They went through several more rooms, each as bizarre as the one before. In one, great spiders scuttled in glass cases and wove savage webs like clouds of silk. In another, fish swam in giant tanks, endlessly prowling back and forth in the dark, quiet waters, turning and turning nervously, never still, never at rest, like sharks that will die if they stop moving. And finally there came a small room filled with bright flames. Everywhere, lamps burned, throwing tongues of fire into the shadow-encrusted air. Earth and air, water and fire all the elements and creatures from each one. The world in miniature.
At the end of the fire-room was a door different to the others they had passed through. It was painted with mandalas circular patterns in which the worlds of air and land and sea were depicted.
From reality to shadow, from the shell to the kernel. The steward opened the door and stood aside to let Christopher pass.
Beyond the mandala door lay a great chamber that seemed to stretch across most of the upper storey. Shafts of dust-laden light drifted lazily through apertures in the ceiling, but they were insufficient to dispel the abundant shadows lurking everywhere.
The tiny flames of butter-lamps wavered in the distance like fireflies above a dark lake. Christopher heard a sound behind him.
He turned to see the door close. The steward had gone.
As his eyes grew accustomed once more to the gloom, Christopher saw what sort of room it was he had entered. He had heard of such places before, but had never expected to see one. This was the chorten hall, where the tombs of all the past abbots of the monastery were ranged along one walclass="underline" great boxes, vaster than the deaths they contained, untarnished, polished, dusted gleaming receptacles for decaying flesh and mouldering bones. The lights flickered and picked out the facades of the great tombs, built from bronze and gold and silver, encrusted with jewels and precious ornaments.
Each chorten stood on a large pedestal and rose almost to the ceiling. In an impermanent world, they were tokens of permanence, like crystal in ice or gold in sunlight, never melting, never shifting through the dark, uncertain boundaries of change and chance.
Inside each one, the mummified remains of an abbot had been placed. From time to time, salt was added to keep the mummies in a state of semi-preservation. Through grilles set in the front of the chortens, the gilded faces of their inhabitants gazed out forlornly on a world of grey shadows.
Slowly, Christopher walked along the row of golden tombs.
Outside, he could hear the whistling of the afternoon wind. It was cold up here, cold and alone and, somehow, futile. There were twelve chortens in all. Some of the abbots would have died as old men, some as children but if the monks were to be believed, they were one and all incarnations of the same spirit, the same being in a multitude of bodies. Each living abbot would dwell up here all his life, side by side with his old bodies, as a man will dwell with his memories or his castoff clothes, waiting for his own body to join the others, waiting to take on a new form but never a new identity.
‘
The abbot was waiting for him just like the day before, in a niche at the far end of the long hall, seated on cushions among gilded shadows and gods like fire. He seemed more diminished here, dwarfed by the huge chortens, a pale figure lost among his own past lives. It was as if he had been sitting there, on that same throne, on that same spot, down long centuries, watching the chortens being built and occupied, waiting for someone to come and say it was finished, that it was time to leave at last. Christopher bowed low and was told to seat himself on a padded seat facing the abbot.
“You asked to see me,” said the old man.
“Yes.”
“An important matter.”
“Yes,” said Christopher.
“Go on.”
“Someone came to my room last night. While I was sleeping. Do you understand? He entered my room while I was sleeping. He tried to kill me. I want to know why. I want you to tell me why.”
The abbot did not answer straight away. He appeared shaken by Christopher’s revelation.
“How do you know he wanted to kill you?” he asked at last.
“Because he had a knife. Because he carried a gar rotting cord and tried to use it on me.”
“I see. And you think I know something about this, that I am perhaps responsible for it.”
Christopher said nothing.
“Yes. You think I tried to have you killed.” There was a long pause.
The abbot sighed audibly. When he spoke again, his voice had altered.
It was weaker, older, sadder than before.
“I would not have you harmed. That you must believe, even if you doubt everything else you see or hear in this place. That alone is true. Do you understand me? Do you believe me?”
You are holy to me. I cannot touch you. The words came unbidden into his mind, like birds that had been caged and suddenly set free.
They fluttered grey wings at him and were gone. But I can harm you, he thought. He could feel the cold blade of the knife nestling against his calf.
“How can I believe you?” he said.
“You’ve taken my son by force and killed a man while doing so. One of your monks has killed a boy whose only crime was to have been injured. And a man comes to my room in the dark, carrying a knife. Why should I believe a word you say?”
He saw the abbot’s eyes watching him intently.
“Because I am telling you the truth.” There was a pause.
“When you met me first, you mentioned someone called Zamyatin. Tell me now what you know of him.”
Christopher hesitated. He knew so little of Zamyatin himself, and so much of what he did know depended on information that would be meaningless to the abbot of a remote Tibetan monastery that he scarcely knew where to start. It seemed easiest to begin with the basic facts that Winterpole had supplied him with.
When he had finished, the abbot said nothing. He sat motionless on his throne, carefully sifting everything Christopher had told him. After what seemed an age, he spoke again.
“Zamyatin is here, in Dorje-la. Did you know that?”
“Yes. I guessed he must be.”
“He has been here for several months. He came as a pilgrim. At first.
Tell me, do you think he was behind the attempt on your life?”
Christopher nodded. It was highly likely.
“You are enemies, you and this Russian?”
“Our countries are .. . not at war, exactly. But in a state of
rivalry. Tension.”
“Not your countries,” said the abbot.
“Not your people. Your philosophies. Not long ago, your countries were allies in the great war against the Germans. Is that not so?”
Whoever this abbot was, thought Christopher, he had underestimated his knowledge of the world outside his monastery.
“Yes, we were allies .. . But then the Russians had a revolution.
They killed their king and his family his wife and children. A party called Bolsheviks came to power. They killed anyone who stood in their way tens of thousands, guilty, innocent: it made no difference.”
“Perhaps they had a reason for killing their king. Was he a just king?”
Not just and yet not a tyrant, thought Christopher. Just weak willed and inept, the figurehead of an autocratic system he could not change.
“I think he wanted to be just. To be loved by his people,” he said.
“That is not enough,” the abbot answered.
“A man may want to enter Nirvana, but first he must act. There are eight things necessary for liberation from pain: the most important is right action. When a just man takes no action, the unjust will act instead.”