NAMSHE’S CELESTIAL BOUDOIR
a play by Peter Oswald
Note. Myself and Josephine Larsen set up a theatre company in Devon called HEART’S TONGUE. This was the first play we worked on, and then produced. That was a long time ago and the play has changed a huge amount. I did some work on it with Tim Carroll and then ran with it on my own.
The story is historical - that the Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyamtso, renounced his vows of celibacy, had lovers and wrote love-songs which are held by the Tibetans to be among their finest poetry. Tibet was under the control of a Mongol Tribe, and the Khan was a Buddhist puritan. In this play, he loves Tsangyang as a person but can’t reconcile himself to the break with tradition.
Characters
Namshe, a prostitute, lover of the Dalai Lama
Phuntsog, brothel-owner, her mother
Thurgenye, a young decayed lord
Gotisang, his guardian
Deckyi, a prostitute
Tsangyang Gyatso, Ocean of Melodious Songs, the 6th Dalai Lama
Doctor Death, Tibetan Chief of Intelligence
Lhazang Khan, Mongol King of Tibet
Sangye, his Tibetan Prime Minister
Tsering Tashi, Sangye’s lover and PA
Two assassins
Duza, a priestess of the Bon religion
Aide to the Khan
Tibetan soldiers
Monk, Dhargey
Mongol warriors, palace servants, prostitutes.
ONE. PHUNTSOG’S BROTHEL IN LHASA. NAMSHE’S CELESTIAL BOUDOIR, WHICH IS LIKE A KITSCH SHRINE FULL OF ICONS AND CANDLES ETC. NAMSHE.
NAMSHE: I have to vanish. I am loved by someone
who is not meant to love one person only,
but everybody equally - all beings
as if they were his mother, from the tapeworm
in a shark’s guts to the celestial peacock,
via all ranks of postmen, civil servants,
kings, contract killers – universal love,
that has instead collapsed, like all the stars
into a tin cup - into universal
love for just me. The Dalai Lama loves me.
Which is a big political disaster.
And I love him, so I have got to scarper.
SHE IS ABOUT TO LEAVE, WITH A SMALL BUNDLE OF BELONGINGS, WHEN PHUNTSOG ENTERS, FOLLOWED BY THURGENYE, DECKYI, AND GOTISANG.
PHUNTSOG: Out!
NAMSHE: What do you mean, out?
PHUNTSOG: We need this room.
NAMSHE: This is my room!
PHUNTSOG: Well we need it.
NAMSHE: What for?
PHUNTSOG: For Thurgenye and Deckyi –
GOTISANG: (DRUNK.) Goo on, son!
PHUNTSOG: Thurgenye is eager to perform a sex act, aren’t you Thurgenye?
THURGENYE: No.
GOTISANG: Goo on, son!
DECKYI: Whatever.
NAMSHE: Not in my room!
THURGENYE: (REALISING) Oh yes! This is Namshe’s Celestial Boudoir -
HE REVERENTLY REMOVES HIS HAT, THEN PUTS IT ON AGAIN.
PHUNTSOG: She’s leaving.
NAMSHE: No I’m not.
PHUNTSOG: You are. You’re not happy here.
NAMSHE: Not happy?
PHUNTSOG: ‘Bye bye!
THURGENYE: I can’t – do it – in Namshe’s Celestial Boudoir!!
DECKYI: Whatever.
GOTISANG: Goo on!
THURGENYE: Shut up, dad!
PHUNTSOG: It is not her room!
NAMSHE: Yes it is!
PHUNTSOG: No it isn’t!
THURGENYE: All the holy pictures –
PHUNTSOG: So wrong! This is all going to be completely changed –
NAMSHE: Why? It works! I am not going!
PHUNTSOG: Yes! You put off the punters!
NAMSHE: Like who?
PHUNTSOG: Thurgenye!
GOTISANG: No she doesn’t, does she, Thurgenye?
THURGENYE: I don’t know what to do!
GOTISANG: Come on, son!
THURGENYE: I’m so confused!
DECKYI: Want to go for a walk?
PHUNTSOG: No! No more walks! Walks don’t pay!
DECKYI: Whatever.
NAMSHE: Every room in the house is stuffed full with shagging!
PHUNTSOG: Is it?
NAMSHE: Otherwise you wouldn’t be wanting my little coffin! So who are these punters I’m putting off?
THURGENYE: You know who she means!
GOTISANG: His Holiness!
THURGENYE: His Holiness!
DECKYI: His Holiness!
PHUNTSOG: Where? Where?
DECKYI: Not here, basically.
PHUNTSOG: Not here for a week and a half!
NAMSHE: Well – is he ill?
THURGENYE: They don’t like letting him out.
NAMSHE: Well he’s a monk, he’s taken a vow of celibacy –
THURGENYE: A what?
NAMSHE: No intimacy. The Mongols insist on it. That’s the tradition they learned and they’re sticking to it. It’s not easy for his Holiness to visit us. If the Khan found out - !
DECKYI: They can’t keep him!
GOTISANG: Maybe they’ve done him in!
DECKYI: Oh Gotisang!
PHUNTSOG: We know why he doesn’t come! Because of you! That’s why you’ve got to go!
NAMSHE: Because of me?
PHUNTSOG: Yes! Every time his Holiness comes, these days he doesn’t even sniff at the other girls! He goes straight to this room!
DECKYI: You’ve stopped charging him, Namshe.
PHUNTSOG: Sometimes you go for a walk!
DECKYI: No charge for walks.
PHUNTSOG: Sometimes he leaves looking sad. Sad! People see him leaving my house sad! They say, did you see his Holiness leaving Phuntsog’s house sad? What a sad-making house that must be, to make his Holiness sad! How they laugh! What do you say to him, Namshe?
NAMSHE: Nothing!
PHUNTSOG: No wonder he leaves looking sad! Go, Namshe!
NAMSHE: Well actually I am going as it happens.
PHUNTSOG: What?
NAMSHE: I am going.
PHUNTSOG: What? Where?
NAMSHE: Into the mountains. To become a nun. It’s the logical step. I’ve got the outfit.
PHUNTSOG: Oh good, good, my darling, good! We can monetise this room again, Thurgenye can perform his sex act and stop all this walking.
GOTISANG: Goo on!
PHUNTSOG: Ooh – ooh – ah, will you pray for me, baby – pray for me? Make up for all the liquidity you’ve lost me! Pray for me, pray for me!
NAMSHE: Of course. Goodbye. Burn all my pictures and books. If his Holiness comes, say I have gone.
PHUNTSOG: Which mountain are you going to, babe?
NAMSHE: The snowy one.
EXIT. A VERY BRIEF MOMENT OF SURPRISED SILENCE.
PHUNTSOG: Right then! To work!
BURST OF MUSIC. ENTER TSANGYANG CARRYING NAMSHE.
PHUNTSOG: Holiness!
TSANGYANG: Mother!
PHUNTSOG: Mother?
DECKYI: All living beings are his mother.
PHUNTSOG: Holiness, I have to say, that in your absence our hearts have been garbage.
TSANGYANG: Well now I have returned, mother!
THURGENYE: Holiness!
TSANGYANG: Mother Thurgenye! (KISSES AND GREETS THEM EACH ONE BY ONE, STILL HOLDING NAMSHE IN HIS ARMS.)
GOTISANG: Holiness!
TSANGYANG: Dear old mother Gotisang!
DECKYI: Holiness!
TSANGYANG: Dear old mama Deckyi!
THURGENYE: What’s happening?
TSANGYANG: Heavy and sour political indigestion,
vultures descending on Tibet, and vampires.
Our Mongol Khan, the Emperor of China,
our dear Prime Minister, that mole-eyed scholar,
who is a game of chess against himself,
the rest of us just crucified onlookers.
Give me a drink, for fuck’s sake!
PHUNTSOG: Give him a drink, for the sake of fuck!
DECKYI: Fuck has been invoked! Drink must be drunk!
GOTISANG: I have it!
GOTISANG PASSES ROUND HIS BOTTLE. HE SINGS.
GOTISANG:
Black blows the cold night,
white shines the moon,
keep all your hopes bright,
help is coming soon!
AS EACH RECEIVES THE BOTTLE AND BEGINS TO SING, THE OTHERS JOIN IN, SINGING AND DANCING.
TSANGYANG:
As I was looking to the south
I saw the bright moon rise,
smiling with my true love’s mouth
and shining with her eyes!
THURGENYE:
She took off her dress
and lay down on the bed,
I have to confess
I was out of my head!
PHUNTSOG:
When you take me by the hand
I am in a magic land,
darling kiss me sweetly and
say you love me!
DECKYI:
How could I have known,
how could I have known,
her mother was a snake
and her father was a stone?
NAMSHE:
If you give a girl a rose,
when she takes it and it goes,
you will hear the weeping bee
say, If you take my love take me,
if you take my love take me!
PHUNTSOG: Holiness, never leave us for so long again!
TSANGYANG: Yes mother, but – the Khan has laid it down
that I shall not set foot outside the palace
ever again!
DECKYI: How come you’re here then?
TSANGYANG: Only to say goodbye!
DECKYI: Fuck the Khan!
TSANGYANG: Yes, fuck him! Fuck death! Fuck the moon!
GOTISANG: No, not the moon! Not the moon! Please not the moon!
PHUNTSOG: Holiness, we have news of our own! Namshe is departing!
SHE HAS PUT ON HER NUN COSTUME.
NAMSHE: Give me your blessing, Holiness. The mountains
are strong with me. A cave will be my country,
from which a soul with one step can reach heaven,
if it can be a stone, can be alone,
and icy-silent!
PHUNTSOG: So farewell Namshe, and congratulations on your sideways promotion! She leaves happiness behind her here, in the wow-shape of Deckyi!
DECKYI: Me!
PHUNTSOG: Thurgenye, Gotisang, you go with Namshe, see her safe to the edge of town and wave goodbye. I think we should leave his Holiness alone with Deckyi, since he is stressed from the stale carnival of government.
DECKYI: Holiness?
TSANGYANG: Yes. Ok.
NAMSHE: Goodbye.
TSANGYANG: Goodbye.
THURGENYE: (TO DECKYI) Goodbye.
DECKYI: (TO THURGENYE) Goodbye.
PHUNTSOG: Out, out, out!
EXEUNT ALL BUT DECKYI AND TSANGYANG. THEY FACE EACH OTHER STIFFLY.
DECKYI: Haha!
TSANGYANG: Haha!
DECKYI: Alone at last!
TSANGYANG: Alone and covered with clothes!
DECKYI: Covered and covered with clothes! A drink?
TSANGYANG: A drink!
DECKYI: A song?
TSANGYANG: A song! (SINGS)
If you look at me that way
you will steal my heart away,
darling can you truly say
that you love me?
DECKYI: I truly can say it!
TSANGYANG: Truly I can say anything!
DECKYI: Oh do say anything!
TSANGYANG: I love you!
DECKYI: Do you?
TSANGYANG: Truly I can say I do.
DECKYI: A song!
TSANGYANG: A song! Can’t think of one!
DECKYI: A drink!
TSANGYANG: A drink!
DECKYI: Fuck the Khan!
TSANGYANG: And the Emperor!
DECKYI: And the Prime Minister!
TSANGYANG: Fuck them! Good plan!
A BELL STARTS MANICALLY RINGING OUTSIDE THE DOOR.
DECKYI: A bell!
TSANGYANG: A bell!
TSANGYANG OPENS THE DOOR. GOTISANG AND THURGENYE BURST IN.
GOTISANG: Holiness!
THURGENYE: Holiness!
GOTISANG: We have got it!
THURGENYE: Gotisang got it!
TSANGYANG: He got it?
THURGENYE: He got it in one! Gotisang, what was it?
GOTISANG: It is not –
THURGENYE: What?
GOTISANG: It is not –
THURGENYE: Not what? He had it!
GOTISANG: It is not inedible!
THURGENYE: No!
GOTISANG: No! It is not inevitable!
TSANGYANG: Certainly not, no.
GOTISANG: Absolutely not!
