Bassanda and the Bolshevik Revolution, Ch. 51

Alba

June 1919

On one knee, Dara placed the handle of her kukri into Michael’s right hand—the hand that had held the pen, and the knife, and the pistol, with equal fear and equal courage. She gently closed his lifeless fingers upon the leather haft, still stained with Ivanovich’s blood. Then she crossed his arms, right over left, upon his chest, covering the hole in his side, where he lay on the gritty asphalt of the tenement roof. She reached out and gently closed his eyes, and was surprised to find her own breath short. Behind, she heard the first phrases of the Dharma chant.

Gate gate paragate paragate gate gate bodhi svaha.

She got to her feet, and saw the Professor against the parapet, looking out over the Parliament Square that lay below them, and the city beyond, its clay rooftops and chimney pots shifting from black to gray to rose in the rising sun. Dara came to her side. Jamshid was standing, weeping openly, his arms around a dry-eyed Luzja, who held her infant son. Yezget crouched in a fetal position against the parapet of the roof, hands clasped over his temples.

Lapin looked down at her, and smiled sadly. She made a gassho, palms together. “He was a great bodhisattva, even though he didn’t know it. He was like the Big Barbarian who came from the west, carrying the dharma—completing the task that karma had laid upon him, or Milarepa, who was able to clean his own bad karma.

“That our friend died does not lessen his courage or his accomplishment. It now turns to us, to carry on the teaching of his life, and of his death, in service of all beings. All things end: joy ends, suffering ends. His suffering is over; others’ is only beginning. We must think of them, as well.”

Yezget looked up, his face open and wondering. Jamshid and Luzja turned, and like him looked to the west.

Dara did not respond, but looked out over the rooftops as well. And, unexpectedly, her vision blurred. She scrubbed the khaki jacket sleeve roughly across her eyes, yet still the tears came.

And then, very faintly, echoing it seemed from all directions at once, but growing louder and louder into the range of hearing, they heard the sound of singing. It seemed to be coming from the sky: the flaming, low-hanging but swiftly rising eastern sun. There were voices in all ranges and registers, singing wordlessly in a swelling infinite chorus. She heard the Professor singing beside them, and then realized she was singing herself. The chorus grew louder and louder, like bells ringing, like the roll of thunder before dawn, the chorus of birds in an Alpine meadow, the rumble of avalanches and the rushing of mighty waters.

The Professor and Dara sang, and Jamshid and Yezget, and Luzja and her tiny baby, and Ranbir Singh and Emir Basha and their fighters sang around them, and it seemed as if the entire city below—the entire phenomenal world—and the sky above them, the flaming clouds and the unseen stars and waning Moon in the West and the flaming Sun in the East, were singing likewise.

The entire phenomenal world was singing, as the new day came.

THE END

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