The Rose of Tibet

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Why can’t your abbess get her finger out and see that we get away? She runs the works here, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s come over you? You surely don’t believe this bloody trulku nonsense, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t. But they do. We’ve got to wait until the prophecies work themselves out.’

  ‘What have you got to do with the —prophecies?’

  ‘Not a — thing,’ Houston said, using the same term in an attempt at intimacy. ‘But they think I have. Just wait till everything works out.’

  With Sheila Wolferston and Meiklejohn he was on somewhat easier terms, for here there was no lost intimacy to be regained. Meiklejohn, it was true, regarded him with a certain sardonic amusement and had taken to calling him St Charles, which he found after a time very trying; but with the girl he was able to establish something like a normal relationship. For he had a bond with her; before leaving he had been to see her mother, in a damp little cottage in Godalming, Surrey; and they talked for hours of her mother.

  ‘She does everything herself, you know. It isn’t so easy with her leg.’

  ‘What’s the matter with her leg?’

  ‘She’s lame – didn’t you notice?’

  ‘I never did.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t like people. She tries to conceal it. … It’s so silly. I wanted her to come and live in a flat in town, you know – no stairs – but she wouldn’t. She’s so obstinate. … It isn’t as if she really knows anybody in Godalming. Daddy was the convivial one. She merely clings. I suppose it’s because she hasn’t got very much to cling to.’

  He had noticed the somewhat mournful strain in the girl that he had noticed in the mother; he saw the mother’s blunt nose, and the mother’s head-shaking ghost of a smile.

  They were sitting on his shirt in the stubble of a barley field at the time: a yak with a deep bell round its neck was passing with a sled piled high with tawny stooks, and far below them the green lake and the seven gold roofs swam in the rising air currents. … All a long, long way from damp, soft Godalming with its mushy autumnal leaves underfoot and its dark green trains commuting to Waterloo.

  She said, shaking her head, ‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it? We’re almost literally out of the world. They think we’re dead. And it’s all going on there still.’

  ‘I know,’ he said for he felt it himself, and, moved by something, took her hand. She had cut her hair short. She wore an orange sun top and skirt, dark glasses, no shoes. Her skin was tanned brown; he thought her very fine and wholesome in a warm, blunt kind of way. He said, quietly, ‘I hope all is going well with you and Hugh, Sheila.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a strain.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘We’re on top of each other all the time, and yet not able to be really alone ever.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Some of us are never without company,’ she said lightly. ‘I understand you’re not hampered in that way yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  The dark glasses were turned curiously upon him.

  ‘You don’t want to talk about it much, do you?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘All right. Only you won’t forget that our future is in your hands, will you?’

  He liked her.

  But he liked Mei-Hua more. He liked her more than he had ever liked anyone in the world, and he didn’t think that anything could come about that would make him view her differently. That was before the Second Festival, of course.

  4

  The Second Festival of the Monkey began that year on 1 September, two weeks before it was normally due; this was because, owing to a second earthquake (on 15 August) which caused much damage in Lhasa, the omens had become suddenly more threatening than ever; the Oracle had indeed indicated that if it were not held early it might not be held at all.

  Like the Spring Festival, the celebrations lasted seven days. Houston stayed for only four of them, for on the fifth, badly shocked, he left Yamdring and went to stay with the Duke at Ganzing and didn’t return for a fortnight.

  He left on the day of the emerald ceremony, after participating in it. He had been up very early that day, for the deputy abbot had wakened him at four o’clock to take him to a large chapel in the first monastery where the ceremony was due to take place.

  He found the abbot already there, sitting over the emeralds: he had carried the bags down himself from the top monastery, and had watched over them all night. Apart from the abbess, he was the only person who could open and seal these bags.

  Houston knew that he was himself to be a supernumerary guardian of the emeralds, but had learned very little more. Mei-Hua had told him that he must not come to her during the week of the festival, for it was to be devoted entirely to remembrances of the monkey; but had refused to tell him anything else. It was not spoken of, she said. He would see for himself.

