Читать книгу Mirror of Dreams - Martin Louis Alan Gompertz - Страница 5

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“Now then, Tom, tell me what we’re starting out to look for—or, rather, what you think you’re going to find—it’s sure not to exist, but I should like to know the plot, so to speak.”

Thus Oxley, after dinner a few nights later, sitting in Tom Carruthers’ room. Mrs. Carruthers had persuaded him to stay with them until he and Tom sailed.

Tom Carruthers, sitting opposite with Tosh fast asleep at his feet, laughed. He knew that John Oxley had no faith in his ideas, and, if anything, that made him all the more determined to carry through with his quest.

“In other words,” he said, “explain to you once more the holes tied together with invisible string—the chain, you say, doesn’t exist, and therefore presents no problem. It’s wasted on your prejudiced mind, of course, but here goes.

“The beginning of it all is the dreams which I’ve had ever since I can remember. I won’t waste time over them except to remind you of one or two. Some of them I’ve already told you at different times.”

“Taken as read,” said Oxley. “You were lucky to own the chance combination of hand and foot and eye which the barbarian English youth and man worship more than all the intellectual qualities which ever happened. Hence you did your lunacy in a haze of stick and ball skill. If I had dared to have dreams—thank God I didn’t....”

“You’d have been hunted more than ever—greatly to your soul’s good,” retorted Tom. “Shut up! I’m talking now.” Then he continued: “They were all about places I’d never seen, mountains and glaciers, and things like that. They were so vivid that I used to give names to them. There was the great mountain which looked like a tent; the Giant’s Stairway of ice; the mirror dream with the mirror that used to turn into a window, and you could see all sorts of queer things through it—battles and ships and men fighting prehistoric animals. And the temple place where they kept the mirror, with the old man who used to stand beside it in queer clothes—an old man who looked as if he was about a hundred years old.”

“I remember him all right,” remarked Oxley. “It was my first inkling of how dreams are made, because it was the night after you had been caught smoking in the lower copse at school, and, according to your account, old Pendlebury really surpassed himself at the interview that evening. Next morning—lying on your face—you told me that dream, and said that the old man’s eyebrows twitched just like old Pendlebury’s used to do when he was stuffy.”

Tom grinned at the recollection. He had recently met old Pendlebury, who still played a mild game of golf and attributed his skill at the game to his practice on Tom Carruthers in earlier days. Then he went on with his story for the benefit of the unbeliever opposite.

“Well, anyway, the dreams still came after I’d left school—went on for years and years—and I was convinced that they meant something, were some sort of message for me. I was sure I was meant to find out something, only I didn’t know how or where, except that I was convinced it was off the beaten track. Later on, when I knew more and had travelled a bit, I felt certain that it was somewhere in the middle of Asia. As you know, I left the army before the war and was just going to begin exploring when the blooming Hun started upsetting things and I had to come back. However, the dreams went on all the same, although on your theory I ought to have dreamt of other things in France.

“When the war was over, I went out to India again and travelled up Ladakh way because I was sure now that whatever I was to find was somewhere up Thibet direction, and Ladakh was a good place to begin learning the language and the customs and how to trek about in that sort of country. I spent a year on the first trip and learnt a lot.

“I took two years for the second effort, and even then I always worked eastward towards the Thibetan border, still with the same idea in my head. I really don’t know what it was that made me turn north towards Nubra and the Karakorum, which is going away from Thibet and into quite uninhabited country. But as soon as I got into Nubra I felt that I was on the right track. Also I had an interest in that bit because that was where old great-uncle Steven was last heard of. You know about him and how he vanished.”

John nodded, for he knew that story, which was a tradition in the Carruthers family. “Great-uncle Steven,” as they always referred to him, had been the cousin of Mrs. Carruthers’ grandfather, Fenwick by name, and, like many another adventurous spirit, he had gone to sea for a space. Then India had called him, and for a short time he held a post under the British East India Company, only to find that settled work was not to his liking. He had abandoned that for the more risky, but potentially more profitable, business of private trade, and had moved steadily northward until, in time, he reached Ladakh and the Thibetan border in the days before the Dogras came in through Kishtiwar to make an end of the old Western Thibetan dynasty which ruled in Leh.

