Not like the Khutukhtu in Urga. Men said that he had two bodies - a real body and a phantom body. They said the real body stayed in the Potala while the phantom went round the taverns, testing their faith. He wrote poetry. Love songs. But his poetry was sad.
Like perfume on a dying man.”
She began to recite lines from one of his poems:
High in the Potala, I dwell alone within dark chambers, I am a god walking, I am an unearthly thing;
But when the narrow streets enfold me and I walk in shadows among other men, I am a thing of earth, a king of dancers, I am the world itself learning to sing.
In the silence that followed, she understood for the first time just how alone she had been. Not even the Lady Tara could substitute for the presence of flesh and blood. She tried to remember her mother’s face bending over her when she was tiny, but she could see nothing but shadows.
“I’m sorry for him,” said Christopher.
“He must have been very sad.”
She was looking down; not at him, not at anything.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“But perhaps no more sad than other Dalai Lamas, other incarnations. We all live lives like his. We’re all disfigured in the same way. Our bodies are pale, Christopher. Our flesh is like ice. Our lives are endless rituals.”
She looked up quickly, as though afraid he might have disappeared.
“In my whole life,” she said, “I have never smelt a flower. Only incense. Only butter-lamps. There are no flowers here.”
No flowers anywhere in this world, thought Christopher. Only snow.
Only ice. Only frost.
Chindamani got up and went across to the window. Like other windows on the top floor, it was glazed. She looked out into the darkness beyond, past her own reflection, past the reflection of the lamp, gazing out of a world of shadows into a world of shadows. It was not yet dawn, but the sky held the first signs of light. She stared into the darkness, at the still edge of the night.
“We come from darkness,” she said, ‘and we go back into darkness.”
The pee-ling confused her. He had turned everything upside down All her life she had known no other place than Dorje-la. For twenty years, she had watched the sun rise on the same mountains, prayed to the same gods, wandered the same corridors.
Silently, she returned to her seat.
“Ka-ris To-feh,” she said in a quiet voice, ‘do you love your son very much?”
“Of course.”
“What if you found a destiny?” she asked.
“Here, in these mountains. In Dorje-la perhaps. Would you turn aside from it in order to go home with your son?”
“Are you offering me a destiny?” he asked in return.
“Is that what this is about?”
“I don’t know,” she said simply, and he saw that her eyes were still troubled.
“What is it you want me to do?”
She fell silent and gazed into the little cup she held between her hands. If the cup broke, it could not be reborn. It would be gone forever. Not all things were permanent. Transience lay at the heart of everything.
“Take us away from Dorje-la,” she said.
“Samdup and myself.
Take us northwards. There is a monastery far to the north where Samdup will be safe. Your son will be safe there too until it is time for you to take him home. Will you help us?”
He hesitated. It would mean lengthening his journey and William’s considerably. And such a diversion would not be free from danger. Common sense said he should answer ‘no’. But he knew already he could not do that.
“How will we find the way?” he asked.
“I have a map. Sonam found it for me in the abbot’s library.”
He looked at her face, at her eyes. He could not look away.
“Very well,” he said.
“I’ll come with you. We’ll find your sanctuary.”
She smiled and stood.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her heart felt as though a great weight had been lifted from it. Why, then, did she still feel so frightened?
There was a sound of a trumpet blaring outside.
“It’s time for me to go,” she said.
“I’ll come back later today. You need to sleep now. We don’t have much time. I think Zamyatin plans to leave here very soon.”
He stepped up close to her.
“Take care,” he said.
She smiled.
“Sleep well.”
He bent and kissed her gently on the forehead. She shivered and turned her face away.
“Goodbye, Ka-ris To-feh,” she said, then turned and went out by the secret entrance through which she had come in.
Christopher went to the window and gazed out. If he looked hard, he could just make out the shape of mountains emerging from the darkness.
He was dreaming of Carfax, and in the dream William came out to the gate to meet him. He saw him in the distance, waving, his tiny white hand making patterns against the sky. It had been so long, he thought, and Tibet had been so cold. How William must have grown, and how warm the fire in the library must have become. With every step he took, the boy grew bigger, and now here he was directly in front of him, not a boy at all but a man.
William’s hair had grown white at the temples, just like his own, and his face bore heavy lines, whether of grief or simple age he could not be sure. From nowhere in particular, a child’s voice recited in Christopher’s ear:
“You are old, little William,” his father said, “Andyour hair has become very white.
“And yet you incessantly wear it to bed “Do you sleep at your age every night?”
“You’ve been gone a long time, father,” William said.
“We thought you were dead. We thought you’d disappeared like grandfather.”
“I was dead,” answered Christopher.
“But now I’m alive again.”
“Are you?” asked William, smiling a little smile.
He waited for Chindamani all that day, but she did not come. Noone came, except for a young monk who brought him food on two occasions and left without saying a word. Once, in the late afternoon, he thought he heard the sound of voices raised in anger, but after a while they died away and left him once more in silence.
At sunset, the trumpet was not sounded. When the boy came to clear away his dishes, he seemed frightened, but he would not answer Christopher’s questions and left in a hurry.
He went to bed early, uneasy. For a long time he could not sleep. He strained for sounds in the night, but there was only the wind as always. He lay in the dark, wishing sleep would come. Or Chindamani, to banish it. And it came quietly, when he was not expecting it.
The next thing he was aware of was a figure bending over him in the dark. It was Chindamani, and her hand was clapped hard over his mouth. She put her lips to his ear and whispered fiercely.
“For all our sakes, Ka-ris To-feh, don’t make a sound. Get out of bed as quietly as you can, then follow me. Please don’t ask any questions, there’s no time.”
He sensed the urgency and the fear in her voice. Without hesitation, he slipped out of bed and stood up. On
