Читать книгу Pyramid Asia - Ian Purdie - Страница 7

The next morning Tashi woke up early. The pain he experienced when he awoke was less than excruciating for the first time in 48 hours and continued to diminish as he got out of bed and dressed himself.

Out in the kitchen his mother had the fire roaring and was ready with hot yak butter tea.

Ping emerged from her bedroom a few minutes later and bid everyone a happy afternoon. She looked slightly confused as they all laughed. Tashi pointed out her mistake and she re-issued her greeting, swapping morning for afternoon. Both Tashi’s parents smiled in appreciation of her attempts to communicate in a language which up until their arrival had been little more than a collection of academic noises. The pain in Tashi’s stomach continued to become more bearable over breakfast but lingered threateningly for the rest of the morning.

Lunch had it on the run. The fresh organic food he hadn’t experienced since leaving home marched triumphantly through his grateful gut, restoring his sense of health and wellbeing. Ping appeared to have been accepted by his parents and the terra cotta warriors were occupying a place of honor on the large wooden cabinet which dominated the living area. By late afternoon the pain had been thoroughly vanquished and that evening he ate as if he had a vacuum cleaner for a stomach.

The trunk in the attic remained undisturbed for another day while Tashi took Ping on a tour of some of the magical places which had enchanted his childhood. The other villagers maintained a respectful distance, returning Tashi’s greetings and some even returning Ping’s smile.

The next morning, at Ping’s insistence, the trunk was manhandled down from the attic, landing roughly on the hard dirt floor.

“I think it’s in here,” said Tashi.

A selection of his childhood chattels were ripped unceremoniously from their sanctuary, exposing the tip of an object wrapped in green cloth.

“I was sure I wrapped it in blue cloth,” said Tashi affecting a non-dental extraction.

“It’s beautiful,” said Ping as the object was unwrapped.

“It’s a lot smaller than I remember,” said Tashi.

“I wonder what these symbols mean,” said Ping ignoring his disappointment and lovingly taking hold of the object. “It feels warm.”

“So would you if you’d been stuck up in that attic with all that other junk.”

“We need to find the other half,” declared Ping.

“That’s not going to be easy. I haven’t seen Wen for years.”

“Somebody must know where he is.”

“He may not have it any more.”

“Something like this couldn’t just disappear. Anybody can see that it’s beautifully made and totally unique.”

“We’re farmers. It’s not useful.”

“If this really is half of the Oracle of Singh Ma, it’s incredibly valuable. And even if it isn’t the genuine article, it must be very old.”

“What do you want with that old thing?” asked Tashi’s mother from the kitchen.

“Do you or dad know what happened to Wen?” asked Tashi, ignoring her question.

“Wen’s family moved to a village south of here. I heard he died in a fire about two years ago.”

“He died?” It had been a long time but special childhood friends never entirely leave your heart. Tashi sat down as a wave of grief crashed over him.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ping, whose knowledge of Tibetan hadn’t covered the subject of death.

“My friend Wen is dead,” Tashi translated.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t still find the other half,” insisted Ping, ignoring Tashi’s sudden sadness. “Where did he die? Somebody must know where it is.”

“Do you know which village?” asked Tashi attempting to recover from his sudden sullen slump.

“I think they went to Daru,” said Tashi’s mother.

“How far away is it?” asked Ping, recognising Daru as a location.

“Not far. It’s on the other side of Mt Luguna,” said Tashi.

“When can we go?”

“What? My mother just said he’s dead.”

“That doesn’t mean the Oracle is gone. It must still be somewhere. Don’t you realize, you may have found something ancient, rare and extremely valuable?”

* * *

Two days later they were on the road. Tashi borrowed his father’s cart and attempted to reacquaint himself with its workings. He’d never liked horses and this particular one had thrown him when he tried to ride it a few years earlier. Fortunately it didn’t remember him.

Ping had never ridden on a cart before. Her first experience of family transportation that didn’t involve a chauffeur and plush leather seats had been riding on the tractor trailer when they arrived. The horse amazed her as it navigated the treachery of the mountain track.

The air tasted intangibly sweet and she could feel the snow in her bones. The chill in the air energised her imagination as they passed a sparse assortment of small dwellings, stimulating her wonder at the ancient methods Tibetans still employed to survive in such a harsh environment.

Then she began to wonder at the birds and insects. They lacked the rudimentary shelter the people had built and yet somehow seemed to be thriving. It was summer and the snows had ascended to the peaks of distant mountains but the thought of what existence must be like during the freezing winter months made her shiver.

