Balbeer’s voice was calm and even, but Milo saw real fear in his eyes.
He did as he was asked, and when Milo returned, Balbeer and the disciples were sitting in a loose circle around the sleeping Master, looking grave.
“Set it down,” said Balbeer. “He won’t take anything.”
They all pretended to meditate.
The sun crept down the sky.
Ompati mixed leftover fruits and greens into a salad and split it with Milo for a snack.
The Master stirred after a while. He sat up and then, despite Balbeer’s remonstrances, stood. Hunched at first, and looking a little green, but then he straightened up and peered around at them all with his cosmic eyes.
“I am going to die,” he announced.
Voices clamored, but the Master raised a hand and silenced them all.
“Why should this bother you?” he chided. “I’m eighty years old. My soul is going out into the Everything. Be happy for me.”
His stomach made a horrible noise.
“If you would,” he said, “please ask in the village if they would bring some blankets and pillows and make for me a bed in that grove, just there.” He pointed to some sal trees, not far away. Then he excused himself and made for the woods at an awkward trot.
—
By late afternoon, they all knew. Every last pilgrim and student and hanger-on had gathered in the sal-tree grove, in concentric circles, with downcast eyes. The Master had arranged himself on a mound of simple blankets, resting his head on a nice tasseled pillow. His face was greener than before, but he appeared composed.
“Listen,” he said. “I just want to clear something up, so there’s no confusion when I’m gone. I haven’t chosen anyone to take my place. I don’t want you guys to keep hiking around India; we look like a circus. Split up. Go home. Spread what you’ve learned.”
“What does Perfection feel like?” cried a desperate voice, somewhere in the grove.
“How do you feel right now?” asked the Buddha.
“Sad,” answered the voice. “Scared.”
“That’s what Perfection feels like,” said the Master. “Don’t worry. In a while, it will feel different.”
Soft voices, confusion.
“Listen,” said the Master, coughing. “Don’t search the ends of the Earth looking for your happiness. Perfection is being happy with what you are right now.”
“What if you’re an asshole?” someone called.
The Master offered a weak smile. “I doubt very much,” he said, “that many happy people are assholes.”
Then he died.
Ompati stared off into space. His eyes glazed with shock.
“His last word was ‘assholes,’ ” he observed.
“I don’t think he would have minded,” said Milo. Then he said, “Look!” and pointed. Lots of people were pointing.
Flowers were dropping from the sal-tree branches. Light red blossoms fluttered like moths on their way to the ground, drifting over the dead Master, over the grass, and over the pilgrims.
“That’s better,” said Ompati.
—
Milo found his bo tree once again and had a seat.
He would meditate. What else could he do?
He could go back to Moosa. Why not? No one needed to hear the teachings of the Master more than the idiots of Moosa.
Ducks, he thought, closing his eyes. Cats. The moon. Death. The wind.
He could hear the villagers at a distance, gathering over in the sal-tree grove. They would let the Master lie there for some time that way, so that he could be seen. In three days, like it or not, they’d have to cremate him.
Maybe they’ll let me have some of the ashes, he thought.
Did he deserve that? He still didn’t know.
He hoped his older voices and past lives would offer some kind of remark, but the voices had gone eerily silent. He was left with a feeling that they had been super-happy with him and that he had screwed this up.
“Open your eyes,” said Ompati’s voice. “You know you can’t meditate for shit, so just open your damn eyes.”
Milo opened his eyes.
Ompati stood before him.
“You did it, didn’t you?”
Milo squinted. He looked up at the sky.
“I don’t know…” Milo began.
“Don’t dishonor yourself!” Ompati shouted.
“All right,” said Milo. “Yes. I did it. I found a mushroom in the woods before I went to beg for his dinner. A certain kind of mushroom. I mashed some of it into the pomegranate I brought him. There you are. That’s your answer.”
Ompati trembled visibly. “Why?” he asked.
“You know why. His story is more important than his life. He knew it. We all know it. I did something that was necessary. I am, perhaps, his greatest friend.”
Was this true? He felt doubtful. He could hear his soul voices, darkly muttering.
He would meditate on it, he decided, all the way back to Moosa.
“I’m sorry,” said Ompati.
“Sorry for what?” asked Milo.
“I’m afraid I mixed the uneaten half of the Master’s pomegranate into a salad.”
Milo’s stomach gave a seasick lurch.
“Yes?” he asked.
“The salad we split for a snack, earlier.”
A bird called. Milo watched the moon among tree branches.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, the wave returns to the river.”
“Indeed,” said Ompati, sitting down beside him.
Together, they waited, meditating about beets and monsoons and gods and brothels and other fine things they had known.
They breathed in. They breathed out.
“Cats,” said Milo.
“Shhh,” said his friend.
Milo didn’t wake up beside the river this time.
He didn’t even wake up in the desert.
He was sitting at the bottom of a deep well. Sort of like a jail cell but without a sink or a toilet.
“Great,” he muttered.
It didn’t take a wise man to guess that this was where you went if you murdered the Buddha.
