cave:
no light, no sound, no fragrance. If six days passed without the food being touched, they would break down the wall and take the old man’s body for burial.
They went up the hill to visit the cave.
“What does he think about?” Christopher asked.
“If I knew, I would be walled up like him.”
“Don’t you know? Doesn’t the Lady Tara tell you?”
She shook her head, irritated.
“I’ve told you. She tells me nothing. I’m just the vehicle. But it’s different anyhow. I have no choice about being a trulku. He chose to enter his cave. He will escape rebirth through his own efforts.
The Lady Tara will go on being reborn, in me, in others after me.”
“We have holy men,” he said.
“But they don’t wall themselves up like this. They pray, but not incessantly. They fast, but not to excess.”
“Then they cannot be very holy men,” she replied.
“Perhaps they may have the fortune to be reborn as gomchens.”
“I think it’s horrible,” he said, ‘to be walled up like that. To have no light or company or fresh air, year after year for forty years. It’s worse than prison. A man might go mad in there.”
“This world is a prison,” she answered.
“He is seeking to escape.
Light and fresh air and conversation are nothing but bars and walls. We are doomed to be reborn to them. In his cave, he is already free.”
He took her hand and held it tightly.
“Do you believe that?” he asked.
“Do you believe that when we make love, when I lie with you? Do you believe that now, here with me in the sunlight?”
She looked away, at the cave, at the little stream running from it, at the hillside.
“I don’t know what to believe any more,” she answered. She could hear nothing from the cave, not even the sound of the old hermit’s voice reciting prayers.
In front of them, the valley stretched out of sight. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the huts that made up the village. In a field, yaks were grazing. At their feet, the monastery glistened with gilded cupolas.
“I remember,” she said, ‘paintings on the walls of the Chqje’s room.”
She paused.
“Yes. Go on,” he said.
“They were bright paintings. I used to think they showed scenes from the next world, from hell. In one of them, a man was being held by a band of monks. His arms and legs were tied, and they were lifting him.”
She paused again. Beyond the valley, stark peaks rose into a sky of ice. She shivered.
“Yes,” he said.
“Go on.”
i “There was a hole. They were lifting him to lower him into the , hole.”
i “I see.”
“And in the next picture, he had been lowered through the hole and was standing in a dark room. I think .. .” She shuddered.
“I
think he was held there by a spider’s web.”
“I understand. And was there more? Were there any more pictures?”
She nodded.
“Yes. Another one,” she said.
“In it the man was lying down.
Perhaps he was not a man, but a boy. He seemed very small. And demons with several arms were attacking him. I tell you, I thought it was hell.”
“Yes,” he said.
“It was hell.”
But he thought though he could not be sure why of the photographs he had found in Cormac’s desk.
“Simon, Dorje-la?, 1916’, “Matthew, Dorje-la?” 1918’, “Gordon, Dorje-la?” 1919’.
“I think they must have lowered the victims into the room a few days before it was time to go down to the first chamber to bring up the Chqje’s things. The rest of the time, there would be some guardians to watch over the treasure; but while the treasure was needed, they would all be feasting at the other end of the tunnel.”
He shuddered. Had his father known what went on? Had Carpenter known to what uses the boys he sold were put?
“When was the last time the Oracle appeared in public?” he asked.
She thought briefly.
“About... a week before you arrived at Dorje-la,” she said.
He remained silent. It fitted. The fresh body. No traces of spiders in the treasure-chamber.
“I think we’d better go back down to the river,” he said.
On the fourth day, the abbot called for him. Chindamani took him
there, then left them alone. The abbot was old and stern, but
Christopher sensed that some at least of the lines that creased the skin round his eyes were laughter lines; he guessed that, at another time and under other circumstances, the old man might have shown himself less severe.
“You are the son of the Dorje Lama? Is that correct?” the abbot asked after tea had been served.
“I am the son of a man who was called Arthur Wylam,” Christopher answered.
“In my world he died. In yours, he became the abbot of a monastery. I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it.
I don’t even seek for an explanation any longer.”
“That’s very sensible of you. There are no explanations that you would understand. You say you thought your father died. Perhaps it is best if you continue to think of things that way.”
The abbot paused, then looked up at Christopher.
“Tell me about Zam-ya-ting, the Burial.”
“What do you want to know?”
“The truth. As you understand it. Who he is. What he wants with Dorje Samdup and your son.”
Christopher told him what he could. Each time he was about to let his personal feelings about Zamyatin interfere with the facts, a look in Khyongla Rinpoche’s eyes stopped him. It was not a conscious thing, but afterwards he realized it had happened throughout the interview.
When he had finished, the abbot nodded and poured tea into Christopher’s cup. For the first time, Christopher noticed that the cups they used were to-tai, identical to those he had drunk from in Dorje-la.
“And the woman, Jebtsumna Chindamani,” the abbot said.
“Do you love her?”
“Has she told you that I do?”
“Yes. She has told me so. And that she loves you. Is that true?”
Christopher felt like someone walking on an ice-covered lake, who hears the ice groaning beneath his feet. He was sure he had contravened a fundamental law of this ritual-obsessed society.
What did they do to mortals who ravished their goddesses?
“Have you slept with her?”
Christopher could not keep himself from nodding. Perhaps whatever death they chose to inflict would be quick.
“You don’t have to conceal it from me. She herself has told me.
I am glad.”
“Glad?” Christopher was sure he had misheard.
