Blue Poppies Read online

  “Does the General have no use for those?” he asked a lieutenant in some surprise.

  “It’s a petrol model, sir,” said the lieutenant. “We have only diesel here.”

  “But the radio?” insisted Duan.

  “Sir?” The lieutenant looked puzzled.

  A faint chill touched Duan’s stomach.

  “What is in that crate?” he asked.

  “Generator, sir,” came the reply.

  “And the second crate?”

  “I believe it is equipment for the generator, sir, loose items that were packed separately.”

  “Open it!” snapped Duan.

  When the lid was off, one glance was enough to make Duan’s nostrils flare with anger—mostly at himself: he had never checked. There was no radio here. So, the imperialist hireling Wilson had taken it with him. And that suggested a horribly simple explanation for the elusiveness of the caravan: that Wilson and the renegades had been listening to his transmitted orders. Was it possible? Certainly, if Wilson had any sort of portable power supply: the man was a trained military radio operator! The stern Major Duan felt humiliated and secretly violated, as though he’d caught someone reading his diary.

  He returned to his own headquarters, encamped by the Lhasa road. From here he was following an approximate diagonal south-west, which must cut across the route of the Jyeko caravan unless they had fled wholesale to India. “Diagonal” was a relative term, of course, since the mountain ranges hardly allowed for niceties of direction. The core of Duan’s detachment moved slowly but at frequent intervals he dispatched search-and-intercept parties to scour every possible pass, side valley and river crossing. Often he had sensed that they were within a few miles, or less, but they had never set eyes on the Tibetans. He had felt so certain that the trap at Nupkong would yield results. But no, nothing. And now he thought he knew why.

  In his camp there was an air of uncertainty, of indecision. The Major knew that the indecision was his own, and felt that he was being watched. In the command tent, Duan placed his thumbs on the edge of the table and leaned once again over the inadequate sketch maps from which he was working. His officers watched him in apprehensive silence: things were not going so well. But they did not understand Duan’s particular ill-humor at present; he had not mentioned radios since his return. As they waited for their commander’s thoughts and instructions, a less military figure entered carrying a large black kettle of tea. Puton limped across the tent without speaking and placed the kettle on a wooden box at the back with a grimy collection of tin mugs. Duan’s eyes flicked up at her and back to the map, so quickly that none of his staff caught the look.

  “They must cross the Pang-chen range to the south of us,” the Major mused aloud, “which gives them the choice of only . . . three passes? No, four. How high is Nangpe-La? Fifteen thousand seven hundred feet. What is this one, nearest India?” His searching finger traced and stabbed at the crudely hatched contours.

  “Moro-La, sir,” said an officer, “fifteen thousand three hundred and sixty feet, usually open until January. There’s also Jewe-La and another here, but we don’t have the name. I believe Jewe-La is the usual trade route, sir.”

  As Duan listened, he was aware that Puton was hovering by the tea things without good cause. Listening also, of course for scraps and names. “We cannot cover all of them,” he thought aloud, “not with sufficient force. We have to make a best estimate of which route they will select. If only we could influence that choice.”

  No one spoke. Puton poured tea, very slowly. Duan noted this; usually she left it to the junior officers, taking herself out of the tent as fast as possible. Duan pondered a moment, then said: “Transmit a radio instruction, Sergeant Lin, as follows: ‘The two companies marching towards Moro-La are to go no farther, but should return immediately to a position west of Nangpe-La.’ ”

  The staff officers dared to frown and glance at each other, puzzled. For a few seconds, there was silence. Then one foolhardy young man found courage to say: “Excuse me, sir, we don’t have two companies heading for Moro-La. Actually, sir, we don’t have any—”

  “Your critique of my orders will doubtless be most interesting at some other time, Lieutenant,” said Duan icily. “However, for now you will see to it that the transmission is made exactly as my request. Transmit at four and at six this evening, and repeat in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Duan looked up. The staff officers were watching him, intent but anxious. He thought that he detected one or two feet edging in involuntary retreat from him: really, he had little time for young men who could not stand their ground. He suppressed a desire to say something withering. Behind him, he heard a small rattle and a dribbling sound. Puton had overfilled or knocked over a cup, he guessed. She, too, was nervous, wasn’t she?

