RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT

 

When I learned of Werner’s death at ninety-four, I was taken by surprise.  I had never forgotten my interview with him for a magazine article:  his presence at the dining-table at right angles to me, but sitting quite upright and staring straight ahead, a proud cast of a man, as if reading an autocue running across the window opposite.  Indestructible, he seemed, as if moulded from rock.  Even his hard, inanimate face held a bluish metallic tone, his inner elbows a shocking deeper blue running to inflamed red, as if he’d burnt himself in the kitchen.

Some would contend that repressed anger is like a corrosive acid burning the soul, while others might argue that anger focused for a purpose recharges one’s batteries, sustains the glow of self-righteousness or is a manifestation of stubborn will.  Werner’s intense gaze at nothing concrete was chilling.  It reminded me of my father.

I was born of German parentage in Dusseldorf in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.  After spending four years in primary school and six in high school, I matriculated in 1936, one of the last Jewish students to do so before the Nazi crackdown on Jewish institutions.  It was my ambition to study engineering, but all Jewish students were now prevented from going to university.  Since anti-Jewish sentiments were deliberately inflamed by the Nazis, I decided to study in Zurich, where the engineering syllabus in the technical colleges was similar to that of Germany’s educational system:  six semesters over three years and familiar course content.  I possessed the qualifications, so there was no need to take exams, but I did require six months of work experience in the field. 

By October, 1936 my chances of success looked fairly easy but one class appeared difficult – technical drawing.  However, I took an extra class in the Christmas vacation, one bonus being that practical laboratory sessions gave access to lecturers for further assistance.  It was my intention to return to Germany during vacations, but after 1937 my passport expired.  A friendly passport control officer confided that I might not be able to return to Switzerland if I re-entered Germany.  He gave me to understand that I would be dispatched to a re-training camp for instruction in Nazism.

In 1938 my brother, who was six years older, found it increasingly difficult to work with my uncle under the Nazi regime and decided to emigrate to distant relations in the USA.  But the number of applicants was so high that the American Government established quotas.  Already a growing trickle of Jews and non-Jews was fleeing at night across the border to France, Belgium and Holland, countries that suffered in the early years of war.  Fortunately, my brother received a visa in 1938, about the time of Neville Chamberlain’s Peace Agreement.

I travelled through France along the German border in order to meet my uncle and parents across the Channel in London.  Troops were assembling on stations, ships were already crowded.  At Liverpool Street station my uncle said, ‘You look so pale.’  I was still suffering the effects of seasickness.  I hadn’t seen my parents for two years but stayed at their boarding house before making the return journey by train to Switzerland.  That was where my security lay as well as my studies.

In Germany pressure was continually mounting on the Jews.   Many were caught by the Nazis, shoved into trains and consigned to death camps in the east.

I happened to be staying with my parents in Richmond, near London when the British Government declared war on Hitler’s Germany on September 3, 1939.  But no action was taken until Germany invaded her neighbours, including parts of Scandinavia.  At that time I was feeling quite comfortable residing in England, then local tribunals began an investigation to classify foreigners.

My parents and I were classified Category C, so we were allowed to move around freely, except in coastal areas, but ordered to hand in all cameras and not use a car.  Foreigners classified as Category A were interned immediately – non-Jewish Germans and some Jewish ‘suspects’ (some of whom were later transferred to the Dunera).  Foreigners classified as Category B were subjected to restrictions of movement and regular reporting to police.  At the 1940 tribunals I was recalled but mercifully classified again as Category C.

In the early days of war the public were worried, almost panicky about foreigners.  For instance, I belonged to a tennis club which organised social nights and boasted a licensed bar.  But about the time of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, the atmosphere grew more heated, more suspicious.  Would the German advance to the coast lead to a possible invasion of Britain?  Any foreigner could be suspected of Nazi sympathies or espionage.  In 1940 I was asked to leave the tennis club, though some members were sympathetic.  However, I sensed the unease and witnessed the preparation of armaments and the use of searchlights before air raids actually began. If Hitler had pressed his advantage at Dunkirk then and sanctioned an invasion of Britain, the Germans would surely have triumphed.

During June and July further internment of foreigners took place and rumours about their fate ran rife.  The police warned me to pack my possessions.

On July 2^nd my father and I were detained at Kempton Park in primitive conditions, slept on a concrete floor with blankets, took cold showers.  Then my father was taken to the Isle of Man, while I was sent by train to Huyton, near Liverpool, not knowing what to expect.  It mostly rained at the camp, so everything got damp in the tent.  Nor was the food very wholesome in the meal tents.  Meanwhile my uncle was involved in war work at a manufacturing establishment, so he was not interned. 

In the camps there was no communication with the outside world, only rumours.  We interns didn’t know what had happened to our families back in Germany.

My father never spoke about his war.  Not to me, at least.  Now and again my mother would remind me: ‘Don’t upset your father by asking about the war.  He’s bottled it up for years.’  It was my mother who told me the little I knew.

Apparently, Dad didn’t refuse the draft; he actually looked forward to his national service in Vietnam.  When the official letter in the brown envelope arrived informing the family that his name had come up in the ballot, he responded eagerly to the call of duty, determined to make the most of this experience.  How many of the fifty-five thousand nashos could claim that?  Not to mention the draft-dodgers.  At first his enthusiasm was swept along by the gung-ho rhetoric of politicians and the military that demarcated the ideological battle-lines:  the democratic tradition of a free, open society defending itself against the proletarian dictatorship of Marxist-Leninism.  But Dad wasn’t prepared for what soon followed.  Cleaning up the battlefield on fatigues, heaven knows what horrors those green conscripts witnessed, deadly quiet as they mooched about that gruesome task.  Most of those innocents abroad simply withdrew into themselves.

 

I reluctantly volunteered to join one of the transports.  Three transports departed for Canada, but one was torpedoed on the first day at sea.  About one thousand lives were lost, including crew and guards.  Survivors were taken back to Liverpool on overcrowded lifeboats. 

On July 10, 1940, the Dunera lay in Liverpool Harbour, its destination unknown.  The  Dunera boys speculated that they might be sent to Canada, near the USA border. 

Officially, we were allowed only forty kilos of luggage, but we were told to drop everything on board and searched.  If we didn’t comply, troops seized our possessions, especially our valuables and personal documents.  We were never to see them again. The officers looked on and tolerated the rough handling meted out.

We were pushed downstairs into the hold below sea level, lower deck no.3.  The artificial light was dingy.  There were no toilet facilities except chamber pots that soon overflowed.  Once again we were searched by NCOs, before finally getting something to eat.  Many of us were expected to sleep on long mess tables for ten or twelve men.  Some of us were issued with hammocks - although there weren’t nearly enough - mats or tables or benches to sleep on with some blankets.  Even so, it was difficult to get to sleep.

Then during the night, the ship’s engines rumbled disturbingly.  On the second morning I heard a noise like thunder, as if something violent had struck the ship.  The seas were rough and some men were seasick, others panicked, but getting upstairs was forbidden by guards with bayonets mounted, as the lights flicked on and off.  Clearly, something must have happened, but the Dunera boys were not told.  However, some of us did notice the ship zig-zagging.   We were in a convoy of thirty-odd vessels, but soon parted ways with them.  Now we were accompanied by one solitary destroyer.

From the top of the decks, we could see for ourselves other ships dispersing into the distance.  After a few hours our destroyer also disappeared.  Later we learned of the U-boat attack outside Liverpool.   When the Dunera turned direction, observers realized that we were going south, not west to Canada or the USA.

The guards called for volunteers to report to the kitchen to carry food down below, but the Irish Sea was extremely rough.  I was sick for at least a day, but managed to gain access to the upper deck next day.  When extra hammocks were issued, sleeping became more comfortable.  I was still sick, though, and there was no cleaning up.

 

In a voice of monotonous evenness, Werner continued his humourless narrative, relentlessly, in those hard, clipped sounds, as if he knew the script off by heart, without changing s single word, preserved forever in aspic.  I’ve made alterations, which he would have fiercely resisted, for although his English expression was competent, occasionally his choice of word or idiom was not up to the mark.  After a two-hour sitting, by which time I’d had enough, not because his story didn’t fascinate me, but his voice went droning on irrespective of my mental fatigue.  Only once did his voice waver:  when he mentioned his son, who wasn’t in the least interested in keeping the Dunera scandal alive in living memory.  And although the grandson had once been enthralled by Werner’s dangerous Hollywood adventure, that romantic world must seem light-years away to him now.

 

Then the situation improved.  We were provided with more regular meals from big containers of food.  Breakfast was substantial:  porridge, bread and marmalade, tea.  Hot lunch was served at mid-day.  There was a light meal in the early evening and a light supper.  There was a great deal of corned beef, so we were not starved but did wish for better food.

The Dunera stopped at several African ports between Liverpool and the Cape, such as Takarari, where the free French fleet was based.  Inside our ship the tropical conditions were unbearably hot, but we were only allowed on deck for a mere half-hour each day.  Sometimes the sea was too boisterous for exercise.  Always under guard, we could be pushed with a rifle butt for the slightest misdemeanour.  Without shoes, we’d find ourselves walking on broken glass, for the troops drank negligently.

We docked for two days and nights at Cape Town, but we still had no access to our luggage, not even our underclothes.  Our cases were opened forcefully by the Captain and clothes laid out on tables to be identified.  Many luggage labels were torn off, for the crew didn’t care.  Luckily, I was still a member of the clothing party and we blokes enjoyed the freedom to go on deck and visit parts of Cape Town and Table Mountain. 

Once round the Cape, I was granted a ship’s bed with white linen.  The medical officer, an understanding man, suspected that I had appendicitis.  I lay in hospital for four days, then returned to quarters.  It was back to routine.  The clothing party exhibited an assortment of clothes on various decks.

About a week out of Liverpool, we Dunera boys learnt that we were going to Australia.  After seven weeks at sea, we crossed the equator and arrived at Fremantle in Western Australia, where we caught sight of troops on the mainland.  On the following day we left for Melbourne.

The sea was rough in the Australian Bight, but we were seasoned sailors now.  We enjoyed healthier food, such as an apple every day.  In Fremantle we all submitted to a medical examination.  Our hands were examined for skin disease.  I was disgusted with my clothes and appearance – I’d lost weight.  A report was made by the Australian army to the British army.  Consequently, we were issued with shaving gear that had been confiscated.  All of us had arrived unshaven but managed to clean up a little.

Early one morning we landed in Sydney and disembarked under the eyes of British troops as well as the Australian police and army, who were amazed at this strange lot of arrivals, many with ragged and torn clothes and some without shoes.  They suspected something was wrong - they had officially been told to receive German POWs and paratroopers!

The boys were transported on four trains of wooden carriages.  From the first moment the guards started conversing in a friendly manner, doling out cigarettes and chocolates and bonhomie.  Some of them had served in Palestine, where they had experienced contact with Jews.  The contrast between British and Australian guards was the difference between night and day.  In addition, the boys received much-appreciated food parcels from ladies auxiliaries.  On the journey we spotted the remnants of bush fires, blackened areas of burnt tree stumps and leaping kangaroos.  What amusement these dear animals gave us!  I can’t remember the boys chuckling so much.