And from there, in the late thirties of the last century, he had set out for Central Asia and had never been seen or heard of again. Central Asia, and even Ladakh and Baltistan, were more or less unknown in those times, nearly a century ago, and the worthy merchants who ruled the middle and south of India had other things to think of than the whereabouts of a private trader, whose period of service in their employ had mostly been spent in acrimonious bickering with his possibly hide-bound seniors. Steven Fenwick just disappeared, and that was the end of him, though whether his caravan was overwhelmed in an avalanche or blizzard on one of the high passes, or whether, possibly, he came to his end by poison or disease, or whether, even, he still languished in the noisome prison of one of the independent Khans of Central Asia which had not then come under Russian domination, only possibly his relatives at home cared.

“I knew that Nubra country the moment I got there,” continued Tom Carruthers. “It wasn’t because I felt I’d been there in a previous life—I don’t believe in reincarnation. But it was because it seemed to fit in with my dreams, and, after a march or two, I was certain that somewhere in front must lie the Tent Peak, the Giant’s Stairway of ice, the Crow’s Nest, and all the other things.

“But I went wrong at first because I started out over the Saser, on the Central Asian road, into the Upper Shyok, and on to the Murgo route, where I found nothing at all. Then I came back to Nubra and thought I’d go north and have a look at the Siachen glacier, which is the biggest thing of its kind in the world. It’s very hard to reach in summer because there’s an enormous volume of water coming down—the late autumn’s the proper time. However, with a good deal of trouble, I made my way up to Kungma, about eight miles short of the glacier snout, where there was said to be a small monastery. There are no villages up as high as that, of course; the last of them was two long marches further back, and there is no road for most of the year. But I wanted to see the monastery which very few other people had ever seen, and which no one seemed to know much about.

“It was quite a small place, on the side of a hill, with a most gorgeous view of glaciers and snow-peaks, at about fourteen thousand feet up, high enough to be snow-bound for part of the year. And when I got there I was certain sure that I had come somewhere near the beginning of my dreams, although there had never been any monasteries in them.

“It was a yellow cap monastery—that means one belonging to the reformed sect of Lamaistic monks, whose founder tried to bring them back to something more like what Buddha had intended monks to be. As a rule, the yellow caps are more monk-like than the red ones, but the Kungma monastery was quite the most monastic place I’d ever seen in Ladakh, and the monks really seemed to behave as one would expect them to. By that time I could speak Thibetan passably, and even write a little, and when they found that out they were very keen to talk and show me over their monastery.

“Although the layout was the usual type, with the main chapel for the images and the room where the sacred books are kept, the painted walls and the silk hangings, yet somehow it seemed a little different, and yet I couldn’t quite place the difference. The thing that finally caught my attention was a picture painted on a small door behind the main altar in the chapel, a locked door, such as you often find there, a sort of shrine.

“At first sight it seemed to be a picture of a thousand-armed deity, Avalokita or Dukar. Looking closer, I saw that it was a woman, like Dukar, only, instead of making a sort of centipede figure out of it, the artist had put extra arms as a background in halo form. The result was that you seemed to see the woman standing before a crowd of unseen people who were lifting up their arms towards her, as though asking for something. The picture was very beautifully done and very alive, and it seemed as if the woman was looking down at something which she held in her hands, and almost as if she was reflecting whether she should give it to the people who stood behind her.

“The thing she held in her hand was green and silver, oval, with a short handle; and that fixed my attention very much, because the whole shape was that of the looped cross which was the symbol of life among so many old peoples—among the Egyptians, for instance. I’d never seen it in Lamaism before, nor in India, which is where Buddhism began, and Lamaism is a debased form of Buddhism.

“The head monk was showing me round. He was what they call a gelong—a degree higher than the rest—and wearing the special robes with gold brocade on them; a quiet man, with rather an intellectual face of refined Mongol type. I asked him who the picture represented, and he smiled a little as he told me it was Dukar. I said that I’d seen plenty of pictures of that lady, and this was quite different, and I also wanted to know what she was holding in her hands. He told me that he didn’t know—that it was an old picture that had been there for years and years before he came. I felt certain then that he was not telling me all the truth. But when I left he was very friendly, and said he thought I would come back again before long, which, at the time, struck me as queer.

“One of my reasons for going up to Kungma was that I suspected the old map—the only one there was of those parts. It showed big glaciers north of the Saser route, draining eastward. There’d been a scientific expedition on the east side just before the war, who’d surveyed that part pretty carefully and found no glaciers draining that way. And yet there must be big glaciers in those hills, and if they didn’t drain north or east, which I knew they didn’t, then they must drain west into Nubra. So I decided to go back on to the Saser divide before winter set in and have a look. It was a problem worth clearing up.

“I struck off northwards from the trade route by a long glacier, which was fairly hard work, although, of course, I’d left my heavy kit behind. Also I had a little trouble with my Nubra men, who hated going off the trade route or the known parts. However, eventually I got them up to the head of that glacier, but when it came to climbing the divide beyond it, they weren’t coming. In the end, I got four of the best to come with me, leaving the rest below, and could thus carry enough food and things to let me go on for a couple of days. Just then we were on a light enough scale even to suit your taste, John.

“We climbed the divide and dropped down on the farther side and, as I had expected, came on the head of a big glacier, where we camped for the night on the edge of the névé. Next day we pushed on down the glacier, which, after a while, I found was trending westward, and not eastward, as the old map had shown. It was fairly hard going nearly all the way. We followed it all day until almost dark, and it seemed to go on for miles and miles in front, so I realised that there could be no question of following it to Nubra. We must turn back and go over again into the Saser country.

“Next morning, however, I decided to do something rather risky, in view of our few supplies and the difficult country. If snow had started we should certainly have been done in, but the weather was perfect, and I felt that I simply must chance something, for I was convinced that somewhere close by I should find a key to all those weird dreams of mine. I was absolutely certain of that, though I can’t explain why.

“I decided that we would halt there that day while I took the two best men, Anchuk and Tseing, and climbed a rather high but fairly easy spur on the north bank. I thought that from there I should not only get a long view down the glacier and see where it went to, but that I should also see what lay to the north, for by now I knew I was too far west for the glacier to be any part of the Shyok drainage system, which it ought to have been, according to the old map.

“Anchuk and Tseing were both fairly used to ice and snow now; I had been training them for some time, and we managed to go pretty fast. Also we were lucky in having no step-cutting to do, as, most of the way, we were able to keep on easy rock where we didn’t even need the rope. We managed to make over four thousand feet before we were stopped quite close to the head of the spur by a rather sheer rock-face, which was bad for several hundred feet. However, we climbed it in the end, using the rope at times, and, as the weather was just perfect, with a full moon that night, even if we were late getting down, it wouldn’t matter much.

“At last we hauled ourselves up on to the crest. And then I knew for certain that I had reached the place I had been dreaming of all these years. In front of us there was a great, wide valley with a glacier running down the centre and some smaller side glaciers, while beneath us was a very sheer drop to one that I knew—one I had dreamed of and called the Snow Sea because it seemed all broken up into green and white waves. About ten miles away, on the opposite side of the valley, which seemed to be closed all round by big mountains, rose a single rock peak. The moment I looked at it I realised that I knew every cranny and ledge on its face and all the folds of the hanging glaciers on the northwest side of it. It was the peak which I had called the Tent Peak in my dreams because it does look rather like a tent, as you can see from the picture over there—an enlargement from one I took with my small camera and a telephoto lens on the day I’m talking of. At its foot was a flattish stretch, probably two or three miles long, above the glacier, and, although I could not see it from there, I knew that below the farthest point I could see the central glacier dropped in an ice-fall—the place I used to call the Giant’s Stairway when I was a kid.

“The men were too done to take any interest in it—they had bad headaches, and, anyway, to them it was merely another patch of ice and snow and hills such as I had been dragging them over for the last few months. The only thing they wanted was to get down and back and on to the trade route and so home to the warmth of Nubra, for it was getting cold up where we were.

“But after I’d taken some photos and had a bit of food, I got out the telescope and had a look round. And I’m perfectly certain that on that flat space I could just make out something that I’m sure was a big building, though how on earth such a thing could be there, in an enclosed valley miles from anywhere, beat me at the time, and I tried to tell myself that it was only a queer-shaped rock.

“Then we came down—nasty going, the first bit on the rock-face, but somehow I felt I couldn’t make a mistake that day—things were bound to go right. I think the men felt it, too, for we came off in about record time and reached the other two men and the mummery tents just before it got dark, or rather before the moon rose.

“The following morning we started back, and, the day after, got over the divide just in time, for the clouds were banking up and we had some heavy snow before we hit the trade route, and, although it cleared again over our side, it still covered the hills we’d left and the clouds kept low, hiding everything behind us. I was very glad to make Pangdongtsa, where I’d left my servant, Nawab, and the bigger tent. I had an ex-Sepoy, too, on that trip, a Pathan called Makhmud, that Sanderson got for me, but I’d left him at Panamik with the heavy kit because he had been a bit out of sorts for the last few days.

“That night at Pangdongtsa I couldn’t sleep at all. I lay awake for hours, and then at last I got up and went for a stroll, hoping that moving about might send me to sleep later. There was a bright moon and very few clouds. We had the camping-place to ourselves, although Nawab said there had been a caravan there the night before, but they’d gone on in the morning. I was very surprised, therefore, after I’d walked a little way, to see a man on the slope just above me, moving about as though he was looking for something. I thought, at first, that it was one of my fellows, and then realised that it couldn’t be, as I had no one dressed like him. He seemed to be a merchant of sorts, with the usual long coat and felt boots.

“I walked up towards him and he moved round behind some rocks, still apparently hunting for whatever he’d lost. I saw him again as I got closer, bending down in the shadows, and I called to him. He stood up, and I could see clearly in the moonlight that he was no one I knew. Then, suddenly, he ran in among a cluster of big boulders and I lost sight of him. I was interested, so I followed, but I couldn’t find him at all, which seemed queer. There were lots of boulders all over the place, and, of course, he could have hidden behind any of them, but I felt that I ought to have seen him move from one to another, because it was bright moonlight, and full moon at a high altitude is about as strong as English sunlight on a winter afternoon.

“I thought it rather funny and looked round for any trace of an encampment, expecting to find a few pack-saddles with some bales piled up against a rock and a man or two asleep. But there was just nothing at all. Then I went to the place where I’d last seen him. Nothing there either, until I stubbed my foot against what I took to be a stone, and, looking down, saw something shining. I bent down and saw that it was the metal handle of some object half buried in the ground, which was soft there. I dug it out presently and found the mirror you’ve heard of.”

Carruthers stopped for a moment and went over to his writing-table, unlocked a drawer, and took from it what seemed to be a mirror of some green substance like very opaque bottle-glass, set in an oval frame of silver or some other white metal chased over with what looked like some strange writing. He handed it to Oxley, who looked at it with mild interest and admitted that it was not a common sort of thing and might be old. Carruthers had mentioned also that no one had been able to decipher the writing. But, as a mirror, it seemed useless, since it did not reflect—the surface was quite dull.

“I know,” said Carruthers, “but when it begins to show things that changes; you get lights coming into it until it clears and becomes transparent. Only it won’t do it for everyone. So far, it only has worked for me. But it worked that first night when I found it, and it really frightened me, because it numbed my hand and I couldn’t let go—it was just as if I’d got hold of the terminal of a low-power battery. It began when I got back to my tent and was looking at the thing and puzzling over its shape, which was the same looped cross that I had seen at Kungma. Suddenly I began to see pictures. First of all there were all sorts of things I’d forgotten about, things at school, and so on. Then it started to show the things I’d dreamed of so often. Last of all, it showed me the chapel at Kungma and the picture behind the altar, and I could see the gelong standing there. I’m not inventing; it’s all literally true. But what attracted me most then was that I could now see that the thing the woman in the Kungma picture held in her hand was a mirror just like the one I had.

“Then suddenly it all veiled over again with shadows and dancing lights and as suddenly went dull and dead just like it had been before, and it was a long time before I could use my fingers, they were so numb. It’s worked several times since, but I have no control over it, and I’ve tried heaps of times. I can’t say when I’m going to see anything or what I’m going to see.

“That night, however, it worked twice. I was just going to put it down when it came to life again, and showed me a man I’d never seen before. I couldn’t see him very clearly; it seemed to be night and he was doing something, working hard, with his back to me. But suddenly he turned round, and I could see his face for a minute, a rather heavy, dark face, clean shaven, and very sensual. And his eyes were what I call really foul. He stared at me, and then the mirror clouded over and nothing I could do would make the pictures come back.

“We started back for Panamik the next morning, and all my people insisted that there had been no one else at Pangdongtsa that night. I let the men and animals go on and stopped behind a bit to search round those rocks once more. I thought something might have been hidden there with the mirror, but, although I raked about and turned up some of the earth, found nothing at all. But, instead of going to Panamik, once we reached the Nubra, I sent the men on, and with just a bedding-roll and some grub and two or three men I went to Kungma. I wanted to have a talk with the gelong before I started for home, for I was certain he knew a lot more than he had told me on my first visit.

“The old man seemed to be expecting me, which again was queer, since no one could possibly have got word to him that I was coming. But he had a room ready for me in the monastery and was actually waiting for me at the gate. That part was easy, however, because there is a fair view from the roof, and they must have seen me coming for the last half-mile up the hill, and visitors are uncommon at Kungma. But, after I’d had a meal—we got in late—he came into my room and told me he’d been watching me all the time, which I thought a bit of a steep yarn considering where I’d been. He might, of course, have been asking the men, but he certainly gave me pretty accurate details about my trip. Then, last of all, he told me he knew I’d found the mirror—‘The Eye of Vision’ he called it—and none of my men knew about that; I’d not said anything to anyone.

“He took me along to the chapel and opened the door behind the altar, the one on which I’d seen the painting the first time. Inside was a little cell, and in that was a most beautiful statue of the woman shown in the painting. It was so lifelike that I’m certain it was made from life. The little shrine was all lit up, and the woman really looked as if she were alive. It sounds silly, but her whole attitude made me think of a mother who has got something which her children want but is afraid to give it to them lest they should hurt themselves with it. There was one other thing about the statue which struck me, too. You know my one ghost-story about the deserted bungalow in Bashehr and the old man and the baby?”

Oxley nodded, thinking hard the while. He knew that story and it was not very accountable. Neither did what he was hearing now seem to be very accountable. Carruthers was a bit queer at times, but he did not invent yarns.

“Well, round the neck of that statue was just the same kind of necklace with the looped cross that I saw the old man fasten round the baby’s neck in the bungalow.

“I asked the gelong what the statue really was, and he told me a lot of things. That night I wrote them all down in my diary, as near as I could in his own words, so far as I remembered them. I’ll read bits to you.” Carruthers reached over to the bookshelf for a small diary, looked through and then selected a page. “This is what the old man—Rinpoche was his name—told me that night by the statue:

“ ‘It is the statue of the Mother of Vision—she who has all knowledge. She has been represented somewhat in the guise of Dukar, so that the ignorant may not ask foolish questions if, by chance, they see her. But she is not Dukar—a mere imagination of men—she is more—more than Dukar, as the sun is more than the least star. Yet she is not all things, only our vision of the tiniest fragment of what lies behind her. This monastery, which the Nubra folk call Kungma, is truly styled the ‘jewel gate of vision,’ and was set here many, many centuries ago by those who dwell in the hidden valley you have seen. There is the true home of the Mother of Vision and her few servants in the house that is called the City of Vision. From here, and from here only, may it be reached from Ladakh, though the way is hidden and sometimes perilous, and this house is set here, as it were the gate which is the reason for its name, so that none may pass who are not summoned. You have been summoned—that has been revealed to me—and I suspected that when first you came, but my lips were sealed at that time. Now they are loosed, for I know that you have looked down on the valley of the Mother, as only one other man has ever done, and, moreover, that you have found one of the Eyes of Vision which, in truth, it was ordained that you should find. The summons has come to you, and I am to say that if you return after two winters I will guide you to the City of Vision, where, maybe, you will find nothing but danger and what men call death. Maybe, you will find other things; of that I am not permitted to speak now. But if you return, then bring with you others, trusted men, three, four, five, perhaps one of your own kind. You have the Eye of Vision—guard it well, it can show all things. But it will show naught but what is commanded, so seek not to learn from it idly nor concerning worldly affairs, nor wealth, nor health, nor your own safety. These it will not show you, save only if such be necessary to the task which is given to you to fulfil. See you that the Mother herself holds just such another Eye as you have found.’ Rinpoche leaned forward and turned the silver object in the hands of the woman, and I saw that it was the same kind of mirror as I had found. ‘Look into it well, for I think that the Mother has somewhat to show you.’ I looked into the mirror and saw that it was clearing—the lights and the shadows were playing in it, and presently it cleared altogether and I found myself looking at the great ice-falls I used to call the Giant’s Stairway. There were men climbing up them—I could see Rinpoche and other strange men. Then I saw myself, and there was another white man walking close by, and a dog. Then the man turned so that I saw his face, and it was ...”

