‘The hermit has made his peace with them, Chao-li.’
‘Only because the Mother allows, sahib. The holy hermit lived here fifty years, and the Mother protected him from all harm. She can protect us also.’
‘All right,’ Houston said. He wished she would set about it. The tearing cold and the unearthly row had combined suddenly to reduce him again to a state of utter exhaustion.
The girl looked at him and turned away and walked out from the cleft. She was knocked down at once. Houston made to assist her, but was held back by the boy. She picked herself up, and was again knocked down, but raised herself in a doubled-over position, and went on. It could not have been more than fifty yards to the chorten, but it took her the best part of a minute to get to it, the wind hurling her this way and that, once spinning her round entirely. A few feet before the chorten, she stood suddenly upright, and Houston heard the boy gasping in his ear, but whether with pain or with astonishment at this manifestation of power over the wind, he could not tell. He had already calculated that since the pillar of stones was standing upright it must lie out of the wind; perhaps in the very eye of the turmoil. And such indeed proved to be the case, for when the abbess had bowed to the chorten and embraced it with her arms, she turned and beckoned to them, and after some bruising and suffocating seconds in the wind, Houston found that he too could stand upright. For a radius of some six feet around the chorten, the air was quite still; a dead freezing calm.
A large slab formed the doorway. The boy lowered it, and the abbess went in. A few moments later, they followed her.
3
The hermit hole of Bukhri-bo – such was the name of this abominable spot – was hewn out of solid rock, some ten feet below the ground. Its narrow approach passage led to a single large chamber, twenty feet by ten. The hermit’s possessions had not been touched; they consisted of three wooden bowls, a small sack of tsampa, a lamp, and a kruse of cheap mustard oil to burn in it. The hermit had not used a blanket or a bed. He had not used the sunken fireplace, either, for there were no ashes in it. He had kept a calendar on the wall with a writing brush; it had stopped on the eighth day of the fourth month of Earth Mouse, two summers previously. The boy said he had been dead four months when found. The chamber smelt like it.
They heated snow over the reeking mustard oil lamp and made tea. They slept in their bags on the floor. The mule slept with them.
They left as soon as it was dark, and, as the boy had promised, took six hours to reach the pass. They turned round when they got there and came back again right away. The Chinese were camped on the pass.
The boy slept heavily for a day and a half on their return, and Houston let him. He had no more powders to put on the wound, and it was looking no better. The shoulder had puffed up like a football. He had sweated as he slept.
‘Sahib,’ the boy said when he awoke. ‘I must go back to the pass. I will go alone, by day. It will be quicker.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘The pass will soon be blocked. We must know how long the Chinese will stay.’
‘How can you find that out?’
‘They had porters with them. There must be a village near by. I will ask in the village.’
‘What’s the alternative if the pass does become blocked?’
‘We must go over the mountains and find another.’
‘I see,’ Houston said. It was quite obvious to him that the boy would not be climbing any mountains for a long time. But he didn’t see how he could tell him this; and he didn’t see therefore how he could stop him from going.
He went out himself while the boy was away, to find wood. The boy had taken the only knife and he couldn’t break the leathery branches that he found. He broke off little twigs and spent exhausting hours chasing them in the wind. But he filled a couple of knapsacks, and they had a fire that night.
The boy had not returned by morning, and Houston went to look for him. It was a couple of hours before he found him. He was simply sitting on the track. He had his back to the wind, and his face was screwed up with strain.
‘Are you all right?’
‘All right, sahib, all right.’
‘What the hell are you sitting here for?’
‘Having a rest, sahib. Just a short rest.’
‘Does your arm hurt?’
‘Yes, it hurts.’
This was the first time the boy had ever so much as admitted that his arm gave him the slightest irritation.
He didn’t question him till he had eaten, and then he got off his bandages and had a look at the wound while listening to the story. It was not a very satisfactory story. The boy had found the village. He had found that the villagers were by no means opposed to the Chinese. The Chinese had brought them wrist-watches and clothes. They had hired their men at the highest rates. And they had promised that they would not be carrying burdens over the pass but merely going to and fro to the village for stores as required.
‘Do they know what it’s in aid of?’
‘They know, sahib. They are bad people. The snow is late and it will be a hard winter for them. They hope the Chinese will stay a long time.’
‘When do they expect the snow?’
‘Not for ten days at least.’
‘And how long are the men hired for?’
‘By the day, sahib. As long as necessary.’
‘Not so good, eh?’
‘Not so good, sahib.’
The wound was not so good, either. It was yellow, and the tight swollen flesh around it was yellow. He couldn’t tell if the dye had come off the monk’s robe. The robe had not been very clean to begin with. He threw the bandage on the ashes and cleaned the wound with hot water. The boy sat hissing, his face tight and grey.
‘Mei-Hua, do you know how to heal a wound? Do you know about herbs, leaves, anything of that sort?’
‘No, Chao-li. It is not my function.’
‘Sahib – if the Mother would permit,’ the boy said in English. ‘A piece of her robe – if she would bless a small piece. I don’t know if it is possible for her.’
