"I say no to it! Aye, by my honor I say no to it!"

  Grim snapped three English words at him:

  "Who asked you?"

  Stung by the snub Narayan Singh muttered and glared at the babu. Grim made a proposal to the lama:

  "If you know where the man we seek is hidden, tell me, and we four will make our own terms with his captors."

  "Atcha! Bohut atcha!" [13] said Narayan Singh.

  Chapter Nineteen—The yellow lama.

  And forget not this: that outward semblance of authority is not a necessary symptom of its essence. There are men in high place who have no authority at all beyond what indolence confers because the indolence of many is the opportunity of one. Such men lead multitudes astray.—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  That yellow lama was an incarnation of a paradox, whatever our babu might be. He seemed to deduce from Grim's speech that we were on better than nodding terms with the black art experts whose prisoner Rait was, or was supposed to be.

  "Chiling," he said, forcing his voice, which was inclined to waver from so many mixed emotions, "you came here with a White Lodge guide. You go to a Black Lodge destination?"

  "Will you do what I asked?" Grim demanded.

  "I question how you came not knowing how to find the way hence," said the lama.

  It appeared to me we were as good as prisoners, unless we chose to use our firearms and bolt for it down that zig-zag trail. At almost any part of it they could easily drop boulders on us; and if, on utterly leg-weary ponies, we should manage to escape the monks, there would remain the impossible task of finding our own way forward or backward before our scant remaining store of barley and canned rations was exhausted. However, Grim put another interpretation on it:

  "We are your guests," he remarked.

  "Ah!" said the lama slyly, "but you said you wish to go to Jalung-dzong."

  Grim's eyebrow twitched. That was our first intimation of the name of the place where Rait might be. But Grim put a doubtful face on it:

  "You are trying to deceive us as to where the man is."

  "There is a devil in you," said the lama, wetting his lips with a tongue that licked out swiftly like a snake's.

  He began studying Chullunder Ghose again. Then, rolling his tongue in his mouth a time or two, he presently propounded terms.

  "I shall send you to Jalung-dzong, provided you leave that one here. Let them give you the chiling. I shall let them appoint this a place of pilgrimage. Crowds may come and see the living Lord Chenresi. That will arouse religious fervor, which brings crowds into subjection. For me there will be perquisites. For them power, which is all they crave. That one," he said, nodding at the babu, "shall have adulation and a life of ease. You may take your chiling and return to where you came from. You agree?"

  Grim did not answer. The lama began to look furious, swaying himself to and fro—glanced at me, as if a thought occurred to him of appealing to me to manage Grim—abandoned that, and played a trump card suddenly.

  "You are spies!" he said, curling his lip.

  "Yes, we certainly are," Grim retorted.

  Chullunder Ghose gasped. Narayan Singh moved almost imperceptibly, his right hand drawing nearer to the pistol hidden underneath his coat. I held my breath. If there is anywhere on earth where a denounced spy is in danger it is on the frontier of Tibet. But our emotions were as nothing to the lama's, whose eyes nearly bulged from his head. A spy, who calmly boasted he was one, was something new in his experience.

  For a second I thought he would summon his monks. Most lamaistie monasteries have their fighting complement—the more degraded ones particularly. Known as dok-dokpas they belong to the lowest rank of the fraternity. Too lazy or indifferent to memorize the ancient texts, they are not qualified to attain merit in that way, so they acquire it second-hand, fighting and brawling to preserve their betters from the necessity to fight. Perhaps the sudden movement of Narayan Singh's right hand toward his weapon, or, it may be, the look of confidence on Grim's face, made him change his mind.

  "Did they send you to spy on me!" he asked.

  Grim did not answer.

  The lama got up suddenly and left the room by the inner door through which his monks went when he drove them out. Chullunder Ghose seized Grim's arm.

  "Let us go! Let us go now—swiftly!" he insisted.

  Before Grim could answer the lama returned followed by a monk in black robes with a sheepskin jacket over them. He looked like a stage assassin. His ferocity, and the care he took to show it, verged on the ridiculous. He rolled his eyes, folded his arms, and snorted as if the very air he breathed offended him; and he eyed us one by one like a butcher considering sheep. When the lama sat he stood behind him glaring at us.