Beyond was a valley and the imposing bulk of Mt Luguna.

The journey lasted almost the whole morning. As the sun reached its zenith they arrived at the village where Wen’s family had reportedly moved.

Tashi asked a farmer they passed, if he knew anything about Wen or his family. The man had lived in the village all his life and directed them to the site where Jim’s house had once stood. As they approached the place where his closest childhood friend had died, sadness filled his heart once again.

He pulled on the reigns and attempted to guide the obstinate horse to pull over. The horse did it’s best to ignore him. Eventually human intelligence prevailed over whatever happens inside a horse’s head and the cart belatedly drew to a halt, further down the track than intended.

The charred remnants of the house stood in stark contrast with the rest of the well-maintained village.

Situated on a small mound of barren brown earth, away from the inhabited dwellings, the mud brick walls were slowly being reclaimed. Despite the interceding two years, the aroma of burnt wood hung over the ruins like a badly written invitation to stay away.

Inside the crumbling walls, a few scorched, empty whiskey bottles were the only reminder that the place had once been a human dwelling. Tashi began poking randomly beneath the dirt with a charred stick. Ping was more purposeful and managed to find some old rusting springs that had once been part of a mattress.

“This looks like it was probably the bedroom,” she said. Tashi followed her and forlornly applied his stick to the morbid task of excavation. It didn’t take long to dig out a large section from where the bed had once stood. Ping found an old syringe and pieces of a broken vase. Tashi dug up a door handle as Ping produced some other handles that had probably been part of a dressing table.

They continued in silence for another twenty minutes, unearthing more sorry relics.

"Here it is!" announced Tashi, pulling what looked like a vaguely triangular lump of rock out of the dirt.

Ping took it from him and began to rub the charred earth from around it. The black crystal shone in the afternoon light.

“That’s it!” she confirmed, flashing him a smile.

Although it had been two long winters since the house had burnt down, Tashi imagined he could still smell burning flesh. Obsessed by what she was holding, Ping didn’t seem to even recognise the emotions he was suffering, or care about the sad fate of his childhood companion.

“It doesn’t appear to have been damaged,” she exclaimed as they exited the charred wreckage and walked triumphantly towards the horse which was attempting to make a meal out of some lonely shrubs beside the track.

* * *

By the time they arrived back in Womadige, the dirty triangular lump had been polished and restored to the closest state to its former glory it had exhibited for several sooty years. The sun was casting its last superfluous rays between the mountains as cold shadows devoured his childhood home.

“We found the other half of the Oracle,” announced Ping proudly as they entered the warm kitchen.

“What?” asked Tashi’s mother.

“Ungh?” inquired Tashi’s father.

“We found the other half of that ornament, the one Wen and I found on Mt Luguna,” explained Tashi.

This failed to elicit any further curiosity and no more questions were asked about the black object Ping was proudly displaying.

“Did you see Wen’s mother?” asked Tashi’s mother.

“No,” replied Tashi. “But we found the house where he died. It was very sad.”

“Where did you put your half?” asked Ping.

* * *

The pain in Tashi’s stomach only returned briefly the next afternoon when a small group of villagers assembled outside his parent’s house, hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful, Chinese girl they’d heard he’d brought home. They loitered for an hour but dispersed when Tashi’s mother opened the front door and invited them inside for a cup of tea.

The next day it was time to catch the train back to Xi’an.

The trip had been a complete success.

As they were preparing to leave for Nagqu railway station, Tashi’s mother gave Ping a present. It was a very old pair of turquoise and Himalayan coral earrings. They had been given to her by her mother-in-law when she and Tashi’s father were married. They were a family heirloom whose origins receded back through many generations of the women in Tashi’s family.

Tashi was both pleased and mortified.

He was very happy his mother had given the earrings to Ping because it meant his parents accepted Ping into the family. Most ethnic Tibetans opposed their children marrying Chinese, believing the Chinese had done immeasurable damage to Tibetan culture by destroying monasteries and murdering monks since the invasion of Tibet in 1958.

They had exiled the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people and flooded Tibet with 25 million Han Chinese, who now outnumbered the Tibetans by five to one. Tibetans were second class citizens in their own country. They were forbidden to practice their unique form of Buddhism and were constantly harassed by soldiers and the police, controlled by the government in distant Beijing.

The capital city of Lhasa had suffered unspeakable atrocities as cultural imperialism insisted that one of the most spiritually advanced societies on Earth renounce their cherished beliefs and conform to the dictates of the spiritually inert elite in Beijing.