The girl didn’t know, either. She considered the request, troubled.
‘Mei-Hua, the boy is in pain.’
‘Alas, Chao-li, it must be written for him.’
‘Mei-Hua, it is a small thing that he asks. Give him the piece of robe.’
‘Chao-li, it is a big thing.’
But she snipped off a piece and blessed it. Houston thought the boy’s face cleared a bit as he bound him with this sanctified bandage.
They stayed in the hole for a week, voyaging out only to collect wood. It seemed to Houston that the boy grew more tottery every day. He seemed to cover the distance from the chorten to the track practically on his face, and he would no longer let Houston look at his wound. He bathed it secretively by himself in a corner of the chamber.
On the eighth day, he thought there were intimations of snow in the air.
‘We better leave tonight, sahib. It’s our last chance.’
Houston saw that his face was puffy and flushed and suspected that he was running a fever; but he made no inquiries for he knew the boy resented them; and as he had said, it was the last chance.
With the boy he had been eating his way through the horse, to leave the tea and tsampa for the abbess, who would not touch the meat. They had a large meal, and rested again after it. Towards midnight, they got going.
Houston hoped he had seen the last of Bukhri-bo. It struck him then – as it was to strike him years later – as the vilest place on God’s earth.
The snow began long before they got to the pass. It was early bitter snow like little sharp flints and it drove hard in their faces. They bent their heads, and it seemed to come up from the track. They turned their heads, and it whipped them in passing. There was no protection from it. The wind was so incredibly cold that it was simply not possible to face it for longer than minutes at a time. The abbess dismounted and they turned the mule broadside in the trac
k and rested, gasping, behind it. Houston saw that the boy was scarcely able to stand.
He said, ‘Ringling, we can’t do it. We’ll have to try again.’
‘Sahib, no. It will stop. You’ll see it will stop. It will be easier on the pass.’
Whether it was or not, they had no opportunity to learn. For it was iron grey dawn when they came to the pass, and it needed only one look to see that they would not be going through it. The Chinese were still there.
The abbess slept on the way back.
‘Sahib,’ the boy said, ‘if the Mother should ask for a river, there is one before the village.’
‘All right.’
‘It is frozen and no one will be there. The water moves below the ice, sahib. It moves into the Tsangpo.’
‘Why should she want a river?’
‘If she does, sahib. Remember.’
4
Houston had not as then begun to keep a calendar, but by later calculation he made it 17 November when they had taken the last abortive trip to the pass, and the 27th when he and Ringling had gone back to the nomad encampment to buy curdled milk and garlic. The boy had been delirious for a couple of days, and in his delirium he had raved for the curdled milk and the garlic – specifics which had cured him of many a childish ailment, and which alone would enable him to take them over the mountains. He was still hankering for them when he came to.
Because their food supplies were dwindling, and this would be an opportunity to renew them, Houston humoured him. He dragged him on his back across the place of wind devils and sat him on the mule, and they went.
It had been snowing hard for days, and the boy was sure the Chinese would no longer be billeted with the nomads. Houston went cautiously ahead to see.
He found that the Chinese had gone, and a considerable number of the nomads with them. A considerable number still remained.
He gave the boy what money they had managed to retain through their adventures – a sum of three hundred rupees in small notes – and helped him off the mule to transact the business.
They ran right away into unforeseen difficulty. The nomads would not take the money. The Chinese had told them it was worthless and would shortly be replaced by the yuan. They were prepared only to barter.
What would they accept as barter?
They would accept the mule.
The boy had by this time got his hands on the curdled milk and the garlic, and he agreed. Houston took him angrily on one side.
‘What the hell is the point of getting rid of the mule? We need the mule. How can we move without it?’
‘Sahib, how can we move if I am ill? The mule eats. It eats all day. What good is a mule that eats and has no work to do?’
His face was more flushed than ever, his eyes glittering, his voice far too loud.
‘All right,’ Houston said.
For the mule they got garlic, curdled milk, tsampa, dried meat, mustard oil, needle and thread, and four animal traps. They were offered also either a skinful of chang or a sled to drags the goods away with. Houston gave the boy no opportunity of deciding on this point. He began piling the goods in the sled.
The boy rode the latter part of the journey on the sled, and he ate garlic as he rode. He ate more when he got back, and he boiled up a head of it in curdled milk for his dinner. He crushed garlic in one of the holy hermit’s bowls, and soaked his bandage in a solution of it. He stuffed as many cloves as he could into the wound. He was chewing garlic when he turned in and he was awake and still chewing when Houston turned out.
There were forty heads of garlic. The boy got through them in a week.
‘Just wait, sahib,’ he said. ‘The garlic will work. We will be away soon.’
And indeed the garlic worked wonders. It cleared his fever. It reduced the watery yellow swellings. He had energy to move. Every day he accompanied Houston out of the hole to collect wood. He showed him how to set the traps, and how to skin their catch – two rat-hares and a fox, which they ate immediately to save the dried meat. But he tired quickly, and had to be carried back on the sled.
