Exiles (17 page)

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just woke up and had this feeling.”

They let themselves into the shrine room. The overhead lights were out, but dozens of butter lamps provided enough light to see. The room was empty except for one person; Lama Padma still sat on his platform, sipping from a cup of tea. When he saw them he brightened and waved them over. Peter sat on the carpet by the platform, and Devi offered three prostrations, then joined him. Lama Padma spoke.

“He says what a lucky coincidence we should come by,” Devi said, smiling. “He says your letter piqued his curiosity, but it’s hard to get mail back and forth from his monastery, so if it’s okay with you he’d like to talk about some of this now.”

Peter nodded. The whole situation was a little uncanny, but Lama Padma seemed his usual good-humored self.

The lama spoke again. “He’s interested in how ideas about this evolution you describe have affected society in the West,” Devi said. “Are there moral or spiritual implications?”

Peter appreciated the lama’s curiosity, but it was a funny thing to bring up at one o’clock in the morning. Then he remembered how little Lama Padma slept, and it made more sense. Peter was still feeling both jazzed and sleepy, so he tried to clear his head and collect his thoughts.

“Mainly, I guess it’s useful in understanding what motivates us,” he said. “I feel strange saying this to a monk, but from an evolutionary perspective, mainly what drives people is sex. And what’s underneath it is the subconscious desire for viable offspring. Once you understand that, a lot of things make more sense.”

The lama spoke, and Devi said, “So you’re saying that the desire people feel is just how their bodies get them to act in certain ways?”

“Exactly,” Peter said. “The guy thinks he wants to get into her jeans, but really he wants to get into her genes.”

“Then how does morality play into this?”

Peter rubbed his head and realized his hair had gone all wild as he’d lain in bed. “Consider what sexual practices have been frowned upon in most cultures, at least until recently,” he said. “Homosexuality, incest, masturbation, sex during menstruation, abortion, contraception.”

The lama raised his eyebrows and spoke. “There’s some thread between all these?” Devi translated.

“They all have one thing in common,” Peter said. “They reduce the chance of viable offspring. I think we’ve manufactured morality out of our own instinctive desire to reproduce, then thrown a heavenly cloak over it, hoping people won’t peek too closely at what’s underneath. We even write books with things in them like ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ then ascribe the quotes to God.”

The lama spoke. “But what does this mean to people?” Devi said. “Does it make them intolerant, or more forgiving, or what?”

“Even if you’re aware of what’s driving you, it doesn’t necessarily make you able to resist it,” Peter said. “It’s all very emotional, and that’s the nature of the beast; we’re the saddest kind of slaves because we actually believe we’re free.”

As Devi translated, the lama said, “Ah,” and then sipped his tea, looking pensive. He spoke again.

“He agrees that we tend to be captives to our emotions,” Devi said. “But he wants to emphasize that compassion is the one emotion that has the potential to free us, because it isn’t based on a desire for our own happiness.”

“Free us from what, though?” Peter said. “From the kind of slavery I was talking about?”

“More than that,” Devi said. She listened to the lama for a few moments, then went on. “One of his Western students described the fall from grace in the Bible, and he says it’s like that, except that instead of a legendary event it’s a real one that happens in people all the time. What really chains us is ordinary mind, the inability to rest in pure awareness. That we’re always falling away from that, and that’s how we lose our true freedom.”

Peter rubbed his eyes. “It seems like you guys are way ahead of us,” he said. “I mean, this monastery is full of people who’ve taken vows that remove their DNA from the gene pool, who devote their lives to the welfare of others. That’s an extremely rebellious act against the forces of instinct.”

When Devi translated this, the lama’s eyes lit up and he laughed.

“Yes,” Devi went on. “He says every monastery is really a hotbed of subversives!”

Then the lama turned to Devi. They spoke together in Tibetan for a little while, and tears came to Devi’s eyes.

“What?” Peter asked, a little anxiously. He hoped this wasn’t about more karma purification.

She looked down and wiped her eyes. “He asked me if I was just sitting here translating, or if I was paying attention,” she said. “And then I realized this whole thing wasn’t just about having an intellectual discussion with you.”

Peter looked at Lama Padma, who was watching Devi with kind interest. “So I was the decoy?” Peter said.

Devi smiled. “Only partly,” she said. She glanced shyly at the lama. “He just thinks I have potential, and I might want to pay attention to that.”

In the morning, Devi appeared introspective, quietly holding herself apart from them as they loaded the jeep. When they were briefly alone, Peter asked her what was on her mind.

