The Stone and the Vicious Dog

  In the Light He Shines and Glints

  This time the landscape is sand, the world a never-ending dune in the heart of the Gobi. Everything in flux, everything impermanent. In the nearby cliffs the exposed bones of dinosaurs bleaching in the white heat. The lidless eye of the sun beats down on my shoulder, the skin of my body as dissoluble as limestone. Two cinereous vultures circle overhead. The way their species is named for ashes, what is transitory. Though they soar above at a great distance, I know these two as if we are intimates. Unlike all other birds in existence, these two have no feet, their bodies forever airborne, forever unable to land.

  He is standing on the tallest dune, sand the color of turmeric. This time He-Who-Is-Always-Hooded wears no clothing. Instead his whole body resplendent with seashells, bits of coral stuck to his skin as if he is a creature of the sea. In the light he shines and glints like a weapon. The six syllables of the jewel-in-the-lotus mantra fill the air. Om mani padme hum. I know what he wants, why this figure appears every night in my dreams for the past year. He smiles and points to the east. His fingers wink with mother-of-pearl, arms studded with the silver coins of sand dollars. His body so radiant I lose him in the desert glare just as I am beginning to understand the path he chooses for me.

  It can take innumerable lifetimes to wake up from this dream we call life. When awakening finally occurs, one often wakes up laughing. I open my eyes, but as always no laughter comes. Am I ever to find my way into the one radiant moment that is all things?

  How Quickly Things Change

  I am lying on a mattress in a western-style bed, the thing so soft I am afraid to move lest it break. This is what it must feel like to float along in a soap bubble or to be the wind itself, the air like hands holding you up. I wonder what it is about this way of sleeping that westerners prefer. To me, despite the ethereal softness, I feel like one of the dead, a body whose ties to the earth are severed so that I feel nothing, am nothing.

  Though he tries to hide it, I can tell Mun is embarrassed. He lies on the floor in a patch of dawn that comes angling through the window. When I enter his apartment an hour ago, I see my brother’s mind in the chaos of books and DVDs, posters of foreign films. I lie directly under one of four men in dark suits and sunglasses walking down a street, each with a gun in hand. Upon my arrival, the bed is unmade and piled with clothes and dishes, the thing no more than a glorified shelf. On the floor at the foot of the bed is a nest of blankets and pillows, the traditional leitur stuffed with straw.

  From a young age, I imagine my brother sleeping in a western-style bed, the mattress soft as a cloud of newly shorn wool. Winter nights when we are children it is all he talks about, the two of us lying on opposite ends of the leitur in the dark. Someday I’m getting away from all this, the child Mun says in my memory. This morning I try not to laugh as Mun’s sheepishness seeps into my waking mind. He may no longer be a herder, but he still sleeps like one.

  How quickly things change. Yesterday waking at Yatuu Gol in the shadow of the volcano, and today I am waking a world away in the capital. What never changes: emptiness, no-self, impermanence. It is only a little more than an hour ago that Noyon the friendly police officer and I drive through the heart of Ulaanbaatar, turning a corner in the dawn light to find my brother standing on the street out in front of his building and wearing what he calls a hoodie, my twin rubbing his arms to keep warm. When I get out of the car, there is no hug between us. I know Mun would be there waiting for me and he knows it too.

  It’s early, he grumbles.

  At Yatuu Gol, morning puja begins at 5:00 a.m., I say brightly, a fact my twin knows as well as anyone. Mun scowls and our reunion is complete. Mostly we prefer to communicate verbally, especially in front of others. People can sense when we are wordlessly sharing thoughts though they do not know what is happening—our father says he can feel a tingling rippling between us. Since childhood, we practice various ways to keep each other out of our mind, to hold and maintain secrets.

  Before heading out on the long drive back to the grasslands, Noyon gets out of the car and does one full-body prostration at my brother’s feet. Mun looks exasperated. Nevertheless, he clasps Noyon’s outstretched hands in his own, raising them to his forehead and giving them a squeeze. Then my brother turns and leads me into the building.

