Craving

by Kristina Meister

  I glanced back at Arthur and was surprised to find him gazing at me, leaning against the breakfast bar.

  “What?” I laughed nervously, looking away.

  “You’ve been very quiet.”

  “I have a lot to think about.” I put a few more books into the empty box. Without any rational thoughts to rely upon, I somehow thought that if I put my back to him, he wouldn’t be able to see what I was going through, but Arthur was the most astute person I had ever met. I should have known better.

  “This is true,” he murmured casually, “but are you not using that as an excuse to avoid dealing with the issues?”

  “Truth getting in the way of truth?” I mumbled, closing the box. The shelves were almost empty, her closet was clean, and soon everything would be gone. I would be closing the door on Eva’s life on a down note, wondering why she had done this to me.

  “I’m sure there are a thousand questions in your mind,” Arthur hinted.

  “If you’re trying to get me to ask you, I’m not going to. I don’t want a teacher.”

  He laughed quietly. “Have you considered that perhaps it is a debriefing necessary for you to join an elite squad of vampire-hunting spirit ninjas?”

  I stopped what I was doing and turned to look at him. He seemed so pleased with himself that I couldn’t help but laugh too.

  “Alright, alright.” I threw up my hands. “Go on then.”

  He sighed. I knew he could sense it, the distance I was putting between us, and I suppose I had just been waiting for him to try and cross it. I took a dust cloth to the shelves and wiped away the last pieces of my sister.

  “How long have you been tracking them?”

  “Them? You mean the Arhat.”

  “The Arhat?” I frowned, more Sanskrit.

  “Those of the Sangha,” he murmured, pulling the plates down and stacking them in a crate.

  “I thought that’s what they were called: the Sangha.”

  “The Sangha is an organization, but the people in it are Arhat.”

  “Oookay,” I gave in. “So how long?”

  “Would you believe if I said most of my life?”

  “Yes.” It would certainly explain his lack of an identity. After all, how could a person hunt monsters when the monsters hired researchers like my sister, unless they obscured their existence in some way? “Why?”

  He shrugged, but didn’t look away from his task. “It’s a duty. I’ve been watching them, but the older ones are almost impossible to find, let alone follow. They and their underlings have such varied abilities, it is difficult to go into any circumstance feeling capable.”

  I walked over to the bar and lay my bandaged wrist on the counter. “What sort of abilities?”

  “Remote-viewing,” he replied pointedly, “telepathy, the ability to control others with fear.”

  “You said older . . .” I hesitated,

  “The closer to the source, the stronger they are.”

  “Immortal?” I could barely say it.

  He pulled out a sponge and began scrubbing the tile, his face turned from mine. “I do not believe it is perfect immortality.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He went still, but did not turn. I watched his breathing, slow and calm. “Ursula was more than one hundred years old.”

  I gasped. “Shut up!” He turned to look at me finally, assessing my reaction. “You’re not jerking me around?”

  He looked confused by the slang. “No.”

  “Well, she died pretty easily.”

  “Clinical immortality,” he explained. “When left to their own devices, the Arhat do not die, but if injured, if the systems of their bodies are disrupted, they perish just like a normal person, if they are unable to heal fast enough.”

  I laid my head down on the counter and let the cool tile refresh me. He continued to work until the counter gleamed. When he was finished, he began emptying the refrigerator, dumping rotting takeout containers in the garbage.

  “Where does it come from?”

  He narrowed his eyes at a Styrofoam container that smelled particularly awful and dropped it before looking up.

  “It can be traced back to the very foundation of Buddhism, to the enlightenment,” he said softly, his revelation contrasted by the mundane task he was performing. It made it even clearer to me that this was his everyday life, not the overwhelmingly strange event it was for me. Never mind that he had a coffee shop, wore socks, or made sandwiches; he was a vampire hunter. All the normal stuff was window dressing. Then again, I mused, would I have liked him as much if he had been nothing but the normal stuff?

  “You’re not going to tell me that Buddha was a vampire.”

  He blinked. “No.”

  “Okay, so . . .”

  “The Buddha traveled with a group of disciples, commonly called the First Circle, many of whom passed on eventually.”

  “Passed on, you mean died?”

  “Yes. Though, in this case, we equate enlightenment with immortality, the outsiders had no knowledge of this. All those who followed the Buddha, dead or not, were accounted as enlightened by outsiders.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled, bemused.

  “The disciples were called ‘Arhat’ or ‘worthy ones.’”

  “Ah, I see.”

  He crossed his arms and stared at the full bag in concern. At my glance, he shook his head. “Your sister did not eat well.”

  I nodded. “I was the cook.”

  Sam reappeared and picked up the last few boxes. He looked in Arthur’s direction. “I’m going to take these over and come back.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Arthur dismissed. When Sam again vanished, he turned back to me, his work forgotten. “When Buddha died, he gave specific instructions that there was to be no leader, that after he was gone, they were to adhere to the teachings, the truth. However, after his death, many of his followers immediately organized an assembly to declare who would be the next leader of the faith. It was called the First Council, or Sangha of the Buddha.”

