Part 5 (2/2)

The sooner you get off the better. Tundu will get you to Phakding tonight, Namche tomorrow. Maybe three more days to Det-sen.'

Tundu shouted something and his sister appeared leading a big brown yak. On it sat the ancient monk. The girl, whose name was Sonam, took Victoria's bags from her. As they loaded up, Charles proffered Victoria a small packet.

'Dairy Milk,' he said. 'Not yak milk. Chocolate'll make your diet a bit more interesting. It's got my address on the back. Stay in touch. I don't know if I'll be here when you get back.'

'Thank you, Charles,' she said. 'Good luck with the gentians.'

He laughed and slapped the yak on its rump. He waved for a long time until the street disappeared out of view and only the mountains were rising around them. Victoria was not sure if he was waving at her. She wasn't sure what she thought any more.

The road to Namche Bazar and beyond twisted its way through the wild country between the mountains. The lower slopes were dark with pine forest, which stretched up to the snowline from where the peaks tore against the blue air. They crossed a wooden bridge over a rus.h.i.+ng melt.w.a.ter torrent and followed the course of the Dhud Kosi Dhud Kosi, travelling north. Tundu insisted on stopping at the chorten chorten, little way-temples that stood at the roadside like huge chesspieces abandoned by the mountain giants. They were intricately carved and hung with ropes of fluttering prayer flags. And along the route there were prayer walls, spotted with lichen and engraved in huge letters with the lotus prayer Om mani padme hum. Om mani padme hum.

Victoria, travelling in foreign territory, equipped with an entourage of porters, imagined herself as a sahiba sahiba from the days of the Empire. This track was the main highway. They pa.s.sed other trekkers and merchants, women carrying bamboo baskets bigger than themselves and groups of travelling monks in robes of startling orange. from the days of the Empire. This track was the main highway. They pa.s.sed other trekkers and merchants, women carrying bamboo baskets bigger than themselves and groups of travelling monks in robes of startling orange.

The old monk, perched on the lumbering yak, seemed oblivious of this. His lips, although silent, mouthed endless mantras as they trudged northward.

Tundu chattered to Victoria in extraordinarily idiomatic English. He said he had picked it up as a child from friends who knew Tensing, the Sherpa who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary at Lachi-Kang Lachi-Kang, which they called Everest. And Bonington said this and Mallory said that, but Victoria couldn't tell if Tundu was telling stories secondhand. She avoided asking what Charles Bryce said.

Tundu pointed out to her the wild goats and flowers. There were fields of meconopsis meconopsis, Charles's blue poppies, their petals like fallen fragments of the azure Himalayan sky.

Among the plants by the road they saw evidence of the opening up of the region to the outside world. Cl.u.s.ters of drinks cans discarded among the flowers. It was Charles's 'thin end of the greasy slope...'

By late on the second day, Victoria was starting to wonder if they would ever reach Namche Bazar. They had crossed and recrossed the river by means of precarious wooden bridges and were scaling yet another interminable slope. The air was thin and she was starting to feel light-headed. She topped a ridge with what might have been her last breath and gasped. In the distance, maybe twenty miles away, rising beyond the closer peaks, was the majestic colossus of Everest, rose-coloured by the sunset on a throne of blue-grey clouds.

Victoria felt suddenly insignificant, dwarfed by the enormity of what she had set out to do.

'It is a G.o.d,' said Tundu. He took Victoria's arm. 'But we travel the opposite way. Come, the town is not far now. Then you can sleep well tonight.'

On the third day out, beyond Namche Bazar on the road to Thame, they encountered a traffic jam of yaks. Two groups travelling in opposite directions had met with room for only single-file progress. There was already a tailback in both directions, compounded by the bored yaks, which sat down and refused to move despite the shouting of their drivers. It took an hour and a half to clear and reminded Victoria of the rush hour at home.

To Victoria's surprise she had not dreamed since they left Lukla. Perhaps it was the crystal mountain air that made her feel easier, although the lure of her destination, ripe with memories and threats, was still darkly compelling.

When they reached Thame, the old monk insisted on visiting the local gompa gompa. The walls in the little lamasery were covered with gaudily coloured paintings of holy figures.

'The whole world is full of them,' said Tundu's sister, Sonam. She was turning one of the painted prayer wheels that were set in the wall. Her English was even better than her brother's. 'All of us are on the wheel of life, tormented by G.o.ds and demons and hungry ghosts.'

The prayer wheel turned, its coloured letters dancing on its drum, and Victoria began to feel drowsy.

There was a mountain flying towards her. It surged through the air, filling half the sky, as if the mountain giants, weary of their chess games, had plucked Everest from its throne to see what monsters might be trapped underneath.

Distant thunder rumbled as the huge displaced peak continued its remorseless approach, blotting out the sun.

