it best not to give either the letter or the paper to the Tibetan Agent along with the monk’s other possessions. Instead, he showed them to Frazer, who had the paper translated by his munshi. It turned out to be very simple: instructions on how to find the Mongol Trade Agent Mishig.

  One thing nagged at Christopher’s thoughts while he made his way to the

  orphanage in accordance with Lhaten’s directions: if the monk Tsewong

  had been dying when he got to Kalimpong, and if he had in fact died the

  morning after his arrival at the Knox

  Homes, how on earth had he managed to convey Zamyatin’s message to Mishig? Had someone else taken the message on his behalf? If so, who?

  The orphanage, like the church beside which it was built, looked as if it had been transported bodily, like the palace in “Aladdin’, from the Scottish lowlands to the place where it now stood. Here in Kalimpong, not only did the Christian god reveal himself in open defiance of the myriad tutelary deities dwelling in the mountains above, but Scottish Presbyterianism ranged itself against the questionable mores of the unredeemed masses of India below.

  Although the rest of Kalimpong luxuriated in a cold winter sunlight that seemed to have been bounced off the gleaming white slopes to the north, the Knox Homes and the pathway that led up to them were sunk in gloom, as though the very stones of the building rejected all but the grey est and most melancholy of lights.

  The path was lined with thick, dark green cypresses that seemed to have stepped straight out of a painting by Bocklin. Everything was steeped in shadow not merely touched or etched by it, but steeped in it, tormented by it. The Reverend Carpenter had brought more to Kalimpong than Presbyterianism and God.

  The pathway led directly to a short flight of steps that in its turn led to a heavy wooden door. There was nowhere else to go. Feeling Catholic and English and travel-stained, Christopher lifted the heavy brass knocker and announced himself loudly to the hosts of Christendom within.

  The door was opened by an Indian girl of about fifteen, dressed in what he took to be the uniform of the Knox Homes: a dark grey dress fastened at the waist by a black leather belt. There was nothing welcoming about her face or her manner. The slight trace of a Scottish accent alerted Christopher to the possibility that she might now carry in her soul more than just a trace of Calvinist iron.

  “Would you please tell the Reverend Carpenter that Mr. Wylam, about whom Mr. Frazer spoke to him recently, has arrived in Kalimpong and would like to see him at his earliest convenience.”

  The girl looked him up and down, clearly disapproving of what she saw. In the Homes, the girls were taught of cleanliness, godliness, and chastity, and the half-shaven man on the doorstep looked very much as though he were deficient in all three. But he spoke like an English gentleman and carried himself like one.

  “Yes, sahib. May I have your card, sahib?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, ‘but I’ve just come out from England. I haven’t had time to have my cards printed yet. Would you please just give the Reverend Carpenter my name and message?”

  “The Reverend Carpenter is very busy today, sahib. Perhaps it is better you come back tomorrow. With your card.”

  “I’ve just told you. I don’t have a card, young lady. Now, please do as I ask and give my message .. .”

  At that moment, the young lady was precipitately displaced in the doorway by a thin, Presbyterian-looking woman in her late thirties or early forties.

  “I am Moira Carpenter,” she said in a polite Edinburgh accent that would have crushed glass.

  “Do I know you?”

  “I regret not, madam,” Christopher said.

  “My name is Wylam, Christopher Wylam. I understand that Mr. Frazer, the Trade Agent, spoke with your husband concerning me last week. Or so I was given to understand before I left Calcutta.”

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Wylam. How good of you to call. I was expecting . ah, someone different.”

  When Moira Carpenter said ‘different’, she meant exactly that.

  She fitted her surroundings as though, by an act of simultaneous decree in the mind of John Knox’s dour and unsociable God, they had been brought into existence in one and the same cosmic instant: dark things set down in the Indian sunlight, as though to hamper it. Like someone in perpetual mourning, she wore black a long dress without the vice of trimmings or ornament, more a cage for the body than a fabric for the soul.

  A mother if that is not an unsuitable use of the word to dozens of destitute Indians, she had herself given up trying to have children at the age of twenty-eight. Her womb, she had been candidly informed by doctors at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, was just not up to it, and the four deformed foetuses she had theretofore delivered into immediate oblivion had borne the doctors out. At the heart of her, something was broken, something that neither doctors nor prayers could fix.

  As a Christian woman whose duty in life lay in the replenishment of that pool out of which the good Lord would one day choose His elect, she spoke bitterly of her loss. She sought reason for her failure in a sense of her own sinful unworthiness. But privately, she rejoiced in her barrenness, for she had never had much liking for children and none at all for the turgid conjugal act that necessarily preceded their procreation. She had never understood why the Lord had not thought of a quicker, less embarrassing, and more sanitary method.

  Now, she devoted herself, inter aha, to the welfare of the orphans of Kalimpong, whom she had helped make world famous through the pages of a thousand parish magazines, and to the furthering of the Mission’s plans to bring the Christian witness to the benighted heathens of northern Sikkim and Tibet. She was forty-four, flat chested nervous of temperament, and given to kidney troubles.

