The oldest monk and the youngest one leaned back against the radiator, down at Joes level, and soon they were engaged with his vast collection of blocksa heaping mound of plain or painted cubes, rhomboids, cylinders, and other polygons, which they quickly assembled into walls and towers, working with and around Joes Godzillalike interventions.
The young one, Drepung, answered Annas questions directly, and also translated for the oldest one, named Rudra Cakrin. He was the official ambassador of Khembalung, but while he was without English, apparently, his two middle-aged associates, Sucandra and Padma Sambhava, spoke it pretty wellnot as well as Drepung, but adequately.
These two followed Charlie back out into the kitchen and stood there, beer bottles in hand, talking to him as he cooked. They stirred the unkilled pasta to keep the pot from boiling over, checked out the spices in the spice rack, and stuck their noses deep into the saucepot, sniffing with great interest and appreciation. Charlie found them surprisingly easy to talk to. They were about his age. Both had been born in Tibet, and both had spent years, they did not say how many, imprisoned by the Chinese, like so many other Tibetan Buddhist monks. They had met in prison, and after their release they had crossed the Himalayas and escaped Tibet together, afterward making their way gradually to Khembalung.
Amazing, Charlie kept saying to their stories. He could not help but compare them to his own relatively straightforward passage through the years. And now after all that, youre getting flooded?
Many times, they said in unison. Padma, still sniffing Charlies sauce as if it were the perfect ambrosia, elaborated. Used to happen only every eighteen years or about, moon tides, you know. We could plan it happening, and be prepared. But now, whenever the monsoon hits hard.
Also every month at moontide, Sucandra added. Certainly three, four times a year. No one can live that way for long. If it gets worse, then the island will no longer be habitable. So we came here.
Charlie shook his head, tried to joke: This place may be lower in elevation than your island.
They laughed politely. Not the funniest joke. Charlie said, Listen, speaking of elevation, have you talked to the other low-lying countries?
Padma said, Oh yes, we are part of the League of Drowning Nations, of course. Charter member.
Headquarters in The Hague, near the World Court.
Very appropriate, Charlie said. And now you are establishing an embassy here
To argue our case, yes.
Sucandra said, We must speak to the hyperpower.
The two men smiled cheerily.
Well. Thats very interesting. Charlie tested the pasta to see if it was ready. Ive been working on climate issues myself, for Senator Chase. Ill have to get you in to talk to him. And you need to hire a good firm of lobbyists.
They regarded him with interest. Padma said, You think it best?
Yes. Definitely. Youre here to lobby the U.S. government, and there are pros in town to help foreign governments do that. Ive got a good friend working for one of the better firms, Ill put you in touch with him.
Charlie slipped on potholders and lifted the pasta pot over to the sink, tipped it into the colander until it was overflowing. Always a problem with their little colander, which he never thought to replace except at moments like this. I think my friends firm already represents the Dutch on these issuesoopsso its a perfect match. Theyll be knowledgeable about your problems.
They nodded. Thank you for that. We will enjoy that.
They took the food into the little dining room, which was a kind of corner in the passageway between kitchen and living room, and with a great deal of to-and-froing all of them just managed to fit around the dining room table. Joe consented to a booster seat to get his head up to the level of the table, where he shoveled baby food industriously into his mouth or onto the floor, as the case might be, narrating the process all the while in his own tongue. Sucandra and Rudra Cakrin had seated themselves on either side of him, and they watched his performance with pleasure. Both attended to him as if they thought he was speaking a real language. They ate in a style that was not that dissimilar to his, Charlie thoughtabsorbed, happy, shoveling it in. The sauce was a hit with everyone but Nick, who ate his pasta plain.
Charlie got up and followed Anna out to the kitchen when she went to get the salad. He said to her under his breath, I bet the old man speaks English too.
What?
Its like in that Ang Lee movie, remember? The old man pretends not to understand English, but really he does? Its like that I bet.
Anna shook her head. Why would he do that? Its a hassle, all that translating. It doesnt give him any advantage.
You dont know that! Watch his eyes, see how hes getting it all.
Hes just paying attention. Dont be silly.
Youll see. Charlie leaned in to her conspiratorially: Maybe he learned English in an earlier incarnation.
Quit it, she said, laughing her low laugh. You learn to pay attention like that.
Oh and then youll believe I understand English?
Thats right yeah.
