by John Wilcox
Light was beginning to stream in from the window, so Alice presumed that it was a little after dawn and the jailer had come, not to bring breakfast, of course, but to check to see if she was still alive. So … what would he do now? Go to the General, of course, and/or fetch the guards.
The danger of her position, jerked Alice out of her tiredness. She looked around her once again. There was nothing in that little cell to help her, only a few ends of the rope that had constrained her. Except, of course, for her handgun. Yet firing it would sound like a cannon in this confined space and bring all kinds of retribution upon her head. And she only had six shots. Impossible to set herself up in the cell and defend it like a fortress. They would either rush and overwhelm her or leave her to starve.
On an impulse, she whipped off her blouse and pulled off the little vest that lay beneath it. Then she rebuttoned the blouse and took the vest and bound it tightly around the hand holding the automatic pistol, so that the gun was out of sight, and the barrel completely covered by several layers of the cotton. How effective it would be in reducing the sound of the gun firing she had no idea, but it presented one possible way out of the impasse. But only if other factors slipped into place.
She estimated that the jailer would waste no time in telling her captors that she had somehow escaped from the bonds that bound her to the window bars, so she did not trust herself to slump back on the welcoming straw, but instead, stood waiting, her back to the wall under the window.
Nothing happened for at least an hour and she was struggling to keep her eyelids from closing when two distinct sounds, one after the other, jerked her out of her reverie. The first was the well-remembered, high-pitched voice of the interpreter coming from, by the sound of it, the mid-distance beyond her door. He was arguing, or more likely pleading, by the tone of his voice. Ah! Alice bit her lip. That swine of a jailer had obviously come to the conclusion that it was he who had cut her down, as well as provided food and water for her and had betrayed him to the General. More treachery in Tibet! What was happening to him?
The second sound provided the answer. It was a high-pitched scream from just outside her door that ended in a half moan and then a kind of gurgle, followed by a creaking noise and then silence.
Alice took a deep breath and kept the bandaged pistol close to her side, her back pressed against the cold wall of the cell. Then there was the sound of laughter, again from the other side of her door, and then a regular creaking noise, as though a child was pushing a swing. The laughter, the creaking and the sound of muted voices continued for perhaps three of four minutes, when, once again the key grated in the lock, the door was swung open and the jailer entered once more.
This time, however, he was not alone. Behind him, grinning and making lewd gestures with their lifted fingers, came the two Khampa guards who had assaulted her before. For a moment they stood regarding her, grinning lasciviously, before they said something curtly to the jailer and they both stepped forward towards her.
Alice let them approach until the leading man had extended both arms to grasp her when she brought up the bandaged hand, pressed the trigger and fired into his chest at a distance of some three feet. Without a pause she turned on the other man and shot him too, symmetrically between his shoulders at a slightly longer range as the soldier paused for a moment, his mouth gaping.
Without a sound, the two men slumped to the floor. To Alice the noise of the shot seemed to boom in the confined space of the cell and she whirled around and directed the gun at the jailer. With a cry, however, he threw himself to the ground and lifted his hands beseechingly. Alice tightened her grip on the trigger but then paused. It was a very different thing, shooting two men who were about to seize her, to killing a man who was begging for mercy and grovelling at her feet.
She stepped over the two bodies and that of the jailer and put her head around the door. Nobody seemed to have heard the— She jumped back in horror. The interpreter was hanging at the entrance to the courtyard, his eyes wide open but staring sightlessly and his tongue protruding from his open mouth. His smashed spectacles lay at his feet.
Alice then realised that the poor man had been pleading for his life and that the creaking noise was that of the two Khampas pushing him to and fro, having fun with his last struggles. She breathed hard. She mustn’t faint now. She stood listening quietly. There was no sound to be heard, no obvious reaction to the muffled shots she had fired. What to do now?
She stepped back into the cell and tried not to look at the two corpses sprawled on the ground before her. Trickles of blood were forming scarlet pools on either side of them. Alice tossed aside her vest, its job done, and pointed her gun to the jailer, who immediately began wailing again.
