life on earth. The Buddhist karma is a deed, physical, oral, or mental, containing within it a potential power. Each of our actions results in the good or bad effect and influences our future. A good deed repeated accumulates the good, and its potential power will affect the future as a beneficial influence. Each person has his own karma, his own potentiality for good or evil. Like the chi among the Ibo.
“Our ancestors tell us that a builder can only build you a house with the building blocks you bring him. You bring him stones? You get a house made of stone. You bring him wood? You get a house made of wood. You bring defective stone, wood, iron, or steel, you get a defective house. The chief difference between your position and the religions I’ve studied concerns belief in the transmigration of souls. If you do beastly deeds in this life, then in your next life you will be born a greedy hyena or an ugly warthog or simply a beast. A person should lead a life of good works to ensure that in his next cycle of being he or she is reborn as a superior being.
“The Buddhist attitude to property attracted me. A person who chases after fame and wealth and love is like a child who licks honey from the blade of a knife. While tasting the sweetness of honey he risks damaging his tongue. But what fascinated me most was the notion of nirvana. I understand that the word literally means to blow off.’ It is a state of perfect light, a state in which all human defilement and passion have been completely extinguished through practices and meditations based on the right wisdom. Buddha means the enlightened, the one who has found the light.’ And it was not lost on me that Gautama Buddha himself reached this state in his old age, lying between two large trees in a forest.
“When I returned to Aburlria my spiritual preoccupations yielded to necessity: I had to find a job. There was a time when I thought that maybe a person could do business in a righteous way-you know, without greasing palms- and so remain incorruptible. As it turned out I did not even have the opportunity to find out if that was possible. The rest you know.
“I’ve come to believe that there is a power outside of us that drives human affairs. It is the power hinted at by the religious when they say that God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. You and I had not chosen to meet when we did. The same power has brought you here. There is a purpose to all this.
“Nyawlra, please don’t go back to Eldares, back to the corruption. Let’s build a shelter here; listen to what the trees and the animals have to tell us. Long ago, my ancestors, the hunters, believed that the sun was our god because it was the source of fire and light. When we were children and we captured its heat in pieces of glass, we believed we’d captured a bit of its power. Let’s stay here and find out the secrets of the heat of the sun and the light of millions of stars.”
Nyawlra could not quite believe her ears. She had not expected this response. He was asking her to turn her back on Eldares, Aburlria, the people, so as to become a hermit, one of the children of the new-millennium Buddha in the Aburirian forest, searching for the meaning of life. Without thinking of what she was doing, she removed Kamltl’s hand from her shoulders.
“Maybe we are different. You are drawn to the ministry of wounded souls, I to the ministry of wounded bodies. I may not know which is the better ministry. But this I know: human beings are free to choose how they use the gifts given to them by God, nature, sun, fate, call it what you like, I mean that transcendent power that you say governs our lives, whether to use it to seek personal salvation or a collective deliverance.”
It was not a question, but again Kamltl squirmed under its implication.
“When I look into the distance of time I see only a kind of darkness, a mist, smoke, nothing clear. Nyawlra, I smell tears and blood…”
“Whose tears and blood?”
“I don’t really know. I will not ask you and your friends to give up the plans you have for disrupting the rites at the site of Marching to Heaven. However, on my part I don’t feel ready for the task. I still want to hear what the animals, plants, and hills have to tell me. I need to find myself.”
“For us,” she now said as she stood up, “we see Marching to Heaven as means of turning our earth into hell, and we have chosen to do something about it.”
She started collecting her things, ready to leave. She did not pack the boxes of matches, the kettle, or the pot.
Then she suddenly remembered something at the back of her mind that she had not yet voiced.
“Tell me,” she said, “what happened to the three bags of money? What did you do with them, or rather with the money?”
“I buried it,” Kamltl said, exhausted.
“You buried the money?” Nyawlra asked, as if she had not heard the words clearly. You should have given it to us!” she said. “The movement would have made good use of the money against these criminals.”
“I will tell you where it is. It is all yours. But be forewarned: that money is cursed.”
“There is no money that is blessed or cursed,” Nyawlra said. “It depends on the uses to which it is put,” she added, and then suddenly paused.
She recalled that the three bags of money almost took her life the day she returned to the office to collect her handbag and ran into Tajirika’s gun. The three bags had provoked white-ache in Tajirika.
“Forget the whole thing,” she said. “I don’t even want to know where it is buried. Our movement believes more in the actions that people do than in the money that people give. So let us leave the money bags to red ants and termites. It is time I returned to my lair in the city.”
“The sun is about to set. Why don’t you stay for the night and leave in the morning so you can cross the prairie by the clear light of day?”
“No, I will start right away. I have to report to work tomorrow.”
“I will see you across the prairie,” Kamltl offered.
“No, no. Let me do the prairie alone. That way I will get to know it better. The wild beasts of the prairie are less cruel than the beastly humans embarking on Marching to Heaven.”
“But don’t burn your bridges. What is the saying? One may find oneself back to places one had thought that one had left for good. I am now a dweller in the forest. If ever you come back, please leave a piece of your cloth here in the cave or on any rock in the forest and I am confident that I shall find you.”
“Thank you, but I have no intention of returning to these parts anytime soon. Eldares calls me.”
They walked in silence to the foot of the hills where the prairie begins. Kamltl watched Nyawlra cross the expanse of the land until she became indistinguishable from the acacia in the distance.
SECTION III
1
Weeks later when Nyawlra was on the most wanted list and the police, under the Ruler’s orders to take her dead or alive, were looking for her all over the country, what most helped was her knowledge of the prairie, and Kamltl’s admonishment not to burn bridges was very much in her mind as she crossed the plains in the dark alone with nothing more than the dress she had worn to work and a handbag.
She recalled how firmly she had resolved not return to these parts anytime soon and was struck by Kamltl’s prophetic insight. She felt fearful of the darkness but also grateful for the protection it offered against pursuers. The stars above were her best companions, and it was now that she most appreciated the talks she and Kamltl had had about the sun, the moon, and the stars.
She went to the cave where she had last seen him. There were no signs of human presence. She stood there; she grew teary-eyed. Not that she regretted what she and the other women had done, although she grudgingly admitted to herself that it was no less provocative than if they had pelted a police station with rocks.
The moon appeared in the horizon, and though it did not shine as brightly as it had that other time with Kamltl, still its light enabled her to make out her surroundings. She did not want to stay in the cave because it was near the foothills, so she decided to try her luck farther in and wander among the places where she and Kamltl had earlier stayed to see if she might find him.
