“No, no, my dear sir.” He shook his head profusely. “You are jumping off so quickly.” Again the patronizing smile. “Please, please. Do try to relax. You Americans are so very jumpy people.”
“Yes, but our business is finished so I . . .”
“No hurry, no vurry.” He smiled at me and tipped his head. “Isn’t it so?”
I remained where I was, poised in midair.
“Please be calm, sir. Be calm. Please.” Still smiling, he waited, unwilling to continue until he was sure I had regained my self-control. I settled back down into the chair and he spoke. “I am afraid to say, no one can be permitted to enter i-storage facilities. It is regulation. You know?”
I started upright. “But . . .”
Again he silenced me with a wave of his arm. “Patience, my dear sir. Patience. Matlab ki, no one may enter without receiving proper authorization.”
“Proper authorization,” I echoed his words. I was hot and itchy and thirsty. My patience—already in short supply—was rapidly wearing thin. This endless delay was starting to really piss me off. I’d already been sitting here for over an hour. But to show any sign of temper was out of the question. To lose your cool in a situation like this is simply to lose. This man sitting behind the desk held all the cards. He could easily turn me away, and that would be it. Game over.
He grinned, flashing a set of uniformly spaced, paan-stained teeth. “Even important scholar like yourself must collect proper form.”
It turned out that the proper form could be issued in this very office, and to do so would require only a few minutes. Meanwhile I must have a cup of chai. He reached under his desk again and punched the buzzer several times before it dawned on him that the electricity was no longer functioning, something he should have noticed already since the ceiling fan had coasted to a stop several minutes earlier and we were both sweating copiously. No problem. He commenced violently pounding a bell on his desk as if we had already been kept waiting for hours. The same peon shuffled through the curtain, joined his palms and bowed, as before. He was again sent forth.
We waited, smiling and nodding at each other. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Eventually a ragged, barefoot urchin popped through the curtain with a wire rack containing six glasses of chai. The subdirector and I were joined by two assistant subdirectors, an accountant, and the head reference librarian, and I was compelled to endure the same pointless interrogation about where I was from, what was my business in India, how much money I made, and so forth. At some point we shifted into Hindi, and everyone, even my host, was favorably impressed. Finally, the peon returned from somewhere bearing the requisite permit, in quadruplicate. The subdirector extracted a sheaf of small pink stamps from his drawer and carefully pasted one to each of the four copies. He meticulously signed all of them over the pink stamp and passed each one along to an assistant, who also signed. I added my signature in the appropriate place on each form. After that the forms went back to the subdirector and were summarily pounded with one of the rubber stamps from the miniature tree. I received my copy, the subdirector retained his, and the remaining two copies were entrusted to the peon who would take them to be filed among the library’s permanent records.
The guardians of the inner gate let me pass.
39
I FOLLOWED THE DIRECTIONS I had been given, back through the stacks to a heavy metal doorway, then down a flight of stairs that led to the basement storage facilities. Silverfish crawled over the walls and the air was tinged with mildew. At the foot of the stairs a single dimly lit passageway led through a jumble of packing crates and piles of musty books. A rat stuck its head out of the shadows, darted across the aisle and back in among the boxes, his tail slithering after him. I threaded my way along the path for fifty feet or so, to where it drew up in front of two narrow wooden panels standing slightly ajar. From inside came a rough bark, like the sound of a dog, and I instinctively recoiled. After a moment, the mysterious sound came again, and I realized it was someone coughing. This was followed by an indistinct mumbling and the rustle of stiff paper. I pushed the panels open and stepped through.
