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  Chapter 19

  The night before she was to leave India for Tibet, the forty-seventh Bunji Lama could not sleep.

  She tossed on her kang and dreamed wild dreams. This much the scriptures later recorded. What they failed to record was that chocolate-covered cherries as much as insomnia kept her from sleep.

  She sat up, too enervated for rest, and with her perfect teeth-indicating her high state of spiritual evolution-she broke the outer chocolate shell and sucked the sweet nectar that was within.

  From time to time she hummed to herself. Often she sang softly.

  "I am the Buddha. The Buddha is me. I found myself under the bodhi tree. Don't cry for me, Pasadeeenaaa."

  Outside the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala abode, the Tibetan exile community gathered around, spinning their tassled prayer wheels in their hands. Those who understood English translated for the others.

  "The new Bunji Lama sings as sweetly as any woman," it was said.

  "Move over, Evita," the Bunji was heard to sing.

  This was not so easily translated, and became a point of much contention to Buddhist scholars in the next century.

  "Bunji! Bunji!" they cried. "Give us your blessings, O Bunji!'

  Squirrelly Chicane heard the calls, but did not understand the words. She did not need to understand. It was her public calling, her new public, and she could not ignore them.

  Swathed in her saffron robes, her peaked lama's cap making her seem taller than her diminutive dancer's stature, she stepped out onto the great balcony where the Dalai Lama held his audiences.

  She was blowing kisses to the wild approval of the crowd when Lobsang appeared at her side.

  "What are they saying?" she asked.

  "They wish only to drink in your wisdom, Buddha Sent," Lobsang said.

  "I'll pontificate, you translate," Squirrelly said. Lifting her voice, she said, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."

  Lobsang recast the words into Tibetan and then Hindi.

  "Squeeze the day!" Squirrelly added.

  The crowd gasped. They began to prostrate themselves, throwing their bodies to the ground and bumping their foreheads on the dirt. It looked wonderfully aerobic.

  "They are with you, Bunji," Lobsang said.

  "Great! Tell them-oh, tell them life is just a bowl of cherries."

  Lobsang translated. The prostrating abruptly ceased. Blinking, dubious eyes lifted toward the Bunji Lama.

  "What's wrong?" Squirrelly asked.

  "They do not understand cherries."

  "What's to understand? A cherry is a cherry."

  "They are poor and have never seen a cherry, much less eaten one."

  "Then tell them life is a bowl of tsampa. "

  After Lobsang translated this, a sea of foreheads began bumping the ground again.

  "You know," Squirrelly said as she basked in the strenuous worship of her new public, "I can see an exercise video coming out of this-Bumping with the Bunji."

  WHEN THE SUN CAME up, the gilt palanquin of the Dalai was brought from storage. The Tibetans wept to see it. It had been used to bear the Dalai into exile and now it was to carry the greatest lama of all time back to Lhasa, where she would seize the lion Throne and cast out the cruel Han Chinese.

  They lined the road leading to the mountain pass. All the way to the border they stood side by side like human flowers.

  Some were fortunate enough to witness the Bunji emerge from the house of the Dalai Lama. They gaped to see the Dalai prostrate himself six times to the Bunji and the Bunji did not bow back once.

  Then, with stately majesty, the Bunji stepped into the palanquin, and the bearers lifted it with not a grunt of complaint.

  It was as if the Bunji weighed less than a snapdragon.

  The palanquin lurched forward. A ferocious Mongol walked ahead of it, glowering and searching the faces of the crowd for would-be assassins. He carried high the saffron parasol of the Dalai Lama, signifying that a torch had been passed to a new spiritual leader.

  The regent of the Bunji strode beside the palanquin. Lobsang Drom walked proud with his head held high, but no one had eyes for him.

  All eyes were fixed on the Bunji Lama.

  "The Bunji has as sweet a face as any woman's," it was said. All noticed the Bunji's saffron robes. Even the Bunji's nails, long and tapered, were saffron. Truly, people whispered, this was the god-king of the old days returned.

