At the Heart of the Universe (38 page)

The monk grabs his ears harder and forces him to submit to another set of hot stares. Finally he stops, lets go, knits his brow, strokes his chin.

Pep groans.
She dragged this guy out in the middle of the night across those logs to treat me?
He looks around. Katie is asleep on the floor, huddled under the quilt.

The monk takes Pep's wrist, feels for a pulse, and his head snaps back. He drops the wrist as if it's a live wire, and his mouth, which has been a thin, wrinkled slit, pops open in surprise. He barks something grim at Xiao Lu. Both of them stare down at Pep, who thinks,
This is not a good sign.
He starts to say something but the monk tries to silence him. Pep slips his head free.

“Clee, tell him the problem's in my ankle.”

Clio tries to explain this. The monk nods in a dismissive way and traces a path on Pep's body from his wrist pulse to his heart and then up to his head, mimics a man looking down at a chasm, terrified, and then traces a line back down through his heart to his ankle, which is swollen to the size of an eggplant and bruised the same color.

Pep focuses on his heart—it's racing even more crazily. At that moment the monk puts his fingers on his pulse again, more lightly this time, and suddenly, as if receiving another shock, jerks his hand back. With a smile he shakes his fingers in the air as if to cool them off. Pep tries to explain that the monk's exam is causing the symptoms he's noticing, but he gets nowhere. Finally, after cooling his fingers in the pail of drinking water, the monk touches Pep even more lightly so that it might not even be a touch at all, keeps his fingers there, and closes his eyes.

From time to time he sighs, spreading the odor of garlic and ginger through the tiny room. He lifts his fingers, places them on the other side of the wrist. For another long space of time he communes with the pulse, his face twisted in worry. Pep is getting scared, feels his heart speed up—
the damn thing seems to be beating at random!

Clio is fuming at this useless delay. Xiao Lu has failed to bring back anyone who could carry Pep out. After what seems like half an hour Pep and Clio are not even sure that the monk is awake. His breathing is deep and regular, and he isn't moving.

Finally the monk stirs, groans, and digs in his bag.

“What are you going to do for him?” Clio asks, indicating this in gesture.

The monk stares at her with a haughty air—reminding her of the infertility doctor telling her that everything had failed. Again, but this time with insistence—as if explaining the basics of life to a child—he points to Pep's heart, then traces his finger from heart to neck to head, into the brain, and then back down to the swollen foot. And then he smiles, revealing a silver mine of repaired teeth, front and back. He removes his worn quilted coat and points to his black bag. With a snort and a fist placed over his own heart, he indicates that he is the doctor and Pep is the patient and Clio counts for nothing and should just stay out of his way.

“Honey,” Pep says, “I'm a goner.”

The monk takes out a box of acupuncture needles.

“It's okay,” she says. “He may be brusque, but acupuncture may be just the thing.”

“The
porters
are just the thing—why the hell didn't she—?” The monk barks at him to be quiet. Pep lays his head back down and pictures himself dying of hepatitis or AIDS. He sighs. At least they say these acupuncture needles are painless.

Which is why, when the intense pain hits his inner thigh, he screams. The monk curses and tells him to be quiet. Katie wakes up, mumbles, and goes back to sleep.

The needles are a torment. So much for being painless, Pep thinks, these ones must be too thick or too dull—they feel like a nail twisted in through his skin. He bites his lip until it bleeds. The placements and twirlings are bad, but worse is when the monk takes a piece of kindling and sets the end aflame, then places it on a needle the length of a ruler stuck into the soft white middle of Pep's belly. At this Pep groans, whimpers—which makes the monk's wrinkled face re-wrinkle even more tightly in hearty laughter, joined by Xiao Lu. He tries to push away the big needle in his gut—the monk's hand bats his away as if it were a Ping-Pong ball in a tight game, and cautions him with a single raised index finger not to try that trick again. Pep clenches the wooden sides of the bed, clenches his teeth, clenches his mind down on his body, fighting the burning needles.

