JOHNNY GONE DOWN (10 page)

‘You are a survivor. A brave, brave man,’ said David. ‘The Red Cross estimates that nearly six million people have been killed since the Khmer Rouge took over two years ago. That’s a third of the Cambodian population. Can you believe that? A third of the population eliminated using methods that are nowhere as sophisticated as the Nazis’, as you well know.’

I recalled the shrivelled corpses of children in the countryside with vultures feeding on them. Madness, I thought, stark, raving madness.

‘Isn’t someone doing anything about it?’ I asked.

‘They have cut off all international ties completely, and frankly, no one cares. America is busy fighting a war with Vietnam, and Cambodia is too small an
economy to matter to anyone else. Besides, there is just a handful of survivors who’ve escaped to tell their stories; most of the country is dying slowly of either starvation or the not-so-random acts of brutal violence in the fields.’

But it’s their country, I wanted to shout. They had something to do with it, or at least they were born there. What about me? What did I have to do with anything? Suddenly, I was reminded of Ishmael, smiling and dignified even in death, accepting his destiny with grace. He had helped me escape. He wouldn’t be complaining right now if he were me, I thought. He had given me a chance to live; if nothing else, I owed it to him to make something of it.

‘When can I get back to the US?’ I asked, my mind a confused jumble of thoughts.

‘As early as tomorrow, if you feel up to it,’ he replied. ‘There are flights every night from Bangkok to New York. We could arrange for you to leave for Bangkok tomorrow with someone from the monastery. The American embassy has a standing record of missing Americans and is likely to process your paperwork immediately. You could be on a flight late tomorrow or the day after.’

‘Yes, I feel fine,’ I said sharply. ‘I would like to leave as soon as possible.’

He nodded understandingly and I felt like a jerk. He had saved my life. He owed me nothing, yet I
was speaking to him as if my foolishness in coming to Cambodia was his fault.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Thank you for saving my life.’

He smiled broadly. ‘No apologies required. You have taken this extraordinarily well. As I said, you are a very courageous man to have made it out of there alive.’

My missing arm began to hurt again. I looked at it in surprise.

‘It’s called a phantom pain,’ he said, noticing my reaction. ‘Soon it will get better as you… err… get used to it.’

As soon as I got used to being a cripple, I thought bitterly.

He stared at me. ‘You are at the right place to get the answers you are seeking,’ he said after a while. ‘Would you be willing to come with me for a discourse by the Maha-thera, the head monk of the monastery? You are lucky. We are inducting a few new monks today so he will give an overview of the Buddha’s teachings.’

Great, lucky again, luckiest bastard in the world, wasn’t I? Lucky to get a chance to hear a cheerful, well-fed monk in the pink of health tell me what an ennobling experience my suffering was. I didn’t want to be a noble person, I thought. I just wanted my arm back.

‘Like you, I could never understand why the innocent had to suffer. That’s why I left the Red
Cross,’ David said as he helped me get out of bed and walk a few hesitant steps. The soles of my feet seemed to burn, and I grimaced in pain. Some suffering, I thought. Look at me. I didn’t even have an arm to balance my movements any more; if I fell, I fell.

‘Whatever your questions, the Buddha has the answers,’ he told me.

Sure, I thought, who better to understand my pain than a thirty-something prince in the throes of a mid-life crisis who abandoned his family so he could ‘find himself’. Today’s junkie was yesterday’s Buddha.

David laughed. ‘You don’t do a very good job of hiding your emotions. If you prefer to rest before your trip to Bangkok, please don’t feel obliged to come.’

‘No, no. I want to come,’ I said, suddenly ashamed of myself.

So later that day, I limped my way through the silent, well-lit corridors to the common room.

‘The first noble truth is this: All life is dukha.’

Despite my vow to keep an open mind, I felt a surge of irritation. What was I doing here, in the middle of these orange-robed, bald, stoned looking monks with impassive, content faces, listening to a phony Chink godman who had probably never seen
the outside of a secluded monastery spout paternal homilies on the nature of existence?

Get me a man with an amputated arm or a man who sat for two years in his own faeces smelling his friend’s decomposing body - and I will hear him speak all day. But spare me this, I said silently to the fat, cheerful teacher, who looked ageless and radiant, nowhere near the eighty years of age David had said he was. I already know all life is suffering, in a way you will never know.

The forty-odd monks in the small room were listening in rapt attention. Despite the location of the border village, most were westerners. Red Cross dropouts or trust fund hippies, I thought uncharitably. Crest cleans your teeth in ten days; the Buddha gives you nirvana in ten days. Salvation or the Buddha will give your money back. Try next door at Walmart.

‘Contrary to popular perception, dukha is not just suffering,’ the teacher continued. I focused my attention on him again. Unlike the pastors at church, he stated his position untheatrically and calmly, without trying to convince or provoke.

‘Dukha in Pali also means uneasiness, disquietude, restlessness, a vague feeling of incompleteness that characterizes all life.’

