Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “If you mean geographically, about six days’ march,” said Lhaten. “You have already come a long way into Tibet. The elevation here is sixteen thousand feet.”

  “Am I going to be allowed to make it?”

  “Yes. You.”

  “What about my friends?”

  “That is not my business. I can’t answer you,” said Lhaten. “You might get there with your friends. Two explorers have passed near it within comparatively recent years. You would see no more than the explorers did — a very plain, uninteresting village, occupied by plain, uninteresting looking people. There are no barbed-wire entanglements! But seclusion is something the Masters know how to preserve. I have authority to lead you in alone; and in that case you will be allowed to stay a while — perhaps for quite a long time. But if you insisted on taking your friends without authority, you might exclude yourself.”

  “Can I obtain authority?” Grim asked.

  “It may be. But I don’t know and I promise nothing. No man is ever taken in on any other terms than on his own initiative and entirely of his own free will. So that would be Ramsden’s affair.”

  “And Chullunder Ghose?”

  “The same.”

  For a long time Grim was silent — for so long a time that I began to think he had left the hut without my knowing it. But at last I caught the familiar grunt that he makes when he has considered all points of something and rejected it.

  “I shall not go in without my friends,” he said.

  “Is that exactly fair to them?” asked Lhaten. “You impose on them responsibility for your success or failure.”

  “No, I don’t,” Grim answered bluntly. “I know damned well Rammy wouldn’t make that grade and leave me, if positions were reversed. He’ll lie about it, naturally. He’ll even try to quarrel, if all else fails. It won’t be his fault if I don’t go on and leave him. It will be my independent judgment as to what I personally care to do. That settles it. All three of us, or none!”

  “Let me see — who was it settled that the sun goes round the earth and that the earth is flat?” asked Lhaten. “You will find,” he added, “that your friend Ramsden has been listening to every word we have said.”

  Grim got up to come and test the truth of that remark; but Lhaten went out, letting in a hurricane of wind that blew all the fire off the hearth before the door slammed shut again.

  So Grim had to gather up the fuel and relay the fire before he could attend to me, and I had time to think what I should say to him.

  CHAPTER XXIII. Jimgrim and Ramsden engage in argument, and come to terms.

  And though ye strive in friendship, be that friendship as ennobling as the gods’ good will, I tell you ye must enter one by one. But of the three, faith, hope and friendship, I declare the last is not least; nor without all three shall ye draw nigh the skirts of Wisdom.

  — from The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  GRIM pulled up the yak-skin bench and sat beside me. Due, I think, to the tremendous elevation and, perhaps in part, to the recent torture I had undergone, the edges of thought, if I may coin an expression, stood out definitely. There was no confusion between yes and no. Physically I was weaker than I ever remember to have been, but thought was sharp and vivid — concentrated. The essentials were obvious.

  “Rammy, old top, is it true? Were you listening?” Grim asked me. “Now see here: you and I have stuck together, and as a general thing you have left the leading up to me. Damn you, you’ve been too lazy to argue. You’d rather work like a locomotive to prove me right than go to the trouble of disagreeing. We never have disagreed, and we’re not going to this time. But here’s a crisis and it’s your turn to decide which way the cat jumps. Do your job.”

  “How is Chullunder Ghose?” I asked him.

  “Rotten. But he’ll pull through. Lhaten brought some medicine.”

  “Can he talk yet?”

  “No. But look here, there’ll be no committee work on this. If you say ‘forward,’ forward we go. And if you don’t like the prospect of spending perhaps three years in a Tibetan village, learning stuff that will upset all your previous conclusions — after which we’ll probably be turned loose to be hated like hell by half the men who used to like us — just say so and we’ll turn back. For that’s all there is to it.” It was clear enough what Grim wanted to do. His eyes almost gleamed through the smoke.

  “If this were poker, any fool could tell you held four aces,” I remarked. “Do you guarantee to accept my decision as final?”

