Blue Poppies

by Jonathan Falla

  The market was busy, and for a moment Puton was not noticed. When two traders at last saw her and stared, she moved on through the crowd. But a hostile susurrus began. For some minutes Puton gazed around at the stalls, trying to convince herself that she was glad to be there. Then she heard a malicious snort behind her, and felt Dechen tug nervously at her free hand. She stopped in front of a haberdasher’s table, trying to still her nerves as she peered at buttons and braids. The trader, a woman with a harelip that gave her a permanent snarl, stood hand on hip and glared at her. And then took a brown-black oilcloth from under the stall and laid it over all the goods.

  Puton looked up at her.

  “I want to sell my goods,” sneered the harelipped woman. “I don’t want them tainted with your sort of luck.”

  Around Puton, the market voices fell silent. She looked at the peering, grinning faces. She felt the terrified press of Dechen’s hand in her own. Then she turned and lurched back to the lane and her dark house.

  Khenpo Nima visited that afternoon. He called to Puton up the steep stairwell but she didn’t reply. At first he smiled to himself, thinking that she was enjoying her liberation. But then he saw, in the gloom above him, the soft, frightened shine of Dechen’s eyes at the ladder’s head. Alarmed, Khenpo Nima climbed up, calling again, “Miss Puton?”

  She was sitting on a stool by a barred window on the far side of the room. Khenpo Nima said, “Miss Puton?” but she didn’t move. She gazed out of the window fixedly. When Nima came closer, he saw the wet streaks and smeared rose madder on her face.

  “I shall not go out again,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  “You shall go out in my company,” he retorted, “and anyone who speaks ill of you shall answer to me.”

  He stood over her, tall and vigorous, and looked again at the mountain in the distance. He remembered that her husband had died in its shadow. He felt momentarily dizzied with pity for her and with anger at his uncharitable people.

  As he thought all of this, Nima heard the sound of a mule’s tread in the lane and he looked down. At once, he smiled with indulgent amusement. Below, the curious figure of a “Ying-gi-li” sat stiffly on a hard Tibetan saddle, followed by his house servant, prodding the mule with a stick to move it along, but furtively, to save the foreigner’s pride. Inadvertently, Nima chuckled, then remembered where he was. The young widow was gazing up at him, puzzled.

  “I shall see to it that you are never without protection,” he said sternly. Puton lowered her face. To divert her, Khenpo Nima told Puton about the peculiar coming of the Ying-gi-li, who was now also in the care of the Jyeko lamas.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE LAMASERY AT Jyeko was modest: three dozen monks, no more, lived in its flat-roofed halls. The walls were of stone crudely rendered with clay, the lower part ochre and the upper third a blistered and faded raspberry red. A chill stream frisked down the mountainside behind the village and tumbled over rocky steps by the gate, where it powered a little waterwheel. This ground no corn; the leather paddles turned an arrangement of prayer flags that should have kept a constant om mani padme hom twirling heavenward, but the device was in poor repair and prone to jamming.

  Though the lamasery was small, it was reputedly ancient. The main gates were suitably massive, bristling with iron nails. But within the walls, everything was on a modest scale, a muddle of arcades and oratories with praying machines of every size: little wheels that rattled and tinkled in the windows, wheels driven by leather cups to catch the wind, inscribed prayer tables you could spin with a finger, great drums packed with paper prayers surrounded by butter lamps like throngs of gleaming admirers. From one window, steam billowed night and day. In this chamber, a cauldron the size of a barrel was kept simmering for the provision of limitless buttered tea.

  The physician Khenpo Nima was by no means senior in Jyeko. Though the establishment was humble, they had a Venerable Abbot, a humorous old gentleman. It was the Abbot who, against all precedent, had banished the ferocious mastiff guard dogs from the monastery. He disliked their slavering malice, he said; it was not the thing for a place of peace, and he feared they’d bite a child one day. The holy compound was guarded instead by four dead dogs, crudely stuffed with straw and propped up on sticks in the front court. Their decaying muzzles hung open in desiccated snarls, their teeth brown and dusty, their eye sockets empty and dry. They were, said the Abbot, quite sufficiently terrifying to keep out evil spirits.

