The Breath of God

by Jeffrey Small

  Confident in his rightness, Issa stood. “How can you speak of this man as if he were no more than one of your camels? He lives now. We can save him.”

  “He’s no better than a camel, if he cannot work.”

  “He’s one of your countrymen, your kin.”

  “Boy, you understand nothing. This servant isn’t my kin. He’s nothing but a Shudra, the lowest caste. His place in life is to serve, to carry, to clean: to do jobs that are unfit for higher castes. I’m Vaishya. It’s not a merchant’s responsibility to care for a servant. Nor is it your concern what happens to him.” Manu leaned so close to Issa that the teenager could almost taste his foul breath. “You paid us to take you to the city of the great sages. Until we get there, keep your ideas to yourself. I’ve grown tired of listening to your mouth every day.”

  “But he is a human!” Issa shouted, his voice cracking.

  “A man who will die here in desert.”

  “He will not die. I have saved him tonight and will again tomorrow.”

  “We’re two days’ walk from the next village. How will this man get there if he cannot walk? Villagers will not care for him. He has no way to pay for food or shelter if he can’t work.”

  The solution came to Issa after a moment’s contemplation. Men can be so shortsighted, he thought. If only they would learn to open their minds.

  “Simple,” he said. “We tie him on one of the camels and divide the camel’s load among us. The empty sacks,” he continued, pointing in the direction of the camp supplies, “we can use to spread the weight around. When we get to the village, I have a few silver pieces left I can give them to care for the man.”

  Issa looked to the rest of the group for support. They in turn looked back and forth between him and Manu, as if watching a Roman athletic contest. Only from the porters did he sense encouragement. But Issa knew he would eventually talk sense into even these dim-witted merchants. His quick mind and quicker tongue may have brought him trouble among his teachers, but these gifts would serve him well in the world. He didn’t expect the burst of laughter from his adversary.

  “What do you think we are, boy? Camels?” Manu said through his guffaws. “You don’t expect us to carry these supplies. Why do you think we have animals and Shudras?” The other merchants were now smiling along with him. “I think you’ve had your fun.”

  A chill passed through Issa when he spotted Manu’s fingers grasping the braided leather handle of his sharp blade. Then, handing the glowing log to one of the porters, who needed two hands to hold it, Manu pushed past Issa, nearly knocking the teenager off his feet.

  Regaining his composure, Issa grabbed the thick shoulder of the man, who knelt beside the unconscious porter. “What do you think you are doing?” Issa asked, trying to lower his voice.

  Manu’s smile vanished. “I’m ending this game, boy, and then going to sleep.” He drew his knife and glared at Issa’s hand on his shoulder. “If you want to keep that, you move it quickly.”

  Issa withdrew his hand and searched the faces around him. They couldn’t let this happen! But the other merchants only looked on with curious detachment, while the three porters gazed at the ground. Manu grabbed a fistful of the injured boy’s hair, lifting his head off the ground. The porter’s eyes fluttered open, and he gazed upward with grateful recognition at the teenager who saved his life. Issa struggled to fight back the nausea that rose to the back of his throat. He was helpless to prevent the inevitable.

  In one efficient movement, Manu drew the long curved blade across the porter’s throat, just as he might kill a lamb before a feast, or a sacrifice. Issa wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t abandon the doomed boy’s gaze, which widened to surprise as his last breath gurgled through the gash across his neck.

  Manu stood, towering over the teenager. Issa’s fight drained out of him, just as the life drained out of the porter. Manu said, “Starting tomorrow, you carry the Shudra’s burden until we reach village and buy another one.” He then wiped the bloody knife clean across the side of Issa’s pants before turning toward camp and settling back onto his mat to sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  HOTEL ZANGDHO PELRI PUNAKHA, BHUTAN

  THREE HOURS HAD passed since Grant had sat transfixed in the utse tower library as Kinley translated the stories of Issa. Before they left, Kinley had signaled to Jigme from the window to distract Dawa again while they made their escape. After they descended the six long flights of stairs, Kinley left to tend to the junior monks while Grant and Kristin caught a silver Land Rover taxi from the dzong into Punakha. The small town consisted of two-story wooden buildings with shop space on the ground floor and apartments on the top. With the wind blowing dust down the main street, Grant thought that Punakha appeared like an Old West town in the States, minus the tumbleweeds.

