The Breath of God. Jeffrey Small

to his room many times over the past weeks: “Om mani padme hum.”

      She put her finger to her lips, so he leaned into her. “It’s Sanskrit. Originated in India, but it migrated to Tibet. A form of meditation for the monks.” He couldn’t believe how intoxicating it felt to be close to someone he’d only just met.

      “What’s it mean?” she whispered in his ear.

      “My friend Kinley translated it as ‘the jewel in the lotus of the heart.’ I think it has to do with the idea that the light of the divine burns inside each of us.”

      “Beautiful.”

      “I guess so.” His eyes lingered on her face, then followed her gaze around the temple. The rectangular hall was supported by twenty-foot-tall bronze-coated wooden columns around the perimeter of the room. Above them, a balcony circled three of the four sides of the hall. Above the balcony, an elaborately carved and painted wooden ceiling mirrored the decorations on the wood trim on the exterior of the building. On the right end of the room where the balcony ended, six monumental statues rose from behind a stone altar. Grant recognized the one in the middle, the tallest at two stories in height, as the Buddha. The only light came from windows placed high in the second story and from the candles along the altar.

      The chanting rose from the monks seated on reed mats in a rectangular formation in the center of the room. With the exception of the young boy, Ummon, whose shy smiles Grant had become fond of whenever the boy brought his morning tea, the monks were mostly in their teens or early twenties, like Jigme, who also sat among them. Every other monk held a drum attached to a twenty-four-inch stick. They beat the drums in unison with a second padded stick while they chanted with their eyes closed. Two elderly monks sat at one end of the rectangle, blowing into long wooden wind instruments that reminded Grant of Swiss alphorns.

      Grant could feel the bass reverberation of the drums within his core, and the harmonic voices of the monks filled the air with a weight almost as heavy as the atmosphere of candle smoke and incense. If Grant hadn’t had something more important on his mind at that moment, he might almost have found the effect calming.

      “That’s him.” Grant nodded to the only monk in the center group dressed in orange robes. Kinley had explained that orange designated his position of honor as the senior monk present at the monastery. Kinley paced around the group holding a string of prayer beads, which he would periodically shake in front of any of the young monks who drummed out of rhythm from the others.

      Grant had to restrain himself from hobbling over to Kinley and begging to be taken to the library. Over the past week, he’d offered to help the monk strategize how to sneak him in, but Kinley had only changed the subject. Then a troubling thought occurred to Grant. Would Kinley use the villagers’ activity in the monastery as an excuse to delay the unveiling of the manuscripts again?

      Grant watched the stream of villagers pass by the seated monks and head to the far left end of the temple, the opposite end from the giant statues. The locals lined up in front of an oversized throne, upholstered in a luxurious purple velvet and perched on a platform six inches above four simple wooden chairs that flanked it. They stacked the food they brought next to a small altar on the side of the platform. Then Grant saw the figure sitting on the throne.

       CHAPTER 8

       EMORY UNIVERSITY ATLANTA, GEORGIA

      ENGLISH LIT PROFESSOR MARTHA SIMPSON pulled her pashmina tighter around her neck. A brisk wind had picked up since she’d left Harold Billingsly’s house. Fortunately, the parking deck was just around the corner. She glanced over her shoulder, checking that the maple-lined sidewalk behind her was still empty. She might have been more cautious about walking alone on the city street if it had been midnight, but at five AM the streets were deserted. The only vehicle to be seen was a white van parked across the street by the CDC buildings. Probably the cleaning crew, she thought.

      Picking up her pace, she recalled the lecture she and Harold had attended the previous evening. She’d found Professor Browning’s comments on Leonardo’s use of chiaroscuro in The Virgin of the Rocks particularly interesting, but she guessed that Harold had gone just to be nice to her. Art history wasn’t his passion like it was hers. He’d attended the lectures and museum trips because they excited her. She was lucky to have found a man who was as caring as Harold was. Sure, he was ten years her senior, but at her age that no longer mattered.

      Although they had only been on four formal dates, they had known each other for years through various faculty functions. She’d even sat in on some of his lectures. He was an engaging speaker and a first-rate theologian. Lately he’d been excited about a new project that had piqued her curiosity when he told her he couldn’t reveal any details about it yet. For some reason, it had to remain secret, but he’d promised she’d be the first to know. Martha wasn’t religious herself, but she respected Harold’s passion and his views. She was also looking forward to the following weekend, when they had plans to go to his cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina. The fall leaves would be at their peak then, and she was excited to spend some time lounging by the fireplace with him.

      She opened her purse, a colorful Vera Bradley, and removed the round tin of Altoids. Trying to pry the lid open, her fingers slipped, and the container of mints tumbled to the sidewalk.

      “Darn it!”

      The can rolled across the pavement and stopped at the edge of the grass. At least it didn’t open. The last thing she wanted to do at this hour was to collect a hundred little candies from the sidewalk. She bent over and reached for the tin.

      The wall of heat hit her as unexpectedly as if she’d stepped onto the street and was struck by a speeding truck. The invisible force picked Martha up off her feet, sucking the breath from her lungs. The thunder of the explosion rang through her head. Then the dark night around her erupted into an orange inferno, engulfing her world.

      Strangely, she didn’t experience any pain.

       CHAPTER 9

       PUNAKHA DZONG, BHUTAN

      RECLINING ON THE THRONE at the far left end of the temple was a rotund monk about thirty years old. Unlike the crimson-robed monks Grant had seen during his stay, this monk wore orange, just like Kinley. Who is this other senior monk? Grant wondered. He immediately worried about how this development might affect Kinley’s ability to take him to the off-limits library.

      In spite of his impatience, Grant stood by Kristin and watched as the villagers received a ritual blessing from the orange-clad monk. When the villagers approached the throne, they prostrated themselves three times on the wooden floor. Then they rose, covered their mouths with their left hands, and bowed their heads in front of the holy man. He reached out with a lemoncolored staff and touched their heads while mumbling a blessing with the bored expression of an assembly worker in the middle of his shift.

      “Reminds me of when I was thirteen,” Kristin whispered in his ear, her hair falling on his cheek, “dressed in a frilly white confirmation dress, which made my mom happy. I knelt at the altar in the cathedral. When I bowed my head, the bishop blessed me.”

      Grant turned to face her. “You know, many rituals of the Church and its monasteries were patterned after the monarchies they existed under.”

      “So the bishop’s pointy hat is like the king’s crown?”

      He nodded. “The bishop, as well as the most senior monk here, also carries a pastoral staff, just as the king would carry a royal staff; each wears unique royal robes; each sits on thrones elevated above their minions; subjects kneel in deference to them and bring offerings in the form of tithing to the Church and taxes to the king.”

      Ten minutes later, the drumming from the young monks in the center of the temple ceased. While the blessings from the holy man on the throne continued, Kinley nodded to the students, who opened the Buddhist textbooks