TSANGYANG: It is not inevitable at all.
GOTISANG: It is not inevitable!
THURGENYE: Ha! There!
TSANGYANG: What is not?
THURGENYE: That the Mongols –
GOTISANG: Yes, that the Mongols! It is not inevitable that the Mongols!
TSANGYANG: Should rule Tibet. But –
GOTISANG: Lead us!
THURGENYE: Lead us!
GOTISANG: We will fight!
THURGENYE: We will fight!
GOTISANG: We still have an army!
TSANGYANG: Yes we do! On paper!
GOTISANG: Lead us! Thurgenye has got noble blood! I am not his real dad!
THURGENYE: Lead us!
TSANGYANG: But then, with the Mongols gone, we would have to fight China.
GOTISANG: No problem!
THURGENYE: Once, Tibet ruled the world!
GOTISANG: Before there was Buddha!
THURGENYE AND DECKYI WAVE TO EACH OTHER.
THURGENYE: Hello Deckyi!
DECKYI: Hello, Thurgenye!
TSANGYANG: Listen, my friends, I have a little plan.
There is a place, where two young walnut trees
dream of each other where the stars go over
the rocks and over, at this time of night,
drawn by the river. Deckyi, take Thurgenye
for a walk there, to think about rebellion,
and other things, whatever comes to mind
between you two, when the night falls between you
over and over. Guard them, Gotisang,
from the armed shopping trips of wolves and bandits,
and every other shape of sharp-fanged karma
that stalks our souls as falling down stalks houses
badly constructed in a place of earthquakes.
Will you do that for me?
THURGENYE: A sweet command,
sweetly commanded –
DECKYI: But Phuntsog told me to –
TSANGYANG: I tell you to do what you want to –
SHE GOES TO THURGENYE
GOTISANG: That is the key to leadership!
EXEUNT THURGENYE, GOTISANG, DECKYI. TSANGYANG ALONE.
TSANGYANG: (SINGS)
If you give a girl a rose,
when she takes it and it goes,
you will hear the weeping bee
say, If you take my love take me,
if you take my love take me!
HE TAKES AN ICON FROM NAMSHE’S SHELF AND KISSES IT. SHE CLIMBS IN THROUGH THE WINDOW.
NAMSHE: Oh! I thought you and Deckyi had left – it was so quiet.
TSANGYANG: That was me.
NAMSHE: It was you making such a quiet. Why were you kissing that?
TSANGYANG: Why not?
NAMSHE: Put it back.
TSANGYANG: Alright.
NAMSHE: No, give it to me. I came back for it.
TSANGYANG: You came back for it?
NAMSHE: Yes I want to take it with me to the mountains. Just this, nothing else.
TSANGYANG: You are quite right to go into the mountains.
NAMSHE: Well it was not our plan.
TSANGYANG: Well did we have one?
NAMSHE: No. So I thought – we have not got a plan,
he is not here, so I will have to make one.
It is hot here, for me, and getting hotter
each day he is not here – so best, I reckoned -
this was my thinking – to go somewhere colder.
TSANGYANG: That was intelligent.
NAMSHE: So well then goodbye then.
TSANGYANG: But I am back now.
NAMSHE: Yes! The room is silent.
Nobody dares to scream at me to vanish.
But when you go –
TSANGYANG: What if I stay forever?
NAMSHE: Well then the Khan will come for you, and Sangye,
his pet Prime Minister, they will both perch yowling
like toms up on the roof, Come home, come home,
we are too scratchy-noisy when you roam!
Bring back your silence, hush us like stopped gongs,
dear divine Ocean of Melodious Songs!
TSANGYANG: What if I go with you?
NAMSHE: Oh thankyou! Please!
My cell will be a safe place then, besieged
by the whole horde, and all the bumping skulls
that dangle from their bridles!
TSANGYANG: But I mean –
what if we walk away across the mountains
to India –
NAMSHE: Ah! Well you did not say China
at least – you know that China, big-arse empire,
for you would be a little room, no door,
no windows, and each day one drop of water
till you were dead. But might not India,
large country though it is, be even smaller,
shrink, when you touch it, to a copper wire
strangling your songs?! I think you are a species
of mountain flower the whole world has provided
only one teaspoon of the proper soil for –
Tibet, we call it.
TSANGYANG: Which I cannot live in.
NAMSHE: Unless you live alone.
TSANGYANG: I can’t.
NAMSHE: Well, sweetheart,
then you will die.
TSANGYANG: I will, that is my plan.
NAMSHE: What do you mean, my love?
TSANGYANG: Life is so lonely,
will you die with me?
NAMSHE: How? By fire? By poison?
TSANGYANG: No. Just by living.
NAMSHE: That takes decades, darling!
Life is the slowest form of death, it might take
seventy years!
TSANGYANG: Not if we love each other.
NAMSHE: What difference does that make? You love me here,
I love you in a cave, slow-motion suicide
falling towards its old age rope-end anyway -
TSANGYANG: Not if you marry me!
NAMSHE: My dear Dalai Lama,
are you proposing?
TSANGYANG: Yes I am proposing.
NAMSHE: With death your wedding kiss. I would be murdered
at the reception.
TSANGYANG: So would I.
NAMSHE: Why would you?
Only one murder would be necessary,
to end the marriage!
TSANGYANG: But I will defend you!
NAMSHE: With what?
TSANGYANG: There isn’t any fate decided!
NAMSHE: There is. By us. If we two stay together,
we will die. Soon. Me by government murder,
you in a big protective tantrum, useless
dog-daisy boxing back against a hailstorm.
But if we part, we live.
TSANGYANG: I would not ask you
to die for me.
NAMSHE: But you just did!
TSANGYANG: No – with me.
NAMSHE: Die, anyway.
TSANGYANG: I do not want to kill you!
NAMSHE: Excellent!
TSANGYANG: But I want to marry you!
I want to live! With you!
NAMSHE: That is not possible!
TSANGYANG: But we are human beings, we are cunning!
We have to change the world, it does not fit us,
it is too tight for love, we have to stretch it,
and if it breaks, we have to make a new one –
persuade the Khan to let the Dalai Lama
marry!
NAMSHE: Persuade the Khan?!
TSANGYANG: With you to help me!
NAMSHE: It would be so much easier to kill him.
TSANGYANG: What, could you kill him?
NAMSHE: If a man insults me
or pushes me around, I do, I kill him.
Maybe not straightaway, but in my own time
I see him dead.
TSANGYANG: How many have you murdered?
NAMSHE: None yet. But there are one or two of them
living on borrowed time –
TSANGYANG: You scary woman -
HE EMBRACES HER. DESPERATE RINGING ON THE BELL.
TSANGYANG: What now?
OPENS THE DOOR, GOTISANG AND THURGENYE BURST IN AGAIN.
GOTISANG: Holiness! Holiness! Justice! Justice!
THURGENYE: Don’t listen to him!
GOTISANG: Holiness!
THURGENYE: Shut up, dad!
GOTISANG: Holiness, speak for me!
TSANGYANG: What is it, Gotisang?
GOTISANG: Did I or did I not teach him how to lie?
THURGENYE: No you didn’t!
GOTISANG: Yes I did! I taught him everything, Holiness! None of his uncles or aunts could be bothered with him, after his parents were killed – it was left to me!
TSANGYANG: An old servant of the family –
GOTISANG: That’s right, Holiness!
TSANGYANG: I remember. You were in a sweet shop with little Thurgenye. My Lord his father and my Lady his mother, deep in love, were walking, arm tight in arm, down the steep street. Suddenly a wheel broke off an ox-cart, came spinning down the hill and smashed them apart, killing them! You stepped out of the shop, with the lad, and there they were, dead. And he burst into tears and screamed, I wanted the orange ones!
GOTISANG: I had to tutor the child, but I myself knew nothing! So I asked a wise old man, sitting by the road –
THURGENYE: How wise is it to sit by the road?
GOTISANG: Shut up, Thurgenye! I said, What shall I teach the child? And he said, Truth is within us, it cannot be taught. - What can I teach him then? I said. And he said –
THURGENYE: Teach him how to lie.
GOTISANG: So I did!
THURGENYE: No you didn’t!
GOTISANG: I taught you how to lie, Thurgenye!
THURGENYE: You did not!
GOTISANG: Are you saying I taught you nothing?
THURGENYE: You taught me nothing!
GOTISANG: That’s a lie!
THURGENYE: It can’t be a lie! You never taught me to lie!
GOTISANG: Liar!
ENTER PHUNTSOG DRAGGING DECKYI. NAMSHE HIDES.
PHUNTSOG: This is not slow progress, this is no progress!
DECKYI: We need time for our love to blossom!
PHUNTSOG: Bollocks! This is a hothouse! Sowing to wilting in five seconds. Thurgenye and Gotisang, clear off – (SHE SPOTS NAMSHE.) Namshe!!!
NAMSHE: I’m not here! I’ve gone!
PHUNTSOG: Now I understand! She’s against me! Struts out saying she’s leaving, then sneaks back in again! That’s why we’re going nowhere. Now his Holiness leaves and doesn’t come back for a week, because of something she’s said! She’s complex!
TSANGYANG: Phuntsog –
PHUNTSOG: Holiness, please, explain her to me! I think I’m going mad! I don’t understand! She was always my favourite! Like a daughter to me! I’m a perfectly ordinary human businesswoman, and she’s a spanner, a spanner –
TSANGYANG: (GOES DOWN ON ONE KNEE TO PHUNTSOG) Mother! I want to marry her!
SHE LOOKS AT HIM HARD AND THEN BURSTS INTO STRAINED LAUGHTER.
PHUNTSOG: Ha! Haha! You took a vow of celibacy!
TSANGYANG: I broke it here in this house, mother!
PHUNTSOG: And you’d have carried on breaking it happily with all and sundry. Holiness, you haven’t let her take you in have you, with all these trinkets? They’re fake -
TSANGYANG: Listen to me, mother –
PHUNTSOG: You can’t marry! It’s against the law!
TSANGYANG: I will change the law!
PHUNTSOG: What? Seriously? You are serious, I see that. His Holiness always speaks straight. Marry her? So she will be – what will you call her? The wife of – the Queen of – the goddess of –
TSANGYANG: The consort –
PHUNTSOG: Consort! Fantastic! Holiness! You genius! How did you get the Khan to agree to this? And all the rest of the Mongols? And the PM? And all the monks and lamas with their big hats? This is incredible! Right, well if one of my girls is the consort of the Sixth Dalai Lama, that is the end of this house!
DECKYI: What?
PHUNTSOG: I’m letting you all go – not out on the street – myself and his Holiness will see to it you each have a house and a husband – a Lord or a Judge or a Tax Inspector! In fact let’s close down all the houses, this is a disgusting trade, by thirty-five the girls are pet food. Appoint me, Holiness, Redeemer of the Whores, we’ll set up a college and teach them biology. Would you like that, Deckyi? Or do you still want to follow round that permanent infant in the hopes of scooping his first fuck? Let’s have one last party! I’m quite emotional! Namshe! Namshe!
NAMSHE: Oh honey!
THEY HUG.
TSANGYANG: Mother, I have not yet persuaded any of them.
PHUNTSOG: Sweetheart – I mean, Holiness – I thought not! How could you possibly? They won’t shift! There will be war.
TSANGYANG: Yes.
PHUNTSOG: Yes, he says! But – you are in love – it does happen - and you are who you are – and who knows, just possibly – possibly! Well my love I am not going to fight you! Do it!
ENTER MUSICIANS, WHORES, DANCERS, INCLUDING DOCTOR DEATH.
PHUNTSOG: I give her away! I give her away! For free! And let the whirlwind come! Gotisang, be the priest!
GOTISANG: I bless you. May you be – blessed.
PHUNTSOG: This is what his Holiness wants! It is what he wants! They are serious, do you see? They are serious! It happens, from time to time!
IN THE DANCING, THURGENYE ACCIDENTALLY KNOCKS OVER DOCTOR DEATH.
THURGENYE: Woops! Oh, it’s Doctor Death! Sorry! The girls all call him Doctor Death, I don’t know why!