  Kristin’s dark hair, which earlier had been pulled back into a loose ponytail, fell freely around her shoulders. Again, he caught a whiff of her shampoo as the two hunched over his laptop in the cramped business office at her hotel, the Zangdho Pelri, the same hotel he’d stayed at before his kayaking accident. The office was nothing more than a windowless room that doubled as overflow storage for the adjacent gift shop. The screeching from the office’s dial-up modem and the long minutes it took to log on to the Internet would have grated on Grant’s nerves a month ago, but today he was thankful to have access to any kind of technology.

  From the moment Kinley opened the first book in the dusty library, Grant’s life had taken a new direction. He now better understood Kinley’s Chinese parable about the man and his horse. A horrible accident had indeed turned out to be an incredible stroke of good fortune. Thoughts now raced through his mind so quickly he barely had time to register them. He imagined the shock waves that would reverberate throughout the academic world when he released the Issa texts. After listening to Kinley’s translation, Grant was confident that the books were indeed the primary sources that were used to compile the Tibetan version Notovitch had seen. But what moved Grant even more than he had expected was the richness of the stories about Issa. Although he’d read Notovitch’s account many times, the stories that Kinley relayed contained a level of detail and a personalization of Issa that Grant had been unprepared for. The pressure on the Bhutanese government to allow the documents to be studied would be immense, and Grant felt confident that he would play the lead role in the project.

  “So,” Kristin said, interrupting his daydreaming, “if this Indian saint is as historically significant as you claim, you’re not uncomfortable emailing the entire translation to your professor?” Kristin pulled the memory card out of the portable card reader that she’d used to download the three hundred and fifty pictures into Grant’s laptop, clicked it into a small plastic case, and zipped it into her camera bag.

  “I trust Professor Billingsly completely, and I’ll need him to line up resources the moment I arrive in Atlanta. Seven years ago, I was rejected by the graduate program at Harvard because of an irregularity in my file.” A shiver passed through his body. “Irregularity” is putting it lightly, he thought. He pushed the memory of his greatest humiliation out of his head. “I worried that my application to Emory would follow the same path, so I set up a meeting with Billingsly, one of the senior faculty members in my area of study. We bonded immediately. After I explained the circumstances behind the note in my file, Billingsly went to bat for me in front of the admissions committee. I returned the favor last year when the position for one of the college’s deans opened up. I organized a petition of recommendation that over one hundred students signed.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Unfortunately not. Harold is an articulate and open-minded teacher, although our philosophical views often differ.” Grant thought back on the many times he’d debated theology with Billingsly, who always took the more traditional Christian view, while he himself took the skeptical one. “The job went to someone connected in the fund-raising circles at Emory. Money, more than teaching, drives
university politics.”

  “Oh no.” She lowered her camera bag to the floor, reached for his laptop, and danced her slim fingers across Grant’s illuminated keyboard. “Crashed again.”

  The slow and intermittent connection had already been lost twice before. The files were simply too large for the outdated technology. Grant decided instead to send only the Word file he’d transcribed. He would just bring the pictures back with him. With the originals on Kristin’s flash memory card and a copy on his laptop, he felt comfortable waiting the few days until his return to Atlanta.

  “Isn’t it unusual for a professional writer not to travel with a computer?” Grant asked, as he watched her reboot his laptop. He’d been surprised when Kristin had opened her backpack and revealed three spiral-bound notebooks in which she wrote her articles. Who uses pen and paper these days? he wondered.

