by Ruskin Bond
The driver continued to grin, and occasionally to breathe smoke into the air, ogre-wise. Otherwise he gave no sign.
“These are very important sahibs,” Chiranjilal said. “Chhibar sahib wishes particularly to see them. You will gain great honor from the Dewan sahib if you take them.”
“My honor has already been taken away by these sahibs,” said the driver. “I am being generous when I charge only two hundred rupees extra for it.”
“We will give you four hundred,” said Das, almost pleadingly.
“Five,” said the driver, adamant. I looked at my watch. Quarter to nine. Lost, I thought.
At this point the Tibetan mother, at the fringe of the crowd, lifted her beautiful aquiline head and called: “Shame on you, Sanje, and shame on Sikkim. You should be privileged to do anything for these sahibs. And here you are bargaining for more money to give your unchaste wife for jewelry, and bringing your country nothing but disgrace.”
The driver looked at her, then looked back at us, and said sulkily: “Two fifty. Get in.”
I shot our preserver a grateful glance. She returned a broad wink. I laughed with relief. I could have kissed her.
We left Gangtok at about nine.
“Bahadur sahib,” Das said flatteringly, “if you get us to Nathu La by eleven, we will call you Rajkumar, a prince.”
“Sanje is sufficient for me,” said the driver disagreeably. “Do you think I have wings to fly to Nathu La?”
I offered him a cigarette, and said guilefully, “If you get there by eleven, we will pay three hundred rupees.”
“Sahib,” said the driver, suddenly tractable, “if you say half past eleven, I can do it.”
He sucked tentatively at my cigarette as we climbed out of Gangtok into the Himalayan track.
“It will be raining. There is fog ahead. I will try. Sahib,” he said, looking at the cigarette in his fingers, “do you make these yourself?”
“They are made by a great sahib in Bilayat,” I said, “called Du Maurier.”
“Do you know this sahib?” asked the driver.
“Of course,” I said.
“If he comes to Sikkim,” said the driver, “recommend me to him. He must be rich. I will take him to Nathu La for a thousand rupees.”
Then we passed into the mist.
Out of the mist, every so often, mules blundered like moths against the headlights. Behind them the tall shivering muleteers raised their arms in salute as we passed. As we climbed that spiral funnel toward the sky, the air thinned and rain began to whip tinily in with a knife-cold wind. I pulled the waterproof across the doorway, cutting off the view and saving myself from vertigo, for the track had narrowed to a strip of mud disintegrating in rain. We passed a huddle of shacks outside which cold policemen stood. “Karponang,” Das said. “Twenty-three miles still.” I looked at my watch again. It was ten to ten. “Good going.”
Das said, “Last time I passed through Karponang there were ten feet of snow. Mist everywhere also, you could not see even. I was coming back from taking medicine to the first Tibetan refugees, just after the flight of the Dalai Lama. My driver was driving with one hand and telling his beads with the other: he was a Buddhist. But I also thought we were going to die that day.” He hesitated and said: “One should not bother about dying.”
Cigarettes gave one a strange ill feeling so I stopped smoking and squinted ahead through the mist-frosted windscreen. Only one of the wipers was working; it hissed and snicked to and fro; as a child I used to call them “vipers.” Presently we passed a gutted building.
“The old fifteen-mile checkpost,” Das said. “It burnt down last year. Soon comes the new one.”
Ahead the mountainside widened and accommodated a kind of village with a worn wooden gate and a barbed-wire palisade across the road. A policeman came dripping out in a waterproof to inspect our pass. He took down the particulars, and nodded, unspeaking. We drove on. “Nine miles to Chhangu.”
For the next half hour we leant slowly, noiselessly, through a cotton-thick mist. Rain fell. It was bitterly cold, and I draped my knees with one of Das’s blankets. Then we moved out of the mist, to a cold burning of sunlight, and the unwinding road brought us down to a great lake. The mountains lay wobbling gently under the water; the water was powdery and blue, like an eye, like a pearl, and shivered all over by the risings of fish.
“Chhangu Lake.”
