The Book of Stanley (15 page)

 

THIRTY-THREE

F
or a moment, the Lord could fly. Trivial things blew away and belief clung to her insides like melted iron. This,
this
was what Maha had been waiting for. This was why she had been born, why they were here, to bask in his greatness. To serve the one God. To transcend themselves through him.

Nothing she had learned in school was important, no piece of history or chemistry. Books were insignificant–dust-collectors! The clothes upon her, symbols of vanity. Her family consisted of three talking mannequins. She reached out and grasped a handful of Kal's shirt at the chest. He flexed his pectoral muscles.

In the next moment, the Lord could not fly. The Lord fell into the valley stomach first, his hands and feet swimming along. He did not cry out. As he plunged to the dense forest of pine and fir trees far below, the Lord tilted forward. He crashed into the canopy headfirst, with a ferocious cracking of branches audible even in the strong wind, and then the Lord disappeared from view.

His wife fell to her knees on the summit of Tunnel Mountain and cried in whispers.

No one said a word. They waited a moment. Maha had not heard the thud of his body crashing into the tan riverbank. She backed away from the ledge.

“Jesus H. Christ.” Tanya turned to Alok and slapped his mighty breasts with the back of her hand. “You said he had
powers and I actually believed you. I actually
believed you
.” She addressed the others. “Do you understand the trouble we're in here?”

Alok filled his cheeks with air and blew. Kal continued to look down.

Maha put her hand on Frieda's shoulder, waited for her own sadness and disappointment to come. But they were not there. Even though the Lord had just plummeted to his death, Maha felt no sense of loss. “Don't worry,” she said, to Frieda. Maha hugged the Lord's wife around the shoulders. “He's okay.”

Then she addressed the others. “Don't worry. The Lord is not dead.”

“Are you fucking blind?” said Tanya. She motioned toward the Bow Valley with her thumb. “Hello!”

Frieda pulled at some weeds as she sobbed, her hands shaking. She seemed not to have heard Maha. Frieda seemed to be in another place, mentally. Maha kneeled beside Frieda and prepared to explain things to her.

“Let her grieve.” Alok pulled Maha away.

“But she doesn't need to grieve. He's not dead.”

Tanya looked at her cellphone. “I bet the Mounties are pretty bored around here. They'll investigate us. No one'll believe he jumped. We're screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

“Kal. Will you listen to me?” said Maha.

“You bet.”

Maha looked over the cliff with him. “You see, he's testing us. Our faith.”

“Of course.” Alok joined them, and clapped his hands. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I'm a fool. That's why he dragged us up here. It's like Abraham and Isaac.”

“Ishmael,” said Maha.

Tanya stuffed the phone into her purse and jogged toward the path. “On second thought, I won't call from my own phone. Let's go, you guys. We have to get our stories straight.”

Maha helped Frieda up, and Kal and Alok followed. As they reached Tanya and the path, Frieda pulled herself away from Maha and walked determinedly into a bluff of shrubbery and spruce.

“Let her go,” said Alok. “She knows the way down.”

“Frieda's a problem.” Tanya gestured toward the shrubbery. “She could tell the cops just about anything.”

The Lord would not appreciate Tanya's doubt. Maha wondered what would have happened if Abraham, peace be upon him, had not followed the Lord's directions. What if Abraham, peace be upon him, had stayed in camp, protecting his beloved son from the eye of Allah? What if his faith had been weak, as Tanya's faith was weak? Allah surely would have destroyed the prophet and his son, and Abraham, peace be upon him, would not have led his tribes out of darkness.

“Maybe we should pray,” said Maha.

Tanya did not slow her pace. “All right, he was a crazy person. Everyone agree? Good. If they press us on it, we can say he led us up a mountain to show us a miracle. That isn't a lie. We'll look naive, maybe a little stupid. But it's better than a holding cell. Even cops understand simple human curiosity, right? Alok, you shared some history with him. It was cordial?”

“I wish I had an accordion right about now,” said Kal.

It was much faster going down Tunnel Mountain than up. Maha wore sandals and the leather straps rubbed at the backs of her heels. But she would endure the pain without
complaint. There were much greater things to consider. The Lord, she imagined, watched them somehow. Not from the riverbank but from nowhere and everywhere at once. His human form was only a shell, a vessel. This was the flaw in Maha's narrow imagination: she used the model of western reason to comprehend the incomprehensible. She wanted to look through the Koran again, for hints of the Lord's return and all that he expected of her.

