The Godfather of Kathmandu (7 page)

I followed his uneven gait around the stupa, spinning the prayer wheels as we went. He had a specific technique, a professional’s handiness with the brass. I was less adept.

After the first nine wheels, Tietsin said, “Whoever is angry, harbors ill will, is evil-minded and envious, whose views are delusive, who is deceitful, he is to be known as an outcast.”

I tried to remember where I had heard that before. Surely it was nothing less than the
Vasala Sutra?
I said, “Whoever destroys life, whether bird or animal, insect or fish, has no compassion for life …”

“Whoever is destructive or aggressive in town and country and is a known vandal or thug …”

“Whoever steals what is considered to belong to others, whether it be situated in villages or the forest …”

“Whoever, having contracted debts, defaults and when asked to pay, retorts, ‘I am not indebted to you’ …”

“Whoever is desirous of stealing even a trifle and takes such a thing, having killed a man going along the road …”

“Whoever commits perjury either for his own benefit, for that of others, or for the sake of profit …”

“Whoever has illicit affairs with the wives of his relatives or friends, either by force or through mutual consent …”

“Whoever does not support his father or mother, who are old and infirm, being himself in a prosperous position …”

“Whoever strikes or abuses by words either father, mother, brother, sister, or mother-in-law …”

“Whoever being asked for good advice teaches what is misleading or speaks in obscure terms …”

“Whoever having committed an offense wishes to conceal it from others and is a hypocrite …”

“Whoever having gone to another’s house and taken advantage of the hospitality there does not reciprocate in like manner …”

“Whoever deceives a priest, monk, or any other spiritual preceptor …”

“Whoever abuses by words and does not serve a priest or monk coming for a meal …”

“Whoever, being enmeshed in ignorance, makes untrue predictions for paltry gain …”

“Whoever exalts himself and despises others, smug in his self-conceit …”

“Whoever is a provoker of quarrels or is avaricious, has malicious desires, is envious, shameless, and has no qualms in committing evil …”

“Whoever insults the Buddha or his disciples, whether renounced ones or laymen …”

“Whoever not being an
arhat
pretends to be one, he is indeed the greatest rogue in the whole world, the lowest outcast of all …”

“Thus have I exposed those who are outcasts …”

“One does not become an outcast by birth, one does not become a Brahmin by birth. It is by deed that one becomes an outcast, it is by deed that one becomes a Brahmin.”

The celebrated sutra had taken us one half turn of the stupa. We had started in the west, I suppose because Tietsin wanted to finish in the east. He was silent for the whole of the second turn of the stupa, then he said, as he spun the wheels with particular vigor, “I guess we have a deal.”

“I guess. How much can you ship?”

“Our movement needs forty million dollars. Whatever will get us that sum, we’ll ship.”

“Your movement? Is it political?”

“Sure. We’re going to invade China.”

“What with?”

He stopped short, as if the question surprised him. “With the inexorable power of Tantra, of course.”

I assumed this was some kind of macabre Tibetan joke; we were talking, after all, about a Communist republic which suppressed religion
wherever it could, so I focused on the practical issue. “How can you do what no one else can do and export so much at one time?”

“Contacts and know-how. The stuff is shipped raw from Afghanistan into Waziristan, that is to say tribal Pakistan, where it is processed. From there it is moved to Ladakh, which used to be known as Greater Tibet, all under our supervision. People forget, Buddhists were active in that part of the world for a thousand years before Mohammed. Our contacts predate Islam. From Ladakh we ship it directly into Chinese-occupied Tibet. That’s the key. Tibet is mostly pure emptiness, and anyway our people are the only ones who can tolerate the climate—the Chinese all get very frail at that altitude, especially when stationed outside of Lhasa, where there are no hospitals and no oxygen bottles. We have total free rein. No one can stop us.”

“Does the Dalai Lama know?”

Here Tietsin stopped. It was the first time he had frowned at me. “Of course not. His Holiness is the greatest living Tibetan. Actually, he is the greatest living human being, he is the incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, but his mission is not to save Tibet. He has invaded the world instead. Anyway, he has said he will not reincarnate, or if he does it will not be in Tibet. Do you understand what that means?”

“You and your movement are left to defend it on your own?”

