Ruben shakes his head.
“Of course not!” Francis says. “There are people who care very much about Smith, Turner, and Stevenson. Myself included. And they would be very disappointed indeed if you let them down. Wouldn’t they?”
Ruben nods.
Francis says to himself, He is too bloody easy! I am so bored! The inhumanity of it all!
Aloud, he continues, “Good! We seem to understand one another. Now, I happen to know another little secret. One that you are not familiar with.” He looks at Ruben, who by now is so tense that he seems ready to burst.
“What?”
“Within a short time, you will receive a business proposition. It will be a highly attractive offer with a minimum investment and the prospect of surprisingly attractive returns. Very hard to resist. One would actually be a fool to refuse it. But Ruben, we both know that you are a fool, don’t we?”
Francis doesn’t wait for an answer, but continues, “The thing about this attractive business opportunity is that it is a rather sophisticated pyramid game. Initially, you will get fantastic returns on your investment; you will harvest quickly and bountifully. But that won’t last. Within one or two months, you will lose all your investment and the equivalent of your gains. You see, even though you are a lawyer, and a rather good one at that, you’ll fail to read the small type because of your what should we call it? your affliction. Before you know it, you will be even deeper in debt than you already are. The thing is, Ruben, this offer is designed by some people who are not your friends with the sole purpose of ruining you. And by ruining you, they’ll get to the firm. So, you will say no. Just that: no. Right, Ruben?”
“Yes,” Ruben stammers, “but how do you ”
Francis interrupts, “Don’t worry about how. Just make sure you decline the offer in no uncertain terms. Politely, but firmly. Is that clear?”
Ruben nods. Francis asks again, his voice stronger now, “Is that clear?”
“Yes, it is completely clear.” Ruben’s voice is shaking.
“Good. Now you will also join a Gamblers Anonymous group, and you will attend meetings diligently three times a week. If you do that, I will make sure a large bit of your debt disappears. However, if you fail to comply, there are some people who will be very cross with you. And we never know what people might do once they get cross, do we?”
Francis looks inquiringly at Ruben. “Do we have a deal?”
“We do,” Ruben says, stunned.
Francis gets up, rubs his hands, and looks around the room. “You do have a lovely home, Ruben, and a beautiful wife. Make sure you keep it that way.” And with that, he offers his hand to Ruben and walks out.
In the doorway, he stops. “Oh, and thank you for the tea. It really was most delicious.”
Chapter 14
The sun is rising, and Jo can feel its increasing heat through the top of the buggy. After Colombo, this is like entering an oasis of calm and beauty. The dense foliage of temple trees, coconut palms, heart leaves, and bamboos obscures the view, making it difficult to get an idea of just how vast the grounds are. Which is probably the intention. Apart from a couple of what seem to be main buildings, a large number of bungalows are built next to one another. Four-meter-tall walls ensure the privacy or confinement of the bungalows.
Everywhere, flowers are bursting as though in welcome, and they are friendlier than any of the people Jo has encountered since getting out of the car. Even the gardeners they meet along the way all stop what they are doing and stand motionless with eyes cast to the ground as the buggies pass. See not, hear not, and speak not.
During the night’s drive, de Lingua had proudly described his collaboration with the famed local architect who envisioned this very place before going on to conquer the Western world. She recognizes his trademark Japanese-inspired style in the clean lines and the use of dark granite. The bungalows look neat and cozy in their traditional design. They are the colors of the soil, ochre and rust. The main buildings have a modern austerity and seriousness to them that she finds stunning, but also slightly forbidding. Lots of glass, square forms, and rectangular columns of black timber.
The bungalow to which they take her is simple, yet beautifully decorated. One of the young guards, now doubling as a houseboy, shows her around. He clearly thinks she’s lucky to be staying here. The bungalow is designed in the traditional local way with a limited floor area, but a pointed ceiling reaching far into the sky gives it a feeling of vastness. Floor-to-ceiling glass and lattice panels form one side of the bungalow, overlooking a garden with a terrace and a small pool. The terrace has a double sun-lounger and a dining table with two chairs. She wonders who her guest is supposed to be.
Inside is a quite spacious sleeping and living area with a writing desk, an armchair, a small sofa, and an enormous bed. The mosquito net is fastened to the ceiling, which makes it the biggest she’s seen at least six meters above ground. Sliding screens separate this area from a small tea kitchen and an open-plan bathroom and dressing area, which is as luxurious as any she’s ever been in. From the bathroom and the living room, the terrace is directly accessible via sliding doors. The wardrobe in the dressing area holds a number of Western dresses, sarongs, and bikinis. In her size! She doesn’t know whether to be offended or impressed. But it is definitely disturbing and reinforces her growing suspicion that Francis and the rest of the team are no longer in the driver’s seat of this operation, and perhaps haven’t been for some time.