‘Just wait, sahib. Next week.’
Alas, the next week, which was the second one of December, the weather deteriorated into savage blizzards, which kept them in the hole, and the boy deteriorated with it. The flush came back to his face. The arm swelled up. The pain became unbearable.
Houston woke one night to hear screaming, and swiftly lit the lamp, and saw it was the abbess. The boy was threshing silently on the floor. He was stabbing at his shoulder with the knife.
Houston tore his bag getting out of it.
‘Here, give me that, give me it!’
‘Sahib, it’s killing me! I can’t stand it!’
‘Come here, come here, stay still.’
‘Sahib, stop it, oh, stop it! Take it away, sahib. Get it away from me.’
Houston took the knife and got him on his back and sat on the writhing chest and looked at the wound.
‘Sahib, only stop it! Do anything! Cut it off. I can’t stand it any more, sahib.’
‘All right. Let’s wash it first. Let’s see what we’ve got.’
What they had got was something that all the garlic and all the curdled milk in the world would not cure. From shoulder to wrist, the arm was a puffy yellow mass. It spread under the armpit and over the shoulder. Blood and pus had streamed from the place where the boy had stabbed.
Houston’s stomach turned over, and his heart failed him. For he saw that what the boy in his agony had prescribed was indeed the only remedy. The arm would have to come off. In a frenzy, because he could not stand the agonized bellowing, and because he knew he must stop it, he hit the boy hard on the head with a boot, and knocked him mercifully out, and held his own sweating head in his hands and thought what to do.
‘The boy will die,’ the girl said.
‘No!’
‘He will die, Chao-li. It is written for him.’
‘Nothing is written!’ Houston said savagely. ‘I’ll save him. I’ll cut the arm off.’
But he didn’t cut the arm off, and he didn’t save him. Ringling died, as near as Houston could judge, on the 19th December – which was the date he gave his mother – and his death brought peace to them all, for he had bellowed continuously for three days.
Houston wept for him as he had not wept for his own brother. The girl remained composed.
‘The boy was not a native of Tibet, Chao-li?’
‘No, he came from Kalimpong, in India.’
‘Then we will need a river,’ she said.
Houston found the river, and as the boy had said, it was frozen and no one was there. He cut a small hole in the ice with the boy’s knife, and dragged the stiff body off the sled.
The girl crouched beside it, shivering in the bitter wind.
‘Where does the river flow, Chao-li?’
‘Into the Tsangpo.’
‘Very good. It will carry him home.’
She snipped a lock of the boy’s hair, and murmured over it, and dropped it into the ice hole. Then she bent over the body and made two small incisions, above the eyes, and murmured again.
Houston remained looking into the ice hole. The hair was still there in the slow-moving water. It went just as the girl rose beside him.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes. His spirit is now released. If it loses the way, the river will lead it home. For an outlander, it is very simple.’
‘Yes,’ Houston said. It had been very simple the first time, in the little stream, in the little wood, between Sikkim and India; a few drops of water, a posy of flowers.
‘Good-bye,’ he said into the hole.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
THEY left the boy on the ice. They left him naked to preclude the possibility of identification. They returned bleakly to the cave, and did not speak on the way. They turned in as soon as they had eaten.
The next day, Houston became very busy.
He slit two of the
sleeping bags and sewed them together. He went out and began very methodically his immense collection of wood. He drew up his calendar on the wall with a bit of burnt stick.
In the week before the boy had died they had agreed upon a rough plan. The plan was to stay in the hole for the winter and to make a quick dash for the pass as soon as the thaw set in. In this part of the country it set in very rapidly in the middle of April. In the space of three or four days the blizzards stopped and the sun shone. Unless the Chinese had left a party in the village – and it would be necessary to check on this – they could have as much as three days’ start on any troops sent to cut them off. In three days they could be well into the Chumbi valley.
Houston drew out his calendar from December to May, and made a ring round 1 April when he thought he would make a reconnaissance of the village, and another round the 8th, for a final one.
The long-range planning struck him as utterly fantastic. The thought of April, in December, seemed to him as remote as the next century. But he clung to it doggedly, for there was nothing else to cling to. He even worked out for himself some refinements. The emeralds were heavy – the eight bags weighing each something like thirty pounds. With no one to help him, he thought he had better ferry them up to the pass a bit at a time. He thought he might make one trip on 8 April – when he would be going for his second look at the village – and another on the 10th. The rest could go with them when they left.
There were seventeen weeks from the end of December to the middle of April. Houston set himself to regulate them by a strict routine. They rose at seven, as they had done in the monastery, and washed and ate, and then while the girl, after setting their home to rights, embarked upon the ritual of prayer and mental exercise that had always made up her day, Houston went out on his wood-collecting and trap-setting labours.
He went out whatever the weather, and the weather in January was the most abominable he had ever encountered. The snow came continuously, and horizontally, and at tremendous velocity, driven by iron hard winds. He stood for a moment in the strange icy chillness beside the chorten and listened to the unbelievable howling, and took a deep breath before heading out into it.
The Rose of Tibet Page 29