A foraging visit to a monastery was often marked by several phases, in which the relations between visitor and visited underwent considerable change. The officer in charge of the foraging party would ride up to the monastery with his escort. They would have been seen coming, and after a few signs of hurrying and preparation and the fluttering of several red monastic skirts in the breeze, a small select deputation of monks would descend from the main building to meet the intruders. This deputation would first and foremost bring with it a white muslin rag as an emblem of peace. Along with the rag would be carried peace-offerings, of which the most common would be a tray of whole-wheat parched and salted, or a small basket of eggs, which, on nearer acquaintance later in the day, would usually be found to be neither new-laid nor fresh, but simply 'eggs.'
With the aid of an interpreter a pleasant conversation would ensue. The officer would then probably produce his hand-camera and snapshot the head lama, after which he would try to get to business. He would ask how much of such and such article the monastery could sell us. The monks would shake their heads, flutter their skirts, jerk up their thumbs, and in a shrill falsetto repeat the word 'Menduk' (which means 'nothing'). After a little more parley they would confess to having, say, twenty bagfuls of tsampa or whatever was required. Even the naming of a high rate and the jingling of a bag of rupees in their faces would not make them raise the above figure. You would then, if you were the officer, proceed within the monastery and demand to be shown the said twenty bagfuls. You would be led with great pomp and circumstance upstairs and along dark passages and past rows of cells till you were ushered into a small pantry or storeroom, where, with a gesture of pompous satisfaction at having so completely fulfilled your requirements, the head monk would point to a few handfuls of tsampa lying at the bottom of a small elongated wooden trough. You would feel a little annoyance at this, and show signs of it. The head monk, as by a happy inspiration, would suddenly beckon you to accompany him, and, after another long meandering through the monastery, would lead you to a large doorway into a large darkened hall, which, when your eyes became accustomed to the dim light, you would recognise as the main 'gompa' or temple of the monastery. Here his hand would steal into yours, which he would caress, while with his free hand he pointed to the chief image of Buddha, which he was apparently wishing you to admire. Of course you admired him, but you wanted tsampa, and this was obviously merely a ruse to detain you from your quest. British choler would then rise, and, going out of the temple with somewhat irreverent haste, you would begin to express yourself forcibly in terms which you made the interpreter translate. The interpreter had probably an axe of his own to grind, and it was doubtful how many of your trenchant phrases, even if fit to repeat in a monastery, got actually translated. But after a great show of meaning business, and a few threats of stronger measures in the background, you probably got, say, fifty maunds of tsampa from a proper storeroom which the lamas had previously refrained from showing you. A little later a few more threats and the threatening crack of a whip round the head of a 'chela' or two would send the monks all skipping about in trepidation, and the door of the main storeroom would be opened to you, in which you would find, it might be, two hundred maunds (or three days' supply for the force) of the desired article. After this you were all friends. No ill-will was borne on either side. The junior monks or 'chelas' would assist in bagging the flour, and in carrying it down to the place where the mules were waiting for it. The money would be doled out and counted with the greatest good humour, there would be another proffer of parched wheat and rotten eggs, and you would depart with the head lama's blessing.
After one such visit I dreamed a dream. I knocked in a boisterous swash-buckling manner at Tom Gate, the main gate of my old college—Christ Church. Behind me, stretching up St. Aldate's to Carfax, were a string of pack mules, fitted with empty bags, forage nets, and loading ropes. The gate was opened by those of the porters whom I knew years ago. One, an old soldier, saluted me. Then it occurred to me that I was a Japanese officer, and that in the year 2004 the Japanese army were invading England. I was at the head of a foraging party, and we had come to loot the House. We had a fine time. We started of course by ringing up the Dean. He too blessed me, and when I asked him for some of that old Burgundy that I know was a speciality of the senior common-room cellar, he showed me round the cathedral and pointed out the restored shrine of St. Frideswide. This was not what I wanted, and I told him so. I brought the mules in from outside, and set them to graze on the neat plots of turf that encircle 'Mercury' the fountain, and told him they must all go away laden with the good things of the Christ Church larder and cellar, at which he protested. Some undergraduates emerged in cap and gown from a lecture room and began to show fight. We drove them into Peckwater at the point of the bayonet.
Then the Steward and the Junior Censor appeared, and the latter began to reason with us in what I considered a tone unbecoming to a private person resident in an invaded country. I raised a heavy knout which I carried, and was going to flog the Junior Censor where he stood, when the Steward intervened, and, giving hurried orders to all the scouts and porters that stood around watching the scene, soon produced the finest store of provisions that we had met with in all our campaigning. The mules were marched out of Tom Gate, up St. Aldate's, along the Corn and out to Port Meadow, where we were encamped, laden with sirloins of beef, with turkeys, with geese and ducks and fowls and pheasants, with beer in the barrel and port wine in the case, while I remember taking special personal possession of a mould of 'aspic of larks' which I fancied for my supper.
But then I woke, and by doing so felt done out of that aspic of larks, which would have been a pleasant change from the fare of those days.
Quite a silly dream of course; but on recalling it with my waking thoughts, and feeling sympathy for the Dean and students of Christ Church, I felt some too for those poor lamas whom we had invaded the day before.
CHAPTER XX
REACHING LHASSA: SUPPLIES: MESSING: THE LHASSA BAZAAR
The mode of our arrival in the environs of Lhassa was something of an anti-climax. We had marched four hundred miles, fought a few fights, and provided ourselves throughout our journey with the necessaries of life, much against the will of the enemy, and here we were at Lhassa, where an exciting climax to our march, such as a good fight in the Lhassa plain, would have been highly artistic. Here stood the Debun monastery, and there further on the Sara monastery, full of monks who at that time hated us. A few good shells in those monasteries would have set the monks buzzing in consternation like swarming bees disturbed. There glistened in the sun the gilded roof of the chief astrologer's house, that would have made grand loot and have looked so well in the British Museum. There ahead of us rose majestically on its conical hill the Potá-Là, that pièce de résistance which would have really taxed our efforts, and by its side on a similar hill the Medical College, challenging us by its proud eminence to seize it. But such wild schemes were not to be realised. These ways were not our ways. We marched quietly into a swampy camp, sat down, and began to negotiate. Those that negotiated were busy men, for the amount of talking that the representatives of the Tibetan Government got through, and that needed listening to, before anything was settled, must have been immense. The rest of us were not often very busy. 'Those also serve who only stand and wait' was our motto.