Blue Poppies

by Jonathan Falla

  A moment—and he was gone from the room. Little more than one hour later, Puton and Dechen rode out of Jyeko just as they might have done days earlier, in the midst of men and animals. Only this time the Abbot was with her and, behind them, Jyeko was ablaze.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE RADIO INTERCEPTS were almost reassuring, and the leaders of Jyeko gathered each evening to listen intently. Jamyang Sangay declared that the blundering invaders were exhausting themselves in chasing up and down searching for the caravan. The villagers were under no illusion that they could outstrip Duan, but his men and animals would not be finding the weather any more comfortable, or the grazing more plentiful than they were. They were ahead of him, and that was everything. With watchful outriders behind the caravan, they felt confident that it would be Khampas ambushing Chinese and not vice versa . They’d slaughter them all over again!

  Khenpo Nima did not like such talk, but he kept his distance and rode on with his own thoughts. It had not occurred to anyone that Duan might divide his forces.

  It was now the second week of November. As the crow flies, the caravan was perhaps little more than fifty miles from the border with Assam, but that meant little on the ground. Even at Moro-La, where the ways divided, the villagers would be only halfway to safety. A turn due south would lead Jamie through the passes to India. Those heading for Lhasa, however, would still have more than two hundred and fifty miles to go.

  They trudged along broad valleys, riding when they could but increasingly going on foot. The mules were in poor condition, debilitated and slow. The ponies were so famished that they had begun to bite each other’s tails and blankets. They could be given tea leaves and some barley but the people’s own rations were hardly generous. Even the yaks, whose horny, barbed tongues could pull up almost anything that grew, were now lethargic and reluctant to move.

  Each evening the temperature plunged further and the winds gathered force. A steady gale set in and continued for several days. The cold blast drained energy from the caravan, leaving people and animals without reserves. By day, the weaker pack animals began to stagger. A pony’s eyes would glaze sadly as it saw the village party draw away, and its head would sink down. A man would turn back to the forlorn thing and cut its throat, rather than leave it to the wolves that would terrify it before tearing it apart. The redundant packsaddles were ripped open, and the hay stuffing shared out as fodder.

  Ravens and griffon vultures were on watch now. One morning, after a night of seventeen degrees of frost, two ponies and a mule were dead. They were found on their sides in the thin dust-snow, rigid, necks and legs outstretched. From one, the eyes had gone already; ravens were hopping towards the next corpse, to enjoy the delicacy warm and soft. The people shouted curses at them. The mastiffs had a fine meal.

  “The weakest die, which means that the strongest are still living.” Karjen shrugged.

  The radio mule, meanwhile, with perhaps some sense of its greater dignity, showed no signs of giving in. At nightfall Jamie swathed it in blankets and in the morning it stomped along admirably, its mast and pennon swaying at the caravan’s head and the people dutifully following.

  They reached an expanse of thin pasturage, the dry grass long enough for the ponies and mules that trotted unstoppably in all directions and gorged themselves. The Jyeko women cried, “For pity’s sake, let them eat!” so a rest was called.

  Wild creatures seemed to be flourishing in this bleak place. They saw a herd of mountain asses, white legs trotting in the distance. There were antelopes that sprang away, their smooth fur a lustrous satin that turned to velvet as the wind brushed it. The outriders went after them with Chinese rifles and brought in enough for everyone’s supper. There were wild yaks far off, and the tracks of wolves.

  Jyeko made camp, setting up the black tents and lighting fires. For once they made no effort to wait until dusk. If it was fated that the fires be seen today, then so be it. The people needed warmth, buttered tea without stint, their clothes to be thawed and dried.

  There were streams around the camp, frozen into flat glassy snakes. The villagers began chopping up the ice to boil. With the radio tent up and Karjen hobbling the animals on the best grazing, Jamie sat on a saddle peering into the flames. He felt little tongues of heat penetrating his face; his cheeks and lips were badly cracked with cold.

  “Jemmy,” said Khenpo Nima beside him, “with luck we shall reach Dengkol tomorrow, where there is a village. After that, just two or three days to Moro-La.”

