The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  They pitched their tiny yak-hair tent in a sheltered position near the valley wall. In the night, Lhaten tossed and turned, unable to sleep. The boy was worried. He had not been certain at first, but for the past twenty-four hours he had been sure: they were being followed. They had been followed from at least as far as Nampak, soon after the jungle ended. In all probability, their pursuers he was sure there were at least two had been with them in the forest as well, but he had not been aware of them then.

  Christopher slept uneasily while the snow fell in uninterrupted torrents, like white petals in a dark and noiseless spring. Inside, the tent was hot, sealed tight against the freezing cold outside. The elements were turning against them. In the mountains, soft winds were moving slowly across sheets of naked ice.

  In the morning, they argued. Lhaten wanted to wait where they were for several more days, until Christopher had had time to acclimatize. Technically, the boy was right, though he could not have explained why. At twelve thousand feet, the alveolar oxygen pressure drops to about 50mm; when this happens, ventilation increases and the carbon dioxide pressure in the lungs begins to fall. The result is hypoxia, a lack of oxygen which can have serious and even fatal consequences if the body fails to acclimatize. During the present journey, they would have to climb to about eighteen thousand feet. If Christopher had done it before, he should be able to acclimatize quickly. But on his own admission, he had never been through the passes in weather like this before.

  “I don’t need to acclimatize. I’m feeling perfectly fine,” he

  insisted.

  “Please, sahib, don’t argue. It’s been easy going up to here. But now things get hard. Give your body time to adjust.”

  “Damn it, I’ve done it before, Lhaten. I didn’t bring you with me to give advice. Just show me how to get to the passes, that’s all. You can turn back now and welcome.”

  Lhaten said nothing. Irritability was often the first sign of altitude sickness.

  “I said I’d come with you to the passes,” the boy said finally.

  “If you like I’ll take you through them. You won’t get far on your own.”

  “I’ll be all right. Don’t mother me.”

  “Won’t you wait at least one day, sahib? Until the weather clears.”

  It had stopped snowing earlier that morning, but there were deep drifts everywhere, both ahead of them and behind.

  “No. We’ve got to leave now. If it snows again, we may not get through at all. Or perhaps you’d like that. Is that what you pray for enough snow to block the passes?”

  “No, sahib. I’m asking the Lady Tara for protection. And for good weather.”

  But even as he spoke, he glanced at the dark clouds building behind the mountains. Left to himself, he would have turned back two days ago. Any one of his family or friends would have done the same. But Christopher, like all pee-lings, was stubborn. He lacked a nose for danger. Whatever happened, he would try to push on, even if it meant taking stupid risks. And that meant someone would have to be there to get him out when the time came. Lhaten sighed. There wasn’t any choice about who that someone would be.

  They moved on just after 10 a.m.” Christopher going ahead, sullen, irked by the snow-drifts that hindered his progress. Using his body as a plough, he forced a path through the packed snow that lay at times four feet high. Lhaten followed him, carrying far more than his share of the baggage. On either side of the narrow valley, steep hillsides restricted the view. There was no way through them. The only path lay ahead and up.

  All that day and the next they pushed on until they came to a flat region almost free of snow. The weather held, but it was growing colder the higher they climbed. In the more open country before the passes, they were exposed to sharp winds that rushed on them like vampires, sucking away their breath and chilling their blood. Lhaten kept an anxious eye on Christopher, watching for further signs of altitude sickness. Sometime about the middle of the second night, a gale-force wind lifted their fragile tent and hurled it ofT into the darkness. To the dangers of altitude was now added the threat of exposure in the freezing nights ahead.

  “If we go further,” whispered Lhaten in the darkness, ‘it means going deeper into this. The winds will get stronger, strong enough to tear our flesh. And it may snow again. Not a little, like before, but a great deal. There may be a blizzard. Nothing can survive in that, sahib. Nothing.”

