Zuolun came out of a cafe on the left bank of the Thames and walked through the thick London drizzle toward the hotel where he was staying. He wore a leather jacket unsuited to the season, its surface shining heavily under the rain-soaked streetlamps. In his left hand he carried a large dark green suitcase that looked very heavy and from time to time struck the ground with a dull thud.
Zuolun was his alias. His real name was Rexi Cairangdan. He had come all the way from distant Gamalinka to London for one reason only: the hierarch had received word from British believers that Nima Rima, the Solar Consort awaited for more than two hundred years by the Sangjie sect, had at last appeared. The Sangjie sect was a hidden offshoot of the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, long since unknown to the world. Yet its followers had concealed themselves among other sects, even sometimes attaching themselves to Bon practitioners, passing the line down generation after generation for the sake of that one legend.
Nima Rima sits cross-legged at the feet of Xiran Sengfo,
and the Buddha entrusted to her the final scripture. That scripture belongs neither to the Greater Vehicle nor the Lesser Vehicle; to neither exoteric nor esoteric teaching; to neither the southern nor the northern transmission. It is the Buddha’s first sentence and his last.
The County Hotel lay in the center of Covent Garden, only about half an hour away on foot. Carrying the suitcase, Zuolun stepped into the lobby, ignored the attendant who came forward to greet him, and went straight to his room. The corridor was carpeted in thick velvet of bright colors, preserving a decorative style carried over from Indochina in the Victorian age. Entering the room, Zuolun carefully checked the telephone and the wardrobe, then laid the suitcase flat in the middle of the room. After a moment’s hesitation, he decided he should bathe first, change into robes, and only then touch the case.
The County Hotel was an old three-star establishment. The guestrooms were equipped with all the necessities of life, but in order to preserve the old layout and style, no room had its own washroom. Guests had to share a common bath. Zuolun, raised in the pastoral districts, cared nothing for this, though even so he repeatedly checked the room before daring to leave it.
In the bath there were several drunks from Yorkshire chatting noisily. They saw a skinny Easterner whose left arm was wrapped with black prayer beads, his body trembling nervously in the steam. He was muttering to himself, and as the water droplets passed over his skin, they seemed to slow, gradually gathering into a transparent shell. Just as the drunks lowered their beer mugs in astonishment, the Easterner swiftly dried himself and left the bath.
Nima Rima is yellow in body, tranquil in expression, with a golden-red Buddhist radiance above her head. Nima Rima has sixteen legs and twenty-four eyes, symbolizing vulture, owl, parrot, eagle, magpie, chicken, and goose. She is more dazzlingly beautiful than the consorts of even the Eight Great Heavenly Kings.
Zuolun had no mind at all to scrub the dirt from his body. He only felt that the ritual of bathing would make him more devout. He dressed himself in blue-black monastic robes, took in his left hand a chu bell made from a kneecap bone, and placed his right hand on top of the suitcase lid.
Seen up close, the suitcase appeared larger than its actual size. Zuolun seemed to catch wafts of fragrance drifting out through the seams. That scent was one he knew better than almost any other; every herdsman’s daughter kept that smell in her tent. Yet gradually the fragrance seemed to fade until he could smell nothing at all. The suitcase before his eyes, meanwhile, slowly turned a brilliant yellow.
Zuolun opened the suitcase. With a cry, he fell backward to the floor.
Nima Rima sat naked upon a golden coffer, yellow in body, tranquil in expression, with a golden-red Buddhist radiance above her head. Swastika signs circled around her, while protective vajra deities danced behind her mounted on snow lions.
“Buddha!” Zuolun, in that instant becoming once more Rexi Cairangdan, threw himself flat upon the floor in full prostration, his palms pressed tightly against the carpet. The pointed end of the chu bell pierced the thick rug, and the prayer beads coiled around his arm like a snake.
Rexi Cairangdan saw the final two lines of scripture. They were engraved upon Nima Rima’s body itself, dense beyond counting, endless, flashing with golden light. Again and again he rose with hands joined, then threw himself back down to complete one prostration after another. After worshipping for a long time, he shut the suitcase, trembling, and drew from the sleeve of his robes a ritual conch, which he set on the floor with its mouth facing east.
“Ga Gong Rinpoche, we have finally found her!” he said into the conch with a shaking voice. After a long pause, a distant voice came back: “Bring her home.” Manchester, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Zhangmu, Gamalinka. In his mind Rexi Cairangdan sifted through the quickest route.
Aphrodul had lived as a guest in England ever since the days of George IV of the House of Hanover. Her sisters back in Norway had joined forces to drive her away, simply because the people there loved the sun a little too much. For several centuries now, plump, short, and covered in freckles, Aphrodul had never been welcome among the English. All she could do was lower herself to the noisiest and filthiest workers’ taverns, doing the dullest drudgework. She had changed jobs many times, but the locals were either Protestants or Catholics; no one worshipped a sun goddess. Changing one post for another meant only more work as a maid, a cleaner, and the like.
A few days earlier, when Aphrodul was coming home from work and passing through the blackness of Hyde Park, she had suddenly been struck hard on the back of the head and knocked unconscious. When she regained awareness, she found herself stuffed inside a suitcase, her body almost folded into the shape of a Z. The flesh of her belly pressed so hard that she could scarcely breathe. By all rights she ought to have suffocated long ago, except that she could not die. She was carted about inside the case, handed from one person to another.
After who knew how long, Aphrodul felt herself being stood upright and carried off once more, striking repeatedly against the ground, until she was finally brought somewhere new. After another long while, the suitcase opened. The foul stale air was swept away at once, and Aphrodul greedily dragged in huge breaths, wriggling desperately outward. Then suddenly she saw a small Easterner kneeling before her with an expression of reverence, performing rites she could not understand over and over. His eyes shone with a crazed devotion and faith so utterly sincere that she had not seen such a gaze in seven hundred years.
Aphrodul felt the power of centuries ago return to her body, and a breath of youth spread through her again. What you are willing to see, that is what you will see. This had always been the boon granted by the sun goddess to her worshippers over thousands of years. Just as she gathered her strength to say something to this Eastern believer, there came a slap, and the suitcase shut once more.
Further Reading
Consort Ming: in esoteric Buddhism, the female cultivation partner of an advanced male practitioner.
Xiran Sengfo: Avalokiteshvara.
Nima: in Tibetan, sun; Rima: in Tibetan, consort ming.
Aphrodul (Alvrodul): the sun goddess of Norse mythology.
[Image source] Freckle shared image.