  Houston waited with the keenest interest to do so.

  He sat with the two silent men and the eight sacks of emeralds for the best part of an hour, listening to a chanted mass that was going on elsewhere in the monastery. There was a sickly smell of flowers above the incense in the candlelit chapel; it seemed to be coming from a large jade ornament in a far corner. His two companions had fallen into a meditative trance, however, so he did not disturb them with questions but merely sat on his own two sacks and awaited events.

  At five o’clock a little handbell was rung, and complete silence fell. In the silence, the abbess was brought down through the seven monasteries. She was brought down on a litter, and deposited outside the gates by four bearers, who left immediately. Little Daughter and the Mistress of Ceremonies had come down with her, and now, with the abbot and the deputy abbot to help, the litter was raised again and brought inside the chapel, and the gates closed.

  Houston watched in fascination. She had her devil’s mask on. She had been newly anointed: he had smelt it right away. But now as Little Daughter took off her robe, he saw it, too: the abbess stood, quite naked, gleaming all over in the candlelight. She walked to the jade ornament, the small procession following.

  The ornament was a large oval urn – three quarters full of rose petals, Houston saw. The abbess stepped into it, and sank deeply in the petals, and kneeled there, with her devil’s head bowed slightly so that only the pointed golden ears projected above the rim; and as she did so the abbot began to chant.

  All had been done in perfect silence so far, but now, as the abbot took from his robe a long gold knife and bent to break the seals of the emerald sacks, the others took up the chant.

  The Mistress of Ceremonies produced a gold ladle, and one after the other, Houston taking his turn, they began to scoop into the urn ladles of emeralds.

  The job took a long time to complete the dull green heap steadily mounting, until at last the abbess was entirely covered, her devil’s ears alone sticking out from her lake of ‘tears’.

  The abbot had not been assisting in the last few ladles, and hearing his chant become suddenly muffled, Houston turned and looked.

  The abbot had put on a mask. It was a golden mask. It was the mask of a monkey’s head.

  He had been fumbling about in another corner of the chapel while he did this, and now as he approached the urn again, the chanting stopped and the deputy abbot and Little Daughter and the Mistress of Ceremonies prostrated themselves on the ground before him. In astonishment, Houston did the same, but, looking up, was able to see what the abbot was doing. The abbot was dipping his hands into the emeralds. The abbess’s hand emerged. The abbot took it, and raised her to her feet. She came up very slowly, a few dull stones sticking to her back, and the abbot brushed them carefully into the urn.

  His muffled chanting began again as she stepped out of the urn, the two masked figures facing each other and holding hands; and after a moment the worshippers got up from the floor. The Mistress of Ceremonies gently brushed the abbess down, replacing the few adhering emerald
s in the urn; and then she covered her again with her robe, and took one of her hands, the abbot retaining the other, and they walked with her out of the chapel.

  Houston saw, through the gates, that she took her place again in the litter; and then the handbell was rung and the four bearers appeared, and picked up the litter and carried it away. The Mistress of Ceremonies returned alone to the chapel, and that seemed to be the end of it.

  With the others, Houston began ladling the emeralds back in the bags. They were smiling a little, as after a job well done, but not actually talking, and though Houston found himself with many questions he didn’t ask them. When he saw the deputy abbot produce a stick of green wax, however, and begin to seal the bags, he whispered in some surprise, ‘Doesn’t the abbot have to do this?’

  ‘Yes. The abbot,’ the deputy abbot said, smiling gently. ‘I am now the abbot for three days.’

  ‘What is the abbot?’

  ‘The abbot is the monkey.’

  It was all said very genially, with the two women smiling faintly as at some well-established family joke, and for a moment Houston didn’t get it, and smiled with them.

  He said, ‘If you’re taking over the abbot’s job for three days, what will he be doing?’

