Craving

by Kristina Meister

  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.

  So why had he done this to the Arhat? Why had he made it impossible for them to ever use the sutras to create a cure? Why had he made it impossible for them to go back to the word and see their own error?

  I made to ask Arthur, but he was already shaking his head. He opened a door. Beyond it was a tiny room devoid of artwork or personality. There was a low table and a sleeping mat folded up in the corner.

  You’re staying here? I said in mild shock.

  “For a time. Thanks to your excellent compensation.” He took a seat on the floor and set the money on the table.

  Trapped in a cell and I still have to do all the work. But shouldn’t you be with the others? I would have crossed my arms and sighed playfully if possible, but I knew he would infer my feelings clearly.

  “It is for Sam’s sake that I stay away from the shop. Hopefully,” he said as he looked up at me, “in a few days, we will have Ananda’s exact location, for, as I said, I have ultimate faith in you and Jinx.”

  Finally, he had answered me in less cryptic words. It was the first time in our relationship that I felt I knew him, and I was glad that I had known which questions to ask to unlock his trust. With what he had given me, I felt that I could finally make sense of the bigger picture.

  Jinx had called it error correction. The Sangha needed the key in order to unravel the cipher, just as he had for Eva’s journals. They hoped if they had Ananda, he would reveal the changes he had made, but in his wisdom, for whatever reason, he had refused to speak.

  That’s why Ursula was here, I directed at Arthur thoughtfully. I knew she seemed a bit too much of a diva to be shacked up in a warehouse. They used her to interrogate Ananda, and when she failed, they tried to use Eva to get to him.

  My sister had been nothing more than a bargaining chip and the sugar in their medicine.

  They thought if they let her meet him, showed him someone that he came to like, then forced him to watch her fall apart because of what he had done, he would change his mind. They thought he would cure my sister and that she would cure them. But why doesn’t Ananda escape?

  “You met him. Do you believe he needs to be elsewhere?”

  I take your point. I thought about the fate that awaited me when I woke. Stuck again behind high walls, unable to do anything, bereft of the acceptance that kept Ananda sitting in a tree as calm as the day was long. What do you think will happen to me, Arthur?

  “The answer is, whatever you want. You are bound by nothing.”

  I felt a tug,
a jerking on my consciousness. My body was being prodded. They were calling me back to endure more anguish on their behalf. I wondered what would happen if I ignored them, if I stayed with him and curled around him like smoke, but the pull was unavoidable. I had no choice but to return.

  I welled myself in the hollow of his ear, trying to stay as long as possible. Am I the leader of her revolution?

  “It comes down to a choice,” he whispered. “Do you wish to be? Be careful, though. Leadership comes with a price.”

  Chapter 25

  Ananda was sitting beside me, burying my right leg in the sand. I sat up and considered the Arhat, wondering if his silence would hold out against the Sangha. I picked up my tea cup from the flat rock and took a sip; the liquid was cold.

  Resting there, I refused to ruminate on the horrible uncertainty. I felt the past like chains around me, choking me, condemning me, and I was tired of struggling. The Sangha, my friends, Eva, they all were waiting on me to do something, become something. But at that moment, all I wanted was to slide into the jhana and stay there forever.

  When the hand shadowed my vision and warmed my forehead, I said nothing. If anyone could understand, it was Ananda, and yet, he was the one I should hate the most.

  “A prisoner of the people who killed your friends,” I remarked, not expecting any rejoinder. If Arthur was correct, Ananda would never say a word.

  A voice came out of nowhere, drifting on the wind. “No man is ever a prisoner unless he chooses to be.”

  Caught off guard by his words, I nodded. His voice was softer even than Arthur’s and had a more pronounced accent. I imagined him living in a monastery for centuries, happily raking up sand only to smoosh it with a bare toe.

  “So you choose to be a prisoner?”

  He stared down at me like a man who did not speak my language and was trying to understand. “Who would choose to be a prisoner?”

  “I . . . I don’t really know.” I realized how foolish I had sounded. He had, in one fell swoop, eliminated my need to ask the question. The answer was plain: there was no such thing as imprisonment.

  “If you’re not a prisoner, then what are you doing here?”

  “Sitting in the garden with you.”

  “Right. I should have realized.”

  Cheerfully, he dug his fingers into the sand beside me and lifted a handful upward. Like an hourglass, he let the grains slip through his fingers, and when they were empty, reached down and repeated the process.

  “Ananda, why did you do it?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I shrugged, making a small mountain, poking a hole in it, turning it into a volcano I could later smash. “Kind of. Do you know the Sangha sort of ruined my life to get to the truth?”

  “Kind of . . . sort of . . . you should have greater conviction, shouldn’t you?”

  “I need to know the truth,” I replied.

  “What purpose would it serve to know anything?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  His fingers were longer than Arthur’s and as they swept sand away from mine, their grace charmed me. I set down my cold tea to watch him work.

  “If you do not know what you should know, or why you should know, or even how you should know it best, then what makes you think there is anything to know?”

  Our eyes met.

  “Someone told me that everything meant something.”

  “Someone you trust?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded as if it decided the issue. I closed my eyes again.

  “Did the ambition bother you?” I asked. “Was it because they wanted to be better?”

  “It was because they did not,” he replied, much to my surprise.

  I opened my eyes and followed the arm to the tilted shoulder, followed the shoulder to the sorrowful face. The old Lilith would demand answers, but my trishna was finally too weak to control me. I stared at him and when my eyes began to spin with the perfection they found there, I covered them with my arm.