The periphery of the room was jammed to the ceiling with more boxes and crates, with bundles of books wrapped in dusty cloth, every seam stitched tightly and dotted with hard red puddles of congealed sealing wax. Directly in front of me, under a single overhead bulb, a table seemed to float among the packing debris. Behind the table sat a round, middle-aged Tibetan lama carelessly wrapped in thin summer robes bleached to the color of Portuguese rosé. He was bent forward, forearms resting on the edge of the table, the cat’s cradle of a rosary slung between his hands—totally absorbed in the unbound leaves of a Tibetan text that lay open before him. His chin was fringed with long whiskers, and two gray tufts sprouted from the corners of his mouth. An array of red and yellow strings hung around his neck. One of them had been threaded through a chunk of smooth, honeyed amber. His long hair was coiled on top of his head and held in place with a silver stylized dragon studded with turquoise scales; a single coral flame trailed from the dragon’s jaws. The lama’s head was tilted forward so that both eyes were enclosed in shadow, and he was reading aloud to himself in a low murmur. The only other sound was the soft click of the beads as they passed between the stubs of his fingers.
I was debating how best to attract his attention when he brought his face up out of the pages. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be reflecting on whatever it was he had just read. Before I could speak, both lids opened, and he found himself looking right at me. I was standing only a few yards away, and my presence obviously caught him by surprise. He jerked back in his chair, knocking over a crowbar that had been propped against the table. It clanged against the concrete floor.
I winced and smiled weakly. “Maaf Kijiyay.” Dorje Sherap and I had spoken Hindi together, and the language emerged from my mouth now without a second thought. “I startled you. I’m sorry.”
He stared at me wide eyed, like one of the little monkeys outside my window in Banaras. I was about to apologize again when he cut me off with a series of choppy, heavily accented English syllables.
“Why you make no sound?”
“I . . . I was . . .”
“Creeping, creeping! Like chuha!” He hunched his shoulders, raised both hands in the air over the table, palms downward, and began to wiggle his fingers, presumably mimicking the tiny paws of a rat.
“You were reading,” I said defensively, still in Hindi. “You didn’t hear me.”
“You speak English?” He looked at me hopefully. The fingers hovered, motionless now, just above the surface of the table.
I nodded. “Ji . . . I mean, yes. Sure. I thought you might feel more comfortable in Hindi.”
This seemed to strike him as quite amusing. “A-lay! I look like Indian man?” His hands dropped flat on the desk. He puffed up his chest and put on a haughty, supercilious expression. “Maybe big sardarji, eh? What you think?”
“I, uh . . .”
“My English bad. I know. But Hindi . . .” He hauled up his right hand and held it aloft, palm up, in the space between us. While I watched he touched the tip of his thumb to the base of his little finger, then to the first and second joints, then to the tip, moving in this fashion from one finger to the next, all the while counting out loud in Tibetan. “. . . chu-sum, chu-zhi, chu-nga, chu-duk . . .” His thumb reached the tip of his pointer finger and he paused for a moment. “Mindu!” He raised his left hand and began the same process all over again, placing the tip of his left thumb at the base of his little finger. “Chu-dun . . .” He stopped, considering, then looked up and announced his discovery in emphatic English. “Seven-ten!” He stared at me in disbelief. “Seven-ten years now I am in India. But Hindi not so good.” He shook his head sadly, as if mourning a lost opportunity. “Why you come here?”
The blunt question caught me off guard. “I’m looking for Nyingpo Toobpa.”
He sat up straight and started in again running
the beads of the rosary through his fingers. “What you say?”
“I’m looking for Nyingpo Toobpa. I was told that he was here.”
“Who want meet this man?”
“Who wants to?” I adjusted my posture, straightening my back ever so slightly. “I do. Me.” I placed one hand on my chest. “I want to meet Nyingpo Toobpa.” It came out like a declaration of faith.
“Where you hear this name, Nyingpo Toobpa? Who tell you?”
I explained about the assistant subdirector and the authorization he had showed me, the one signed by an agent at the Ministry of Home Affairs. “It said there that Nyingpo Toobpa was sent to the library as a representative of the Dalai Lama.”
“Nyingpo Toobpa. Very nice. Very important man.” The beads clicked decisively. “But Nyingpo Toobpa not here.”
“Well then,” I cleared my throat. “Perhaps you can tell me where I might find him.”
“Dead.”
“Dead? What?”
