Slow Fade (15 page)

Wesley nodded as if he had heard something profound. He stood up, saying he would be back in a moment, but then changed his mind and called on A.D. to come up and talk about what they were working on. “I don’t want to leave you in the lurch,” he told the Host, introducing A.D. and then walking back to talk to Evelyn, who was putting on her coat. The camera stayed with A.D. and the Host, who was drawing laughs with his deadpan confusion.

“I take it you are the producer of this project?” the Host began.

A.D. was trying to relax and present a contained and authoritative image, but he wasn’t succeeding. His eye kept darting over toward Wesley, who was standing against the far wall talking to Evelyn. At one point Sidney came in for a close-up and Wesley said something that made him turn and walk out of the studio.

“
. . .
and so, how did all this come about?” the Host was asking.

A.D. paused, as if gathering himself together, then smiled directly into the camera.

“I’ve always been a fan, you know? I’ve seen all the great films. And when I had a chance to put together a deal with Wesley Hardin, I jumped. Wesley wants to work with his family and I respect that. It’s altogether a new process for both of us. A departure film. You won’t have seen this kind of a story before from Wesley Hardin. I shouldn’t say this with him over there, but it’s so rare to work with a man his age who still hasn’t lost it. I’ve learned a lot from him. I didn’t know anything about film before I met him. I thought I did, but I didn’t. To be able to put together a deal around him, well, it makes you think about yourself in a different way
. . . .
”

A.D. looked over to see how Wesley was receiving all this. He was sitting alone in the back, Evelyn having disappeared.

“We don’t mean to exclude you,” the Host called out to Wesley. “Please, come on back, Wesley Hardin. We love you.”

The crowd laughed and cheered, and when A.D. stood up to applaud Wesley as he stepped up onto the podium, they applauded as well.

ON LEAVING
the studio, Evelyn hailed a cab and went directly back to the Sherry Netherland. After she had poured herself a drink she noticed Walker’s manila envelope lying on the coffee table in the living room. The image of Walker out there on the road coming closer and closer made her finally open the envelope and read the enclosed pages, if only to learn when he might arrive.

EXTERIOR. NEW DELHI — DAWN
. . .
Jim and Lacey are ready to roll, the Chrysler piled high with water containers, canned goods, camping equipment, suitcases, cameras, tape decks, and even a lightweight table and two folding director’s chairs
. . . .
They drive through the parched desolate countryside, through town after town jammed with an endless stream of people and the usual slow choked images of water buffaloes, cows, beggars, broken-down buses, etc. The tape deck plays Rod Stewart’s “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” and they sit back within the safe air-conditioned cocoon of the huge car, sightseers, voyeurs of a world they cannot touch, feel, or hear
. . . .
They slow to pass a funeral, the body carried on a freshly cut bamboo stretcher, wrapped in a grass mat and covered with flowers. Behind the body walk the mourners. For a brief moment they surge around the car, blinking at the strange apparitions inside. Lacey turns down Rod Stewart and they can hear the chanting: “Hare nam satya hai, Ram Nam satya hai.” “God is truth.”
. . .
But then the car passes through and the moment is just another image on the road
. . . .

THE DAY IS A MONTAGE FULL OF SOFT DISSOLVES
. . .
the enormous blazing sun climbing to its zenith
. . .
the car penetrating farther into the interior, the tape deck blasting out The Talking Heads, Dylan, and the Clash, passing women and children swaying through undulating waves of heat, laundry and earthen pots balanced on their heads
. . . .
That evening they drive through another village of mud huts strangled in heat and poverty and disease. Beyond some paddy fields and mango trees they see flashes of color and activity. A festival is going on, and they drive over the narrow sandy road and park near an ancient stone reservoir, its crumbling tiers descending to a shallow pool of green slime. A large crowd from the neighboring villages wanders about the reservoir watching snake charmers, acrobats, puppet acts, and singers. The soft light has a melancholy effect and the festival seems part of a dream. Jim and Lacey are stared at as if they are visitors from outer space until finally they flee, pursued by a crowd of children. In the safety of the car they drive until they reach an empty field, the dying sun spread out on the horizon in a display of raw umber and vermilion too exaggerated to film.

