Blue Poppies

by Jonathan Falla

  “Oh. You have been in a war? Which war is it?”

  “The war—how many do you need? I was in Malaya, a radio instructor.”

  “You maybe fought the Chinese?”

  “We were allies.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Nima stared at him, and shifted awkwardly on the rammed earth floor. “Jemmy, do you think I am very ignorant?”

  “For pity’s sake.”

  “But I know nothing . . .”

  “Oh, come on!” Jamie felt his face reddening. Delving into a chest, he drew out a flat oval of colored wood with a short handle. “Ah, now, here’s something.” He rummaged again and produced a small box, opened it and took out a gleaming white ball. “There we go!” he exclaimed. And he dropped the ball onto the oval. It bounced lightly, crisply up into his fingers with a sharp and hollow tock. “Remember I said? You have to make a table. I’m going to teach you lads ping-pong.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ON KHENPO NIMA’S orders, Karjen painted T4JW Tibet in white letters over the outhouse door. The monk had written out the call sign very carefully on a scrap of ruled paper, but Karjen’s rendition was somewhat approximate.

  At nine each morning, Khenpo Nima would bring a brief report to go to Lhasa in ciphered Morse. Each evening, Jamie would take down any directives in return. Apart from Lhasa, there was a gaggle of hams in Australia to greet, and a pundit in Hyderabad who was disconcertingly good at chess. But there couldn’t be much idle chat. He had to conserve his tins of petrol, brought from India at absurd cost. He had a pedal dynamo for emergencies.

  Only the Chinese preoccupied him. Lhasa did the official monitoring of Radio Peking’s foreign-language broadcasts but Jamie tuned in too, well aware that China was the reason for his presence. The Tibetan government had three radios: one in the capital, two on the frontier with China. Khenpo Nima’s daily reports were made up of trivial routine business that for centuries had gone overland and taken months about it with no harm done. What Lhasa wanted now was rumor, scraps, hints regarding the chaos and slaughter of China’s civil strife—and whether it was coming closer to Tibet. But there was precious little of substance.

  Otherwise, the day was Jamie’s own, his spirit was free and his curiosity without limit. And he lived in Tibet, of all places! The Royal Corps of Signals had spirited him from Inverkeithing, from a suburb of tight-lipped Episcopalian tradesmen to barely imagined places: the desiccated tracts of Palestine, then the dank rubber groves of Malaya. After that, he’d wanted to know what more there was. The day in New Delhi that he’d signed a contract to work in Tibet, his young head had throbbed with some sort of ecstasy. War had set him loose in the world, and he loved it.

  He felt it all the more when he saw the grandeur of this country. Khenpo Nima took him into the summer hills, secretly surprised that Jamie could manage a pony without a Tibetan hand on the bridle. The house mastiff came with them. Jamie had christened this majestic dog Hector; he lolloped easily alongside the riders. They would climb to the low pass on the Lhasa trail half an hour from the village, and look back eastward. Jyeko leaned against the mountain flank, gigantic heaps of crumbled greenish mica-schist hard up behind it, the yellow and red of the monastery walls bright among the dirt and dark timbering of the houses. The young man thought it glorious, and began to paint it in delicate watercolors.

  They’d traverse the lower slopes of the Grey Ghost range, over rocky tracts smudged with thin grass. They would trot above the indignant faces of the little pica, half mouse half rabbit, that burrowed in thousands in the tufted topsoil. The pica left the ground like worm-eaten board, its tunnels a risk for the ponies. Hector would pounce, snout down into the holes and dig with officious fury. He never caught a pica, but sprayed gravel and dirt in bold arcs as he wrecked their homes. Then he’d look up at Jamie with a pleased see-what-I’ve-done expression, and trot after the ponies once more.

  On they’d go, starting the high-horned antelopes and the wild ass, watching the Jyeko goatherds, and the sheep and yaks gorging while the summer permitted. They’d see blotches of black on the southern plain where the nomads had set their big felt tents whose poled-up guy lines looked like spiders’ legs. The geese went sailing overhead in threes; black-bearded lammergeyers streaked across the cliffs.

