Complete Works of Talbot Mundy, page 1017
“You interrupted a conversation,” said Johnson, after at least a minute’s silence. “The Reverend Abbot was giving me his views of the situation in Tibet. His Reverence, as I dare say you know, is a Yellow-hat Lama. His religious convictions impose upon him a consistently pacifistic attitude. The present state of anarchy in Tibet deeply grieves him. His constant prayers have inspired him, so he tells me, to keep this monastery open to all-comers, of whatever faction. Thus he keeps himself well informed of what is happening beyond the border. He would like to return to Tibet, to die in peace at Tashi-lunpo.”
He talked like a lecturer to a class of students of anatomy — as if there were a corpse in front of him and the students must listen whether they liked or not.
“However,” he continued, “should His Reverence return to Tibet, he might be murdered without having accomplished anything.”
He paused. He appeared to expect comment. Tom glanced at the Abbot:
“What would happen to this monastery, if His Reverence should go away? No fat brethren as long as he’s here! No unchaste ones who aren’t whipped and given ‘solitary.’ None who dares to miss a midnight service! I’ve attended those services — cold — draughty — full ceremonial — no cuts. But he makes ’em like it.”
Mu-ni Gam-po beamed. Johnson shot a sudden question at Tom.
“Do you know what happened to the Dalai Lama?”
“Sure. They poisoned him.”
“Who did?”
“Some of his own political gang in Lhasa.”
“Why?”
“He was too pro-British, for one thing. Too sincere. Wouldn’t stand for sending Bön monks to try to poison the exiled Tashi Lama. He was for letting the Tashi Lama return to Tibet.”
“How long were you in Tibet?”
“Two years.”
“You knew the Dalai Lama, of course? I mean, you met him?”
“Well,” said Tom, “they poisoned him. You can’t ask him that, can you.”
“I am trying to discover where your prejudices lie, Mr. Grayne.”
“They don’t lie,” said Tom. “It’s the truth, I haven’t any. I’m here to listen.”
“I have been told you propose to return to Tibet.”
No answer.
“It is no business of mine,” said Johnson. “My department is a purely decorative one. I assemble dry facts and write reports that no one reads. I understand you carry an American passport.”
“Yes. I have it with me.”
“Do you know that there are laws and treaties specifically forbidding foreigners of almost every nationality from entering Tibet?”
“Yes,” said Tom, “I understand that.”
“The Indian Government has solemnly pledged itself not to permit British subjects to cross the Tibetan border.”
Tom sat silent. Mu-ni Gam-po appeared to have gone into meditation. Johnson resumed:
“An Englishwoman, who marries an American, becomes an American citizen, doesn’t she, Mr. Grayne?”
Tom laughed. “Damned if I know. The laws are funny. She’d be eligible, under certain conditions. Go on. You’re telling me.”
“No American,” said Johnson, “can be classified as British. That might not hold in Tibet, where I imagine they don’t know the difference. But we are under no treaty obligations to guard the Tibetan frontier against American citizens. We are equally under no obligation to protect Americans in Tibet.”
“Hell. D’you mean you wouldn’t send the British fleet to Lhasa, over them thar hills?”
Johnson rose abruptly. “I must go. I have an appointment. Will you see me to the stairhead?”
“Come back, Tum-Glain. Come quick back,” said Mu-ni Gam-po.
Johnson shook hands with the Abbot and then lingered in the anteroom to talk with one of the attendant monks. Tom went ahead and waited midway along the gallery, where he watched the devil-dancers until Johnson overtook him.
“Are you hurt?” asked Johnson. “You carry your left arm pretty close to your side.”
“No,” said Tom. “I’m all right.”
Johnson shed his brusqueness: “Quite a scholar, the old Abbot. He is worried about some books in the British Museum. He wants them sent to him, to be returned to Tibet, on the ground that they’re sacred and were stolen in the first instance. The request seems reasonable. I have put him in touch with Dr. Mayor. You know Mayor, I believe.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “I know him.” He wasn’t going to get garrulous just because a brusque ethnologist had suddenly turned civil.