  “I’d rather not talk about luck,” said Jamie coldly.

  Nima peered sideways at him and frowned. “You think about Miss Puton?”

  “Oddly enough.”

  “Oh, that was very bad luck.”

  “Which, I suppose, proves the whole notion. If she had the bad luck to be left behind, she would obviously have been a dangerously unlucky person to bring along.”

  “Well . . .” murmured Khenpo Nima, taken aback. There was half a minute of silence. “Jemmy, you see that woman who is breaking ice there?”

  A dumpy woman was bent with her back to them, smashing at the ice with a small rock. When she turned, Jamie recognized her by her harelip: she had once stood with Jamyang Sangay, shunning Puton.

  “I know her,” he said, and looked back at the fire.

  “Some three years ago,” continued Nima, “this Tesla had a husband. Her man Norsam, he was a wool trader, an ill-made person quite as coarse as she. But they were contented in their way. Now, Norsam came home one afternoon saying he had something in his eye. He thought it was a grain of sand. Tesla looked but could see nothing. The next morning Norsam’s left eye was red and swollen and his vision was bad. He sat in the house rubbing his eyes and rubbing again, and perhaps with rubbing he moved the grain of sand to the other eye because by the evening that eye was sore also. Still, Tesla could not see the grain of sand and she began to worry because his eyes were worse.

  “So she spoke to a lama who said that during a festival in Jyeko when the devils were being driven away one of the evil spirits had looked for somewhere to hide. And this spirit had seen that Tesla’s store of luck was low, and had sought a way into the household. Now, normally this would not be dangerous but in this family—so the lama told Tesla—there was a little chink in their fortune through which the evil spirit had crept. Those very words: a tiny gap in their fortune. So Tesla now believed the evil spirit had entered their home through the gap in her lip.

  “They called in a physician from Chamdo who charged dearly. Norsam lay in a fever. By this time, his eyes had hard growths in the corners that were growing towards the center, closing his eyes and throbbing with pain. This so-called doctor looked at Norsam’s eyes and took out a small knife. He cut the growths away, as roughly as a nomad butchering a sheep. Tesla tells me that her husband never made a sound. The doctor told Tesla to pray hard—as if she hadn’t been! He gave her some potion, and left with his pay.

  “When he had gone, Norsam asked Tesla what the doctor had said, and did it agree with the lama’s diagnosis? The poor man begged her to tell him why he was suffering so. Tesla began to weep, to confess that it was all her fault that the evil spirit had got among them. Norsam lay listening in silence. Then he turned his back to her and he never spoke another word. He died a few days later.”

  Khenpo Nima stopped speaking; the two men sat side by side looking into the fire. Jamie dropped another piece of dried yak dung onto the embers, which burned with a sweet scent.

  “What are you telling me?” he said at last. “That her luck was even worse than Puton’s? I can’t say I’m impressed.”

  Khenpo Nima shook his head. “I wonder only, what should this woman believe? Why did her husband suffer so? Was it all caused by a grain of sand, something so small that she could never find it? I have taught her myself that these things are prescribed in our destiny: if her husband’s wheel had turned thus far, his death was certain and no guilt of hers. But still she would ask, why should he suf
fer such bitter pain?”

  “Deep matters, I’m sure,” grumbled Jamie.

  “Oh, yes, but no deep explanation could make her happy. Tesla is a vigorous but simple woman. She sees life in terms of butter and barley, fire and money and wool. She listened politely to my doctrines, but I am afraid they had little force for her. So, she was left with a choice: either she inhabits a perfectly hostile and unpredictable world, having no notion of what malignancy surrounds her, what might strike her next, or she clings to the explanation of the little gateway in her lip that she can plug up again with prayers. Are we surprised that she has chosen the latter?”

  Jamie glanced towards the woman who was now packing ragged shards of ice into a pan and perching it on three stones over a yak-dung fire. But he said nothing.

  Again, they sat in silence until Nima said, “Jemmy, I do not wish you to leave Tibet filled with hatred as you are.” Jamie looked at him sharply—he continued: “Consider, Jemmy, whose luck is more in question here? You, with no job and no lady? Or one hundred and thirty people from a burned village who must walk to Lhasa?”

