The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  “I’m sorry,” the abbot said.

  “That will not be possible. There is so much you do not understand.

  But he is no longer your son.

  That much you must try to understand. For your own sake. Please try to grasp what I am saying.”

  “What do you want with him?” Christopher was shouting now.

  He could hear his voice echoing in the empty, snow-filled chamber.

  “Why did you bring him here?”

  “He was brought here at my request. I wanted him brought to Dorje-la.

  As yet even he does not understand. But in time he will.

  Please do not make it difficult for him. Please do not ask to see him.”

  The abbot reached down and picked up a small silver bell from a low table. He rang it gently, filling the room suddenly with a loose, fluttering music, like fine crystal being struck. There was a smell of old incense, like crushed flowers in a tomb.

  “You will have to leave now,” he said.

  “But we shall meet again.”

  Footsteps sounded behind Christopher. He turned to see the steward waiting for him. As he walked away from the abbot, the old man’s voice came to him out of the shadows.

  “Mr. Wylam. Please try to be wise. Do not attempt to find your son. We do not wish any harm to befall you: but you must take care. You ignored Tsarong Rinpoche’s warning. Do not ignore mine.”

  Christopher was taken back to the room in which he had been confined before. He sat for hours in the silence of his own thoughts, trying to come to terms with his situation. The revelation that William was alive and being kept here in Dorje-la had shaken him.

  He needed time to think, time to decide what to do next.

  Several times he went to the window and looked down at the pass below. Once, he saw a party of monks moving along a narrow path away from the monastery. He watched until they vanished from sight. Later, he saw someone running to the monastery from a point just above the pass. From time to time, he heard the sound of chanting, punctuated by the steady beats of a drum. On a terrace below him and to his left, an old monk sat for hours turning a large prayer-wheel At sunset, the trumpet on the roof brayed into the coming darkness; it was quite near him and very loud.

  A monk came and left him some food, lit his lamp, and left again without saying a word in reply to his questions. There was soup and tsampa and a small pot of tea. He ate slowly and automatically, chewing and swallowing the balls of roasted barley without enjoyment. When he had finished eating, he lifted the cover from the teacup. As he raised the pot to pour, his eye caught sight of something white pressed into the cup.

  It was a sheet of paper, folded several times and pushed firmly down. Christopher took it out and unfolded it. It was covered in Tibetan writing, in an elegant Umay hand. At the bottom was a small diagram, a series of intersecting lines that lacked any obvious pattern.

  He took the sheet across to the table by the bed, where the lamp was burning. His knowledge of written Tibetan was limited, but with a little effort he was able to decipher most of the text:

  I am told you speak our language. But I do not know if you can read it

  also. I can only write and hope that you will be able to read this. If

  you

  cannot read it, I will have to find a way to send someone to you; but that may be difficult. The trapa who brings your food does not know that I had this message placed in your cup: do not speak of it to him.

  I am told you are the father of the child who was brought here from the land of the pee-lings. I am told other things, but I do not know whether to believe them.

  You are in danger in Dorje-la. Be careful at all times. I want to help you, but I too must be careful. I cannot come to you, so you must come to me. Tonight, your door will be unlocked. When you find it open, follow the map I have drawn below. It will lead you to the gon-kang.

  I shall be waiting for you there. But take care that no-one sees you leave.

  There was no signature. He re-read the letter several times, making sure he had understood it. Now that he knew the diagram was meant to be a map, he thought he could make some sense of it, even though he could not relate the rooms and corridors it showed to places he had actually seen.

  He stood up and went to the door. It was still locked. He sighed and went back to the bed, feeling restless now that a possibility for action had at last presented itself. Who had sent him the message?

  He knew no-one in Dorje-la. And why should one of the monks want to help him, a stranger?

  Several times over the next few hours he went to the door and tried it. It was always locked, and he began to think that the mysterious letter-writer had been unable to carry out his plan. The last service of the day was sung, the monks returned to their cells for the night, and a profound silence settled on Dorje-la at last.

  About an hour later, he heard a low fumbling sound at his door.

  He got up and advanced cautiously to it. Silence. He reached out a hand and tried the handle. It turned without resistance.

  Quickly, he found his lamp and stepped outside. He was in a long corridor: at the far end, a single butter-lamp burned. There was no-one in sight. AH around him, he could feel the monastery sleeping. It was freezing in the corridor.

  Consulting the map, he set off slowly to his right, down to where the corridor joined another. The second corridor stretched away into shadow. There were lamps at intervals, faint offerings to the surrounding gloom. In the dim light from his own lamp, the painted walls seemed half alive, seething with a dark, tormented movement. Everywhere, red predominated. Faces appeared for a moment out of the darkness, then vanished again. Hands moved.

  Bared teeth grinned. Skeletons danced.

  Imperceptibly, a sense of deep antiquity began to impress itself on Christopher as he padded deeper into the sleeping monastery.