 

When that horrific photograph of that young girl hit the front pages, Dad was devastated.  Mum said it happened in 1972.  A nine year-old girl - she even remembered her name - Kim Phuc, running naked toward the camera, her back covered in burning oil.  Napalm melted the flesh from the bone.  Amazingly, she survived, but knowledge of the cruel suffering of innocent citizens caused a tide of revulsion against the war.  Later when Dad returned home, even our neighbours accused him of being a killer, an animal, a heartless bastard.  When he eventually laid eyes on that photo, I doubt whether he ever scraped that sickening image from his mind.  About that time he would be tossing and turning in bed, Mum said, waking up in a sweat with a start, whimpering, even occasionally shouting, ‘Get your bloody head down!  The fucking gooks are out there!  And there!  And there!’

Then there was a story breaking about the deleterious efforts of herbicides and defoliants.  Denied by the Australian Government, of course.  But again the photographic evidence of babies born with clubfeet, cleft palates, enlarged heads, missing limbs . . . so the list of deformities continued ad nauseam.

Dad’s severe headaches and muscular twitching gave way to unpredictable mood swings.  Never could he relax, unwind, just let go.  You could tell from that wild look in his eyes that he was a haunted man, living in the lurid jungle shadows of his mind.  He refused to see a psychiatrist.  Even refused to seek counselling from the Vietnam Veterans’ Action Association, he was that ashamed.  Of course, the RSL didn’t want to know him.  Nor did the army acknowledge the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Even the medical profession smugly, cruelly dismissed claims for PTSD, since clearly proven to be a genuine and absolutely understandable condition suffered in extremely stressful situations.  However, the Australian army was at pains to differentiate itself from the American military.  Its top brass maintained that Australians killed only armed soldiers in the jungle and did their utmost to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the Yanks often got away with indiscriminate brutality.  Until My Lai, that is, with those shocking revelations in November, 1969 of disgusting atrocities.

 

We travelled through the night, some boys sleeping on the floor with Dunera blankets; some slept in luggage racks.  We passed through Young, Cootamundra, then Hay at seven o’clock in the morning, where we were received by Australian troops, some middle-aged, some who had served in the Middle East. 

There would be no more rough treatment, we realized.  After all, the Dunera boys were held on behalf of the British Government with no intent of jurisdiction, but with the responsibility of care.  One thousand men would be accommodated, twenty-eight to a hut.  Another thousand slept on the floor with blankets.  They were fed in relays from two kitchens.  I warmly remember that first day - tasty sandwiches, fresh apples and oranges.  Officers helped, for they were short of hands.  Many of the boys quaffed food, especially the fresh fruit. 

The spokesman of the two or three hundred orthodox Jews on the Dunera was Andrew Eppenstein.  The group included a number of rabbis who broached the Captain about their fate, but it was the troops who were effectively in command.  No news was filtering through, but some lads might have received news by way of Cape Town.

The rest of the journey was uneventful.  At last it was wonderful to be able to relax when meeting Australian guards on trains.  Many of the boys spoke good English but couldn’t understand the Australian accent.

The generous treatment accorded us on our arrival, such as hot tea and cakes and chocolate, would never be forgotten.  Such generous fare formed our first impressions of Australia, most favourable impressions indeed, and these continued through internment, with the result that no escapes were attempted, no tunnels dug.  In any case, we could see the edge of the desert so there was nowhere to slope off to even if we’d wanted to.  In the distance we could discern the houses of Hay, a few inhabitants and children, and that was enough for the present.  Occasionally, we made excursions to the river.

The clothing party continued for six weeks to examine all luggage stored in the huts to identify clothing and documents to hand back.  But about thirty per cent of luggage had disappeared, and some thrown overboard, particularly in those early days of the voyage.  Later we were entitled to claim compensation from the British Government.

At Hay there were thirty-six huts in each of two compounds, each with a captain and parliament; and a camp spokesman who had access to the commanding officer, who was amenable to whatever meetings were required.  The treatment by officers and guards was very cordial.  There was a daily inspection of huts:  beds properly made and clothing folded; and kitchens inspected.  There were also daily roll calls – two or three times a day at first – so the sense of army routine was quickly established.

The two camps had some communication with each other, but no direct contact, though there were two working parties in the same vicinity.  Eventually, workshops were established to repair shoes.  Some boys were trained tailors who could repair clothing and uniforms.  Others had trades and vocations, such as hairdressers. We acquired tools to manufacture tables and chairs to furnish huts.  I myself gained carpentry skills from tradesmen friends.  It all helped to pass the time.  Also we appointed night guards on two-hour shifts to attend to anyone who might have got sick and check that everything was in order.  I obtained some writing equipment and started to write diaries.  I’d already taken notes on the Dunera, but I had to be cautious. I deemed it expedient to make no reference to the British guards’ rough treatment.  These notes I used to write up a proper diary, which I later typed to complement my life in the army.

In camp, organized sport was enthusiastically welcomed.  Franz Stampfl, who over a decade later coached Roger Bannister toward breaking the four-minute barrier for the mile, directed physical exercise, handball and fistball.  Consequently, I regained fitness and recovered my average weight within a few weeks.  Australian kitchen crews worked alongside my own people, as several Jews had been employed in the food industry.  They were able to prepare better meals from ample food supplies in the Riverina.  A canteen was organized, which included clothing from the Sydney branch of Myers.  One could order sleeping bags and straw palliasses.  Each bed had a fine mattress and five blankets, so proved comfortable but cold at night.  The camp organized private cafes selling cups of coffee and homemade cakes.  Money was sent by families.  Payment of one shilling per day was made for jobs done in camp, such as night guards or cleaners of latrines.  Such a small sum enabled inmates to buy from the canteen such items as cigarettes, toothpaste, razor blades, condensed milk, soft drinks and chocolate but no beer.  Access to mail, including airmail and cablegrams to England and the USA, took three weeks, so any news might be quickly outdated.

The British Home Office organized a representative, Major Julian Layton, to investigate the inmates’ situation and offer assisted passage from the middle of 1941.  The first vessel returned to Britain in convoy via New Zealand and Panama.  One vessel with forty men on board was torpedoed.  But approximately 1100 returned to Britain by 1942 or ‘43.  Major Layton made several visits to Australia and interviewed many of the Dunera boys, making himself open to any requests, which he referred back to the Home Office or relatives in England. 

By the end of 1942 all the Dunera boys had been transferred to Tatura with a short interval in Orange.  Three hundred men in May and July, 1941 were selected from patients suspected of heart tremor.  They were detained in the grounds of the camp in Orange and kept under guard on their daily walks.  The Australian guards, however, were friendly.  The locals gave us curious looks – we weren’t soldiers but were issued with army greatcoats dyed red!  The remainder of the Hay inmates was transferred.

Tatura boasted thirteen camps:  one for refugees from the Dunera; one for refugees off the Queen Mary from Singapore; one for single; and one for married men.  The camp at Tatura was similar to that at Hay, but not as cold in winter.  We stayed there until the end of 1941 to early 1942 after the USA had entered the war on December 7, 1941.

The day of my father’s return to Australia was utterly soul-destroying.  He was forever embittered, for when he arrived home in the dead of night there was no fanfare, no warm welcome by pollies or military officers.  What’s more, Australians on Civvy Street, by and large, seemed indifferent to these lucky blighters who had risked their lives in appalling conditions.  Frequently, Dad was spat at, jeered, sent to Coventry, persona non grata.  By the very people who had voted to rush the poor devils to a veritable hell!

 

So what was Australia going to do with all these mostly younger men in their twenties and thirties?  Those who went back to Britain were generally older and may have rejoined army units or tank units.  I heard that one tank driver was saved when the tank blew up; everyone else was killed, yet this survivor drove a tank in the Berlin Victory Parade of 1945.  He wrote a book on Dachau.  He never returned to Australia and died at the age of ninety.

What will happen to us?  Which way is the war going?  Well might we wonder, but early in 1942 I was attached to some orchardists in Shepparton and Kyabram.  Seasonal fruit-picking was hard work, especially in the heat of February and March, but generally pleasant enough.  I was paid at the official award rate, four guineas for 40 or 44 hours per week.  Housed in a primitive shed in the orchard away from the owner’s family, I fell in with four friends in Kyabram.  The teenage daughters who brought us milk daily I met again in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s.  All are pretty fit now.  I used to go to dinner at the local pub in Kyabram.  The landlady took pity on us.  We were given a four-course meal for two shillings – at that time, the norm was three courses.  Dressed up in a shirt, tie and jacket and looking like real foreigners to the locals, we would take a twenty-minute walk into town every day.  By this means I made friends with some of the local inhabitants and stayed in touch with others.

When the British Government offered voluntary service in the Australian army, about four hundred Dunera boys enrolled in the Australian Labor Corps (later known as the 8^th Employment Company) and transported to Caulfield racecourse.  In time, that number increased, although some gained early release or had protected jobs in industry.  Similar companies existed to find employment for refugees.

We adhered to strict army routine with the exception of drill and were issued with full kit but no rifles.  After two or three days in Caulfield, we were accommodated in the grandstand, then later in tents.  I worked in army stores, munitions and food stores and transported them to railways.  Some boys were stationed at Tocumwal ready to transfer from Victoria gauge to NSW gauge.   The company was stationed in an open area of Parkville, Melbourne for the first twelve months, before tents were erected for American troops due to arrive from May, 1941- 42.  Many were sent to the Dutch East Indies, which we helped unload onto trucks and railways and took to various stores.

I experienced one trip to Eskona in Switzerland.  A fellow in a golf club by co-incidence hailed from Dutch East Indies.  The camp was built for Americans, but my group was housed in tents.  Since I was working for the American army, I could be transported on their trucks and enjoy their canteen service.

The army unit then transferred us to Broadmeadows on the outskirts of Melbourne.  Most of us slept out in tented rooms close to the camp area and walked back to camp.  Occasionally, there was an army dinner, but often we’d descend on the town for food and lectures at Melbourne Technical College or university.  I had previously continued courses by correspondence and night classes.  Weekends were mostly free except for work parties on Saturday or Sunday, after which duties we were free to do whatever.

Our first commanding officer was Captain Broughton of half-Maori descent, a wonderful man to us.  He could identify with refugees and supported the notion that a man’s religion was a personal matter.  He quickly grasped the nature of our background and the circumstances of our internment in Britain, our Dunera experience and our internment in Australia.  Not only was he educated and understanding, he got to know everyone in the 8^th Australian Company and helped whomever he could to get release from the army.  Above all, he gave us new faith in ourselves.

I was given discharge from the army in February, 1946 in order to attend university on a full-time basis.

By war’s end many of us Dunera boys tried to get rid of our German habits, such as refusing to speak German; however, some persisted in speaking their native tongue – to their detriment!  Many rid themselves of their refugee appearance, but others didn’t.  My own intention was to become Anglicized or Australianised, without negating those affirming qualities of my German origin.

 

Alas, Dad’s only demonstrative emotion was anger.  Born in part from frustration, a sense of helplessness from no longer having a meaningful role in society.  Pretty quickly he’d become an outcast.  Took to drinking at home instead of the pub.  His rages became more predictable, more ugly, more threatening.  The Vietcong were no longer the enemy.  Now it was my mother lined up in the cross-hairs!

I advised Mum she had to leave Vince, my poor wreck of a father, for her own safety and well-being.  Which she did.  Found herself a little bedsitter and managed to start work again.  But, of course, fate plays its own tricks.  Around 1987 the public disregard for Vietnam vets underwent a major sea-change.  Sydney staged a Welcome Home Parade for the vets and this time the public cheered them.  Five years later in Canberra, a national memorial to the Vietnam veterans was unveiled.

