Also by Quan Barry

  Fiction

  We Ride Upon Sticks

  She Weeps Each Time You’re Born

  Poetry

  Loose Strife

  Water Puppets

  Controvertibles

  Asylum

  Plays

  The Mytilenean Debate

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Quan Barry

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers for permission to reprint excerpts from Essential Tibetan Buddhism by Robert A. F. Thurman. Copyright © 1995 by Robert A. F. Thurman. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Buddhist symbols by kathykonkle/DigitalVision/Getty Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Barry, Quan, author.

  Title: When I’m gone, look for me in the East / Quan Barry.

  Description: First Edition. New York : Pantheon Books, 2022

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021028160 (print). LCCN 2021028161 (ebook). ISBN 9781524748111 (hardcover). ISBN 9781524748128 (ebook).

  Classification: LCC PS3602.A838 W48 2022 (print) | LCC PS3602.A838 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2021028160

  LC ebook record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2021028161

  Ebook ISBN 9781524748128

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Cover illustration by Na Kim

  Cover design by Kelly Blair

  Map and compass art by Rodica Prato

  ep_prh_6.0_139201566_c0_r0

  For the sangha

  Contents

  With homage, homage, homage I bow down!

  Offering praises, I pay homage!

  Who praises, who is praised?

  When will I understand that we are like

  Water poured in water, butter poured in fire?

  Either You Get to Ulaanbaatar by Sundown or You Don’t

  Listen Without Distraction

  Outside the post office in Bor-Urt, a handful of men clump around a pool table, its felt top sun-ravaged and mangy, the men’s faces weathered from living in a world without trees. When I step outside they stare, each man a finger in a fist, and the one slumped in the ratty camping chair at the head of the table is the thumb. I glance at the digital watch the Rinpoche hands me last night, its plastic band already cracked, the thing used. I know it is a necessity, that I must have it for the places I am to journey to in my search that must not fail. Nevertheless I feel like one of the wild horses foreign researchers shoot down with arrow guns, the animal succumbing so that the researcher can fix the radio collar around its neck, the collar eventually becoming a part of the body. After just a few hours in the July light, the skin around my wrist is already somewhat paler than the rest of me, though like the planets and the summer sun, nothing is permanent.

  It is ten in the morning. The main road through Bor-Urt periodically billows with dust as a breeze blows through town. The men stare at me and then look away. Someone spits in the dirt. Hidden in the folds of my robe there is a bag filled with more tögrög than they can earn in six months or even a year if the winter is harsh. Normally they would be out on the grasslands, out watching their flocks or herding them in for one of the two daily milkings, but today they drive the many kilometers into Bor-Urt on their motorbikes to bring their wives in to do the shopping. The men huddle idly around the table as men often do as they wait for women. Men with time on their hands, looking to establish their status among their kind.

  I step out of the post office, and their faces fall. I am not what they want. I am a novice of the Yatuugiin Gol monastery, a monk who lives in the shadow of the sleeping volcano. As it is mid-morning, the mail truck I am to ride to Ulaanbaatar on the first stage of my journey is not scheduled to arrive for hours. Thirteen hundred years ago Shantideva tells us the only source of happiness in the universe is the cherishing of the other. Silently I approach the table and nod.

  Brother, booms the one enthroned in the camping chair. He is sitting with his legs spread wide, a toothpick in his fingers as he works at his teeth. Something in the lackadaisical arrangement of his limbs reminds me of Mun, Mun’s long black hair often loose like a horse’s mane. I only play for money, the man says.

  A good policy, I say. I lay ₮2,000 on the table.

  Ten minutes later and I can tell the others do not know who to root for—the one who sits outside the post office each day looking to deprive the local herdsmen of their money or me, a young monk from Yatuu Gol in his simple red robe. My body wavers like a flame in the summer heat. On the faded table the balls roll and crack like stars.

  In the Universe’s Eternal Calendar, It Is Always Now

  Now there is only the black ball remaining for me to sink, the thing a hole rumbling in space. At the other end of the table my opponent draws heavily on the cigarette he lights after I sink three in a row. He stands smoking with the toothpick still wedged in his teeth, eyeing the two balls he has left on the table. The angle of my final shot is not an easy one. Earlier the second ball I pocket is a spectacular combination shot, the men all gasping as it rolls in. As there is no chalk, I rub the tip of my stick in the dirt. My opponent is breathing hard. It is proving to be an exciting game. Should he lose there is no reason for him to hang his head. Oddly enough, a loss could be good for business. Once word gets out, normally reticent herdsmen might begin to saunter up and lay down their hard-earned tögrög, thinking he is beatable. I wonder if he has a wife and children. I wonder why he chooses a life in town, the town consisting of a few hundred people and a series of dusty buildings constructed in the blocky Russian style, when every beautiful thing is far from here.

