The Ninth Buddha

by Daniel Easterman

  Suddenly he lunged, and Christopher felt something tighten round his neck. It was a thin cord and the man was pulling hard on it His head spun as the cord tightened and air and blood were cut off. He had seconds before he began to weaken. Throwing himself forward, he crashed into his assailant, causing him to stumble and fall back against the bed. The cord slackened and Christopher grabbed hold of it, ripping it from the man’s hands.

  He tossed it aside.

  Christopher realized that his one advantage was his weight. The man beneath him was much smaller than he, but clever with his hands. Without warning, Christopher’s attacker uncoiled himself and directed a blow to his throat. His chin took most of the blow’s force, but he felt a searing pain run through his jaw. He remembered the way the monk in Kalimpong had disabled him so effortlessly. Springing back, he hit the chair and knocked it over.

  Without thinking, he picked it up.

  “Who are you?” he hissed, but his assailant said nothing in reply.

  He saw the shadow move towards him, lifted the chair, and struck out. He felt the chair connect with his attacker, lifted it again, and struck a second time. There was a dull cry, then the sound of feet stumbling as Christopher’s assailant tried to find his balance. He saw the man stagger, then straighten up and make for the door.

  Christopher made a dash after the man, groping for him in the semi-darkness, but one foot caught on an altar-bowl and he tripped. When he got to his feet, his attacker had gone. Christopher went to the open door and looked in both directions along the corridor. There was no sign of anyone. He took the key from the lock and closed the door, locked it and put the key inside his boot.

  Further sleep would have been madness. He remained awake until dawn, then tidied the room, replacing the bowls on the altar as accurately as possible. He found his assailant’s knife, a thin weapon with an eight-inch blade, and tucked it into his other boot.

  He was beginning to feel that the attack had turned in his favour.

  Breakfast came long after dawn and the first morning service.

  There was no message in the cup this time. When the monk returned later that morning to take the crockery away, Christopher told him that he wanted to see the abbot. At first the man denied that this was possible, but Christopher implied there would be trouble if his message were not passed on. The monk said nothing when he left, but later that afternoon the steward returned and told Christopher to come with him.

  They did not follow the same route they had taken the day before. Instead, they climbed dark stairs that led to the top floor of the building. Christopher guessed that he was being taken to the abbot’s private quarters. As befitted an incarnation, he would live in the highest storey, so that no-one would be able to stand or sit above his head.

  They seemed to be leaving behind more than just the lower monastery. Up here, it was another world. At the top of the stairs, a large window looked out across the pass; it was glazed, not with the wax paper often used in Tibet, but with panes of real glass that must have been carried all the way from India. Christopher paused for breath and looked out: in the distance, sunlight was resting on the peaks of dazzled mountains, dappled and quiet among the white snow. He felt closed in, a prisoner in this murky place, shut away from the air and the sunshine.

  The steward led him through a doorway with huge bronze rings round

  which coloured ribbons had been tied. Above the door, a

  Chinese inscription proclaimed a message incomprehensible to Christopher. An imperial name, a paean, a warning?

  The door closed behind them and they were in a square chamber filled with painted cages within which birds of all sizes fluttered and hopped. The air was thick with birdsong, a greedy twittering that bounced off the walls and ceiling in strange, bewildered echoes. There were blue pigeons and red starts grey and red accentors, snow pigeons cloaked in white, thrushes, finches, and canaries from China, bright-plum aged parakeets from India, and two birds of paradise with feathers like the edges of rainbows.

  Coloured plumage coruscated in the light of the lamps, awakening silent echoes on the unpainted walls. But for all that, the room was a prison, a cell where shadows and wood and wire conspired to dim all brightness. As Christopher passed through, heavy wings flapped against bars on every side; there was a deep, deep fluttering, like cloth in a nightmare. The steward opened a second door and ushered Christopher into another room.