EXTERIOR — NIGHT
. . .
They prepare dinner, cooling soup and beans on the propane stove and spreading out canned ham and bread on the flimsy card table they unfold from the trunk of the car. Jim opens up a jar of caviar and uncorks a bottle of warm champagne while Lacey lights a candle and places it in the middle of the table. They eat in silence. Halfway through the meal, more than a little drunk, Lacey asks: “Do you think our marriage has a chance?”
. . .
“Not too much of a chance,” he admits. “We’re not honest enough with each other, for one thing.”
. . .
“You’re not going to play that old tune?” she asks angrily
. . . .
“I don’t want to. Believe me.” He boils water for coffee, tipping over a chair
. . . .
She won’t let it rest. “What do you mean, not honest enough? How can you say that after all we’ve gone through on this trip?”
. . .
Something lets go inside him and he says what he’s thinking. “This trip is a Band-Aid. There are areas it will never cover.”
. . .
She opens up a bottle of bourbon. “Like what? Give me an example.”
. . .
He sits down and gives her an example. “Like sex. We’ve become mechanical with each other.”
. . .
She considers that. “What else?”
. . .
“I can’t stand your compulsions and the obscene amount of time you spend indulging them. And sometimes I’m not too crazy about your smell and the way you nip at me all the time and the silly little ways you choose to distract yourself from taking anything too seriously.”
. . .
“What do you mean, my smell?”
. . .
“You get rank from time to time.”
. . .
“Are you finished?” she asks evenly
. . . .
“No, but go ahead.”
. . .
“For openers, you’re a creep for sabotaging this evening and starting something like this. I was even having a good time and actually feeling positive about us. But you always manage to pull the rug out from such moments because you can’t stand any kind of intimacy and will do anything to deflect it. You complain that I’m distracted but you’re paralyzed and the way you embrace your paralysis is totally demoralizing.”
. . .
Shocked by her own intensity, she stops and they sit silently, gathering up energy for a final assault. Night has fallen swiftly, almost brutally, and the candle on the table flickers and hesitates. He stands and walks over to her, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to slug her. “Go ahead,” she says defiantly as he jerks her to her feet, bending her backwards and biting her neck. As she struggles against him he kisses her. She gives in too easily and this dampens him somewhat, but he gets beyond that and throws her to the ground. She shrugs herself out of her pants and fumbles around in a suitcase. “What are you doing?” he asks, taken back
. . . .
“Looking for my diaphragm.”
. . .
Enraged he throws her down for real. “It’s either right now or I get in the car and leave you here,” he explains, ripping away the rest of her clothes
. . . .
“Oh, God, fuck me,” she moans
. . . .
In a fury he mounts her from the rear and tries to do just that
. . . .
As they plunge on, the moon rises over them, the car and the paddy field visible as well as a crowd of spectators. Jim notices them first. “Darling,” he says, imitating Cary Grant as he slowly withdraws. “Our enthusiasm seems to have drawn a crowd.” Lacey looks up and screams
. . . .
She and Jim make a run for the car
. . . .

INTERIOR — NIGHT
. . .
Locking the doors, Jim throws the car into reverse, then jolts it forward, sending a shower of sand over the crowd. They find the main road and drive through the night. Lacey is hysterical, unable to stop sobbing. A shape looms before them and they swerve, missing a water buffalo. Jim slows, then speeds up again. Despite himself, he laughs, drowning out Lacey’s sobs. “Well, I mean, after all,” he says, and then they are both laughing uncontrollably
. . . .

THE FOLLOWING DAY
. . .
finds them continuing on as before; the same dusty plains, mud villages, hollow-eyed children. They are sober and chastened, the Chrysler having become a mixed blessing, drawing attention everywhere even as it protects them. They pass through a small city where Jim wants to stay for the night, but Lacey implores him to keep going and so they roll on, the outskirts of the city looking as if a famine has recently swept through
. . . .
A few miles later a stone punctures the radiator and the car comes to a halt in a cloud of hissing steam. There is no sign of life except for a thin line of smoke in the distance. Lacey bursts into tears
. . . .
Jim shakes her. “This is no time to freak out. I’ll walk toward the smoke until I find someone.” Afraid to be alone, she decides to go with him and they lock the car and start off.

EXTERIOR — DAY
. . .
The ground is full of short spiky cactus and piles of smooth boulders. Lacey, who is walking ahead, stumbles and falls
. . . .
As if in a dream, Jim watches a cobra sway up out of the dead grass, its tongue tasting the air as it slides toward Lacey, who is sitting with her legs crossed, holding her ankle. For a brief second she controls her breathing before her fear overwhelms her, her head beginning to shake. “Oh, God, please,” she moans. As if in answer, the snake strikes, depositing its venom into her outstretched hand and in a long whipping motion disappearing into the dead grass
. . . .
Jim and Lacey sit watching each other. A hawk circles far above. A cricket chirps
. . . .
“I’m dead,” Lacey whispers. “How odd.”
. . .
Jim kneels before her and tries to suck the poison out of her hand
. . . .
“You have too many cavities,” she says as she slips into shock
. . . .
He spits out what his mouth has collected. “I saw it in a movie. William Holden, I think. In Africa.”
. . .
“Too late,” she whispers. “Hold me. It’s into my heart. The poison. Oh, please.”
. . .
He breaks then, sobbing as he holds her in his arms
. . . .
She stiffens, eyes imploring him. But he can do nothing, only cradle her as the pain envelops her and the breathing becomes harsh and ragged and finally stops altogether
. . . .
He sits through the afternoon and evening, unmoving, unseeing, holding her rigid in his arms while behind him a collection of children break the car window and begin to strip the car of its possessions.