Kal touched Maha's arm and smiled at her. “I know why he chose you, Maha.”

“Can we walk slower?” said Alok.

They neared the bottom of the mountain and Maha recalled the visit, to her mosque in Montreal, by an imam from London, England. She'd still been a child then. The angry imam had recited various prophecies about the last day, and claimed they were coming true on what was then the verge of the millennium. These stories had terrified Maha, for she'd feared she was one of the unrighteous. Her thoughts were not pure. She had seen pictures of men and women fornicating on the Internet. She had sneaked chocolate bars at school during the fast of Ramadan. Desperately, desperately, she had wanted her parents to be rich so they might buy her a horse.

In the presence of the British imam she had felt irredeemably far from God. On the way home, in the blue minivan, Maha had wanted her mother to say he was a silly man, a medieval lunatic from a depressing suburb. But her mother had said nothing about the imam, even when they'd stopped for ice cream at Dairy Queen. The imam's words and his beard and his long fingers, the peculiar, well-travelled accent to his Arabic, kept her up that night and for many nights thereafter. Maha realized, in view of the Tunnel
Mountain parking lot and two shirtless men with goatees drinking beer from cans, that this was the first time she'd felt entirely free of the imam's prophecies.

 

THIRTY-FOUR

D
uring his fall, Stanley experienced a few regrets. Number one was the way he had handled things with Frieda. He really should have told her he planned to fly off the back of the mountain. Number two was going public before a couple of practice sessions.

Stanley passed through a hot and mysteriously fragrant pocket of air. In the newspaper, or perhaps in a book, Stanley had read that when people jump off buildings they die of fear before they land. He questioned the science of this. How could scientists know such things, unless they had hooked monitors to a volunteer?

Stanley was falling faster than he imagined possible, and he was not afraid. He experienced a more potent, ecstatic, and comprehensive version of empathy–not only for Frieda and his new friends but for Asian restaurateurs and nasty teenagers and his son in New York City. He thought, for the first time, that he understood Charles.

From a distance, the boughs of Douglas fir and lodgepole pine trees appeared soft. Downy. Up close, however, they were anything but. Stanley slammed into them and it sounded, and
felt, like he was being ripped to pieces. He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

And that was the secret: intense concentration. Stanley could not worry about Frieda or fragrances, and he could not concern himself with the science of fear. His body went hot. He slowed and landed softly on the spongy ground, simply by willing himself to do so.

It was shadowed here, much cooler, a refuge for mosquitoes and twinkling spider webs. There were deep cuts on his face and hands, and he was something like sore, but otherwise Stanley felt well.

His blue suit, which no longer made him feel insignificant and ghostly, was covered in ashy soil and pine needles. Nearby children playing among the hoodoos and in the cold Bow River screamed with joy. Birds sang. Stanley lay on the ground for some time, his soreness easing, completely bewildered. All of this must–must–mean something. In earlier, less-skeptical times, it would have felt more natural to consider oneself a prophet or even a god.

Instead of standing and hiking up to the road immediately, Stanley took the opportunity to practise his newfound skill. The sensation originated in the back of his skull and radiated down from there. His heels ached and rose before his chest hopped up off the ground. It was difficult to control his body as he levitated into the branches. He attempted to remain horizontal but tilted back, upside down.

Stanley practised floating under the boughs of the spruce trees, easing into a somersault and opening his arms in a Superman imitation. He tucked and spun, slowly, and laughed the way he had laughed the first time he'd snorkelled in the Caribbean. Then he remembered where he was. Stanley remembered how he had come to be here, in this
mossy fort of northernness. Frieda's concern hit him like a baseball, splintered his concentration. He dropped, awkwardly, on his neck and shoulders. A fall that would have killed him a month ago.

He ran up the bank, swerving around trees and shrubbery. The sun came out from behind a cloud and lit up the mountainside. Stanley scoured the forest for his wife, first the path and then non-traditional routes created by wildlife. He found Frieda easing over a slab of white rock, holding on to a juniper branch for balance. There were tears on her face and the characteristic pink had drained from her cheeks. She saw Stanley and, after a moment of gaping at him, she snorted, sarcastically. “Of course,” she said, and let go of the branch.

