The moment when the web of fabricated spiritual understanding broke and left her in free fall must have been a small death.
She was with a client at the club where she worked when he asked her if she wanted to go to his apartment, and because she felt unusually tired that night, she said no. It was the first time she ever said no, and the first time that she realized she had never had the power to say it. Her date grabbed her wrist and twisted it until she almost fainted from the pain. He screamed and spit on her. She couldn’t understand most of what he said, but the disgust in his eyes spoke perfect English. Nobody in the room came to help. She was invisible to them.
After he stormed out, she paid the bill and dragged herself to the tiny apartment where she slept directly on the floor for twenty hours. When she woke up, she found out from the roommates that she didn’t need to return to work—the client had complained to the owner, and she no longer had a job.
She went out to a park nearby and spent the whole day on a bench, looking at the fishpond. It had been just a job, she thought for the first time. She got paid for sex, and there was no spiritual gain from it. Not for her, not for the men she slept with. There was no deeper meaning to it, and nothing was all right anymore.
.
Laura has been sleeping for three full days. She has been waking up to go to the bathroom and drink water, and I was able to even make her eat a small yogurt and a handful of walnuts, but otherwise she has been only sleeping. I will let her sleep as long as she needs. She must not be ready to face the day yet.
After losing her hostess job in Japan, Laura tried to contact the organization. Nobody picked up her calls, and after a week, she received only one reply by e-mail in which she was told that they could not arrange for her return to the country.
The only thing she could think of was to call one of her clients, a Japanese man who visited her regularly, and with whom she felt she shared a connection that was strong and meaningful. He was about her age and had a very kind smile. He tried to make her laugh, and was always very gentle. Several times, they even talked about the meaning of life and the pathways of the soul. He embodied the Japanese experience that Laura had been dreaming about.
Morio offered to take care of her. He rented an apartment that seemed like a palace. A whole family of four could have lived comfortably in that place. The kitchen and the bathroom were actually rooms with space to move around. She felt grateful and happy for the first time in months. At least it all was on her own terms now.
Morio visited her every other night. They often went out to restaurants and movies, and on weekends, they went for long drives outside the city. The rest of the time, Laura explored her surroundings. She spent long days at the Buddhist temple. They allowed visitors to join the meditation groups and volunteer their work for the monastery. She worked in the kitchen and garden and meditated. At night, she returned to her beautiful apartment and whenever she could, she sat in meditation again. There were days when Morio joined her at the temple, and it made her feel like their connection was one of the spirit.
One day she told him that she didn’t want to return home when her visa expired after four months. She wanted to extend her stay, maybe indefinitely. Looking at his feet, Morio told her in a very unequivocal voice that it wouldn’t be possible. He was married, had children, and he couldn’t afford to support her for much longer because his business was not doing well. He wanted her to leave at the end of the four months. He would call her back when he managed to put his affairs in order. He felt horrible about it and didn’t want to sadden her, but taking care of her for those few months was all he could do at the time.
“I saw then with the utmost clarity that my life was over,” Laura told me. “I had destroyed it. I couldn’t stay in Japan, and nothing was waiting for me back home. I couldn’t return to the group, and the real world couldn’t use me. Everything I had done until then had been a mistake. My path had been the wrong one. I only wanted to find a way to myself and God, but I got stuck in the mud of human lust and greed, and in my own failure to see the truth.”
Laura went to the Buddhist monastery the next day. She had been crying all night. She sat on a bench in the park and tried to stop thinking of herself and just listen to the birds. She felt dizzy and closed her eyes for a moment, or maybe for hours. When she woke up, there was a woman sitting next to her on the bench. She was wearing the long, black robes of a nun.
“You look tired,” she said. “Go and sleep. Troubles grow larger than the world when you haven’t had rest.”
“But I have nowhere to go.”
“There is a room in the visitor’s building for you. There is always room somewhere for you. Come.” The nun led her to one of the small guest rooms at the temple and told her to rest as much as she needed. The next day, Laura was told that she had been accepted in the ten-day retreat that the monastery organized twice a year and for which participants needed to sign up months in advance.
It was torture for a few days. The thoughts of all her failures assaulted her, and she felt that maybe she would never be able to sit in meditation again. On the fourth day, her mind stood still and she felt the negative thoughts pulling away, in the distance, far from her, where they seemed small and of no consequence.
“I was one thing, my world was another. I was real; it was a fabrication. It had no power over me. It was such a phenomenal feeling, such a freeing perspective. I was invulnerable.”
After the meditation retreat, Laura returned to the apartment that she had shared with the three other girls. She contributed to the rent with the money she made by selling prayer bead pouches in front of the temple. She made the pouches at home at night, with a small sewing machine that she had bought, for the first time in years feeling grateful that her mother taught her how to sew. She never saw Morio again, but she accepted the plane tickets that he offered to help her get back home.
