Namaste (11 page)

“Then kill me already.” Alfero’s earlier calm pulled back in a smile. He didn’t look afraid, or remorseful. He almost looked like Amit felt — a man content on vengeance, about to get his due.
 

Then Amit saw why.

Three black Escalades rolled around the curve and barreled down the deserted road, two from Alfero’s compound and one more from farther down the street. All had their lights off, but once in range, clicked them on.
 

Headlights painted the field on one side and the small thicket of woods on the other, near where Alfero had tossed his keys. Windows lowered on all three vehicles. Black muzzles poked out like turtles from shells, all centered on Alfero’s SUV. The others parked sideways, so they could shoot without obstruction.
 

“I figured I was dead already,” said Alfero. “From the ricin.”
 

He smiled, then soldiers in all three Escalades — one in each front seat and another in the rear — started to fire.
 

Chapter 12

T
EN
Y
EARS
A
GO

“F
OCUS
.”

A
MIT
tried to focus. It was difficult. He was watching Woo’s right hand as they stood face-to-face, trying to parry and dodge his fingers’ small jabs. Woo’s objective in the drill was to touch Amit’s robe. Woo said that if a person could touch you, he could find a way to hurt you. It was the first touch that mattered, because it broached your spiritual perimeter.
 

Pretend you are surrounded by a great bubble, and never allow anyone inside that bubble without your express invitation
.
A man’s space is his own, and once another breaches it, he has you by the soul.

“You are angry.” Woo held his unflinching eyes to Amit.
 

He watched the silver-white head in his peripheral vision, his half-focus on the man’s darting fingers. Woo would try to jab, and Amit would retreat or block. It was normally a simple drill — one he had mastered as a child. But Woo was no longer pulling his jabs. He tried his best, and if Woo could touch him, their agreement was that Amit would need to hold a heavy book over his head for three hours. Simple, but extraordinarily painful.
 

“Of course, I’m angry.” Amit tried to compose his face — to wear a neutral expression — but his head was filled with a heavy red fog. The world was starting to spin. He was doing his breathing exercises, but they were not helping.
 

“So use it. Don’t be used by it.”
 

“What is the difference?”
 

Woo’s left fist slammed into Amit’s kidney. He collapsed onto his knees, holding his side, groaning.
 

“That is the difference.”
 

“I am supposed to be watching your right hand!” Amit realized he had yelled. He tried harder to calm himself. It was not easy; in addition to being angry, he was now in pain, and enraged over his sensei’s audacity in launching a sucker punch.
 

Woo knelt beside Amit in the grass. The younger man was curled into a comma, his knees drawn high, hand at his side, face blushing red.
 

“What were you
supposed
to be doing when your mother was killed?”
 

“I was 6!”
 

“You haven’t answered my question. Where were you, when she was being slaughtered? Were you napping? Pissing in your pants like a baby?”
 

Amit lashed out at Woo, aiming for his eyes. His fingers were hooks. Woo easily dodged back, simultaneously extending a foot from his kneeling posture and ramming a toe into the back of Amit’s neck.
 

“Stop hitting me!”
 

“Is it making you angry?”
 

Amit rolled hard to the side, then stuck out an elbow. His rolling momentum tossed him up onto it, his side off the ground, and at the same moment he shoved with his legs and tossed himself backward. A half second later, he was up on his feet.
 

“You are going to fight me?” Woo sounded amused.

“If you fight me, I will fight you back.”
 

The red fog was in Amit’s eyes as if the world had bled. His ears were filled with white noise, his face was twisted in rage. He ran through a seconds-long mental check, telling his muscles to firm and stand ready. He was a weapon. He’d been
trained
as a weapon. He needed only a target, and his mind zoomed in on the closest one. Woo wanted him merciless? Fine. He could do that.
 

“I am not fighting you. I am embarrassing you. I am showing your weakness.”
 

“I am not weak.”
 

In one smooth motion, Woo swept the grass with his hand, picked up a small stone, and hurled it at Amit’s head. A shadow monk didn’t throw a stone like a person. Amit’s honed mind watched the rock spin in a spiral; saw the subtle changes in its trajectory. If he let it strike, it would hit with the force of a dulled spear.
 

Amit stooped to let the stone fly over his head, then reached up to pluck it from the air. Before he could, his foot was swept out from under him. Woo sat on his chest. The sensei had knocked him down, and pinned Amit’s right leg beneath him. His left leg, relative to where Woo sat, was useless. He could punch Woo with his right hand, but it stopped mattering when the older man moved forward to put his knee against Amit’s windpipe. The knee tipped his chin back, and Amit felt like his neck might snap. He tried rolling his shoulders to relieve the pressure, but Woo’s weight held them firm.
 

“I would argue that you are indeed weak.”

“Get off me!” Amit croaked.
 

“Is that how you would escape a real attacker? You would yell at me?”
 

“You’re cheating!”
 

“Oh. I apologize. You are indeed pursuing an effective strategy, accusing me of cheating.” Something cold and unseen pressed against Amit’s throat. It dragged across his skin and was gone. Woo climbed off and Amit looked up to see him sliding a small knife back under his sash, running his finger along the dull edge he’d used, ironically, to make his point.
 

“Congratulations. I, as your attacker, have slit your throat. But you have achieved a moral victory in pointing out my inherent lack of fairness.”
 

