Peter Dickinson - Tulku

In fact the oracle-priest seemed as happy to answer questions as to ask them. The Lama Tojing Rimpoche had chosen him – ‘recognized him’ was what he said – as the new Dong Pe oracle soon after the old one had died. One day he and his father and his brother and his uncle had been leading a train of yaks across the Stone Lake when they had found the Lama Tojing, all alone, waiting for them on the near shore. The Lama Tojing had simply beckoned him out from among the other three. He hadn’t wanted the job, but he’d been chosen, hadn’t he? There was no escape from that. Next he’d been sent on a four-year training course in Lhasa, and by the time he’d come back to Dong Pe the Lama Tojing had vanished. No, he’d no theories about where he’d got to – of course the other Lamas had kept asking him when he was performing his duties as oracle, but apparently he’d never given answers that anybody could understand. Of course he didn’t remember any of that himself – he was only telling Theodore what the others had told him afterwards.

‘It must have been very difficult getting trains of yaks across the Stone Lake,’ said Theodore.

‘Not as bad then as it is now. Since Lama Tojing vanished the Guardians have got a lot worse, throwing the stones about and that. We used to be able to keep the causeway in much better shape – the Guardians seem to know we haven’t got a Siddha here, and they do what they like.’

The Tibetan lessons seemed to go off the rails almost at once. Major Price-Evans had learnt the language mainly in order to understand the prayers and chants of worship, and the sacred books stored in the temple. It was difficult for him to remember that there might be any other reason for learning the language. His Buddhism was just as intense as Father’s Christianity, but in a quite different manner; Father had been, so to speak, an athlete of faith, funnelling all his energies into his worship, consciously driving himself on to further attainments and endurances; the Major seemed to make no effort at all – he was like some natural creature, it might be a grass-hopper, which can flick itself across a space a hundred times its own length because that is what it was made to do. So he tried to teach Theodore by chants and ritual, which Theodore’s mind refused to accept, even when his tongue mouthed the incomprehensible syllables. Learning went slowly.

Theodore did learn, though. On about the fourth morning he was able to give an adequate greeting to a group of women who had dragged a communal loom out into a courtyard and were weaving a patterned piece of cloth too long and narrow for a blanket, too fine for a rug. They laughed as they answered him and tried to explain what the cloth was for, but he understood very little of their quick chatter. He got the impression that they knew who he was and why he was there, and were excited but a little wary of him, as though he might bring ill luck on them if he said or did the wrong thing.

In the afternoons Theodore would have a drawing-lesson from Mrs Jones, and then help her clear and prepare the patch of earth she was planning to use as a garden for her finds – or at least pretending to plan. ‘Nothing like a bit of garden to make it look like you’re meaning to stay,’ she said. On days when her expeditions took her further afield Theodore would draw for a while, and then wander by himself through the steep, many-tracked wood below the monastery, with its pockets of clustered shrines and groves of prayer-flags.

Sometimes Lung joined Mrs Jones on her expeditions – she had her escort thoroughly tame by now, of course, so that they did what she said without question – but often he spent the day in the monastery, where the Lama Tomdzay had introduced him to the Librarian. Most of the sacred books were kept in one of the two temples, but the monastery over the years had amassed a weird collection of other volumes; one evening Lung produced a collection of Latin sermons, printed in Madrid in 1743 – heaven knows how it had wandered, almost like Major Price-Evans, to this last nook. Theodore, who to Lung’s disappointment knew no Latin, feigned interest but took it back to the Library next day, and found Lung there sitting with a middle-aged Lama, drinking tea Chinese-fashion, and discussing the exact meaning of an ancient Chinese Buddhist hymn with a scholarly absorption that seemed to show he’d completely forgotten why he was supposed to be there.

On the seventh evening of their stay Tomdzay came to the guest-house in the dusk and told them that the stars were propitious for the oracle ceremony to be held next morning, and that the Lama Amchi had finished his period of contemplation and would appear. The three foreign guests were expected to be present.

‘I’m not going,’ said Theodore in English.

‘Oh, I think you better,’ said Mrs Jones.

‘I will not attend a ceremony in a heathen temple.’

Theodore would have liked the words to come out with heroic firmness but all he achieved was a feeble mutter. The Lama Tomdzay looked at him enquiringly. Lung translated what Theodore had said into Mandarin, toning down its bluntness with polite twirls.

‘The ceremony will not be held in the temple,’ said the Lama Tomdzay.

‘That makes no difference. I’m not going,’ said Theodore, still speaking English and leaving Lung to translate. The Lama Tomdzay stood for a moment, nodding his head gently, then took Lung by the elbow and led him to the door, where they spoke for a while in low voices. Lung came back looking embarrassed.

‘Tomdzay say this,’ he said in English. ‘If Theo not come gladly to oracle ceremony, then monks bind him and carry him to temple.’

‘No!’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I won’t have it! If they’re going to do that to Theo, they’ll have to do it to me as well!’

‘I say this,’ said Lung. ‘I tell him Missy fight for Theo. He say monks bind and carry Missy also.’

‘Let ’em,’ said Mrs Jones grimly.

‘No,’ said Theodore. ‘I’ll come.’

Lung looked immensely relieved, but Mrs Jones shook her head.

‘It’s all right,’ said Theodore. ‘They can’t touch me.’

‘Course they can’t,’ said Mrs Jones with one of her sudden, marvellous smiles. ‘Only it just shows how far they’re ready to go, don’t it?’

Next morning she appeared from behind her screen wearing a long black dress, padded at the hips, narrow at the waist, with a double row of pearl buttons running up the curve of her bosom to her high lace collar. She took half an hour to coax her hair into a tall structure of curling swags, and grumbled about her hat, a little black nonsense which she pinned to the front of the hair-pile so that its two bright blue feathers curved up over the top and its fine veil just covered her eyes.

‘If only I hadn’t left that other hat-box behind,’ she said, ‘where that first lot of beggars had a go at us. I had a lovely hat in there, just the job for getting me fortune told in church.’

Theodore thought she looked extremely striking, and he could sense Lung almost shivering with pleasure at the sight of her – indeed, the dress had about it a hint of military uniform, with its stiffness and formality disciplining her bouncy curves. She had painted her face several layers thick and her eyes flashed with excitement behind the veil.

When the Lama Tomdzay led them out of the guest-house Theodore saw that the paths of the mountainside were covered with little processions, as if the whole valley was emptying itself up into the monastery. A crowd jostled at the main gate, but Tomdzay headed further west to a narrow dark door which Theodore had always seen closed before now. Inside it they climbed a steep stair to the series of open galleries which linked the upper storeys of the courtyards; below them the crowd moved and bustled at random, and even up in these apparently private areas they came on several groups of gossiping peasants, usually with a monk or two among them. Once they picked their way through a full-blown family meal with children scampering round while adults sucked noisily at the reeking tea.