by Talbot Mundy
The Lama looked at Ommony for a long time, repeatedly almost closing his eyes and then opening them suddenly, as if to catch some fleeting expression unawares.
“And when you came, my son, hiding in Chutter Chand’s shop. When I knew the piece of the jade had reached your hands. When Benjamin sent word that you were spying on me. Then, it seemed to me that in spite of many faults you might be the man whom I must test. I have tested you in more ways than you guess, and I have seen all your faults, not least of which is a certain pride of righteousness. But San-fun-ho knows how to deal with that. Now think. Answer without self-seeking and without fear, truly. For I offer you my place, as San-fun-ho’s protector and servant, to guard her that she may serve the world. My time has come to die.”
CHAPTER XXXI. The Jade of Ahbor
A man is what he is. He starts from where he is. He may progress, or he may retrogress. All effort in his own behalf is dead weight in the scale against him. All effort in behalf of others is a profit to himself; notwithstanding which, unless he first improve himself he can do nothing except harm to others. There is no power in the universe, nor any form of intercession that can separate a cause from its effect, action from reaction, or a man from retribution for his deeds.
— from The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
OMMONY sat still. Diana growled and chased some creature of imagination in her dreams. The Lama threw wood on the fire, and watched it as if he were much more interested in the outcome of that than in what answer Ommony might make.
“What makes you think I could do it?” Ommony asked, half stunned by the suggestion, vaguely and uncomfortably conscious that he was being invited to make himself the butt of half a world’s ridicule, if of nothing worse.
“A flea — a mouse — a drop of water — a piece of wood — can do its duty,” said the Lama. “Is a man less!”
“I will do mine,” said Ommony, “if I can see it. But good God, man — how can I take your place?”
“She — and they — can go to India very easily, my son, without you. They are all provided for. They will never lack for money. It may be you are not the right man to be my chela’s friend and in that case it is better for you, and for her, and for the world that you accept no burden you cannot bear.
“Do not deceive yourself, my son. There will be no personal ease, no basking in the stupefying rays of flattery. You will be accused of all the evil motives that lurk in the minds of your accusers. Lecherous men will accuse you of lying when you say she is your niece; and you cannot prove the relationship. Thieves will accuse you of theft. Ambitious men will denounce your ambition. Traitors will accuse you of treachery toward the human race. Bigots will charge you with unpatriotic scheming. Men of outwardly unblemished aspect, but whose secret thoughts are viler than the froth of cesspools, will accuse you of secretly immoral practices. They will leave you not a shred of reputation. They will try to impoverish you; they will try to prove you insane; they will try to put you in prison.”
“Very well,” said Ommony. “I will do my best.” He nodded, thrusting his stubborn jaw forward. The Lama could have said nothing better calculated to persuade him.
“And you will find,” the Lama went on, nodding back at him, “here and there are men and women, who will accept what San-fun-ho can teach. Some of those will be traitors, who will try to learn in order that they may set up themselves as teachers and accumulate money and fame. Those will be your most dangerous enemies. But some will be honest and steadfast, and they will encourage others; for the West is moving forward on a cycle of evolution; and moreover, it is growing very weary of its own creeds and politics and competition. It begins to be ready at last to put the horse before the cart, instead of the cart before the horse as hitherto. There is a great change coming — although this is Kali Yuga, and it is not wisdom to expect too much. The harvest takes care of itself — none knows how many generations hence. This is a time for the sowing of the seeds of thought on which a whole world’s destiny depends. I have sown my handful. I can sow no more.”
“What makes you so sure you are going to die?” asked Ommony.
“The Ahbors, my son, will attend to it, for I have broken their law. I made them promises which I intend to break; I knew that I must, when I made the promises. There is that in me that blinded me to any other way out of the difficulty, and although I did my duty, that does not preserve me from the effects of wrong-doing. The Ahbors have their rights. This is their country. They protect this monastery and its secrets. They have protected me. Of my own free will I have availed myself of their protection and their law against admitting strangers. Do you remember Socrates, who broke the law of the Athenians, although he did his duty? He might have escaped after they condemned him, but he refused, although his friends insisted. And Socrates did well, my son; he had no right to avoid the consequences of his own acts; it was enough that he had told the Athenians some great truths, for he knew those truths, and it was the proper time to tell; if the Athenians had a law against telling the truth, that was their affair, not his. Socrates drank his poison, which was a simple little matter, and soon over with. Does it appear to you that the Athenians have even yet finished suffering from the injustice they inflicted?”
“But the Athenians could think. These Ahbors are mere savages,” said Ommony.
“The Ahbors have their rights,” the Lama answered. “They work out their own destiny. I work out mine. If I had been a wiser man, less blinded by my lower nature, I could have found a better way to save my chela than by deceiving the Ahbors. But I was blind, so I took the only way I could. When I return to earth again, I am convinced I shall be less blind; and at least I shall owe no debt to the Ahbors, for I will pay it now.”
“Why not leave all that to destiny?” Ommony objected.