  As the palanquin moved closer to the border, the crowds began to follow. They formed a tail, a thousand people long. They were Tibetans and Indians, Khampas and Nepalese.

  In their individual languages, they cried out their joy and their hopes.

  "Bunji Lama zindabad!" cried the Indians in Hindi. "Long live the Bunji Lama."

  "Lama kieno!" shouted the Tibetans. "Know it, O Lama!"

  "We're gonna kick Chinese butt," the Bunji shouted back, and although no one in those days knew what it meant, the cry of the Bunji Lama was taken up by the lips of all worshipers, regardless of nationality. Apart for centuries, they were united by the Light That had Come.

  "We're gonna kick Chinese butt!" they chanted over and over, few understanding their own words.

  "Your people are with you, Presence," Kula the Mongol boomed out in his thunderous voice.

  "This," the Bunji was overheard to say, "is only the first reel."

  INTO THE MOUNTAINOUS frontier of what the Chinese authorities called the Tibetan Autonomous Region, a man came running. He wore the dark turban and bushy beard of a Sikh hill man.

  Panting, he approached the checkpoint where People's Liberation Army border troops guarded the narrow pass that the Dalai Lama had taken into ignominious exile decades before. Beyond it lay the snowy dome called Mt. Kailas, and at its foot the impossibly blue sky-mirrors of Lakes Manasarowar and Rakas Tal.

  For over an hour the nervous PLA soldiers detected a growing mutter to the west, very disturbing to the ears. There were rumors of the Bunji Lama's return, but being Chinese, they knew not what it meant.

  "Do not shoot! Do not shoot! I am Han! Like you, I am Han!"

  The Han soldiers of Beijing held their fire. The hill man came ripping off his beard and turban to show that he was of their blood and color. A Chinese.

  "I am Wangdi Chung," he said, puffing. "And I have failed to poison the Bunji Lama. She comes."

  "She?"

  "It is a she."

  The soldiers of Beijing looked at one another in puzzlement. One woman. What was the difficulty? She would be taken into custody if her papers were not in order. And since the soldiers of Beijing were simple farmers' sons and could not read, the Bunji Lama's papers could not possibly be in order.

  "You do not understand, you stupid turtle eggs!" Wangdi Chung cursed. "The Bunji Lama is followed by a thousand adherents."

  The soldiers looked at one another again. There were three of them. One, the sergeant, was in charge of the other two. Each man had a Type 57 assault rifle and a side arm. The sergeant had responsibility for their bullets. He went to the steel ammunition box and checked the number of rounds. It was very low. He came back to report this to the agitated Intelligence agent.

  "There are enough bullets to kill the Bunji Lama and twenty or twenty-five others if no round goes astray."

  "If you kill the Bunji Lama, we will all be torn limb from limb," warned Wangdi Chung.

  The soldiers of China laughed. In their years in Tibet, they had not known a Tibetan to do more than curse at an offense.

  "They are Buddhists. They will not fight."

  "Walking before them is a Mongol warrior as fierce as any I have ever seen."

  "One Mongol?"

  "One Mongol."

  The faces of the Han soldiers said that was different. Very different.

  "We do not have enough bullets to stop a Mongol," the sergeant said, looking at his bullets unhappily. "But what can we do? If we abandon our post, we will be executed and our relatives will be sent the bill for the very bullets
that execute us."

  The soldiers fretted and discussed their conundrum, while down in the hot plains of India, the mutter of human voices grew and swelled and began echoing off the mountains. It took the form of a woman singing:

  "I am the Buddha, The Buddha is me. Predestination is the place to be!"

  "We're gonna kick Chinese butt!" chorused a thousand voices.

  After Wangdi Chung translated the English threat into Chinese, the soldiers of Beijing shot him dead and fled into the mountains.

  And in this fashion did the historic train of the Bunji Lama enter the mountains that ring Tibet, and Tibet itself.

  THE MINISTER of state security debated with himself the best way to communicate failure to the premier of China as he waited for the operator to connect him with the Great Hall of the People.

  There was nothing in Mao's Little Red Book that fitted the circumstance. Or if there was, he could not find it.