The garden is well kept and just big enough to allow for walking meditation or a concentrated stroll. That is if one walks in circles. But it is small enough to generate a sense of impinging claustrophobia by being enclosed within the high, solid walls. A heavy timber door, locked from the outside, leads to whatever part of the world lies beyond. The garden also boasts two temple trees, as if somebody knew these were her favorite trees: a coconut palm tree and a cut-back bamboo. The garden is devoid of flowers, except the frangipani, and trimmed to perfection. In a corner, however, Jo spots a couple of yellow oleanders, the seeds of which are the suicide means of choice in rural Sri Lanka. A single one might kill a man in the space of a few to a maximum of twenty-four hours.
It is an austere garden. A garden to match her life. A garden polluted by the incessant, angry, throaty screech of the crows.
The bungalow is perfect for a simple life. A life with only the bare necessities, but where everything is of exquisite quality and taste.
But this house is a kind of prison, with neither windows nor doors in three of its four walls, and the courtyard surrounded by walls too high to climb without some kind of equipment.
Every day, she searches for a tiny stick on the lawn and places it carefully in a well-hidden place. They took everything from her during the first night all her clothes, her watch, phone, purse. The sticks are a means of keeping track of time. She would have preferred pebbles or something else more durable, but there was nothing else. Maybe someone cleaned the grounds of anything hard. Jo prays that mice and birds will leave the sticks alone.
Three times a day, someone comes to clean and give her food. They are sweet-looking boys, fresh-faced and tender with her. But right behind them, a couple of guards always hover. Never looking her in the face, as if insisting she’s an object, a thing they could easily harm or kill, if necessary. The food is good and plentiful, traditionally spicy. But her appetite is scant.
The constant deference of the houseboys and the gardeners makes her feel guilty of being born in privileged circumstances. Being born a Westerner entitles Jo to reverence from working-class Sri Lankans, regardless of how she behaves. Their glances contain fearful longing. It is not a present-day fear, probably, since after all, it has been almost sixty years since the last imperialists left. It is an inherited fear, born of generations servicing one brand of imperialist after another. The only constant of the rulers has been their much paler skin color.
It is so easy to get accustomed to this kind of courteous respect, an
d had she not been so attuned to Buddhist values, she would have lost her head long ago. Even as a young girl, she recognized the imperialist in herself, the desire to protect and rule. She remembers thinking as a girl, “I was born to rule,” only there were no subjects but her brothers, who were notoriously unruly. As she grew older, she carried this secret within her, a shameful insight into the darkness of her being. An inner voice acknowledging reverence as her due. The naturalness with which she accepts the service provided, the position given her whenever she travels to the East. The ease with which she takes control. It probably is the direct reason Jo had sought and adopted the doctrines of Buddhism.
During her stay, she sometimes wonders whether the crows are angry with her, or just with life at large. And yet, for all their constant anger and their horrible screeching, she finds them beautiful in a raw, masculine way. Feathers glisten in a black so deep it is almost blue; some birds with brown wings, others with black. And sometimes it seems as if one of them responds to her gentle words. Or perhaps she’s just been alone for too long.
Yet another day breaks with a sky as white and dense as milk, pregnant with rain but unable to let go. This heavy, condensed sky, this milk-fat sky, pulls a blanket over the world, muffling every sound, stilling the wind, keeping Jo enclosed in a state of contained suspense.
Jo is sitting on the terrace, sipping her morning coffee, which is brought to her every day by the same young boy. She is listening to the gardeners who sweep the terraces and whatever else lies outside her walls. The sound of Sri Lanka is the sound of sweeping. It seems somebody is always sweeping the lawns for dry leaves, keeping the grounds clear of hiding places for snakes and scorpions.
She hasn’t seen de Lingua since the day of her willing abduction, and she can only speculate as to how long he intends to keep her here. Or indeed, what he has in mind for her. Is he merely keeping her out of the game for as long as it pleases Schwartz? Or will he eventually send for her, after her soul has turned soft and her mind lazy, the better to get her to talk? And if that is so, what exactly would he think she knows? And if she does not provide the desired answers, what will he do?
Scenes of terrifying content flash before her, and it requires all her self-discipline not to get sucked emotionally into these terrors. Due to her extensive training, she knows with the rational part of her mind that she must never entertain these types of thoughts, as they only weaken her and play into her captor’s hands.
But for stretches at a time, she can almost forget the circumstances and enjoy the solitude and the beautiful surroundings. And when the terror rises, she uses meditation to hold it at bay. That is the worst part of it. The not knowing. The ultimate fear is losing control over your own destiny, being a victim to somebody else’s desires or whims. To live with the knowledge that at any moment, the thugs might enter your room and subject you to unbearable pain. For that, if for nothing else, she hates her captor. She knows nothing stands between her and death but the capriciousness of de Lingua or whoever holds her captive. To be a victim fills her with anger and dread, and it takes all her training in mental control to look the anger and dread squarely in the face and stay with that, rather than being overwhelmed by the horror of it all.
She can control her mind during the day. But the nights are difficult. She doesn’t yet have the power to control her dreams and in them unfold all the worst scenarios of torture, rape, death, or being forced to stay here for the rest of her life. So, she forces herself to stay awake most of the night, only allowing herself a couple of hours of exhausted sleep in which her mind goes deep into the part of her consciousness that is beyond fear, beyond dreams.
