Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [53]
The pep talk was over.
Relieved to be out from under his acetylene gaze, I slipped into the corridor, shaking slightly, and put in a call to The Thumb to inform him of the news, that the show was going to fail, bec—
“AND ANOTHER THING: PLEASE STOP CALLING THE NETWORK EVERY TIME YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.”
—oops.
1 Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Of course I refused. Are you crazy? No freakin’ way! The instant the camera was off, I removed my harness, traveled back to safety on the side of the gorge again, and retired to a café for a glass of wine and a long sit-down. The lesson? Never give in to peer pressure, kids. Go your own way, even if it means sabotaging your TV career to do it.
10
The Girl with No Nose
“Well, Cash, good night. I wish you many blessings.”
I'm lying on the floor in a stupa.
Not a stupor, a stupa. Some kind of Buddhist meditation building with a raised platform at one end.
Four timid young monks in saffron-colored robes stand over me, each one an expressionless mannequin, elevated by love and light and infinite patience into a state of lofty indifference that sets them above life's minor tribulations. Which is how we'd all like to be, I'm sure, only some of us have bills to pay.
It's around 8:30 P.M. Almost dark outside. Lit by a couple of bare bulbs high in the ceiling, the meditation room is murkily uninviting, although thankfully the temperature, which has been in the 100s all day and sticky, has dipped a little. Now it's just oppressively claustrophobic. Fairly typical, I dare say, for a Cambodian summer.
While I wait and watch, fumbling hands unroll a thin mattress onto the bare wooden boards and rig a simple tent of blue mosquito netting over it.
Buddhist monks are by tradition nonviolent, honest, patient, effortlessly kind, and sober. So, of course, you'd never want to hang out with them socially. But here at Wat Bo Monastery it allows them to be very accommodating hosts, eager to welcome passing travelers to share their basic ways: eating simple food, wearing simple robes, and spending the night on a simple bed. And quite honestly, beds don't come much simpler than not having one.
“Our temple is open for the public of the world,” the head monk told me on the way here. His name is Preah Maha Vimaladhamma PIN SEM Sirisuvanno, which unless I'm mistaken is also the chemical name for aspirin, and a bit of a mouthful, even for a Cambodian.
“So I can come and stay for free?”
“Yes. For one, two, three days,” he said.
“Wow, this gets better and better!” The word “free” has the same effect on me that a hefty tax rebate has on others, or finding a neighbor's expensive magazines stuck in my mailbox by mistake. Nothing can quite beat the rush of exhilaration I feel on learning that something is to be handed to me on a plate with absolutely no effort on my part. “And where will I be sleeping?”
“This way.”
Down on the floor of the stupa, I find myself addressing Vim's bare ankles. (I call him Vim for short.) He's a slight, round-headed man with the permanent strained expression on his face of someone who's expecting a balloon to be popped close by his ear at any second. Despite his calm-enough-to-be-mistaken-for-dead demeanor and the noble position he holds within this young spiritual community, unfortunately for him he also possesses the voice of a fiendish supervillain, a creepy nasal monotone drone emitted through barely open lips, like an English tavern sign creaking in the wind, the way they do in old werewolf movies—nyeeeeeerk nyeeeeeerk nyeeeeeeeerk. Somehow within that sound, words are formed. Fiendish-sounding words.
“Well, Cash, good night…”—nyeeeeerk—“… we wish you many blessings. Tonight you are sleeping here alone. Is it comfortable for you?”
“It is very comfortable,” I respond through the netting. “So what do I do tomorrow?”
“You get up to have breakfast with us.”
“And what will we be eating?”
“Rice porridge. It is traditional for Cambodian monks to eat it.”
Rice porridge, eh? Hm. Maybe I'll sleep in.
The monks press their hands together, give