  Great bottles stood everywhere, each the height of a tall man and correspondingly broad terraria filled with living plants brought up from the jungle regions below. Each was a universe forever sealed in a cycle of growth and decay. Among the plants, huge butterflies soared and swooped, beating cramped wings silently against the glass sides of the bottles, or moving from flower to flower restlessly. More prisons, more cells. Light fell on the bottles through glass shafts set in the ceiling, and the plants fought and strained to suck what life they could from the thin blades of tired sunshine that entered.

  They went through several more rooms, each as bizarre as the one before. In one, great spiders scuttled in glass cases and wove savage webs like clouds of silk. In another, fish swam in giant tanks, endlessly prowling back and forth in the dark, quiet waters, turning and turning nervously, never still, never at rest, like sharks that will die if they stop moving. And finally there came a small room filled with bright flames. Everywhere, lamps burned, throwing tongues of fire into the shadow-encrusted air. Earth and air, water and fire all the elements and creatures from each one. The world in miniature.

  At the end of the fire-room was a door different to the others they had passed through. It was painted with mandalas circular patterns in which the worlds of air and land and sea were depicted.

  From reality to shadow, from the shell to the kernel. The steward opened the door and stood aside to let Christopher pass.

  Beyond the mandala door lay a great chamber that seemed to stretch across most of the upper storey. Shafts of dust-laden light drifted lazily through apertures in the ceiling, but they were insufficient to dispel the abundant shadows lurking everywhere.

  The tiny flames of butter-lamps wavered in the distance like fireflies above a dark lake. Christopher heard a sound behind him.

  He turned to see the door close. The steward had gone.

  As his eyes grew accustomed once more to the gloom, Christopher saw what sort of room it was he had entered. He had heard of such places before, but had never expected to see one. This was the chorten hall, where the tombs of all the past abbots of the monastery were ranged along one wall: great boxes, vaster than the deaths they contained, untarnished, polished, dusted gleaming receptacles for decaying flesh and mouldering bones. The lights flickered and picked out the facades of the great tombs, built from bronze and gold and silver, encrusted with jewels and precious ornaments.

  Each chorten stood on a large pedestal and rose almost to the ceiling. In an impermanent world, they were tokens of permanence, like crystal in ice or gold in sunlight, never melting, never shifting through the dark, uncertain boundaries of change and chance.

  Inside each one, the mummified remains of an abbot had been placed. From time to time, salt was added to keep the mummies in a state of semi-preservation. Through grilles set in the front of the chortens, the gilded faces of their inhabitants gazed out forlornly on a world of grey shadows.

  Slowly, Christopher walked along the row of golden tombs.

  Outside, he could hear the whistling of the afternoon wind. It was cold up here, cold and alone and, somehow, futile. There were twelve chortens in all. Some of the abbots would have died as old men, some as children but if the monks were to be believed, they were one and all incarnations of the same spirit, the same being in a multitude of bodies. Each living abbot would dwell up here all his life, side by side with his old bodies, as a man will dwell with his memories or his castoff clothes, waiting for his own body to join the others, waiting to take on a new form but never a new identity.

  ‘


  The abbot was waiting for him just like the day before, in a niche at the far end of the long hall, seated on cushions among gilded shadows and gods like fire. He seemed more diminished here, dwarfed by the huge chortens, a pale figure lost among his own past lives. It was as if he had been sitting there, on that same throne, on that same spot, down long centuries, watching the chortens being built and occupied, waiting for someone to come and say it was finished, that it was time to leave at last. Christopher bowed low and was told to seat himself on a padded seat facing the abbot.

  “You asked to see me,” said the old man.

  “Yes.”

  “An important matter.”

  “Yes,” said Christopher.

  “Go on.”

  “Someone came to my room last night. While I was sleeping. Do you understand? He entered my room while I was sleeping. He tried to kill me. I want to know why. I want you to tell me why.”

  The abbot did not answer straight away. He appeared shaken by Christopher’s revelation.