“Funny,” said Johnson. “Old Mu-ni Gam-po wouldn’t write to Mayor for fear his correspondence might be opened by the censor. We’ve a pretty drastic censorship in force, on account of the Indian Nationalist troubles and one thing and another. But that needn’t have bothered him. I suppose he’s touchy. I had to apply for authority to give him my personal word of honor that his letters won’t be opened in transit.” He stared at Tom. “Of course,” he added, “we never censor anything that comes from Tibet addressed to Mu-ni Gam-po himself. If we did, he’d soon know it. He might retaliate by ceasing to keep us informed, and that’ud be awkward. Those rogues down below us, for instance, have undoubtedly brought him secret news. If it’s important he’ll drop us a hint. Do you know any one in Dorking?”
“I did,” Tom answered. He looked as suddenly casual as a hunter who sees his quarry with the side of his eye.
Johnson smiled. “Dangerous place, Dorking. Lots of traffic accidents. Police there are very officious.”
Tom reciprocated promptly. He could hardly have asked for a plainer hint.
“Thank you. Speaking of police,” he said, “some of your men might recognize this.” He produced Noropa’s dagger from under his left arm. “Careful! It’s poisoned.”
“Found that, did you? May I have it?”
“Yes,” said Tom. “If you can’t find its original owner, label it a souvenir from—” he began to spell it, pausing on the second letter— “D — o—”
“Dorking! Yes, yes. I must show this to Abdul Mirza. He arrived this morning to discuss the mysterious death of a Japanese merchant. Abdul Mirza knows some one who is rather an authority on unusual weapons and rare poisons. You know Abdul Mirza?”
“Good guy.”
“Very. To all intents and purposes he governs Naini Kol. I must get him to ask his scientific friend about this thing — dagger would you call it? — before the — ah — scientific friend goes into retirement. Abdul Mirza tells me you know Lobsang Pun.”
“Know him? The old hellion booted me out of Tibet. Damn his eyes, he waited until it was almost a cinch I’d be caught by winter in the passes.”
“So you’re enemies, eh?”
“I like him first rate,” Tom answered. “The man’s a gentleman. He wouldn’t stoop to dirty murder. But he’d laugh like hell if you or I should run into something we couldn’t buck. Then he’d pray for our souls, to a bunch of saints who know what humor is. He’s a high altitude, high church humorist.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” said Johnson. “If old Lobsang Pun could have persuaded the Japanese to do the fighting for him, the Tashi Lama would be spiritual ruler of Asia, with all the temporal power that Lobsang Pun could filch for him. But the Japanese, as I understand it, turned him down. Both sides wanted too much, I imagine. Such men as Lobsang Pun make bitter enemies. If he should happen to be murdered while he’s under our protection, there’d be hell to pay. But who knows which his enemies are?” He changed the subject abruptly:
“I hope the police didn’t give you a scare this morning, Mr. Grayne. The station-master phoned them from Siliguri, so something had to be done in the way of eyewash.”
“Scaring me wouldn’t matter,” said Tom. “I’m used to it. But third degree would—”
“Tut-tut, man, we never use it. In special cases, to prevent anything of that sort, it’s the rule for an officer to keep a prisoner under continuous observation. That Noropa person is a mean customer. It was just as well to lock him up until we could discuss him with you. We don’t want an American citizen murdered in India. Your State Department could be very unpleasant about it.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t bother about me,” said Tom. “I may need Noropa.”
“You may have him — delivered, if you like, in cellophane. Simply press the button.”
“If they should tell him he was being let go as a personal favor to me, he’d come and find me. He’s feeling friendly at the moment.”
“Very well. But he’d better be shadowed, or he might double back. We don’t want him in Delhi.”
“Thank you for the tip about how to get my mail through.”
“Not at all. You may count on that. You’ll reciprocate, of course?”
“You bet.”
“Anything addressed to me in Delhi, in any kind of envelope marked Secret, reaches me unopened. Thunder Dragon Gate! Where is it? What is it? Why is it? Facts, if you please, Mr. Grayne. And don’t get bumped off. It isn’t you I’m thinking of.”
“Sure. I get you.”
“Well then, good luck.”
“Thanks, and same to you.”
Johnson turned away abruptly and strode along the gallery toward the stone stairs. Tom turned the other way, toward the Abbot’s chamber. Neither man glanced back ward. Tom was humming to himself. His stride was vigorous — springy — the stride of a man who smells the wind and sees the long trail open.
