The Assassin Lotus

by David Angsten

  He demonstrated: two diagonally, two straight.

  What the hell could that mean? We ate our plov, staring mutely at the camel.

  “That damn thing almost got me killed,” I said.

  “Many Afghans as well,” Anand said. “When the Taliban ruled their country, along with music and dancing, playing chess was strictly forbidden.”

  “Amazing,” I said. “Who knew chess was the gateway to sex and rock ‘n’ roll?”

  Our eyes fell again on the camel. Anand asked, “Why do you suppose your friend wanted you to have it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Baghestani was researching a book on Tamerlane. Woolsey seemed to think the connection with soma had something to do with his tomb.”

  “His tomb,” Anand repeated. “That’s why you’re traveling to Samarkand.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s all we’ve got to go on.”

  Anand sipped his wine, contemplating the camel. “I was born near Kathmandu, in the mountains of Nepal,” he said, “but in my youth I became a soldier in India, and for most of my life my home has been in Delhi. The terror of Tamerlane is well-remembered there. And the date: December 17, 1398. That was the day his army of 70 thousand soldiers approached the city gates. Twenty thousand had frozen to death crossing the Hindu Kush. The Conqueror of the World had come to teach the Sultan of Delhi a lesson. The Muslim sultan, he asserted, had been too tolerant of his Hindu subjects. Tamerlane would show no such mercy.

  “The Sultan of Delhi knew the threat he faced. All across Asia, Tamerlane had left the cities that resisted him piled high with corpses and cemented towers of skulls. On his march across the Punjab toward Delhi, he put whole cities and towns to the sword, burning them to the ground, driving all before him, leaving behind a vast swath of death and destruction. Those who fled were captured and beaten. A hundred thousand Hindus taken in chains were mercilessly slaughtered to hasten his march. When finally the Scourge of God reached Delhi—the ancient treasure house of the Indian empire—he set up his encampment and prepared to take the prize.

  “In response, the Sultan assembled his army: 10,000 horses, and at the forefront of his massive infantry, 120 war elephants. Armored in mail and metal plate, their tusks lashed with poisoned scimitars, with flame-throwers and crossbowmen mounted in castle-like turrets on their backs, the war elephants struck fear in Tamerlane’s men—they’d never seen anything like it.”

  I thought of the elephant chess piece I’d seen on the board in Baghestani’s office. No doubt the sight of those exotic beasts had been Tamerlane’s inspiration.

  Anand picked up the camel chess piece. “Tamerlane had only his camels. Skittish and unruly, they were clearly no match for the mighty war elephants. But Tamerlane knew the one thing to which even the most powerful beasts on earth were not immune: fear. And so he turned his cowering camels into instruments of terror.

  “He had his men load the camels with bales of hay and set the hay on fire. Roaring in pain, the camels raced frantically toward the advancing Indian army. Facing the strange spectacle of flaming camels charging toward them, the elephants panicked and turned to flee, sparking a thunderous stampede and trampling the Sultan’s soldiers. The Indian army was quickly routed.

  “Tamerlane entered the city, and three days of the bloodiest of massacres began—soldiers, old men, women, children—with tens of thousands more forced into slavery. Delhi was sacked and left in ruins. Ninety captured elephants were loaded with treasures and set off on a great procession back toward Samarkand.”

  Anand lowered the camel chess piece back down on the table. “It took more than a hundred years for Delhi to recover.”

  Holding our empty forks in hand, Phoebe and I had stopped eating. The sphinx-like camel seemed somehow different now, its darkly impenetrable jade imbued with a kind of malevolent power.

  The power, I thought, of fear.

  I asked if there was any more wine.

  65.

  The Flower Sermon

  BY THE TIME WE FINISHED OUR SECOND BOTTLE, the dining car had quieted some and a number of tables had emptied. The soldiers’ raucous poker game had grown dull and somber with drink, streams of children no longer terrorized the aisle, and we could finally hear the crooning of the hayseed minstrels plucking their gourd-like lutes.