  The deputy abbot told him what the abbot would be doing for the next three days; and very shortly after, Houston went back to his cell. He stayed there all day, not eating and not sleeping, and the next day he went to Ganzing.

  ‘But my dear chep,’ the duke said, ‘it’s been going on for a long time – for seven hundred years at least. The practice was started by the Third Body. Nobody would dream of stopping it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you as particularly horrible?’

  ‘Not a bit. Why should it? You see, you’ve got it quite wrong, old chep. It isn’t just an old monk and a young girl. It’s the monkey and the she-devil – we are reminded of our origins. We’re very simple people here. You have your cradle- to-grave benefits, and so have we. It’s a guarantee that we are still watched-over – that nothing will change for us. It’s very touching in a way.’

  ‘It’s horrible,’ Houston said. ‘It’s peculiarly, vilely horrible. For three days –’

  ‘And another thing you’ve got to remember is that our women have rather – rather better constitutions than most. It’s, in a way – we shouldn’t talk about it, of course – very much harder on the abbot. The old chep isn’t getting any younger. He had a perfectly dreadful time with the Former Body – was quite fegged out one year and had to be taken away to hospital, delirious. The chief medical monk had to sit with him for a week. Oh, quite a scandal.’

  ‘And that doesn’t disgust and revolt you? The idea of a young girl –’

  ‘The Former Body was 74 at the time,’ the duke said, drawing on his cigar.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Houston said faintly.

  ‘And by no means disgusted or revolted, except by the poor old chep’s deficiencies. The thing is, old chep, you don’t know us. The act – I’m not embarrassing you? – hasn’t the same connotations for us as it has for you. We regard it as, on the whole, a fairly pleasurable and useful occupation. We aren’t greatly exercised by problems of legitimacy and so forth, since property can be handed down in the female line, and so the pattern of our social behaviour has tended to develop in –’

  ‘But in a monastery!’ Houston said, his distress in no way eased by this rationalization. ‘How can you possibly countenance –’

  ‘Ah, well. That does of course lead to certain difficulties. The people there are rather devoted to it – naturally: they have so few alternative pleasures. And of course in principle they shouldn’t be. It means that three women have to be kept constantly on the go aborting them.’

  Such new horrors were evoked by this piece of information that Houston lost all desire to pursue it. He gazed silently at the duke and picked up his whisky and drained it at a gulp. The duke poured him another.

  He said, mildly troubled, ‘You know, you shouldn’t concern yourself particularly with – with anyone here. It could be very dangerous for you. There’s such a lot you can never know, old chep.’

  But there was something the duke didn’t know, either. He said on another day, ‘The emeralds? Oh, they’re part of the quite beautiful legend. The she-devil is supposed to have wept endlessly for the monkey and so bitterly that finally some of her tears turned to emerald. The monkey comes once a year to dry them up, as it were.’

  ‘She must have wept a long time. There are a lot of emeralds.’

  ‘Are there, old chep? You mustn’t tell me, you know. I don’t want to know. Nobody’s supposed to, except the monastery council and the governor of the province.’

  ‘Where did they actually come from?’

  ‘From a mine. There used to be a very rich vein in the hill the monastery was built on. There was an earthquake several hundred years ago, in the time of the Third Body, and the general view was that the demons were upset at the mine workings. The abbess sealed up the mine and built over it – she was a tremendous builder. She put up the three higher monasteries, and rebuilt the shrine on the island. She was the one who introduced the Second Festival.’

  ‘Whereabouts was the mine?’

  ‘Nobody knows, old chep. There used to be a story – I remember my grandfather telling me it – that it went under the lake and that a lot of cheps were entombed there, but I don’t think there’s anything in it. You would expect it to go back into the hill. But there’s no trace now – none at all.’

  Houston didn’t bother to tell him otherwise.