  She was going to die two years later in an accident involving two

  Tibetan ponies, an over-laden mule, and a two-hundred-foot drop near Kampa-Dzong. In the meantime, however, she was on one side of the doorway and Christopher on the other.

  “I’m sorry if I don’t match your expectations, Mrs. Carpenter,” said Christopher as politely as he could.

  “If it’s inconvenient, I’ll call again. But I am in Kalimpong on urgent business, and I would like to start my investigations as soon as possible.”

  “Investigations? What have you come to investigate, Mr. Wylam?

  I assure you, there is nothing here to investigate.”

  “I think I will be the judge of that, Mrs. Carpenter. If you would kindly let your husband know that I am here.”

  The formidable presence turned and barked into the gloomy interior of the entrance hall.

  “Girl! Tell the Reverend Carpenter that a person is here demanding to see him. An English person. He says his name is Wylam.”

  The girl departed, but Mrs. Carpenter remained, as though afraid Christopher might have designs on her brass knocker. She had brought the knocker all the way from a shop in Princes Street herself, and had no wish to see it fall into the hands of a man without a visiting card.

  In less than a minute, the girl returned and, still invisible, muttered something to her mistress. The presence shifted and gestured wordlessly to Christopher to enter. As he stepped through the door, childhood tales of Protestant irregularities chattered in the back of his mind. The girl
led him along a narrow, carpeted passage dimly lit by weak electric bulbs to a dark-panelled door.

  He knocked and a thin voice bade him enter.

  ‘ll John Carpenter’s study, like his wife, his faith, and his own person, had been carried wholesale from Scotland and set down, virgo intacta, in the heart of heathendom. Nothing Indian, nothing dark skinned, nothing indelicately foreign had been permitted to obtrude itself into this small, un incensed sanctuary of Christian virility. On the walls, the heads and antlers of Highland stags braved the moths and biting insects of the north-east frontier, while men in kilts and bristling beards glared their defiance of the heathen and his gods.

  Had Jesus Christ himself walked in dark skinned, Jewish, and mundane the good Reverend Carpenter would have made haste to convert him there and then and to have him baptized Angus or Duncan. The Aramaic-speaking Jewish teacher from Nazareth was nothing or worse to John and Moira Carpenter. Their Jesus was a pale Galilean, blond, blue eyed and beardless, walking miraculously above the wild flowers and heather of a Scottish hillside.

  John Carpenter was standing, hands clasped behind his back, peering at Christopher through a pair of gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles. He was a man in his early fifties, spare, slightly bent, balding, with teeth that would have made a dentist turn to drink and wild women. He looked, on the whole, as though he had seen better days. Christopher thought he seemed nervous.

  “Mr. Wylam?” he said, in an accent to match his wife’s.

  “Do take a seat. We’ve not had the pleasure of meeting before. Is this your first visit to Kalimpong?”

  That was a subject Christopher preferred to stay clear of.

  “I’ve been here before,” he said.

  “Once or twice. Just short visits.

  No time to socialize.”

  Carpenter glanced at him sharply, as though to suggest that socializing was hardly an activity men like Christopher engaged in.

  “Or go to church?” The little eyes twinkled behind thick lenses.

  “Ah, no. I’m afraid .. . that is, I’m not a Presbyterian, Dr.

  Carpenter ‘ “Oh, too bad, too bad. Church of England, naturally.”

  This was getting off to a bad start.

  “Well, no, not exactly. More Roman Catholic really.”

  Christopher was sure the men in kilts stiffened and drew in ghostly breaths.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wylam,” Carpenter persisted, ‘but I don’t quite understand. Surely you cannot be “more” or “less” Roman. The Church of Rome is not a church of compromise. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, is that not so?”

  “Yes, I expect it is.”

  “You were brought up in your faith, I expect?”

  “Yes. Ah, Dr. Carpenter, I .. .”

  “Of course. That is usually the way. There are few converts to the cult of saints. The Anglicans sometimes turn in that direction, to be sure. But they are half-way there already, more’s the pity.”

  “I’m sure. Now, if you don’t mind, I .. .”

  “Do you know,” Carpenter continued, utterly disregarding Christopher, “I have often thought that your faith meaning no disrespect has much in common with the faiths one encounters in this dark wilderness. I think of the Hindus with their extravagant gods, their priests, and their offerings. Or the Buddhists of Tibet, with their hierarchies of saints and their candles always burning on altars of gold and silver. Of course, I have never set foot in their savage temples, but I .. .”

  “Dr. Carpenter,” Christopher interrupted.

  “I’m sorry, but I haven’t come here to discuss theology. Another time, perhaps. For the moment, I have other matters that require my attention.”

  Rebuffed, the long-suffering martyr of Kalimpong smiled a gap toothed smile and nodded.

  “Yes, of course. Mr. Frazer did mention to me that you were coming and that you might want to ask me some questions. He did not tell me what these might concern, but said they were of a confidential nature.

  I’m sure I will do my best to answer them, though I cannot imagine how

  your affairs could possibly concern me, Mr. Wylam. I know nothing of

  trade or commerce. My one and only aim here is the purchase of souls

  from damnation, though

  the penny I pay is not a copper one. Nor silver nor gold, for that matter. I deal in .. .”