  Anand opened a dessert wine labeled A Thousand and One Nights, which he said had been produced at a winery in Bukhara. Phoebe expressed some doubt about this and the two began another wine debate. As this wound on, I retrieved from my pack Dan’s Buddha Book drawings and laid them out in rows on the table for Anand.

  He recognized them immediately as a mandala. “Tibetan, I would think. But unusual,” he said. “The remarkable profusion of figures. And the central core is usually a square fortress, not a circle.”

  “Someone else told me that, too,” I said.

  He picked up the drawing of the Buddha and studied it. “Also, this combination of gestures is unusual.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “These ritual gestures are called mudras. Each one has a specific symbolic meaning. You are perhaps familiar with the Namasté mudra?”

  “Oh. Sure.” I pressed my hands together, palms touching, fingers pointing skyward as in prayer. Bowing slightly to him, I said, “Namasté.” It was the standard formal greeting in India and much of the Hindu and Buddhist world.

  “The word Namasté is derived from the Sanskrit,” Anand said. “It translates roughly as ‘I bow to you.’ Together with the mudra, it means: I honor the place within you where, when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.”

  Phoebe lowered her wine. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Or delusional,” I said. “But maybe it’s just me—I mean you. I mean us.”

  “Yes,” Anand laughed. “But which is the delusion?” He held out his glass: “To the one of us!”

  We clinked. As one. And drank as three.

  Anand set the drawing down for all of us to see. The Buddha was holding up the lotus flower while reaching down with his right hand to touch his fingers to the ground. Anand pointed to the right hand. “This is the Bhumisparsha mudra. It shows the Buddha at the moment of his awakening, summoning the earth to witness his enlightenment. The gesture represents his unshakable nature.”

  “It’s as if he’s in heaven,” Phoebe said, “but still living here, in touch with the earth.”

  “Wonderfully put,” Anand said. He pointed to the Buddha’s left hand. “Here, the upraised palm is held outwards, with the thumb and index finger forming a circle—what Westerners call the ‘OK’ sign. With the Buddha the circle means ‘giving refuge.’ It’s closely related to the Abhaya mudra, which may be the oldest gesture of all: the open hand held up at the level of the heart in a sign of greeting or friendship. Usually it’s the right hand, the weapon-bearing hand. The gesture is meant to dispel fear.”

  “But here the fingers hold up the lotus,” I said.

  “The implication seems clear,” Phoebe said. “The lotus bestows fearlessness.”

  “‘Divine Soma,’” I quoted from the Rig Veda. “‘Urged on by thee may we overcome even mighty foes in battle.’”

  “Yes, refuge from fear,” Anand said. “But there is also another possible meaning, one that complements the enlightenment gesture of the right hand. Depictions of the Buddha holding a lotus flower are often ascribed to a teaching of the Awakened One known as the Flower Sermon.”

  “I’ve heard of this,” Phoebe said. “Isn’t it called ‘the wordless sermon?’ In China and Japan, they claim it’s the origin of Zen.”

  “It is perhaps only a legend,” Anand said. “But it is said that one day, toward the end of his long life, the Buddha arose before his assembled throng of disciples and held up a lotus flower. He spoke no words; the flower itself transmitted the essence of his wisdom. Enlightenment came, not through scripture or philosophy, but through a direct experience—a deep realization—of the m
iracle of existence.”

  “Tathata,” Phoebe said. “In English it’s translated as ‘suchness’ or ‘thatness.’ It’s the transcendent reality that shines through the ordinary world of appearances.”

  “Zen aims to awaken this awareness,” Anand said. “It’s not about thinking the right thoughts or gaining some knowledge beyond us. It is simply experiencing the miracle of what is right in front of our eyes.”

  As he spoke, I was staring into my amber glass of A Thousand and One Nights, contemplating the miracle, the “suchness” of the wine. It just so happens it truly was a remarkable thing to behold. The clear glass goblet, with its myriad reflections, was itself a visual spectacle and a marvel of lucid design. It seemed the perfect instrument to display what lay inside: an enclosed, miniature, sunset world, a windless ocean of wine; a crumb of cork floating like a microscopic ship; one translucent, planet-like bubble orbiting the sea’s round edge; and finally, the hue of the sea itself, a luscious honey-yellow, glowing with a radiance all its own, as if the crushing of the dusty, vine-ripened grapes had set free captured sunlight.