Some nights are worse than even the nightmares of torture. These are the nights during which all hope is eclipsed where she is outside the dreams of her life, when there is nothing to wait for, nothing to hope for, nothing to dream of. When even the thought of getting out of here means nothing to her. That, she realizes, is the ultimate terror of the soul, the final destination of hopelessness, the horror of resignation. When life is whispering, “Come on, you know you’ll enjoy this!” and the soul just turns over and goes back to sleep, not even bothering to check what’s on offer.
Those nights, she is no longer a human being, but a shadow, a memory, a passing thought. The pain is manifest.
She’s debating with herself whether she overall enjoys her present life or is terrified by it. In a sense, it is the ultimate retreat: There is nothing she can do; everything is taken care of for her. She’s left with very few choices and a rather real sense of danger. Not a bad way to practice non-attachment and equanimity.
Over and over again, she hears Dhammakarati’s voice in her mind: “There is just this. Nothing else. This is perfect. This is all there is.” She aches for him. For that body of his that she has never known. For the touch she has never experienced. For the sense of deliverance he gives her. But most of all, she longs desperately for his mind. Longs to find herself in the light of that magnificent mind.
He has opened a new side of her, given her insight and a longing she hasn’t experienced before. She needs him in a way she hasn’t needed anybody in a long, long time. She needs him to fertilize her humanity, her love for mankind, and her respect for the universe. She needs him here, for at least as long as she is captive.
Francis, on the other hand, brings out the best of her professional skills, sharpens her mind and instincts, and fuels her aspirations and her aggressive demand that the world behaves in a morally acceptable way. He makes her do good. Provides her with a platform and a rationale for helping to correct the putrid mechanics of business. But he leaves her lonely, despite their occasional lovemaking and the fact that she knows he’s the one person in the world who will come to her aid, no matter what bad situation she finds herself in. She knows for certain that he’s tearing himself apart from worry right now. Regardless of his flippant, arrogant manner, he’s more truly a friend that anyone else she has ever met. And yet, she’s not sure she loves him.
She has plenty of opportunities to examine her mind and body for clues to her true feelings. But the best answer she has come up with so far is that she actually needs them both and that the freedom she has cultivated so zealously over the years is not only overrated but also illusory. For as long as she can remember, she has prided herself on being able to function well without depending on anybody for her happiness except in her early years of knowing Francis, where for a short period, she did cast him in the role of the rescuer. It might even be that this confinement is actually good for her. If she gets out, that is.
She recalls the disillusionment of her younger years when she defined nonattachment by the lyrics of a Janis Joplin song: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” She felt less free then than she does right now, despite the fact that she doesn’t have the liberty of leaving this beautiful prison.
Back then, her disappointment in herself and the world, and her loathing of the world’s political and economic leaders who fashioned bad morals out of opportunity had filled her with rage. It was an impotent, wasted rage. Energy with nowhere to go. And it had enslaved her as a young woman. Because she did have everything to lose, despite her material abstention. She stood to lose her belief in a better world. Her very hope. And since hope is the strongest, most powerful tool for fighting for existence, she could lose her very meaning in life.
Since then, of course, she has realized that even her beliefs are nothing but mental constructs. Not real and hardly important. And that’s why she can sit here, in this garden, on this side of a very closed door and not feel terrified. Just bored. At least for long periods.
For years, she looked for answers in a lot of places, but the one thing that made sense to her was Buddhism. She learned that the problems existed mainly in her own mind and that in order to fight the real ones, she needed calmness, equanimity, and compassion. And then one day, when she was just about ripe still infuriated, but now with the tools to conquer her m
ind at will Francis had picked her up, explained his vision for her, and sent her to boot camp. Over the years, he turned her into an agent with an exceptional set of competencies.
And now she’s here. Relatively free in mind but completely shackled. A poor choice for Wharton’s rescuer.
Chapter 15
The party is well underway. People are mingling, gossiping, and enjoying themselves, or at least pretending to have a good time. Francis bides his time during dinner, waiting until the perfect opportunity arises. Bernard Ferguson, the second person on Francis’s list of exposure-challenged senior partners at Smith, Turner, and Stevenson, seems to be the center of attention in a small cluster of distinguished-looking people. Gorgeous women in long gowns are laughing with him, showing their smooth necks and bleached teeth in the process. Men of authority slap his back.
Francis is standing at the periphery of the group surrounding Ferguson, observing his time of glory and the pleasure he evidently takes in it. Here is a man who needs to be center stage, Francis thinks, who lives and breathes for being loved and worshipped at the altar of power. And who will probably do close to anything to maintain his current position of reverence including sanctioning a series of phone hackings of politicians and celebrities for one of his major clients, The National Times. Francis’s research team hasn’t been able to find out just how long the scam has been going on, but the duration has been sufficient for Schwartz and his own team to have found out about it.
The whole issue of the public’s right to know and the individual’s right to privacy is tricky, once one is dealing with people like politicians who determine our lives. Or for that matter, celebrities who thrive on the public’s interest in them. In recent years, that line has changed. What used to be considered privacy is not necessarily so any longer. Nevertheless, Francis has no doubt that most people would agree with him that tapping phones and answering machines is taking the public interest one step too far.
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