MUCH LAUGHTER. DOCTOR DEATH IS FURIOUS AND STORMS OUT, THREATENING THURGENYE. PARTY CONTINUES, TILL TSANGYANG HITS A GONG.
TSANGYANG: Listen everyone! I will go to the palace tonight! With Namshe! They never sleep, up there in the palace! We will go there tonight and tell the Khan that I have married Namshe! Namshe, will you come?
NAMSHE: Ye – yes.
TWO. POTALA PALACE. THRONEROOM. KHAN, SANGYE, TSERING TASHI. CENTRAL IS THE EMPTY THRONE OF THE DALAI LAMA, NEXT TO IT A SMALLER THRONE FOR THE KHAN.
KHAN: Where is that shining man? What is he doing?
I cannot breathe when he is not beside me,
or somewhere near. When he is in this palace,
in his right place, the air flows freely through me,
flies from the ice across the flowering valleys
into me, deeply, and then out of me
slowly, and in. And it is Buddha beating
softly, a big drum. Then I have a shrine
glittering in the centre of my mind,
and in it sits his Holiness, a diamond
dressed in blue robes, a clear and present heaven!
TSERING: I think I saw him walking in the garden.
KHAN: That was not him!
SANGYE: My most beloved Khan –
KHAN: It does me no damn good to be beloved,
Prime Minister, by you, or anyone,
if the mind’s diamond is disintegrating!
TSERING: His Holiness –
KHAN: I need the actual man!
The words do nothing for me, Tsering Tashi!
Like if you told me, such and such a lady
is beautiful and bright, she wears silk moonlight!
But if I never set my eyes upon her,
words have just widened my imagination
and left it gaping like a starving python!
HE LOOKS LONGINGLY AT TSERING TASHI. SHE IS BEWILDERED, TURNS TO SANGYE, WHO GIVES HER NO HELP.
TSERING: Well, I am here –
KHAN: Yes, you are here, for certain,
but you are not his Holiness! Not heaven!
He is not here! And he is living Buddha!
TSERING: Well I am sorry –
KHAN: Can you lift my spirit
out of the swamp?
TSERING: Well I can sing, a little,
and dance, a bit –
KHAN: You dance upon my tomb!
You sing my soul to hell!
TSERING: I must keep practising –
SANGYE: Dear Khan, we suffer from the privilege
of being comrades of his Holiness.
Each brilliant minute that we spend with him
makes every moment we drag through without him
worse than the heart-ache of Encyclopaedias
gnawed out by bookworms. But he has not left us
without a fragment of himself to ease us
through the pest’s innards – in the form of patience!
Whenever we are patient, he is with us!
KHAN: I had some patience but it hanged itself.
SANGYE: Khan, what has happened? There is surely something
you are not telling us.
KHAN: It creeps, the desert,
into the flower beds, blows its grainy nothing
into your eyes, when you are smelling roses –
SANGYE: What do you mean, Khan?
KHAN: There are always demons!
Demons of Truth, and demons of pretending,
demons of beauty, and the ugly demons!
Demons of speaking, demons of not speaking –
sun rising and moon setting, these are demons!
Sleep all you like, you wake from dreams of demons
to piss among the demons in the bathroom!
Put on your coat and hat – they are both demons:
one hatches out your egg head, while the other
clings to your back and burns you with its black flames!
All of the trees are crowned with twittering demons –
they followed us, a locust host, in millions
out of our country and they keep on coming.
We carved a path for them.
SANGYE: Khan, what has happened?
KHAN: Whispering visions –
TSERING: What have they been saying?
SANGYE: Dear Khan, was it the embassy from China?
TSERING: With us they had no special urgent issues –
SANGYE: Did they speak secretly to you? Division
is what they love – dear Khan, do not believe them!
KHAN: Believe you should I, then? When you presented me
with a false Dalai Lama, chanting mannequin,
unsacred sticks dressed in a dead man’s saffron!
The Fifth died, my dear master. You said nothing!
For fifteen years I was a fool, a gaping
puppet show child – I only saw the shadowman
at temple rituals, in the gloom of candles,
and if I asked to speak in private with him,
as we had always done – he had a fever,
so you would tell me! Why should I believe you
ever again?! The Fifth was dead! You fed him
secretly to the eagles and paraded
a counterfeit – for fifteen years! My master
was dead, and I was dead to that! You hollowed
my spirit out! Your searchers had discovered,
in the meantime, his re-born self. You raised him
far away, till his fifteenth year, my master,
not telling me! Now I trust no Tibetan
except his Holiness the Sixth! And truly,
if he had not been so heart-softening,
I could not have forgiven you for stealing
his fresh first years from me! And when I see him,
I stare hard, look him in the eyes, to make sure
he has not perished, you have not replaced him
with a false version, for your own sweet reasons!
Where is he now? My eyes need constant evidence!
TSERING: What have the Chinese told you, Khan? Please tell me!
We need to know!
SANGYE: So that we can protect him
from slanders –
KHAN: Things too terrible to mention!
EXIT.
SANGYE: Ignorance is poison. It will kill us in seconds. How much does he know???
TSERING: Hush, Sangye – here is your man.
ENTER DOCTOR DEATH.
SANGYE: Tell us the worst!
DOCTOR DEATH: The worst? The worst is that my right shoe hurts –
SANGYE: What??
DOCTOR DEATH: My left foot.
SANGYE: No, no, speak, speak –
DOCTOR DEATH: I have spoken.
SANGYE: Not so runically please!
TSERING: You can’t hurry him.
SANGYE: No, no, of course. I breathe – I breathe –
TSERING: Tell us in your own words in your own time.
DOCTOR DEATH: I wanted the orange ones! Haha! I wanted the orange ones!
TSERING: This may or may not mean something –
DOCTOR DEATH: Me – I prefer the blondes! Haha!
TSERING: How judicious of you, Doctor.
DOCTOR DEATH: (SINGS)
Night after night all night I go
over love’s mountain through the snow,
to wake more weary than the dead
in the sad valley of my bed –
TSERING: I am sure you rarely wake alone!
DOCTOR DEATH: When I wake in my coffin, I am alone. But when I wake up in the plague pit – then we party!
TSERING: How nice!
SANGYE: And tell me – how – how is his Holiness?
DOCTOR DEATH: Happy!
SANGYE: Oh good!
DOCTOR DEATH: They both are! Blissfully! And so are we all! So are we all!
SANGYE: Both???
TSERING: Hush, Sangye –
DOCTOR DEATH: (SINGS)
I have written on a pane
words my breath wipes out again,
but the love I cannot write
will outlast the use of sight –
SANGYE: Both?
DOCTOR DEATH: So are we all! So are we all!
EXIT, DANCING.
SANGYE: This is my Spy Chief, my Head of Intelligence! Well he will speak more sense tomorrow, he is always half-mad when he comes back from the Joy-Houses!
TSERING: I understand him entirely.
SANGYE: Do you?
TSERING: Both! Both!
SANGYE: His Holiness and his Holiness’s latest whore!
TSERING: No. Something deeper.
SANGYE: Why could he not just say that?
TSERING: Because he is a spy!
SANGYE: My dear?
TSERING: Pity the poor professional killer! All he can do is quote lovesongs –
SANGYE: The lovesongs of his Holiness.
TSERING: Which are themselves intelligence –
SANGYE: Desperate!
TSERING: More desperate is the Khan’s message –
SANGYE: And what was that?
TSERING: Danger of death!
SANGYE: Death?
TSERING: The death of his faith!
SANGYE: Which will be our death.
TSERING: Yes, yes. Buddha is the only thing that stops the Mongols from piling up our skulls into a mountain.
SANGYE: That is why I hid the death of the Fifth!
TSERING: You were terrified!
SANGYE: It won fifteen years. But we have paid the price, in loss of trust. Still - the Khan adores his Holiness.
TSERING: He adores his Holiness’s holiness.
SANGYE: Which doesn’t exist!
TSERING: And a Chinese whisper has informed him of that –
SANGYE: He still only half believes it!
TSERING: Nevertheless – ‘both’ – ‘we are happy for them both’ – both!
SANGYE: We need something –
TSERING: To replace his Holiness’s holiness, which is about to manifest its non-existence even to the Khan who does not want to believe it –
SANGYE: What would a genius do in this situation?
TSERING: Ah – um –
SANGYE: A great leader?
TSERING: The great Fifth!
SANGYE: But are great leaders great? What are great leaders?
Why do we call the great Fifth great? Quite simply
because he strapped the Mongols like plate armour
onto the softened body of this country,
to shield us from the mangling fists of China.
But then he died. He had appointed me
as his right hand. Why me, a small man standing
on a large book, to make himself look taller?
Because he was so great – you understand me,
he did not need or want a giant second,
a Captain with a following. No, he wanted
a pen, a brain, a great administrator,
who could administrate his greatness greatly.
And then he died! And I could think of nothing
better than to pretend it had not happened,
he was still there, still great, with me his shadow.
And secretly we searched for his successor,
for his rebirth. And found him by the border,
and had him raised out there, not here in Lhasa,
under the staring stars of strict religion,
till he was old enough to hold the Mongols -
with the results that we have suffered from,
which are not great. And this is my conclusion:
great leaders leave their countries with great problems.
TSERING: And this speech has got us nowhere! We have got to tackle the Khan! We have got to find something to keep him sweet, to make him still love Tibet when he finds out – finds out –
SANGYE: I think I am –
TSERING: Having a moment of greatness?
SANGYE: My love, I would like to tell you in the rosegarden.
EXEUNT. MUSICAL PAUSE. ENTER TSANGYANG AND NAMSHE THROUGH A WINDOW.
TSANGYANG: So do you like your palace?
NAMSHE: I don’t like climbing through the buggering window –
TSANGYANG: You’re always climbing through window.
NAMHE: Not anymore.
TSANGYANG: If you walk through the door it locks behind you. I tell you, Namshe, I would be dead if it wasn’t for windows. Windows, I adore you! You are my doors! When the the mouth shuts, the eyes open –
SINGS
Here I may not remain,
where the eagles are.
Lend me your wings, white crane,
to fly to Litang, not far.
NAMSHE: I don’t get that song.
TSANGYANG: Well -
NAMSHE: So where is the giant who lives here?
TSANGYANG: Listen. No, nothing. Only the specific pressure of this moment in time. Ding!
NAMSHE: How will you introduce me to him?
TSANGYANG: There must be a window in his head. There must be. If we can find it and you can climb in through it, we will be saved!
NAMSHE: And will I have to stay in there forever?
TSANGYANG: No. Once you are in, start smashing more windows open here there and everywhere, fly in and out like air.
NAMSHE: Right, let’s meet him.
TSANGYANG: No, no – no, my darling. You will hide – behind a tapestry – like in a play – and listen to me speaking to him and see how it goes -
NAMSHE: You have to call me out, at the right moment. I’ll leap out like a salmon! What’s the signal?
TSANGYANG: Hey look -
NAMSHE: Something’s coming through the window!
TSANGYANG: Whatever it is, it’s my mum!
ENTER PHUNTSOG THROUGH THE WINDOW.
NAMSHE: Honey!
PHUNTSOG: Aggh! Reborn! What gorgeous room is this?
NAMSHE: What are you doing here, honey?
TSANGYANG: This is my throneroom.
PHUNTSOG: I have followed, as the official Redeemer of the Whores.
NAMSHE: Too soon, too soon!
PHUNTSOG: I know that, darling! But when you slipped off to visit the Khan, I reckoned – that man needs a word from me.
NAMSHE: Will he listen?
PHUNTSOG: He’ll have to! I am the one who has got the plans! I have got to explain to him the role of ex-prostitutes in governing the country. The experience, the stamina of those women! I have got to oversee the closing down of the whorehouses. He will appreciate that.
NAMSHE: Is he going to be able to take you in all at once, honey?
PHUNTSOG: Me? Why not? Little me!
ENTER THURGENYE AND DECKYI THROUGH THE WINDOW, DRUNK.
