Slow Fade (19 page)

Lemuel waved to Wesley and fell off the stove, twisting his leg but not enough to keep him from limping over to the counter for a drink.

A shrunken white-haired woman in an old army coat stood up on the counter near the cash register, clearing her voice and speaking out in a loud voice: “Now I knowed Wesley Hardin and the others, too. Coley Hardin and Dan Louis Hardin most of all. I recollect the winter of ’thirty-two. The Spanish flu was on and it was down to lean pickings or none. We was living with the Hardins that winter in the Macy house. All three of us families was there and it was some hard
. . . .
”

Her voice faded and the party seemed to lose momentum only to pick up again with the arrival of three young trappers all loudly drunk and shouting for the secession of Labrador from Canada and the entire Commonwealth.

Wesley stood up looking for a way out but was intercepted by Sidney and A.D. Once again A.D. presented a microphone to Wesley and once again it was rejected.

“A message from Walker taped last night,” A.D. said, his voice strangely hollow and subdued.

Wesley received the statement as if it were a physical blow and sagged against a sack of feed. A.D. hesitated and turned off the tape recorder, but Sidney stopped him, turning it on again and then moving in with the camera for a close-up on Wesley’s reaction.

“
. . .
It’s two-thirty a.m. and I’m sitting in the Sherry Netherland with Evelyn and your home movie crew. I’ll take part of the responsibility for A.D., but Sidney is your contribution to the culture. I’m wired and stoned and distraught to know that, once again, you’ve disappeared. But I’m not going to Slab Island. That’s for sure. I can’t speak for Evelyn. She’s taking a bath. I’m sliding along a raw edge right now and it makes me want to give you more information than you asked for. Such as: I spent the night in Montauk with Evelyn. It was very sweet and we both needed each other and I, for one, don’t have any regrets. I’m sure she won’t reveal any of this, as protecting you seems to be an obsession with her. But you’re bound to get the news when they screen all their demented footage for you. Although that night might never happen the way these guys are shooting. They remind me of that lame comedy team you used for the killers in
Baby Legs
. Totally inept and perverse. If I were you I’d take all the footage away from these goons as soon as possible. They seem to think that violation means reality, but then who are we to say no to that? In fact we’ve said yes all along. But why am I saying all this? Why is it still so important for me to communicate with you when you have never met me halfway, never once? And why do I bother to tell you that I made love with your wife and that it’s okay and we’re not going to run off with each other? Perhaps because it was your choice not to be here when I arrived, not to receive the final information about Clementine, and to leave me staring into a camera, which, I admit, I consented to do. So I say: You want to know what I’m up to? How I can serve you in terms of a story? What my back story is and how you can transfer your children into one-dimensional images? Fine. Here it is. And here’s the story about Clementine. Then our deal will be over and I’d appreciate a check as soon as possible care of the Sherry Netherland, which is where I’ll be until I figure out my next move, which I suspect might be back to Albany en route to who knows and who cares where
. . . .
Wait. Here’s Evelyn. She’s out of the bath and wants to say something
. . . .
”

“Wesley? I trust you’ll be somewhere, sometime at the other end of this machine. But I suppose Mr. A.D. Ballou will see to that. He looks determined enough. I don’t feel right communicating this way, but it’s the way it happened so it’s the way we have to go. There are things Walker didn’t mention, doesn’t know how to say, but that he said to me. Perhaps because saying it is some kind of release — for me, for him, for both of us — from you. Do you know what I mean? Saying that we love and hate and fear you? Giving each other permission to say those things and feeling that all of us, including you, have come to the end of something? So you’re leaving us together makes it possible for all of us to go our separate ways. You know that I can’t follow you to Slab Island. I can’t go back to that even if I owe it to you. But you know that it wouldn’t be good with us and anyway, that’s not why you’re there, is it? You can always come back if you want to see me. I’ll be here or somewhere where you’ll be able to find me. But you won’t come. I know that, too. No regrets, Wesley. Nowhere do I have any regrets, and I pray that your own regrets are fading, have faded
. . . .
”

