Heinrich Harrer

摘要

When Heinrich Harrer gazed for the first time on Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in 1946, he noticed especially the roof-pinnacles of the Potala Palace, gleaming with gold. After 21 months on the run from a British prison camp, having crossed 65 mountain passes and 1,000 miles of territory more than 16,000 feet high, it seemed like a glimpse of Paradise. He had travelled by yak and on foot; he was now verminous and starving, in rags of sheepskin, crippled with sciatica from sleeping on frozen ground, and without a rupee to his name. But gold shone ahead of him. He little knew that up on that roof, from time to time, a boy of 11 would wander up and down. The youngster had an excellent collection of field glasses and telescopes, and these he would train on the town, watching people. When his subjects-for he was their god, and they his worshippers—realised he was observing them, they would try to remove themselves from his field of vision. But, if only from a distance, the young Dalai Lama would try to catch them. His life otherwise was study and prayer, in dark rooms, with few visitors. The roof was his window on the world.