Soon, by the way, means zero. It was typical of Dr. Supatra to recommend him, for he is the most authentic and radical mordu in Bangkok, if not Thailand. Almost everything he predicts comes to pass. So, is his daily surgery filled with eager seekers after truth? Nope. People who claim to want to know their future avoid him like the plague. Women especially, who are the chief consumers of clairvoyant products in their endless search for emotional stability and amorous bliss and constitute eighty percent of the market nationwide, generally have nothing to do with him. He really does see, that’s his problem. His few followers hang around mainly to save him from starvation. Once I realized how unpopular he was, how close to total destitution, how even tough-minded macho types who have been to hell and back, or think they have, find him hard to hang out with, I knew he was the man for me. He just won’t tell fibs to make you feel good. No wonder he’s bankrupt. Now the lights have changed and we’re on our way.
My first conclusion on my earlier visit was that his two decades in the robes in Cambodia did not include training in shack construction. Even I, who have seen more than my share of incompetent carpentry, was impressed by the way the uprights of his hut leaned, the corrugated iron roof sagged, crossbeams seemed to have been chosen for their crookedness, the door was permanently stuck half open, and he forgot windows. Outside a woman in her early thirties was sobbing uncontrollably.
“I hope you haven’t come to see that bastard,” she managed. “I came for help and advice and he broke my heart in two minutes. He’s not a mordu, he’s a damned demon, that’s what he is.” More boo hoo hoo.
“What did he say?”
A dam broke. “He said I wasted the best years of my life on useless handsome shits who were good in bed and flattered me when I could have married a boring, honest, ugly man who would have taken great care of me and my kids and now it’s way too late, and anyway, I still haven’t even begun to give up on admiring myself in the mirror even though my looks have melted, my tits and ass have sagged, and self-love has ruined my nerves so no one, not even an honest, boring, ugly man, could possibly live with me for long, and anyway, even if I could find one I’d make his life hell by taking the piss out of him behind his back and to his face because of my insufferable narcissism that even now that I’m no longer cute makes it impossible for me to feel compassion for my fellow human beings, especially if they’re not attractive.” She paused for breath. “I couldn’t believe it, the way he went on. He said what I called love was anything that made my pussy wet, I’d been masturbating since puberty and still couldn’t stop playing with myself every time I felt insecure, and the only thing that brought temporary relief was the ruthless lust of a man with a big hard cock.” She paused. “I mean, for a holy man he sure knows a lot about women and sex.” She wiped her eyes. “If he wasn’t so skinny, old, and weak, I would have kicked him in the balls. No wonder he’s a failure. Who’s going to pay good money for that kind of crap?” She glared. “And he knew it all in less than a second. He didn’t even look at me.”
“Really?”
“He was trying to fix a hole in his roof with a plastic bag, he didn’t get off the chair he was standing on. Didn’t even turn his head. What a bastard.” She paused for breath. “He’s definitely clairvoyant, though. How the hell did he know my tits were sagging when he didn’t turn around to look at me?”
When I entered the hut he was standing on a chair, still fixing the hole in the roof. “Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy,” he said, not looking around. “All your life that’s been your mantra. No wonder you’re stunted, you haven’t even begun to live your own life, you’re waiting for daddy before you begin. Get over it.”
Now he climbed down off the chair. He was taller than I expected, about five eleven, incredibly skinny like representations of the Buddha when he was starving in the forest. He wore only an old shapeless pair of shorts held up with a piece of string, and his long hair was held back in a makeshift gray bun also tied with string. It had been decades since he’d shaved. As he possessed a mixture of Chinese and Thai genes, his beard was sparse but long, drooping down from the corners of his mouth, which was almost invisible. It ended in a few white wisps. Apart from a black fire in the depths of his eyes he looked as if he had maybe a week left in the body. And his tongue, of course. That was alive and kicking.
He assessed me in a blink. “Now I see you better. That father thing is just a distraction, isn’t it? You’re like me. I saw you in a dream.”
“How’s that?”
“A total misfit. You could come from the most stable, loving, chaste, comfortable family in Thailand with a beautiful mum and a wise dad and the very best schooling, and you’d still be all fucked-up. You chose a broken home and a whore for a mother just so you’d have an excuse to be weird. Maybe you’re not so dumb after all.” An extra voltage of gleam came into his eye. “It’s your equivalent of a broken roof.” I could see he believed he’d won the battle and was pleased with himself. “It’s your great distraction. Anytime you’re in danger of having to face the real challenge of your life, you deflect. You tell yourself you’re looking for your true identity, which can only happen when you’ve found your daddy, who, incidentally, will be of no use to you at all when you finally meet him. What a psycho scam. I’m almost impressed.” He paused for breath. “It’s not entirely your fault. Man has made astonishing strides recently in all things inessential. The price we’ve paid is enormous. Stuck with an infantile description of reality that cannot come to terms with death or even lesser challenges, the eternal infant must torture himself for lifetime after lifetime, probably without end.”
–
This time when I arrive at the shack I show him the printout of the English words on the mirror. He studies it for a long moment. “Don’t you want to know what it says?” I ask.
“No. What it says has no importance. Can’t you see what it really says, smartass? It’s telling you how big your problem really is.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s not written by a human being. I saw that in a dream last night, but even I couldn’t believe it. It’s there, though, plain as day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The individual characters. Look at that one, what’s that called?”
“It’s an E.”
“Right. There are lots of them. And they’re all the same.”
“Of course they’re all the same. They’re all Es.”
“Idiot. I mean they’re exactly the same. Same size, same shape, no variation at all. You’ve meditated, you’ve studied the Abhidharma, you know how the mind works. Say it takes a tenth of a second to make one stroke of a pen. Then there’s a gap in consciousness too brief to notice, but it’s vital to your functioning. During that gap the whole history of humanity intervenes in the form of sparks and flashes, your own personal history, the whole cosmos, actually, which of course doesn’t exist in time, but when you make the next stroke of the pen you are a different person. After a whole inhalation and exhalation nothing at all remains except the blueprint. No way the next stroke is going to be identical to the first, there has to be a subtle difference. When it comes to a whole letter, well, no normal person possessed of normal consciousness will produce exactly the same letter over and over again.”
He stares at me. I take back the printout, hold it close to study, nod, hand it back to him. “So what are you saying? Someone has a template they use to write this stuff on mirrors in blood after they’ve brutally beheaded a person?”