  He didn’t see Mei-Hua for a week after he returned, for he had had a fortnight to reflect and it seemed to him that the duke had spoken nothing but the truth. He didn’t know this country or these people, and he didn’t think he ever would.

  She was a fascinating young Chinese girl, unlike in her features and in her grace any woman he had ever met. But now he had been away from her for a while, he thought he could see her in perspective; and what he saw he didn’t like.

  She had been picked for a life of sacred prostitution; this was to be the whole of her life, and she could never be removed from it. He had no part to play in this life, and by trying to find one he was, as the duke said, courting danger, not only for himself but for others. He had been infatuated with her and with an image he had constructed of her: of a pale china rose, nurtured in shade, something immensely precious and immensely fragile. But he saw her now as an object lovely but diseased, a rank thing growing unhealthily on top of a dunghill.

  He didn’t want the rank thing or the dunghill. He wanted very much to get away from both. He saw that to do so he must remain uninvolved and out of trouble for the rest of this dangerous year; and this he proposed to do.

  Mei-Hua sent for him twice during that week. He did not respond. The third time, Little Daughter came heavily upon him while he was painting.

  She said, ‘Trulku, the Mother has sent me for the last time.’

  ‘It’s useless, Little Daughter. You know it is useless.’

  ‘She can force you if she wishes. She begs you not to make her force you.’

  ‘Little Daughter – the Mother has no need of me.’

  ‘She has a need, trulku.’

  ‘You know it is unwise.’

  ‘I know it is unwise. But come. I beg you also.’

  So he went.

  If she had been sulky, or haughty, or petulant, or in any way reserved with him, it would have been easy. But she was none of these things. She clutched him, weeping.

  ‘Oh, Chao-li, Chao-li, you have deserted me.’

  ‘I’ve been away, Mei-Hua. I’ve been busy.’

  ‘You could have come. You didn’t want to come. What have I done?’

  ‘Mei-Hua – you know we shouldn’t see each other. It’s silly for us to go on.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why do you say these things to me? You are cruel to say them, Chao-li. You don’t mean them.’

  He d
idn’t know what else he could say. She had forced herself like a little kitten into his arms and was mewing in his ear.

  He had not meant to say it, but he couldn’t help himself. He blurted out, ‘You didn’t tell me about the abbot.’

  ‘The abbot? What about the abbot?’

  ‘That he was to spend three days here with you.’

  Her head came up out of his shoulder and her lovely eyes looked at him in bewilderment.

  ‘Not as the abbot, Chao-li. As the monkey. You saw.’

  ‘It was the abbot who was here, not the monkey.’

  ‘In his mask, Chao-li, and I in mine – I can’t tell you about that. It is one of my mysteries,’ she said, a little horrified. ‘I am no longer of this world, then, and nor is he.’

  ‘But you acted with him as people of this world act.’

  ‘Yes, of course. We must,’ she said, looking at him, wide- eyed. ‘You mean – this worries you, Chao-li?’

  He said helplessly, ‘Mei-Hua, how often has this happened?’

  ‘Every year since I was 13. It has to happen, Chao-li, as soon as I am able.’

  ‘Oh, Mei-Hua, how can you? How can you bear to?’

  ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand you, Chao-li. The monkey loves me. He has always loved me.’

  ‘You mean you don’t mind? You like it?’

  She said, bewildered, ‘I don’t know. Why not? It’s very nice. Don’t you like it? I don’t understand you, Chao-li.’

  He didn’t think that she ever would. He looked for several minutes into eyes that were naïve and yet not naïve, that were young and yet not young, as though another, older intelligence were looking through them. He saw that she was a creature beyond any morality that he could understand.

  He said gently, ‘Mei-Hua, your life is here. Mine is not.’

  ‘For now it is, Chao-li.’

  ‘But not for always. At some time I must go. We must try not to love each other, or it will hurt too much to part.’

  ‘Ah, Chao-li, there is no help for us. I told you before – it is written.’