Reality by Other Means. James Morrow

aficionado of Anglo-American cinema. Until I began my study of the dharma, our mutual affection for Agent 007 was the only thing we really had in common.

      “Or perhaps much talk of James Bond,” the monk corrected me, “though surely even more talk of Cham Bön, the dance celebrating the gods.”

      The motives behind our trips to see the false Dalai Lama were essentially political rather than religious, although in His Holiness’s universe the art of the possible and the pursuit of the ineffable often melded together. Having once dined on Laurence Beckwith, a Stanford professor of twentieth-century Asian history, I understood the necessity of these furtive treks. The disaster began in 1950 when the People’s Liberation Army crossed the Upper Yangtze and marched on Lhasa with the aim of delivering the Tibetan people from the ravages of their own culture. By 1955 the collectivization process was fully underway, with Mao Zedong’s troops confiscating whatever property, possessions, and human beings stood in the way of turning this backward feudal society into a brutal socialist paradise. Over the next four years it became clear that China intended to dissolve the Tibetan government altogether and imprison Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and so on the evening of March 17, 1959, that regal young man disguised himself as a soldier and fled to Dharamsala in India, where he eventually established a government-in-exile, got on the radar of the secular West, and won a Nobel Peace Prize.

      A mere two months after Tenzin Gyatso passed away, Beijing shamelessly appointed a successor, a bewildered three-year-old from Mükangsar named Shikpo Tsering. On his tenth birthday, Shikpo Tsering was taken from his parents, placed under house arrest in the Potala Palace, and ordained as Güntu Gyatso, the fifteenth Dalai Lama. No Tibetan Buddhist was fooled, and neither were we yeti. Güntu Gyatso is no more the reincarnation of Tenzin Gyatso than I am the reincarnation of King Kong. Among my race he is known as the Phonisattva.

      Meanwhile, the monks in Dharamsala set about locating the genuine fifteenth Dalai Lama. When a chubby infant from Zhangmu, Töpa Dogyaltsan, passed all the tests, including the correct identification of the late Tenzin Gyatso’s eyeglasses, prayer beads, hand drum, and wristwatch from among dozens of choices, he forthwith became Chögi Gyatso, the latest iteration of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. On Chögi Gyatso’s twenty-first birthday, the monks relocated their itinerant theocracy to the austere environs of Gangtok in Sikkim. The Panchen Lama told the outside world that certain benevolent deities, communicating through dreams, had demanded this move. He did not mention that these same gods evidently envisioned His Holiness periodically slipping across the border to advise the false Dalai Lama in matters both pragmatic and cosmic.

      And so it happened that, one fine white day in February, my lair became the locus of a royal visit. The unexpected arrival of Chögi Gyatso and his retinue threw my girlfriend, Gawa Samphel, into a tizzy, and I was equally nonplussed. Had we known they were coming, Gawa and I would have tidied up the living room, disposing of the climber skulls strewn everywhere. We were fond of gnawing on them after sex. Death is healthier than cigarettes. To their credit, the monks pretended not to notice the bony clutter.

      Gawa served a yeti specialty, pineal-gland tea sweetened with honey. His Holiness drained his mug, cleared his throat, and got to the point. As the leader of “the tall and valiant Antelope Clan” — an accurate assessment, the average yeti height being eight feet and the typical yeti heart being stout — I could perform a great service for the long-suffering Tibetan people. If I and my fellow Shi-mis would escort His Holiness through the Lachung Pass to Lhasa three times each year, doing our best to “peacefully and compassionately keep the Chinese patrols at bay,” the monks back in Gangtok would send forth 800,000 prayers a week for the continued prosperity of my race. His Holiness promised to compensate us for our trouble, one hundred rupees per yeti per six-day pilgrimage.

      “I want to help you out,” I said, massaging my scraggly beard, “but I fear that in the course of shielding you from the Mao-Maos we shall inadvertently reveal ourselves to the world.”

