A Well-tempered Heart (6 page)

No matter what I was doing, no matter where I went or what I saw, I thought of nothing but the voice in my head. Even when she was quiet.

I apologized to Mulligan in a dramatic e-mail referring to serious health problems on which I did not elaborate; further rigorous testing was going to be necessary. He replied full of concern and wished me a speedy recovery.

On one of my restless wanderings about the city I noticed a man in the Union Square subway station. He was about my age, wearing a black suit and a white shirt. A briefcase between his legs. All around him people were bustling from one platform to another. The man stood rooted to the spot.
Amid the deafening roar of the arriving trains I could just make out isolated phrases. “Hearken unto the Lord … we are sinners all … put your faith in the Lord … you have gone astray …” No one besides me paid him any mind. Even if someone had taken pity on him and stayed to listen, they would not have been able to pick up even one complete sentence. I wondered what drove him to it. Did he, too, hear a voice? Did it command him to preach to arriving trains in one of New York’s biggest subway stations? What power would my voice acquire over me with time?

IN SPITE OF
my fears I took the prescribed medication only twice. It was not the objections of the voice that held me back. Nor was it the possible side effects. It was the intended effect. The thought that I would be consuming a chemical substance that would overpower me. Direct me, control me. A strange heaviness had overcome me already that first time. The feeling of being a stranger in my own body.

Every fiber of my being resisted it. Under no circumstances was I willing to enslave myself to these little white pills. It had not yet come to that. There must be some other way to rid myself of the voice. I needed to try something completely different, only I didn’t know what. Should I follow Amy’s advice and withdraw with her to the forests of upstate New York? Meditate? I feared that the quiet there would only exacerbate my condition.

The one thing that helped was classical music. When
I lay on the sofa listening to Mozart, Bach, or Haydn, the voice fell silent. The tones of the violin, the cello, and the piano worked on her like an exorcist. As if their melodies could lay her to rest. I had to be careful, though, not to do anything else at the same time. No reading, no cleaning up, no cooking. She would chime right in.
Knock it off. Make up your mind: Listen to music or read. Listen to music or get dinner ready. It won’t do to try both at once.
I was always trying to do much too much at once rather than concentrating on a single thing. That was not going to turn out well. She would not stand for it.

Thanksgiving only made things worse. For the first time in my life I would be spending the holiday alone. Amy was visiting a relative in Boston. The few other friends whose company I might have enjoyed were celebrating with their families. Half the country was going to be traveling. I had turned down my brother’s halfhearted invitation to San Francisco weeks ago.

I had never seen the city so empty. Nary a car on the street, shops and cafés closed. Even the homeless man who always sat at the corner of Second and Fifty-ninth had disappeared. I called half a dozen restaurants looking to order in; not one was open.

By dinnertime the whole building smelled like roasting turkey. From the other apartments on the floor came the laughter of the revelers. The clink of glasses. The aroma of cranberries, glazed carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie.

The miserable stench of loneliness.

I ate leftovers from the fridge and, against the vociferous objections of the voice, drank almost a whole bottle of red wine. She turned out to be right. The alcohol did me no good. I started to pity myself. I ended up huddled in tears on the couch.

On Sunday evening Amy returned from Massachusetts. We had talked on the phone several times over the past few days. She was relieved when I went off the meds, and she kept inviting me to spend a few days in the countryside with her. She was really worried about me now. Wouldn’t I come with her to the Buddhist center after all? It would do me good to disengage. She promised. And if it didn’t, we could be back in Manhattan within three hours. I had nothing to lose.

By that point I didn’t care where we went. I was at the end of my rope. I couldn’t stand to be alone anymore. I needed to get out of the city.

THE TAXI TURNED
around and rolled slowly back down the dirt road. The driver shot us one more look of pity, then disappeared around the bend.

Amy and I stood there surrounded by an eerie silence. No birds, no insects. Not even the wind whispering in the treetops.

I looked around. Not much color. Leafless trees, scraggy brush, boulders thrusting up out of the earth. A world in grayish brown. Vacant.

For one long moment I felt as if I had been marooned.

Amy shouldered her backpack, nodded to me, and led the way. We walked up a path and crossed through a bit of forest until a bizarre building appeared on a hill before us. The bottom part looked like a blocky, flat conference center with large windows. Above that someone had set a pagoda roof, complete with octagonal cupola, little towers, golden ornamentation, and Buddhist symbols presiding over the corners. Our path led straight to it.

A slender woman in a light-pink robe met us at the entrance. Her hair was cropped short. Her smile and her soft features masked her age. She and Amy were apparently well acquainted with each other, but she greeted me with no less warmth. We followed her around the main building to the guest quarters. Breathing heavily, she climbed up to the second floor and showed us where we would be staying.

My room was maybe eight feet by ten. There was a bed, a chair, and a little cabinet. On the nightstand stood a Buddha made of light-colored wood. Behind it, in a vase, a red plastic hibiscus blossom. On the wall hung a painting of a meditating Buddha and a plaque with some of his aphorisms: “No sorrow can befall those who never try to possess people and things as their own.”

I thought of my brother in Burma. Had he internalized this idea? Is that why he could remain so serene? In spite of the poverty in which he lived?

The nun led us into the hallway and showed us where to find the bathroom and the shower. On the first floor, she told us, was a shared kitchen. The food in the refrigerator and the cabinets was available to all. There would be five other guests in the house. If we wished, we were welcome to participate an hour from now in the communal meditation that happened every afternoon at four. Dinner was at six, and, as with all the activities, participation was voluntary.

Amy wanted me to drink a cup of tea with her before the meditation, but I was not in the mood.

I put my backpack down, closed the door, and opened the window.