  “Take your tea, and leave me now,” said Duan. The officers moved towards the box of cups, grateful for the dispeling of tension. Puton moved to the doorway. Duan snapped: “You, stay! There’s a mess to clear up, so wait.”

  The other soldiers departed quickly, breaking into low chatter as they walked away from the tent. Major Duan sipped at his mug and watched Puton as she tried to wipe away the splashed tea with her sleeve. “Tell me,” said the Major, “did your young Britisher have any means of powering his radio other than the petrol generator? Look at me, please.”

  Puton regarded him with an expression of dumb ignorance.

  “Don’t understand what I’m talking about? Well, perhaps not.”

  The woman gave no hint of understanding. It was infuriating: to think that the wretched British youth might have been listening to his every word. Duan recalled Wilson in their interview at Jyeko, impertinently trying to demand that he take his radio with him when he was thrown out of the country. If he was now lugging it through the Himalaya but was unable to turn it on, this whole supposition would be a colossal red herring. And he, Duan, would be making a perfect fool of himself with his nonsensical order to nonexistent companies.

  Duan moved around the table and sat gingerly on a folding stool. Puton remained standing by the low box, resting on her stick. The Major tugged off a boot and shook out some grit. “Now, tell me how the old man is today.”

  “A woman may not speak to the Abbot,” she replied, “but I understand that he is weary.”

  “I daresay he would be. He has been propagating nonsense for fifty years. I do not grieve for him. Do you believe in his teachings?”

  She said nothing.

  Duan’s eyes returned to hers. “Or do you, perhaps, find British philosophy more agreeable?”

  Still she did not reply. He terrified and unnerved her, this major. He watched her so intently, so expectantly. He had ordered a little tent to be erected for her and Dechen only feet from his own, while the Abbot and his attendants were always camped on the far side of the troop. She was positioned by Duan, as though he expected she would shortly flow into him, like two droplets of mercury touching. He made no demand of her, never abused or forced his attentions on her, had never so much as touched her: he watched and waited for her like an incontrovertible fact that sooner or later she would have to accept. She picked up the kettle and turned as though to leave. Before she knew it, he was standing in front of her.

  “Do not put your faith in cracked vessels, Miss Puton,” said the Major. “When a bowl is well made, it rings true.”

  She gazed up at him; she was becoming used to his cryptic talk. It induced a terrible lassitude in her. Her resistance was seeping away into the cold gravel.

  “All Tibet will acknowledge this in time,” said the Major. “We are happy to wait.”

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER ONE

  “MORO-LA, MORO-LA!” SANG Jamie, striding through the Dengkol camp. “Karjen, come on, we’re on our way.”

  Karjen blinked. Dawn was scarcely come: what was all this? He’d have everything packed in due—

  “I’ll do the tent, Karjen, you go for the animals.”


  Before Karjen could reply, Jamie was tweaking guy lines off the rocks and the tent was subsiding. Nearby, reluctant figures were creeping about in the thin mist.

  “Nima, good morning!” Jamie saw the lama sipping at a bowl of tea. “We should be moving. If we want to make Moro-La—”

  “Yes, yes, we shall be ready.”

  “Nima, the Chinese are returning to Nangpe-La! We’ve a chance, you see? Got to grab it!”

  “Chance, yes.” Nima shivered, experimentally moving the muscles around his eyes to see if he’d had enough tea to crack the ice there. He looked around the caravan. He knew what was being whispered. There were those in the group who thought of little except going home, rebuilding Jyeko (wasn’t there peace now?). It wasn’t mutiny, just exhaustion.

  The night before, a tense, thoughtful group had gathered in the radio tent. A vigorous young man cranked the dynamo, the lamps had glowed, the crackling and tapping had slewed in and out of focus. Jamyang Sangay had interpreted the Chinese order: they were turning back from Moro-La.

  Jamie’s face had lit up: “There’s our opening!”

