In the Universe’s Eternal Calendar, It Is Always Now

Now there is only the black ball remaining for me to sink, the thing a hole rumbling in space. At the other end of the table my opponent draws heavily on the cigarette he lights after I sink three in a row. He stands smoking with the toothpick still wedged in his teeth, eyeing the two balls he has left on the table. The angle of my final shot is not an easy one. Earlier the second ball I pocket is a spectacular combination shot, the men all gasping as it rolls in. As there is no chalk, I rub the tip of my stick in the dirt. My opponent is breathing hard. It is proving to be an exciting game. Should he lose there is no reason for him to hang his head. Oddly enough, a loss could be good for business. Once word gets out, normally reticent herdsmen might begin to saunter up and lay down their hard-earned tögrög, thinking he is beatable. I wonder if he has a wife and children. I wonder why he chooses a life in town, the town consisting of a few hundred people and a series of dusty buildings constructed in the blocky Russian style, when every beautiful thing is far from here.

I clear my mind and lean in, the stick an extension of my body. In the silence Övöö’s two favorite sayings come to me—the world is what we make it, and a man’s dreams are the most real part of him. My grandfather with his thick limp, his broken teeth, his eyes forever scanning the horizon. I draw my arm back and send the universe scattering.

The cue ball goes spinning erratically off the eight, a comet colliding with an asteroid. Collectively we watch the white ball roll toward a pocket. Life is suffering. Everywhere mercy and the power of mercy. I exhale and the cue ball falls in. The men cheer. My opponent smiles. Very nice game, he says. Because I am a monk, as a formality he offers me back my ₮2,000, but I bow and he stuffs the bill in his shirt.

Brother, how do you play so well, someone asks. I do not tell him the truth, that this is my first game ever. I think of Mun, my brother with his hair braided down to his shoulders in the old style worn by the horsemen of Chinggis Khaan. If I close my eyes I can see one of Mun’s braids skimming the table as he bends down to survey a shot. Each day at Yatuu Gol’s morning puja, in my mind’s eye Mun on his golden cushion silently reminding me we are all Chinggis Khaan’s wandering descendants, every last one of us.

I turn toward my questioner. Even under his hat the work of years in the summer sun is obvious. I imagine the simple life this man leads out on the grasslands, the smell of sheep and the milk hardening on the roof, but nothing is ever simple. Once you are bitten by a snake, you become cautious of rope. I tell the man an approximation of the truth.

In another life, I say.

Then I walk to the community center and the town’s one larch tree and I plant myself beneath it with nothing but a bag of money and a half-written letter wrapped up in the folds of my robe and wait for my destiny to claim me. Listen closely: today may be the year 2015, the month July, but in the universe’s eternal calendar, it is always now. What every moment of sentience for the past twenty-three years teaches me. There is one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering. This is the true journey. Everything else is bait. I place myself on the earth with the intention of rising up rooted like a tree.