“No, we’ve already lost it. I and my movement are going to take it back on our own. From under the noses of two billion Chinese.”

“How many lifetimes will it take?”

“That is the only unknown in the whole equation. It is also irrelevant.”

My next question, obviously, involved the sensitive issue of morality. However worthy the cause, Tietsin was involved in shipping poison in bulk. I didn’t need to ask it. He said, almost apologetically, “I follow my dharma. That’s all I can tell you. At the end of the day
I am
is an unfathomable mystery.”

We had come to a stop, our three and one half turns of the stupa were complete. We had landed in the east. As we shook hands and he gripped mine with those two fingers, Tietsin said, “We’ll ship it to any address in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, or Burma. We’ll talk about offshore bank accounts nearer the time. We prefer to use Lichtenstein.”

I was about to take my leave, but those two fingers of his were pressing into my palm, refusing to let go until I looked into his eyes. Naturally, he
had one more spectacular little trick to play that day. I saw it again, in each of his eyes this time, in perfect miniature clarity: the black stupa, the lightning, the rage.

“Nice meeting you,” Tietsin said, and turned to make another tour, spinning the wheels as he went.

I should have let him go, but instead, in my ignorance, I stared after him, willing him to come back. So he did. Now he was standing in front of me again, rolling his eyes back, as if he hated having to preach but felt he had no choice. “There’s only one real instruction. Forget the Eightfold Path if it doesn’t apply to your situation.
Be one of those who travel to the Far Shore
. The Buddha doesn’t give a broken alms bowl how you get there, just do it before it’s too late. There isn’t a lot of time left. That’s all I can tell you.”

Then he was gone.

When the how-to publishers produce a handbook for aspiring consiglieres it will emphasize the wisdom of getting the hell out, once the main deal is done. Any good mafioso would have gotten on the next plane, right? Even a mediocre, 9-to-5 type of consigliere would have done so. Even a tenth-rate thug who operates on animal instinct would have known to go to the Thai Air offices on Durbar Marg and have them change the ticket so he could leave that same day and rush back to Colonel Vikorn with the wonderful news that we could expect to receive however many tons of poison for retail within the next month, probably enough to put our main rival General Zinna out of business—wouldn’t he? And did I?

Well, I rushed, but it wasn’t to the airport. It was to the Pilgrim’s Bookshop on Thamel. (You have to remember how I got into this: I was a monk manqué who found himself ensnared in a nefarious process for which he could only feel partially responsible; if that sounds like a cop-out to you,
farang
, try being an Asian head of family.)

Now, reader dear, would you permit a pause in the breathless narrative while I sing praises? Briefly, if it’s God you’re after, or some variation thereon, the Pilgrim’s Bookshop is the outfit for you. Maybe the Library of Congress is better for general inquiries, but if it’s the allegedly nonexistent that interests you—say, the lesser-known habits of Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, or which color Tara would be most suitable for the thanka in your living room, or which particular cave in the high Himalayas you should choose for your summer retreat, or how to be a sadhu without giving
up your day job, or which plants, mushrooms, and toadstools in the Kathmandu Valley will really get you stoned (there’s a whole wall dedicated to them)—trust me, you need the P.B. (Yes, they
do
ship overseas, and they
are
on the Net, and no, I don’t have shares in the company.) In the end I bought eleven volumes of transcendental obscurity and five DVDs, only one of which turned out to be of direct relevance. Entitled
The Shadow Circus
, it went into detail about the CIA-sponsored rebellion after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. I got the management of the Kathmandu Guest House to lend me a DVD player and holed up for the day with my books and my disks. By afternoon I felt I knew a lot more about Tibetan Buddhism, aka Tantra, aka Vajrayana, aka Apocalyptic Buddhism. I guess I ended up with a more nuanced concept of the Far Shore, the biggest nuance being that it was not susceptible to concepts.

And still I didn’t go to the airline offices. Or call them. When my eyes grew tired and I couldn’t focus anymore, I decided to do some sightseeing. I took out a map of the city and after a lot of wrong turns wound up at a backstreet shrine near Asan Tole which is dedicated to Vaisya Dev, the god of toothache. There were half a dozen dentally challenged citizens wearing scarves around their jaws looking miserable; the trick is to nail a single rupee coin to the wooden shrine with an ancient hammer which is tied to the shrine with a string, mutter your favorite mantra—and Bob’s your uncle, no more pain. You almost wish you had a mild toothache yourself so you could check out the magic. Then I thought maybe old Vaisya was also good for preventive medicine, and fished out a rupee to nail up:
Oh, Vaisya, let me never suffer toothache again
. There is no denying superstition. It’s part of what’s out there,
thathagata:
like toothache.

