Peter Dickinson - Tulku

Theodore started into his story. He tried to begin with the destruction of the Settlement, but the Lama made him start with his own birth, and was both surprised and disappointed that he had no idea what astrological signs he had been born under. Then the details and timing of Mother’s death were apparently important, but Father’s work and the success of the Settlement quite uninteresting. When it came to the meeting with Mrs Jones, Theodore expected to have to go back and explain all about her, but the Lama cut him short.

‘We can consider that later, perhaps,’ he said. ‘But ask the woman now why does she roam through wild places, seeking flowers. Whence is this need?’

‘Tell him . . . oh, don’t tell him about Monty – that’d take all night. Tell him I don’t know – I just like the seeking and finding, that’s all. It’s true, too.’

‘A search,’ muttered the Lama. ‘I have read that all searches are the one search. And has the woman found satisfaction?’

‘Funny he should ask that,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘You remember me saying, first time we saw them lilies in the coomb, as how I felt they might of been sending for me, somehow. I really did feel it, all while we was there. But since then, I dunno, I’ve been thinking that wasn’t really it. There’s something else, and them lilies was only a sign-post on the way. Go on. I know it sounds nonsense, but you might as well tell him, since he asked.’

Theodore translated as best he could. The Lama listened with close attention and then began to make a curious humming noise in his throat, a purring vibration that seemed to involve no movement of air in his lungs.

‘A sign,’ he whispered at last. ‘The lilies. And the horse. Child, who drew those pictures which you carry?’

‘Mrs Jones drew the lily. I was trying to draw the horse. Why do you want to know all these things? Where are you taking us?’

The old man ignored the questions.

‘The Chinese with whom you travel,’ he said, ‘is he a servant of his Government? He is no ordinary servant, I think.’

‘Course not,’ said Mrs Jones, when Theodore had translated. ‘What the old geezer means is he thinks Lung is a spy. Tell him I picked poor Lung up in Canton, ’cause his uncle swore he could talk a lot of Chinese lingos, besides Miao and Lolo what he only knew three words of. He’s a poor scrap of a poet what can’t get a government job, ’cause he failed all his examinations from thinking beautiful thoughts – and if he’s got the gumption to go spying, why I’m Queen of England. Besides, I never let on as I was hoping to get to Tibet, or he wouldn’t of come in the first place. Tell him that. And ask him what it’s all about, while you’re at it.’

It was hard to fit her rush of speech into staid Mandarin, but Theodore did as well as he could and added the question at the end expecting to be put off again. But this time the Lama answered quite straightforwardly.

‘Yes, I will explain,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps you, who carried the signs of which the oracle spoke, will be able to tell me the next step of my search. I seek a child. It is our belief that the soul does not die with the body, but begins a new life, forgetting all that went before. Only when a soul has attained enlightenment is it freed from this endless wheel of death and re-birth and can go to join the great soul. I know that you, being Christians, do not share this belief.

‘Now, there are certain great souls who, though they have reached enlightenment, choose to continue in the world of death and birth in order that they may show their fellow creatures the path to freedom which they themselves have chosen. And these men have reached such spiritual mastery that they can overcome the forgetfulness which ordinary souls experience at death and birth. They can will their own consciousness to continue from one life into the next. Their memory does not remain whole, however. At first it is all unrelated fragments, but as they grow they can be helped to piece these fragments back into the whole it once was, so that all their lives and all their old learning become present once more to their consciousness.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of that,’ said Mrs Jones when Theodore had finished translating. ‘They’ve got this head priest called the Dalai Lama, and when he dies they go and look for a boy born at the same time to be the new Dalai Lama, and they say it’s really the same person.’

The old man must have picked the known syllables out.

‘He whom you call the Dalai Lama,’ he said, ‘we know to be the Tulku, or reincarnation of Avalokitesvara, the Great Compassionate One. But he is not the only Tulku, and the Abbot of my own monastery of Dong Pe was also such a one, Tulku of the Siddha Asara. In his latest body he was known as the Lama Tojing Rimpoche, and though he was not yet thirty years of age, all who knew him bore witness to his spiritual mastery and holiness and wisdom and learning. But for twelve years we have not seen him. He set out on a journey to Daparang, where we rested last night, and never arrived. It was his custom to travel alone, and often to wander into waste places to perform his spiritual exercises, so we did not find his disappearance surprising. But winter came on and he had not returned, and then a rumour grew that he had been waylaid by traitor monks and sold to the Chinese.

‘I must explain that the Chinese have long claimed lordship of Tibet, and there is in Pekin the Tashi Lama, who they say is the true spiritual head of our people. Dong Pe is the nearest great monastery to the Chinese border, and if its Abbot were to acknowledge the claims of the Tashi Lama that would be a victory for the Chinese. Tojing Rimpoche, however, was always loyal to the Dalai Lama at Lhasa.’

‘That explains why he’s been looking so beady-eyed at poor Lung,’ commented Mrs Jones.

‘Now we have a famous oracle at Dong Pe,’ said the Lama, still talking as though he were discussing the most ordinary things in the world, such as weather or crops. ‘But when we consulted it, it told us nothing, not even whether Tojing Rimpoche lived or died. We sent to the State oracle at Lhasa and received only riddling answers. And so matters rested until this year, when two things happened. First a story reached us that the Chinese were preparing to announce the discovery of the Tulku of the Siddha Asara; and second our own oracle at Dong Pe spoke plainly for the first time, saying that Tojing Rimpoche was dead, and it was now time to search for the Tulku. It gave us certain signs, but did not tell us when Tojing Rimpoche had died, so that we could not know the age of the child we sought, except that he must be less than thirteen years of age – which you call twelve years of age.

‘I will tell you the signs. Towards the south-east we must search. There would be a river. There would be a guide, and symbols of lower creations. There would be three people, one of them the mother of the Tulku. And there would be danger to the Tulku. Furthermore, it is usual in such cases for the oracle to describe some point by which the house in which the Tulku is born may be recognized, but this time there was no hint of any house at all. Lastly, though in this the oracles spoke even more obscurely than in the other matters – and oracles are seldom wholly clear – it seemed that the child we sought was begotten in a foreign land. This last sign we greatly feared for it seemed to us that it might be taken to show that the child from Pekin, of whom the rumours spoke, is the true Tulku of the Siddha Asara.

‘Therefore we decided to search for our Tulku. It is normal to form a commission of several experienced Lamas to conduct this search, but in this case we decided to send only one man and to conduct the search in secret. And since it was I who had first recognized the child who became Tojing Rimpoche as the Tulku of Asara, it was thought best that I should conduct the search alone.