  But Christopher did not listen. He felt driven now, and in love with the ice and snow. He could feel his heart beating more rapidly as the air grew thinner and his blood tried to regain lost oxygen.

  Lhaten could hear his rapid breathing in the darkness, but he said nothing. He would let the altitude stop him, then lead him back the way they had come, like a lamb.

  They reached the Chumiomo Glacier the next day. From there, a narrow side-passage would take them to the first pass. The ascent was steep, and Christopher was forced to stop more than once to rest. When he walked, he leaned heavily on his climbing stick. His breathing was becoming more laboured, and Lhaten wondered how long it would be before exhaustion forced him to surrender and turn back.

  They had just reached a point about half-way along the defile when the avalanche came. There was a low rumbling that grew in volume rapidly, like an express train bearing down on them out of a black tunnel. Lhaten knew the sound at once. He looked round, terrified, knowing they were trapped in the canyon. He saw it at once a mass of snow and rock and fine white spume tumbling at breakneck speed down the face of the steep slope to their left. The whole world seemed to shake and their ears were filled with crashing and pounding as ton after ton of dislodged matter thundered towards them.

  Frozen to the spot, they watched it come: crystals of snow leapt shimmering into the air, catching the light, dancing in space, cavorting as they fell. It was a thing of beauty, not heavy at all, but free of mass: rare, white and mysterious, fashioned from air and water, as fine as cloud or mist .. . and as destructive as sheets of beaten steel.

  Lhaten broke from the spell and snatched at Christopher’s arm.

  “Run!” he shouted, but his voice was drowned in the roar from above.

  Christopher was like a man in a trance. His feet felt like lead and his legs had no strength left to move them.

  “We have to run, sahib,” shouted the boy again, but the thunder snatched his words away like feathers. He pulled at Christopher.

  Like a man in a dream who drags himself through a clinging swamp, Christopher followed Lhaten. The first clumps of flying snow started to land in the canyon, striking them with uninterrupted force, snowballs in a deadly game. Fear gripped Christopher and he felt power surge back into his legs. He began to run, following Lhaten up the narrow path. It felt as though he were trying to run at full speed up the side of a mountain.

  A stone struck him on the arm, then a larger one chipped his leg. Ahead of him, the world was turning white. Lhaten disappeared in a cloud of whirling snow.

  Christopher ran on, his lungs tearing inside him, desperately struggling for air. He thought his heart would stop beating, it hammered so thickly in his chest. He felt himself stumble, then regain his feet and stagger on. The world was nothing but roaring in his ears and redness in front of his eyes. Two steps, three steps, each one an individual agony. The world vanished and he was wrapped in snow and the roaring of snow. All light, all other sounds were blocked out. His body became heavy, then his feet would not move, and he felt himself pitch forward.

  The roaring died away and the last snow settled on top of the debris. Silence returned to the valley. The mountains watched, unmoved, uncaring, smug in their white and unsoiled remoteness.

  They had seen it all before and they would see it all again.

  In the silence, he could hear his heart thumping like a drum at a funeral, slow and melancholy, but alive. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing, only blackness. For a moment, he panicked, thinking he had gone blind. Then he realized he had been buried in the avalanche. He cou
ld feel the weight of the snow on top of him, pressing him down.

  Heavy, but not too heavy. He was sure he could push his way out.

  They had been caught at the end of the slide, where the fallen snow came to only a few feet in depth. It did not take Christopher long to struggle free. Finding Lhaten took him rather longer. The boy had been in front when the avalanche struck, so Christopher looked for him there, scrabbling with his bare hands at every likely looking mound. As he searched, he kept glancing up anxiously at the slopes above him: the crash of the avalanche might well have dislodged more snow higher up or on the opposite slope.

  He found Lhaten curled up beneath about three feet of snow, several yards from where he himself had been. Christopher thought he was dead at first, he was so still. But a quick check showed that the boy was still breathing. There was blood on his left temple and a large stone nearby, and Christopher assumed he had been knocked unconscious. It was only when he dragged him clear of the snow that he noticed the leg.

