dress.’ He looked back at me unsmiling, with the same eyes and bow-shaped lips as the Buddhas he served. Then, as if to make certain, he asked: ‘You in the West favour the Dalai Lama, don’t you?’
‘Yes. We think of him as the head of your Buddhism.’
His face opened in the sunburst Tibetan smile. ‘I want to leave here! I have an older brother at Dharamsala. He crossed into India eleven years ago. I want to follow him! So do both my parents. My father’s a peasant, out of work now. We all want to go.’
‘How easy is that?’
‘I can go through Tibet into Nepal. You have to be strong for that, and have a little money. But others have done it, and I can’t stay here. Things are wrong between the Chinese and my people. I want to go away. To India, to anywhere.’
‘Do many of you feel that way?’
‘Some.’ His smile disappeared. ‘They all love the Dalai Lama.’ A group of pilgrims passed in a scuttle of mud-spattered robes. ‘But I’ve only been able to telephone my brother twice in eleven years.’
Back in the guesthouse, hidden among the bricks beneath the stove, I had left my satellite telephone–a faltering lifeline back to the West, which I barely used. Now it might come into its own. Its calls would be untraceable. I offered him the use of this, and he accepted with lingering uncertainty, and a tinge of wonderment. So we went on walking along the path under the hillside, I going a little ahead of him, while beneath us the monastery swam supernaturally under its golden roofs.
In the safety of the guesthouse, where only a few pilgrims lingered, he sat in my room, staring at nothing, while I went out into the courtyard and tried to dial his brother. After a while I received a message that the number was out of service. I tried again, with the same faded answer. The monk was still sitting on my bed as if in a trance, upright among my notebooks and thermal underwear. But he had the number of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard, he said–the man worked with his brother. So I tried this number too–but it too failed. I felt a creeping sadness. I imagined that onlysome extra digits separated us from contact, but I could not guess them.
Back in my room the monk was fumbling a key-ring decorated with a London bus, which I’d imagined giving to some child or other; now I offered it to him instead: anything Western seemed to comfort him. He nodded wanly, and it disappeared into his robes.
There was nothing more to do. The numbers were out of date, he realised, and the knowledge of this new barrier deepened his dejection. So I promised to telephone his brother from England somehow, to pass on a message, and we slid back into the monastery streets, not knowing what to say. A light snow was falling again, blurring the temples and the sky to the same cold oblivion. As we walked up the alleys in silence, his feet began to drag, and he wrapped his robes around his face, closing himself away.
I asked: ‘Is it okay to be seen walking with me?’
‘No, no problem.’
The problem was elsewhere, I realised, rankling in his mind, and as his pace slowed I drew slightly ahead of him, and he did not quicken his step, so that we drifted little by little apart, until he was lost in the purple and magenta crowds of the others, and in the thickening snow.
The immense doors unlock, and for an instant, looming in scented darkness, I glimpse the Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, like a vast doll squeezed into a cupboard. As the gilded features disclose themselves high above, a band of pilgrims pitch to the ground, not daring to lift their eyes again, murmuring long-learnt prayers.
I stare up through the fumes of floating candles and the stench of yak butter. The enormous face does not see me. Its heavy-lidded eyes are gazing unfathomably beyond. It is splashed with anemone lips and flanked by the long ears symbolic of wisdom. This passionless titan–far-focused, oracular–is how the Maitreya was anciently
‘Yes. We think of him as the head of your Buddhism.’
His face opened in the sunburst Tibetan smile. ‘I want to leave here! I have an older brother at Dharamsala. He crossed into India eleven years ago. I want to follow him! So do both my parents. My father’s a peasant, out of work now. We all want to go.’
‘How easy is that?’
‘I can go through Tibet into Nepal. You have to be strong for that, and have a little money. But others have done it, and I can’t stay here. Things are wrong between the Chinese and my people. I want to go away. To India, to anywhere.’
‘Do many of you feel that way?’
‘Some.’ His smile disappeared. ‘They all love the Dalai Lama.’ A group of pilgrims passed in a scuttle of mud-spattered robes. ‘But I’ve only been able to telephone my brother twice in eleven years.’
Back in the guesthouse, hidden among the bricks beneath the stove, I had left my satellite telephone–a faltering lifeline back to the West, which I barely used. Now it might come into its own. Its calls would be untraceable. I offered him the use of this, and he accepted with lingering uncertainty, and a tinge of wonderment. So we went on walking along the path under the hillside, I going a little ahead of him, while beneath us the monastery swam supernaturally under its golden roofs.
In the safety of the guesthouse, where only a few pilgrims lingered, he sat in my room, staring at nothing, while I went out into the courtyard and tried to dial his brother. After a while I received a message that the number was out of service. I tried again, with the same faded answer. The monk was still sitting on my bed as if in a trance, upright among my notebooks and thermal underwear. But he had the number of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard, he said–the man worked with his brother. So I tried this number too–but it too failed. I felt a creeping sadness. I imagined that onlysome extra digits separated us from contact, but I could not guess them.
Back in my room the monk was fumbling a key-ring decorated with a London bus, which I’d imagined giving to some child or other; now I offered it to him instead: anything Western seemed to comfort him. He nodded wanly, and it disappeared into his robes.
There was nothing more to do. The numbers were out of date, he realised, and the knowledge of this new barrier deepened his dejection. So I promised to telephone his brother from England somehow, to pass on a message, and we slid back into the monastery streets, not knowing what to say. A light snow was falling again, blurring the temples and the sky to the same cold oblivion. As we walked up the alleys in silence, his feet began to drag, and he wrapped his robes around his face, closing himself away.
I asked: ‘Is it okay to be seen walking with me?’
‘No, no problem.’
The problem was elsewhere, I realised, rankling in his mind, and as his pace slowed I drew slightly ahead of him, and he did not quicken his step, so that we drifted little by little apart, until he was lost in the purple and magenta crowds of the others, and in the thickening snow.
The immense doors unlock, and for an instant, looming in scented darkness, I glimpse the Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, like a vast doll squeezed into a cupboard. As the gilded features disclose themselves high above, a band of pilgrims pitch to the ground, not daring to lift their eyes again, murmuring long-learnt prayers.
I stare up through the fumes of floating candles and the stench of yak butter. The enormous face does not see me. Its heavy-lidded eyes are gazing unfathomably beyond. It is splashed with anemone lips and flanked by the long ears symbolic of wisdom. This passionless titan–far-focused, oracular–is how the Maitreya was anciently
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