The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  “And your son. The one you say was kidnapped. Where is he? Is he in India as well?”

  Christopher shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “But, yes, I think he may be in

  India. Or, more possibly, already on his way to Tibet.”

  “Mr. Wylam, you may be telling the truth about how you got here. Modern science is truly miraculous: the good Lord has given us the means to spread His Gospel in the remotest regions of the globe. But the rest of your story makes no sense to me. I am truly sorry to hear about the kidnapping of your son. My wife and I shall pray for his return to you. But I do not see how I can be of any further help to you. The man who died here brought no messages. He said nothing coherent. He had no visitors. And now, forgive me, but there are urgent matters awaiting my attention.”

  Carpenter stood up again and reached a hand across the desk.

  Christopher followed suit. The missionary’s fingers felt dry and brittle.

  “I’ll ask Jennie to show you out.” He reached for a small brass bell and rang it vigorously. An uneasy silence followed. Christopher could see that Carpenter was eager to be rid of him. What was he hiding? And who was he frightened of? Abruptly, the missionary broke into his thoughts.

  “Mr. Wylam,” he said.

  “You must excuse me. I have been very short with you. I am under a great deal of pressure at the moment.

  The Lord’s work makes demands on us. And no doubt you yourself are feeling great anxiety on behalf of your son. You must be very concerned for him.

  “Would it help to make amends if I were to invite you to dine with us this evening? Just my wife and myself. A simple meal, I fear: this is a house of charity, not the palace of Dives. But we have ample for a guest. And perhaps a little sympathetic company will help to ease your troubled heart.”

  Ordinarily, Christopher would have declined. The thought of sitting through a meal of charitable frugality with the black gowned Mrs. Carpenter and her desiccated spouse did not fill him with eager thoughts. But the very fact of the invitation both unnecessary and, thought Christopher, out of character- added to his conviction that Carpenter was uneasy about something.

  “I’d be pleased to accept. Thank you.”

  “Good. I’m glad. We dine at seven. There are no formalities.

  Come a little earlier and I will show you something of our work before you eat.”

  There was a knock, then the Indian girl who had opened the front door to Christopher entered.

  “Jennie,” Carpenter said.

  “Mr. Wylam is leaving now. He will be dining with us this evening. When you have shown him to the door, will you please ask Mrs. Carpenter to join me in my study?”

  The girl curtsied but said nothing. Christopher shook hands with Carpenter again, then followed the girl out of the study.

  John Carpenter remained standing at his desk, his hands resting on its top as though for support. He heard the front door open and close and the sound of Jennie’s footsteps going towards his wife’s sitting room. The wing of the orphanage in which he and Mrs. Carpenter lived was soft and silent, filled with carpets and velvet hangings, dark, papered walls and heavy chintz furniture. Sounds were muffled, light was turned to shadow, the air was thick and unnatural.

  Behind him, on a low shelf, a clock ticked and ticked, forlorn and remorseless. He closed his eyes, as though to pray, but his lips remained tightly shut.

  Kalimpong fell away from him like a dream. All the spired and domed and pillared cities of India fell away, leaving nothing but a thin ochre dust hanging in the air. He was alone, walking along a dirt road that led to the residence of the tsong-chi, the Tibetan Trade Agent. Above him, to the north, white mountains hung in the sky like castles of snow and ice. In the air above them, thick clouds like dragons’ breaths swirled in a tattered swarm.

  As he looked at the mountains he felt descend upon him a sense of unease he had first experienced eleven years earlier, not long after his marriage. He had brought Elizabeth north to Simla for the summer season, and at one point they had gone up to the Himalaya foothills. On the second day, an icy wind had come down from the north, stirring the trees in their garden. They had stood on the terrace together, drinking cold whiskey in heavy glasses and watching the clouds shift and scatter above the mountains.

  “Can you feel it?” Elizabeth had asked, and Christopher had known instinctively what she meant. All the crude power, all the vast material strength of their civilization was massing about the quiet places of the earth. Christopher could feel it now as he had felt it all those years before, but redoubled in its potency. Like an octopus, its tentacles were reaching into every corner of the world, stroking at first, then squeezing, and finally draining the very life from all it touched. Ancient places, sanctuaries, the dark and the untouched realms all were being turned into an endless battlefield where tanks roamed like black beetles and new men in new uniforms danced in a dim ballet.

