Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

‘Not really the first, Mr Holmes. Oh no. My late guru, the great Hungarian orientalist, Alexander Csoma de Koros, not only produced the first Thibetan-English dictionary, but pioneered the whole modern study of the Thibetan language and civilisation.’

‘How were your interests first directed towards this field?’

‘Well, Sir. It is a long story, but I will be brief. I finished my M.A. from Calcutta University in 1862, when I was a young man of twenty-four. Being favourably known to Sir Alfred Croft, the director of Public Instruction of Bengal, who has always been my good friend and mentor, I was appointed to the post of headmaster of the Bhutia Boarding School in Darjeeling. At that pleasant hill station on the border of Sikkhim. I met Csoma de Koros.

‘He was an extraordinary man and a great scholar, truly one of the greatest. He had left Hungary as a young man and come to this Himalayan town to learn everything he could about Thibet. He believed that the Hungarian people, the Magyars, had, many centuries ago migrated to Hungary from Thibet; and everything about that strange country fascinated him. He was a very old man when I met him, and it is my great regret that I was not able to fully imbibe from this fount of wisdom, for he passed away a year later. But none the less, he fired in me a great inspiration to learn about Thibet.

‘You see, Sir, after deep study of the Thibetan language and scriptures, de Koros was convinced that Thibet was the last living link that connects us with the civilisations of a distant past. That although the mystery-cults of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, of the Incas and the Mayas, had perished with the destruction of their civilisations, and are forever lost to our knowledge, Thibet, due to its natural isolation and its inaccessibility, had succeeded not only in preserving but in keeping alive the traditions of the most distant past — the knowledge of the hidden forces of the human soul and the highest achievements and esoteric teachings of Indian saints and sages.

‘I applied myself with energy to the study of the Thibetan language and established friendly relations with the Rajah of Sikkhim (who is of pure Thibetan stock) and many of the leading lamas in that country, so that I was eventually not only conversant in the language but was able to read and understand many of their ancient books. The authorities eventually came to learn of my abilities in this arcane subject and decided that the interests of the Government of India would be better served if I were to quit the field of public education and join another department where my skills could be put to more … aah … vigorous use. And this is how I now happen to be here, Mr Holmes, at your service.’

‘And a valuable one you would be performing for me, Huree, if you were to teach me the Thibetan language.’

‘You do too much honour to my trifling skills, Mr Holmes, nevertheless the littie I know is at your disposal. But I must warn you, Sir, that mere knowledge of the language would not help you to
enter
Thibet.’

‘What do you mean, Huree?’

‘Well, Mr Holmes, you may have heard of Thibet referred to as “The Forbidden Land” — and that is exactly what it is to all foreigners, especially Europeans. The priestiy rulers of that country are jealous of their power, their wealth and their secrets, and they fear that the white man may take them away. Therefore Europeans or their agents are forbidden, on pain of death, to enter Thibet. The situation has taken a turn for the worse recently, since the Dalai Lama, the Supreme Pontiff of the Thibetan church and the ruler of the country, is now in his minority, and the power of the Imperial Manchu representative in Lhassa has gained ascendancy.’

‘What do the Manchus have to do with Thibet?’

‘Since the army of the Emperor Yung-Cheng entered Thibet at the beginning of the last century, the Manchu throne has claimed certain suzerain rights in Thibet, and has established two Manchu representatives called Ambans in Lhassa, the capital city. The exercising of imperial prerogatives in Thibet has had an uneven history, which has also affected the position of those wishing to travel to Thibet. At the moment, unfortunately, not only has the senior Manchu Amban in Lhassa, Count O-erh-t’ai, gained an ascendancy over the Dalai Lama and the Thibetan Government, but he also has an intense and virulent hatred for all Europeans, especially the English.’

‘Hmm … I see. But have you yourself managed to get into Thibet?’