Wesley stood up and walked to the back door and stepped outside. There were northern lights and the sky was full of red and silver flares. Still drunk, he walked aimlessly through the town and out to the end of the dock. After a while he stepped down into the
Angie D.
, sitting on the Chevy engine and looking out over the harbor, the black water oily and unsettling. He felt himself to be waiting for something, a terminal sign perhaps, some small acceptance of that lost silence within that was now threatening to rise and wash over him completely. But there was nothing but the idle chatter of his mind: vague images and fragments of dialogue that could just as easily have been from one of his films as from his actual life. He sat until the cold had numbed the push of dead language and empty scenes. Then he walked slowly back to the house on the hill.

They were waiting for him: Annie Mae and Long and the usual cluster behind the camera and a dozen others that had struggled up from the Hudson Bay Post. They had brought the radio and they were all drunk, except for Sidney, who kept his cold eye behind the lens, focusing on Wesley as he walked through the kitchen and collapsed on the torn and split living room sofa.

A.D. sat off to one side, holding a bottle of rum in both hands and staring vacantly out the window. Sidney, who had apparently taken over and whose eyes shone with a malicious and heightened resolve, approached Wesley with the camera, the sound man carrying the tape recorder.

“Do you want to hear the rest about Clementine?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he gestured for the sound man to turn on the tape.