On it goes, the monk really getting into the fire cure and Pep in hot pain and Clio in frank doubt, until suddenly, and for no obvious reason, the monk stops still, alert, as if he hears something scary outside. He puts down the wooden mallet he has been using on a picket fence of needles between Pep's toes and, barking a command at Xiao Lu and motioning to Pep not to move, hustles to find his coat and umbrella and a rolled-up bamboo mat. Then, as if late for his next patient, he hurries out the door.

“Get him back in here!” Pep cries. “He needs to take out the goddamn needles!”

Clio gets up. From outside there's the sound of a tiny bell being struck—first a dull
clink
, then a hard strike and long ring. As it ends, another dull
clink
and a long ring. A third time, then silence. Clio looks at her watch. Four a.m. exactly. She takes the flashlight and goes outside.

It is dark—a thick, heavy dark just this side of fog. She sweeps the beam of the blue-laser flashlight around the clearing. The light hits the cliff face and brings to life reflections in the skin of the rock, mica and quartz—the mineral soul of the mountain. She senses an aura of gold and silver ore all around her.

On the far side of the clearing, where the stream runs, the monk sits on his bamboo mat in a full lotus. The bell perches in his hand like a songbird, the echo of its song fading, fading, to nothing. With a serene diligence he lowers it to the ground, and places the small piece of padded wood with which he struck the bell beside it. He then gathers his heavy coat around him and chants the sutras, bowing to the Buddha.

Clio watches, startled and touched. Startled at the transformation from an irritated, haughty, even mocking doctor to a devoted old man who has given up everything and endured God knows what during Mao's China for this classic Buddhist practice—to affirm that suffering is human, that there is a cause of suffering, that the cause is holding tight, that the relief of suffering is possible by merely this, merely letting go and bowing to the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. She watches with envy and dismay.

This
matters
. This practice, somehow, will help get them back to safety. Even having the monk here makes her feel safer; they're no longer alone with her. Somehow this monk's spirit will ease her husband's fear.
This is, because that is. That is, because this is. In the compost is the flower. In the flower is the compost.
Does she believe it, this co-arising of all life? At her best, maybe. Now?

Not really, no. She wants to go over to the monk and point to her watch and say, “Excuse me, sir, how much longer do you think you'll be? Back at the temple, the bowing and chanting lasts an hour. Is there any chance that, since this is a kind of satellite service, and my husband is paralyzed with fear and we can't get out of here, you could cut it short?”

She watches for a while, feels the night chill start to seep into her bones, and goes back inside.

33

Katie, curled up asleep in the chair, doesn't get to see the acupuncture needles porcupining out from her father's body. She's set her Baby-G to go off in time for her to feed the deer at dawn. By the time she awakens, the monk has ended his meditations, come back in, unceremoniously plucked out his needles, and demanded food.

Sleepily, Katie checks in with Clio, nods to Xiao Lu, is introduced to the monk, and asks Pep how he's doing.

“Okay,” he says, cheerily. “Did you have a beautiful sleep?”

“Un hunh. How's your ankle and your like panic attacks?”

“Ankle's swollen, panic's gone—as long as I'm on solid ground. This monk is a doctor—he's already started working on it.” He doesn't mention his pounding heart.

“He's started with acupuncture,” Clio says.

“
Needles
!? Don't let me see 'em, okay?” Clio nods. “Hey, wait—I thought she was supposed to come back with some guys to carry Daddy across?”

“So did we,” Clio says, tersely.

Katie picks up on Clio's irritation. “So maybe there weren't any guys and she left a message for them to come later.”

“Maybe.” Clio goes to Pep.

Xiao Lu settles the monk at the table and serves him a steaming hot bowl of congee. He slurps it up quickly, and asks for another. Though his name is True Emptiness, she has heard the joke around the monastery that this thin old man has such an enormous appetite they nicknamed him True Fullness. She laughs to herself, and wishes she could tell Chun this joke.

