Peter Dickinson - Tulku

‘No I’m not! I’m a Christian, and I always will be. I’m not going to help with any of these heathen ceremonies! I don’t believe in any of it!’

‘Don’t you?’ said the Major, not at all put out, but leaning forward and trying to peer at Theodore with his bulging, nearly sightless eyes. ‘Used to think a lot of it was nonsense meself, you know, even after I settled in here. But bit by bit I’ve begun to see how it all fits in. You wait and see what the Lama Amchi’s got to say.’

‘Isn’t there anyone else in the monastery who speaks English?’ cried Theodore.

‘Not so far as I know. Quite a few speak Pali, of course, and Sanskrit. Lot of Chinese. Mongolian dialects. Couple of fellers came up from Burma and stayed on – they must speak something . . . But in any case, me boy, it’s no go. You are the Guide, you see. A child of a foreign faith, bearing symbols of the lower creations – that’s what the oracle said. I heard him with my own ears, and it’s as plain as the nose on my face that the powers mean you.’

‘You didn’t hear him,’ said Theodore. ‘You heard that other monk reading out what he said the oracle had said.’

‘But that is the way it is always done. The powers only speak in the barest whisper.’

‘So you never know if the man with the slate is telling the truth.’

‘My dear boy,’ said the Major, still not seeming at all shocked, ‘why shouldn’t he? They’re not fools, these monks. The Master of Protocol – that’s the fellow you saw with the slate – he’s a long way on to enlightenment, almost free from the illusions of the world. Think what he’d do to all that if he started perverting the word of the oracle!’

‘He might think he was doing the right thing. I mean, he wants to keep Dong Pe out of the hands of the Chinese, doesn’t he, and that means getting in first before the Chinese produce somebody they say is their own Tulku. And anyway, people do do things like that – Christians too, famous ministers, and bishops, and cardinals, although they know they’d go to hell for it.’

‘I dare say. I dare say. There’s nowt so queer as folk, as my poor batman used to say – good example meself, some people might think. You’ll just have to take my word for it that the Master of Protocol was telling the truth, and we won’t talk any more about it. It won’t get us anywhere and it will only make you miserable.’

‘But . . .’

‘I think we’ll drop the subject. No? Well, I suppose I’ll have to show you I mean it. I hadn’t meant to tell you this, but I see I must. Now listen. Even if the Lama Amchi himself were to come and beg me to do what you want, I’d turn him down. He might threaten to throw me out of Dong Pe, but I’d still turn him down.’

‘But why . . .’

‘That woman . . . I’ve been fretting about this, because I didn’t care to tell you, but as a matter of fact I’ll be glad to get it off my chest. Lama Amchi asked me to go along yesterday morning – never set foot in his house before – sit behind a screen, listen to what you and Mrs Jones were saying. I’ve told him I won’t do it again. Remarkable character, Mrs Jones, don’t you consider? Here I am, past seventy and good as blind, and yet . . . I’ve known quite a few women in my day – nothing like an Indian Army station for hot little intrigues – and yet there was I, tucked in behind that screen, listening to that voice, and she brought it all back – the glances across the dinner table, the squeeze of a foot as you helped some other fellow’s wife into the saddle, dusk beneath the deodars . . . Can’t have that, you know, just when I’m starting to free meself from the wheel, all those memories coming whistling me back, hey? Not much help to you, me boy. I’m telling you partly to get it off me chest, and partly to show you that there’s no question at all I’m going to do what you ask. I’m sorry, but there it is.’

‘I see,’ said Theodore dully. ‘Shall we go and clean the temple?’

‘Been round already. All done. Can’t have the Guide doing that sort of work, you know. What would the other monks think of me?’

‘I like cleaning the temple. It’s something to do.’

‘My dear boy . . .’

‘I’m going to start over where I left off, and nobody’s going to stop me.’

The Major’s protests were short and feeble. He liked company while he was doing his chores and was glad to be overruled. Encouraged by this success Theodore determined to refuse to be present at Mrs Jones’s ceremony of initiation as the Lama Amchi’s chela , whatever anyone said or threatened.

He was brushing out the intricate crown of a female god called Tara when the big doors opened and the oracle-priest came in to perform his morning rituals. His face had a huge bruise all down one side, and he limped along, supported on one side by a young monk and on the other by a crutch.

‘How do you feel?’ asked Theodore, in answer to his croaked greeting.

‘Like a thrashed yak,’ said the oracle-priest, with a rueful peasant grin.

14

THE TUSSLE OVER the initiation ceremony was nothing like as fierce as Theodore had expected. He told Mrs Jones beforehand, and she pleaded with him with surprising earnestness, then suddenly shrugged and said, ‘Ah, well. You’ll just have to tell old Amchi it’s against your religious principles. I’ll back you up, if you really feel that way.’

The Lama Amchi on the other hand accepted Theodore’s decision almost as though he had been aware of it already.

‘It is not necessary that the Mother of the Tulku understands the ritual,’ he said. ‘It is only necessary that she has faith in it. But tomorrow, when her instruction begins, it will be necessary for you to be present.’

‘All right,’ said Theodore reluctantly.

The Lama Amchi was a teacher very like Father in some ways, patient, systematic, stone-certain of his divine right to teach. At the school in the Settlement Theodore had been neither the best pupil nor the worst. At Dong Pe there was only one pupil, Mrs Jones. Theodore was a piece of classroom equipment – a blackboard, so to speak, on which the Lama Amchi wrote for Mrs Jones to read. Theodore deliberately chose this role, rather than become a second pupil in the class. He tried to learn nothing, to let only the surface of his mind become engaged and then to wipe it clean as soon as Mrs Jones had understood what was written there. The job was both tiring and tedious, and though Theodore was perfectly at home in both languages, after about half an hour his mind would go numb, so that he was unable to find the right words for even the simplest phrase. The Lama seemed able to guess when these moments were coming, and would often tell him to rest just as he felt the blankness coming on him. Then Theodore would rise and bow and go to one of the windows, prop his Bible on the sill and read for a while with his fingers stuffed in his ears to shut out the sound of Mrs Jones practising the throbbing and humming mantras which the Lama was teaching her. Or else he would take a pencil and a sheet of the fibrous Tibetan paper and make one more effort to sketch the majestic bulk of the mountain called the Dome of Purest Light, which composed all the far horizon of the valley. After a while, as if at an unperceived signal, he would fold his paper away or put his Bible into his pocket, turn, bow to the Lama, and become a blackboard again.

But even as a blackboard he learnt something. Certain marks, so to speak, could never be quite rubbed out. For instance, he was startled out of indifference by discovering that the Lama didn’t believe in God. Gods, yes, but all bound like men to the world of illusion, beyond which lay something which wasn’t God, but was what the Lama called enlightenment, the only not-illusion. All life yearned towards that state. Souls were like fish struggling towards their spawning-ground against the rush of a great river; they were born again in many forms on that almost endless journey, until they reached their goal. But some, reaching it, turned back to help the others. The Buddha himself was not God, or even a god, but a soul who had chosen to be re-born into the world of illusion when it could have escaped, in order to show others the way. The Siddha Asara was another such teacher.