The Abominable: A Novel

“Okay.”

“Rongbuk Monastery is the highest monastery in all of Tibet…in all the world, for that matter,” continues Reggie. “The faithful make pilgrimages there all the time, many of them prostrating themselves every few yards… for hundreds of miles. And the hills all around us here are filled with caves holding holy men who’ve renounced the world. Some of the lamas at the monastery say that after many years, many of these holy men—they’re all but naked through the terrible winters here—can survive on three grains of barley per day.”

I turn to Dr. Pasang beside us and say, “Do you believe all this?”

Pasang smiles slightly. “Don’t ask me, Mr. Perry. I’m a Roman Catholic. I have been since I was a child.”

He is polite enough to pretend not to notice my gawking amazement.

Reggie looks at me. “How old do you think the Rongbuk Monastery is, Jake? Take a guess.”

I remember how ancient the temple and its crumbling chortens and other shrines had looked when we’d paused there on the way to Base Camp. “A thousand years old?” I venture.

“The current head abbot, Dzatrul Rinpoche, started building the place just twenty-four years ago,” says Reggie. “He was thirty-five years old, and his name then was Ngawang Tenzin Norbu. He managed to get the patronage of traders in Tingri and of the Sherpas living and teaching across the Nangpa La and other passes in Solu Khumbu in Nepal. Some here called him Sangye Buddha, the Buddha of Rongbuk. The name he’s settled on is Dzatrul Rinpoche, a living embodiment of the legendary Guru Rinpoche—the Great Teacher—and a spiritual master of chod.”

I have to ask. “What’s chod?”

“It’s a Buddhist spiritual practice,” replies Reggie. “In literal terms it means the ‘cutting through’ of attachment to this illusion that is the world. Chod was first practiced here in the Rongbuk Valley by Machig Labdron, an eleventh-century yogini…a sort of tantric wizard. Machig Labdron was known as a leading Buddhist scholar by the time she was seven years old, and she dedicated the rest of her life to freeing her mind of all intellect.”

“Sometimes I feel that I’ve been doing the same thing,” I say. The guilt in my gut about Babu’s death, not to mention Ang’s and Lhakpa’s imminent amputations, all due to J.C.’s and my poor shepherding skills, grows stronger by the hour.

Reggie glances sharply at me. “Machig Labdron came to Rongbuk nine hundred years ago to shatter all orthodoxy with her chod techniques,” she says. “She taught that only in such fearful, inhuman places as Rongbuk and its frozen hills—or in the haunted wildness of charnel grounds, cemeteries, sky burial sites—the foulest and most ragged and exposed of environments, could the catalyst for true spiritual transformation be found.”

I bounce along on my tiny pony and think about this. The low rooftops of Rongbuk Monastery are just now visible above and ahead of us.

Pasang says, “Machig Labdron once wrote, Unless all reality is made worse, one cannot attain liberation.…So wander in grisly places and mountain retreats…do not get distracted by doctrines and books…just get real experiences…in the horrid and desolate.”

“In other words,” I say, “face your demons.”

“Exactly,” says Reggie. “Make a gift of your body to the demons of the mountains and wilderness. It’s the best way to destroy the last vestiges of one’s vanity and pride.”

“I can vouch for that,” I say.

“As chod spiritual master of Rongbuk,” says Pasang, “Dzatrul Rinpoche has dispatched more than a thousand seekers of wisdom into the mountains here to confront demons. Most never return and are assumed to have achieved enlightenment in their caves and high places.”

“I guess we can add four more names to that list,” I mumble. I’m thinking of Mallory, Irvine, Bromley, and now Babu Rita. More loudly, I ask, “Does Dzatrul Rinpoche give any advice on how to deal with yetis? ”

Reggie grins. “As a matter of fact, one young would-be ascetic did once ask the Rinpoche what he should do if a yeti appeared at his cave. The master responded, Why, invite him in to tea, of course!”

With that image fresh, we fall silent for the rest of our approach to Rongbuk Monastery.

We’re kept waiting in a downstairs antechamber for about ninety minutes, but the lama’s high priests bring us a lunch of yogurt and rice and the very thick, almost nauseating butter tea they drink. The wooden bowls are clean, but the chopsticks have been nibbled down to sharp points by countless teeth other than our own. They also serve us radishes dipped in hot black pepper; these make my eyes water and my nose run.

Eventually we’re shown up the stairway, our Sherpas following us with heads bowed, to a sort of half- enclosed veranda on the rooftop, where Dzatrul Rinpoche awaits us on a metal throne that looks for all the world like a red iron bedstead. We sahibs and Pasang are ushered in to sit on elaborately upholstered benches on either side of the alcove, but most of our Sherpas go onto all fours on the cold stone, their gazes and faces downcast. I begin to understand that it’s not the proper thing to look into the eyes of a man-god.

But I stare anyway.

My first impression of Dzatrul Rinpoche, the incarnation of the man-god Padma Sambhava, is that his head is weirdly large, and is shaped rather like a huge, squat pumpkin. The Deacon has told me that what he remembered of the Holy Lama was his wide, engaging, delightful smile. The god-man’s smile is still very broad in that far-too-wide face, but it looks as if he’s lost some major teeth since the Deacon saw him last.

The Rinpoche’s voice is very low and rough, as if grown hoarse from endless hours of chanting, and I suddenly realize that he’s not chanting some prayer now but asking a question of either the Deacon or Reggie or both. In any case, Reggie translates the query: “Dzatrul Rinpoche would like to know why we are again trying to climb Cho-mo-lung-ma after the deaths of so many earlier sahib explorers and Sherpas.”

“You could tell him…‘because it’s there,’” the Deacon suggests to Reggie. Our English friend’s face is still grim and tight.

“I could,” said Reggie, “but I don’t think I shall. Any other answer you want to give him before I create my own?”

“Go ahead,” growls the Deacon.

Reggie turns back to the Holy Lama, bows, and speaks in rapid, melodic Tibetan. The Rinpoche smiles even more broadly and bows his head slightly.

“You just told him that we’re here to find and honor the body of your cousin, Percival,” accuses the Deacon.

Reggie flashes him a look. “I’m aware, Mr. Deacon, that you know some Tibetan. If you don’t want me answering, go ahead and talk to His Holiness without my translations.”

The Deacon merely shakes his head and looks even more dour than before.

The Rinpoche speaks again. Reggie nods to him and translates for the Deacon, J.C., and me. “His Holiness reminds us that the high places of Cho-mo-lung-ma are very cold and filled with forces dangerous to those who do not follow the Path. There is nothing of value to be done up there, he tells us, except for the practice of dharma.”

“Humbly ask for his blessing and protection,” says the Deacon. “And assure His Holiness that we will kill no animals during our stay on Rongbuk Glacier.”

Reggie does so. The Rinpoche nods as if satisfied and then asks a question. Without conferring with the Deacon, Reggie answers it. The head lama nods again.

“I didn’t catch that,” whispers the Deacon.

“His Holiness says that he and the other monks are doing a very powerful ritual of sanctification here at the monastery over the next two weeks and warns us that such a ritual always stirs up the demons and angry deities of the mountain.”

“Please thank him for the warning,” says the Deacon.

Reggie conveys this to the Rinpoche, who speaks at length. Reggie listens, bows her head low, and answers the Holy Lama with a short burst of almost musical Tibetan.

“What?” says the Deacon.