  “How do you know he wanted to kill you?” he asked at last.

  “Because he had a knife. Because he carried a gar rotting cord and tried to use it on me.”

  “I see. And you think I know something about this, that I am perhaps responsible for it.”

  Christopher said nothing.

  “Yes. You think I tried to have you killed.” There was a long pause.

  The abbot sighed audibly. When he spoke again, his voice had altered.

  It was weaker, older, sadder than before.

  “I would not have you harmed. That you must believe, even if you doubt everything else you see or hear in this place. That alone is true. Do you understand me? Do you believe me?”

  You are holy to me. I cannot touch you. The words came unbidden into his mind, like birds that had been caged and suddenly set free.

  They fluttered grey wings at him and were gone. But I can harm you, he thought. He could feel the cold blade of the knife nestling against his calf.

  “How can I believe you?” he said.

  “You’ve taken my son by force and killed a man while doing so. One of your monks has killed a boy whose only crime was to have been injured. And a man comes to my room in the dark, carrying a knife. Why should I believe a word you say?”

  He saw the abbot’s eyes watching him intently.

  “Because I am telling you the truth.” There was a pause.

  “When you met me first, you mentioned someone called Zamyatin. Tell me now what you know of him.”

  Christopher hesitated. He knew so little of Zamyatin himself, and so much of what he did know depended on information that would be meaningless to the abbot of a remote Tibetan monastery that he scarcely knew where to start. It seemed easiest to begin with the basic facts that Winterpole had supplied him with.

  When he had finished, the abbot said nothing. He sat motionless on his throne, carefully sifting everything Christopher had told him. After what seemed an age, he spoke again.

  “Zamyatin is here, in Dorje-la. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. I guessed he must be.”

  “He has been here for several months. He came as a pilgrim. At first.

  Tell me, do you think he was behind the attempt on your life?”

  Christopher nodded. It was highly likely.

  “You are enemies, you and this Russian?”

  “Our countries are .. . not at war, exactly. But in a state of

  rivalry. Tension.”

  “Not your countries,” said the abbot.

  “Not your people. Your philosophies. Not long ago, your countries were allies in the great war against the Germans. Is that not so?”

  Whoever this abbot was, thought Christopher, he had underestimated his knowledge of the world outside his monastery.

  “Yes, we were allies .. . But then the Russians had a revolution.

  They killed their king and his family his wife and children. A party called Bolsheviks came to power. They killed anyone who stood in their way tens of thousands, guilty, innocent: it made no difference.”

  “Perhaps they had a reason for killing their king. Was he a just king?”

  Not just and yet not a tyrant, thought Christopher. Just weak willed and inept, the figurehead of an autocratic system he could not change.

  “I think he wanted to be just. To be loved by his people,” he said.

  “That is not enough,” the abbot answered.

  “A man may want to enter Nirvana, but first he must act. There are eight things necessary for liberation from pain: the most important is right action. When a just man takes no action, the unjust will act instead.”

  “That is true but Zamyatin must be stopped,” Christopher said.

  “The Bolsheviks are planning to take control of Asia. They will reach out and take each country on their borders. And then they will go further. No-one will be safe. Not even you, not even this place. Zamyatin has come to Tibet to further those ends. If you value your freedom, help me stop him.”

  The old man sighed audibly and leaned forward again. The trace of a smile crossed his lips.

  “And you,” he said, ‘what will you do when you have stopped him?”

  Christopher was unsure. It depended on what Zamyatin was up to. Would he have to stay .. . and turn Zamyatin’s work to the advantage of Britain? Or would stopping Zamyatin be enough? .

  “I’ll return home with my son,” he said, acutely conscious of the half-truth. Winterpole had offered him William at a price.

  “And what will your people do? Will they leave us alone once the Bolsheviks are defeated?”

  “We have no desire to be your masters,” Christopher said.