THURGENYE: Buddha! Whose chair is that?
TSANGYANG: That is my throne.
THURGENYE: May I - ? May I - ?
THURGENYE SITS ON THE THRONE.
THURGENYE: Deckyi! Look at me! Deckyi!
DECKYI: Shit! Thurgenye’s seized power!
THURGENYE: I have returned into the world, dear friends! The second Thurgenye!
GOTISANG TRIES TO ENTER THROUGH THE WINDOWAND GETS STUCK.
GOTISANG: Thurgenye! Get off there! Thurgenye!
THURGENYE: Shut up, dad! Holiness – let’s start the revolution right now! Call the Khan in here and we’ll skewer him!
GOTISANG: Thurgenye!
THURGENYE: I feel so powerful!
GOTISANG: Then help me! Help me!
TSANGYANG AND NAMSHE PULL GOTISANG INTO THE ROOM.
TSANGYANG: Welcome, dear friends! Now I will have to ask you
not to be noisy. Please go through this way –
down the long passage, fifth door on the left,
and you will find a stairway leading down
to a big room with softer furnishings
than this one – take a little nap, for me –
and in the morning we will have a meeting!
THURGENYE: Good luck! And if you need me, call me!
GOTISANG: Why would he need you?
DECKYI: Come along – softer furnishings!
PHUNTSOG: Tell the Khan I want to see him!
EXEUNT ALL BUT NAMSHE AND TSANGYANG.
NAMSHE: Disaster!
TSANGYANG: No, I need them close to me.
The Khan is ice, and they are summer days
all warbling in the background happily,
to warm me if not him, help him through me
to warm to you.
SOUND OF DOOR SLAMMING OFF.
Quick, I can hear him coming,
that is the way the air drops dead behind him,
when he moves through it like a wave collapsing.
Hide, my dear heart -
NAMSHE HIDES. ENTER KHAN. HE STOPS, BOWS, PROSTRATES HIMSELF SILENTLY. TSANGYANG SITS ON HIS THRONE. THE KHAN RISES.
KHAN: Do you remember, master,
when you called me? I was a young man then,
and you were old. Now you are young again,
but you are still my master, still the same.
That is the mystery. The sun gets old
endlessly, and the moon gets fat and thin
like a demonic frog –but still one thing
fixes its constant diamond in the mind,
for which no grave is waiting. Every day
armies of infants swarm out of the womb,
and each and every one of them will find,
after a squint at life, its way back down
into the hooded ground. But very soon,
the cosmic wheel of torture squeals again,
and sprawls them out, in gusts of blood, again,
to wriggle back into the soil again,
until the end of time, which has no end.
Over and over, Love, with its two hands,
one soft, one hard and hirsute, heaves the chains
that turn the wheel that breaks our hearts and bones.
Love is the leat that makes the millwheel spin
that grinds our flesh to dust between the stones.
Love makes our ends meet, makes our agony
a perfect circle. Oh but there is one
absolute one, above this and beyond –
he comes to us, and leaves, and comes again,
to prick our prison bubble, break the charm,
to jam the cogs and free the treadmill-walkers!
That is you, master.
TSANGYANG: Padmasambhava,
who brought the Buddha’s teachings here from India,
who won this land from demons for the dharma
when it was kings and cannibals and vampires,
who blessed the caves, who built the seven temples
as pegs to nail in place the chaos-goddess –
he had a wife, the great princess Mandarava –
KHAN: Do you remember, master?
TSANGYANG: And her father
the King, forbade her, and he built a pyre
to burn them both to death – or to perfection,
maybe – but they transformed the fire around them
into a bright unrippled lake of fragrant
sesame oil, ringed by a wall of fire –
and from the centre rose a lotus flower,
with Padmasambhava and dear Mandarava
seated upon it happily together.
KHAN: You chose my people! Once our home was nowhere,
and demons nightly drained our horses dry,
and all our prayers were pebbles made of air,
that sank into the blue divine huge sky,
swallowed. Then we were wild, stormed everywhere
to find the edge of endless hell! We found
at last, a wall – came up against faced stones,
and oh what bliss was that, to find a form,
a shape, a stop! Oh how they stood, child-eyed,
our grandfathers, and drank the beauty down,
the crowned and queenly curving of the wall!
The demon gabblings died, and out of them
songs rose, as strong as silence in our minds,
and thoughts of gardens, streets, and little teashops.
So we broke through, in love, and seized the empire,
and she seized us, and poured us into Buddha
like air into a jar! We did lose China,
but we have kept the sky-shape that we found there,
and that is why you came and found us, master,
knowing that mine, of all the Mongol tribes,
is the one tied most tightly to the dharma.
We, the Qosots, dissolved into the Buddha
utterly, will defend Tibet more firmly
than any other horde, against the empire,
that has now wandered from the middle way
back to its ancient unenlightened cart-road,
and seeks to break the wheel of Buddha’s teaching,
and make a slave out of this land of mountains!
TSANGYANG: In Maratika cave they prayed together
till they attained eternity –
KHAN: Oh did they?
Good luck to them! Have they come back to help us,
either of them? I do not think so, master!
But you, because you have renounced desire,
you keep returning, not compelled by passion,
dragged by a hook of perfumes – but free-minded,
to set us free!
TSANGYANG: If you could only see her
with my eyes, Khan.
KHAN: The Emperor is intrigued.
Do you intend a dynasty? If so,
what is my place? Not that he cares for me,
but he does want foreknowledge, I imagine,
of any sudden sinkholes on his borders!
TSANGYANG: Tell that sublime divinity from me,
there is no force of water, earth, air, fire,
that can tear me from you. Tibet embraces
the Qosots freely, everlastingly!
KHAN: Is it you speaking, master, is it you?
And when you have a son, what will he say?
Will he be you as well? How could that be?
This is not wisdom drifting down from heaven,
this is the old familiar demons screeching!
TSANGYANG: So you think now, being only what you are, knowing nothing but what you know! But what happens next? Is it ever exactly predicted? There are no circles! No repetitions! All of our wisdom is false, all our traditions perfectly fitted to rocks that have liquified!
KHAN: That is not how you used to speak, dear master –
TSANGYANG: Look! Something might suddenly appear that changes everything!
KHAN: No, no, no, no –
TSANGYANG: Namshe! Namshe!
KHAN: No, no, no, no!
NAMSHE APPEARS. SHE BOWS TO THE KHAN, AND STANDS STARING AT HIM. HE STARES AT HER.
NAMSHE: Hello!
KHAN: What is this?
TSANGYANG: Don’t ask me! Look for yourself! See!
NAMSHE: I am the Dalai Lama’s wife. How do you do?
KHAN: Aggghhhhh!
HE RUNS OUT, CLUTCHING HIS HEAD AND BELLOWING.
NAMSHE: Whoops!
TSANGYANG: Are you sure?
NAMSHE: Do you think he likes me?
TSANGYANG: He will! He will!
NAMSHE: Not if he keeps running away, that’s the only thing -
TSANGYANG: We will catch him! I’ll make him give you another chance! Already he may be changing! Let him sleep on it. Visit him in his dreams. To hear of you is one thing, from spies and the Chinese – but to see you!
NAMSHE: I know these Khans – I can work him.
TSANGYANG: Let’s hide till morning and I’ll present you again!
EXEUNT. RE-ENTER KHAN, WITH TSERING AND SANGYE.
KHAN: She was here! Right here!
SANGYE: He brought her here?
KHAN: I saw her with my own eyes!
TSERING: What does this mean?
KHAN: I will call the guards! To arrest her!
TSERING: No! Do not do that, Khan!
KHAN: What, then? Leave her to dance through the palace of the Dalai Lama!?
SANGYE: Force will not evict her from his heart.
KHAN: What shall I do then? What shall I do then?
TSERING: Poor Khan! Ten thousand Mongol horsemen are useless in this situation!
KHAN: Oh are they? You think I do not understand what is happening? You think I do not see this plan to drive me out – to drive out all of us, though we were invited here by the great Fifth himself! You think I do not see your hand in this?
SANGYE: No! Khan!
KHAN: And what will you replace me with? This prostitute! And how will she defend you from the Emperor? With her stilettos??
TSERING: Khan – Khan –
KHAN: I am going back to the camp! I have spent too long in this palace! You will not see me again! This is a declaration of war!
TSERING: Oh Khan, Khan, do not leave! (SHE BREAKS DOWN IN TEARS.)
SANGYE: Do not break her heart, Khan!
KHAN: What do you mean?
SANGYE TAKES KHAN ASIDE.
SANGYE: She loves you.
KHAN: What?
SANGYE: Don’t you know?
KHAN: Lady Tsering?
SANGYE: She and I have long ceased to –
KHAN: Lady Tsering loves me?
SANGYE: It is so sad!
KHAN: No – no – it is not sad at all –
SANGYE: It is! Poor creature! Locked in an impossible dream!
KHAN: Impossible?
SANGYE: Oh Khan, Khan – what could she be to you?
KHAN: I am very fond of her.
SANGYE: You are so kind-hearted!
KHAN: Very fond indeed.
SANGYE: Well in that case, Khan, if you could find it in your heart to spend five minutes with her, just to convince her, incredibly gently, to abandon her hopes – painfully faint as they are –
KHAN: I will speak to her.
SANGYE: Tsering – the Khan wishes to speak to you alone.
TSERING: Ok.
EXEUNT KHAN AND TSERING. SANGYE REMOVES HIS RING. HE DROPS IT ON THE FLOOR, BURSTS INTO TEARS, LEAVES.
INTERLUDE OF MUSIC AND DANCING. DAWN. ENTER DECKYI.
DECKYI: Wonderful structure! And the wall-hangings!
I woke at dawn – not far away from me
that infant adult who was meant to be
my cash-bull for the next two years or three
so I could be a profitable arm,
not have to be lopped off the corporation.
Him I was lubricating for the future,
sleeping the sunrise-snubbing sleep of one
who has no plans, who, having sent downstream
the paper boat his life, now stands and dreams,
watching it soak, sag, sog, suck up the drown,
snagged on a little twig. But everything
has changed. I never knew a night so final,
ref never shrilled so clear a full-time whistle
as Namshe did with Tsangyang by their wedding.
I see the heart exists, and is a thing
that stops the world and starts it up again
completely different. And I have to say,
I wish he was the man he might have been.
ENTER THURGENYE.
THURGENYE: Good morning, Deckyi! Ha! The tapestries!
I have been standing staring like the moon
at one of them. It burned my face off and
printed itself direct onto my brain.
I can still see it.
DECKYI: Dancing heavenly ladies –
THURGENY: No, not at all. A lake of – maybe oil –
a ring of flames around it. In the middle,
a lotus flower. On the lotus flower –
which must have been much bigger than most flowers –
a woman and a man pressed close together,
smiling amazingly. I stared and stared,
till I was standing in the picture staring
out - at the empty face of poor Thurgenye!
DECKYI: Were you not sitting on the lotus flower?
THURGENYE: Well yes I was.
DECKYI: So there were three of you?
THURGENYE: No, just the woman and myself.
DECKYI: Who was she?
THURGENYE: Well she was you. I tried to change her face,
but you and I have been so much together,
traipsing around, drunk, strolling by the river –
and there are faces in the mind that stay there,
not like the face reflected in the water
that you take with you when you leave.
DECKYI: So tell me,
why did you want to change her face, Thurgenye?
THURGENYE: Because I was not me, so it seemed proper
that you should not be you.
DECKYI: But I remained me,
stubbornly, so you jumped back out the picture
into yourself –
THURGENYE: No. There was no Thurgenye
standing there – he had vanished like a sand-flea.
DECKYI: So who are you then?
THURGENYE: That’s the crucial question.
I have not met myself before – I reckon
I am a stern and striving man of action,
dangerous to behold – or else a wizard,
with undiscovered powers – or a painter
of cave paintings – maybe a murderer,
or a dog-eater. But I know for certain
that I am not the man you knew, and therefore
we two must part.
DECKYI: And I am not the woman,
so I agree!
ENTER TSANGYANG AND NAMSHE.