She began to slide down the rock and Stanley caught her. They stood on the root of a pine tree. Frieda buried her face in his suit collar and clung to him. “You son of a bitch.”

Stanley ran his fingers through her grey and blond hair, untangling the bits at the end. “I'm sorry.”

“If you knew you could suddenly break the moon in two, or kill the President of the United States, would you do it?”

“No.”

“You jumped off a mountain.”

“I should have warned you.”

Frieda placed her hands over her eyes and held them in place for several minutes. A raven landed on a branch nearby and cawed. The sun came out from behind a cloud. Stanley wanted to say something to comfort his wife but all of his instincts ran contrary to her wishes. She took a deep breath and dropped her hands from her eyes.

“There must be a reason for this, and I intend to find it,” he said. “I can do some good here.”

“You
can
do some good. Sign the
RRSP
s over to the Cancer Foundation. Volunteer at the Food Bank, or construct some affordable housing. Read to poor kids at the library. Trade the Oldsmobile for a Smart Car.”

Stanley lifted his hands. “Half an hour ago I had deep lacerations on my hands and face. They're gone.”

“I don't want to hear that.” Her voice broke and she attempted to walk away. But off the root, the rockface was too steep. Stanley caught Frieda's arm before she fell, and she fought to get away from him. Once she gave up, he picked her up and carried her to the path. They passed a group of Japanese tourists who whispered to one another.

Near the parking lot, her breathing returned to normal. He lowered his wife to her feet and she fixed her clothing. Her hands were criss-crossed with scratches from the juniper bush, and she blew on them. She straightened his tie and wiped debris from his collar.

“Tuck in your shirt,” she said.

“What if these people were called here, to me?”

“I think you know my feelings, Stan.”

“You think we ought to jump in the car and drive home, without saying goodbye.”

She nodded, and started walking down the path again. At the Old Banff Cemetery they looked over the bear-proof fence at the blanched tombstones.

“Isn't religion supposed to be about losing the ego? Shouldn't it be about
giving up your worldly power
, in order to think harder? Comprehend the incomprehensible?”

“So I should go home and meditate? Waste this?”

Frieda shrugged. “This frightens me. It doesn't frighten you?”

“No. That isn't the right word.”

“You aren't the same person you were a week ago.”

“I'm not. It's true.”

“Maybe it's immature or selfish or unadventurous of me, but I don't want a husband who jumps off mountains.” Frieda pushed herself off the fence and rubbed another errant pine needle from Stanley's jacket. She started back down the street to the Chalet Du Bois and, to his amazement, he did not know whether to follow.

 

THIRTY-FIVE

T
he day had taken on a curious aspect for Kal. First, an old man had jumped off the side of a mountain. Now, Tanya was talking to the police from a pay phone in Cascade Plaza–with her voice disguised to sound like a hillbilly's.

“We were hikin' up that there mountain you got in town there, yep,” she said. “No, sir, we don't know him for nothin', constable. He was a white-haired fella in a very dated suit. Wool or somethin'. I remember sayin' to my husband, Roy, I says, ‘Isn't that peculiar, a man in an old suit goin' for a hike?' And the next thing you know, the fella went and
jumped
.”

To impress Maha, Kal whipped up his most disapproving glare.

“No, there was no one with him nohow. He was all alone, constable, and talkin' crazy. Like some sorta crazy person.
No sir, no, I won't be providin' my family name, sir. This here's an anonymous tip.”

Tanya hung up the phone without saying goodbye. She looked up and pointed at what looked to be a light with a black shade.

“We're being surveilled!” She sprinted toward the door. “Let's beat it out of here.”

Alok chuckled. “I don't run.”

“Come on, you retards.” Tanya covered her head with her hands like a captured serial killer and bolted.

Maha and Alok walked at a leisurely pace. So did Kal, behind Maha, so he could stare at her legs in the athletic short-shorts she had worn for the hike. Alok seemed to think Stan was dead and not-dead at the same time, and he questioned Maha about how she could be so certain he was alive.

“Is it a hunch?”