  Lhaten’s left leg lay at an awkward angle. There was blood on his trousers below the knee, and when Christopher ran his fingers over the leg, he encountered something hard beneath the cloth.

  The boy’s shin had been fractured in his fall, and the broken bone had cut through the thin layer of skin.

  Christopher reset the bone while the boy was still unconscious and prepared strips of bandage from his own undershirt. Using thicker pieces cut from his chuba, the sheepskin coat Lhaten had obtained for him in Kalimpong, he made pads to place between the boy’s legs and then tied them together firmly, having first bandaged the actual wound.

  When he had finished, he collapsed beside the boy and fell into a deep sleep. If another avalanche began, that would be too bad:

  Christopher could not move another step, even to save his life.

  When he finally woke, it was dark. A wind had sprung up, a black wind from nowhere, an old wind full of sadness and unreasoning anger. It was lonely and hungry and malevolent. The whole world was filled with it: sky, mountains, passes, glaciers all the high places, all the footpaths of the damned. It moved through the gully in which they lay, raging with all the fraught intensity of a lost soul.

  Because of the wind, Christopher was not at first aware that the boy was groaning. Then he heard him, moaning into the darkness like a dog cast out into the storm. Christopher shifted towards him.

  “Lhaten,” he called, trying to make himself heard above the din.

  “It’s me, Christopher! Are you all right?”

  There was no answer, so he bent down closer, bringing his mouth near the boy’s ear. This time Lhaten responded.

  “I’m cold, sahib. And my leg hurts. Someone has tied them together my legs. But my fingers are too cold. I can’t untie them.

  And there’s a terrible pain in my left leg.”

  Christopher explained what had happened and the boy grew calmer. Then he pulled Christopher close and said, “We’ve got to find shelter, sahib. If we stay in this, we’ll die.”

  The boy was right. In their weakened condition, exposure would kill both of them, if not tonight, then tomorrow or the day after. In a matter of hours, Christopher might be too frozen to stir, and once that happened they were both doomed. Fortunately, the enforced rest had done him some good. It was the longest stop he had made in a while, and it had given his body a chance to make some progress with acclimatization. His previous experience at high altitudes had rendered his system better able to cope with the abrupt changes of the past few days, and after his crisis he was beginning to return to normal. Now, the real danger was not height, it was the wind and the rapidity with which it could strip the human body of heat.

  Christopher found the large canvas bag that had been slung round Lhaten’s neck and which had still been with him when he was found. His own smaller bag had been lost in the slide. Inside Lhaten’s, he found the tiny trenching tool he had insisted they bring with them. It was small, but sturdy. With luck, it would save their lives.

  The wind was still rising as Christopher made his way back to the site of the avalanche, crouching low to prevent himself being picked up and spun over by the gale. There was just enough light to find his way by. Once in the snow, he began to cut out blocks, each about two and a half feet long by a foot wide. When he had cleared a six-foot area in this way, he started to stack the blocks edgeways, forming a wall. It took him an hour to build a crude, rectangular igloo, roofed by slightly thicker, longer blocks.

  When he got back to Lhaten, the boy was shivering uncontrollably and showing signs of severe heat-loss. He was moaning again and muttering to himself. When Christopher tried to talk to him, he showed no sign of hearing him. His pulse was sluggish and his breathing slow and shallow. It would be impossible for him to walk to the shelter, even with Christopher’s assistance. If nothing else, the wind would just tilt them over like skittles.

  Christopher dragged him. It was only a matter of about ten yards, but the wind and Christopher’s desire not to dislocate the boy’s leg again made it seem like a hundred. After the exertion of building the snow-shelter, his lungs were making it clear they would not stand much more of this treatment. He closed his eyes and hauled. Not now, he prayed, not now.

