by Talbot Mundy
“I’m hungry. Any soft grub? Jam? Sardines?”
Tom nodded. Andrew went and dug out a can of salmon and a can of marmalade from one of the loads. He tossed them to St. Malo.
“Biscuit?” he asked.
Andrew threw him a small can of ship’s biscuit. Now at any rate they possessed two scraps of important information. Tom ticked them off:
“So your eighteen men are on iron rations. But you favor your belly. How come you didn’t fit out those men with a few luxuries?”
It might have meant that St. Malo was unfamiliar with the craving for rich food, in Tibet, in spring, at an altitude above twelve thousand feet. But it might not. He stuck a can into each side pocket and one into the bosom of his overcoat.
“I’ll let you know when I need more,” he said. “I didn’t fit ’em out. It was done for me.” He sneered. “It’s a sure thing, if they started out with fancy stores they’ve eaten ’em en route. I’ll have to count on you.”
Then he walked out, not looking backward.
“The insolent pimp!” said Tom Grayne. “Damn him!”
Andrew laughed: “But can you shoot a man who turned in his automatic.”
“It wasn’t his. It was mine, the damned pickpocket.”
“Well, all right, you’ve got it. Will you shoot him?”
Where the long, irregular cleft in the cliff met the ledge that skirted the ravine, St. Malo stopped, outlined against the setting sun, and spoke to the lookout man. Then he turned to the right along the ledge and vanished around the bend. Andrew went and questioned the lookout:
“What did he say to you?”
“His saying, him being my friend — when trouble coming by — um — by, my looking to him.”
“What did you answer?”
“Nothing.”
That wasn’t true. Andrew had seen the man’s lips move. Clearly St. Malo was a master of the dubious art which differentiates the spy from the mere informer. He could spot a simpleton a mile off and get his confidence in sixty seconds. Andrew returned to report to Tom, who was already delivering judgment on the men who had attacked him.
“Hard labor,” Tom pronounced, “without rations. No tea until tomorrow. Carry rocks and barricade the ledge. Now. Get busy.”
For a Tibetan, no tea is punishment. They would rather have been flogged. But they were glad not to be executed. So they stuck out their tongues in token of meek submission and went to work without protest. Tom went out to show them how to fortify the place, and Andrew sent Bompo Tsering with another man to boil tea without fuel. It was simple enough; outside the cavern, well protected from wind and view by the stone barricade that the punishment squad was now enlarging, was a pot-hole full of boiling water from the hot spring. One only had to lower the urn into that. It would boil anything. Baking, against the rock wall near the pot-hole, was just possible. One could warm up meat and make it palatable, or parch barley against it. It almost entirely solved the fuel problem.
When Tom came in, Old Ugly-face had returned to the upper cavern, so Andrew asked for information. He knew how simple it was to get Tom’s mind into its own orbit, where nothing except the main objective — not even pain or misery — had much importance.
“Are the monks of the Shig-po-ling monastery armed?”
“You bet. Five hundred new Jap rifles and lots of old ones. No training, of course — or not much. But Abbot Ram-pa Yap-shi has a gangster’s brains and he has ’em bulldozed. He’s a money buzzard. Buys things. Buys people. Double-crosses. Uses poison. He has never been beaten yet, so he lacks experience. I think he’ll take the full count if he gets a sudden upset.”
“Yeah. But can we do it?”
“Suddenness ‘ud do it. He has the infant Dalai Lama under close guard, in an apartment at the rear of the monastery. The kid’s pining for fresh air and exercise. There’s an inner guard of picked men, unarmed for fear they might get fancy notions of their own. Only the outer guard have weapons. Ram-pa Yap-shi has been dickering, all winter long, between the Tibetan agents of Japan and Russia. Now he’s heard of the Germans. So he shot both sets of agents. He calculates that Moscow’ll be pleased because he shot the Jap agents; Tokyo should feel the same way about his having shot the Soviet contingent.”
“What’s his background?” Andrew wondered. “Is he a lama? Educated? Does he know his black book?”
“He’s a political priest. He was what’s called a lay chela. That’s to say he took holy orders more or less by proxy. No more education than a Hitler or a Stalin. But good family. His name, Ram-pa Yap-shi, indicates descent from two lines of the ancient nobility. He has no more claim to the title of abbot than Henry the Eighth had a right to be pope. He gets away with it by bribery and force and by poisoning his critics. The monastery monks are scared stiff of him.”
Andrew demurred: “If Ram-pa Yap-shi has been in that monastery all winter, how did he boot Old Ugly-face out of Lhasa?”
“Bribery,” Tom answered. “Ram-pa Yap-shi has the money. He got away with all the cash in the treasury at Lhasa.”
“Then what more does he want? If he has the young Dalai Lama, and money, he owns Tibet.”
“He’s like all usurpers,” said Tom. “He has to keep on going. There’s no safety in standing still. He has no genuine dictator’s guts, so he intends to sell out to the highest bidder. But the higher they bid, the more he wants. That’s another familiar symptom — greedy. And on top of that he’s nervous as long as he knows Old Ugly-face still lives. He knows Old Ugly-face would chuck away his own hope of eternity if he could save Tibet. Ram-pa Yap-shi is a crook who’d sell Tibet to save his hide; but he’s top dog for the time being.”
“And we?”
“We’ve a tough job. It isn’t finished until the kid’s in safe hands.”
“Meaning Ugly-face’s hands.”
“Yes.”
They sat down side by side at the foot of the ramp and watched two of the Tibetans butcher a sheep for supper. Tom had ordered it for two reasons: the sheep was sick; and the smell of the cooking meat would sharpen the punishment of the men at hard labor. The phony lama had been shamming for quite a while. A minute after Andrew kicked him unconscious he had been alert enough to roll out of the way of the mad yak. Now he sat up, sniffed the butchered sheep and stared around him. Tom ordered him out to the labor gang, but he didn’t obey until Andrew got up suddenly and started for him. Then he ran.
Andrew turned around and faced Tom. He wanted to glance up the ramp toward the upper cavern without Tom’s knowing it. There was no one on the ramp. If he could keep Tom’s mind off Elsa for another ten or fifteen minutes, Tom’s natural resilience — his power to absorb punishment — his disciplined, stoical courage would come to his aid. Concentration of purpose would exclude even the sense of personal humiliation. That was something that Andrew knew about, having tried it for himself when all else failed. So he invented questions, just to occupy Tom’s thought.
“See here. I don’t get this. Old Ugly-face is a badly beaten man—”
“Beaten, hell!” Tom interrupted.
“We’re all the friends he’s got,” said Andrew. “He needs us. He’ll have to chip in.”
Tom raised his head from between his hands and laid a clenched fist on his knee.
“Sit down,” he answered. And when Andrew sat beside him, he laid the first on Andrew’s knee. “Get this! Old Ugly-face isn’t beaten. It can’t be done. There’s no way of beating him. He’s a genuine mystic, and they’re the most practical people in the world, because they know what they’re doing, and why. Any man can be beaten who has personal ambition, and who believes that death is the end of the road. But Old Ugly-face isn’t that kind. He doesn’t believe — he’s a knower. What he doesn’t know, he doesn’t bet on. He doesn’t care a whoop in hell whether you or I understand him or not. That’s our lookout. When he says he has lived thousands of lives in the world, getting a little wiser each time, gradually earning evolution in the sweat of his brow, he
isn’t guessing. He claims he knows it and can prove it. When he says he’ll go on incarnating, life after life, until at last he doesn’t have to any longer, because he’ll have learned all that the world can teach him, who’s going to contradict him? You? The pope? Einstein? The Archbishop of Canterbury? Freud? Bishop Manning? Fosdick? Have you discussed it with him? Death means nothing more to him than passing through a door from one experience to another. Riches are nothing. Even power is nothing, except as a duty. His duty is to Tibet. How can you beat that man?”
“He must have a soft spot somewhere,” Andrew suggested.
“All right, you find it,” Tom answered. “By the time Lobsang Pun was twenty-five he had spent seven years, naked, winter and summer, immured in a cave, not far from here, fed once a week on raw barley, through a hole in a wall. That’s where he learned how to think and to control himself. By the time he was thirty-five, he was the Dalai Lama’s diplomatic representative in China and Japan, and he had tasted every luxury the world can offer. Barring liquor, which he once told me he has never touched, he has sampled everything and watched its effects on other people. He has control of all his appetites. He can take things or leave them. For choice he leaves ’em.”
“He has a heart,” Andrew suggested.
“You bet he has. For Tibet and the Tibetans. Listen to this: I’m his friend. He knows that, and he knows why. I t’s because I recognize his integrity. A few years back, when he was in power, he chased me out of Tibet just ahead of the first snowfall. If the snow had caught me, I was done for.”
“Sounds friendly.”
“Doesn’t it? He put a thousand monks to work, praying I’d get through, just to give me the edge. He figured that if I hadn’t been too sinful, and if my destiny entitled me to it, I’d get through in spite of the weather.”
“On the floodtide of the monks’ prayers?”
“Yes. I guess so. He figures prayer can’t help the wrong man; and it can’t help the right man to do the wrong thing. Anyhow, I got through, no worse off for being prayed for. He’ll pray for us now. He’ll bless every thought we think, to make us useful to him and Tibet. But the minute he’s through using us, he’ll want to boot us out of Tibet or I’m a bad guesser.”
Andrew demurred for the sake of talking: “You mean, if you and I pull off a miracle, ditch Ram-pa Yap-shi and put Old Ugly-face on top, he’ll turn on us?”
“Hell, no. He’s not treacherous. But why are we here? To get reliable information. If Old Ugly-face wins out, then we’ll have what we came for. He’ll owe us nothing. But I don’t intend to-be booted out of Tibet. I’ll send you back to India with the news. I’m staying on. When the kid’s in safe hands, I’m going to get clairvoyant — I’m going to learn to see — hear — think the way Old Ugly-face does — if it kills me.
“I’ve been told,” said Andrew, “that the first few lifetimes are the hardest — the first two or three hundred years.”
Tom got up. He looked down at him. Suddenly he used an unexpected phrase. Andrew had never heard him quote the Bible before:
“‘Ask and it shall be given unto you.’ I’ll make Old Ugly-face do the teaching. Because of my importunity he shall!”
He walked out then to see how the barricade was coming along. Andrew sat still, pondering, until presently he heard Elsa at the head of the ramp.
“Is that you, Andrew?”
“Yes. I’ll bring up some supper.”
“Andrew, please — just sardines and tomato juice and biscuit.”
“Doesn’t Old Ugly-face want a square meal?”
“No. He says not. He has barley. He prefers it. Quick, Andrew. I want to talk to you before Tom gets back.”
He wondered how she knew that Tom had left the cavern. Strange that she should know that and yet not have known there was a fight; neither she nor Old Ugly-face had as much as stirred while the fight lasted. He could hear Tom, outside, cussing and showing the Tibetans how to build the barricade; there was no need for haste on Tom’s account. He chose Elsa’s supper with slow deliberation, adding odds and ends to make it palatable. He knew what she liked. He had a good meal for three by the time he started up the ramp — fruit juice and some honey and tinned cake — all sorts of things.
Elsa had lighted a lantern. It was getting near sunset; almost no light came through the gap in the wall. Elsa looked wan, but tense, excited. She sat down on one of the bedding rolls and spread another as a makeshift table for the food, avoiding Andrew’s eyes.
Andrew asked: “Where’s Old Ugly-face?”
She glanced up at the gap in the wall.
“Climbed back there, did he?”
“No. He has been there all the time.”
“I guess you weren’t looking. I saw him just now, part way down the ramp. He was listening in.”
“But please, Andrew, I know where he was.”
“He was on the ramp. I saw him. He was trying to hear what Tom and I were talking about.”
“But, Andrew, I was up there with him. He called me up there as soon as you went away. I have been there all the time. I have only just come down.”
“Beats me,” said Andrew. “Elsa, I saw him — looked right at him. He saw me.”
“Andrew, I think — perhaps you don’t understand.”
“You bet I don’t. Are you telling the truth?”
“You too?” she asked. She bit her lip. She met his eyes for a second. “Oh — oh well, let’s not talk about it.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m ashamed. I shouldn’t have said that. I guess I’m worked up. Of course you told the truth. But so did I. I saw him.”
He opened a can, then another, stabbing them savagely with his knife, slicing off the tops by the sheer strength of sculptor’s fingers.
“Oh, Andrew—”
“What? What is it? Shoot!”
She sighed, then pulled herself together and spoke to the cavern at large, as if giving evidence that she didn’t expect to be believed:
“When Lobsang Pun wishes to see — or to hear; and when he knows and loves those whom he wishes to hear and see — then — because they also know him — sometimes — the great effort of will projects his image into their imaginations.”
“But Tom didn’t see him.”
“Perhaps Lobsang Pun was thinking more strongly of you. Or you of him.”
Andrew laughed grimly: “Loves me, does he! ‘Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth!’ Is that his motto? Tom believes he’ll give us the air when he’s through with us — boot us all three out of Tibet.”
Elsa looked startled — excited. “Did Tom say he will leave Tibet?”
“No, he didn’t say that — not to me.”
“But do you think he will leave Tibet? Did anything he said give you that impression?”
“Easy,” said Andrew, “easy. I don’t ever ask that kind of question. So I’ve the right not to answer ’em.”
He was sorry he said it. It sounded priggish. He loathed prigs. So did Elsa. They sat silent a moment or two, listening to Tom returning into the lower cavern, marshaling the punishment gang. They could hear his voice, not his words; it was easy to guess he was ordering the culprits supperless to bed, in the corner beyond the ponies.
“Discipline,” said Andrew. “If he went back on his word and gave ’em a bite to eat tonight, they’d think that weakness. He’d have it all to do over again.”
They heard Bompo Tsering and two or three men rigging a tent over the entrance to keep out wind and make the place snug for the night.
“Andrew, I have let the time slip by. Now Tom may come up here, and—”
“I don’t think he will,” said Andrew, “unless you ask him. He’s more likely to go to his own hide-out.”
“Andrew, will you take a message to him?”
“From you? Can’t you tell him yourself?”
“It’s from Lobsang Pun.”
“Well, all right. Can’t Old Ugly-face talk? What’s wrong with him all at once? He knows Tom �
�ud go the limit for him, now or any time. — Say, eat or you’ll be starving. Be a good girl — drink up that tomato juice.”
She obeyed, then laughed: “Andrew, I have grown so used to obeying you that I must guard against the habit!”
“Now sardines on biscuit. Wash ’em down with champagne. Go on, that’s the last half bottle.”
“Andrew, we had six half bottles. What became of the others?”
“Bulah Singh and St. Malo stole ’em.”
“You knew it.”
“Yes. I pretended not to. The poor devils needed something to keep their hackles rising. You said you’ve a message for Tom. What is it?”
“Lobsang Pun wants you to deliver it, because Tom will listen to you. He says it was wise to let St. Malo go. But it isn’t wise to give him too much time, because he’ll waste it.”
“So Ugly-face wants action?”
“Yes. He said this:’Devils are not angels. If you buy a devil, he is all the more a devil, having added one more sin to make him worse; and the higher the price you pay, the more certainly he will betray you.’”
“Who’d choose to buy St. Malo?” Andrew wondered. “Governments, yes. They’re all crazy. But who else?”
“I don’t know. Lobsang Pun told me to say that.”
“To me?”
“Yes, to you — to repeat to Tom. Then he said this: ‘Devils know how to be devilish, so make them do it quickly. By betraying, they create an opportunity.’ And after that he added: ‘If a plan has a flaw, turn it inside out, or change it, but don’t abandon it unless it’s wicked.’ He wants you to say that to Tom.”
“Well — all right. Tom’s the head man. I’ll go down and tell him. But I won’t say it’s my opinion. I’ll just make a report.”
“Andrew, won’t you eat something?”
“Not now. Later. Say: is there nothing that you’d like to say to Tom?”
She paused a second. “No, Andrew.” Suddenly she put her hands to her face — spoke through them. “What could I say? Tom doesn’t love me — you know he doesn’t! You heard him, Andrew. Tom loves his career — his solitude — his—”
Andrew interrupted: “Do you love him?”