Are you familiar with Buddhist koans? you, Richard Gere, said to me.
“No,” I said, even though I vaguely remember reading something about this at the library once.
In the West, people often mistakenly think of koans as riddles, tests of one’s intellect—something to solve. But a truer interpretation would be that koans are brief stories to meditate on—they have no answer. We cannot “solve” or “understand” these koans any more than we can solve or understand a shooting star or a lion’s roar or the smell of fresh dew on roses or the feeling of warm sand between our toes. We can only ponder all of these things deeply, and revel in the mystery. It is a mistake to think there is a correct answer or solution, but it is good to ponder all the same. The Dalai Lama would agree here. Trust me. He and I are friends.
“What does any of that have to do with Father’s McNamee’s dying just hours before he was supposed to tell me who my biological father is?”
You smiled at me as if I were a child.
Are you asking me to solve the koan? There is no answer, Bartholomew. None. But it is good to reflect upon the question that lives at the heart of your current story. I suspect you will reflect on it for many years, and this will make you wiser—it will enhance your experience of this current reality.
“So you’re saying that this story—what we are involved in right now—is a koan, something to meditate on, but it has no meaning?”
It has great meaning! It just has no answer.
“You’re confusing me!”
No, you are confused completely independent of my influence.
“What am I going to do?”
You are going to call an ambulance, Bartholomew. That is the most rational thing to do at this moment, given the unfortunate circumstances you have inherited. But first, take the money and credit cards out of Father McNamee’s wallet.
“What? Why?”
He wanted you to make this journey. You will need money to complete it. Trust me. This is completely acceptable. Father McNamee would want you to take the money and credit cards he had set aside for this journey and complete it in his honor. Search your heart, and you will discover that what I speak is the truth.
I searched my heart and it agreed with you, Richard Gere.
I saw Father’s wallet on the table.
Do it, you, Richard Gere, told me, and I did, emptying his wallet, stuffing the money and credit cards into my pockets. And—
I saw something that made my heart leap, but also stunned me into a warm, deep calm.
Now hide the empty wallet in your suitcase so the police don’t see it, said the voice in my head, but it was no longer yours, Richard Gere.
You were gone.
It wasn’t my mother’s voice or the angry little man’s.
Was it my own?
Regardless, I did as the voice commanded me to do, slipping Father’s wallet into an interior pocket of my suitcase that was somewhat hidden behind a stack of clean white underwear briefs.
Good, the voice said. Now call the front desk and tell whomever answers that you need an ambulance sent immediately.
It took about fifteen minutes—during which I sat calmly on the bed, my mind blank, shocked into submission.
Father McNamee was pronounced dead immediately.
Two large men struggled to put his solid round body on a stretcher, but—with much breath and sweat—they finally got him strapped down, at which point they covered him with a white sheet and took him away.
Next, two local policemen interviewed me in my hotel room. One was tall with a mole on the end of his nose and the other was short with long sideburns. They both had freshly sharpened pencils and spiral-bound notebooks the size of bread slices, in which they scribbled furiously whenever I spoke.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Sideburns said.
“Unfortunately, we need to ask you a few questions,” said the Mole.
“And we apologize in advance if any of the questions seem disrespectful, given the circumstances, but we have to do our job,” Sideburns said.
I nodded.
“What were you doing in Canada with the deceased?” the Mole asked.
“We were on a pilgrimage to Saint Joseph’s Oratory. We were planning to visit Cat Parliament afterward.”
“Cat Parliament?” the Mole said, scribbling.
“In Ottawa,” I said.
The cops exchanged a glance.
“Pardon my asking, but is that a peeler joint?” Sideburns said, scribbling.
“What?” I said.
“A . . . um . . . a gentleman’s club. A place where you pay women to take off their clothes. Strippers.”
“No, Cat Parliament’s a place where feral cats can roam free. I think it’s near the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.”
The police looked at each other again while raising their eyebrows and then continued to scribble.
“Were you drinking last night?” Sideburns asked and pointed the eraser on his pencil at the empty whiskey bottles.
“I wasn’t. Father McNamee drank daily.”
“You found him dead this morning? Dead in his bed?”
“Yes.”
“Traveling with anyone else?”
“Max and Elizabeth are in the lobby. They don’t yet know what’s happened.”
“Would you like me to get them for you?” the Mole said.
I looked up at him, not quite sure why he had asked me that.
“You seem to be in shock,” Sideburns said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”
I nodded.
That sounded reasonable.
“Max and Elizabeth, you said? Those are the names I should call for?” said the Mole, and when I nodded, he said, “Got it,” and left.