Craving (23 page)

“You’re not going to tell me that Buddha was a vampire.”

He blinked. “No.”

“Okay, so . . .”

“The Buddha traveled with a group of disciples, commonly called the First Circle, many of whom passed on eventually.”

“Passed on, you mean died?”

“Yes. Though, in this case, we equate enlightenment with immortality, the outsiders had no knowledge of this. All those who followed the Buddha, dead or not, were accounted as enlightened by outsiders.”

“Okay,” I mumbled, bemused.

“The disciples were called ‘Arhat’ or ‘worthy ones.’”

“Ah, I see.”

He crossed his arms and stared at the full bag in concern. At my glance, he shook his head. “Your sister did not eat well.”

I nodded. “I was the cook.”

Sam reappeared and picked up the last few boxes. He looked in Arthur’s direction. “I’m going to take these over and come back.”

“We’ll be fine,” Arthur dismissed. When Sam again vanished, he turned back to me, his work forgotten. “When Buddha died, he gave specific instructions that there was to be no leader, that after he was gone, they were to adhere to the teachings, the truth. However, after his death, many of his followers immediately organized an assembly to declare who would be the next leader of the faith. It was called the First Council, or Sangha of the Buddha.”

“Then that’s where it all went wrong,” I mused. His hands were very close to mine, and I couldn’t help but watch them and hope they found mine. My wrist twinged, a reminder of Ursula’s craving that brought me back to myself and my own failings. I pulled my eyes from his hands, determined not to want his touch, to finally stand on my own and be “of myself.” “If the enlightenment led to this, then why would you have spread it to Anna?”

“A virus comes to three ends,” he elaborated. “The body develops an immunity to become stronger, or the virus hides within the body and becomes a part of it, or the virus kills its host. What Anna received was just enough exposure to make her stronger, tailored for her specific needs, an inoculation.”

I stood up, trying to reason through it. If his picture was accurate then Anna got over the virus, the Arhat were permanently afflicted with it, and Eva died because of it.

Just before she infected me.

“So I’m not a stream-enterer. I’m one of them, the Arhat.”

“All Arhat were Stream-Enterers, until they passed into the change.”

Disgruntled, I looked away. “How could you do this to me?” I said under my breath, but if Arthur heard me, he said nothing.

“Have you heard the legend of the Bodhi Sattva?”

I shook my head, not really listening. Sullen and distraught, I laid my head back on the counter. His hand patted me gently.

“Three men wander into the desert. When they are at their weakest, they happen upon an enclosure encircled by a high wall with no doors. The first man climbs up on his friend’s shoulders, discovers a garden and climbs over. The second man climbs up on the third man’s shoulders, sees the garden and with a shout of joy, disappears over the wall. The third man, left to himself, climbs laboriously up the wall, but when he sees the garden, turns away and goes back into the desert to point other wanderers toward the oasis. The Bodhi Sattva are enlightened individuals who forgo the transcendence of Nirvana in order to help others find their way.”

I lost myself in the sensation of his fingers moving through my hair, closed my eyes and drifted. “That’s noble of them.”

“Legend tells us that they are gifted.”

“With what?”

“Uncanny insight,” he answered.

I sat up sharply. “Who do we know with that affliction?”

His mouth was a beautifully curved line. “Another legend, based on truth, but not entirely truthful.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, almost angrily, “you’d think that the Buddha would’ve been a Bodhi Sattva if it was such a great idea.”

“Many people argue that he is,” Arthur said with another shrug. “In his first sermon, he said ‘this is my last existence; now there is no rebirth.’ Many believe that those words referred to reincarnation, but that doesn’t mean anything. As with Elvis, I suppose some people cannot help but keep him alive in their minds, though his passing is documented.”

“Well, the couple in the Himsuka story
did
get young again when they ate the fruit.”

The smile grew. “True. The Theravada school, focused upon the word, believes that the Bodhi Sattva is an as yet, unenlightened individual working toward Nirvana, because they have not yet died and transcended, but the Mahayana school believe that their generosity gains them a kind of honorary enlightenment called ‘bodhicitta.’”

