The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

In the afternoon, the wind rose. An hour later, snow began to fall. Except that it did not fall, but became part of the wind. It was as if the wind had been a spirit that craved a body and now found it in the snow. The higher they climbed, the fiercer the wind grew.

  It was like walking against razors. Every breath had to be snatched before the wind could tear it away. They took hours to cover as much ground as they would previously have walked in an hour.

  t w

  That night, they were too tired even to build a proper shelter.

  Christopher dug a deep trench in the snow and they sheltered in that, huddling beneath Lhaten’s namda, a large felt blanket like a rug.

  In the morning, Lhaten complained that his left foot hurt more than on the previous day. Christopher undid the boy’s boot and removed the sock underneath. The foot was hard and white and freezing to the touch, like stone. The cold had combined with the interrupted blood-flow to cause severe frost-bite. Saying nothing, Christopher replaced the sock and boot.

  “What is it, sahib? Is it frost-bite?”

  Christopher nodded.

  “Yes.”

  There was no point in trying to thaw the foot it would only freeze again, worse than ever. Christopher was worried that the boy’s other foot might go the same way. His boots were made of cheap leather and his socks were too thin. Christopher sacrificed two strips from the namda to provide extra insulation, but he feared it would not be enough.

  That day the blizzard set in in earnest. It was as if the fabric of the world was being torn apart. Wind and snow hurtled down from the passes in fits of insanity. Visibility was reduced to almost zero. When they could no longer walk, they crawled, Lhaten dragging his leg.

  He made no sound, but Christopher knew he must be in unbearable pain.

  By midday they had covered very little distance, but Lhaten could go no further. The gale had not lessened in the slightest, and they still had not reached the pass. Christopher was beginning to think he would have to leave the boy after all, to go for help. But would he be able to persuade anyone to return with him in these conditions?

  He built another shelter from the snow. They huddled inside, shivering. From time to time, Christopher made Lhaten eat dry tsampa and wash it down with a handful of snow. In his mind, Christopher was back at Carfax, in front of the roaring fire of logs in the library, reading a tale of Arthur Mee’s to William.

  In the night, Lhaten grew feverish and talked in a delirium of frightened words and inarticulate cries.

  “Take it away,” he shouted loudly, loud enough to cover the screams of the wind outside.

  “Take what away?” asked Christopher.

  “What do you see?”

  But the boy never answered clearly, and Christopher could only talk to him, offering reassurance that he knew was meaningless.

  The night was long. When dawn came, it brought only the faintest of lights.

  Lhaten slept at last, like a baby worn out by crying. When he woke, his head was clear, but he complained of feeling weak. He could not keep down the tsampa Christopher offered him. His other foot was frost-bitten now.

  Christopher made him walk. It was that or leave him to die.

  Like children in a nightmare, holding on to one another as anchors, they clawed their way through the madness of the storm.

  They reached the first pass, Sebu-la, that afternoon. Its surface was broad and flat, and they could see a little more clearly through the blizzard there.

  “Lha-gyal-lo. De tamche pham,” Lhaten whispered, thanking his gods for giving them this victory.

  “The gods have triumphed,” he said.

  “The demons have been defeated.” It was this formula all travellers used when they reached the top of a pass in safety. But on the boy’s frozen lips, the words were charged with an intense and cruel irony.

  “Lha-gyal-lo,” Christopher repeated, cursing all gods in his heart.

  He thought they were still playing games. But the games were over.

  Lhaten wanted to stay at the top of the pass, but Christopher forced him to move on when they had rested. It was too exposed there. The path went down now for a bit before rising again to the second and final pass. Every foot nearer was a triumph to Christopher.

  They spent that night between the passes. In the early hours of the morning, the wind began to drop, and by dawn the blizzard had stopped. When Christopher looked out, it was as though the world had been restored to him. Out of a grey sky, a grim light filtered down on everything.

  That day they made it to the top of the pass, but Christopher knew they were almost at their end. He had to carry the boy on his back much of the way, leaving behind several pieces of baggage to make it possible.

  They made their camp just below the pass, in a large cleft in the rock. Lhaten said he could not go any further, and this time Christopher did not argue. He would leave in the morning and head towards the Kampa basin. If the weather held off, someone would return with him. If not, he would buy wood and make a trestle on which to bring Lhaten back.

  In the end, it was unnecessary. The next morning, Christopher helped Lhaten out of the cleft into the valley and set about building a snow-shelter for him. It would be warmer than the cleft and easier to find again.

  While he was working, cutting and stacking blocks, he heard a voice. It was a man’s voice, calling from lower down the valley. He stopped work and waited as three men approached. They were dressed in heavy travelling clothes, and their faces were muffled behind thick scarves. One was taller than the others and walked ahead as though he were in charge of their party. The men were monks Christopher could see the edges of their orange robes protruding from beneath their chub as They approached slowly, with the caution all travellers show when meeting strangers in the open.

  The taller man came up to Christopher and greeted him in Tibetan.

  “Tashi delay.”

  “Taski delay.” Christopher answered.

  “Have you been travelling in the storm?” the stranger asked.

  Christopher nodded.