They returned to the dining room, laughing, and found Joe holding forth in a language anyone could understand, a language of imperious gesture and commanding eye, and the assumption of authority in the world. Which worked like a charm over them all, even though he was babbling.
After the salad they returned to the living room and settled around the coffee table again. Anna brought out tea and cookies. Well have to have Tibetan tea next time, she said.
The Khembalis nodded uncertainly.
An acquired taste, Drepung suggested. Not actually tea.
Bitter, Padma said appreciatively.
You can use as blood coagulant, Sucandra said.
Drepung added, Also we add yak butter to it, aged until a bit rancid.
The butter has to be rancid? Charlie said.
Traditional.
Think fermentation, Sucandra explained.
Well, lets have that for sure. Nick will love it.
A scrunch-faced pretend-scowl from Nick: Yeah right Dad.
Rudra Cakrin sat again with Joe on the floor. He stacked blocks into elaborate towers. Whenever they began to sway, Joe leaned in and chopped them to the floor. Tumbling clack of colored wood, instant catastrophe: the two of them cast their heads back and laughed in exactly the same way.
The others watched. From the couch Drepung observed the old man, smiling fondly, although Charlie thought he also saw traces of the look that Anna had tried to describe to him when explaining why she had connected with them in the first place: a kind of concern that came perhaps from an intensity of love. Charlie knew that feeling. It had been a good idea to invite them over. He had groaned when Anna told him about it, life was simply Too Busy. Or so it had seemed, though at the same time he was somewhat starved for adult company. Now he was enjoying himself, watching Rudra Cakrin and Joe play on the floor as if there were no tomorrow.
Anna was deep in conversation with Sucandra. Charlie heard Sucandra say to her, We give patients quantities, very small, keep records, of course, and judge results. There is a personal element to all medicine, as you know. People talking about how they feel. You can average numbers, I know you do that, but the subjective feeling remains.
Anna nodded, but Charlie knew this aspect of medicine annoyed her. She kept to the quantitative as much as she could, as far as he could tell, precisely to avoid this kind of subjective residual.
Now she said, Do you support attempts to make objective studies?
Of course, Sucandra replied. Buddhist science is much like Western science in that regard.
Anna nodded, brow furrowed like a hawk. Her definition of science was extremely narrow. Reproducible studies?
Yes, that is Buddhism precisely.
Now Annas eyebrows met in a deep vertical furrow that split the horizontal ones higher on her brow. I thought Buddhism was a kind of feelingyou know, meditation, compassion, that kind of thing?
This is to speak of the goal. What the investigation is for. Same for you, yes? Why do you pursue the sciences?
Well, to understand things better, I guess.
This was not the kind of thing Anna thought about. It was like asking her why she breathed.
And why? Sucandra persisted, watching her.
Welljust because.
A matter of curiosity.
Yes, I suppose so.
But what if curiosity is a luxury?
How so?
In that first you must have a full belly. Good health, a certain amount of leisure time, a certain amount of serenity. Absence of pain. Only then can one be curious.
Anna nodded, thinking it over.
Sucandra saw this and continued. So, if curiosity is a valuea quality to be treasureda form of contemplation, or prayerthen you must reduce suffering to reach that state. So, in Buddhism, understanding works to reduce suffering, and by reduction of suffering gains more knowledge. Just like science.
Anna frowned. Charlie watched her, fascinated. This was a basic part of her self, this stuff, but largely unconsidered. Self-definition by function. She was a scientist. And science was science, unlike anything else.
Rudra Cakrin leaned forward to say something to Sucandra, who listened to him, then asked him a question in Tibetan. Rudra answered, gesturing at Anna.
Charlie shot a quick look at hersee, he was following things! Evidence!
Rudra Cakrin insisted on something to Sucandra, who then said to Anna, Rudra wants to say, What do you believe in?
Me?
Yes. What do you believe in? he says.
I dont know, she said, surprised. I believe in the double-blind study.
Charlie laughed, he couldnt help it. Anna blushed and beat on his arm, crying Stop it! Its true!
I know it is, Charlie said, laughing harder, until she started laughing too, along with everyone else, the Khembalis looking delightedeveryone so amused that Joe got mad and stomped his foot to make them stop. But this only made them laugh more. In the end they had to stop so he would not throw a fit.
Rudra Cakrin restored Joes mood by diving back into the blocks. Soon he and Joe sat half-buried in them, absorbed in their play. Stack them up, knock them down. They certainly spoke the same language.
