Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

facing him, and while meditation offered no solution for such problems, it did at least allow him to stop thinking about it. He had been meditating for some ten minutes or so when his wife came into the room, looked at him, and said:
    â€œOh.” She had a way of saying it, a remarkable way. “You do look ridiculous when you sit like that. I mean, a grown man.”
    He smiled apologetically.
    â€œThat cat of yours is acting very strangely.”
    â€œYes. How?”
    â€œDinner is ready.”
    â€œYou were saying about the cat?”
    â€œHe purred.”
    â€œCats do purr.”
    â€œHe purred pleasantly.”
    â€œI’ll be with you in a moment,” the professor said. “I’ll just wash up.”
    He took a tiny plastic envelope from his desk, and went out to the garden, musing over a name. He was neither proud nor obsessed with any desire for immortality, even in the small botonist’s world of the cactus, and he decided that Echinomastus contentii would serve very satisfactorily. The cat came after him mewing with delight as the professor shook a little of the yellow pollen into the plastic envelope..
    â€œI do wonder how the world appears to you,” he said to the cat.
    Apparently the cat, purring with pleasure, understood him completely.
    â€œWhat a beautiful, incredible thing you are!” he said to the cactus.
    From the house, his wife called to him. “What on earth are you up to out there? Who are you talking to?”
    â€œA cactus,” he replied as he came back into the house.
    â€œI don’t think that’s funny. If we could eat one meal where the food doesn’t sit around and get cold while you fuss over God knows what to get yourself to the dinner table, I would be a very happy woman. Anyone else can come to dinner when dinner is ready, not you. You always have five things that must be done.”
    â€œI’m afraid so,” the professor agreed.
    â€œAnd I don’t want that miserable cat in the room while we eat.”
    The cat understood. He regarded his mistress plaintively, and then he marched reluctantly out of the room.
    Barbara served the chicken and rice, and then informed him that she had run into Clair Maguire at the shopping center.
    â€œDid you? I do hope you gave her my very best. And to her husband. He’s a gifted man.”
    â€œThey’re making him the head of Oriental Studies at U.C.L.A.”
    â€œThat’s just wonderful,” the professor replied.
    â€œIt’s more than just wonderful. It’s forty thousand dollars a year.”
    The professor nodded with appreciation.
    â€œI don’t think you ever hear me, Timothy,” Barbara said. “I said forty thousand a year.”
    â€œYes. Yes, of course. It’s a handsome wage.”
    â€œThey’re moving. Do you want some more rice?”
    â€œNo, thank you.”
    â€œTo Westwood.”
    â€œOh? Well, that will be nice. He can walk to the college.”
    â€œThey bought a ninety-thousand-dollar house. With a swimming pool.”
    The professor smiled and nodded.
    â€œTimothy, Timothy,” his wife said, her voice as soft and beguiling as she could make it under the circumstances. “I’m trying to tell you something. Bob Maguire will be the head of the department. They will have an empty chair in Oriental Philosophy, and Clair said he is thinking of you. It’s thirty thousand dollars a year. Thirty thousand dollars.”
    â€œThat’s very thoughtful of him.”
    â€œIs that all you can say? It’s double what you make now.”
    â€œWell, a small college has its own problems.”
    â€œBut they’re not your problems.”
    â€œI just don’t know whether I would be very happy at U.C.L.A. It’s such an enormous place.”
    â€œWell, I do know that I would be very happy in Westwood or Brentwood and driving a decent car instead of that miserable Pinto, and just once,