But that was all too late for Vince.  He’d been dead six years.  Took his own life with an overdose of barbiturates.  The grog didn't help.

Eleven years after starting a university course in Zurich, I was finally awarded my engineering degree in Melbourne.  I had no difficulty obtaining employment in that field.  A job with Heine Bros, a big trading firm in Melbourne, was arranged by another Dunera pal.  This was a company that fostered business relations with Germany, so I was obliged to reconsider my opinion of German people.  In fact, I had several happy experiences with those I encountered.  It is evident that the present generation no longer exhibits that superiority complex that characterized the Nazi years, thank goodness! 

Then there were those old friends from Germany who sought to learn about my wartime experiences, but alas others who didn’t even enquire about my Dunera days.  ‘We were under such a dreadful bombardment,’ they’d gabble on.  ‘You couldn’t imagine.  Seven whole weeks.  Most of the inhabitants have fled.  Or died in the streets, if not buried under the rubble.  Dusseldorf is now a dead city.  Even those lovely trees that lined our streets are mere skeletons, as you can see.  In March the Americans occupied the Oberkessel.  Those of us who remained were ordered to shovel away the rubble so their jeeps could drive around.  They say over six thousand Jews were murdered in the east . . .

 

For them, I had nothing to say.

 

                                                                                                                        Michael Small

September 3-October 8, 2012; January 12-17, 2015

 

 

SHOWING THE FLAG

                                                        

Choking awake, he found himself coughing, like swimming up from deep underground, breathless but parched dry.  And dared open his blinkers, ungummed them, nice n slow, tentative like.  Breathe shallow, breathe easy.  What’s that smell?  Gas . . . and something other.  Cordite?  What the bloody hell was cordite?

Wailing piercing his head, a roller-coaster of sharp, shrill screams.  Sirens more like, braying.  Move, he couldn’t, not flex even, feelingless.  Until he pressed thumbs hard against each fingertip in turn, just like when the arthritis got too much.

Oglers stinging something awful, unfocussing.  Close up, motes of dust still raining.  Brick dust?  Were his eyes partially blinded or brain dimmed, dumbed?  Or the lounge swathed in darkness, fuses blown?  Mind blown?  What for god sakes lay around the lounge?  Some sort of scatter - Christ, what a scatter! - dark oblongs like bricks or slabs of paving.  Then tensed, sensed his two and a half metre solid walnut bookcase sloped across his back, digging in. 

Books as bricks?  Huh, struck his whole life on a scaffold of bricks.  Wasn’t his dwelling a haven of words and long drawn-out lacunas, lacunae?  Books the ballast.  If ever he’d do away with himself, he’d pondered frequently, he’d treat himself to a cave stacked with piles of bound paper, piles and pyres of them, douse them in petre and oil and slow-burn amid their ashes, spines broken.  Symbol of his journey.  A bookish person they’d say, Who’d say?  Fearful of facing the ferments and terrors of Terra Firma.

Yet face them he did.  Literally.  A Letter to the Editor.  His first ever!  The Morning Post, oft referred to in these times of unreal politik as the Mourning Post.

Sir, Since the Sydney siege, it is scarcely credible how many people believe that Islamic terrorism is the work of a few disaffected individuals with mental issues.  Surely these blinkered Lefties cannot deny that extremist elements within the Islamic diaspora have declared war on our cherished western values.  I appeal to both left-wing progressives, who dare not offend the notion of multiculturalism, and those who believe, such as the P.M., Mal Priestley, that by permitting Australian aircraft to assist the American air force in an attack on the ISIS ‘death cult’, this horrendous cultural conflict will be over in ‘certainly months rather than weeks’.  Oh, really?  Or just another shirtfront by the fakir of facade.

Last night I learned on the six o’clock news that Muslim boys as young as five are being taught to cut off the heads of westerners by slicing slowly through their necks.  And today I read that a clean-living seventeen year old Muslim boy, a former student of a distinguished Sydney grammar school who had won a scholarship to university, has gone off to fight in Syria; an adolescent girl was raped by Islamic State soldiers, then sold at market; and pregnant women were slain for refusing to marry jihadists.  We must remain vigilant.  Terrorist chatter is increasing on social networks.  We are not immune.  It is imperative that we review both our terrorist laws and immigration laws.

Name and address supplied

Disgusted, sickened by that horrific photo of a captured Pakistani pilot he dredged up that angst-ridden time as a god-awful teen, when he himself finally plucked the nerves to immolate . . . emasculate?  Striking a safety match - Swan Vesta? - to light the gas oven with its range of flames in pretty hyacinth blue, leaving the oven door ajar and tuning out the incessant hissing by wallowing in groovy black shellac 45s . . . the Grifters?  No, Drifters, deep throats, all cascading violins and bell sounds, Belsen . . . Nelson . . . Ricky, the Neverly Brothers . . . two long lonely hours lapsed before sticking his scone in the oven, laying it on the bottom blue-mottled metal shelf, his body slumped on that cruddy brown lino . . . but still no easing, releasing pain.  Utterly useless it was, cowardly stuff.  Tedious too.  What else but brew up a cuppa?  How homely was that?

First, though, staggered outside to snatch some fresh air.  Not before spewing up over the bluebells by the back step.  Where the buck stops.  If he’d had the wit to put the kettle on the ring first, he’d have blown roof-high to smithereens or been so badly bloody crippled the physical wounds would have cut as bad as a lobotomy.

When his wandering senses trundled round again, baubles of water seemed dripping down seams and cracks in the ceiling.  Unsealing, splashing on the side of his noddle.  What relief, thank god!  Though throat was dry.  Dry as . . . That’s it!  Keep thinking.  What was the familiar . . . similiar, simile?  Dry as the cocky’s selection after a drought.

Sirens were still . . . whirring?  Moaning?  Belling?  Snatches of vocal utterances far away, real or imagined.  Outside walls licking up the flames?  Whistles pitching in shrieks, then trilling shrill.  


His other war, he recollected in blinding flashes, had been sheer bliss:  running barefoot in shorts, what, five or six years old?  Playing cops and robbers in the camp, squinting up at the air raids, tracers of anti-aircraft fire.  So much larking about, except for gathering firewood or keeping an eye on the washing line, till roll call at evening.  Which was taken by conscripts acting as guards, South Korean or Taiwanese, the Japanese soldiers concentrated on the front line.  That's right, the teachers had all been locked up.  He'd been taught in the mornings only - what, he couldn't remember - the seniors like his big brother Eric did the afternoon shift.  Eric was given a book on the Norse sagas by the librarian, but preferred Zane Grey, Tarzan and the jungle stories of Kippers Kipling.

Pre-war Honkers was but a hazy, lazy blur.  His father was a sales manager for the British air industry.  They could afford two servants . . . amahs? in their apartment.  He and his younger brother, Tom, were greedy readers of American comics, fifteen cents each, which they'd swop:  Superman, Captain Marvel, Batman . . . At the end of their street, a two-dollar shop.

The war he'd only been vaguely aware of, the Japanese invasion of China.  Hong Kong had proved a haven for Chinese escapees from the mainland, but they were treated badly by the locals, so Dad said.  Whereas he was more taken with making bird traps of bricks and twigs to catch sparrows, bulbuls and finches for his mother to cook up.

One day, September, 1941?  A Canadian army unit turned up.  Two thousand men marched up Nathan Road, in readiness for transport to the U.K.  The army camp lay three miles yonder toward the hills.  They marched three abreast, never-ending it seemed, their thick black boots grating, the slogging past lasting a good half-hour.

Dad was in the reserve army then, the Hong Kong defence force, often coming and going without saying much.  Then suddenly disappeared.  December 8 rings a bell, but he can't be sure of the year.  Went off to catch the bus to school.  He heard the ack-ack fire, spied planes winging across the sky.  Only manoeuvres, he shrugged.

But then:  'No school today,' said the conductor in Cantonese.  'The Japanese are coming.'

He was deliciously excited.  But when he ventured home, Mum was sobbing bitterly.  'Where's your father disappeared to now?  Don't tell me he's joined up.  And where were you?'

He skulked off again in spite of the heavy droning of planes and bursts of gunfire.  And, bull's eye!, picked up a big lump of shrapnel that was still hot!

Later that arvo, when Mum had calmed down a bit, she heard on the radio that all British passport-holders should go down to the port with whatever they could carry.  What a bloomin' struggle for him and his two brothers , all those suitcases.  Someone said a bomb had killed ten internees.  Another gasped out Hong Kong's surrender.


Remember, try to remember.  Last fire drill: ‘Testing, testing!’ burst the intercom with a crackle.  ‘This is only a practice.  Repeat:  This is only a practice.  Do not do anything!’

Remember walking homeward back to the Towers one time?  Yes, head clearing the fug a bit.  Must’ve been end of morning constitutional, round eight o’ clock.  Mass of residents clucking about the forecourt, some in dressing-gowns, some with sticks, riffs of gabbling and chuckling.  What an adventure that was, what a hoot, surging down corridors into lifts in carpet slippers!  And he’d missed all the fun.  The wardens of each floor, wearing their silver helmets like Her Majesty’s horse guards with jutting jaw, thumping on apartment doors if a pillow hadn’t been dumped outside to signify evacuation or checking if door locked.  A surge – yes, even lame oldies can surge if need – down the concrete steps to the exit and round onto the forecourt.

‘Eighty people missing!’ he heard the chief warden informing the manager, with a straight face, checking his lists of apartment numbers and names ticked off, obviously dismayed that so many hadn’t bothered to desert their comfy warm beds or even bid him to 'get lost'.

‘That’s alright, Fergus,’ Maeve reassured with the hint of a smile and a pat on the forearm, deeply relieved that the cause was only some duffer’s burnt toast.  Why don’t the buggers use their fans? she wondered.  ‘Here at Chiltern Towers there’s more chance of drowning than burning if there’s a real fire.’

All the same, Fergus thought, eighty people missing, presumed toast, is hardly a commendation for the operation’s success.

Next Maxwell knew, retching and retching, the mess leaking out of his mouth splodging the carpet - Russian salad.  Even shed a few tears at the helplessness of being stripped almost naked, vulnerable as a sensitive nipper four years old groping in the dark.

From the pit of his stomach, he heard spasms of grumbling.  Strained his much weaker, foggier right eye upward to the ceiling.  Flooded, pale yellow, now greyish.  Fractured with seams of water dropping, dripping.  A giant’s jigsaw fretted.

A blinding moment of reckoning!  There was at least one floor above him that could come crashing down on top of his splayed body.  Not to mention eight apartments with extensive gardens up on the flat roof . . . or structural damage from below. But his back he couldn't feel for dead weight.  Was broken already?

Pent up, insides churning.  Try to flex those flaming hands.  Where the fuck were they?  Left arm throbbing, pinioned beneath.  Couldn’t roll off without creasing pain.  Limply lying down beside.  Try to clench fingers, but no, not much sensation there.  Exercise your mind, for god sake!  Tell what happened.  More than just an explosion of gas?  Old brainpan didn’t want to register, but after a long pause, he urged.  Suppose something far worse than an accident, something executed with intent, something political.

Which brought back to mind last month’s residents meeting, some parade  In fact, it had played on his mind, with his mind most nights since.  He had spoken out against the village president -  the resi presi he called him in flippant moments - but could’ve bitten his tongue.  And hated himself for doing so.  In particular, because he had rarely spoken out in his life, except when flaming angry.  In the nineteen-forties you could be flogged by your parents, in the fifties by your teachers, at uni by the brainy bunch; and, in harness, metaphorically by your editor:  ‘Keep your head in, Maxwell!’  Now that he was no longer constrained by the chains of subservience and liberated by retirement, he had resolved to tell it how it was.

