Black Buddha

by Richard Waters

  ‘You watched me all those years? Why?’ I screamed.

  ‘Lesson number one: get to know your quarry - especially quarry as precious as you were to us. And we had so much time before you turned forty, Alain.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

  The smile peeled away from his lips. ‘Before I joined our organization I was lost on the traveller trail, another junkie stuck in Goa running from a confused existence… then I met Him in a stinking market in Delhi. He showed me a purpose, taught me the meaning of patience.’

  ‘You’re just another fuckup they’ve used to their own purposes. You’re a muppet James, a loser; I knew it when I first saw you with the others. You don’t fit in. None of them liked you.’

  His face twitched with uncertainty as he looked up to the treehouse behind me and made a gesture. I didn’t take my eyes off him. ‘You know, sometimes I wanted to walk up and introduce myself to you in Richmond High Street, tell you what lay in store for you a few years down the line.’

  The dragons were moving toward us again. ‘Presuming I believe you, why did you wait?’

  ‘Because the old bitch with the key couldn’t give you it until you were forty. We searched her flat a number of times then we found your Father’s will. After that we had no choice, we realized it was the way, the order of things; the magic would be useless unless we observed its sacraments.’

  I thought back to what Nana had said about receiving visits from people she didn’t like, how I’d just stood there nodding at her senile pronouncements as if they were nothing more than the hallucinations of an old woman. No wonder she’d gripped my hand with such force.

  ‘You killed her?’ My head was burning in flame.

  As he looked at the girl, his grin turned into a leer. ‘You know I think Giselle was actually beginning to fall for you? It was getting risky.’

  She looked toward the gathering reptiles.

  I remembered the black guy with the steel hook as an arm in Live and Let Die, dispensing advice to Roger Moore at the crocodile farm, ‘There are only two ways to defend yourself against a crocodile; first of all stick your hand in his mouth and rip all his teeth out,’ Then just as I was remembering the second James said, ‘Take him to the Host, I’ll prepare the old man.’ He wrenched Yin by his neck, my friend rasped and tripped over a tree rot.

  I raised the machete, ‘You harm him and I’ll kill you.’ I said impotently.

  ‘I’d get up that tree pretty quickly if I were you, they’re getting hungry.’

  He dragged Yin away. I was left in impotent silence with Giselle and the approaching animals. ‘It’s not too late,’ I whispered, ‘you can help us…Giselle!’ She looked ahead into nothingness, a waxen figure.

  Then a voice from above floated down; a gravelly, soothing voice, ‘Mr Deschamps?’

  I looked up to see Sammy Casbaron leaning from the wooden balcony of the treehouse, fifty feet up. He gazed down in amusement, the burnt side of his face turned toward me. My legs collapsed. As I fought to regain my balance, shaking off Giselle’s attempt to support me, I couldn’t stop thinking about him in the dimpled leather armchair in my Mother’s lounge.

  Sammy? No, it was too much to believe. I knew he’d been incommunicado during my troubles in Bangkok, but involved in Skip’s murder? Memories of Giselle and my conversation in the Hanoi noodle bar drifted back. ‘What’s he do, your dad?’ ‘Oh, he’s a business man.’ ‘What kind of business?’ ‘Oh stuff, he has his fingers in lots of things.’ Then - ‘He’s on a business trip in London’. How convenient.

  Casbaron broke my reverie, ‘Are you coming up or are you going to allow my daughter to be fed to the dragons… she’s menstruating and they can smell her.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s all she deserves.’ I said bitterly,

  ‘That’s not very nice.’

  ‘Neither is opening up peoples’ ribcages… daughter?’ I said, suddenly cognizant of what he’d just said. Giselle stared blankly back at me. Droplets of acid slid down the sides of my heart as I tried to estimate the parameters of their game. Was this just another line in preparation for a later effect?

  ‘Ladies first.’ I said coldly,

  ‘I seem to remember you calling me bitch.’

