Ben Soul

by Richard George

Ben walked into a living room that looked like no one had lived in it for a long time. The furniture was severe in its line, the couch, chair, and tables carefully matched to the lamps. There were no knickknacks on any surface, and though the room was dust-free, reeking of lemon furniture polish, it reminded Ben of an abandoned stage set from which the prop manager had removed all the props.

  “I brought Minnie some flowers,” he said, and offered them to Cori Ander.

  “How thoughtful,” she said. She took the bouquet from Ben. “I’ll take you in to Minnie, and then I’ll get a vase for them.” She led Ben through a dining room as sterile as the living room to a bedroom. The door was closed. Before she went in, she turned to Ben and said, “Minnie is much changed. Please, show as little shock as possible. She’s grown very fragile in the last few weeks.” The care and concern in Cori’s voice moved Ben. Cori turned and knocked on Minnie’s door, and entered without waiting for a response.

  The bedroom had none of the sterility of the rest of the house. Shelves lined two walls, with books and figurines crowded onto them. Ben recognized a plastic hen he had given Minnie years ago as a joke between friends. Its colors were bright as ever, and smote the eye, even in the soft light of the sickroom.

  Minnie lay on white sheets, several layers of blankets on top of her. Only her face and her arms showed. What remained of her hair straggled across her head, wisps of distressed straw on a skin-covered skull. The blankets were pulled up only to her waist. She wore a white bed jacket with tiny forget-me-nots embroidered in blue on it. Ben thought it was too feminine for Minnie. She should have had something like a football jacket. The pungent smell of liniment almost overpowered the musty odor foretelling the grave that dying people give off.

  Ben was struck at how much Minnie had shrunk. He couldn’t reasonably apply any other term. The Minnie he knew had always been an ample person, not particularly tall, but large of bosom and bottom, and a bigger than life spirit. The figure on the bed had shriveled, wrinkled like a prune left in the sun too long, and nearly as dark of complexion. Minnie had always had fair skin. The inevitable tubes and wires ran from her matchstick arms to batteries of beeping monitors and bags of fluids around her. She was sleeping.

  Cori watched Ben’s face closely, and when she gauged he had gotten beyond his initial shock, she went to Minnie and leaned over her.

  “Ms. Vann,” she said softly, and then repeated herself a little louder. Minnie opened her eyes and looked at Cori. “Mr. Soul is here,” she said. She motioned to Ben to come nearer.

  “Hello, Minnie,” he said. She turned her black eyes to him. Minnie looked out of her wasted shell at him.

  “Hello,” she rasped. She coughed.

  Ben waited for her to finish. When she had, she pulled feebly at him to bring him closer. “Found a man, yet, kid?” she asked, and smiled. Ben was surprised to see she had lost all her teeth.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Tell me about him,” Minnie said. “That way I won’t have to talk so much.”

  Ben told her about Dickon, and about Butter, and, though he hadn’t meant to burden her, he told her about the disastrous night at Pueblo Rio, and how Dickon had ignored him to get drunk with Harry. “I was humiliated, Minnie. I thought we’d gone there for a romantic weekend, not a hangover. The nerve of the man! I don’t think I want to risk getting hurt like that again.”

  She nodded feebly when he was through. Some of her old fire sparked from her eyes. “Young Ben,” she said, “forgive this Dickon of yours.” Her words came slowly, with pauses between their syllables. She coughed again. “Remember, if I hadn’t told you to go out one weekend, you’d never have found Len. Live while you can, Ben, live while you can. Stop looking for Mr. Perfect or Mr. Right, and make whoopee with the man that’s in front of you. Listen to a dying lady.” Ben protested, “Don’t talk like that, Minnie.”

  Minnie smiled at him. Her smile was a little other-worldly. “I’m going fast. Won’t last out the month,” she said. “Don’t pretend it ain’t so, young Ben,” she said. “I’m an old lady, and I’m dying.” She coughed again. “Hurts too much to stay alive. I’ve had a good run, my share of women and booze, spaghetti, morning sun and moonlit nights, all the things that make life good. Time to go. Time to see the other side.” She coughed again, and her breathing grew ragged. Cori approached.

  “Mr. Soul?” she said, “perhaps it’s enough visiting?”

  “No!” Minnie rasped out. “One more thing to do. Cori, bring me that bamboo Buddha.”

