Читать книгу The Breath of God - Jeffrey Small - Страница 19

CHAPTER 11

PUNAKHA, BHUTAN

HOW OFTEN DOES A PERSON face a moment when he knows his life is going to change forever?

This question played in Grant’s mind as he gazed up at the decorative windows of the six-story, whitewashed-stone utse tower. The low morning sun cast a long shadow of the tower across the flagstones, like a giant sundial representing to Grant the time to grasp his destiny. He thought about the answer to the two-thousand-year-old mystery that might be revealed in the tower above him. He thought about the draft of his dissertation stored in his laptop, which was in the small backpack slung across his shoulders. He thought about the redemption this discovery would bring to him. He mentally reviewed the checklist he’d been writing the past week—documenting the find, emailing the photos and text to Professor Billingsly, arranging for the professional translations ...

Then he caught up with the mental movie he’d been replaying in his head all morning. Kinley had taught him to monitor what the monk called the cycles of unproductive thinking he claimed Grant was prone to, the repetitive rehashing of future events in his mind. Grant released the breath he held tightly in his chest. The brisk breeze tossed his hair just as it swayed the naked branches of the tree in the center of the courtyard beside him. He continued to breathe, and he relaxed. But then other thoughts intruded: What if all this buildup was for nothing? What if the Issa texts were not as old as Kinley said? What if Notovich’s critics were right? What if the story of Issa was nothing more than a legend spun by the creative mind of some Indian writer centuries earlier?

The footsteps behind him saved Grant from continuing that line of thought. His breath quickened when he saw Kinley and Kristin hurrying toward him. Dressed for the cool autumn day, she wore a red fleece over jeans with various multicolored patches that she’d obviously sewn on herself. Her camera was slung over her shoulder. Kinley strode with his hands clasped behind his back, while Jigme followed a step behind.

“So we’re really doing this?” Grant whispered to Kinley.

“We cannot allow religious isolationism to govern our actions. But you do understand that what we are doing carries certain risks?”

Grant tried not to imagine what a Bhutanese jail cell looked like. But then they weren’t planning on taking anything other than pictures. Surely they couldn’t go to jail for that? He nodded. “This is too important not to try.”

Kinley smiled. “Exactly what I would have said at your age.”

“How are you going to get us up there?”

“Lama Dorji left for a neighboring monastery early this morning. We must hurry before he returns.” He turned to Jigme. “Dawa will be sitting inside by the door to the stairs. Please occupy his attention.”

A few minutes later, Jigme exited the utse with another monk who appeared to be in his late sixties. After they disappeared around the side of the building, Kinley hustled Grant and Kristin to the stone steps at the foot of the tower’s entrance.

“What do you guys have against putting your doors on the ground floor?” Grant asked under his breath.

Kristin took his free left arm, wrapped it around her shoulder, and assisted him up the steps. Grant was proud of the milestone he’d reached that morning—graduating to a single crutch—but he didn’t protest the help. He felt the same thrill he’d experienced the day before just by putting his arm around her.

They entered the building through a set of bronze-coated doors. Kinley surveyed the courtyard behind them and then closed the heavy doors with a thud. Inside, Grant noted that as in the other temples in the dzong, a worn wooden floor stretched from one mural-covered stone wall to the other. A single chair stood by a closed door.

Grant nodded to the door. “Top floor?”

Kinley nodded. “The sixth.”

Grant started for the stairs while Kristin rushed to keep up with him. When he reached the sixth-floor landing, sweat dripped from his hairline. Kinley brushed by Grant, materialized a ring of keys from under his robe, and unlocked a set of carved doors at the end of the short hallway. The double doors creaked loudly, causing Grant and Kristin both to wince. Grant entered the shadowy room last, stooping to avoid cracking his head on the low frame. Kinley then parted a beige curtain from the room’s single window, allowing the sun to pour in.

In the weeks he’d spent imagining the library, Grant expected it to be grander. The room measured twenty by thirty feet and had the musty odor of a closed space that hadn’t felt fresh air in years. Dusty Tibetan-style books, narrow and long like the ones he’d seen the students use in the temple, were randomly stacked on crooked shelves and in various piles on the floor throughout the room. He looked around with the eager expression of a miner prospecting for gold in an undiscovered mountain vein.

