They carried the bodies to the Maidari Temple and left them there, at the foot of the giant statue of the Maidari Buddha. There was no resemblance between the statue and Samdup, except that neither lived nor breathed. Chindamani tidied Samdup’s clothes and hair, but otherwise did nothing to disguise the fact that he was dead. Christopher took the small teddy-bear and put it in William’s hands as he had done in England when he was asleep. There were no words.
It was dawn when they left the temple. The first rays of the sun were striking its towers, and everywhere pilgrims were rising to pray the first prayers of the Festival. They prayed for paradise and an easy death to take them there, for the removal of the weight of their sins and enough food for the journey home. Today, nothing would be refused them.
Christopher and Chindamani walked out of the city without any very clear idea of where they were headed. Their clothes and hair were covered with blood, but they walked on without stopping to wash or refresh themselves.
It was well after noon before they halted. They had long since lost anything that looked like a road or a track, but had gone on as though they had found a path of their own to follow. They went north into the Chingiltu Ula mountains, making their way by guesswork. The sides of the steep hills through which they passed were heavily forested with dark conifers. They passed no-one. They could hear birdsong, but saw no birds or any other form of wildlife.
The place they stopped in was a small temple, abandoned and partly ruined. They spent that night there, huddled against one another for warmth. The following morning, Christopher went into the forest to find food. There were berries on low bushes and small mushrooms that he gathered in his shirt. He found a small stream close to the temple and carried water back in an abandoned bowl he discovered in an inner room.
They spent the rest of that day in the temple, resting, and decided to spend the next night there too, lighting a fire with wood Christopher collected from the forest floor. By now, they could talk about what had happened.
There was no point at which they decided to stay in the temple.
But gradually, they made themselves more comfortable there, and soon they regarded it as home. No-one came there. Nothing disturbed them. Christopher found abundant game deeper in the forest and made small traps for deer and rabbits; but Chindamani would eat no flesh and subsisted on what they could gather from the trees and bushes.
She suffered badly from a sense of guilt. She was convinced that her illicit passion for Christopher had in some way been responsible for Samdup’s death. Her hesitation at the entrance to the tunnel had, she was certain, cost Samdup his life. No amount of reasoning could convince her otherwise.
She was a trulku, she said, a vehicle for the Lady Tara. She had not been born to love or marry or have children. That was for mortals; but the’gbddess in her was not mortal. He used the arguments that she had used with him before, that she herself was a woman, that she was not a goddess, that their love was its own justification; but she would not listen, or if she did, she chose not to accept his reasoning.
For the first two months, she would not sleep with him. He, for his part, neither pressed her nor made her feel unwelcome. But when they walked in the forest together, she would sometimes hold his hand, and at those times he would feel she still loved him in spite of herself. And one day towards the end of June he kept a rough calendar on the trunk of a tree outside the temple she came to his bed as she had done the first time, without explanation.
The summer passed in shadows and bars of sunlight slanting through me trees, restless and delicate. Chindamani prayed each day in a small shrine that formed part of the temple, and together they restored the building as best they could. They never spoke of leaving or finding a place for the winter, although they both knew they could not stay where they were much longer.
At the beginning of September, a traveller passed near the temple. A lama, he spoke adequate Tibetan, and was able to explain to them what had happened since they left Urga. At the end of May, von Ungern Sternberg had taken his forces out of Urga for a last engagement with the Soviet troops now entering the country in large numbers. He had been defeated, captured, and, it was rumoured, executed exactly one hundred and thirty days from the time of his visit to the Shrine of Prophecies in Urga, when the words recorded on the placard to the south had been whispered to him. Sukebator and his partisans had taken Urga at the beginning of June, assisted by Bolshevik troops, and a People’s Republic had been proclaimed. A sense of normality was beginning to return to the country.
The lama was on his way to a monastery north of the mountains, a place called Amur-bayasqulangtu, situated on Mount Buriinkhan, of which both Christopher and Chindamani had heard. It was the site of the tomb of Ondiir Gegen, the first of the Jebtsundamba Khukukhtus.
They persuaded the lama to stay with them for a day or two. He explained to them that the temple in which they now lived was known as Maidariin sume and that it had been dedicated to the Maidari Buddha. When it was time for their visitor to leave, he asked if they would accompany him to Amur-bayasqulangtu, and they agreed. The nights were growing cold and before long food would become scarce. But they had another reason for leaving.
Chindamani was one month pregnant.
Amur-bayasqulangtu was a vast establishment that amounted to a small town, with some two thousand lamas in permanent residence. The abbot, known as the Khambo Lama, was happy to receive them and provided them with quarters where they could spend the winter. During the coming months, Christopher and Chindamani lived together as man and wife. Once, a deputation from the new government paid a visit to the monastery to assess it for taxes; but the lamas hid their guests until the officials had gone.
Once winter set in hard, they were not troubled by further visits.
But Christopher knew the monks would not be left in peace for ever.
There would be fields to dig and roads to build and armies to train.
There would be a price to pay for independence.
Years later, Christopher thought he was never so happy as during that
winter and spring. All his time was spent with
Chindamani or doing things for her. And he believed she too was happy.
“If I left you, Ka-ris To-feh, could you bear it?” she once asked him
while they lay in bed together listening to the wind flapping against
the walls of their yurt
“No,” he said, and held her hand beneath the rough blanket.
The wind blew and snow fell and ice lay packed against their door. It was a bad winter, during which many of the monastery’s livestock died. But in the end spring came and the ice melted and turned to water. At the beginning of May, Chindamani’s baby was born. It was a boy. They called him William Samdup.
Christopher woke one morning a week later to find both Chindamani and the baby gone. He looked everywhere, but could not find them. Then, on the table where they had eaten supper the night before, he found a note in Tibetan. It was not easy for him to ready-but he persevered, and in the end he understood it.
Ka-ris To-feh, it read, I am sorry that I could not leave you in any other way. Forgive me if this causes you pain, but it is hurting me too, more than I can bear. If I could choose, I would stay with you forever.
Even if it meant endless lifetimes, I would willingly stay with you. I love you. I have always loved you. I shall continue to love you until I die.