standing.
His face was badly scarred by smallpox. He stared at Christopher without blinking.
“Who are you?” Christopher asked.
“What do you want?”
The monk regarded Christopher with an intense scrutiny that went far beyond the merely curious. His gaze tore away skin and scar tissue, exploring living flesh.
“I want nothing,” he said in a soft voice. His English was clear but stilted.
“But you,” he went on, ‘are in quest of something. I wonder what it is you want.”
“If you want nothing, what are you doing here?” asked Christopher. The monk’s gaze unnerved him. Being in the same room with him unnerved him.
“To warn you,” said the monk, very quietly.
“Warn me?”
The gecko on the wall shifted in its search for shadows and concealment.
“You have been asking questions. Indelicate questions. Improper questions. Questions that have no answers you can understand.
You are holy, I cannot touch you. But already one man has died.
I will carry his blood on my hands. Do you understand? Into the next world and beyond. You are holy for me, but others can harm you. I know you do not understand. It is better for you that you do not. But this is my advice: leave all thought of the lama who died here. Leave all thought of your son. Leave all thought of revenge. Go home. All other ways are closed. The gods are only playing now. Leave before they grow tired of games.”
What did he mean, ‘you are holy for me?” Christopher remembered the thin man in Hexham.
“I am ordered not to harm you,” he had said.
“Are you telling me you killed Martin Cormac?” Christopher took a step towards the monk. The man did not move.
“You do not understand,” the monk whispered. Christopher thought he could hear flies buzzing in the room. He could see sunlight spilling on to white, disordered sheets. He felt suffocated.
“I understand,” he shouted above the buzzing.
The monk shook his head.
“You understand nothing,” he whispered.
Christopher stepped nearer, but something held him back from actually attacking the man.
“Please,” said the monk.
“Do not try to harm me. If you do, I will be forced to prevent you.
And I do not want that on my conscience.
I have put blood on my karma today. But you are holy: do not make me touch you.”
Inarticulate anger grew in Christopher, but the very placidity of the monk made it hard for him to strike him. The man stood up, his robes falling elegantly into place around him.
“I have given my warning,” he said.
“Leave Kalimpong. Go back to England. If you seek to go further, I cannot be responsible for what will happen to you.”
He passed Christopher on his way to the door, brushing him with the edge of his outer robe.
Christopher never knew what happened next. He felt the touch of the monk’s robe against his hand. He remembered the touch of Cormac’s mosquito-net against his bare skin and felt a surge of anger rise in him. The monk’s placidity was nothing: he wanted to strike him, to drag him down to some sort of justice. He reached out, intending to haul the man round, at the very least to confront him. Perhaps he had intended to strike him, he could not be sure.
All he felt was the monk’s hand on his neck, a gentle touch without violence or pain. Then the world dissolved and he felt himself falling, falling endlessly into a lightless, colourless abyss out of which nothing ever returned.
He dreamed he was in silence and that the silence clung to him softly, like wax. The wax melted and he was walking through empty corridors. On either side, vast classrooms stood empty and silent; chalk-dust hung like bruised white pollen in long beams of sunlight. He was climbing stairs that stretched above him towards infinity. Then he was on a landing that took him into another corridor. From somewhere, he could hear the sound of buzzing.
He passed through the first door he came to and found himself in a long white dormitory drenched in silence. Two rows of rusted hooks had been screwed into the ceiling over the central aisle.
From each hook a rope was suspended, and at the end of each rope the body of a young girl was hanging. They all wore white shifts and their backs were turned to him, and their hair was long and black and silken. He watched in horror as the ropes twisted and the bodies turned. The sound of buzzing filled the room, but there were no flies. A door slammed suddenly, sending echoes throughout the building.
“Wake up, sahibl Wake up!”
He struggled to open his eyes, but they were glued together.
“You can’t lie here, sahibl Please get up!”
He made a final effort and his eyes opened painlessly.
The monk had gone. The boy Lhaten was bending over him, a look of concern on his face. He was lying on the floor of his room, flat on his back.
“The monk told me I would find you here, sahib. What happened?”
Christopher shook his head to clear it. It felt full of cotton wool.
Cotton wool mixed with iron filings.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How long have I been here?”
“Not long, sahib. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Lhaten, are there still police outside?”
“One man. They say they are looking for you. Have you done something, sahibT He shook his head again. The cotton wool was feeling a little more like cement.
“No, Lhaten. But it won’t be easy to explain. Can you help me up?”
“Of course.”
The boy put an arm under Christopher’s neck and raised him to a sitting position.
With the boy’s help, Christopher made his way to the chair. He felt more winded than anything, as though all the air had been forced out of him suddenly. Whatever the monk had done, it had rendered him unconscious briefly but left him otherwise unharmed.
He had often heard of such techniques, but until now had never witnessed them used.
“Do the police know I’m here, Lhaten?”
The boy shook his head. He was sixteen, seventeen perhaps. By his accent, Christopher guessed he was Nepalese.
“I need to get out without being seen,” Christopher confided in the boy.
“Can you help me?”
it~”v f} ;
“No problem, sahib. There’s no-one watching the back. But where will you go? They say there are police everywhere, looking for you. You must have done something very wicked.” The boy seemed pleased by that possibility.
Christopher tried to shake his head, but his neck refused to join in.
“I’ve done nothing, Lhaten,” he said.
“But a man has been killed.
I found him.”
“And the police think you killed him?” Lhaten raised his eyebrows and whistled. Christopher remembered that William used precisely the same gestures to express amazement.
“Yes. But I didn’t. Do you believe me?”
Lhaten shrugged.
“Does it matter? No doubt he was a very bad man.”