Lightning flickered across its upper slopes. She could see a rain of rocks and dust falling from its dark underside. She was in its path. A tiny ant about to be crushed. Then its snowy crags billowed and seemed to s.h.i.+ft form. The rocky c.u.mulus slowly altered in shape, its lines softening and rippling like a colossal amoeba. Its progress did not falter as it engulfed the sky, but its shape was uncertain, the ma.s.sive bulk suddenly as insubstantial as a fluttering prayer flag.

The formless phenomenon shuddered and was webbed with a skein of electric blue. As the wind began to tear at its edges, shredding its dark pall, there came the distant roar of some lost denizen from an outer existence. A demon or a hungry ghost.

Victoria knew that cry. That voice was in her, too. It embodied the despair and loneliness of a being cast out from its old and native haunts.

She opened her eyes and saw the old monk standing over her.

His staff slowly raised itself and levelled at her. It moved of its own accord, the hand jerking to follow. His wizened face crinkled with pain. His unseeing blank eyes were piercing. He knew what she had seen, she was certain of that.

Suddenly she blurted out, 'My father, Edward Waterfield.

Is he at Det-sen? Do you know? If he is, please tell me!'

The old monk returned her stare. Slowly he raised one finger to his lips in a gesture of silence. Then the staff swung away and his body followed. It tapped its way across the floor and he moved after it, clinging to the upper end for fear of being left behind. She was certain that the staff was leading him.

Sonam was still turning the prayer wheel as she watched her employer. Victoria took a deep breath. 'Can we go now please?'

'Food first,' replied the Sherpani. 'I've made special potato bread.'

'All right. But then please can we go?' From outside the gompa gompa, Victoria could hear the tap-tap-tap of the old monk's stick as it led him clockwise around the walls of the lamasery as was the custom.

Once they had crossed Nang La Pa.s.s into Tibet, it was another day's walk to their destination. Victoria had hardly spoken and the others seemed to catch her mood.

At last, she began to recognize the terrain over which she had repeatedly flown: a long valley strewn with scree and at its head, a mountain with its peak cracked like a dead volcano.

Fifty years before, when she had been only ten years younger, she had stood at the broken gates of the monastery and watched that mountain throbbing with unearthly energy. A livid mixture of plasma and lava had belched from the shattered summit, pouring down the slopes as if the wounded earth was casting the suppurating filth of the invader out of its system. The Doctor and Jamie had stood beside her and she had wept because the Great Intelligence, whose death was causing so much violence on the mountain, had been inside her body too. But she had been raised not to talk of that. A lady always maintained her self-composure in company no matter how great the violation.

The party rounded the mountain and looked down into the next valley. The monastery of Det-sen lay on the lower slopes of the next mountain, a cl.u.s.ter of tiny grey buildings, more like a fortress than the coloured gompas gompas she had visited along the route. she had visited along the route.

The track leading down was in poor repair. Twice it vanished completely under landslides that had not been cleared away. Tundu and Sonam exchanged worried glances as they struggled to guide the yak over the loose rock. The old monk sat tight on his steed, clinging to its curved horns as it lurched back and forth.

As they approached the monastery, they could see that the ornate roof was in a bad state too. There was no sign of life apart from the tattered prayer flags that fluttered from the broken walls. Victoria struggled to calm her nerves. She could not believe that all this had been in vain.

Suddenly there was a cacophony of drums and cymbals and deep horns. The ma.s.sive gates of Det-sen swung wide and a group of monks robed in red issued forth. They stood at either side of the entrance, waiting as the raucous din continued.

Victoria's little group stopped opposite the gates and stared as a single line of ancient lamas with crested yellow hats moved forward out of the inner courtyard towards them. Each lama carried a stick which tap-tap-tapped ahead of him. Like the monk who had travelled from Lukla, all of the lamas of Det-sen were blind.

Two of the monks came forward, and with great veneration helped the old man from his place on the yak. It was obvious that all this ceremony was in his honour. He allowed them to lead him towards the monastery and the line of blind lamas parted for him to pa.s.s.

When he reached the gates, he signalled and one of the young monks inclined his head as he received instruction. As the old monk pa.s.sed on into the courtyard, the young man approached Victoria and bowed.

'The Abbot Thonmi asks that you be brought into the monastery as his honoured guests.'

The room that they gave Victoria was austere, but comfortable enough; certainly better than the cell she had spent time in during her previous visit. Although the Sherpa were housed in a separate dormitory, Sonam had brought her a meal of dumplings and sweet tea. Victoria sat on the bed, picking at her food. Now she had reached her goal, she had no idea what to do. Worse, she was convinced that the ancient abbot, the old, old man with whom she had travelled, must be the same Thonmi she had known as a handsome young monk some fifty years before. To journey through Time could be so abrupt and cruel.

<script>