  Where the snows had melted off the sharp gray stones, primulas and blue poppies sparkled in the scree. In the tremendous rains they hung their heads so that they were not washed clean of their pollen. The saussurea, like bearded jellyfish, huddled in protective white down, while the trumpet gentians shut up tight at the first cold touch, to gape wide again the moment the sun reappeared. The poppies’ intense blue scintillated through the droplets, a brooch of tiny sapphires.

  Khenpo Nima showed Jamie the furry edelweiss and saxifrages that split the rocks, the cobalt borage, crimson and yellow scrophulas. He pointed out the strong herbs strewn across the meadows that made the air rich, and told of the cures that each one worked. He waved to the far southeast where the river sank into gorges with alder woods and a promise of warmer, lower valleys. And he pointed to the score of glittering peaks around them, naming each one. Jamie laid his head against a rock and gazed, entranced.

  “And so you love our Khampa country?” said Nima, pleased.

  The young man frowned. “Well . . . it’s grand as anything. isn’t it? The air is so light. Nothing weighs down.”

  But the sharp, blasting rains made him duck his head; in moments there’d be rills bubbling down the hillsides; the ponies skidded and trembled on the slippery turf, the reins were sodden and Jamie’s hands numb. He loved it, once in a while. Afterwards, the direct blaze of the sun had their coats steaming in a minute.

  Sometimes Karjen would show Jamie how he stalked the na, the wild sheep, and killed them with his musket. It was a weapon from another time, a black powder matchlock with a spindly bi-pod of antelope horns. It took a long minute to prepare and fire, in which the agile na might easily escape. But Karjen’s hunting dogs cornered them among the crags and barked to signal. Nima cried, “They’re here, the na is trapped!” and waved excitedly. Karjen brought Jamie to the gully’s edge, gestured him to brace the musket on its stand, to light the matchcord with flint sparks and blow on it till it glowed, then to tug it down into the powder bowl. There came a startling, hissing flash, Jamie jerked aside and the ball smacked off a rock beside Hector. Alarmed, the mastiff yelped and skulked behind a boulder as Jamie stumbled and fell. The opportunist na jumped past them all, hurtled to the crannies and ledges above—and was gone. Karjen flapped his arms in despair while Khenpo Nima howled with laughter. “Sorry, Jemmy, so sorry! Rotten lousy Tibet gun! Ha!”

  Jamie picked himself off the ground, rubbing the side of his head, grazed on a rock. He looked with annoyance at the ramshackle musket lying with its antelope horns twisted under it. Karjen picked up and tenderly straightened the contraption. He spat—then remembered his manners. “My old thing . . . sorry, Mr. Jemmy. You bring us a good British gun and teach us all proper shooting. That’ll scare the wits out of the Chinese, Reverend—Tibetan shooting and British guns!”

  “Ah, Jemmy,” laughed Nima, “you see how we cannot do without you now.”

  Jamie smiled.

  Everything was new to him, the manners, clothes, accents, houses, the drinking of barley beer. Though he’d been in Lhasa almost a year, the province of Kham was utterly different. The women were fiercely opinionated pragmatists, who would marry four brothers at once and rule the house. The men were tall, often very tall indeed, well over six feet. Their faces were sunburned and aquiline, and their hands clanked with crude silver rings. Their hair was tied in thick tails wound on top of their heads, and in anything short of a blizzard they walked with their rough robes off one naked shoulder. They wore sheepskin in winter, felt in summer. Their reputation was for shameless brigandage, for appalling ferocity. They would wait for weeks in the rocky hills, then little bands of twenty Khampa men would swoop on the tail of caravans of
two hundred or more and rush off with animals and silver, silks, guns and ammunition. In the market at Jyeko, one did not inquire too closely as to the provenance of horses or trade goods.

  Fascinated, Jamie would sit gazing and sketching. He examined the triumphant bandit-cavaliers who strutted through the lanes, long swords at their waists; or the farmer-serfs, their spines sore from labor and their hands like charred wood; the pilgrims in rags and knee pads who measured their prostrated length every yard from monastery to remote monastery; the huntsmen come to buy gunpowder, and their precious dogs with curled red-gray lips; criminals in shreds of sackcloth with their feet chained and their hands cut off, condemned to a short life of shuffling and whining for food; the merchants—Khampa, Tibetan, Chinese, even Indian or Mongol—bustling about their business to make the most of the summer caravans, their money sewn into their robes and a wary eye on the horsemen. Jamie watched, drew their portraits and made them laugh, sitting in the late-summer warmth.

