The Far Shore

by Paul T. Scheuring

  His name is Nova.

  At least that is the best she can make it out, as they pinball it back and forth between each other a few times, once they formally introduce themselves upon climbing in his sputtering old sedan.

  After two or three times, even if you still can’t understand, you don’t want to keep asking.

  You don’t want to seem stupid or give them a complex.

  So you just nod finally and say you got it.

  Nova.

  Close enough.

  Cool, too.

  Racing through Yangon—Yangon!—with an ever-smiling brain-eater called Nova.

  Can’t beat that with a stick.

  She’s giddy, for so many reasons.

  She’s actually doing this.

  Willing it into being.

  Totally out over her skis.

  Scared free excited.

  There are, of course, no seat belts in the car.

  But that about says it all, doesn’t it?

  The city falls apart in no time and the land takes over.

  Nova is trying to set a land-speed record.

  The engine, she can tell, hates him for it.

  It’s just a tired old thing, this car, that long ago wanted the respite of the junkyard.

  Leave me alone, it says.

  Don’t redline me.

  Let me die in peace.

  But the way Nova drives is a retort, as if to say: What do you think you are?

  An American car?

  You think you can just lie down and retire while there is still usefulness in you?

  This is Burma, we stretch things.

  And you shall be stretched.

  And indeed, that poor car—whining all the way as they whip up the winding potholed roads that climb into the rainy mountains—is stretched.

  Bruce had sent her an email, two in fact.

  She’d checked at the hotel’s computer before she left in the morning.

  The first one, short, succinct:

  Where are you?

  The second one, a few hours later, like an impulsive, unacknowledged high school girlfriend:

  Don’t cut me out of the loop.

  I’ve done so much for you.

  We have legal right, Lily.

  Remember that.

  Both emails, a moment later, banished to the trash folder.

  You metate?

  This, like most other things on the drive, is asked three times.

  Twice it’s requested that the question be repeated.

  And on the third time, still not certain of what was said, she nevertheless refrains from asking again.

  She sorts through the possibilities.

  Do I meditate?

  Yes, that’s what I said.

  No, I, uh…

  Then why you come Pak Auk?

  Only metaters come Pak Auk.

  Do you meditate?

  Nova smiles like it’s ridiculous, but:

  I was monk once; three month.

  Burma, all boy monk for three month.

  Metate.

  Were you a monk at Pak Auk?

  No, Yangon.

  Why aren’t you a monk now?

  Hard!

  Do nothing all day!

  Harder than working all day!

  Working all week!

  Working: easy.

  Doing nothing: impossible.

  Mr. Nova drops her off at the monastery.

  He tries to solicit a return trip to Yangon.

  She declines; she will not be heading back so fast.

  And thus here she is, a sweat-soaked American a million miles from home, this ridiculous roller bag behind her.

  There is not a sidewalk or cement surface to be seen, either around the monastery or in the small town crouched around it.

  The wheels of the roller bag bury in the dust when she tries to move them, petulant things, unhappy to be here, unwilling to budge.

  So she drags the roller bag with brute force up the hill leading to the monastery.

  She carries, too, the old black-and-white picture of Gray.

  The one top-lit, with shadows concealing his eyes.

  In case she needs a visual aid.

  This place: now this is a monastery.

  Gilded undulating gold everywhere along the tile roofline—even though it could not possibly be real gold, not up here, not in this town—or everyone here’d be swimming in money.

  They’d be driving BMWs and there would be sidewalks.

  It would not be a monastery town; it would be something else.

  Inside the monastery there is more gold.

  Legions of statues line the courtyard.

  Buddhas smeared in gold leaf.

  One hundred of them.

  An army of calm.

  Yes, she could see coming here.

  If you were bent on erasing the world and its vexations from your life.

  If you wanted the solace of a cocoon in building form.

  It feels right.

  It feels worthy of Gray.

  Interesting that she thinks of him that way.

  That something should be worthy of him.

  He has become something different in her mind.

  A victim, a spurned heart carrying noble pain. But this thought is interrupted.

  A schismatic vertigo besets her.

  Maybe it is the jetlag.

  Or the dizzying drive up here.

  But for a moment she loses her bearings.

  Like her eyesight has shifted slightly in her own head.

  And she is seeing things from a few degrees to her left.

  It is not just what she sees, or how she sees it, but how it lands with her, how her brain processes it, puts it into context.

  Time—whatever that inner intuition is that sets it for us—in seconds, hours, years—that wordlessly geographizes it into the worlds of past, present, future—

  —that intuition fails her—

  —and she feels the simultaneity of her entrance into this place with Gray’s—

  —like they are walking together, inhabiting the same footfalls—

  —her boots his, his hers—

  —and then it is gone.

  She stops for a moment.

  Smiles a what-the-hell smile at herself.

  Everything is back as it should be.

  No ghosts walk with her.

  Time has been made right.

  Channeled back into its sane corridors.