NAMSHE: Good morning Deckyi! Good morning Thurgenye!
TSANGYANG: Any sign of the Khan?
THURGENYE: (IMPERIOUSLY) The Khan? The Khan I have not seen!
TSANGYANG: What?
THURGENYE: I have not seen the Khan. But when I see him – when he sees me, let me tell you, he will be seeing something!
NAMSHE: What will he be seeing?
THURGENYE: Not what he thinks! Oh no! Holiness, holiness! Let me show you!
HE DRAGS TSANGYANG OFF.
DECKYI: Thurgenye has changed in the night!
NAMSHE: Into what?
DECKYI: Nobody knows! I had decided to leave him – well we are not together – but he was my job and since I am now out of work, I reckoned the relationship is redundant.
NAMSHE: Are you out of work?
DECKYI: I mean if Phuntsog plans to redeem the whores. But might I hope, your Maj, that when you are enthroned you might make me a wealthy Minister of something?
NAMSHE: Why not?
DECKYI: Phew! Then I don’t need to hang around Thurgenye!
NAMSHE: But I am not there yet, Deckyi – the Khan -
DECKYI: Namshe, his Holiness really loves you.
NAMSHE: Yes he does – the freak!
DECKYI: The Dalai Lama has married you! Woh!
THEY HUG.
DECKYI: Anyway, to tell the truth, when I woke up this morning, I felt different about little Thurgenye –
NAMSHE: Did you?
DECKYI: Yes! Unprofessional. And then when he told me he too has changed, I thought, oh? Then he says he must leave me. But he doesn’t know that I have changed too!
NAMSHE: Tell him!
DECKYI: How? I don’t even know who he is!
RE-ENTER TSANGYANG AND THURGENYE.
TSANGYANG: Behold –great Padmasambhava!
THURGENYE: Who? Me? Really?
TSANGYANG: Thurgenye passed away into a picture,
and was reborn as Padmasambhava,
here in this palace! Mortals must beware
the transformations that in holy places
such as this is, lie waiting to devour them!
Though this was beneficial – our Thurgenye,
pounced upon, has himself become the panther
that swallowed him alive! He is no longer
a drunk, spoilt git, he is a holy man,
who strangles vampires!
NAMSHE: Well the same goes for Deckyi –
TSANGYANG: Certainly! Deckyi! She was in the picture!
Princess Mandarava, half of Padmasambhava –
he half of her – the image needs both partners,
If either leaves, the lotus tips the other
into the oil. Thurgenye, will you take her?
Deckyi, will you take him? I mean forever?
THURGENYE: I did not love you as you were –
DECKYI: Nor me.
THURGENYE: Our past selves parted.
DECKYI: Unsurprisingly.
THURGENYE: But they did not know us!
DECKYI: And nor do we!
NAMSHE: You do! You do! You will!
TSANGYANG: Will you marry each other, like me and Namshe?
DECKYI: I will!
THURGENYE: I will!
TSANGYANG SEATS THEM ON HIS THRONE, WHICH IS BIG ENOUGH FOR TWO. ENTER GOTISANG.
GOTISANG: Thurgenye! Thurgenye! I had a weird dream!
THURGENYE: Describe it to me, reverend father!
GOTISANG: What?
THURGENYE: What was your dream, dad?
GOTISANG: You put your hat on my head, and I turned into a little girl!
THURGENYE: Let’s try it!
THURGENYE HAS A LARGE YELLOW HAT. HE PUTS IT ON GOTISANG’S HEAD.
THURGENYE: Nope.
DECKYI: Gotisang, bless us, we are getting married!
GOTISANG: What, first thing in the morning? Think it over.
TSANGYANG: Give Thurgenye away!
GOTISANG: He gives himself away every time he opens his gob –
NAMSHE: Please! Say something –
GOTISANG: I see I have stumbled on a serious occasion. Which, in the Potala palace, ought not to surprise me! Here we are, in the residence of the Dalai Lama! Who comes and goes, in and out of death, like a duck out of water! Who waddles into the world once a lifetime with a new face and new feet. Well we all do, they say. This one, the Sixth, he can never remember a single thing about his previous lives. When I ask him, he says, For frig’s sake, grandpa, I can’t remember this morning! -Well anyway, look, he is Thurgenye’s friend. And so no wonder wonderful things are happening to Thurgenye. I always knew he would marry a whore, but never never never did it enter my head that he would end up married to such an expensive one. You are no dusty stray, Deckyi, you are a Jaguar! Vrooom! If I could afford you – hohoho! I can tell you –
THURGENYE: Thanks, dad!
TSANGYANG: Deckyi, worn out by joy – half-born Thurgenye –
they tried their hardest and it got them nowhere.
They were bad hands played badly by bad lovers,
blind drunk and struggling to out-cheat each other.
And then one day they fell into a pond,
splash, bubble bubble – and were gone forever!
But from the spot where they had disappeared,
a lotus rose, a sacred waterflower,
broad as a casting couch. And crouching on it
were Padmasambhava and sweet Mandarava,
shining, entwining, full of peace and power!
Obviously this is who they really were!
Paper-thin veils, the drunk pratt and the whore,
hiding the naked brightness of such stars
as telescopes refrain from looking at,
to shield the minds of the astronomers,
which would explode! No need to guide the light
into the light – see how it streams together
into a single sun! Or maybe daughter –
DECKYI AND THURGENYE KISS.
GOTISANG: Huzzah! Huzzah!
HE GRABS A GONG AND STARTS TO BEAT IT, WILDLY DANCING. EVERYONE JOINS IN, TILL TSANGYANG CALMS THEM DOWN.
TSANGYANG: Friends, we have got to find the Khan! It’s morning! The robed routine of sacred government will be soon beginning! Already in their cells the monks are humming. Can you not feel the warming of the wings, and the whole hive vibrating? We have got to find the Khan and share our happiness with him!
EXEUNT. ENTER PHUNTSOG.
PHUNTSOG: Deckyi! Namshe! I heard cackling. Couldn’t have been the monks. Unless they are all like his Holiness. Could be. Only one thing spreads faster than religion. And that’s decadence. Thankfully, for the economy! But I was forgetting the new dispensation, where love is allowed, even by religion. So there’s no need for whore-houses! Well I am certainly the perfect priestess. Though, all of a sudden, I feel misgivings, like a cold wind blows through my markets, causing my stocks to fall round my ankles. Uncertainty. Which way – left, right, up, down? This is the world. Your friends have vanished in a boom of gongs – if it was your friends, not the ghosts of feral children. You know things are tipping – but in which direction?
ENTER TSERING, IN GREAT MISERY.
Here is a lady full of misery.
Who, in my former life, I would have reckoned
as a potential high-end article.
Drenched in abuse, her soul is up for sale.
She does not want to keep that wingless owl.
Hello!
TSERING: Ah, mother –
PHUNTSOG: Mother?
TSERING: Somebody’s mother?
PHUNTSOG: Everybody’s.
TSERING: Who are you?
PHUNTSOG: I am a priestess.
TSERING: Oh. Good. I didn’t know there were any left.
PHUNTSOG: I am the last. And the first.
TSERING: I am lost, mother.
PHUNTSOG: Tell me.
TSERING: He loved me. He actually did love me.
PHUNTSOG: Yes.
TSERING: I mean I was such a help to him, in his studies!
PHUNTSOG: I see. His studies.
TSERING: I was the librarian. Would you believe? Seeing me in all these court clothes, with my court face –
SHE SEES SANGYE’S RING ON THE FLOOR.
Ah there is his ring, his little ring! He has thrown it away! So really that is finally it. Ha! Oh, I will look after you, little one, I will look after you!
SHE PICKS UP THE RING, KISSING IT AND CRYING.
PHUNTSOG: You helped him –
TSERING: We were one mind! So much time – so much time – more than any man ever with any woman ever! The moon and the moonlight. Love was likely but – such love – impossible!
PHUNTSOG: Love is impossible!
TSERING: Common and impossible.
PHUNTSOG: Yes.
TSERING: Agh, it has such horrible power, that time – it drags me backwards. I cannot plod onwards with the rest of my species –
PHUNTSOG: No.
TSERING: But to be dragged backwards is - cancer! Because I can’t get there! It has not gone, that time, but I cannot go there!
PHUNTSOG: Sorrow.
TSERING: Yes, thankyou! Sorrow! That is the only way forwards. Sorrow. No way on without sorrow. Sorrow, you are my road, sorrow. You are my horse, you are my feet, sorrow. I will be happy with you, sorrow. Sorrow, sorrow.
PHUNTSOG: And beyond –
TSERING: Well there is no beyond, you see, because I have been given.
PHUNTSOG: Given?
TSERING: Yes, given. He has given me away to his master. I had to do it, to save him. To save the state! I had to pretend to like it – to love – for the sake of the state. And I must keep pretending.
PHUNTSOG: Daughter, this is too much.
TSERING: Too much, yes! Each of us is too much. Some of us, much too much!
PHUNTSOG: You must fight! You must fight!
TSERING: Fight who, mother?
PHUNTSOG: The one who gave you!
TSERING: Haha! I love him! Fight him?
PHUNTSOG: What he did is not right! Not love!
TSERING: Should we be punished for not loving?
PHUNTSOG: Yes!
TSERING: And where will that end?
PHUNTSOG: Stand up! Stand up! A new light has come into the world! I am its voice! Daughter, you shall no longer be crushed! Fight him! Fight! Crushed, you still love him. Crush him into love! It is right! It is right!
TSERING: Bless me with your strength.
PHUNTSOG: I pour into you all of my power! All of the power of the new light! Rise up, rise up, daughter!
TSERING: Here comes the Khan –
PHUNTSOG: Perfect.
ENTER KHAN, SANGYE, GUARDS.
PHUNTSOG: Good morning, great Khan! I have come to present to you a program for the closure of all the city whorehouses, under the new dispensation, which is about to seize hold of all of us! Freedom! Equality! Love!
KHAN: Remove that lunatic from the palace but do not hurt it.
PHUNTSOG IS SEIZED BY THE GUARDS AND CARRIED OUT. ONE OF THEM HOLDS HIS HAND OVER HER MOUTH AND SHE CARRIES ON SHOUTING, MUFFLED.
KHAN: Mercy is surging through my veins today,
though I was blasted in the early night
by a most lifeblood-draining vampire vision,
that turned my eyes to fangs fixed in my mind,
sucking my spine soft. Upside-down hell-icon
of a young woman with his Holiness,
who was his woman. And it was a fact,
not an illusion sent by black magicians
to drive me mad. Though it did drive me mad,
so the air seemed to scrape like sandpaper,
later the night descended into velvet.
A wish came true – and wisdom followed it,
or peace at least. Or anyway the absence
of the desire for war. The female wizard
who has bewitched and smutched his Holiness,
she does not have to die. His Holiness
would feel the wound that felled her, in his flesh,
or choke from the constriction of the pipe,
that made her sag. And I do not want that,
I have no heart to hurt his Holiness,
only to be his follower, his good dog,
when he goes walking on the path of truth.
I long to see his Holiness himself,
and speak to him without that female half
twisting him out of shape. Please tell him that.
When she is gone, there will be perfect balance.
I will protect his Holiness with force
when he protects my people with the truth.
So let the phantom vanish. Tell him that.
Meanwhile this storm of woman and myself
will celebrate our wedding – in the camp,
as Mongols do it! She will learn to shoot,
and swing a sword, and ride, and lead a charge
against formations so they fall apart!
EXIT WITH TSERING. SANGYE COLLPASES. ENTER DOCTOR DEATH.
DOCTOR DEATH: He is wandering with his flock, looking for the Khan, to show off his wife.
SANGYE: Ouch. Wife. Do not say wife. It cuts me sharper than knife. Do not stab me through the heart with a blunt wife.
DOCTOR DEATH: I will tell his Holiness that the Khan has gone back to his camp.
SANGYE: Tell his Holiness – tell his Holiness that the Khan will not see that woman! Say the Khan has fled to his camp to get away from her! Say anything – but stop his Holiness from driving the Khan insane with that woman!