Where were we? On the road to Benares with Jim. Dazed. In shock as Jim sits by the side of the road, his arms wrapped around him, shaking and afraid. The next morning he has gathered himself together enough to stumble on. He walks all that day down the blistered empty road not knowing where he is, where he’s going, where he’s been. Outside a small town he buys tea and a stale chipati with one of his few remaining coins. Unable to eat, he retches violently and staggers into the middle of a field. Somewhere within the extremes of a paroxysm that involves his whole body he experiences a release, a chaotic letting go, and he lies thrashing on the ground until the seizure leaves him empty and oddly still
. . . .
Surrendered for the moment to whatever awaits him, he joins workers from a cement factory piling into the back of a flatbed truck, their exhausted bodies covered with white dust
. . . .
Hours later the truck stops and they all disembark, Jim following an old woman as she pushes her way into an ancient bus. He manages to say “Benares” to the driver, who nods and points up the road, accepting Jim’s gold watch as fare
. . . .
A day later, the bus rolls into Benares. Dazed and on the far side of exhaustion, Jim attaches himself to a small band of naked sadhus walking to the Ganges for their evening prayers. Suddenly they are pushed and pummeled by a deluge of worshipers as saints, cripples, lordly palanquins, dying pilgrims, magicians, and religious hustlers, all the variations and then some, accompanied by booming and clashing cymbals, stream through an ancient gate and throw themselves at the holy river. Jim feels caught within an awesome hallucination, abandoned to a force that is incomprehensible and cruel. As he sags against a crumbling wall, he stumbles over two corpses lying on a rope charpoy wrapped in white and covered with flowers. A sheet has fallen away revealing a child’s face painted red. He has stumbled into the land of the dead. The air is thick with smoke from a wooden pyre where a body lies burning, a gnarled gnomelike creature popping open the skull with a long stick. The air has the sweet and pungent smell of a pork barbecue and Jim feels faint and nauseated. He sits down near another body, which lies waiting on a wooden rack, dressed in white robes, the shriveled extended face neither man nor woman. Two men casually pick up the rack and place it on the pyre and the ghat attendant touches the wood and there’s a crackle of flames as the fire licks upward. It soon reaches the body and the belly opens and the intestines ooze out. The feet burn to a black crisp. An arm falls off and the attendant takes his long pole and expertly flips the corpse over
. . . .
Jim flees to the edge of the sacred river. Hymns to the dead echo from a half-sunken temple above him. Worshipers wade in front of the ghats chanting, “Rama, Rama, Hari Rama,” sprinkling water over their heads, caressing with little intimate mudras the flat surface of the river. The whole shore is packed with walls, ancient turrets and balconies, stone platforms and apartment houses
. . . .
Jim wades in up to his shoulders. Squatting down, he lets the thick oily water cover his head. A dead cow floats by and on the far shore beyond a progression of enormous low-flying cranes he can see smoke from other burning ghats. He dunks himself over and over, obsessed with the sensation of being completely covered. After one particularly violent dunk a hand reaches out and grabs him by the collar and he’s dragged roughly to the side of a houseboat, one of many stretching along the shore connected to each other by ropes and wooden planks
. . . .
“Your ablutions were getting a little excessive,” says a voice with a soft German accent. “I hope you don’t mind. None of my business of course.”
. . .
The voice belongs to an emaciated man with a long blond beard wearing only a rumali, or G-string. With great effort he manages to pull Jim into the boat
. . . .
Jim lies panting on the warped planks while his savior regards him from underneath a torn green canopy. Finally the strange figure speaks: “Perhaps you might care to join me for tea? I assume you are English or at least English-speaking?”
. . .
Jim nods weakly and the German helps him climb down a ladder into a rectangular low-ceilinged room. It has a spare, simple arrangement: a few straw mats, a kerosene stove and a bucket of water, piles of cloth-bound books and candles placed about on the floor. Jim shrugs out of his wet clothes and is handed a worn and faded dhoti. As soon as he’s seated he sags against a wall unable to keep awake. “Rest,” his host says. “There is no need to speak.”
. . .
Jim sleeps while the German lays out his clothes, efficiently going through his pockets. Miraculously Jim has retained his billfold. There is no money, but there is an identification card and a snapshot of Clementine, a thin blond girl in a tennis outfit. There is also a copy of Charles’s report and a card with a list of telephone numbers on it, including Jim’s father’s
. . . .
Several days pass in a series of dissolves showing
. . .
the German performing a series of vigorous asanas
. . .
bathing in the river
. . .
smoking opium while studying a book of sutras
. . .
spooning Jim clear broth, carefully cooling his forehead with a damp cloth
. . .
taking a ricksha to an international hotel where he places a call to Jim’s father
. . . .
