Coromandel! (42 page)

Jason listened, relaxed and at ease now. He was the Twentieth Lama of Tsaparang Gompa, who had been the Nineteenth and the Eighteenth, and the Great First, and would be the Twenty- first and the Twenty-second . . .

Ishmael said, ‘They will come for you in a moment, Jason. Don’t pretend. Be yourself; then they will see what you truly are. Don’t deceive them. Tendong will be sad if it turns out that you are not the Lama, because already he loves you. But I love you too, and I am sad now. Catherine ‘

Jason jumped up and said harshly, ‘Be quiet! I must be what I am.’

‘That is all we ask,’ Ishmael said with dignity.

Then the door opened. The abbot Tendong waited in the passage, flanked by two other old men. Behind them stood three gigantic monks in bright scarlet robes, each carrying a golden mace, and on top of each mace rested a high orange hat shaped like a crested helmet. Behind again stood an even bigger monk, this one’s scarlet robe almost hidden by white scarves, and his mace surmounted by a larger hat--a very old, shabby hat, its orange colour faded to the dullest terra cotta.

Jason stepped forward slowly, his eyes fixed on the faded hat--the Lama’s hat,
his
hat. From a distance he heard Ishmael’s murmur, ‘Good-bye.’ Then he took his place in front of his proctor and behind the three abbots. He forgot Ishmael.

Twenty shaven-headed monks formed the procession. One had a small conch horn, two carried hand gongs, nine had flaming tapers, and eight bore sacred scrolls. They struck the gongs and sounded the conch. The procession moved off.

After a long way and two ladders, Tendong opened a door on the right. Jason passed through into a small chamber. Heavy robes, white scarves, and jewelled rings lay neatly arranged on a couch. The three abbots fell back. The proctor took the hat off the mace and laid it beside the clothes.

They wanted him to put on the robes and the faded hat. If he was not the Lama boils would burst out all over his flesh. Painted hells writhed on the walls here, full of demons and screeching monks.

But he could not put on the robes until his head was shaved.

He touched his hair and said, ‘Cut it.’ The abbots sighed.

He stood silently while they went slowly round him with a razor-sharp knife. His hair fell to his shoulders, and they brushed it with their hands to the floor. Tendong sank to his knees and with a tiny brush swept the hair into a wooden box.

His head felt cold now. He put on the robe and the hat. The gongs boomed in front, and he walked out into the passage.

Slow, slow steps. It was dark and lined with more hells, dark and furious with grimacing. The abbots fell back, and he stopped. Three doors faced him, each of black wood, each barred with gold and hung with paintings on silk screens. He waited, but none of the doors opened.

The Abbot Tendong breathed asthmatically behind him. Tendong was an old man, and tired. His feet dragged as the responsibility which had given him strength was lifted from him. He, Jason, was lifting it and taking it on himself. He could carry it. The old abbots needed a rest. They needed to be told what to do instead of having to worry.

Jason walked to the left-hand door and rapped on it. It opened at once. He strode through, Tendong’s feet shuffling more wearily now behind him. Twenty portraits hung in a row along the left side of the room which he now entered. There were no windows. The light came from a row of lamps, one under each painting. Jason walked down the line. Every portrait was of a man. Some were crude, some delicate and finely detailed. Some of the men wore ritualistic expressions, some were as sharply seen as a beggar scratching his ear. One had soft dark eyes, a long chin, and in his hand a stringed instrument. Jason touched that portrait, and again the abbots sighed.

He followed the abbots down more ladders, and the monks followed him. Another door--but Tendong flung it open with a crash, and Jason strode into a blare of sound. Two thousand devils filled the enormous hall, the walls writhed sombrely in smoke and scarlet, twenty long trumpets boomed. He paced forward among the devils, who opened their prancing ranks for him. The monkish robes swirled about their legs, but their faces were hideous black, white, and red masks, with gnashing fangs and yellow tongues and scarlet horns.

He took his seat on the wooden throne at the far end and turned to face the dancers. The abbots stood in a row behind him. The mouths of the trumpets were at his ear; their bellowing deafened him, then drove out all sense of reason. The robes of the devil dancers swirled, the masks dipped and rose. . . .

