Hearing the truth stung, but Gautama was too exhausted to work up heavy resentment. Instead he said, “Was I ridiculous in your eyes?”
“Why would it matter? A saint has to rise above ridicule. Maybe I was trying to teach you that.”
“Are you my teacher now? I thought you hated teachers.” Gautama knew that he had let childish pique creep into his voice, but he didn’t care.
He expected Ganaka to keep on mocking him, but the older monk’s voice grew suddenly serious. “I’m part of the world. If you want a teacher, turn to the world.”
Gautama stepped out of the water, feeling cooler but still sore with the sense of having been badly used. “The world’s wisdom is contained in you? Congratulations.”
“Not all the world’s wisdom, but a piece of it. The piece you need to hear,” said Ganaka calmly.
“And what is that?”
“Are you free enough of anger to listen?” Ganaka asked. He met Gautama’s stare. “I didn’t think so.” He sat under a tree and watched Gautama as indifferently as he had watched the husband and wife in trouble. Gautama could have walked away, but after a moment he felt settled enough to sit down beside the older monk.
“Everything you say is true,” he admitted.
“Only it shouldn’t be. That’s your position, isn’t it? That when you act like a saint, you should be loved, and whoever sees you doing good works should be inspired to join you.”
“All right, yes,” said Gautama reluctantly. “What’s your position? That you can be my teacher by standing around and letting me do all the work?”
“There was no work to do.”
“I think there was,” Gautama protested.
“Then tell me where I’m wrong. The man would have calmed down eventually and figured out how to unyoke his animal and empty the cart. He and his wife were strong enough to push the cart out of the ditch, and if they weren’t, they could walk back to their village and get help. So by helping them, you kept them from helping themselves.”
“Go on.”
“If you thought you were preventing violence because the man stopped beating his wife, all you really did was shame him. He will not only resent you for that; he will beat his wife extra hard tonight to make a point. He is master, she is slave.”
“And no one should try to show them a better way?”
“Maybe, but why should it be you? They had parents and priests who taught them right from wrong. They must know families where the wife isn’t beaten every time the husband loses his temper. Or maybe they don’t. Why should it be up to you? You’re a wandering beggar,” Ganaka pointed out.
Gautama was too tired to argue in the face of the older monk’s certainty. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he mumbled.
Ganaka laughed with a hint of scorn. “You can do better than that. I can tell what you’re thinking. You’re highborn, so that makes you right. No question about it.”
“Do you always goad people like this?” Gautama asked, resolving not to make himself the butt of this irksome cynic.
“Is there any other way to learn?” Ganaka replied. “If you don’t want the world to have more shame, helplessness, and slavery, stop doing what you did today. All you did was increase it.” He got to his feet, as indifferent as if they’d been talking about the possibility of rain, and looked around for the shortest way back to the main road.
“Thank you for the bread, and the company,” Gautama said, forcing the words out.
Ganaka shrugged. “I may not be enlightened enough to suit you, my idealistic lad. But I’m far from being a fool. Don’t pretend you’re a saint. Experience tells me that they might not even exist.”
THE OLD KING mourned the day he saw his son ride out the gates of Kapilavastu, but he didn’t send guards to break into the Shiva temple and arrest the high Brahmin. The writing had been on the wall a long time before their plan finally failed. Canki realized that fate had turned against him, and he decided to appear in the king’s chambers one morning unannounced. He bowed without prostrating himself on the floor.
“I hope you don’t have the gall to try to console me,” Suddhodana grumbled. He had taken to sleeping late, and more often than not there was a young courtesan on the pillow by his side, the only consolation Suddhodana wanted these days.
“I’m only a priest, bringing the king’s wishes before the gods,” Canki said.
“I had only one wish, and you failed to make it come true. Your presence is distasteful to us. You should stay home.”
They had hatched their conspiracy almost thirty years earlier, and Suddhodana wasn’t one to look backward. He placed little faith in the promise that Siddhartha would return. “Return as what?” he said. “He’ll never come back a king.” The last part he didn’t voice aloud to anyone, just as he didn’t voice a secret intention he had, to name Devadatta as his successor. The notion had come to him in a dream. He often revisited old battles in his dreams, but not as he had fought them. Instead he was a wanderer among the dead.
Night after night Suddhodana saw himself asleep in his tent, still dressed in armor. He would wake up feeling stifled, suffocating for air. He would throw aside the tent flap, and scattered around him in the moonlight would be bodies, thick on the ground in poses of agony. He didn’t weep over them; he hated them for troubling his peace.
However, this dream was different. He wandered the dusty field listlessly, head bowed. He came across a shallow grave. A body lay faceup, arms crossed over its chest. A cloud passed away from the moon, and he recoiled to see Siddhartha’s corpse. A cry erupted from his chest, and Suddhodana leaped into the grave. He embraced the corpse, which was horribly cold. Suddhodana was wracked with sobs, so strongly that he was sure it would wake him up. Instead, the corpse moved. Suddhodana clutched it tighter, praying that his own life could seep into his son and revive him.
The corpse’s head was beside his ear, and a voice said, “The prince is not the king.” These were Siddhartha’s words, and the moment they were spoken Suddhodana woke up in a cold sweat, but not before he got an instant’s glimpse of the face again, which melted into dust.
He turned now to Canki. “You’ve been released. That’s why I’m not going to kill you,” he said.
“Released?”
“From our plot. I’m not heartless. I know what I’ve done, to my son and to all those people who suffered.”
Canki had never heard the king talk this way; remorse wasn’t in his nature. In fact, the high Brahmin had intruded in the royal chambers to remind Suddhodana that his son still had a great destiny ahead of him.
“You must have another plan. I will aid you however I can. I sense that you’ve found a ray of hope. True?”
Suddhodana gave a derisive snort. “So, you’re not in your dotage after all. I thought priests softened when they saw heaven coming closer.” He didn’t wait for a reply. “What if Devadatta is king? Do we trust him?”
“Is that really necessary?” Canki said coolly. After Sujata’s disappearance Devadatta had fallen under a cloud, yet he might be a necessary tool, and for that reason the king hadn’t banished him.
“Explain yourself,” Suddhodana demanded.
“The boy came here as a prisoner. He turned into a schemer. You have no idea if he really loves you or simply fears you. For myself, I don’t think anyone could find out the truth. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is ambition. If you promise Devadatta the throne, two purposes will be served. You will put out the fire of his hatred. And you will give your kingdom to someone as vicious as you are.”
Heaven had to be close indeed for anyone, let alone a Brahmin, to risk those last words. Suddhodana looked at Canki, who had lost much of his imposing bulk. His haughtiness seemed to have shrunk with his body.