Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle

by Dorothy Gilman

  She sat down beside him, stunned by Anu's defection and frightened by the thought that he might not return. She thought, If he doesn't return how can we ever find Cyrus, how can we reach the Shan camp?

  "Anu?" she called again.

  She wondered if Anu believed that Mornajay had been taken over by evil spirits, or—more optimistically—if he had decided to go with Bonchoo, after all, and was following him.

  Or perhaps, she thought with a chill, Anu feared the return of the naklengs who had tried to kill Bonchoo and might try again. At this thought she decided that she would not call out Ami's name again but would sit very quietly.

  The silence was unnerving; it was as if the forest's animals and insects were asleep while they waited for night, like the snakes Bonchoo had spoken of, but the night was a thought that she found important to avoid. What she had to face and accept was that Anu had slipped away into the forest, and Bonchoo had left without any satisfying explanation, filled with a hope that she couldn't share because what help could he find here, she wondered, and—more important—would she be able to find Bonchoo if he didn't return, would he have cut a path with his machete that she could find?

  To occupy herself she began carefully examining her surroundings, listing what her glance absorbed. "That," she said aloud in a low voice, "is a grove of bamboo, and there is a butterfly—lovely—such a tender pale cream color with wings tipped in brown. And along the fallen tree trunk there is a procession of ants going in and out of the hollow in the stump... the earth is red where there are bare patches, and there's some sort of ground cover over there and somewhere high above there must be the sky."

  Abruptly Mornajay screamed, pointing a trembling hand at something she couldn't see, and it felt to her as if the jungle moved a little, shifted, as if his hallucinating disturbed its unseen occupants as acutely as it disturbed her.

  Or had he truly seen something? She remembered the Ghosts of the Yellow Leaves and shivered; were they being watched by men of the forest who knew how to be invisible?

  Mornajay's scream made them known just when they needed protective coloring, and her uneasiness mounted. She whispered, "I will count backward from ten to one... Mr. Mornajay, I'm going to count backward, try to hear me and please don't shout again... Ten... nine... eight."

  A sound of rustling stirred the canopy of leaves overhead; she glanced up furtively and then around her and concentrated again on counting numbers, this time beginning at one hundred and working down, her glance often wandering to the watch on her wrist to count the minutes as they passed, each one assuming the shape of an eternity. Two o'clock arrived. She could feel Mornajay's body heat from where she sat, his whole body radiated heat and she wondered how long a human being could survive such a temperature, and where he had gone in the privacy of his delirium.

  Aspirin, we ought to have aspirin, she thought. She had none with her, it was one of many items left behind in the hotel, but since it was possible that Mornajay carried some with him she crept over to his backpack to look. When she turned it over to open she found it surprisingly heavy. Unzipping it, she peered inside and then in astonishment she opened it wider: she was looking at a shortwave radio, which explained the weight of it, and at a smaller object wrapped in silk whose shape told her that it was a gun. She lifted out the gun and unwrapped it: it was a 41 magnum revolver. She stared at it for a long time: no pajamas, no aspirin but a radio and a quite lethal-looking automatic... this to find a lost monastery? She sat back on her heels, wondering what a man looking for a monastery would want with a radio. The revolver she could understand, considering that he'd come without a guide, claiming an experience in these mountains that implied he knew its dangers, but a radio suggested more than a safeguard against becoming lost. For one thing it was heavy; a compass and a map would be more sensible and she was finding neither. The radio implied a rendezvous, messages, other people and brought the nagging suspicion that Mornajay had lied to them about his purpose here.

  It was certainly puzzling but she realized that her speculations were purely academic now because whoever Mornajay was, and whatever had brought him to these mountains, it looked very doubtful now that he would ever leave them. For this she pitied him, and with a sigh she carefully returned the radio and the revolver to his backpack. Returning to her place beside him, she began doggedly resuming her counting backward from one hundred back to one.

