The Ninth Buddha (60 page)

It only wants your signature and your seal.”

And if there is bloodshed, he thought, whose body will be first on the gibbet?

“You have a khubilgan of your own,” he said.

“Let him sign the decree.
 
Let him rally the faithful.”

“You know that will take time.
 
We don’t have time.
 
We must act now if lives are to be saved.”

Whose lives?
 
he asked himself.
 
Mongol lives?
 
Or the lives of Soviet troops?
 
He knew Red forces were already moving into the north of the country.

“That is none of my concern.
 
But if you will permit me, I want to speak to my Minister of War.”

He reached out a hand and lifted the telephone.
 
Dandinsuren would understand.
 
He would send Ungern.
 
And then he could sit and listen as they bickered for power.

The receiver was dead.
 
He should have guessed.

“I’m sorry,” said the Buriat.

“Your telephone has been temporarily disconnected.
 
You’ll have to make your own decisions tonight.”

He leaned back in his chair, defeated for the moment.

“Bring the boy to me,” he said.

“I want to speak with him.
 
I want to touch him.”

There was a pause, then Zamyatin spoke quickly in bad Tibetan.

A woman answered him, but he overrode her objections.
 
There was a shuffling sound.
 
Someone was standing by his chair.
 
He reached out a hand and touched a face, a child’s face.

“Come closer, boy,” he said, speaking in Tibetan.

“I can’t feel you properly.
 
I can’t see you, so I must touch you.

Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”

But the boy remained rigid, standing just within reach, yet holding back from him.

“What’s the matter?”
 
he asked.

“Are you afraid of me?
 
Is that it?”

He could feel his own heart racing.
 
It was curious, but now they were so close, he realized witrflTstart that he himself was afraid of the boy.
 
It seemed a sort of blasphemy for them to be here together, two bodies incarnating a single godhead.
 
In the recesses of his mind, an image formed and became clear: an endless row of shining mirrors, repeating a single figure until it grew quite dim in the distance.
 
He understood himself better than he had ever done before: he was a mirror, and he suddenly felt fragile, like glass bending in candlelight.
 
With the slightest touch he would shatter and fall into tiny silver pieces.

“Yes,” said the boy.
 
His voice trembled, but it was a finely modulated voice.
 
He was sure the boy was pretty and that his cheeks would be soft to the touch.
 
What if they should sleep together?
 
Would that hold the mirrors firm?

“What is there to be afraid of?”
 
he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the boy.

“But .. .”

“Yes?”

“But Tobchen told me you would try to have me killed.
 
If you knew of me.”

He moved a finger along the slanting ridge of the boy’s cheek.
 
It always cheered him to hear Tibetan spoken.

“Who is this Tobchen?”

“He was my tutor.
 
And my best friend.
 
Except for Chindamani.

He was an old man.
 
He died while we were trying to get to Gharoling.

That was a long time ago.”

“I see,” he said.

“I’m sorry.
 
And I’m sorry he told you I would try to kill you.
 
Why would he want to say that?”

“Because you are my other body.
 
Because only one of us can be Khutukhtu.
 
They want to make me Khutukhtu in your place.”

Such soft down on the child’s face.
 
Old Tobchen had been right, of course.
 
He would have the boy killed if it helped him keep his throne.
 
But the thought frightened him.
 
If he smashed one mirror, what would happen to the images in all the others?

“Perhaps,” he murmured, “I could be your tutor.
 
And we could become friends.
 
I have a palace full of toys.
 
You could stay here:

you would never grow bored or tired.”
 
Or old, he thought.

The boy ventured a little closer.

“What’s your name?”
 
he asked.

“They say I am now called the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu.
 
But I find it hard to say.”

He snatched his hand away.
 
How perverse to be caressing his own cheeks!
 
His hand felt cold and empty.

“Do you have another name?
 
A Tibetan name?”

“Dorje Samdup Rinpoche.”

“Dorje Samdup Rinpoche?
 
When I was brought here first, many years ago, my name was Losang Shedub Tenpi Donme.
 
That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?
 
I was ten years old.
 
How old are you, Samdup?”

“Ten, sir.”

His heart froze.
 
Perhaps it was true, after all Perhaps a death of some sort had occurred, perhaps he had truly been reborn while still in the flesh.

“Who is the other child with you?
 
I heard the footsteps of a second child.”

“He is a pee-ling,” replied the boy.

“His name is Wil-yarn.
 
His grandfather is the abbot of Dorje-la.
 
One of the men with us is his father.”

“His father is a Bolshevik?”

“No.
 
They’ve taken him prisoner.
 
He came to rescue Wil-yarn and me tonight.”

“I see.
 
And who is the woman you were talking with?”

“Her name is Chindamani.
 
She used to be with me in Dorje-la Gompa, where I lived.”

“Was she your maid?”

“No,” the boy said.

“She is the Tara trulku of Dorje-la.
 
She’s my closest friend.”

He reached out an unseeing hand.
 
The boy had long hair that made his fingers blush to touch it.

“Do you think she would speak with me?”
 
he asked.

The boy was silent.
 
Then the woman’s voice answered, quite near.
 
She had been standing beside the boy.

“Yes,” she said.

“What do you want to say to me?”

“I want your advice,” he said.

“My advice?
 
Or the advice of the Lady Tara?”

“The Lady Tara’s help,” he said.

“I want to know what I should do.
 