After that I walked on Thamel, then down to the Vishnumati River, across the iron bridge next to the Hindu temple, then the long trek to the foot of the Monkey Temple. Even the stairs did not cool my fevered brain. At the top I impatiently paid my tourist rip-off fee and almost
ran
around the stupa spinning the wheels and then stared out over the valley thinking, nay,
screaming
silently to myself,
The mountains, the mountains
. Then:
Tietsin, oh Tietsin, I want the Far Shore
. That old Tibetan witch had pressed my big red emergency button. I was in a fever.

Why was I not surprised when a Buddhist monk in his plum robes with the right shoulder bare surreptitiously passed me a flyer for a seminar that was being held that very evening on the top floor of a tea shop at the
great stupa of Bodnath? He was gone before I could ask if he knew Tietsin personally. I had a feeling every Tibetan in the city knew Tietsin personally.
Listen
, I whispered to the sublimely beautiful black stone Buddha just behind the miniature mausoleum and next to the Kodak shop (before you get to the alley that leads to the Café de Stupa—I didn’t think much of the food, but the rooftop views were transcendental),
I’m supposed to be a mafioso, a despicable international drug trafficker, a poor sucker among six billion poor suckers ensnared irrevocably in karma from which there has never been any escape and for which therefore I experience no responsibility even if it is all my fault. I really don’t know if I can stand too much fresh air.

Cut the crap
, was the black Buddha’s terse reply.
I don’t give a broken alms bowl how you do it, just get to the Far Shore, there isn’t a lot of time left
.

That evening I gave myself half an hour to get to Bodnath from Thamel, which should have been ample, but there was a traffic jam on Thamel Chawk at the junction with Tridevi Marg (I’m sure the noise was all from frustrated Hindus; Buddhists don’t honk like that), so when my driver finally got me to Bodnath I expected the seminar to be almost finished. I saw no sign on the door, no flyer, and the door was shut; maybe everyone had gone home?

When I knocked softly, a Buddhist nun opened and stared at me suspiciously for a moment until someone behind her murmured something in Tibetan and she changed her attitude. She let me in with a great sudden beam of loving-kindness and nodded at a seat at the back. After I was seated, she locked the door again. Tietsin was on his feet, limping across the floor as he spoke, ruthlessly using his stump as theatrical device. “What was at issue was not Tibetan autonomy, it was the soul of the world. The world decided it didn’t need a soul and couldn’t use a heart. If there had been a lot of oil there, that would have been different. If we were on some geopolitical trigger point of interest to the West, it would have been different. But there was not, and we were not.” He paused. “You could say that in the year 2076 of our calendar there began a process long prophesied by which the bulk of humanity—I’m talking ninety percent—will get trapped in the continuum of materialism and will therefore be destroyed. The way leading to final destruction is superficially
pleasurable, until we’re snared, then it gets old real quick. Even on the best view, we’re looking at three thousand years of unenhanced mediocrity, before the Maitreya Buddha comes. Does that ring a bell? I guess it must, or you all wouldn’t be here, would you?”

He looked over the audience without appearing to see me. All the seats were full, and it struck me that the one I was sitting in had been reserved, because there were people standing and leaning against the walls. The room was packed, lending a feeling of intensity, even passion, to the atmosphere. As I took it all in, I realized that perhaps half the people present were Buddhist monks and nuns in their robes; most of those, however, were Westerners who I supposed had been ordained here, maybe kids on their gap year between high school and college who got snared—by Tietsin? The others in the audience, lay listeners like myself, seemed to come from a variety of different countries and ethnic groups, but these laypeople seemed older and more serious than those at the afternoon seminar. I had a feeling they had been handpicked, like me. Without exception we were all mesmerized by the crippled giant in the open parka who strolled up and down unevenly in front of us, now with his hands in his pockets, now using them to emphasize a point; and this fixity of focus gave his words a terrible penetrating power.