  He found the tsong-cki’s residence in a small valley about a mile from town. It was a small house built in Tibetan style, with touches of Chinese ornamentation on the roof. At the door, a tall prayer wheel stood like a sort of guardian, reminding the visitor that religion, not trade, lay at the heart of every Tibetan.

  The tsong-chi, Norbhu Dzasa, was at home. Christopher had originally planned on getting an introduction from Frazer, but in its absence he had produced one for himself. It wasn’t much to look at, but he didn’t want it to be. Here in Kalimpong, he had to act the part he had imposed on himself.

  He handed the letter of introduction to the tsong-chi’s grave little Nepalese servant and asked him to transmit it to his master. The little man looked at Christopher as if to suggest that his very existence was an impertinence and his calling without an appointment not far from a capital offence. He took the letter, harrumphed loudly, and disappeared down a dark passage.

  Christopher thought he could hear a voice murmuring in the distance:

  somewhere in the house, a man was praying. The sound of his voice was melancholy and remote, a single mantra endlessly repeated. Suddenly, he heard footsteps and a moment later the little servant reappeared out of the shadows. Without a word, he ushered Christopher inside and closed the heavy wooden door.

  The room into which Christopher was shown was, in its way, as much a transplant as John Carpenter’s study, even if it had travelled rather fewer miles to get to Kalimpong It was another world entirely, a world within a world, wrapped, enfolded, miraculously set down: its colours were different colours, its shadows different shadows, its fragrances different fragrances. He stood on the threshold gingerly, for all the world like someone about to abandon one element for another, as a swimmer stands naked on the water’s edge or a moth turns about the flame that will in another instant devour it without trace.

  He had stumbled somehow upon a hidden and finely constructed paradise of birds’ wings and dragons’ eyes, meshed in a manner at once mysterious and simple with the earth in which it inhered.

  Like a bee drowning in honey after a season rich in blossoms, he felt himself grow heavy with sweetness.

  Painted columns rose out of a bed of multi-coloured carpets to a ceiling intricate in ornamentation. Around the walls, thick curtains embroidered with red and yellow silk formed a sort of sofa. Low lacquered tables of Chinese manufacture sat among richly carved and gilded cabinets festooned with angry dragons and soft-petalled peonies. On the walls, naked gods made love, encircled by tongues of fire. At one end stood an altar of gold, studded with precious stones, on which were grouped the images of Tibetan gods and saints. Incense burned in little golden stands, filling the room with dark, intoxicating fumes. In front of the altar, silver butter-lamps gave ofFa yellow, ethereal light.

  And then, as though he had just that moment materialized in the room, Christopher caught sight of Norbhu Dzasa himself- a man masquerading as a god, a human image fashioned from silk and coral and precious stones. His dyed jet-black
hair was set in tightly coiled bunches above his head, and from his left ear dangled a single long ear-ring of turquoise and gold. His upper robe was of finely woven yellow silk, delicately patterned with dragons and held at the waist by a crimson sash. He was standing motionless in a corner of the room near the altar, his hands crossed in front of him, concealed by the long sleeves of his robe.

  On his way, Christopher had found a stall in the bazaar that sold kfiatags, the thin white silk scarves used throughout the region as tokens of respect at formal introductions. He held out the scarf, loosely woven from strands of the finest silk, like gossamer, and approached the tsong-chi. Norbhu Dzasa extended his arms and took the scarf with a slight bow, placed it on a low table, and, with his hands free of the sleeves, lifted a second scarf, which he passed to Christopher. He looked bored. The two men exchanged stiff greetings, and the little Tibetan invited Christopher to join him on cushions near the window.

  A moment later, the servant who had shown Christopher in opened the door and bowed low.

  “Cha kqy-sho,” ordered Norbhu Dzasa.

  “Bring us tea.”

  The servant bowed, sucked in his breath, and simultaneously muttered ‘la-les’.