  This is what the old Dutch masters observed when painting their gorgeous still lives, what art lovers flock to museums to see, crowding in close for a view.

  A golden drink in a glass on a table.

  “It looks so real,” we say—that is, so replete with “suchness.” The painted wineglass taunts the eye. It seems to contain some mystery. Look closely, it says. Look carefully. If your eyes can pierce the veil of maya, you might just glimpse the truth.

  This put me in mind of that other golden drink and those venerating verses in the Rig Veda—hymns of praise for the sacred soma juice, elixir of the Aryan gods. If a drunk like me could glimpse the eternal in a glass of fermented grape juice, then surely those horse-herding cowboy warriors could have gleaned it from the “suchness” of soma.

  Exhilarating, intoxicating, the mighty, golden-hued showerer of blessings. Pleasant to the taste, dripping with milk, thou flowest like horses let loose in battle without reins, without chariots, unharnessed. Flow for us, o conqueror of cattle, of chariots, of gold, of heaven, of water, of thousand-fold wealth, who the gods have made for their drinking, most sweet-flavored, invigorating, dripping, honeyed, causing happiness—

  These were more than drinking songs to buck up soldiers’ courage. Soma was the Aryans’ Holy Hooch, their version of the Lamb of God bleeding into the Grail. One inspired the Rig Veda hymns; the other—three millennia later—inspired the St. Mathew Passion. Though clearly incomparable in musical terms, both compositions were a means of transportation, vehicles designed to enchant and enthrall, to carry one out of one’s limited self, to penetrate the veil of sound and reach beyond the reach of thought into the realm of silence.

  Silence.

  “Jack?”

  It was Phoebe.

  I had lost myself in the glass of wine—a glass I’d apparently emptied.

  Anand lifted the bottle. “More?”

  “Please.”

  He filled my glass and offered a toast. “Tat tvam asi.”

  We clinked and sipped. I had no idea what he had just said; at that point I didn’t really care. Call me a drunk or call me a sage, or call me a drunken sage, but in that delirious moment, sipping wine on a train with the woman I loved and this spy who expounded like a guru, the fellow known as Jack Duran had temporarily vanished, levitating up from the dining car toward some cloudland paradise, a place where bald-headed bodhisattvas floated by on lotus thrones, and soma flowed in golden streams that ran like wild horses. Beyond the wastes of Bactria, beyond Tamerlane’s teetering towers of skulls and Stalin’s dried-up cotton fields, this hidden paradise had appeared out of nowhere—a breezy green oasis, faint as a mirage. Long ago, those horse-herding Aryans had stumbled on this bottomless watering hole and found themselves invigorated. I’d caught only a glimpse of it, but now I felt determined to find out if it was real.

  “More?”

  “Please.”

  Anand grinned and poured, and the three of us once again clinked our golden goblets, a silent toast of camaraderie. Phoebe and I were unaware at the time that the Indian intelligence agent, while happily replenishing our glasses, was not really doing any drinking himself. Cheery as he was, he was sober.

  I have little memory of what happened after that, though I do recall Anand raking winnings off the poker table, and Phoebe and I singing Suspicious Minds with the two lute pluckers from Urgut. At some point the charming agent kindly offered us his sleeping compartment, and before long I found myself wobbling after Phoebe down the long, snaking aisles of the train. My hands kept inadvertently touching down on shoulders, waking wrathful travelers from their sleep. Phoebe tossed several giddy glances back at me while stumbling in her stiff new pair of pumps. My gaze began to linger on the nape of her neck and the slit down the back of her blouse. To me it appeared like a crack in her shell, a glimpse into the mystery of her body. At the top of the slit, a single pearl button held the carapace in place; I could barely keep my fingers from undoing it.

  Enlightenment? “Suchness?” The ultimate truth? With all the talk of oneness I could think of just one thing: how badly I wanted Miss Chastity to merge with me.

  66.

