The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  Finally, they reached the top and rounded the corner of the pass.

  The monks shouted “Lha-gyal-lo Lha-gyal-loV loudly. It was the first sign of anything approaching exuberance Christopher had ever observed in them.

  Tsarong Rinpoche came up close beside Christopher and grasped his arm. There was a look of intense excitement in his eyes. The rest of his face was hidden by his scarf.

  “Look up,” he said in a sharp whisper that sounded exaggeratedly loud in the crisp air.

  Christopher looked. At first, he could see nothing out of the ordinary: just a rock face that rose up and up into a curtain of swirling mist. The mist seemed to fill the region ahead of them, rising like a wall into a bank of freezing cloud. On either side of them, ice and mist formed a cradle in which they were gently rocked.

  “There’s nothing,” Christopher murmured.

  “Stones and mist.

  That’s all.”

  Suddenly, the trumpet sounded as before, but nearer this time.

  Much nearer. Its deep, throbbing notes travelled through the mist like the blasts of a foghorn at sea. But wherever he looked, Christopher could see nothing but rocks covered in ice, rolling mist, and low cloud.

  “Wait,” whispered Tsarong Rinpoche “You will see.”

  The other monks were busy whirling their prayer wheels, adding the tinny whirring sound to the reverberations of the unseen trumpet that blared out from behind the mist.

  And then, quite remarkably, as though the trumpet had wrought a miracle in the heavens, a portion of mist parted, revealing a golden roof and a terrace below it on which an orange-clad figure stood motionless against the dying light. The man blew into a large trumpet resting on wooden blocks. Obliquely, the sun’s rays caught the bowl of the instrument, turning it to fire. Then, it fell abruptly silent once more, and across the silence, like the murmur of waves falling on a pebbled shore far away, the sound of chanting voices came faintly to their ears. The figure on the terrace bowed and vanished into the mist.

  As Christopher watched, the mist parted further, revealing bit by bit the clustered buildings of a vast monastery complex. The great edifice seemed as though suspended between earth and sky, floating impossibly on a cushion of mist, its topmost pinnacles lost among clouds.

  At the centre stood a vast central building, painted red, to which a variety of lesser buildings clung like chicks about a mother hen.

  The main edifice was several storeys tall, with brightly gilded roofs and pinnacles that burned in the light of the setting sun. Its windows were already shuttered against the evening wind. Icicles hung from eaves and lintels everywhere, like decorations on a giant cake.

  Christopher was awed by the sight after so many days of unrelieved whiteness and desolation. The colours of the place dazzled him. He had forgotten how much life there could be in colour. Like a hungry man, he feasted on the golden vision in front of him until the sunlight turned violet and began to fade, taking the warm colours with it. His vision turned to darkness and he wondered if it had really been there at all.

  “What is this place?” he whispered, to no-one in particular.

  “Our destination,” said Tsarong Rinpoche.

  “The pass we have just climbed is Dorje-la. The monastery in front of you is Dorje-la Gompa. But its proper name is Sanga Chelling: the Place of Secret Spells.”

  Christopher looked up again. In a window high up near the roof, someone had lit a lamp. Someone was watching them. Someone was waiting for them.

  Dorje-la Gompa, southern Tibet, January 1921 They entered the monastery the following morning after dawn.

  The sound of the temple-horn had awakened them, braying high up on the wide terrace, calling in the darkness for the light to return. And it did return, lingering briefly on the broad peaks of the Eastern Himalaya before sliding reluctantly down into the dark valley below Dorje-la.

  The ascent to the building was made on a long wooden ladder that threatened to give way at any moment and send them spinning back on to the rocks below. Christopher climbed without emotions of any kind; dread, anticipation, even triumph at having reached this place all had deserted him.

