The Rose of Tibet (23 page)

The ornament was a large oval urn – three quarters full of rose petals, Houston saw. The abbess stepped into it, and sank deeply in the petals, and kneeled there, with her devil’s head bowed slightly so that only the pointed golden ears projected above the rim; and as she did so the abbot began to chant.

All had been done in perfect silence so far, but now, as the abbot took from his robe a long gold knife and bent to break the seals of the emerald sacks, the others took up the chant.

The Mistress of Ceremonies produced a gold ladle, and one after the other, Houston taking his turn, they began to scoop into the urn ladles of emeralds.

The job took a long time to complete the dull green heap steadily mounting, until at last the abbess was entirely covered, her devil’s ears alone sticking out from her lake of ‘tears’.

The abbot had not been assisting in the last few ladles, and hearing his chant become suddenly muffled, Houston turned and looked.

The abbot had put on a mask. It was a golden mask. It was the mask of a monkey’s head.

He had been fumbling about in another corner of the chapel while he did this, and now as he approached the urn again, the chanting stopped and the deputy abbot and Little Daughter and the Mistress of Ceremonies prostrated themselves on the ground before him. In astonishment, Houston did the same, but, looking up, was able to see what the abbot was doing. The abbot was dipping his hands into the emeralds. The abbess’s hand emerged. The abbot took it, and raised her to her feet. She came up very slowly, a few dull stones sticking to her back, and the abbot brushed them carefully into the urn.

His muffled chanting began again as she stepped out of the urn, the two masked figures facing each other and holding hands; and after a moment the worshippers got up from the floor. The Mistress of Ceremonies gently brushed the abbess down, replacing the few adhering emeralds in the urn; and then she covered her again with her robe, and took one of her hands, the abbot retaining the other, and they walked with her out of the chapel.

Houston saw, through the gates, that she took her place again in the litter; and then the handbell was rung and the four bearers appeared, and picked up the litter and carried it away. The Mistress of Ceremonies returned alone to the chapel, and that seemed to be the end of it.

With the others, Houston began ladling the emeralds back in the bags. They were smiling a little, as after a job well done, but not actually talking, and though Houston found himself with many questions he didn’t ask them. When he saw the deputy abbot produce a stick of green wax, however, and begin to seal the bags, he whispered in some surprise, ‘Doesn’t the abbot have to do this?’

‘Yes. The abbot,’ the deputy abbot said, smiling gently. ‘I
am
now the abbot for three days.’

‘What is the abbot?’

‘The abbot is the monkey.’

It was all said very genially, with the two women smiling faintly as at some well-established family joke, and for a moment Houston didn’t get it, and smiled with them.

He said, ‘If you’re taking over the abbot’s job for three days, what will he be doing?’

The deputy abbot told him what the abbot would be doing for the next three days; and very shortly after, Houston went back to his cell. He stayed there all day, not eating and not sleeping, and the next day he went to Ganzing.

‘But my dear chep,’ the duke said, ‘it’s been going on for a long time – for seven hundred years at least. The practice was started by the Third Body. Nobody would dream of stopping it.’

‘Doesn’t it strike you as particularly horrible?’

‘Not a bit. Why should it? You see, you’ve got it quite wrong, old chep. It isn’t just an old monk and a young girl. It’s the monkey and the she-devil – we are reminded of our origins. We’re very simple people here. You have your cradle- to-grave benefits, and so have we. It’s a guarantee that we are still watched-over – that nothing will change for us. It’s very touching in a way.’

‘It’s horrible,’ Houston said. ‘It’s peculiarly, vilely horrible. For three days –’

‘And another thing you’ve got to remember is that our women have rather – rather better constitutions than most. It’s, in a way – we shouldn’t talk about it, of course – very much harder on the abbot. The old chep isn’t getting any younger. He had a perfectly dreadful time with the Former Body – was quite fegged out one year and had to be taken away to hospital, delirious. The chief medical monk had to sit with him for a week. Oh, quite a scandal.’