  The Abbot had no interest in administration or affairs of state: all official post from Lhasa was Khenpo Nima’s concern. When Lhasa informed Jyeko that they were sending a transmitter to establish a radio station, it was Khenpo Nima who opened the letter and read out the announcement in the refectory.

  “Reverend One, what is radio?” inquired a novice.

  “I have seen this at Chamdo,” said Nima. “It is a box of iron from which voices fly through the upper air.”

  “It is a prayer wheel, then, Reverend One?”

  “It is not. These voices are letters, not prayers. They fly to Lhasa, or wherever they are directed.”

  “Are they extremely loud, that they may be heard in Lhasa? Are the spirits of the upper air disturbed?”

  “Not at all,” said Nima.

  The novices looked at one another, some bewildered, some frankly incredulous.

  “Don’t look like that!” snapped Nima. “I repeat, I have seen this happen at Chamdo. A foreigner worked it. I saw the Governor speak a greeting to Lhasa. I heard Lhasa send greetings back again!”

  The novices nodded respectfully, silenced by Khenpo Nima’s irritation. He was not above cuffing their ears.

  “Why are we to have this box, Reverend One?” another asked.

  Nima hesitated—and a novice interposed: “So that Lhasa may hear of trade caravans from China.”

  “But there aren’t any, not since their war began.”

  “So Lhasa will be anxious for news—”

  “Enough!” bellowed Khenpo Nima. “Too much gossip and speculation. A Ying-gi-li will come here; we are to prepare a house for him.”

  When their “English” arrived in Jyeko three months later, the house was ready. Khenpo Nima walked to meet the official caravan of ponies and pack animals at the pass two miles from the village. He looked at the slim young man who sat on a pony, regarding him a little apprehensively. Nima saw blue eyes puffy with chill and sleepless nights, crisp sandy hair and a chin covered in pale stubble. He was a former soldier called James Wilson.

  “Your journey is over,” Khenpo Nima smiled up at the traveler. The young man looked down at the monk, his shaven head and shabby robe of purplish red.

  “I can’t wait for a hot soak,” he said. It was a curious phrase, and Nima puzzled over it a moment, surprised that the newcomer spoke Tibetan at all. He took the pony firmly by the bridle and marched it down the hill to a house at the edge of the village. Lhasa’s orders were coldly clear: the Ying-gi-li was to be made very comfortable, so that he stayed.

  The house had been built for a Chinese trader: it was a clutch of bare rooms surrounding a courtyard, which was enclosed by mud-brick walls topped with flat stones against erosion by the rain. It was entered through a timber-arched gateway with a rough double gate. There were stables and stores, good outhouses for the radio, even a bathroom with a stone floor, crude duckboards and a hole in the wall through which the water drained into the lane outside. For the winter, there was a kang, a stone sleeping platform with a fire beneath. Khenpo Nima had installed, on a chain, a huge and savage mastiff with bloodshot eyes that snarled at anyone in the gateway. As housekeeper, he had recruited a grim old Khampa who owed him many favors, a reformed but impoverished bandit with a snuff-stained mustache called Karjen. He’d ordered Karjen to sweep the goat droppings out of the bedroom. Then they could only wait to see what the foreigner might require to keep him contented in Jyeko.

  When they arrived at the courtyard gate, the mastiff bayed in outrage. Khenpo Nima watched an
xiously for Wilson’s reaction. The young man merely smiled at the dog, which fell silent and followed his movements with curled lips and a rumbling in its throat. As the pack animals were led in and the boxes unstrapped, the Ying-gi-li stood in the middle of the yard looking around. Then, in his curiously accented Tibetan, he called to Khenpo Nima: “Whose is the house, then?”

  “It is your house, sir,” replied Nima.

  “Well, it’s just grand. And you’re to call me Jamie.”

  He gave Khenpo Nima a broad grin. Hugely relieved, Nima beamed back at him.

  “I’ve been in Lhasa nearly a year,” said Jamie Wilson. “It’s great to move.”

  He spun on his heel and went off gaily to poke his nose into every room, and to direct the unloading of his packs and cases.

