The Rose of Tibet (3 page)

‘Very,’ I said.

I called on Mr Oliphant several times more in succeeding weeks – as will be narrated in the proper place – and on some other people also. But it was not till the following May, after much had passed, that we commissioned from Professor Felix Bourgès-Vallerin of the Department of Oriental Studies of the Sorbonne his account of the significance of the years
1949
–
51
in Tibetan affairs.

Because this account must also be considered an indispensable part of the
backgd
, I give it, however, not in its chronological place, but here.       

BY PROF. F. BOURGÈS-VALLERIN
(Abridged.) … The year
1949
, corresponding with that of Earth-Bull in its Sixteenth cycle, was for Tibet one of long-predicted ill-omen. The events associated with it had indeed been foretold for more than two and a half centuries; latterly with such elaboration of
detail that four of the largest monasteries had seriously advocated changing the calendar in an attempt to avert them.

The Tibetan calendar, derived from the Indian and the Chinese, relies upon a combination of elements and animals to designate individual years. Thus,
1948
was Earth-Mouse,
1949
Earth-Bull,
1950
Iron-Tiger, and
1951
Iron-Hare. There are five elements (earth, iron, water, wood, fire) and twelve animals (hare, dragon, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey, bird, dog, pig, mouse, bull, tiger). Each element appears in sequence twice, first to designate a ‘male’ year and then a ‘female’ one. The calendar makes a complete cycle every sixty years.

Because certain combinations (wood-dragon, earth-bull, fire-tiger) have traditionally been considered inauspicious, they have attracted over the centuries a considerable body of prediction. Most of the forecast events have come off, notably the Nepalese invasion of
1791
, the British Younghusband expedition of
1904
and the Chinese invasion of
1910
. Those that have not come off are said to have been ‘averted’.

No single year had ever produced so ominous a body of prediction, however, as that of Earth-Bull in its present cycle.

The events would be heralded, it was said, by a comet clearly visible from the three principal cities of Lhasa, Shigatse and Gyantse. Four catastrophes would then follow in strict order: a mountain would move; the Tsangpo river would be hurled from its course; the country would be overrun by terror; and the line of the Dalai Lamas would end.

While all these predictions were of some antiquity, that concerning the Dalai Lama was the most venerable. A succession of oracles had foretold that the line would end with the Thirteenth. In fact, the Thirteenth had died in
1935
, and his successor, a
4
-year-old boy had been recognized in
1939
. By
1949
, however, the year of Earth-Bull, he would still be under age and legally incapable of assuming full powers as spiritual and temporal head of the country.

Because of the alarming nature of these predictions, corroboration was sought from the oracles attached to the most important provincial monasteries. Their findings were entirely in line with those of the State Oracle; indeed they were able to provide considerable elaboration.

Thus, the female oracle of Yamdring could state with
precision that for her monastery the tribulations would begin in the sixth month of Earth-Bull (August
1949
); and that between then and the ‘terror’, the monastery would have a visitation, ‘from beyond the sunset’, of a past conqueror of the country who would carry away the abbess together with the monastery treasure.

(The visitor was expected to be an incarnation of the Tartar prince Hu-Tzung, who in
1717
had invaded from the northeast, sacked the province of Hodzo and only withdrawn when the abbess of Yamdring had given herself to him. Because he had accepted the abbess’s favours, this prince was subsequently struck dead by Chen-Rezi, the God-Protector of Tibet. For according to tradition, the abbess was divine – a benevolent she-devil who had been the original inhabitant of the Himalayan plateau, before a wandering monkey from India had lured her from her cave, coupled with her on an island in the Yamdring lake, and thus fathered the Tibetan people.)

Other monasteries produced equally gloomy predictions, one of them (the country’s second largest, at Sera) providing, however, an important variant. This was that the ‘terror’ mentioned in the forecast would not take place actually in Earth-Bull, but in the following year, Iron-Tiger, and would begin in the first week of the eighth month (October
1950
).