“Hello?” he called.
No one answered. Would they just leave him here and forget about him? Were they that mean?
Dammit, he had one more life to live! Somebody was going to listen to him, by God. He began looking around for a stick, for some rocks, anything he could throw. He would throw one hell of a fit, if they thought they could just stick him down here—
Something interrupted the light and came tumbling down the well.
A rope ladder. It snapped to an end just in front of his face and swung back and forth.
“Climb up here,” snarled Nan’s voice. “Want you to see something.”
Milo growled in frustration. He had really been looking forward to throwing his fit.
He climbed the ladder.
At the top, there was Nan, with a cat or two, standing in what looked like someone’s backyard.
Most of the yard was packed with people—standing, sitting on blankets, sitting on lawn chairs. They were all facing the same direction, paying not the least bit of attention to Milo.
Even Nan ignored him. She, too, was turned away, watching something.
The house and the backyard were built on a hillside, and the hillside overlooked a river. Most of the landscape was hidden beneath a crowd like Milo had never seen, spilling down the hill and stretching for miles.
It was a festive crowd, to say the least. They wore bright colors. There were flags and hand-painted signs. There were shirtless drunks with painted chests and eighteen thousand different kinds of music playing. It was Woodstock Meets the Super Bowl.
Milo stepped up beside Nan.
“What—” he began.
“Shut up and watch,” Nan barked. “You might learn something in the hour or two you have left.”
What?
His heart pounded. They meant to space him. Or “No
thing” him, or whatever you wanted to call it. God…what did that mean for Suzie? She had been nearly gone, that night on the train. What about now? Was she still out there? Or had she gone ahead of him, into Nowhere?
The crowd grew louder. They sang out in raw joy and gladness.
The source of the joy and gladness appeared, not far away, downhill.
It was the Buddha, arriving in the afterlife. He made his way pleasantly, humbly, through the crowd. He was young again, Prince Siddhartha, with shining black hair falling over one shoulder.
Would the Master recognize him? (Help him?)
Milo waved both arms and shouted, “Hey! Up here!”
Nan elbowed him in the gut, sneering, “Keep still, you. That’s the greatest soul that ever lived, down there. You’re just the bastard who killed him.”
Milo wheeled on her, turning red. “I should have known you wouldn’t understand!” he bellowed. “I did the most difficult thing imaginable, for the good of the Master and everyone in the world—”
Nan elbowed him again.
“You get everything wrong,” she muttered. “You always go too far.”
Down below, the Master had drawn near the river, and the air above the water began to shake and glow.
A golden light spun itself out of thin air and cast a perfect cosmic dawn over the multitude. It made everything beautiful and simple. Made everything clear, like the air and the light after a rain.
Surely, thought Milo, the Buddha himself understood what he had done.
Maybe he would say something at the last minute. Any second now he’d stop and say, “Hey, we’re forgetting someone! Why, without Milo, the Master would just be a story about some old coot who forgot his own name and sat around meditating in his own drool. C’mon down, Milo!”
But the Buddha did not say these things.
He waded out into the river, wearing a breezy expression.
“Please,” said Milo. He didn’t have the energy for anything more. Time and space had clamped onto him with a corkscrew and twisted everything right out of him.
He was done.
How could a person be so wise and so good, generally, and wind up with the whole universe against him?
The Master became a mere shadow in the wild flood of light. Then the Sun Door overwhelmed him and absorbed him, and he was a part of it.
The great light closed and faded.
“That’s pretty much the opposite of where you’re going,” said Nan. But Milo barely heard, because his own ancient voices had begun to speak up, taking rather a pissy tone.
You were on your next-to-last chance to get life right, said his soul, and you murdered Buddha. Oops.
Oh, come on! Milo thought. You were there!
You. Murdered. Buddha.
I tried to do something complicated and beneficial, Milo explained. Tried to, anyway. Inside, he suddenly felt a feathery kind of flutter. A violence that was soft, angelic.
Milo’s own soul was trying, in its metaphysical way, to beat him up.
—
The light was just evening light now, over the river and the town and the bridge and the multitude. But the excitement wasn’t quite over, the great day not quite done.
Blinking, the crowd turned and buzzed and seemed to be seeking something. Slowly, following pointing fingers, they all found what they were looking for and raised their eyes to the hill, to the backyard where Milo stood, to Milo himself.
As one, they pointed.
“Him,” they said.
“Oh, fucking hell,” said Milo. “Really?”
—
Pop! Mama materialized beside him.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I didn’t want to miss the receiving line down there.”
“Ma!” cried Milo. Hope!
“Thank God!” he said. “I was about to—”
“Hush,” said Mama, turning away. “Please, just hush.”
Milo felt himself collapsing inside. Indeed, he would have fallen, but they caught him. Not Mama and Nan but the backyard people, the crowd people. And they raised him up and carried him the way crowds have sometimes carried saints to the stake or queens to the chopping block. Downhill, along the river.
Milo closed his eyes and let it happen.
Over the bridge, toward the neighborhoods and their sidewalks.
