The Buddha of Brewer Street - Michael Dobbs

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had floated, the one inside him and the one that was laid out before him in the courtyard, suddenly collided and broke into a million fragments. All around him there were screams, cries of pain and fear, the sounds of destruction. And shots. The narrow stone alleyways of the monastery filled with the frantic slipping and scraping of the monks’ soft leather sandals as they tried to flee, pursued by the pounding of steel-tipped boots. Wherever there was resistance, and particularly the pernicious resistance of prayer, a single monk was set upon by three, four, sometimes six soldiers, breaking him with boots and blows from their rifles. Then they moved on to the next.

      Nothing was to remain. Brocade-mounted thanka paintings were ripped from walls they had adorned for generations, precious buddha images were broken, every one of the monastery’s effigies of compassion was crushed underfoot. This was not simply punishment, it was to be persecution.

      Behind one door the soldiers discovered a hall filled with endless shelves laden with leather-bound books and parchment scrolls and ancient wooden printing blocks. The library. It contained nearly a thousand years of learning and memories. It was destroyed in as many seconds.

      As the library was put to the torch a spiral of glowing ashes and smoke rose from the flames and spread across the sun. Beneath its wrathful shadow the soldiers began herding the monks who could still walk across the narrow bridge. An ancient librarian-monk, a rifle butt at his back, cried in anguish and fell to his knees, his toothless mouth praying for strength. The guards swore at him. They were about to set upon him when he rose unsteadily to his feet and with stubborn care began brushing the dust from his robes. They shouted at him to move on, but he shook his head. ‘Everything is impermanence,’ he said, uttering the last words of the Great Buddha himself. For one lingering moment he looked back to the monastery that had been his world for a lifetime, perhaps several lifetimes. His old eyes brimmed with gratitude. Then he walked to the side of the bridge and stepped off into eternity.

      He fell for what seemed like forever, and as he plunged, the buttercup and claret of the monk’s robes opened and fluttered like the wings of a gentle butterfly. Until, in the darkness that clung to the very bottom of the ravine, the wings broke and lay still.

      The soldiers shouted in anger, sensing they had been cheated. Older monks chanted in sorrow, while the younger ones hustled forward with a renewed sense of urgency.

      Kunga watched all this from his vantage point. He was too insignificant to be a prime target for the soldiers, too frozen with fear to move. And high on that wall, surrounded by death and the destruction of so much that he loved, Kunga passed into manhood. He began to hate. He knew it was a passion he should not feel, but there it was, undeniable, embracing, and empowering.

      Hate!

      He’d have to deal with its karmic consequences later, but later could take care of itself. For now it warmed his blood, unfroze him, drove him on, running. Amidst the ruination that was spreading around him, he knew there was one thing he must save, one treasure that must be kept from the hateful Chinese even at the risk of his life.

      His route to the great prayer hall was blocked by many soldiers, but he was small and too deft for them, ducking beneath their outstretched arms and rifles. Up close they looked so much less fearsome, their uniforms ragged and patched, their faces all but obliterated by crustings of dirt that gave them the appearance of lizards. Many seemed only a few years older than Kunga. Some seemed almost as scared. At the head of the broad stone steps that led to the prayer hall a group of monks had gathered to try to block the way of the troops, but they had nothing with which to resist other than their own bodies. Resistance became sacrifice as the Army of Liberation fell greedily upon its prey. Mao was right. The power of the human spirit was no match for the butt end of a gun. In every corner claret robes flapped and fell. More broken butterfly wings.

      Kunga was quick, but not quick enough. As he rushed through the midst of the clubbing and systematic dislocation of bones, a single blow struck him on the shoulder. It sent him sprawling through the entrance to the prayer hall, where he lay stunned on the floor, defenceless. But the soldiers were like foxes in the chicken pen, distracted by too much choice. The boy could wait, until later.

      The great hall at first seemed dark. Most of the butter lamps had not been lit that morning. But from all around came the sounds of the Chinese troops at their work, tearing at the magnificent hangings of satin and silk, smashing every piece of glass. Delicate wood carvings were reduced to splinters, tall stucco statues as old as the monastery itself were toppled and turned to dust beneath their boots. Along one wall ran shelves on which were set out sacred images of the Buddha, fashioned by monks from wood and bronze and plaster and even pressed butter. These were works of devotion and skill. Of many different sizes. Numbering in all more than a thousand. The work of countless lifetimes. A laughing soldier ran along the shelves with the barrel of his rifle and swept away every trace.

      Spreadeagled on the cold stone floor, Kunga slowly revived, his wits restored by the heavy aroma of incense which stung his nostrils and irritated his deadened senses. He could smell something else, too, something new. His own fear. He crawled forward. He could see more clearly now, for they had started a fire at the foot of one of the great carved wooden columns that soared towards the timber roof, and onto the flames they were piling anything that might burn. The flickering light fell upon the statue of Padmasambhava, the ancient who had first brought Buddhist teachings to Tibet from the sweltering plains of India, a figure almost fifteen feet tall that filled the far end of the prayer hall. Padmasambhava appeared awesome, red eyed, his gilded skin afire, the dancing shadows lending him an expression of the most intense wrath. He held a trident in his hand, decorated with a skull and other fearsome symbols that Kunga didn’t yet fully understand, and for a moment Kunga prayed that the great Buddha himself might materialize to overwhelm the enemy and add a few more skulls to his tally.

      But it was only a statue. Two soldiers began attacking it with bayonets, hacking away at the riches of precious stones and inlays that decorated its base. They were too busy with their ransacking to notice Kunga as he stole past in the shadows.

      At last he was there, before a glazed shrine cabinet on the wall behind the statue. A single butter lamp flickered at the foot of a small clay Buddha, a cracked and age-brushed figure that had been made by Lama Chogyal Lumpo himself, the teacher who had founded this monastery more than a thousand years before. Kunga had always felt a special tie to Lama Chogyal. Perhaps in a previous life Kunga had been a close friend or assistant, maybe even the Lama himself. And perhaps one day Kunga would be recognized as the Lama’s reincarnation. He didn’t fully comprehend these things, but of one thing he had no doubt – he, Kunga Tashi, had a special role to play in protecting the memory of the Lama, and in particular in protecting this clay figure, the only relic of the master to survive all the accidents and indignities of time and to have passed unscathed through the ages.

      It was as he stretched to his full height to open the glass-fronted cabinet that the rifle butt smashed through it. He had been caught unawares. One of the soldiers was upon him. Shards of flying glass cut across Kunga’s face and hands. Blood flowed into one eye. But hope! The figure was still intact. It wasn’t too late.

      Desperately Kunga snatched it from its place, even as the soldier pushed him aside. He fell heavily, cracking an elbow, but still he clutched the statue. As he looked up, the soldier was standing above him, rifle raised. Kunga knew he was going to die. But ifhis death could help preserve the memory of the Lama, it would be a sacrifice willingly given …

      The rifle butt smashed down. Not on his head, but on the clay statue. He could feel it break, yet still he refused to release it. His crippled fingers struggled to cover the fragments on the stone floor. Again and again the rifle came down, shattering both bone and clay until there was nothing of any form left. Only pain. Savage pain. Excruciating pain. Unlike anything Kunga had ever known. Once more he felt his consciousness leave his body, drifting away as he watched the soldier bring down the rifle butt time after time. Still Kunga would not let go of the statue. He would not, until both his consciousness and the pain had drifted away into darkness.

       ONE

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