Free The Ninth Buddha by Daniel Easterman Page B

could very easily have paid a visit to Norbhu Dzasa before continuing his ill-fated journey.
    “It’s very little, really,” Christopher said.
    “Perhaps you will find it sentimental of me.   You’ll have seen from my letter that I am a businessman.   I’m here in Kalimpong to do business with Mr.
    Frazer.   I knew him years ago, back in Patna.   He knows about an incident that happened back then something that happened to my son, William.   We were in Bodh Gaya, William and I, just passing through, on our way to Aurangabad.   We lived in Patna then, when .. . my wife was still alive.”   The combination of fact and fiction would, Christopher hoped, serve to convey a feeling of conviction to the tsong-chi.
    “William fell ill,” he went on.
    “There was no British doctor in
    Bodh Gaya, none anywhere near.   I was desperate.   The child was very sick, I thought he would die.   And then one of the pilgrims visiting the sacred tree ... It is a tree they have there, isn’t it, Mr.

Dzasa?”
    Norbhu nodded.   It was a tree; he had seen it.   Lord Buddha had gained enlightenment while sitting under it.
    “Right,” said Christopher, warming to his tale.
    “Well, one of the pilgrims heard William was ill, you see.   He came to visit us and told me there was a Tibetan monk who was a sort of doctor.
    Anyway, I found this monk, and he came at once and looked at
    William and said he could treat him.   He went off- it was late at ‘ night by then.   I can remember it, sitting in the dark with William in a terrible fever.”
    There had been a fever once, and William had almost died but there had been no monk, no sacred tree, only an old doctor sent round by the DBI.
    “I thought he would die, I really did, he was that bad.   Anyway, he went off as I said the monk, I mean and then came back in about an hour with some herbs he’d got from God knows where.
    He made them up into a drink for the boy and got it into him somehow or other.   It saved his life.   He came out of the fever that night and was on his feet again two days later.   I tried to find the monk afterwards, to thank him, give him something.   But he’d gone.”
    “Frazer knew about it.   When he came here, he asked questions, but he never heard of any monk.   Until a couple of weeks ago.”
    Norbhu Dzasa glanced up from his steaming cup.   His little eyes glistened.
    “He said a Tibetan monk died here.   A man with the same name as my monk.   About the same age.   Frazer said he carried herbs.   He thought I should know: he wrote to me about it.   I was coming anyway, I have business here.   So I thought I’d make some enquiries at the same time.   About the monk.”
    “Why?   You could not meet.   Not thank.   He is dead.”
    “Yes, but he might have a family, relatives.   His parents, brothers, sisters.   Perhaps they need help, now he is dead.”
    “What his name, this medical monk?”
    “Tsewong,” Christopher answered.
    “Is that a common name?”
    Norbhu shrugged.
    “Not common.   Not not common.”
    “But it was the name of the man they found here?   The man who died?”
    The tsong-chi looked at Christopher.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Same name.   But perhaps not same man.”
    “How was he dressed?”   asked Christopher.
    “Perhaps it would help to identify him.”
    Norbhu Dzasa saw that Wylam wanted him to lead with information rather than confirm something he already knew.   It reminded him of the theological debates he had seen the monks at Ganden engage in verbal fencing matches in which the slightest slip meant failure.   What would failure mean in this case, he wondered.
    “He wear dress of monk of Sak-ya-pa sect.   Was monk you met Sak-ya-pa?”
    “I don’t know,” said Christopher.
    “What would one of them look like?”   But in his own mind he had already begun the process of narrowing things down.   The majority of Tibetan monks belonged to the politically dominant Ge-lug-pa sect.