  Cori went to a shelf at the side of the room and brought a small Buddha carved from bamboo. Minnie took it in one trembling hand. “Take it from me, Ben,” she said. “I’ve had it for a long time, ever since my grandmother gave it to me. She said it was a charm against harm. I’ve lived pretty well with it. Now, take it, and when you’re time comes, pass it on.” Ben took the statue from Minnie. She smiled at him, and closed her eyes. Then she opened them. “More about the Buddha in its belly.”

  “Go now, Ben,” she said. “I’m going to sleep. I’ll see you again on the other side, if there is one.”

  Ben leaned over and kissed her.

  “Sleep well, Minnie,” he said. Tears formed in his eyes. Minnie smiled and closed her eyes. Cori took his elbow, more as a show of compassion than as a way to steer him out of the room. In the sterile living room, she promised to let him know when Minnie’s end had come.

  “Don’t bother about a funeral or memorial service,” Cori said. “Minnie has requested that there be none.” Cori showed Ben to the door. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “Ms. Vann started out just being my patient. She’s become like family to me in the end.”

  “I’m glad you’re with her,” Ben said, and went down the steps toward his car. He did not look back. He felt a backward look would betray Minnie’s insistence that life go on.

  Provenance of a Buddha

  Tran Di Poh idly wove bamboo strips while he waited. He intended to make a basket to hold the red lychees his wife so loved to eat. Their season would come soon. Poh knew his wife grieved; she had lost their child in the womb. The Buddhist monk declared the child’s soul was so pure it did not need to be born again, but instead had gone on to Nirvana. The French priest declared the child had been lost to the wrath of God because Poh would not convert to the Jesus way. The local shaman was certain demons that lived like parasites on the French soldiers’ souls bore responsibility for the unborn child’s demise. Poh shrugged his shoulders at what each of the holy men said, and quietly tried to comfort his wife.

  The sun was hot. Autumn should come soon, but the summer heat still clung to the mountain south of Poh’s village. Poh wiped the perspiration from his brow, and settled his back against a lingam the ancient Cham people had carved. His fingers continued weaving bamboo strips. Poh fell into a trance, induced by the sun and the residual creative power in the lingam. He did not hear the tramping boots of the French soldier or the soldier’s command to stand.

  Private Jean D’Arme did not like being a soldier, but there had been the girl, and then the girl was pregnant, with an angry father. Jean determined it wise to leave France for a brief time. He joined the army. The army, with its usual folly, sent Jean to the Indochine, where he proceeded to serve in Purgatory. On good days, at least, it was purgatory. On bad days, it was a little worse than hell. And the priests didn’t help. They kept the soldiers and the local girls thoroughly separated. Not from the officers, of course, just from the grunts. The priests, no doubt, made use of the boys, who looked a lot like girls, anyway.

  In this afternoon, with his sweat trickling down his ribs, Jean decided Poh was the source of all his troubles. Jean yelled at Poh, and kicked Poh’s bare foot. Poh did not react. Only Poh’s fingers moved, weaving with a rapidity that would have astonished him, had he been aware of it. Poh’s impassivity intrigued Jean. He sat in the shade to watch
Poh. How long, he wondered to himself, could this crazy peasant keep this up?

  Jean dozed intermittently. Poh went on shaping his bamboo creation. Jean recognized it as a copy of the idols that lurked in the dark corners of the incense-clouded heathen temples. Jean preferred watching Poh and dozing to marching back and forth on his sentry line. His dozing soon outdid his watching.

  Poh wove the last strips into place on the Buddha’s bottom, and slowly swam up out of his trance. In the afternoon ruins cluttered with jungle, only the insects buzzed. It was too hot for birds, and most jungle inhabitants are nocturnal by nature. Poh closed his eyes without glancing toward the recumbent form of Jean D’Arme. With a great smile on his face, he leaned back against the lingam. He drifted to sleep, the Buddha in his lap. Jean woke suddenly when he heard his sergeant whistling as he walked up the trail. He looked at the long shadows, and realized he needed an excuse to be in this particular place. He leaped to his feet and aimed his rifle.

  Poh was still smiling when Jean D’Arme’s bullet passed through his brain, spattering it across the avudaiyar, the circular stone pedestal that held the lingam. His blood followed, and drained out through the groove the ancient Cham people had carved in the avudaiyar to carry off