Kingdom (8 page)

It was Hexagram 50: ‘Ting’ – the cauldron.

Next, she read through the cryptic judgement that was written beneath.

Nancy read the verse several times, a frown deepening on her face.

‘Here, I’ve found it.’ Krishna said, bustling back into the office and squeezing round the tables, overflowing with magazines and books.

Nancy was still scrutinizing the cryptic definition and the hexagram. Without looking up she said, ‘Krishna, can you look at this?’

‘What?’

‘Here. Hexagram number fifty.’

Krishna came over to the desk, his head tilted to see what she was looking at.

‘So you asked the Oracle a question?’ He eyed her suspiciously and turned the book round so he could read it: ‘Let me see.’

First, he flicked through the pages to the back of the book and carefully checked that she had numbered the hexagram correctly.

‘Yes – it is hexagram fifty. That is correct. “Ting”. The Cauldron.’

Then he found the hexagram and read through the definition. As he did so his eyebrows rose in interest and he looked at her accusingly:

‘Nancy, what exactly did you ask the Oracle?’

She could feel herself blushing.

‘I asked it if it really worked.’

Krishna looked at her with the glint of a smile in his eyes.

‘Well then, let me tell you how it answered. The Oracle describes itself as a cauldron.’

‘Yes – I worked that part out. But I don’t understand what it means, let alone the rest of it.’

‘Wait, be patient and think a little. In ancient China, a cauldron was a communal vessel used for cooking food to nourish the whole village. Nowadays, no one uses cauldrons any more. This means the Oracle is telling you that in the old days everyone used it all the time and benefited from it but now it has fallen into disuse.’

Nancy listened in fascination. Krishna continued.

‘Now listen carefully, this is the important bit.’

He read the definition aloud:

Nancy shrugged her incomprehension, but Krishna continued.

‘The Oracle is saying that it still contains food, which means it still contains wisdom and nourishment: it still contains the truth. Then it says that its comrades are envious. By “comrades” it means people who we turn to today as oracles, for example doctors or politicians or priests. It says that these modern-day oracles are envious of the
I-Ching
’s power but their envy is in vain for the
I-Ching
alone has access to the truth.’

‘Then the next lines:

Krishna laughed out loud.

‘What?’ Nancy said impatiently. ‘What does it mean?’

‘The Oracle says that no one knows how to use it properly these days and that its real wisdom, the fat of the pheasant, isn’t touched any more. Finally it finishes by saying that when these dark times pass, and when the rain has gone, then people will recognize that it speaks the truth and good times will return again.’

‘That is pretty extraordinary. It seems to make sense. But I wonder how it works.’

Krishna smiled mysteriously.

‘Well, now you know why the Japanese governments consult it in moments of crisis. Be very careful when passing judgement on the so-called superstitions of the East. And be careful in future not to ask the Oracle such cheeky questions. It has been known to play nasty tricks.’

He shut the book firmly but respectfully and slid it to one side. His expression had become serious again.

‘But here – enough of that. Let me show you this. It will help you understand Herzog and Tibet.’

The television screen flickered for a moment; Krishna was fiddling with the cable that joined the DVD player to the back of the TV. Now a picture sprang into life.

It was a street scene, a scene of chaos. It looked like it was somewhere in Delhi. The picture quality was poor. She could tell from working with old news footage that it must have been shot more than a decade ago. The cameraman was filming amongst a crowd of people; monks mainly, and some normal Tibetan people as well. They were protesting in the streets somewhere; there was a large government building in the background, a Victorian-looking structure typical of the government areas of Delhi. Armed Indian policemen had formed a protective cordon around the gate, which was shut. Their faces were tense as they stared at the crowds.

And the protesters in turn were very agitated. They were holding up clenched fists, and waving their placards towards the gate. Some of these were in Tibetan and some were in Hindi but some were written in English. ‘Free Tibet.’ ‘The World Must Help.’ The cameraman must have turned the sound on, for suddenly a wave of noise emanated from the television. People were shouting and screaming and there were police sirens and orders barked in Hindi.

Then Nancy heard another voice. It was breathless and close; very loud compared with the other noises. The incongruity of the setting made her hesitate for a moment, but then she knew it was Herzog’s voice. His accent was distinctive – American but with undertones of both Spanish and German, so that he always sounded almost like a European aristocrat speaking English.

‘. . . I am now going to walk over to the gates . . . and film the crowd from there . . . the police are beating the hunger strikers . . .’

Nancy watched as the camera wobbled one way and another. Herzog was clearly being knocked into, buffeted by the tidal surge of the crowds. Yet he must have reached the gates, for he stopped and turned around and the picture steadied and she was better able to study the faces of some of the people in the crowd. They were so sad, she thought, so desperate, so full of anguish and pain and frustration. She could scarcely bear to watch. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. Krishna leaned forwards and pointed urgently at the television, touching his right index finger on the screen.

‘Watch him,’ he said.

Nancy leaned closer in. Krishna’s finger had singled out the face of a man. He was clearly Tibetan, he had the characteristic rosy cheeks and round face. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He must have been about forty-five, she thought. His face was a mask of anguish. She watched him as he walked aimlessly amongst the crowd. He clutched his head in despair and then he set to beating his breast. There were tears in his eyes. Like a silent ghost he weaved around the picture and then suddenly he disappeared out of the shot. Nancy looked in alarm at Krishna and was about to ask where he had gone and who he was, but Krishna stopped her, abruptly raising his hand, his eyes still fixed on the screen. A second later the man reappeared. He was soaking wet. How had he got so wet? Were the police using a water cannon to control the crowd?

