Everyone Burns by John Dolan Read Free Book Online

the envelope open with a paper-knife. If this was CSI , I could check the gummed flap for the writer’s DNA. But this is KSI ( Koh Samui Investigator ), and I have no such technology at my disposal. I carefully extract a single sheet of paper and repeat the dusting procedure. Nothing.
    I shake off the powder and lay out the paper beside the letter from the first envelope. I am comparing two A4-sized sheets of cheap photocopying paper. Both have been neatly folded twice, and the printing on both is in Ariel Bold from a lazerjet printer.
    The first letter says
    HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?
    The second says
    WIVES CAN BE A PROBLEM
     
    I put the envelopes and letters into the folder, and the folder back in the bottom of the desk drawer. I tidy up, lock the drawer and put out the light.
     

3
    “and what I want to know is
    how do you like your blueeyed boy
    Mister Death”
    E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems
     
    This morning I go to the temple for one of my regular spiritual cleansing sessions.
    Wat Son is a small but colourful Buddhist temple clinging to the hillside not far from my house. The wat is not on the standard tourists’ itinerary so there I can meditate without being surrounded by gawping visitors or plagued by souvenir sellers. The only wares on offer here are merit and the necessary paraphernalia of devotion. I have rarely seen another white face there, and that suits me just fine.
    Aside from the main temple building, the complex comprises a courtyard, some outbuildings, a walled garden and the monks’ quarters. One of the outbuildings houses a glass case which contains a mummified monk dressed in traditional robes. In his cupped hands he holds a painted wooden lotus, the eponymous symbol of Buddhism. Some wag – I suspect the Old Monk who is in charge of the temple – has put a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the mummy. The devout claim this is so that you can see your own karma reflected back at you. I think it’s just to demonstrate even Thai monks have a sense of humour. Or perhaps someone thought it was nicer to look at than a corpse’s sewn-up eyelids.
    The day’s heat is already gathering strength when I arrive , and the courtyard is quiet – only a few locals and one young, orange-robed monk sitting on the wall, his head buried in a newspaper. As I pass by him I see he is reading the football results. “Manchester United wins again,” he says brightly, giving me the thumbs-up.
    I buy incense, flo wers and gold leaf to rub on the Buddha statues, slip off my shoes and enter the temple, passing under a large stone arch in the form of a nāga, or serpent. Although there is no-one around, many incense sticks are burning and the sunlight streams through the windows exposing the peeling paint and setting alight the dust particles in the air. I experience one of those moments where time’s arrow is suddenly halted in mid-flight, or seems to be. In the centre of the temple, the larger-than-lifesize golden Buddha sits impassive and I can feel around me the world of samsara crumbling before his blind gaze. I am not a god, he had said, I am simply awake.
    I light a bundle of incense sticks and holding them between my palms, bow several times to the statue, before kneeling and bringing my forehead to the temple floor. After this, I present the rest of the incense, along with the flowers and gold leaf, before walking backwards respectfully out of the space. I slip on my shoes and go in search of the Old Monk.
    I find him sitting beneath a tree in the garden, his bright eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. While I wait for him to finish his meditation, I look around the garden. Although Thai Buddhism follows the Theravada tradition, there is something of Zen in this garden: not so much colour and many rocks, even some raked gravel shaped into lines and circles. But then the Old Monk, who exercises a hypnotic influence over the others here, is impatient with such sectarian distinctions, and I have heard