“Hmm. I wonder which school the Sangha loves best.”

“The Mahayana Buddhists are devotional. Such a faith allows the Sangha freedom and access to a group of humans.”

“You mean that because they worship Buddha instead of revering him that the Sangha can use that to their advantage?”

“Yes.”

“So it
is
a big conspiracy.”

But even with his perfect recounting of an obscure history, I could not see how an idea could do so much. I knew that the brain took on the shape that was needed to hold the thoughts a person might have, and that some thoughts could become obsessions, and even that some obsessions could lead to chemical imbalances strong enough to compel a person to act. I wondered if that was what it felt like for the Sangha, if for them it was a never-ending torture of compulsions. It made the word “craving” take on whole new meanings for me.

Until that moment, I had hated Moksha, seen him as a representation of my sister’s downfall. Now, all I felt was pity. I bowed my head and knew I should have reserved judgment, but how could I when I was acting within the real world? How could I have known that what happened to Eva, just as Ursula had said, was her own doing? More importantly, how could she have condemned me to that?

“I know you hate me. I’ve always known.”

“How did they become clinically immortal?” I asked.

“Cravings are the root of suffering. To rid themselves of suffering, the Stream-Enterers meditated in hopes of curing themselves from within, to annihilate their attachment to the things they desired. But entering into the
jhana
, or that many-leveled perfect state of cognition, can cause a person to acquire what the Buddha called right knowledge and right liberation.”

“Right knowledge? You mean the uncanny insight?”

“It would seem so. Perfect knowledge of whatever they choose to focus upon.”

“So what’s ‘right liberation?’”

“The heights to which mind and body may travel. The self-awakening.”

“And you think that that is when they become immortal?”

“Yes.”

“So the Arhat meditate, achieve the
jhana
, and become immortal. Well, obviously, the disciples who died were
not
enlightened. They were just
srotapanna
. Right?”

“So it is believed, but it depends entirely upon whether or not you believe the Buddha is dead.”

“That must have sucked.” I shook my head, feeling sorry for them even though I didn’t want to. “Suddenly being left alone at the head of a faith you have no ability to follow. But if they get there, to the perfect place, then how can they devolve?”

“Ideas do not ever move backward, for even with amnesia, the brain is the perfect shape to recall those memories. They achieved a height, but at the last step, fell short and are left in permanent suffering.” He traced a circle on the table. “It is a wheel, moving forward, very much like the Karmic cycle . . .”

“Samsara.”

He nodded and looked into my eyes. “You can understand now, why Moksha would choose such a name. It was meant to be ironic. With an eternity and right knowledge, what do you think would happen?”

I knew what he was hinting at. He was implying they would eventually become frustrated with their state of being. “But if they got that far, then wouldn’t that mean they were free from the taints? Wouldn’t that make them free of selfhood?”

“Some would say there is no way that a man could achieve ultimate understanding only to devolve, they talk of
annica
, the understanding that all things are one and are impermanent, but when one has immortality, that is not such an easy thing to accept. They have come to believe, over time, that they went even farther than the Buddha, because they did not die. Now, they see no resolution.”

He went back to his chores silently, scrubbing the appliances amicably. I half-expected him to whistle while he worked, he seemed so happy to be helping. It was probably penance for failing as the knight in shining armor.

As I pushed the beanbag toward the garbage bags by the door with my foot, I saw my sister, scrambling over that wall toward what she thought would save her. I saw her clambering up on my shoulders, reaching for the green blur of love and serenity, leaving me behind.

“How could you do this to me?” Another angry kick sent the bag into the door. I stood staring at its mouth, grinning at me no matter what I did, no matter how afraid and uncertain, conflicted and lost. What would happen to me? Would I end up craving something worse than blood? Would I end up high-diving into a concrete ocean?

I felt his hands on my shoulders and, unable to suppress the urge, sobbed.

