The Ninth Buddha by Daniel Easterman Read Free Book Online

make such a hazardous and uncomfortable journey, carrying their provisions on their own backs.
    What a contrast there was with his own journey to India.
    Winterpole had arranged for Christopher to fly there in a Handley Page biplane by way of Egypt, Iraq and Persia.   While these men had been trudging through snow and ice, buffeted by high winds and in constant danger, he had flown like a bird across the world, his worst discomforts cramp and a little cold.
    He felt an impulse to intervene, but checked himself just as he was about to step forward.   Instinct gave way before training: the rules of his trade said ‘do not draw attention to yourself, merge into the background and stay there, do nothing curious or out of character’.   He had come to Kalimpong in the guise of a poor English box-wallah from Calcutta a trader down on his luck and desperate for a new venture away from the scenes of his failure.
    No-one would give such a man a second glance: he was a common enough sight in the doss-houses of the big cities and the flop-downs of the frontier bazaars.
    Christopher turned away from the shouting peasants and went into the rest-house’s common room.   This was the centre of the house’s activities, where guests cooked their own food during the day and where those without bedrooms slept by night.
    The room was dark and grimy and smelt of sweat and old food.
    In the corners, bales of wool and gunny sacks filled with rice or barley were stacked up high.   By one wall, an old man and woman were cooking something over a small iron tripod.   Near them, under a greasy-looking blanket, someone else was trying to sleep.   A fly buzzed monotonously as it toured the room, out of season, dying, finding nothing of interest.   A girl’s voice singing came through the half-shuttered window.   She sang in a dreamy, faraway voice, a Bengali song about Krishna, simple but possessed:
    Bondhur bdngshl bdje bujhi bipine Shamer bdngshi bdje bujhi bipine.
    I hear my lover’s flute playing in the forest;
    I hear the dark lord’s flute playing in the forest Christopher imagined the girl: pretty, dark-eyed, with tiny breasts and hair pulled tight in long plaits, like the images of Radha that hung on the walls of so many homes.   For a moment, he wondered what she was really like, singing in the alley outside as if her heart would break.   Then he called out, breaking the spell of her voice, and a boy came.
     
     
    “Yes, sahib.   What do you want?”
    “Tea.   I’d like some tea.”
    “Ystrang?
    “No, not bloody ystrang!   Weak tea, Indian-style.   And get me a chotapeg to go with it.”
    “No whiskey here, sahib.   Sorry.”
    “Then bloody get some, Abdul. Here,
    take this.”   He tossed a grimy rupee to the boy.
     
    “Step lively!   Juldi,juldi.”
    The boy dashed out and Christopher leaned back against the wall.   He hated the role he had chosen to play, but he played it because it made him inconspicuous.   That sickened him more than anything that it was possible to be inconspicuous by being rude and that politeness to a native would have made him stand out like a sore thumb.
    The fly buzzed and the girl’s voice continued outside, rising and ,
    falling as she went about her chores.   Not since his arrival in “
    Calcutta had Christopher had time to sit and think.   The journey had
    been all rush and bustle: the hurried preparations for departure, the
    clumsy, rushed farewells, the staggered flight from staging post to
    staging post across the world, the hot, sleepless railway journey from
    Calcutta to Siliguri, and finally the trek by pony to
    Kalimpong.   No time to reflect on what he was doing.   No time to reconsider.   Just the world rushing past beneath him, water and sand and silent green valleys where time stood still.   And yet always a growing realization of what it was he had embarked on, a tight knot of fear in his chest that grew tighter and larger with every stage he travelled.
    He had