Faced with these lowering and increasingly refined predictions, the Regent convened a cabinet of five ministers. It met in April
1948
, and by midsummer had drawn up a number of provisions.

To placate the devils who lived in the mountains, a national spiritual effort would be made: this would take the form of prayers and offerings throughout the country. In addition, so that the devils might be offered no provocation, nomads would be forbidden their traditional right to winter at the foot of the mountains.

In the event of the devils refusing placation (that is, if a mountain
did
move or the Tsangpo
were
hurled from its course) further measures would have to be taken to avert the remaining predictions.

Since by ‘terror’ it was assumed a new Chinese invasion
was meant, it would be necessary to examine all circumstances that might give the Chinese a reason to invade. All contacts with the Western world should be reduced, and all foreigners who could be regarded as ‘Western imperialists’ dismissed.

Since at the time only five Europeans were living on a permanent basis in Tibet, all of them in day-to-day contact with the government, the cabinet could see no reason for immediate action in this respect.

The five Europeans were: Hugh Richardson, Reginald Fox, Robert Ford, Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschneiter.

Richardson was the head of the newly created Indian Government Mission; although an Englishman he was acting for another Asian power, and one moreover that had just thrown off the imperialist yoke: he thus enjoyed the highest diplomatic status.

Fox and Ford were radio operators on contract; it would be enough merely to let their contracts expire. Harrer and Aufschneiter were ex-prisoners of war who had escaped from a British war-time camp in India; they had no official standing and could be turned out at a moment’s notice.

For the moment, therefore, all was under control. However, if despite everything, the Chinese did invade, one last and rather more awesome step would be necessary. Seven hundred years of tradition would have to be flouted and the Dalai Lama installed while still under age, to ensure the succession.

This was not a step that any of the ministers cared to plan in detail; but since they had done everything that could be expected of them, the weeks-long meeting adjourned. The Regent set himself to watch the course that events would take.

It is a matter of historical record that they took exactly the one predicted.

In October
1948
, the comet appeared, causing widespread alarm and disorders in Lhasa, Shigatse and Gyantse. In July and August
1949
the ‘mountain moved’, an enormous seismic disturbance that affected the entire Himalayan region and diverted the Tsangpo eight miles from its course. (It ‘moved’ again even more formidably the following August.) And in October
1950
(in the ‘first week of the eighth month of
Iron-Tiger’ as the oracle of Sera had predicted) the Chinese duly invaded.

Faced with this final disaster, the Regent took his ‘last step’. On
12
November the under-age Dalai Lama was formally installed as Head of State – and three weeks later, on
9
December, fled.

Such the predictions and such the record for the year of Earth-Bull.

Whether the many regional predictions were similarly fulfilled must remain a matter for speculation. Among refugees on Indian-controlled border territory, however, there appeared to be a substantial belief, early in
1951
, that some at least of the predicted events had taken place; in particular those fore
 
cast for the Yamdring monastery.

A report in the Calcutta
Amrita Bazar Patrika
of
3
February that year quotes one refugee: ‘Certainly the troubles at Yamdring began in the sixth month of Earth-Bull… . As everyone knows the abbess was abducted and with her treasure to the value of four crores of rupees’ (three million pounds sterling).

The story was taken up by other newspapers and caused a good deal of speculation (and some political upsets) over the meaning of the phrase in the prediction ‘a visitation from beyond the sunset’. Some editorialists felt it could only mean ‘from the west’, and that since the Chinese had indisputably attacked from the north and the east, the oracle must have foreseen depredations from Ladakh on Tibet’s western border.

This was bitterly denied (
9
February) by a partisan member of the
Lok Sabha
, the Indian Lower House, who rejected the ‘foul insinuations of certain people in Calcutta who can only ascribe to Ladakhis the base motives that would actuate them in similar circumstances. It is beyond question that any Ladakhi or Kashmiri could have lent himself to the looting of monasteries… .’

Despite this and other denials, the Indian Press kept the story alive for several weeks, titillated, even in the midst of such tragic horrors, by the strange tale of an abducted abbess and of four crores of rupees.

