Max's Folly by Bill Turpin

Author:Bill Turpin [Turpin, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771830768
Publisher: Guernica Editions Inc
Published: 2015-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

• • •

A few minutes later, having ascertained that Gurus drink, Max has led his client to a bar he knows too well.

“Why are there fish swimming through this . . .?” the Guru asks, gesturing to the clear tube surrounding the bar.

Max raises his eyebrows, expels a breath and shrugs, as if to say that no one really knows. “But they’re here, so successive owners just keep feeding them.”

“Do they have names?”

Max begins to ruminate on appropriate names for fish but catches himself.

“What’s your full name?” he asks the Guru.

“Bernard Ashok Carruthers.”

Hmmm.

“Ashok?” Max asks. “Does that name have a meaning?”

“Why is it that when people hear a foreign name they want to know what it means? Does anyone ever ask you what Max means? Do you even know?”

“It was a professional question, but the answer to your questions are dunno, no and no.”

The Guru nods. “Ashok honours Ashoka, a great Indian emperor who one day realized that victory at any cost is actually defeat. Then he adopted Buddhist principles and instituted a reign of peace.”

“That’s good, but not great,” Max says. “What’s the name actually mean? Like Miller — everyone knows what Miller means.”

“Let’s see if I understand you. My name — my actual name — is good, but not great,” the Guru says. “You seem to have an instinct for your new business.”

“Irony is not lost on me, you know,” Max says. “I’m fully aware that I’m staring at goldfish in a Plexiglas pipe with some kind of sarcastic guru. Are you going to tell me what Ashok means?”

“Well, it means something like ‘without sadness’ or ‘without sorrow’.”

Without sadness, Max thinks. Thank you, Jesus. This job is even easier than I imagined. All you have to do is buy your client a beer and get him to cough up the meaning of his middle name.

“Don’t you think,” Max says, “that ‘without sadness’ is a much better name than Bernie — no offence?”

“But meditation is not about driving away sadness.”

“It’s not?”

“Can’t be done. You can make room for sadness, though.”

Max is about to ask why it can’t be done, but realizes that if driving out sadness was that easy, there wouldn’t be any sadness. He thinks about ways to turn this obvious communications weakness into a strength, one of the perversities of his new trade.

“Well, can’t you use it as a talking point?” Max says.

He suggests the Guru say something like: “My name means ‘without sadness’, but don’t take that too literally.”

“And then you go on to make your real point,” Max adds.

“My real point,” the Guru says. “As opposed to my phony point.”

“No, your talking point. There’s a difference. Think of it as a teaching point.”

The Guru signals for more beer, is disappointed to learn there is nothing on tap from Hungary, and orders a Remy Martin instead. Max sticks with beer.

“That’s actually a good idea,” the Guru says. “It’s an opportunity to teach. What do you call it? It’s a teachable moment.”

“Exactly,” Max says, who has orbited

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