  He could see, if only imperfectly, how the character of the regions through which he passed was undergoing a gradual change. Like geological strata, the individual sections of the gompa showed clearly how they had been built up, a little at a time. The further he penetrated, the more a primitive quality revealed itself to him in the paintings and carvings. Chinese influence gave way to Indian and Indian to what Christopher recognized as early Tibetan. He could feel growing in him a sense of trepidation. This was like no monastery in which he had ever set foot before.

  The final corridor ended in a low door on either side of which the images of guardian deities had been painted. Two torches burned in brackets half-way up the wall. This was an ancient part of the monastery, perhaps a thousand years old.

  He stood at the entrance to the gon-kang, the darkest and most forbidden place in any gompa. Christopher had only ever heard descriptions of such places from Tibetan friends, but he had at no time been allowed to set foot in one. They were dark places, narrow crypt-chapels where the masks for the sacred dances were kept.

  This was the ritual abode of theyi-dam, the tutelary deities, whose black statues watched over the monastery and its inhabitants. It was the seat of the sacred horror at the heart of Tibetan religion.

  Christopher hesitated at the door, oddly frightened at the prospect of entering. He had no reason to be frightened: there was only darkness inside, darkness and strange gods in whom he did not believe. But something made him hesitate before finally putting his hand to the door and pushing.

  It was unlocked. Immediately behind lay a second door bearing the brightly painted face of a yi-dam. Red, staring eyes confronted him like living coals. The light of his lamp flickered and shone on old paint and flecks of gold leaf. He pushed open the second door.

  Darkness visible, darkness like velvet pressing against his eyes, darkness palpable and entranced. Here, night was permanent. It had never been truly broken, it would go on forever. A strong smell of old butter filled the stale, lightless air. It was like entering a tomb.

  Christopher held up his lamp. From the ceiling near the entrance hung the stuffed
car cases of several animals a bear, a yak, a wild dog. These ancient, rotting things were an integral part of every gon-kang, as much an element in the place’s dark mystery as the figures of the gods on the altar. Christopher felt his skin crawl with disgust as he passed underneath, crouching low to avoid contact with the mouldering fur hanging loosely from the poorly preserved cadavers. They had been hanging there for God only knew how long, and would go on hanging in the same places until they finally decomposed and fell apart. Generations of spiders had added a thick outer carapace of their own to the mildewed fur. Dusty cobwebs brushed Christopher’s cheeks as he went through.

  It was old. He knew as soon as he was inside that the gon-kang was an ancient place, older than the monastery, half as old as the mountains themselves. It was a cave, low and dark and dedicated from the beginning of time to the most hidden mysteries. The dance-masks hung by thick ropes from the ceiling to Christopher’s right, images of death and madness, painted long ago and set here in the darkness with the grim guardians of the monastery. Once or twice a year, they would be taken out and worn in the ritual dances. They would turn and turn to the sound of drums and flutes, like the naked girl Christopher had seen in the orphanage, her face a mask hiding the dull terror beneath. The faces of the masks were grotesque and larger than life the malign features of gods and demi-gods and demons, faces that would transform a dancing monk to an immortal being and a man to a god for a day.

  Near the masks, set against the wall, were piles of old armour spears and swords and breastplates, hauberks and crested helmets, Chinese lances and pointed Tartar hats. It was ancient armour, rusted and useless for the most part, kept there as a symbol of sudden death, weapons for the old gods to wield in their battle against the forces of evil.

  Standing before the rear wall were the statues of the yi-dam deities, their many arms and heads swathed in old strips of cloth placed there as offerings. Yamantaka, horned and bull-headed and festooned with a coronet of human skulls, leered out of the darkness. In the flickering shadows, the black figures seemed to move, as though they too were dancing in their eternal night.

  Filled with a foreboding he could neither understand nor master, Christopher went closer.

  Something moved that was not a shadow. Christopher shrank back, holding his lamp out in front of him. Before the altar at the back of the room, facing theyi-dam, sat a dark figure. As Christopher watched, the figure moved again, prostrating briefly in front of the gods before resuming a seated position. It was a monk, wrapped up against the bitter cold, engaged in meditation. He did not appear to have noticed the light from Christopher’s lamp or heard him enter Christopher was uncertain what to do next. He guessed this must be the monk who had written the letter, but now he was about to confront him, he felt suddenly wary. Was this perhaps nothing more than an elaborate trap, set by Zamyatin or Tsarong Rinpoche? He had, after all, just violated the monastery’s innermost sanctum. Had that been the intention all along to provide someone with an adequate justification for his death?

  The figure moved, not abruptly like someone startled, but gently, like a man woken from sleep and still half in the world of his dream. He stood up and turned. A shadow fell across his face as he did so, veiling him.

  “You have come,” he said. The voice was soft, like a girl’s.

  Christopher guessed the monk was a ge-tsul, a novice. But what would a novice want with him?

  “Was it you who wrote the letter?” Christopher asked, stepping towards the figure.

  “Please! Don’t come any closer,” the monk said, stepping back further into shadow.

  Christopher froze. He sensed that the ge-tsul was nervous, in some way frightened by Christopher’s presence.

