Craving (40 page)

“Yes.”

Is there a metaphysical website that you all leave personal ads in, because I need to get rid of an old freezer and the futon in my attic.

Suddenly, the old man turned at looked directly at me, as if he could plainly find my outline in space. It unnerved me, because somehow, instinctively, I knew he was just a plain, old, garden variety human being.

“You’re the one they need to speak to,” Arthur replied.

What? Me? How can he see me?

“He is very insightful. They’re waiting, Lilith. Tell them what you have to say.”

What do I have to say?
I mused, joyfully confused.

“Tell them about the man in the tree,” he prodded.

If I had been standing there, I would probably have choked on my own spit, but in the
jhana
, it seemed like a perfectly normal leap of understanding for Arhtur to make, even though it did surprise me a bit.

I can’t keep any secrets from you, can I?

Arthur smiled. “No, but knowing you, that is probably fortunate.”

Are you calling me a trouble-maker?

Arthur shrugged and gestured to the old man, who was still staring fixedly at my lack of a position. He said something. Arthur translated.

“Have you seen him?”

I am in a place they call the Vihara. I think it’s out in the grasslands. They just introduced me to a man who doesn’t speak. He’s wearing a golden robe.

What the old man said next, needed no translation. “Ananda!” he cried happily and placed his hands in a prayerful position. I would have chuckled if I could have. I wondered if Unger had felt deflated when Arthur told him that he was not Ananda.

I got the impression Eva had seen him before too. Do you know anything about that?

“Yes, the Sangha arranged meetings between your sister and Ananda, but always at a different location, and until now, we had no idea where they kept him.” I thought of Arthur’s questions to me the last time I had spied on him. He had asked me if I had met anyone else, because he had known Ananda was there somewhere, waiting to be found.
And you came here, knowing I would be able to tell them what they wanted to know, because the Sangha would try the same thing with me!

“Yes,” he replied unabashedly. The conversation with the old man continued until their business concluded. Happy and supported on both sides, the old man puttered away, too excited to bother with an immortal and his imaginary friend.

Arthur turned back to the statue with a tiny shake of his head.

What?

“He will not get what he wants.”

What’s that?

Arthur sighed. “To see Ananda again, before he dies. We both know this is not a possibility.”

Again? And how do you know the old man won’t see Ananda again?
I protested, thinking that if a man had lived that long, he at least deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Because we both know when he will die,” Arthur disclosed, glancing my way.

What? You can
tell,
like, the exact date and time?

“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly.

Oh. Well, that sucks.

His left brow twitched. “It
is
unfortunate. He loves Ananda very much.”

I scanned the room.
So these are the Guardians who paid Eva?

“Yes.”

Was she hired to find Ananda? And why are they so obsessed with him? Is he their leader?
A sudden thought came to me. Ananda had sat, in fervid meditation, concentrating on the single purpose: to attain enlightenment so that he could recite. Had he, like Ursula, gotten
exactly
what he’d wished for? And if Jinx was right, about it all being Ananda’s fault, then how could he too possess a coping mechanism? If the idea that triggered such horrible transformations was built into the sutras Ananda created, how could he be affected by it?

Could even holding the thought in your head be enough? It was concerning, especially since I had no idea what the thought was. Imagining it worming its way through my personality, eating away at the core of me, was terrifying. My pity for the Sangha grew.

His memory,
I said to Arthur,
it wasn’t just an irenic memory. It wasn’t human.

“You are becoming quite wise in your immortality, my dear. It is true. Ananda has been cursed with a perfect memory that he cannot escape, as the human mind can only hold so much. When the Sangha kidnapped him, they endangered him in a way they cannot imagine.”

Kidnapped?

“The man who died in Sam’s shop was one of his handlers,” he explained. “After Ananda recited the sutras, he saw how things had changed. Eventually, he went out on his own. He lived in monasteries and such, but was always followed by those who knew who he was. When he decided to attain the
Parinirvana
. . .”

What’s
Parinirvana
?
I asked.

“Some would say it is the final level of the
jhana
,” Arthur clarified doubtfully. “The final Nirvana where death and life entangle. A stage beyond death.”

Beyond death? How can an immortal go beyond death? Isn’t he already?

He crossed his arms. “It is perhaps not real death, but simply seems like it to all those watching. It is said to be impossible to return from, that the body lays in a deathlike state for many days, immune to decay. And then the person moves on. If Ananda achieved it and returned, he would be the only one. In any case, Ananda began a new life. Only to be surrounded once more by those who came to revere him for his harmonious character.”

How ironic.

“Indeed. Eventually, a group formed around him, his own circle of followers, and they set about taking care of him, just as the Sangha had done for the Buddha. Eventually, as these enterprises do, the circle grew, organized, laid out goals. However, their mission is one of watchfulness; they are record keepers, an entire society of rememberers, and because Ananda believes the Buddha did not desire followers, he refuses to aid their enlightenment.”

I could see then why Arthur was waiting. The little old man was returning, making his slow way across the lovely garden, over a tiny decorative bridge that arched over a small stream. The poor gentleman; as much as he loved Ananda, he did not merit being saved. It was heartbreaking. I realized how blessed I was not to sit at Death’s table and challenge him to a game of backgammon.

So they’re
all
still human? They’re not like the Sangha?

“They live and die, and over time, have come to revere Ananda’s immortality to such a degree, that he was ensconced in their shrines and temples. He is a saint to them and cannot ever be free of it.”

Why?

“If he were to go into the world, he would be confronted with a great many things it would be impossible for him to forget.”

They protect him from himself.

“Yes. To this day, Ananda is moved to safe houses every lifetime or so, the latest being a Vihara in the Texas desert. The monastery is always the same in every way, and because of this there is nothing new for him to remember, thus he is not buried by the weight of time.”