  The first morning assembly had finished by the time they entered the building. They came in through a small red gate, but the monks were still in the Lha-khang taking tea before resuming their devotions. The travellers were met by a fat little monk dressed in the robes of a steward. The two trap as mumbled greetings and at once scuttled off down a dimly lit corridor, like rabbits returning to their warren. The lama entered a doorway on the left and closed the door behind him without a word. Christopher was led in a different direction, along a passage lit by rancid butter-lamps that gave off a jaundiced, almost sulphurous glow. The all-pervasive smells of ancient dri-butter and human sweat were doubly noxious to Christopher after so long in the fresh and rarefied air of the mountains outside.

  The steward showed Christopher to a small room on the first floor and asked if he wanted food.

  “No, thank you,” he said.

  “I’d like to sleep. I’m very tired.”

  The monk nodded and backed out, closing the door behind him.

  Against one wall was set a low pallet bed. Without pausing to inspect the rest of the room, Christopher threw himself on to the bed. The last thing he thought of before sleep overpowered him was Lhaten’s reaction when he had asked the boy if he had ever heard of Dorje-la.

  “I think it is time for sleep, sahib.”

  And it was.

  When Christopher awoke, he could not tell how much time had passed. The butter-lamp left by the steward still burned steadily on a little table near the door, but it had been full to begin with.

  The comfort of the bed and the profundity of his sleep had only served to accentuate the depth of Christopher’s tiredness and the aching he felt in every joint and muscle. He could have lain there forever, he thought, neither sleeping nor waking, but in a state between.

  From somewhere far away came the sound of voices, many voices, rising and falling in a dirge-like chant, whether of celebration or lament he could not tell. The chanting was punctuated by the sounds of a variety of musical instruments. A large drum was being struck in slow, steady beats; a conch-shell wove in and out of the deeper notes raised by a shawm; from time to time, small cymbals clashed with a tinny sound. Christopher recognized the tight, nervous sound of a damaru, a small drum fashioned from a human skull and used in the lower Tantric ceremonies.

  Slowly, as he lay in the darkness listening to the sound of the monks at prayer, the reality of his situation was borne in upon Christopher. It still made little sense: though all the separate parts seemed to connect, there was a lack of logic to their connection that made him despair. But of one thing he was absolutely certain now his son William was here, within these walls. Whatever madness lay behind his being here, that was all that mattered.

  The music and chanting stopped abruptly, and the monastery was returned to silence. Nothing stirred.

  Christopher glanced around the room. A draught from the window teased the flame of his lamp and sent speculative little shadows here and there. Above the bed hung a large thangka depicting the Buddha surrounded by eight Indian saints. Opposite, an old lacquer chest had been transformed into a private altar, adorned with paintings of lotuses and various sacred emblems. On the wall over the altar hung a wooden cabinet with glass doors: inside were painted images of Tsongkhapa and his two disciples. Near the window stood a small table and a chair, and on the wall above them a narrow wooden shelf holding bound copies of scriptural texts.

  He stood up and went to the window. Tibetan monasteries did not as a rule have glass in their windows, so the heavy wooden shutters were kept permanently closed throughout the long winter months. He found the latch and pushed one half of the shutter open. Outside, it was night again. A sharp wind had whipped the clouds away, and in the black expanse just visible above three distant peaks, the sky groaned with the weight of innumerable stars. From
somewhere outside Christopher’s range of vision, moonlight fell like icing on the crystal landscape of the pass below.

  He closed the shutter, shivering, and sat down on the chair. He was feeling hungry now and wondered how he could get hold of someone to bring him food. Perhaps they were waiting for him to give some indication that he was awake. He stepped across to the door and pulled on the handle. It was locked. His monastic cell was to serve as a prison cell as well.

  In the morning, he found food waiting for him on a low table: some lukewarm tsampa, a few barley-cakes, and hot tea in a covered cup. It was plain enough fare, but after days of nothing but cold tsampa, its warmth alone was delicious. After he had eaten, he opened the shutters and looked out of the window. Sunlight had grown out of nothing overnight, spreading itself across the valley below. He could just make out the path he and his companions had followed the day before. Patches of grey mist still clung to the rocks at the foot of the monastery, like small pools of colourless water left on the seashore by the departing tide. If he craned his neck upwards, he could just make out the shapes of distant mountains through gaps in the cliffs surrounding the small valley.

