The Devil's Guard, page 21
Narayan Singh fired three times, and it was impossible to see whether he had hit a man or not. But one of his bullets smashed into the very root of an enormous icicle and brought it avalanching down on us, crushing the loaded pony next ahead of me and sweeping him over the edge of the slope. A yell of exultation from the cliff announced that the disaster had been seen, but the rifle had served its purpose; no more ice was dropped on us and our assailants vanished.
When we reached the end of that gruesome slope Grim called a halt to rest the ponies and our guide came back to find out why we were not following. Grim asked her who the men might be who had dropped that ice on us.
"Did not Lhaten warn you!" she retorted. "Did he not say, in the cave last night, that monks are watching for you?" Not long after that we saw their monastery—if the name serves for a wasps' nest built on a cliffside under the projecting shoulder of a mountain so that none could reach it from above, and from beneath the only access to it was up a zigzag path a few feet wide that, if defended, not an enemy in the world could force.
"Whither you go next," she said and pointed to the monastery, laughing at the expression on Chullunder Ghose's face.
"Krishna!" he exploded. Then, with a grimace at me:
"Rammy sahib, they have made our Jimgrim mad! He leads on!"
"None but the mad can lead except in circles," said Narayan Singh. "I have served under many officers. Madmen were always the best."
Lhaten probably had said a great deal more to Grim than I overheard in the cave the night before. While I was dragging out the babu from the tunnel and Narayan Singh was bringing fuel there was plenty of time for conversation. However, while we lingered on a broad ledge, where one dead, dwarfed and twisted tamarisk was held by the roots in rock that it had burst asunder in the days gone by, a shower of boulders dropped from overhead, one shearing off the tree as cleanly as if a giant's axe had done it.
"So much for doubt!" said Narayan Singh. "We should have ridden on."
He suited action to the word and led the way, another volley of boulders crashing to the ledge behind us, many of them striking where we had sat our ponies half a dozen breaths before, then bounding down into the ravine, whence their echoes followed us like laughter from the underworld.
I tried to overtake Grim, but there were ponies in the way and the track kept narrowing until the loads on one side scraped the cliff and on the other hung projecting over the ravine. When I shouted he merely waved his hand and rode on; and I could see the woman, striding along like a mountaineer ahead of him, looking straight toward the distant monastery. Whoever was frightened, she was not. Her gait suggested cheerfulness because of the journey's end in view.
And now, instead of following the ridge that joined two mountains, we descended by hair-raising grades to the very depths of the ravine and crossed it where echoing ice had spanned the frozen watercourse with a bridge that Romans might have built. The ice was even yellow from the ocher borne down-stream, and from a hundred yards away it so resembled masonry that I looked for a guard-house and expected to see some one with a rifle standing there.
The effect was increased by the presence of tamarisks crowded near by in the folds of the gorge, and of wood stacks where the monks had cut their winter's fuel and piled it, cleaning up even the splinters of the precious stuff. There were crags on the cliff behind the bridge that looked like castle turrets, and the track beyond the ice bridge led between two bastions of naked rock that would have checked artillery.
But instead of a man with a rifle a young monk in a soiled cloak of faded yellow appeared midway in between the bastions and, with a prayer wheel whirling in his right hand, seemed to challenge us. He was shouting, but the echoes threw the words into confusion, so that it sounded as if ten or twelve men were holding a noisy argument.
Our gray old guide strode straight toward him, swinging along with the stride of a man, her spiked staff like a marshal's baton in the hollow of her arm, and though the monk kept shouting at her she neither changed her gait nor paused until she came within two yards and turned her back on him to wait for us—we taking our time about it because the far slope of the bridge was slippery and the ponies needed help.
By the time we reached those bastions the monk was foaming at the mouth. The frenzy in his eyes was like a maniac's. He kept his prayer wheel spinning like a top while he searched our faces; but when Chullunder Ghose came dragging the last of the ponies he seemed to choke, as if his heart was in his throat—stared with his yellow eyes popping—and ran.