  "Which is extremely tiresome," she complained, having accomplished this, and went on to perform the feat again. She had reached twenty when she heard the distant sound of a machete hacking away at branches, and then came the miracle of a voice. It was Bonchoo, calling to her.

  "Bonchoo!" she cried, leaping to her feet. "Oh, Bonchoo—Bonchool"

  He was returning... With tears in her eyes she watched his broad and bulky shape appear through the screen of trees and vines. He called out, "I have brought help!"

  "Help?" she echoed, not understanding, and then to her astonishment she caught a glimpse of orange in the forest behind Bonchoo, and then another, and two verticals of orange turned into a pair of young men wearing orange— no, saffron, she amended—saffron robes. "Monks?" she gasped. She wanted to cry, she wanted to laugh, but with a semblance of calm she went to meet Bonchoo, and as he emerged from the tangles she grasped his hand. "I'm so glad to see you," she said, and promptly burst into tears.

  Bonchoo, embarrassed, patted her shoulder. "How is Mornajay?"

  "Worse," she sobbed and drew out a handkerchief and blew her nose. The two young monks walked into the clearing carrying a bamboo stretcher. They looked very young, still in their teens, their heads shaved, smiles very white in their dark faces. "Where on earth did you find them?" she asked.

  "Later," he said. "We must hurry while there is still hope."

  The monks put down the stretcher next to Mornajay, placed fingertips together in a wai and bowed to her, then gently lifted Mornajay onto the stretcher.

  "Where is Ami?" asked Bonchoo, looking around in surprise.

  "Gone. He didn't catch up with you? He just went." She picked up Mornajay's camera and his sleeping bag and waited while Bonchoo absently picked up Mornajay's backpack.

  "Not good," he said with a sigh. "He must have been scared the naklengs would come back and kill us all. Scared for himself, because if an Akha dies outside his village—" He shook his head. "They fear this most of all."

  She said sadly, "Not finding the Shan camp frightens me most of all. Bonchoo, where are we taking Mornajay, where on earth do these monks come from?"

  "You will see," Bonchoo said, brightening. 'To find the temple—I scarcely dared hope, but the spirits of the forest are go rooh nak after all. It's a miracle. Six years ago when I was smuggling radios into Burma and was lost I stumbled across the ruins of this wat... we are very near to the border now."

  "A ruined temple, and inhabited?" she said in awe.

  "Only by the Acharya, a very holy man, and the few who come to learn from him, like these two." He added as they passed with Mornajay, "He might call it the lost monastery he seeks, who knows? Now I will go first, with the machete."

  He went to work at once, widening the path for the stretcher, and they set out with Mrs. Pollifax following behind the two monks. A weight had been lifted, and she experienced an infinite relief that something could be done for Mornajay after all, and that if he must die it would be with a few amenities, and with a holy man present. They walked quickly; Bonchoo had cut a good path on his first journey and it was only occasionally that they had to stop for him to cut away more undergrowth. The gloom of the jungle was deepening, however, and Mrs. Pollifax shivered at the thought of darkness arriving before they found shelter. Overhead a faint breeze stirred the foliage; birds flew away at their approach; in this dim light she thought it was rather like moving through an aquarium that had lost the overhead rays of sun. They went so swiftly that it was a surprise to her when they suddenly walked out of the jungle's gloom into the golden sunlight of late after
noon.

  She stopped in astonishment. Ahead of her three seated Buddha-images rose out of the ground, massive in size and towering over the vegetation that already engulfed their base; three stone Buddhas seated in a row, at least twenty feet high, serene and dreamlike in their tranquility, each with lips curved in a tender smile, and here of all places, in the middle of a jungle. She gazed up at them in amazement, at their colors faded and weathered into dull shades of ocher and rust, at faces marred by erosion but still clear, and she wondered for how many centuries they had sat here in dreamlike contemplation, how many sunrise and sunsets they had watched come and go and how many civilizations as well. "How astonishing, how beautiful," she whispered.

