Kingdom (31 page)

‘A few minutes later, after I had been escorted back to my room in silence, I tried to regain a hold on my wits. I sat down and forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply and then I struggled to assemble the facts. The lamas of Shangri-La had no intention of ever letting me leave again – that much was clear. Felix Koenig had told the truth when he said that his expedition had reached their goal; that too was obvious and furthermore, according to the Abbot, one of Koenig’s companions was not only still alive but was actually now the King of Shangri-La, though given the fate that befell all monarchs of this evil place, it was not at all clear if that meant anything other than that he had been imprisoned here for years with a sentence of ultimate death by burning upon his head.

‘But then there was one other equally incontrovertible fact that provided at least a faint glimmer of hope: Felix Koenig had escaped. He had made it back to India; he had been seen again, and so it was not true that there was no way out at all. Sure, by the time he had reached Bombay, he was raving mad and he never completely regained his mental equilibrium, but the war was also to account for that.

‘The fact was that the descriptions that Felix Koenig had passed on, though vague and strange, seemed to be of the same place. The longing to fly down to the emerald valley that he described was almost conclusive proof to me. I could easily picture myself, as the condemned King, pacing the battlements, yearning to be back in the emerald valley, and instead waiting grimly for my successor to tug on the thread below.

‘And there were other thoughts that came to mind: Haushofer and Hess had been right about Tibet and the Book of Dzyan. But did they gain anything from their contact with Shangri-La? Did Koenig’s companions ever exercise their authority as kings in any decisive way, or had they been merely summoned by the lamas as sacrificial offerings, chosen from amongst the German race at the height of its powers as fitting physical and psychic specimens? And had the lamas instigated the dreams of Wotan and sown the seeds of the upheavals of the war? Had they been using their awful knowledge to cultivate, in the garden of Europe, a breed of men of such will-power and self-belief that they would be fitting heirs to the barbaric throne of Shangri-La? Or were the rest of Haushofer’s beliefs also true? Was the Book of Dzyan an Aryan artefact left over from the destruction of an Aryan civilization in the Gobi desert, a civilization that itself had risen from the ashes of Lemuria, the lost continent of the Pacific?

‘All these question whirled in my brain. If I resigned myself to my fate, and accepted the imprisonment and certain death of my reign as King, then I would be able to seek answers to these questions. It was ironic, I thought, that I would gain much of what I had desired – access to the Book of Dzyan, knowledge of the deepest mysteries of the psychic carnage that had devastated Europe. But the price would be my own incarceration, my own violent death. And it seemed to me at that moment that I cared much more about life than all these questions. I had to find a way out of this ghastly place. I had to discover the escape route that Felix Koenig must have discovered before me. He at least was proof that it was possible, whatever the High Lama said . . .’

First light came early, just after five thirty a.m. As Nancy came blearily into consciousness, she could hear that at least one of the sherpas was already up, making breakfast. She rolled over onto her elbow, and found that she was alone in the cramped tent. In the struggling daylight, she saw Jack’s things folded neatly, everything ready for departure. She slipped out of her sleeping bag, her chilled breath issuing from her mouth in great plumes. She put on her walking boots and the chuba and then wrestled her arms into the sheepskin coat and crawled out of the tent.

Breakfast was a hurried affair, everyone standing in silence eating tsampa out of tin mugs and drinking butter tea. As soon as the tents were packed and the mugs had been washed in the stream, they set off again; the serious climb was about to begin. Step by step, the going got more difficult. Nancy’s lungs no longer acted automatically. She had to force herself to breathe with every step in order to get enough oxygen into her veins to propel her forward. After half an hour of this, she had almost lost sight of the two sherpas. Jack was some ten yards in front of her and the other sherpa was bringing up the rear, alert for danger, she assumed. Even though Jack was just within talking distance, the idea of even attempting to exchange words was out of the question. She needed all her energy simply to stay upright.

