“I am the Ghost of Tuo Mo,” I said. “Yes. Why are you still here?”
“Where? In the house? Can’t I haunt my own house?”
“In the spirit realm. You must have died not long after I did. Why have you not moved on to your next life?”
“Have no idea what you’re talking about. Next life. Didn’t expect to be here this long, though, I’ll grant you that. Thought I’d be getting some heavenly rest by now. Someone has to look after the place, though. Protect all this stuff from generations of nitwits.”
I was fascinated. “Did the Lord of the Underworld not send you on to another incarnation?”
“Hmmm? I met some fat red-faced fool, I vaguely remember. Ranting and raving. Asked me if I had any idea where I was bound for. Told him, as long as my numbskull son was in charge of the collection, damned if I was going anyplace. He said fine, and he sent me back here.” The spirit frowned. “Something like that, anyway.”
“But as long as you are here, you cannot continue along the path.”
“What path?”
“To enlightenment.”
“Can’t think what you’re getting at. You’re an odd one. Always were, if memory serves. What’d you say your name was? Moe? And what’re you doing here, anyway?”
“I’ve come with Leonard Wu, to request the return of the Buddha head.”
The spirit of Explorer Trent snorted. “Good luck.”
“It is very important that the head return.”
“It is? How come?”
“Until it does, I cannot continue on to my next life.”
“Next life? Listen, you mean, whaddaya call it, reincarnation? That what we’re talking about?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, I’ll be hornswoggled. You really get to come back as something else?”
“Every being does. Yourself included. I cannot hope for another life as any being better than a man, but I do hope to have the opportunity to be a better man than I was as Tuo Mo.”
“You’re making my head spin. And then what? Next man you are dies, you just go on like this forever?”
“For quite some time, hoping to gain wisdom with each life. Until finally, you have reached enlightenment and can meld into the not-made.”
“The what?”
I was at a momentary loss, until I recalled something he had said. “Heavenly rest,” I told him. “I think it would be like that.”
“Oh? Sounds pretty good.” He stroked his chin whiskers.
“You will be on the same path,” I said. “Once you leave here.”
“Hah. There’s the rub. I can’t leave until someone’s in charge around here who’s not a moron. When you look at these birdbrains, I think I have to plan on staying forever!”
“Please?”
He heaved a great sigh. “My son the idiot begat my grandson the jackass, who begat this simpleton here. Each one’s worse than the one before him. I should’ve gotten out when I had the chance.” He shook his head. “Can’t leave now, though. Not one of them has a clue about anything in the collection. Best I can do is make sure everything’s kept clean, gets repaired if it breaks, and stays together. That’s why Walter here won’t give you back the head. If I could’ve trusted any one of them even an inch I’d have let him make his own decisions about what stays and goes. But these imbeciles, they can’t be allowed to think for themselves, because whatever they do, it’ll be wrong! So I’ve drilled it into them: The collection stays together! Nothing leaves this house!”
“And you are remaining in this realm to make sure they behave correctly?” I tentatively inquired.
“You got it, Moe.”
“But then . . . your next life . . . your path . . .”
“Does sound good, got to admit. Made some mistakes this time around, I don’t mind telling you. That red-faced gent—what’d you call him, the Lord of the Underworld?—he pointed out a few. Might like a another chance, maybe see if I could correct ’em. But nothing to be done. Like I said before, can’t leave now.”
I regarded the ghost of Explorer Trent. Compassion stirred what would have been my heart, had I been corporeal. I remembered my attachment to the cloths and carvings in the monastery caves. Over the century of my guardianship of the spirits, those ties had loosened, until, I realized, I no longer gave a thought to any of these objects. In fact, as I contemplated them now, a hopeful warmth suffused me—an impossibility, of course, in my disembodied state, but nevertheless the sensation I felt I felt—at the thought that these works, having been spread willy-nilly around the world, might even now be aiding in their journeys beings who would never have reached the caves.
“You must let go of your attachment to these objects in your collection,” I told Explorer Trent. “Or you cannot move on.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? That’s why I’m here.”
“But you cannot mean to remain.”
“As long as dunderheads are in charge here, yes I do.”
“As long as you remain here,” I said, voicing a thought that was new but, I was suddenly sure, correct, “ ‘dunderheads’ will be in charge.”
“Eh? How’s that?”
“Did you not say that each one is worse than the one before him? The Lord of the Underworld is clearly assigning, to be reborn in your family line, souls who, for whatever reason, must expiate the arrogance of pride—in their own intelligence and in their skills at decision making. Politicians, perhaps, or military commanders. They are reborn as directionless fools. As long as you remain attached to your collection, he will continue to send them here.”
“That the way it is, huh? Well, as long as he sends ’em, I’ll stay here and keep ’em from mucking things up!”
“You are not proposing to set yourself in opposition to the will of the Lord of the Underworld?”
“You think if I did, I couldn’t take him down a peg or two?” The ghost of Explorer Trent swelled, then deflated. “Nah, really, that’s not what I meant. But as long as all my stuff’s here, and being watched over by morons, I don’t think I can leave. No, I don’t think so.” He frowned, narrowing his eyes at me. “Wonder if I can help you out, though.”
While we had been conversing, Leonard Wu and Walter Trent had been in discussions also. The ghost of Explorer Trent turned to look at them now, so I did the same.
“So do you see?” Walter Trent was inquiring anxiously of Leonard Wu. “It’s not my decision. Everything of my great-grandfather’s has to stay in the house.”
“If I understand you correctly, though,” responded Leonard Wu, “that’s not written anywhere. It’s not a legal or contractual obligation, I mean.”
“Well, no.” The young Trent shifted uncomfortably, provoking a snort from his great-grandfather’s ghost. “But it’s my mandate. Our mandate. Everyone’s understood that, from the time my grandfather took over. It’s the way it’s always been.”
“Wouldn’t have been, if you hadn’t all been muttonheads!” barked the ghost of the elder Trent. Walter Trent nervously rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well,” said Leonard Wu, “the way it’s been was suited to the times, maybe, but times change. Important artifacts are being sent back to their original sites all over the world these days. Restoration of patrimony is a big movement in the art and archaeology communities.”
“Yes, I know. And I’d help if I could, I really would. The Fogg, in Boston, asked just the other day to borrow some bronzes for an exhibit they’re doing. I’d love to send them, too.” The younger Trent looked unhappy. “But I can’t. I just don’t feel I can make those decisions.”
My heart, or whatever had been beating hopefully, sank. The head would not be returning? I would not be moving on to my next life?
The ghost of the senior Trent turned to me. “What do you say, Moe? This head really important to you?”
Miserably, I said, “It is.”
“Make you happy if this half-wit here sent it back?”
“Yes.” I allowed myself a tiny spark of hope. “Very happy.”
“Well,” said he. “Well.” He stroked his whiskers, as before. Drifting across the room, he reached his great-grandson’s side. He leaned down until his lips were at the young Trent’s ear. I flinched involuntarily at the idea of approaching a man so closely. The ghost of Trent, who obviously did not suffer from such timidity, waited a moment before he spoke.