“Let me see,” Kinley said, stepping over several piles of books. “Twenty-two years ago, I was the assistant librarian in the dzong. That’s when I first discovered the texts about Issa.” The monk ran a finger along one of the shelves, wiping up a line of dust. “Not much has changed.” He disappeared around a bookcase at the far end of the room, mumbling to himself.

“How can we help?” Kristin whispered.

“Oh, no help. Around here somewhere,” he replied from the other side of the bookcase. “This library doesn’t get used much. We keep the current texts downstairs.”

The sound of books crashing to the ground startled Grant. “Are you okay?”

“Found it.” Kinley reappeared carrying by iron handles a simple pine box the size of a small suitcase. He placed the box on a laminate table that looked like it had been salvaged from a 1970s garage sale but which sat on an exquisitely handwoven carpet.

Grant and Kristin took two of the four wooden chairs around the table. Grant noticed that Kristin sat cross-legged in the chair like she had on the knee wall the previous day. While Grant gazed at the simple box, she reached across him and touched it, as if trying to glean its contents from the texture of the wood. Grant eyed her slender fingers and short but manicured nails as they traced the grain of the wood. As alluring as she was, her need to touch everything reminded him again that she was too much a free spirit.

When Kinley lifted the lid of the box, which had neither lock nor latch, Grant held his breath. He rose from his chair and peered into the open container.

Grant’s first reaction was surprise—more Tibetan-style books, seven, stacked on each other. Eighteen inches long by three or four inches wide, the books were individually wrapped in silk cloths of various faded colors. He recalled Notovitch’s description of the book he found at Himis: it was larger with an ornate cover.

Kinley lifted a green, silk-wrapped book. He blew off the fine layer of dust from the silk and then slowly unwrapped the book. The cover was heavy and sturdy, woodlike, and the book was as thick as it was wide—about four inches. Kinley opened the cover using the silk so that the oil from his hands would not touch the book itself.

“Well?” Grant said, craning over the table from the edge of his seat.

Kinley stared at the first page for a long minute, then turned to the second page. Grant noticed that the pages, a beige color, were much thicker than normal paper, not really flexible, and seemingly handmade. Each book contained twenty pages at the most.

“Aha,” Kinley said, when he turned to the third page. Grant saw some squiggly writing in faded black ink. He bolted out of his chair to stand over Kinley’s shoulder.

“It’s Pali!” Grant said.

“What’s Pali?” Kristin asked.

“An ancient language”—he squinted at the text—“somewhat similar to Sanskrit.”

“Can you read it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Only rudimentarily. I took a year of Pali and Sanskrit, but I had three years of Tibetan: that’s the language of the texts I was expecting to find.” He turned to Kinley. “Do you have any idea how old these are?”

Kinley flipped a few of the thick pages. “First century, if I’m reading the words correctly.”

First century! Grant’s mind raced. Judging from the thick pages, it appeared possible, but he feared to hope too much.

“They do look pretty old,” Kristin said. Grant flinched when she reached a hand toward the open book.

Kinley gently guided her hand to the table. “I grew up reading the Buddhist canon in its original Pali.”

Grant knew that Pali was the language of the ancient Buddhist canon, and it was still in use in first-century India when Issa supposedly lived. The book that Notovitch had seen in the Himis monastery, however, was written in Tibetan, a language that developed centuries later. As part of his research, Grant had theorized that the Notovitch book, if it existed as he believed it did, was like the Gospels from the Bible. The oldest copies of the Gospels in existence were copies of copies of copies written more than two hundred years after the originals. More significant was the fact that the Gospels were written in Greek, although Jesus would have taught his apostles and his followers in Galilee in Aramaic. For decades after his death, stories of Jesus would have circulated first among his followers in Aramaic, and then later they would have been translated into Greek and then written down in various forms. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not apostles of Jesus who had known the historical man, as was the common but mistaken belief. They were men who were part of the later Jesus community who compiled the stories that were in circulation about him and composed the Gospels.