DOCTOR DEATH: I will kill her.
SANGYE: No. Not her. Not her. One of the others. It is his Holiness we are talking about! And anyway he’d just find someone else! But kill, yes. It has come to that! One of the others. Then he will get it, and get rid of her.
DOCTOR DEATH: Which one?
SANGYE: Don’t ask me that! I didn’t sleep last night! You choose! You choose! Alright???
THREE. PHUNTSOG’S HOUSE. COUNCIL OF WAR. TSANGYANG, NAMSHE, GOTISANG, DECKYI, PHUNTSOG, THURGENYE.
TSANGYANG: He will not see her! So we have to fight!
But here’s the thing – we cannot beat the Khan,
his horde is fierce and fast, our troops are kind,
though we had sharp kings once, who led Tibet
down from the mountains to devour all China.
We were the nightmare then, skull-necklaced warriors,
whose rations were the enemy casualties.
But then the dharma came, and changed our fighters
to monks who marched against their own delusions,
fought inward wars against the dog-head demons,
who kennel in the mind. Old mountain castles
changed into monasteries, whose chanting armies
won perfect inward peace. But not security.
That is why when I was my predecessor,
I asked the Khan to save us from the Emperor.
So I suppose. He seemed the softer evil,
but now his stiff mind stops the wheel of teaching,
that heaven with its whole heart wants to turn.
I do not say that when I come next time
I will not be what I have always been,
and make and keep a vow to have no woman.
I am not smashing one stone-graven law
simply to carve another – I am saying
only, the wheel of teaching must keep turning!
DECKYI: Holiness, you are right what you say about our army! The Mongols were supposed to train them but – well, my brother’s a soldier – they give them depressed horses with three legs or no head, and stone spears. And the Qosots eat all our rations. And we never get paid.
PHUNTSOG: We give our boys vouchers – just to try to keep up morale, do our bit.
THURGENYE: They will fight! They will fight for his Holiness!
GOTISANG: And lose.
PHUNTSOG: That Khan has got to listen! But if we can’t fight him, what can we do?
NAMSHE: Drown me in a sack.
GOTISANG: No, kitten!
NAMSHE: Smuggle me out of the country –
GOTISANG: Ah! Maybe.
TSANGYANG GRABS HOLD OF HER.
NAMSHE: Let me go!
PHUNTSOG: Just to please the Khan?
NAMSHE: To please me!
PHUNTSOG: This is nothing to do with you!
NAMSHE: Yes it is!
PHUNTSOG: This is our country’s struggle –
NAMSHE: No, honey, it’s all about me! Me, me, me!
PHUNTSOG: You?
NAMSHE: Take me out of the picture and where is the problem?
PHUNTSOG: She was always like this! Look at me! Look at me!
NAMSHE: I am saying don’t look at me!
PHUNTSOG: So as to get attention!
NAMSHE: So as to get rid of it!
PHUNTSOG: Really?
NAMSHE: You think I should just shut up and let people die for me?
PHUNTSOG: Yes I do. You are a symbol.
NAMSHE: I am not a fucking symbol!
PHUNTSOG: You are. So shut your mouth.
AWKWARD SILENCE. GOTISANG SINGS.
GOTISANG:
The willow loves the sparrow
and the sparrow loves the willow!
I shot him with my arrow
and I put him in my pillow!
THURGENYE: That’s right, spot on, daddy!
TSANGYANG: We will change the Khan! Nothing can take Namshe from me!
NAMSHE: Except Namshe!
PHUNTSOG: Don’t you dare! Everyone’s incredibly excited. Word’s burned through all the houses. And that means word’s burned through everyone. Except for the Mongols, who only like hoofed women. The girls are on strike. Not a strike but – they have downed tools. And no one’s fussed, everyone gets it. Everyone! Without a word being said. The crossing of the legs communicates: business as unusual till his Holiness is set free to love his love! Lhasa will fight for this!
GOTISANG: And lose!
THURGENYE: That’s right, that’s right, daddy!
PHUNTSOG: No! Because we won’t fight how they want! We won’t line up. We will just be bloody difficult.
GOTISANG: Yes, yes!
PHUNTSOG: And they’re a Mongol horde, not a Chinese department. They couldn’t administrate a dead piglet! They totally depend on his Holiness, and the poor PM. If we start acting up – ho! Every single mistress in the city says yes. They want to follow me, I am their Queen of the Night!
NAMSHE: I failed to change the Khan! He saw my face
and almost threw up! Things were looking great
up to that point – then suddenly the earth
opened beneath his feet and down he went.
I saw myself as he saw me – a mouth
with lips of fire. Hell’s entrance. Glimpse that once,
and from then on you see the whole world hideous!
And it was weird, coz I was looking great -
PHUNTSOG: He’ll be alright. I’ve been to hell loads of times.
NAMSHE: What can you do with a man like that?
THEY ALL WANDER ABOUT, CHATTING, DREAMING, DRINKING.
GOTISANG: (SINGS)
As I was looking to the south
I saw the bright moon rise,
smiling with my true love’s mouth
and shining with her eyes.
THURGENYE: (SINGS)
Mister, take your eyes off me,
look up high in the old peach tree!
Stick tobacco in your pipe
and suck – these peaches are not ripe!
NAMSHE: How could love lead to this? Is love just love,
or something else as well? It seems alive,
but it draws down the vultures like a corpse,
whistles hyenas to its wedding-funeral.
Is it too much alive, perhaps, so bright
it drags enormous moths, the size of night,
towards its warmth, conducting alien lightning
into its copper headgear? Like a house-fire
that beckons both to looters and to rescuers.
With prostitution you don’t have this problem –
take money, give your body, and it’s done –
no afterthoughts the doctor can’t take care of.
We should try not to love too much, I think.
If by the flashing of its razor eyes
love makes you think of massacres, keep it blinkered.
I mean – I say it, but I couldn’t do it.
TSANGYANG: (SINGS)
Night after night all night I go
over love’s mountain through the snow,
to wake more weary than the dead
in the sad valley of my bed.
THEY DANCE, DRINK, SING.
THURGENYE: Holiness, what is our first move? Holiness -
TSANGYANG: This is it. This is it. I am refusing to go to the Palace, until the Khan calls for me. And when he does, I will go, but on conditions!
THURGENYE: Yes!
TSANGYANG: In the meantime, there is no Government.
DECKYI: So let’s go down to the river!
NAMSHE: Yes!
TSANGYANG: Down to the river!
PHUNTSOG: Not me, I have got a meeting with the madams.
EXIT.
THURGENYE: Can I have my hat back, dad?
GOTISANG: No!
DECKYI: No, not the hat! I hate the hat!
THURGENYE: You hate it? You never said!
DECKYI: Don’t go back to the hat!
THURGENYE: Alright, I won’t. Keep it, dad!
EXEUNT. ENTER ASSASSINS, ONE AND TWO.
ONE: They have gone out.
TWO: Yes.
ONE: Down to the river.
TWO: Yes.
ONE: Let us follow them and
TWO: Kill
ONE: Thurgenye, yes. The one with the hat.
FOUR. BY THE RIVER. NAMSHE AND DECKYI. NAMSHE WEARING THURGENYE’S HAT.
NAMSHE: How do I look?
DECKYI: Sad.
NAMSHE: Shall I chuck it in the river?
DECKYI: No! Gotisang likes it!
NAMSHE: Gotisang! Gotisang! (SHE IMITATES HIM.)
DECKYI: Let’s run ahead and hide and jump out on them!
NAMSHE: The old man might die of fright!
DECKYI: We’ll bury him with his hat on!
EXEUNT. ENTER GOTISANG AND THURGENYE.
GOTISANG: I’ll smack your arse, bitch!
THURGENYE: No, no, no, dad, no –
GOTISANG: My hat!
THURGENYE: She’ll give it back!
GOTISANG: But will she give me back these hatless moments?
THURGENYE: What’s important is not the hat but what’s under it.
GOTISANG: The hair? I haven’t got any! That’s the point of the hat!
THURGENYE: No, no, the brain, the mind –
GOTISANG: That’s bald as well –
THURGENYE: Dad! You’ve taught me many things –
GOTISANG: I wish I could remember them myself!
THURGENYE: When I was seven you sat me on a chair and said, Thurgenye, child, I will now communicate to you the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. Nothing is what it seems. A dog is not a dog. It is a cat, or even a bird. The sky is not the sky – it is the sea, or possibly the roofs of a small town. A horse is not a horse, it is a pony, probably, or a blurred goose. A man is not a man, he is a tree, and a tree is not a tree, it is a shrub – so a man is a shrub, you see? Let’s have a drink, lad! – And today I have got Deckyi and I am happy and that’s thanks to your wisdom!
GOTISANG: You have indeed grown wise, Thurgenye. I don’t know how it happened. But you and I will part soon, I fear. Oh well. Where is his Holiness?
THURGENYE: He said meet by the bridge. He wants to think.
GOTISANG: Let’s creep up on the girls – and get back my hat!
THURGENYE: And smack them on the arse!
GOTISANG: The bitches!
EXEUNT. ENTER TSANGYANG. SINGS.
TSANGYANG:
Swan by the water’s face
that you kiss and you kiss,
when the water turns to ice
you will forget this.
HE HEARS A SOUND AND WHIPS ROUND.
There is a beast on my track. A strange one. What is it? Who is there? Come out!
DUZA, A BON PRIESTESS, EMERGES FROM A SHRUB.
DUZA: Holiness, my name is Duza. I am a Bon priestess.
TSANGYANG: So - still some of you left.
DUZA: We are capable of changing into birds, and so we survive, even though your dharma has taken over all of this land.
TSANGYANG: Have you come to kill me, Duza?
DUZA: No, Holiness, no! I had a vision. When I was perched with the other priestesses in a park in Lhasa. We have been watching you! Sometimes you scatter us crumbs – but the cats are quick! We speak to you, as best we can. Sing, sometimes, in the morning.
TSANGYANG: Thankyou.
DUZA: You have got to take back Tibet!
TSANGYANG: From who?
DUZA: From Padmasambhava!
TSANGYANG: Ah –
DUZA: Set free the goddess! He nailed her down with seven shrines! For all that Mandarava could say! Before, we were stronger than the whole of China! Now seven temples stake down our goddess! And the prayers that are said in them! Smash the walls, snuff the prayers, spin the wheel of dharma backwards!
TSANGYANG: Oh –
DUZA: She groans, she screams! But you, by taking a wife, have given her hope!
TSANGYANG: I see –
DUZA: Only she can free Tibet!
TSANGYANG: From whom?
DUZA: The Mongols! China! Set her free, let the monks all marry, be our King and with your Queen by your side set free Tibet forever!
TSANGYANG: I will think about it.
DUZA: Do it! Or do you want this land of mountains to vanish?
TSANGYANG: The mountains will remain.
DUZA: But they will not be steps to heaven!
TSANGYANG: Ah, Duza.
DUZA: Look! Look! Look at the eagle – turning far up – she has you in her
eye – she is listening, waiting – will you fight, or not? Look! Look! Look at her! But first – set free the goddess!
EXIT DUZA. TSANGYANG STANDS STARING AT THE EAGLE. HE SINGS.
TSANGYANG:
Here I may not remain,
where the eagles are.
Lend me your wings, white crane,
to fly to Litang, not far.
ENTER NAMSHE, WITHOUT HAT, DEEPLY FURIOUS.
NAMSHE: Gotisang smacked my arse!
TSANGYANG: What?
NAMSHE: Gotisang! Gotisang!
TSANGYANG: What? What?
NAMSHE: Smacked my arse!
TSANGYANG: He smacked your arse?
NAMSHE: Yes!
TSANGYANG: Who?
NAMSHE: Gotisang! Gotisang!
TSANGYANG: How hard?
NAMSHE: This hard!
SHE SMACKS HIS ARSE.
TSANGYANG: What? As hard as that?
HE SMACKS HER ARSE.
NAMSHE: Don’t you smack my fucking arse! No more shall my arse be spanked! I am the Queen of fucking Tibet!