TWO YEARS
later Walker sat underneath an elm tree at the end of a quiet residential street in Albany. He had been sitting for most of the day opposite Byron’s apartment, the top half of a simple two-story blue and white clapboard house. He had gotten the address from the directory office at the local college where Byron taught an elementary course in linguistic theory. When Byron had not appeared by late afternoon, Walker finally rang the doorbell. No one was home. He walked around the house to the back, where a small dark-haired woman in a blue nylon jogging suit was pulling up carrots from a vegetable garden. He asked where he might find Byron.

“He won’t be home for another few hours. I’m his wife.”

Walker asked if she knew Lama Yeshe.

“Lama Yeshe?” The question had an unsettling effect. “What do you want with Lama Yeshe?”

“I knew him in India.”

She stopped pulling up the carrots and walked over to him, wiping her hands on her pants. “You knew Byron in India?”

“I met him once. In New Delhi. How is he?”

“All right,” she said in a way that implied the opposite.

“Look, you’re not going to stay here, are you? The last person that came from India stayed for months and it wasn’t good for any of us.”

“I want to find out about my sister. That’s all. Byron knew her over there.”

She turned away, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Clementine?”

“Yes, I’m looking for her.”

She wearily faced him. “Byron and I made a deal not to talk about anything involving India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, or points east. I just haven’t learned how to handle any of it.”

“Any of what?”

She laughed, shrugging her shoulders. “Oh, you know. Karma and samsara. Lamas and their mamas. The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The action of nonaction. Clementine. Enlightenment. Any of those hit tunes. But there I go, it’s quicksand. Why don’t you go and see Lama Yeshe? He’ll drive you crazy trying to talk English and leave you more confused than ever.”

“I only want to ask him one question.”

“I know. He’ll tell you, too. He works in a frame shop on the corner of Eldridge and Macy. You can’t miss it.”

Walker told her he would come back the next day to see Byron. Then he drove down to the corner of Eldridge and Macy. When he reached the shop the proprietress, an old woman with blue-tinted hair, told him Yeshe was in back. Walker found him stacking wooden crates against the wall. He wore blue jeans and a green golf jersey with a small alligator sewn over the breast. He had allowed a helmet of thick black hair to grow back over his scalp, although Walker noticed that the roots were white where an apparent dye job had worn off.

“Lama Yeshe?” Walker asked.

Lama Yeshe didn’t answer, continuing to stack crates.

“Yeshe?”

“Ah.”

“I’m Clementine’s brother. I met you in New Delhi.”

“Ah
. . .
Clementine.”

Yeshe kept all stacking up the crates, refusing any help from Walker. After he finished, he separated a pile of frames into different sizes, hanging them on their designated pegs. Then he held up a frame for Walker’s inspection. “My job,” he said, his finger following the rectangular shape. Pulling a small dictionary from his pants pocket, he leafed through it until he found the word he wanted. “Image prison maker. No freedom for picture. Very good job. Freedom for me.” He slipped into a red nylon warm-up jacket, and they went out to the front of the shop.

“Good night, Yeshe,” the old woman said, looking up from where she had been balancing the books.

“Good night, Mrs. Orlovsky. You are happy?”

“Not happy, not sad,” she said mechanically, as if they had gone through this many times before.

“Good,” Yeshe replied.

“Not good. Not bad,” she said.

“Ah, very best. You not fire me?”

“Not for all the black men in China.”

“To the river?” Yeshe suggested.

They got into the van and Walker drove outside of town. The river valley was hot and they drove past apple orchards that were being harvested and dense fields of corn and alfalfa. After a while they crossed some railroad tracks and parked near a wooden pier. At the end of the pier a man and his small son fished for eels and beyond them in the river a speedboat went round and round in a large circle. It was only after they had sat down on a cement bench facing the river that Yeshe spoke.

“I remember Clementine.”

“My wife and I were looking for her. My wife died and I came home. It’s taken me all this time to find you.”

“Your wife is dead?”