  “Then that’s where it all went wrong,” I mused. His hands were very close to mine, and I couldn’t help but watch them and hope they found mine. My wrist twinged, a reminder of Ursula’s craving that brought me back to myself and my own failings. I pulled my eyes from his hands, determined not to want his touch, to finally stand on my own and be “of myself.” “If the enlightenment led to this, then why would you have spread it to Anna?”

  “A virus comes to three ends,” he elaborated. “The body develops an immunity to become stronger, or the virus hides within the body and becomes a part of it, or the virus kills its host. What Anna received was just enough exposure to make her stronger, tailored for her specific needs, an inoculation.”

  I stood up, trying to reason through it. If his picture was accurate then Anna got over the virus, the Arhat were permanently afflicted with it, and Eva died because of it.

  Just before she infected me.

  “So I’m not a stream-enterer. I’m one of them, the Arhat.”

  “All Arhat were Stream-Enterers, until they passed into the change.”

  Disgruntled, I looked away. “How could you do this to me?” I said under my breath, but if Arthur heard me, he said nothing.

  “Have you heard the legend of the Bodhi Sattva?”

  I shook my head, not really listening. Sullen and distraught, I laid my head back on the counter. His hand patted me gently.

  “Three men wander into the desert. When they are at their weakest, they happen upon an enclosure encircled by a high wall with no doors. The first man climbs up on his friend’s shoulders, discovers a garden and climbs over. The second man climbs up on the third man’s shoulders, sees the garden and with a shout of joy, disappears over the wall. The third man, left to himself, climbs laboriously up the wall, but when he sees the garden, turns away and goes back into the desert to point other wanderers toward the oasis. The Bodhi Sattva are enlightened individuals who forgo the transcendence of
Nirvana in order to help others find their way.”

  I lost myself in the sensation of his fingers moving through my hair, closed my eyes and drifted. “That’s noble of them.”

  “Legend tells us that they are gifted.”

  “With what?”

  “Uncanny insight,” he answered.

  I sat up sharply. “Who do we know with that affliction?”

  His mouth was a beautifully curved line. “Another legend, based on truth, but not entirely truthful.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, almost angrily, “you’d think that the Buddha would’ve been a Bodhi Sattva if it was such a great idea.”

  “Many people argue that he is,” Arthur said with another shrug. “In his first sermon, he said ‘this is my last existence; now there is no rebirth.’ Many believe that those words referred to reincarnation, but that doesn’t mean anything. As with Elvis, I suppose some people cannot help but keep him alive in their minds, though his passing is documented.”

  “Well, the couple in the Himsuka story did get young again when they ate the fruit.”

  The smile grew. “True. The Theravada school, focused upon the word, believes that the Bodhi Sattva is an as yet, unenlightened individual working toward Nirvana, because they have not yet died and transcended, but the Mahayana school believe that their generosity gains them a kind of honorary enlightenment called ‘bodhicitta.’”

  “Hmm. I wonder which school the Sangha loves best.”

  “The Mahayana Buddhists are devotional. Such a faith allows the Sangha freedom and access to a group of humans.”

  “You mean that because they worship Buddha instead of revering him that the Sangha can use that to their advantage?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it is a big conspiracy.”

  But even with his perfect recounting of an obscure history, I could not see how an idea could do so much. I knew that the brain took on the shape that was needed to hold the thoughts a person might have, and that some thoughts could become obsessions, and even that some obsessions could lead to chemical imbalances strong enough to compel a person to act. I wondered if that was what it felt like for the Sangha, if for them it was a never-ending torture of compulsions. It made the word “craving” take on whole new meanings for me.

  Until that moment, I had hated Moksha, seen him as a representation of my sister’s downfall. Now, all I felt was pity. I bowed my head and knew I should have reserved judgment, but how could I when I was acting within the real world? How could I have known that what happened to Eva, just as Ursula had said, was her own doing? More importantly, how could she have condemned me to that?

  “I know you hate me. I’ve always known.”

  “How did they become clinically immortal?” I asked.

  “Cravings are the root of suffering. To rid themselves of suffering, the Stream-Enterers meditated in hopes of curing themselves from within, to annihilate their attachment to the things they desired. But entering into the jhana, or that many-leveled perfect state of cognition, can cause a person to acquire what the Buddha called right knowledge and right liberation.”

  “Right knowledge? You mean the uncanny insight?”

  “It would seem so. Perfect knowledge of whatever they choose to focus upon.”

  “So what’s ‘right liberation?’”

  “The heights to which mind and body may travel. The self-awakening.”

  “And you think that that is when they become immortal?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the Arhat meditate, achieve the jhana, and become immortal. Well, obviously, the disciples who died were not enlightened. They were just srotapanna. Right?”

  “So it is believed, but it depends entirely upon whether or not you believe the Buddha is dead.”

  “That must have sucked.” I shook my head, feeling sorry for them even though I didn’t want to. “Suddenly being left alone at the head of a faith you have no ability to follow. But if they get there, to the perfect place, then how can they devolve?”