“My son, there is no other judge in whose hands I can leave it! But destiny judges a man’s unwillingness to pay, as surely as it judges his mistakes — as surely as it rewards his hidden motives and his honesty. There is no thought hidden from the Higher Law, and no escape from rebirth, time and time again, until each individual learns wisdom by experience. The Ahbors will learn wisdom, some sooner than others; but they will not learn it by being deprived of opportunity to use their own judgment. If they choose to kill me, they must inevitably suffer; but I would rather they should kill me than that they should have killed that child, and for more than one reason. They can do very little harm by killing me; the wrong will not amount to much, because I bear no resentment. If they had killed her, they would have robbed the world.”
“You have your rights,” Ommony objected. “You’re worth more than the Ahbors.”
But the Lama’s eyes twinkled humorously. “My son, you argue ignorantly, meaning well enough, but reckoning without the facts.”
“For instance?”
“You would not understand. My course is necessary — never mind why, my son. It was entirely necessary for you to come to this place of your own free will; otherwise it would have been impossible for me to open your mind. I could have talked to you for ten years in India, and you would never have understood. But it was also necessary to provide for your admission to the valley, and for your safe return to India after I am dead. You were admitted because I told the Ahbors about your talking dog, and because I gave my own life as hostage, saying they might slay me if you should ever escape from the valley alive. I did that, knowing they would slay me in any event, when they should learn that San-fun-ho and the others have left the valley forever. You see, my son, it is necessary I should die, in order to consume as soon as possible the consequences of an untruth. As for the Ahbors; they are very ignorant, but faithful to their valley and their own law, generous toward this monastery: it is better that they should kill me, than that they should be faithless to their laws and to their trust. I will do all I can to minimize the consequences for them.”
A monk came in again with food, and once more the Lama amused himself by feeding Diana. “Make her d
o tricks,” he insisted, and rewarded her with handfuls of food after each performance, he and the monk laughing as if it were the most interesting and amusing business in the world. The sun had gone down over the mountains and there was a gloom within the chamber that affected Ommony’s nerves, for it seemed to foretell tragedy, but the Lama apparently had not a trouble on his mind. The moment the monk had gone Ommony began questioning:
“Does Elsa — I mean, does San-fun-ho know anything about your plans?”
“Enough, my son. A little. She understands she has a destiny. She understands she is to take you with her into India.”
The Lama rose to his feet, as if to avoid further conversation; but Ommony shot one more question at him:
“Does she know you expect to be killed?”
The Lama did not answer. His wrinkled face became expressionless.
“Where is she now?” asked Ommony.
“Come.”
The Lama led the way, in deepening gloom, along the wooden gallery that overhung the ravine, and through a door into the monastery, which appeared to be a patchwork nest of caves and buildings connected by passages hewn in the rock. Some of it appeared as old as time, but parts were medieval; some was almost modern. There was an air of economically conserved affluence and studied chastity of design — beauty everywhere, but less laid on than inherent in proportions and the almost exquisite restraint.
Pictures were hung on the plastered corridor walls at widely spaced intervals, apparently all drawn by the same hand. The Lama stopped for a second in front of one of them, done in pastel on paper: a study of an eagle soaring, balancing himself to catch the uplift of the changing wind. It might have been done by a Chinaman a thousand years ago, it was so full of life, truth and movement and, above all, so superbly beautiful.
“My chela!” he said, and smiled, and passed on.
At one place, where the corridor turned at right angles and a lamp hung in chains from the ceiling, there was another pastel drawing, a portrait this one, of the Lama himself.
“Wrinkles and all!” he said, chuckling.
He stood beside Ommony and studied the portrait for more than a minute; it seemed to amuse him as much as it astonished Ommony, who caught his breath.
“My God!” Ommony exclaimed. “That’s—”
“Yes,” said the Lama, chuckling. “That old person was my God once. It takes us long to learn. But San-fun-ho drew the picture, and I saw myself through the eyes of my chela, which are very interesting. Notice, my son, how affectionate she is, and yet how truthful. Not one hidden foolishness escapes her; and she sets it all down. Yet she is as gentle as the rain on dry hills.”
He passed on, opened a door, glanced in, and motioned Ommony to enter.
“School-room!” he said, and chuckled again, as if remembering a chain of incidents.
It looked about as much unlike a school-room as it would be easy to imagine. There was nobody in there, but it was lighted with kerosene lamps as if visitors were expected. Across the full width of the room at one end was a stage, provided with curtain, footlights, wings and painted scenery. There were comfortable seats and small, square, solid tables on the floor for twenty or thirty people; and there was a gallery, at the end opposite the stage, for twenty or thirty more. The place was scrupulously clean and tidy.
“Life, my son, is drama. Why teach how to drug the mind, when the purpose of life is to render it alert and active? Shakespeare was right. You remember? ‘All the world’s a stage.’ No learning is of any value unless we can translate it into action. Bad thoughts produce hideous action; right thinking produces grace and symmetry; and the audience is almost as important as the play. Let the child act the part of a villain, and it learns to strive to be a hero; let the hero’s part be a reward for genuine effort, and lo! sincerity becomes the goal. There have been plays enacted here that would have thrilled Shakespeare to the marrow of his manhood. San-fun-ho wrote most of them.”