“You’re wrong about her,” he said into my ear. “Your life has been one ending after another. The last was your marriage. Eva knew that without your devotion to her, you would finally be free of all the desires that might tie you down and wanted to give you a chance at eternity. She leapt from that wall and helped you over. She was your Bodhi Sattva.”

Chapter 16

I stared at Unger. He stared back, blinking like any good cynic. The waitress attempted to refill his coffee, but his hand guarded the top. With an annoyed look that he didn’t take notice of her open top button, she sauntered away.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

It was a formality. By this point, he was used to the absurd from me. I sighed and tilted my head. “What, Matty, don’t believe me?”

He frowned at my wrist. “Oh, I believe you, and that’s what’s fucking with me.”

I leaned back and chuckled. It had been his idea: a trip to the diner, a debriefing on my debriefing over the pie and greasy food that Arthur shunned without a word.

“Why do you believe it? I mean, you’ve been a detective
how
long
?”

He shook his head. “
Too
long.” He leaned his chin on his hand. “That’s just it. Do it long enough and you come to the notion that it never ends, that somewhere, someone is fighting you, making sure it never goes away. The longer I do this, the more I believe in it.”

“‘It’ being evil?”

He nodded.

“So what do we do about it? If Arthur’s right, then what?”

His disgruntled inner watchdog came to the fore. “What makes you think he’s right?”

I shrugged.

“Yeah yeah, I know. I
feel
him too.”

It was a begrudging agreement that promised further skepticism ahead. As I sat there looking at the poor man, I began to see Arthur in a new light. The “un-reasoning” he employed was difficult to follow, but it was the only thought process that promised to be productive. Those of us inclined toward linear reasoning were frightfully unprepared.

Unger sat up straight. “I don’t know what his method is, but I know what I would do if I was a P.I. and this was a normal case.”

“Pound the pavement, Mr. Gumshoe?”

He scowled. “I’m not Humphrey Bogart.”

I smiled at him flirtatiously and noticed his blush. “You’re
my
Humphrey Bogart. Can I be your Gretta Garbo?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, so what would you do?”

He shoved his coffee away in what looked like discomfort. “If we want to speculate that Moksha and Ursula were linked, then we have to believe that whatever Eva was doing was somehow tied into it.”

I nodded, because it was what I had thought all along.

“No matter what
kind
of people they are,” Unger specified, “they’re still people. They’ll have the same weaknesses as people would.”

I looked at him dubiously. “Yeah, because most people go into blood-withdrawal.”

“They’ll have money, secrets stored in vaults, people they don’t trust, et cetera.”

“Ooooh.” I grinned. “Stool pigeons.”

He growled. “Your sister was the head record keeper.”

“Yeah.”

He held out his hand. “So we go to the records.”

I shook my head. “They’d never let us in. Hell, I don’t even know where in the building they keep the records.”

He massaged his face and leaned back, casting his eyes out the window to the twilight streets. I picked at his apple pie with a finger. After several moments, he looked back at me.

“Her journals.”

I nodded. “Arthur’s already got that covered.”

He glared at me.

“And I’m sure he is doing a fine job, though you’re welcome to investigate his ‘methodology.’”

“I’m more interested in letting him tell me what he finds and seeing if I believe him,” Unger said quietly. “Meanwhile, I plan on cross-checking.”

“Oh?”

“Ursula’s club
was
owned by Moksha’s company, just like you said,” he explained. He opened his wallet and threw a few bills onto the table. “Because I was first on scene, it’s my case, if I want it.”

I watched him get to his feet.

“And I do,” he offered me a hand.

“And here you were having such a great vacation!” I took it and stood up. “You’re going to use it as an excuse to delve into her shady relationship with him?”

He smiled slyly. “Will I ever.”

“And?” I hinted eagerly.

He held me at arms’ length. “You’re bored with the ascetics, fancy that.”

I pulled my hand away and crossed my arms in stubborn refusal to allow him to leave without assigning me my next mission. Looking at me, his face slowly changed from amused to false aggravation.

“Fine. Take Sam to the County Records Office. Find anything you can about the AMRTA building. All construction or building renovations go on file, because they have to apply for permits.”