| |
Anger is like fire; its destructive power can be swift and leave permanent damage.
-Master Fjeld
***
One morning, early as usual, Abraham was up preparing breakfast. He hummed a tune while he worked. He was feeling quite good. He had a couple trays ready with cereal, preserved fruit, toast, cheese spread, and hot water. All he had left to do was to add a steeping capsule to the tea pot and the apple juice to Keralan's cup. He took the large silver tin of ritual tea down from the nearby shelf and set it on the counter. When he opened it, he reached inside for the scoop, but his hand hit nothing but air.
"What the?" he said out loud.
When he looked inside, he was startled to find the entire bin was completely empty. In hindsight, he thought it had felt unusually light. Abraham narrowed his eyes, wondering what had happened. He hadn't done anything with the tea, so it was obvious that Keralan had. He didn't know why she would. He calmly replaced the lid and set it back on the shelf, shaking his head to himself.
Keralan wasn't up yet, so he poured juice into her cup. He picked up her tray and carried it down the corridor to her room. He knocked on the green door, as he always did before opening the door.
"Keralan?" he called.
"Hold on!" he heard her cry from within.
He waited for over twenty seconds before she opened the door.
"Oh, thank you Abraham," she said, eyeing the breakfast tray.
He noticed that her face seemed a little flushed like she had been doing exercises of some kind. She reached out and took the tray, setting it down on a table near the door.
"I'll meet you in the main room in a few minutes."
Keralan closed the door. Abraham had wanted to ask about the tea, but she hadn't given him a chance. He walked back to the kitchen and dumped out the hot water he'd prepared. He grabbed a glass and poured himself some juice instead. He took his tray to the table in the main room and began to eat.
It was more than a few minutes before Keralan joined him at the table, carrying a book with her. He had already finished his meal, so he had begun to read as well. He set his book aside.
"Keralan, I have to ask you something."
"Sure, what is it?" she asked.
Abraham frowned, "did you remove the ritual tea from the tin in the kitchen?"
"Oh," Keralan said, with recognition. "Yeah, the tea. Right, um, I had to take it out because...I found bugs inside it."
"Bugs?" Abraham said, with surprise. He thought about it briefly, but he couldn't fathom why bugs would live in a tin full of tea, especially tea a pungent as the ritual tea. He frowned and studied her face closely. He saw the way she scrunched up her face, sheepishly.
"I'm sorry Abraham, I had to throw it all out. I know it's your daily tea, but I had no choice."
As Abraham stared at her, he got the sense that she was lying. He wondered if she had accidentally knocked it over and spilled it onto the dirty floor. He didn't know why she wouldn't just tell him that. He wanted her to feel safe to be honest with him.
"It's all right," he said simply.
It was just tea after all. It wasn't as if his tea was mandatory or necessary for spiritual growth. He didn't need it. The master had made it a special morning ritual, but he knew it was just a habit, not unlike the juice that Keralan liked to drink every morning.
Abraham mused, "I guess I can start drinking apple juice, right?"
Keralan smiled.
"Yes, now we will both be the same. On an even playing field," she said. He couldn't keep himself from laughing. It was a weird thing to say.
"Whatever you say," he told her.
Keralan laughed as well, and they moved on from the subject.
That day, Keralan seemed to be in a particularly good mood. He was pleased with how much her attitude had improved from when she'd first arrived. He also enjoyed seeing her happy. Her joy was infectious. It brightened up his day.
***
Abraham was in the kitchen a few evenings later, preparing a special snack. He opened the oven, which blasted him with uncomfortably hot air, slid a metal baking sheet inside, closed the door, and set a timer on his wristwatch for eight minutes. He was baking cookies, something he had not done in a long time. Cookies were a real treat for the refuge members. They had them only a few times a year, but with each passing day it was feeling less and less like it mattered how much of the special supplies he and Keralan consumed. No one had come.
He walked over to the chalkboard mounted to the kitchen wall near the door. He had been marking the days since Keralan had arrived. Already there were thirty marks in the upper corner. He made the thirty-first.