  Abruptly, Norbhu Dzasa turned to Christopher, speaking in English.

  “I’m sorry. Not ask. Take Indian tea or Tibetan tea?”

  Christopher asked for Tibetan, and the tsong-chi spoke again to his servant.

  To cha kay-sho - ‘bring some Tibetan tea.”

  “So,” Norbhu Dzasa said when the servant had gone.

  “Drink Tibetan tea. Been in Tibet?” He had learnt what English he knew here in Kalimpong, out of necessity.

  Christopher was unsure how to answer. So many of his visits

  there had been made illegally. With rare exceptions, Tibet was barred to foreigners and Christopher knew from personal experience that the ban was no mere formality.

  “I was in Lhasa in 1904,” he said.

  “With Younghusband.”

  In 1903, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, had been disturbed by reports of growing Russian influence in the Tibetan capital.

  Determined to force the reclusive Tibetans to discuss the issue of commercial and diplomatic relations with Britain, he despatched a small force to Kampa Dzong under the command of Colonel Francis Younghusband. Ignored by the Tibetans, Younghusband obtained reinforcements 1,000 soldiers, 1,450 coolies, 70,000 mules, 3,451 yaks, and six unhappy camels and moved up the Chumbi valley in force.

  Christopher still remembered the journey: the freezing cold, the misery of the foot-soldiers unaccustomed to the winds and the altitude, skin sticking to gun-metal in the frost, men tearing skin from their lips with frozen spoons, the sudden deaths, men and baggage plunging from narrow ledges into the abyss. Above all, he remembered the insanity of Christmas Day, when the men had been served plum pudding and turkey, and the officers had tried to drink frozen champagne.

  But the real madness had begun outside Gyantse. Tibetan troops carrying muzzle-loading guns and broadswords, and wearing charms to turn aside British bullets, had advanced against men armed with modern rifles and machine guns. Christopher would never forget the massacre that followed. In four minutes, seven hundred Tibetans lay dead on the battlefield, dozens more were screaming in pain. The expedition took Gyantse and moved on unopposed to Lhasa, where it arrived in August 1904. The Dalai Lama had fled in the meantime to Urga in Mongolia to take refuge with the Living Buddha there, and the Regent was forced in his absence to sign a peace treaty with Britain on very unfavorable terms.

  “Don’t remember you,” Norbhu Dzasa said.

  “I was much younger then,” answered Christopher, ‘and of no importance.

  We would not have been introduced.”

  Norbhu Dzasa sighed.

  “Younger then, too,” he said. Their eyes met for a moment, but the tsong-chi gave nothing away. That, as he interpreted it, was his job: to give nothing away. He was very good at it.

  Tea arrived quickly. It was served in ornamental cups of jade decorated with silver. Norbhu’s man had brewed it in the kitchen from semi-fermented tea bricks imported from Yunnan, mixing it in a wooden churn with boiling water, salt, wood-ash soda, and dri-butter. It was more a soup than tea, but Tibetans drank it in vast quantities forty Or fifty cups a day was not at all unusual.

  Christopher could tell at once from the way he quaffed his first cupful that Norbhu Dzasa was a record-breaker even in Tibetan terms.

  Norbhu had been tsong-chi at Kalimpong for seven years now and was doing very nicely out of it. He could afford to drink tea in urnfuls if he wanted to. His greatest fear was to be recalled to Lhasa prematurely, that is, before he had stashed away enough rupees to ensure a comfortable future for himself and, above all, his children. He was over sixty now, though he could not be sure exactly how old he was. His mother thought he had been born in the year of the Fire Serpent in the Fourteenth Cycle, which would have made him sixty-three. But his father had been equally sure he had been born in the Wood Hare year, which would make him all of sixty-five.

  “What I do for you, Wylam-la?” asked the little tsong-chi as he poured himself a second cup of the thick, pinkish beverage.

  Christopher hesitated. He felt he had got off to a bad start with Norbhu Dzasa by referring to the Younghusband expedition. In the end, the British had gained the respect of the Tibetans they had looted no temples, raped no women, and withdrawn their forces at the earliest possible opportunity but the memory of the more than seven hundred dead and the profound sense of vulnerability that the expedition had created in their minds lingered even now.