As the weather in the border territory grew warmer, how
ever, and the refugees began to drift back to their own devil- haunted mountains, the reports tailed off. By June of
1951
they had quite finished.

F
.
B
.–
V
.
PARIS

1960
              

That was the month Charles Houston arrived back in London on his stretcher. He had been away seventeen months. It felt, he said, like as many years.

I
N
the summer of
1949
, when he was
27
, Houston found himself having an affair with a married woman. She was
30
, and he was not in love with her, and he had gone into it only because he was bored and lonely. He didn’t think that the affair would outlast the summer, but it did, and by the autumn, when he started school again, he was wondering how to end it. He was a bit disgusted with himself.

Houston was living at this time at Baron’s Court in the flat which he shared with his half-brother Hugh, who was two years younger and a good deal noisier and rather inclined to take his shirts and his handkerchieves when he was home. Hugh was not at home. He was in India. He had gone in June, with a film unit, had gone very hurriedly, for permission had come through at the last moment; and one effect had been that Houston’s holiday plans had had to be altered. He had been going to spend a month with his half-brother walking in France.

As it was he had decided to stay at home and have a look round the galleries and do a bit of painting; and he would have done this if it had not happened to be the hottest summer in London for ten years. Instead, his days began to follow a familiar indolent pattern.

He got up every morning and let the char in, and ate his breakfast and read the paper. After this he fiddled with a sketch and then he went out and had a drink.

From time to time he went to parties. He even held one himself in the flat. But the people bored him; they were Hugh’s friends rather than his own. He felt himself very much older than his brother.

At two of the parties in a single week however, he encountered Glynis, and on both occasions found himself wondering about her and about her small and quarrelsome and very drunk husband.

She was tall and somewhat self-conscious about her height;
she stooped a little and wore flat shoes. But her face had about it a fey and unprotected character that appealed to Houston most strongly.

She lived with her husband at Fulham, quite close to Baron’s Court, and after debating with himself for a couple of days, Houston had telephoned her.

It was an afternoon in July a high blue day of reeling heat. Houston told her he was going to Roehampton.

‘Lucky you.’

‘Why don’t you come?’

A pause. ‘Oh, I think not.’

‘Can’t you swim?’

‘Yes, I can swim.’

‘I’ll pick you up, then.’

That was how it started. Years later the whole of that curious and aimless summer seemed to crystallize for him in the single moment; the moment of replacing the receiver in the hot empty flat and of feeling the first faint lurch: of excitement, disgust, apprehension.

He remembered very well the heart-searchings of that summer, the times he had taken stock of his position.

He had four hundred pounds in the bank, the lease of the flat, and his job as an art teacher at the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary School in Fulham; it was because of the job that he had taken the near-by flat.

He had got in the habit over the years of looking after his brother. When he had come out of the navy in
1946
he had thought of staking himself for a year with his gratuity and the money his mother had left him, and setting up as a full- time artist. If the worst came to the worst he knew he could always teach. But then Hugh had in turn been released from the service and had got himself a job with the film company at five pounds a week, and Houston had had to postpone setting up as an artist; he had gone instead to the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary, had signed for the flat, and kept Hugh for a couple of years.

His brother, of course, no longer needed keeping. He was earning more than double Houston’s income, and cheerfully spending it. Houston didn’t blame him. He knew that if he
wanted, Hugh would stop frittering his money and keep him in turn. He could give the sailor’s farewell to the Head of the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary, a woman he deplored, and on any propitious day set up as an artist.

Why then, he wondered, didn’t he? Houston didn’t know why. He felt very lax. He had a lowering feeling that he had somehow missed the bus, that some of the virtue had gone out of him in the past year. He didn’t want to paint quite as much as he used to. He was obscurely disinclined to have his brother keep him. He didn’t know what he wanted.

In the middle of July, he thought it might be a woman; but by the middle of August knew that it wasn’t that, either.