“Mom, can I ask Xiao Lu about feeding the deer?”

“You can ask, as long as you wait for me to come with you.”

Through gesture with the Cheddar Goldfish, she makes it known that she wants Xiao Lu to produce the deer. Xiao Lu gets a few packages of Goldfish and heads outside, Katie following.

“Katie?”

Katie stops on the threshold, turns. Clio, hand raised to pour water into Pep's cup, is looking at her.

“Please don't go out there without me.”

“But I'll miss the—”

“I'll be right there.”

Katie glances at Xiao Lu, who laughs. When Pep is settled, they go out.

The sun is barely up, more a glow than a disk. The morning, after the rain, seems to Clio all mist—scrubbed fresh, the dew hanging on the grass and big drops shining on the wide leaves of skunk cabbage and on the thinner leaves of what Katie has said is the only thing giant pandas eat, cold arrow bamboo. A dark cypress grows next to the cliff, and a weeping willow rises over a streambed. Flowering azaleas, their purple or white blossoms downed by the rainy wind, are scattered around as if a wedding party has passed by in the night. Bordering the ravine to the left are catalpas, and dragon spruce that climb straight up for a hundred feet. Clinging to the walls of the ravine are what might be thousand-year-old gingko trees, gnarled and angry looking in the easy dawn. And ferns, ferns everywhere, as big as Clio has seen in the jungles of the islands, and Panama and Costa Rica, and moss upon moss upon mulchy rotting logs. And earth. All in all, a perfect place for deer.

Katie and Xiao Lu are walking softly across the clearing to where the cliff edge cuts back into the mountain and the forest takes over. Xiao Lu puts some Goldfish in Katie's hand, takes some herself, and faces the forest.

“
Ping
,” she calls out quietly, musically. “
Ping
.
Ping
.”

They only have to wait a few moments. Suddenly the mountain deer are there. Katie is amazed at how silently they come to them through the woods, how still they stand there—two, three, four—and one of them is a
fawn
! They're much smaller than any deer she's ever seen. Their long delicate faces and big dark eyes are beautiful. She wants to turn around to tell Clio but knows she mustn't move or she'll scare them away. They're wild, but they act tame. Wild mountain deer her birth mom has tamed! She stares at Xiao Lu, who nods and slowly holds out her hand, palm up, motioning to Katie to do the same. They hold out their hands and wait.

The deer, eye level with them in the safety of the rhododendrons, hesitate.

Katie watches their eyes flick from Xiao Lu to her, and then down to the Goldfish, and back up. The biggest one, with a set of small horns, takes one step toward Xiao Lu, and another, then bends his head to the Goldfish and nibbles them up.

Katie is left with her hand out. The doe looks at her, looks back to Xiao Lu, approaches, steps back, approaches again, steps back again. Katie's hand is getting tired, but she holds it as steady as she can—bringing her other hand up to support it from the bottom like she's offering a gift to a god—and sure enough, the doe comes back, nibbles the fish quickly from her palm. Her lips feel rough and strong, as if eating harsh leaves and twigs and bark has made them tough. But it tickles, too—it's all she can do to keep from laughing. The doe bounces off—like a reebok or a bongo on Animal Planet—but then stands a few feet away, staring.

Xiao Lu pours more Goldfish into Katie's hand and into her own, and the deer come back. This goes on for several turns, until finally all the deer, even the fawn, have come up to eat. Xiao Lu shows them her empty hands, and the deer, Katie thinks, almost nod. Then they walk away,
gentle-gentle
, into the woods.

Katie watches them go. Amazing how fast they disappear in real life, with hardly a sound! It's different from TV. She turns around to where Clio stands. “Mom, did you see it? They ate from my hand—there was a whole little family, a momma, a daddy, and a
bay-bee
!”