TSANGYANG: No you’re not -
NAMSHE: Yes I am!
TSANGYANG: No you’re not!
NAMSHE: What am I then?
TSANGYANG: You are – you are –
NAMSHE: So any cunt can smack my arse?
TSANGYANG: No – no –
NAMSHE: Cut off his head!
TSANGYANG: What?
NAMSHE: Cut off his head! For starters!
TSANGYANG: No – no, I will not –
NAMSHE: Yes!
TSANGYANG: No!
NAMSHE: I say you will!
TSANGYANG: I won’t!
NAMSHE: You must!
TSANGYANG: (ENRAGED) No! No! No! No!
NAMSHE: Kill them all! All those who ever insulted me! If you love me! I will tell you the names!!! Hundreds!!!!
TSANGYANG: No! No! No! Enough! Enough!
NAMSHE: Kill them!!!!
TSANGYANG: I am Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion! When I looked at the suffering of the world, my head split into eleven pieces! Have I come here to cut off heads? Have I? Have I? Fly away, eagle, fly! Spit me out of your eye!
NAMSHE: My love, my love –
TSANGYANG: My love, my love –
THEY KISS.
TSANGYANG: Why did he smack your arse?
ENTER GOTISANG, IN HAT, WITH THURGENYE AND DECKYI.
GOTISANG: Holiness, I went too far! Take this away from me! Wear it yourself, to redeem it!
PUTS THE HAT ON TSANGYANG’S HEAD.
GOTISANG: Because of my attachment to the hat, in my fury I thwacked this wicked hand against the sacred arse of your wife, causing her to squeak like a toy mouse!
TSANGYANG: Gotisang, did she take your hat away? The hat Thurgenye gave you? Namshe –
NAMSHE: I did not know he was bald! He always wore a little cap, mostly –
TSANGYANG: Mostly! So you did know!
NAMSHE: Maybe I knew – but I didn’t know I knew!
TSANGYANG: Gotisang, you are forgiven! Take back the hat. Wear it with pride. Pride in Thurgenye, whom you have raised!
GOTISANG PUTS THE HAT BACK ON.
TSANGYANG: And I say this to you all – from this day on, whoever exposes the bald head of Gotisang, will be smacked upon their bald bottom! But – but – I also say this: that if she respects this law, then no more shall Namshe be spanked! No more! She has entered a new dignity.
NAMSHE: To put it another way – me wife of Dalai Lama. You smack my arse I cut your dick off.
ASSASSINS ROAR, CHARGE IN, CUT DOWN GOTISANG.
ASSASSINS: Die, Thurgenye!
THURGENYE DRAWS HIS SWORD, ASTONISHED, WHIRLS AROUND, KILLS ASSASSIN ONE, ALMOST BY MISTAKE. THE OTHER GETS AWAY.
THURGENYE: Dad! Dad!
GOTISANG: Let’s have a drink, lad!
DIES.
THURGENYE: He’s gone – he’s gone – gone –
TSANGYANG: Thurgenye!
HE EMBRACES THURGENYE. EVERYONE EMBRACES, SOBBING.
THURGENYE: He will come back as a girl! That was his dream. I put my hat on him and he turned into a girl! Oh the hat, the hat killed him! (HE GIVES IT TO NAMSHE.) Gotisang, what will you be like, as a little girl? Look out for her! She’ll be a pickle! She’ll be a filthy little urchin -
TSANGYANG: This was the Khan. He has called. Very well, I will go to him. Love, you must not come!
NAMSHE: Love, I will! I have a plan! Listen to me!
EXEUNT TSANGYANG AND NAMSHE. ASSASSIN GROANS.
THURGENYE: So, still alive then? I’ll kill you again!
DECKYI: No – no –
THURGENYE: Who sent you?
ONE: Sangye –
DIES.
THURGENYE: Not the Khan?
DECKYI: The PM!
THURGENYE: I’ll kill him!
DECKYI: Stop bloody killing everyone!
THURGENYE: It was me he wanted! He fears me!
DECKYI: Why?
THURGENYE: Why? Why? Because I have stepped out of the shadows!
DECKYI: Of your hat –
THURGENYE: I am dangerous, I have ideas, Deckyi!
DECKYI: Like what?
THURGENYE: Write – write a letter to the Khan, warning him that Sangye the PM is planning to poison him –
DECKYI: Where did that come from?
THURGENYE: It’s good!
DECKYI: It’s good but we must ask his Holiness –
THURGENYE: No! He will say no! This is just me. You and me, Deckyi!
DECKYI: But we must tell his Holiness that this wasn’t the Khan –
THURGENYE: No, no, Deckyi, you will wreck my first ever plan! Help me write the letter to the Khan!
DECKYI: Will he believe it?
THURGENYE: Yes! And that will be the end of Sangye!
DECKYI: I can’t let you do this, darling! Think of his Holiness!!
THURGENYE: Yes, no, yes. You’re right, you’re right. It’s crazy! But Deckyi, my dad is dead!
DECKYI: Sweetheart, sweetheart -
FIVE. PALACE THRONEROOM. KHAN. TSERING. SANGYE. AIDE WHISPERS TO THE KHAN.
KHAN: His Holiness is here! Without the woman!
Then he and I are friends again, and heaven
has risen like the moon! Behold its pure beams!
ENTER TSANGYANG.
KHAN: Holiness! You have come, yourself alone!
TSANGYANG: Stopped like an ocean by a reed, my wife
holds herself back with slight considerations,
such as, that if you killed her I would wither.
KHAN: Killed her? Believe me, I do not kill women.
TSANGYANG: Khan, you will do whatever death commands!
You have become death’s subject and right hand!
The knifeman’s being is the knife, the spine
and spirit of the poisoner, his poison.
Death is entirely in the hands of heaven,
of karma – time and place, and what comes after,
not in the killer’s wish. His only power
is to dissolve his own self-rule, by acting
as death’s lieutenant. With his victim’s blood
he signs the tightest contract ever written!
KHAN: Who have I killed?
TSANGYANG: A stupid, drunk old man –
which is to say, mankind!
KHAN: I gave no order!
TSANGYANG: You have forgotten, as the broken eggs
forget the scorpions that crawled out of them!
KHAN: Holiness, do not starve me in the hell
of thinking me a murderer! Oh, what you
think me, I am. And I beg you, therefore,
to think the truth! I did not kill this man,
master! The only thing on earth I long for
is not the death of anyone, but simply
that you should be the one you were before,
not suffering mongrel changes, like us humans.
That we should be the master and the Khan,
that when I look at you I look at heaven,
as once my people stared into the sun
till they were almost blind – but now that brightness
shines through the lantern of a human form,
and we can look at it at least! But clouds
have crept between us. Why was I invited
to rule Tibet? Where is the one who called me?
It is you, master! Be yourself, I beg you!
My heart is hot with mercy when I see you
standing alone in all your old simplicity!
TSANGYANG: (SINGS)
As I was looking to the south
I saw the bright moon rise,
smiling with my true love’s mouth
and shining with her eyes.
TSANGYANG AND KHAN STAND STARING AT EACH OTHER. ENTER GUARD.
GUARD: Khan, an old holy man is here, who says he has the answer to everything!
KHAN: Not now –
TSANGYANG: It could be a god, Khan, don’t turn him away!
KHAN: Alright!
ENTER NAMSHE DISGUISED, WEARING GOTISANG’S HAT AND DOING HER IMITATION OF HIM, DRINKING FROM A BOTTLE. SHE STANDS IN SILENCE, STOOPED.
KHAN: Speak then!
SILENCE.
KHAN: Speak!
SILENCE.
KHAN: What do you want, old man?!
NAMSHE: Khan! I have come to you with one request!
KHAN: What is it?
SHE THROWS OFF HER DISGUISE.
NAMSHE: Kill me!
KHAN: It is her! Tsering! Sangye!
NAMSHE: Kill me! The one you love loves you! The only thing between you is me! Get rid of me!
TSANGYANG: Namshe!
KHAN: What shall I say? What shall I say?
NAMSHE: Or if you can’t kill me, kick me out of the country!
KHAN: (GOING BLIND) Something is happening to my eyes!
NAMSHE: Or if you cannot kill me or kick me out, because you love him and he loves me – then change! Change! You have got to do one of these three things straightaway! KHAN!
KHAN: (GOING DEAF) Something is happening to my ears!
NAMSHE: Right now! I am sorry for you but this is the reality!
SHE STARTS TO DANCE AROUND THE KHAN, FASTER AND FASTER. TSANGYANG CLAPS THE RHYTHM OF HER DANCING. THE KHAN SINKS TO THE FLOOR, DEAF AND BLIND. AN AIDE RUSHES IN AND GRABS HIM, WHISPERS URGENTLY INTO HIS EAR.
KHAN: What? What is that you say?
AIDE WHISPERS AGAIN, MORE URGENTLY.
KHAN: I must be in a dream. Say that again.
AIDE WHISPERS AGAIN.
KHAN: Say it aloud!
AIDE: I cannot, Khan!
KHAN: (TO GUARDS) Arrest the Prime Minister!
GUARDS HESITATE.
SANGYE: Khan?
KHAN: There are allegations! We will investigate them!
TSANGYANG: What are you accusing this poor scholar of?
KHAN: We will investigate these allegations!
TSANGYANG: Khan – if you were a spelling mistake he would cross you out, but – as you are you are safe –
KHAN: We will investigate!
TSANGYANG: Leave it to me! (HE LOOKS SANGYE IN THE EYES.) Innocent!
KHAN: Sadly we can no longer trust your judgement!
TSANGYANG: What?
KHAN: Since you refuse to renounce that!
NAMSHE: Khan! Listen to me!
TSANGYANG: Listen to her, Khan!
KHAN: I cannot see her, I cannot hear her!
TSANGYANG: Sangye, don’t worry, I will get this sorted –
SANGYE: Holiness!
TSANGYANG: Sit tight, Sangye!
NAMSHE: Khan! KHAN!
TSANGYANG: Namshe, my love, come, quickly!
HE MAKES TO LEAVE WITH NAMSHE. THE KHAN PUTS HIS HAND ON HIS SHOULDER. TSANGYANG STOPS.
TSANGYANG: Khan, you have put your hand on my shoulder.
KHAN: Yes.
TSANGYANG: You are stopping me from leaving.
KHAN: Yes I am.
TSANGYANG: Then you have lost your master – forever.
KHAN: Only if you destroy him! (TO GUARDS) We may be in the middle of an uprising! Evacuate the palace – get to the camp! Bring his Holiness, and the Prime Minister!
EXEUNT LEAVING NAMSHE, WHO IS KNOCKED OVER IN THE RUSH. SHE SPRAWLS ON THE FLOOR.
NAMSHE: KHAN! Khan! Listen to me! I exist, you stupid bastard! Listen to me!
SIX. MONGOL CAMP. KHAN, AND MONGOL OFFICER.
KHAN: The Prime Minister must escape.
OFFICER: He shall not escape, Khan!
KHAN: No, no, he must escape.
OFFICER: Khan, he would muster the Tibetan army –
KHAN: He would. And we would destroy it.
OFFICER: I see, I see!
KHAN: The Prime Minister must escape.
OFFICER: And his Holiness?
KHAN: No. Him we keep. We keep him.
SEVEN. SOUNDS OF BATTLE. A MOUNTAIN-SIDE. ENTER TIBETAN SOLDIERS, ONE AND TWO, WOUNDED.
ONE: We broke at their first rush! The whole Tibetan army just fell apart!
TWO: They trained us to do that!
ONE: We shouldn’t have listened!
TWO: They drilled us to lose!
ONE: We trained too well!!
EXEUNT. ENTER DOCTOR DEATH AND SANGYE.
SANGYE: Why did you ever get me out?! You should have left me in the Mongol camp! I am no General!
DOCTOR DEATH: Death is behind us.
SANGYE: I can’t run anymore!
DOCTOR DEATH: Death is ahead of us.
SANGYE: Kill me!
DOCTOR DEATH: Oh no, no, no! This is my treat!
