by Sean Platt
“Woo saw it in a new way — clearer and more twisted than how any of us had ever seen those underworld dealings. His passion for exterior thought allowed him to question something the rest of us never had. Specifically, he said, ‘Is murder for hire so wrong?’ It was a repugnant thing to consider, and only a mind such as Woo’s would think to do so. It felt wrong, but in his mind, the fact that something was difficult, odd, or obviously wrong was all the more reason to investigate. The more he did the more reasons he found. The ends justified the means. Money could improve the Sri. Woo could build a separate compound to train his elite. You see, as much as you were a thorn in our side, Amit, Woo’s arrogance dwarfed yours like the sun swallows the darkness. He was certain of so much. He needed only resources to realize his truth. The organization could give him those resources.
“So, he moved. You remember when he left, though you could not have known why. He splintered our order, and took those he could persuade to go with him. You remember when he left, and how tense it was. You cannot think of them as a nest, because they are not swords for hire. They believe they are doing what is right, and that those who oppose them are wrong, just like the monks here, in this monastery. Our division balances on a sliver. Anyone here, who I see as an honorable Sri, could choose to go there. Some have over the years — people you yourself grew up with. If I tried to fight Woo’s group I would face opposition here. We are still both Sri, you understand. Men and women from this camp still go to his, as if it were a recruiting ground. I do not stop them. It is a matter of belief, and seems almost arbitrary. Sometimes, monks return to us with blood on their hands. Should I reject them after they have teetered back into our arms?”
Amit sipped his tea, unable to believe what he was hearing. And he was supposed to be the blind one? He was supposed to be foolish?
“It is not a matter of opinion. They are working for organized crime.”
“In service of what they feel is a greater good,” argued the abbot. “A Sri monk is, above all else, calculating and intuitive and logical. You cannot fight properly if you do not possess those traits, and if you possess those traits, you will tend to leave small obstacles behind on your way to larger truths. Why do you think we make the difficult choice of divorcing ourselves from the modern world? Life is easier down from the mountain, as I hear. They can learn most things at the touch of a button. They don’t tire their bodies with work. Yet we became monks because we believe that hard work is rewarded later, and that suffering leads to what is proper and true.”
“But killing … ”
“ … is a matter of perspective. Have you ended no lives?” The abbot chuckled. “Of course, you have. And I believe you have done so rather unpleasantly. Have you never considered that there might be two sides to every death? Were there none you killed who would vehemently agree that you were the wrong one? Do you really think that an entire nation’s legal system wouldn’t disagree that what you did was ‘right’?”
“Their perspectives are incorrect and timid.”
“Your opinion,” said the abbot. “And as a dealer of death yourself, who are you to say that Woo is wrong?”
Amit’s ears were lying.
“Are you saying you agree with what Woo has done? How he’s picked and sifted your spiritual pilgrims and hired them off to criminals for profit?”
“Of course not. But as wrong as I believe he is, Woo sees me as equally wrong.”
Amit shook his head. He felt as stupid as the abbot had accused him of being. Woo was wrong. It was not a matter of opinion. The organization was wrong. The Right Hand had been wrong. Alfero had been wrong. The people who’d ended Nisha’s life — “just following orders and nothing personal” or not — had been wrong. Ending a life was wrong … unless you were ending a life to avenge the ending of another.
“You are timid,” said Amit. “You are afraid.”
“Perhaps. But it is good to be afraid sometimes, and it does not change the reasons I have stated for not trying to convince Woo.”
“And you call me weak?”
“You are weak.”
Amit shook his head. “I am willing to do what you are not.”
“Or to commit the fallacy that I know is best left at rest.”
“It is not a matter of opinion, Abbot.”
Suni shook his head. “At best, you will be killed. At worst, you will join him.”
Amit set down his tea. It was the most ludicrous thing a monk on a quest for vengeance had ever heard.
“I would never join him.”
“Won’t you?” Suni’s old, wrinkle-bunched eyes met Amit’s.
“Why would you ever think I would join my enemy?”
“Because,” said the abbot, “you and Woo are so very alike.”
Chapter 22
AMIT WENT ON FOOT.
THERE was no other way to move from place to place without returning to the city below unless he wanted to ride a donkey or something equally quaint and rural. He would have gone on foot even with a superhighway or railroad running between the Sri camps.
Amit’s world had been turned upside down by Nisha, then flipped again by her death. For a while after that, things made sense. His life was filled with blood, pain, and clarity. There were bad people who had to pay. He needed only to keep moving relentlessly forward until the bad people were gone. Then he’d found out about the Sri — supposedly his brothers — and what they’d been training for whether they knew it or not. That turned his world a third time. But this last was a blow beyond all blows. Not only was the ultimate bad man his mentor, he was no longer even sure that there was any objective truth about good and bad. He had shed a lot of blood. At the time, it was righteous bloodshed, plain and simple. In his mind, those ahead of his deadly hands wore black hats, clearly indicated as those to hate. Based on the abbot’s words — and against which Amit’s tired mind struggled and fought — the hats were shades of gray. There were peaceful monks in his home monastery who could easily be on the wrong side, and mercenaries in the other compound who could easily come back to the right. Directly above that lever’s fulcrum were the abbot (whom Amit had always hated) and Woo (whom Amit had always loved), tipping balance with the smallest motions of mind and body, spirit and whim.