It wasn’t till the middle of September that he began to worry consciously about his brother; but once he started he knew that he must have been worrying for some time. He knew that location work would have finished in Calcutta and that the unit would have moved up into the foothills of Everest. The film was of an attempt to climb the mountain. Mail would be carried by runner and was bound to be irregular. By the middle of September, however, he had not had any for a month. He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t want to ring up the film company, which seemed to him a fussy thing to do. He thought he would wait a bit.

He waited a week, and then didn’t care whether it was fussy or not.

The girl on the switchboard put him through to a secretary. The secretary put him through to a Mr Stahl.

Houston had heard of this Mr Stahl; he thought he was one of the chiefs of the company. He was somewhat taken about to be connected so instantly with the great man.

‘Who is this?’ said a quiet voice.

‘Mr Houston – about Hugh Whittington,’ he heard the secretary’s voice say on the line.

‘Oh, yes. Mr Houston. I am spending the day on the telephone,’ the American voice said dryly to somebody in the background. ‘We have received a cable, Mr Houston. I thought you would care to hear it.’ He began to read the
cable in soft, uninflected tones before Houston was properly aware of the sense of it. It seemed that a party of sixty-six people had been sighted below the west face of a mountain; they were on a rough trail that connected with a trade route. It was not yet known if this route was blocked.

‘It’s signed Lister-Lawrence,’ Stahl said. ‘He’s the British representative in Calcutta, and our only source of information at the moment. Of course, we are sending a man to the frontier as soon as possible, but it will be a day or two before we hear anything. The earthquake destroyed all the telegraph lines.’

‘The earthquake did,’ Houston said, dazed, and felt the telephone begin to tremble against his ear.

‘Apparently it was quite a severe one. We surmise it blocked their route back and they’re going round the mountain. However, we’re very optimistic. With the local people hired out there, our party should come to sixty-six… .’

The conversation went on for perhaps a minute or two more, and Houston made the necessary responses, but could not afterwards recall what else had been said. He put the phone down presently and stared at it in stupefaction.

This was the first that he heard of the earthquake.   

Hugh had been
8
and he
10
when they had first realized there was something a bit different about them. That was when he had gone away to boarding school and Hugh had been too young to follow. He had been sick all the term, and Hugh had been sick too, and he had been taken away from that school and the experiment never repeated. He had thought himself over it during the war when they had been parted once for fifteen months without ill effects. But neither had been in any real danger during the war. He had a sensation of danger now.    

By the end of September he had heard a good deal more about his brother. He had heard that he was safe, that the film party was resting in a village, but that their return might be held up by three casualties, none of them, however, very serious.

He had heard all this in three conversations with Stahl’s
secretary, a young woman called Lesley Sellers, with whom he was now on the best of telephone terms.

She rang him again on a Monday at the beginning of October, at school, and asked how he was sustaining himself. Houston said very well and inquired what news she had.

‘The best, wonder boy,’ said the young woman. ‘They’re on the way back. The boss heard from Lister-Lawrence last night, and he’s expecting a call from Radkewicz some time tomorrow.’

Houston let out his breath; for Radkewicz was the director of the unit and this was news indeed.

He said, ‘Where will he be calling from.’

‘From Calcutta. A plane has been laid on for them there, so they should be home very soon. I thought you’d like to know.’

‘Well, thanks. Thanks very much.’

‘Is that all the bearer of glad tidings gets – thanks?’

‘What else had you in mind?’

‘Oh, I’d leave that to you. You could tell me when we met. We haven’t yet, have we?’

Her voice was uncomfortably audible in the listening common room. Houston said quietly, ‘Perhaps the first thing would be to organize that. When do you suggest?’

She had told him her suggestion, and a couple of nights later, for the first time, he had met her.  

She was waiting on the corner of Wardour Street, a little, pretty, lively thing, shivering in her fur collar in the gusty evening. She put her arm through his without self-consciousness and they walked into Soho.

‘So you’re the artist?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’re not much like Hugh, are you?’

‘We’re only half-brothers.’