I found myself getting just a little interested. A lifetime ago, when my troubles weren’t as concrete as a missing arm, I had occasionally felt that sense
of vague, inexplicable dissatisfaction. It surprised me to hear it being articulated as such.

‘The origin of dukha is attachment - craving and clinging to emotions and experiences whose fundamental nature is to change, to be in flux. This is the second noble truth. We crave a simpler past, or a brighter future, without realizing that the loss of that past is inevitable, that the self which is seeking the future is itself changing.’

I had a sudden, surreal sensation that there was no one else in the room. He seemed to be speaking directly to me. He was right, I was clinging to my past. I was craving the happiness of a better time. What was that better time, though? When I was at MIT, I would think about the time Mom and Dad were alive; here, I was craving my time at MIT. If I ended up losing both arms, I would probably be pining for the time I had one arm. I know life changes, I thought. I understand it’s always in flux. But how do I rid myself of the burden of the past?

‘I don’t teach anything here,’ he continued. ‘I am not a godman, I don’t fly on carpets, I don’t walk on water. I can only be a guide on your journey to free yourself from the craving that binds us to this ultimately unfulfilling cycle of life and death. But this journey is yours and you have to walk the path alone.’

He was addressing weighty topics - birth, death, rebirth, bondage, enlightenment - but his tone
wasn’t patronizing. Every bone in his body screamed sincerity, his face radiated truth. He wasn’t a quack -as I had half hoped he would be.

‘Make no mistake, it’s a tough journey. Through intense meditation, you will annihilate the self, destroy the ego, and lose the “I” that craves. I haven’t reached this goal myself. I am not the Buddha, the enlightened one. I am just rowing the ferry that separates this world from the other, but the peace in my heart tells me I am paddling in the right direction. You can choose to follow my imperfect path and perhaps waste a lifetime or maybe more getting there - or you can choose to return to the life you know. Whatever you choose, I wish you peace.’

For the rest of the discourse, I stared at him in a daze, watching his calm face mouth words which sometimes made sense but mostly sounded esoteric and obscure. But all of it sounded sincere. Was there really a chance that the body was just a shell? That losing an arm wasn’t a tragedy, but not taking steps to achieve nirvana - the union of the individual soul with the universal soul - was? I looked around the room full of impassive faces deep in concentration. There were monks as young as ten or twelve, and they were ready to devote their lives to this important but ultimately elusive quest, unsure of the outcome but trusting in the path paved by someone thousands of years ago, who had left no written record of his
existence. If they could have faith, couldn’t I believe once more?

There was a sudden buzz of activity in the small room as the discourse drew to a close.

‘I hope that wasn’t too boring.’

I was taken aback for a moment. I had forgotten that David was sitting next to me.

‘Let me introduce you to the monk who will take you to Bangkok tomorrow,’ he said as he helped me up.

I would soon take a flight from Bangkok to New York, I thought, and hopefully still be able to join NASA in some capacity. If I was lucky, I would help build equipment to transport people to a distant, perhaps kinder world. And one day I would be married to someone who wouldn’t care that I was a cripple. Maybe we would have two children and live in a quiet suburban home, and I would never understand the madness of these last two years, I would never be able to explain to my children why there was evil in the world and whether it would ever cease.

‘We don’t have a phone here, but as soon as you reach Bangkok, you should give your family a call.’ He smiled. ‘They won’t be able to believe their ears, will they? How absolutely delighted they will be!’

No one was waiting for me. A few spare friends, a couple of professors perhaps, but I was a footnote in their lives, at best an interesting subject for cocktail
parties, forgotten as the complexities of their own lives took a grip on them. Someday, I would matter less than a missed promotion or a failed relationship, if that hadn’t already happened. Sam would care, yes, but he must think me dead by now, which was better for both of us. I wasn’t big enough not to grudge him his health and happiness and he, in turn, would be obligated to me in a way that would threaten our friendship. No, my going back would help no one at all. I was better off away from the memories of happier times.

‘The bus leaves early morning. Try to get a good night’s sleep.’

Would I ever be able to have a good night’s sleep again, I wondered. I would probably continue to be scared of the dark, terrified of every footfall I heard in the corridor, tormented by the nightmares of the past.

‘Come, let’s go back to your room,’ he said.

I didn’t move.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘David, I want to stay here,’ I said in a rush. ‘I don’t want to go to Bangkok or New York. I want to stay in the monastery. I want to try and walk the Buddha’s path. Will you give me a chance?’

Space and silence, breathing and concentration, hearing without judgment, listening without
speaking. In the stillness of the hall with its solid, wooden columns and the rhythmic rotation of the prayer drums, days passed, then months, then years. Time lost all relevance. Instead of moving from space scientist to senior space engineer to explorations project leader in NASA, I climbed the monastic hierarchy and went from the novice monk samanera, to the middle-ranked majjhima to the more senior thera. But even that meant nothing. I didn’t want to get anywhere. All I wanted was not to feel the wrench every time I saw the empty sleeve dangling by my side, not to feel regret on seeing the impish grins on the faces of the young monks shuffling through the large, silent hall. Peace was too lofty a goal; acceptance would do just fine.