  “If you play fair,” he answered. “yes. But none of your concessions to my prejudice. What I’ve got to know is, what would you do if left to yourself — supposing I weren’t here, for instance. If you don’t convince me that you’re answering on the level, I shall vote to go back.”

  His eyes were fixed on mine and it would not have been any use to try to shift ground. On the other hand, no argument of his was going to make me stand in his way. He was aching to go to Sham-bha-la. So was I; but I had less chance of getting in than he had, and was much less likely to be able to understand the mysteries that I supposed would be explained if we should gain admission.

  “When we agreed to enter Tibet, we all took the same chance, didn’t we?” I said at last. “Narayan Singh lost out, as you or I might have lost out, just as easily. Now, once again: will you accept my answer?”

  But he put me through a third degree before he pledged himself, endeavoring to probe for mental reservations. In the end, because habitually I had never tricked him, he committed himself:

  “Shoot!”

  “Forward,” I said, “as soon as Chullunder Ghose is fit to travel; and the devil take the hindermost. Whoever makes the grade, goes in. Whoever doesn’t make it, goes home.”

  “Damn!” he exploded, then laughed at himself. “I might have known you’d turn the trick on me. All right. But I’ve a trump left. I shall leave you and Chullunder Ghose whenever Lhaten asks me to, and shall go on alone with him, as he proposes. Once there, I shall ask for admission for both of you. If they refuse, then I won’t go in either and we’ll all three turn back.”

  I told him he would be a damned fool to refuse for any such reason.

  “If they won’t let me in,” I argued, “I’ll go back to the States and wait for you. If they turn you into something that’s too wise for me to understand, I’ll get my fun backing you, nevertheless. Besides,” I said, “I’ve salted down some money and you haven’t. Knowing something, as you will, you’ll certainly be branded as a nut and you’ll need all the support you can get, in addition to someone big enough to punch the heads of your opponents. From what I’ve seen and heard,” said I, “they’ll teach you to abstain from violence, but they’ll fill you full of stuff that will exude from you and start explosions wherever you go. You’ll need someone who isn’t a pacifist, to break the heads of bigots. That’s a job for me. And I’ll help to keep the women from suing you in court when you refuse to accept them as soul-mates.”

  I could no more make him yield than he could make me, though. I threatened to take him by main force as soon as I could recover strength and throw him into the Sham-bha-la ditch, to be fished out by the chelas as an act of charity. He promised to go forward. He refused to make the goal unless Chullunder Ghose and I might make it with him.

  Lhaten kept coming and going, though I have not the remotest notion whence he came or whither he went at such regular intervals. As a doctor he was almost a magician; he reminded me of a physician whom I once met at Baroda when bubonic plague was playing havoc in a camp of famine refugees; he was a man who had not graduated with distinction, and who had no professional prospects because he did his thinking for himself and doubted all the doctrinaires, but most of his patients recovered, whereas most of those whose luck submitted them to other ministrations died. The man had the healer’s gift — and so had Lhaten.

  He was silent, nearly always, but his silence was something like that of the red man, totally devoid of surl
iness, suggesting that he had so much to think about that talking was a waste of time. How he kept himself clean was a mystery. At midday, when the sun would burn the skin of anyone exposed to it, tea would freeze in the kettle within fifteen minutes after it was taken from the fire; washing, consequently, was a questionable luxury and the Tibetans who occupied the portion of the hut that was cut off from ours by the partition were as filthy as might be expected. Lhaten even wore clean clothes, which usually smelt of sandal wood. He only laughed when I asked him how he managed it.

  Once, I believe, Rao Singh came, although I would not swear I was not dreaming. At that elevation, for reasons doubtless natural, but of whose nature I have not the remotest notion, dreams were as vivid and sharply etched as waking thought; so that it was difficult at times to draw the line between the dream and actuality. I can remember conversations that I thought I had with Grim, though he assured me afterward that I was sleeping and had not talked during sleep.

