The Cult of Loving Kindness by Paul Park, Cory, Catska Ench Read Free Book Online Page A

of the stones upon the bank. And some felt they could see for the first time the subtlest and smallest pattern of all these, the pattern in their own suffering and joy, the proof they had not lived in vain.
    This lesson, which was the single clearest distillation of the master’s thought, exists only as the memory of an ideal. Later theologians have speculated that the master had intended it that way, that he had intentionally sent from the room his faithful, perfect secretary upon some minor errand. For by the time Palam Bey returned leading the old novice, followed by Mr. Sarnath and the child, the master again had closed his eyes.
    And he was roused only by the sound of Honest Toil’s snuffling tears, and the sound of movement in the crowd. Finally the old man flopped down in the inner circle with the tears wet on his cheeks. For though his memory for facts was more than perfect, and though he could more accurately than anybody in the room have recited the history and prognosis of the master’s illness, still his memory for the importance of events was flawed. In that hot room where the master lay dying and his students sat in concentric circles fanning themselves with pieces of banana leaf, it was as if the old novice was confronted for the first time with the significance of what he knew. He burst into tears, demonstrating once again for anyone who cared the truth of the master’s apothegm that passionate emotion comes from a deficiency of understanding.
    “Stop that,” the master said. Honest Toil knelt down and held his breath, puffing out his cheeks and wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands. In this way he dutifully suppressed his grief, though all that day from time to time his sobs would burst out suddenly redoubled, venting as if under pressure; then he would gulp and swallow and control himself.
    But even in that first flush of emotion, with the tears still running down his cheeks, he smiled suddenly, as if remembering some secret joy. And when his breath was quiet enough for speech, he leaned forward. “Sir,” he said, “I would like you to meet my friend Sarnath Bey.”
    The master smiled in his turn. “But there’s no need,” he said. And he raised his eyes to where Mr. Sarnath stood with Cassia by the screen, and indicated with a gesture of his head that they should come forward. Again the senior students had to budge themselves, and it was not until Mr. Sarnath was sitting near him, cross-legged, with Cassia on his lap, that the master spoke again. At this time his face was sometimes touched with quick spasms of pain.
    “What have you brought for me?” he asked.
    Mr. Sarnath bowed his head, unsure of what to say, how to behave after so long. He stared at the back of his own hand, meditating in silence. And it was not until the master had repeated his question that Mr. Sarnath pulled his knapsack from his shoulder. It was almost empty: just a few worn shirts and T-shirts, and a ragged quilt. Then from the bottom he produced a bundle, wrapped in a tangle of worn paper and bound up with strips of linen.
    He untied the skull and held it up. The master reached out his hand, and with his forefinger he traced the inside of the skull’s left eye socket. Then he let his finger run along the cranium, which was carved with scenes from his own life: how his parents sealed him in the bell of a bass horn when he was ten days old; how they smuggled him away out of the siege of Caladon; how they were set upon and killed by members of the Desecration League; how a drunkard, finding the horn abandoned in the grass, was astonished by its mournful voice.
    “What did you see?” asked the master, taking the skull into his hands.
    Mr. Sarnath said: “The night when I decided to start home—it was a Friday. I saw the junior customs deputy at Camran Head. He gave me gifts, too much for me to carry. But I kept this—he carved it as a gift for you.”
    The master shook his head. “Tell me about what you