A world without police sirens. Without cars. Without music from the next apartment.

A silence without voice.

She had not uttered a word since our departure from New York. It had been days since she had held her tongue for such a long time. Why had she suddenly clammed up?

—Hello? Tentatively.

—Where are you? More tentatively still.

No answer.

I lay down on the bed. Waited. Impatiently. On the one hand I wished for nothing more fervently than to be rid of her for good.

On the other hand.

The vague awareness that it would not happen of its own accord. That I was going to have to get to the bottom of what was going on inside myself. Where the voice came from. What she wanted from me.

THE MEDITATION HALL
was bigger than it had looked from the outside. It could accommodate several hundred people. Red carpeting on the floor. In one corner were piles of red blankets and blue meditation pillows. In three glass cases a range of Buddhist statuary; on small tables in front of them were offerings: a couple of oranges, bananas, cookies. The sweet fragrance of smoldering incense sticks filled the hall.

I arrived somewhat late. Amy and the others were already sitting in a row meditating. I took a pillow and a blanket and sat in a lotus position beside them. I closed my eyes and listened to the quiet breathing of the others. Peace like theirs eluded me. My heart beat fiercely; my breath was shallow and quick. There was a din in my head. Thoughts flitted past like clouds before a brisk wind. I thought of Mulligan with his bushy eyebrows. Of my brother’s small ears, inherited from our mother. Of U Ba’s threadbare green longyi. I saw an ice floe slowly melting in a lake until it vanished entirely. I thought of my shoes, which needed polishing. Of the milk spoiling in my refrigerator.

The harder I strove to concentrate, the more banal and intrusive my thoughts became. It was like the times I had tried to meditate in yoga class. My teacher’s deep
Om
had not resonated with me. Relaxed emptiness, Buddhist serenity, had not descended on me. Frustration, rather. At myself. Why was I unable to sit still and do nothing? Why could I not stem the persistent flow of thoughts in my mind?

I opened my eyes. Not even ten minutes had passed. What was the point of sitting here motionless for another three quarters of an hour subjecting myself to the torment of superfluous thoughts? Could I not make some better use of my time? Going for a walk? Reading? Helping to get the dinner ready? I was just about to stand up when I heard footsteps behind me. The light, nimble gait of a child. I turned around. A monk, a short, older Asian man in a dark-red robe, head shaven, approached me and sat down next
to me. Our eyes met, and he greeted me with a congenial chuckle.

As if we had known each other for years.

I could not take my eyes off him. He was wearing absurdly large glasses with thick lenses, the black frames much too dramatic for his thin face. His nose was unusually sharp, his eyes small. His full lips made me think of Botox. His smile revealed a prominent overbite. At the same time he carried himself with considerable grace. He radiated a dignity that I found impossible to reconcile with an outward appearance he was either unaware of or completely indifferent to.

He lay his hands in his lap, closed his eyes, and I could see his features relaxing further.

I also gave it another try, but now I saw the old man’s face before me the whole time. From one minute to the next I became increasingly agitated. My pelvis ached, and my back was cramping up. My throat started to itch. It was torture; contemplation was out of the question.

At some point the gong sounded to indicate the end of the meditation. Relieved, I opened my eyes. The old monk beside me had vanished. I looked around the room, somewhat irritated. Amy hadn’t moved yet. The others were slowly getting to their feet.

Of the old monk there was no trace.

SOON AFTERWARD WE
met with the other guests for dinner. They were all from New York City. A yoga instructor,
about my age. An older widower hoping through meditation finally to bid farewell to a wife who had died a year earlier. A student seeking something, she wasn’t sure what. A journalist who spent most of his time talking about a book he was working on called
The Power of Silence.
I ate my vegetable curry and hoped that his writing was more engaging than his conversation. And the whole time I could not get the old monk out of my mind. Between Amy and me one look was sufficient, and a couple of minutes later we were sitting in my room.

She had brought a bag, and she had an air of mystery about her. Out of the bag emerged a candle, two small glasses, a corkscrew, and a bottle of wine.

“Is that allowed?” I asked, surprised. The lawyer in me.

Amy smiled and put a finger to her lips.

She lit the candle and turned out the light, opened the bottle quietly, poured for both of us, and sat down next to me on the bed.

“The Buddha says: ‘A fool who recognizes his own ignorance is thereby in fact a wise man.’ ”

“I think he also frowns on drinking alcohol. Or will drinking wine turn us into sages?”

She nodded conspiratorially.

“So are you a Buddhist or not?”

“Almost.”

“What does ‘almost’ mean?”

“The Buddha says: ‘To live is to suffer.’ ”

“And?” I asked, now curious.

She leaned far over to me and whispered: “The master is mistaken: to live is to love.”

“Love and suffering are not mutually exclusive,” I quipped. “Perhaps one even implies the other?”

“Nonsense. Anyone who truly loves does not suffer,” she countered, still in a whisper. An even lower whisper.

“Oh, please.”

“No, really. Trust me.”

She leaned back, smiled, and raised her glass slightly. “To the lovers.”

“And the sufferers.”

I did not wish to pursue the matter and asked whether she had noticed the old monk with the oversized glasses during the meditation.

Amy shook her head. “But the nun told me that they have a monk visiting from Burma.”

“What did she say about him?” I asked, curious to know more.

“I guess he’s pretty old, and in Burma he’s highly esteemed and has lots of devotees. Supposedly people come from all over the country seeking his advice in difficult situations. He was forced to flee, I’m not sure why. He’s been here four weeks and is leading a secluded life in a small hut somewhat deeper into the woods. They don’t see him very often; she said he doesn’t usually participate in the group meditation. Funny that today is the day he would show up.”