“That’s good. By chance or design, you’ve begun at the beginning of the cycle.”
“It was by chance,” I told him, and he smiled politely, as if it made no great difference.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
I told him, and Theda chose that moment to arrive with my drink, a dark amber liquid in an oversize shot glass. I took a sip and blinked in astonishment at its weighty, charged smokiness.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?”
I nodded, suddenly feeling oddly detached, like a page torn from one book and inserted in another. “And ‘B’?” I asked. “Why are you called B?”
He gave me a twisted smile. “Do you know—I’m not entirely sure! This was a name the crowds chose for me, in answer to some deep, unconscious perception. When the name stuck, I did some research, as much as is possible about something like that. If, in ancient times, you met a man or a woman branded with the letter A, you knew that their sin was …?”
“Adultery.”
“Of course. That wasn’t just Hawthorne’s invention for The Scarlet Letter, you know. If you met someone branded with the letter B, you knew that his sin was blasphemy.”
“And is that in fact your sin?”
“Oh yes. But I can’t believe the crowds chose the letter for that reason—or at least not deliberately.”
“Then why?”
He shrugged. “I simply don’t know.”
“May I ask your real name?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I no longer use it, except on hotel registers.”
“All right. Why did you signal me to follow you?”
He smiled in a new way, as if out of real pleasure. “Do you know the ancient Chinese novel Monkey? It’s the story of a scamp of a stone ape hatched as a sort of divine accident from a stone egg on a mountaintop. After living a carefree life for many years he suddenly became aware that there’s a great deal to learn that he knew nothing of, and he set off across the world to find a teacher. At last he came to a monastery ruled by a famous sage, who let him attend classes with the other novices while serving as a sort of chore
boy. One day after several years the master asked Monkey what sort of wisdom he was searching for. Monkey asked in turn what sorts were available, then proceeded to reject each one as it was described. The master became enraged, cracked Monkey three times over the head with his knuckle-rapper, and stomped off. The other pupils were furious, but Monkey wasn’t dismayed, for he understood the language of secret signs and knew that the master had ordered him to come to his quarters at the third watch. When he arrived, the sage commended Monkey for insisting on a wisdom beyond what others would accept and made a magical revelation so powerful that Monkey received Illumination on the spot.”
Teachings: public and secret
I gave B a minute to go on, and when he didn’t, I asked him if I was a monkey he’d selected for special instruction.
“Possibly,” he said, “but that isn’t why I told the story.”
Go on.
“Why did the sage have two sets of teachings, public and secret?”
“I don’t know.”
B lowered his chin to his chest and gave me an ironical “up-from-under” look. “Give it some thought,” he told me. “Play along with me.”
“Why did the sage have two sets of teachings? I’d say it was because he wouldn’t be much of a sage if he didn’t. The public teachings are the ones that everyone hears, because those are the ones that can be articulated. The secret teachings are the ones that cannot be articulated at all—because they don’t exist.”
B nodded thoughtfully. “A very good, modern answer. The answer of a cynic.”
“I don’t think of myself as a cynic.”
“But you’re quite certain there are no secret teachings.”
“Absolutely certain.”