‘Your committee,’ the silver-tongued, silver-haired Warwick Holman was saying in doggedly determined mood, ‘has decided in its wisdom to erect the Australian flag in a corner of the front garden.’

There were murmurings from the chairs towards the back of the lounge, some smirks, some eyes flickering heavenwards, some knowing nods. 

Maxwell’s hand shot up.

‘I haven’t finished yet, Maxwell,’ said Warwick tersely, more corpulent than corporate.

‘ All the same, I think . . .’

‘Be so good as to let me finish, if you don’t mind.’

He had never seen the man so steely.  ‘Mr President, I appreciate that your sentiments are worthy.  But we haven’t been permitted a vote on the matter.’

‘Look, we have dickered about for years without making a decision.  You have elected me president and I wish to press ahead.  We had a show of hands at last month’s meeting and the indication was that those in favour were in the majority.’

Maxwell grudgingly admired Warwick’s determination for a cause fervently believed in.  Right, this was the moment.  Stand up and be counted!  ‘I fear I must be frank.  If you raise the Australian flag, you are attracting the attention of any jihadist who feels he must obey the strictures of his imam without question.’  There, it was out!

When the gasps had died, there was quite a stir.  ‘Shame on you!’ the treasurer cried out, waving his treasury report.  ‘You muckraking panic-merchant!’

‘That is a disgraceful thing to say!’ blurted Meg Adams.  ‘Have you no sense of shame?’

‘You are out of order, sir!’ shouted wizened Dr Duffield with dodgy knees, who knocked over his seat as he struggled to his feet.

 

‘You go against the grain,’ said Mary-Jane Walters more calmly, having made a grab for the microphone.  ‘We are fortunate to live in a tolerant multi-cultural society and any wild talk of jihadists will stir the pot.’ 

‘I am quite sure,’ Maxwell retaliated, ‘that in the city of Chiltern we are in no immediate danger from any dissident group, but regrettably we’re not immune from the machinations of the caliphate.’

‘Nor should any of us say anything that can be misconstrued,’ added Warwick, with a fierce look of disdain. 

So why did he bother to attend the ceremony?  At the show of hands Maxwell had opted No to Chiltern Towers flying the Australian flag.  It might signal an exclusive club, a bunch of out-of-touch anglophiles, a promo for the smug plutocracy of yesteryear.  You would never witness on the streets of Chiltern a woman wearing a niqab, not even a hijab . . . of course, the city was a possible target for a lone wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Or might one day - heaven forbid! - harbour a cell of jihadists, that taboo word which left-wing progressives found impossible to utter for fear of appearing critical of Islamic culture, even Islam itself?  Bloody hell, could this be the second home-grown atrocity committed by ISIS terrorists in two weeks?  

Here I am living in a blue riband seat, he thought, ultra-conservative, very right wing.  The residence is plum in the centre of Chiltern, opposite the town hall, whose Australian flag atop the clock tower flies freely, so proudly, whereas ours hangs limp.  Had some bod, some rough with grievance, broken in?  To cause such grief?  Unlikely.  Security is number one factor, why all we resis sold up in the burbs, downsized and washed up here.

Besides, how could you break in?  Well, you for one lost your swipe card, didn’t you?  At least once.  So whose got their thieving fingers on them?  What’s more, don’t the tradies get given swipe cards when they’re on the job?  Not all, but some, specially early starters of a morning.  And forget to hand them back?  No, the office would chase them up.  Hound them till they brought them back.  They’re very expensive:  eighty dollars, an expensive mistake.  Or charged them.  Hopefully, incentive enough.

Occasionally, some scruff would lurk in the recesses of the outside walls, out of sight if residents seated inside the lounge looked up.  Watching, waiting, he would nip in behind a doddery or distracted couple, sneak through reception and lounge, wander over to the café bar, have a gander, then turn his back away from them all, pour himself a cup of coffee with trembling fingers and snaffle a couple of biscuits, then hover in the reception area as if waiting for an inmate about to emerge from the lift.  Sometimes the oldies didn’t care a brass razoo.  After all, you couldn’t be sure who was a newie, unless dressed like some dero.  Other times residents cast suspicious glances, nudged one another and called over the staffer at the front desk.  The cadger would mumble something inaudible.  If pressed, would mutter, ‘Meeting a mate’ or ‘Waiting for apartment 215.  They’re just comin.’  But such transgressions should never happen.

Again, remember when the new blinds were installed in the lounge?  The sliding double-glazed doors went unlocked for a week to make it easier for the workmen laying the new skirting board, kept open for much of the day. The day staff in the office must’ve left it to the caretaker, didn’t inform the night staff at the five o’clock changeover.  Five days passed by before any staffer thought to check that doors now closed were in fact locked.  They weren't!  Yet no one broke in – as far as far we know.  Christ, what a stink if company honchos had known!

Remember that recent notice from the police?  Security alert for all Over 55 Residences.  Lock all bikes and motorised vehicles even in underground car parks.  Beware that incidences of tailgating are growing, so be suspicious of cars driving through the boom-gate on your tail.  Which to his embarrassment he well knew.  While awaiting a friend at the boom-gate, he used his own swipe card to allow what he thought was her buttercup yellow car to proceed down to the basement, only to realize too late that the face of the driver behind the tinted windscreen wasn’t in the least familiar, nor the rego.  But then could any trespasser prowl around beyond the gated car park?  Yes, from the fenced-off visitors’ car park, they could open the fire door and pass along a brightly lit passageway, lined by a few garbage bins.  Concrete steps did lead upwards from there to a locked door, but intruders could simply leave explosives hidden in one of the bins, then exit directly through an outside door into the street without being spotted.  Christ, his own apartment was situated on the third floor adjacent to the lift, just above that fire door in the car park!

So much for security.  Security sucks!

Racking his tired old brain, thoughts proving too hard to come by.  Water now dripping in a steady trickle onto the back of his head far more irritating than refreshing.  Back all clammy and cold as death.  Yawns growing gapes.  Mind going wanderbout like wailing of nearby sirens.  Was he imagining the moans of his pitiful, bed-ridden neighbouring resis?  His body twitched when in his mind’s eye he glimpsed the black jihad battle flag bearing an Arabic inscription in white.  Like countless Australians who read the week’s newspapers, he knew its meaning:

    There is no god but God and Muhammed is the messenger of God.

When he was returned to his senses, he recalled that last social gathering.  In the front garden looking most attractive and refined, with beds of mauvish and pink begonias in full bloom and jacarandas flowering in delicate showers of purple.  Chairs rushed outside by the fish pond.  Photos shot of the nine long-lived vets who’d survived World War II, brandishing their medals on stiffly proud lapels.

In black suit and white shirt, the resi presi, stalks of grey hair buffing up at the collar, was in a bit of a flap, irked as he struggled to speak against the static of erratic mike and whelming hot northerly gusts.

‘For several years now some of us have expressed the wish to honour the fallen with a show of support for our armed forces.  Each time this worthy cause was defeated in a motion.  This very morning Chiltern Towers is proud to declare we have nine brave people who fought on our behalf in World War II.  This year your committee was determined to push the ‘Yes’ vote, especially as today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of that universal catastrophe, World War I.

I now call upon Reg Burgess to raise the flag at Chiltern Towers for the first time.’

Bidding these gallant heroes to rise and follow him, albeit with slow, measured dignity, the party all but disappeared behind the sturdy frames and arching boughs of a stand of oak trees.

Burgess, the former wartime pilot, balding and bespectacled, wearing a navy blue blazer and squadron tie, swayed from side to side aided by his stick to the flagpole.  A state of apprehension hung in the air.  What if the hoist wouldn’t work?  Slowly, though, the furled flag rose in a clearing between the trees, much to the relief and joy of the president and to the muted clapping from the onlookers trailing behind.

And it was with an image of the starry-eyed Southern Cross that Maxwell drifted off again, bereft of the quarter owed to the British Union flag.

Voices barkng louder, more distinct, whistles more frantic, more shrill.  ‘Hello.  Is anyone there?  Can anyone hear me?’

The crunching sound of heavy boots trampling buckled furniture, bricks and scrap iron being slung aside.

Scarcely daring to believe, Maxwell opened his gritty eyes painfully slowly on the shape of a figure looming in dark ballistic armour.

Michael Small

December 21, 2014-January 4, 2015

HIMALAYAN RETREAT

                            

Two weeks elapsed before the old man spoke to me in English for the first time.  ‘Good morning,’ he muttered, so gutteral that I nearly missed the greeting.  Most mornings at six o’clock you might hear his shuffling plod sounding slightly less noisy in his slow descent from the rooftop by way of the creaking metal door, down the flights of steps to the ground floor and out onto the veranda.  For a Tibetan of eighty-two, Mr Lodro was a tallish man, about five foot eight, notwithstanding his gradual stoop, who from all accounts must have been strongly muscled in his twenties.  Nowadays he is always apparelled in a sleeveless black imitation leather jacket, dark blue dungarees and a distinctive white woollen beanie topped with a pom-pom.  Seldom does he speak, but to his family he can suddenly bark utterances, particularly to his four-year old grandson, Jackson, whom he sometimes catches pissing on his potted marigold.

Old Mr Lodro’s first task of a morning is to fill up the watering can and bucket with tap water and carry both unsteadily to the garden at the side of the house, then back along the row of shrubs, small trees and colourful potted plants that run along the path in front of the veranda:  native plants, one or two of which have flourished in southern England and Australia, such as begonia and hydrangea.  Not surprising, given this township had once been a hill station during the British Raj, though unlike Shimla, the state capital, no sign remains. 

Whilst splashing the water on, Mr Lodro keeps a stony eye on that excitable scamp, Jackson, who kneels on one of the veranda camp beds that doubles as settee during daytime and site of evening smokos for the volunteers.  Today Jackson is sporting his number 9 Les Bleus soccer shirt and elastic-sided boots, as he roars rrrmm! rrrmm! forcing his trucks round the dishevelled quilt, then swinging round by one of its furry arms his much maligned big brown, pink-faced monkey with floppy legs.

Then the veteran climbs the stairs, unbolts the metal door with a clatter and once more shuffles out onto the flat roof.  Up here, he stares into the valley, whose densely packed canopy of green-leafed boughs of pine prevents him from laying eyes on the forestry monastery itself, whose deep growl of a monastic chant is relayed by microphone with tinny echo the length of the valley.  As old Lodro shifts his watery gaze around at the ranges, he murmurs prayers or the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.  Then he unfurls all those snapping prayer flags twisted by the night breeze, or merely touches each flag in succession as a holy relic that would carry some message of hope.  The Tibetan name for ‘prayer flag’, lung-ti, means ‘wind horse’.  When the wind catches the prayers, they ride off as horses on the wind.  The colours of the flags represent the elements:  green for earth, yellow for wind, red for fire, blue for water and white for air.  Some resemble washed-out rags with indiscriminate colours, as lines of prayer flags run round the four corners of the roof, others running diagonally across.  If volunteers wish to use the clotheslines, they duck under the flags to reach them.