  "If I had known it was they who wanted that chiling who is held at Jalung-dzong, they should have had him long ago," said the lama.

  He appeared to have recovered self-possession, but he drooped his eyelids. He had a false card up his sleeve.

  "This monk," he said, "has often been to Jalung-dzong, and he will go now, though the way is difficult in winter. He will bear my message, which the monks of Jalung-dzong will not reject. So when you reach a certain place beyond the Tsang-po River you shall find the chiling. You may take him. Do what you will. If I had known they wanted him released I would have seen to it long ago.

  "You mean the monks at Jalung-dzong will release Rait at your order?"

  "At my request," he corrected, pursing his lips.

  "Then why not have him brought here?" Grim asked.

  Instantly he went into another of his fits of nervousness. (He must have been a problem for the monks who had to get along with him!) He began swaying on his seat, trying to suppress the hysteria that seemed to seize him whenever his will was opposed.

  "I won't have him here! I won't have anything to do with him!" he exploded. "This is my monastery. It is I who say what shall be and what shall not be. It is enough for you that he is to be taken to a certain place, and that I shall give you a guide to that place. What more do you want?"

  "Nothing," said Grim, "unless your generosity provides a meal for visitors."

  "It cooks."

  He snorted and left the room again, the stage-assassin following, and for a while we sat there with a sense of being spied on, although there was nothing to indicate that we were watched. The feeling was so intense that none of us spoke; we sat and searched the walls for an eye-hole with an eye behind it.

  After a while Grim got up and opened the outer door.

  "Bad medicine!" he remarked to me. "You sit there, Rammy old top. We've got into the wrong pew somehow. I'll explore."

  He took Narayan Singh and left Chullunder Ghose with me. The babu and I sat listening, convinced we were watched, yet unable to determine where the eyes were. It was probably five minutes before the inner door began to creak and opened gradually. Suddenly a woman stepped inside, shut the door quickly behind her and bolted it.

  Some of the Tibetan monasteries are not notorious for morality, nor had our friend in yellow impressed me with the odor of his sanctity; the marvel was not that a woman was there, but that such a female as the one who leaned against the bolted door and leered at us should have been able to play paramour.

  Her mouth was like a gash made with a knife. She was a Tibetan, and of no high rank, which is to say that she was oily, covered with a thick veneer of dirt, and pig-eyed. But she had been told, and she believed that she was charming; and she set to work to charm Chullunder Ghose and me. It felt like being ogled by Lilith, the she-monster who seduced our father Adam, before Eve turned up to make him our respected ancestor.

  For the sake of the proprieties we smiled, since there are no worse manners than to air one's prejudices in a foreign land, nor anything, in any place, more dangerous than manners inappropriate to the occasion (as the moralists discover now and then, who make long faces at the mistresses of kings). I, personally, am a blunderer with women, but Chullunder Ghose is a Lothario. He arose to the occasion.

  "Priestess of immaculate maternity, we squirm!" he said. "This babu is beside himself." To me, in English he remarked: "No safety in numbers, Rammy sahib. Polyandry is polite custom hereabouts!"

  She beamed on him and came a little nearer, he ridiculously conquering an impulse to run, shrinking and then turning the involuntary movement into over-acted thrills of ecstasy.

  "Chenresi!" she giggled and pointed a thumb at him.

  "Krishna! Could my wife but see this!" he exploded.

  The woman mistook that for a compliment and sidled closer. She was coy, no other word for it—coy, with a kind of spiderish determination underneath the "luck-covering" as they call dirt in Tibet.

  "Chenresi!" she giggled again. Then her little bright pig-eyes glanced at me and she began to walk toward me quickly. However, my alarm was premature. She shot the door bolt home and, after favoring me with one more furtive glance, returned to the more gallant man. After ogling him a moment she sat down on the mat and faced him, almost knee to knee.

  "My name is Kyim-shang." That statement entitled us to doubt whatever else she might say. Kyim-shang was the famous queen of Tibet who was the daughter of an emperor of China; such names are not bestowed on modern peasants.