Should I sign these papers?
 
What is the right thing?”

She did not answer straight away.

“I think,” she said at last, ‘that the Lady Tara would tell you not to sign.
 
You are still Khutukhtu.
 
It is not for these people to decide who shall and who shall not be an incarnation.”

“Do you believe I am an incarnation?”

“No,” she replied.

“Was I ever one?”

“Perhaps,” she answered.

“Before the child was born.”

“Then what would you advise me to do?”

She was silent.

“I cannot advise.
 
I am only a woman.”

He shrugged.

“And I am only a man.
 
You have said so yourself.
 
Advise me what to do.
 
As one human being to another.”

She was long in answering.
 
When she spoke, her voice was dull and flat with defeat.

“You must sign the papers.
 
You have no choice.
 
If you don’t, they will kill you.
 
They already have the boy.
 
They have all they need.”

He said nothing.
 
She was right.
 
They would kill him, and what would that achieve?
 
He turned and faced the Burial.

“Are you still here, Za-abughai?”
 
he asked.
 
He meant Zamyatin.

“Yes.
 
I’m waiting for your decision.”

“Very well,” he said.

“Give me my pen.
 
I’ll sign your papers.

Then you can get out.”

Christopher wondered when the nightmare was going to end.
 
They had shot Tsering seconds after entering the yurt.
 
Then he and Chindamani had been tightly bound and taken outside with William and Samdup. There had been a long wait-while Zamyatin got his men ready for their move against the Khutukhtu’s palace.

Christopher had somehow managed to get close enough to William to talk to the boy, reassuring him, telling him his ordeal would soon be over.
 
They had set off about an hour after Zamyatin first discovered them.

He remembered a maze of crooked alleyways and streets smelling of ordure and decomposition, hands holding him, pinching him, guiding him, voices whispering and whimpering in the troubled darkness, the darkness itself struggling to become flesh as faces swam in and out of view.

Then the moon had glided out from behind the clouds, copper and stained in a turbid sky, and the alleyways had become silent streets of silver filled with dogs and the dim, shrouded bodies of the newly dead.
 
Above them, the towers of the Maidari Temple, eighty feet high, made bold pillars against the sky; on the Tower of Astrology, a single light burned in readiness for tomorrow’s Festival.

It had been a simple matter for Zamyatin and his men to effect an entry to the palace.
 
There were fewer guards on duty than usual, with half of them preparing for the festival.
 
Those that remained had put up little resistance, and the revolutionaries had rounded them up in a matter of minutes.

William sat on his knee, the way he had once sat when he had been a much younger child, many years ago, before all this began.

He was telling his father the details of his journey to Dorje-la.

Christopher let him talk, urging the boy to get everything off his

chest.
 
He wondered if William would ever recover properly from

his ordeal assuming, that was, that they ever got out of this place and made it back to England alive.

Samdup had told them that the swelling on William’s neck had started to go black about a week ago.
 
Zamyatin had been too preoccupied making the arrangement for his coup to waste time getting a doctor for the boy.

“How does your neck feel now, son?”
 
Christopher asked.

“It’s no better.
 
I think it’s going to burst all the time.
 
It feels as though things are crawling round and round inside.
 
If I touch it, it hurts terribly.
 
Sometimes I want to scratch it off, it gets so bad.

Samdup had to tie my hands behind my back two nights ago.
 
I’m frightened.
 
You’ll make it get better now you’re here, won’t you?”

The boy’s trust was almost unbearable.
 
Christopher felt more helpless than at any time in the past months.
 
The Khutukhtu had sent instructions for his personal physician to come.
 
Now all they could do was wait.

The Khutukhtu was growing drunk on his port.
 
He sat on a long sofa in one cornel of the room, smoking long Turkish cigarettes with the peculiar affectation of the blind.
 
Chindamani and Samdup sat beside him.
 
For all the differences between them, they understood one another.
 
They were all trulkus, they all suffered from the same deformity.

Samdup was tired, but he could not even think of sleep.

Chindamani was with him again, and the pee-ling who had helped to rescue them from Dorje-la that night, Wil-yarn’s father.
 
He felt uncontrollably excited: perhaps something would happen now, perhaps he and Wil-yarn could escape from Zamyatin at last.

He did not like his other body.
 
The Khutukhtu drank alcohol as though he were an ordinary person, and he appeared to be quite drunk.
 
Samdup disliked the way the fat old man stroked and frotted him with smooth, clammy fingers.
 
The vacant expression in those blind white eyes unnerved him.
 
Unaccustomed to either vice or sensuality, the boy had no capacity for sympathy.
 
He was too young to understand that sin was just as much a part of life as prayer, or that holiness, like water, would grow stagnant if it were allowed to lie too long without being stirred.

“Come here,” the Khutukhtu said, standing and taking Samdup’s hand.
 
Samdup followed him across to a huge table on which stood a huge machine with a wooden horn.
 
It reminded Samdup of the great trumpets on the terraces of Dorje-la.
 
The Khutukhtu bent down and cranked a handle in the side of the machine, then, with blind fingers that shook from a combination of port and nervousness, dropped the needle heavily on to a spinning black disc.

Instantly, a raucous voice blared from the horn, accompanied by rapid, jumping music.

I would say such wonderful things to you There would be such wonderful things to do If you were the only girl in the world And I were the only boy.

“That’s a gramophone,” said the Khutukhtu.