  “I’m sorry if Mr. Frazer was mysterious with you. I am here in Kalimpong on an important matter, but one that need not concern you. Nevertheless, you may be able to assist me. I require some information, information you may have. I understand you were responsible for looking after a Tibetan monk who died here some weeks ago. A man called Tsewong. Anything you know of him would be of use to me.”

  The missionary gave Christopher a curious look, as though that had not been the question he had expected It seemed to have thrown him slightly off balance. The smile left his face and was replaced by a keen, probing expression. He rubbed the tip of one finger along the edge of his nose, lifting his spectacles a fraction.

  He was clearly weighing his answer. When it came at last, it was cautious.

  “I cannot see of what concern the monk could be to you or to Mr. Frazer. He was not a trader. Just an unfortunate devil-worshipper with scarcely a penny to his name. May I ask the reason for your interest?”

  Christopher shook his head.

  “It’s a private matter. I assure you it has nothing whatever to do with trade. I merely wished to know whether he said anything of importance while in your care, whether you recall anything that seemed significant at the time.”

  The missionary looked sharply at Christopher.

  “What would you deem significant? How am I to judge? I have already given an account to Mr. Frazer and to Norbhu Dzasa, the Tibetan Agent here.”

  “But perhaps there was something that seemed trivial to you and was not put in your report, and yet would be of interest to me. I’m trying to find out how he came to Kalimpong, where he came from, whom he had come to see. You may have some clue that would help me.”

  Carpenter reached up, removed his spectacles, and folded them up

  carefully, one leg at a time, like a praying mantis folding an even

  tinier victim in delicately articulated forelegs. For a moment, the

  mild-mannered missionary had gone, to be replaced by another man

  entirely. But the substitution lasted only a second before

  Carpenter regained control of himself and straightened the mask he had allowed to slip. As carefully as before, with the same insect like deliberation, he unfolded his spectacles and replaced them exactly as they had been.

  “The man was dying when he was brought to us,” he said.

  “He died the next day. All that is in the report. Would that I could say he had gone straight to the arms of a merciful Saviour, but I cannot. He spoke deliriously of things I did not understand. I speak a little Tibetan, but only what suffices for conversations with the dzong-pongs and the shapes when they come to visit me.”

  Christopher interrupted.

  “Did anyone like that visit you while the monk was here? The Tibetan Agent, perhaps. I forget what you said his name was.”

  “Norbhu Dzasa. No, Mr. Wylam, there were no visitors, unless you count Doctor Cormac. This man Tsewong died among strangers, I regret to say.”

  “You say he spoke deliriously, that he muttered things you did not understand. Did he say anything at all about a message? Did he mention the name Zamyatin? Or my name, Wylam?”

  Christopher was sure the little Scot reacted to the questions. He seemed to grow pale and then flush. Just for a second, the mask slipped again, then Carpenter was back in control.

  “Absolutely not. I should have noticed something of that kind, I am sure. No, it was all gibberish about the gods and demons he had left behind him in the mountains. You know the sort of thing I mean.”

  Christopher nodded. He did not believe a word of it.

  “I see,” he said.

/>   “Are any of your staff Tibetan? Or perhaps some of your orphans?”

  Carpenter stood up and pushed his desk back.

  “Mr. Wylam,” he expostulated, “I really would like to know just where you are driving with these questions. You are verging on the impertinent. I am willing to answer anything within reason, but questions about my staffer the children in my care pass the bounds of what I regard as proper or allowable. You are not, I take it, a policeman. Nor a government official, presumably. In which case, I would like to know what right you think you have to come here prying into my affairs and the affairs of this institution. In fact, I think it would be best all round if you were to leave at once.”

  Christopher remained seated. He had succeeded in rattling the man.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to seem impertinent. I think it will be best if I explain. My son William was kidnapped two weeks ago. As yet, the motive for the kidnapping is not known. But I have reason to believe he was abducted on instructions contained in a message carried out of Tibet by this man Tsewong. I’m not at liberty to tell you why I think that to be the case. But I assure you my reasons are very serious.”

  Carpenter sat down again slowly, as though something very sharp had punctured him. He looked more rattled than ever.

  “Where exactly was your son when he was .. . ah, abducted?”

  “At home, in England.”

  “And you say this happened two weeks ago.”

  “On the Sunday before Christmas. We had just left Mass.”

  A look of sectarian distaste flickered over the missionary’s

  face.

  “You expect me to believe this?” he said. Christopher noticed that he had started playing nervously with a small ivory paperknife on the desk.

  “It is not humanly possible for anyone to have been in England two weeks ago and to be in this room talking to me today. You know that as well as I do, unless you are completely insane. Goodbye, Mr. Wylam. You have wasted enough of my time.”

  “Sit down. Please sit down and listen. I was in England until nine days ago, if you want me to be precise. There’s no mystery about how I got here. Certain friends in England arranged for me to be flown here in a biplane. The world is changing, Mr. Carpenter. Before long, everyone will fly to India.”