  We both thought Rao Singh came into the hut, but we did not agree as to how he behaved, so it is possible that both of us were dreaming, though that both should have the same dream with mere minor variations as to detail, seems unlikely. Grim said Rao Singh was wearing a turban; my version of it was a loose fur cap. We both agreed about his eyes, which were as blazing blue as when we saw him in the hermit’s cave, and if there is anything in the theory that people don’t dream color that alone ought to settle the question. However, I am usually disbelieved when I assert that all my dreams are colored vividly, so I must leave the issue undecided.

  As I recall it, no wind blew in through the door when it was opened and admitted Rao Singh. On the contrary, Grim declared there was the usual mid- morning gale and Lhaten had to force himself against the door to shut it. We were both sure there was snow on Rao Singh’s coat, but differed about what boots he wore and as to whether he spoke to Lhaten in Tibetan or some other language. Grim thought he used Tibetan; I am nearly sure he spoke Hindi. What is certain is, that Grim and I both understood him, or believe we did — which adds to the weight of evidence in favor of the dream, since we understand people in dreams without defining what language they use.

  He said to Lhaten (Grim and I agreed about that) “You should not waste energy. Too much is worse than too little. Exactly enough is the proper quantity.” Then he examined Chullunder Ghose, who had been more or less unconscious for ten days and was lying babbling in a sort of half-delirium, under sheepskins that he threw off constantly.

  “Can’t you reach him?” he asked.

  “No,” said Lhaten. “I could reach that other, but not him.”

  “You strike too strenuously, and you don’t go deep enough,” said Rao Singh. “What did you follow?”

  “His affection for his friends.”

  “No use. It leaves off at the head. His heart is sound enough, but when the brain sees disadvantages the head prevails. His brain is full of terror. Calm that.”

  “I have tried, but he becomes afraid of me.”

  “He is dreaming of nothing but dugpas. The whole universe seems full of evil to him. He has been badly poisoned. Get into his dream and let him see that what he fears is but the other side of what he loves. Make haste.”

  What Lhaten did then neither Grim nor I discovered, although we were almost exactly agreed, afterward, about the conversation and we both saw Lhaten sit down by Chullunder Ghose’s head. Thereafter, Rao Singh monopolized attention, striding over to us where we sat together on the yak-skin bench, our backs against the wall.

  And that is another circumstance in favor of the dream theory. I may have been too weak to stand, but I cannot imagine that Grim would have remained seated if he had been awake; ordinary manners would have made him stand up. When we discussed it afterward, Grim was as sure as I that both of us remained exactly as we were.

  Rao Singh stood still and looked at us, his penetrating blue eyes dwelling first on Grim’s face, then on mine. He was not exactly awe-inspiring; he impressed one much too favorably for a sense of awe to creep into the feeling, which was rather of confidence combined with inability to understand him. There was no vanity about his dignity, no condemnation in his frown. When he spoke after several minutes he began in the middle of a sentence, as if he had been talking to us since he came into the hut:

  “ — So you think it matters what is said of you, or what is done to you. But I tell you, nothing matters to you except what you think, and what you do to other people. If you expect praise for what you do and adulation in return for what you think, you may just as well give up thinking, because the world will only praise what pleases it and will only tolerate what does not cause it the necessity to think. It stifles thought with ostracism and with bayonets, and then flatters itself how wise it is. How wise are you?”

  He smiled, stood silent for a moment, and then went away and left us.

  Neither of us spoke. I dare say it was twenty minutes before Grim asked whether I remembered just what Rao Singh had said and we began comparing notes. It first occurred to us it might have been a dream when we found that we did not agree as to minor details. Even then we did not care to interrupt Lhaten, who was motionless in meditation near the babu. But when Lhaten moved at last and stood up Grim asked him whether Rao Singh had gone for good, or whether we might expect him again presently.

  “From Rao Singh you will never know what to expect except benevolence,” he answered.

  So I put the question bluntly: “Was he here, or was he not here?”