Amit backed away, coming to rest against a large rock in the outer garden. A circle of mixed-gender, blue-robed monks mediated across the green. Farther on, a lone pilgrim walked a stone path with his hands laced before him. He looked over, trying to avoid his sensei’s gaze, and saw something small and silver tinkle into his draped lap. Amit looked down at his mother’s locket, then up to find Woo slowly shaking his head.
 

“You are too easy, Amit. Rafi did not steal your locket. I did.”

“Rafi didn’t steal it? But I thought … ”
 

“You
thought
nothing. That is the problem. Rafi was your simplest target. I could have set you against him and had you snap his neck as he slept. And I have no doubt you might try, which is why I conveniently showed up for your training as soon as you’d discovered it. But you couldn’t set it aside, could you? You allowed another’s actions to dictate your state.”
 

“If Rafi did not deserve to have his neck broken for taking the locket, he deserved it for many other things. Not just for what he has done to me, but for what he has done to others.”

“So, you are a crusader for justice,” said Woo. “You are taking the role of the enforcer, who will do what is right.”
 

“You do not approve?”
 

Woo lowered himself and sat cross-legged in the grass.
 

“On the contrary. A good monk is able to rise above himself to see what is true and right, and act accordingly. You must
always
look for what interests the greater good, even if that path is difficult or studded with stones you do not wish to surmount. But ‘following the greater good’ is not what you do. You, Amit, are selfish, and think only of yourself. You think of how you have been wronged, and you react rather than respond. A person hands you an insult, and you rub it into your wounds like salt. Because of this, your training is useless. I hear this constantly from the abbot. He wants you to leave the order, as he has every day since your arrival. He says you do not learn.”
 

“I learn plenty!”

Woo shook his head. “You can wield even the heaviest swords in our arsenal and throw weapons with a precision I have never seen. When we spar, when you are engaged, I cannot get a strike past you. Someday soon, you will be able to respond well enough to land strikes of your own. Others — and I can see this myself — have reported that you have a curious way of pre-guessing them. They will feint with a fist and strike with a foot, or feint with a sweep and slash with a dagger. But you are not fooled. You will move to block the true attack almost before your opponent has launched it. Some shadow monks claim you read minds; they can get nothing past you. But it is all useless, because your abilities are a complicated series of armaments that deactivate with a single key. Just like your whore mother.”
 

Amit felt hot blood streak into his hands, which struck of their own accord. He started to rise, but Woo’s open palm smacked his face sideways.
 

“Or perhaps it’s deactivated with a password,” Woo amended.
 

Amit looked down at the silver locket, closed in his palm. His grip was too tight, as if he thought he could crush it into his skin, to take it inside his body.
 

“You are lethal and unstoppable when calm. When your ire is raised, you are as simple to defeat as the child you are. It is an unforgivable weakness. I understand why the abbot wishes you gone. Your anger causes fights and disharmony. Your instability makes your skills useless. You have been here for nine years, Amit. What is the abbot to think? What kind of a monk will you make? What does this say about our brotherhood, if we allow someone so undisciplined to pollute our family? A monk’s life is about control. We can slow our heartbeats enough for a Western physician to think us dead, breathe almost imperceptibly even to a person setting a hand on our chests. We can slow our metabolisms and grow fat. We can speed them to thin. We can crush nuts with a finger and thumb. Yet nothing matters if you cannot summon control.

“I
have
control.” Amit heard his petulance and hated it. “But when Rafi … ”
 

“Stop right there. You’ve given Rafi his control. And he
does
control you, Amit — just not in the passive way you seem to believe. As does Suni. As do I, for that matter. We do not control you by enforcing our will upon you. We control you because you
allow
it. Because you
invite
it.”
 

Amit sidestepped the trap.
 

“If I listen to you, I am being controlled.”

Woo slapped him again. Amit blinked, caught off guard.

”There is a difference between being taught and being controlled. You are free to turn your back on my teachings, and I encourage you to at least consider it. But in the end, I hope that you are smart enough to question, then turn back toward where I would steer you. Because what I say is best — not for me, but for you. Teaching is nourishment. You may turn away, but that would be unwise. By contrast, control is that slap — something I’m doing
to
you.”
 

“Which is what Rafi does to me, when he … ”
 

“Rafi can only do what you allow. Just as Rafi surrenders his own control — to you, who tempt him into violating the order of peace, control to the abbot, who infuriates all of the children … even control to Amala.”
 

“Amala?” Amit could see the girl in his mind: two years younger and always flinching back whenever he looked over at her, as if afraid of her shadow. Amala was strange, even among the other girls. Just as Woo had his hair in defiance of convention, Amala grew, shaped, and sometimes even painted her fingernails. She was an oddity — a non-presence at most.

“Yes, Amala,” said Woo.

“Amala couldn’t control anyone.”
 

“You are 15, correct?”
 

Amit nodded.
 

“Plenty old enough to know better, then.”

Amit blinked, unable to follow the discussion. As was often the case, Woo was speaking in circles, darting down blind conversational alleys to confuse him. Maybe even
that
was part of Woo’s control. His words themselves seemed to make little sense. Control was like the slap: something done
to
him. At the same time, Woo was arguing that Rafi (who apparently controlled Amit) had permission to do what he did. It was a contradiction. Amit could usually follow his teacher’s logic for a while, but ended up with a headache. It was a sly way to win debates — confuse your opponent with riddles until he surrenders in frustration.