  “A child cannot ever know the true wisdom of his father, nor can his son ever guess at his,” Ananda murmured in that same, airy voice. “It is impossible to become better than the tools you use, without tossing those tools aside completely. That is the heart of the Buddha’s teachings.”

  For some reason, I began to laugh, but the laugh swung dangerously out of my control, until I was sobbing just like Moksha. Smoothly, Ananda’s hand slid from my forehead to my eyes, and dropping my arms to my sides, I let him hide me from the world.

  “Was it to punish them?”

  “Punishment has no purpose,” he replied evenly, taking the accusation in stride. “It will never bring back the things lost, undo the suffering caused. Indeed, there is no way to ever undo suffering. It is a natural byproduct of life.”

  I reached up and covered his hand with my own. “Tell me the story, Ananda. Make me see.”

  He let out a soft sound in his throat as if to laugh, and it was the first useless utterance he had ever made.

  “We were children together, he and I, friends from the very beginning. I followed him everywhere and would gladly have suffered anything to preserve him.”

  I sniffled. “The Buddha?”

  “Yes.” The hand retracted and I was left feeling abandoned, but when I sat up and faced him, it returned. Long fingers curved around my own and anchored me to the sea of sand. “Many times, when we traveled, we were invited to stay in the houses of rich men, and though many of his followers did not understand why he was so willing to include them in his teachings, when they would never give up what they had to join our cause, the Buddha stayed with them.”

  “I read about them,” I added unhelpfully.

  Ananda smiled and moved the hair from my face, much to the veiled chagrin of his chaperone.

  “Lord Buddha wanted all to hear what he had to say, and innocently, I believed it was out of compassion.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  His ponytail brushed from side to side as he shook his head. “It was the first step, a way of sorting the flock, of pulling reason from the noise.”

  “You mean, he was searching for people that could be turned into Arhat?” Where best to find ambition, than in the gutter and the palace? I sat up taller, gripped the hands in mine more tightly, lest the man suddenly get bored and try to escape into the tree.

  But he did not go anywhere. “I believe so.”

  “Go on,” I encouraged, though my stomach was churning apprehensively.

  “While we slept, he would walk. At times I would wake to see he was not there and it would worry me. The last time, I went to find him, feeling something stir in me that called me to his side.”

  I watched his gaze push aside endless years. I was sure it was like yesterday for him, that in that moment, he was standing beside his master, worrying after him, wondering if their midnight trek was another lesson. His eyes were glassy, focused somewhere in the air between us.

  “He was beneath the tree,” Ananda whispered, “staring at it. ‘What vexes you, my lord?’ I asked him, and he turned to me in what seemed like the gravest sorrow, a sorrow I had never seen from him before. ‘When the seed becomes a tree, it ceases to be a seed. I am not a man anymore, I am this,’ and he pointed at the tree. ‘It could never be any other way. I knew it from the start,’ he said to me.” Ananda blinked slowly, and a single tear dropped to the thirsty ground. “It frightened me.”

  “Why?”

  “To know him was to be certain of the falseness of certainty. We were safe in that, because it gave us only the responsibility we took instead of the responsibility we could manage.”

  Confused, I slid my hand from his and placed it on the coppery skin of his forehead. His eyes closed easily.

  “From my cousin to my leader, from my friend to my instructor. He was changing right before my eyes. ‘I love you, lord,’ I said to him, afraid that he might be suffering. ‘That is the poison,’ he whispered, and then walked away from me.”


  I tried to reason through what he was saying, but something about him would forever be lost in translation to me. “He believed they were fixated on him?”

  Ananda nodded. “He became a tree, not a seed. As he walked away from me, I understood his final lesson to me, that I must cast my tools aside in order to be strong enough. Within the week, he was dead and they were talking of the Sangha, their glorious organization. Then they built the wall around their tree and lied to the world.”

  I thought of Himsuka and the fearful king. “It was just a misunderstanding. Innocent people are dying.”

  “Those are the tools with which they were born. Weapons, all.”

  “Only because you made it impossible for them,” I insisted, but he shook his head and pulled my hand away.

  “That is the secret, my dear,” he replied sadly, then tipped forward and put his mouth to my ear. “I changed nothing. The truth of the Buddha is completely intact.”

  My mouth fell open. My head swept backward and I stared into his face. I wanted to call him a liar, accuse him of continuing to perpetrate the worst crime imaginable, but I knew, unequivocally, with absolute certainty, that he was telling the truth. As if I was in the jhana and was gazing at his memories the way I had perused my own, I could clearly see the Buddha’s back as he walked away, his message ringing in my ears.

  “All is perishable. Through vigilance, awaken.”

  Ananda bowed his head. “There were no perfect transformations, not even for the First Circle, just fruit, falling from the tree. All of us have our weaknesses, and our ways of protecting ourselves from them. With the Buddha gone, there was no focus, no direction. Leaders came and went, and as each member of the First Circle rose to the fore, they found themselves lacking. They sought Parinirvana and never returned. I believe the Buddha intended them to be as seeds for new trees, but instead, they rot in the ground.

  “There is no cure, because there is no disease.”

  I said nothing. The wind danced through the branches, shifting light across the sand. I heard the last few weeks again, as if I was dying, and finally Arthur’s warnings made sense. He had cautioned Eva to stay away, because he had seen her weakness: me. She would have done anything to help me, to keep me safe, to stave off death for as long as possible. In the alley she had fought, not with him, but with his quiet insistence that nothing good could come of such experiments. He had warned me to be of myself, less like a tree, more like a seed.