Amit and Woo. Very alike.
Amit didn’t want to believe that. Not after knowing Suni’s story to be true. He’d believed it all his life; he’d grown up with Woo and had trusted him like a father. Whenever Amit found himself in trouble, Woo had pulled him out. When things grew difficult, Woo had been there to lean on. He offered guidance when needed. When the abbot had wanted to toss young Amit out into the streets to starve and die, Woo argued for him to stay. Woo was his defender, protector, and greatest champion. But Suni and Woo had agreed on one thing: Amit was one of the most skilled monks whom either had seen — possibly the most skilled. There were drills given to Amit by Woo that had proved superiority, feats of strength, speed, balance, and agility that Woo had never expected him to master, but which he’d mastered handily in days or weeks — whichever time frame was appropriately impressive or absurd.
Amit once overheard the two discussing his future. Woo said, We need him because he will do great things. Suni had said, We must release him, because with our training and without discipline, he will do terrible things. Same skills, same excellence, same level of appreciation. To Woo, Amit’s emotional instability — always under observation but never truly contained — was an asset. To the abbot, a liability.
Amit put one foot in front of the other, barely aware of the perilous drop to his one side. He topped scree after scree of rocks, sliding only as far as his eye had told him he’d slide, climbing in places, never caught off guard. The air was rare and thin, but it didn’t bother Amit. It was as if his time away from the monastery had been extinguished in a blink, and his lungs had retained all their former power. A hawk circled in the distance, searching for prey, like Amit.
What was the difference, really, betw
een himself and Woo? According to Suni, Woo had embraced the idea of doing wrong so that one day he might do that which he thought of as good. But was the wrong truly wrong? Was the good he sought truly righteous? Or was it all, as the abbot said, a matter of opinion? He himself had done wrong — in the eyes of many — for a noble cause. At least, that was the way it had seemed when he’d left. The abbot saw it coming; Amit remembered his grave warning to control himself. It was the same warning the abbot had given him throughout his entire life.
Stop.
Think.
Meditate, but do not act from passion, because passion is deceptive.
It was the same thing Suni would say to Woo. Suni didn’t approve of Amit’s quest, and he didn’t approve of Woo’s. A few weeks ago, that hadn’t mattered. A few weeks ago, Woo had been like a father, and Suni was the cranky elder who’d never understood. Amit knew better. As had Woo.
Of all the Sri, only Woo had encouraged Amit not to quell anger over his mother’s death so many years ago. There was no talk of transmutation, of washing himself clean of his fury. Woo argued that it was an asset. Emotion was human. It was why, Amit felt certain, Woo would have understood — even championed — his growing affection for Nisha.
You are a monk, Amit. But below it, you are a man. Sri does not define you.
As Sri did not define Woo, who’d never shaved his silver hair.
Miles passed. Amit was not fatigued. He cut his feet but did not feel it. His arms brushed sharp rocks and came away streaked in red. It was like walking a gauntlet, nature lashing him with whips. It was a walk of penance, of cleansing.
Have I done wrong?
Amit wasn’t sure, and realized he never had been. He was arrogant, as the abbot said. He never took the time to think. He obeyed what he wanted, but had not known what was best. He’d wanted the men who killed Nisha to suffer. He’d fantasized about it, reliving it often once finished. He’d wanted them alive so he could kill them again. He wanted them to wake up with their throats slit and look up at him, so that he could pull the skin from their muscles, and peel them like a fruit. Even now, even as he walked, even as he pondered his own motivations, Amit wondered if he had ever truly listened to what the others were trying to teach him. He stuffed emotions down as if into boots, so low he could walk atop them in victory.
Meditate. Plan. Deduce. Concentrate. Repeat.
There were drills for speed and balance, and drills for discipline. He’d fasted for days; he’d walked rocky paths like this one with no surety that he’d return from a kind of vision quest; he’d encountered animals in the wild that had wanted to cut and gut him like a fish. He’d remained silent for two months; he’d starved himself to nothing then re-experienced gluttony. He’d stood atop a post on one foot for a day; he’d hung by his neck (as if hanged) and by his bound hands (as if crucified). He’d been whipped to learn what whips felt like, to see if he could leave his body behind as it healed. He’d taken decimated muscles and rebuilt them. He’d excelled at every test.