“Who were the audiences” asked Ommony. “Monks — Ahbors. The stupider the better. Let the actors strive to act so simply and sincerely that even monks and savages can understand. There have been plays acted on this stage that I think would have converted even Christian missionaries from the error of their own self-righteousness.”
He led the way out again along the corridor, and now he began to hurry, striding with the regular, long movements of a mountaineer. He had suddenly thrown off fifty years again, in one of those strange resurrections of youth that seemed to sweep over him at intervals. Ommony, with Diana at his heels, had all he could do to keep pace.
However, there were pauses. He opened doors here and there along echoing corridors, giving Ommony a glimpse of rooms, each one of which had some connection with the beloved chela. There was a bedroom, as plain and almost as severely furnished as a monastery cell, only that every single item in it was as perfect as material and craftsmanship could contrive, and the proportions, the color, and something else that was indefinable, produced an atmosphere of unconditioned peace. There was nothing out of place, and no unnecessary object in the room. The walls were pale daffodil yellow; the Chinese rug was blue; the bed-spread was old-rose. There were flowers in a Ming vase on a small square table, but no other ornament.
“These walls will not forget her,” said the Lama. There was an agony within him, as his voice betrayed.
He led the way along a corridor, opening doors of rooms where the chela’s companions had slept, making no comment. Those other rooms were more ornate than the chela’s and vaguely, indefinably less beautiful; — there was more furniture — less character but tidiness and cleanliness beyond belief.
The monastery was honeycombed into a limestone mountain’s heart. It was enormous. There was possibly accommodation for a thousand people, with perfect ventilation and no dampness, although how that was contrived did not appear. Nor was there any sign of its inhabitants, nor any sound, except the shuffling of Ommony’s loose shoes and the solid thump of the Lama’s bare feet as he strode with bowed head and the skirts of his long robe swinging.
They descended a long, hewn stairway presently and emerged, through a door a foot thick that was carved on both sides with dragons, into the open air. The rush and roar of water pouring into hollow caverns greeted them. They were now on that side of the monastery that Ommony had first seen, with the terraced amphitheater below them, but it was too dark to peer into its depths. The stars blinked down above a rim of mountains. “There will be a full moon,” said the Lama, a propos, apparently, of nothing.
He led down into the dark amphitheater, by paths and steps that linked the circling terraces, and turned, midway, into a tunnel whose dark opening was like an ink-blot in the shadow of rocks and trees. Ten yards along the tunnel Ommony heard him fumbling with a lock; a door swung almost silently; the Lama took him by the hand and pulled him forward, closing the door but not locking it. Then, in such utter darkness that all the senses were almost swallowed by it and Diana whimpered, the Lama led, pauseless, holding Ommony’s hand as if it were a child’s. The old man’s grip was like a swordsman’s, as if his vanished youth, reborn for the moment, were burning him up. The strange thrill that was consuming him communicated itself to Ommony through the linked hands.
At the end of an immeasurable distance — (there was no sense of time or space in that impenetrable darkness) — they emerged into gloom under an oval patch of starlit sky, on a ledge, an incalculable distance down the inside of a limestone pit — somber, irregularly circular, enormous. The Lama sat down on a mat that somebody had placed for him — signed — and Ommony sat down beside him, on the same mat.
“Let the dog not wander away. Bid her lie here,” he said, in a normal voice.
As Ommony’s eyes grew gradually used to the gloom he discerned that they were very near the bottom of the pit, whose almost perpendicular flanks rose so high that the stars appeared like bright dots on a dark-blue dome that rested on the summit. His own breathing seemed abominably noisy in the s
ilence.
In front of where they sat there was a sheer drop, but the bottom did not seem to be more than fifty feet below; and somewhere in the midst of the almost circular space into which he gazed there was an object, bulky, of no ascertainable shape, and apparently raised on a platform of rock so as to be almost on a level with the ledge on which they sat. Diana lay still, sniffing, one ear raised; there were humans not far away.
Presently there was a sound below — apparently a footstep, and Diana growled at it. A lantern appeared, but it was impossible to tell whether the individual who carried it was man or woman. There were several more footsteps, and one word in a clear voice — instantly recognizable — the chela’s. There began to be a prodigious phantom movement in the gloom. Something — a great black cloth apparently — was pulled by many hands and the shape of the object in the center changed. The lantern-light was reflected in a sea-green pinpoint that spread and increased as the moonlight spreads on water, but much more fiery, and full of weird movement. The lantern suddenly went out, but the peculiar green glow had made such an impression that with his eyes shut, Ommony could still see evolving, glowing green.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The Jade of Ahbor.”
The Lama’s voice was solemn. He seemed almost to resent the question. However he went on speaking in a low voice.
“That fragment, that was broken off and stolen by an Ahbor, has been set back, but there is none nowadays who knows how to heal the break. There is a blemish. Thus one ignorant fool can spoil the product of a thousand wise men’s labor. But that Ahbor was no better and no worse than they who ruin reputations, to possess an hour’s self-righteousness. Others who should know better, will try to break my chela’s spirit when the time comes — some for their own amusement, some for profit, some because they hate the truth. But she is made of stronger stuff than stone.”