Our gray guide looked at Grim and laughed, her wrinkles leaping into sudden life and vanishing again.
"They in the twilight jump at all illusions," she said. "I told the fool the Lord Chenresi is his monastery's guest," and, with a mocking gesture at Chullunder Ghose, she strode on between the bastions.
We had nearly a dozen miles to traverse yet, although the monastery was not more than one mile distant as an eagle would have gone. The trail led all around the bases of the intervening hills, marked well enough because the monks had used it for packing fuel, but steep, difficult and dangerous. Our ponies were exhausted when we reached the cliff on which the wasps' nest buildings perched with their stone walls leaning outward from a ledge three thousand feet above us. And, weary though the ponies were, they had to climb three thousand feet, up a path that I imagine is unique even in that land of guarded solitude.
At the foot there was a chorten—a very big one, looking something like a dome over a tomb. It was placed in the midst of the track which forked around it, so that all who came or went could pass it on their right hand. Behind it was a fissure in the cliffside, narrow and as ragged as forked lightning. Entering that, we found ourselves inside a screen of rock that enclosed a space of two or three acres, deep under accumulated snow. An irregular road had been dug through the snow to a gash in the foot of the cliff, where it entered and ascended for a hundred feet through a tunnel that had been enlarged out of a natural cave. Then we came into daylight on a ledge of half an acre from which we again entered a tunnel and rose another hundred feet, if not more. From the upper mouth of that second tunnel the track led for nearly half a mile along a level parapet of rock until it turned sharply and began to zigzag upward across the face of the cliff. It was so steep that a loaded pony had the utmost it could do to climb; but it was very largely hand-hewn and had been surveyed so that the prevailing wind would sweep it clear of snow.
In places it looked almost as if dynamite had done the work, but the rocks were split too evenly along the grain. The fractures were ancient, but at one of the hairpin turns we passed a rock that told the story: they had bored and filled the bore with water, leaving that to freeze in the terrific winter weather. Nature had done the rest.
There was a marvelous economy of distance—a contempt of steepness indicating that the men who did the work had not had horses in their minds. And there were sections where the wind would not have swept the snow away and where tunnels had been cut for fifty yards or more— not straight, but following the rock faults.
Leading our staggering ponies we emerged at last through a ragged gap on to a ledge so small that the buildings reared on it appeared to be pushing one another off. There was a courtyard, thirty or thirty-five feet square, crowded between the mountain and the monastery storehouse; but in order to make room for that the builders had projected the foundations of their walls out over the sheer cliffside—which created the appearance of a wasps' nest from below. The roofs looked Chinese, but the architecture was careless, crude and (compared to the road we had climbed by) modern. There was possibly accommodation for a hundred monks, if they should choose to live with economy of comfort. We were greeted by a great horn blowing and the clangor of a group of bronze bells swung on one beam. Not a monk was in sight until a man in yellow hood and robes emerged out of a door that faced us, on the far side of the courtyard, and went through the motions of a lamaistic benediction. He was followed by a group of excited monks, a few of whom wore black, the others yellow. All had prayer wheels, which they kept in constant motion.
He looked nervously suspicious of our old guide, who greeted him with a note of laughter that seemed, nevertheless, to hint at consequences should he fail to answer civilly. And civilly he spoke up, in Tibetan, using complimentary phrases as he asked our names, and whence we were, and why we came.
The woman glanced at Grim and stepped back, leaving him a pace or two in front of all of us. But the man in yellow hardly looked at Grim at first; his eyes were on Chullunder Ghose and his lips kept working as if something choice to eat were almost within his grasp.
"Our names don't matter," Grim said. "Tell why your monks attacked us on the road."
"It is the custom," he answered, his eyes meeting Grim's for a second, then returning to the babu's face, which seemed to fascinate him.
Grim made a gesture toward the woman: "Is our guide not known to you?"