Sit still, Amit, and don’t think about your mother’s murder, Woo would tell him. That test he always lost. Woo was like a human medical instrument, watching his pulse and breathing. He always knew. And when Amit allowed himself to be goaded into anger rather than consciously choosing it for himself, he performed poorly. Woo could get him angry over his past, then spear him with a sword as easily as goring a cloth-and-wood dummy. When he took the insults and goading of others and chose to grow irritated, he forgot everything and was easily bested. Just as Suni, the old man, had done to him in the garden.
Tell me, Amit, what good is training your muscles if you can be undone with a word?
Amit had manufactured words in his mind. The boys used to insult him, and he’d choose to be wounded. Now the stimuli weren’t words; they were stimuli that Amit himself held keys to. He undid himself. Others needed only to hold firm, and the knot inside himself, repressed but never quelled, would rise like a bubble of gas.
Sit still, Amit, and don’t think about Nisha’s murder.
That anger drove him forward. It was an engine. It wound him, like the key at the back of a toy. It served him. But was he the one in control? Or had it been like a great red cloud, controlling his strings? Had he ever been doing karmic work? Or was he doing the work of ego, spurred by the one thing he’d never learned to control?
Was Woo his enemy?
Of course, Woo was his enemy. He’d heard the abbot’s story. Maybe Suni had never agreed with Amit’s tendency toward anger, and perhaps the abbot had never agreed with his quest for vengeance, but Suni did agree that the man who had sold himself and his brothers to those who trafficked in lies, theft, and murder was the one who had gone bad. At least in principle. Amit had seen how the abbot had shaken his head, and the way his gaze had dropped. He was giving monk-like, philosophical lip service to the idea that Woo’s position might be as valid as his, but it was not how Suni felt. What his soul felt. What his karma and dharma said. Amit had never liked the abbot, but the man had never stepped a single toe from his true path. He was an insufferable, honorable man.
Amit watched the horizon. Maybe he’d been wrong, and maybe he hadn’t. What was done was done. All that mattered was what came next. He would face Woo, this time with the certainty that he was doing the right thing. He would control his anger — focus and use it to his advantage, to be the machine he could be, and that both masters always saw.
He would control himself, and face Woo.
Maybe Amit would ask why Woo why he’d not been invited.
The thought leapt into his mind unbidden. Once there, he couldn’t deny it. Woo had left to start the second monastery, and had taken his best warriors with him. Why not him? It didn’t make sense. Amit was the best — or at least had potential. At the time, he would have done and believed anything Woo said. If he had sworn to Amit that greater goods could be addressed by committing some wrongs, he would probably have reluctantly accepted that. Amit remembered how he’d been — how, he had to admit, he still was. He’d wanted to believe anything. He’d been robbed of his life and parents, left to starve. It all seemed so unfair. The streets teemed with disease, and the cities frothed with poverty and despair. It was easy to believe in nothing, yet Woo gave aim to his faith. There was a universal spirit: a reason for everything. The mind could be cleared by meditation. After enough practice, peace could be found. The Sri, save the occasional insult from the other boys and girls, delivered on those promises. Amit would have marched as a good soldier, even (and especially) then.
Why hadn’t Woo brought him along?
And why had he ordered Nisha’s murder?
The thought unhinged Amit so much that his foot slipped. He had to cling to the cliff for support. He found a clear spot and sat, crossing his legs and closing his eyes. He saw his anger as a ball inside his chest, then breathed in to quench it, out to allow it. Calm returned. Like a man testing a hot brand, Amit edged back toward the question, because it was important.
This was all about Nisha. Amit was here at the end of her trail. It should have been obvious, but when the Möbius strip underfoot was rematched end to end — Nisha next to Woo — something defied logic. If Woo had wanted Nisha dead, why didn’t he kill her himself? He must have known where she was staying; lines of communication to the old monastery couldn’t be that tattered. They’d been a handful of miles apart, and even Suni said that monks sometimes defected and repatriated. Woo could have come. He could have sent an assassin. They were Sri; they could have easily killed her. Why had he sent word down, spanning the sea and back? Why was the chain long enough to wrap the globe?
Amit didn’t know why. But this was where the money led, and in the end, it came down to that. Woo’s Sri didn’t have any more goods to sell than Suni’s, so they sold their services. Nisha had died because of dollars. Maybe she’d been in someone’s way; maybe she’d known something she shouldn’t have, maybe she’d soured a deal.
Amit stood and resumed walk
ing, his anger returning. It was empowering; it made his hands seem to fill with strength from the inside, as if slipping into gloves. He had let it go, so that he could fight. His anger drove him to battle, but he ironically couldn’t spar if it drove him. To pile one irony atop another, Amit fought best when he allowed it to surface in the end and flow through his fists.
Maybe he’d done wrong. He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter. What was done was done. He could only keep moving forward, and think of Nisha. Without love, despair, or anger. He had to think of her, who she’d been and how she’d died.
Amit didn’t know if it was right, but it was all he had.
Nisha.
Nisha.
The lone man in blue walked, sun high in the sky, and indecision on his back like a beast of burden’s yoke.
Chapter 23