  But no doubt about it.

  That one, whatever it was, was a whopper.

  You are…Anagarika’s granddaughter?

  This comes from the well-polished young monk at Registration.

  Seems they host quite a number of western travelers here.

  He presumed her to be the same, another cocoon-seeker, but she’d quickly apprised him of her mission.

  He is smoking, by the way.

  Perfectly cropped monk buzz cut.

  Perfectly draped saffron robes.

  And a Marlboro dangling from his mouth.

  I am his granddaughter.

  An incredibly long moment hangs between them.

  His eyes intimating that there is something she needs to know.

  Her eyes saying Jesus Christ Just Get On With It!

  Anagarika…is gone.

  Gone?

  Yes, gone.

  …

  Does that mean…dead-gone?

  No no no.

  No, I do not think, anyhow.

  I don’t mean this to come out the wrong way, but I’m totally confused.

  Yes, I see.

  I should have you talk to Passano; is that okay?

  Passano is a Caucasian monk.

  They are standing together out in the jungle.

  There is a small hut a dozen yards before them.

  A shack, truly not much larger than an outhouse.

  Beaten down by the elements.

  Lifeless.

  That was his kuti, Passano says.<
br />
  Kuti, in monkspeak, is a hut.

  He was there up until the end, Passano says.

  Passano is Australian.

  Maybe thirty.

  Lively eyed.

  The way he uses English, you get the sense it is a luxury to him here in Burma.

  A holiday of nouns, adjectives, adverbs.

  XXVI

  It was only a few months ago. You know, until that point, Anagarika Ratha had been his usual self around the community, around the monastery. He was getting old, obviously, walking with a cane. He was a model citizen. Never a bad word. And he was a citizen. He steadfastly refused to ordain. But he kind of had it both ways; he lived on the grounds of the monastery, if you can say that this area out here is officially part of the complex; Burmese are a bit flexible with real estate up here, particularly when temples are concerned. Woe is it to someone in the community to say where the temple’s reach ends. And at any rate, exactly who aside from a monk—or should I say in his case, a spiritual practitioner—would find anything redeeming in a soggy hillside like this one? But Ratha made it his home. You know, I guess, in thinking about it, there were signs in the preceding months. He was always sort of conflicted, I mean that was a given, considering how he lived an equivocal existence as a monk, not-a-monk. He was always astride definition. People like that—and I readily acknowledge this perspective is coming from a monk like me, who has no problem living by the 227 precepts—it tends to be that they’re resisting something. Belonging to something causes them too much consternation, so they live half-in and half-out of the world. I don’t judge such a stance. I find that it tends to mean that someone has some unresolved issues that they’ve not fully worked through. Again, I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. One thing you have to understand about monasteries: every single monk in there is working through issues. It’s our mandate, the Buddha would say. If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t be human. Anyhow, Ratha, for as long as I knew him, always struck me as a guy who was still hanging on to some sort of resistance. He just, in the end, couldn’t belong (though clearly he wanted to, given his proximity to and participation in the community). And whether he knew it or not, I think that was the main thing impeding his development. Because he was advanced, no doubt about it. But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t enlightened. One thing that can happen as we age is that our issues can ossify, just through habit. Alternatively, we can gain wisdom, and let go of the things that trouble us. But Ratha, for all his considerable qualities—he was kind to everyone, you have to understand—Ratha, you got the sense he wasn’t kind to himself. So it was, a number of months ago, that he requested a kuti, as far removed from the central grounds of the monastery as possible. It tends to be that when a monk makes a request like this, they’re really planning on digging in, getting deep into their contemplation and meditation. Maybe it was because of his advanced age, I don’t know, but something in me felt that Ratha was making a final stand, if that makes any sense. As if he was going to wage the final battle before he died. Face down the demons, as the Buddha did Mara. And Ratha, he went in there, and he took full rations of rice with him, water, crackers, that sort of thing, so he wasn’t planning on coming out anytime soon. Even in silent retreat, monks tend to come down and sup with the other monks, if only in quietude. But Ratha chose to stay up there in his kuti, the door closed. After a number of weeks, it became a bit of a talking point with the other monks. Had anyone seen Ratha? Was he dead up there? Had he disappeared in the night? But we allowed him his space for a few more days. Still, nothing. Only that closed door. So finally I went up there, because for some reason Ratha had taken a liking to me. My intention was to approach very respectfully and peer in, no words spoken, just to make sure he was all right. I confess I was a little spooked approaching this place. That it was twilight at the time probably didn’t help. But I came up. There was no sound from within as I approached. I did manage to get a glimpse inside, through that small window. And Ratha was there. He was on the floor, seated, alive, deeply absorbed. Now one thing that happens sometimes in the deeper, more intense and protracted sessions of meditation is that the body releases deep-seated tensions; it gnarls, twists; muscles that have held psychological stress for decades will begin to uncoil; the body will look broken, misshapen, tilted way too far to the side, for instance, as was the case with Ratha when I saw him. He was craned far over to the left, his head almost hanging like the broken neck of a chicken. I suppose that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the left side of his body had sort of collapsed. In normal circumstances, it would be a supremely unnatural state to see someone in, all bent over like that. But in this case, it was as if a resistance had been given a release after who knows how many years, as if the brain had finally acknowledged something that allowed the body to release its pent-up trauma. He looked strangely at rest in that horrible, twisted position! His eyes were closed, so he never saw me. And a stream of drool laced from his mouth to the floor. Drool usually means you’re asleep, but it can suggest jhana as well. Jhana are the deepest states of immersion in meditation, where the most profound insights occur. Often a by-product of this is a bodily paralysis, to the point that one can’t swallow away their extra saliva, or blink new tears into their eyes. It was clear to me that Ratha was in one of the deepest levels of jhana. Even if I said something, I doubt he would have been able to register it or move to respond. To this day, I wonder what he perceived. We are not supposed to be covetous as monks, but I would desperately want to know what he experienced! And I’ll tell you why. He came out a few days later. He’d emerged from jhana and said he was done. “I’ve done what needs to be done,” were the words he used. He was a different man. He was still old, but there was something new in his eyes. It was not youth, it was not that. As strange as it is to say, it was something beyond old. He was just alive. Perfectly alive. He was not some glowing, supremely happy being, it was not that. Words will fail me here. But what was clear was something had happened in that hut. Realization. The realization. I don’t know. But it had infused him with something that we can perceive in those rarest of people—that sense of arrival. He’d done what needed to be done. That was as much as he ever elaborated. All the monks wanted to know what his insights had been, but Ratha being Ratha, he was hesitant to tell anyone anything, to be a teacher, to be a leader. It was as if he knew himself fully, his capabilities and limitations. It was not long after that, a matter of twenty-four hours, really, that he was gone. He went back to the humble flat he’d long lived in in the village, retrieved a set of clothes and his doctor’s bag—which he’d not used in some time, that is a story in its own right—and left.