The roof is level concrete, save the two blue water towers, two solo energy panels and the eight-rung metal ladder that lands you with an eagle’s eye over the surrounding village, the partially shadowed forested slopes and distant mountain peaks.  Did old Mr Lodro remember that treacherous trail of half a century ago in that flight from Lhasa?  Very steep, very slippery up and down blinding white inclines and blurry false leads to dead ends on a precipice, sudden blizzards that blocked the passes, relentless squalls that stung your raw red eyes, icy rivulets in torrent that you had to traverse somehow, miserably sodden.

Did he in his most disturbing dreams hear the wild laughing yelp of the shaggy-haired yeti?  Or imagine he was hallucinating with a partial sighting of a red panda or a skulking Red Guard?  Did he glimpse the elusive snow leopard in his frozen derangement?  And when he bivouacked on bone hard ground, back hard up against a boulder or shivering in a narrow cairn, did he seek propitiation from the mountain gods with an offering of the simplest food and a heap of stones, sticks and rags?  Surely, the callow twenty-three year old must have desperately prayed for a wandering lama who might magically transform himself into a trusty guide.

My own far more modest journey began two and a half weeks before in Dharamsala, otherwise known as Little Tibet, at the startlingly modest Kangra airport, home of Air India, where I was collected by an almost silent taxi driver with very little English.

But clutching the hillside, those uniform boxes mounting upper Dharamsala were not without appeal, thanks mainly to the heavily green-treed setting and sumptuous views.  Rectangular, with gaily coloured roofs, mostly white facades with stark, oblong eyes staring down at the valley.  Gullies of grey stones and small boulders line the falls of water to their winding beds.  Whereas even higher at McLeodganj, the narrow streets without pavements were crowded with tourists, the odd cow that could shoulder you aside and crawling cars whose wing mirror might clout your arm. 

Here I was joined by another volunteer, Gareth, a nineteen year-old from Southampton.  That evening we dined at an Indian restaurant not recommended by our Tibetan contact that had escorted us round the town to the Dalai Lama’s residence, urging us at stalls or shop windows to buy some keepsakes to help the poor Tibetan community.  During the night I heard him tossing from side to side and groaning.  Then he got up and rushed to the bathroom. ‘Oh god, oh god!  That bloody rice!’  Later he confessed to having suffered an upset stomach since Thailand.  He slept in till late the following afternoon, while I moseyed up and down the busy, narrow streets, hoping to find some woodland walk away from the hurly-burly.  Our hotel was beautifully appointed overlooking a vast forested valley.  Breakfast of toast and coffee on the veranda was made entertaining by the manager firing his slingshot at marauding monkeys, while I observed the black hawks swooping down on the lower life.  Then watched in utter disbelief and growing disgust at bins of rubbish being systematically poured from the rear of the hotel down the steep sides of the lush green valley.

Already Gareth was officer material, but an officer-in-waiting.  Compelled to wait till he was twenty to take up his commission in the British army, he had been encouraged to draw on his life savings, loans from his uncle and a blessing from his father to gain experience of the world by taking up a series of voluntary teaching positions in a push through south-east Asia.  During these travels he had garnered the basics of playing chess, mainly by a close observation of his opponents’ superior strategy of thinking several moves ahead, of somehow imagining the consequences for several pieces tracking alternative routes across the board.

He was chuffed to discover the connection between chess and his own addiction to on-line war games.  Waxing irrepressibly, he opened up a whole new world to me:  how he could take the role of general or rebel leader, issue commands to deploy troops in different theatres of war, recruiting and funding armies, making use of campaign maps to conquer regions never dreamt of in geography lessons at school.  ‘The global reach of these games is unbelievable!  So is the realistic detail of the 3D visuals.  One time I’m Napoleon, next day Attila the Hun.  I’ve learnt so much history.  Besides, you hold in your hands the power to change history – retrospectively, of course.  When I get back to the Old Dart, I intend to hold a rematch between the Allies and the Axis Powers.’

Which explains why I could never outflank him with castles at chess.  As much as I envied Gareth his enthusiasm for strategic planning, I felt slightly uneasy that he had his life’s journey already mapped out:  entry into the British army as an officer responsible for his own platoon; then when he’d outgrown that experience, falling back on his trade skill as an engineer, for which he had recently acquired a college diploma.

Two days later, after being shunted between offices and floors of the Deputy Commissioner for four tedious hours, our contact, Dorjee, gesticulating furiously to us from the other end of the corridor, we were advised to return at a later date to collect our permits that enabled us to reside in a Tibetan district.  How utterly frustrating!  Yet I felt so relieved to be winding down the mountain away from Dharamsala, passing the airport and heading towards Palampur, the taxi driver tooting his horn every few seconds to warn other vehicles he was sitting on their tail ready to sniff a half-chance of an opening and shoot past.  In the fertile Kangra valley we saw rows upon rows of short, thick tea bushes, the massive extent of the ranges that would follow us for two hours, the nonchalant fatalism of canines, cattle and pedestrians crossing blind in front of traffic and witnessed the procession of two convoys of fifteen military trucks – this was border country!  Himachal Pradesh faces China to the east and Kashmir to the north.

As soon as the taxi turned off the highway onto a quiet, tree-lined lane, the ambience changed completely.  Here in the Tibetan project was a veritable domain, a secluded green world, a reminder of old village charm, a huddle of small farms with their intricate network of waterways, slender viaducts and stone or wooden bridges, an odour of manure; a kaleidoscope of colours – streams of prayer flags signalling a cluster of monasteries.  Even the Indian mynas, a bullying pest that had colonised southern Australia, were perched with familiarity on the flagpoles.  Trotting down a narrow path a herd of working donkeys, saddle bags filled to the brim with stones for laying fresh paths, followed by a wizened Indian farmer, his stick striking against a pole to encourage the laggards tempted by clumps of grass.

At the railed-off bust of a bespectacled Mahatma Gandhi with a wreath of freshly cut flowers adorning his neck, the taxi turned left very slowly into an even narrower lane with a handful of shops with small frontages and a two-storey café on the corner.  The driver parked close by a walled garden.

Gareth and I stretched and drew breath to take in the house, our living quarters for the next four weeks.  Heaving my luggage up steep steps, I found myself on the third floor.  My first impulse was to check the view from the two windows at right angles to each other.  Behind my bed soared the highest mountain with its snow-covered peak.  From the side window beyond the neighbouring houses and streams of prayer flags, I could descry four ranges of more distant mountains receding.

In the lounge/dining area on the ground floor a wide-screen Samsung was showing some computer-generated martial arts film, gawked at by mainly youngish volunteers lying sprawled on two of three sofas or sitting in armchairs poring over smart phones and hoeing into packets of crisps, bars of chocolate, nuts, sweet biscuits, shakes and fries . . . mounted above them on the wall was a very large coloured photograph of a modestly smiling Dalai Lama.  Seated over by the staircase, an older lady, seemingly detached, mid-fifties, absorbed in her apple I-Phone, whom I soon came to know as Leanne.

‘Welcome to our house,’ a young man said breezily, stepping in from the kitchen.  ‘I’m Tenzin.’  Slim, black-haired with a fashionable quiff above the forehead, tanned face, open-necked shirt, dress jeans.  ‘You must be Callum.’

‘That’s right,’ I said.  ‘Was it so obvious?’

‘You look like experienced teacher.  So you,’ he said, half-turning, ‘must be Gareth.  I know you tired, but we go for walk now.  Have lunch when you return, okay?’

I’d been looking forward to lunch, a long, cool drink and a refreshing shower after a sticky journey in the mid-day sun – it was nearly three o’clock!  On the other hand, I was impatient to scope the village. Tenzin leading the way over a very rough, pock-marked road scarcely wide enough for two cars, we strolled past the smallest stalls, more the shape of sentry boxes, the vendors appearing to sell nothing but stare at the passers-by.  At the landing place for para-gliders, Tenzin halted so we could witness close-up the novices seated in front of their instructors gliding in quickly to land, brake on, feet down.

‘This is world-famous Billing Fields.  Bir is thirteen hundred metres above sea, so para-gliding very good.  If you want to go gliding,’ he warned, ‘make sure you ask to see instructor’s qualifications.  Many die because they ignore this safety check.  The cost is two thousand, one hundred rupees for about half-hour gliding.  Today it is quiet but weekends it’s very busy.  We get invaded by tourists.’

Four trainees were struggling to tug their harnesses on, leaning forward, then practising short runs downhill to open their chutes, roared on by their instructors.  It didn’t look too easy.

Tenzin treated us to a delicious sweet masala chai, as we chatted in the shade of trees by one of several streams cascading down the mountains - so restorative after the run-around meted out to us by the Indian public service that morning.

On our return I started to unpack, when my room-mate walked in.  Wearing a FREE TIBET t-shirt, Jerome was a baby-faced nineteen-year old American, who had made himself very much at home with clothes heaped over the spare bed and luggage rack and thirteen empty water bottles lying on the floor.   I soon discovered his partiality for chicken mimosa, crisps and Hershey chocolate.  I hoped he wasn’t too anxious about the disparity in our ages, but in any case he would get up late and retire late, which made it easier for me to take an early shower.  He would spend most of his free time downstairs watching computer-generated movies on Airtel, playing riffs on his guitar or surfing the internet for gag sites.

Summoning Gareth and myself to a briefing after dinner, Tenzin explained our placements in different monasteries, times of lessons, geographical locations.  Spoke of his own family.  How his oldest brother was living in America, a married sister living in France, the mother of Jackson.  How he too wished to fledge his wings and emigrate to test himself in the wider world, the free world, another culture, enjoy the pleasures of a western life-style, but he could never leave his father.  His mother, Zenji, had died three years before from liver cancer.  How he greatly respected his father who had always favoured him above the other siblings.  He was the first to be given his own bed, the first to be given a bike.

‘Lodro always did his best for me, even when we had no money.  Sometimes I buy things from old poor people, things I don’t even need, because they remind me of my father’s poverty years ago.  That would make my father happy, if he knew.  I vowed to help others.  If you cannot help others, at least don’t harm them.  You must respect old people, listen to them.  My father used to be a loner, stayed home all the time.  I think he’s becoming happier.  As much as I long for independence, I will do nothing to betray my father.’

My first stint of teaching began on the following morning.  The monastery was situated in the main street five minutes’ walk from the volunteer house.  Around the courtyard, lying neatly over the balcony rail to be aired, extended a long line of maroon robes; and yellow shirts lying over another rail at right-angles.  Dhona, Tenzin’s oldest sister in charge of the running of the household, also did occasional clerical work at the monastery and introduced me in the library to the headmaster, a solemn monk in his mid-forties, wearing the typical maroon robe, yellow shirt and tonsure.  He spoke quite good English but very softly.

‘This is the workbook for class 6.  Marigold.  How long you stay?  Only one month?  Can you stay longer?  You sure?  Now we go to your classroom.’  Which proved to be a small dark room with ceiling fan, a chalk blackboard and ten mats in two rows on the floor.  ‘I tell you now, some of these boys are very naughty.’

At 10.30 the bell was struck for my English class to begin.  Having slipped out of their sandals at the door, the boy monks filed in, gathering up a length of robe they would fling over their shoulder like a Roman senator, said ‘Allo’ with a nervous giggle, sat cross-legged on a mat and studied their umpteenth voluntary teacher of the year with curiosity.  After briefly introducing myself, I asked for their names and ages.  Several were Nepalese, some Tibetan.  The youngest, very short and skinny, was eight, the oldest and least able sixteen.  After mutual introductions and some testing of days of the week, parts of the body, clothes and colours – no one had informed me of the class standard or which page the boys had reached in Marigold – I decided to revise the present participle, with the students demonstrating an action while asking, ‘What am I doing?’  The youngest boy was picked on to begin and after some prevarication and false starts moved into a suite of dainty dancing steps, little hops, turning on one foot with sweeps of his robe down to the floor, which drew forth a critical commentary in Hindi or Tibetan or Nepalese.