‘Yes, Mr Holmes. The native has a few advantages in this respect. That is why the Department employs natives for conducting explorations and investigations in places like Thibet; especially from among those races living near the Thibetan frontier.

‘I myself travelled to Thibet in the guise of a holy man, a pundit, but unfortunately aroused the suspicions of the authorities half-way to Lhassa, at the town of Shigatse, where the great monastery of the Teshoo Lama
¹
is located. The Manchu officer of the small Chinese garrison there was one of the most unpleasant representatives of the Celestial Empire I have ever had occasion to encounter. The blighter would have beheaded me on mere suspicion — dam’ his eyes!

‘By Jove, Mr Holmes, you will appreciate the irrevocability of my position, but at the eleventh hour I was saved from the executioner’s sword by the mother of the Teshoo Lama, whom I had earlier cured of a mild dyspepsia with an effervescent draught of my own preparation. The pious lady sent a large bribe to the officer in question, which fortuitously relieved him of most suspicions concerning my status and activities. But I was forced to curtail my explorations and retire posthaste, to Darjeeling. So you see, Sir, a visit to Thibet is not all beer and skitties, as they say. Besides, what with the altitude, snow-storms, wild animals, bandits and what not — it can all be very trying.’

‘Well, Hurree, you have certainly made the perils of a Thibetan journey clear enough. But one must cross one’s bridges when one gets to them. For the present I will, with your invaluable guidance, confine my explorations to the complexities of the Thibetan language.’

So I commenced giving daily lessons to Mr Holmes. He was an admirable pupil, and had an unusually sensitive ear for the subtle tonal inflections in the language, which generally drove most Europeans to despair. For instance, the Thibetan ‘la’ could mean a mountain pass, an honorific suffix tagged to a person’s name, a god, a musk deer, wages, to lose something, or even one’s soul, all depending on the exact tonal inflection used when pronouncing it.

Sherlock Holmes also found no difficulty in the usage of honorifics, for the Thibetan language is not one language but three: ordinary, honorific, and high-honorific. The first is used towards the common people; the second towards gentlemen; and the third towards the Dalai Lama. One may think that these distinctions are merely a question of prefixes and suffixes. But that is not the case at all: even the roots of the corresponding words in each often have no relation to one another.

But I will not burden my readers with any further digression into the subtleties of the Thibetan language, for such a subject can only be of interest to a specialist. Nevertheless, for those readers who would like to know more about the Thibetan language I can recommend my
Thibetan for the Beginner
(Re 1), published by the Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, and the
Grammar of Colloquial Thibetan,
(Rs 2.4 annas) by the same publisher.

1. Probably

1. The monastery of Tashi-lhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lamas. Early European travellers to Tibet and writers mistakenly referred to the Panchen Lama as the Teshoo’ lama or the ‘Tashi’ lama, after the monastery.

9

A Pukka Villain

Runnymeade Cottage was just outside Chota Simla. Behind the cottage was a mule track which, seven miles beyond Chota Simla, led to the Hindustan-Thibet (or H-T) road. Sometimes our lessons would be disturbed by the sound of bells, as Thibetan traders plodded along the track with their panniered mules. Occasionally lamas in weathered wine-red robes would go past, twirling their prayer wheels, and half naked sanyasis with begging bowls of polished coco-de-mer and blackbuck skins would make their way to some distant cave-shrine, where they would spend the summer fed by the nearest village. Pahari herdsmen in warm putoo (home-spun wool) coats would pass through with their flocks of goats and sheep, sometimes playing strange tunes on bamboo flutes.

I would explain to Mr Holmes the background of these various people — their origins, religious customs and so on and so forth. He took a great deal of interest in them. Sometimes he would stop a Thibetan muleteer or a Ladakhi trader and try out his Thibetan on them. They would smoke his tobacco and laugh with amazement when the strange sahib spoke to them, haltingly maybe, but unmistakably in their own language. Months passed in this manner: in study, long walks and conversation, without even a hint of Colonel Moran or his society’s activities ever disturbing the peace at Runnymeade Cottage.