  ‘Bitches come into season and I reckon you’d be incapable of such a generous gesture.’ I felt the sharp point of a hypodermic teasing the vein in my neck.

  ‘Drop the machete Alain.’ She pricked me a little harder with the needle and I let it fall to the ground.

  As my fingers released the knife, something struck me; I still had the key, the map in my head that would lead through their accursed cave to their dead leader; surely that was a weapon in itself. The answer to thirty years of soul-searching and a string of murders lay at the summit of the ladder, I didn’t need the threat of a hypodermic to push me there – I wanted to go to the people waiting for me.

  In his linen-white suit and crocodile shoes Casbaron looked quite the colonial. His shades were off, his eyes milky and alien. Why had he needed to come to my Mother’s house at all? Suddenly I was petrified, not for myself but for Mum six thousand miles away. He languidly leaned on the wooden balcony railing and smiled as I hauled myself up.

  ‘Welcome to the end of the trail,’ said the American softly, ‘and I hope, the beginning of a new one. You had me worried for a moment, my grey friends were almost upon you.’

  ‘You lying bastard!’

  He knew I could have tossed him over the edge, yet there was no fear of repercussion. I guess he knew how desperate I was for answers. Either that or he was a clinical psychopath. There was movement inside the hut, a figure darted past the doorway… more preparations.

  Casbaron sighed theatrically and smiled a dead smile. Giselle brushed her body past me as she brought up the rear. He looked over to her proudly. ‘You two have ofcourse met… You know she’s quite the actress that girl of mine. Not a bad photographer either.’ He looked at me mockingly, ‘but then I suppose you know that.’

  I want you to think of cold stone… I want you to focus on the dark.

  ‘She certainly has a flair for the dramatic,’ I said sourly, ‘Why did you come to my mother’s house? Why bother with all the deceptions when you could have just taken the key?’

  ‘We needed you to bring it yourself… willingly. That’s the prophecy.’

  I had to play them at their game, whatever it was; had to remain calm at all costs. Where was their leader Carabas… was he even alive? I tried not to look down from the vertiginous ceiling of the rainforest. Far below I could see ropes being tightened on a pulley system just above the reach of the dragons.

  Casbaron caught my glance and opened his palms expansively, ‘Stage management. For later…’

  ‘Let’s get to the point.’ I snapped, trying to hide the fear in my voice.

  His comedic gaze pierced the soft tissue of my deceit, ‘That’s the spirit kid, still got a little spunk left in you… that’s good, you’re going to need it. Did you bring my gift?’ His eyebrows arched across his mottled skull like the wings of an ascendant crow.

  ‘You didn’t have to kill Skip or Stretch and the others.’

  ‘Oh the travellers you mean…’ he said absently. ‘We all run the rapids at some time.’ He was shivering, his arms pocked in goosepimples. ‘I wanted you to see this place, Alain, it’s quite beautiful isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘There’s nowhere quite like jungle, especially at night. This is where it all began, for Adam and Eve… the snake… in here.’ He sounded almost avuncular, affectionate even.

  ‘It’s getting cold and our guests are waiting, shall we?’ Casbaron gestured for me to step inside. As I entered the hut I nearly retched.

  - 40 -

  The treehouse was surprisingly large, divid
ed into two rooms separated by a muslin screen. Behind it I could discern the silhouettes of the awaiting diners. There was something unreal about them as if perhaps they were shapes flitting across a Chinese lantern, only, none of them moved. I wondered who they were, friends of the charade - the monkey-faced receptionist from Bangkok, the policeman from the morgue, the midget in Luang Prabang? Bit players in the screenplay of my travels.

  ‘So, this is the endgame?’ I said.

  I felt his rutted hand curl around my shoulder and brushed it away with a violent jerk. ‘On the contrary the final level of the game has just started. Alain… you’re shaking, are you scared?’