The day before her flight back home, she packed her bags and went to the temple to look for the old nun who had helped her that day in the garden. She had never seen her again after that day, although she had hoped to be able to thank her. It was hard, since she didn’t know her name, and all the nuns looked the same. After looking for her everywhere, Laura just went to the garden bench where they had met that day and left a small note: “Thank you for coming to me when I needed your help. I will carry you compassionate spirit with me now, wherever I go.”
As she got up to leave, she noticed on the pavement at her feet a thin and colorful brochure that seemed to have been from the temple. She picked it up to throw it in the next trash can that she found, but when she looked closer at the picture on the cover, she froze: dressed in sparkling blue garments and surrounded by iridescent clouds, her nun was playing a chord instrument, her eyes closed in a frozen expression of rapture. The text under the image identified her as The Goddess of Miraculous Sound and Patron of the Blind Musicians. The goddess, said the brochure, was the protector of all those who lose their divine sight at birth and have to navigate life guided only by the sound of heavens that they try to replicate on their worldly musical instruments in an effort to escape their humble human condition.
.
I am watching Laura on TV right now. This composed, peaceful, forgiving creature is my childhood friend. I am proud. She is going to do this. She is going to expose these people for who they really are and help tens, if not hundreds, of other young women. She has to unveil such painful and intimate aspects of her life in the process, though. I know it’s not easy. There are many things she never told even me about. The private dance parties with naked performers that the group organized. The nude video chats where the women worked to contribute money to the organization. But most of all, the relentless mind control that kept these women enslaved and incapable of escape.
It took her a long time to realize how wrong it all had been. It took a long time and extreme experiences of pain and degradation. She believed. All these other women, they all believe—because beli
ef is the easy way out. They wanted an infallible path, and they had it, but for a very short time. It later proved to lead to the darkest of places. I cannot blame them for trying, though. I would have done the same thing. I would have gone all the way, too. It’s easy to mold your mind so that it keeps you happy. As long as there is some exterior assurance that it’s the right thing to do and you decide to put your faith in that.
Laura is free now because she found another path. She rediscovered Buddhism, and she is making it her own this time. Not looking for a group or for a teacher anymore. It is a rockier path, with no assurance about the destination, but all assurance is smoke vanishing against the immense blue sky anyway, and faith always remains the only real thing you’ve ever had.
.
Miaw hasn’t come home for three days. I went out to look for her, but she could be anywhere. It’s not the first time that she hasn’t come back home at night, but it has never been this long. I hope nothing happened to her. I don’t know if I can live with this loss. She was old, it’s true, but I was hoping she would be with me forever. I found her shivering next to our door when she was maybe a month old, and miraculously, Marta agreed to keep her. She has been the soul of this house after Marta left, and she leaves behind a black hole that I’m afraid is going to suck me in any moment now.
.
It’s three p.m. Rain. Darkness. I had to turn on all the lights in the house. Night-black day.
I am not able to move from the day bed. I sit here with the notebook on my lap, listening to all the sounds coming from outside. I feel blessed to have this house that keeps me warm and dry, protected from the path of thunders. I feel grateful for the blanket that covers my cold feet. And I cry in despair. I have nothing. A good place to start, they say.
. .
The notebook is covered in a blue silk fabric with an intricate, Asian-looking embroidered design representing a ferocious dragon whose head seems to lift from the page and extend toward the viewer. The cover inspires fear and an irresistible attraction at the same time.
I WOULDN’T HAVE SURVIVED this without Bogdan. Today, we went to the hospital to visit Marta after her knee surgery. She had been out of the recovery room for a few hours. She was alone in a big room, and nobody had come to check on her, she told me.
I sat with her for two hours. By the side of her tall bed, I sat on that cold, plastic stool and read her articles from gossip magazines. The prime minister is divorcing his wife for his girlfriend, a twenty-five-year-old pop singer who wears tutus and ponytails. It made Marta giggle. “People are crazy,” she said.
A couple of actors battle over their children in divorce procedures. “These people should be institutionalized, not me.”
An old millionaire married a too-young beauty from a remote village. Now she leaves him at home with the baby and goes to party every night in clubs. Photographs show her kissing a woman on the dance floor. “You show him, girl.”
Then Marta felt tired and in pain. I wanted to wait patiently for a nurse or doctor to come and tell me about the surgery, but Marta needed pain medicine urgently, so I went out on the corridor and stopped the first white coat. No, it was not the right one. I was advised to wait until the nurse came. I could hear Marta breathing heavily, moans of pain escaping with every other gulp of air.
That was when Bogdan showed up and saved the day. In less than ten minutes, there was a doctor talking to me about the surgery, and a nurse was giving Marta her medication. Bogdan was discussing with somebody else the possibility of moving Marta to a smaller room, closer to the nurses’ station.
“What a darling boy.” Marta clapped happily when she heard the good news.
I do feel that he is trying to enter my life too abruptly, but maybe I am paranoid. He explained to Marta that he loved me very much and he was taking our relationship very seriously. We never discussed these things. After all, we’ve just met two weeks ago.
.
This man is baking an apple pie for me now, after doing the grocery shopping, cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, and taking out the trash.