CHAPTER 22. “Fine.”
TOM lost no time about eliminating Dorking from his line of communication. Abbot Mu-ni Gam-po was delighted to have him draft a letter in English to Professor Mayor. The Abbot copied the letter, in beautiful handwriting, taking nearly an hour to do it. He enclosed with it, in the same sealed envelop, one in Tom’s handwriting that Mayor’s deaf-and-dumb filing clerk would know what to do with.
Carefully written with one of Mu-ni Gam-po’s fine pens, it covered two sheets of closely written paper. The fine pen-point went through the paper here and there. Mayor would read the letter and toss it to the deaf-and-dumb Pole to be filed away. The Pole would transcribe the pen-pricked letters only. They would then read:
Eiji Sarao dead. Jap system may be out of gear for time being. Indian Government Number One using me and in return guarantees my mail by this route secret. Leaving for Tibet. Pronto.
The Polish filing clerk would add to that message the words “No. 88 to No. 1” and would mail it, in a plain envelope, to an address in the west of London. It would reach Washington sooner or later.
The next thing was to get Mu-ni Gam-po to act as secret postmaster and to protect all letters with his big Tibetan seal. That had to be done tactfully. Very Reverend Abbots, even more than other people, mustn’t let the right hand know the good or evil that the left is doing. It says so, definitely, in nearly all the sacred scriptures, of all nations.
So there was patiently copious conversation, cordial, evasive of the issue, guarded. The Abbot continually questioned Tom about European politics. Tom knew not much more about those than he had read in the papers. In fact, the Abbot knew more than he did. Tom kept returning to the subject of the Tibetan books in the British Museum, little by little increasing the stress on the fact that he was intimately friendly with Professor Mayor. The Abbot wished to be told about President Roosevelt.
They had drunk not less than twenty cups of tea apiece, and it was growing dark; they had discussed the probable action of the League of Nations in regard to Italy and Ethiopia, the behavior of Japan in Manchukuo, and the state of religion in Russia; Tom had had to struggle to explain the New Deal in the United States (it was the first time he had ever seriously tried to understand it!) before Mu-ni Gam-po gently and persuasively suggested that, if Tom should write now and then to Professor Mayor, and if he, the humble Abbot Mu-ni Gam-po should forward the letters, perhaps Professor Mayor might be thereby reminded to employ a little of his illustrious influence to procure the return of the stolen sacred books. That settled that. They understood each other without having swapped any naive confidences. Not even Tom would be able to swear that the Abbot knew what was going on.
Then solemn ceremony in the monastery chapel, Tom looking down from the gloom of the heavily beamed gallery. A lamp-lit altar, spread with the Eight Happy Symbols and large incense pots. A great stone image of Chenrezi, twenty-five feet high, between smaller images of Padma Sambhava and Atisa. The entire dimness hung with painted banners. Rows on rows of half-seen monks all bowed in the flickering shadows cast by scores of tiny oil lamps. At intervals they laid their foreheads on the floor in adoration. Gongs. Horns. A tinkling silver bell. A murmur, a drone that swelled into a chant and died away, to be awakened again by Mu-ni Gam-po’s golden voice. In his robes, in the lamp-lit dimness, the old Abbot looked like a wooden carving come to life; his acolytes and ministering monks, patient though they were, in comparison resembled lively worldlings in a hurry to be through with ceremony and receive their blessing. There was no sign of the Bön magician’s party, though they might have been beneath the gallery, where Tom couldn’t have seen them.
After that, the evening meal in the dim refectory. The old Abbot ate supper alone; not even for Tum-Glain would he set aside that rule. Tom filed into the refectory behind the hooded monks, all two by two, and took his seat near the door. Prayer. Blessing. Silence, save for the sound of munching and the noise of spoons and platters. Tea, cheese, barley bread. Good grub. Tom was used to it. He had long ago learned how to chew the lightly cooked grain so that, like the monks, he needed not enough of it to bloat him, though he ate enough to leave the table feeling fit for a forced march.
Again, not a sign of the Bön magician’s party. Perhaps, as rank heretics and blasphemers, they were being fed in the outer courtyard along with the stablemen and horsemen.
