Authors: Marc Laidlaw
“There is a
way,” Tara said.
“Help me,
then,”she said.
“Imagine one
candle lighting another. That’s what you must do.”
“Then show
me! Guide me!”
“Apply your
passion. Learn to discriminate its uses. In a sense, you’ve already begun. You
desire him, Marianne. Now use that desire.”
Marianne
came back to herself and found that her hot hands were moving on Jetsun Dorje’s
flesh—not through his garments, but over his bare skin. She made circular,
rubbing movements, squeezing the blood through him, trying to work her own fire
into his veins.
When had she
made contact? When had she opened his shirt?
It must have
been in that moment of terror when she first cried out for aid. It must have
been when she knew that she must save him now or lose him forever.
She
hesitated no longer. One candle lighting another. Yes, she was truly afire,
aglow with the mystic heat. Even her fear was burning away inside her, fueling
that bright warmth; this was the forge in which she was to temper her soul. The
flame was a thing of passion; it would consume her ego and leave behind nothing
but pure essence. Gyayum Chenmo. Not even ash.
He moaned.
Her hands
moved down along his hard convulsing belly. His skin was smooth, lightly
furred. She pressed against him and closed her eyes, not that it mattered in
the total dark. With her eyes closed she could see Jetsun as a faintly glowing
silhouette, cool blue in color, speckled and hazed with frost. Her hands roamed
over the translucent blue contours, fingers of flame driving away the ice. All
she could touch was the surface of his life. Deep within his body, she could
faintly see something locked in ice, unreachable but struggling: a tiny flame
that diminished by the instant.
A flame so
close to going out. . . .
She burst from
her clothes, shedding them like a useless husk. Then she tore Jetsun’s clothes
from him as well, finding them cold as death. She pressed herself against the
man, breathing life into him, trying to share her fire.
His flame
was deep inside him, shut away so deep, and dwindling. She would have dived
toward it but a wall of flesh, an impenetrable barrier, kept her out. She
roamed the surface, seeking a way in. She called to Tara then realized that she
had lost any sense of separation from her yidam. She felt like a goddess
herself now—a goddess who could bring life with her ministrations or cause
death by her denial.
Life was the
only thing in her heart. Life was the thing that fueled the fire in her hands.
“Use your
passion,” Tara had said.
She grasped his
cock and saw the flame flare down inside him. His fire had grown more distant,
more entrapped, until she touched him.
Suddenly
steam infused Jetsun Dorje. She could hear crystals of ice cracking, hissing,
turning to water. But it was not yet enough.
She bent
over and took him into her burning mouth. His fire blazed through her eyelids.
He moaned, quickening now, seeming to expand. She could see the actual flame
of his existence, could glimpse it through the walls of his flesh where sudden
water flowed. The channels of his body began to fill with heat.
The flame
lapped up toward his crown. She imagined the brilliant diamond
OM
floating there, beginning to melt, permeating him with fire. If he
could not envision the reaction, she would do it for him. The end result would
be the same. He would live.
He was hard
now and the heat was coming from him, merging with her own. She drew herself up
against him, put her mouth to his, and blew a fiery blast into his lungs,
finishing off the last of the frost that the wind had driven into him. Then she
guided him into her warmth, pressing him as close as possible to the stroke of
white heat deep within her. She touched her hearth to the one that burned in
him.
One candle
lighting another. Their bodies slick with sweat, both burned like a single
flame.
The night
filled with their cries; they drove the chill from the rock. At the mouth of
the cave, the snow began to melt. She heard it trickling between the rocks. The
wind came in again, but they did not feel it. They were aware of nothing but
each other, nothing but the mystic heat, the Tantric fire that had saved and
purified both of them.
Marianne and
Jetsun were treated with suspicion at the first door upon which they knocked.
It opened no more than an inch, just enough to allow a wide brown eye to
examine them.
“Excuse me,”
Marianne said. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. His name is Jigme.”
After a moment
the door opened all the way. A hunched little woman stepped out of the house
and pointed at a shack across and down the street.
“That’s Jigme’s
house,”
she said, “but you won’t find him there. His cousin died
yesterday. He’s with the boy’s parents right now, in that house over there, but
they won’t be wanting any extra company.”
“We were
friends of Tsering’s, too,” said Marianne. “We were with him when he died.”
The old
woman gaped at her for a moment, then quickly put her palms together and raised
them to her brow. She bowed, muttering apologies, and hurried back into her
house. “I’ll tell them you’re coming!” they heard her say.
Marianne
wondered how much gossip had twisted the tale of yesterday’s events. In any
case, they left the house and headed down the street toward the house she had
indicated. The ground was slushy with snow; frozen puddles cracked beneath
their boots.
