J.C. and I step outside the main monastery building to say good-bye to Reggie, Pasang, and the Deacon. The Sherpas have already begun their long trek back to Base Camp.
“You may be sorry that you chose to stay for the sky burial,” is all that the Deacon has to say.
I ask why we’d be sorry, but he ignores me and prods his little pony into a semblance of a canter, moving quickly to catch up to the Sherpas.
“Tell us about this Padma Sambhava that the current Rinpoche is supposed to be a reincarnation of,” Jean-Claude says to our tall doctor. “Was he a man or a god?”
“He was both,” says Pasang.
“In the eighth century, Padma Sambhava brought Buddhism to all of Tibet,” adds Reggie. “He overpowered Cho-mo-lung-ma with Buddha-truth and then defeated the evil power of all the mountain demons and gods and goddesses, turning them all into dharma protectors. The darkest and most powerful of all the demon-goddesses, the queen of the dakini sky dancers, was turned into the pure white peak Cho-mo-lung-ma, her skirts reaching here to the Rongbuk Valley itself. The first temple built in this region was constructed on her left breast. Beneath her vulva was buried a white conch shell from which all dharma doctrine and Buddha-wisdom flow to this day.”
I find myself blushing wildly again. First “testicles” and now “vulva.” This woman is likely to say anything out loud.
Jean-Claude says softly, “If Guru Rinpoche—the Great Teacher, the Great Master, Padma Sambhava himself—defeated all the gods and demons around here and turned them into acolytes for the Buddha, why does Dzatrul Rinpoche say that they’re angry and that he’ll intercede for us?”
Reggie smiles as she hops onto her white pony. “The mountain gods, goddesses, and demons have been largely tamed for those who follow the Way, Jake,” she says. “Those who’ve mastered dharma. But nonbelievers and those of small faith are still in danger. Are you two sure you want to watch the sky burial?”
J.C. and I nod.
Reggie speaks to the Sherpa Norbu Chedi, and then she kicks her pony into motion and hurries to catch up to the line of Sherpas and the Deacon. They are already disappearing into the gray evening. Dr. Pasang nods to us and strides to join the others. “A storm is coming” are his parting words.
And it is gray. Clouds and snow have moved in again, and the temperature’s dropped at least thirty degrees.
“Monsoon?” I say.
J.C. shakes his head. “This front is coming in from the north. The monsoon will come from the south and west, piling up against the Himalayas until it pours over the peaks like a tsunami over a low breakwater.”
Two priests come outside and say something to Norbu Chedi.
“These two will show us where we’ll sleep,” says our Sherpa. “And there will be a light repast of rice and more yogurt.”
The old priests—they have perhaps five teeth among them—lead us to a small, windowless (but terribly drafty) room where, according to Norbu, we are to spend the night before being wakened for Babu Rita’s sunrise funeral. There is a single candle for us to light, three bowls of rice, a communal bowl of yogurt, and some water. Three blankets have been spread out on the stone floor.
Before leaving, the two monks pause at a dark niche and hold their candles high so that we can see the wall mural there.
“Holy Christ,” I whisper.
A series of devils, complete with cloven hooves, are throwing climbers into a deep abyss. Instead of Dante’s fiery Hell, we are looking at a zone of damnation that is all snow, rock, and ice. The mural shows a whirling vortex, a sort of snow tornado, that is carrying the hapless climbers down, down, down. The mountain is obviously Everest, and to either side of it are growling, slathering guard dogs of immense proportions. But the most disturbing part of the mural is a single human figure lying at the base of the mountain the way a human offering would lie prostrate on an altar. The single body is white with dark hair—obviously a sahib. He has been speared, and one shaft still passes through him. Horned demons surround him, and J.C. and I step closer to see that the white man has been eviscerated. He is still alive, but his guts are spilling out onto the snow.
“Nice,” I say.
The two monks smile, nod, and depart with their candles.
We sit on the cold stone, wrap the blankets around ourselves, and try to eat our rice and yogurt. All through the temple, the rising wind howls with a woman’s terrified scream. It is very cold and growing colder.
“I wonder how old that mural is,” says Jean-Claude.
“It was painted only last autumn, Sahibs,” says Norbu Chedi. “I heard the other monks speak of it.”
“After Mallory and Irvine disappeared,” I say. “Why?”
Norbu Chedi pokes at his rice. “Word spread both at the monastery here and at Tingri and other villages that the sahibs had left much food behind at their higher camps—rice, oil, tsampa, much food.”
“What is tsampa?” I ask.
“It is barley flour, roasted,” says Norbu Chedi. “At any rate, when some of the villagers and some of the herders from the valley went up the East Rongbuk Glacier to claim this abandoned food, but about where you and Sahib Deacon have put our Camp Three, seven yetis leaped out of their hiding place in the caves in the ice and chased the young herders and villagers all the way off the glacier, all the way out of the valley. So Dzatrul Rinpoche had this mural painted as a warning to the greedy and foolish who would follow the foreign sahibs into such dangerous territory.”
“Wonderful,” I say.
We curl up in our respective blankets, but it is too cold to sleep. The monastery echoes to wind whistles, the distant slap of sandals on stone, the occasional dismal chanting, and the unceasing whir of prayer wheels spinning.
Without saying anything to one another, we decide to leave the candle burning between us and the mural.
Friday, May 15, 1925
The high priest comes for us—I can’t say “wakes us” because neither J.C. nor I has slept a minute all night—sometime around 4:30 a.m. Norbu Chedi has chosen to sleep outside in the cold and wind, and I can’t say I blame him. The candle the priest is holding, like so many others in the Rongbuk Monastery, consists of ghee butter in a tiny bowl. It smells terrible.
I’ve realized through the endless night that I hate the smell of everything in this supposedly sacred place. It’s not because of filth—Rongbuk Monastery is one of the cleanest places I’ve seen in all of Tibet—but rather because of some mixture of the underlying scent of unwashed bodies (Tibetans tend to bathe once a year, in the autumn), the reeking ghee lamps, a heavy musky odor of incense, and the very stones of the building, which seem to have a coppery smell, like freshly spilled blood. I chastise myself for this last thought, for the Tibetan Buddhists here are nothing if not nonviolent. In the beyuls nearby—the sacred valleys made loci of dharma energy by the white magic of Guru Rinpoche so many centuries ago—the animals have been left unmolested for so many generations, the Deacon has told us, that undomesticated mountain sheep will come into your tent, wild swans will come to eat out of your hand, and the white wolf of the Himalayas is said not to kill his prey there.
A monk appears in the dimness, and we follow him and his flickering ghee lamp through the labyrinth of rooms. Norbu Chedi is still knuckling his eyes as a second priest joins us.