Chapter Four
And if this should be unchanging eternity, then at least it is quiet, and free from the interruptions of morons, and the confusion of innocents, and the complications of daily existence, and the sins of the helpless guilty who cry out that it wasn't their fault, that it was for someone else, and that they aren't to blame. Though then who is?
The smoke from Sanzou's cigarette climbed like a spiralling ladder to Heaven.
Not that he believed in Heaven. Or perhaps, rather, he considered with the lazy detachment of solitude which does not expect to be disturbed for a while, that Heaven was only a place, just like any city on Earth, and that the people there would be just as persistently annoying as they were down here. Not to mention pervert hermaphrodites who would doubtless seize the occasion to be exceptionally frustrating.
This is the end of all roads, the silence which waits for all human beings, the mercy which is no mercy at all, but which is all you will receive.
Mercy was a curious concept, and probably something that it was better to leave to people who actually knew something about it.
Dust hissed against the window as the wind rose outside. It sounded like rain. The lights dimmed with it, as the blowing sand cut off the sun in whispering rasps and rattles against the glass.
Sanzou took another drag from his cigarette. For the first time in a while, he wondered if his master would have approved of the habit. Or of his drinking. Or of the corpses strewn behind him in a scattering of exorcised powder.
He could have raised one finger to brush it against the sutra, but he didn't. That would have been weakness, and Koumyou Sanzou's last words had been about the precise opposite of weakness. Be strong.
Karma brings us to our appointed ends. We follow the roads laid out for us. Each drop of blood, each shed tear . . .
Did I cry, he wondered.
He couldn't remember.
. . . builds the next step of our carefully calculated path to damnation and endings and finality. We stop moving and do not go any further. In that we find all the punishment we were expecting, all the enlightenment that we will ever need.
His fingers tightened on the cigarette butt. Sanzou. Sanzou hoshi-sama. Master of the Law. Enlightened priest. Teacher. Such petty, useless, worthless words.
Open up your mind.
It was dark now.
You know where you are.
Rushing sand outside like a river of rain, pattering endlessly against ground and walls, the sounds constant and heartless, like a message which he would never understand.
Now and forever . . .
He broke its hold. It was as instantaneous and spontaneous as that, the equivalent of a curse flung in the face of despair, a moment of light which existed in spite of the darkness, as much as the darkness. There was no forever. Nothing was forever. And if God did not save, neither did he damn. And all of this was such a load of complete and utter shit that it wasn't worth listening to any longer. He wasn't in the habit of walking into traps, other than to spring them, and he wasn't going to dance on anyone's strings for their pleasure, and despair was a waste of time and effort.
No wonder the other two morons had never come back from their little strolls outside.
Sanzou ground out the cigarette butt and stood up. "I don't know who you are," he said aloud, "but I know what you are. This stops here."
---
And if this should be unchanging eternity, then at least it is quiet, and free from the interruptions of morons, and the confusion of innocents, and the complications of daily existence, and the sins of the helpless guilty who cry out that it wasn't their fault, that it was for someone else, and that they aren't to blame. Though then who is?
The smoke from Sanzou's cigarette climbed like a spiralling ladder to Heaven.
Not that he believed in Heaven. Or perhaps, rather, he considered with the lazy detachment of solitude which does not expect to be disturbed for a while, that Heaven was only a place, just like any city on Earth, and that the people there would be just as persistently annoying as they were down here. Not to mention pervert hermaphrodites who would doubtless seize the occasion to be exceptionally frustrating.
This is the end of all roads, the silence which waits for all human beings, the mercy which is no mercy at all, but which is all you will receive.
Mercy was a curious concept, and probably something that it was better to leave to people who actually knew something about it.
Dust hissed against the window as the wind rose outside. It sounded like rain. The lights dimmed with it, as the blowing sand cut off the sun in whispering rasps and rattles against the glass.
Sanzou took another drag from his cigarette. For the first time in a while, he wondered if his master would have approved of the habit. Or of his drinking. Or of the corpses strewn behind him in a scattering of exorcised powder.
He could have raised one finger to brush it against the sutra, but he didn't. That would have been weakness, and Koumyou Sanzou's last words had been about the precise opposite of weakness. Be strong.
Karma brings us to our appointed ends. We follow the roads laid out for us. Each drop of blood, each shed tear . . .
Did I cry, he wondered.
He couldn't remember.
. . . builds the next step of our carefully calculated path to damnation and endings and finality. We stop moving and do not go any further. In that we find all the punishment we were expecting, all the enlightenment that we will ever need.
His fingers tightened on the cigarette butt. Sanzou. Sanzou hoshi-sama. Master of the Law. Enlightened priest. Teacher. Such petty, useless, worthless words.
Open up your mind.
It was dark now.
You know where you are.
Rushing sand outside like a river of rain, pattering endlessly against ground and walls, the sounds constant and heartless, like a message which he would never understand.
Now and forever . . .
He broke its hold. It was as instantaneous and spontaneous as that, the equivalent of a curse flung in the face of despair, a moment of light which existed in spite of the darkness, as much as the darkness. There was no forever. Nothing was forever. And if God did not save, neither did he damn. And all of this was such a load of complete and utter shit that it wasn't worth listening to any longer. He wasn't in the habit of walking into traps, other than to spring them, and he wasn't going to dance on anyone's strings for their pleasure, and despair was a waste of time and effort.
No wonder the other two morons had never come back from their little strolls outside.
Sanzou ground out the cigarette butt and stood up. "I don't know who you are," he said aloud, "but I know what you are. This stops here."
---
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