  When Khenpo Nima returned next morning, he was surprised to find the great mastiff dozing peaceably in the sun. The house fires were blazing to drive out damp, the rooms were chaos, and a clump of gawping children blocked the gateway. In the kitchen, Karjen fussed noisily with pans and fuel. In the yard, two youths had taken it upon themselves to groom the pony and pack mules. But Nima could not see Wilson.

  “Up here!”

  The Ying-gi-li was waving and grinning from the flat roof of the outhouses. A tree-trunk ladder stood against the wall; Khenpo Nima climbed. The roof was neatly stacked with the usual fuel reserves of dried dung but in the center there was a bizarre new structure: a tall metal pole from which four strong cords stretched out and were lashed around large stones. A coil of coated wire lay nearby at which the young man was tugging with some sort of tool.

  “Antenna!” said Wilson.

  “Ah, yes,” replied Nima, unenlightened.

  “Terrific place for it. Reception should be excellent.”

  “Reception, yes!” said Nima, happy to join in his pleasure, whatever the cause.

  “I’m putting the set in the room directly below. Come and see.”

  Wilson scampered down the ladder like an outsize squirrel. Khenpo Nima followed more restrainedly, oddly conscious of his clerical dignity.

  In a small storeroom, the radio transmitter sat on a table improvised from planks and mud bricks. It was not imposing, nothing more than a gray box with small round glass windows and black knobs on the front. It hardly seemed adequate for speaking with Lhasa—indecently small, even, for such a momentous task. When it was turned on, said Wilson, little lamps would shine inside the windows. Two cords came out of the front, one attached to a chunky black object on a stand, topped with mesh, the other to a small contrivance with a metal lever. Wilson prodded this with his finger, making a merry rhythmic clicking. He said it was like writing in the air, and he would be teaching some local men how to do it. He handled the parts of the radio with care, but no special reverence.

  “It’s an American model. There’s three now, one in Lhasa and another in Chamdo. We’ve trained Indian operators there. Can you get me a couple of stools?”

  “Anything you require,” said Nima. “What makes it go?”

  “Oh, there’s a petrol generator. It can stay in the shed by the gate.”

  “Ah, yes, generator!” Nima knew the word and felt pleased. He had come across generators at Chamdo where the government office had one, causing lanterns that hung like giant water drops from the ceiling to shine brilliantly. They did without butter-oil lamps altogether. On his visit there, Nima had found the smell most peculiar. Then he’d realized that there was no smell.

  “I can run a cable over the arch,” said Wilson.

  “Cable?”

  “For the power. From the generator to the radio.”

  Nima looked at the arch of the gateway, and the rooms on either side. “Please, put the generator in this room with the radio,” he said.

  Wilson stared at him.

  “No chance. The noise, the fumes.”

  “Oh,” said Nima, regarding the arch unhappily.

  “It’ll do just fine over there,” said the Ying-gi-li.

  “It might not be so wise,” murmured Nima. He was wondering what the effect on the spirits—or, indeed, on the Abbot— might be. Neither spirits nor abbots were used to passing beneath an electric force. It seemed to him a foolhardy proposal.

  “Not wise?” Wilson bristled. “And why would that be?”

  A few yards away, the mastiff opened its eyes. Wilson was looking at Khenpo Nima with his chin up. The monk thought, he is stubborn, and I am instantly disputing with him, which is the last thing I should do. “You are certain that this is best?” he asked.

  “Quite certain,” said Wilson.

  “Then, of course, it is a wonderful arrangement.”

  “Great stuff,” said Wilson. “You ever played ping-pong? I could teach you that too.”

  Two days later, Wilson told Khenpo Nima that he would make his first test transmission that evening.

  “Mr. Jemmy, you will wait till tomorrow morning? The Abbot will come. He has seen the equipment at Chamdo, and he must bless this. Please, this is important.”

  Wilson nodded. “Bring him along first thing.” He smiled cheerfully. Nima was filled with relief and a sudden liking for the foreigner.

  “Ah, first thing!” he concurred.