  A month later, on the high pastures an hour from the village, the scent of the plants was gone. In September, the grass withered and the temperature fell a degree lower each night. In October, the ice took hold.

  Storms came, presaged by yellow and violet clouds. For days at a time the village went into hiding. High winds scoured the lanes with small snow crystals like grit. The gales banged and buffeted hour after hour, leaving the ears dulled and aching. After losing the antenna twice over the parapet, Jamie learned to lower it on his roof at the first hint of changing light.

  Travelers from Sikhang spoke of a turn in the Chinese wars, of colossal armies breaking apart and fleeing. Over the chain bridge, the forlorn garrison of Nationalists seemed frozen in fear. Jamie sat on the flat roof of his house, and made a watercolor sketch of the bridge and the grim little barracks. He could see the glinting bayonet of the solitary guard who stamped despondently at the far side, longing for the fire within.

  “Now they are unhappy, and have insulted ladies in the market,” said Khenpo Nima.

  “If I were them I’d pack up and go home,” said Jamie.

  Nima replied, “Where to go? Their homes are all burned now.”

  The two men sat quiet for a moment, the paintbrush tinkling in a cup of water.

  “Jemmy? I have a letter come from Lhasa.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Lhasa says, your old contract will finish soon. They send a new one.”

  “That right?”

  “So now, I must ask you to sign.”

  Jamie stopped washing-in the eastern peaks. “What makes them think I want to stay?”

  “Oh, but you do want to! In Khampa country!”

  “Well, though. With a Chinese war and all?” He began painting again, little flicks of his finest brush doing the gray chain bridge.

  Nima watched him with dismay. “Do you want to go home now, Jamie?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. But I might like to move about.”

  “You have someone special at home?”

  “Nima! No chance.” He was blushing; his rendition of the bridge was spiky, the perspective nonsensical.

  “So why will you not sign your new contract?”

  “Nima, I’m just thinking, all right? I might want to move on, I don’t know. I’ve done the best part of two years in Tibet. There’s other places I’d like to see.”

  Nima held his tongue for a minute. Then suddenly he smiled broadly. “Hey, Jamie, that table? We have done it.”

  He rode to the monastery that afternoon, passed through the gates and crossed the courtyard. Beyond this was the prayer hall, full of columns, dark red paint and gilding, shadows, smoky flickering and the rancid reek of burnt butter oil. A stern, elderly lama sat cross-legged on a carpeted dais with a desk; arrayed before him were a dozen young monks seated on mats with wooden stands for the scriptures. Their master intoned the verses: they replied, then sipped from copper beakers of buttered tea—and looked around in mid-chant as Khenpo Nima led Jamie through.

  Beyond the scripture hall was a large chamber with splendid painted beams. In the center stood a table of raw, rough new wood, to which Jamie attached a little green net. Then from his knapsack came the hard white ball and paddles. Jamie curled Khenpo Nima’s fingers around the handle.

  A resonant clicking reached the prayer hall. A moment later, the double doors sprang open, banging back hard. A dozen monks jammed the opening to gaze into the chamber. The little celluloid ball bounced in quick, gentle arcs across the table, which was not terribly flat and sometimes sent it off on wild trajectories. Khenpo Nima dabbed valiantly at the ball, Jamie calmly caught and sent it back, and the big monk leaped up and down, his voluminous purples swaying. The closer Nima peered at his target, the less often he hit it true. More often it flew across the big chamber with a shrieking novice in pursuit.

  “I will accompany you to your house, Jemmy, and you shall read this new contract.”

  They walked together, Jamie leading his pony past the sellers of butter, trinkets and brass implements. In the center of the market, two Nationalist soldiers stood arguing with a tobacco trader. He was refusing them credit; as they turned away, the soldiers shouted obscenities at him.

  “The Chinese would not have spoken like that a year ago,” said Khenpo Nima. “They are frightened and quick to anger now.”

  They moved into the lanes—and again heard shouting.