‘In English,’ I said, somewhat sharply.  ‘Try to think in English.’  Which was foolishly optimistic at this level.

But the novelty of the exercise, the opportunity to get to their feet and show off – ‘I’m playing football’, ‘I’m washing an elephant,’ ‘I’m Sachin Tendulkar playing cricket’ - was too tempting.  Was that straight-faced performance an imitation of the headmaster eating noodles?  I wondered.  Actions grew more silly and giggly or more daring.  The whole class erupted in laughter when one boy freely announced he was an orphan.  Constant chat amid gales of laughter, a nervous teacher’s worst nightmare.  And a foreign tongue, to boot.

‘Sit down, boys!’  Obviously, I had to settle things down, casting a nervous look in the direction of the library through the open door.  ‘Quietly, thank you.’

But as they did so, a sudden flurry:  two boys trading niggling pinches and insults.

‘Stop that!’ I ordered, trying not to raise my voice, but prised them apart.  ‘Buddhist monks must not be violent.  The Buddha said so.  Now go and stand outside the door, you two.’

One of the boys hawked up a gobbet of phlegm.  It was an ugly noise I would hear frequently in India.

And what of the youngest Tibetans born in India?  For instance, Jackson, hyperactive with attitude … belligerence!  Chestnut eyes, very short black hair combed forward, tanned skin.  At present he is sporting a peacock feather behind his ear.  Now the proud owner of a big new toy:  a plasma car with blazing red body and seat, three wheels and steering wheel all black – another giant stride away from the high plains of Tibet.  Both his model buggy with gold capsule and his racing car are made in China.

One of the Dalai Lama’s most frequent pronouncements is the avowal of non-violence, of doing no harm to any sentient creature.  Jackson is too young to understand or even listen to such pronouncements.  Within his orbit are three guns with which he frequently bails up the volunteers:  a hefty fat Tommy gun in military green; a conventional grey pistol; an over-sized red gun in the form of a fish head, eyes on each side of the barrel – three guns too many for a Buddhist happily shooting at limp, fluffy animals with a growly running commentary, talking to himself in staccato Tibetan or Hindi phrases and plosive sounds.

Son of old Lodro’s youngest daughter now living in France, Jackson is suitably dressed in khaki and green combat shirt and violently clashing gaudy-striped pants, a litter of super-sized plastic toys, trains, trucks spread over the floor.  Perhaps nursing resentment that his parents had deserted him, unaware that they couldn’t obtain his visa.  Loud and ‘in-your-face’ with volunteers grinning at his antics, who had more tolerance than I for his boisterous play.

One person I really liked was Bindu, the long-suffering Indian house servant.  While sitting on the veranda before breakfast, I would hear her heavy breathing as she ran down the lane from the bus stop and coughed her way up the path.  For a young woman, maybe in her thirties, with a child at home, Bindu was very stout and broad across the beam, but she possessed a beaming smile and long raven-black hair clasped in a bun at the nape.  A slow, ponderous mover about the house, she nonetheless possessed very fast hands for beating out balls of pastry into fresh chapatti and was capable of serving up a dozen vegetable omelettes for breakfast in double-quick time.

It struck me as very odd that Bindu gobbled her lunch sitting on the kitchen floor, slumped back against the wall.  Nor did she use a knife and fork – then I realised there were never any knives on our dining table, only forks and spoons.  She poured juice over the rice from the eggplant or chickpeas or dal, kneaded the rice in a closed palm, then tucked a fistful of the vegetable and rice mash into her mouth.

One lunch-time I committed a faux-pas and Bindu’s uncharacteristic reaction shocked me.  ‘No-o, no-o!’ she suddenly cried, quite vehemently – perhaps, as I later reflected, because Dhona was working at the hotplates alongside her.  I had simply bowed before her with my hands raised palm to palm in order to express my thanks for the fruit salad and sweet yoghurt.

‘You not do that!’ protested Dhona.  ‘Only for respect elder men.  We bow you!’

In the afternoons I attended a second monastery, again only a few minutes’ walk away.  I was far more comfortable with these two classes.  The older group, aged fifteen to seventeen, were very keen and conscientious, making it clear that they wanted more grammar.  I was in my element.  Not only did I revise the nine parts of speech, but introduced them to figures of speech.  They were very earnest in their comical attempts to get their tongue around round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran and Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  Only a couple of these senior students were reasonably communicative in English, but all insisted that we finish the comprehension questions they had had been working on with their previous teacher and were deadly serious about repeating words three or four times in pronunciation practice.

The young group were very quiet, almost sleepy, but for the dominant young man, Choekiy, tall and slim, who always jumped to offer answers but usually got them wrong and subsided with a rueful smile.  This was especially true in mathematics, where I attempted to teach them algebra and the multiplication of minus numbers.  A passive group, they seemed very vulnerable.  They rose at six o’clock in the morning, shared rooms for four or six boys, took lessons in Hindi, Nepalese and Tibetan as well as English and were required to learn by heart pages and pages of sacred chants.

On my first Saturday morning I decided to walk up the mountain behind the monastery, which meant I would pass by their almost bare, bone-dry games area.  Some of these young monks I recognised playing football or king-he, whereby they’d fiercely throw a ball to strike the fleeing body of another.  They waved back at me and I was pleased they were enjoying themselves, having finished their cleaning duties in the monastery as well as in their rooms.  But these hard-working, tightly regulated youngsters might never see their families for years; nor were they allowed out of the monastery grounds by themselves till they were seniors.

Crossing the minor road behind the monastery school and stepping over a broken wooden stile, I envisioned a rural scene that must have endured many years:  women young and old, working in the fields amongst the haycocks, immaculately dressed in saris of magenta, purple or deep green, bending their backs or kneeling at the base of bushes, reaping knives in hand to cut the grass and hang yellowing clumps on bushes or branches to dry.  Later the hay might be stored in stone barns or the upper storey of a dilapidated old house for animal feed.  Slowly picking my way along the narrowest of paths, I came across crickets zinging through the air, a pile of corn cobs lying in the sun, six-inch dark brown slugs plump as dog turds, a pile of cow dung, a small stupa at cross-paths with space for a humble offering.

My favourite walk beyond the village was past the landing-place at Billing Fields and across the bridge to the pine forest.  At first glance it looked as if all those thin trunks had been burnt in a raging fire, their branches trimmed, with fine feathery foliage sprouting only at the top.  On closer inspection, the lighter bark of these trees, almost pink in the sunshine, reminds you of a snake; or the darker black-to-brown of an alligator’s scales.  There are no animals to be sighted in daytime; perhaps after dusk the monkeys will emerge, as they do nearby the forest monastery.  Only occasionally do circumspect motorists, mainly tourist taxis bumping over lumpen rock and dusty gravel, or motorcyclists straightening out of the serpentine bends with increased revs, tamp down the ceaseless sissing of insects unseen.

Late in the afternoon, gradually searching the distant sky, you could glimpse para-gliders as dots sailing over the crest of the mountain ranges, gradually becoming translucent membranes in the bright glare, evolving into miniature kites, then looming in the dome above as fully fledged gliders way up under the fleece of clouds, seeming to hang and drift in the upthrust of thermals, before swooping with lateral sweeps, until with a sharp tack to left, then right, then left again they line up their approach to the landing-place, billowing down and swinging across the terraces of vegetable beds and fields of Billing and low over the tourist road to the lower grassy slopes.

Lodro’s original family hailed from south-eastern Tibet, the region of Kham, where he was brought up with five sisters and four brothers.  A most devout young man, he made a pilgrimage to India before she gained independence at a time when few Tibetans travelled alone.  A patriotic Tibetan, he acknowledged that the heart of Buddhism was based in India.  But when Chairman Mao defeated Chiang Kai-Shek to establish a Communist regime in Beijing, he took a keen interest in his vast but underpopulated neighbour for its strategic importance and unrealised mineral wealth.  Besides, he claimed, he wished to rescue Tibet from feudal serfdom and regarded his army as liberators.  In October, 1950 Chinese troops began their invasion.  The following year Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, falls.  In the countryside native resistance simmers for years.  In 1959 protests against Chinese occupation are staged on the streets of the capital.

Tibet is very mountainous and possessed no suitable road to advance an army.  It took ten years to build one worthy for the Chinese military to proceed far beyond Lhasa.  When the call was made by the Tibetan government to all men, including monks, aged between sixteen and sixty to volunteer for military service, Lodro heeded the call.  Loathing the notion of living under Chinese rule, he made protests against Beijing and joined the volunteer army in eastern Tibet.  Believing his first allegiance was owed to the Dalai Lama, he later transferred to central Tibet to protect His Holiness.

The moment that the Chinese army attacked his summer palace, the twenty-three year old Dalai Lama fled across the mountains to seek asylum from the Indian government.  He refused to countenance resistance himself.  One hundred thousand loyalists fled with His Holiness.  Lodro was forced to make the painful decision of leaving his wife and children to act as escort for his political and religious leader.  At twenty-four, he found himself fighting the Chinese face to face and becoming a killer, which for a Buddhist believing in non-violence was another dreadful dilemma.  For your own self-defence and the defence of your country, reassured the Dalai Lama, you are permitted to fight the aggressor.  During the hasty retreat of the volunteer army, young Lodro killed half a dozen of the enemy.  He vividly remembers setting fire to a supply cart and killing its driver.  Armed only with a big hunting knife and an outmoded gun like a powder musket, he was often engaged in hand-to-hand fighting.

But with no military training under its belt in this hitherto peaceful country, the Tibetan army struggled.  At first the Americans sent guns, but the soldiers didn’t know how to shoot them.  Nor had they ever heard of rockets, so when the Red Army launched these mysterious missiles, the Tibetans stood and watched bemused.  Many died for their ignorance.  Nor did they understand the concept of machine guns.  In their naivety the Tibetans assumed the Red Army would make a frontal attack, so they waited . . . fatally.  Instead, the Chinese had them surrounded.  One of several Chinese soldiers who opposed the Communist regime and fought alongside the Tibetans, put too much dynamite into a piece of ordnance.  Lodro watched in horror as twelve fellow soldiers were blown sky-high.  Worse, these alien invaders were slaughtering innocent men, women and children and summarily destroying six thousand monasteries.  Many Tibetan soldiers committed suicide at the helpless plight of their country.

Educated Tibetans who stayed behind, such as the family of Lodro’s first wife, could not find work because the Chinese government gave preference to its own people.  Consequently, many emigrated to America and Canada, sending money back home so their own people could hold onto their own culture.  Lodro has returned three times to his native country on Indian papers and travel visas, but regrets that the Dalai Lama can never return, therefore never reincarnate in Tibet.  Will he be the last Dalai Lama?  With heavy heart, the old man fears so.  Nor has the second-highest ranked lama, the Panchen Lama, the man responsible for finding the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, been sighted since he was a six year-old taken into custody by Chinese authorities.

In her early forties, Viv had never taught before.  She had brought with her several boxes of coloured pencils as a stand-by.  Although she exuded warmth and confidence, possessed a lively manner and was genuinely inquisitive about people, the very thought of addressing a group of strangers made her anxious.  Children, in particular, for she had no children of her own, in spite of many years of trying with her husband back in Kauai.  But then volunteering in a foreign culture was always going to be a challenge.  In her brief time in India certain experiences had already disturbed her.