  When the sun came over the shoulder of the Grey Ghost, the dust of snow on the pastures vanished in moments. Even so late in summer the rays could burn through the thin veil of high-altitude air. But in the shadows, the water in the pails was ice-capped. The ponies’ breath plumed out of Jamie Wilson’s stable, where they stood wearing embroidered blankets of thick yak-hair cloth. Karjen pushed past the animals into the fuel store to bring in kindling and dried dung for the stoves. The Ying-gi-li demanded hot water for his morning wash, and for the evening too. Karjen couldn’t see how the fuel stocks would last more than a month. He foresaw his winter spent collecting freeze-dried dung on the pastures, and clicked his tongue in annoyance.

  But the young foreigner certainly kept busy. Soon after dawn, Karjen was pottering about the kitchen preparing breakfast: butter tea, Chinese biscuits and a tin of the sticky orange jelly the Ying-gi-li had brought with him. Karjen moved slowly: he was not a young man and was swaddled in ragged gray sheepskins against the cold. He had reckoned he had a good while before the young man would be up and wanting anything, so he was put out to see Wilson standing in the doorway clapping his arms around his sides and grinning. “Karjen, morning! Does it get much colder than this? I’m ready for a cup, if you can manage.”

  Karjen stared at him in astonishment. Before he could speak, however, sounds came to them: bright ringing harness, hoofs and voices. Karjen was about to cry, “The Abbot!” but the Abbot got in first.

  Every monk in Jyeko came through the courtyard gate, a bustle of maroon milling about the Venerable ancient beaming down from his pony. They grinned, they chattered, they looked about them in excitement. Khenpo Nima stood with the bridle in his hand. He glanced up at the cable beneath which they had passed without mishap, and laughed aloud. “First thing, Jemmy, first thing!”

  “That’s great!” beamed Jamie Wilson. “Karjen, the generator, please.” Overawed by the occasion, the decrepit bandit stood dumbstruck. Jamie pointed to the shed and repeated patiently: “Generator, Karjen.”

  The engine raced, then settled to a modest puttering. The old Abbot settled comfortably on a stool by the radio table; the door was jammed with monks, and the lamps and valves glowed warmly. Jamie stood aside, waiting. The Abbot picked at his gold tooth pensively as he regarded the Morse key and the microphone. He touched both gently, pulled his robe tighter across his front. Then he began to speak in a mellifluous singsong voice and antique intonations that Jamie could not follow.

  “He says, he wishes to bless this radio,” Khenpo Nima murmured in Jamie’s ear. “He says it will be a wonder to listen to Lhasa, and he begs forgiveness of the spirits of the upper air and trusts they will not be unduly disturbed by flying messages. He gives thanks to you, Jemmy, for your important contributi
on to Tibet’s safety at this difficult time.”

  “Oh, it’s not my doing . . .” blushed Wilson, but Nima’s hand stilled him. The Abbot had taken a scarf of creamy white silk from within his robe, and now laid it around the microphone.

  “He asks,” continued Nima, “are we ready to begin?”

  The Abbot glanced slowly around the room, the furrows on his ancient face flexing into a broad grin as he leaned towards the microphone and said, “Over!”

  Jamie smiled, leaned forward and said, “Come in, Lhasa, over,” then motioned the Abbot to release a switch in time to catch the accents of the Indian operator in the capital: “. . . ing you, Jyeko, go ahead, over.”

  “Khenpo Nima, please tell the Abbot that he can now make his report to Lhasa.”

  Nima murmured in the Abbot’s ear. The Abbot looked at Jamie Wilson, then spoke quietly to Nima.

  “He says that he has nothing to report,” explained Nima.

  “But . . . nothing to say to Lhasa?”

  Nima shrugged.

  “The Chinese are still here. No one comes, no one goes. Nothing to say.”

  The house was a shambles: wooden boxes spewed out books, clothes and tools. Nothing was put away because there was nowhere to put anything. Jamie turned a tea chest upside down and began to stack technical manuals on top of it.

  “Is this like a Ying-gi-li house, Jemmy?” asked Khenpo Nima.

  “Not very.”

  Nima sat down with surprising gracefulness, and watched Jamie pottering and sorting his belongings. He frowned awkwardly. “You have many things. I myself have nothing. We shall find you a cupboard. I think we can find you a table also.”

  “I’ll make do. I’m not here forever.”

  “You want to go home?” cried Nima anxiously.

  “Home? To Inverkeithing? No chance. That’s war, you see. You escape, get to move, to see things. That’s what I like.”