  “They’re doing well enough.”

  “Really? We are giving our barley to the animals to keep them strong but still they freeze to death. Most families are on short rations now, did you know? They are eating once a day only. Few have any butter left. Some have a little cheese, most do not. We are even short of tea.”

  “I had no idea,” Jamie mumbled, not entirely truthfully.

  “No?” replied the monk gently. “Well, of course, you they will always feed.”

  Thirty yards off, Tesla of the harelip put a few handfuls of barley into a nose bag for her mule. The animal hung its heavy head, looking weakly towards Jamie. Khenpo Nima got to his feet to walk away among the villagers.

  “Nima,” said Jamie quickly, looking up, “what happened to Puton’s husband?”

  “Oh, yes, there was an accident,” said Khenpo Nima wryly, “in the gorges.”

  “He was a taxman, wasn’t he? People hated him, didn’t they?”

  Khenpo Nima spoke quietly: “Our sufferings spring from our desires, Jemmy. Do not be ruled by desires.” He began to walk away, tall and strong.

  He was some yards off when Jamie said clearly: “You brought her to me, Nima.”

  Khenpo Nima walked on.

  In the morning, a weak sun came out and tried to warm them. The light steel tubing of the antenna took on a faint gleam as it flicked and bobbed rhythmically above the radio mule. They were climbing again.

  Towards midday the caravan paused. In front of them, stretching several miles along the valley, was a narrow frozen lake of ice tinged with grays and greens. A steady wind streamed over the valley floor from the peaks ahead. It picked up tiny spicules of ice that stung their faces; as these blew across the lake, a faint humming rose from the frozen surface.

  “Nomads, Jemmy!” shouted Wangdu. Jamie looked along a treeless shore of icebound boulders. Two miles ahead, he glimpsed a cluster of three or four black tents.

  “Typical.” Khenpo Nima smiled. “There are friendly houses at Dengkol just at the lake’s far end but these nomad people stay apart.”

  Buoyed by the thought of company and news, the scouts trotted ahead. Jamie let his eye survey the mountains that pressed on the south shore, the steep shoulders of black gneiss banded with quartz. They seemed lifeless, frigid and deserted. No birds, no plants, no mountain livestock that he could see. There might be leopards, even bears in the vicinity; if so, they were huddled out of sight. The barren aspect made Jamie shudder, made him more susceptible to the bitter cold. He noticed idly that the outriders had stopped short of the tents and were now returning at a fast trot. Jamie saw Khenpo Nima frown and stare ahead. The riders were calling, their shouts thin and barely comprehensible in the wind.

  A knot of villagers came together in sudden conference. The faces were dark, looking along the shore with narrowed eyes.

  “What is it, Nima?” Jamie asked.

  “Something is wrong there. Come.”

  A dozen riders were moving forward; Jamie went after them, seeing them bring muskets and rifles off their shoulders. He caught up just as the riders slowed to a walk, rising in their saddles, peering ahead and then all around the hillsides. Nothing moved among the rocks except wisps of snow. The group trotted forward again. Seventy yards from the tents, on the near side of a frozen stream, they stopped, stared, dismounted. Then the men stepped gingerly across the strip of ice.

  There were three large tents. One had been cut to ribbons. It hung in strips from its guy lines, teetering at wild angles. Cords and fabric flapped pathetically in the wind; snow had penetrated the rents, settling on despoiled property. The inhabitants were spread about on the ground. Death had reduced each figure to a shapeless dark bulk. As the Jyeko men moved wordlessly among the corpses, two startled dogs backed away from a heap at which they had been tearing. Only here was there any color, any crimson. Two quick shots from a carbine knocked the dogs off their feet.

  Jamie stood at the edge of the campsite shivering. He saw what might have been a woman sprawled facedown with her legs at a ridiculous open angle. Just beyond her reach, a much smaller bundle lay still. Although the child was possibly five or six feet away, the mother was almost touching it, because her arm had been severed and lay midway between them. Nearby, four adults lay together in an untidy pile, apparently executed together. Other corpses were scattered at random, killed as they ran. A Tibetan musket lay apart, its long prop twisted off; someone had tried to fight back. Perhaps that had been the mistake.