During orientation week in Delhi she’d been groped from behind while descending a flight of steps, her buttocks squeezed.  Never had she felt more offended, more angry, more violated.  ‘Fuck off!’ she yelled with all her might and, turning back, lashed out with both fists flailing.  Her reaction warded off the assailant, who acted miffed, as if he didn’t understand such an outburst.  Viv scurried back to the safety of the volunteer house, took a longer shower than usual and tried to calm down with a can of beer from the fridge.

In Dharamsala she had been moved to tears by a giant display of photographs, a tribute to the one hundred and thirty-four monks, mostly teenagers, framed by leaping red flames, who since 2007 had poured petrol over themselves, crying out, ‘Give freedom to Tibet!’ before dropping the fatal match.  ‘Don’t harm other sentient beings,’ the Buddha had advised.  Apparently, you may harm yourself, she thought.

But she couldn’t rid herself of the strain and stench of Old Delhi, the rubbish, the beggars, the parasites of rickshaw drivers dogging her footsteps, the squalor of the streets, the physical decay.  Until Bir.  What a relief to find some escape from crowds and corruption!  Except that even in this manageable village amid so much pristine grandeur, all water courses were polluted with rubbish, usually clogging up beneath stone bridges.  All that refreshingly pure water flowing down from the mountains!  Surely for Buddhists, pure water is placed in vessels on the shrine to represent a reverence for life.  How could the local inhabitants turn a blind eye to the violation of natural beauty?  Such an ugly scar saddened her immensely.  But then what about the volunteers’ litter?   The empty plastic bottles of Bislieri, Acquafina, Kinley and future choice?  Left behind on the rooftop to roll crinkling around in the breeze or under their beds and on the veranda with cigarette butts or empty on the dining room table or partly full with their given names labelled on the cap or on the side in black ink? 

Meandering along a narrow path through the farms behind the monastery, she was taken aback at the sight of a cow tightly tethered over a rubbish pit, barely able to move.

The transition for the Tibetans to a new land must have seemed very strange to Lodro and the others.  They’d journeyed from a very cold region to a land of much milk and meat, plenty of warm clothes, but no money.  The changes of diet meant that the food was often indigestible.  Rice and dal had never been part of the Tibetan diet.  Many died because of the different extremes of food and heat as well as border fracas.                                                         

The Indian government established the Settlement project by building roads in northern India.  Lodro earned one and a half rupees a day, his wife one rupee.  After several years of daily running the family on two and a half rupees, his new young wife, Zenji, was able to start a business selling liquor, while he ran a jeweller’s business.  But to look after nine children, they still had to borrow money.

In 1970 they finally acquired a house in Bir, but an empty house:  no bed, no mattress, only one shawl to cover the children.  They had to collect wood to make a fire to keep warm and boil hot water.  They were obliged to share a bathroom with neighbours and hold down the flat iron roof with rocks in strong winds.  It was essential for Mr Lodro to go out in winter to earn some money.  He found a job selling suits, carrying them on each arm as he walked from village to village.  Instead of using sign language, he began to learn Hindi.  Then he got lucky, winning a small house with kitchen in a raffle run by the Tibetan government-in-exile.  Forty-five years later he had saved enough money to move to a slightly larger house.  Finally, the family purchased their current dwelling, a four-storey building largely given over now to the twelve or twenty English-speaking volunteers each week.

Woken by the cawing of crows massing about the rooftops, Viv was always the first of her room-mates to get out of bed, but delayed taking a shower till lunchtime when the solar-heated water might have warmed up.  After a cup of strong coffee – she’d bought her own instant coffee – she walked along the laneways to the monastery.  Dhona was always gabbling on about puja and had invited Viv in the first week to join her.  By seven o’clock in the morning Dhona was already doing puja lying on the kitchen floor, wearing black trackies threaded with lavishly coloured floral symbols.  The kitchen as usual looked a mess at this time:  dirty cutlery and crockery piled up in the sink and on the draining board, the two hotplates splashed with grease, all from the volunteers’ meal the previous evening, awaiting Bindu’s breathless scurry.

Puja, Dhona had explained, could be practised while exercising, and she was frequently discovered on the second-floor landing or in the lounge doing press-ups or sit-ups, but at dusk she would walk around the stupas, sometimes listening to the same monastic chant on her smartphone.

As a professional artist, Viv found Tibetan art fascinating, even though spontaneity or freedom of expression didn’t play a part.  Not in the monasteries, at least.  One evening she watched a team of monks painting sand mandalas.  Two would consult the scriptures to make scrupulously sure they were using the exact shade of colour as had been used for centuries.  Another would meticulously slide the grains of coloured sand down a six-inch chute onto the space assigned on the mandala.  She admired the way the mandala itself represented the world in terms of intricate designs replete with rich colours.  Yes, the monasteries certainly impressed Viv:  the riotous colours, the lavish ornamentation of the temples, deep red tapestries paired with pillars of gold, statues or paintings of wrathful, black-faced gods, the blissful smile of the massive, high-throned, gilded Buddha . . .

In the monastery garden the eight stupas with golden finials formed the centre of a peripatetic walk where you paid obeisance.  The Buddha sitting cross-legged in the act of meditation was also illustrated behind glass in the seven stages of the Buddha’s life.  The eighth stupa representing his death held no depiction behind a glass case at all.  The bold, bright ornamental motifs painted on a brilliant white stone, such as the lion cheerfully smiling with big white jagged teeth, but a friendly lion nonetheless, holding up with both paws the tiers of the column and the encased Buddha.  Around the base of the stupas lay boulders of varying sizes.  Carved into the stone in minute hieroglyphics were the Buddha’s prayers.  These were also daubed on small, smooth boulders in gold paint against glossed-up red or deep blue ground by devoted elders mostly, their heads covered in a piled-up shawl, who touched up the message with a rag to wipe splashes of red or blue from the gold lettering.  One regular mumbling, bent old lady would stop her lurching shuffle, stoop down and kiss several of the boulders with her forehead.

One morning a thick grey mist hung over the village, rendering the mountains invisible.  Thunder rolled in the distance.  Prayer flags hung limp.  The loss of those silvery peaks to her vision dampened Viv’s spirit.  When she arrived at the stupa that housed three floor-to-ceiling drums or prayer wheels, a stumpy, skinny old man was waiting outside, a miserable expression crabbing his face.  ‘Namaste,’ she said.  The old man couldn’t have understood.  Once inside, she grasped the white sash and tugged with all her might to get the drum spinning, very slowly at first.  Then she moved to the second drum and yanked on the sash.  The old man was suddenly at her side, grinning from ear to ear, baring his gums.  With each revolution of the drum sounded the jingle of a bell.  She set the third drum in motion, the old man muttering his prayers and giving her a nod and toothless grin as she left to the jingling of three bells gradually fading.

Invariably, there were four or five quite large, curled-up dogs lying asleep in the monastery grounds, usually a couple on the steps up to the courtyard.  Unlike the rabid, scruffy, limping curs that she winced at in Delhi, these specimens appeared well fed and in good shape, with well groomed coats and ungummed eyes.  She recollected Siobhan mentioning the Hindu belief that dogs have lost their good karma, therefore have no chance to reincarnate in human form, so are held in contempt.  Whereas Buddhists believe that all sentient creatures must be treated with compassion, as they do have the potential to reclaim human form.  Suddenly, one of the dogs scrambled to his feet and, wagging his tail, approached one of the old women in black swaying slowly around the eight stupas with the aid of a walking stick.  Up close, the dog rolled on his back, expecting to be tickled.  The old girl gave a deep-throated chuckle and tickled the dog behind the ears, as if her relationship with the dog, almost certainly a sleeping partner of the monastery, had made her day.

‘I want to visit your class this afternoon, watch your lesson,’ said Tenzin, lifting the lids of various dishes set out in a semi-circle at the head of the large dining table:  eggplant, lentils, broccoli, paneer . . . ‘You’ve never taught before, right?’  He took a couple of slices of chapatti from beneath a tea towel cover.

‘No,’ said Randy.  ‘I design computer programmes.  I wanted to do something very different.  When it comes to teaching, I’m very green.  I’d appreciate your comments.  Yah know, I threw myself in the deep end.  I checked out the organization.  It checked out just fine.  You’ve got to do that.’

‘You want chickpeas, Tenzin?’ broke in Dhona, bringing in another bowl from the kitchen.

‘But I didn’t do any research on Bir or the exact nature of the work.  I like surprise.  I like challenge.  Sometimes you gotta take a chance.  I sized up the situation in the classroom, the level of the kids, laid out my aims and prepared my science lesson accordingly.  The kids responded really well, understood where I was coming from.  I try to give them something fresh, something practical.  I get fulfilment from that.  But I have needs too.  Personal needs.  You know what?  I get satisfaction from this job.  I have no children, but I have parental needs too.  I take responsibility for these kids.  I care for their learning.  It gives me fulfilment.’

‘But you only stay two weeks?’

‘I gave myself three weeks to find myself, see if I can give to children.  There’s no satisfaction in having lots of money.  How can you help others? I ask myself.  Give them more opportunity to find themselves.’

‘Sounds admirable,’ chipped in Callum, helping himself to a third portion of cold creamy porridge left over from breakfast.

‘You want chapatti?’ Dhona interrupted, bringing in another plate.  ‘Chapatti warm, Bindu just made.’

Missing my sweet biscuits, I had acquired the taste for this unleavened round bread with a dollop of strawberry jam.  The Hindi word ‘jam’ and the commodity itself, both a legacy of empire.

‘See this?’ said Randy, raising five fingers on one hand.  ‘None of them is the same.  Same with people.  As a teacher, I give all my energies to them, their differences.  Trust me.’

Callum felt he could.  Tenzin had seldom witnessed a novice wannabe teacher sound so confident.

Randy scarcely gave a glance to the wide-screen that dominated one wall of the lounge, so intense was he to gather other volunteers’ ideas about teaching.  There was a restlessness about him – perhaps his time-out was too short – but also a seriously reflective side.

‘So you don’t care much for team teaching,’ he said to me.  ‘See, there’s three of us with the same age group all scheduled at the same time.  I’m sounding out the other two to present a fifteen-minute segment each to the whole group, then we go back to our own class.  Gives the kids a chance to learn different perspectives.  Teaching has to be about values as well as building vocab.  How’m I doin’?’

‘You’re going great guns, Randy.  You remind me of our idealism in the sixties.  My tutor used to say, “I don’t want to witness any lesson I’ve seen before.  For goodness sake, do something fresh, something imaginative.”  And even today, forty years later, I still receive occasional thankyou letters and phone calls from past students.’

‘That’s great, man!  Let me tell you something.  I’m in I.T., right?  I’ve never received any word of thanks from companies I’ve designed a programme for.’

‘There were ten of us who went to the monastery café.  Viv was excited that the monk, Kalden, would join us.  Barely could she contain her excitement in posing several questions; in effect, dominating his attention.  So bright and intense were her green eyes, so quick and articulate her tongue, so warm her smile and sensitivity - forgive me but I began to wonder if her charm might possibly break through the monk’s air of goodness and purity.  The young man, who was no more than twenty, said it was ok to challenge the Buddha’s ideas.  It is more important to understand than to accept.  The group’s biggest hurdle to understand was the question of attachment.  All us westerners believed that human beings can’t help but be attached to loved ones.  Kalden insisted that such attachment was a form of ego.  If you have love, you can love everyone and his dog.  I’m ashamed to say that I received a flash from 1968 Haight Ashbury, some decadent rock concert, but quickly shut out that cheap and absurd association with ‘free love’.  And was further embarrassed when the monk turned to me and said, ‘You are an ordinary man (as opposed to a monk), the oldest person among us, so a man of experiences.  What do you think?’