For hour after hour they ascended like this; even when they took an occasional break for water and butter tea, Nancy said nothing, parsimonious with words because she was so exhausted. The temperature edged a little lower until it was well below freezing and the scree slopes were peppered with snow. At the back of her mind was the possibility that the pass might in fact be entirely snowbound, in which case they would have to descend again. That would shatter morale, she thought. The other concern was altitude sickness, for that too would bring to a speedy end her chances of getting into Pemako. The instant it set in, and it could come any time, they would have to get straight back down to a lower altitude. She would have to hope that she was lucky, that they were all lucky.

By midday, they were approaching the top of the pass. The slopes were spartan at this height; only the lichens and mosses still managed to flourish. A mist had enveloped the path and was billowing around the rocky crevasse up which they were ascending towards the Su La. Nancy was aware that she was getting a headache, and she seemed to be losing the ability to tell whether she was hot or cold, although it was well below freezing. This troubled her deeply, and she tried to resist these signs that her body was not coping, to push them away.

The sherpa following behind came up level with her and tried to offer encouragement. He seemed to be indicating that they were near the top. She tried to smile but couldn’t manage it, and then all of a sudden she slipped and everything went dark. The next thing she knew, she was sitting inside the tent and someone was trying to pour hot tea down her throat while someone else was rubbing her back through the sheepskin and the chuba. For a moment she couldn’t speak; she was disoriented and her head was pounding as if she had received a blow. Jack said, ‘OK, now, have some more of this,’ and forced the tea towards her lips again. She took a sip.

‘Am I all right?’ she asked him.

‘Yes. We are going to rest. Drink more tea. Your body needs the heat.’

‘Is it the altitude?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s more likely to be exhaustion . . .’

She tried to explain that she was fine, that they should simply press on, but then she must have fallen asleep again. How long she slept she did not know, but she awoke feeling somewhat better. When she opened her eyes, the image that presented itself to her was so surreal that she thought for a second that she must be dreaming. Jack was lying next to her and the three sherpas were squatting over them both, their backs pushing out the canvas of the tent wall. They looked like doctors in an operating theatre.

‘Jack?’

‘Nancy, you’re awake. Good.’

‘What happened? Why is everyone in here?’

‘We’re talking – and keeping warm.’

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s morning.’

‘Still?’

‘Er . . . no. A day and night have passed since you went to sleep.’

‘Really?’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘A bit better I think. Listen, I’m sorry about this . . .’

‘No need. Let’s try and get some breakfast down you and then see if we can get going. It’s only few hundred yards more to the top. We were lucky you called the break here – it’s quite sheltered.’ He began to untangle himself from his sleeping bag, and as he did so the sherpas slipped out of the tent doors and into the snow, like seals slipping through a hole in the ice.

‘I’ll come back in a moment with some breakfast,’ he said.

‘Tsampa?’

‘Oh yes. Don’t you worry, tsampa is always on the menu at this hotel.’

She managed to laugh, though hoarsely as she watched him disappear through the tent door. She was feeling a bit better. It had been so intense, the feeling of exhaustion; it was as if she couldn’t go on – in fact she hadn’t gone on, she reminded herself. Her body had just called time on the whole escapade; it had independently decided enough was enough, no matter what her mind wanted it to do.

The tent was already much colder, now that the three men had all left. Jack reappeared and passed her two tin mugs, one of tea and one filled to the brim with tsampa.

‘The orders of the hotel stroke hospital tent are that you must finish both of these, no complaining, and then we’ll reassess your case.’

This wasn’t so bad, she thought with a smile; being relatively snug and warm, whilst Jack waited on her hand and foot, even if it was moist sawdust that he was serving her. He must have been worried about her. Sure he was, losing the pay packet on a hazardous mountain, hardly the sort of thing he wanted to do. Always keep your sponsors alive – that must be his basic mantra. But perhaps that was unfair. He might have been genuinely concerned about her; he wasn’t, she was coming to realize, quite the mercenary that Krishna had advertised him as.

Herzog must be a hard man, she thought. He was in his sixties. To do this climb was bad enough, even at her age, but they said he still scaled peaks as well. Physical strength and will-power, that’s what got you up mountains; but by his age the will-power had to be pre-eminent, compensating entirely for the fading strengths of the body. To do this climb, at his age, Herzog must be a man with an iron will Or, she thought grimly, really a magician, able to conjure himself up these ancient ravines, to warp the properties of the physical world. It wasn’t possible, but then what was possible anyway? – she no longer knew, and couldn’t begin to imagine.