‘And that doesn’t disgust and revolt you? The idea of a young girl –’

‘The Former Body was 74 at the time,’ the duke said, drawing on his cigar.

‘Oh, my God!’ Houston said faintly.

‘And by no means disgusted or revolted, except by the poor old chep’s deficiencies. The thing is, old chep, you don’t
know
us. The act – I’m not embarrassing you? – hasn’t the same connotations for us as it has for you. We regard it as, on the whole, a fairly pleasurable and useful occupation. We aren’t greatly exercised by problems of legitimacy and so forth, since property can be handed down in the female line, and so the pattern of our social behaviour has tended to develop in –’

‘But in a monastery!’ Houston said, his distress in no way eased by this rationalization. ‘How can you possibly countenance –’

‘Ah, well. That does of course lead to certain difficulties. The people there are rather devoted to it – naturally: they have so few alternative pleasures. And of course in
principle
they shouldn’t be. It means that three women have to be kept constantly on the go aborting them.’

Such new horrors were evoked by this piece of information that Houston lost all desire to pursue it. He gazed silently at the duke and picked up his whisky and drained it at a gulp. The duke poured him another.

He said, mildly troubled, ‘You know, you shouldn’t concern yourself particularly with – with anyone here. It could be very dangerous for you. There’s such a lot you can never know, old chep.’

     But there was something the duke didn’t know, either. He
said on another day, ‘The emeralds? Oh, they’re part of the quite beautiful legend. The she-devil is supposed to have wept endlessly for the monkey and so bitterly that finally some of her tears turned to emerald. The monkey comes once a year to dry them up, as it were.’

‘She must have wept a long time. There are a lot of emeralds.’

‘Are there, old chep? You mustn’t tell me, you know. I don’t want to know. Nobody’s supposed to, except the monastery council and the governor of the province.’

‘Where did they actually come from?’

‘From a mine. There used to be a very rich vein in the hill the monastery was built on. There was an earthquake several hundred years ago, in the time of the Third Body, and the general view was that the demons were upset at the mine workings. The abbess sealed up the mine and built over it – she was a tremendous builder. She put up the three higher monasteries, and rebuilt the shrine on the island. She was the one who introduced the Second Festival.’

‘Whereabouts was the mine?’

‘Nobody knows, old chep. There used to be a story – I remember my grandfather telling me it – that it went under the lake and that a lot of cheps were entombed there, but I don’t think there’s anything in it. You would expect it to go back into the hill. But there’s no trace now – none at all.’

Houston didn’t bother to tell him otherwise.  

He didn’t see Mei-Hua for a week after he returned, for he had had a fortnight to reflect and it seemed to him that the duke had spoken nothing but the truth. He didn’t know this country or these people, and he didn’t think he ever would.

She was a fascinating young Chinese girl, unlike in her features and in her grace any woman he had ever met. But now he had been away from her for a while, he thought he could see her in perspective; and what he saw he didn’t like.

She had been picked for a life of sacred prostitution; this was to be the whole of her life, and she could never be removed from it. He had no part to play in this life, and by trying to find one he was, as the duke said, courting danger,
not only for himself but for others. He had been infatuated with her and with an image he had constructed of her: of a pale china rose, nurtured in shade, something immensely precious and immensely fragile. But he saw her now as an object lovely but diseased, a rank thing growing unhealthily on top of a dunghill.

He didn’t want the rank thing or the dunghill. He wanted very much to get away from both. He saw that to do so he must remain uninvolved and out of trouble for the rest of this dangerous year; and this he proposed to do.

Mei-Hua sent for him twice during that week. He did not respond. The third time, Little Daughter came heavily upon him while he was painting.

She said, ‘
Trulku
, the Mother has sent me for the last time.’

‘It’s useless, Little Daughter. You know it is useless.’