‘Oh shut up, you little worm,’ she breathed. Then she gestured to the heavy key that hung from a belt around his midriff. ‘Take it off,’ she hissed, moving the barrel of the automatic towards the man’s temple. The jailer quickly unbuckled the belt and threw it at her feet.
‘Good.’ She put her finger to her lips and pointed to the gun and said ‘shush’. The man stared back at her speechlessly. She had no idea if she had been understood, but she picked up the belt and its appendage and backed out of the door, shutting it firmly behind her and turning the key which had remained in the lock.
Alice had briefly forgotten the interpreter and she almost walked into his hanging body. She started back and then stood still for a moment, tears springing into her eyes. ‘I am so sorry, my old friend,’ she whispered. ‘Your very kindness to me led to your death.’ And then, more brusquely, ‘But I can’t stop to cut you down.’ She stepped around him and went into the little passageway. The doorway to the jailer’s cubbyhole of an office led off it and, hesitantly in search of some more substantial weapon, she entered. There was a large cabinet hanging on one wall but little else. She fingered the key that still hung from the jailer’s belt in her hand and slipped it into the keyhole in the cabinet. It swung open. Inside were two rows of similar-sized keys to that which opened her own cell.
Again she stood for a moment in thought. Then, a ghost of a smile began to spread across her features and she took down each of the keys from their hooks, noting that they were numbered. Presumably, they were the keys to the cells that fringed the courtyard and perhaps elsewhere. Tucking her automatic into the pocket of her breeches, she set out opening each of the locked cells that she found.
Some were empty but at least half were occupied – if that word could be used to describe the vacant-faced wretches, all in solitary confinement, who were sprawled on straw within. Each man struggled to his feet in his rags and looked, slack-jawed, at Alice as she stood in the doorway. ‘Come on, you poor devil,’ she called, ‘get out. You’re free now. Move yourself. Move back into the world.’
Then she moved on. As she looked back, she saw each prisoner poke his head round the door and, then, slowly, shamble out into the courtyard. Then, as she worked her way around, she heard a growing babble of voices from them all, as they stood, attempting to understand this latest, quite unexpected development in their grim, solitary lives.
Looking at them, huddled together in the churchyard, she wondered why they did not move to the jail’s entrance. Then she remembered that the door was closed. After their incarceration, they lacked the initiative or courage to leave their place of imprisonment. So she pushed through them and swung the great door open, and then stood by it in the dark passageway, making ushering motions with her arms, as though she was shepherding a flock of sheep onto good grazing grounds.
‘Goodbye,’ she called. ‘Spread out. Enjoy yourselves.’
Then Alice closed the gate and realised that she was shivering. She was not cold. It was the anticlimax, of course, and the realisation that she did not know, now, what the hell to do next. She had shot two men, locked up a third and freed the inmates of the whole bloody prison. The General would be wondering why his two henchmen had not returned with her. And hadn’t she been told that ten of h
is bodyguard were stationed in the prison? Where the hell were they? She had to get out quickly to … to … where?
Alice took a deep breath. Having delved in for a penny she was undoubtedly in for a very deep pound. She had killed and this would bring consequences – and very soon. She was standing just behind the jail door, with her fairish and now unkempt hair straggling down her back, wearing her very English riding breeches and boots, and her dirty blouse, looking less like a Tibetan woman than was possible. If she attempted to walk down a Lhasa street in these clothes she was bound to attract attention. How to disguise herself?
She strode back into the jailer’s office. There was some old woollen, hand-knitted garment hanging on a peg and also a blanket, slung over a chair. She pulled on the old cardigan, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the encrusted food stains on its front, and then wrapped the blanket round her midriff so that it hung down low like some misshapen skirt, almost hiding her riding boots. A tattered cotton scarf completed the outfit, tied over her head and under her chin, peasant-fashion. There was no mirror to study the effect but it would have to do.