  “Yes. We were cut off before the Sebu-la. My friend is hurt. I was going to leave for help today. You’ve come just in time.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Christopher explained. The man did not pull his scarf down, but scrutinized Christopher over the top of it with dark, piercing eyes. Christopher imagined for a moment that he saw a look of recognition in the stranger’s eyes, as though they had met before.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Five days ago.”

  “I see. You say you were in the canyon before the Sebu-la.”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you alone? You saw no-one else?”

  “No. We saw no-one.”

  “Let me look at the boy.”

  The man went across to Lhaten and bent down to examine him.

  The two monks stood near Christopher, watching. Carefully, the stranger looked at Lhaten’s feet and leg, then examined his general condition. The boy was bad again. He had lost consciousness about an hour earlier.

  Christopher did not see what happened next until it was too late to do anything about it. The man stood up and drew something from his pocket. He bent towards Lhaten and put his hand to the boy’s temple. There was a loud report, and Christopher realized with horror that the stranger had just shot the boy. The man straightened up and put his revolver back into his pocket.

  For what seemed an age, Christopher stood rooted to the spot.

  The gunshot echoed in his head, as if the bullet were crashing again and again into Lhaten’s skull. He looked down and saw a trickle of bright red blood stream from the boy’s temple on to the white, innocent snow.

  He cried out in pain and rage, and threw himself at the boy’s killer, but the monks had already seized him by the arms and held him at a distance.

  “Why?” shouted Christopher.

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “He would have died anyway,” the str
anger said in an unruffled voice.

  “We are still too far here from help. It was better like this.

  Better for him. Better for us all.”

  “We could have saved him! There’s a village a few miles from here.”

  “We aren’t going to the village. He would have delayed us.

  Delayed us badly. The weather may deteriorate again. A cripple would have been a threat to all of us.”

  Christopher struggled, but it was useless. He wanted to hit the man, to tear his scarf away, to see his face. But the monks held him firmly.

  The man cast a glance at the limp body on the ground behind him.

  “You were warned, Mr. Wylam. You were warned not to enter Tibet.

  There has already been a tragedy as a result of your disobedience.

  There must be no more.”

  He paused. A gust of wind lifted the corner of his scarf and dropped it again. His eyes looked keenly at Christopher again, as though searching for something.

  “Who are you?” Christopher asked. But he already knew.

  The stranger lifted his hand and pulled down the scarf from his face.

  Christopher recognized the heavily pitted skin.

  “I didn’t think you would make it this far, Mr. Wylam,” said the monk.

  “But now that you have done, perhaps you had best accompany us the rest of the way.”

  “The rest of the way? Where are you planning to take me?”

  “You wanted to find your son,” the monk said.

  “I can take you to him.” He glanced up at the sky, at banks of grey cloud.

  “It’s time we left. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  By the second day, they were deep into the mountains. At the bottom of

  the descent from the passes, near the point where the track entered the

  Kampa plain, preparatory to turning toward Kampa Dzong, they had veered

  west, skirting the mountains along their northern edge, then

  re-entering along a valley whose opening it was impossible to detect

  with the naked eye.

  Christopher could never work out how they traced their path, but the monks appeared to know the way unerringly. They climbed high, sometimes taking what seemed like impossible passages past steep drops or by the edges of dark crevasses. They made their way in silence through the heart of a white, sleeping world, their tiny figures dwarfed by walls of rock and frozen snow. Sometimes fresh snow fell, not violently as before, but in soft showers that covered them quietly in mantles of white. They passed ice-falls that resembled vast abandoned cities encased in glass. In the mornings, out of banks of white mist, pinnacles of rock jutted into view, carved over centuries by remorseless layers of frost. In the evenings, the rays of the setting sun would fall on decaying towers of ice and frozen curtains woven from long, thin icicles.

  They walked for days, stopping only briefly to eat and rest.

  Christopher, exhausted by his exertions over the past week, felt driven almost beyond endurance. He moved in a dream, urged on by the monks, who shoved and pulled him over the hardest parts.

  Sometimes, there was real climbing to be done, and he was afraid he would slip and fall to his death. But luck and dogged perseverance kept him going.

  He persevered because he wanted to kill the lama, but no opportunity presented itself. At night, they tied his arms and legs tightly with rope and made him sleep at a distance, trussed up and aching in the bitter cold. He lay awake for hours, thinking of Lhaten and the callousness of his death, of Cormac bloody beneath the buzzing of flies.

  The lama’s name was Tsarong Rinpoche. He spoke little to Christopher after the first day. He had brief conversations with the two monks from time to time, but otherwise he journeyed in silence.

  The monks were even more silent. When they rested, they prayed. When the going was easy, they brought small silver manikhors out of their robes and spun them, filling the air with a whirring sound. The prayer-wheels were finely decorated drums set on polished wooden handles, about whose axis they turned, driven round by the action of a counterweight attached to a small chain. Inside, block-printed sheets bore the formula of the mani prayer repeated thousands of times. At each revolution, the prayers were ‘recited’ by the mere act of turning. In a single day, the monks sent up millions of invocations. And while they did so, their lips muttered other prayers, muffled behind their scarves.