‘She can force you if she wishes. She begs you not to make her force you.’

‘Little Daughter – the Mother has no need of me.’

‘She has a need,
trulku
.’

‘You know it is unwise.’

‘I know it is unwise. But come. I beg you also.’

So he went.

If she had been sulky, or haughty, or petulant, or in any way reserved with him, it would have been easy. But she was none of these things. She clutched him, weeping.

‘Oh, Chao-li, Chao-li, you have deserted me.’

‘I’ve been away, Mei-Hua. I’ve been busy.’

‘You could have come. You didn’t want to come. What have I done?’

‘Mei-Hua – you know we shouldn’t see each other. It’s silly for us to go on.’

‘What do you mean? Why do you say these things to me? You are cruel to say them, Chao-li. You don’t mean them.’

He didn’t know what else he could say. She had forced herself like a little kitten into his arms and was mewing in his ear.

He had not meant to say it, but he couldn’t help himself. He blurted out, ‘You didn’t tell me about the abbot.’

‘The abbot? What about the abbot?’

‘That he was to spend three days here with you.’

Her head came up out of his shoulder and her lovely eyes looked at him in bewilderment.

‘Not as the abbot, Chao-li. As the monkey. You saw.’

‘It was the abbot who was here, not the monkey.’

‘In his mask, Chao-li, and I in mine – I can’t tell you about that. It is one of my mysteries,’ she said, a little horrified. ‘I am no longer of this world, then, and nor is he.’

‘But you acted with him as people of this world act.’

‘Yes, of course. We must,’ she said, looking at him, wide- eyed. ‘You mean – this worries you, Chao-li?’

He said helplessly, ‘Mei-Hua, how often has this happened?’

‘Every year since I was 13. It has to happen, Chao-li, as soon as I am able.’

‘Oh, Mei-Hua, how can you? How can you bear to?’

‘What do you mean? I don’t understand you, Chao-li. The monkey loves me. He has always loved me.’

‘You mean you don’t mind? You like it?’

She said, bewildered, ‘I don’t know. Why not? It’s very nice. Don’t you like it? I don’t understand you, Chao-li.’

He didn’t think that she ever would. He looked for several minutes into eyes that were naïve and yet not naïve, that were young and yet not young, as though another, older intelligence were looking through them. He saw that she was a creature beyond any morality that he could understand.

He said gently, ‘Mei-Hua, your life is here. Mine is not.’

‘For now it is, Chao-li.’

‘But not for always. At some time I must go. We must try not to love each other, or it will hurt too much to part.’

‘Ah, Chao-li, there is no help for us. I told you before – it is written.’

He took her two arms. He said, ‘Mei-Hua, nothing is written. You know who I am. You know I am not
yidag
.’

‘I know you are not
yidag
.’

‘Then what can be written?’

‘That you will love me and help me and leave me. The Oracle has seen it.’

‘Mei-Hua, she saw it because I dreamed it. You know where my dreams came from.’

‘Nobody knows that, Chao-li.’

‘They came from this room. We made them here.’

‘If not here, somewhere else. If not this way, another way. You had to come, Chao-li. You cannot escape your destiny.’

He saw that she was a mistress not only of the answers but of the rules, and that she could change them at will. But he tried once more.

‘Mei-Hua, you told me once you couldn’t tell my destiny.’

‘But I know my own, Chao-li, and you are part of it.’

‘How can you know it?’

She smiled sadly. ‘I have known it two hundred years.’

‘Then tell me it.’

She looked him in the eyes and shook her head slowly.

‘Not now. One day, perhaps. Do you love me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You said once that you did.’

‘Then perhaps I did.’

She released her arms and put them round her neck.

‘Then for now take what is offered.’   

He took what was offered. He did so for three weeks, three strange weeks, in which he couldn’t tell if he loved her or hated her, and thought that perhaps he did both; for there was something repulsive to him in the knowledge that she would offer any man what she was offering him.