“Still
warm?” she asked Jetsun, squeezing his hand.
He grinned,
meeting her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be cold again.”
Despite the
loss of the jet, she was full of confidence this morning. The snow was like a
fresh coat of white paint on the world. The sky was a crisp, deep blue, the sun
yellow and warm; she did not expect that the snow would stay on the ground for
long.
Her mood was
also kept aloft by the fact that she had the tight bud of the lotus safe in her
pocket. The first of Chenrezi’s ornaments was in her keeping now.
Jigme
stepped out of the house they were approaching and greeted them with a puzzled
smile. “You’re back?”
When they
explained what had happened, he looked doubtful. “Well, I have a snowskimmer,
but i don’t think that will get you as far as you want to go.” He looked back
at the house of Tsering’s parents. “Come, we’ll go to my place. The mourning
will continue without me.”
Jigme’s
shack proved to be small but comfortable, being well heated by a central stove.
He put on water to boil then began the churning of butter tea while they
devoured balls of moistened tsampa. He offered them sausage but the smell of it
turned Marianne’s stomach.
“I can take
you to the highway,” he said. “Trucks pass through all year round. You might
find a ride with someone heading south, though it would be dangerous to cross
the provincial line. They search all trucks, you know.”
Marianne
accepted a cup of steaming tea then sat down in the light from a window and
spread out the map they had taken from the three-eyed man.
“I’m not
convinced we should go south anyway” she said. “If we can signal Dhondub and
tell him what we’re up to, then I think we should head northeast and look for
the next ornament. We’ve come all this way. Why should we go back?”
“I would
like to recover my plane,” said Jetsun irritably.
She nodded.
“Well, I don’t think we’ll find it in the south. Just look at this map.”
The chart
showed details of the Kunlun range which extended from the westernmost borders
of Tibet, curved north above the plains, then swept down again toward the
Tsaidam basin in northern Tibet. The basin was a chaotic
jumble of colored dots,
triangles, and broken lines that might have represented roads or flight paths.
A number of markings had been made by hand in this area as well as in the
western Kunlun where they had found the lotus.
“I think
this may be where your jet has gone,” she said, pointing to a small “X” on the
map. “And in any case, the Tsaidam is where we hope to find Chenrezi’s nectar.”
Jetsun
nodded, leaning over her shoulder, his cheek lightly brushing against hers.
“Then we want to catch a ride through here.” His finger traced a thin red line
that trailed along the southern edge of the Kunlun, running east-west. It was a
highway leading straight into the Tsaidam.
“The
truckers could tell you about that,” said Jigme.
“Where can
we meet them?”
He reached
for his heavy coat. “You won’t want to wander into the main depot; many of the
drivers are from mainland China and they would report suspicious strangers.
I’ll take you to a place I know. We might also find someone to carry a message
to your nomad friends.”
She gulped
the last of her tea and replaced the map in her pocket. Then she patted the
warm bulge of the lotus.
“I’m ready,”
she said.
* * *
A journey of
several miles brought them down into the pine-covered foothills. The going
became rather rough for the snowskimmer. There was snow on the ground but it
was melting into mud. Marianne kept an eye out for the road that Jigme had said
they would encounter.
The sky
ahead of them was full of vapor, as if clouds were peeling from the trees. She
couldn’t imagine what caused the phenomenon until they came out on a snowy bank
and she saw the black stripe of a road below. Steam rose from it in the form of
a long veil stretched from horizon to horizon. Solar disks gleamed at intervals
along the edges of the road, like sequins dotting the hem of a misty curtain.
Nearby, she
saw three trucks parked along the road. From their squat oval shape and the
gray rubber skirts around their bases, she knew they were hovercraft. Hover
vehicles were not permitted off the roads because they contributed to soil
erosion, but they were widely used on major highways. There was a fourth
hovertruck set back from the road, an older model with rust streaking its
sides. She would have thought it abandoned, save for the trail of smoke that
rose from a pipe in the roof.
Jigme drove
down the bank and plowed across a patch of wet earth. He parked the skimmer in
the shadow of the ancient hovertruck.
Wooden steps
led up the back of the vehicle, ending at a loading door. Jigme climbed up and
knocked sharply, then ducked as the door opened outward over his head,
A thin dark
man, his thick woolly hair set with turquoise beads, looked down at the three
of them.
“Jigme!” he
said with a smile. “Come in, come in. And your friends.”
Inside, the
huge storage compartment had been hung with shabby cloth and cluttered with odd
items of furniture. Sooty oil lamps hung from the ceiling but most of the light
came from a dim solar bulb. Battered roadsigns, a yak skull, other souvenirs of
the highway were scattered throughout. And there were people, two men and a
woman, sprawled on the torn cushions, smoke wreathing their heads.