  I clear my mind and lean in, the stick an extension of my body. In the silence Övöö’s two favorite sayings come to me—the world is what we make it, and a man’s dreams are the most real part of him. My grandfather with his thick limp, his broken teeth, his eyes forever scanning the horizon. I draw my arm back and send the universe scattering.

  The cue ball goes spinning erratically off the eight, a comet colliding with an asteroid. Collectively we watch the white ball roll toward a pocket. Life is suffering. Everywhere mercy and the power of mercy. I exhale and the cue ball falls in. The men cheer. My opponent smiles. Very nice game, he says. Because I am a monk, as a formality he offers me back my ₮2,000, but I bow and he stuffs the bill in his shirt.

  Brother, how do you play so well, someone asks. I do not tell him the truth, that this is my first game ever. I think of Mun, my brother with his hair braided down to his shoulders in the old style worn by the horsemen of Chinggis Khaan. If I close my eyes I can see one of Mun’s braids skimming the table as he bends down to survey a shot. Each day at Yatuu Gol’s morning puja, in my mind’s eye Mun on his golden cushion silently reminding me we are all Chinggis Khaan’s wandering descendants, every last one of us.

  I turn toward my questioner. Even under his hat the work of years in the summer sun is obvious. I imagine the simple life this man leads out on the grasslands, the smell of sheep and the milk hardening on the roof, but nothing is ever simple. Once you are bitten by a snake, you become cautious of rope. I tell the man an approximation of the truth.

  In another life, I say.

  Then I walk to the community center and the town’s one larch tree and I plant myself beneath it with nothing but a bag of money and a half-written letter wrapped up in the folds of my robe and wait for my destiny to claim me. Listen closely: today may be the year 2015, the month July, but in the universe’s eternal calendar, it is always now. What every moment of sentience for the past twenty-three years teaches me. There is one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering. This is the true journey. Everything else is bait. I place myself on the earth with the intention of rising up rooted like a tree.

  When the Only Hope Is a Boat and There Is No Boat

  The moon is already rising hours before sundown when my opponent staggers up the road and motions for me to follow. Both pool sticks are gripped in his hands, the toothpick still clenched between his teeth. Prior to this moment I am sitting all day in the lotus position under the larch tree, trying to conquer the feeling spreading in my chest, a feeling like being carried away by a swollen river, the water like a series of hands dragging you into the turbid cold. For the past several hours my heart alternately beating the mail truck arrives and then the mail truck does not arrive. But I think of the Rinpoche back in the monastery at Yatuu Gol, my teacher a man well into his eighties. How he entrusts me with this task, his digital watch periodically beeping on my wrist. How I am only fifteen kilometers from the sleeping volcano and already I am stuck.

  Such is the life of the grasslands. There are few paved highways here. With travel there is never any certainty. Journeys that should only take hours stretch on i
nto days or longer. The grasslands are rife with lands where no car ventures. From Bor-Urt the mail truck that arrives in town once a week is the only scheduled way out, and today it has yet to appear. Though the sun is still well above the horizon, already the moon begins its nightly climb. To be defeated before I even begin. Inside me the watery feeling starts to take root, solidify, ice curdling on the surface of a river, my eyes rimed like glass on a winter day. I move deeper within myself, occupying as little space as possible.

  My opponent waits for me to rise. Does he know how important it is that I get to Ulaanbaatar’s Gandan Tegchenling Monastery before sundown tomorrow? The Buddha says when the only hope is a boat and there is no boat, I will be the boat. I watch as my opponent spits the toothpick into the dirt. There is nothing else for me to do but follow. My heart falls silent. Destiny is letting yourself go where you are meant to go even when your mind says otherwise.

  I Am Not on the Edge of a Forest

  My opponent leads me along the one dusty road through Bor-Urt to the other side of town. He walks silently ahead, his eyes locked on the ground as if deep in prayer. Each time he moves, the small burlap sack slung over his shoulder clatters with a sound like old bones. In each hand he grasps a pool stick which he carries like a spear. An aura of violence surrounds him—some of it past, some of it yet to manifest. The way he walks with a swagger, his shoulders muscled like a horse.

  Despite his aggressive emanations, something about this man’s presence comforts me. I begin to feel hopeful, a boat lifting off rocks as the tide rises. But then I remember the pitfalls of such feelings. Hope makes it difficult to accept things as they are when things as they are seem unacceptable. Hope is about projection, about living in a time to come. Doubt is one of the six mental afflictions and the near cousin of hope. To combat it, I must always remember where I am. On the edge of a forest, the sun would just now be falling into the tops of the trees, a spectacular sight. But at this moment I am not on the edge of a forest.

  Instead, we turn and enter a neighborhood of ger. The structures look alien, like objects from outer space. I am used to ger dotting the grasslands, gray smoke spiraling from their iron stovepipes, their impermanence an absolute. One day you pass them and the next day they’re gone, a trampled circle left behind in a vast sea of grass. But here within the borders of a town riddled with square concrete buildings, the ger look extraterrestrial, a flock of peculiar animals penned in for the night.

