of yeti culinary practices, they’d never learned all the sordid details, assuming in their innocence that we restrained our appetite until the donor was defunct — an illusion I preferred to keep intact. “Every species has its own epistemology,” I noted, offering His Holiness an intensely dental grin.
“For me you are like the carrion birds who assist in our sky burials,” said Chögi Gyatso. “Scavenging is an honorable way of life, Taktra Kunga. You have no more need of Buddhism than does a vulture.”
“I wish to feel pity for those on whom I prey,” I explained.
A seraphic light filled His Holiness’s countenance. Now I was speaking his language. “Does it occur to you that, were you to acquire this pity, you might end up forsaking sha-shespah altogether?”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“I shall become your teacher under two conditions. First, each lesson must occur at a time and place of my own choosing. Second, you must forgo your usual cheekiness and approach me with an attitude of respectful submission.”
“I’m sorry to hear you think I’m cheeky, Your Holiness.”
“And I’m sorry if I’ve insulted you, Your Hairiness. I merely want to clarify that these lessons will be different from the banter we enjoy during our journeys to Lhasa. We shall have fun, but we shall not descend into facetiousness.”
“No talk of James Bond,” I said, nodding sagely. Like the fourteenth Dalai Lama before him, Chögi Gyatso was an aficionado of Anglo-American cinema. Until I began my study of the dharma, our mutual affection for Agent 007 was the only thing we really had in common.
“Or perhaps much talk of James Bond,” the monk corrected me, “though surely even more talk of Cham Bön, the dance celebrating the gods.”
The motives behind our trips to see the false Dalai Lama were essentially political rather than religious, although in His Holiness’s universe the art of the possible and the pursuit of the ineffable often melded together. Having once dined on Laurence Beckwith, a Stanford professor of twentieth-century Asian history, I understood the necessity of these furtive treks. The disaster began in 1950 when the People’s Liberation Army crossed the Upper Yangtze and marched on Lhasa with the aim of delivering the Tibetan people from the ravages of their own culture. By 1955 the collectivization process was fully underway, with Mao Zedong’s troops confiscating whatever property, possessions, and human beings stood in the way of turning this backward feudal society into a brutal socialist paradise. Over the next four years it became clear that China intended to dissolve the Tibetan government altogether and imprison Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and so on the evening of March 17, 1959, that regal young man disguised himself as a soldier and fled to Dharamsala in India, where he eventually established a government-in-exile, got on the radar of the secular West, and won a Nobel Peace Prize.
A mere two months after Tenzin Gyatso passed away, Beijing shamelessly appointed a successor, a bewildered three-year-old from Mükangsar named Shikpo Tsering. On his tenth birthday, Shikpo Tsering was taken from his parents, placed under house arrest in the Potala Palace, and ordained as Güntu Gyatso, the fifteenth Dalai Lama. No Tibetan Buddhist was fooled, and neither were we yeti. Güntu Gyatso is no more the reincarnation of Tenzin Gyatso than I am the reincarnation of King Kong. Among my race he is known as the Phonisattva.
Meanwhile, the monks in Dharamsala set about locating the genuine fifteenth Dalai Lama. When a chubby infant from Zhangmu, Töpa Dogyaltsan, passed all the tests, including the correct identification of the late Tenzin Gyatso’s eyeglasses, prayer beads, hand drum, and wristwatch from among dozens of choices, he forthwith became Chögi Gyatso, the latest iteration of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. On Chögi Gyatso’s twenty-first birthday, the monks relocated their itinerant theocracy to the austere environs of Gangtok in Sikkim. The Panchen Lama told the outside world that certain benevolent deities, communicating through dreams, had demanded this move. He did not mention that these same gods evidently envisioned His Holiness periodically slipping across the border to advise the false Dalai Lama in matters both pragmatic and cosmic.
And so it happened that, one fine white day in February, my lair became the locus of a royal visit. The unexpected arrival of Chögi Gyatso and his retinue threw my girlfriend, Gawa Samphel, into a tizzy, and I was equally nonplussed. Had we known they were coming, Gawa and I would have tidied up the living room, disposing of the climber skulls strewn everywhere. We were fond of gnawing on them after sex. Death is healthier than cigarettes. To their credit, the monks pretended not to notice the bony clutter.
Gawa served a yeti specialty, pineal-gland tea sweetened with honey. His Holiness drained his mug, cleared his throat, and got to the point. As the leader of “the tall and valiant Antelope Clan” — an accurate assessment, the average yeti height being eight feet and the typical yeti heart being stout — I could perform a great service for the long-suffering Tibetan people. If I and my fellow Shi-mis would escort His Holiness through the Lachung Pass to Lhasa three times each year, doing our best to “peacefully and compassionately keep the Chinese patrols at bay,” the monks back in Gangtok would send forth 800,000 prayers a week for the continued prosperity of my race. His Holiness promised to compensate us for our trouble, one hundred rupees per yeti per six-day pilgrimage.
“I want to help you out,” I said, massaging my scraggly beard, “but I fear that in the course of shielding you from the Mao-Maos we shall inadvertently reveal ourselves to the world.”
“That is a very logical objection,” said Chögi Gyatso, flashing his beautiful white teeth. He had the brightest smile in Asia. “And yet I have faith that these missions will not bring your species to light.”
“Your faith, our skin,” I said. “I am loath to put either at risk.”
“Faith is not something a person can put at risk,” His Holiness informed me, wiping the steam from his glasses with the sleeve of his robe. “Faith is the opposite of a James Bond martini — it may be stirred but not shaken.”
To this day I’m not sure why I assented to become His Holiness’s paladin. It certainly wasn’t the money or the prayers. I think my decision had something to do with my inveterate affection for the perverse — that, and the prospect of discussing secret-agent movies with a young man whose aesthetics differed so radically from my own.
“I had no idea you were a James Bond fan,” I said as Chögi Gyatso took leave of our lair. “Now that I think about it, the titles do have a certain Buddhist quality. The World Is Not Enough. You Only Live Twice. Tomorrow Never Dies. Live and Let Die. Is that why you like the series?”
“You are quite correct, Taktra Kunga,” His Holiness replied. “I derive much food for meditation from the Bond titles. I also enjoy the babes.”
Whether by the grace of the Bön gods, the vicissitudes of chance, or the devotion of his yeti protectors, Chögi Gyatso’s pilgrimages proved far less perilous than anyone anticipated. Whenever a Chinese patrol threatened to apprehend His Holiness, my six cousins and I would circle silently around the soldiers, then come at them from behind. The Mao-Maos never knew what hit them. A sudden whack between the shoulder blades — the blow we apes call glog, the lightning flash — and the startled soldier wobbled like a defective prayer wheel, then fell prone in the snow, gasping and groaning. By the time the patrol recovered its collective senses, Chögi Gyatso was far away, off to see the sham wizard on his stolen throne.
Our victories in these skirmishes traced largely to our invisibility. This attribute of Candidopithecus tibetus is highly adaptive and entirely natural. Like the skin of a chameleon, our fur transmogrifies until it precisely