  He’d looked around the company, searching the dubious faces, trying to understand how they could possibly be wavering now. Khenpo Nima understood very well.

  “We shall have to move quickly,” Wangdu had said. “We’ve almost exhausted our food, even with this Chinese stuff. There will be nothing for us in the passes ahead. We must reach friends— and we shall not be able to wait for stragglers.”

  With this chill observation to send them to their beds, they’d agreed to continue. Only the Dengkol family refused to leave their homes, dismissing all entreaties and warnings.

  In the colorless dawn light, Khenpo Nima said: “Jemmy, remember, this will be hard traveling. You must carry some food ready.”

  “How, ready?”

  “You have some barleymeal? You make little cakes with tea. Then place this inside your clothes, you see? Right inside, out of the cold. You can eat them as you go along, in the worst places.”

  Jamie peered at him, his ebullience momentarily chastened.

  “The worst places? I see. Right, then, barley cakes in my clothes. Where’s Karjen with the mule? Karjen!”

  Jamie scurried away among the white-frosted boulders.

  Half an hour later the mountain peaks were touched with new gold but Dengkol lake skulked in shadow. The cavalcade was packed, mounted and still shivering with uncertainty. Knots and subgroups had formed. Like a truck stalled on a hill, the caravan might start rolling backwards at any moment. Their plumes of breath were the liveliest thing among them.

  Jamie appeared from behind one of the houses, urging on his tired pony and leading the radio mule with Hector padding at his heels.

  “All ready?”

  No one spoke; not even the pack animals stirred. Many people would not meet his eye. Jamie looked around the company, his gaze darting anxiously from face to face.

  “A few more days,” he cried. “Then you’ll be safe!”

  Still there was silence, still there were those who looked away. A fleeting panic touched Jamie, but in an instant he brushed it away. He reached into the radio mule’s panniers, pulled out the whip aerial, jammed three sections together and thrust it into position down the side of the bag. The prayer flag still fluttered from its tip.

  “Follow, Jyeko! To Moro-La!”

  And the stalled pantechnicon spluttered into life; the reluctant knots fell apart and the caravan began to stream through the hamlet and onto the westward trail. In silence, the Dengkol family watched them go, then turned indoors.

  The valleys were now broad scoops in the mountains. Two hours’ climb from Dengkol, they were back in the snow. Occasional outcrops broke the sweep of the snowfields with dark blotches; otherwise, all around them was a gritty white. Up this, the mass of people and animals came in a narrow column. From the crest of the first pass, they looked deep into the tangled mass of the range, fold on fold of white hills across which the incessant wind flowed unimpeded. Between these ran pencil-thin frozen streams. No break for pasture in the rise and fall, no hint of flat ground. The landscape was oddly featureless. Though Jamie could see fifty miles in some directions, he could make no sense of the watersheds, and was relieved and thankful that certain Jyeko men moved on without hesitation, following a scattering of rock cairns along the ridge.

  The weather was deteriorating. The sky had not brightened all day, but from dull beginnings had grown steadily sullen. From cloud so heavy that it seemed on the point of collapse, spurts of snow, hard and very fine, drove into their faces. Jamie saw people stop, families tying tufts of wool in front of each other’s eyes to break the stinging impact. He tugged his fur hat down as far as he could, inched the red scarf off his chin and nibbled one of the little pats of barleymeal that he’d placed inside his shirt.

  They made camp in the poor shelter of a turn in the stream. Setting up tents was a fight, with whole families hanging on to the black cloth lest it be blown over the mountains. They stacked their belongings in tall crescents for protection: heaps of striped woolen packs and leather saddlebags, the shrinking sacks of barleymeal, rugs and bundles and even the occasional musical instrument, all heaped as high as possible and topped with wood and leather harness. The wounded, white-faced with pain from riding, were lowered gently into the shelters. Gusts of dry snow, fine as flour, hissed on the fires. It puffed through the tiniest holes in the tents and powdered the contents. The yaks shuffled through the snow, nosing out a thin meal of short-tufted sedges. The children were sent foraging for any scraps of dry grass the ponies might eat; they were becoming less choosy by the day.