"Oh, yes." He pursed his lips and looked ashamed of mentioning a woman. "But the Higher Law attends to whether guides succeed or not. They who die, die. They who do not die, may approach. This is a sacred place."
He began looking at Chullunder Ghose again.
"Do you mean, you try to kill whoever comes this way?" Grim demanded.
He answered impatiently, as if he thought the question stupid:
"It is death that kills. Are you not here? Of what are you complaining?"
Still staring at Chullunder Ghose he gave a curt command and some of his monks began leading our ponies into a shed backed against the cliff on one side of the courtyard. I went in with them to make sure that the ponies were off-loaded properly and to see what could be done about obtaining barley. It took time to bargain with the monks for grain, and when I came out the courtyard was empty, except for the old woman, who pointed toward a door that faced me. I opened it and walked unannounced into a square room in which an image of Chenresi squatted at the farther end. The walls were bare of ornament but all the roof beams were extravagantly carved, and at the side of the room on the right of the image was a low, carved wooden divan on which the ruler of the monastery sat surrounded by a dozen of his followers.
Facing him on a mat on the floor Chullunder Ghose sat between Grim and Narayan Singh. Our babu looked embarrassed. The Sikh was scowling. Grim wore his poker expression, which signifies nothing except that he is thinking like a clock behind it. Nobody took any notice of me, so I sat down on a small rug near the door where I could watch proceedings.
The lama in the yellow robe who ruled the place was talking in a vain didactic voice intended to impress the monks who stood around him, as undoubtedly it did. But the dialect he used was more like the Ladakhi than Tibetan, and I was able to piece together most of the conversation.
"That woman said, `The Lord Chenresi is a visitor.' She is a woman. There are devils in her. But if it were untrue she would not have dared to say it. It is therefore true."
"I am flesh and blood, and I am hungry," Chullunder Ghose answered.
"The Lord Buddha also fasted, so that is no argument," the lama retorted. "You wish not to be recognized, and it is possible that you yourself don't know what great one is incarnate in you. Nevertheless, I recognize the Lord Chenresi. It appears to me that he has chosen a very inferior body, doubtless for his own good reasons. Discipline is needed—penances—instruction and self-mortification, that the spirit may prevail over the flesh. I know. I am wise in these matters. It is no use your denying it. How is the new Living Buddha chosen when the Living Buddha dies? Does he not reincarnate into the offspring of a peasant woman very often? But are they deceived whose task it is to find and recognize him? And the child, in whom the Living Buddha is incarnate, is he not like other children? Does he not need discipline and teaching? Must the body not be brought into subjection with the help of learned counselors, in order that the spirit may prevail over the corruption of the flesh, and wisdom pour forth? What has brought you here? You say, you seek a certain Lung-tok who is held fast in a dungeon. Allegory! All our books are filled with allegories. I am learned in interpretation. That is the voice of the spirit, seeking to release humanity from bondage on the Wheel of Life! Hither you came, because the spirit in you guided. Here you shall find refuge while the flesh melts and the spirit shines through."
Poor Chullunder Ghose suppressed a shudder and the vanity that lingered with him until then began to wilt. He glanced at Grim, but Grim stared straight in front of him—listening—thinking. On Narayan Singh's face there began to flicker the resemblance of a smile as if he saw the full significance of our babu's dilemma and was pitiless.
I think Grim whispered then, but it is very hard to tell what he is doing when he sits with that expression on his face. He can speak without moving his lips and, like ventriloquists, he has the knack of making your own eye deceive you.
At any rate, Chullunder Ghose's vanity returned, but with a hundredfold effectiveness because he had assumed it now and was acting a part, whereas before he had been merely flattered by the identification of himself as the abiding place of an incarnate god. Besides, his wits were working, spurred by that threat of penances and education.
"Priest," he answered, "who are you to speak to me with arrogance! It is the flesh that speaks. Your spirit would forbid such insolence unless your inner ears were deaf. Shame on you! Ignorant monk that you are, shall you teach such as me?"