It was this tranquillity that permitted me the leisure to examine Mr Holmes’s personality and uncover traits in it that were not at all tranquil. He was not a happy man. It seemed that the great powers he possessed were sometimes more of a curse than a blessing to him. His cruel clarity of vision seemed often to deny him the comfort of those illusions that permit most of humankind to go through their short lives absorbed in their small problems and humble pleasures, oblivious of the misery surrounding them and their own inevitably wretched ends. When his powers thus overwhelmed him, Sherlock Holmes would, unfortunately, take certain injurious drugs such as morphine and cocaine in daily injections for many weeks.

Aside from this unhappy habit, there was much in Mr Holmes that was lofty and spiritual. He was celibate, and did not seem to have any desire for such human foibles as wealth, power, fame or comeliness. He could have been an ascetic in a mountain cave, for the simplicity of his life.

Strickland came up for Christmas. Simla was deep in snow, but up at the cottage, sitting before a roaring log fire, we warmed ourselves with potent beverages, and listened to Strickland’s, report. The case had made no progress. In spite of the strenuous efforts by the Bombay police, no link could be established between the dead Portuguese clerk and Colonel Moran. Also, no witnesses had been found who had seen anything remotely suspicious at the time the clerk had been shot in front of the police station. Strickland had attempted to rattle the Colonel’s self-assurance by sending in ‘beaters’ to flush him out of his lair. He had posted policemen in civilian attire around the Colonel’s house and club, and had even had half-a-dozen following him wherever he went. But Colonel Moran was not a man easily shaken by such tactics, and stuck to his daily routine as if the ‘beaters’ did not exist at all. Once, on leaving his club, he had even made one of the policeman hold his horse, and subsequently tipped him a rupee. A cool rogue, the Colonel sahib.

Strickland also had instructions for me from another Colonel, our department head, Colonel Creighton. I was to remain with Mr Sherlock Holmes for the time being and make myself useful to him in whatever way he wanted. I was also to take every precaution against any further attempt on Mr Holmes’s life — and I was to look sharp about it! The last comment — quite uncalled for — was probably Colonel Creighton’s way of expressing his disapproval of the way I had been caught with my dhoti down, when Colonel Moran’s thugs had made their abortive attempt to murder Sherlock Holmes on the Frontier Mall. Being a scrupulously honest sort of chap I had not hesitated to include the incident in my report to the Colonel, even though it had not really shown me up in the best of lights. Even if I hadn’t, the Colonel would have learnt about it one way or the other — he was that sort of person.

Well, we babus have our pride. I was determined never to have such an embarrassing situation repeated again. So I doubled my precautions, instructed my informers and agents to increase their vigilance, and even employed, full-time, a couple of littie chokras, to keep an eye around the vicinity of Runnymeade Cottage for anyone who might take undue interest in the cottage or its occupant. In my line of work it is axiomatic that time and energy spent on precaution are never wasted. Sure enough, within a week the truth of this was demonstrated, Q.E.D.

One day one of the ragged little urchins, the one with the particularly runny nose, came running to my house at the lower bazaar. ‘Babuji. A strange man appeared at the back of the sahib’s house a short while ago,’ the boy said, sniffing in a disgusting manner.

‘And what of it?’ I asked impatiently. ‘All manner of men pass by the track behind the house.’

‘Nay, Babuji. This man did more. He entered the house.’

‘Kya? What manner of man was he?’

‘He looked like a real budmaash, Babuji. He had long matted hair and was dressed belike as a Bhotia, in brown woollen bukoo and sheepskin cap. He also had a burra talwar, stuck in his belt.’

‘And what of the sahib?’ I enquired anxiously.

‘We know not, Babuji. We saw him not.’

I imagined Mr Holmes peacefully sitting at his desk going over his Thibetan declensions, or happily performing one of his malodorous experiments, while an assassin silently approached him from behind, a glittering sword raised in his hands. I felt slightly sick.