For two weeks, I have been swamped preparing for this certification exam, and Bogdan offered to take care of a few things around the house for me so I don’t have to do anything but study. He has been doing much more than he promised. I only need to call his name and anything I want materializes: tea, blanket, water, red pen, ottoman, notebook, socks, heat, hair clip, an orange, music, quiet.
It’s early, but we put up the Christmas lights in the living room and around the curtains and bookshelves. They sparkle through my brains, I feel, creating chemical reactions that would otherwise require strong medication to take place. I feel at peace. The world is a warm place with a house, an armchair, and a blanket, where I’m sipping my mint tea prepared by a nice man who cares for me. It is the place that smells of baked apples and security. I want to put my head on a pillow and smile.
Is this what I’ve been waiting for?
.
Ilinca is determined to upset me.
“Ana, you just met him a month ago! It is absurd. Don’t you find this strange at all? I don’t think he’s Okay. He looks like he has a very disturbing psychological problem. I’m sorry, it’s not easy for me to say this, and you know that I want you to find that happiness that you’ve been longing for, but this is not the way. There is something about him that I cannot explain. It just doesn’t inspire confidence.”
I know she is not entirely wrong. He is a character. First of all, he already calls my mother “Mama.” What is that all about? Earlier today, he was very vivaciously telling Ilinca about how he tried to convince “Mama” to go and see a doctor about her stomach problems, and how he’s conversant with doctors because of his own mother, “the doctor”.
He calls his mother “the doctor”: “And then, the doctor yelled at me about not eating my dinner and coming home too late.” “You should have seen the doctor laughing like a high school girl when she was watching that stupid comedy.” “If I ever do that, the doctor might not let me back in the house anymore. She has very strict rules.”
He also seems to be embellishing the truth at times. When Ilinca was here, the discussion went to a fraud scandal involving TR&RT, the company that seems to have bribed its way into a contract for supplying computers to all the schools in the county. Bogdan immediately contributed a story about how he was acquainted with the owner of this company, calling the man Lucian. Ilinca knew that the name of the company represented the owner’s initials, so he couldn’t have been Lucian. Bogdan had a quick comeback, saying that it was possible that Lucian was the guy’s the middle name, and that was not important anyway, because what he had meant to tell us was a story about this man’s promiscuity and drinking binges, of which Bogdan knew from a very credible source.
While Ilinca might be too protective of me, she is a good friend and I am glad she told me what she thought. Sometimes I am too hopeful and refuse to see any evidence of dream cadavers lining the road. But I don’t think this is the case now. Bogdan is genuinely a nice guy. He has issues, but who doesn’t? He is also very caring and attentive, and I need him. I feel that I can rely on him.
.
He is talking too much, it is true, but I don’t take so seriously everything that he says. He likes to talk and to look important in the eyes of others. Is that such a sin? I don’t know. I cannot just discard everything he has done for me just because he likes to pretend a little when he talks to people.
I am ready to acknowledge that he has a problem with embellishing reality. For example, he says that he knows a number of deputies and senators, and he could any time go and ask favors from them. He also offered to find a job for me with ten times better pay than I have now. It’s not like I’m ever going to take him up on that. I know he didn’t really mean it, and he only mentioned that because we had company at the time, and he wanted to impress people. I think I know already when to take for real what he is saying and when to overlook his eccentriciti
es.
Anyway, the truth is that right now, he is filling a hole in my life, and I think I need him. I don’t even want to think about it anymore. I just want to live without thinking, and Bogdan makes that easy for me.
.
He seems to be occupying my life like an oppressing foreign army. I have no space to retreat. He is coming into my life with brutality and disregard for my needs. Sometimes, his actions are so strange and sudden that I am left without words or possibility of reaction.
He has been living in my house for two weeks. He’s out now. He said that he was going to work. Finally. He hadn’t stepped out for three full days.
Two weeks ago, I told him that he could bring a set of clothes and a toothbrush, if he wanted. What do you think he did after this? He brought in a huge duffel bag and started to unfold on my bed a whole pile of tee shirts, two pairs of shorts, a track suit, a bag of underwear and socks, two formal shirts, and one pair of dress pants. Then he advanced into the bathroom: combs, shaving set, toothbrush, dandruff shampoo. The next day, he brought his desktop computer and never left again after that.
Another problem is that he has been complaining that he hasn’t received his paycheck for a month, but he is waiting for some money to come any day now. In the meantime, I am the one taking care of all the expenses. I wouldn’t mind doing this, but the truth is that I can barely support myself. Now, my expenses have gone up considerably. I hate thinking of money, but it is not like I have a choice. I don’t need a man to take care of me, but I would be grateful for one who can at least take care of himself.
He is coming into my life with all these problems when I only want to have a little fun. Just a little, please. I want the wooing part now. Let the hardships come later. I know they always come. I want to go out, hold hands, laugh at humorless jokes, take walks in the park, not think of money problems, jobs, or places to live.
Spell of Blindness Page 15