We climbed again, till we had left the mountain hollow of the lake behind us. Mule caravans were now very frequent. The landscape was changing noticeably. All the way from Gangtok, the mountains had been humped and rough with trees. Now they seemed to have broken off in the air, jagged and pointed, and furred over with thick gray-green lichen, on which broken fragments of limestone lay. Among this lichen browsed enormous antediluvian animals, hung round with black hair, like woolen blankets walking, with horns splaying massively across their low brows. “Yaks.” The driver pointed out a reddish flower coquetting in the wind. “Poison-flowers, sahib. You only find them here. Touch, and you die.”
The sunlight burnt on, an icy fever, and wind tacked across the shelved valleys, altering the clouds. We reached another hamlet, another worn gate, more barbed wire. Yaks were browsing between the huts. One raised his great matted head with a deep sleepy bellow.
“Sherathan,” Das said. “The last checkpost. Two miles to Nathu La. What’s the time?”
“Ten past eleven.”
“Not bad. Good. Shabash, driver. Three hundred rupees for you. Chhibar also may be late,” he explained to me.
Now we were climbing all the way, above the blue sockets of two more lakes, anthology of the tears of all the rocks. The landscape had an undated quality, prelapsarian perhaps, and the yaks, shaggy and gentle because their eyes were hidden under hair, might have floundered to Adam’s hand in Eden. Ahead the road became well trained, covered with small slaty flagstones like fish scales. Then coming round a bend we saw it lift, under walls, to where a jeep was parked and three uniformed midgets stood. Das gave a deep sigh of achievement. I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty. “That is Nathu La.”
We pulled in at a small shelf cut into the mountaintop, a lichen-rusted hummock rising beyond. The shelf had for ornament a small stone boundary post, inscribed “Sikkim-Tibet Border.” Pools of water lay about, memorials of the morning’s weather. A police officer and two constables greeted us with a request for our passes.
Then Das and I climbed the hummock, to look into Tibet. The sun had come out brilliantly and coldly, and the sky over Tibet was an icy blue. From where we stood the mountain slipped steeply down, dry and boulder-strewn, into the Chumbi Valley, a succession of folds in the ground, thickly forested, rippling to a narrow V. At the point of the V, across the valley, rose a range of forested hills. Beyond them the horizon was like a picture postcard, two scarred snow peaks vivid in the frosty sky, and a glimpse of plains between and beyond. The police officer came silently up behind us, pointing out the higher of the snow peaks.
“That is Chumbiladi.”
“Where does Tibet start?” I asked.
“My dear gentleman,” said Das, “we are in Tibet. It starts from the boundary post down there.”
“Where are the Chinese?” I inquired naively.
The policeman handed me his field glasses. I followed his finger as it swept the Chumbi Valley. Where the valley turned into hills, at the point of the V, I made out a small concrete building among the trees.
“That is their checkpost, at Chumbithan. But who can tell where those rapers of their sisters are? They hide here and there in the jungle and watch us through field glasses. But I can tell you, sahib, there must be a hundred or two between here and Chumbithan, and that is two miles.”
“Chinia aye the aj, kya?” Das asked. “Have they come here today?”
“Ji nahin. No, sir. They will not come till Chhibar sah
ib has passed. This is their diplomacy.”
I turned and looked about. Huge cairns of stones littered the hummock, ominous and druidical. Above them hundreds of improvised prayer flags, made of tattered garments, tautened in the whipping wind out of Tibet.
“What is all that?”
“When these Tibetan folk come back from Kalimpong or Gangtok they throw a stone at the border, to drive away the evil spirits from abroad. Also they put up those flags for good luck.”
Clouds swept over the sky, and suddenly mist rose everywhere, and Tibet was blotted out of sight as completely as if it had never been there. I could understand, suddenly, why the Tibetans believe that evil spirits live in these high passes. The cairns loomed gloomily; the prayer flags hung limp, then whiffled in the wind. I found myself strangely exhilarated. “It’s the air,” I thought, then, as the wind sang over the pass, shivered, helpless with cold.
Das, drinking the wind like a tonic, rushed sharply about, posing the policemen, the drivers, and myself in various places, against the cairns and flags, drooping over the boundary post, etcetera. He had given me his movie camera to hold, and that hand had turned completely numb. I tried to talk to the police officer, but it was difficult to move my lips.