  It came from the double doors of a sizeable house, gloomy and uninviting. There stood a young woman. Her heavy black hair, hastily pushed back, framed a finely made face now twisted with anxiety. A little girl stood beside her, clinging to her mother and sniveling with fright. The woman supported herself with a stick in her left hand; her leg seemed misformed. In front of her stood three men, who spat imprecations at her while they pointed into the house and leered maliciously.

  Khenpo Nima stopped and stared at the dispute.

  “What is it, Nima? What’s happening?”

  Jamie had not seen the woman before. She pushed her hair back once more and lifted her face to answer the jeering men. Though she looked hunted and at the mercy of her tormentors, though she was injured and weak, though she had a child to shelter, though she was pleading, still she had pride. Jamie saw the fear that gripped the woman. Her body wanted to curl into a ball, but she held herself upright by willpower: the mouse that defies the cat. She lifted her stick to block the door to the three men. They laughed at her and turned away.

  Then they saw Khenpo Nima, and their faces changed at once. They stepped aside with a hint of a bow, and departed.

  Khenpo Nima hurried forward. Jamie stood still and watched. Steadying herself against the doorframe, the woman reached down for her daughter. The child buried her face in the folds of her skirt. Her mother spoke quickly but quietly to Nima, gesturing with her look after the three men. Her eyes, dark and narrow, tilted downwards at the inner corners, were awash with tears. Jamie felt a desire to touch her, to say something comforting though he had no idea of her trouble. He realized that he was staring. Nima was listening closely, leaning forward and frowning. The woman glanced at Jamie, who felt awkward suddenly. “Nima, I’ll get on home,” he called out. “I’ll see you shortly.”

  “Yes, yes,” agreed the monk, distracted, and turned his attention back to the woman.

  Jamie mounted his pony and rode on through the village, more disturbed than he could account for.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHEN KHENPO NIMA rejoined Jamie at his house, both men were subdued. Karjen cranked the generator; they listened to commands from Lhasa concerning trade passes to Assam. There was nothing relating to China. Jamie shouted at Karjen to stop the generator, and the yard fell silent.

  The house had improved little since Jamie’s arrival. He was no homemaker. Paints and brushes, radio valves in tatty cardboard boxes, clothes, harness and books still littered the corners. The upturned packing case still did for a table. On this Karjen placed wooden bowls of dark tea with globes of butterfat rotating on th
e surface.

  “What is this one?” asked Khenpo Nima, picking up a flat tin and tugging at the tight-fitting lid.

  “Moffat toffee. My mother sends it from Scotland. Go ahead.”

  Nima placed a toffee in his mouth and sucked thoughtfully. Jamie puffed across the surface of his cup, blowing the greenish globules aside so that he could avoid them.

  “What was all that with the girl?” he asked.

  “You see these men?” Nima sighed. “They tell her to leave. The landlord is a rich man: he says he cannot risk having her there. He says his animals abort, that he gets no milk, this is wrong, that is wrong, and it is all the woman’s fault.”

  “How come?”

  “She is bad luck. You see that she cannot walk so well? Now his property has her bad luck and he wants her out.”

  “Where can she go?”

  “Nowhere. No one in this village wants her. Tomorrow I shall go and speak with that man again. He will do as I say. He will leave her alone.” He paused, frowning, then fished in his long robes. “Now, more important, Jemmy.”

  He brought out a flat, grubby packet of oiled cloth: a government envelope. Jamie regarded it without enthusiasm.

  “Jemmy, Lhasa must know if you are staying. You must give an answer.”

  “How long?”

  “Five years.”

  “No chance!”

  “This can be your home.”

  “Who says I want a home? Maybe I’ve other plans.”

  “You are courting? Bring that person to Jyeko.”

  “Nima, there’s no one. I’m not ready for all that.”

  Khenpo Nima surveyed Jamie’s shambles, the kit and clothing cast anyhow, the poor comfort. “Your house is not so nice, Jemmy. This Karjen is hopeless, I shall find someone better.”

  “Karjen’s fine. Look, Nima, a year. Maybe I’ll stay another year.”

  A pause came between them. Through the window Jamie could see the dour Karjen grooming the pony, retying a string of red beads in her mane. The villain had his charms. Jamie said: “Anyway, Nima, the Chinese might do something.”