“Of course. Did you think I would be angry? We value chastity this is a monastery, after all. All Buddhist monks and nuns are celibate. But Jebtsumna Chindamani is not a nun. She is not bound to the Sangha by vows. It is merely a convention that the Tara trulku at Dorje-la remains unmarried.”
“But I’m not .. .”
“Divine? Neither is she. Not exactly. But I expect she has already tried to explain that to you and failed. I am not sure that I approve of her choice ofapee-ling for a lover. That may be unwise. But the Lady Tara dwells in her. And you are the son of the Dorje Lama.
I cannot criticize her. If she has chosen you, then the Lady Tara has chosen you.”
Christopher began to wonder if he had any choice in this at all.
He had never felt more like a puppet. And he knew exactly whose hands held the strings.
“Go back to her now,” said the abbot, ‘and tell her I wish to speak with her again. Do not ask her to tell you what she and I talk about there are things it is better for you not to know. But do not resent that. You have an important task. You have been chosen for it, see that you fulfill it.”
On their last night at Gharoling, she came to his room, wearing a Chinese gown of white silk and small stitched shoes of Indian brocade. She brought tea and barley cakes and purple incense that smelled of honey and musk and wild roses. As they sat and sipped from their tiny cups, coils of smoke wreathed their heads, filling their nostrils with a heavy, intoxicating fragrance. The smell reminded him of his childhood: of church on high holy days, of spring evenings crammed with the sweet smell of holiness, of the white hands of the priest turning bread to flesh and wine to blood.
But there was no priest, no altar, no life-renouncing god to stand between him and his senses. He feasted on her hair and eyes and lips, on the simple miracle that she was there. He had grown to need her, and he wondered how he had lived before he knew her.
“Do men love women where you come from, Ka-ris?” she asked.
He smiled.
“Of course. And women love men.”
“And do they marry?”
“Yes.”
“The person they love?”
He shook his head.
“No, not always. Perhaps very seldom. They marry for money or land or to please their parents.”
“And may a woman have more than one husband?”
He laughed.
“No,” he said.
“One is enough.”
“In Tibet, a woman may marry several brothers at one time.
When the oldest brother is away, she has to sleep with the next.
She is never lonely.”
“What if she does not like her husbands?”
She shrugged.
“She may like one. What if an English wife does not like her one husband? Can she choose another?”
i “Sometimes. If she is wealthy.”
I “And if she is poor?”
“Then she will have to stay with him.”
, “Even if he beats her?”
He nodded.
A “Even if he beats her.”
She paused.
“I think your people may be very unhappy,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Sometimes I think they are.”
Chindamani sighed.
“I don’t understand why such a simple thing should cause such unhappiness.” She paused.
“Do I make you happy? Are you happy when you lie with me?”
He nodded. She was beautiful.
“How could I not be happy? I wish for nothing else.”
“But if I ceased to please you?”
“You will never cease to please me.”
“Never is very long.”
“Even so.”
She sat, watching him, lifting her lower lip with little white teeth, breathing the perfumed air.
“Does my body please you?” she asked.
“I never slept with a man before you. I find everything about you wonderful. But you have known other women. Does my body please you in bed?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Very much.”
She stood and unbuttoned the white gown and let it fall to her feet. She was naked. Only coils of incense smoke veiled her. It was the first time he had seen her naked: each time they had made love ‘ on their journey, it had been in the darkness of their unlit tent.
“Does this please you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Yes.”
Afterwards she seemed sad and a little withdrawn. She had grown serious again, just as he had seen her before, after her talks with the abbot.
She stood and went to a door that led on to a small terrace.
Opening it, she stepped outside. She wore her white gown: the night air was cold. He joined her and took her hand.
She looked out at the darkness. The stars seemed so far away, the darkness so near, so immediate.
“Don’t think I can be yours forever,” she said.
“You must not think that ‘ He said nothing. Below them, he could see lights in the valley, little lights that twinkled as if the sky had fallen.
“What must I think, then?” he finally asked.
She turned, and he saw tears in her eyes.
“That I am dying, that I am dead, that I have been reborn where nothing can ever come to me not you, not the Lady Tara, not even the darkness.”
“Please,” he said.
“Don’t speak to me in riddles. You know I don’t understand. When you speak like this, you frighten me.” He paused and shivered.
“You say we’re all reborn. Very well, if you’re planning on dying and coming back, why can’t I do the same?
What’s to stop me?”
Her cheeks flushed angrily.
“What do you know of it?” she snapped.
“Do you think it’s easy?
In places like this, men spend their whole lives preparing for death.
They study it like a text that has to be memorized. They know its face as if it were the face of a loved one; the sound of its voice, the feel of its breath, the touch of its fingers. And still, at the very last moment, their thoughts are corrupted and they fail. Do you think you can make death so easy?”
He took her face in his hands. The tears on her cheeks were cold and frosted.
“Yes,” he said.
