Peter Dickinson - Tulku

They had reached by this time the gallery on the south side of the courtyard, and a little way along it Sumpa halted and leant his elbows on the rail. Theodore fell in beside him, as casually as he could.

‘You see the hermit-caves?’ said Sumpa.

‘Yes.’

Major Price-Evans had told Theodore about the hermit-caves. In each of them lived a monk who had vowed to endure total isolation while he performed spiritual exercises. Most of them were walled in, with only a slit left open through which food could be passed. At the end of his time the monk would emerge purified, and gifted with strange powers. Apparently the Lama Amchi had achieved this, living alone, Walled into one of the caves, for seven years. It was to this he owed his spiritual authority. Seven years!

‘Follow the left-hand stair up, then,’ Sumpa muttered, ‘and you will see a ledge branching off to left and right. Three caves on the right-hand branch and one on the left. The woman is in that single cave on the left.’

‘Walled in?’ whispered Theodore.

‘Of course not. There is a token stone at the entrance. Now, immediately we have left the guest-house I will take you to a side-door to the monastery – the one you used when you came to the ceremony of the oracle. Go there on the night and behind the door you will find a monk’s robe, folded. Take that with you and go to the cave. You will meet no-one of importance. All the senior monks will be in the temple for the ritual that starts the days of meditation before the festival. The woman will be there also for a while, but at a certain point in the ceremony she will leave and return to her cave. She will find you there and not be alarmed. You will explain what is happening. She must dress in the robe you carry and raise its cowl, so that in the dark she may pass for a monk. You will lead her back by way of the door through which you entered the monastery, and turn west, along beneath the wall, until you come to the place where there are many shrines on either side of the path, above and below. You know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the third shrine turn left and climb straight up the hill. In thirty paces you will come to a platform which was made for a shrine not yet built. Tefu will be waiting there, with the honoured Lung, and your horses. He will have yaks and men. If you leave at once, travelling in the dark, you will be able to camp by the edge of the Stone Lake and cross it next day at dawn. You can do all this? It must be you, because you speak the woman’s language, and moreover you are the Guide, so no-one will question or stop you.’

‘I think I can do it. I don’t see why not. I’ll make sure I know my way through the monastery so that I can find it in the dark. I’m much more worried about the journey.’

‘No difficulty there, provided you leave unnoticed. You will have three days’ start, and before the end of that time you will be among friends. I am only the furthest finger-tip of the strong hand that will take you to safety.’

A monk came pacing along the gallery. Sumpa started telling Theodore the names of the demons who inhabited the mountain peak, but as soon as the monk was out of earshot, led him away to show him where he would hide the robe Mrs Jones was to wear. Theodore by now knew the monastery well enough to notice that they were making a longish detour to avoid the courtyard where Yidam Yamantaka – Death and Slayer of Death – stared at the sky.

There was one more meeting at the Lama Amchi’s, and Theodore, despite his new nervousness, could not see that it differed at all from any of the other recent meetings. The pattern had changed from that of earlier days. Nowadays Mrs Jones wore her nun’s robe and barely seemed to notice Theodore, speaking directly to the Lama in Tibetan, stumbling but happier to communicate like this. The Lama answered her questions in short, repetitive sentences, and only called on Theodore to amplify some idea that could not be treated in simple terms. So Theodore spent most of his time at the window, reading or drawing; and even when he was taking part in the lessons, the ideas he was asked to translate were so strange and rarified that there was no need for him to shut his mind to them – he could not have begun to grasp them, however hard he had tried.

This made the lessons less tiring, but he was distressed by the increasing gulf that had opened between Mrs Jones and himself. It was she, now, who treated him as a mechanical device, while the Lama became increasingly polite and kindly. At the end of one meeting he had said, ‘Theodore, a guide exists by virtue of the path he has to show. Once the journey is made and the path known, he is a guide no more. A bowl of life-giving food does not itself give life. Once the food is eaten, the bowl is only a bowl.’

‘Yes, I know. I didn’t want to be anyone’s bowl.’

‘But you have served honestly, my child. I think well of you, for what my poor thoughts are worth.’

‘Thank you.’

An odd little part of Theodore’s nerves rose from the prospect of resuming the old life with Mrs Jones, the songs and the teasing and the rush of energy flowing out of her which was now all turned inward. Would it be like that again? He didn’t dare wonder. Luckily at that last lesson he was hardly called on to take part at all. It consisted largely of silences, repetitions of sacred formulae, hummings in the throat or single syllables exploding, while Theodore stood at the window and neither read nor drew, but stared at the majestic skyline he hoped he would not see again.

The scene at the guest-house went like a well-rehearsed play. For some days the over-decorated little room had become increasingly crowded and smelly and noisy as visitors began to gather for the festival. Tibetans seemed to have no sense of privacy at all, so wherever there was a spare patch of floor they thought it natural to spread out their flea-ridden blankets and bed down. Lung, now triply fastidious in his loneliness, fought against these invasions, using a screen and a barrier of baggage to mark out the area which belonged to him and Theodore, but even these frontiers of civilization contracted daily under pressure from the alien horde. On the evening marked for the escape there were already eight Tibetans – two of them boisterous small girls – using the guest-house when the door heaved on its frame, the latch gave, and a squat woman backed in, dragging a loose pile of baggage. Two thin little men, so alike that they were certainly brothers and therefore probably her husbands, followed laden with pots and food. Several children seemed to be hovering in the dusk beyond the door-frame.

The woman, bewildered but cheerful, stared round the room, spotted the last empty space between Lung’s cot and Theodore’s, and marched towards it. Lung rose to fend her off, but her technique for getting through the gap between the screen and the baggage was the same as the one she had used at the doorway – she reversed, pulling her belongings behind her, moving with enough momentum to knock Lung on to his cot when she collided with him. By the time he was on his feet the children – there were only two of them after all – were climbing across the baggage pile, the men were halted in the gap, and three of the other inhabitants of the guest-house were crowding behind them to watch the upheaval and explain to the woman that the space between the foreigners’ cots was sacred ground, or something of the sort. At the same time the two little girls came shrilling across to tell the new children about the wickedness of climbing on foreigners’ baggage, a lesson they themselves had only learnt two days ago. In the end Lung had to move the screen to reach the door where the Steward of the Guest-houses, a middle-aged monk, stood gap-toothed and blinking.