In the grand scheme of a lifetime, it wasn't a long time, but in a world where communication was instant, it was like a year. The longest he'd been alone at the Refuge was five days. His master sometimes didn't come for longer stretches of time, but there were always comings and goings. The horrible truth was that he and Keralan were stranded there. Though he didn't like to think about it, there was the possibility that no one would ever come for them.
Abraham had realized when Henry hadn't shown up that it was likely he'd been arrested. Each additional day that passed left less and less doubt in his mind. A whole slew of bad things could have befallen him and any of the outliers he was connected to. For all he knew, they were all imprisoned. No one would ever know that two people were out in the middle of the dessert, underground. It was possible that he and Keralan would spend the remainder of their days there, finally succumbing to hunger when the food ran out.
Abraham tried to snap himself out of it. His mind was running wild and all the thinking in the world wouldn't solve their problem. He walked back to the oven. He turned on the internal light and peeked at the cookies. The little balls of dough had melted and spread out, but they were not done.
Just then, Keralan came into the kitchen. She greeted him and immediately went to the oven to get a glimpse as well. She was excited to have something other than monk food, as she teasingly called it. She was also looking forward to watching a movie, which was another rare indulgence.
There were only a few dozen old movies to choose from. Unlike Keralan, he had seen them all, so he selected the one he thought she would enjoy the most. Instinctively, he avoided the one movie that portrayed an intimate relationship between a man and woman. There were no inappropriate scenes, of course, but he knew it would make him uncomfortable, nevertheless.
In the outlier communities, things may have been different. He wasn't sure. He knew that one of his trainees had obtained something that had been confiscated by Master Shahid years ago. Abraham had not seen what it was, but he never saw Adam the same way again. Adam hadn't been cut out for the life of a monk, anyhow. He left only about a month after he was caught.
Before Adam had come to Sal Anita, his job had been to procure goods from the provinces. The outlier communities depended on certain necessities that they could not manufacture themselves. Abraham believed that Adam's time in the provinces had corrupted him. According to Master Shahid, some provinces, especially the wealthy ones, were laced with sin like a contaminated source of water, tainting everything and everyone.
That knowledge made Abraham feel leery of Keralan at times. She had spent time in Shebai. He wondered how much it had influenced her. He couldn't help but think that his master was right to get her out.
Abraham watched her as she grabbed a pitcher of milk within the cold storage. She carried it to the counter and placed two cups beside it. As she began to pour the milk, unaware that he was watching, he began to have a strange feeling. At first, he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It seemed like something was different about her. He noticed the curves of her form underneath the unflattering robe she always wore, as if for the first time. And then, completely out of the blue, he had the distinct thought that he would like to see her naked.
Abraham frowned at himself, perplexed.
Where did that come from?
He let it go. It was just a thought, after all. He would not give it any more of his attention.
Just then, the timer on his wristwatch began its familiar alarm sounds. Abraham pressed the tiny button to turn it off and took the cookies out of the oven. He transferred them to a plate, careful not to let them break apart. Keralan stood waiting at the door with their glasses of milk. Without a word, they went to the main room and sat at the couch.
Keralan seemed giddy. She said that she had never been so excited to see a movie. Abraham smiled at her and told her that just like cookies, having too much of anything ruined its specialness. Keralan gave him a funny look but did not reply.
The movie Abraham had queued up was about a man who had been stranded on an island all alone. Abraham hoped that he hadn't made a mistake in his choice; it may have been too close to their own reality. All he knew was he enjoyed the internal struggle the character went through in his solitude. It was comical at times, and uncomfortably real at others.
He pressed the button on the remote to start the movie and took a deep breath. As the story began, they ate their warm cookies and drank their cold milk. At first Abraham was amused by the sounds of pleasure Keralan made with each bite. Then, the sounds suddenly brought up some very crude images in his mind. He did his best to let them go but was glad when Keralan stopped.