Prayer, quite a lot of that. Blessing, a bit quick and perfunctory. Then up the stone stair to the guest cell, along a passage leading from the gallery between two long dormitories, fifty yards from the Abbot’s chamber at the other corner of the building. Good clean quarters, though a trifle draughty from the small, square, unglazed windows that faced the Himalayas. Plain stone walls and floor. A truckle bed. A chair. A little table. A lamp in a niche in the wall. A strip of matting. A teak door two inches thick, without a lock but with a peephole for the dutiful-observant-brother- going-rounds-approving-silent-meditation-and-no-visiting- each-other-in-the-night.
The sound of a bell about every fifteen minutes. Dutiful-observant-brother’s eye, and then his big mouth at the peephole and his knuckles on the teak:
“Blessed-night-of-celebration-of-wonder-working- incarnation-of-the-precious-Lord-Avalokitesvara-whose-mission- is-to-liberate-humanity-from-the-Eight-Great-Perils-humbly- make-your-meditation-before-midnight-service.”
Thud-thud again on the teak and the slap on stone of dutiful-observant-brother’s retreating sandals. Thud-thud on another door, and another, and another. A monk might sleep if he could.
Then the weather again, not the climate. Darjeeling actually boasts of a hundred inches of rain in June. But it wasn’t June. It was merely getting ready for June, six weeks ahead. The rain came down in swishing torrents that cascaded to the courtyard flags until night was all one tumult of crashing and gurgling water.
Damp walls, as cold as the devil. Meditation indicated. Tom, in two shirts and his sleeved leather waistcoat, was meditating where to buy the necessary garments for the venture into Tibet, when he heard a clatter in the inner courtyard that sounded more like stones being thrown from the roof than falling rain. A twenty-foot radong blared like a fog horn. Shouts. Hoof-beats — couldn’t be anything else: the walls re-echoed them until they sounded like a regiment of horse arriving.
Tom made his way to the gallery by torchlight reflected off the wet walls of the courtyard. A fabulous scene. Some of the light was electric — one of Mu-ni Gam-po’s innovations, very good for discovering monks up to mischief in holes and corners. Economical, too: penalty-of-work-in-meditation- time-on-monastery-woodpile-paying-cost-of-batteries-for-torches.
Seen through the rain from above, the electric torches and the spluttering pine-knots weirdly suggested a wet night in Trafalgar Square. There were things that suggested Landseer’s lions, dripping wet. In place of Nelson’s Column in the midst, there was a man on horseback.
Couldn’t possibly mistake that man — even from above, in pouring rain, near midnight — even under that pointed black hood, on a steaming horse, beneath a small black canopy on long poles held by four men, that kept him liberally splashed with water from its tasseled fringe whenever the horse moved or the bearers fell out of step. He was riding forward across the courtyard toward the gallery, dead slow.
The things that looked at first like Landseer’s lions revealed themselves after a moment or two as enormous, shapeless loads covered by black tarpaulins. Six or eight men — a confusion of legs — staggered beneath each.
There were monks on the run, all hooded, with their robes up and the torchlight gleaming on wet bare thighs and calves. Greetings. A great howdydo of obeisance. A big yellow umbrella that wouldn’t come open was being made ready by monks who struggled against gusty squalls at the foot of the gallery stairs. Even the Lord Abbot of a Ringding Gelong Monastery must be summoned from his bed, or meditation as the case may be, to do the honors for such a prelate as the Most Reverend and Holy Lobsang Pun.
It was he all right. He bulked on the back of the horse like a black balloon, but he sat the saddle like an experienced horseman. The thrice-blessed horse was a little bit gone in the knees and looked inclined to kneel and pray beneath the staggering weight. But the total effect was magnificent.
Tom stared. Lobsang Pun on the march meant climax. It meant that one of Asia’s dynamic geniuses had decided to forge an event or two, instead of waiting for Time and Destiny to do it.
Mu-ni Gam-po passed, followed by his four attendants, hurrying along the gallery. They took no notice of Tom. They had passed him a minute ago; he was leaning, head and shoulders in the rain, with his elbows on the rail, when he felt a touch on his shoulder. He didn’t turn. Probably one of the monks had been sent to tell him to keep out of sight. He stole the last second to stare at the scene.