  The two young monks were just disappearing beyond the Buddhas but Bonchoo had stopped; he had slid to his knees, his hat removed, and he was bowing three times to the Buddhas, his face intent and reverent. This was a Bonchoo she'd not seen before and she waited, not wanting to encroach. When he rose to his feet he bowed a last time and she followed him past the huge stone images, feeling very small beneath them and still marveling at their being here. The path led into a tired-looking garden and seeing the temple beyond it she stopped again and stared.

  Once it must have occupied many acres of ground but only a third of the building remained standing, and much of this in ruins. Its outer skin had been stripped away by time and erosion, leaving thick slabs of laterite that glowed brick-red in the sun, many of the stones hurled to the earth as if a giant fist had scattered them. With so much of the wat crumbled into dust and slab, almost all of the roofs had vanished, but where the walls remained standing the roofs had been replaced by intricate arrangements of bamboo and thatch, giving the impression of large untidy birds' nests dropped from the sky. Prom the walls that had survived, however, she could discern the shape of what had once existed here: two stone griffins still guarded a staircase that led up to a wide parapet, and beyond this rose the spire of a chedi, which must have been what Ami had seen when he climbed the bamboo half a mile away. Off to her left above the trees a brilliant orange sun was slowly sinking into the jungle.

  Three stone Buddhas dreaming in a row... the ruins of an ancient temple... an orange sun... She was caught by the surprise of it, and by a feeling of enchantment that swept over her, as if she had stumbled into a space where time no longer existed. The isolation, her sense of discovery, the unexpected and powerful beauty of it held her spellbound. For a moment she, too, was released from time as she stood among the ghosts of the centuries, and with this there stole over her a sense of wonder that life had led her to this holy place, this temple guarding a past that was all but forgotten by the world. A movement on the parapet caught her eye and she glanced up to see a man observing her. He was, she thought, the one detail that had been missing from the scene and which completed it, a man in a saffron robe, his head shaved; perhaps it was the holy man, she thought, but she was not close enough to see more, and once seen he vanished. With this she emerged from her trance and remembered why she was here.

  She was alone. Bonchoo had disappeared and so had the two monks carrying Mornajay. She chose an arched entrance under the staircase and entered a long dark corridor. Following a sound of low voices she mounted narrow stone stairs that brought her to a room that was roofed with thatch and opened onto the parapet. The late sunshine filtered through the slats of bamboo in thin gold stripes. Mornajay lay restlessly on a mat, surrounded by Bonchoo and the two young monks. The man she had seen on the parapet had his back to her as he leaned over Mornajay examining him. She could not see his face but she could see that he was holding one of Mornajay's hands and gently squeezing the fingernails. He nodded and spoke to his two monks, who handed him a bowl and a cup.

  Bonchoo, seeing her, rose and took her by the arm. "Come," he said, "it's better you not watch. While I went back for you there was time for the Acharya to make antidotes. Trust him, he is a very holy man."

  "But what can he give Mornajay here?

  Bonchoo chuckled. "Just now it is nguang chum, hua euang and krachao sida boiled in water, does that help?"

  "No," she said with a wan smile.

  "Me either but this is what I am told. What nguang chum is I don't know—some sort of herb only country people know—but hua euang and krachao sida are kinds of orchids."

  "But does he think Mornajay will live? I mean, it's surely been two hours at least!"

  Bonchoo said gravely, "It will be decided by his karma but because it has been two hours and because he did not die the Acharya says it must have been weak poison."

  "Weak! I shudder at the thought of a powerful dose! Does the holy man speak English?"

  "A little, I think."

  "Only a little—oh dear," she sighed.

  They walked out onto the parapet into the soft cooling air. Here they were at eye level with the tops of the trees surrounding the clearing. The orange globe of sun had slipped into the forest, leaving the sky suffused with pink. A flock of rooks flew down and encircled a huge tree at the edge of the forest, swooping and diving and twittering until they settled in among its leaves. A parrot protested their invasion and flew away with a flash of scarlet and green. As they stood and watched, the pink sky faded into a luminous mauve. Except for the birds and a few chickens scratching in the garden below, there was only the hush of twilight.