The earrings were a powerful symbol, but Tashi was afraid a wealthy Chinese woman would find them ugly and primitive, the stones unpolished and the silver dull. He couldn’t imagine Ping ever wearing them. He had seen the contents of her jewelry box, laden with precious stones and golden trinkets.

However, despite his misgivings, Ping appeared ecstatic. She understood that the gift symbolised her acceptance by Tashi’s family. That was worth far more than money.

She also knew the value of genuine turquoise which is rare. The vast majority of turquoise available in markets and shops was in fact hard plastic, sold to the gullible and ignorant who had never seen the real thing.

She hugged and kissed Tashi’s mother while Tashi and his father stood back and enjoyed the generational moment.

Then the four of them squashed themselves, and Ping’s and Tashi’s luggage onto the cart to make the journey to Nagqu railway station. The tractor was being used to drag boulders from the river so it wasn’t available for the return journey. The horse whinnied a brief protest at the extra weight before resigning itself to the task.

Tashi and Ping waved a teary goodbye from the train windows as Tashi’s parents and Nagqu railway station slowly receded from view.

Despite the complete absence of any luxury, the trip had ended far more successfully than Tashi’s first visit to Hong Kong. Not only had nobody been arrested or hospitalized, they had the Oracle of Singh Ma, or a very convincing copy, packed safely inside Ping’s luggage. They sat contentedly together on a bottom bunk as the rugged countryside flashed past.

Tashi suspected it was the same train. He spent most of the first afternoon trying to locate familiar aspects of the carriages that would confirm his belief.

By the time it was dark he’d given up. Trains all looked the same. They sounded the same and smelt the same. They were the same even when they were different.

The return journey back to Xi’an was far less painful. The dread and fear that had grown progressively more oppressive going the other way had all proved unfounded.

They were young. They had each other and time on their side. The mountains were replaced by the dry monotony of the Gobi Desert, which eventually surrendered to more interesting vistas of trees, hills and rivers.

Suddenly, or so it seemed, lost as they had been in each other’s company, they were back in Xi’an.

The traffic was still fighting to arrive before itself, the sky was hidden behind an enormous canopy of stale pollution and the air was warm and humid. Nothing appeared to have changed since they left, a stark contrast to the myriad inner transformations they had experienced.

They boarded another train and within half an hour were back in Xian’yang.

Nobody was waiting to meet them and the university didn’t appear particularly interested in where they had been or what they had done.

That was until the afternoon of Ping’s first archaeology tutorial.

“What’s that supposed to be?” asked Professor Guo.

“It’s either the Oracle of Singh Ma itself or a very old copy,” claimed Ping proudly.

“The Oracle of Singh Ma was blue,” said the professor dismissively. “Give it to me,” he added with professorial disinterest etched into every learned syllable.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“Mt Luguna.”

“Where’s that?”

“Tibet.”

“Ungh?”

The silence that followed smelled strongly of traffic and stale duck.

“Can I take this away for examination?”

“No. The wind is strong and I need it as a paper weight,” teased Ping.

The learned professor looked beyond his glasses for the first time in several semesters. He was young in professorial terms, being in his mid thirties, tall, thin, unmarried and lacking a developed sense of humor. He sported a Spartan growth on his upper lip which looked like somebody had attempted to sew his lips together with a few strands of wispy black cotton but had somehow missed his mouth. He’d spent all of his short existence engrossed in academic study and appeared awkward in the presence of attractive female students.

“Of course,” corrected Ping as the trafficky, ducky silence threatened to merge with the sweet smell of her own perfume.

This was followed by an even more meaningful, “Ungh.”

Later that afternoon, when Ping returned to her flat after lectures were concluded, she was surprised to find Professor Guo waiting on her doorstep.

“Can I come in?” he asked after a brief exchange of courtesies.

“Of course.”

Once inside, he produced the Oracle from his bag.

“Where exactly did you get this?” he asked, this time displaying genuine interest.

“My friend, Tashi found it on Mt Luguna in Tibet when he was a boy.”

“This could be the greatest find since the terracotta warriors,” he declared, throwing traditional discretion to the wind. “I’ve already checked with the major museums. It’s too early to know for sure, but nobody seems to know of anything quite like it. A colleague of mine, who specialises in rare antiquities, is on his way from Beijing to examine it personally. He should be here tomorrow morning. Have you told anybody else about this?”

“Besides Tashi who told me about it, no I haven’t.”

“Good! Until we can verify its authenticity, I think we should keep it to ourselves.”

“Is it valuable?’

“I can’t be sure at this stage. Do you mind if I keep it in the faculty safe until it can be properly examined?”

“Not at all.”