“It was an interesting debate. A very contentious area. One that is not clearly laid out in the Buddhist doctrines. In many respects I could see his side of the matter. I was keen to hear all of the arguments and make my own.”
“And you would have abided by his decision?”
“Of course.”
“What was the complaint?”
Both the abbot and the nun smiled.
“You speak your mind,” the nun said. She got to her feet and put her hand on my arm. It was my signal to walk with her. “You could very well be a southerner.”
That didn’t automatically register as a compliment and I was unhappy about being steered away before my question was answered. But I’d always been uncomfortably aware of rituals and unwritten rites in temples. I seemed to be the only one who didn’t know all the secrets. As children, Mair had hurried us in and out of ceremonies as if some spell might infect us if we lingered too long. Consequently I always felt like a foreigner with only a basic grasp of the language.
“So?” I pushed.
We were behind the half-painted wall. The nun’s voice dropped to a hush no louder than the swish of her robe.
“Abbot Kem here was accused by one of his flock of fornication,” she said.
I looked at her and took a stab.
“With you?”
“Yes.”
Nuns and monks and fornication. Is it any wonder I avoided it all? When I was at primary school we learned the golden rules by rote. None of them came to mind right now but…abbots sleeping with nuns didn’t seem to be OK.
“And did you?” I asked. “Did he?”
“No.”
“But you used to have…something.”
“We have known each other for many years,” said the nun. “We cared for each other. Before all this, before religion overwhelmed us, we had the most beautiful and pure friendship two people could ever know. We were, and remain, as close as any two creatures on this earth. We saw through one another’s eyes, breathed the same breaths.”
Perhaps I was being a bit dumb here and this probably wasn’t the right time to ask about sex, but it was all relevant.
“So even with all that eye sharing and co-breathing, it was still platonic?”
“Yes.”
“And you had this really nice connection but nothing came of it and you went your own ways and found religion?” I hoped I wasn’t being cynical.
“Yes.”
“And by chance, even though there are forty thousand
She smiled again. “Of course not. We have always been in touch: letters, phone calls. We are like family. We have a connection. I think we always knew that we’d end up at the same place. Abbot Kem told me about the simple beauty of this region and I decided to move from the northeast.”
OK, the millionaire question. No friends to phone. No help from the audience.
“Are you still in love?” I asked.
The nun sighed deeply, then switched over to profound mode. She sandwiched her hands together in front of her lap and spoke to her toes. It felt rehearsed.
“When you understand the dharma,” she said, “all love and hate is absorbed into a greater appreciation of the universe. Personal likes and dislikes are irrelevant. You are no longer an individual. You are a part of the whole.”
Good speech. I didn’t believe her. I was annoyed not to have the abbot’s view of events. I needed to look into his eyes and see what his slant on all this was. For all I knew, this could all have been the nun’s personal fantasy. But somehow I doubted it.
“So, you don’t love each other anymore?” I asked.
I was probably sinning like hell by forcing a nun to answer personal questions about her love life, but I had a murder inquiry on my hands — at last. Thank God I wasn’t shackled by any of those guilt trips that are such a lovely feature of organized religion.
“My love encompasses all,” she said.
All right. Technically I’m a Buddhist. It’s written there on my ID card. But I was brought up as a sort of warped realist. My mother threw me into this modern world where I was supposed to make friends with technology and alien cultures. And although part of me believes there’s a higher plane where jogging and
With the detectives and the IA monks back in the office detecting and my brother and his truck nowhere to be seen, I took the opportunity to visit the scene of the crime. The live abbot, Kem, was confined to the temple grounds but not to his quarters so he walked with me along the concrete path to the spot where the dead abbot, Winai, was found. A lethargic procession of temple dogs trailed along behind us. I attempted to push him on the relationship issue but he was mute on the subject. Not surprisingly, the body was no longer ahead of us on the path, but a large section of concrete had been stained a chewed-tobacco brown.
“Lot of blood,” I said.
“He was stabbed several times in the stomach,” Abbot Kem said.
I looked around. It wasn’t a secluded spot at all. I could see the road clearly down the hill with our truck pulled up beside it. To the north, anyone visiting the prayer hall, the monks, the nun, all of them had a clear view of where we now stood. And at our backs, the bright bank of bougainvilleas in full bloom reared up like an advertising hoarding declaring: MURDER OF THE DAY.
“Who found the body?” I asked.
“I did.”
“What time?”
“Just after three yesterday afternoon.”
“What made you come up here?”
“The dogs. There was a lot of commotion. They’re normally asleep around that time when the air’s at its driest. I was afraid they’d come across a cobra. When I got here I found the abbot dead on the path.”
“You came all this way because of a snake? Are you a snake charmer, Abbot?”
“Most of the snakes up here are harmless but we lose a lot of the dogs to cobra bites. The snakes only bite in self-defense so it’s often merely a question of refereeing. I have a cane basket. I get between the dogs and plonk it upside down on top of the snake and sit on it. When the dogs get bored and go home, I release the snake.”
“So, in fact, you’re rescuing the snake?”
“In a way, yes.”
I’d heard some wild witness statements in my time but that was a good one. However, unless any of the snakes were prepared to give evidence, it didn’t do a thing for Abbot Kem. I thanked him and watched him stroll back along the path, stopping here to pick up broken branches, there to pluck a dead leaf from a plant. As I walked down to the truck, I considered the variables. One resounding question that stuck in my mind was: Would a man who valued life enough to step between a pack of dogs and a cobra be able to kill another human being? But, I’d seen stranger things.
“How did you manage to talk your way past all those policemen?” I asked Arny as I climbed into the truck.
“I didn’t have to.”
