But he is no longer your son.
That much you must try to understand. For your own sake. Please try to grasp what I am saying.”
“What do you want with him?” Christopher was shouting now.
He could hear his voice echoing in the empty, snow-filled chamber.
“Why did you bring him here?”
“He was brought here at my request. I wanted him brought to Dorje-la.
As yet even he does not understand. But in time he will.
Please do not make it difficult for him. Please do not ask to see him.”
The abbot reached down and picked up a small silver bell from a low table. He rang it gently, filling the room suddenly with a loose, fluttering music, like fine crystal being struck. There was a smell of old incense, like crushed flowers in a tomb.
“You will have to leave now,” he said.
“But we shall meet again.”
Footsteps sounded behind Christopher. He turned to see the steward waiting for him. As he walked away from the abbot, the old man’s voice came to him out of the shadows.
“Mr. Wylam. Please try to be wise. Do not attempt to find your son. We do not wish any harm to befall you: but you must take care. You ignored Tsarong Rinpoche’s warning. Do not ignore mine.”
Christopher was taken back to the room in which he had been confined before. He sat for hours in the silence of his own thoughts, trying to come to terms with his situation. The revelation that William was alive and being kept here in Dorje-la had shaken him.
He needed time to think, time to decide what to do next.
Several times he went to the window and looked down at the pass below. Once, he saw a party of monks moving along a narrow path away from the monastery. He watched until they vanished from sight. Later, he saw someone running to the monastery from a point just above the pass. From time to time, he heard the sound of chanting, punctuated by the steady beats of a drum. On a terrace below him and to his left, an old monk sat for hours turning a large prayer-wheel At sunset, the trumpet on the roof brayed into the coming darkness; it was quite near him and very loud.
A monk came and left him some food, lit his lamp, and left again without saying a word in reply to his questions. There was soup and tsampa and a small pot of tea. He ate slowly and automatically, chewing and swallowing the balls of roasted barley without enjoyment. When he had finished eating, he lifted the cover from the teacup. As he raised the pot to pour, his eye caught sight of something white pressed into the cup.
It was a sheet of paper, folded several times and pushed firmly down. Christopher took it out and unfolded it. It was covered in Tibetan writing, in an elegant Umay hand. At the bottom was a small diagram, a series of intersecting lines that lacked any obvious pattern.
He took the sheet across to the table by the bed, where the lamp was burning. His knowledge of written Tibetan was limited, but with a little effort he was able to decipher most of the text:
I am told you speak our language. But I do not know if you can read it
also. I can only write and hope that you will be able to read this. If
you
cannot read it, I will have to find a way to send someone to you; but that may be difficult. The trapa who brings your food does not know that I had this message placed in your cup: do not speak of it to him.
I am told you are the father of the child who was brought here from the land of the pee-lings. I am told other things, but I do not know whether to believe them.
You are in danger in Dorje-la. Be careful at all times. I want to help you, but I too must be careful. I cannot come to you, so you must come to me. Tonight, your door will be unlocked. When you find it open, follow the map I have drawn below. It will lead you to the gon-kang.
I shall be waiting for you there. But take care that no-one sees you leave.
There was no signature. He re-read the letter several times, making sure he had understood it. Now that he knew the diagram was meant to be a map, he thought he could make some sense of it, even though he could not relate the rooms and corridors it showed to places he had actually seen.
He stood up and went to the door. It was still locked. He sighed and went back to the bed, feeling restless now that a possibility for action had at last presented itself. Who had sent him the message?
He knew no-one in Dorje-la. And why should one of the monks want to help him, a stranger?
Several times over the next few hours he went to the door and tried it. It was always locked, and he began to think that the mysterious letter-writer had been unable to carry out his plan. The last service of the day was sung, the monks returned to their cells for the night, and a profound silence settled on Dorje-la at last.
About an hour later, he heard a low fumbling sound at his door.
He got up and advanced cautiously to it. Silence. He reached out a hand and tried the handle. It turned without resistance.
Quickly, he found his lamp and stepped outside. He was in a long corridor: at the far end, a single butter-lamp burned. There was no-one in sight. AH around him, he could feel the monastery sleeping. It was freezing in the corridor.
Consulting the map, he set off slowly to his right, down to where the corridor joined another. The second corridor stretched away into shadow. There were lamps at intervals, faint offerings to the surrounding gloom. In the dim light from his own lamp, the painted walls seemed half alive, seething with a dark, tormented movement. Everywhere, red predominated. Faces appeared for a moment out of the darkness, then vanished again. Hands moved.
Bared teeth grinned. Skeletons danced.
Imperceptibly, a sense of deep antiquity began to impress itself on Christopher as he padded deeper into the sleeping monastery.
He could see, if only imperfectly, how the character of the regions through which he passed was undergoing a gradual change. Like geological strata, the individual sections of the gompa showed clearly how they had been built up, a little at a time. The further he penetrated, the more a primitive quality revealed itself to him in the paintings and carvings. Chinese influence gave way to Indian and Indian to what Christopher recognized as early Tibetan. He could feel growing in him a sense of trepidation. This was like no monastery in which he had ever set foot before.
The final corridor ended in a low door on either side of which the images of guardian deities had been painted. Two torches burned in brackets half-way up the wall. This was an ancient part of the monastery, perhaps a thousand years old.
He stood at the entrance to the gon-kang, the darkest and most forbidden place in any gompa. Christopher had only ever heard descriptions of such places from Tibetan friends, but he had at no time been allowed to set foot in one. They were dark places, narrow crypt-chapels where the masks for the sacred dances were kept.
This was the ritual abode of theyi-dam, the tutelary deities, whose black statues watched over the monastery and its inhabitants. It was the seat of the sacred horror at the heart of Tibetan religion.
Christopher hesitated at the door, oddly frightened at the prospect of entering. He had no reason to be frightened: there was only darkness inside, darkness and strange gods in whom he did not believe. But something made him hesitate before finally putting his hand to the door and pushing.
It was unlocked. Immediately behind lay a second door bearing the brightly painted face of a yi-dam. Red, staring eyes confronted him like living coals. The light of his lamp flickered and shone on old paint and flecks of gold leaf. He pushed open the second door.
Darkness visible, darkness like velvet pressing against his eyes, darkness palpable and entranced. Here, night was permanent. It had never been truly broken, it would go on forever. A strong smell of old butter filled the stale, lightless air. It was like entering a tomb.