Now the nun quickened her pace, passing doors and windows as her cloth slippers scraped harshly against the pavement. As I again noticed the two mutilated fingers, my heart pounded within my chest. In order not to miss her, I dashed to the parallel path on the other side of the garden, scurried a short distance ahead, then cut across another path perpendicular to the one that the nun had taken.

We stopped, face-to-face. I tried not to stare at her scar. “Dai Nam!”

She halted. Her face had the expression of a frightened cat.

“Dai Nam, don’t you recognize me? I’m Meng Ning, your friend from Paris.”

The nun’s face showed no recognition. “I am Miao Rong.”

Wonderful Countenance.

“I’m sorry…Miao Rong Shifu,” I said, looking at her scar and feeling ridiculous. Why did the temple give her this name? To remind her of her past karma? And what karma was that?

An awkward pause, then I said, “Can we find a place to talk?…I’ve been thinking about you since you left for China…”

“What do you want from me?” the nun asked flatly. I could almost see her scar writhe like a trapped snake.

“I don’t want anything. I just want to talk, to know how you are.”

“I’m fine.” Her eyes flickered suspiciously under her oversized, black-rimmed glasses.

“Yes…but that’s not what I mean…” I hated my stammer. “Can we talk? Dai…Miao Rong Shifu.” I moved close to her to let her know that I would not give up. That although she was bigger and older than I, and now had the status of a nun, I was not intimidated.

Her eyes looked impenetrable.

“Please, I won’t take up too much of your time.” I felt embarrassed to be pleading, but stood firm on the ground in front of her.

“All right…follow me.”

Once we arrived in her room, Dai Nam excused herself. “Please sit and wait for a moment.”

I was suspicious. Would she just disappear as she had done three years before in China?

Her room was small and neat; the air conditioning seemed almost noiseless. Outside buzzed the distant noises of construction; inside floated the scent of fresh flowers and incense. Along one wall rested a cot; beside it stood a wooden chest as tightly closed as if stoutly guarding its mistress’s secrets. A bronze incense burner and a bowl with fresh lotuses sat before a small altar with a ceramic Buddha. Framed pictures and documents hung conspicuously over her desk.

I stepped closer to inspect the pictures: Dai Nam as a nun in Thailand, holding a begging bowl, in front of strangely shaped stone ruins. Dai Nam in front of the Arc de Triomphe, her full head of black hair fluttering in the wind. Dai Nam with her French professor at the entrance of the Université de Paris VII. Her doctoral certificate in a gold frame. The pictures hung in chronological order, but none showed her stay in China. Why had she left out this part of her past?

I slumped down into the chair. Did Dai Nam really think she could settle her mind by shaving her head, putting on a robe, and strenuously tidying up her room? I wondered what torrents flowed under her emotionless face and the tidy appearance of her room. And what demons knocked around within her.

I remembered that one evening as we were sipping tea in her attic in Paris, Dai Nam told me how she’d run away from her alcoholic-gambling-womanizing father and money-thirsty stepmother, and had swum across the shark-infested Mirs Bay to Hong Kong. She had tried and failed seven times. She said, “During Daruma’s nine years sitting in Zen meditation, his legs were nibbled away by rats, withered, and fell off. Yet after that, he remained upright because he had found his center through meditation. You know the proverb, ‘Fall down seven times; get up eight.’ The limbless Daruma doll always rights itself when knocked over. That was also how I came to Hong Kong.”

After she had arrived in the Fragrant Harbor, Dai Nam’s great-aunt took her in, bought her a Hong Kong identity card, and enrolled her in a charity Buddhist middle school. Later, she sent Dai Nam to a Buddhist college. When we met in Paris, Dai Nam had just spent two years in Thailand experiencing the life of a lay nun, begging for her food-the experience she had turned into her Ph.D. dissertation.

Dai Nam and I became friends because of our shared interest in Buddhism. Her eccentricity, her loneliness, and her obsessive cultivation of nonattachment intrigued me. Yet her withdrawn personality had always made our friendship tense and difficult. She rarely looked me in the eye when she talked, and when she did, her eyes were bottomless holes revealing nothing. Although her face never showed definite emotion, her gaze betrayed agitation and restlessness. Silent most of the time, she could also be talkative. When she talked she seemed more withdrawn-her eyes would turn abstract and her mind seemed to be at some far-off place.

One day when we were still living in Paris, she’d invited me to her home and told me she had to leave for China immediately. Her long-estranged father was dying from lung cancer. That was the last time I, or anyone else I knew, saw her. Until now, when suddenly she had resurfaced in Hong Kong as a nun.

The door’s click woke me from my musing. Dai Nam entered with a tray laden with a pot of tea, two cups, and a plate of fruits. She put the tray onto the desk, pulled up another chair, and poured tea.

“Please,” she said.

I watched her closely as she held the teapot with her mutilated fingers. How had this happened?

I took the cup she handed me with both hands to show my respect for her new status as a nun. “Thank you…Miao Rong Shifu,” I said. It still felt odd to call her by the preposterous name of Wonderful Countenance.

I quietly sipped my tea and struggled to think of something appropriate to begin the conversation. Dai Nam picked up a couple of grapes, popped them into her mouth, and chewed noisily. Despite the small wrinkles around her eyes, her thick-rimmed glasses, her disturbing scar, and the worn-out clothes she wore, this enigmatic woman in front of me might have been attractive in this life. Did she deliberately hide her charm? Why this radical effort at nonattachment? What really resided in her mind and in her heart?

Finally, I could only think to say, “How have you been?”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

“When did you come back to Hong Kong?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“Oh…did you ordain as a nun in this temple?”

“Yes.”

“So you plan to stay?”

“Yi Kong Shifu has asked me to be her assistant to take charge of the temple’s affairs.”

My cheeks felt hot. Hadn’t Yi Kong always implied that she wanted me to be her successor?

Dai Nam, as though reading my mind, said, “It’s only temporary. And she asked me only last week.” She paused, her gaze resting on her tea cup.

“Oh.” I put my cup down with a sharp clank. What had I done to my life? I’d turned down Michael’s proposal, neglected Yi Kong, and so far had no news about any interviews I’d applied for.

I squeezed out a smile. “Do you plan to take the position?”

Dai Nam stared at the construction outside for long seconds before she returned her gaze to me. “Do you think anyone could turn down such a call from Yi Kong Shifu?”

I could not think how to answer.

She changed the subject. “How was your talk with Chan Lan?”

Why was she suddenly asking about something totally irrelevant? “You mean the old lady in the garden?”

Dai Nam nodded and I said, “Interesting but sad…she told me she had a child but no husband. I wonder why.”

“She was a comfort woman in the thirties.” Noticing the shock on my face, Dai Nam sighed. “In 1932, the Japanese Navy set up comfort houses in Shanghai where more than a hundred Chinese women were forced to work. Chan Lan, even though already in her fifties, was one of them. A year later, she escaped from the comfort house and managed to board a ship to Hong Kong. There she washed dishes at a restaurant for twenty years. She’d saved some money and used it to open a small noodle shop. When she was too old to run her restaurant, she came to the nursing home in this temple.”