“Alobar!”
“I swear it to be true.”
“Remarkable. And did you run after it?”
“Oh, no. I staggered off into the night and eventually did, indeed, return to Samye, where you have caught up with me. I wanted to forget the whole experience with Bandaloop. Unfortunately, it has remained alive in my mind.”
“But you have never gone back?”
“I made a vow. If we mortals can better the gods in no other way, we can at least keep our promises.”
“Why did you return to Samye?”
“I do not know for sure. When I arrived, I asked to see Fosco. He entered the gatehouse with his calligraphy brush in his hand, and I seized him by his robe and shook him until ink flew. 'Why did you send me to that crazed place?' I demanded. He answered me mildly. 'The Bandaloop doctors are much despised by my superiors, and I risked reproachment for directing you to them. They practice a base, orgiastic form of religion that we cannot condone. But they are powerful magicians and healers and fortunetellers, and I thought they might assist you in your obsession with your earthly vessel. Forgive me.' Fosco was so obviously sincere that it behooved me to ask his forgiveness. Not only did he grant it, he persuaded the abbot to let me remain at Samye as a laborer and student. It appears that I have been here a long time.”
Kudra looked him over. “Samye has agreed with you. You appear healthy and strong. I did not lie when I mentioned down at the river that you have not aged since I saw you last. Perhaps you are receiving here the knowledge you were after all along. What have the lamas taught you that would keep you in their tutelage for twenty years?”
“You really think I have not aged? We had a magic glass back at. .” His voice trailed off, held hostage by memory. Bound, gagged, and blindfolded with a swath of ermine ripped from a concubine-stained bedspread, his voice lay in an unlit corner until memory collected its ransom or else took pity. The sun had sunk so low that it was looking up Chomolungma's dress by the time Alobar's freed voice resumed its normal life. “There are no mirrors hereabouts. The river shows me how to shave, but it shows me little in the way of skin condition or hair color. Hmm. It pleases me, what you say.” He sat down, and once again he touched her shoulder. She did not pull away.
“I have found peace here. Years of one sort of turmoil or another had rubbed against my spirit until it was raw, but it has been healed by tranquility, a calm that comes from within as well as without. The architecture, the painting, the sculpture, the music and liturgy and refined garments, but most of all, I think, the meditation, the hours each day of sitting silent and motionless, these things have smoothed my frayed edges and left me floating through life like a toad bladder in a mountain stream. The lamas have suffered endlessly from my resistance to their dogma and strict morality, but I daresay we have all benefited. I have grown serene, and they, well, many a ton of stone has been moved for them, and they have been kept on their toes. Ha ha.”
“Am I to assume that they have not instructed you in the practice of long life?”
“Not openly. They speak to me occasionally on the subject, but they obtain their ideal through gradual stages of spiritual progress. And their ideal is neither immortality nor longevity, but release from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.”
“Yes, yes. That is my people's ideal, as well. Do you fail to appreciate the perfection that lies at the heart of that goal?”
With his free hand, Alobar scratched his head, a head herring-boned with equal parts chestnut and silver, like a cow pie on a frosty morning. The other hand held fast to its roost on Kudra's shoulder. “Frankly, I do not appreciate it as deeply as I probably should. Or, maybe it is that I long not for the perfect but for the complete, and there is something incomplete about a life that is dedicated to escape from life.”
“Please, explain.”
“Here they teach that much of existence amounts only to misery; that misery is caused by desire; therefore, if desire is eliminated, then misery will be eliminated. Now, that is true enough, as far as it goes. There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? A life with neither misery nor pleasure is an empty, neutral existence, and, indeed, it is the nothingness of the void that is the lamas' final objective. To actively seek nothingness is worse than defeat; why, Kudra, it is surrender; craven, chickenhearted, dishonorable surrender. Poor little babies are so afraid of pain that they spurn the myriad sweet wonders of life so that they might protect themselves from hurt. How can you respect that sort of weakness, how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring?”
Alobar was surprised by the ferocity with which he felt himself attacking the teachings of the men who had pacified him for the past two decades. Perhaps his need for Kudra was whipping long-smoldering dissatisfactions into flames. For her part, Kudra could not locate the words with which to defend her faith. Perhaps her faith had been taken from her. She looked at Alobar and said nothing. He accepted her silent gaze as encouragement to continue his diatribe — and to inch his fingers toward orbit of her coconut moons.
“If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow — what's his name? — cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.”
Alobar paused to consider what he'd said. He had not given voice, even inwardly, to such thoughts in years, although one day, watching a yak calf gambol about the rocks like a goat, he asked himself what the Great God Pan might think of the Buddhist way of life. The answer promoted a prolonged twinge of discontent.
“The lamas declare that they have no fear of death, yet is it anything less than fear that causes them to die before they die? In order to tame death, they refuse to completely enjoy life. In rejecting complete enjoyment, they are half-dead in advance — and that with no guarantee that their sacrifice will actually benefit them when all is done. They are good fellows, and I must respect their choice, but fullness, completion, not empty perfection, is this fool's goal.”
“I take it that if the Bandaloop doctors were to give you another go at their provisions, you would not this time abstain?”
“There is the matter of quality, my lady. Have I implied that a person must abandon discretion in what he enjoys, then my tongue, or your ear, has erred.”
As if to correct the one or the other, he thrust his tongue into the nacreous coils of her ear, smothering all the while her breasts with his hands, lest their rocking motion somehow interfere with the process of correction. Her right ear thusly plugged, her left nevertheless clearly heard a donging back at the lamasery.
“I'm famished!” she announced, springing to her feet with such force that for a moment he feared she'd taken his tongue with her. “I do hope that is the dinner bell.”