However, “What do you think?” I said. “Will the Chinese attack?”
“Sahib, that is what their officers tell everybody. The yak drivers and the muleteers say that the Chinese promise to be in Sikkim before next summer.”
“What will you do then?”
“Fight, sahib. What else? Only the Sarkar must give us material for us to fight with. Our radio transmitter here works only three hours a day. If the Chinia should come while it is not working, how can we let them know at Sherathan, so that our boys can be ready there?”
“Well, they can see Nathu La,” I said, “through field glasses.”
The police officer laughed.
“Sahib,” he said, “the garrison at Sherathan has no field glasses. They have asked for some, but the Sarkar does not send. If there is fighting at Nathu La, our men at Sherathan will not see it till the Chinia are on their heads.”
The mist was thinning. He swept the Chumbi Valley with his field glasses. Then he said, “Someone is coming.”
I shouted to Das, who returned from his photography at a trot. He peered through the field glasses, then passed them to me. Four or five men on muleback were snailing up one side of the valley.
“It doesn’t look like a diplomatic party,” I said.
“It may be some traders,” said the policeman. “Let us wait.” I remembered the brandy. We squatted, all of us, under a cairn, which afforded some protection from the wind, and passed the bottle from hand to hand. Mist went over in little puffs. The brandy had a strange, fiery effect, fifteen thousand feet up: my ears sang and I felt sick.
As the mist lifted again for a minute, we saw the mule riders plodding up from the foot of the hummock toward us. Das jumped up and shouted for his movie camera. He began to work it as the first rider reached us. Three others drifted after him. They were definitely Indian traders: small, heavily muffled men, with nervous rolling eyes, like apprehensive ponies. The first one dismounted, and Das was at him like a terrier.
“Welcome. Where are you from? Yatung, hah? Kya hal chal hai Yatung me?”
“Bahuth mushkil he Yatung me, sahib. Much trouble. Yesterday the Chinia killed an Indian trader there. Their people stabbed him and looted his shop. Therefore this morning we left there, closing our shops. There are only three Indian shops open in Yatung today, where once there were fifteen.”
The police officer interrupted. “Have you seen Chhibar sahib?”
“He was leaving Yatung an hour after we left, Inspector sahib. We thought, if we came before, we would be safe; if we came after, the Chinia would eat our lives.”
“So,” said Das thoughtfully. “He will still be one hour.” He glanced into the misted valley. “Are there any Chinia down there?”
“Many, many Chinia,” one of the other traders said. “They are in the forest, three furlongs down the valley.”
“Why don’t we go down and look at them?” I suggested.
“That is what I also was thinking,” Das said.
Brandy and the thin air had brought on euphoria. I heard myself laughing and saying rather stagily, “Two minds with but a single thought.”
“Arre, don’t try these mad tricks,” said the inspector in alarm. “If the Chinia see you they will shoot you first and then ask who you are.”
“Sahib,” said one of the traders. “On my mother’s life, it is a mad thing to do.”
“Driver,” shouted Das, “bring my movie camera.” He cast the kind of glance a professional spy might have cast into the valley. “While the mist gives us cover, we shall start. Lend us your field glasses, Inspector sahib.”
“Sir,” said the policeman, “on my mother’s and grandmother’s lives, I should forbid you. What will come to me if you are killed or taken prisoner? I will lose my job!”
“Come on, Dom,” Das said to me.
So I took a final drink from the bottle, borrowed the inspector’s field glasses, turned my coat collar up against the wind, and followed Das into the valley.
The slope was strewn with rocks, which afforded precarious handholds. We had to let ourselves down backward, like mountaineers, and I felt acutely conscious of the wind flapping my jacket, the field glasses dangling round my neck, and the unseen Chinese probably even now gloating over us through their field glasses, like uniformed Fu Manchus.
I reached the bottom of the slope a minute after Das. He did not hesitate, but set off at a brisk walk down the valley. The ground was rough and tussocky, the mist had thickened, and it was impossibly cold. My limbs were like stalactites: lifting one became a creaking, breathless effort. Conversation was out of the question. I simply followed Das, and we were suddenly among trees.