Alice moved to the jail door and pulled it slightly ajar. Would the poor prisoners she had freed be milling about outside, drawing attention to themselves and to her? She peeped out, looking up and down the street. It was deserted, thank God. The inmates must have dispersed. She closed the door behind her, turned right and, head down, hurried away.
The street ended abruptly in a T-junction and, once again, she had to choose the direction to walk. For a brief moment, the thought occurred to her that to make all that had happened to her in Lhasa meaningful, she should return to her original objective and, somehow, find where one of the great monasteries stood and attempt to talk to the lamas or – what were they called? – the Chamber of Secretaries or something like that. Then, equally quickly, she realised what nonsense that would be. She had killed two Tibetans and her actions at the jail in freeing the prisoners – a spur-of-the-moment decision that she was beginning to regret – would surely count against her. Who would listen to a woman who came preaching peace and pacifism who had just killed twice?
No. She must find her way back along the main road that led south-westward towards the Indian border; the way that Simon hopefully would be taking now towards Lhasa. South-west …? Which way was that, for God’s sake? She looked up at the sky. The sun was hiding behind a high bank of cloud – and was she now in the southern hemisphere and, anyway, did that matter? Her brain in a whirl and anxious to avoid drawing attention to herself by her hesitation, she turned left.
At least this street seemed to be much more of a main thoroughfare than the other. Men and women, all dressed alike in the dun-coloured, long tunics of the Tibetan peasant, walked by in that nonchalant, unhurried way of their kind; going to market perhaps? But what day of the week was it? She had no idea.
Alice stole a glance behind her, hoping to catch a glance of some gilded temple that was supposed to characterise the centre of Lhasa – at least this would indicate that she was walking away from the heart of the city. But the shoddy dwellings rose too high and too close on either side to give her any kind of distance perspective. She bent her head and tried not to hurry.
It was important that she left the area of Lhasa that was controlled, she remembered hearing, by the Lhasa General, who was some sort of area governor. If she was to be apprehended again, it was better – far better – that it was not by a Khampa. Again, she fought back the desire to break into a stumbling run.
Now, market stalls were beginning to materialise on either side of the street. Oh lord! Was this, she wondered, a good or a bad sign? Did it show that she was going away from the city, perhaps into some semi-prosperous suburb, or that she was walking away from the direction she sought? At least she seemed to be attracting only the odd, inquisitive stare. Thank goodness that Lhasa was a well-populated city, at least by Tibetan standards.
The stalls, however, made Alice realise that she was ravishingly hungry. Apart from the interpreter’s sandwich, she had had little to eat since leaving the house of Sunil’s uncle – how long ago? She had no idea for she had lost all sense of time. But the aromas that were coming from the little trays and tables on either side of her assailed her nostrils and made her salivate.
Oh, how she wished she had mastered even a few words of Tibetan! She doubted if her very basic Hindi would be of use here. But … she pushed her hand underneath the blanket and fingered the handful of rupees that jingled in the pocket of her breeches. The Tibetans loved the rupees of the British Raj! This much she had learnt from Sunil as he had bartered for them in the little bazaars they had passed. Could she use them now? Well, they were all she had.
Alice paused and moved slowly to a stall kept by an elderly woman with a face like a wrinkled Pekingese dog. She was presiding over trays containing meatballs fried in what looked like onions and herbs, with what appeared to be local black bread at the side. Delicious …
The woman gave a wrinkled smile and spoke to her quickly. Alice pointed to the meatballs and, opening her mouth and pointing inside with a finger, made a negative sign, shaking her head from side to side, in what she hoped was a universal gesture indicating that she was dumb. Immediately, the woman snarled and shook her head vigorously and waved her away.
Alice then tried to smile and offered a few rupees in her hand. Immediately, the woman’s manner changed. She looked up sharply but Alice kept her head down. The old woman then extended a finger and turned one of the rupees over, fastidiously. Then she grabbed all of the coins and thrust them into her apron pocket. For a terrible moment, Alice thought that that would be the end of the matter, but, still scowling, the woman scooped up some of the meatballs, loaded them onto a piece of the bread, put them onto what appeared to be a sheet of almost parchment-like paper, thrust them at Alice and then waved her away.
