Buddhas and Bikinis - Vetbook

courtyard a blur of lavender and magenta leaves like a Renoir impression.
There came a rustling sound, a note thrust under the door.
Buddhas and Bikinis 6
The hallway was empty when I glanced down the corridor. I sat down on my bed,
unfolding the scented parchment, across which beautiful calligraphy flowed:
One thought and a thousand worlds come into being...
A young girl stands on a beach, wishing for an angel,
The sand falls through her fingers, yet she is the beach.
‛Where are you?’ she asks.
‛Here,’ he says.
She frowns, disappointed. ‛You are but an ordinary boy; pretty, vain and fearful of
passion. You are but a fallen angel. Why should I love you?’
‛I am a messenger of God’s sacred contract,’ he says. ‛Signed, sealed, delivered.'
But all she sees is bitter irony; she has ignored those who adored her, adored those
who ignored her, hurt those who loved her and loved those who hurt her.
One world and a thousand angels come into being...
I smiled, forgetting momentarily my pending exam.
The opening line of Hiroshi’s letter made me realise that this girl had faith, the
same as my mother. Now there was a woman blinded by faith. She lived in a reflective
chrysalis of gilded-framed icons and butter-lamps, reminiscent of her Christian childhood
in Kastellorizo, Greece. She was a social butterfly until she married a devil who clipped
her wings, and called her fat, like a caterpillar. She weaned my father, Stavros, of his
infidelities on the lathe of her ample breasts, gave him twins, first me the oldest by twelve
minutes, then Maria. The synchronised squealing offspring reminding her just how lucky
she was to be the wife of a somebody.
‛Saints are worthless,’ I said to my mother. I was ten, leading my sister astray.
‛Saints - they’re like the Joker when you’re playing seven card stud. Tits on a bull.’
She laughed with her egg-and-lettuce-Tuesdays’ mouth and poker-dotted dress that
made her fat jiggle ten years longer than it should.
‛Son,’ she said, appended to her solemn epistle on God and raising children, ‛Be
careful, life is not a card game, the ego thrives on self-beatification as much as self-
beautification, both hindrances on the path to heaven. Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling.’
But I disagreed, loudly shouting, ‛You’re an idiot, Mum!’