“Yes. On the road to Benares.”

Yeshe looked directly at him and held up two fingers. “Wife and sister dead. Mother dead?”

“Yes. But you said Clementine was dead?”

Yeshe held up three fingers. “All women dead. Must take female inside.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind.”

“How did Clementine die?”

“Mind not so bad. Lungs very bad.”

“Pneumonia?”

“Maybe. Anyway, dead.”

The speedboat had stopped making circles and was floating idly in the middle of the river. “You said her mind was okay?” Walker asked. “Does that mean her death was free of pain and suffering?”

Yeshe walked over to the river’s edge and poked around, returning with a cracked milk bottle. Placing the bottle on the bench next to Walker, he went off again, gathering up pebbles. When he had enough he came back and dropped them into the bottle. He shook the half-full bottle so that the pebbles made a loud rattle.

“Noisy mind,” Yeshe said. “Much fear.”

Then he filled the bottle up to the brim so that when he shook it there was no sound. “Full mind,” he said. “No fear.” Letting the pebbles spill out until the bottle was empty, he said: “Empty mind. No fear.” Then he selected two pebbles and dropped them inside the bottle and shook it slowly so that there were only separate clinks. “Clementine’s mind,” he said and handed the bottle to Walker.

Walker filled the bottle halfway with pebbles and shook it loudly. “Walker’s mind,” he said. “Very noisy. Very scared.”

Yeshe laughed and shook his head in agreement and they sat silently with the setting sun slanting in across the river. The speedboat had sped away somewhere and the man and his son who had been fishing for eels had left. No one was about except for an old woman in a faded yellow housecoat walking a puppy with a tightly held leash made from a piece of rope. The image of the old woman as she constantly yanked the puppy by the neck made Walker inexplicably sad and tears formed in his eyes. Yeshe wasn’t watching, staring down at the ground and moving his lips in silent prayer.

“Never mind,” Yeshe said. He took out a small notebook from his jacket pocket and tore out three empty pages. Handing the pages to Walker he asked him to “Write mother name. Sister name. Wife name.”

Walker wrote the names and handed back the pages. Yeshe carefully folded them up, one inside the other, and put them in his pocket. Then he gathered up scraps of wood and newspaper and started a small fire. When the fire was going he handed the folded pieces of paper to Walker, nodding for him to throw the paper into the flames. After another round of prayers, he clapped his hands three times, and that was the end of it. Bowing to Walker, he walked away, down the railroad tracks toward the city.

“Wait,” Walker cried, running after him. “I’ll drive you home.”

Yeshe whirled to face him, his eyes wrathful and unyielding. “Don’t follow. You’re the car. I’m foot.”

“You’ll get lost,” Walker insisted.

“Lost?”

“Disappear. Separate. Become cut off.”

Yeshe whipped out his dictionary and looked up the word. “No loose,” he said and looked up another word. “No loose. No target.”

“The city is your target.”

“No city. Only one foot, then another. No one, no thing, no where. I loose all. Very good fortune for me. You stay and watch smoke. Sister, mother, and wife all go in smoke. Wave good-bye. Then walk loose forever.”

With that he turned and walked down the tracks.

Walker watched the smoke until the fire had burned down to ashes. Then he got into the van and drove aimlessly through the countryside. When night fell he stopped at a roadside tavern and drank three rounds of straight bourbon. A
Star Wars
movie was playing at a drive-in down the road and he bought a bottle next door and drove in, turning off the sound and watching the images. The images didn’t help, and he lay down on the seat and sipped the bourbon straight out of the bottle. When the film ended he stayed to watch the credits, looking for names that he knew. He thought he recognized the art director’s name and possibly the assistant wardrobe man, but he wasn’t sure. Everyone else was unknown to him. That was as it should be, he thought, and drove back to the motel, where he finished the bottle of bourbon.

The next afternoon he went to see Byron. He found him in the backyard near the vegetable garden shooting a basketball at a hoop with a wooden backboard and no net. He was wearing sneakers and cut-off jeans, and he wasn’t as Walker remembered him. He had gained weight around the middle and his hair was cut short. Despite his labored breathing, he looked like he knew what he was doing on the court. Walker sat down and watched until finally Byron came over.

“Clementine’s brother?” Byron asked. “I thought it was you. Although you seem changed. But aren’t we all?” He held out his hand and Walker got up and shook it. “Did you see Yeshe down there at the shop or was he off somewhere watching the World Series?”

“I saw him.”

“You’re one of the few. He usually won’t see anyone. I suppose he recognized you.”

“I guess so, although I sure didn’t recognize him.”