  A Hungry Man Who Remembers the Taste of Food

  I sit up in bed and stretch my arms. In the past twenty-four hours I have only this hour of sleep and what I am able to manage on the drive here. It is enough as I am accustomed to existing on little. Mun is sitting upright among his lair of blankets. Already he has a cigarette going, the cherry burning hungrily. I can’t believe you’re down for this, he says. He runs a finger through his toes as if looking for sand. Instantly I know he also awakens from the same recurring dream of a mysterious figure among the dunes and bejeweled in the treasure of the seas, a figure calling us to find him.

  Mun lights another cigarette off the end of the first one. It’s unbelievable, he says, how after everything that happens, you still think being a reincarnation is a good thing.

  I’m not the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, I remind him.

  My brother purses his lips and blows a smoke ring my way. Together we watch it rise toward the ceiling. Deftly he begins to braid his hair while still holding the cigarette between his fingers. Neither am I, he says. He waves a hand around the shabby room. Open your eyes, he adds.

  It is more than a year since I last see my twin. His hair now hangs past his shoulders, his face adorned with a patchy beard thickest around his mouth. As he braids his hair into two plaits, he reminds me of a young Chinggis Khaan, his face slightly pinched as if he is hearing something with which he does not agree.

  It’s hot in the cramped apartment, and it’s only a little past seven o’clock. The toilet is down the hall and shared by everyone on the floor. In a corner there’s a hot plate and a water spigot but no sink, just a red plastic bucket. Mun stretches and stands up. I can see the birthmark staining his neck, the flames sharp as knives. In Mongolia and throughout Asia, many of us are born with the Mongolian blue spot. Generally it is found on the backside, the skin mottled as if bruised, babies born with blue spots on their rumps, their bodies as if tattooed with maps. Most blue spots disappear before the age of five, but not Mun’s. To me it looks like a hand grasping for something just out of reach. It is the kind of mark where one can see in it what one wants to see, a test of the perceiver. Come on, he says. We got a lot to do.

  Then we can count on your help. I intone this silently. I do not put my request into actual words, as if merely thinking it might somehow soften my desperation.

  Mun slaps his naked belly with both hands. I remember this habit of his from Yatuu Gol. On days when his anger is at its sharpest he slaps himself until the skin turns pink, a small conflagration burning around each pupil. I live in the real world, he says out loud. He slaps himself again only harder. I gotta make a living.

  I already know what my brother is thinking. I try to hide my disappointment. We are twins, genetically identical in every way. Up until this moment I am hoping the bond between us is enough for him to aid me in this quest I am tasked with. Instead, I pull my bag of tögrög out from where I keep it hidden in the folds of my robe. Mun eyes it like a hungry man who remembers the taste of food. Still, he does not say yes. A wall of fire rages between us. Something deeper is needed to get him to agree. But for the moment I do not know what that something is.

  Conrad

  The fire inside my brother burns lower but does not go out entirely. You wanna come with me today, he asks. Mongolian is one of the world’s old tongues, the ancient script like eagle tracks in snow. The sound of the language is almost unchanged since the time Chinggis Khaan shapes the earth and establishes what would become his magnificent court in Karakorum. Or you gonna stay here and pray for the whole world, my brother says, the language in his mouth strangely modern, as if a foreigner is speaking a slang-heavy idiom but somehow in Mongolian. He brings me a bowl of water from the spigot. Bits of dust float on the surface.