Never a mouse amid the skirts of maiden aunts created such a fuss as that speech did! The ruler of the monastery (he was far below the rank of abbot) had not wit enough to hide the half-hysteria that seized him. He sat blowing out his cheeks and kept his prayer wheel going.
The other monks were simply fanatics, reduced by superstition and necessity to a state of ignorant and cunningly enforced submission to the lama's will. It staggered them to hear him rebuked and to see him unable to answer. Some leered, as if they hoped the bonds of discipline were broken. Others looked frightened. They were torn between allegiance to their chief and superstition.
Grim probably whispered again, although I did not see his lips move. Our babu rose to the occasion.
"Do you expect me to reveal myself to mere monks?" he demanded. "Do you think I would favor such ears as theirs with what I might possibly say to you alone?"
The question worked like magic. He in yellow was himself again. He turned on the men around him and rebuked them furiously. His mildest epithet was "worms in a dog's entrails," and the mildest threat was "insects you shall be dung-beetles!" He decreed half- rations for a month. He ordered midnight penances. They ran from him before he should order worse things; and when they had left the room by an inner door he went to make sure none was listening outside. Slamming the door again he strode back to his seat, with his prayer wheel like a jester's bauble whirling in his right hand.
"Now," he said, "speak!"
I admired him at last, in a way. He abandoned hypocrisy. With his hands laid on his thighs and an expression on his face of "now or never," he defied us, tacitly admitting that he did not believe a word that he had said about Chenresi being incarnated in the babu.
It was Grim who answered, looking up like some chela answering his guru: "It is for you to speak first."
"You are foreigners!" The lama put scorn into the word, and something more than the suggestion of a threat.
"We are entitled to use this route," Grim answered.
"Here I am the custodian!" The lama blew his cheeks out, tossed his hands palms upward and then slapped his thighs, implying, without wasting words on it, that he was sitting there to bargain, not to argue about rights of way.
I opened the door an inch or two and looked for our gray-haired guide, but she had vanished. The courtyard was empty. I shut the door again.
"I am a lama," said the man in yellow. "It is lamas who identify incarnate Buddhas. If I say the Lord Chenresi is among us, some will listen. Some of high rank will confirm my word. It is a good thing for religion to have manifestations—which have been scarce of late, and men are not so respectful as they used to be. Also, it is a long way from Lhassa to this monastery. There can be a rumor sent forth, that will take hold and excite, arousing the hope of people, of whom many will be monks. So that they who will be sent from Lhassa to investigate will not dare to deny the story, knowing how much safer it is to deceive men than to undeceive them."
"There is no deception about you," said Grim. "You are a rascal."
"Not so. There have lately been rumors of new Living Buddhas, but the plots failed because the wrong men managed them and the conspirators were too near Lhassa. I am far off—and the right man."
He pursed his lips. In that mood he looked capable of emulating Jenghis Khan and it was hard to remember he was the same hysterical incompetent who had been panic-stricken when rebuked before his monks. Suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, he gave us actual news of Rait.
"What is this that you seek!" he demanded. "Some chiling who has been imprisoned? Well: they who hold him are expecting you, and if they catch you—Pfouff!"
He blew out his cheeks again and slapped his thighs.
"As it happens," he went on, "those are the very ones who would accept the Lord Chenresi. They are individuals who know that there are no hairs on a fish. They are not fools. They are powerful. Some of them are my friends, though I do wear yellow."
"What do you propose?" Grim asked him.
He pointed at Chullunder Ghose, whose face turned liver color with the dread that seized him. Humor, vanity and courage were all gone and his jaw trembled as he stammered out a protest:
"I will not have greatness thrust on me! I—"
"Give him to me, and I will get your chiling for you!"
Grim held his tongue. Chullunder Ghose eyed Grim as a criminal looks at the jury when they file in to announce their verdict. Narayan Singh spoke:
