Books

THE PROSELYTIZER was sent back to the dungeon to mend before his release.

And that was how the Maichi family acquired another slave. According to the chieftain’s not so complicated laws, whenever a condemned prisoner was spared, he became a family slave. Instead of being embraced by us, Wangpo Yeshi, with a religious belief he claimed to be omnipotent, was now owned by people he considered to be savages.

Aryi Junior daily went to tend to the wound of the first victim of his career.

I didn’t go to the dungeon until nearly two weeks later.

Morning was the only time a bit of sunlight dribbled into the man’s cell. When we entered, he was staring at the small slice of sky through his window. Turning when he heard the door open, he actually smiled at me. It was hard for him to give a recognizable smile; obviously, it hurt.

I raised my hand. “That’s enough. You don’t have to do that.”

That was the first time in my life I’d raised my hand when I spoke, as my father and brother did. And I quickly discovered its advantages: it lent a sensation of infinite power to my hands and a comfort to my heart.

Wangpo Yeshi smiled at me again.

Finding myself drawn to this fellow, I asked, “Is there anything you want?”

He gave me a look that meant “What can I want looking like this?” Or it could have been understood as “I’d like to speak, how’s that?”

But since I’d implied that I wanted to give him something, I had to do it. “I’ll send some books over tomorrow. Books. You like books, don’t you?”

He slid silently down the rocky wall to the floor, with his head bowed. I’d thought he might like the idea. But my reference to books must have touched a nerve, since he just let his head droop between his shoulders. As we were leaving, Aryi said, “Young Master was trying to be nice, and you should bid him good-bye. Maybe you can’t say it, but you can at least use your eyes, can’t you?”

Still he didn’t look up. His head must have been weighed down by something very heavy. Was it the books he’d read before? I felt sorry for him.

It took a bit of trouble to find books for him, even though I was the chieftain’s son.

First of all, I couldn’t look for them openly. Everyone knew that the chieftain had two sons, one of whom, the smart one, needed to read, since he would be chieftain one day. As for the idiot son, he knew no more than four of five of the thirty letters in the Tibetan alphabet. When I told the crippled steward to find some sutras for me, he thought I was joking. It was out of the question to look for books in the sutra hall. And as far as I knew, on our vast estate, the chieftain’s room was the only place other than the sutra hall where a few books could be found. To be more precise, these weren’t books in the usual sense, but records of the first three chieftains, written when the Maichi family still had its historian. I’ve already told you that one of the historians recorded things he should have avoided, so that now no such servant could be found anywhere under the chieftain’s sun. I knew that Father had stored those records in the closet in his room, and that he had stopped sleeping there shortly after recovering from his madness when Yangzom became pregnant. Even when Mother told him to stay there on occasion, he’d spend one night and then return to her room.

When I entered, Yangzom was sitting in the dark, singing. I didn’t know how to speak to her; we hadn’t had a single private conversation since she entered the Maichi household.

So I asked, “Are you singing?”

“Yes, it’s a song popular in my hometown.”

Then I noticed that her accent was different from ours. She spoke with a soft southern lilt, a bit slurred, which to a northerner seemed to hold special meaning.

“I’ve been to the south, during some of the fighting,” I said. “You sound like them.”

“Who are they?”

“Oh, Chieftain Wangpo and his people.”

She told me her hometown was farther south. Then we ran out of things to say. I stared at the closet; Yangzom looked down at her hands. I knew what I was looking for. It was wrapped tightly in yellow silk, sandwiched between some important things and some unimportant odds and ends. But I didn’t dare walk up, open the closet door, and simply remove the early history of my family. The smell of dust permeated the room. “Um,” I said, “this room could use a good cleaning.”

“The servants come every day, but they don’t do a good job,” she said.

Silence returned.

I stared at the closet some more; she went back to looking at her hands.

Then she laughed. “Young Master has come for something, hasn’t he?”

“I didn’t say that. How did you know?”

She laughed again. “Sometimes you seem smarter than anyone, but now you’re acting like a real idiot. How could a clever woman like your mother have a son like you?”

I didn’t know if what I was doing fell into the realm of intelligence or idiocy. But I made up a story, saying I’d left something here a long time ago. “Can an idiot lie too?” she asked. When she told me to point at what it was I wanted, I refused. So she moved over to the closet and took out the yellow bundle. After sitting down in front of me, she blew the dust into my face. For a moment, I couldn’t open my eyes. “Oh, look what I’ve done,” she said. “I nearly blinded the young master.” She bent forward to lick the dust out of my eyes, and that single action told me why Father had loved her so much. The subtle fragrance of orchids wafted around her, so I reached out to hug her. She stopped me. “Remember, you’re my son.”

“I’m not,” I said, then added, “you smell like flowers.”

“It was that smell that got me into all this.” She told me she’d been born with it.

“Go on now,” she said as she placed the bundle in my hands. “Don’t let anyone see you. And don’t tell me that isn’t your family history in the bundle.”

The fragrance disappeared as soon as I walked out the door. When I was back out in the sunlight, the wonderful feeling of her tongue on my eyes also vanished.

Aryi and I delivered the books to the dungeon.

Wangpo Yeshi was sitting beneath the tiny window, holding his head in his hands. Strangely, his hair had grown much longer overnight. When Aryi took out a packet of medicine, Wangpo Yeshi opened his mouth noisily to show us that the bloodied scab and powdered medicine had fallen off. His wound had healed and the tongue was a tongue again. Though incomplete, it was a tongue nonetheless. Aryi smiled as he put the medicine back in his satchel and took out a small bottle of honey. Using a tiny spoon, he spread some honey on Wangpo Yeshi’s tongue, which produced a look of joy.

Aryi said, “See, he can taste now. His wound is healed.”

“Can he talk?”

“No,” Aryi said, “he can’t.”

“Then don’t tell me his tongue is fine. If that thing can be called a tongue, I’ll have your father cut out yours, since an executioner doesn’t need to talk.”

Casting his eyes to the ground, Aryi stood aside submissively, not saying anything more.

I took out the books and placed them before Wangpo Yeshi, who had just tasted the honey.

The happy expression disappeared as he frowned at the books.

“Open them and take a look.”

He was about to say something when he suddenly realized he didn’t have the thing he needed to speak. So he shook his head with a pained look.

“Open them,” I said. “They aren’t what you think.”

He raised his head and looked at me with doubt in his eyes.

“Those aren’t the books that got you into trouble. They’re the Maichi family history.”

He obviously didn’t harbor any dislike for books, since his eyes lit up and he reached for the bundle as soon as I said that. I noticed he had long, nimble fingers. The bundle contained handwritten scrolls made of coarse paper. People said that back then the Maichi family had grown its own hemp to make paper. The origin of papermaking was said to have had the same origin as the fortune-making opium—the Han.

When Aryi returned from the dungeon the next day, he passed on a request from Wangpo Yeshi for paper and a writing brush. I saw to it that they were sent to him, only to be surprised the following day, when Aryi brought out a letter. Wangpo Yeshi wanted me to pass it to the chieftain. Not knowing what he’d written made me uneasy.

“They told me you like to go to the dungeon,” Father said when I delivered the letter. “Is this why you go there?”

Having no answer, I just smiled foolishly. A foolish smile is very useful when you have nothing to say.

“Sit down, you foolish boy,” Father said. “I was just telling someone you weren’t an idiot, but now you look exactly like one.”

As he read the letter, the chieftain’s face changed colors many times, like a summer sky. He didn’t say a word when he finished. And I didn’t dare ask what it said. Many days passed before he ordered Wangpo Yeshi to be brought to him. Looking at the new-grown hair on the monk’s head, the chieftain said, “Are you still the man who wanted to spread his new sect in my land?”

Wangpo Yeshi didn’t reply—he couldn’t.

The chieftain said, “Sometimes I think that maybe this fellow’s teachings are good. But if they are too good, how can I govern the land? Things are different here than in inner Tibet, where men in cassocks rule over everything. That can’t be done here. Tell me, if you were chieftain, would you be like me?”

Wangpo Yeshi laughed. With a shortened tongue, it sounded as if someone were throttling him even as he laughed.

“Damn!” the chieftain remarked. “I forgot, you don’t have a tongue.” He sent for a brush and paper and put them before the proselytizer. Their conversation now formally began.

The chieftain said, “You’re my slave now.”

Wangpo Yeshi wrote, “Did you ever have such a learned slave before?”

The chieftain said, “No, nor did the chieftain before me. But I have one now. Previous Maichi chieftains weren’t powerful enough. I am the mightiest Maichi.”

Wangpo Yeshi wrote, “I’d rather die than be a slave.”

The chieftain said, “I won’t let you die. I’ll keep you in the dungeon forever.”

Wangpo Yeshi wrote, “That would still be better than being a slave.”

The chieftain laughed. “You’re quite a man. Now tell me, where did you get the ideas you wrote in your letter?”

He had actually mentioned only one thing to the chieftain in his letter: that he would like to be our historian, to resume a tradition that had been interrupted for too long. He said he found the history of the first three chieftains fascinating. At the time, Chieftain Maichi was thinking that he should leave something behind other than silver for later generations, for that way he would be remembered as the most powerful Maichi in history. “Why do you want to record our family history?” he asked.

“Because it won’t be long before chieftains disappear from the land.” The monk went on, “When that day comes, neither the eastern nor the western neighbors will tolerate the existence of local overlords. And, of course, you yourselves have already thrown a torch onto dry kindling.”

The chieftain asked him what he meant by a torch.

He told him it was the poppies.

The chieftain asked, “Are you telling me to get rid of them?”

He wrote, “That won’t be necessary. Everything is predestined. The poppies will only make what must happen arrive sooner.”

In the end, Chieftain Maichi granted Wangpo Yeshi’s request to resume the tradition of recording the Maichi family history. But another argument ensued over the status of the historian. Finally the chieftain told him that he would grant his wish to die if he did not agree to be a slave.

The tongueless one put down his brush and gave in.

When the chieftain told him to kowtow to his master, he wrote, “If it’s only this one time.”

“Once every year at this time.”

Now the tongueless one showed that he indeed possessed a historian’s foresight, for he wrote, “What happens after you die?”

The chieftain laughed. “Wouldn’t I know to kill you before I die?”

He repeated the question on paper. “What if you die?”

The chieftain pointed to my brother. “Ask him, since he’ll be your master then.”

My brother said, “You won’t have to kowtow to me when that time comes.”

Then he walked over to me. I knew he was going to ask me the same question and wanted me to promise I wouldn’t ask him to kowtow if I became the chieftain.

“Don’t ask me,” I said. “Everyone says I’m an idiot and won’t ever be chieftain.”

But he wouldn’t budge. “You really are an idiot,” my brother said. “Just promise him.”

“All right,” I said. “If I do become chieftain one day, I’ll make you a freeman.”

My brother didn’t like the sound of that, but I said to him, “It isn’t for real anyway, so what does it matter what I promise him?”

Then Wangpo Yeshi finally knelt before Father and kowtowed.

The chieftain’s first order to his new slave was “Write down what happened here today.”