“Why me?” I wanted to know.
“Because Tibet is occupied by the Red Chinese. I need somebody who could arrange for me to get into the country. I remembered that you have some sort of Washington contacts. I figured if could arrange for the grant, you’d manage the entry.”
It intrigued me. I’d never been to Tibet. And polyandry was a relatively unstudied terrain in the field of sexology. What’s more, Dudley was right. There were strings I could pull to get into Red China.
The strings led to Charles Putnam. He was the man who’d recruited my services for the U.S. government on more than one occasion. He was the human question mark between the State Department and the C.I.A. He was part of neither organization, accountable to neither, yet instrumental on a policy level with both. He was the invisible man, for where he stood in government there was a void that perhaps only the president and one or two others knew he filled. His influence in both diplomacy and espionage was immense. And he owed me a favor.
I collected. Which is how, two weeks later, I found myself riding a yak through a blizzard that was blanketing a Tibetan mountain some 15,000 feet above sea level. Behind me, in the valley below, the Red Chinese authorities in charge of the garrison occupying the city of Shigatse were in a state of angry confusion. The order to allow me to travel had come from the top; how Putnam arranged that, I’ll never know. I could guess that there was also an order to keep tabs on me since I was by definition a capitalistic American and must therefore be engaged in some sort of spying. Just how to keep me under surveillance in the middle of a Tibetan blizzard while still supposedly extending the hospitality of the country must have been quite a problem for them. I could also guess that somewhere behind me in the blizzard there was a Red Guard tail blood-hounding yak prints in the snowdrifts.
Ahead of me by only a few feet, but still almost invisible in the snowfall, was the yak-borne Dudley Nightshade. Ordinarily Dudley was a man of about forty years who looked sixty. With his small, emaciated body hunched against the cold and his blubbery lips freezing green, now he looked more like eighty. When we paused he pulled a scarf up to cover the lower half of his face and for a moment he looked like an octogenarian mouse with tiny red eyes and a sharp, colorless wax nose that looked as if it might be snapped off by the cold like a twig.
Under me, as we resumed our trek, was a yak. The yak is just about the only form of transportation in Tibet. It has a very hostile back—which may explain why one-sixth of the male population of Tibet is composed of chaste monks. Indeed, quite a few of these are actually eunuchs — a bit of data which made me sit my yak very carefully indeed. I made a point of riding like the other five-sixths of the population, my bottom raised above the hairy red leather skin of the yak, leaning forward to hold onto its large, curved horns for support. In Tibet a yak is no laughing matter.
Neither is Tibet. It’s the highest country in the world (elevation, not LSD), and one of the coldest. Once you leave the Tsangpo valley for the Himalayan and Kunlun mountain ranges which surround it, you’re in some of the roughest terrain and weather on earth. The upper parts of the mountains are beset by constant blizzards, but the snow freezes into ice and below the mountain slopes suffer from lack of water; rainfall is sparse and the growing season is short-lived every place but in the Tsangpo Valley itself where the Tsangpo River irrigates the soil. Even here, grains and barley are the only crops hardy enough to survive. Our trek had led from the valley up the barren, rocky slopes to the ice caps ringing the mountain tops.
It was a Rinso-white4 world with fangs of ice through which we were yak-bouncing. Finally the curtain of snow parted and I could make out a tape in the distance. Its bulbous dome crowned with a gilded copper parasol and crescent was a welcome sight.
Less than an hour later we reached it. It was a Lamaist temple staffed by monks. It stood in the center of a small village of thatched huts which extended into ice caves. For the purpose of our research, I was more interested in the village than the temple.
Despite their proximity, they were separate entities. The tope was Lamaist~Buddhist, the village a sort of matriarchy ruled by women who imposed a system of polyandry. The two were constantly in religious conflict, the pagan customs of the villagers opposed to the sex mores of the monks.
The head-woman of the village was a sort of combination between a pagan priestess and a matriarch mayor. Besides running things, she was entrusted with overseeing the system and rites and taboos of the polyandric society. After we dismounted our yak, Dudley and I were taken to her.
Her cave-hut was the biggest in the village. It was staffed by her husbands, half a dozen Milquetoast males. The head-lady herself was an aging harridan without benefit of Elizabeth Arden. Even her wrinkles had wrinkles.
Through our interpreter, we explained our mission. She agreed to cooperate. We could have the freedom of the village and she would instruct her people to tell us whatever we wanted to know. Dripping thanks, we bowed our way out.
As soon as we were outside, Dudley began muttering frosty smoke clouds of “Nirvana” into the subzero and tried to get me to head for the temple. But I was more interested in our research. So we arranged to meet later and split up.
The village had been situated on the mountainside in a manner that shielded it from the wind and snow. Walking around it was a cold stroll, but since I wasn’t being buffeted by the elements, it wasn’t too unpleasant. The villagers -—particularly the women—were quite friendly. And nobody proved friendlier than Ti Nih Baapuh.
Ti Nih was a Tibetan Tuesday Weld5 who nibbled on raowolfa hors d’oeuvres and had an ever-present appetite for a main course of passion. By Tibetan standards, each of her breasts was double-breasted. Her legs were longer and more slender than average and her golden-hued derrière might have served as a model for one of those erotic temple sculptures found throughout Asia. The golden tones of her face were shaded with delicate pinks. The features were firmly molded, yet childlike, her doe-soft eyes filled with a sparkling mischief. Her face was framed by thick, lustrous black hair which fell past her narrow waist to the ample curve of her hips.
I encountered Ti Nih by chance. The mountain wind must have shifted because a sudden, strong, icy gale knifed through the compound. Villagers scurried for their homes, some pausing to tether their yaks behind crude wooden shelters. I dived for the doorway to the nearest hut and then backed further into it to get away from the wind.
I’d been standing there a moment when the voice trilled from behind me. Not speaking the language, I could only suppose the words were a greeting. I turned to face the speaker.
“Hello.” I took my first look at Ti Nih Baapuh. “Well, hello-o-o.” It was a long look. “Is this your house?”
“It is Papa house.”
“You speak English?” I was surprised.
“Papa pay temple Lama teach me when I have very young.”
“That can’t have been very long ago,” I observed. “You’re still pretty young.”
“Please. No make sounds as Papa.” She scowled, then smiled. “I be Ti Nih Baapuh,” she introduced herself.
“I be Steve Victor.”
“How do you do it?”
“I have a feeling you know the answer to that one.”
“Begging pardon.”
“Never mind. Just a silly joke. Is your father home? Or your mother?”
“Mama in ground many years. Papa with Lamas. After Mama bury, he convert very strong. Make him angry no me though. I yet Bon.”
I understood that by this she meant she clung to the primitive cult of polyandry which predates the Mahayana form of Buddhism practiced by the Lamas and their followers in Tibet. “Bon” is an animistic belief which holds that all objects—even inanimate ones—are possessed of a soul which may affect the life and health of persons who corne in contact with them. In Tibet “Bon” and polyandry are fused, while Lamaism and asceticism go hand-in-hand. It was unusual to find the two views in one household.