  Tonight I am to meet the rest of the search party at Gandan Tegchenling Monastery. To walk through the monastery gates alone without my twin by my side is to doom our search before it even begins. We need him and his ancient wisdom even if he no longer counts himself among the faithful. All right, I say, today I’m yours. I bow my head and accept the water. I kneel and begin my ablution. I wash my face and feet, breathing as deeply as I can. When done, I dress. In Tibetan Buddhism, our triple robe is different from our brothers’ who follow other traditions. Of the numerous Buddhist sects, our clothes are the most colorful; some even describe our attire as flamboyant. Older Mongolian lamas often wear the traditional deel sewn in scarlet fabric or gold brocade; wearing the long-sleeved deel keeps one warm in winter. As it is summer, I choose to wear the Tibetan banzal, a long full maroon skirt, with a short-sleeved dongog that can be either yellow or red. In winter, I wear long sleeves, but for now I wrap an orhimj in such a way that my left shoulder is covered by this scarlet shawl while my right arm is bare. In the days of the Buddha, the robes of a monk are made from cast-off fabric, cloth that is sewn together from rags that are stained, perhaps with blood, or used to shroud corpses. Today we use mostly new fabric, though in keeping with tradition, there is always one small section of used material somewhere on our robes. Lastly, I slip on my sandals, my only pair of shoes.

  Mun wriggles into a pair of long plaid shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of a baby in a swimming pool paddling after a piece of money. On his feet he wears some type of western sneaker that looks flimsy and is laced in such a way he never needs to tie them. He grabs an already bulging backpack and stuffs a few items in it. The white cord from his earbuds snakes down his shirt to a tiny silver MP3 player that clips on his shorts. I recognize it from his days at the monastery. Many of the monks at Yatuu Gol have similar devices. We may be monks, but we are not hermits living isolated lives in mountaintop caves. Some novices even have iPhones.

  Ready, he asks. He takes a hat off a hook, a gray fedora much like the kind herdsmen wear out on the grasslands. As my twin now knows from his interactions with tourists, fedoras are also popular with young urbanites in the west. Mun scans the room. I let him feel my disappointment about his refusal to help, but I don’t mention it out loud. We must play the game as we learn to play it and as life demands. To act as if we do not share an inner life, that we cannot read each other’s thoughts, which we discover time and again makes others uneasy.

  I too glance around the apartment. I wonder how long it takes him to accumulate the trappings of this new life. I myself am my own planet. Everything I need is right here—on my body, in my heart, in my mind. As I think this I sense Mun’s agitation. Tonight the journey I set out on from the gates of Gandan Tegchenling does not sit well with him. He wants no part in it. To him, the idea of branding another as a tulku, a reincarnated being, is abhorrent. He knows better than anyone the subsequent responsibility of such a naming. I wonder if there is something else my brother, the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness, is not telling me. I am your servant always, I say.

  Cut it out, he says, swiping a pair of keys off a hook.

  I follow him out into the hallway and watch as he locks the door. By the stairwell he leans over and tucks a key on a ledge up high above a grimy window. The sunlight is filled with dust, tiny motes swirling haphazardly. I think of the billion-billion-armed universe that contains every sentient being. For the millionth time in my life I am glad I am not the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. Instead, I am the Servant to the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. Mine is only an honorary title. My neck is perfect and unmarred. May it never be otherwise!

  It is only then that I notice. As he reaches up to tuck the key on the ledge. The script running down the inner forearm of his right arm. The script dark green and in English, the letters tattooed in a simple font. it is written i be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.

  My twin sees me staring. Conrad, he says, adjusting the earbuds in his ears. Heart of Darkness. You should read it sometime.

  I feel as if the world tilts, as if I might slide out of existence. Together and apart we walk down the stairs.

  O Possessor of the Eye of Omnipotence—Look Upon Us With Compassion!

  Today, the first week of July, Ulaanbaatar is full of foreignness. Every physical characteristic. Brown eyes, green eyes, eyes blue as wolves’. Skin from palest ivory to deep-brown sand. This is my first time in the capital. I also feel foreign, my red robe like a flag, but nobody pays me any mind. Mun lives on a small side street in a maze of streets, this the heart of the district that caters to tourists. There are internet cafés and hostels and tour agents, places to rent motorbikes, places to do laundry. In the shop windows there are foods packaged in bright colors, things I would not even recognize as food except for Mun’s memories of eating them.