SANGYE: What?
DOCTOR DEATH: To taste this at last, for myself! Prime Minister - death is a private pleasure, like buggery, and all that sucking they do, so they tell me. Do you mind turning away, just for a moment?
SANGYE TURNS AWAY. DOCTOR DEATH DRINKS POISON AND DIES ORGASMICALLY. ENTER TSERING TASHI IN ARMOUR, WITH MONGOL WARRIORS.
TSERING: Heroic editor! How did you escape
from the hard covers of your Mongol vault,
and reconstruct the scrambled alphabet
of the Tibetan army? That was not
characteristic of your cleric spirit!
Even your master, backwards alchemist
who by sick magic changes gold to shit,
though much less bookish, has remained with us.
It must have been this King of dogs, this abbot
of bats, who sniffed and dug and flew you out!
Wasn’t it easy? Think a little bit.
Scholar, you are a dunce! We let him do it!
SANGYE: My darling –
TSERING: Now the mountains turn their heads,
and at the splitting stroke of noon midnight,
words and their meanings all fall out of love.
Darling means death – which is correct because
his Holiness is not his Holiness,
friends are not friends, or Emperors enemies –
SANGYE: What do you mean?
TSERING: Your ghost can whisper this
mantra forever – his unholiness
is an egg-present to the snake of China.
SANGYE: What? What, my love?
TSERING: Yes – give this man my love.
MONGOLS KILL SANGYE.
EIGHT. SQUARE IN THE CITY. KHAN, WITH JIAN, CAPTAIN OF THE CHINESE ESCORT.
KHAN: Keep your men out of the square!
JIAN: There are not many of us – look – only one hundred cavalrymen, as agreed.
KHAN: Keep them out of the square! They are not to appear!
JIAN: They will not!
KHAN: It is possible that – his Holiness will not be going.
JIAN: What? What? What are we here for then? Is this a trap??
KHAN: Ha!
JIAN: We have come to escort his Holiness to the Emperor!
KHAN: Of course, of course!
JIAN: If you decide not to hand him over to us, do you still guarantee our safe passage back out of Tibet?
KHAN: Yes, yes! But I will hand him over –
JIAN: You will? You will?
KHAN: I may not. Stay out of the square! Wait!
JIAN: We will wait – for a short time!
EXIT JIAN. ENTER TSERING.
TSERING: His Holiness is here. Say goodbye.
KHAN: No need. I will not give him to the Chinese.
TSERING: What?
KHAN: Do you really think I will have to do that?? Do you really think he will not renounce that – that - when it comes to the point, the point!!
TSERING: What if he doesn’t?
KHAN: Then he is not the Dalai Lama! There was a mistake! Somewhere the real Sixth is living in purity and prayer just like my master. Or else – there was no Sixth. The Fifth was the greatest and last, this man is just a Tibetan trick. There is no Sixth!
TSERING: What do you believe?
KHAN: I don’t know! I love him, but -
TSERING: You want to give him one last chance?
KHAN: Yes! Yes!
EXIT TSERING. RE-ENTER WITH WARRIORS AND TSANGYANG.
KHAN: Master, I thank you for this trial of faith!
Now we are at the end, the very edge.
Take off the mask, turn back into yourself!
Renounce that woman! I did not believe,
not for one instant, that she was your wife!
How could that be? Now I have played my part,
held you against your will, convinced the Emperor
to take you into banishment, rid Tibet
of you, its heart, forever! As I should,
my every motion prompted by your motions,
so I have acted. Now I crave release
from the next step, there is no turning back
master, from that. What is, to both of us,
a grave game, changes, when you leave Tibet,
into reality – that is what it is
under the sky that rains upon the Emperor.
Say you renounce that creature, who is doubt,
doubt that you are, or ever were, my master.
Say it.
TSANGYANG IS SILENT FOR A LONG MOMENT.
KHAN: Master?
TSANGYANG: No. I love her.
KHAN TURNS AWAY. MONGOL WARRIORS CALL TO THE CHINESE. ENTER JIAN, WITH CHINESE SOLDIERS, WHO TAKE TSANGYANG. SILENCE.
TSERING: So he is gone! There was no Sixth! The Fifth was the greatest and the last! There was no Sixth! Haha!
KHAN SCREAMS, DRAWS HIS SWORD, ATTACKS TSERING. SHE IS WOUNDED, BUT AFTER MOMENTARY ASTONISHMENT FIGHTS BACK. KHAN ROARS. THEY FIGHT, TSERING IS KILLED. KHAN CUTS OFF HER HEAD, HOLDS IT UP, FLINGS IT TO THE GROUND, HOWLING. SOUND OF UPROAR OFF.
WARRIOR: A crowd is attacking the escort!
KHAN: Kill them all! Kill every single Tibetan!
NINE. MONASTERY OUTSIDE LHASA. PHUNTSOG.
PHUNTSOG: We struck at just the right moment! The handover! Don’t say we’ve got no timing! Us? We are the great comedians!
ENTER TSANGYANG, THURGENYE, DECKYI, NAMSHE.
TSANGYANG: Oh I love monasteries!
PHUNTSOG: The monks will fight to the death!
TSANGYANG: Lifetime after lifetime –
PHUNTSOG: And all of Lhasa! They are rising up! They won’t allow his Holiness to be fed to the dragon!
THURGENYE: Why does the Khan want to send you to China?
TSANGYANG: He is impatient for my next rebirth.
THURGENYE: You have to die first!
TSANGYANG: Correct.
DECKYI: Thurgenye has worked out a strategy –
NAMSHE: Tell us, Thurgenye!
THURGENYE: Phuntsog is our General, really –
PHUNTSOG: I am the commissar, you are the Colonel -
THURGENYE: Alright! First, let’s have a drink –
DECKYI: No!
THURGENYE: No – time enough for that, when we are victorious!
NAMSHE: What’s happening now?
THURGENYE: We are surrounded.
TSANGYANG: Who by?
THURGENYE: By the Mongols.
NAMSHE: All of them?
THURGENYE: All the Qosots, say about ten thousand. And their Chinese allies, the ones who want to take his Holiness.
DECKYI: But the Mongols are crap at sieges!
THURGENYE: Yes the Mongols are shit at sieges. And the monastery is strong. It was a castle once.
NAMSHE: A thousand years ago.
TSANGYANG: Who is inside?
THURGENYE: Eight hundred monks –
DECKYI: Sixty-nine ex-prostitutes.
NAMSHE: Sixty-nine?
DECKYI: And us!
TSANGYANG: Thurgenye, what is your plan?
THURGENYE: To wait!
DECKYI: To wait!
THURGENYE: To wait for help to come! The monks can fast. The ex-whores can creep in and out and bring in supplies and intelligence.
DECKYI: Yes.
THURGENYE: Holiness, what do you think?
TSANGYANG: I think you were right, Thurgenye, in the first place.
THURGENYE: What?
TSANGYANG: We should have a drink.
SILENCE. MOMENT OF GENERAL DESPAIR, ESPECIALLY THURGENYE.
THURGENYE: Holiness, can I speak to you for a moment?
THEY GO ASIDE.
TSANGYANG: What is it, brother?
THURGENYE: Holiness, Holiness, it was me, I sent that letter –
TSANGYANG: You sent the letter to the Khan about Sangye?
THURGENYE: I set off all these disasters!
TSANGYANG: You idiot.
THURGENYE: Yes I am.You told me I was Padmasambhava, but I’m just an idiot! What can I do about it??
TSANGYANG: Probably nothing in this lifetime.
THURGENYE: But how can I come back not as an idiot next time?
TSANGYANG: I don’t think you will. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?
THURGENYE: Yes it would.
TSANGYANG: Bless you, Thurgenye.
THURGENYE: Thankyou!
TSANGYANG: Leave me, please, everyone, to speak to Namshe.
EXEUNT ALL BUT TSANGYANG AND NAMSHE. THEY STAND LOOKING AT EACH OTHER. ENTER MONK.
MONK: Holiness, the Khan accepts your offer.
TSANGYANG: Thankyou, Dhargey.
EXIT MONK.
NAMSHE: What did you offer him?
TSANGYANG: To give myself up.
NAMSHE: Yes. Sure.
TSANGYANG: If he will let the rest of you go, and harm no other Tibetan. He will keep his word, but still, things will be difficult. I’m sorry. A little time we have had of singing and kissing. It never lasts very long. Now things will turn savage again. Listen. When I am gone, the Khan will choose a new Dalai Lama, the Seventh, my rebirth. But it will not be me.
NAMSHE: No.
TSANGYANG: It will be a false Dalai Lama.
NAMSHE: I will kill him, this Khan. Don’t you worry! He won’t live a week, after you’re gone! He won’t live a day! I gave him his chance!
TSANGYANG: No need. I have been in contact with the Dzunghars.
NAMSHE: Who?
TSANGYANG: Mongols, but enemies of the Qosots. Stronger than them. Just as the Fifth invited this Khan, so I have invited the Khan of the Dzunghars to rule Tibet when I am gone, under the guidance of my next rebirth. That Khan will drive out this Khan, and his false Dalai Lama with him.
NAMSHE: How will we know you?
TSANGYANG: You know where I will be reborn. It is in the song.
NAMSHE: Now I understand.
TSANGYANG: Go there, please, and look after me, when I am a child.
NAMSHE: I will.
TSANGYANG: And I will look after you, when you are an old lady.
NAMSHE: Tsangyang, why did you come to our house, why? If you had never entered Namshe’s Celestial Boudoir, you wouldn’t now be going to China to die – all alone, my darling!
TSANGYANG: I was told to look for my love in a house of joy.
NAMSHE: Yeah! It took you awhile!
TSANGYANG: It was like looking for a needle in a stack of them. One particular one.
NAMSHE: You spent a ton of loot.
TSANGYANG: Robbed the Treasury!
NAMSHE: You would leave no stone unturned, no tart untasted –
TSANGYANG: Do you have to remind me?!
NAMSHE: Many sad songs you sang –
TSANGYANG: And then suddenly –
NAMSHE: Just when you had almost given up –
TSANGYANG: I stepped into Namshe’s Celestial -
NAMSHE: Phuntsog was not best pleased!
TSANGYANG: You tried to run away –
NAMSHE: I did try!
TSANGYANG: But you came back again.
NAMSHE: We have walked by the river, you and I. A few times. That was nice.
TSANGYANG: We will again.
NAMSHE: A lady and a child.
TSANGYANG: You’ll hold my hand tightly.
NAMSHE: I have kissed you.
TSANGYANG: Once or twice!
NAMSHE: You it was I kissed.
TSANGYANG: Yes it was me.
NAMSHE: No more.
TSANGYANG: No.
NAMSHE: We will walk side by side, very serious, along the river. Me a lady, you a child, the Seventh Dalai Lama. What if they won’t let you near me?!
TSANGYANG: I will escape from them!
NAMSHE: All over again.
TSANGYANG: I will!
NAMSHE: He runs towards me, the little boy, out of breath, very serious, having escaped. I hold his hand, we walk side by side along exactly the same river.
TSANGYANG: That is how it will be!
NAMSHE: Now I am old and you are a young man, the Dalai Lama. You come and see me. You hold my hand. I am dying, I drift away.
TSANGYANG: We meet again and again!
NAMSHE: Do we? Do we? Do we?
EXIT TSANGYANG. NAMSHE SITS VERY STILL. ENTER THURGENYE, DECKYI, PHUNTSOG.
THURGENYE: Where is his Holiness?
PHUNTSOG: What have you done with him? Namshe!
NAMSHE: (SINGS)
Here I may not remain,
where the eagles are.
Lend me your wings, white crane,
to fly to Litang, not far.
DECKYI STARTS TO CRY.
PHUNTSOG: Namshe! Namshe! Namshe!
THURGENYE STARTS TO CRY.
NAMSHE: (SINGS)
Here I may not remain,
where the eagles are.
Lend me your wings, white crane,
to fly to Litang, not far.
PHUNTSOG: (FURIOUS) Namshe! Namshe! Namshe!