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“Seems like a waste of four hundred years to just die.”
“You’re telling me.”
“How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“The only interesting thing about you. Self-mummification. How does it work?”
“Everybody asks that sooner or later,” he says, and walks away. “It’s boring. Monk stuff. You’re a monster in love with another monster. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe I will and that won’t make you so special anymore.”
The Shonin stands and pulls his robes around him in mock outrage.
“Ooo, psychology,” he says. “You took me down a peg, didn’t you, you sly dog? Here’s the truth. I didn’t want to talk about it because I think all you want to do is compare it to your time in Hell and see who suffered the most. Think about it. What if I suffered more? Then you’re the one who won’t be so special anymore.”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
The Shonin looks at me with his empty eye sockets. The bone around the edges is the color of dirty tea. He opens and closes his mouth. Thin lips stretched across rotten teeth.
“It begins with a thousand days,” he says. “Fat rots the body, so you have to get rid of it. Even rice can make you fat. I ate on
ly nuts and seeds, with a little tea, but mostly just water. I worked hard. Manual labor. It burns the body down to its essence. Want to hear more?”
“Right now it doesn’t sound much worse than what an Olympic runner goes through.”
The Shonin shakes his head.
“In the next thousand days there’s nothing but bark and pine roots to eat. You’ll find this part funny. To prepare my body I had to drink a kind of poison mixed with tea. Not strong, but it will ruin you if you drink enough. You puke your guts out. Maggots hate it. I drank plenty. I loved it more than you love tacos.
“When there is so little of us left in this world we’re barely ghosts, monks like me, we enter our tombs. There’s a tiny breathing hole and a bell. We sit and meditate. Clear our minds and let eternity enter us. Once a day I rang the bell to let other monks know I’m alive. Soon I can’t even do that. I’m not sure if I’m dead or dreaming I’m alive. I’ve stopped ringing the bell, so the other monks seal my tomb. I stay there for another thousand days before the tomb is opened. They took my body, placed me in robes, and put me in a place of reverence. There are not so many like me who made the journey intact.”
“So, you’re dead. What happened next? I mean what was the point of the whole thing?”
“I preserved myself to come back with wisdom to help the world when I’m needed.”
“Why you?”
“Why not?”
“Who woke you up?”
“No one woke me up. I woke myself when I sensed it was time. A young attendant came in one day to brush the dust off and I said ‘Boo.’ Not only was I awake, but the boy attained enlightenment the moment I spoke to him.”
“One soul saved. Only six billion to go. That’s a lot of ‘Boos.’ ”
The Shonin gets up and puts a kettle on for tea.
“What do you say, fatty? You heard my story. I already know yours from Wells. Tell me. Who suffered more?”
I feel in my pocket for a Malediction, then remember I can’t smoke in here, like maybe I’m going to give a dead man lung cancer.
“You suffered plenty. I’ll give you that,” I say. “But if we’re going to get along you’ve got to give me something. The difference between us isn’t who suffered more. It’s who chose it. You chose to suffer. Me, I was just standing there and Hell opened up and swallowed me. Eleven years of torture, rape, slavery, and fighting monsters, that’s not the nothing you want to make it out to be.”
“I never said it was nothing. I’m saying you don’t carry your suffering with grace.”
“And you get to decide what grace is?”