He heard the names they called him. They weren’t very creative.
“Buddha killer.” “Buddha poisoner.” “Buddha’s Judas.”
Now and then someone would give him a poke or throw something at him. Something wet splashed over his shoulder. Something hit his knee.
Milo remained silent. He didn’t want them saying, later, that he raged and panicked like a madman or a killer, but just then someone let him have it with a stick, right in the funny bone.
“God fucking dammit!” he howled.
All around him, eyes bugged.
“See?” they said, pointing. “See? I’ll bet he was always like this! All ten thousand lives, like a time bomb, waiting.”
That’s it, Milo thought. If they can be mean, I can be mean. I have more experience than these losers, anyhow. And he began fighting to turn himself over, opening his jaws as wide as they would go. He would begin by biting some fingers off. And then some faces. What did he have to lose?
And then he was flying.
It happened in an instant. A storm of leaves and dust, snatching him up and out of their grasp. Up and away into Nowhere, into Nothingness. Nothing but wind and something that wrapped around him and felt like legs, looked like bottomless eyes, felt like a tongue.
“Lover,” said the dark and the wind and the nothing.
—
When the whirling and the dark settled down, they were someplace far away.
Twilight. A soft breeze and wind chimes. Colored lanterns here and there. A harbor, with old boats that rose and fell as if breathing.
They materialized aboard one of these boats. A long, spacious sampan, like a big canoe with a roof.
Chinese Heaven, thought Milo. Cool.
He looked around.
“Suzie?”
Something like a gasp and a whisper from the shadows at the sampan’s far end.
He didn’t see her until the moon broke out from behind clouds. Then he saw her, draped like a rag over the gunwale, dripping like heavy mist.
“Aw, shit,” he said, rushing to her. Trying to hold her. Trying to find something solid enough to touch.
“You have to hold me,” she breathed. “I’m all used up. You have to let me take from you.”
He held her. He shuddered with rage and fear. How long before she faded into nothing? How in hell had she managed the strength to scoop him up and fly off with him?
“I know,” she sighed. “Shut up.”
Even her voice wasn’t all there.
God, he thought, when you loved someone, every day was Opposite Day. Being with them made you feel weak and also strong. They made you want to laugh and cry. Get dressed up and get undressed. You wanted to keep them forever and eat them like a bucket of cheese fries.
“I killed Buddha,” he told her.
“He understood,” said Suzie. “He knew it was the smart thing, what you did.”
Milo stomped both feet in frustration. “I knew it!” he yelled. “I knew it! Goddammit, Suze, how come he didn’t say anything? All he had to do was look at those universal slice bastards and say, ‘Don’t be too hard on Milo, you soulless bipolar butt-suckers; he was only trying to ensure a future of peace and goodwill,’ but nooooooooo—”
“He was busy,” she said calmly, “being transformed into pure eternal light. I missed you, by the way.”
Well, yeah.
“I missed you, too,” he said. “We didn’t get to see each other much last time.”
“We might not get to see each other much this time, either. Depending on how badly they want to chase you down. Depending on…”
She waved one hand in front of a lantern, and the
hand became invisible.
But he was able to read her eyes, and they were love eyes.
See, now, Milo thought. This is Perfection.
“Maybe if we go into the pure eternal light together,” Milo said, “we’ll dissolve together or something, and sort of be together still.”
She nodded.
“Maybe my expectations have diminished,” she said. “But that would be okay with me, too.”
Milo sat, leaning back against the gunwale. Suzie lay down with her head in his lap. She matched his breathing.
“Buddha made me see something about Perfection that I hadn’t seen before,” he said.
“It’s better than oblivion?”
“It’s about evolution. That guy kept evolving. When he started losing his mind, you’d think he would have slipped into death. But he didn’t. He kept getting up in the morning, and doing things, and learning. And when death did come, he was okay with it. He kept evolving. Taking the next step. And that’s how it should be. And the next step, if I can earn it, is the Sun Door.”
Suzie made a questioning noise of some kind.
“We’ll figure out what to do about you,” he said. “We just need to keep ahead of them long enough to figure it out.”
True night had fallen, afire with stars. Paper lanterns, fueled with candles, rose like butterflies over the city and the bay.
“I wish we’d done this long ago,” said Suzie.
The stars and the lanterns cast reflections in the water.
It was as if they’d run away to outer space.
—
Time passed. They lived on the sampan, sometimes staying in the same harbor, sometimes moving down the coast. Over days and nights, and in and out of weeks.
Once or twice, Milo thought he sensed unfriendly eyes turned their way. Sensed plans and bad intent moving around them. Sensed balance seeking to assert itself. When that happened, they waved. They sailed. They anchored up rivers, under vast, overarching flowering trees.
They were the most beautiful fugitives in all eternity.
—
Even as fugitives, they knew that life was for doing stuff.
They read books together. They ate and drank at festivals. Once, they made a paper dragon big enough for the two of them to hide inside and wove through the crowds, ringing bells and roaring. Delighted children followed them.
Reincarnation Blues Page 26