‘I wonder who got the best of the bargain.’

Houston liked her. She had a sideways look that was provocative without being challenging; a small elfin mobile face. They turned into Gennaro’s, and examining her more clearly in the light he wondered why he had never met her. He had met most of the people Hugh worked with. He asked her about it.

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘I’m not a girl who likes to compete.’

‘Who would you be competing with?’

‘Sheila, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Sheila?’

‘Sheila Wolferston.’ She glanced at him. ‘You know about her.’

He could dimly remember a Sheila at a party, but he didn’t know what there was, particularly, to know about her.

He said, ‘You mean they’re very friendly?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘Does she work at the office?’

‘Yes. Well. Not just now. She’s out there with the unit – the broken leg. Didn’t you really know?’ she asked, looking at him curiously.

‘No,’ Houston said lightly; but he was oddly disturbed. He wondered why Hugh hadn’t mentioned the girl.

But he enjoyed the evening; and he thought he liked her better than most of Hugh’s friends. He took her home, to Maida Vale, and loitered for a while in the hall of the block of flats.

‘Perhaps we’ll see a bit more of each other now,’ she said.

‘Yes. I’d like that.’

‘The only thing is, my life is a tiny bit complicated at the moment.’

‘Mine, too.’

They looked at each other, smiling.

Houston leaned over and kissed her. He expected a cool and light-hearted response; and got rather more.

‘Perhaps we’d better start uncomplicating,’ she said after a moment.

‘Perhaps we’d better.’

She had told him that a reception was being held for the unit if it returned, as expected, on the Saturday, and they agreed to meet there.

‘Back to your complication, then, wonder boy,’ she said lightly. ‘I expect I’ll ring you on Thursday.’

But she rang before that.

She rang on the Wednesday, and she asked if he could call that afternoon to see Stahl.

He said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose so,’ confused for the moment. ‘Do you know what it’s about?’

‘I think he’d better tell you himself. Would three o’clock be all right?’

‘Yes. Yes. All right.’

He saw by her face that the news was not good, but asked no questions. She showed him in immediately to see Stahl.

He had not met him before, and was surprised by what he saw. Despite the authority of his voice, the director was a small man, almost a midget; a little spare bag of bones. He had a beaky nose with a red ridge across it, and a curious condition of the eyes that kept them moving ceaselessly behind their gold-rimmed spectacles. He came round the large desk to shake Houston’s hand.

‘Sit down. Cigarette. I have some disappointing news for you, I’m afraid,’ he said directly.

Houston took the cigarette without speaking, and tried to keep it still as Stahl lit it for him with a big desk lighter.

‘There’s been a slight hold-up. Your brother won’t be coming back this week.’

Houston stared at him, licking his lips. He said, ‘He’s not ill, or injured or anything… .’

‘Oh, no. On the contrary. He’s staying to look after the ones who are. Mr Radkewicz, our director, was in a hurry to move on. The passes out there start getting snowed up early, and he had bulky equipment to shift. He felt it would take another two or three weeks for the casualties to mend satisfactorily, so they’re remaining till they do. Your brother opted to remain with them.’

‘I see,’ Houston said. He found himself considerably disconcerted by the restless eyes. ‘I wonder why he should do that?’

Stahl smiled fractionally. ‘I guess because he’s a good- natured boy,’ he said. ‘There isn’t any danger, if that’s worrying you. They’ll have adequate transport and guides and so forth and the passes are negotiable for ordinary purposes for most of the year. He thought they would appreciate a friendly face and someone who could speak English – although a few people in the monastery do speak a little, apparently.’

‘Monastery,’ Houston said. ‘What monastery?’

‘The one they’re staying in. In Tibet. You know this, of course,’ he said, watching Houston’s face.

Since it was obvious Houston didn’t, he took the cigarette from his mouth, coughing anxiously. ‘Oh, pardon me. I thought I told you. Didn’t I mention the route was blocked so they had to go round the mountain?’

‘Well, yes,’ Houston said. ‘Yes, you did mention that.’