  “I just prefer the tactile sense of writing longhand. It’s like I’m more connected to my work. The electronics sap my creativity. Besides, once I’ve done the writing part, all I need is an Internet café or hotel computer where I can type in the story and email my editor. I can travel without worrying about someone stealing my laptop or having to recharge it.”

  Grant checked the screen. The translation of the texts had gone through. It would be waiting for Billingsly when he woke up. “I wish I could get Billingsly on the phone. Can’t wait to hear his reaction.”

  Grant had placed four phone calls already, but the ten-hour time difference had made communicating difficult. He also knew that the professor spent long weekends at his cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina, where he had no cell phone service. Anyway, Grant would be home in three days. Then the real work would begin.

  He reviewed the steps that had to occur before he could publicly announce his find. The photos Kristin took would have to be analyzed and the Pali text professionally translated. He would have to write an article on the background of the discovery. Two months’ work, he estimated. And then his life would change. As he evaluated his mental checklist a second time, a voice intruded in his thoughts—Kinley’s admonition about his endless ruminations on the future. Grant pushed the voice away. This time was different. He needed to make sure he was prepared to hit the ground running the moment he landed. Kinley’s Buddhist mind tricks were useful when he needed to relax, but relaxation was the last thing on Grant’s mind.

  Then he noticed that Kristin had shifted the intensity of her stare from the computer to him, as if she were trying to read his thoughts. Her fingers absentmindedly toyed with the plaster on his cast. He held her gaze, mesmerized by her blue eyes, so unusual on a face like hers, and yet so captivating. They were the only two Americans in this place, and months had passed since he’d last been with a woman. He thought back to Holly, the brunette business student with the spiky hair and the temper to match, and Michelle, the blond theater major, before her. Dating students was uncomplicated: they didn’t want to move in with him or call him every second of the day. His research had to be his priority.

  “So what’s the dating situation like, traveling from one place to another?” He tried to sound casual.

  She moved her hand from his cast as if she’d just been caught touching something she wasn’t supposed to touch. “I’m not really looking right now.”

  “Oh no, me neither,” he added quickly. “Work, you know.” He watched how her midnight black hair curled around her delicate ear. Hadn’t she been flirting with him since they met yesterday? Then he reminded himself that she wasn’t his type anyway. He had too much to think about without complicating his life further.

  She shifted her gaze from him to the computer. “Look, Grant, I know these texts are important to your research, but what are you holding back? The stories Kinley read to us moved me. Issa’s experiences made me question my own spirituality.” She turned to him. “When are you going to tell me the truth about Issa?”

  Conflict tugged at his mind. He’d been vague with Kristin on purpose. How could he trust someone he’d just met with this revelation, a journalist, no matter how intelligent or beautiful she was? But she was instrumental in his bringing back proof of the texts, and for a reason he couldn’t put a finger on, he felt a connection to her. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t lie to her if she asked him directly. He took a deep breath and began to tell her about the two-thousand-year-old mystery of the missing eighteen years in the life of Jesus of Nazareth—the period of time from when Jesus appeared in the Temple in Jerusalem at age twelve until his ministry began at age thirty, a period about which the Bible was silent.

  As the truth began to dawn on Kristin, her blue eyes widened. “Are you telling me,” she asked, “that Issa is Jesus?”

  PART TWO

  THE FLAME

  “I am the source of all things, and all things emerge from me ... Infinite are the forms in which I appear. I am the self, seated in the heart of all beings; I am the beginning and the life span of beings, and their end as well . . . I am the source of all things to come.”

  The Bhagavad Gita, 5th century BC

  “I am the Alpha and the Omega who is and who was and who is to come.”

  The Book of Revelation, AD 1st century

  CHAPTER 14

  BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

  TIM HUNTLEY SCRUBBED his body with the thin washcloth in the motel room shower. Usually he was careful not to irritate the skin on his arms and face when he showered, lest he aggravate his eczema. This evening his body stung from the soap penetrating the cracks and crevices of his skin. But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t wash away the sin. Ever since he’d been a teenager, he’d struggled with his unnatural desires.