  Christopher could not reconcile their apparent piety with their indifference to Lhatep’s murder or their harshness with him on the journey. Or was it simply a kind of piety he could not hope to understand?

  Sometimes they woke in the middle of the night and filled the brutal silences of Christopher’s insomnia with the reading of sutras that seemed to have no meaning. Out of a sky washed clean of cloud, bands of frozen moonlight glided across their still figures.

  On several occasions, Christopher saw the lama rise in the middle of the night and walk in and out of the shadows, like someone who cannot bear immobility. He slept little, yet in the mornings never seemed tired or irritated.

  Once, he came across to where Christopher was lying, bound in the darkness.

  “I’m sorry you have to be tied,” he said.

  “But I have no choice. I know you want to kill me. You must take revenge for the boy and the doctor. Since you do not understand and will not easily be made to understand, you must be prevented. I am sorry.”

  “Would it have meant much delay to have saved the boy’s life?

  A day, two days perhaps.”

  “We were in a hurry. We still are in a hurry.”

  “If I fall behind, will you kill me as well?”

  “You will not be allowed to fall behind.”

  His voice made strange verbal patterns in the darkness. Words like ‘choice’, ‘understand’, ‘prevented’, and ‘allowed’ were the links in a subtle chain that was fastening hard round Christopher.

  “But if I fall and injure myself, what then?”

  “They will carry you. You will not be permitted to come to any harm.

  They have been given their instructions.”

  Christopher remembered his words in Kalimpong: You are holy:

  do not make me touch you.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I am here to see they carry them out.”

  “When shall I see William?”

  The monk shook his head.

  “That is not for me to decide,” he said.

  “At least tell me if he’s safe!”

  “Yes, he is safe. Or he was safe when I last saw him. If Lord Chenrezi wills, he is still safe.”

  “Where is he?” Christopher asked abruptly.

  “Where are you taking me? Are we going to Dorje-la?”

  The lama reached out a naked hand and touched Christopher’s cheek.

  “You are like a child,” he said.

  “A child who cannot sleep.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Haven’t I?” replied the stranger and stood up. He walked away into the darkness, silent and tense, waiting for the dawn to come.

  They travelled for six days. Christopher tried to work out where they were, but it was useless. There were landmarks the peaks of Kachenjunga, Chombu, Kachenjhau, Panhunri, and Chomolhari lay in the distance, now visible, now hidden from sight by lower but nearer masses of rock or ice. As they progressed, however, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish even the more distinctive peaks. Christopher had never set eyes on them from this angle, and most of the time he was guessing their identity on the basis of comparative height and position.

  To make matters worse, the mountains themselves seemed determined to play a madcap game of disguises. First one would put on a crown of clouds, then another would wreath itself in mist while a third drew down on itself a heavy fall of snow that quickly distorted its shape. Light and shadows danced at intervals on every crag and gully they could reach. What seemed a vall
ey one moment might in the next be transformed into a glacier; a flat buttress would suddenly become a razor-edged ridge; a bright snow-field would in the blink of an eye be replaced by a swathe of the deepest shadow. Nothing was constant, and Christopher despaired of ever making sense of the path he followed or of being able to find his way back again. Once or twice, even the monks stopped and consulted before deciding which of two possible routes to follow.

  Late on the sixth day, Christopher saw that they were approaching a broad pass. The air felt incredibly thin and he had difficulty breathing. Even the monks, he noticed, were labouring. They stopped just short of the pass to rest.

  “Our journey will be over soon,” the lama whispered to Christopher.

  “That is our destination.”

  He pointed upwards in the direction of the pass. Fading sunlight beaded the edges of a curved ridge. A lammergeyer swooped effortlessly down through the opening, then rose again, catching the sunlight momentarily on its wings. Beyond the light, at the head of the pass, a bank of mist moved lazily.

  “I see nothing,” Christopher said.

  “Look more closely,” the lama told him.

  “Up there, just to the left of the mist.” He pointed again.

  Christopher saw something fluttering. It took him a few moments to make out what it was a tarcho, the traditional pole bearing down its length a cotton flag printed with prayers and the emblem of the wind-horse. Somewhere nearby, there would be a habitation a small village or a hermit’s cell.

  Suddenly, as though Christopher’s discovery of the tarcho had been a signal, the valley reverberated with sound. From high above came the deep notes of a Temple prayer-horn. It was no ordinary trumpet but a giant dung-chen. Low and deep-throated, the voice of the great horn penetrated every corner of the pass and the valley below. In that dreadful silence, in that vast solitude, its bellow filled Christopher with something akin to terror. He felt his flesh creep as the sound echoed and re-echoed over everything.

  And then, as suddenly as it had come, the sound ceased. The last echoes died away and silence flooded back.

  They began to climb towards the pass. The ascent was steep and treacherous. Wide patches of ice forced the men to crawl part of the way. Although the head of the pass had seemed near from below, now it appeared to tease them, receding and receding ever further into the distance as they climbed. It was some sort of optical illusion, caused by a curious combination of shadow and the light of the setting sun.