  I wheeled around and looked into his eyes. ‘If you know me as well as you think, you’ll be aware I have it in my character to throw you off this fucking treehouse and take a bullet for it, so don’t push it.’

  ‘I’m impressed by your tenacity, very impressed. And almost every crumb of information - every clue we left - you picked up.’

  I stared hard at his ragged features, aside of his duplicity and the perverse enthusiasm of his machinations, something about his person didn’t add up. ‘Clues?’ I said.

  ‘The matches on the rooftop. Okay I know it was a little clichéd, but that was your first piece of bait.’

  ‘It was you who killed my grandmother.’

  He grinned so slowly I felt as if we were moving at half-speed. The smell of the reptiles seemed to drift through from the other room in a thick yellow cloud; flyblown meat, I remembered then the same stench at his Thai warehouse,

  ‘No, it wasn’t me. You’ll meet the man who did it.’

  ‘Clever little trick with the Komodos, Casbaron; you import them to Bangkok with your phony trading company, then bring them here and kill a few locals to keep people away from your sacred mountain. All so you can play out your sick, twisted game.’

  His eyes were watering. ‘The first time you came snooping I was inside, you very nearly caught me.’

  I swallowed hard. I wanted to kill him. ‘I trusted you.’

  ‘We all make mistakes. There’s someone you’ve been waiting to meet since you were a baby. I don’t think you should keep him any longer after all these years, do you?’

  I knew it was another trick, I banished the impossible bait from my mind. Instead I tried to focus on the memory of the candle I’d watched in the ruined wat.

  Casbaron nodded as if in tune with my thoughts, ‘That’s right, think the impossible kid, because tonight it happens… welcome to pandemonium.’

  I heard Yin screaming wretchedly far below us. I had to do something! ‘Is that all life is to you, a game on a board?’ My friend screamed again. ‘If you kill him you’ll never find what you’re looking for,’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ Casbaron held up a finger and cleared his throat of congestion; a wave foaming against pebbles on a phlegm-coated shore, ‘but I wonder if you will find what you’re looking for.’

  I was about to make a rush for him, he must have registered the change in my eyes. He brought up a long dagger from behind his back. ‘I wouldn’t do that. Ladies and gentlemen,’ he called to the hidden room, ‘may I present The Player of Games, Alain Deschamps.’

  Behind the screen the candles snuffed out on cue, the silhouettes disappeared and we were in the dark.

  ‘Be seated please,’ he said, leading the way.

  I remained where I was for a beat, if only to illustrate the last grains of my resistance leaking through his hands. Then I followed.

  A vacant chair at the head of a long table, Casbaron took a seat at the opposing end, his daughter at his shoulder. I wondered what this girl had suffered physically in the name of fatherly love. There was something disturbingly still about her, in fact about all the diners. I sidled past the still diners and took my seat.

  Casbaron announced in mock reverence, ‘Let us pray.’

  Yin’s screaming stopped. In the distance I heard the caterwaul of a monkey. ‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ I said, trying to see the peoples’ faces. The rotten smell of the hut reached into my lungs and stole my breath.

  Casbaron laughed, ‘Let’s start with what you do know, it will save time.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because you’ve nowhere else to go.’

  ‘You can’t play me anymore… I know you need the map and the key,’

  ‘Yes? We all know that Alain, let’s not be naïve.’

  I decided to play my only ace. ‘You need the key, but without the map it’s useless.’

  ‘And I presume you have both?’ he said coolly.

  I tapped my head with my finger. ‘Only in here, the map’s been burnt.’ One of the figures tremored slightly. Casbaron laughed in a weak display of unruffled superiority. But he gave enough of a pause for me to realize I had a pencil poised beside the eye of the crocodile.

  ‘You have the edge now, is that your intimation?’

  ‘You need me, that I know.’

  ‘Well, well everybody, Alain is no longer scared. The lab rat who got injected so many times he no longer felt the needle. And it was such a promising start; the knife in your hand on the rooftop, the rain falling over Paris… almost poetic. You had such…’ he sought the word he needed from the darkness as if he were plucking a choice meat from a silver dish, ‘such anger. That’s good, it makes for a stronger adversary.’

