Neon Lotus Read Online Free PDF

violence
accomplishes nothing , that even death cannot stop us .
    He looked
over at Tashi’s electronic slate and sighed. Here his mentor had proved the
equality of emptiness and appearance. Something was missing from the equation,
but he had no idea what. Tashi had left him floating in an ever-widening wake.
Who knew what the device might have accomplished, had Tashi brought the work to
completion?
    He set down
the slate, stared again into the silvery eye of the Bardo device, and then sat
back to wait.
    For you , Tashi , I will wait for years .
    ***
    Kate lay
shivering in Peter’s arms, wide awake, feeling the first touch of dawn on her
eyelids. She had slept no more than a few hours in the wake of their
lovemaking. Their passion had swept her into a warm, peaceful sea—a sea of
dreams. But soon those dark waters had turned threatening. She had been
awakened by nightmares of gunfire, explosions, severed hands, voices screaming
in languages she did not know. Peter had slept on through the night, warm as
embers in a hearth. She had clung to him without disturbing him, but wishing
all the same that he were awake to reassure her.
    The chaos of
the previous night had continued long past the death of the three-eyed man. The
Dharamsala police had called his demise suicide; a poison capsule had been
discovered crushed between his molars. The police had grilled Peter and Kate in
broken English on their involvement in the capture. After hours of sitting in
the hotel manager’s office being asked the same questions again and again, she
had begun to believe that she and Peter were suspects. But eventually the
officers had made heartfelt apologies and let them go.
    No
explanations had been offered, however. She still had no idea who had been shot,
or why. The body of the three-eyed man had been removed by the time they
returned to their room, and their friends had gone to sleep.
    “I want to
leave,” she had told Peter, as soon as they were inside.
    “Leave? Why?
It’s over, Kate. We have a week in Dharamsala. You’ll forget about it.”
    She had
begun to cry then, burying her face in the hollow of his neck. “I can’t stop
thinking about it.”
    “Mm.” His
arms went around her. “There’s nothing else we can do.”
    She kept
thinking of the man with the bony face. It was the pain in his eyes, more than
anything else, that hurt her.
    “Hold me,”
she’d said.
    “I am
holding you.”
    “Closer. I
need . . . ”
    “What?”
    She hadn’t
been able to say. It was nothing she could put into words. But Peter had
understood. They had let their bodies speak, reaffirming that they were
together and alive despite the frailty of muscle, blood, and bone. She began to
wonder if she had been in India too long, if she were becoming a nihilist. Life
was cheap here. You saw it expended everywhere: corpses on the roadside, pyres
burning on the ghats.
    In silence,
their bodies argued. No, Peter seemed to say. It’s not
only that. There is also this .
    Pleasure had
worked its way through her muffled senses until the night air pierced her
lungs. Their bodies came together, gasping, of one mind, violence and sorrow
forgotten for the moment.
    Now she
opened her eyes and stared at the mountains above the hotel. The sky was
brilliant blue, bottomless. She felt as if she were falling into it.
    Peter
stirred. Fearing that her shivering would wake him, she slipped out of the bag
and drew on her clothes.
    “Where are
you going?”
    She turned,
hopping on one stockinged foot as she struggled to get a hiking sneaker onto
the other.
    “I didn’t
want to wake you,” she said.
    He sat up, rubbing
sleep from his eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”
    She smiled.
“I’m just going to the bathroom.”
    “I don’t
mean that. I mean, I don’t want you to go back to California.”
    She stopped
hopping and put down her foot.
    “Come back
to Geneva with me.”
    “Peter . . .
”
    “Kate, I
love you. ”
    She kicked
off the shoe and knelt beside