“No, not a hunch. More than a hunch. I'm certain.”

“But it's not like you're receiving messages, is it? He hasn't sent me anything, unless I'm not tuned to the right frequencies.”

Kal didn't know what to add, or what questions to ask. He just wanted to be sure that his relationship with Maha outlasted Stanley's funeral. With the money coming in from his settlement with Far East Square, he could learn how to play the accordion. He longed to describe the mountains surrounding him, the pretty and spooky aspects of the mountains, in song. He longed to hear and understand musical notes the way he saw colours and smelled smells. It would make him a full man, worthy of love.

Far ahead on the Banff Avenue sidewalk, Tanya wove through the pedestrians. “She's going to end up feeling really stupid,” said Maha.

“So stupid,” said Kal.

The weather was hot and dry now, the sky an unblemished blue. As much as Kal was worried about Stanley and everything, he was keen to change the tone of the conversation. “One thing I was wondering about is swimming. Does anyone want to go?”

“I think we should wait to hear from the Lord,” said Maha.

“Maybe after we hear about him or whatever?”

Alok suggested they stop for Grand Marniers, so he could learn more about the spotlessness of Maha's faith. Maha wanted to get back to the hotel. So they compromised in front of an ice cream store. While Maha and Alok talked about Stanley, Kal bought three ice creams. When they arrived at the Chalet Du Bois, Tanya sat in the lobby on a bench made of logs. Her arms were crossed. “Where have you been?” she said, through her teeth.

Kal took a demonstrative lick of his ice cream cone, which had pecans in it.

“Has Stan been through here?” said Alok. “Have you checked with the front desk?”

“Get up to my room, all of you, now.”

Kal turned to Maha, because Tanya made him tired. Maha shivered as she stared into the darkness of Tony Roma's. “Oh no,” Maha said, “no, no, no,” and rushed to the elevator. She pressed the call button several times and kicked the door.

A man in his late twenties or early thirties, with a healthy growth of stubble on his face, emerged from the restaurant and walked past Kal and Alok. He approached Maha and spoke urgently to her. “Your parents are ill with worry.”

“How did you find me?” Maha pressed the elevator button again.

“There was a pamphlet in your bedroom. I phoned the hotels. It was simple.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Who are these people? What are you doing here with them?” The man gestured toward Kal and Alok, briefly. He said something to Maha in a language Kal did not understand, and grasped her arm.

“Hey, fella.” Kal stepped in close to the man and breathed into his face. “You're gonna take your hand off her, I think.”

Maha led the man through the lobby, to a chesterfield underneath a majestic portrait of elk. They spoke too quietly to hear.

“Who the hell's he?” said Tanya.

Kal shrugged. He didn't want to talk about it.

“Boyfriend,” said Alok.

“Oh, she's way too pretty for him. It won't last. An imbalance like that'll destroy a relationship.”

Maha led the man, who was actually a bit too handsome for Kal's taste, back to them. “This is Gamal.”

Kal shut off momentarily, like a generator on its last dribble of gasoline. He flickered, slumped, and cronked slowly back into operation. By the time Kal was ready to process what this meant and challenge Gamal to a bench-pressing competition, the stranger had already introduced himself to the others. Now, he held his hand out for Kal to take. He said his name a couple of times.
Gamal
.
Gamal
. It sounded like a cuss word, the way he pronounced the final
l
. And yes, his advantages were clear: he had infuriatingly clear and brown skin, and an expensive-looking wristwatch.

“Kal,” said Kal. Gamal's grip was soft. The drowning husk of pre-poetry Kal, swirling around in his stomach acid,
flailed to the surface and nearly called out, “You wanna fuckin' go, pussy?”

Gamal put his arm around Maha and she shook it off. “Maha tells me you've been good friends here. Thanks for looking out for her. She's very young and, as you can tell, an inexperienced traveller.”

“Shut up,” said Kal. Then he said, “Sorry.”

Silence crackled through the lobby of the Chalet Du Bois. The elevator door opened. “I'll help you pack,” Gamal said.

Alok laughed. “She isn't leaving.”

“Absolutely not,” Maha said.

Gamal took Maha's hand and led her into the elevator. Kal feared saying goodbye to her, or offering a note of warm regard, because he was certain his voice would come out as a squeak.