  XXVII

  He left the village?

  He went to the Tenasserim, apparently.

  What’s the Tenassarim?

  A region in the east: very poor, very remote.

  How do I put this delicately: more remote than this?

  Hard to believe, hey?

  He went alone?

  A nod from Passano.

  And this was two months ago?

  About.

  She wishes now that Mr. Nova had not left.

  But there are plenty more Mr. Novas up here.

  Guys with rickety, unmarked taxis that are only taxis because they call them taxis.

  She is thinking vaguely of going to the Tenassarim.

  She is drinking an orange soda in front of a shop.

  Passano is with her.

  What was the story with the doctor’s bag?

  He’d given up being a doctor some years back.

  When a real clinic had shown up, men with more contemporary equipment, more modern methods.

  Ratha, Ratha was the old-school doctor for the town, the one that showed up with the leather bag.

  He’d been made obsolete, but he took it in stride.

  He’d never been a doctor anyhow, he said.

  He’d been a doctor in name only, and the way Ratha was with names, he was all too willing to drop that one
as well.

  You got the sense it was a relief.

  That he could put down that identity.

  It may have been that he was trying to reduce himself to an identiless stay.

  A man without name, country, religion, job, or label.

  You think that’s why he went to the Tenassarim?

  How do you mean?

  It’s effectively jungle, isn’t it?

  Primitive, yes, if that word’s not yet taboo.

  The Red Karens live there.

  ?

  They claim to be the original peoples of Burma, Passano says.

  The indigenous people that the contemporary world has not yet coopted.

  You think he was trying to go backwards?

  Again…how do you mean?

  To regress, I don’t know.

  To find a simpler truth in ancient people, that sort of stuff.

  It’s hard to say.

  Whatever happened to him in that kuti is a mystery, Passano says.

  But the fact that he picked up his doctor’s bag after it had lain unused for almost a decade says something.

  She waits until the next morning to head out.

  Passano has given her a full lay of the land of the Tenassarim.

  Yes, it is jungle, but there are roads.

  Granted, dirty roads, muddy roads.

  But roads.

  And no dearth of local men who will drive her that way.

  Men who know the small villages that dot the tangled landscape up there.

  Men who know some of the people.

  If she has that picture, that is all she needs.

  If there is a Caucasian with a doctor’s bag up that way, the Red Karens will most certainly know.

  Her Nova that day is younger, a little less undead than the original Nova.

  Yes, his teeth are stained with betel, but his skin is smooth, not yet cragged by cigarettes, rice wine, and malnourishment.

  He could be a student in the States, this one, she thinks, as she eyes him in the rearview.

  The car is jouncing through muddy jungle ruts.

  Outside, the foliage is incalculably dense.

  A crush of furtive life a hundred miles deep.

  Yes, the driver, if he keeps his mouth shut, you would not know.

  You would not peg him for a Burmese mountain boy.