The film drew him in, though he did his best to look away every so often for a deep breath, to anchor his presence. He recalled that he'd been worried about watching a movie with Keralan. It reminded him of the dates his mother went on when he was a kid. He didn't want their evening to feel like a date. But it didn't. He told himself that watching a movie with her wasn't against any rules.
An hour in, and just when Abraham was beginning to think that his reservations about watching a movie with Keralan had been completely unfounded, she suddenly slid over from her side of the couch to his. He felt the warmth of her body as she pressed her body against his.
Abraham tensed up. He didn't know what to do. Would it be rude for him to tell her to give him some space? They had never sat that close to each other before. He knew it wasn't right. She shouldn't be so close if they were no more than friends. There were many reasons it was unwise for them to be sitting the way they were. Then, Keralan lay her head onto his shoulder and snuggled into him even more.
Abraham had enough awareness to realize that he liked the way it felt. And he liked that she wanted to be close to him. But it was just a physical craving and an emotional desire of his to be liked. On his path to enlightenment, such things were the very obstacles that could lead one astray. His master had spoken often of the need to be aware of the obstacles in order to avoid them. He was glad that he at least understood the danger. It would keep him on the right path.
He had to say something. It would be confusing to Keralan if he didn't outline some clear boundaries.
"Keralan," he began, "please don't take this the wrong way, but you really shouldn't be sitting so close to..."
Keralan cut in, quickly apologizing. She pulled away from him, leaving a space between them. Abraham noted the change in her demeanor. It was as he feared. His words had upset her. He felt guilty, which made him want to explain himself.
"It's not that I don't like you," Abraham began.
Keralan sighed.
"Pause the movie Abraham," she told him flatly.
He tapped at the button on the remote control, concerned. The movie screen and audio froze. Something in her voice was different. She turned to him, frowning.
"Look, I'm not going to try anything, okay? I know you're celibate; and just because we could have sex, doesn't mean we're going to. I only wanted some human comfort. Okay?" Her voice cracked and she paused and took a breath. "Maybe you can go for years without...touch. But not me."
Abraham was taken aback. She was being straightforward and honest, but he hadn't expected the emotion. He recognized that something had surfaced within her.
"What happened Keralan? Where is this pain coming from?"
She broke down.
Abraham listened numbly as the story poured from her lips. She had been in love and had been taken away. His heart squeezed within his chest. The more she spoke of the man she loved and how Henry had taken her from him, the sicker he felt. Something inside him had been shredded to pieces, but he couldn't quite understand what it was.
She cried and cried. Abraham did his best to comfort her, without touching her. He understood the human need for love. It was an egoic need. People wanted to feel special. They wanted to feel that they mattered to someone. It was the need of an incompleteness. A desire to be whole.
The master had said that the soul is already complete and perfect. It was the realization of its perfection that was the bliss of enlightenment. One simply had to let go of all the needing, craving, desiring, longing, and the fear that lay at the roots of all such feelings of separation.
"So Keralan," Abraham said, "you felt loved by this man."
"Yes," she said, wiping her eyes.
"But Keralan," Abraham told her, "eventually you would have found that all the love in the world can never fill the emptiness. The ego is never satisfied. No human can ever fill that emptiness for you. Eventually this man would have let you down, lied, cheated, or made you feel unloved in one way or another. You shouldn't let it get you down."
Keralan stopped crying and stared at him. Then she did something that Abraham never would have expected. She slapped him right across his face.
Abraham was stunned. The skin on his face stung, but the fact that she'd wanted to hit him hurt more.
"How dare you speak of something you know nothing about," she hissed at him. "You're just a monk so you have no idea what love feels like."
That was the moment that left no doubt in his mind that he was not ready for spiritual enlightenment. Far from it. The fury came upon him so quickly, that afterwards he could see that there was nothing he could have done to stop it, and although he regretted it deeply, there was a sense of triumph in the power it gave him.
His hand shot out to grab her arm.