  There was a light tap on the door. Christopher closed the shutters and called.

  “Who’s there?”

  There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, then the door opened and the steward of the day before entered. He held a tall staff in one hand, less for support than as a token of his office. In the other, he carried a flickering butter-lamp.

  “You’re to come with me,” he said.

  “Why am I being kept locked in this room?”

  The steward ignored his question.

  “You have been summoned. Please follow me.”

  “Who is summoning me? Where am I being taken?”

  “Please,” the steward said, fixing his abrasive eyes on Christopher.

  “Don’t ask questions. There is no time. You have to come with me now.”

  Christopher sighed. He was in no position to argue. And anything was better than being cooped up in this tiny room indefinitely.

  The steward led the way in silence along a different route to the one along which he had led Christopher the previous morning, along deserted and unpainted corridors. It grew cold. No-one passed them.

  After a while, they entered regions that seemed to predate the main monastic foundation. No-one lived here any longer. Christopher could feel the touch of the wind as it forced its way through untended cracks in the fabric of the building. At last they reached a heavy door covered with painted eyes. The paint had long ago faded, but the eyes still seemed to possess the power of sight.

  The steward opened the door and motioned Christopher through. For a moment, he thought they had abruptly left the monastery and gone outside. He stood on the threshold, bewildered, trying to make sense of the sight that met his gaze.

  Snow fell in patches, bright and translucent, fine white flakes like the forms of tiny angels descending, wing upon white wing, in heavy, dreaming multitudes. Someone had lit thousands of butter lamps and placed them all around the room: they lay thick on the snow-covered ground, a shifting carpet of fireflies catching breath.

  The tiny flames trembled and cast pale patterns on walls of naked ice.

  Everywhere, a caul of snow and ice lay silent upon the sleeping room, veil upon white veil, glaze upon frosted glaze, year upon frozen year. It was a room of ice and ivory, its broken ceiling open to the sky and its mirrored walls exposed to the endless breath of the mountains. Shafts of sunlight lay everywhere like slanting rods of glass: the snow fell through them, flickering as it dropped earth wards On plinths throughout the room, statues of gods and goddesses stood unrecognizable beneath thick garments of tattered frost. Their hair was white and stiff with icicles; from their frozen hands, long strands of ice trailed to the floor.

  At the far end of the long chamber, hidden away among shadows, in an area out of reach of the shafts of sunlight, Christopher made out a grey figure seated cross-legged on a throne of cushions. Slowly, feeling his heart trip repeatedly in his breast, he made his way towards the shadows. The figure did not move, did not call out. He sat immobile, hands resting on his knees, back straight. His eyes were fixed on Christopher.

  The figure was dressed in the simple robes of a monk. On his head, he wore a pointed cap with long ear-flaps that hung down to below his shoulders. His face was partly hidden in shadows. It seemed lined and full of sadness. The eyes, above all, ached with sadness. Christopher stood in front of him, not knowing what to do or say. He realized that he had not brought a khata scarf with him, that he could not perform the ritual of greeting. Some time passed, then the stranger raised his right hand gently and motioned to Christopher.

  “Please,” he said, ‘be seated. You do not have to stand. I have had a chair brought for you.”

  For the first time, Christopher noticed a low chair just on his left. He sat down, feeling self-conscious. He could sense the old man’s eyes on him, scrutinizing him with a fierce intensity mixed with terrible sadness “My name is Dorje Losang Rinpoche. I am the Dorje Lama, the abbot of this monastery. They tell me your name is Christopher, Christopher Wylam.”

  “Yes,” said Christopher.

  “That’s correct.”

  “You have come a long way,” said the Dorje Lama.

  “Yes,” said Christopher, his voice feeling cracked and awkward.