She stopped and looked at her feet shyly. “I think I might like to stay here for a few days,” she said. “Maybe spend some time with the
anis.
”

Alex walked up with her bag then, and overheard. “Devi,” she said. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about joining up.” She smiled, but her concern showed.

Devi shrugged. She was clearly wrestling with her feelings. “I’m just curious,” she said.

Peter watched her. “You should stay if you want,” he said. “We can pick you up next week.”

Alex looked at him, her eyebrows arched in surprise. But Devi’s face filled with color, and her eyes teared up. It was as if he’d casually offered her a diamond. “Would that really be okay?” she asked.

“Call me on your cell if you want us to come sooner.”

“Thanks,” she said, and put her arms around him.

|   |   |

On the road back, Alex was quiet for a long time, staring out the window. It began to rain.

“Let’s hear it,” Peter said, finally.

“How could you just let her leave like that?”

“She’s a grown-up,” he answered. “For that matter, so are you.”

She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. “So I’m not allowed to be upset?”

“She’s got to figure out her own life. I thought you’d be sympathetic.”

“I’d be plenty sympathetic if it didn’t include her becoming a nun.”

“Give her time,” he said. “If you try to tie her up, she’ll fight you all the way.”

She made a dismissive puffing noise. “Since when are you the great oracle on successful relationships?”

He looked at her, genuinely stung by this. “I’m not,” he said. “But sometimes I know what
not
to do, and if there’s something really important to somebody you love, you don’t want to tell her she can’t.”

“Oh, like Mom and meth? Tolerance worked real well there, huh?”

He felt the hackles rise on his neck. “I put her into rehab three times, and three times she went back on that shit.”

“So then you do it a fourth, if you have to.”

“Another thing you learn along the way is when to quit.” His voice was hard. “If Devi wants to meditate, it might take her away from you, but it isn’t going to destroy her. Don’t pretend you don’t see the difference. You’re not that stupid.”

She fought back tears. “Maybe I should just walk back.”

“Good idea,” he said. “It’s only eight more miles, and it’s not raining
that
hard.”

“Goddamn it, Dad!”

“What do you want from me? I’m not her father.”

“You dragged me out to this godforsaken place, and the one consolation was that she’d be here! Now I don’t even have that!”

“You think I’m having a great time? Just weeks ago you wanted to stay. Don’t make it sound like this is all my damn fault.”

“It
is
your fault,” she said.

“It is not!”

“It is!”

“Enough!” he shouted, and she recoiled and sobbed harder. They were both too angry to say any more or even look at each other. Alex snuffled the rest of the way home, and when they got there, she got out of the jeep and went inside ahead of him, without glancing back. The silence continued through dinner. When Peter finally cooled down a little he wanted to say something consoling, but he didn’t trust his temper. Alex went to bed early but slept fitfully. Peter read until after midnight, then finally turned in, exhausted.

The next day Bahadur appeared at the clinic with three girls.

“Doctor,” he said, with an unctuous smile. He seemed to enjoy viewing Peter’s reduced circumstances.

The girls crowded onto the exam table like birds on a wire, dangling their feet and surveying the room nervously. Two of them were beautiful, but the youngest was gangly and plain, and wore an old pair of plastic glasses held together at the bridge with masking tape.

Peter looked at them. “What are you doing here, Bahadur?”

Bahadur handed him a letter. It was from Franz, instructing Peter to cooperate with whatever Bahadur asked him to do. The survival of the clinic was apparently at stake.

“Now that I’m getting used to how things work around here, I trust there’s something in it for me?” Peter said.

“I suppose that depends on what you want, Doctor.”

“Tell me what
you
want, then we’ll negotiate from there.”

“Very well,” Bahadur said, smiling. “These three girls are to be sold as virgins. I will need a letter that they are intact and without disease.”

“You can’t seriously be asking me to do this.”

Bahadur tapped the letter in Peter’s hand and smiled. “Banhi tells me you’re quite impressed with the TB drugs and the quinolone antibiotics,” he said. “What a shame for your patients if they ran out.”

Peter stared at him, processing this. He’d just been talking to Lama Padma about bogus morality, but there was one form of morality he believed in, which was that you didn’t deliberately participate in things that harmed people. Now he was being asked to do just that, and if he refused, still others would be hurt because they wouldn’t get the drugs they needed. It wasn’t enough that he’d failed at everything else; now, if he wanted to keep practicing medicine, he even had to fail at the Hippocratic oath.