  That evening, a family announced that they had run out of barleymeal. They had a tiny quantity of butter, a little tea and salt: nothing else. They declared that their silver charm case was on offer to whoever would give them a bag of meal.

  Their neighbors glanced around uneasily and Khenpo Nima at once objected. “And what will you sell to your so-called friends when that food is gone? Your daughter? This is not going to become the survival of the richest.”

  There was some halfhearted applause from the nearby fires. A collection was begun, a handful of meal from here and there dropped into a bowl. But, in the process, it became clear that a dozen other families were in almost the same condition and would soon be asking for themselves.

  “Then it’s time we killed a yak,” said Khenpo Nima sadly.

  “This one,” said Drolma, pointing to her animals. Jamie frowned: the young widow would need her meagre wealth more than most. But Drolma insisted: “My husband is dead and there is less to carry now.”

  “Listen,” said a gruff voice, “I’d like a word with you about this.” It was Jamyang Sangay. He waddled towards Drolma, wagging a finger of disapproval. He was moving slowly, Jamie noticed, was looking gray-skinned and weary. Jamie watched the muttered negotiation, saw surprise on Drolma’s face and was about to curse his old enemy when he saw awkward smiles.

  “Right,” announced Jamyang Sangay. “I’m buying a yak off Drolma, and we eat it. Anyone object?”

  “I saw your face, Jemmy,” whispered Khenpo Nima, “but you should know something: you see the yak the men are going to kill? Over there, look. It’s one of Sangay’s, not Drolma’s. He’s just pretended to buy one of hers and has given her the money anyway.”

  “Why?” asked Jamie, bewildered.

  “Why, Jemmy? What sort of a question is that?”

  That night, the tents were so stiff and heavy with ice that they buckled, creaking as they sagged. The wind found chink after chink, seeming to stab new holes in the fabric. The dogs shifted uneasily; friends clung to each other in heaps.

  In the morning, several mules and ponies were dead. Debilitated, starved, they could not survive these nights. They froze, fell, swelled up, all in silence. There they lay in the morning, hard as iron with their legs outstretched. One pony had died standing, its body fluids turned to ice. On rock
outcrops nearby, the ravens waited.

  The villagers regarded their reduced pack trains and comforted themselves without conviction: “The strongest are still living.” The animals looked anything but strong. They dropped their heads dismally. Long icicles hung from their nostrils and their weeping eyes. Someone “burned” a mule’s nose, stupidly offering barley in a metal bucket that touched and tore the skin.

  Small children and the elderly were the riders now; there was also a growing number of sick. The caravan picked itself off the frozen ground and tottered stiffly into the march.

  “Today I shall issue some medicine to these people,” said Khenpo Nima. He searched his packs and brought out a cloth bag, then stood by the trail issuing everyone who passed with a small gray-brown pellet. Jamie saw that each recipient nodded gratefully and ate the pellet at once.

  “Don’t I get one?” he asked, as Khenpo Nima was about to replace the bag without coming to him. The monk peered at him thoughtfully, then shrugged and held out his little pouch. Jamie took the rough pellet and swallowed it with a grin.

  “Yes, yes,” said Khenpo Nima vaguely. “Why not? It will keep you warm.”

  “What’s it made of?” Jamie asked.

  “Our Reverend Abbot’s feces,” said the monk.

  On they went, the dogged radio mule and its flag leading the way from cairn to cairn, the animal itself wrapped in a yak-hair blanket. Jamie stumbled: the cold was taking hold of his brain, seeming to crush it. He knew that he was turning inward.

  He began to feel inside his clothes for the little barley cakes he’d placed next to his flesh, hot and wrapped in a piece of cloth. Delving under layer on layer of fur and wool, down to his own belly, he found the cakes and extracted them. They were frozen hard.

  The two men just in front of him came to a sudden halt. Jamie followed their look. Not far below the ridge on which they trudged, the broad river was white, still and noiseless. Some two hundred yards ahead, the gravel banks of either shore were joined by an irregular dotted line, black shapes in the ice, unmoving.