  “From. India. From Kalimpong.”

  “Further than that,” the abbot contradicted him.

  “Yes,” Christopher said.

  “Further than that.”

  “Why have you come? Please be truthful with me. No-one comes here for a trivial reason. There must be matters of life and death to bring a man to us. What has brought you here?”

  Christopher hesitated. He feared and distrusted the abbot. This man had played a major role in what had happened. For all he knew, Zamyatin was himself a pawn in a greater game.

  “I was brought here,” he replied.

  “By three of your monks:

  Tsarong Rinpoche and two trap as Tsarong Rinpoche killed my guide, a Nepalese boy named Lhaten. He killed him merely because Lhaten was injured. Before I answer any of your questions, I demand justice for the boy.”

  “You are making a serious charge.” The abbot bent forward, as though trying to see the truth in Christopher’s face.

  “It is not my only charge. I met Tsarong Rinpoche before that in Kalimpong. He admitted killing someone else there: an Irish doctor called Cormac. Did you know of that? Was he acting under your orders?”

  The abbot sighed and straightened himself again. His face was that of an old man, but extremely pale. The eyes were still pools of sadness, but Christopher sensed another emotion in that look.

  Compassion? Love? Pity?

  “No,” he said.

  “He was not acting under orders from me. I had no reason to want either the doctor or your guide dead. Please believe me. I have no wish to cause the death of any sentient being.

  My purpose on earth is to diminish suffering in any way I can. If Tsarong Rinpoche has acted wrongly, he will be punished.”

  The abbot paused and blew his nose gently on a small handkerchief which he took from inside his long sleeve. The ordinariness of the man’s action was more reassuring to Christopher than his words.

  “Tsarong Rinpoche tells me,” the abbot continued, ‘that when he met you, you were on the borders of Tibet, just beyond the Sebula. Is this true?”

  Christopher nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “He also tells me that he warned you not to leave India, not to attempt to enter Tibet. Is that also true?”

  “Yes. That is true as well.”

  “You had been warned of possible danger. Danger to yourself and anyone who travelled with you. You chose a route that you must have known to be almost impassable. Tsarong Rinpoche tells me he thinks you were already seeking for this place, for Dorje-la.

  Is that true
too?”

  Christopher did not say anything.

  “You do not deny it is true? Very well, then I must conclude that something of great importance drove you here. Or perhaps I should say “drew you here”. What would that thing be, Wylamla? Can you tell me?”

  Christopher remained silent at first, his gaze fixed on the old man. On the abbot’s chest, a silver gau caught particles of light from the lamps and transformed them into shadows.

  “Not a thing,” Christopher said at last.

  “A person. My son. His name is William. I believe he is here, in this monastery. I have come here to take him home.”

  The abbot stared at Christopher with a look of intense sadness.

  All around, snow kept falling. It lay sprinkled on the old man’s hair and covered the cushions on which he sat.

  “Why do you think your son is here, Mr. Wylam? What possible reason could there be for his presence in this place?”

  “I don’t know the reason. All I know is that a man called Zamyatin ordered my son’s kidnap. Zamyatin’s instructions were carried out of Tibet by a monk named Tsewong. Tsewong is dead, but a letter was found on him that identified him as your representative. Carpenter, the Scottish missionary in Kalimpong, has told me that my son was taken to Tibet by a Mongolian called Mishig. Mishig is Zamyatin’s agent.”

  The Dorje Lama listened to all of this with his head bent, as though Christopher’s words weighed him down. There was a lengthy silence.

  “You know a great deal, Wylam-la,” he said finally.

  “A very great deal. And yet you know very little.”

  “But I’m right. My son is here. Isn’t he?”

  The abbot folded his hands.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You are right. Your son is here. He is alive and well. He is being looked after with the greatest possible attention.

  There is nothing for you to worry about.”

  “I want to see him. Take me to him at once.” Christopher stood up. He felt faint and angry.