Peter Dickinson - Tulku

‘First-rate brew, this,’ said the Major happily. ‘Nothing like it for keeping you going in the mountains. Often strikes me that if we could have persuaded Thomas Atkins to drink the stuff we’d never have had all that trouble getting him to Kabul and back. Hey?’

‘I guess you’re right, sir,’ said Theodore, taking the copper mug. He had little idea what the Major was talking about, but there was a warmth, an eagerness, an innocence about the old man that made you want to please him. Even, it turned out, to the extent of drinking Tibetan tea and getting it down without gagging.

Meanwhile the Major talked. His story was difficult to follow because he rambled to and fro in time and space, and because the people and campaigns he had known forty years ago seemed no more and no less real than the pagan demons he now served. At one moment he would be talking about a miraculous fact achieved by some Lama, and the next he would have slid into an account of getting a famine train through southern India, only to find the people he had come to save lying dead in their tens of thousands round the railway head with the kites wheeling above the almost fleshless bodies. As far as Theodore could make out he had been a soldier in the British Army in India, an engineer concerned to build the bridges and roads for the campaigns of the British Empire.

He seemed to have dabbled in a lot of religions and superstitions but had gone on with his soldiering until something had happened . . . ‘Just came to me, me boy, like Paul on the road to Damascus – not so sudden as that, quite, didn’t fall off me horse or anything – been brewing up inside me for a long while without me knowing – but there I was, one week sitting at me desk, supervising me coolies, dining in mess, all that, and next week I’d chucked it all up and was tramping along a dusty red road, barefoot, with nothing in the world but me begging bowl.’ He seemed to have wandered right down into Ceylon, where he had finally been converted to Buddhism, and then come rambling back towards the hills, further and further, settling at last in this final cranny in Dong Pe. It didn’t seem to him at all extraordinary – nor had Theodore’s sudden greeting on the temple steps in a language he hadn’t spoken for twenty years, nor did anything else that had happened or could possibly happen. He was almost blind.

‘Finished your tea?’ said the Major suddenly. ‘Come and have a look at the temple, hey? Worth seeing, you know. Well worth seeing.’

It didn’t cross Theodore’s mind to refuse. The dark was no longer ominous in his company, the pagan powers no longer dangerous. At the cell door the Major slipped a pair of thick felt pads onto his boots and began to walk with a movement like a skater’s.

‘Might as well give the floor a bit of a polish while I’m going my rounds,’ he said.

‘That’s clever,’ said Theodore.

‘Not my own idea. Copied it from a lama I met at Ghoom.’

‘Did you make the windmills that drive the prayer-wheels outside?’

‘Yes, yes indeed. Lamas weren’t all that keen on it. Wheel’s sacred, you know. Never see a barrow in Tibet. Bit uneasy about using wheels, even when it’s to drive prayer-wheels, and some of them not that keen on having the prayer-wheels turn of their own accord – can’t acquire virtue by turning them yourself, hey?’

‘One side has stopped turning.’

‘I know, I know. Storm last winter, you know, and my old eyes aren’t up to mending it. Never mind. All material endeavour must fail, you know. It’s all illusion. Not that I wouldn’t like to get it mended. Dear me. Now this fellow here, he’s one of the chos-skyong – that means Spirit Kings . . .’

The temple was quite small, and filled with the presence of the gold-faced Buddha. The gold was real gold, Theodore decided, and the glitter of the idol’s ornaments sparkled from real jewels. Though the temple was packed with objects – so much so that there seemed little room for worshippers – these all had the air of being precisely placed in relation to the central statue and became part of the Buddha’s presence. Even the line of hideous, grimacing, weapon-waving demons in front of which the Major had halted were part of the grammar of the place, with a meaning of their own in the context of the smooth metal face and the eternal smile. Theodore could sense that, though he didn’t know the grammar in question and didn’t want to.

‘Could you teach me Tibetan?’ he said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said the Major. ‘Why do you want to learn it?’

‘Oh . . . well . . . I like to be able to talk to people, I suppose.’

‘Much better keep silence. Much better. Still, I dare say I could. Started writing a dictionary when I first came here . . . Tell me something, me boy – have I got this fellow clean?’

Theodore inspected the Spirit King with different eyes. Parts of the monster gleamed with steady polishing, but elsewhere a cranny held a cobweb or the whole surface of a dishlike object which the monster carried in one of his several hands was mildewed with ancient dust. There had been a note of anxiety in the Major’s voice.

‘He’s fine,’ said Theodore. ‘Just a couple of places . . . would you like me to give them a rub?’

‘If you would,’ said the Major, gruffly. ‘Don’t mind telling you I’ve been fretted about this since my eyes began to go. Worked out a routine, you see, a system of work so I can keep everything spick and span as a gun-carriage, but I’m not such a fool that I don’t know I’m bound to miss places. Oracle-priest, he’s very nice about it, pretends not to notice . . .’

‘Aren’t you the priest in charge?’

‘Dear me, no. Dear me. I’m not the oracle-priest. Shouldn’t care to have that happen to me. No, no, I’m only the cleaner . . . Now, you’ll find a ladder under that hanging on the back wall and I’ll get you my brush . . .’

For an hour or more Theodore climbed about among the idols brushing and polishing, while the Major pottered around on the floor, muttering prayers, commenting on the attributes of the idols, filling the innumerable little lamps that glowed on almost every flat surface, or pulling from a shelf a loose-leafed sacred book to show Theodore its intricate strange pictures and patterns. Far off, like a clock striking, a gong began to boom with a steady beat.

‘We’ll pack it in now,’ said the Major. ‘He’ll be here any moment and I like things shipshape when he comes.’

‘Who?’

‘Oracle-priest. First rate young man – would have made a good soldier, I sometimes think. Can’t say how grateful I am to you, young fellow.’

‘Shall I come back tomorrow and do some more? And you could start teaching me Tibetan.’

‘Have to think about that. Now, stow that ladder where you found it and come and give me a heave on the other door . . .’

The sun did not shine into the temple, but the mid-morning brightness was strong enough to lay a gleaming path across the polished floor as the doors opened. The gleam darkened with a shadow, and through the widening gap paced a monk wearing the usual russet robe and a tall pointed hat made of silvery cloth. The monk knelt before the Buddha and bowed till the tip of his hat touched the floor. The Major and Theodore, each standing by a leaf of the doors, watched him in silence for a full two minutes until he rose, removed his hat and turned. He gave some sort of blessing to the Major, who answered him in Tibetan, beaming and anxious; then he turned to Theodore.

‘Welcome to my temple,’ he said in Mandarin.

He was a square-built man of about forty, smooth-faced and athletic-looking.

‘Thank you for letting me see it,’ said Theodore awkwardly. ‘It is very interesting.’