  “Why did you ask me to come? What do you want?”

  “You are the father of the pee-ling child?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have travelled from far away to find him?”

  “Yes. Do you know where he is? Can you take me to him?”

  The monk made a hushing sound.

  “Do not speak so loudly. The walls of Dorje-la have ears.” He paused.

  “Yes,” he continued, “I know where your son is being kept.

  And I can take you there.”

  “When?”

  “Not now. Perhaps not for several days.”

  “Is he in any danger?”

  The novice hesitated.

  “No,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. But something is happening in Dorje-la, something I do not understand. I think we may all be in danger very soon.”

  “I want to take William away from here. I want to take him back through the passes to India. Can you help me?”

  There was silence. Shadows gathered about the small figure by the altar.

  “I can help you take him from Dorje-la,” he said at last.

  “But the way to India is too hazardous. If you want your son to leave here alive, you must trust me. Will you do that?”

  Christopher had no choice. However mysterious, this was his only ally in a world he did not understand.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “I will trust you.”

  “With your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “With your son’s life?”

  He hesitated. But William’s life was already in jeopardy.

  “Yes.”

  “Go back to your room. I will send another message to you there.

  Be sure that you destroy any letters I write to you. And speak of this to no-one. No-one, do you understand? Even if they appear to be a friend. Do you promise?”

  “Yes,” Christopher whispered.

  “I promise.”

  “Very well. Now you must leave.”

  “Who are you?” Christopher asked.

  “Please, you must not ask. Later, when we are safe, I will tell you.

  But not now. There is too much danger.”

  “But what if something happens? If I need to find you?”

  “You are not to look for me. I will find you when it is time.

  Please leave now.”

  “At least let me see your face.”

  “No, you must not!”

  But Christopher raised his lamp and stepped forward, letting !

  the light fall directly on the shadows before him. The mysterious stranger was not a novice, not a monk. Long strands of jet-black hair framed small, delicate features. An embroidered tunic shaped itself about a slender body. The stranger was a woman. In the shadowed light, her green eyes sparkled and the tiny yellow flame cast drops of liquid gold over her cheeks. Her hair was filled with golden ashes.

  She stared at Christopher, her eyes startled. One hand sprang to her face, covering her from his gaze. He took another step, but she recoiled, stumbling back into the shadows once more. He heard her feet run softly across the stone floor. Holding the lamp high, he followed, but the light fell on nothing but figures of stone and gold. On the walls, paint crumbled and fell slowly to dust.

  Time stood still. The bright patterns of a dozen heavens and a dozen hells shuddered like tinsel in the darkness. The girl had vanished utterly into the shadows out of which she had come.

  He returned to his room, passing through the sleeping monastery like a phantom. As far as he was aware, no-one had seen him leave or re-enter the room. About half an hour after his return, he heard the sound of fumbling at his door again, and when he tried the handle he found it had been locked once more.

  He lay in bed, trying to get warm, his thoughts in turmoil. There were so many unanswered questions. Who was the woman who had brought him to the gon-kang? What did she really want with him? And could she really help him get William out of this place?

  He tossed and turned in the darkness, tiring himself without coming any closer to satisfactory answers. In the end, his restless thoughts became restless dreams. But even in sleep there were no answers.

  He was woken abruptly by a sound. His light had gone out and the room was
in pitch darkness. He could hear his own breathing but nothing else. What had wakened him? Breathing evenly, he lay in the darkness listening. It came again, a soft, fumbling sound.

  Someone or something was outside his door, trying to get in. This was not like the sound he had heard before, when his door had been unlocked and locked again. This was furtive, secretive, not intended to be heard.

  A key turned in the lock. Whoever was outside was taking great care not to waken him. He cast back his blankets and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Working by instinct, he found his boots and slipped them on. The key turned gently, with an almost inaudible grating sound. He stood up, careful not to make the bed creak. The door began to open, an inch at a time. He got up and crept to the other side of the room, next to the shrine.

  The intruder did not carry a light. Christopher could see nothing,

  hear nothing. He pressed himself against the wall. As his eyes grew

  accustomed to the darkness, he realized that a small amount of

  illumination came through the shutter, which he had

  closed imperfectly. A slight creak drew his attention back to the door. A shadow was easing itself through the opening. Christopher held his breath.

  The shadow moved to the bed on silent feet. There was an abrupt movement as it bent down, then Christopher saw it fumble with the blankets in confusion. There was a glint of something metallic in the darkness: a knife-blade. Christopher waited for the figure to straighten up, then dashed forward, his right arm extended, and grabbed for the neck.

  The intruder grunted as Christopher pulled back with his forearm against his throat. He heard the knife clatter to the floor.

  Then there was a quick movement and Christopher felt himself being twisted. A sudden blow took him in the small of his back, near his kidneys. As he jerked away from the blow, the man turned again and freed himself from the arm lock A second blow took Christopher in the pit of his stomach and sent him reeling back against the shrine. Bowls crashed to the ground, spilling water everywhere and clanging like bells in the stillness. The stranger did not speak.