Reaching under my bed, I quickly dragged out my tin trunk. Rummaging in it I finally found the small nickel-plated revolver that I had, some years ago, purchased at the Multani bazaar in Cabul. However, I must confess that I am a hopeless shot. In fact I could never quite get over the inconvenient but purely involuntary habit of closing my eyes dam’ tight when pulling the trigger. But being ever averse to the crudities of violence I had always considered the bally thing as an object to be used more
in terrorem
than
in mortiferus
— so the standards of my marksmanship did not really matter too much.

I puffed up to the cottage behind the boy. The other chokra was waiting by the bend in the road, just before Runnymeade Cottage.

‘Ohe, Sunnoo,’ the boy with me called to his friend, ‘what has happened?’

‘Kuch nahin,’ the other replied, ‘the man is still in the house.’

‘And the sahib?’ I enquired anxiously, fingering the pistol under my coat.

‘I have not seen him at all, Babuji.’

‘What of the servant?’

‘He went to the bazaar an hour ago — before the Bhotia man entered the house.’

‘Both of you stay here quietly. I’m going to take a look,’ said I, as confidently as I could. I was not very happy about it, but it had to be done. I approached the cottage from the east side where there were the least number of windows, walking as lightiy as my hundred and twenty seers of corporeal flesh permitted. I managed to scramble over the picket fence without any difficulty — just a few scratches and a slightly torn dhoti — and sidled up to the stone wall of the cottage. Then I crept up to the front door and prepared for action. Girding up my loins — in this case quite literally as I had to tie the loose ends of my dhoti around my loins for the sake of comfort and convenience — and closing my hand on the butt of my revolver, I slowly pushed the door open.

The small parlour was empty, but I noticed that the door of the study-cum-living room was ajar. With nerves tingling I tiptoed over and peeked in.

A pukka villain of a hill-man stood by the side table near the fire-place, rifling through Mr Holmes’s papers. He looked decidedly sinister. His small slanting eyes peered furtively at the papers that he clutched with thin dirty fingers. A scraggly moustache dropped around the sides of his greasy lips. His long hair matted with dirt complemented the filthy sheep-skin cap that partly covered it. He wore a bukoo, or woollen gown of Thibetan cut, and felt boots of Tartar design. His Thibetan broadsword, I was relieved to note, was firmly in its scabbard, stuck into the belt of his robe. He looked quite the budmaash, or desperado, and was probably one of those bad characters from the upper reaches of Gharwal who specialised in robbing pilgrims proceeding to Mount Kailash.

But what was he doing? If he was a robber, he should be packing away whatever articles of value he could lay his hands on, and not poring through other people’s correspondence — which he certainly could not read in any case. There was a mystery here, and I would not solve it by dithering in the parlour.

Cocking the hammer of the revolver, I entered the room. ‘Khabardar!’ I said in a brave voice. He turned towards me slowly. The blighter looked even more villainous than I had previously supposed. His greasy lips curled into a sneer and he placed his hands akimbo on his hips. ‘Take heed, budmaash,’ I expostulated firmly. ‘Thou hast only to touch the hilt of thy sword and I will most surely blow thee to Jehannum on a lead ball.’

He must have been impressed by my stern demeanour for he suddenly fell on his knees and babbled apologies and excuses in a queer mixture of bad Hindustani and Thibetan. ‘Forgive thy slave, Lord and Master. I only came to take back what is rightfully mine. What was stolen from me by the tall English sahib. My sacred ghau, my charm-box. Even now it hangs there on the wall of this unbeliever’s house.’

Mr Holmes stealing his charm-box? What tommy-rot did this smooth-tongued villain expect me to believe. I moved my head to look at the wall where he was pointing but there was no charm-box there. When I turned back to the rascal to give him a piece of my mind, Sherlock Holmes stood smiling at me by the fireplace.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t grip the revolver so tightly, Huree,’ said he in his dry, unemotional way. ‘After all, the thing may have a hair trigger, you know.’