“Well, no. He’s trying out something new. Cutting loose from the old ways. At least on the surface. If I wasn’t such an old, used-up disciple of his, he would have gotten rid of me long ago. He doesn’t even let me translate for him. But forget all that. I’m sorry about your sister. What happened to you, that you didn’t show up?”

“It’s too long a story.”

“Tell it anyway.”

“My wife died on the road and I flipped out and ended up in Benares stripped of everything and wandering around like some crazy American sadhu. Somehow I made it to Darjeeling and then up to Kathmandu, where I stayed in a Buddhist monastery outside of town. I just collapsed there, not doing anything but sleeping and eating. After six months I found my way home through Thailand and Hong Kong. I didn’t learn about Clementine until yesterday from Lama Yeshe.”

While Walker was talking Byron kept glancing at the upstairs window where his wife sat watching them. He waved tentatively but she didn’t wave back.

“She’s upset,” Byron said. “We almost broke up last night on account of you, or rather Clementine. A few weeks ago she stumbled on some letters from Clementine when she was up in the Kulu valley. Your arrival opened up the whole thing again.”

“But that’s yesterday’s news.”

“They were amazing letters. They exposed a capacity for intimacy in me that my wife didn’t know existed.”

He picked up the basketball and threw up a long one-hander which missed the basket and the entire backboard. “Both Clementine and I were going through separate crises. She was scared and isolated and having experiences that she couldn’t control or understand. I felt stuck and burned out with India and wanted to get back before I became too strange and out of touch. For a long time we were each other’s only witnesses.”

“Can’t Yeshe set your wife straight?”

“She won’t have anything to do with him. He doesn’t care, of course. It’s a mystery to me how I got involved with anyone who is so hostile to what I’m doing. But why go into that? I suppose you want to know how Clementine died?”

Walker nodded.

Byron put on a sweat shirt that was lying on the ground. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t stand to see her up there blasting me with her rage and suffering.”

They walked around to the van, and Byron directed Walker to a tavern ten blocks away. They ordered beers, and Byron told him about Clementine. It was the first time he had told any of it, and often he paused and stared down at the table or took a long sip of beer.

“Technically she died of pneumonia, but a lot of her systems had already given out and if it hadn’t been her lungs it would have been something else. There had been signals about her health before, but she had always ignored them. We even fought about it, and I accused her of being impulsive about death. And it was true, she was fatalistic and passive and totally unprotective toward herself, which got her into trouble when she went off alone, which she often did. She took all kinds of chances, eating anything, trusting anyone, going anywhere. Yeshe was always scolding her about being undiscriminating and having the wrong view about service and sacrifice. She was doing a complicated practice offering up her body to all the sacred sources of refuge. Part of the visualization involves severing your skull from your body and then placing the remaining corpse inside a skull cauldron and offering it up. Clementine went for it like she was literally going to offer herself up. She was like a moray eel. Once she started chewing she wouldn’t let go until she cut it right through to the bone. You almost had to sedate her to get her to stop. She had too much diligence, too much ambition, and she was as vain as a rock-’n’-roll star the way she set about trying to become enlightened. It was as if the more she believed all the brochures about Nirvana and all-encompassing wisdom-mind, the more knotted and twisted she became. I’ve been like that. One of those bushy-tailed pilgrims endlessly seeking until I got reduced by my own mind, which was inevitable, given my attachment to results. Since then I don’t take anything for granted. It’s just one step at a time now. One day at a time. This is a chair, this is a table, this is a hand, this is a story. It wasn’t like that with your sister. Nothing was ever concrete. Nothing balanced. Everything offered up. A kind of reverse cannibalism. She had so much self-hate, but why get stopped there? What was so ferocious about her was the way she was trying to be holy. She was always worried that she wasn’t authentic, that she was just another deluded seeker from the West strung out on spiritual materialism. Every morning before dawn she would go down to the river and buy all the fish that were half dead and set them loose in the river. She couldn’t get enough of lepers and mutilated creatures, as if she were trying to take on the afflictions. On top of that, she was losing weight and beginning to look consumptive and her responses to people were too intense and compassionate, if you know what I mean? She was also having out-of-the-body experiences. Anything would set her off. A sound. Her meditation. The flight of a bird. Making love. We had to pull back on sex because she would often disappear into some other zone. She had to be grounded by a meal or her period or something on her mind. And even then she was a bliss junkie. Any sign of unity and she was gone. Once I thought she had crossed over altogether and I had to slap her and throw cold water on her. She thought of taking vows, of perhaps becoming a nun or going on a three-year retreat. More and more she felt the need to live inside a stricter set of prohibitions. But there were other problems, too.”