“How old is the child, Venerable?”
“She is three.”
The Old Musician’s pulse quickens. Sita . . . He tries to keep his voice even. “She is too young to be among us. We’re mostly men and boys here . . .” The one thing he’d done right was to give his daughter Om Paan in place of her mother. “Perhaps we can help in other ways—give food and clothes, collect donations . . . It’s better for the child to remain where she is, with a woman, a mother figure. She needs a strong maternal presence—”
“The caretaker fears the wife of the police captain will come after the little girl as well.”
For some seconds the Old Musician can’t speak, thinking he must’ve misunderstood the implication. Finally he manages, “And the police captain? Does he not care that this is his own daughter? Does he not want her? Or, at least, feel some sense of responsibility? Even an animal feels protective toward its young, Venerable.” He stops, quieting his heart.
The abbot shakes his head in shared dismay. “From what I can surmise, having spoken with the caretaker at length, the man cannot and will not care. His wife is from a very powerful family, you see. The wife may accept that her husband cheats, may even tolerate a string of mistresses, but she expects him to know his allegiance. He can stray, but he’s not permitted to leave any ‘embarrassing physical traces’ that can make the family lose face, threaten their position. Put plainly, the police captain will endanger his own life if he lets out word that the ballet dancer’s daughter is his. At the moment, it seems the wife has no clue about the little girl, but, later, if she finds out and confronts her husband, he’ll most likely deny his daughter’s existence. Perhaps he’ll go as far as to say the child belongs to another man, someone prior to him. We’ve seen how scenarios like this play out.” The old monk rubs his chest with his fist, as if pained at having to speak aloud a reality they know all too well. “You see my quandary? It is greater than the question of whether or not I, a monk, should harbor something as dangerous as a gun, when my teaching forbids me to hold even money. Greater than the question of whether or not to give shelter to a girl in a place that tradition reserves for boys.” The head monk pauses to catch his breath. “It is the fundamental yet most difficult question of how to protect a human life. A tiny fragile life now haunted by immense loss. A life that may be hunted.”
The Old Musician feels himself unable to breathe. “Have you spoken with anyone else about this?” he asks, groping through a blur of emotions, his surging bewilderment.
“You’re the first person I’ve come to with this. I must admit I’m still in a bit of shock . . . How are we to care for a little girl? As you say, we’re a community of men and boys. Yes, we have some nuns at the temple, but they come and go, spending some days here and other days back home with their families, when needed. And, besides, I can’t ask them to take on the risks . . .”
“Then, we must do what we can, Venerable.” The Old Musician is aware that his abrupt change of tone must sound rather peculiar to the abbot. “Given the danger she faces, we have no choice but to take the girl in, until this blows over.”
“I was hoping you’d say this. I feel the same way.” The abbot looks once again at the revolver, as if probing it for answers, a more definitive solution. To the Old Musician, the gun appears suddenly benign, innocuous, compared to the dangers outside the temple walls. “Aside from us,” the monk continues, “and some close friends of the victim, no one knows the cause of her death. No newspaper will dare publish her story, let alone link her murder to a prominent family. The truth is once again promptly silenced.”
“Perhaps, Venerable, if the story is forgotten, and lost among myriad others like it, the child will have a chance, her life overlooked, out of harm’s way.”
“Yes, each day we must live with the lesser tragedy,” the abbot gives in, sounding defeated. “Foreigners have often said ours is a ‘culture of impunity.’ An English phrase, as you know. A critique, a condemnation. But the reproof barely registers, let alone dents our conscience deep enough to force us to account for our wrong. What does it really mean? Impunity. Are we truly exempted from punishment for our crimes, when our culture, our core belief, tells us knowledge of the atrocity we commit is itself a punishment? Because who in his right mind would engage in villainy? We inflict suffering because we are afflicted. Round and round it goes. How then do we get out of this wheel, this spinning in circles, and find justice?”
“Perhaps it lies in this, Venerable. In the probing itself. We’ve become adept not so much at escaping punishment but at escaping reflection. We fear to plumb the dark and see ourselves in it, the role we played in its creation, because if we go to that depth again we may not be able to resurface, to return to light.” The Old Musician keeps his gaze down, struggling to articulate each thought, fighting the despair that threatens to smother him, send him back into his habitual silence. “As for justice, I’ve tried to comfort myself with the thought that perhaps it is like love—it transcends generations. If we fail to realize it in our own lifetime, perhaps those who come after us will know it.”
Finally, he looks up, needing to face the abbot now. “When I think of the unfathomable suffering, the countless lives lost and broken, I’m left with this profound hope that someday there will exist a world where justice is not simply the exchange of a life for a life, an ideal of retribution to right a wrong, but a path one walks and lives, a way of being.”
The abbot stares at him, and for a moment the two old men seem a reflection of each other, a shared stillness. Taking a deep breath, the abbot says, “Until then, until that world arrives, we are forced to shelter both weapons and victims as best we can, away from harm’s reach.” Taking a handkerchief from the folds of his saffron robe, he wraps the revolver, shaking his head in disbelief. “You know, I never thought that one day I’d be a keeper of guns.”
The two men rise, and as they turn to go their separate ways, the Old Musician says, “Perhaps, Venerable, you ought to speak with Dr. Narunn. I believe he knows of a charity that can transform such things into art.”