Similarly, Notovitch’s discovery appeared to be a Tibetan translation and compilation of earlier sources, sources that would have been in the original Pali language that was in use during Issa’s travels in India. Grant had not imagined in his wildest dreams that he might uncover the original writings that Notovitch’s book was based upon. He’d assumed those would have been long destroyed or lost, just as the original sources for the Gospels had long ago disappeared. As he stared at the narrow books on the table, he felt his heart pounding in his ears.

“Will someone at least tell me what we’re looking at?” Kristin asked.

Kinley replied, “These books detail the journey of—”

“Issa,” Grant interrupted. “The Indian saint I told you about yesterday. According to legend he left his home as a teen to seek a secret wisdom from the sages in the Himalayas.”

“Secret wisdom. I’m game.”

She sat back in her chair but glanced between Kinley and Grant, as if she suspected they were holding back on her. Grant knew that she was smart, and he made a decision to tell her the truth if she asked directly. Part of the problem was that she’d shown up unexpectedly, and he had a carefully laid-out plan for the release of this discovery. She’s a journalist, he reminded himself.

“So these texts were written by ... ?” she asked.

Kinley answered, “The monks in India who taught Issa. They were impressed by an unusually bright and receptive student, a student who became well known years later. You see, controversy followed young Issa wherever he went, even after he was martyred.”

“Issa was killed?” Kristin asked.

“A story for another time,” Kinley said, glancing at Grant. A short time after Kinley had revealed the existence of the texts to him, Grant had realized that the monk knew the truth behind Issa’s identity. He’d mentioned to Kinley that until they were published, it might be safer for all of them if this fact remained secret.

“These silks, Kinley?” Grant asked, changing the topic.

“Only a hundred years old or so; they were added later to protect the books, and are changed by the librarian when they deteriorate.” Grant noted that many of the other books on the shelves around them were wrapped in similar silks.

“If Issa lived in India,” Kristin asked, “and these texts were written in a monastery there, what are they doing here in Bhutan?”

“For several hundred years after Issa’s death, the texts remained in the monasteries where they were written,” Kinley explained. “But then, as Hinduism began to reassert itself over Buddhism as the dominant religion in India, the books were collected and sent to a monastery in Tibet. During the nineteen fifty-nine revolt by the Tibetans against their Chinese occupiers, the monks boxed up the contents of their libraries and secretly sent them out of the country with the Dalai Lama, just before the Communists suppressed the dissenters. The various texts were divided and sent to monasteries throughout Nepal and Bhutan,”—Kinley gestured to the shelves of books surrounding them—“where they have sat to this day, largely forgotten.”

“What about the book that Nicholas Notovitch saw in the Himis monastery in eighteen ninety-four?” Grant asked.

Kinley shrugged. “In the days before the printing press or computers, it was the practice of the monks to copy by hand the ancient texts.”

“As was the case with Christianity.”

Kinley nodded. “My guess is that the monks at some point translated these books”—he pointed to the narrow books on the table—“into Tibetan, as they did with thousands of others, and then sent the manuscript out to Himis, where Notovitch saw it.”

“But that manuscript is no longer there.”

“Yes, a mystery indeed.”

Grant considered the treasure laid out on the table before him. While the disappearance of Notovitch’s discovery had always been the mystery Grant sought to solve, it was now irrelevant. Grant had evidence of much greater importance. He had the original texts documenting the existence of Issa.

“Does Lama Dorji know about this?” Kristin asked.

Kinley shook his head. “We have other interesting writings in here as well, but if they do not relate directly to the Buddhist canon, then he sees them as a distraction from our mission.” He gestured to the shelves around him. “So they sit here for hundreds of years collecting dust.”

Grant was beside himself thinking about the ramifications of these texts. That such a treasure could remain sitting in the monastery forgotten was beyond something his curious mind could relate to. “Kinley, you know that these texts need to be in a university or museum, where scholars can study and analyze them.”

“I do, but Lama Dorji will never give his permission, and the Je Khenpo will need to be persuaded.” Kinley rested his fingertips under his chin. “Something I will consider.”

“Would international pressure from academic institutions persuade the Je Khenpo?”

“Possible. It would have to be handled delicately.” The monk turned to Kristin, who was craned over the table studying the writing. “The camera?”

“Oh, yeah.” Kristin glanced to Grant as if she were going to ask, What was so important about Issa that these books deserved to be in a museum? The anticipated question never came. Instead, she unzipped the case from around her Nikon and removed the lens cap.