‘Good Heavens, Mr Holmes!’ I cried in amazement. ‘This takes the bally biscuit. How the deuce an’ all …’

‘Confess that you were absolutely taken in,’ said he, chuckling to himself and throwing his cap, wig, and false moustache on the armchair.

‘Why, certainly, Sir. It was a most extraordinary thespian performance. But you should not pull my leg like that, Mr Holmes. I was very worried about your safety.’

‘I owe you an apology for that. I certainly did not intend this disguise to be some kind of practical joke on you. This is my passport to Thibet.’

‘But surely it is too dan…’

‘You were fooled by it, were you not? You thought I was a Bhotia trader.’

‘A Bhotia bandit, Sir. Not a trader.’

‘But a Bhotia, nonetheless.’

‘Well, I cannot deny that, Mr Holmes … By Jove, you were, if I may say so, a Bhotia to the boot heels; a Bhotia
ad vivium,
if you will pardon the expression. But I must still beg you not to be rash, Sir. After all I am responsible for your welfare — and a trip to Thibet demands much more than an adequate disguise. You will require pack animals, provisions, medicines, tents, tin-openers, etcetera, etcetera — and at least the services of an experienced and faithful guide.’

‘Someone like yourself, perhaps?’

‘Me, Sir? Ah … ahem. Well. I was really not implying that at all. But for the sake of argument — why not?’

‘Why not, indeed. So why don’t you come with me?’

‘Mr Holmes, it is a deuced attractive proposition. After all I am a scientific man, and what is a littie danger and discomfort to the insignificant self, when weighed against the opportunities to extend the frontiers of human knowledge — which we will, no doubt, be doing on this proposed venture.’

‘No doubt.’

‘But alas, Sir. I unfortunately happen to be in official harness, and can only proceed on such voyages on receipt of authorised instructions,
ex cathedra!

‘Which would be Colonel Creighton’s?’

‘Most unfortunately, yes, Mr Holmes.’

‘Well, I shall have to speak to the Colonel about it, won’t I?’

‘But the Colonel will surely object. He may even blame me …’

‘Spare me your anxieties, I beg you,’ he said, raising his hand in an imperious manner. ‘Leave it to me.’ He took off his Thibetan robe. ‘Now I would be much obliged if, on your way home you would kindly return this costume to Lurgan, and that horrible wig and moustache to the manager of the Gaiety Theatre.’

Carrying these articles of disguise, I left the cottage. Mr Holmes was so masterly in his ways, and his requests so definite that it was difficult to question his actions — but I was still considerably worried. Colonel Creighton was a very suspicious man. He knew how keen I was on another opportunity to go to Thibet, and that I strongly resented the Departmental ruling that I was not to enter Thibet because of my last mishap there. Old Creighton would certainly conclude that I had deliberately influenced Mr Holmes to make this dangerous journey, so that I could accompany him.

I sighed unhappily. The Colonel could be very hard on those whom he felt were flouting Departmental discipline. I expected a very unpleasant interview with him soon. I was not disappointed.

Three weeks later Colonel Creighton came up to Simla. He met Mr Holmes, in fact they dined together a couple of times and seemed to enjoy each other’s company. I was not invited, so I did not know what exactly passed between them. My own meeting with the Colonel took place in the storeroom behind Lurgan’s shop. For at least an hour I was subjected to one of the most embarrassing and uncomfortable interviews in my career. The Colonel surpassed himself in his suspicions and nasty insinuations. Finally, with what seemed to be a great deal of reluctance and bad grace, he accepted my explanation.

‘So, all right. Let’s say for the sake of argument, that you didn’t put him up to it. Then who did? Why the blazes does he want to go to Thibet, of all places? He’s a detective, isn’t he, not an explorer.’

‘Well, Sir. In spite of my efforts to dissuade him, he is determined to go. That is all I can say.’