Carruthers stopped reading and passed the book over to Oxley, indicating with his finger the place where he had stopped. Oxley read the handwriting—obviously unchanged from the day it was written—and saw the completion of the sentence—“it was John Oxley.”

“How much chance was there of that being true eighteen months ago, when it was written, John?” asked Carruthers as Oxley returned the book. “You were at home, and there was not the slightest prospect of your going to India, still less of accompanying me on a journey that would take more leave than you were ever likely to get from England. But there it is—the page I wrote that night after the gelong had put the lights out, closed the shrine, and taken me back to my room.”

“I wouldn’t suggest for a moment you’re inventing, Tom,” said Oxley. “I expect you really did see something like that. But I don’t believe for a moment anybody made you see the future. I admit that I’m going with you, and, as far as I can see, there’s every chance of my having to follow you up several loathsome ice-falls, judging by your descriptions and photographs of the country. I expect it was some mild form of hypnotism.”

“And how do you explain my finding the mirror?”

“I don’t think you really did find it. I think the gelong got Chuk-Chuk—or whatever you call him—to hide it by those rocks and to watch there that night and lead you that way, pretending to be a stranger, until you fell over the blooming looking-glass. Meanwhile, Chuk-Chuk hid among the boulders till you were safely out of the way. It was much neater doing it that way. If you hadn’t found it, then of course Chuk-Chuk ...”

“Meaning Anchuk,” corrected Carruthers.

“Sounds all the same, Chuk-Chuk or Anchuk... would have brought it to you with some weird story of how he found it. Then the gelong turns on the hypnotic tap and you think you see things. You say no one else can ever see anything, and that’s just what you’d expect. He probably hypnotised you the first time you went.”

“And what about the dreams?”

“That’s about the easiest part. You’ve made a habit of those damned dreams of yours until you expect them to come as a matter of course, and the moment he hypnotised you, of course, you saw them all again. The only reality you can point to is the mountain which you say you recognised and, as I’ve said before, all mountains are the same beastly cold, wet places made up of bits of brick and bits of ice, each just like the rest.”

“And seeing you in the mirror at the shrine?”

“Obvious. He suggests you should bring another white man along and then, of course, your thoughts turn to your oldest pal in the good, sentimental way by which writers of music-hall ballads make their living, and you see his strong, kind face before you. You’d do well in the film scenario trade, Tom! However, it’s fortunate that you did think of me—you want someone with some common sense—you might have hit on some mutt who would have taken all your moonshine as serious stuff.”

“Then kindly explain what we are wanted for, if it’s all moonshine and hypnotic rubbish,” said Tom rather crossly.

Oxley lit a cigarette and contemplated the blue spirals of smoke.

“You are now beginning to talk sense, Tom, asking a question like that—one that must obviously be answered presently. I should like to know myself. Probably the gent has stumbled upon a large gold mine and wants a couple of reliable white men to help him get the boodle away. Meantime, he has had the sense to hide it under a cloud of pseudo-religious tosh which, from your accounts of that part of the world, seems to be quite the best and neatest thing he could have done—everyone up there appears to be ultra-superstitious. But I expect we shall find it our duty to remove the gold which would be wasted on people who live in such places. I shall take up a consignment of pink and blue celluloid mirrors and glass beads to trade them in exchange. Meantime, your fairy-story has made me sleepy, for which I’m really grateful. I shall sleep without drugs to-night.”

Oxley got up and stretched and then moved over to mix himself a night-cap from the whisky and siphons at the side-table.