  When he stepped out of the bath, his arms and face began to itch before he even had a chance to apply the cool lotion. He prayed he was alone so as not to be confronted with the sickness of his actions. Bile rose to his throat when he heard the throaty voice outside the bathroom door.

  “You about finished in there, honey? I need to freshen up. Business, you know.”

  Tim wrapped the towel around his waist and marched into the bedroom. The prostitute smiled at him from the edge of the bed, the tanned, youthful face glowing like a signpost to hell.

  But it wasn’t Tim’s fault. He’d been unfairly tempted. He’d been tired and distracted. He’d returned home from Atlanta just before seven AM. He’d only had time to take a quick shower before launching into a sixteen-hour workday. Though he hadn’t slept in almost two days, the hooker’s tight jeans and low-cut shirt were too much. Even Jesus had been tempted by Satan.

  But Jesus had resisted.

  Usually Tim resisted too. But every so often, maybe once a year, the temptation proved too great. Like that fateful night, late in the latrine in the barracks in Fallujah, Iraq, when he and another soldier had thought everyone else was sleeping.

  “So, sweetie, when do I get to see you again?” the man-boy asked from the bed.

  Tim’s fist flew out like a serpent striking its prey. The first two knuckles of his right hand connected with the side of prostitute’s nose, snapping it as if it were made of balsa wood.

  An instant relief washed over him.

  “What are you doing?” the man shrieked in pain, as his hands flew to his face.

  Tim cocked his fist a second time, but the prostitute grabbed his clothes with bloodied fingers and bolted for the door. Just as well, Tim thought. Who knows what kinds of diseases reside in that man’s blood?

  As he dressed, he began having second thoughts about punching the man. He should have killed the whore instead. Just as he should have killed the private who’d come on to him and caused him to be discharged from the Army. Both men had unfairly tempted Tim. Suddenly the image of Reverend Brady flashed into his mind. What would the reverend say if he knew?

  Tim knew exactly what the reverend would say because he broke out into a clammy sweat every time he heard the baritone voice quote Leviticus: “If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have
committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.”

  Tim was strong, and he truly believed, just as the reverend said he should believe. Why then would God allow him to suffer like this? Even the bombing hadn’t gone according to plan. There weren’t supposed to be any casualties. All the talk in the office that day had been about the bombing in Atlanta. The nonstop news coverage focused more on the story of the death of Professor Martha Simpson than on the effects of the bombing on the CDC. The news reports said that only the exterior of the building was damaged. They hadn’t used enough ANFO. Tim knew that the mixture was unpredictable and wished again that he’d had access to a real explosive like C-4. The work at the agency would continue, although with much higher security. Tim and Johnny hadn’t spoken a single word about it and had ignored each other all day. Tim had promised Johnny that there wouldn’t be any casualties, and the last thing Tim needed was to have Johnny flip out.

  Pulling on his boots, Tim recalled one of Reverend Brady’s sermons. Often in the Bible, sinners, like the Prodigal Son, were rewarded twice over for coming back to the flock after having sinned. The prodigal son’s father had welcomed him back with open arms, as did God. Tim no longer had a biological father to welcome him back. The memory of the shotgun blast still echoed in his mind. He recalled the smell of gunpowder as he ran down the stairs of the house his family had lived in back then. His father lay in a crumpled heap on the floor of the den, his mother standing behind the body holding a black twelve-gauge. Years before, Tim had learned to block out the nightly arguments his parents had, turning up the volume of his stereo so he wouldn’t have to hear their screaming. But nothing was loud enough to block out the sound of the shotgun—then or now. He told the police about the arguments, and he elaborated about the beatings his mother suffered at the hands of his father. The police concluded the shooting was self-defense, and then he and his mother moved to Little Rock.