He saw the unbridgeable gulf between them, and tried to bridge it. And he began to experience then the urge that was later to become obsessional – the urge to know her and to possess her totally.

There was little enough time for him to do it then; for it was 27 September when he went back to her, and 7 October when the Chinese invaded. Houston learned nothing of it till the 20th. That was the day the governor sent for him.

T
HROUGH
July and August and September, the Governor of Hodzo had waited to be informed by Lhasa of the attacks upon him in the Chinese Press. No information on this point came. Some other information did; three items in particular convincing him that his doom was sealed, and a fourth, received on 19 October, formally underlining it.

The first item, sent shortly after the earthquake in August, was a dispatch from the office of the Regent, briefly pointing out that owing to threatening omens, and as a measure of prudence, provincial governors would no longer be informed of military dispositions outside their own areas. The governor had submitted this dispatch to the keenest scrutiny, although its essential feature, left by a careless clerk and plain for all to see, had struck him even before he had read the text. The essential feature was the distribution panel, printed in wood block type on a slip of paper that had become inadvertently stuck to the wafer. Besides the names of the
chef de cabinet
and the Head of Communications, War Office, were those of every provincial governor. Of the latter, only his own had been ticked.

The second item, received in mid-September, from the Head of Communications, War Office, informed him that a new
depon
had been appointed general-officer-commanding for the forces allocated to the defence of Hodzo. The military qualities of this new
depon
, whom the governor had known all his life, were such that at other times he would instantly have inferred that no enemy was expected. But these were not other times; as the third dispatch confirmed.

The third dispatch merely announced that the enemy had arrived: the Chinese had invaded with eight armies on 7 October. The governor would be informed if any special task was required of him.

And the fourth, received five days later, and in the Regent’s own hand, had told him of this task. It was a heavy one, it
was the traditional one of the governors of Hodzo; he must put himself between the gallant forces of the new
depon
and the Chinese invader; he must seek to parley to secure in anyway open to him the safety of the unique treasure in his charge. The Regent expected that the governor would find the Chinese ready enough to parley with him; but gave no reason for this assumption. Without having to dot the i’s or cross the t’s, however, he enclosed some recent parings from the Dalai Lama’s fingernails, and strongly advised the governor to keep them by him in the days ahead.

The governor, a prudent man, did not spurn the parings. He placed them carefully in his charm box; but that same day set in train some other measures that he hoped would prove equally prophylactic for his wives and children.

The measures that the governor had been pondering stemmed from his recollections of the year 1904; in particular those concerning the men who had accompanied Colonel Younghusband to Lhasa. He had formed the opinion at that time that some racial characteristics of these men made them virtually unopposable. They possessed in a rare combination the apparently contradictory qualities of ruthlessness and humanity, unimaginativeness and ingenuity. In addition, an unusual objectivity enabled them to carry out the most complicated plans.

The governor did not have this opinion of his own people. A lifetime of judging them had given him quite another opinion. He did not think that in time of danger he would trust his personal safety or that of his loved ones to such people. He knew which people he would sooner trust it to.

All this had occurred to the governor quite early in the summer; it had been later after his unsuccessful quest for the traitor at Yamdring that he had begun to toy with an extension of the idea.

The Chinese would come; he never doubted it after the second earthquake. And when they came they would find a friend at Yamdring; one who knew the value of the treasure, and doubtless exactly where it was.

This treasure had to be hidden. That was the governor’s starting point. Where should it be hidden? To hide it in the
monastery, or to bury it in the grounds would scarcely serve the purpose. For whoever knew where it was now would also know where it would be hidden.

What then?

Then the treasure must be removed from the monastery.

To this there was an immediate objection. The treasure was the personal property of the abbess. It could never be physically removed from her. To remove the treasure would indeed mean removing the abbess also; which was quite unheard of.

