Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  That suggested a chance to discover guilt or not-guilt without revealing suspicion. If Bompo Tsering knew about the substitution of the pine root for the pistol, he probably would take the opportunity to grope in the pocket and drop the pine root from the cliff, on the way up. That would destroy the circumstantial evidence. No matter. Knowledge was what Andrew needed. Nothing was further from his thought than to prosecute Bompo Tsering, or even to get rid of him. He needed the man. But he needed him respectfully aware of the importance of being loyal. It was his job to inspire that loyalty. So he let him carry the overcoat.

  It turned out to be a missed guess: a minor mistake. Bompo Tsering’s manner revealed his motive at once. By swaggering with that good overcoat hung carelessly over his shoulder he hoped to impress the monks. Doubtless, in his winterlong activity as Andrew’s undercover agent, he had boasted of being almost Andrew’s chief, not chief of staff. Now he foresaw humiliation. That overcoat suggested how to save face. He would have led the way, if Andrew had permitted. But Andrew went ahead up the difficult, winding footpath. He gave Bompo Tsering all the opportunity he needed to get rid of the pine root; and at the same time no chance to get first word at the monastery gate, where he might otherwise have developed his self-importance. The man from Koko Nor was too afraid of monastery magic, and too occupied with his loads, to do anything but grunt his way uphill, too far behind to be nagged by Bompo Tsering.

  It was pitch dark when they reached the summit. The rain clouds had rolled away; the stars were shining. They stood breathless on the edge of a dark precipice, in front of a featureless doorway in a plastered freestone wall. The two monks who greeted Andrew pointed to the new moon that hung like a flake of silver on purple. They smiled like Chinese ivory statues and said something astrologically wise, but they pretended not to understand Andrew’s Tibetan, and they were suspiciously aloof toward Bompo Tsering and the man from Koko Nor. They led the way in, along dimly lamplit passages, upward from stair to stair, until they reached the great guest chamber. It was the same that Elsa had used on the way southward when she was carried up there, with her baby wrapped in Andrew’s spare shirt and his priceless the crimson flames beneath a cauldron in which an adulterous lady was being boiled in oil. A very suitable sermon in paint for the edification of guests, profane or otherwise.

  The monks said something about food, bestowed their benedictions and backed out, spinning prayer wheels as a precaution against foreign devils that might have entered in Andrew’s company. They were monkish monks — a mere couple of mildly pious drones, too timid to sin and too lazy to think.

  Andrew sent the man from Koko Nor to clean and refill the brass pitcher with water that hadn’t been used a few times already. Bompo Tsering laid Andrew’s overcoat on the bed and made experiments with one of the bent-wood chairs; cursing the religion of the man who made it, finally he sat on the floor with his head on the seat, remarking that a peling’s hams must be different from other people’s. Andrew sat on the bed discouraged by the sensation of unfinished business left behind in Darjeeling. The trail ahead seemed as calm as the pale new moon, although he knew it couldn’t be. But he felt now, behind him, where he couldn’t face it, a menace as dark as the ravines on which the new moon shone. It occurred to him to wonder why it did not occur to him to abandon Elsa to her own devices. It didn’t. He saw that thought objectively. It belonged to someone else. It was as remote as the moon.

  The monks brought food — the usual tea, in the usual urn; enormous quantities of mountain rice, half boiled, spiced and soaked in ghee; three bowls of cooked herbs; bread; goats’ milk cheese. Andrew ate sparingly, suspicious of the pungent, anonymous herbs that agree with Tibetans but that sometimes behave like locoweed in a white man’s stomach. Bompo Tsering and the man from Koko Nor ate noisily and well, belching satisfaction and remarking that these monks must be wealthy, to provide such provender for passing guests. They licked the platters.

  Presently Bompo Tsering offered to return the platters and urn to the monastery kitchen. Andrew ordered the man from Koko Nor to do it; he was likelier to come running back without exchanging gossip. So Bompo Tsering sat still, watching Andrew writing with his fore-finger in the smoke on the wall beside the bed. He took the bait before long.

  “Peling’s magic” he suggested, in a fruity sarcastic tone.

  “Yes.”

  Andrew had actually scrawled a brief message to Elsa: Hurry forward. Don’t let them delay you. But Bompo Tsering’s question gave him an idea. Scowling, he made mysterious passes with his right hand — inscribed his initials in the soot — made a punctuation mark — then turned and studied Bompo Tsering’s face until the scrutiny and the silence were too much for the Tibetan. He had to speak:

  “My thinking maybe by-um-by our needing too much more magic. This place being too much making my afraid.”

  “This is hot damn magic,” said Andrew. “It makes the truth talk.”

  Bompo Tsering produced his rosary. He always boasted that its beads were carved from the toe bones of holy hermits from Mt. Kailas, and that they were strung on a saint’s sinew. He even knew the name of the blessed saint. Nevertheless, the rosary had been made in Birmingham.

  The man from Koko Nor returned breathless, looking scared out of his wits. He sat down by himself in a corner, with his hands on his thighs. He appeared to be praying. Bompo Tsering flicked his beads and muttered mantras, shuddering when the night wind howled under the eaves and the draught made the little lamps flicker amid leaping shadows.

  Andrew, wondering how long to let that mood ferment, framed the questions he would presently ask. He lighted his pipe. But he thumbed it out almost instantly, when someone knocked on the door.

  CHAPTER 22

  Bompo Tsering and the man from Koko Nor knelt, suddenly, in a hurry. They laid their foreheads and the palms of their hands on the floor. The Lama Gombaria Rinpoche entered. They remained in that position until he left the room, ten minutes later. The Lama was accompanied by two black-robed subordinates, who looked like homosexuals — ivory smooth — too lushly conscious of a lechery disguised as love that passeth understanding. One was the interpreter. The other carried his master’s official chair; he set it against the wall facing the brass bed. They stood thumbing their beads, one on each side of the grim Abbot, who was graciously pleased to be seated after Andrew had bowed and received the three-fold-gracious-blessing-bestowing-change-of-heart-toward- righteousness.

  He signed to Andrew — an imperious, ungracious, condescending nod. Andrew sat down on the bed, with the soot-smothered painting of hell on the wall behind him. There began to be an otherworld sensation, heightened by the picturesqueness of the black-robed representatives of Secrecy, Serenity and Sacred Law.

  Andrew was well aware that the Lama Gombaria knew scholarly English. But he also had reason to know that His Reverence was much too diplomatic to admit it. He kept many another, more esoteric vehicle for thought equally well guarded behind sanctimonious mistrust of plain appearances of any kind whatever. He had a sour, sardonic look that matched his reputation for severity and fasting, and for spending days on end in meditation without perceptibly breathing or moving an eyelid. Many high lamas cultivate that habit for the sake of the easy authority it gives them over marveling monks. But this man had the air of a disciplinarian who needed no such subterfuge to sweeten rule that he could enforce by strength of will. He was reputed, too, to be a clairvoyant of such astonishing power that he could see through any man’s thought to its naked motive; it was said to be useless to tell him lies. And he was famed as a magician who could leave his body at will and travel vast distances, returning with intimate knowledge of things, events and men. Another, less exaggerated rumor, credited and slyly broadcast by the modern-minded newly literate iconoclasts who swarm the world, mocked him for a bigoted old humbug; accused him of being deeply involved in treason against human liberties; classed trim as a black reactionary, a Fascist, a Nazi, a Communist, an anarchist. He was probably
all of those things, in some degree, by turns, but nothing longer than his inward humor pleased.

  He looked, in his black peaked cap and robe, like a wrinkled old mummy, with bright eyes, unusually long ear lobes, and a long face with a protruding lower lip. But the chiefly remarkable thing about him, that caused Andrew to treat him with watchful politeness, was the sensation of mass. It bore no relation to his weight or his size. He was a small man, lean, emaciated. His underlings, with their backs to the shadowy wall, were taller than he and far heavier; they presented breadth and height; but in the dim, unsteady light they were as flat to the eye as daguerreotypes. The old Lama, regardless of his frailty, was mass personified, like Memnon’s statue on the Nile. He was as motionless. He monopolized attention in the same way, by being — as distinguished from wishing to be. That is great art. A Rodin, Beethoven, Homer can create it in marble, music, words; but some men use themselves — their own presence — as the stuff they mold into a hint of absolutes. This man did it. Andrew’s impulse, so strong that he was conscious of his hands and had to keep them still, was to get out his knife and begin whittling a portrait in wood.

  The interpreter broke the silence: “Our Holy Lama Gombaria Rinpoche graciously is pleased to know that you are well.”

  “Thank him,” said Andrew. “Say I’m grateful for his hospitality and glad to see him looking so well himself.”

  There was no pause for reference. It was like a litany.

  “The Holy Lama graciously enquires about the health and happiness of the lady and child who accompanied you at the time of your former visit.”

  “The child is dead,” said Andrew. He knew that the old Lama already knew that; Bompo Tsering must have told him, during the course of the winter; he undoubtedly had received the news, too, by courier from Mu-ni Gam-po. “But the lady herself,” he added, “has benefited from His Holiness’s blessing and is now quite well. She sends her respectful greetings and best wishes.”

  The interpreter whispered. The old Lama pretended to listen. He murmured an instruction. The interpreter resumed:

  “The Holy Lama orders me to tell you that there is no death of anything but bodies. So the child shall presently receive another incarnation. His Holiness bestows a blessing to ensure a happy rebirth.”

  “Thank him,” said Andrew.

  Then came the hot hint. The interpreter had been primed with well premeditated speech. He exchanged glances with his grim superior and then used words precisely, as if choosing them out of a book.

  “His Holiness, at this time doing penance of meditation for the world’s sins, blesses your journey. But he may not at this time indulge in conversation, because spiritual meditation may not be disturbed by mundane irrelevancies. So His Holiness begs you kindly to be governed by the monastery-rule forbidding — at this time — all unnecessary discussion of matters unrelated to the Higher Law.”

  “Oh, sure, certainly,” said Andrew. “That’s quite understood. I won’t talk to the monks.” The inference he drew was that the Lama Gombaria wanted no official knowledge of the reason for the northbound journey.

  But the interpreter wished to be sure that he did understand. He added: “Subject to our Holy Lama’s will, our minds are filled with blessed thinking. Therefore the obligation is silence.”

  “Thank him for the blessing on my journey,” said Andrew. “I will be on my way at daybreak.”

  “To preserve your will-to-be-silent, and to protect you on your journey, His Holiness caused me to write this mantra, which he himself has blessed and bids me give to you.”

  The interpreter, looking as innocent as a saint in a stained glass window, produced a folded paper from an inside pocket of his robe, came forward with it and gave it to Andrew. Andrew thanked him and made haste with his own gift:

  “I took the liberty,” he said, “of noticing, when I was here last, that His Holiness showed interest in an old illustrated magazine that I had with me. That one wasn’t worthy of his attention. I have brought some good ones. They’re in that roped paper package. Shall I order my man to carry it?”

  A faint smile flickered on the face of the old Lama. His beady eyes watched the interpreter pick up the heavy package as if he feared he might drop it and spoil its precious contents. Twelve Esquires, twelve Sunday issues of the New York Times, twelve National Geographics, twelve Newsweeks, and twelve Fortunes had cost Andrew exactly nothing; they had been given to him by a chance American acquaintance in Darjeeling. But they were worth more than gold to a lonely Lord Abbot, who secretly knew English, secretly delighted in the mad frivolity of Western worldliness, and kept the sources of his information secret to himself. He pretended to be condescendingly astonished, as if a child had surprised him. He dourly accepted the gift, as if manners obliged him to do what virtue forbade. But his eyes were as bright as a bird’s. His blessing, as he and his sycophants left the room, was sonorous, and long, and loaded with praise of the blessed dew that brought the giver’s thought from heaven. The Lama Gombaria was one more dependable friend to the good, on whom Andrew might count for the little favors that resemble drops of oil upon the bearings of events.

  The door closed almost silently. Bompo Tsering and the man from Koko Nor looked up to make sure, then got to their feet and stood gaping at Andrew. He had been allowed to be seated in the Holy Lama’s presence, so he had mounted in their estimation. The effect wouldn’t last long, but for the moment they were filled with awe as they watched him unfold the sheet of paper the interpreter had handed to him. There was another, smaller sheet inside it. On that was the “mantra,” printed beautifully with a quill pen, in English capitals:

  THE CAT CAME BACK TO ELSA. NO SIG.

  It was so startling and different from what he had expected that it took Andrew several seconds to realize that “cat” meant “mouser” and that “mouser” was pun on Mauser pistol. Someone then had found his pistol and it was now in Elsa’s possession. Someone — very likely Mu-ni Gam-po at the request of Lewis — must have wired to the nearest telegraph office. The message must have come a long way by runner, probably spatchcocked into a longer telegram to the Lama Gombaria. Andrew put it in his pocket, forcing a smile and looking wise for the Tibetans’ benefit. No magic is magic without its showman. He assumed a mysterious air. But he couldn’t keep that up. He had to sit down on the bed. He was suddenly seeing things.

  Bompo Tsering, bursting with awed curiosity, came nearer: “That must being too much hot damn holy writing.”

  Andrew made an impatient commanding gesture toward the roll of blankets, but didn’t speak. The skeptical part of his mind was wondering how much, or how little, or if at all, the old Lama, who had just left the room, had to do with the vision that he was seeing with the other part of his mind without in any way changing his view of the room he was in.

  It was arresting. There was no shutting it out, although he tried. Nancy Strong’s room in Darjeeling. The cat, on the hearth. The fire burning brightly. The electric light full on. Nancy in her armchair. Lewis. Elsa — he saw her last. They were more really present to his imagination than if they had been actually in the dim, shadowy room where he sat. They were vivid-brilliant. It couldn’t be altogether a trick of memory. True, Lewis’s use (he could bet it was Lewis) of the word “cat” to mean Mauser pistol might have suggested the fireside in Nancy’s living room and have brought it vividly to mind. But that couldn’t account for their all behaving as they had not behaved while he was there; or for the fact that Andrew himself was not now in the picture. His chair by the hearth was empty. They were all moving. The cat was licking itself. It ran away suddenly and hid under Nancy’s chair. Whichever way he turned his head he saw them. He could see they were speaking, but he couldn’t hear anything.

  It wasn’t like a dream, or a motion picture, or a lantern projection on a screen. It was more like something that crystal gazers are supposed to see when they stare and concentrate: something, but not quite, like the reflection in a good viewfinder, except that it wa
sn’t reversed, and it was apparently life-size. Simultaneously he could see the two Tibetans and all the other objects in the room he was in. There was no physical sensation of eyestrain or fatigue. But there was a feeling almost of horror, as if he had lost control of his mind. He could see the vision with his eyes shut. It made no difference whether he kept them closed or open. He tried it several times. He saw the dim room with his eyes, and Nancy’s electric-lighted room, two hundred miles away, with some other faculty of perception, as if his mind was in two disconnected parts. By shutting his eyes he could shut out the room he was in, but that made no difference to the vastly brighter and more detailed image. He could even read some of the names on the backs of Nancy Strong’s books.

  Lewis was standing with his back to the fire, with a muddy Mauser pistol in his right hand. He was showing it to Elsa. He saw Elsa get up and confront Lewis. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he knew it was his own pistol, and presently he knew what they were talking about because the scene changed. They were still there. Nancy Strong sat quietly in her chair. But there was something added. He could see through the wall to the passage beyond. Tashgyl, the Lepcha servant, was taking the pistol from Andrew’s overcoat on the peg in the hall and presently giving the pistol to someone in the dark garden. It wasn’t clear how Tashgyl reached the garden. Soon after that, or perhaps simultaneously — there was no clear sensation of time or of sequence — he grew aware that the whole vision was framed by Elsa’s face, behind her hands. He could see her eyes through her hands. They were intelligently, dumbly pleading, like a dog’s that wishes it could tell what it knows. He knew that phase of her well. Her face kept fading. The moment he looked hard at it, it faded away. He wondered what that meant. He didn’t trust his own wordless interpretation of it, but he felt she was trying to reach him and disliked doing it — feared to do it. She seemed to expect a rebuke, and to flinch from the expectation. Small blame to her. He had been pretty tough, lots of times, repelling confidences, keeping his thoughts to himself and forcing her to do the same. She probably detested him. Quite right, too. He had humiliated her, time and again. He marveled at the dignity, pluck, patience with which she had endured his reserve. He felt ashamed — but all the same not unreserved — not excusing, nor explaining, even to himself, in secret.