  She dared at last to ask the question that concerned her. "We've lost Anu, Bonchoo. Are we near the Shan camp, could one of the young monks take us there in the morning, would they know where it is?"

  Bonchoo hesitated and then he said carefully, "They are giving us a corner to sleep in tonight, and there will be food. We are interruptions," he told her, turning to look into her face. "We have brought the world here, Koon Emily. Of course the Acharya must know the Shan camp, but whether he will concern himself with such worldly matters I don't know. He is a very holy man. I think we must wait to present this problem to him in the morning, Mrs. Emily."

  A second night, and tomorrow a third day... She stared unseeingly now into the jungle and thought how every hour made finding Cyrus more problematic. Yet Bonchoo was right, she conceded this; there was nothing that could be done now with night coming, nothing at all.

  But holy man or not, she thought grimly, the Acharya must be persuaded to help them in the morning.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Sometime in the night Mrs. Pollifax grew restless and awoke to find that the jungle had awakened, too; a surging cacophony of cicadas rose from the forest, providing the backdrop for a confusion of other sounds: the fierce cry of a bird, a sudden, nearly human scream followed by a number of howls and then a drop in decibels to the steady drone of cicadas before the quarrels and conversations began again. Her gaze moved across walls striped with moonlight filtering through the roof of woven bamboo slats, and she thought automatically, They'll have to repair that before the rainy season.

  Mornajay had quieted several hours ago. Turning her head, she could see his dark form lying only a few feet away from her, and Bonchoo curled up on his mat by the door—Bonchoo who had told her without the least chagrin that he would not be happy to sleep in a cubicle of his own because he might wake up in the night to find a ghost occupying the mat with him.

  She had been very tired when she lay down and she was not sure whether it was the night sounds of the jungle that had waked her, the dull ache in her legs from yesterday's long walk, or the smallness of their evening meal, which had consisted of broth with a few noodles and scraps of chicken in it, and a bowl of rice. She had not seen the Acharya again. There appeared to be five novices on the premises, two of whom had prepared and brought them their dinner and had then withdrawn.

  She thought, There's no point in lying here and puzzling out why I'm awake... I'm awake.

  She crept over to Mornajay and placed a hand on his forehead, hoping his temperature might have fallen a notch or two, and for one awful moment believed he was dead; his flesh was cool. When she grasped his pu
lse and found it beating steadily she sat back on her heels and stared down at him in amazement: his fever had broken, there were still miracles abroad, the Acharya's herbs had proved strong medicine or perhaps, as Bonchoo had said, it was not in Mornajay's karma to die today.

  A loud snore from him abruptly changed her mood of awe; she smiled and left him to his sleep, found her shoes and tiptoed past Bonchoo out into the dark stone corridor. Emerging on the parapet, she met the beauty of a perfect full moon, a brilliant globe of light suspended like a lamp over mountains and jungle, outlining both in silhouette-form, like paper cutouts black against the night sky. The luminous light threw a silvery path across the parapet, made all the more brilliant by the black shadows of the monastery walls. It tipped the broken spire of the chedi with a ghostly silver light and turned the pockmarked gardens below into a bright moonscape. A bird called out from the jungle; the air was soft and cool on her face, and there were stars in the west so low and bright she felt she need only reach out to grasp one. She stood among the harlequin patterns of black and silver and looked for a long time at the sky.

  With a glance at her watch—it was one o'clock in the morning—she strolled to the left, rounded a comer and came to a stop, discovering that she was not alone. The Acharya was seated on the parapet at a point where the low wall had crumbled away; he sat calmly erect, his legs crossed under him in the full lotus position, hands folded in his lap as he gazed out at the jungle, the sky, the moon. He sat without movement, rooted there like one of the Buddha-images beyond the garden, his orange robe darkened by shadows but his profile clearly illuminated by the moonlight. It was a profile not unlike those etched on a Roman coin, lean, powerful, ascetic.