  “Ideas do not ever move backward, for even with amnesia, the brain is the perfect shape to recall those memories. They achieved a height, but at the last step, fell short and are left in permanent suffering.” He traced a circle on the table. “It is a wheel, moving forward, very much like the Karmic cycle . . .”

  “Samsara.”

  He nodded and looked into my eyes. “You can understand now, why Moksha would choose such a name. It was meant to be ironic. With an eternity and right knowledge, what do you think would happen?”

  I knew what he was hinting at. He was implying they would eventually become frustrated with their state of being. “But if they got that far, then wouldn’t that mean they were free from the taints? Wouldn’t that make them free of selfhood?”

  “Some would say there is no way that a man could achieve ultimate understanding only to devolve, they talk of annica, the understanding that all things are one and are impermanent, but when one has immortality, that is not such an easy thing to accept. They have come to believe, over time, that they went even farther than the Buddha, because they did not die. Now, they see no resolution.”

  He went back to his chores silently, scrubbing the appliances amicably. I half-expected him to whistle while he worked, he seemed so happy to be helping. It was probably penance for failing as the knight in shining armor.

  As I pushed the beanbag toward the garbage bags by the door with my foot, I saw my sister, scrambling over that wall toward what she thought would save her. I saw her clambering up on my shoulders, reaching for the green blur of love and serenity, leaving me behind.

  “How could you do this to me?” Another angry kick sent the bag into the door. I stood staring at its mouth, grinning at me no matter what I did, no matter how afraid and uncertain, conflicted and lost. What would happen to me? Would I end up craving something worse than blood? Would I end up high-diving into a concrete ocean?

  I felt his hands on my shoulders and, unable to suppress the urge, sobbed.

  “You’re wrong about her,” he said into my ear. “Your life has been one ending after another. The last was your marriage. Eva knew that without your devotion to her, you would finally be free of all the desires that might tie you down and wanted to give you a chance at eternity. She leapt from that wall and helped you over. She was your Bodhi Sattva.”

  Chapter 16

  I stared at Unger. He stared back, blinking like any good cynic. The waitress attempted to refill his coffee, but his hand guarded the top. With an annoyed look that he didn’t take notice of her open top button, she sauntered away.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  It was a formality. By this point, he was used to the absurd from me. I sighed and tilted my head. “What, Matty, don’t believe me?”

  He frowned at my wrist. “Oh, I believe you, and that’s what’s fucking with me.”

  I leaned back and chuckled. It had been his idea: a trip to the diner, a debriefing on my debriefing over the pie and greasy food that Arthur shunned without a word.

  “Why do you believe it? I mean, you’ve been a detective how long?”

  He shook his head. “Too long.” He leaned his chin on his hand. “That’s just it. Do it long enough and you come to the notion that it never ends, that somewhere, someone is fighting you, making sure it never goes away. The longer I do this, the more I believe in it.”

  “‘It’ being evil?”

  He nodded.

  “So what do we do about it? If Arthur’s right, then what?”

  His disgruntled inner watchdog came to the fore. “What makes you think he’s right?”

  I shrugged.

  “Yeah yeah, I know. I feel him too.”

  It was a begrudging agreement that promised further skepticism ahead. As I sat there looking at the poor man, I began to see Arthur in a new light. The “un-reasoning” he employed was difficult to follow, but it was the only thought process that promised to be productive. Those of us inclined towa
rd linear reasoning were frightfully unprepared.

  Unger sat up straight. “I don’t know what his method is, but I know what I would do if I was a P.I. and this was a normal case.”

  “Pound the pavement, Mr. Gumshoe?”

  He scowled. “I’m not Humphrey Bogart.”

  I smiled at him flirtatiously and noticed his blush. “You’re my Humphrey Bogart. Can I be your Gretta Garbo?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Okay, so what would you do?”

  He shoved his coffee away in what looked like discomfort. “If we want to speculate that Moksha and Ursula were linked, then we have to believe that whatever Eva was doing was somehow tied into it.”

  I nodded, because it was what I had thought all along.

  “No matter what kind of people they are,” Unger specified, “they’re still people. They’ll have the same weaknesses as people would.”

  I looked at him dubiously. “Yeah, because most people go into blood-withdrawal.”

  “They’ll have money, secrets stored in vaults, people they don’t trust, et cetera.”

  “Ooooh.” I grinned. “Stool pigeons.”

  He growled. “Your sister was the head record keeper.”

  “Yeah.”

  He held out his hand. “So we go to the records.”

  I shook my head. “They’d never let us in. Hell, I don’t even know where in the building they keep the records.”

  He massaged his face and leaned back, casting his eyes out the window to the twilight streets. I picked at his apple pie with a finger. After several moments, he looked back at me.

  “Her journals.”

  I nodded. “Arthur’s already got that covered.”

  He glared at me.

  “And I’m sure he is doing a fine job, though you’re welcome to investigate his ‘methodology.’”

  “I’m more interested in letting him tell me what he finds and seeing if I believe him,” Unger said quietly. “Meanwhile, I plan on cross-checking.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ursula’s club was owned by Moksha’s company, just like you said,” he explained. He opened his wallet and threw a few bills onto the table. “Because I was first on scene, it’s my case, if I want it.”