  “We helped the Dalai Lama when he fled the Chinese. When the Chinese were defeated, he was free to go back to Lhasa. We didn’t interfere.”

  “But in 1904 you invaded Tibet yourselves. Your armies entered Lhasa. You showed your fist. You interfered directly, more than the Russians have ever interfered in this country. And you rule India. If you can enslave one country, you can enslave another.”

  “The Indians are not our slaves,” Christopher protested.

  “But they are not free,” said the abbot quietly.

  “We do not oppress them.”

  “Last year, you massacred hundreds in the Jalianwala Bagh in Amritsar. If they rise against you one day, as they did before, as the Russians did against their king, will it be because you wanted to be just and did not act ... or because you were unjust and acted? I want to know.” There was a sharpness in the abbot’s voice now. Christopher wished to see him clearly, but the shadows clung to him tenaciously.

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Christopher said. In his own mind, old doubts came soaring in like moths to a flame.

  “I think we are sincere. I think we act justly most of the time. Amritsar was a mistake, an error of judgement on the part of the officer commanding the troops that day. It was an aberration.”

  “An aberration!” The abbot spoke angrily. His composure had slipped and his voice grown rough.

  “Amritsar was inevitable in a country where one race rules a subject race. It was no aberration, no mistake it was a result of years of petty injustices, of arrogance, discrimination, blindness. Amritsar was a symbol of all that is rotten in your Empire. And you come to me with tales of Bolsheviks, you try to frighten me because a single Russian has set foot in these mountains, you tell me your people have no intentions towards Tibet. Do you take me for a fool?”

  The old man fell silent. There was a pause, a long pause. As quickly as the anger had come, it went again. Christopher felt the old man’s eyes on him, sharp and probing, yet still sad. When the abbot spoke again, it was in a changed voice.

  “You should know better, Wylam-la. You should not be a prey to such foolishness. Were you not brought up to be one with the Indians to eat their food, to breathe their air, to lose your identity in their identity? Weren’t you taught to see the world through their e
yes, to listen with their ears, to taste with their tongue? And you talk to me of errors of judgement, you talk to me of aberrations, you talk to me of dead kings? How can you have forgotten what I taught you? How can you have strayed so far from what you once were?”

  Christopher felt a deep chill take hold of him. He was afraid. He was dreadfully afraid. His whole body shook with the beginnings of this fear. The shadows shifted about the abbot and his throne, ancient shadows, thin things that moved like hungry ghosts. Lights flickered. The room seemed full of voices whispering to him voices from his past, voices from long ago, voices of the dead. He remembered the crucifix he had found in Cormac’s desk, its sharp edges digging into his flesh.

  “Who are you?” Christopher asked in a voice made dry by fear.

  The old man came forward into the light. Slowly, the shadows gave up their hold on him. He had dwelt so long in them and they so long in him, but now, for a brief moment, they parted and returned him living to the light. He stood up, a frail old man in saffron robes, and stepped down from the dais on which his throne was set. Slowly, he came towards Christopher, taller than he had appeared seated on the cushions. He came right up to Christopher and knelt down in front of him, his face only inches away from his.

  “Who are you?” whispered Christopher again. The fear was a living thing that struggled in him, threshing about in his chest like a caged animal or a bird or a butterfly.

  “Don’t you know me, Christopher?” The abbot’s voice was low and gentle. It did not strike Christopher at first that these last words were spoken not in Tibetan but in English.

  The world shattered.

  “Do you not .. .”

  The fragments crumbled to dust and were scattered.

  ‘.. . remember me .. .”

  A wind howled in Christopher’s head. The world was a void filled with the dust of the world that had been. He heard his mother’s voice, calling him:

  ‘.. . Christopher.”

  And his sister’s voice, in the long days of summer, running after him on a sunlit lawn:

  ‘.. . Christopher.”

  And Elizabeth, her arms stretched out in pain, her eyes distended, dying: