Black Buddha

by Richard Waters

  ‘They’ve followed me everywhere… they even planted a girl in my path just to make sure I came to Laos. It’s something to do with Dad, a key he left me.’

  Casbaron rumpled his face sceptically; the burnt-half seemed to mock me, the twists of seared membrane forming into miniature leers. Unless we were out of here quickly it would surely be too late. I had to relieve myself.

  ‘But who would do that? Who could have that level of cash and employees?’ said Casbaron mystified, ‘It just sounds so convoluted.’

  ‘I know, believe me I know. I need the toilet.’

  He looked over his shoulder to the noises coming from the kitchen. ‘It’s out back I think.’ Then he took hold of my hand and squeezed it reassuringly in his mammoth palm. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

  I limped to the toilet passing the kitchen as I did so. There was a western woman slicing some raw meat. As I stepped out into the darkness of the corridor, I felt a rough, cold hand on my mouth, another on my throat. Something in their grasp told me they were not there to harm me, more to keep me quiet. Almost as soon as they gripped me the thin hands drew away without force. I thought for a moment it might be Nathan.

  I turned slowly around to face their owner and a monkey face of white hair and green eyes drew me into the shadows. Yin - the old man from the roadside. He opened a side door, took hold of my arm and tugged it, urging me to follow him out to the backyard.

  ‘I can’t, my friend is in there.’

  He shook his head. ‘No… come, quickly!’ His accent was French-Oriental, but clear enough to understand. With little effort I resisted his grasp. ‘No! Listen to me - he’s my friend and he’s in danger if I leave him on his own.’

  Much as Sammy might think he could take care of himself, he was just a withered old man hanging to the memories of yesterday’s marine spirit. He wouldn’t last five seconds against the Jai-Dam; they’d hang him by his ball-sacks from the nearest temple. I wasn’t leaving him.

  But Yin wouldn’t give up, just as he had by the roadside fire, he pointed to my birthmark then said, ‘Your father had the same mark, yes? Jacques Deschamps? Now you trust me? Please, not much time! Humour me for just five minutes, yes?’

  ‘Alright, I’ll come with you, but at least let me go and get my friend. They’ll kill him.’

  ‘In a moment.’

  We moved out of the backyard, the old man leading me around the side of a temple and back onto the open road by the Mekong. From the shadows we watched the entrance to the Three Elephants. I didn’t know what his plan was, I thought I was safer inside the restaurant, but for some reason I trusted him.

  Just as I was about to break away and return to the restaurant through the front door, some fireworks lit the sky above us in a bloom of red. Yin pulled me behind a mango trunk and pointed down the road to a parked car.

  It was the Lexus.

  ‘Your friend?’ he said,

  ‘No, it belongs to someone else,’ I whispered, ‘this man’s come to take me away.’

  He didn’t need to tell me to squat down, I was already on my belly. I watched in horror as the figure of Vong, the Forestry Minister, climbed out of the black car and walked toward Casbaron with his slow measured stride, his surgeon’s hands stiff by his sides. I made to get up but Yin grabbed me, fingers strong as chicken wire as they wrenched me to the ground.

  Vong looked as if he was drawing a gun as he sat down, back to us, opposite Sammy. The next moment we heard shouting from behind the restaurant. Casbaron looked panicked and raised his hands in defence, then as if in a slow nightmare, they left the restaurant and stood outside on the street, Vong seemingly unperturbed by my disappearance. Sammy stood limp and defeated next to him, too scared to move.

  ‘You still have what they want?’ asked Yin.

  My body felt sapped of its last fibres of resistance; spent as a fox that stops midfield to look at his pursuers, then sits down to wait for them. I buried my face in my hands. ‘Yes… Yin, he’s an old man who doesn’t deserve this. There must be something we can do.’

  His eyes lit up like flames, he shook his head adamantly. ‘No. You have more important things to do and if they catch you they will kill you.’

  ‘What can be more important than saving someone’s life?’

  He looked back at me evenly, ‘We must go.’

  He slithered down the bank without me. I looked back at the two men before me and over to Yin, and for a moment felt as if I were a protagonist in a poorly wrought screenplay. I banished the pain in my ankle and followed the reedlike shadow along the shore of the Mekong River.

  A little boat was moored against the mud bank, he unlaced the rope and ushered me onboard. We flowed with the current, Yin stood at the rear with a longtail motor. He didn’t start her up till we were at least two hundred yards from the bank. The drums and fireworks faded behind us as the darkness took reign, rendering the outlying jungle dark as crows. I saw the high roof of the Palace drifting to our left. Yin caught my stare and tapped me softly on the shoulder. ‘I used to work here, long time ago,’

  Despite his ragged clothes, there was something noble about his furrowed face and unusual green eyes. ‘Yes, I can believe that.’ I said, shivering from the chill on the black water.

  He chuckled, ‘… as a gardener! I was the King’s official vegetable guardian!’

  The Mekong begins in the holy land of Tibet, rolling through the heartland of China before passing through Laos, Cambodia and ending in the Mekong Delta near Saigon. On its course it flows past the most sacred and vicious places on earth; politics, disease, genocide, starvation and splendour. But there was nothing holy about this stretch of the river, at least not to my mind. Yin wrapped his cloak about him till just his silvery beard could be seen. He steered us into the central force of the river, constantly watching the banks for movement on both sides. When he caught me staring again he smiled and said, ‘You are a guardian,’

  ‘What do you mean?’ On a distant hill I could see another temple, he steered the boat toward it, beaching on a spit of sand,

  ‘You will see,’ he said cryptically. ‘You will understand everything soon.’

  We travelled by foot along a winding road, resting when we were at the base of a hill with the sickly gold temple at its summit. There were a few lights on around its base, it looked as if it had fallen into disrepair. We didn’t talk much; once again I’d been lifted from the jaws of misfortune and carried away by a new pathfinder. As I looked up at the stars, my breath blowing in white tubes, I hoped this time I’d chosen the right one. But what the hell was I going to do about Sammy?

  We heard the dog before we saw it, a weighty snarl that set my nerves on edge. As I searched the darkness for its direction, Yin laughed. ‘It friend, no trouble, see?’

  The dog’s head appeared from the blackness, held fast on a link chain by a monk with a hard face. It’s eyes were milky-white, the muscles on its tan flanks twitching as it pulled to reach us. The monk butted the Cerberus with his knee, its tail went between its legs and it sat down quietly.

  The four of us walked up the rocky hill toward the ruined wat, it was beige on closer inspection, the cracked walls dotted in pockets of weed. The monk glanced at me, particularly my neck. Something in his expression suggested he’d been expecting us.

  ‘Come inside.’ he said with a westernized accent, unlocking a huge wooden door. ‘Welcome to our humble abode.’

  Inside it smelt of old houses, of dust… as if no one had worshiped here for years. Yin stayed by my side while the monk lit a match and went about the circular room lighting candles. With each new flame, a wavering mural sprang into life. The first showed a group of naked white people spewing blood; the next a man hanging from a branch over a pit with a cobra in it. The branch had a rat at its end and beginning, they were working their way to the man in the
middle. I was starting to wonder what sort of place it was when another painting came into view; a boy and a man on the back of a white mare flying high above a moon tattered in clouds. And then he lingered over another and paused before lighting the candle; a man entering a cave with a firebrand, a western man. Around him curled black smoke, and on his neck in the same place as my own, was a birthmark.

  ‘You have found yourself.’ Yin patted me on the shoulder and smiled at me through his brilliant turquoise eyes, then walked to the mural and gazed into it.

  ‘What, that’s supposed to be me? Yin, what in hell are we doing here?’ I asked, increasingly spooked.

  He turned to me and said, ‘Please, don’t be scared. You were born for this. I’ve waited a long time for you to come to us. But now I want you to rest before we talk.’ His voice was soothing, like a cool breeze, lulling me into submission.

  Yin motioned me to follow him upstairs as the dog settled on the floor and licked its hindquarters, the monk busying himself with a bag and curiously, withdrawing from it a laptop. I hadn’t associated technology with ancient religion. He caught my inquisitive glance and smiled. ‘For later,’ he said, almost business-like.

  So, they’d been waiting for me, seemingly unsurprised that I was here, and my birthmark was the same as that on the mural; and then my first meeting with Yin by the roadside, again he’d not seemed altogether surprised by my appearance. I didn’t know what to think but had a sneaking suspicion that if there really are polar opposites in life, then perhaps I’d just entered the camp of the Jai-Dam’s enemy.

  I followed him up some spiral stairs to the main tower of the wat, inside, at the very top, like a lighthouse keeper’s room there was a small place to sleep. As I lay down under a mozzie net on a bare mattress I felt safer than I’d done since that first night on Khao San Rd. But something told me again it wasn’t going to last, that if they believed me to have been chosen and the mural was anything to go by, they’d be expecting me to do something opposed to my instinct for self survival… to go back to Black Dragon Mountain.

  Later that night after a few hours’ sleep he shook me awake. Unwillingly I left my womb-like room and followed him downstairs to a circle of candles burning in the centre of the temple, and mercifully, a couple of dishes of food. Over sticky rice and laap salad, we unfurled the small map and studied it while the monk, whose name Sae, fiddled with the laptop again. There was the mountain, an icon for the ruins and something like a maze. It reminded me of those book puzzles you played as a kid. It was so complex it looked like a mandala, looking at it almost made my head swim. For the first time I noticed writing at the bottom of the map, I pointed to it. ‘What does this mean, Yin?’

  ‘The birth of the Buddha, his eyes and nose.’

  ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’ I asked.

  He shrugged, ‘I don’t know,’ he said, wide-eyed,’ Maybe.’

  ‘And when was that, his birth?

  ‘553 AD.’

  ‘Oh.’ Seemed a long time ago to still be affected by the disciples of his polar opposite. I thought about Nathan Moore and what might have already befallen Sammy Casbaron.

  ‘Yin, you know who these people are, the people who are looking for me?’

  ‘Ofcourse, they are the people you must face, the Blackhearts.’

  Once again I had the strange sensation he believed my story was already written, that I was close to the end of my journey. ‘But why me?’

  He looked into the candles spread around us on the floor, ‘Because you are a guardian, just like your Father.’ He said pointing to my birthmark. ‘You have his mark.’

  ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Ofcourse.’ he traced his finger across the map, specifically along the maze-like illustration and looked at me softly, ‘A good man, a strong person. Tomorrow no moon, we will go to the mountain, I will show you the entrance.’

  I knew he was talking about the cave, but I still didn’t understand what he meant. ‘Who made me a guardian, Yin?’

  He fished in the pocket of his cloak and produced a wallet, a Quiksilver rip-off, then took out a small black and white photo and held it near the flame. Time and humidity had almost washed the subjects away. Yin pointed to a man next to his younger self; he was tall and thickset, in his hand was a lettuce, behind him some kind of allotment. His rectangular head was sheened in a shock of obsidian-black hair, there were flowing garments around his sloping shoulders,

  ‘My Master,’ he said proudly, ‘the King.’

  ‘The King of Laos?’

  ‘The King. It was he who entrusted the key with your father… told him to never return. But he did.’

  ‘So he fought his destiny?’ I said,

  ‘Not at all, just the wishes of the king. He never brought the key with him though… he kept that promise. But he came back and there was nothing we could do to help him.’

  ‘He came back… to kill Carabas,’

  Yin looked darkly into the myriad flames. ‘You must take the key with you back to Dragon Mountain. You must willingly go in there, and lead him in.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Blackheart,’ he said quietly. For a moment he couldn’t look at me. ‘The demon who took your father to the grave.’

  I lost my breath; now, after thirty-six years of wondering I finally had the beginnings of an explanation as to the fate of my father. It seemed beyond perverse we would both go to the same place, history repeating itself. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to hear the rest of it. ‘And this devil- this demon,’

  ‘The Blackheart,’ he prompted,

  ‘He was the one who took my father from me.’

