‘Learn Tibetan? Me? Why?’
‘Because we’re going to need it whatever happens. I’m not laying much odds on me finding a way out of here what we can manage by ourselves. Lung’s got a bit better chance, finding a bloke what’ll help us. But my bet is in the end we’re going to have to buy our way out – find a gang of yak-drivers or blokes like that what’s prepared to risk it, or even some of these escort wallahs that’s supposed to keep an eye on us – that’d be favourite, ’cause they could pretend to take us off botanizing and we might get a whole day’s start – two days, if we make out we’re going right over the far side of the valley so we’ve got to camp out . . . but anyway, Theo, if we’re going to do that we got to be able to talk the lingo. There’s not many peasants as know Chinee, I bet. And even suppose we get out one of the other ways, we’ll still have to do a bit of chit-chat, time to time. Now, I ain’t no good at languages, never have been; and Lung here, well, he’s had plenty practice in English but the way he’s got on don’t give me that much confidence. So it’s up to you . . .’
Her ill temper had gone. It was as though a sulky, dank dawn had been cleared by a driving north wind, lifting doubt and low spirits like dead leaves and making the blood sing. The lines on Lung’s face had hardened and his eyes were sparkling – after the days of dejection this was his soldier-woman come back again. Theodore wanted to laugh, not with mockery but with the same sudden exhilaration.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll learn Tibetan.’
The mood lasted while they groomed the horses. They found an old man there who had brought some coarse feed and was now spreading dried fern over the floor of the shed they had been given for a stable. He treated Mrs Jones with awe and tried to prevent her grooming Sir Nigel, but she quickly bent him to her will and made him watch while she showed him exactly how she wanted everything done.
‘Every comfort, you see,’ she said to Theodore. ‘Grooms, stable-boys – if we wanted footmen with white knee-breeches I bet they’d lay them on somehow. I won’t be taking the horses, couple of days at least. They’re fagged out, and it’ll look lots more natural if I start my botanizing close at hand, get the monks used to the idea that’s how I spend my time, before I start off on proper expeditions . . . Ta very much, Theo. Jorrocks here and me can finish off. You go and find some nice monk what wants to teach a kid his own language . . .’
Theodore was hesitating just inside the main gate of the monastery when an old monk came shuffling along the inner wall, automatically twitching a line of little copper cylinders – another sort of prayer-wheel, Theodore guessed – into motion as he passed. They revolved with an erratic thin clinking. He ignored Theodore’s Mandarin greeting, took him by the shoulder, and made gestures towards the southern end of the maze of buildings. Then he himself went shuffling out of the gate. Theodore shrugged, but obediently turned left and began his exploration. (Weeks later he found that the old man had been telling him that one is supposed to move around sacred ground in a clockwise direction – had he realized that at the time, Theodore might well have gone the other way.)
He walked at random through the maze. The monastery was a series of interlocking courtyards, mostly small and irregular, and often at different levels imposed by the underlying mountain. Dark archways, ramps or stairs connected the ground levels, and the upper storey was a second maze of wooden galleries, where the russet-robed monks went to and fro. It was all built of anything that had come to hand, white-washed stone, flaking plaster stuck with cobbles, wood, woven bamboo, tiles, with here and there billowing swags of creeper clothing whole walls. Each courtyard had its own character, like a village; one might be tumbledown and untidy, with a yak tethered against a wall, a dung-pile in one corner, a couple of women pounding something in a tub near by; then, through the next arch Theodore would come out into a smooth-paved rectangle, neat walls hung with banners and all freshly painted since the winter, with a half-formal procession of monks walking across the space, carrying ritual objects.
The exhilaration Mrs Jones had whipped up in him had dwindled by now, but obediently he greeted everyone who seemed free to speak to him. Some smiled, some made signs, some ignored him entirely. He began to realize that the sensible thing would have been to ask Tomdzay to find him a teacher, rather than looking for one at random. Yes. And that would put it off for another day. Perhaps Mrs Jones might even have changed her mind by then . . .
He reached this conclusion just as he came up a shallow ramp to a larger arch than most. Beyond it lay yet another courtyard, but quite different from any he had so far seen. This one was huge. On its further side rose the building with the gold-roofed dome which had dominated the monastery on their first sight of Dong Pe; below that glittering curve and spike was a heavy, plain wall of pale stone, almost undecorated and with no opening except for a pair of large doors which stood wide open. This square black hollow and the slablike wall around it contrasted strongly with the exotic dome, and indeed with all of the rest of the monastery, which seemed to Theodore to have a frilly, tinselly, almost rubbishy quality about it, with the gaudy paintings and the flapping flags and the rows of battered prayer-wheels and the general lack of any obvious plan in its building.
Along the eastern side of this courtyard ran an arcade, supporting a balcony rather grander than most but otherwise quite in keeping with the temple architecture. Opposite it, however, was a surprise, for here the mountain suddenly showed itself, natural rock rising towards the snows in a series of shelves and inclines. The rock had a naked look, like the skeleton of a dead beast that had been scoured clean by birds and insects. It became steeper as it rose, and where the true cliffs began it was pocked with caves, some of them mere openings and some extended into walls and roofs. Stairs, hewn into the rock, zigzagged up to these dwellings – if dwellings they were. Theodore saw three russet-robed monks moving among them, two carrying a large hamper-like basket from which the third took something when they reached each cave and passed it through a slot in the stonework or settled it on the floor of the opening.
Lower down the cliff, only a little above the roof-line of the monastery, was a wider shelf than most, and here was another oddity. Two houses occupied this site, side by side, each the mirror image of the other. A month ago Theodore might have thought they were perhaps shrines, or tombs, but he had slept in too many Tibetan villages to mistake them now. They were slightly plainer than Tibetan farms and more solidly built, and the upstairs windows with their heavy yellow shutters were much bigger than a farm would have afforded, but they were clearly houses. The steps between them and the courtyard were wider and more ornate than the ones that climbed on up to the caves.
Like a mouse creeping round the skirting of a room Theodore walked along below the rock wall and round the far side to the big doors. Peering into the dark he found it was, as he had suspected, a temple. The air here was full of incense and the heavy, greasy smell of the butter lamps. He didn’t cross the threshold, partly from fear of doing anything that might offend these pagan worshippers, and partly from a deeper-seated fear of being in any way involved with the powers they worshipped; but he stood for a while at the door, gazing at the enormous statue of the Buddha which dominated the twinkling dark. There must have been some cunningly arranged skylight to cause the gold mask, with its too-calm and too-sweet smile, to glow as if with inner light, making the dark around it seem thicker than ordinary dark, so that the flames of the hundreds of lamps were weak yellow spots and the clutter of idols and ritual objects were veiled as if by smoke, their true shapes undiscernible, but showing themselves here as the glimmer of a jewel and there as the flash of a staring white eyeball. The darkness and the richness and the closeness seemed to reach out into the mountain brightness infecting it in the same way that the smells of incense and burnt grease infected the clean thin air with their sick weight. Theodore would have turned away at once, but that would have been to acknowledge the power, to accept that it was something he was not prepared to face; so he stood there, staring bluntly at the Buddha.