were already rejecting the world you were leaving behind. The world was reduced to what was left of your memory; in other words a name, yours, the last pale reflection of a process that had come full term; and, by erasing it, as the Chinese version of the Satyasiddhi-Sutra states, you were putting yourself beyond the past and, eventually, beyond the order of time altogether.
To get back to writing these notes, in the academic sense of the word, the thing that encourages me to take this liberty is the fact that there indisputably is a printing press-monastery (and that’s a term you must have coined for the purpose, given that the establishment calls itself a “temple where the monks print Buddhist sutras”) in Pagan. They’ve been printing books there since the eleventh century as indicated by the date of completion on the cover of the Satyasiddhi-Sutra: fifth year of the reign of King Anawratha (Aniruddha). I’d also like to point out that the reliquary in which the work was found, the one cited and commented on above, is in lacquered wood which has been extremely well preserved, and that the tradition of this particular kind of lacquer-work goes back at least as far as King Anawratha’s reign.
I would like to say a few words about the lacquer, because I feel an irresistible rush of pride to think that, unless I’m wrong, I’m the only person to know of the secret love you felt for a Chinese lacquered box sculpted with figures and landscapes that your grandmother gave you for Christmas when you were ten. You yourself told me about it when I visited you in the camp: you couldn’t take your eyes off this newfound friend and the tiniest scratch on it would have broken your heart. Then you recited a Rimbaud poem that you’d translated into Tumchooq, although you were so disappointed with the translation you said it spoiled the precious memory you’d just shared with me. Then you left. That memory returned to me recently when I came across the same poem, “The Orphans’ New Year’s Gift,” while teaching myself French from a book I was given:
—Ah! what a beautiful morning, this New Year’s morning! During the night each had dreamt of his dear ones
In some strange dream when you saw toys,
Candies dressed in gold, sparkling jewels,
Whirling and dancing a sonorous dance …
Buddha teaches us that everything is as if it were nothing, or rather as if it were pure non-being, not that this means an individual’s actions are in the least way subject to chance. Quite the opposite, they are laid down as part of a grand design from which, I believe, even your predilection for Chinese lacquer isn’t exempt. It was a sort of sign from destiny, which deals out the cards: it only remained for you to use them. Zhuangzi was the first to compare a scholar’s life to that of the lacquer tree, Rhus vernicifera, an elegant tree some twenty metres high, but which, from the age of eight to forty (the twilight of its life), is exploited, incised and regularly bled of its precious fragrant sap, thick and white as curdled milk, oozing gently from the monstrous open wound on its trunk. It is collected, filtered, purified, dyed and applied layer after layer onto wood or another background, to become a work of art, a symbol of refinement.
The Pagan reliquary in question bears a long inscription which gives the names of the craftsmen and workshop managers, and the date it was made as well as testifying to the time and application taken to turn a simple object into a unique treasure: lacquer was painted on in thin layers, each one dried and sanded before the next was applied. As this exquisite substance coagulates only in humid conditions, the drying process was carried out on the Irrawaddy in a boat taken onto the water a total of fifty times, the exact number of layers of lacquer needed to create this one item. Then the scene of Buddha’s Extinction—depicted in three different tableaux—was sculpted on it, carved through the thickness of the layers: first there is an atmosphere of fear as the pyre built by the Mallas refuses to catch light until Kasyapa, his most faithful disciple, has come to kiss his masters feet one last time; then, in a mood of intense emotion, Kasyapa almost swoons with grief and has to be supported by another disciple to say his final farewell to Buddha; lastly,