  ‘Yes. You would call him the antichrist. We have our own name.’

  I lit a cigarette and paced the room, my gaze continually referring to the mural. ‘Who is he, Yin, this man?’

  He lit a stick of incense and closed his eyes, ‘Less of a man, and more of a monster, the taker of children, of innocence. The bringer of snakes and darkness.’

  I looked out of the window at the blackness beyond, the glow of the temple on Mount Phousi a faint beacon of light. Luang Prabang and its 21st century tourists, internet cafes and chic boutiques, seemed a world away. ‘You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that. Can we skip the mystic?’

  Yin shrugged. ‘Not the easiest thing trusting a religion you don’t believe in, I appreciate that. Don’t you find it strange that destiny has brought you here, that against all efforts you have ended up here, with me?’

  ‘Perhaps. You said I was chosen, and my dad before me. So who did the choosing?’

  Yin’s eyes opened wide. ‘Buddha. And to be fair he did not choose you, he simply predicted that you would come and what would happen.’

  That was enough, it was too preposterous for words. I laughed out loud, laughed till my ribs actually hurt. They waited patiently exchanging glances. Outside the cicadas switched on in amplified fury, maybe I just hadn’t noticed them before. If this was a dream it was time to wake up.

  Then the monk spoke.

  ‘Alain, I’m from Krabi in the south of Thailand. I have a degree in medicine and I’m studying to be a doctor.’ He said as if to credentialize himself; as if to bring us back to the 21st century so I would take them both seriously. ‘I was a doubter to start with, then I made my own discoveries by accident and they lead me here. I too had a role to play, that of the interpreter… I believe I discovered him.’

  ‘The Blackheart?’

  ‘Yes, quite by accident. His birth was predicted, his arrival in this country too. That is when the king entrusted the key to your father and told him never to bring it back to Laos. But none of us knew who he was, where he would be. You cannot fight destiny, however hard you try - it has ways, ways of doing anything it wants. And so it delivered you
to Laos and you brought the key back.’

  ‘And my best friend is buried. Thank you destiny.’ I said childishly. ‘What if I choose not to help you? More importantly, what if I don’t believe in any of this?’’

  ‘We cannot encourage you to go back in to the forest with a motive of revenge, that would be against our code. You must got for your own reasons.’ He studied me then abruptly moved over to his laptop as if he was dissatisfied with the effect of mere words. ‘I think it’s time we viewed this from a more empirical perspective. Yin, I’d like to show him the images.’

  - 37 -

  ‘American Embassy please.’

  As they rode across the evening sprawl of Bangkok the city seemed to have changed, the horizon now studded with the silhouettes of high-raised buildings. He looked out of the open window at the swarm of traffic, the smell of spicy fried food leaking into the car and filling him with memories.

  ‘You see moon tonight sah?’ spoke the cabbie pointing through his windscreen, ‘it is red mistah, red… many people stay inside till it has gone, very bad luck.’

  Deschamps mumbled a polite response but his thoughts were elsewhere. His watch was still set to English time, Richmond time, where his son would be playing in the garden, or watching his mother painting. He’d leave it like that till he got back. Where he was going there was no time, no schedule, only day and night, life and death. He would kill at night and return by day. Straightforward.

  As he put the phone down to Knowles, Penny had entered and immediately realised something was up by his expression. She’d never looked at him like that before, a look of betrayal; it sent butterflies through his stomach. She understood the call before Jacques even tried to explain.

  ‘You’d risk all this - your new home and family - to go back and work for them? What were you doing with us, biding your time?’

  He tried to reason with her; it was money, perhaps a hundred grand if he had his way… enough not to worry for many years. Maybe she could set up a gallery, perhaps he might open a little jazz bar of his own… Alain’s education. It was something he had to try, he’d never make that kind of money elsewhere. And the man, the abomination… deserved to be dead after all the lives he’d taken. Who knows how many innocents he’d corrupted by now, how many souls had been sucked with that rictus leer. Not that he mentioned Carabas.