  Presently the smoky voice of the premier came on the line. "What is it?"

  The security minister hesitated. He must do this clearly yet diplomatically, for the telephone line might have unwelcome ears.

  "Speak!"

  "When the old gentleman on the border lost his horse, who could know that it was not actually good fortune?" the security minister said, hoping that a Confucian epigram did not offend the premier's ears.

  To his surprise, the premier responded with a Confucian epigram of his own. "The head of the cow does not fit the mouth of the horse."

  The minister of state security searched his mind for a suitable rejoinder. "When one enters a place, he should follow the customs thereof," he said.

  "Ah," said the premier. "I hear thunder out of a clear sky. How many follow the red hat?"

  A direct question. He gave a direct answer. "One thousand, two thousand. It is difficult to know how to accommodate so many visitors under my current instructions."

  There it was. Out in the open. The minister of state security waited for the reply.

  "How many cameras record these events?"

  "Cameras?"

  "Television cameras."

  "None."

  "Ah," said the premier. The pause on the line was marked by the premier's slow, labored breathing. It was said that excessive tobacco smoking was the cause. Already the buzzards of the politburo were gathering about the premier, and his life was not yet spent.

  "Do you remember the old proverb, 'Kill a monkey to frighten the chickens'?"

  "Yes."

  "I knew you would," said the premier, who then terminated the conversation.

  The minister of state security listened to the buzz of the dead line for a full thirty seconds before he replaced it with a trembling hand.

  Here in his office-one of the most powerful in Beijing-he would have to come to a most difficult decision.

  It was one thing to arrange for a poisoning on Indian soil and cast suspicion on a rival lama. It was another to engineer the death of the Bunji Lama on Tibetan soil. If things went badly, blame would attach itself to the state security ministry. And the storm that was gathering promised to move across international borders.

  No piece of paper, no whisper of conversation, could lawfully prove that the premier of China had ordered this thing to be done.

  Yet it must be done, or the minister of state security would lose the support of the most powerful man in all of China-even if they whispered that he had the life expectancy of an elderly rabbit.

  It was a difficult thing, this not knowing what to do.

  Chapter 20

  The Bunji Lama had a splitting headache as her palanquin was borne through the Gurla Pass and into the mountains. Every two or three hundred feet she called her train to a halt and went behind a rock to regurgitate the contents of her stomach.

  "Look how the Bunji shows us that she understands our suffering," the followers of the Bunji Lama whispered. "She has willed herself to share our pain."

  It was later so written into the scriptures, but in the early hours of the Bunji Lama's return to Tibet, her sufferings were constant. So were her complaints-although the scriptures made no mention of these things.

  "Anybody got any Excedrin extrastrength?" the Bunji called out as she was helped into her palanquin, whose goldfringed roof protected her from the harsh sun and elements.

  "You must overcome all suffering," Lobsang Drom cautioned.

  "What's wrong with me? I can't keep down food, and my head feels like some heavy-metal moron mistook it for a bass drum."

  "Altitude sickness," explained Kula, pounding his chest. "You are breathing the sacred air of the Himalayas. It is good for you."

  "I feel like I'm gonna die!" Squirrelly Chicane moaned, throwing herself onto her silken cushions.

  "If you die," warned Lobsang Drom, "you will only have to make this journey again in your next life."

  "Don't remind me," Squirrelly said, burying her head under a mountain of pillows. "I gotta do something about this headache."

  The palanquin began bumping along mountain trails again, and the procession followed, a thousand voices lifting in prayer and a thousand prayer wheels spinning and spinning.

  "Om mani padme hum, " they droned.

  "Tell them to stop," groaned Squirrelly.

  "We cannot. They must pray to ward off the mountain demons and the Chinese."

  "Who's the Bunji Lama around here-you or me? Tell them to stop."

  "It is impossible," said Lobsang stubbornly

  Squirrelly opened her bloodshot blue eyes and sat up. Her stomach jumped. She hadn't felt this bad since she'd crossed the mystic midlife barrier.

  "For a bit player, you act like the director," she said.