  The words of prayer came easily to him. They came unbidden but necessary to his lips, the child in him praying for the man, the believer for the unbeliever. In the howling wind, like Lhaten with his mantras, in another tongue, in another season of faith, he prayed to the Virgin. He prayed for love, for life, for strength to pull the boy another foot across the wind-torn floor of the valley.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary, Mother of God .. .

  The words were torn from him by the wind. He rested briefly, then pulled again. The boy felt heavy, though he should have been light to Christopher. It seemed an age before they made it to the shelter.

  Christopher settled the boy in the back of the dug-out, on a blanket taken from his bag. That done, he sealed the entrance with more blocks cut for the purpose, trimming and squaring them as best he could to ensure a close fit. As the last block slotted into place, the noise of the wind was abruptly cut ofT, leaving Christopher and the boy in the midst of silence, as though they had found the eye of the storm and entered it. Christopher filled the gaps in the makeshift construction with loose snow and curled himself up at the boy’s feet. Within minutes, he was asleep again. He dreamed of harvest and abundance in autumn, of golden sheaves and ripening apples on the bough.

  That was the night the weather changed. It was the twelfth of January. The night two caravans were trapped on the Nathu-la and a hurricane tore the roof from the temple at Mindroling. The night a meteor was seen in the sky above Tashi Lhumpo.

  That was the night the gods stopped playing and came to walk in places they had never walked before.

  By morning, the temperature inside the shelter had risen to a comfortable level. Lhaten had recovered consciousness and said he felt all right, except for the pain in his leg, about which Christopher could do nothing. Christopher found some dried yak-dung left by a summer caravan further up the defile and used it to light a fire.

  In Tibet, where there were so few trees, it was almost the only fuel.

  He had to light the fire inside the shelter, making a hole to let out the smoke. Outside, the wind still raged. At one point, thick, stinging hail hurled itself into the canyon. In a black sky, rolling clouds collided angrily with one another.

  He made hot tea and added it to some tsampa in a bowl. There was a little butter in Lhaten’s bag, and Christopher added this to the tsampa mixture. The boy ate it greedily, then drank some lightly buttered tea. In spite of his pain, he was beginning to look more himself. But Christopher knew it was only a matter of time before he began to weaken again. He would have to have proper attention as soon as possible.

  “We’ll have to head back as
soon as you’re able to walk,” he told the boy.

  “I’ll need a splint,” Lhaten said.

  “I’ve thought of that. I’m going out now to find my bag and my climbing stick. They’ll be near the spot where I was hit by the avalanche. It should be no trouble to dig them out. The stick can be cut to fit your leg. It won’t be easy, but if you lean on me, we should be able to get down.”

  “What about the avalanche? The snow. The canyon must be blocked. I won’t be able to get through. Leave me here. You can get help at Tsontang. If you hurry, you can be back here in a few days.”

  But the boy was lying. He knew what way the weather was going. And there was something else, something he kept to himself as well. Just before the avalanche started, he had heard a sharp crack, high up, like a gunshot. Someone had started the snow-slide deliberately. Perhaps Christopher too had heard the crack. But he had not known they were being followed.

  “I thought there might be a way round. Even if we have to go up a little to join it. Surely you know of a way.”

  Lhaten shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, sahib. There’s only one way that’s back the way we came. Every inch of the way. You must start soon if you’re to clear the snow before nightfall.”

  Christopher did not answer. There could be no question of his going back without the boy. And he was not sure that he himself could make it through the avalanche. There was only one alternative: they would have to go on into Tibet and make for the nearest village. It would probably mean Christopher’s capture, but at the moment the boy’s life seemed more important to him even than finding his son.

  They set off just before noon that day. Christopher walked bent over so that the boy could use him as a crutch. Even with the splint, Lhaten’s leg would not bear the slightest weight. When, by accident, he leaned on it, it gave, causing them both to stumble.