Quite unheard of, the governor repeated to himself; surprised, however, by his lack of emphasis.

He sent for his priest.

Under what circumstances could the abbess leave the monastery?

The priest grew very grave. History had so far produced no circumstances that had led the abbess to leave the monastery.

Under what circumstances could the abbess
not
leave the monastery?

The priest grew graver still, for he hadn’t an idea. He consulted the Kangyur. He consulted the Tengyur. Then he consulted the principal commentaries on these works. He went back to the governor.

No specific prohibition was laid down restricting the movements of the Good Mother of Yamdring.

Such movements were, however, he assured the governor, quite unheard of.

The governor thanked him. He wrote two letters, one to the abbot of Yamdring, the other to its
trulku
.   

Houston had gathered most of the governor’s intentions before he was quite drunk; and just at the point when the room began to dance before his eyes, took the precaution of writing himself a memo. He did this on the back of the map the governor had given him.

He had to proceed in the direction of Chumbi; this was the valley that led most directly into Sikkim and India, and the traditional one to which nobles fled in the event of trouble. The Chinese would know this, so speed and secrecy in the matter of route were essential.

He would be making the journey with the abbess, the treasure, Little Daughter, the other Europeans, the governor’s three wives and children, and a light escort. The governor could not tell him how much of a start he would have on the Chinese; perhaps as much as a week. At the moment their right flank was thought to be approaching northern Hodzo. How long it would be opposed by the new
depon
with his five twelve-pounders, his collection of ancient Lewis guns and his 1911 strategy, was a matter for speculation. The governor preferred to rely more on his own powers as a negotiator to win time; that it would be won for Houston and his party and not for himself, however, was not in doubt. Of his own personal survival he had no hope whatever.

‘Drink up,
trulku
. There is no one to leave it to.’

Houston, already drunk, drank up. The whole household was drunk. The bearers who had brought him were drunk. He could hear them breaking things in another room. The governor’s three wives were drunk; they sat in a lugubrious line just out of earshot of the two men who lay on facing couches, a stack of bottles between them.

There had already been a number of scenes concerning the amount of luggage and the number of servants the wives could take with them; and the governor suddenly bethought himself of a fresh source of trouble.

He said, leaning over between the two couches, and carelessly spilling arak into his boots on the floor, ‘
Trulku
– another matter. Shave their heads. Get it done at the monastery before you leave. And drug them first or it will never be managed.’

Shave heads
, Houston wrote.
Drug first
.

‘And no finery on the journey. See they wear common travelling robes. Vanity,’ said the governor, lying heavily back again, ‘– it destroys us all. It is the way of Karma,
trulku
.’

‘Of Karma, Excellency?’

‘Of Karma. I will tell you a story. Just one year and a half ago,
trulku
, I wished to retire. …’

It was two o’clock in the morning before he left, a nightmarish, drunken departure in heavy frost, made memorable
by a single touching moment; for at the very last, amid a hideous confusion of wailing wives and lurching servants, he had spotted that the governor’s youngest wife was not in place, and had himself stormed into the house to seek her out.

It took him some little time to do so, for he passed the room twice, hearing and seeing nothing, so still were they. In all that house, with its butter lamps guttering and doors slamming and servants runnings, there was only one calm spot, the governor’s private chapel, and here he found her, holding her husband’s hand and looking into his face.

The governor was not aware for a moment of Houston standing over him, for he was kneeling, with his back to the door, but he looked up presently, a smile of rare delight on his face. ‘She wishes to stay with me,’ he said.

He shook his head. He laboured slowly to his feet, raising his wife with him, and then he kissed her hands, one after the other, and her forehead.

‘Go, my child,’ he said. ‘Go now.’

Houston took her arm. The girl made no resistance. She didn’t look back at the governor; but Houston did, just as he left, raising an arm in farewell. The governor raised one back to him. His little thin cat mouth was imperturbably shut and his slit eyes appeared to be smiling, but tears were streaming steadily from them.