  He looked at me a moment rather keenly and then answered:

  “Before you will ever know much about Rao Singh you will have to learn not to discuss him. Not that it injures him in any way, but gossip is a rolling stone that runs downhill. Many a man who was climbing uphill has been hit by that stone and discouraged or else hurt. Some, who are nearer the bottom, where the stone has much more impetus, are crushed.”

  “Were we awake or asleep?” I asked.

  “My back was turned,” he answered. “Sleeping and waking are relative terms. Very few people indeed are awake at all until they die. Your friend Chullunder Ghose is feeling better.”

  CHAPTER XXIV. Chullunder Ghose

  What shall it profit a man if he know more than he can possibly perform? Or if he can do more than he understands? Be moderate in all things, so preserving equilibrium, which is a form of justice that the gods love.

  — from The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  CHULLUNDER GHOSE recovered slowly, and suffered more than we did from the altitude, but from the moment his consciousness fully returned he seemed to have the same experience of thinking, as it were, in high relief with all the mental images appearing rounded and solid, instead of flat and spectral. Plus was plus; minus was minus; there was no borderland of doubt between them.

  Unexpectedly he grieved over Narayan Singh, whom he had urged us not to bring on the expedition and with whom he had never arrived on terms of intimacy.

  “Sahibs, I was jealous of that Sikh. I loved him. He was a fighting fool, as sure to go off as a stick of dynamite. I was afraid of him. I hated his way of sitting by a fireside with that little hone and sharpening his saber. But I would give all I have to be able to wear such blinkers as he wore, and to have such firmity of purpose. Firmity of purpose — ah! To understand too much and see too much is my infirmity, since I see all around a thing. I see absurdities, where other men see only opportunities for valor. Sahibs, knowledge is a dreadful handicap. I envied that man Narayan Singh his blindness; he could not see the absurdity of things, and so he died a hero. But I fear me, I shall die in bed, which is of all abominations the least tolerable because it is the essence of expectedness and almost any fool can do it.”

  We remained three weeks in that stone but on the grim, white, wind-swept shoulder of a mountain, eating food that Lhaten and his men provided from I don’t know what source and recovering strength slowly but without relapse. Lhaten would not hear of our moving on before I was fit to make l
ong marches, although he made no such stipulation as regarded Chullunder Ghose.

  “For if our starting should depend on him, we might stay here a long time,” he remarked as he eyed the babu sharply.

  Chullunder Ghose, I thought, seemed disappointed by that decision. Announcement that Lhaten’s men would carry him aroused no noticeable satisfaction. He was not ill-tempered, but he wore an air of martyrdom when Lhaten’s men at last brought in the litter — and he was hoisted shoulder-high by four great smiling stalwarts who made nothing of the weight and only moved with greater dignity beneath it. He waved an almost tearful farewell to the hut.

  I walked beside him for a while, until the track grew narrow and too rough for anything but single file; and it occurred to me to ask him why he had shown such affection for the hut.

  “I bade goodbye to all romance!” he answered. “Sahib, we are going to where they will teach us the truth about all our illusions, and I have too few illusions as it is!”

  He had some, nevertheless, though I am not quite sure what shape the most attractive of them took. At the end of three days’ exhausting struggle with the wind over a mountain trail that followed the line of a watershed, we started to descend toward a river that we learned from Lhaten was the Tsang-po. The following afternoon we entered a hermit’s cave, about a hundred feet above the river that came thundering through an ice-encrusted gorge around a turn a mile away on our left hand, widened and shallowed in front of the cave but flowed too rapidly to freeze except along the banks, and plunged over a cataract a mile below us. Over beyond the river was another range of mountains, snow-clad, and with no trail visible. Either Chullunder Ghose imagined he could swim that river, or else he suffered from the equally ridiculous delusion that we would let him drown himself. He climbed down to the water’s edge by rough steps hewn in the rock, and the only reason why I followed him was that I wanted to study the rock formation where a buttress of the mountain jutted out into the stream. Suddenly Grim shouted front the cave mouth — pointed — and I saw Chullunder Ghose struggling in the river as the ice-cold current swept him toward midstream.