The dissolve ends with Jim revived enough to sit on the deck of the houseboat and eat a few spoonfuls of rice from a wooden bowl. The German waits until he has finished before he tells him what has been going on: “You have been out of your mind for several days. During that time I have taken several liberties. Through a friend I have located your sister in Saranath. My friend says your sister is very sick, maybe dying. If you feel up to it, we should go there immediately. I have also called your father and he will arrive this evening.”
. . .
“Why are you doing all this?” Jim asks weakly
. . . .
“Your father is rich,” the German replies. “We have made a suitable arrangement for my services.”. . . They take a taxi to Saranath, the German dressed for the occasion in clean white slacks and a white shirt. He points out the great Stupa where Shakyamuni preached the first sermon after attaining enlightenment, quoting the opening lines of the Dhamapada: “We are what we think, having become what we thought. Like the wheel that follows after the cart-pulling ox, sorrow follows an evil thought.”
. . .
“Are you hustling me?” Jim asks
. . . .
“I don’t think so,” the German says. “But then I am an ignorant man and my intentions are often obscure.”
. . .
They find Clementine at the end of a narrow street in a tiny two-room flat. Before they enter her room, the German talks in Hindi to an old woman preparing soup in the kitchen. “She thinks your sister will die tonight,” the German says
. . . .
Clementine lies on a cot in a clean whitewashed room. As they approach her, the German steps back, letting Walker sit on the chair by her bed
. . . .
She is extraordinarily thin, her skin bleached and nearly diaphanous, her hair cropped close to her skull. Her thin parched lips are slightly open, her eyes closed, as if she has already gathered herself for the journey within
. . . .
“I leave now,” the German says to Jim. “I will meet your father at the airport and bring him here.”
. . .
As soon as he’s alone Jim lies down on the cement floor and falls asleep. When he wakes, Clementine is staring down at him from the bed, her dark eyes huge, translucent. He sits on the chair and holds her hand
. . . .
“Oh, Jimmy,” she whispers in a voice so low he has to bend to hear her. “Is Lacey here?”
. . .
“No,” he says. “But Pop is coming in a few hours.”
. . .
The news unsettles her enough so that she tries to sit up, but the effort exhausts her and she sinks back again, shutting her eyes. Jim feels a compulsion to do something, going into the kitchen and bringing back the soup the old woman has prepared. But Clementine is unable to accept even a sip and he puts the bowl beside the bed. Not able to sit quietly, he walks over to her small altar on the other side of the room. The offering bowls are full, and a butter lamp casts a soft glow over a photograph of Lama Yeshe and a reproduction of the peaceful deity, Dorje Sempa. A pile of dharma books is stacked off to one side and Jim brings two of them back to the bed, thinking that he might read to her, but she shakes her head. “No time,” she manages to say. “Just sit with me.”
. . .
He sits with her and for a moment isn’t sure if it isn’t Lacey lying there until Clementine’s lips slowly form the words: “Pray for me.”
. . .
He nods and waits a long time before she is able to whisper again: “Keep the lamp going. Forty-nine days
. . .
sweet brother
. . .
No words. No thoughts
. . . .
Light.”
. . .
She sinks back inside herself and he waits, not daring to move until she moves, which she finally does, groaning softly through a perilous exhale
. . . .
She sleeps and he sits with her until the German arrives with his father
. . . .
Old Pete has lost weight and his eyes and mouth are lined with fatigue. But despite his obvious exhaustion, he presents a brave front in his blue and white seersucker suit and bow tie
. . . .
He sees that Clementine is asleep and turns to end a conversation with the German. “I absolutely refuse to give you cash. A check will have to do.”
. . .
“It is not me that cannot accept a check,” the German says, holding his ground. “It is the Indian bureaucracy.”
. . .
Finally Pete gives him ten one-hundred-dollar bills and the German leaves without a glance toward Jim or Clementine
. . . .
“Now then,” father says to son. “The first thing we have to do is get her out of here and into a hospital. Failing that, to a hotel suite where we can bring the best doctors.”
. . .
“Too late,” Jim says
. . . .
“What do you mean, too late?”
. . .
“I mean too late. She can’t be moved.”
. . .
For the first time since he stepped into the room Pete looks directly at his son, shocked by what he sees. Jim wears the same faded dhoti that the German gave him and an equally faded blue kurta that hangs loosely over his waist. But it is Jim’s sunken ravaged face that upsets Pete the most. He cannot bear to see such exposed and vulnerable grief. It embarrasses as well as frightens him. Shaken, he sits on the chair by the bed looking down at the shrunken form of his daughter. “Where’s Lacey?” he asks numbly
. . . .
“Dead,” Jim replies, his voice empty of any emotion. “We were driving here from Delhi and she died on the road.”
. . .
It is too much for Pete to handle and he slumps in his chair only to rally a few minutes later. “All right,” he says stiffly. “It is tragic but we must go on. We must get a doctor here immediately.”
. . .
“No.” Clementine’s whisper resounds through the room and they both turn toward her. “I’m dying, Pop.”
. . . .
“I absolutely refuse to accept that,” Pete says, fired up now that he has something to fight for. “You must not give in.”
. . .
A smile passes briefly across Clementine’s lips and she makes one last effort. “But I must. As you must
. . .
Even you, Pop.”
. . .
She lies back then and as Jim and Pete kneel by her bed, her eyes are already beyond
. . . .
Jim turns to his father. “She’s dead.”
. . .