  Evening. Bor-Urt. A pool hustler. Emerging stars. Just last night the Rinpoche at Yatuu Gol asking me to make this journey. This is what life brings. I bow my head and accept.

  For the sake of every sentient being who exists both now and in the thought realms of past and future, I must help find an ancient light, what we call a tulku. A tulku is the reincarnation of an enlightened teacher. This tulku chooses to be born again here in Mongolia under our eternal blue sky. While this being is not the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama Himself, who lives in exile in Dharamshala, this particular tulku is destined to help carry on our faith through these troubled times. My mission: to lend my strength where needed in the search for this reincarnation. Last night I stand in the Rinpoche’s cramped room, his bed piled high with prayer books, so many that he sleeps on a woven mat on the floor. When he requests that I lend my strength to the search, I know he is not referring to any physical gifts I may have but to my spirit, my indomitable patience, which is remarked on by others time and again, this rock that anchors me in this world. I tell him I am ready to add whatever light I may possess to the task. I bow in a manner that I hope conveys that I am aware of the trust being placed in me.

  Then it happens. The Rinpoche offers me a bag filled with tögrög. For the journey, he says. Outside, the sound of Yatuu Gol’s only rooster informing the world of his existence. For the first time, the Rinpoche bows to me in a manner that goes beyond convention. Something in the length of time he holds the bow, the angle of his back. I am stunned. The world trembles. This elderly monk who survives the purges by remaining hidden for decades and is now single-handedly resurrecting the faith in a five-hundred-square-kilometer radius is bowing to me. He is bowing to me as an equal. When he stands back up, I accept the bag of money with both hands, and press it to my forehead. It is the most money I am ever to hold. May this tögrög bring only blessings into the world.

  As Is Tradition, This Door Faces South

  When we arrive, a blue light is flickering under the threshold. My opponent pushes open the wooden door. Come, he says impatiently, ducking his head. I enter with hands folded.

  Now that I count myself among the monks at Yatuu Gol, I stand just inside the door for a moment and marvel. It is a long time since I find myself in a Mongolian ger. When the need arises, a ger can be packed up and loaded onto a truck or cart within a few hours. This ger is typical, no more than nine meters at its widest, much like the one I grow up in as a child. Electrical cords snake over the floor, a parquet plastic sheeting covered with worn rugs. Because we are in town, a thick orange power cord runs up one of the two central pillars that supports the roof. The cord continues on out the toono that opens at the top. Around the toono the wooden slats that make up the roof fit into a circular ring, the slats painted a fiery orange and radiating out from the center of the roof like rays of light. I imagine the power cord must plug into an electrical box somewhere outside, possibly a box the whole neighborhood shares. When my twin and I are children out on the grasslands, our ger is electrified by both a generator and solar energy, a small panel winking in the sun just outside the door.

  As is tradition, this door faces south. A cast-iron stove sits in the middle of the room. Next to the stove there’s a small table, some wooden stools for guests to sit. Several large chests are pushed up against the walls. Much of the interior furniture is painted red, orange, and yellow, and covered with intricate designs. Two small beds face each other on opposite sides of the ger. Memories of long nights on the steppe sweep over me. If a family has many children, they might place felt mattresses down on the floor each night. Growing up, Mun and I stuff our pillows with old clothes that are out of season. Since the age of eight, I live in a monastery, but anytime I find myself in a ger, I remember my first self. There is nothing like the sense of home to open one’s heart to all things. And here above it all a blue flag hangs from the skylight—a nod to Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky, our people’s first god.

  There Are Times When We Must Walk Toward the Darkest Dark

  Because of the light from a television in the corner, it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. The sound on the TV is off, but through the blizzard of staticky snow I can make out four western women sitting with shiny triangular glasses in their hands, the women sipping daintily. Then I see her. Down on her haunches in front of the stove. A little girl, probably no more than ten, the girl throwing dried dung in the fire, the flames brightening. When she sees my opponent, the girl jumps up and wraps her arms around his waist. For the briefest of moments, his aura wavers. The way the moon sometimes dons a halo, its skin as if smudged with light. He licks his fingers and wipes a dark smudge from the child’s face.

  You’re off to Ulaanbaatar, the little girl says as my opponent carefully props the pool sticks in the corner by the altar. In the honored place next to a shot glass and an empty bottle of vodka, a young woman poses unsmiling in her best jacket, the Eiffel Tower in the background, though the cityscape is just a photographer’s backdrop.

  It takes me a moment to realize the child is talking to me. I wonder how she knows my destination. Perhaps earlier today someone in the post office tells my opponent who somehow whispers it to her just now. I wonder if the girl knows what lies ahead of me. If I am up to the task. If I have anything to offer.