The Breath of God

by Jeffrey Small

  With the two older men staring down at her, Carla’s neck reddened. “We won’t start receiving the first royalty checks for another couple of months, and by then sales may begin to taper off.” The volume of her voice dropped to the point where both men leaned in toward her. “I just felt that the revenues from that were too speculative to be a basis for the millions in fixed costs that this project will take.”

  Brady glared at the young accountant. The problem with these mainline Protestants, he thought, is that they don’t have true faith anymore. Carla put her faith in numbers and computer models, but computers couldn’t decipher the will of God. God spoke through prophets, like his one and only son Jesus Christ, and at times through his faithful servants, like Brady himself. Brady never had trouble falling asleep at night. He guessed Carla did, judging from the dark circles under her eyes. He didn’t feel the stress of the unknown or the impossible because he had faith that God would provide the answer.

  “I don’t mean to be pushy, sir. I just don’t want New Hope to turn into another PTL fiasco,” she said.

  “PTL?” Brady sputtered. “How could you even begin to compare what we’re doing to that buffoon Jim Bakker?”

  Jennings quickly chimed in, “Carla, I know you didn’t mean any offense by that comment. But you’re new here. We’ve been in difficult situations before. No one believed we would raise the money to build the current church either. It’s only a matter of timing. We just need to make sure that the book continues on its course. Rick Warren made tens of millions off of A Purpose Driven Life. I believe the reverend’s book can do the same.”

  Carla sighed. Brady placed his hands on her petite arm. She obviously didn’t see the light he saw. “Carla, are you familiar with chapter twenty-five of Matthew?” he asked.

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  “A man leaves on a journey, putting his servants in charge of his property. He gives the more capable servant five silver coins, and to another less capable servant he leaves one coin. The servant with the five coins invests the money, earning five more coins. The other servant digs a hole and buries his coin in the ground. When the master returns, the first servant brings him the ten coins and receives praise. The other servant then gives his master the original single coin back, explaining that he was afraid to lose the money so he buried it. Chastising the second servant for being lazy, the master then takes the servant’s single silver piece and gives it to the first servant, who had ten pieces, saying, ‘For everyone who has, he will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.’”

  Brady removed his hands from Carla’s now sweaty arm, leaned back in his chair, and placed his fingertips under his chin. “So you see, our greatest danger is not in going forward with the project, but in taking the path you recommended.”

  Carla stared at the table while Jennings gathered the spreadsheets and handed them to her. “Thank you, Carla. We can talk further when I return to the office.”

  Carla avoided the eyes of both men when she left the room. Brady shook his head. “I told you when you wanted to hire her, William, that a fancy education is no match for faith in the Lord.”

  Jennings winced at Brady’s reprimand. Brady knew that his number two didn’t like to be questioned on operational issues, but sometimes he needed to be reminded of who the boss was.

  Jennings considered his nail-bitten fingernails for a moment and then nodded. “One negative attitude can foster dissention among many others. Negative energy is a virus we cannot have spread through our organization at this critical time. I’ll take care of it.”

  “What will you do?”

  Brady knew that Jennings would bring Carla around. He’d heard the stories of Jennings’s reprimands of employees who didn’t perform up to his expectations. Brady was happy that Jennings relished that role. Every organization needed a disciplinarian, but Brady was too beloved to fulfill that role himself.

  “Simple.” Jennings tucked his reading glasses into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’m going to fire her.”

  CHAPTER 11

  PUNAKHA, BHUTAN

  HOW OFTEN DOES A PERSON face a moment when he knows his life is going to change forever?

  This question played in Grant’s mind as he gazed up at the decorative windows of the six-story, whitewashed-stone utse tower. The low morning sun cast a long shadow of the tower across the flagstones, like a giant sundial representing to Grant the time to grasp his destiny. He thought about the answer to the two-thousand-year-old mystery that might be revealed in the tower above him. He thought about the draft of his dissertation stored in his laptop, which was in the small backpack slung across his shoulders. He thought about the redemption this discovery would bring to him. He mentally reviewed the checklist he’d been writing the past week—documenting the find, emailing the photos and text to Professor Billingsly, arranging for the professional translations ...

  Then he caught up with the mental movie he’d been replaying in his head all morning. Kinley had taught him to monitor what the monk called the cycles of unproductive thinking he claimed Grant was prone to, the repetitive rehashing of future events in his mind. Grant released the breath he held tightly in his chest. The brisk breeze tossed his hair just as it swayed the naked branches of the tree in the center of the courtyard beside him. He continued to breathe, and he relaxed. But then other thoughts intruded: What if all this buildup was for nothing? What if the Issa texts were not as old as Kinley said? What if Notovich’s critics were right? What if the story of Issa was nothing more than a legend spun by the creative mind of some Indian writer centuries earlier?

  The footsteps behind him saved Grant from continuing that line of thought. His breath quickened when he saw Kinley and Kristin hurrying toward him. Dressed for the cool autumn day, she wore a red fleece over jeans with various multicolored patches that she’d obviously sewn on herself. Her camera was slung over her shoulder. Kinley strode with his hands clasped behind his back, while Jigme followed a step behind.

  “So we’re really doing this?” Grant whispered to Kinley.

  “We cannot allow religious isolationism to govern our actions. But you do understand that what we are doing carries certain risks?”

  Grant tried not to imagine what a Bhutanese jail cell looked like. But then they weren’t planning on taking anything other than pictures. Surely they couldn’t go to jail for that? He nodded. “This is too important not to try.”

  Kinley smiled. “Exactly what I would have said at your age.”

  “How are you going to get us up there?”

  “Lama Dorji left for a neighboring monastery early this morning. We must hurry before he returns.” He turned to Jigme. “Dawa will be sitting inside by the door to the stairs. Please occupy his attention.”

  A few minutes later, Jigme exited the utse with another monk who appeared to be in his late sixties. After they disappeared around the side of the building, Kinley hustled Grant and Kristin to the stone steps at the foot of the tower’s entrance.

  “What do you guys have against putting your doors on the ground floor?” Grant asked under his breath.

  Kristin took his free left arm, wrapped it around her shoulder, and assisted him up the steps. Grant was proud of the milestone he’d reached that morning—graduating to a single crutch—but he didn’t protest the help. He felt the same thrill he’d experienced the day before just by putting his arm around her.

  They entered the building through a set of bronze-coated doors. Kinley surveyed the courtyard behind them and then closed the heavy doors with a thud. Inside, Grant noted that as in the other temples in the dzong, a worn wooden floor stretched from one mural-covered stone wall to the other. A single chair stood by a closed door.

  Grant nodded to the door. “Top floor?”

  Kinley nodded. “The sixth.”

  Grant started for the stairs while Kristin rushed to keep up with him. When he reached the sixth-floor la
nding, sweat dripped from his hairline. Kinley brushed by Grant, materialized a ring of keys from under his robe, and unlocked a set of carved doors at the end of the short hallway. The double doors creaked loudly, causing Grant and Kristin both to wince. Grant entered the shadowy room last, stooping to avoid cracking his head on the low frame. Kinley then parted a beige curtain from the room’s single window, allowing the sun to pour in.

  In the weeks he’d spent imagining the library, Grant expected it to be grander. The room measured twenty by thirty feet and had the musty odor of a closed space that hadn’t felt fresh air in years. Dusty Tibetan-style books, narrow and long like the ones he’d seen the students use in the temple, were randomly stacked on crooked shelves and in various piles on the floor throughout the room. He looked around with the eager expression of a miner prospecting for gold in an undiscovered mountain vein.

  “Let me see,” Kinley said, stepping over several piles of books. “Twenty-two years ago, I was the assistant librarian in the dzong. That’s when I first discovered the texts about Issa.” The monk ran a finger along one of the shelves, wiping up a line of dust. “Not much has changed.” He disappeared around a bookcase at the far end of the room, mumbling to himself.

  “How can we help?” Kristin whispered.

  “Oh, no help. Around here somewhere,” he replied from the other side of the bookcase. “This library doesn’t get used much. We keep the current texts downstairs.”

  The sound of books crashing to the ground startled Grant. “Are you okay?”

  “Found it.” Kinley reappeared carrying by iron handles a simple pine box the size of a small suitcase. He placed the box on a laminate table that looked like it had been salvaged from a 1970s garage sale but which sat on an exquisitely handwoven carpet.

  Grant and Kristin took two of the four wooden chairs around the table. Grant noticed that Kristin sat cross-legged in the chair like she had on the knee wall the previous day. While Grant gazed at the simple box, she reached across him and touched it, as if trying to glean its contents from the texture of the wood. Grant eyed her slender fingers and short but manicured nails as they traced the grain of the wood. As alluring as she was, her need to touch everything reminded him again that she was too much a free spirit.

  When Kinley lifted the lid of the box, which had neither lock nor latch, Grant held his breath. He rose from his chair and peered into the open container.

  Grant’s first reaction was surprise—more Tibetan-style books, seven, stacked on each other. Eighteen inches long by three or four inches wide, the books were individually wrapped in silk cloths of various faded colors. He recalled Notovitch’s description of the book he found at Himis: it was larger with an ornate cover.

  Kinley lifted a green, silk-wrapped book. He blew off the fine layer of dust from the silk and then slowly unwrapped the book. The cover was heavy and sturdy, woodlike, and the book was as thick as it was wide—about four inches. Kinley opened the cover using the silk so that the oil from his hands would not touch the book itself.

  “Well?” Grant said, craning over the table from the edge of his seat.

  Kinley stared at the first page for a long minute, then turned to the second page. Grant noticed that the pages, a beige color, were much thicker than normal paper, not really flexible, and seemingly handmade. Each book contained twenty pages at the most.

  “Aha,” Kinley said, when he turned to the third page. Grant saw some squiggly writing in faded black ink. He bolted out of his chair to stand over Kinley’s shoulder.

  “It’s Pali!” Grant said.

  “What’s Pali?” Kristin asked.

  “An ancient language”—he squinted at the text—“somewhat similar to Sanskrit.”

  “Can you read it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Only rudimentarily. I took a year of Pali and Sanskrit, but I had three years of Tibetan: that’s the language of the texts I was expecting to find.” He turned to Kinley. “Do you have any idea how old these are?”

  Kinley flipped a few of the thick pages. “First century, if I’m reading the words correctly.”

  First century! Grant’s mind raced. Judging from the thick pages, it appeared possible, but he feared to hope too much.

  “They do look pretty old,” Kristin said. Grant flinched when she reached a hand toward the open book.

  Kinley gently guided her hand to the table. “I grew up reading the Buddhist canon in its original Pali.”

  Grant knew that Pali was the language of the ancient Buddhist canon, and it was still in use in first-century India when Issa supposedly lived. The book that Notovitch had seen in the Himis monastery, however, was written in Tibetan, a language that developed centuries later. As part of his research, Grant had theorized that the Notovitch book, if it existed as he believed it did, was like the Gospels from the Bible. The oldest copies of the Gospels in existence were copies of copies of copies written more than two hundred years after the originals. More significant was the fact that the Gospels were written in Greek, although Jesus would have taught his apostles and his followers in Galilee in Aramaic. For decades after his death, stories of Jesus would have circulated first among his followers in Aramaic, and then later they would have been translated into Greek and then written down in various forms. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not apostles of Jesus who had known the historical man, as was the common but mistaken belief. They were men who were part of the later Jesus community who compiled the stories that were in circulation about him and composed the Gospels.

  Similarly, Notovitch’s discovery appeared to be a Tibetan translation and compilation of earlier sources, sources that would have been in the original Pali language that was in use during Issa’s travels in India. Grant had not imagined in his wildest dreams that he might uncover the original writings that Notovitch’s book was based upon. He’d assumed those would have been long destroyed or lost, just as the original sources for the Gospels had long ago disappeared. As he stared at the narrow books on the table, he felt his heart pounding in his ears.

  “Will someone at least tell me what we’re looking at?” Kristin asked.

  Kinley replied, “These books detail the journey of—”

  “Issa,” Grant interrupted. “The Indian saint I told you about yesterday. According to legend he left his home as a teen to seek a secret wisdom from the sages in the Himalayas.”

  “Secret wisdom. I’m game.”

  She sat back in her chair but glanced between Kinley and Grant, as if she suspected they were holding back on her. Grant knew that she was smart, and he made a decision to tell her the truth if she asked directly. Part of the problem was that she’d shown up unexpectedly, and he had a carefully laid-out plan for the release of this discovery. She’s a journalist, he reminded himself.

  “So these texts were written by ... ?” she asked.

  Kinley answered, “The monks in India who taught Issa. They were impressed by an unusually bright and receptive student, a student who became well known years later. You see, controversy followed young Issa wherever he went, even after he was martyred.”

  “Issa was killed?” Kristin asked.

  “A story for another time,” Kinley said, glancing at Grant. A short time after Kinley had revealed the existence of the texts to him, Grant had realized that the monk knew the truth behind Issa’s identity. He’d mentioned to Kinley that until they were published, it might be safer for all of them if this fact remained secret.

  “These silks, Kinley?” Grant asked, changing the topic.

  “Only a hundred years old or so; they were added later to protect the books, and are changed by the librarian when they deteriorate.” Grant noted that many of the other books on the shelves around them were wrapped in similar silks.

  “If Issa lived in India,” Kristin asked, “and these texts were written in a monastery there, what are they doing here in Bhutan?”

  “For several hundred years after Issa’s death, the texts remained in the monaster
ies where they were written,” Kinley explained. “But then, as Hinduism began to reassert itself over Buddhism as the dominant religion in India, the books were collected and sent to a monastery in Tibet. During the nineteen fifty-nine revolt by the Tibetans against their Chinese occupiers, the monks boxed up the contents of their libraries and secretly sent them out of the country with the Dalai Lama, just before the Communists suppressed the dissenters. The various texts were divided and sent to monasteries throughout Nepal and Bhutan,”—Kinley gestured to the shelves of books surrounding them—“where they have sat to this day, largely forgotten.”

  “What about the book that Nicholas Notovitch saw in the Himis monastery in eighteen ninety-four?” Grant asked.

  Kinley shrugged. “In the days before the printing press or computers, it was the practice of the monks to copy by hand the ancient texts.”

  “As was the case with Christianity.”

  Kinley nodded. “My guess is that the monks at some point translated these books”—he pointed to the narrow books on the table—“into Tibetan, as they did with thousands of others, and then sent the manuscript out to Himis, where Notovitch saw it.”

  “But that manuscript is no longer there.”

  “Yes, a mystery indeed.”

  Grant considered the treasure laid out on the table before him. While the disappearance of Notovitch’s discovery had always been the mystery Grant sought to solve, it was now irrelevant. Grant had evidence of much greater importance. He had the original texts documenting the existence of Issa.

  “Does Lama Dorji know about this?” Kristin asked.

  Kinley shook his head. “We have other interesting writings in here as well, but if they do not relate directly to the Buddhist canon, then he sees them as a distraction from our mission.” He gestured to the shelves around him. “So they sit here for hundreds of years collecting dust.”

  Grant was beside himself thinking about the ramifications of these texts. That such a treasure could remain sitting in the monastery forgotten was beyond something his curious mind could relate to. “Kinley, you know that these texts need to be in a university or museum, where scholars can study and analyze them.”