  The problem about the present business was that Christopher could not mention the real reason for his visit. There was ample evidence that the Mongol Agent, Mishig, had been contacted by Tsewong. But it was always possible that the Tibetan tsong-chi might also be involved. For all they knew, he might have been the person responsible for transmitting Zamyatin’s message to the Mongol. The tsong-chi’s residence lay between the mountains and the spot where Tsewong was supposed to have been found. The monk could very easily have paid a visit to Norbhu Dzasa before continuing his ill-fated journey.

  “It’s very little, really,” Christopher said.

  “Perhaps you will find it sentimental of me. You’ll have seen from my letter that I am a businessman. I’m here in Kalimpong to do business with Mr.

  Frazer. I knew him years ago, back in Patna. He knows about an incident that happened back then something that happened to my son, William. We were in Bodh Gaya, William and I, just passing through, on our way to Aurangabad. We lived in Patna then, when .. . my wife was still alive.” The combination of fact and fiction would, Christopher hoped, serve to convey a feeling of conviction to the tsong-chi.

  “William fell ill,” he went on.

  “There was no British doctor in

  Bodh Gaya, none anywhere near. I was desperate. The child was very sick, I thought he would die. And then one of the pilgrims visiting the sacred tree ... It is a tree they have there, isn’t it, Mr.

  Dzasa?”

  Norbhu nodded. It was a tree; he had seen it. Lord Buddha had gained enlightenment while sitting under it.

  “Right,” said Christopher, warming to his tale.

  “Well, one of the pilgrims heard William was ill, you see. He came to visit us and told me there was a Tibetan monk who was a sort of doctor.

  Anyway, I found this monk, and he came at once and looked at

  William and said he could treat him. He went off- it was late at ‘ night by then. I can remember it, sitting in the dark with William in a terrible fever.”

  There had been a fever once, and William had almost died but there had been no monk, no sacred tree, only an old doctor sent round by the DBI.

  “I thought he would die, I really did, he was that bad. Anyway, he went off as I said the monk, I mean and then came back in about an hour with some herbs he’d got from God knows where.

  He made
them up into a drink for the boy and got it into him somehow or other. It saved his life. He came out of the fever that night and was on his feet again two days later. I tried to find the monk afterwards, to thank him, give him something. But he’d gone.”

  “Frazer knew about it. When he came here, he asked questions, but he never heard of any monk. Until a couple of weeks ago.”

  Norbhu Dzasa glanced up from his steaming cup. His little eyes glistened.

  “He said a Tibetan monk died here. A man with the same name as my monk. About the same age. Frazer said he carried herbs. He thought I should know: he wrote to me about it. I was coming anyway, I have business here. So I thought I’d make some enquiries at the same time. About the monk.”

  “Why? You could not meet. Not thank. He is dead.”

  “Yes, but he might have a family, relatives. His parents, brothers, sisters. Perhaps they need help, now he is dead.”

  “What his name, this medical monk?”

  “Tsewong,” Christopher answered.

  “Is that a common name?”

  Norbhu shrugged.

  “Not common. Not not common.”

  “But it was the name of the man they found here? The man who died?”

  The tsong-chi looked at Christopher.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Same name. But perhaps not same man.”

  “How was he dressed?” asked Christopher.

  “Perhaps it would help to identify him.”

  Norbhu Dzasa saw that Wylam wanted him to lead with information rather than confirm something he already knew. It reminded him of the theological debates he had seen the monks at Ganden engage in verbal fencing matches in which the slightest slip meant failure. What would failure mean in this case, he wondered.

  “He wear dress of monk of Sak-ya-pa sect. Was monk you met Sak-ya-pa?”

  “I don’t know,” said Christopher.

  “What would one of them look like?” But in his own mind he had already begun the process of narrowing things down. The majority of Tibetan monks belonged to the politically dominant Ge-lug-pa sect. There were far fewer Sak-ya-pas and fewer Sak-ya-pa monasteries.