The others watched them, sipping tea and offering particular blocks to them at certain moments in the construction process. Sucandra and Padma and Anna and Charlie and Nick sat on the couches, talking about Khembalung and Washington, D.C., and how much they were alike.
Then one tower of cubes and beams stood longer than the others had. Rudra Cakrin had constructed it with care, and the repetition of primary colors was pretty: blue, red, yellow, green, blue, yellow, red, green, blue, red, green, red. It was tall enough that ordinarily Joe would have already knocked it over, but he seemed to like this one. He stared at it, mouth hanging open in a less-than-brilliant expression. Rudra Cakrin looked over at Sucandra, said something. Sucandra replied quickly, sounding displeased, which surprised Charlie. Drepung and Padma suddenly paid attention. Rudra Cakrin picked out a yellow cube, showed it to Sucandra, and said something more. He put it on the top of the tower.
Oooh, Joe said. He tilted his head to one side then the other, observing.
He likes that one, Charlie noted.
At first no one answered. Then Drepung said, Its an old Tibetan pattern. You see it in mandalas. He looked to Sucandra, who said something sharp in Tibetan. Rudra Cakrin replied easily, shifted so that his knee knocked into the tower, collapsing it. Joe shuddered as if startled by a noise on the street.
Ah ga, he declared.
The Tibetans resumed the conversation. Nick was now explaining to Padma the distinction between whales and dolphins. Sucandra went out and helped Charlie a bit with the cleanup in the kitchen; finally Charlie shooed him out, feeling embarrassed that their pots were going to end up substantially cleaner than they had been before; Sucandra had been expertly scrubbing their bottoms with a wire pad found under the sink.
Around nine thirty they took their leave. Anna offered to call a cab, but they said the Metro was fine. They did not need guidance back to the station: Very easy. And interesting. There are many fine carpets in the shop windows.
Charlie was about to explain that this was the work of Iranians who had come to Washington after the fall of the Shah, but then he thought better of it. Not a happy precedent.
Instead he said to Sucandra, Ill give my friend Sridar a call and ask him to agree to meet with you. Hell be very helpful to you, even if you dont end up hiring his firm.
Im sure. Many thanks. And they were off into the balmy night.
CHAPTER 4
SCIENCE IN THE CAPITAL
Whats New from the Department of Unfortunate Statistics?
Extinction Rate in Oceans Now Faster Than on Land. Coral Reef Collapses Leading to Mass Extinctions; Thirty Percent of Warm-water Species Estimated Gone. Fishing Stocks Depleted, UN Declares Scaleback Necessary or Commercial Species Will Crash.
Topsoil Loss Nears a Million Acres a Year. Deforestation now faster in temperate than tropical forests. Only 35% of tropical forests left.
The average Indian consumes 200 kilograms of grain a year; the average American, 800 kilograms; the average Italian, 400 kilograms. The Italian diet was rated best in the world for heart disease.
300 Tons of Weapons-grade Uranium and Plutonium Unaccounted For. High Mutation Rate of Microorganisms Near Radioactive Waste Treatment Sites. Antibiotics in Animal Feed Reduce Medical Effectiveness of Antibiotics for Humans. Environmental estrogens suspected in lowest ever human sperm counts.
Two Billion Tons of Carbon Added to the Atmosphere This Year. One of the five hottest years on record, again. The Fed Hopes U.S. Economy Will Grow by Four Percent in the Final Quarter.
Anna Quibler was in her office getting pumped. Her door was closed, the drapes (installed for her) were drawn. The pump was whirring in its triple sequence: low sigh, wheeze, clunk. The big suction cup made its vacuum pull during the wheeze, tugging her distended left breast outward and causing drips of white milk to fall off the end of her nipple. The milk then ran down a clear tube into the clear bag in its plastic protective tube, which she would fill to the ten-ounce mark.
It was an unconscious activity by now, and she was working on her computer while it happened. She only had to remember not to overfill the bottle, and to switch breasts. She had long since explored the biological and engineering details of this process, and had gotten not exactly bored, but as far as she could go with it, and used to the sameness of it all. There was nothing new to investigate, so she was on to other things. What Anna liked was to study new things. This was what kept her coauthoring papers with her sometime-collaborators at Duke, and working on the editorial board of The Journal of Statistical Biology, despite the fact that her job at NSF as director of the Bioinformatics Division might be said to be occupying her more than full-time already. But much of that job was administrative, and like the milk pumping, fully explored. It was in her other projects where she could still learn new things.