  "You have much to learn, O Bunji."

  The face of the Tibetan looked altogether too smug, Squirrelly thought. She rummaged around in a tiny purse. Maybe there was some aspirin there. She found no aspirin, but there was a half-smoked cigarette, squeezed in a gold roach clip.

  "Anybody got a light?" she asked, sticking the butt out of the palanquin.

  A helpful Tibetan man trotted up and tried to light it on the run. He was using some kind of tinderbox. It took three minutes, but the cigarette began smoldering fitfully.

  Squirrelly smoked her way up into the rarefied air of the roof of the world and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

  She had a first act. That was perfect, except for this altitude-sickness crap. The third act would work itself out. How hard could it be to talk the Chinese into being reasonable? They were Buddhists, too. Closet Buddhists, maybe, but Buddhists to the bone. It was in their blood.

  But here she was three hours into what would have to be the second act, and so far all that was happening was a blinding headache and a lot of vomiting.

  Audiences wouldn't sit still for watching Squirrelly Chicane actually throwing up in Technicolor. A little suffering went a long way, entertainment-wise.

  "Maybe I'll keep the headache and cut all this vomiting."

  "You must clear your body of all distractions, Bunji," Lobsang intoned.

  That was another thing. She needed a male lead. So far, all she had were character-actor types. If only that yummy Remo had come along. He would have been perfect.

  Maybe, Squirrelly thought, if nothing better presented itself, she would expand his part. Write him into the screenplay. Of course, there was no way he was going to be in the book. But audiences would understand if she took certain liberties in order to dramatize events.

  But who the hell could play him? Richard Gere? Not intense enough. Steven Seagal? Rumor was he was a rammer. Squirrelly Chicane did not play opposite rammers. Ken Wahl had the right look, but his career had gone so far south the joke was he slept with the penguins. And Fred Ward was losing his hair, for goodness' sake.

  It was, she decided as the sickly sweet smoke made her pounding head feel as big as a weather balloon, going to be a huge problem.

  THERE WERE TANKS waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain
. T-64s with the red star of China on their turrets.

  Stony-faced soldiers in olive drab stood blocking the roads, their AK-47s held before them, spike bayonets fixed.

  Squirrelly discovered this when Lobsang reached in and shook her awake.

  "Bunji. The hour of reckoning has come."

  "The what?" Squirrelly said dreamily.

  "The climax."

  "Oh, I love climaxes," Squirrelly said, turning over and crushing her face against a pillow. "Did I come?"

  A strong hand reached in and pulled her out by her hair. She stood in her slippered feet, her maroon lama's cap squashed down on her head.

  Squirrelly lifted the lamb's-fleece fringe off her forehead so she could see.

  She saw Kula, looking grim.

  "Is that any way to treat a lama?" she said.

  "We will face the Chinese together."

  Squirrelly looked in the direction of the Mongol's sideways glance. She saw three tanks and the soldiers.

  "What do I do?" she whispered.

  "You will know," said Kula.

  An official-looking man in a green uniform advanced, flanked by two soldiers in PLA olive drab.

  "I am PSB man. Public Security Bureau," he said. "You are Squirrelly Chicane?"

  "I have a visa."

  "I will see your visa."

  Squirrelly dug it out of her purse.

  The PSB man looked at it carefully and said, "I must search your belongings for contraband."

  "All I have," said Squirrelly, smiling her best curl-their-toes smile, "are what you see here. My palanquin and a few close personal friends." She waved airily in the direction of her train, whose numbers seemed to reach back to the horizon.

  "Do they have entry visa?"

  "Permission was given for the Bunji to be accompanied by her retinue," Lobsang pointed out.

  "All these?"

  "Hey, I'm planning a really big production," Squirrelly said quickly. "I need crew to scout locations, set up liaisons and research local costumes and exteriors. By the way, do you happen to know where we can find some really good Tibetan sound stages?"

  The PSB man looked at her with the bland expression of someone who understood little and feared to lose face. "I will examine belongings now," he said.

  Squirrelly waved him to her palanquin, where her few belongings were. "Feel free."