Peter Dickinson - Tulku

Lung began to argue. The Steward, who had acquired a smattering of Mandarin in the course of his duties, answered mostly with gestures, designed to show that the other guest-houses were even more crowded. Angrily Lung took him by the elbow and pulled him out of the door, so that it seemed perfectly natural for Theodore to wriggle through the crush and join the discussion outside. He reached them in time to see Sumpa come strolling down the path from the monastery. Lung turned to him in despair and fury.

Perhaps it was all a little too pat, but it seemed to Theodore quite convincing. Sumpa and the Steward argued for a little in Tibetan – perhaps for the benefit of the visitors now crowding the doorway, or perhaps because Sumpa had somehow engineered it that the Steward should bring the newcomers down, without letting him know the reason. But after a minute Sumpa turned to Theodore.

‘If the honoured Guide will come with me,’ he said, ‘I will show him an empty cell in the monastery which he can share with the honoured Lung. Meanwhile the honoured Lung can supervise the packing of your belongings. These peasants will bring them up to the path below the monastery wall and I will arrange for their collection from there.’

He spoke a couple of sentences in Tibetan and turned away, striding up the path with brisk small steps. Theodore caught him up.

‘I went out to the shrine this morning,’ he muttered. ‘There was a camp among them, three tents and some yaks.’

‘That is Tefu and his friends,’ said Sumpa. ‘I will go there now and send them to fetch the baggage. You go to the small door. The robe is where I showed you.’

When they reached the monastery wall he gave a formal little nod and hurried away, vanishing almost at once in the near-dark. Theodore followed the blank line of the wall in the other direction, noticing for the first time how noisy the evening was, with laughter and shouts from the guest-houses and the more distant throb and pulse of temple music. Below him, at the heart of the valley, a thunderstorm had brewed, and the continual flicker of its veiled lightning picked out the tree-tops and the spiky pinnacles of shrines below the path. When he came to the small side-door he found it wedged slightly open with a stone, and tied with a leather thong to prevent it from swinging in the wind. He slipped the knot by touch and slid through, kicking the stone away and latching the door from the inside. The robe was there; folded along the wall. He slung it across his shoulder and felt his way up the stair to the maze of galleries above.

This section of the monastery consisted mostly of the quarters of senior monks. Now there was no-one about, and few lamps burnt in any cells; but from the direction of the main temple came the murmur and throb of horns and drums and the ocean-like rumble of the monks’ responses, all echoed from the valley by the growing mutter of the storm. The building was like a vast creature, the rhythm of whose life at times draws all its living cells to the centre of its system, leaving its outer parts mere lifeless shell, untenanted. Through these veins and chambers Theodore stole like an infection. He felt totally safe.

‘I am armoured in faith,’ he whispered several times.

Whatever happened God would not let him be harmed, but moved beside him now so that all the demons of the mountain could not touch him. This exaltation of certainty lasted while he walked silently above the courtyards, round behind the temple of the oracle, down a stair and out into the main courtyard through the arch from which he had first seen it.

It was full night now, with many stars, though they were smudged out to the north where the thunderstorm was rising and nearing. He picked his way along beneath the slope of natural rock to the stairs he had climbed so often, going to lessons at the Lama Amchi’s house. Almost nonchalantly he started up them, reached the ledge where the two houses stood side by side, crossed it diagonally and began to climb the steeper, more irregular stairs to the caves. Stirred by the fringes of the storm, the night wind, icy cold, slashed and whipped at the mountain, snatching his panted breath from his lips and tugging at his clothes. He slowed his pace, taking care over each step, husbanding his energy as if he had the whole mountain to climb. When he looked over his shoulder he was astonished by how far he had come; the rock-face plunged down, seeming far steeper from above than from below, and the whole monastery was mapped out beneath him. The thought struck him that he should have come up here before and looked at the whole valley from this height. But mostly he kept his eyes on the individual steps, which were often no more than scooped footholds in the rock, no larger than a dinner-plate. At the steepest places a coarse rope, greasy with use, ran beside them.

At last came a change, a step that was wider than the others, and broader too, a place to rest and recover breath without feeling that the wind would scour him off the mountain. But it was too cold to stand still for long, and Theodore was about to climb on when his eye was caught by a dim yellow light to his left and he realized with a shock that he had reached the first line of caves. His eye was now trapped by that light and could see nothing else, so he had to feel his way, trembling suddenly with the knowledge of the sweep of rock below him, till he reached the cave mouth. Heavy curtain was stretched across it just inside. Eagerly he slipped through.

‘Hullo, Theo,’ said Mrs Jones.

She was sitting cross-legged on a prayer-mat on the floor, opposite a place where the cave wall had been roughly plastered and then whitewashed. Elsewhere it was naked rock, but hung with the usual banner-like pictures and patterns that decorated all the monks’ cells. The butter-lamp on the stool beside her cast slant shadows upward across her face. Her eyes were open but they looked heavy with sleep, and she was smiling dreamily, a smile that reminded Theo of the remote sweet smile of the Buddha in the temple.

‘I thought you’d still be in the temple,’ he said.

‘Gracious me! I’ve missed it! I was having a vision – ’salright, you didn’t interrupt nothing. I think it was finished.’

‘It’s time to go. They’ve sent me to fetch you. Everything’s ready. We couldn’t get a message to you earlier, but . . .’

‘I know, ducks. Listen, I’m afraid you’ll have to go back and tell them I ain’t coming.’

‘Not . . . But the baby! Proper doctors! India!’

‘It wasn’t never going to be India, love, not if that Sumpa had anything to do with it. He wanted the Tulku born where the Chinese could get their hands on him. But it’s no odds either way, ’cause I’m staying here. We’ll be all right, me and him – that’s one of the things I seen in my vision.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No more do I. I was just sitting here, humming one of me hums, when all of a sudden that wall there started a-glowing, all kinds of colours and shapes, real beautiful, like nothing I never seen, and I sat where I was with my eyes on stalks, and somehow the patterns became a lotus, and it opened and opened, and there he was at the heart of it.’

‘Who?’

‘Tojing Rimpoche, the Siddha Asara.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I don’t know. It wasn’t that sort of seeing. The lotus was, but I seen him somehow different, in a way as won’t go into words. But he was there, right enough.’

‘I thought he was supposed to be . . .’

She chuckled like her old self and slapped her belly.

‘In here. Not really. It ain’t like that, far as I can make out. Matter of fact, I don’t think any of them’s proper clear how it all works – you see they don’t usually find a Tulku till he’s four years old, about, when he can talk and tell ’em things about his old life, so as they can be sure they’ve got hold of the right kid . . . Do you know, couple of nights back he gave me a great kick from inside – funny how they do that – but it’s early, innit? Shows the little beggar’s going to be strong . . . bit of a shock for you, young fellow, climbing all the way up here and finding I’m going to cry off.’