Free The Godfather of Kathmandu by John Burdett Page A

Tibetan nun unlocked the door, and everyone trooped out, including Tietsin, who used another door at his end of the room. I was left alone for ten minutes, contemplating the great stupa on the other side of the window with its giant eyes, which were spectacularly lit up. Finally the door at the far end of the room opened and Tietsin limped in. He seemed surprised to see me.
    “You still here?”
    “You knew I would be.”
    He shook his head. “Actually, I did not. You should not overestimate me. I’m not a Buddha or a bodhisattva. I’m not even an
arhat
. I’m not even a monk. I learned a few party tricks along the way, that’s all.”
    “I don’t believe you. I think you know what I want.”
    Now he was frowning as if contemplating the possibility that I was slightly insane. “Actually, I expected you to be on a plane back to Bangkok by now, asking for your bonus from Colonel Vikorn.” He paused. “By the way, what
do
you want?”
    “I want you to initiate me. I want the same initiation your meditation master passed on to you.”
    If his shock was faked, he was a damn good faker. He really looked as if it had never occurred to him in his wildest moments that it would come to this: a little mafioso from Thailand, whom he would surely rather not have anything at all to do with, demanding access to his deepest secret.
    “You have no idea what you’re asking. Look at me, d’you want to be like this?” He flaunted his stump and even stood up to limp exaggeratedly.
    “You’re the most complete man I’ve ever met. You’re the only complete man I’ve ever met.”
    “No, I’m not. I’m a freak. I’m like someone who took too much LSD when they were young and had to live with the psychotic consequences.”
    I slipped off my seat onto my knees on the floor. “I am asking.”
    “Get up, you idiot. You have a life, a wife, a child.”
    “You already know about family. It’s not an answer, it’s a trap. Of course I love them, I love them more than life, and that’s the problem: they drag me more and more into flesh until I feel so heavy sometimes I can hardly get out of bed. The responsibility is hard to stand, and worst of all is the worry that something might happen to them. And they always want more. And more and more. It’s all exactly as the Buddha said:
Took, Anija, Anata.”
    “Say again?”
    “Took, Anija, Anata,”
I repeated with a touch of exasperation: these were pretty basic Buddhist concepts, after all: suffering, impermanence, lack of substance.
    “That’s the way you pronounce those words in Thailand?”
    “How do you pronounce them?”
    He replied with the same three words, which I could just about recognize from the Pali root. “Anyway, the answer is no.”
    Still on my knees I put my palms together in a
wai
. “I am asking.”
    He stared angrily at me. Then as he stared his features softened. He was looking into my eyes when a great sadness seemed to come upon him. “Get up.”
    “Is it because I’m not Tibetan? Or because I’m made of inferior stuff, the magic wouldn’t take with me?”
    “No, none of the above. There is no magic. Only science of the mind. I told you, I spent seven years, from the age of eight to the age of fifteen, in a monastery, subject to disciplines that would stagger grown men. Even then, the initiation I was given was too powerful for me. Look what happened.” He waved the stump.
    “There’s something you’ve just seen? Your features just altered. Am I really that lost? Will something bad happen to me? I don’t care. I want to reach the Far Shore. That’s what you said.”
    “Serves me right for being so damned sanctimonious. It’s a virus youpick up in monasteries the way you pick up staphylococcus in hospitals.” He paused, then said in a patient voice, “You’re supposed to take a slow ferryboat to the Far Shore, not an unstable kayak you’ve never learned to paddle.”
    The moment hung for a while in an electric atmosphere. We both