The final ascent wasn’t nearly as bad as Nancy had expected. Perhaps she had acclimatized, or maybe she was invigorated by her twenty-four hours’ sleep: either way, she reached the top of the 13,000-foot pass without having to rest again. She didn’t realize at first that it was the top of the pass. She simply noted that the party had stopped, and for a time she was bent double, struggling to breathe. Yet when she looked up she saw several great piles of stones and hundreds of prayer flags fluttering in the mist. The air was full of freezing moisture and it was impossible to see more than twenty yards. Presumably the view was spectacular; she would never know. As they reached the first pile of stones, the sherpas burst into song and tied small flags of cloth to some of the sturdier-looking flagpoles. They began to chat excitedly to Jack, and Nancy asked what they were all talking about.

‘They say that we should enjoy the cold while we can.’ Jack laughed heartily, also in high spirits. ‘As soon as we drop down four or five thousand feet, it will be boiling hot.’

She found it hard to believe, but soon enough they were off again and, within the hour, the mist had vanished and she could clearly see the path ahead and the surrounding landscape. They were at the top end of a lush tropical valley. The path ahead was a wavy black line etched into the scree slope; the descent was clear, and a welcome change from the merciless climb of recent days.

They plodded on downwards and gradually the scree was broken up by vegetation: first, ankle-high dwarf ferns and then waist-high bushes. When they descended to about ten thousand feet the trees returned. Now, as the sherpas had predicted, they were stripping off their clothes, first the sheepskins and then the chubas. The sun was directly overhead with not a wisp of cloud to offer protection – just an azure, blemish-free sky and all around an ever-growing riot of greenery.

Their course wound through jungle, and the sterile silence of the upper levels was now replaced with a cacophony of noise: insects and animals, snuffling through the undergrowth; life in all its colour and vibrancy. They stopped for lunch in a deserted village that was surrounded on all sides by cornfields partially overrun by the creeping jungle. They drew water from an abandoned well, cleaned it with iodine drops, and made tea and tsampa.

With Jack translating for her, Nancy asked the sherpas if they had any experience of tertons. The oldest sherpa, a man called Glumbuk Mergo, gave a long and sincere account of how he had once witnessed a terton drawing a terma out of a giant rock boulder. This had happened down in his home village in what was now China, many years ago, when he was a boy. With much waving of his hands, he explained how he had seen an old terton strip himself almost bare and then, after meditating for three days and nights, he had stood up and struck the rock with a hammer, in front of the entire village. There had been an explosion, like a lightning strike, and everyone had fallen to the floor and hidden in fear. When they looked up they saw a terrifying spirit beast, a terdak, the guardian of the terma in the spirit realm, fighting with the terton. There were more explosions and they all ran into the forest and hid. When it was quiet again, Glumbuk and some of the other young men came back and discovered the terton lying on his back with the terma, a thick yak-skin book in this case, resting on his chest.

Jack translated all this with a smile and winked at Nancy when he got to the bit about the terdak. Nancy said nothing, but she wondered at Glumbuk’s certainty, his absolute conviction that this was what he had seen. With my own eyes, he had kept saying, pointing at his eyes to emphasize his words. After that, one of the sherpas went off and picked some orchids for Nancy and a mood of levity took over the group; for a brief hour they forgot about the risks they were taking and the strange mission they were embarked upon.

The sherpas were just packing up the paraffin stove when suddenly they became aware that they were being watched. Unnoticed, an old man dressed in red-orange robes and wearing a golden-red crown on his head had approached to within ten feet of their camp and was now observing them calmly with his hands pressed together in greeting and prayer. The sherpas looked as stunned as Nancy was, unable to believe that an old man had managed to sneak up on them. For a moment even Jack seemed to be speechless, but then he managed to regain his composure. He stood up and, putting his hands together, he bowed low to the old man, in recognition of his seniority.