Suddenly
nervous under the truckers’ scrutiny, Marianne looked to Jigme and took hold
of Jetsun’s hand.
“These are
cousins of mine,” Jigme said, speaking to the man who had opened the door. The
thin proprietor went back to a stove and busied himself over cups. “They came a
long way to visit—all the way from the Tsaidam basin—and now they’re looking
for a ride home. Is anyone heading east?”
The woman
asked, “Do you have money?”
“A little,”
Marianne said.
“It’s a long
drive, you know. It can take several days, depending on the weather, depending
on the stops.”
“How long
does it take if you push through?” Jetsun asked.
“Exactly how
far do you have to go?”
Marianne
looked at Jetsun, hesitating. “Just to Golmud,” she said.
The woman
looked at the other two drivers. “It sounds funny to me.”
Jigme said,
“What do you mean, funny?”
The thin man
rushed out with a tray bearing cups of steaming liquid. It smelled alcoholic.
“It does
sound strange,” he said, handing Jigme a cup.
“You know the Tsaidam basin
is closed off these days. You can’t get through anymore unless you’ve got a
government license. They’ll make you turn back at . . . at
. . .”
“At Nur
Turu,” the woman answered for him. She came over to Marianne and stared into
her eyes. She was several inches taller, perhaps ten years older.
“When did
you leave the Tsaidam?” asked the thin man.
“I don’t
think they were ever there,” the woman said.
“But Jigme,”
said the thin man, “why would your cousins tell such a story?”
Jigme looked
confused and apologetic. He started to stammer some excuse but Marianne cut him
off.
“You’re
right,” she said. “We haven’t been there, but we must get there as quickly as
possible. Isn’t there any way?”
The woman
smiled at the confirmation of her suspicions. “Who are you really? And what do
you want?”
“You wouldn’t
know my name.”
“Perhaps
not. But I don’t offer rides to those I don’t trust.”
Marianne
unzipped her pocket and pulled out the lotus bud. It glowed in her hand,
sending warmth along her arm. As she brought it into the light it began to hum
on a low, constant note.
The woman
looked mystified but not frightened. “What is it?”
“A bit of
sacred science,” she replied. “Do you know of the living Chenrezi?”
The woman
glanced at her, startled. “Only what anyone knows. The stories—”
“Are true.
We are Chenrezi’s emissaries. Our mission carries us into the Tsaidam basin. If
you are a true Tibetan, you will take us as far as you can.”
“I am
pureblood, none purer—”
“You can
trust her,” said the thin man, who seemed more amused than shaken by the
appearance of the lotus. “And all of us here. Jigme knows.”
“I thought
the living Chenrezi was a myth,” said the woman. “But there have been rumors. . . . I
once heard of a young woman who would bring the revolution. The Gyayum Chenmo,
Tibet’s mother. Could that be you?”
Marianne
nodded. “So I have been told.”
The woman
touched her palms together and put them to her brow, her lips, and her heart.
She stuck out her tongue as far as it would go, then started to drop to the
floor,
Marianne
caught her with a hand under her arm. “Don’t,” she said. “If we’re to travel
together, we must be friends. In fact, you’re the one who deserves to be
honored at the moment. You can take us where we’re going.”
“Yes,” the
woman said. “I will be honored to drive you. It would be an act of great
merit.”
“You must
call me Sonam Gampo,” said Marianne. “And what is your name?”
“Gyan
Phala.”
“Gyan? Is
there any way we can get to Golmud? Can we get past Nur Turu?”
The Tibetan
woman smiled, clutching Marianne’s arm joyfully. “Oh yes! I have a license from
the government. I’m carrying supplies from an Uygur factory to Golmud itself;
raw materials and some machinery, so they don’t watch me too closely. We’ll
hide you well. You can slip right in.”
Marianne
grinned at Jetsun Dorje, then turned to the two other drivers. “Now, I must
also send a message south to a nomad camp. Is anyone heading that way?”
* * *
The
hovertruck hissed over the steaming road, windshield wipers working
constantly. Gyan Phala, Jetsun Dorje, and Marianne rode together in the front
seat, their eyes a dozen feet above the highway. By midafternoon the road was
dry and they could dearly see the mountains around them. They curved around the
shore of a great lake so deep and clear that it looked like a sheet of glass
set over a black pit. It was dammed at the southeastern end, for Gyan Phala
informed them that it was a main source of hydro-electric power for this
region. They followed the runoff from the mountains, and soon reached the
provincial border.
There was a
hatch in the back of the driver’s cabin which opened directly into the storage
compartment. Jetsun and Marianne squeezed through, then let Gyan Phala lock it
behind them. They took up cramped positions in spaces she had cleared for them
at the start of the drive.