  Having given her announcement time to sink in she produced out of the ample storage space beneath her bulging bosom two gold chains. Then, touching the earrings that weighed down the lobes of her ears, she intimated (or so we understood) by signs that Chullunder Ghose should estimate their value.

  "Now you like me?" she asked.

  By the grace of such wit as remained to our babu he did not say no to her. She took his silence for consent and loosed the floods of speech.

  She spoke so fast that I could not make head or tail of it at first and Chullunder Ghose did hardly any better, but it dawned on her before long that she was wasting time and breath, so she began to talk more slowly and, though her dialect was difficult, we picked out enough words to get the general drift.

  She was sick of the monastery. The monks ill-treated her, calling her foul names, although by bringing her there and keeping her they were just as guilty as herself. Black or yellow-robed, they were a bad lot and there was not much to choose between them, but the dok-dokpa were the worst. She said that two-thirds of the monks in that monastery were dok-dokpas, and the head lama was afraid of them.

  "They tried to drop rocks and ice on you," she went on, "and he knew it. But since you got here with a right guide, he is afraid to let them kill you now. Yet the only way he can prevent it is by promising to have you killed by some one else. So in the morning he will send that man to Jalung-dzong to warn those monks to lie in wait for you."

  "Why do the dok-dokpas want to kill us?" I asked.

  She ignored me but answered my question as if Chullunder Ghose had asked it:

  "They axe afraid you will tell tales about them that may reach the Kun-Dun,[14] who might send them a lama who can really discipline them. Between flattery and threats they can manage this old fool."

  I asked another question and she answered without turning her head to look at me, her idea, I think, being that Chullunder Ghose might possibly be jealous.

  "Do you know anything about the chiling, who was called Lung-tok, who was taken prisoner and sent to Jalung-dzong?"

  "Everybody knows. He tried to learn the secrets of the dugpas. Now they learn his. And if they catch you they will learn yours."

  "Mother of modesty, why do you think we were guided to this place?" Chullunder Ghose asked her.

  "I don't know," she answered. "But you will be guided to your death from this place unless you listen to me."

  We listened eagerly enough, she thawing toward me and even talking directly at me as it began to penetrate her understanding that the babu did not mind. Nevertheless, she rather resented his lack of jealousy.

  "Go forward—go backward—or remain here; you will be killed! You must escape tonight, and there is nobody except me who will show you how. You must leave those other two, and you must do exactly as I tell you."

  She beckoned me, fingers downward, signifying I should sit a little closer although farther from her than Chullunder Ghose. Then with lowered voice and her head between Chullunder Ghose and me she spoke slowly, repeating such words as she thought we did not understand:

  "Leave the ponies—no good. Each man carry barley. Tonight— I come—you follow."

  She laid three fingers on her lips for secrecy, stuck her tongue out at Chullunder Ghose and, with a sidewise leer at me, suggestive of a crumb of patronage, scrambled to her feet and left the room by the inner door, moving much more silently and swiftly than she looked capable of doing.

  Her aroma remained, however. I did not know what to think, and as Chullunder Ghose was obviously going to ask me what I did think as soon as he had finished flapping away the smell, I fled into the open air in search of Grim, intending to repeat the woman's conversation to him, without comment, while it remained fresh in memory.

  Narayan Singh was pacing up and down outside the stables, stamping his feet and flapping his arms to keep warm. He looked worried, and relieved to see me, glancing at the sky that was already almost dark and at the shadows deepening in every corner of the courtyard. He kept hitching his sword hilt forward.

  "Jimgrim went in there," he said, jerking his thumb toward the stable door. "He bade me wait."

  I opened the door and called to Grim. There was no answer and no sound except from the ponies. It was very dark in there so I struck a match. No sign of Grim. I struck another one and went to examine a pile of sheep-skins over in the farther corner; there were deeper shadows there but I drew them blank. Narayan Singh, framed in the doorway, assured me he had seen Grim enter the stable. I told him to come and look for himself, but be refused.

  "Nay! Jimgrim bade me stand guard."