Kinley closed the wooden cover of the narrow book and lay the silk next to it. Kristin took pictures from several angles using both a flash and the sunlight that splashed across the table from the single window. Using the scarf, Kinley gently turned the pages as she photographed them.

The whole time she photographed what must have been more than a hundred pages of text, Grant shot numerous glances to the closed library door. How much time do we have? His ears were alert for any sound of a person climbing the steps, but he only heard the clicking of the camera.

When Kristin finished, he turned to Kinley. “Will you translate for us?” His fully charged, thin white laptop was open in front of him. His fingers quivered above the keyboard. The three years he’d spent studying Tibetan would be of no use to him with these texts. Until he returned to Emory with Kristin’s photographs, he would have to rely on Kinley yet again.

“I am ready,” Kinley said, turning to the first page of the first book, “but are you prepared?”

“Prepared? For heaven’s sake, Kinley. This has been all I’ve thought about for the past five years. It’s hard to even contemplate.”

“That’s what I want you to consider. When we walked up to this room, how many steps did we climb?”

Grant felt the familiar frustration with his new teacher rising. “Six floors, must have been well over a hundred steps, but I don’t see what climbing steps has to do with anything.” Grant folded his hands in his lap. He knew the more anxious he appeared, the longer Kinley would draw out his lesson.

“To reach this room, to read these manuscripts of Issa, you had to climb many steps,” Kinley said patiently. “Each step brought you closer to this table, but once you used a step, you left it behind. You left it not in a disparaging way that the lower step was now beneath you, but instead you left it knowing that it had served you well, a necessary step to get where you are today.”

A stillness settled over the room as Kinley stared at Grant, obviously waiting for his reaction. Even Kristin, who seemed to always be toying with the objects around her, sat quietly.

“Okay.” Grant thought back to one of Kinley’s earlier lessons and the cup of cool water that the monk had dumped on his head. “If I hadn’t been raised in a fundamentalist household, if I hadn’t gone to grad school, if I hadn’t broken my leg on the river, then I wouldn’t be here today.” He squinted at Kinley. “So I need to be more respectful, or maybe forgiving, of my own past, even the painful things, because those events have brought me to these manuscripts?”

Kinley nodded. “Our lives are interconnected with the actions that came before as well as our environments, but there is still more.”

“There always is.”

Kinley pressed on. “A Chinese Zen teacher once said, ‘When you are full of doubt and uncertainty, even a thousand books of scripture are not sufficient; but when you truly understand, even one word is too much.’”

Grant pondered the saying for a moment. “These texts are nothing more than yet another step in my journey?” But how can that be? he wondered. If Kinley’s translation contained the same revelation that the Notovitch’s manuscript did, then this was the type of find an academic experiences once in a lifetime if he or she is lucky. He imagined the effects it would have on the history of religion.

“And as with your previous steps, someday you will move beyond this one too.” As if reading Grant’s mind, he added, “As a historian, Grant, you might be adept at discovering the what: what happened in Issa’s short life.”

“Of course.” Isn’t that the point? he thought. In this case the what answered a crucial question that had remained unanswered for two thousand years.

“The what can be useful, yes, just as the how that scientists teach us can be.” The monk caressed the silk covering the first book. “The importance of these texts goes beyond history. You are missing a bigger mystery here.”

Grant scrunched up his brow. How can that be?

“The why,” Kristin said.

Kinley nodded. “Just as Issa uncovered an ancient wisdom on his journey, Grant, you must do the same with these texts. Ask not just what, but why. Religion is not about what has happened in the past, but about what is happening to us in the present.”

Grant sat without moving, his gaze on the table in front of him. He was suddenly struck by a memory from his early adolescence. A memory that seemed entirely out of place at this moment: he was lying in bed late at night, praying that the divine light would shine on him and remove his doubts so that he could believe just like the others around him did. He looked at the faded black lines of the ancient text in front of him. Then he raised his eyes, looked between Kinley and Kristin, opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it without saying anything.

“Let us see how good my ancient Pali is, shall we?” Kinley opened the first book.

Grant’s fingers flew across the keyboard as Kinley began to translate the story of Issa.