  The Jyeko villagers came together slowly, backing away from the scene.

  “You remember these people?” Wangdu asked Jamie. “We met them on the road. They said we had the bad luck.”

  Jamie pointed: small dark shapes marked the far end of the lake. It was possible to make out movement.

  “Chinese,” said Karjen. “I think we shall go and cut their throats.”

  Even by Tibetan standards, Dengkol was a small village. The homes were built of stone, thick-walled, squat and gray, pierced by a random scatter of tiny windows shut tight with red-brown boards. The parapets of the flat earthen roofs were topped with thick fringes of scrub juniper, like eyebrows. The skulls of horned animals guarded the corners together with ragged little white and yellow prayer flags, flickering on short poles.

  A mani wall ran for some hundred yards parallel to the foot of the hill. Four feet high, it was built entirely of rocks inscribed with sacred texts and blessings. Not so long ago, they had apparently felt inclined to celebrate at Dengkol. In summer, it was doubtless a lovely spot.

  Just now, a squadron of Chinese cavalry was in possession, their horses tethered behind the houses, smoke belching from the hearths. The soldiers bustled about the doorways like bees at a hive, getting inside for warmth whenever they could. In front of the houses were the usual neatly stacked rifles and a light machine-gun in an emplacement of boulders, pointing along the lake shore.

  “Where are the Dengkol people?” whispered Wangdu, lying flat on an outcrop of granite two hundred and fifty feet above.

  Aben, the Jyeko herdsman at his side, pointed to a round stone enclosure some five feet high. “See that animal pen?”

  A thread of smoke was visible, climbing the height of the circular wall and at once torn away by the wind. From time to time, Tibetan hats could be glimpsed moving about inside.

  “They’ve been pushed out to make room in the houses.”

  The reconnaissance party rejoined the Jyeko caravan, halted in the shadow of tumbledown crags two miles distant.

  “We can’t get around them this time,” said Aben the herdsman. “Even if we went all the way around the other side of the lake, we’d still end up at Dengkol.”

  “We could wait until they move away.”

  “Wait where? I’ve got yaks and mules that’ll bellow all night if they get no grazing.”

  “In my opinion—” began Karjen.
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br />   “Karjen wants to rush them head-on,” laughed harelipped Tesla.

  “Well!” spluttered Karjen, piqued. He had been thinking of something along those lines.

  “No good,” observed Jamie. “They’ll post sentries, and the rest will stay in the houses. They’re like fortresses, those buildings. Once the shooting starts, how would you get them outside?”

  “That’s the problem, getting them all outside.”

  “That is not the problem,” said Khenpo Nima emphatically. He drew himself up to his full and impressive height in the center of the ring and looked the villagers straight in the eye, one after another.

  “I’ll tell you the problem. It is that we are getting ever more embroiled in slaughter.”

  The fighting men did not groan audibly because they were too respectful of Khenpo Nima. They looked at the ground instead. Other villagers peered at him, troubled. Someone murmured: “Are we just going to forget the people in the tents?”

  “What do you want? More revenge?” Khenpo Nima cried out.

  “But it’s Duan! His throat’s ripe for cutting!”

  “This isn’t Duan,” said Jamie. “This is just a scouting patrol.”

  “Does not one of you remember our abbot’s words as we left home?” demanded Nima. “Nobody remembers? Shame, Jyeko!”

  “Travel with peace in your hearts,” a young voice said. The teenage boy blushed madly as they all turned to him.

  “Exactly.” Khenpo Nima nodded. “And do not be guided by illusory desire. Remember now? I tell you, there is no greater illusion than vengeance. Remember this, Jyeko: we are in our present plight because we tried to take revenge.”

  From among the crowd, Jamie watched Khenpo Nima carefully. Such was the monk’s presence that the villagers fell quiet before his arguments. But it was not the silence of acquiescence. In the suspended instant that followed, Jamie knew that a contrary decision was taken.

  “Khenpo Nima, dear friend . . .” began Wangdu, shaking his head.