Gratefully, Alice grabbed the steaming bundle and did her best to melt into the passing crowd, eating the delicious half sandwich as she went. It was, she assured herself, probably the best meal she had ever had.
It had, however, been bought at a cost, for she had drawn attention to herself. Inquisitive faces now peered into hers, noticing her grey eyes, the fragments of brown hair that escaped from under her scarf and the un-oriental set of her face. Several of the men spoke to her, but she shook her head and scurried on, head bent, feeling like some figure from the lurid novels of the late Mr Dickens.
Soon, conscious of the gazes she was drawing, she turned off abruptly into a side street and, prompted by the spices contained in the meatballs, she realised that she was now as thirsty as she had been hungry. Blessedly, there to her right a little trickle of water was issuing from a tap in the wall of a more substantial house and dropping invitingly into an ornamental bowl. Tossing aside her grease-stained paper, Alice bent her head and sucked in the water. For a moment, she let it run over her face and then rubbed it into her face.
It was then that her head was pulled back and she looked up into the black eyes of a tall man, dressed in a colour-washed blue smock. Alice’s heart fell. Oh no! A Khampa!
The warrior snarled something at her. Alice immediately produced her dumb woman gestures, but the man stepped back and seized her blanket and pulled it away from her. He then stripped her of her makeshift skirt, revealing her once smart, elegantly flared riding breeches and her riding boots. Then he struck her smartly across the face and called back over his shoulder.
Immediately, two more Khampas appeared, running. Still reeling from the blow, Alice fumbled for her automatic but it was too late. Her hands were seized and a cord immediately produced and wound tightly around her wrists. The men were grinning and talking excitedly. Alice realised with a deep sense of foreboding that her freedom had ended. She had been sought and now had been found.
If she had been a subject of some small curiosity before, now she became an object of derision as she was pulled backwards through the streets by the Khampas, who had attached a longer
piece of rope to the cord around her wrists. How had they traced her? Ah, of course. The rupees! This must still be a Khampa-controlled area of Lhasa, with the inhabitants completely under the sway of and fearing these brutal warriors. Alice realised that the tears were flowing. The vendor of the meatballs must have betrayed her. Treachery in Tibet again! She felt impotently but fiercely angry. To have got so far and then been recaptured!
Then she held up her head as she skipped backwards, her calves aching, as she was roughly pulled through the crowd. She still had her handgun. Well, if this was the end, she was determined to bring down some of her captors with her – particularly General Kemphis Jong. Somehow, she felt a little better at the thought.
They turned a corner and, with a sickening sense of familiarity, Alice realised that they were now in the narrow street which housed the jail – and, she now remembered the interpreter telling her, the house of the General himself. She recalled the cries of the little man and the sight of his body swinging from the cross-beam in the jail and her heart sank.
The house of General Jong seemed unimposing from the outside, but once through the door, Alice realised that it was the residence of a man of importance. Fine rugs, probably from Afghanistan, were strewn across the floor and low divans lined the walls. She strained her neck to find some images of the ubiquitous Buddha, but there were none. Did this mean that this General in the Tibetan army was a heathen? Probably. The thought did nothing to cheer her up.
She was taken to a small room that had few furnishings and left standing, with one warrior to guard her, while the other left, presumably to find the General. The man grinned and approached her, put his face close to hers and began fingering her breasts. Alice slowly drew back her head and then quickly crashed her forehead onto his nose. The soldier staggered back and then hit her with his fist, sending her reeling back against the wall. But he did not approach her again.
‘Yes,’ hissed Alice. ‘Don’t you dare do that again.’ She attempted to wriggle her wrists free of her bonds, but the cord was too tightly bound. If only she could get one hand free and reach the little automatic in her pocket …!