Ah, white cross-garters, down and up! The monastery shaking under the heavy feet--the wind drumming across the Plain.

He stepped forward and held out his hand. Someone must have the thing that he wanted. The Abbot Tendong handed him a mask of black and gold in the shape of a horned demon. They fastened it to his head, and he began to dance.

This mask held a glaring power in it. Or was it his pale eyes seen through the slits that made the other dancers drop out and squat cross-legged on the floor as he whirled among them? The trumpets boomed like the ocean on the shores of Coromandel, but it was the Wiltshire wind that soughed in his ears.

The devils that fell away before the power of his eye, of his dance, were the devils of Stonehenge, and greater than these masked impostors of Tsaparang, for he came from the beginning. He had danced two thousand years longer than they. This was the Oak and Horn.

He danced alone, across the floor, among the cloth-draped pillars, out through the door.

He stopped, breathing hard, and waited for the procession to join him. Then he handed his mask to his proctor, who lowered the hat on to his head. The abbots strode off, and all the two thousand devils followed with trumpets and gongs and bells and the rattling of skull-drums.

In a gloomy cavern, deep in the belly of Tsaparang, all noise suddenly ceased. The shuffling of feet died away down the tunnel behind him. He looked into a square room, unlit, unwindowed, totally bare. A dark orange sheen and a low droning sound came out of it. A little light from the tapers crept past his body where he stood in the doorway. After a time he saw that four monks were kneeling in a row in the middle of the room. They were speaking, sometimes all together, sometimes by question and response, as in a litany. He took a step forward to enter the room.

He was kept out. He stood a moment, feeling the gentle pressure against the front of his body. No one was touching him.

He peered into the room and longed to enter, but he could not. Four monks passed by him, went in, knelt, and joined the litany. The first four moved over, shuffling on their knees. The new four shuffled into their places. For a second Jason saw the floor where the monks knelt. In four places the granite was grooved to the shape of a man’s knees. The grooves were six inches deep.

He turned away, the great hat nodding forward as his shoulders drooped. Men had prayed in there, without ceasing, for seven hundred years. The room was so full of prayer that there was no place for him--no place for the Twentieth, the Great Twentieth.

No place for Jason Savage.

On, on--two thousand pairs of feet tramping behind him, climbing the ladders, pacing the corridors; and the gongs beating and the trumpets blowing and the monastery speaking with the voice of timber and stone.

The abbots stopped in front of him. His eyelids drooped, and his head nodded. No place for Jason Savage.

A door opened; he stumbled inside. It was a big room, with six lamps burning, and the walls were splashed with gold and white. He flopped on the couch and fell asleep.

As the sun rose he looked out from the highest room of all, a quill in his hand, the plain like a carpet of pearl below, his servants no bigger than ants down there as they ran to do his bidding. Of course he might be dreaming. If he was, it might be a sight into the future, rather than a dream. . . .

As the sun set he rode in towards the great gate. Tsaparang rose in triumph against its mountain to greet its master. The vivid light burst over it, and they were blowing the trumpets for him.

Parvati knelt to worship him. She understood. There was also another woman he had once known. She would not kneel. He could not see her face or remember her name. Parvati said, ‘Jason, you can swallow the sea.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘You can. Try.’ He tried. The sea rushed down his throat and was all, all gone. The sea-bed looked like hell and smelled of smoky butter. She smiled at him, suddenly lascivious.

Parvati would believe in him, the Great Twentieth. Ishmael--no. Jane--no. Emily--no. Old Voy--no. Molly--sadly he had to admit--no.

One day there would be a place for him in the room where they said the prayers. Meantime he had better set out again on a long journey to perfect the contemplative state of mind. . . . Dawn, ten thousand monks behind him--
tramp-tramp-tramp
, their shaven heads like cannon-balls in the sunlight, and the crops waving: Good-bye, come back soon to us. Ishmael’s stupa was under the sand--here. He said, ‘Dig! Dig here!’

He awoke, his voice echoing round and back to him. ‘Here!’ Slowly he got up off the couch. The sun was high, and he could walk out of the room on to an open terrace. This was not the cell he had set out from.