  In Your Dreams

  THE LIGHT IN THE SLEEPER WAS OUT. Phoebe kept flipping the switch. I looked around for the penlight I’d seen Anand using earlier for reading. But he had left nothing behind. His bag and possessions were gone. Even his bed was made. Just as our dinner had appeared prearranged, so did this bequest of his quarters.

  The train relentlessly rumbled on with a clock-like clickety-clack. A plane of air skimmed in through the barely open window. Beyond it, a faintly flowing blackness framed the ever-present moon.

  Phoebe pulled the cotton nightshirt out of her shopping bag. I sat down beside it as she laid it out on the bed. “I doubt that’ll fit me,” I said.

  She laughed. “Don’t you cowboys sleep in your clothes?”

  I yanked off a snakeskin boot. “Depends on the cowgirl,” I said. I pulled off the other boot and looked back up at Phoebe.

  She was reaching back, elbows up, unfastening the pivotal pearl. “Which do you prefer: top or bottom?”

  It took me a second to realize she was asking about the bunks. “Top,” I said.

  “Good. I like the bottom.”

  “Naturally.” I stood up. “Need a hand with that?”

  She smiled, still straining. “That’s sweet, but no, thank you. Would you mind turning around?”

  “Would you mind if I didn’t?”

  “Jack, please?”

  Reluctantly I turned and faced the window. “You’re not going to try to take advantage of me, are you?”

  “In your dreams,” she laughed. “I need to get some sleep.”

  I stared at the moon in the blackness and began to unbutton my shirt. “You must be dreaming if you think I’ll let you sleep.”

  Phoebe didn’t respond. Amid the click and rattle of the gently rocking train, I discerned the delicious swishing sound of the black satin blouse softly sliding off over her head. Miraculously her milky figure suddenly appeared in the glass. I shifted for a better view. The reflection was uncanny. Though her face remained in shadow, the moonbeam through the tinted window colored her body blue. Her pale breasts lay cradled in the black demi bra, and her black slacks tapered into darkness. She reached back to an upraised heel to remove an invisible shoe, first one foot, then—with a stumble—the other. Still unaware of me watching, she bent slowly forward, peeling off her pants, hips rocking gently left and right. She was chattering about something, a nervous sort of chatter, but I was so absorbed with her mirror-like reflection I couldn’t spare a brain cell to listen.

  The blue-skinned Dutch girl in her lace bra and thong was now tilting her head to unpin a pearl earring, dipping the rim of her face into the moonbeam, talking nonstop all the while. Her pincer-like fingers then pinched off her other earring, and as she pl
aced them both carefully into her shopping bag on the bed, my gaze fell to the spider-black lace around her hips, its web narrowing neatly into the cleft between her cheeks. Like butterflies her dexterous hands reached up behind her back and with unthinking expertise unhooked her bra. She brushed the ribbon-like straps off her shoulders and released the crescent cups from her breasts. A spasm of delight coursed through me, trailed by a tender tug of guilt. As she bent over the bed to retrieve her lifeless nightshirt, her breasts swelled into a shape that seemed to cry out for my touch. Finally she straightened and faced me again, preparing to don the gown.

  Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

  Phoebe had stopped talking. She’d noticed I wasn’t listening. And suddenly she saw the reason why.

  She froze. Silent. Staring at me in the glass. Realizing I’d been watching all along. For several long seconds, neither of us spoke, and she made no effort to conceal herself. Phoebe seemed to be spellbound by the pull of her own desire, even while refusing to give in to it.

  I thrust open the window, erasing the reflection, and in the swirling rush of air, turned around and faced her.

  She clutched the gown to her chest. Though her face was veiled in shadow, her eyes mere hints of light, I sensed her nervous tension like an aura.

  I pulled off my shirt and dropped it to the floor. “I’m just a man, Phoebe. What is it you’re afraid of?” I waited for her to respond, but nothing came out of the dark. “Please don’t tell me it’s Dan,” I said. “I won’t believe you.”

  She looked away, then looked back. Hesitant to answer. Her chest gently rose and fell with every breath she took. I moved closer, trying to see her face, until at last her gleaming eyes came clear. Though fraught with apprehension, they seemed filled with desperate longing. A struggle raging deep inside her heart.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  I looked at her, uncomprehending.