      “That is a very logical objection,” said Chögi Gyatso, flashing his beautiful white teeth. He had the brightest smile in Asia. “And yet I have faith that these missions will not bring your species to light.”

      “Your faith, our skin,” I said. “I am loath to put either at risk.”

      “Faith is not something a person can put at risk,” His Holiness informed me, wiping the steam from his glasses with the sleeve of his robe. “Faith is the opposite of a James Bond martini — it may be stirred but not shaken.”

      To this day I’m not sure why I assented to become His Holiness’s paladin. It certainly wasn’t the money or the prayers. I think my decision had something to do with my inveterate affection for the perverse — that, and the prospect of discussing secret-agent movies with a young man whose aesthetics differed so radically from my own.

      “I had no idea you were a James Bond fan,” I said as Chögi Gyatso took leave of our lair. “Now that I think about it, the titles do have a certain Buddhist quality. The World Is Not Enough. You Only Live Twice. Tomorrow Never Dies. Live and Let Die. Is that why you like the series?”

      “You are quite correct, Taktra Kunga,” His Holiness replied. “I derive much food for meditation from the Bond titles. I also enjoy the babes.”

      Whether by the grace of the Bön gods, the vicissitudes of chance, or the devotion of his yeti protectors, Chögi Gyatso’s pilgrimages proved far less perilous than anyone anticipated. Whenever a Chinese patrol threatened to apprehend His Holiness, my six cousins and I would circle silently around the soldiers, then come at them from behind. The Mao-Maos never knew what hit them. A sudden whack between the shoulder blades — the blow we apes call glog, the lightning flash — and the startled soldier wobbled like a defective prayer wheel, then fell prone in the snow, gasping and groaning. By the time the patrol recovered its collective senses, Chögi Gyatso was far away, off to see the sham wizard on his stolen throne.

      Our victories in these skirmishes traced largely to our invisibility. This attribute of Candidopithecus tibetus is highly adaptive and entirely natural. Like the skin of a chameleon, our fur transmogrifies until it precisely matches the shade of the immediate snowscape. So complete is this camouflage that we appear to the naïve observer as autonomous blazing orbs and disembodied flashing teeth. Set us down anywhere in the Himalayas, and we become eyes without faces, fangs without serpents, grins without cats.

      Committed to conveying His Holiness to Lhasa with maximum efficiency, we eventually devised an elaborate relay system using modified climbing gear. Our method comprised a set of six grappling irons outfitted with especially long ropes. By hurling each hook high into the air and deliberately snagging it on the edge of a crag, Cousin Jowo, the strongest among us, succeeded in stringing a succession of high-altitude Tarzan vines between the gateway to the Lachung Pass and the outskirts of Lhasa. Once these immense pendulums had been hung, it became a simple matter for Cousin Drebung, Cousin Yangdak, Cousin Garap, Cousin Nyima, and myself to swing through the canyons in great Newtonian oscillations, gripping our respective ropes with one hand while using the opposite arm to pass His Holiness from ape to ape like a sacramental basketball. Cousin Ngawang brought up the rear, carefully detaching the six hooks and gathering up the ropes, so the Mao-Maos would remain oblivious to our conspiracy.

      Naturally my clan and I never dared venture into Lhasa proper, and so after depositing Chögi Gyatso at the city gates we always made a wide arc to the east, tromping through the hills until we reached the railroad bridge that spanned the Brahmaputra River like a sleek tiger leaping over a chasm. His Holiness’s half-brother, Dorje Lingpa, lived by himself in a yurt on the opposite shore. We could get there only by sprinting anxiously along the suspended rails. The passenger train made two scheduled and predictable round-trips per day, but the freight lines and the military transports ran at odd hours, so my cousins and I were always thrilled to reach the far side of the gorge and leap to the safety of the berm.

      Dorje Lingpa worked for the Chinese National Railroad, one of four token Tibetans in their employ. Six days a week, he would leave his abode shortly after dawn, walk twenty paces to the siding, climb into his motorized section-gang car, and clatter along the maintenance line, routinely stopping to shovel snow, ice,