  We pass women with long black hair, their bodies thin, their faces Chinese, cheekbones chiseled as if eroded by the wind. In the same block we pass women who look like our mother in the photographs on our childhood altar, their bodies thick and stout with the ruddy complexion of most Mongolians, their cheeks flushed with blood. It is the influence of the Silk Road, for the last millennium people from all over the world flocking here and interbreeding. A man who looks like a white Russian walks by with a woman dark as India, the two of them speaking Mongolian.

  Like Chinggis Khaan, Mun positions himself in the center of the world. Sükhbaatar is Ulaanbaatar’s central governmental district, the place of commerce and tourism. Ulaanbaatar is a city of just over a million, almost half the population of the country. More and more young people are leaving the steppe. Earlier this morning as I drive into the city with Noyon, we pass neighborhoods composed entirely of traditional ger where recent immigrants from the countryside live who are too poor to afford western rooms. These neighborhoods are also crammed with simple shanties. In the winter months, Ulaanbaatar is one of the most polluted capitals in the world, the air hazy as if smudged, tens of thousands of people heating their homes, cooking their food with fires, the air filled with particulate. But in summer, the skies clear as the need for indoor fires lessens, the eternal blue sky once again blue and endless, perhaps the bluest in all the world.

  Now we are just blocks from Sükhbaatar Square and the mammoth steel statue of Chinggis Khaan that looms over the plaza, everywhere his figure reflected in glass. Across the street is a three-story shopping mall. Although it is not yet eight o’clock, ours is a culture attuned to the hours animals keep. Already people pour out of the first-floor grocery store at the mall’s entrance. I realize Mun’s address must be highly coveted, a few feet of floor space in the heart of the new Mongolia.

  It’s not always like this, says Mun. At a wooden cart manned by a young boy he stops to buy some fried meat on a stick and a drink in a silver can. But it’ll be like this all week.

  Why, I ask.

  He looks at me. Wow, he says, you really are living in the twelfth century. It’s Naadam, he says. I feel a wave of stale rage crest in me. Mun acts as if he can’t sense it.

  Two blocks down we turn into a side street. A group of foreigners sits outside a shop with the words tuul tours written on a big white sign mounted over the doorway. Each foreigner hefting a backpack, their whole world crammed in a single bag. A blond girl gets up and rushes over to Mun, throws her arms around his neck, kisses him on the cheek. Munny dearest, she says in English, you taking us to Terelj National Park?

  I feel a heat begin to prickle in my chest at my twin’s familiarity with women.

  Not today, love, says my brother. The girl pretends to pout. Don’t look so sad, says Mun, but already the girl turns her back on him and is running toward a tanned backpacker walking up the street.

  As If Simply Stepping Over a Puddle

  Inside the office, racks of brochures sprout haphazardly from the floor. Mun slips through the crowd and makes his way toward a desk. A woman sits in an office chair chewing gum, a map of Mongolia taped up on the wall behind her, yellow pushpins dotting areas of interest. A foreign couple sits in front of the woman’s desk, a guidebook open on the man’s lap. The woman picks up the phone and converses in Mongolian. From time to time she turns and speaks to the couple in some other language unknown to me though several foreigners in the room seem to speak it, each of them almost two meters tall, even the women.

  Everywhere is chaos. People stand with backpacks, people in chairs, on sofas. Many stand fanning themselves with pamphlets detailing different attractions. Mun grabs a piece of candy from a dish on the woman’s desk and unwraps it, pops it in his mouth. In the crush, I try to make myself as small as possible. There are so many languages being spoken I feel like the whole world is crammed in this one room.

  The woman holds a hand over the mouthpiece and speaks to Mun. You’re late, she says, snapping her gum. From her tone and demeanor, I gather this must be Tuul.

  I’m right on time, he says, never taking his earbuds out. I watch as he begins folding the candy wrapper into something origami-style, maybe a bird or a flower.

  Tuul hands him a clipboard. Round up your group and get going, she says. The itinerary’s there.

  Mun looks it over. You expect me to hightail it all the way from the stadium out to Hui Doloon Khutag by three, he says.

  You’re supposed to be the best, says Tuul, grinning. She goes back to the phone.