The Ninth Buddha by Daniel Easterman Page B

that lingers on all it touches.
    In a dark-panelled hall hung with the portraits of patrons and pious mottoes edged in funereal black, Christopher was introduced to the children.   Rows of silent, impassive faces stared up at him as he stood, embarrassed and awkward, on a low platform at the end of the hall.   The girls were of all ages, but all wore the same drab uniform and the same dull look of incomprehension and sullen endurance on their faces.   Most appeared to be Indian, but there were Nepalese, Tibetans, and Lepchas among them.   Christopher noticed a few of mixed parentage, Anglo-Indians, and two girls who seemed to be of European origin. There were rather over one hundred in all.
    To Christopher, the most dreadful thing about the place was the temperature: it was neither uncomfortably cold nor was it comfortably warm.   Old pipes brought a certain warmth up from an ancient boiler hidden in the bowels of the place, but not so much that one could feel relaxed nor so little that one could wrap up sensibly against the chill.   And the children themselves, he noticed, looked neither well fed nor thin.   He guessed that they did not go hungry but probably never felt that they had eaten quite enough.
    It was a world of limbo, where these orphans, neither wholly abandoned nor yet wholly loved, lived an in-between existence that would forever determine the tenor and the inner structure of their lives.
    “Mr.   Wylam has come to us recently from the distant shores of England,” Carpenter began to intone in a pulpit voice.
    “He came among us to seek tidings of his son, a child of tender years taken from him by dreadful circumstance.   Which of us here has not prayed in the dark watches of the night for a loving father who might come searching after us, to carry us home?   Which of us has not yearned for such a love as this man’s, that he comes willingly and alone across the globe for the sake of his only child, to return him to the loving bosom of his family?
    “How well this brings to mind the words of our Lord, in that sweet parable of the father and his sons: “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”   Perhaps in Mr.   Wylam’s journey there may be a parable for us here.   For there is a father searching for us, longing for us to return to him, contrite and full of repentance.   And he will travel the lengths of the earth to reach us.”
    Carpenter paused for breath.   It sounded as though he was just getting into his stride.   The girls looked resigned.   They did not cough or fidget or shuffle their feet as English children would have done.   Clearly, they had long ago decided that being preached to was as normal a part of life as eating or sleeping.   Christopher had to struggle to stop himself yawning.
    “Mr.   Wylam, our hearts go out to you in this, your hour of need, as yours, I doubt not, has in the past gone out to the widows and orphans of this godless and wasted land.   These are the children of idolatry, Mr.   Wylam, the children of sin.   Their mothers and fathers were but heathen cannibals, but through the grace of our Lord, they have been brought out of the darkness and into the light.   I ask you, then, to join with us in prayer, that our spirits may be united in the presence of our all-merciful and loving Saviour.   Let us pray.”
    Like mechanical dolls, the uncomplaining rows closed their eyes and bowed their heads.   Their necks and eyelids seemed fashioned to the task.
    “Merciful Father, Who know est our sins and our transgressions,
    miserable sinners that we are, look down this night, we beseech
    Thee, upon Thy servant Christopher .
    And so the evening began.
    The meal was a cabbagy affair with some sort of gristle-laden meat I .   that had long ago given up its struggle to maintain any sense either of identity or taste.   Moira Carpenter was less a hostess presiding , over her table than an undertaker directing the obsequies