“Nyingpo Toobpa dead man.”
“But, when? When did he die?”
“Oh, not so long,” he replied casually, shuffling the beads through his fingers. One of the silver tufts, the left one, twitched.
This man, whoever he might be, was most definitely bullshitting me.
“Maybe two, three year now.” He shrugged and let his head tilt toward one shoulder—an Indian mannerism he had obviously picked up, even if he hadn’t learned much Hindi.
I gathered my nerve. “Two or three years?”
“Four, maybe.”
“Four.” I looked him in the eye now, making a real effort to suppress my skepticism. “Maybe.”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair.
I dipped into my pocket and pulled out the letter of introduction, unfolded it and spread it out on the desk near the text he had been studying. “Please read this. It should explain why I’m here.”
He picked up the note and raised it a little closer to the light. I could make out the florid loops and swirls of cursive Tibetan script. His lips shaped the words as he read. The further he went, the more his expression softened. By the time he finished, the two silver flags were flying aloft at either end of what I took to be a genuinely warmhearted smile. He looked up and waved the paper in my direction, then let it fall to the desktop. “You know this Gelukpa lama? Dorje Sherap?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Your name . . .” He picked up the paper and studied it. “Tsan-lee Harring-tune. Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “I am Nortul.”
“But what about Nyingpo?”
He silenced me with a wave of his hand. “Nyingpo Toobpa dead man. Is finish.”
So the name was obviously an alias of some kind, which means that the authorization from the ministry must have been either forged or stolen. This was not a comforting thought.
“Nyingpo dead, but Nortul still here. Not so bad, eh?” He smiled. “What you say?”
I returned the smile; it was impossible not to. “Nortul Rinpoche,” I repeated his name, joined my palms and offered a modest bow. “I’m honored to meet you.”
Nortul mimicked my gesture, his rosary swinging from one hand. “Honor meet you, Mr. Tsan-lee. So what Dorje Sherap tell about me, eh?”
“He speaks highly of you. He tells me that you are an outstanding scholar.”
“Out-stand-ing.” He pronounced the word carefully. “Means ‘good,’ eh?”
“More than good. Outstanding means that you’re a very good scholar.”
“Hmmmmm . . . good for Nyingmapa lama, no? Maybe not so good compare to Gelukpa.” He laughed. “What else he say?”
“He’s extremely busy these days at the institute, putting together the library. We didn’t talk all that much.” I immediately sensed that Nortul knew I was lying.
He picked up the note again and scrutinized it. “He say here you read pecha . . . He say you read sherchin—in Sanskrit.”
“Well, yes. My Sanskrit’s okay. And I’ve been reading the Prajnaparamita—uh, sherchin—in Sanskrit and in Tibetan. On my own, mostly.” I smiled. “Well, the truth is I’m doing it completely alone. And I read Tibetan very slowly, and only with the dictionary. But that’s why I’m here. I think Geshe Sherap wrote that I want to learn more. I’m looking for a teacher.” It suddenly struck me as totally inappropriate that I should be asking this man to be my teacher. What right did I have to think he would be interested in teaching me? I eyed the note lying between us on the table.
“Yes,” he nodded. “He say you want haggle.”
“Well, I, uh . . . haggle?”
“What is it?” He squinted, studying my face.
“I don’t understand.”
“Is my English, no?” He dove into the junk on his desk and began rummaging around among the papers and books, shuffling things this way and that, rearranging the piles until he eventually fished out a dog-eared Tibetan-English dictionary and held it up for me to see, accompanying the gesture with a portentous gaze. He thumbed through the pages and finally stopped, running one finger down the column of entries until finding the right word. “Je-gyap. Haggle.” He glanced up at me, then went on reading the other entries. “Also mean ‘barter, trade, give or take in exchange.’ Dorje Sherap say you want haggle English in exchange Tibetan. Eh?” He sat there with the dictionary in his hands, looking extremely satisfied with himself, as if he had just proven his point beyond dispute. It was the same look Mick had given me more times than I wished to remember.