In a dither - for where was my own trove of hard-earned wisdom? – I could only agree with the others, that any serious relationship must have strong mutual attachment.  Clearly, the monk could not understand this concept of physical love or the strength of human passion, so certain was he in his own faith.

‘It’s clearly a matter of semantics,’ broke in Randy, who had stayed uncharacteristically quiet.  To be detached is what matters.  That is, to see the loved ones as they are, not to mould them to your idealised image.’

This bone of contention would be resolved on my final day of teaching when the headmaster monk arrived at the classroom door at the end of my morning lesson.  Every student, even the naughtier ones, swathed me about the shoulders in white ribbons.  The headmaster also draped a white ribbon around my neck and gave me as a parting gift a book on Buddhism.  ‘This is traditional way we give blessing.  Thank you very much for teaching this class.  I invite you to have lunch with me.’

I followed him down the steps and along the side of the courtyard under whose cloisters a communal vegetarian lunch was being served to the queue of monks by six mature-age helpers in mufti, scooping food from large pots into out-stretched trays.

‘I hope you enjoy your time with us.  Can you see why monasteries are important to Tibetan people?  They do good job of giving education to next generations.  Also keep alive spiritual beliefs and Tibetan culture.  Did you know, one hundred and thirteen thousand Tibetans are now living in India, Bhutan, Nepal and Laos?   Only five million live in Tibet today.’

‘I notice the older people remain very attached to their religion.  May I ask you what the word ‘attached’ means to a Buddhist?’

‘We Buddhists think real love is shared with all beings.  It is not conditional.  It does not depend on how it can help us.’

At the end of the afternoon class, the young boys made to leave quickly, then immediately rebounded with more ribbons of white cotton.  I also received six letters of thanks – six out of ten; a bare pass!   But Choekiy wrote on a colourfully decorated card with red hearts and multi-coloured crosses:  We haven’t found such a good teacher before . . . your teaching is really good math . . . we are remembered you.

                                                              Pome

                                           When you go away from me

                                   My life becomes a tree without leaves

Viv, my successor on the following Monday, took out her I-Phone and gathered the boys around me.  Pressing into my sides, they were very warm-hearted and in some cases genuinely sad at the loss.  Choekiy, in particular, was most reluctant to let me go.

As we walked back to the volunteer house, Viv informed me that she had taken copious notes on my teaching style!  And she was delighted that Kalden, who was soon to graduate from the monastery, had invited her to return to India to undertake a spell of voluntary teaching in his own village.

‘Don’t you just love it,’ moaned Jerome, ‘when someone nicks your favourite shirt from the clothesline.’  He’d been rummaging through his variously scattered piles of clothing for some while.

‘Must have been an accident, surely.’

‘Not all the volunteers are so gracious, Callum.  There are a couple of snippy girls who like to put me down.  For no particular reason as far as I can make out.  Steph and Mandy.’

Neither girl I knew very well.  They certainly did a lot of joshing and giggling together.  Steph was a very tall, slim blonde who occasionally sun-baked on the rooftop lying prone on a towel in bra and short shorts.  A Canadian, about twenty-two, who’d never spoken to me.  I remembered her exceptionally long legs when she defeated Gareth in his customary run to the bridge beyond the landing-strip and back.  I was writing up my journal early one morning on the veranda.  An itinerant farmer passed by and asked if I wanted to buy a lemon.  There was Steph in green trackies and headband, her long, blonde tresses trailing down her back at the gate, bent double, panting hard.  When Gareth pattered in several seconds later, he wore a shame-faced expression.  ‘Can you believe it!’ he ranted.  ‘Beaten by a girl!’

For her teaching round, Steph tied her hair in a topknot bun, which exaggerated her height.  Like all the female recruits, she had spidery henna on her wrists and ankles.  Physically, she was very striking.  Whenever she smiled, her eyes almost closed, while her mouth opened wide, revealing two rows of large teeth.  She seemed both aloof yet childish.  We never introduced ourselves, which was very unusual amongst volunteers in the same house. 

One evening towards the end of my third week I went upstairs to my room.  The door was wide open from whence a strange humming sound seemed to reverberate through the whole building, growing louder and softer by turns.  Sitting on his bed, there was Jerome giving a sharp tap with a short wooden baton to the side of a brass bowl which he was holding on an open palm, then running the head of the baton round the rim of the bowl to create a loud twanging sound.

‘Now you have a try,’ he offered.

Tentatively, I struck the side of the bowl, but couldn’t extract such a vibrant hum, merely an unearthly scraping sound.  ‘Fascinating.  What is it?’

‘A Tibetan prayer bowl.  I bought it in McLeodganj.  By the way, I broke the absorbent sponge off the squeegee, so we can’t mop up the water after a shower and Tenzin has invited everyone to his twenty-seventh birthday bash tomorrow night.  He’s hired the community centre.’

‘I thought he looked preoccupied.’

‘Yes, the police came by this morning, inquiring if all the residents had their permits.’

‘O god!  What did he say?’

‘Those of us who were here all flashed their credentials.  Tenzin assured them that all the others possessed them too.’

‘My god!  Did he offer a bribe?’

‘Relax, man!  What’s more, there’s a rumour that one of his girlfriends in America has recently broken off their relationship.  This chick was a volunteer here last year.  Apparently, he proposed to her, then when she said she needed time to consider, he insisted he would do anything to obtain a green card so he could settle in the States like his eldest brother.’

‘What a crazy thing to have confessed!’

One morning I went down to the veranda and was surprised to find Siobhan sitting on the bed doing some crochet work with her bandaged ankle propped up on a stool.

‘Are you feeling better?’ I asked.  She had been incapacitated for over a week and couldn’t take her classes, having sprained an ankle on Tenzin’s hastily organised overnight drive and hike to the hot springs.

‘I’m beginning to walk again,’ she replied.  ‘But I’m so frustrated sitting around all day.  It’s a fucking waste of time.  I can’t help blaming Tenzin for his slap-happy organization.  Fancy expecting the ten of us to walk up a mountain in the dark!’

‘Have you heard how he sells the Festival of Lights?  “If you want to see the madness of India, come to Palampur at Diwali.”’

‘I’ve had enough of his fussing around me these past few days.  He’s supposed to be organising another nine beds for the next influx of volunteers.  He’s even turfed his father, old Loro, out of his own room.’

‘Listen, would you like to amble over to the monastery?  You can hang onto my arm.’

‘No, it’s all right, thanks.’

‘ Come on!’ I encouraged.  ‘I’ll show you the haunt of the Asian Paradise Flycatchers.’

‘Fat chance!’ she said somewhat grumpily.’

As we turned into the main street, our dawdling progress was halted.  Pedestrians were obliged to bunch up on the side of the road, at first by a herd of goats trotting past, then the more panicky flock of bleating sheep.  An impatient motorist bumped a lamb bringing up the rear.  The frightened creature could hardly move on three groggy legs.  The Hindu farmer turned back, glared at the motorist but said nothing.  He swooped to grab the lamb with one hand under its belly, carried it a few paces then dropped it brusquely onto the rough surface.  When the lamb limping with pain couldn’t move, he struck it on the rump with his stick.  Shaken and lame, the lamb all but collapsed.  With a moaning sigh, Siobhan buried her head in my arm.

‘Buck up, the turn-off is very close and we’ll soon glimpse the finials of the eight stupas and the silhouette of the mountains.’  It wasn’t until a pair of those divine long-tailed birds arrowed into the trees above her that she broke out in a smile.  Their black heads and white plumage were distinctive enough, but it was the exceptionally long tail feathers with a red streak running through to their forked tails that beguiled us both.

The traditional firework displays on Diwali proved an anti-climax in our village.  A few loud bangs fitfully disturbed my reading, but the occasional rockets were duds, releasing a meagre scatter of sparks.  From the rooftop, there was no gorgeous spectacle lighting up our darkness, just hundreds of tiny pinpricks of light.  In a small Tibetan colony of Buddhists, the Hindu festival of Diwali spluttered in mere tokenism.

I didn’t particularly want to attend Tenzin’s birthday bash, but Dhona wasn’t intending to prepare any dinner and there was no cold porridge left.  Leanne wasn’t keen to go either but we walked together, shining our torches on the gutted surface of the road.  There was little traffic about but we moved to single file when we heard a scooter puttering up behind us, a red scooter.  It was Tenzin astride his Suzuki Flash 125 – no crash helmet, of course - and there was Steph clinging on gleefully, her long tresses trailing out in the light breeze, her impressive white teeth catching the light from our torches.

I saw the two sides of Tenzin that night.  Over the long row of trestle tables groaning with ample tureens of various dishes, he looked very dashing in his open white cotton shirt and slender-waisted black trousers, more so when he sang some yearningly romantic Tibetan song and stamped the floor Slavic style while sweeping one arm down in some courtship dance, then pressed a reluctant Steph to dance opposite him and imitate the stamping steps and flowing gestures.  I was put in mind of a spectacled hooded cobra swaying from side to side, trying to mesmerise with glassy, unwinking eyes, about to strike.

Dressed in emerald leggings and saffron tunic – all the girls except Leanne had bought saris and/or tunics in Delhi – she looked radiant, in spite of the self-consciousness that her huge smile almost covered.  She frequently exchanged glances with Mandy, who had also glammed up in a purple sari with intricate gold embroidery below the neck, green trousers and a red scarf wound round her neck and over the shoulder.

‘If you don’t wear a scarf round your neck, it’s like you’re wearing pyjamas,’ commented Leanne, somewhat sourly.

‘Steph’s getting the hang of the steps.  Good sense of rhythm,’ I said.  ‘Even Randy’s getting into the spirit in his ornamental topi and that long beige coat, the sherwani.  But Tenzin steals the show on the dance floor, even if he puffs out like a playboy.’

‘Like an unabashed flirt with young Caucasian women,’ she whispered.  Then winked with a smile. ‘Is he redeemed by extraordinary generosity?  Partly.  He does lots of things for this community.  At Duwali he invited all the village women, especially the older ones who’ve done it tough, to enjoy a social he’d organised with food, games, singing and chit-chat.  He does his best to preserve Tibetan customs.  And tonight would’ve cost a packet.’

‘I noticed there was wine available.’

‘Vodka, whisky and beer too.  Welcome to the first generation of Westernised Tibetans.  Most of his friends are drinking whisky.  Tenzin’s wary of spirits and wine but he does like his beer.’

That night Leanne and I sneaked away from the party when the exhibition of male Tibetan dancing by Tenzin and friends gave way to disco-style music, too deafening for us old stagers.  Every evening the various clans of dogs, somnolent and slumming in the lanes through much of the day, would start up barking, finally baying into a long drawn-out howling like a pack of savage wolves.  In my half-sleep I thought I heard Steph’s shrill laugh and Tenzin’s muffled voice as they mounted the stairs to the rooftop.  Occasionally I woke up to her giggles and the tinny roll and clunk of bottles across the roof.

I couldn’t help wondering what old Mr Lodro felt about his favourite son.

                                                                                                     Michael Small

October 4-Decmber19, 2014