“I don’t want money. I want to help you, that’s all. Where do you want to go?”
Christopher realized he was wasting time. The police could return to his room at any moment to make a further check on his belongings he guessed it was they who had given the room its second going-over.
“I want to cross the Sebu-la,” he said in a low voice.
“Into Tibet.
I want to leave tonight if possible.”
Lhaten looked at him in disbelief. It was as if he had expressed a wish to visit the moon.
“Surely you mean the Nathu-la, sahib. The Sebu-la is closed. It will remain closed all winter. Even the Nathu-la and the passes beyond it may be closed again if the weather changes.”
“No, I mean the Sebu-la. Along the Tista valley past Lachen, then through the passes. I need a guide. Someone who knows that route.”
“Perhaps you’re not feeling well, sahib. That blow last night. And today .. .”
“Damn it, I know what I’m doing!” Christopher snapped.
“Yes. I’m sorry, sahib.”
“That’s all right. I’m sorry I shouted, Lhaten. I must sound a bit doolaly, eh?”
The boy grinned.
“Thought so. Well, do you know anyone who’d be fool enough to take me at least that far? I wouldn’t want him to come across with me. Just to take me to the Sebu-la. I’ll pay well.”
“Yes. I know someone.”
“Excellent. Do you think you can get me to him without being seen?”
Lhaten grinned again.
“Very easy.”
Christopher stood up. His head spun.
“Let’s go, then.”
“No need, sahib, your guide is here already. I can take you to the Sebu-la. Maybe I’m a little doolaly as well.”
Christopher sat down again. He felt irritated by the boy, though he knew he ought not to be.
“Bloody right you are. I’m not going on a picnic. I’m trying to get into Tibet without an alarm going off half-way across the Himalayas. The main purpose of the exercise is to get there in one piece. I need a proper guide, not a rest-house pot-boy.”
Lhaten’s face fell. It was almost as though Christopher had slapped him.
“I’m sorry if .. .” Christopher began, but Lhaten interrupted him.
“I am not a pot-boy. I am eighteen. And I am a proper guide.
My family are Sherpas. We know the mountains the way farmers know their fields. I have crossed the Sebu-la with my father many times.”
“In winter?”
The boy hung his head.
“No,” he said.
“Not in winter. No-one crosses the Sebu-la in winter. No-one.”
“I am going to cross the Sebu-la in winter, Lhaten.”
“Without my help, sahib, you will not even make it to the first pass.”
Lhaten was right. In this weather, Christopher would need more than just luck and his own limited experience to find and cross the Sebu-la. At this point, he wasn’t even thinking about what he would do when he got there. One thing was certain: he could not attempt the journey by way of the Chumbi valley and the more popular route to the east. There were sentries everywhere. All the caravans and isolated travellers were stopped and examined closely. If he was fortunate, he would merely be turned back. More probably, his visitor of half an hour ago and his chums, whoever they might be, would be waiting for him and the monk had made it clear that his friends would have no compunction about harming him.
“Why do you want to risk your skin on a journey like this, Lhaten?”
Christopher asked.
The boy shrugged.
“This is my third winter in this place, sahib. How many winters could you spend here?”
Christopher looked at the room, at the shabby furniture, at the gecko sleeping on the wall.
“Aren’t you frightened to make such a journey in this weather?”
Lhaten grinned, then looked more serious than ever “Very frightened.”
That decided Christopher. He would take the boy. The last thing he needed on this journey was someone who didn’t know the meaning of fear.
They were lost. For two days now, they had been battling against the snow and the wind, but there were no signs of the chorten that Tobchen said would mark the entrance to the valley of Gharoling.
They had lost the pony. It had fallen into a deep crevasse the day before, taking with it most of their remaining provisions. He could not forget the sound of the dying animal, trapped beyond reach, screaming in pain: the sound had carried in the stillness and followed them for miles.
The old man was growing visibly weaker. Not only physically, but in his mind. His will-power was slackening, and the boy knew he was near the point of surrender. Several times he had had to rouse Tobchen from a reverie or a sleep out of which he did not want to be wakened. Sometimes they climbed up into banks of freezing cloud, where everything was blotted out in the all consuming whiteness. He felt that the old man wanted to walk on into the cloud and disappear, so he held his hand tightly and willed him to go on. Without him, he would be lost forever.
“Will the Lady Chindamani come to Gharoling, Tobchen?” he asked.
The old man sighed.
“I do not think so, my lord. Pema Chindamani must remain at Dorje-la.
That is her peflace.”
“But she said we would meet again.”
“If she said it, it will happen.”
“But not at Gharoling?”
“I do not know, lord.”
And the old man continued to plod on into the blizzard, muttering the words of the mantra, om mam pad me hum, like an old woman ploughing in her field. Yes, that was it. He was just like an old woman ploughing.
He lost the old man on the seventh day, early, between waking and first halt. There was no warning. Tobchen had gone in front as usual, into a bank of cloud, telling the boy to follow slowly. At first all had seemed normal, then the cloud had lifted and the way ahead was empty. On his left, a sheer precipice plunged away from the path, its lower depths hidden in cloud. He called the old man’s name loudly, pleadingly, for over an hour, but only dull echoes answered him. A ray of sunlight bounced off the peak of the tall mountain opposite. Suddenly Samdup felt terribly alone.
He was ten years old. Tobchen said he was many centuries old, but here, trapped in snow and mist, he felt no more than a child.
Without the old man, he knew he was finished. He had no idea which way to turn: ahead or back, it was all the same to him. The mountains seemed to mock him. Even if he was centuries old, what was that to them? Only the gods were older than they.
He carried enough food in his bag to last him for about two days, if he was frugal. If only he could see the chorten or a prayer flag or hear the sound of a temple-horn in the distance. But all he saw were pinnacles of ice and all he heard was the wind rising.
He spent the night in the dark crying, because he was cold and alone and frightened. He wished he had never left Dorje-la Gompa, that he was there now with Pema Chindamani and his other friends. No-one had asked him if he wanted to be a trulku. They had just come to his parents’ house seven years ago and put him through some tests and told him who he was. He had liked living with his parents. True, it was nothing near so grand as life in his lab rang at Dorje-la, but nobody had made him study or expected him to sit through long ceremonials, dressed in silk and fidgeting.
When the night ended, the world was shrouded in mist. He stayed where he was, feeling the damp seep into his bones, afraid to move in case there was another precipice. He knew he was going to die, and in his childish way he resented it. Death was no stranger to him, of course. He had seen the old bodies of the abbots in their golden chortens on the top floor of the gompa, where no-one could stand above them. One of his first acts at Dorje-la had been to preside over the funeral of one of the old monks, a Lob-pon named Lobsang Geshe. And everywhere, on the walls and ceilings of the monastery, the dead danced like children. From the age of three, they had been his playmates. But he was still afraid.