“Yes, of course,” I exclaimed, contritely. “That’s right. I want to trade English lessons for Tibetan lessons.”
At this he positively vibrated with delight. Maniacal glee radiated from his body like a gravitational force, pulling me into his orbit. I could think of nothing else to say, so I simply stood there with an idiotic grin on my face.
“Nice,” he wagged his head up and down, “very nice! When we begin?” His eyes glittered with shameless exuberance. “Now?”
I explained that I had come from Banaras and that I would have to go back for another month or so, but perhaps we could start in May? This too was “nice.” Very nice! He wanted to know if I would be willing to spend the summer in Dharamsala, near the residence of the Dalai Lama. “No Indian people, you know? Only Tibeti.” He gave me another meaningful look, one foreigner to another. “Good place for practice speak Tibeti language.” He had a close friend who would help me find a place to stay. In fact everything would be fixed up when I arrived. How did that sound? I assured him that it all sounded very nice, and with that the deal was settled. We would meet sometime in late May. He gave me his uncle’s name and told me to ask for him at the post office in McLeod Ganj; someone there would contact him for me. Part of me wanted nothing more than to sit right down and begin. No time to waste! Let’s haggle!
The rosary hummed through his fingers. I watched the beads fly past and thought of how quickly the months had disappeared since coming to India. I noticed for the first time that he was wearing another fabulous ornament on the middle finger of his right hand. A chunk of ivory, or maybe some kind of bone, polished smooth and yellowed with age, the surface fractured by an intricate web of hairline cracks, like tiny veins in a dry leaf. It had been carved into a ghoulish carnival mask with two bulging eyes and a broad, hooked nose, nostrils flared over a row of crooked teeth that rose and fell hypnotically as the beads clicked by underneath.
“Well then,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the ring, “I guess it’s all set.”
Again his hands groped out over the desk, stirring up the mess, shuffling and restacking, all the while importuning me to remain for just a few minutes more. He had something very important that he simply had to show me before I left. At last he produced a copybook of the sort that Indian schoolchildren use for their lessons. Several loose threads dangled from its frayed binding. Delux Sarasvati Register was printed on the cover in bold red letters.
> “Come.” He gestured in the direction of an unopened crate that rested on the floor in front of the table. “Sit.” I obeyed his command; there was just enough room to tuck my knees under the desk. “My work,” he exclaimed, patting the book with one hand. “Is translation.” He spoke the word proudly and then seemed to reconsider. “Please, I must request you not laugh on my English. I work alone, you know? Like you!” This realization obviously restored his enthusiasm. “I have wait too long for meeting right person. Foreigner, you know. For help improve English. But now you come! From today we work together! No problem!”
He opened the notebook, turned it around, and pushed it toward me.
“What you think?”
At first I assumed that I was looking at an idiosyncratic style of umey, the cursive Tibetan calligraphy that Dorje Sherap had used to write his letter of introduction, a script I had never learned. Closer inspection belied this initial impression. It was English. But if Nortul Rinpoche’s spoken English was idiosyncratic, then his handwriting—and his prose style—was genuinely original. It passed through my mind that this might be a weird joke of some kind, but I took one glance at the face rising over my shoulder like an impatient moon and dismissed the joke hypothesis as improbable. His expression was far too ingenuous. Painfully so. There could be no question that he was anxious to solicit my reaction to his work. I swam through a quagmire of tortured syntax and highly inventive spelling, then stopped short when halfway down the page a single line of perfect English caught my eye:
Those who do not tremble on encountering the perfection of wisdom called nonclinging, those who are neither terrified nor overcome by dread, they will be filled with wonder.
I read it a second time, then a third, for good measure, before turning to Rinpoche. “What is this?”
He was obviously taken aback. “Is English translation.”
“No. I mean, sure. Right. From a Prajnaparamita text. I can make out that much. But which one?”
Now he flashed me a broad, knowing grin. “Mr. Tsan-lee never see this sherchin. Before today only one man see.”
Maya Page 36