He seemed to be muttering to himself, perhaps he was praying. The crowd began to part around him, and then started to run, looking back over their shoulders at him. The devastated man sat down on the road, adopting the lotus position. The cameraman began to walk towards the man. Even as everyone else ran in the other direction, the cameraman was walking right at him.

And then it happened. The poor man took a box of matches in his hands. Holding them close to his chest, he struck a match and suddenly, in an explosion of light that turned the television screen completely white for a second, he was engulfed in a ball of flame. The man had set himself on fire. The water had been petrol.

Like a straw doll, the man burnt, a great cone of flame engulfing him. Herzog must have dropped the camera to the floor.

He could be heard shouting:

‘Oh my God . . . Oh no . . . No . . . Help. Someone help. Stop him . . .’

And then the screen went black. Krishna had turned off the television. He stood up and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

‘I’m sorry. It is very upsetting. But you have to see it. If you want to understand Herzog and Tibet, it is the only way. People have to be shocked into realizing the truth.’

Nancy was still staring at the blank television screen in shock.

‘Is he dead?’

She felt foolish for asking.

‘Gyurme Dorge? The man in the film? Yes – he’s dead all right. They poured water on him, but it was too late. He survived in hospital for a few days. The Dalai Lama visited him and urged him to be compassionate towards the Chinese. He was happy. He was in high spirits when he died.’

They fell into silence for a minute, then Krishna began again slowly.

‘He was a herder from western Tibet. He had walked over the passes many years ago into India so that he could finally live as a Tibetan, near his beloved Dalai Lama. He lived at Macleod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama lives. He was, by all accounts, a gentle and light-hearted man.’

‘Was he a monk?’

‘No. He was a layperson. He began life as a herder and served for a time in the army. He had made it to India. He lived in a tin shack on the hillside just down the road from the Dalai Lama’s bungalow. All he wanted was to be near the Dalai Lama, amongst other Tibetans, living a religious life. He worked as a waiter and chef at a café when he wasn’t fasting, or walking in the hills.’

‘So, how did he end up there – in Delhi?’

‘That was in 1989. It was the year of a brutal crackdown in Lhasa. So many people were tortured and murdered. And many of the last remaining monasteries and shrines were destroyed. You cannot imagine the pain for the Tibetans. It was as if the Chinese were destroying their soul. Gyurme went down to Delhi to protest. He was so upset, he wanted to do something. Lots of Tibetans were hunger-striking, others were sitting in the road. The army moved in to remove them – the Indian government had buckled to Chinese complaints. None of the other countries round the world did anything. No one had done anything in 1959, when the Chinese destroyed four thousand monasteries and smashed the lamas and forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India. The Americans and the British and the French all just stood by and watched. It is a shameful period of history . . .’

Nancy sighed heavily. She had read about it and it was a sad, sad day for the world. But what could any of the world powers have done? China considered Tibet to be her own sovereign territory. The Chinese government made it quite clear: if they were left to do what they wanted in Tibet, they would never use their veto in the United Nations. It was a cynical trade-off. So the great powers of the time just sat by and did nothing about Tibet; they had other priorities around the world for which they needed China’s cooperation. Tibet was a long way down the list.

Nancy looked up at Krishna and said, ‘Why was Anton filming it?’

Krishna looked over at Herzog’s chair out of habit.

‘Oh, he was always interested in Tibet, but after that day he changed. He had been something of a playboy before then. He was always a great journalist of course, and even then he was a voracious reader, but after seeing that he was a different man.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, he went up to Macleod Ganj for the cremation of Gyurme Dorge. I spoke to him about it only once. The other times he dismissed my questions, simply wouldn’t be drawn. But on that one occasion he said that after the ceremony, which was attended by great crowds of Tibetans in the exile community, he went for a walk. He didn’t know where he was going so he just wandered at random until he found himself standing in front of a small tin-roofed hut down a quiet back alley. An old man who was sitting near by told him that it was Gyurme Dorge’s home. Anton said he already knew that, that he had just walked straight there. He didn’t know how he had managed to do this but he had. The hut was tiny, no bigger than eight feet by six feet, and he had to bow his head when he was inside to avoid scraping the corrugated iron roof. Outside, the garden had been carefully maintained. There were bright red snapdragons and beautiful pansies in the little flower beds and there was even a small hedge that Gyurme Dorge had clearly tried to carve into the shape of a bird – a symbol of freedom.

‘Inside the hut, there were several shelves that served as altars – they had three Tibetan flags on them and an image of the Dalai Lama. On the bed were two neatly folded and perfectly ironed shirts. Apart from that there was really nothing there. Anton said that seeing the hut and understanding how this man must have lived had a profound effect on him. Anton was a great scholar and he had read of the tea masters and poets of old who cultivated a “refined poverty”, but he had never actually understood it until then. Gyurme Dorge wasn’t a lama, after all, he wasn’t a practising monk or anything like that.

‘Anyway, Anton changed after he went to Macleod Ganj. Tibet became his personal cause. And it wasn’t just a political obsession – he had been affected at a much deeper level too. He stopped going out so often in the evenings, he became more serious. I mean he was always rather serious, but even his irony, his dry levity went . . .’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘He started to work all the time . . .’

‘On what? I mean news journalism is finite – it’s limited by the events that are going on . . .’

‘He worked on his own things, in the evenings. He studied and read and collected antiques and old books. He developed his theories. He would regularly work until one or two in the morning, listening to Mozart and Bach, and then go to sleep on the sofa here in the office. I’d arrive in the morning, or Lakshmi would come in, and find him back at his desk . . .’