Why did they have to move him? Why not keep him in the same monastery?

“At first, to benefit from his teachings. However, most recently, he was moved for his safety. He was being tracked.”

Other monks trailed behind the elder, obviously anxious to speak to Arthur, but respectfully matching their pace to his slower one.

Tracked by the Sangha.

The old man lifted a hand and swatted at the air, shoving a greeting at Arthur as if it was too much of a burden. Arthur gave a graceful reply. “Yes.”

Then they knew what he had done?

“Sometime in the last century, the man who imprisoned you came to believe that Ananda held the key.”

Karl? Who is he? Did you know him?

“Not well. He was a
srotapanna
, of the outer circle, but he is not the same man he once was. He achieved right liberation long after the Sangha was already formed.”

Through the course of their quest to find a way to reverse-engineer their cure, the Sangha had begun testing the sutras, seeing what they did to regular people. It was only
after
those people kept leaping into traffic that it was the sutras themselves that were tainted. They must have realized it was not the Buddha’s fault, it was Ananda’s. If they had found out Ananda was still alive, what would they do?

“After the Sangha targeted Ananda, he was brought to the United States, sometime in the seventies.”

I tried to picture him waiting in line for passport photos but couldn’t.
And you followed to see what would happen.

The group of men had reached the door and Arthur turned away from me. Words were exchanged and I realized that I was being introduced when they all turned toward my position in space and bowed as a group.

They’re awfully friendly,
I mused.

“You are very important to them.”

Ah.
There was a lot of that going around.

The escort extended his hand. In it was a stack of bedding and a key. Arthur took the items, turned back to the men, and bowed. He said thank you in their language and then he turned and walked away, pulling me in his wake. The monks watched him go, and though he did not turn to see their faces, I could tell that the older they were, the sadder they seemed.

“Ananda was moved from place to place each time he was found, and for a time, that was enough. But the Sangha is persistent,” Arthur went on, saying nothing of the arrangement that had been reached. “They did not act until they knew Eva was ready.”

Ready . . .
I felt the shimmer of anger distort my focus.

“Do you remember, several years ago, when a Buddhist temple in Texas was burned down by what the police suspected were neo-Nazis?”

Of course, it was in every paper and news program
. I could still see the spire flaming like a giant torch, and the news woman’s face as she detailed that all the monks had been lined up against a wall and executed. Graffiti had been discovered on several unburned walls and a group of local hatemongers had been rounded up and convicted, though they denied their guilt. It was one of the cases that helped instantiate the Federal Hate Crime laws, ensuring that people who committed such racially motivated offenses in the future, were held accountable in the highest of courts.

Then the Nazis
were
innocent!

“In many ways, desiring a death is the same as committing a murder,” Arthur explained. I watched him walk through the buildings, giant sparse rooms without doors, on his way to some place within. “The man who died in the shop was not at the temple when it was destroyed. He returned in time to see them taking Ananda away. He followed them here, but being one man, he had no recourse against their powers.”

They got to him before he could save Ananda.

“And when he needed help the most, he found me.”

The knight in shining armor,
I finished.

As he passed several groups of monks, doing chores or yoga, they bowed to him, moved out of his way, seemed almost to clear his path. It was how I imagined kings being greeted, but Arthur paid no attention to it. I understood why, but his gentle correction was belied by the unyielding blue shards in his eyes. He disliked the attention paid to him; he preferred me and my careless humor.

“You see me perfectly, my dear,” he said quietly.

Which one of the names on Jinx’s list had been Arthur’s? I wondered what his real name might have been, the first words uttered over his head as his mother cradled him in her arms. What would it sound like, if he said it? I wondered if my constant affection bothered him, if it made him uncomfortable.

“It does not,” he whispered.

Good, because I will never stop displaying it even if it does,
I tossed at him flirtatiously.

“I will allow it,” was his gentle reply. Back against the massive metal door that sealed me into my charnel house, my body blushed. But there was no time for silly things like that. I had to figure out what I should do, and it all came back to the silent man in the tree.

Memory, when I considered it in light of Ananda’s gift, truly seemed a curse. Humans, blessedly ignorant of so much, spent a great deal of time chunking data together, linking miniscule thoughts to larger ones. They busied themselves, creating rafts for ideas, rather than allow them all to slosh around between their ears. If a person could not ever forget, if when they closed their eyes, they could see every face and name, every moment of time, every single pang of regret, what would it be like? Tiny moments, stacked like cordwood, crushing him flat; it was no wonder Ananda liked to hang upside down and play in sand.

What was he like; Ananda, I mean?

Arthur’s mouth split into a grin. “Delightful. His name means ‘bliss,’ after all.”

What did the Buddha think of him?

“
The Buddha loved him dearly.”

Weren’t they relatives?

“Cousins, and later, Ananda became the Buddha’s personal attendant. They were always together, and often the Buddha allowed him to handle his personal business, even teach for him.”

He picked his way through the men in prayer, stepping carefully so as not to disturb them, making his way to a door. I hovered beside him, like a balloon on a string.

“Ananda was the storyteller,” he continued, “always amusing us with his humor and ease. He had a way of making anyone feel comfortable, and a method of correcting faults that never caused a person to feel mocked. He was gentle and always brought a smile to my face. There was never a person as charismatic as he.”

It was the first time I had ever heard Arthur speak of those days, when the
dharma
had not been his alone. I supposed it to be part of Ananda’s lingering charm that his memory alone could sweep away such troubles. I recalled the way his gaze caused a chain reaction of warmth and relaxation through my anxious body, making it that much easier to control myself and defy Karl’s gift. Ananda was a healer of the first order, and no doubt, it sprang from his natural amiability and love.