  I struck more matches and looked everywhere for some other way out of the stable, even pulling aside the heap of sheepskins; but at the back there appeared to be nothing except solid cliff, into which the roof-beams were set, and in the other three walls there was only the one door. I returned to Narayan Singh and questioned him but he stuck to his story.

  "Jimgrim went in there and closed the door. Nay, I do not know why. Nay, I heard no sound. On my honor I have not slept. I have stood here as he bade me, and he has not come out."

  I told him about the woman and what she had said.

  "One woman was already bad enough," he commented. "That hag who led us here was a mother of mischief. I looked into her eyes and I saw mockery. If there is another woman meddling, it is time we made ready for trouble."

  Narayan Singh seemed in a nervous, superstitious mood and kept on glancing at the deepening shadows. It was clouding over and there were no stars visible. I shut the stable door and told Narayan Singh to keep a sharp lookout for Grim while I would go and bring the babu.

  Nothing in the world was darker than that courtyard by the time I crossed it. I could hardly see the monastery door but I could hear the monks at prayer, murmuring responses to an accompaniment of bell-ringing and the blare of a radong. It was pitch dark in the room where I had left the babu, but I heard voices whispering and as I entered he spoke aloud:

  "Nay, pearl of purity, I swore a vow never to offend against a virgin. He whose name is Rammy shall offend first. Here he comes."

  He clutched my arm, the woman pulling at his other sleeve, and although I could not see I could hear him try to thrust her away from him, she resisting.

  "Rammy sahib, this mountain of corruption—this chasm of stinks says we are to go now while the monks are all praying. She has brought two bags of barley. She says unless we follow her the yellow lama will imprison us."

  I told him that Grim was missing and that my plan was to get the ponies ready. He agreed. He would have agreed to anything to escape from the arms of that Tibetan woman.

  "But unless we let her come with us she will have her revenge—which might possibly be sweeter to her than herself," he remarked. "She would certainly spread the alarm."

  Abruptly he commanded her to gather up the barley bags and carry them. She grunted as she hove the weight of one of them and called to him to help her lift the other, but we strode out and left her to follow or not as she might choose. She dropped the bags and overtook us, taking our arms and forcing herself between us.

  "Never mind!" she exclaimed. "Never mind! I shall go back for the barley. You wait in the stable for me."

  She followed us toward the stable door, recoiling when she saw Narayan Singh loom out of shadow.

  "Tsa-a-ah!" she exclaimed. "Where is the other one?"

  Narayan Singh laid hold of her. "Aye, where!" he answered. "Mother of abominations, you shall stay until we find him!"

  She let loose a peculiarly modulated yell. It was not loud but there was terror in it. Narayan Singh opened the stable door, thrust her through and closed it again.

  "No sign of Grim?" I asked.

  "None, but I have faith in Jimgrim. He will turn up."

  "Let's be ready for him when he comes," I said. "You'd better help us load the ponies."

  He demurred, having orders to stay where he was; but I saw no sense in his standing there, since he was twice as good as Chullunder Ghose at managing the ponies in the dark. I told him I took the responsibility and he went into the stable, muttering. Chullunder Ghose went next; I, last, and shut the door behind me since the monks might have a watchman on the prowl.

  Then I felt in my pocket for matches and shook the box, and suddenly a man's voice close beside me exclaimed "No!" A hand like a steel vise clutched my arms. Chullunder Ghose gasped. I heard an oath from Narayan Singh and then the swish-swish of his saber. Then a cut-off scream; I did not doubt it was the woman's.

  Chapter Twenty—Prisoners. Jimgrim is missing.

  Until he shall be tested to the utmost none may know what hidden weakness lingers in him. Neither can he know his own strength. —From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup

  I struck out right and left into the dark. I was surrounded. There were other men who moved among the ponies, whispering, and I was sprung on from behind by men who struggled to tie my arms while another drove his thumbs into my throat. Chullunder Ghose cried out for help, but some one struck him on the head and after that he made no sound. Narayan Singh fought like a catamount somewhere in among the ponies that lashed out with their heels at random; he kept shouting to me to use my pistol, but with two men on either arm I could not reach it.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28