Houston left Yamdring on the morning of 25 October, in the dark, still with an abominable hangover; setting off from the jetty before the village was astir with a party of twenty- seven people and sixteen horses in four large skin boats. Planks had been laid for the horses, and their hooves muffled; they were hobbled as soon as they embarked, and within half an hour, without noise or confusion, the small fleet was away.

By daylight they had reached the rapids at the foot of the lake. They disembarked here. The abbess was carried ahead in her curtained palanquin, the others followed on horseback or foot, the oarsmen, two to each boat, carrying on their heads the light craft the two miles to clear water.

The lake emptied into a small fast stream which shortly
collected a number of tributaries to form a broad racing river. Within an hour they were afloat on it.

The river route had been suggested by the governor, and although more circuitous than by land had the advantage of by-passing all centres of habitation – to the governor’s mind a very real one; for mindful of the spy at Yamdring and the likelihood of others in the country, his idea was for the party simply to disappear into the blue. There were many points at which they could leave the river; it would be for Houston to pick one.

Houston thought of this as he studied his scribbled jottings on the back of the map in the late afternoon. They had long since left the snug Yamdring valley and had come into a wild desolate country. The waterfalls on the mountain-sides were frozen, the tracks treacherously glazed, peaks lost in grey fog; it would be snowing up there.

The farther they went, the less he liked it. It was bitterly cold, the horses becoming restive, the governor’s shaven wives and two young children, huddled in his own boat, incessantly moaning. He looked about him. The boats were proceeding in single file, his own leading, making excellent if meretricious progress in the fast river. Behind, in the second boat, the abbess’s palanquin stood like a hearse, curtains fluttering in the strong breeze. No horses had been embarked on her craft, and insufficiently weighted, it was dancing dangerously on the white water.

Houston was by now stone cold sober and the situation struck him as little short of lunacy. Because the governor had carried in his mind for forty years the mistaken impression that the British were all of them men of action and resource, he had chosen him to lead the party. Because he was drunk he had accepted. But he was not drunk now. It struck him as merely incredible that anyone who knew him – Ringling, his brother – should regard him as a natural leader of men. None the less, they did. They had accepted his role as naturally as their own; and now the experts of the expedition, the boatmen, the guards, were looking to him for orders.

Chilled and worried, he sat over the map in the failing light.

‘Ringling.’

‘Sahib.’

‘Do the boatmen know this country?’

‘No, sahib. They have never been here.’

‘Do you know it?’

The boy studied the map for some minutes.

‘No,’ he said at length.

Houston grunted.

The boy said quietly, ‘The boatmen are getting tired, sahib. Maybe someone else should take a turn.’

‘Maybe,’ Houston said, not bothering to consider the suggestion seriously. The oarsmen had been chanting at the beginning of the trip, but they had not chanted for some hours now, requiring all their skill and concentration to keep the boats from overturning. He did not fancy the chances of anyone else at this work.

It had been the governor’s suggestion that they should proceed without stopping for the first twenty-four hours of the trip, to put themselves beyond a caravan route that ran laterally from east to west across the river. But the governor had not seen this dangerous water with its submerged rocks and unpredictable currents.

Houston made a decision, his first, and at once felt a curious lightening of his spirits.

‘We’ll stop for the night,’ he said. ‘Tell them to keep a lookout for somewhere to pull in.’

The light was going fast. It was quite dark again before the solid black walls, rushing past on either side began to show a crumbling of indentations. The bowman reached with his boathook, and eventually caught, and jumped in the icy water and grounded them, manœuvring the boat nimbly so that the others could follow.

They lit lamps and reconnoitred.

They had pulled on to a semi-circular rocky beach. Above, easy toe-holds led to a number of caves.

‘A bear has been here,’ one of the boatmen said.

A party of guards cautiously investigated several of the caves. They found further evidence of the bear; but no bear.