Motherless Brooklyn

Irving. When are you coming home, Irving? Your family misses you.

The joke nagged at me, but I couldn’t put it to work. Was that Roshi’s original name, his American name: Irving? Was Roshi-Irving the voice on the wire?

If so, why? What linked Minna to this place?

They settled into quietude up front. I stared at the row of bald heads, the six monks and Roshi, but discerned nothing. Even Pinched and Indistinct were meditating serenely. Minutes crept past and I was the only set of open eyes. Someone coughed and I faked a cough in imitation. If I kept one eye on Kimmery I was mostly calm, though. It was like having a bag of White Castles beside me on the car seat. I wondered how deep her influence over my syndrome could run if given the chance, how much of that influence I could hope to import. How close I could get. I shut my eyes, trusting Pinched and Indistinct to stay planted obliviously on their cushions, and drifted into some pleasant thoughts about bodies, about Kimmery’s body, her nervous elegant limbs. Perhaps this was the key to Zen, then. We don’t exactly have God, she’d said. We just sit and try to stay awake. Well, I wasn’t having any trouble staying awake. And as my penis stiffened it occurred to me I’d found my One Mind.

I was jostled from my reverie by a sound at the door. I opened my eyes and turned to see the Polish giant standing in the entrance to the sitting room, filling the doorway with his square shoulders, holding in his fist a plastic produce bag full of kumquats and gazing at the roomful of Zen practitioners with an expression of absolute and utter serenity. He wasn’t in a robe, but he might have been Buddha himself for the benignity of his gaze.

Before I could figure a plan or response there came a commotion at the front of the room. A commotion by the local standards anyway: One of the Japanese monks stood and bowed to Roshi, then to the other monks in his party, then to the room at large. You still would have heard a pin drop, but the rustling of his robe was signal enough, and eyes opened everywhere. The giant stepped into the room, still clutching his kumquats like a bag of live goldfish, and took a mat-a couple actually-on the other side of Kimmery, between us and the door. I reminded myself that the giant hadn’t seen me, at least not yesterday. He certainly wasn’t giving me any special notice-or anyonese for that matter. Instead he settled into his spot, looking ready for the monk’s lecture. Quite a gathering we made now, the various mugs and lugs attending to the wise little men from the East. Pinched and Indistinct might be real Zen students playing at thuggishness, but Pierogi Monster was undoubtedly the opposite. The kumquats, I was pretty sure, were a giveaway-weren’t they a Chinese fruit, not Japanese at all? I wanted to hug Kimmery toward me, away from the killer’s reach, but then I wanted to do a lot of things-I always do.

The monk bowed to us again, searched our faces briefly, then began speaking, so abruptly and casually it was as if he were resuming a talk he’d been having with himself.

“Daily life, I fly on an airplane, I take a taxicab to visit Yorkville Zendo”-this came out Yolkville- ah-“I feel excitement, thoughts, anticipations, what will my friend Jerry-Roshi show me? Will I go to a very good Manhattan restaurant, sleep on a very good bed in New York City hotel?” He stomped his sandaled foot as though testing out a mattress.

I vant to go to Tibet! The joke insisted itself upon me again. My calm was under pressure from all sides, the goons everywhere, my echolalia provoked by the monk’s speech. But I couldn’t turn and gaze and refresh my dose of Kimmery without also taking in Minna’s titanic killer-he was so big that his outline framed her on all sides despite his being farther away, an optical trick I couldn’t afford to find fascinating.

“All these moods, impulses, this daily life, nothing wrong with them. But daily life, island, dinner, airplane, cocktail, daily life is not Zen. In zazen practice all that matters is the sitting, the practice. American, Japan, doesn’t matter. Only sitting.”

I vant to speak to the Lama! The American monk, Roshi, had half turned in his spot to better contemplate the master from across the ocean. The profile below Roshi’s gleaming dome stirred me unexpectedly. I recognized some terrible force of authority and charisma in his features.

Jerry-Roshi?

Meanwhile the giant sat disrespectfully pinching the skin of a kumquat, pressing it to his monstrous lips, sucking its juice.

“It is easy practice zazen in its external form, sit on the cushion and waste time on the cushion. So many forms of nothing-Zen, meaningless Zen, only one form of true Zen: actual making contact with own Buddha-self.”

The High Lama will grant you an audience.

“There is chikusho Zen, Zen of domesticated animals who curl up on pillows like cats in homes, waiting to be fed. They sit to kill time between meals. Domesticated animal Zen useless! Those who practice chikusho should be beaten and thrown out of the zendo.”

I obsessed on Jerry-Roshi’s face while the monk sputtered on.

“There is ningen Zen, Zen practiced for self-improvement. Ego-Zen. Make skin better, make bowel movement better, think positive thoughts and influence people. Shit! Ningen Zen is shit Zen!”

Irving, come home, went my brain. No soap, Zendo. Tibettapocamus. Chickenshack Zen. High Oscillama Talkalot. The monk’s wonky syllables, the recursions of the Tibet joke, my own fear of the giant-all were conspiring to bring me to a boil. I wanted to trace Roshi’s enthralling profile with my fingertip-perhaps I’d recognize its significance by touch. Instead I practiced Essrog Zen, and stifled myself.

“Consider also gaki Zen: the Zen of insatiable ghosts. Those who study gaki Zen chase after enlightenment like spirits who crave food or vengeance with a hunger can never be satisfied. These ghosts never even enter the house of Zen they are so busy howling at the windows!”

Roshi looked like Minna.

Your brother misses you, Irving.

Irving equals Lama, Roshi equals Gerard.

Roshi was Gerard Minna.

Gerard Minna was the voice on the wire.

I couldn’t say which got me there first, his profile in front of me or the joke’s subliminal nagging. It felt like a dead heat. Of course, the joke had been designed to get me there sooner, spare me figuring it out while in the belly of the whale. Too bad.

I tried to quit staring, failed. Up front, the monk continued to enumerate false Zens, the various ways we could go wrong. I personally could think of a few he probably hadn’t come across yet.

But why had Minna buried the information in a joke to begin with? I thought of a couple of reasons. One: He didn’t want us to know about Gerard unless he died. If he survived the attack he wanted his secret to survive as well. Two: He didn’t know who among his Men to trust, even down to Gilbert Coney. He could be certain I’d puzzle over the Irving clue while Gilbert would write it off as our mutual inanity.

And he felt, rightly, that no conspiracy around him could possibly include his pet Freakshow. The other Boys would never let me play. I could be flattered at the implied trust, or insulted by the dis. It didn’t really matter now.

I stared at Gerard. Now I understood the charismatic force of his profile, but it inspired only bitterness. It was as though the world imagined it could take Minna away and offer this clumsy genetic substitution. A resemblance.

“California Roll Zen. This is the Zen of sushi so full of avocado and cream cheese might as well be a marshmallow for all you know. The pungent fish of zazen smothered in easy pleasures, picnics, get-togethers, Zendo becomes a dating service!”

“Zengeance!” I shouted.

Not every head turned. Gerard Minna’s did, though. So did Pinched’s, and Indistinct’s. And so did the giant’s. Kimmery was among those who practiced their calm by ignoring me.

“Ziggedy zendoodah,” I said aloud. My erection dimmed, energy venting elsewhere. “Pierogi Monster Zen master zealous neighbor. Zen zaftig Zsa Zsa go-bare.” I rapped the scalp of the sitter in front of me. “Zippity go figure.”

The roomful of gurus and acolytes came to agitated life but not one of them spoke a word, so my burst of verbiage sang in the silence. The lecturing monk glared at me and shook his head. Another of his posse rose from