Here there was a clean acid stench of wet earth and herbs. A bird or two shrieked upward through the leaves, but otherwise everything was grave-silent. Our feet scuffing through the undergrowth sounded like a forest fire.
We walked for about twenty minutes, twice passing clearings where ashes remained in ersatz fireplaces made of heaped stones. Then Das stopped. We were both breathless. We sat down and I lit a cigarette. We talked in whispers.
“There don’t seem to be any Chinese hereabouts.”
“Certainly we are not seeing any. But we must have come the best part of a mile. If we push on, we will be near the checkpost. If I can get a film of some troops without their seeing me, we shall have scooped the world.”
I no longer felt any apprehension. It seemed to me reasonable that Das should want to scoop the world. Apart from the difficulty of breathing properly in this rarefied air, I felt quite willing to go on.
“Those fireplaces, do you think they were made by the Chinese?” I was beginning to feel toward the Chinese now as I might toward the inhabitants of Troizen or Zimbabwe.
“Perhaps by the Chinese, perhaps by some muleteers. Let us get on.”
We stumbled through the trees. In the forest the mist seemed to be filtered away by the leaves, but overhead the sky was still clogged with gray. This unrewarding sky was our only window to the rest of the world for another twenty minutes, till we stumbled out of the forest onto a bare ridge, littered with chalky rock fragments, between two hillocks. Here we sat down again. I looked round through the field glasses. We were a good way into the valley: the two great snow peaks looked closer and the barren hummock of Nathu La surprisingly far. I put down the glasses and lit another cigarette. Das drummed his fingers on his knee.
“If we pushed on a little farther, we would get close enough to Chumbithan to take a film of the checkpost. Do you think that is a foolhardy plan?”
The clouds rifted: suddenly and fugitively the sun glared from a waste
of blue. Idly I picked up the glasses and looked round. The sun caught them, and reflected light flashed on one of the neighboring hillocks.
A moment later, there was an answering flash on the ridge where we sat. Das looked up in surprise. The flash was repeated. I looked through the glasses in the direction from which it came.
On the neighboring hillock, clustered together, was a group of Chinese.
There were about twenty, stocky and tough-looking. Two were in a drab gray-green military uniform with peaked caps. These two were looking at us through field glasses. The rest stood behind, Sten guns and ammunition belts hung over their shoulders. They pointed at us, and were apparently discussing us among themselves.
I told Das. He said very coolly, “Let us get back into the trees in case they open fire. I will take a film.” We moved back to the fringe of the forest. Das fitted the telelens on his camera. He knelt down, swiveling it for focus. I was unnerved, but not unpleasantly. I tried to analyze what I was feeling. I hoped to God that they wouldn’t think Das’s camera was a Sten gun and open fire. I could feel my own heart beating very fast, and I kept on swallowing. But after the initial shock had worn off, I was able to calculate a few things. First, they could not be less than half a mile away. If our information about their weapons had been right, we were out of range. Second, we were going to have to hurry back, for they would certainly send men after us. Das’s camera had begun to hum by my side. I put the glasses back on the Chinese. Half a dozen men and one of the officers were already moving downhill. The remaining officer continued to study us through his glasses.
Das’s camera ceased to hum. He stood up and turned to me.
“A scoop. You noticed those men coming down the hill, hah? They are coming to get us. Therefore I think we will have to run.”
He nodded toward Nathu La.
“Run straight back. We must not stop for anything. Mind the field glasses; they belong to the inspector. Come on.”
Of the next half hour I remember very little. I am not a good runner anyway and in the thin clear air of the plateau I was worse than usual. The initial stumbling gallop through the forest rendered me breathless; then my ears filled with a buzzing that shut out all other sound; finally I developed a burning stitch in my left side. That is the physical memory, and there is one visual image: when we came to a small pebbled brook in the forest, I collapsed beside it and lay on my stomach watching the weeds waver slowly in the flow of the current, two long-legged water flies, and a minnow; the moss was cool against my cheek. When I looked up Nathu La seemed far and unreachable. I was willing to stay where I was. Das’s voice, breathless but imperative, brought me to a kind of reality.