"You don't...know...me," he growled at her. Without thinking he stood up and pulled her to her feet with him. At first, he didn't know what he meant to do, but soon he was dragging her down the hallway. He made a right at the connector and then spied her green door. He was aware that Keralan was begging him to stop. He was hurting her where he clenched her thin arm within his large hand. He was so filled with rage that her pleas fell on deaf ears.
Once they made it to her room, he opened her door and shoved her inside roughly. She fell to her knees. He could see that she was crying, but he didn't care.
Abraham yelled at her, "did it ever occur to you that your beloved uncle may have given his life to get you away from that man? Has it crossed your fucking mind that maybe he had a good reason for doing that?"
He stared down at her, feeling the intensity of the rage within him. She said nothing back, but hung her head, hiding her face from view.
"You can stay in here until you die for all I care!" he yelled.
He slammed the door and pulled down the latch at the top of the door, locking her inside. His hand was shaking. Satisfied, he turned and walked back the way he had come.
It took some time for Abraham to calm down, but eventually the anger left him. In its place, the most profound shame settled over him. He couldn't believe what he'd done.
He went to the bathroom to splash some cold water over his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was not who he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be patient, calm, reflective, and most of all, cause no harm. He had failed in so many ways. Abraham hated the man that stared back at him, but the realization that loomed large over everything else was the way he felt about Keralan. He didn't just feel badly that he had hurt her. It wasn't a brotherly kind of love, no matter what he tried to tell himself.
He was in love with her.
Thinking about the man Keralan loved made him feel ill. He hadn't known that she was pining for someone else the entire time she was there, but when he thought about it, it made sense. She was a normal person, creating normal connections. He was the one who was living as a monk.
Abraham was horribly jealous of the man she loved. The man was everything that Abraham wasn't. Everything he wanted to be but could never be.
How could he have ever thought that Keralan could grow to love him?
And there it was. A subconscious wish that had finally revealed itself. Stupidly, he had hoped that Keralan might feel the way he did about her, given enough time. It was the most nonsensical thing he had ever believed. Why would she even consider him anyway? He had made it more than clear that he wasn't available.
Abraham was so overwhelmed that he felt like he would explode. He knew the only thing he could do to deal with it was to exercise. He ran from the bathroom, down the hall, cursing the vilest profanity he knew, until he came to the room with the exercise equipment. He hopped onto the stationary bicycle and pedaled away.
No matter how hard he pushed himself, the thoughts and feelings didn't go away. He had a strong desire to punch something, or someone. The last time he had felt it had been as a child, back when he and some street kids fought and argued over the rules of a game. This time, however, the urge was more intense. He couldn't quite understand why he felt so out of control.
He climbed off the bicycle and paced the small room. Back and forth. The feeling did not leave. He dropped down to the floor and managed to do more push-ups than ever before. His body had so much extra strength, but he kept at it until he finally reached the point when he could no longer lift his body off the floor.
Then he did something else he had not done in many, many years.
He cried.
Lying on the floor, weak and purged of his fury, he bawled like a baby.
Pain rolled through him in fitful waves of agony. He didn't know where it came from, but it was as real as anything he'd ever experienced. Each wave squeezed his chest and made him whimper like the world was ending. In fact, he felt like he had as a child. Abandoned, unloved, and alone. A sudden realization entered his awareness. All the feelings of loss from his childhood, which he wasn't aware he still carried, were there, having been dredged up from the depths.
Abraham was glad that no one was seeing him at such a low moment. He was supposed to be beyond childish feelings of sadness and fear.
What had happened to him?
But the reason was all too clear. Keralan had happened to him. She had singlehandedly destroyed the decade of self-sacrifice he'd made to becoming a better version of himself. She had toppled him like a marble statue and broken him apart. He didn't know how he could continue to live with her.
He couldn't think any longer. He had to get away from the pain. He wanted nothing more than to curl up and become unconscious. He pulled himself up and forced himself to walk the few rooms down to his door. He climbed into his bed and pulled the blankets over his face.
He wished that he could just disappear.