  ‘How did you know I’d come here?’

  ‘Saw it in your eyes when I first met you, hanging on my every syllable like a kitten on a tit… any little crumb of information I could give you about your precious dad. I dragged you around Southeast Asia by your Achilles heel. And of course, it was your destiny, which made it easier.’

  That word again.

  ‘Surely everyone has a right to know about his blood.’

  He laughed back at me. ‘You’re a four year old still looking for a father. It’s pathetic.’

  I felt the first flush of tears building. He seemed to understand me perfectly, carefully removing another brick from the crumbling mortar of my emotional equilibrium.

  ‘You wanted me to make the delivery and I’m here.’

  ‘Giselle, a little light please.’

  I watched his daughter strike a match and touch it to the wick of a hurricane lamp, barely a glow as it stuttered to life. Flickers, perhaps that’s all my efforts of investigation had been, my nemesis calibrating the shadows of my emotional reactions as he wished. They knew everything about me - of them I knew almost nothing. He twisted the knob, as the light grew around us the silhouettes at the table formed into Promethean flesh and bone. But it was still too dim, I couldn’t make them out.

  ‘Did you ever read Plato’s analogy of the cave? The men in the cave lived their lives by the false light of their fire. They couldn’t face the truth, so they watched the shadows on the wall and perceived them to be true. But some ventured outside, got burnt, very badly burnt in their quest for truth.’

  ‘Like you? What’s your point?’ I said, craning to hear if Yin was still alive.

  ‘You’ve got to risk a few burns if you want to evolve; what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

  ‘You’re confusing Nietzche with Plato.’

  He laughed again. ‘Have you got the stomach for the real light, or do you want to live another thirty years by the shadows on the wall?’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think it’s your plan to let me go.’

  The dragons were shifting, amassing below, their stench more concentrated now, intensifying in parallel with the growing aura in the hut. Casbaron twisted the knob to half-beam. I stared around and vomited.

  ‘Some of the first men to see the light couldn’t handle it,’ The Janus’s burnt face cracked into a rictus grin.

  I should have known it was my oversized f
riend sat to my right, they’d even changed his bloody t-shirt and put on a fresh one. Stretch’s glasses were perched on his nose at a funny angle, his skin bloodless and elephant-grey. The opened wound about his throat had been hurriedly stitched up with thick black wire, it looked like a badly darned sock. Beside him my Swedish friends stared blankly at the men on the opposite side of the table.

  In a sweat I followed the eyelines of Zig and Kristen; Vong, the Greyman, head bowed, eyes shut. Next to him the scrawny figure of the man I’d befriended in Vientiane, Lou. Panic rose in my gut and flooded through my limbs. The smell of dead bodies seemed even more acute now I could see them; I was sure I was going to pass out.

  Lou still had on the same waistcoat he’d worn outside the Bakery. Casbaron and his daughter looked back at me without emotion. Why had they killed Vong? Maybe they no longer needed him. Nathan had said his fruitless investigations had disinterred only one fact - the tract of land in which I was now trapped, was owned by a foreigner.

  I looked at Lou. ‘Why him? He was just an old man… he was nothing to do with this!’

  Casbaron fixed me in the cross hairs of his eyes, wagging his dagger at me.

  ‘Think Alain, think!’ He shouted contemptuously, ‘He knew something, didn’t he?’

  My brain was reeling, lateral doors slamming shut at every turn. I remembered Lou’s words about Giselle, that he’d seen her before in Vientiane. He’d been the catalyst that drove me upstairs to the room… then I found her photos… met James and the travellers… James kept us in Vang Vieng for another night after his lie about the infrequent buses. The chain of reactions was fitting together now, the sediment settling, but it was all too late. But if he’d helped them why was Lou also dead?