‘Ishmael,’ he called. ‘Ishmael!’

No one answered, but there was a wavering and a whistling in the air, like fifty flutes. They did not make a tune but all sang together, every note that God had ever given. The terrace was twenty feet square, and the edges were guarded by a low balustrade. Scores of pigeons circled round, flew back and forth, came in to land with their legs forward, their bodies back, and their wings fluttering to throw the air forward. Little bamboo tubes were tied to their legs. He muttered, ‘They are the flutes.’ It was a beautiful idea. The pigeons allowed him to stroke them.

He walked into the room and opened a brass-bound box just inside. It was half full of parched barley. He took out handfuls of it and scattered it over the terrace for the pigeons. They cooed down in thick multitudes and in a minute were fluttering all round him and under his feet.

Glancing at the sun, he realized that the terrace jutted out over the south-west corner of the monastery. He had a long view from here, toward the mountains and over the plain. Staring suddenly, he raised his hands to shelter his eyes from the sun and peered into the north-west. A mountain with twin peaks stood out there, distinct among formless fields of snow and rock. He had the map in his loincloth, under the robes.

He rubbed his hand over his head and listened to the crackling of the stubbly hairs. He sighed and turned back into the room.

He remembered. This was the Lama’s apartment, which Ishmael had told him about. They were going to leave him here until tomorrow morning, when they would come and decide finally whether he was or was not the true Twentieth.

So he was not the Lama--yet. But how could that be?
Yet
was the word that made it impossible. He was, or he was not, now--whatever they said tomorrow. He would like to ask Ishmael to explain that. But Ishmael was not here, and they had locked the door.

Yes. Bolted and barred.

Early afternoon. He must have slept like a dead man. The apartment had several rooms, and everything he could need. Here was a carved box. Ah, spare flutes for the pigeons’ legs, and golden thread to tie them with. The pigeons must wear them out quickly, fluting from dawn to dusk, landing, flying up, probably pecking at them sometimes.

This was no cell. There were books by the hundred--but he could not read them. Several low tables. Jade ornaments. Prayer wheels. Six statues of the Buddha, all draped with scarves and necklaces. A pencase. Ink. Paper. Two jars. He removed the stoppers and sniffed--barley spirit, rather like brandy. A metal pot with a spike on top and a flame burning under it, and a jar of oil under the table. Tea leaves. Tsampa. Butter. The Lama’s jade cups with the black veining.

He made himself some tea, lifted down a parchment roll in a brass case, and began to unroll it. This must have been the Nineteenth’s favourite. It had lain easily to hand. It was full of pictures of gods, wheels, and dragons. He studied it for a time, then laid it on the table. When they came for him they would know that he had read it.

He told himself that he was calm, confident, and happy. He felt restless.

Now the Nineteenth would probably have done some writing at this time of day. The Great Twentieth should do the same. He’d write down some of
his
dreams and visions. Well, he could write a letter or a lot of swear words, and the abbots wouldn’t know the difference, because they could not read English.

But first ... He washed out a tiny jade cup, filled it with brandy, and drank, using his left hand.

It could hardly be tasted, the cup was so small. He refilled it and drank again. Careful. The Nineteenth never drank more than two.

But they were so small! He refilled the cup, sat down, took paper and pen, and prepared to write.

He wrote: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

This was foolish, that he thought so quickly and wrote so slowly. He laid the pen down and stared across the terrace. If he had two thousand monks,
and
all of them must do what he told them, he could divide them into parties of, say, ten each. That would make--two hundred parties. But they couldn’t all go out searching for knowledge at the same time. Some would have to stay here to put into books what the others saw. Probably one hundred parties would be out and one hundred in. The brandy jar made a pleasant, gurgling sound as he lifted it.

He needed more monks--another two thousand, at least. And more abbots to control them. He took another drink. The pigeons fluted melodiously, and he thought he heard a tune-- but no, there was none.

God’s blood, now he’d lost his train of thought.

He went out to the terrace to examine the view. Evening was on its way but not yet come. The sky to the west burned orange-red like one of his monk’s robes; all day it had been pure and as coldly blue as the northern ocean.