This World

Chapter Fourteen.

Messenger

“Mrs. Bolton,” Mr. Petrov said politely. “Your dream. Mr. Chiari, you will listen inside.”

By now it was night. The table we sat around was illuminated by the two oil lamps on its surface. The room’s walls and ceiling had become shadowy, indistinct. The effect was not one of gloom, but of comfort, the sort of almost luxurious comfort you feel beneath warm covers in a cold room; the comfort comes from the contrast.

In lamplight, people speak more softly, observe each other’s faces and words more carefully, penetrate into their own thought, and the thoughts of others, more deeply. At the same time, they are apt to rediscover a part of their mind they normally ignore. As they listen to what is said, some inner day‑dreamer goes off on its own quests, and the messages from both parts interact, and reinforce one another.

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Chapter Thirteen.

Responsibilities

Six weeks later. Early evening. Eight of us sat around a polished wooden table in one of the library alcoves. The two senior monks, Mr. Chin and Mr. Petrov; Mr. Conway; Mr. Herrick; Mr. Chang; Sunnie; Mr. Barnard, and myself. I was emphatically in the presence of my betters.

Mr. Barnard occasionally referred to Mr. Conway, humorously, as Shangri‑la’s “Executive Director,” but I had rarely seen him act in that capacity. The few incidents that disturbed our placid routine were handled in their course by a quiet word in the right place. As the high lama had promised, the burden of leadership there was light.

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Chapter Twelve.

Adjustment

Finally he was ready to talk.

I had brought him outside and showed him the trail and offered to walk with him if he wanted. He had set out, as I’d expected, alone, without a word. I had settled onto one of the stone benches on the patio—which Mr. Barnard always called a veranda—and, after a few minutes, had taken a cigar from my pocket and lit it with a sparker, feeling a little like Mr. Barnard myself.

I had told myself, while I sat there waiting, that we had told Corbin for his own good, that waiting would have meant deceit, that ultimately this was kinder. I had told myself that this was Mr. Conway’s decision and that Mr. Conway didn’t commonly make mistakes. I had told myself that Corbin seemed to be a bright kid and would undoubtedly have figured out the situation soon enough.

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Chapter Eleven.

Isolation

“Dennis Corbin, I’d like you to meet Mr. Conway, the man in charge here. This is Mrs. Bolton. [”Sunnie,“ she interjected pleasantly.] Mr. Barnard, our only fellow American.“

Procedures at Shangri‑la are nothing if not flexible. Mr. Conway, on hearing my fast sketch of Corbin’s background, attitude, and mission, had swiftly decided that the five of us should have lunch together—presumably on the theory that no surroundings are quite so disarming as an informal meal. So it was that, within half an hour of our receiving Mr. Meister’s seal of approval on Corbin’s health, I was escorting him to one of the library alcoves that doubled, according to the occasion, as den, living room tea‑room or—as now—dining room. And so he was introduced, with no greater ceremony, to three people who would be at the center of his life for the foreseeable future.

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Chapter Ten.

Interrogation

I awoke early that afternoon. That is, Mr. Barnard woke me up, touching my shoulder with one hand while holding a cup of hot tea near my nose with the other. Most unusual. Then I remembered the day before, and our long night. “Did they get the engines up okay?”

“No, they didn’t. Too blamed big and heavy. But they piled three feet of rock and dirt on ’em. Think that’s enough?”

“These days, God knows, but I suppose it’ll have to be. Just so they’re out of sight, we ought to be all right.” I remembered something from sleep, and sat up abruptly. “Say, Mr. Barnard, you know what we forgot? We ought to comb the rocks near where the wing tip hit first; there were fragments all over the place. Not so big a clue, but all it would take would be for the sun to reflect off just one piece. . . .”

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P A R T   T H R E E

Messenger

August, 1979

 

Chapter Nine.

Corbin

We were chanting.

Years ago, chanting used to irritate me. It had seemed a needless relic of the Middle Ages. But I’d long since changed my mind about that, as about so many things. I’d discovered its virtues.

Partly we chant for the joy of the sound; partly, for the spiritual side effects to be had by losing ourselves in a chorus. The Latin chants in particular—which I once would have found highly irritating—I now found soothing, those ancient Latin words, sung of the beauty of God and God’s world. And blended in with the sounds were the smell of the incense, the rich colors of the tapestries, and the weight of the hymnal I myself had helped to manufacture the paper for, 11 years earlier.

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Chapter Eight.

The Monkey

Mr. Conway’s hand on my shoulder brought me awake, and I got out of bed, shivering in the mid‑night cold. One advantage to wearing robes: it wasn’t hard to get dressed. Seeing his face by the flickering oil lamp, I got a sense of the experience—not to use the embarrassing word “wisdom”—concealed behind that youthful face. Our silence reinforced the impression.

He worked with me to find a comfortable position for the meditation exercise, telling me (to my surprise) that I would not have to torture myself into the cross‑legged lotus position favored by yogis. “Without years of preparation, you would be unable to sit for long with legs crossed. The pain would be intolerable.”

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