Kim Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below

Suddenly Charlie leaped to his feet shouting: “Where’s Joe!” and looking around them desperately.

“Not here,” Drepung reminded him. “With Anna today, remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Charlie sank back down. “Sorry. For a second there I forgot.”

“That’s okay. You must be used to watching him all the time.”

“Yes.”

He sat back on the cliff’s edge, shaking his head. Slowly Frank ascended toward them. As he looked up for his next hold his face reminded Charlie of Buster Keaton; he had that same wary and slightly baffled look, ready for anything—unflappable, although not imperturbable, as his eyes revealed just as clearly as Keaton’s that in fact he was perturbed most of the time.

Charlie had always had a lot of sympathy for Buster Keaton. Life as a string of astonishing crises to be dealt with; it seemed right to him. He said, “Drepung?”

“Yes?”

Charlie inspected his torn hand. Drepung held his own hand next to it; both were chewed up by the day’s action.

“Speaking of Joe.”

“Yes?”

Charlie heaved a sigh. He could feel the worry that had built up in him. “I don’t want him to be any kind of special person for you guys.”

“What?”

“I don’t want him to be a reincarnated soul.”

“… Buddhism says we are all such.”

“I don’t want him to be any kind of reincarnated lama. Not a tulku, or a boddhisattva, or whatever else you call it. Not someone your people would have any religious interest in at all.”

Drepung inspected his palm. The skin was about the same color as Charlie’s, maybe more opaque. Let that stand for us, Charlie thought. At least as far as Charlie’s sight was concerned. He couldn’t tell what Drepung was flunking. Except it did seem that the young man didn’t know what to say.

This tended to confirm Charlie’s suspicions. He said, “You know what happened to the new Panchen Lama.”

“Yes. I mean no, not really.”

“Because nobody does! Because they picked a little boy and the Chinese took him and he has never been seen again. Two little boys, in fact.”

Drepung nodded, looking upset. “That was a mess.”

“Tell me. Tell me what happened.”

Drepung grimaced. “The Panchen Lama is the reincarnation of the Buddha Amitabha. He is the second most important spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism, and his relationship with the Dalai Lama has always been complicated. The two were often at odds, but they also helped to choose each other’s successors. Then in the last couple of centuries the Panchen Lama has often been associated with Chinese interests, so it got even more complicated.”

“Sure,” Charlie said.

“So, when the tenth Panchen Lama died, in 1989, the identification of his next reincarnation was obviously a problem. Who would make the determination? The Chinese government told the Panchen Lama’s monastery, Tashilhunpo, to find the new reincarnation. So, that was proper, but they also made it clear they would have final approval of the choice made.”

“On what basis?”

“Well, you know. To control the situation.”

“Ah yes. Of course.”

“So Chadrel Rimpoche, the head of the Tashilhunpo Monastery, contacted the Dalai Lama in secret, to get his help in making the choice, as was proper in the tradition. His group had already identified several children in north Tibet as possibilities. So the Dalai Lama performed divinations to discover which of them was the new Panchen Lama. He found that it was a boy living near Tashilhunpo. The signs were clear. But now the question was, how were they going to get that candidate approved by the Chinese, while also hiding the involvement of the Dalai Lama.”

“Couldn’t Chadrel Rimpoche just tell the Chinese that’s who it was?”

“Well, but the Chinese had introduced a system of their own. It involves a thing called the Golden Urn. When there are any uncertainties, and those are easy to create, then the three top names are put into this urn. The name drawn from the urn is destined to be the correct one.”

“What?” Charlie cried. “They draw the name out of a hat?”

“Out of an urn. Yes.”

“But that’s crazy! I mean presumably if there is a reincarnated lama in one of these kids, he is who he is! You can’t be drawing a name from a hat.”

“One would suppose. But the Chinese have never been averse to harming Tibetan traditions, as you know. Anyway, in this case the Dalai Lama’s divination was a boy in a region under Chinese control, so it seemed as if chances for his confirmation were fairly good. But there was concern that the Chinese would use the urn to deliberately choose someone other than the one Chadrel Rimpoche recommended, just to show they were in control, and to deny the Dalai Lama any possible influence.”

“Sure. And so?”

“And so, the Dalai Lama eventually decided to announce the identity of the boy, thinking that the Chinese would then be pressured to conform to Tibetan wishes, but satisfied that it was a boy living under their control.”

“Oh no,” Charlie said. “I’m surprised anyone could have thought that, knowing the Chinese.”

Drepung sighed. “It was a gamble. The Dalai Lama must have felt that it was the best chance they had.”

“But it didn’t work.”

“No.”

“So what happened to the boy?”

“He and his parents were taken into custody. Chadrel Rimpoche also.”

“Where are they now?”

“No one knows. They have not been seen since that time.”

“Now see? I don’t want Joe to be any part of that sort of thing!”

Drepung sighed. Finally he said, “The Panchen Lama is a special case, very highly politicized, because of the Chinese. Many returned lamas are identified without any such problems.”

“I don’t care! Besides, you can’t be sure whether it will get complicated or not.”

“No Chinese are involved.”

“I don’t care!”

Drepung hunched forward a little, as if to say, What can I do, I can’t do anything.

“Look,” Charlie said. “It’s upsetting Anna. She doesn’t believe in anything you can’t see or quantify, you know that. It upsets her even to try. You make this kind of stuff be about Joe and it will just freak her out. She’s trying not to think about it right now, I can tell, but even that is freaking her out. She’s not good at not thinking about things. She thinks about things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be. I mean, think of it this way. If she hadn’t befriended you guys like she did when you first came here, then you would never even have known Joe existed. So in effect you are punishing Anna for her kindness to you.”

Drepung pursed his lips, hummed unhappily. He looked like he had while climbing: unhappy, faced with a problem.

“Besides,” Charlie pressed, “the whole idea that your kid is somehow not just, you know, your kid—that he’s someone else somehow—that in itself is upsetting. Offensive, one might even say. I mean he is a reincarnation already, of me and Anna.”

“And your ancestors.”

“Right, true. But anyone else, no.”

“Hmmm.”

“But you see what I mean? How it feels?”

“Yes.” Drepung nodded, rocking his whole body forward and back. “Yes, I do.”

They sat there, looking down at the river. A lone kayaker was working her way upstream against the white flow. Below them Frank, who was standing by the shore again, was staring out at her.

Charlie gestured down at Frank. “He seems interested.”

“Indeed he does.”

They watched Frank watch her.

“So,” Charlie persevered, “maybe you could talk to Rudra Cakrin about this matter for me. See if he can do something, see if there is some kind of, I don’t know, exorcism he can do. Not that I mean to imply anything, just some kind of I don’t know. Re-individuation ceremony. To clear him out, and well—leave him alone. Are there such ceremonies?”