The Cult of Loving Kindness (18 page)

In the afternoon she found herself moving in a long line of people. The path had widened by this time, and in places several travelers could walk abreast. From scattered snatches of conversation, Cassia understood that many had been on the path for weeks or even months, and in these especially she could feel an intense and growing excitement, above all in the children, who were everywhere. They formed the majority of every group—long-legged, wraithlike girls skipped by her, with shaved heads and luminous fair skins, and they were chattering and talking with their hands. “Tomorrow night,” one called, and made a song out of the words, for there was singing everywhere along that ragged and unruly line which trailed on behind Cassia out of sight. Carrying the guitar she did not feel out of place, for many others carried pipes, fiddles, concertinas, xylophones, and drums. At gathering places on the trail, children would sit in circles around lone musicians, and the line of pilgrims, passing, would pick up the song, and it would run along them like a wave until it clashed with something else, coming down the opposite direction. In time Cassia found herself smiling and humming too, not from her own happiness, but because the festival atmosphere was difficult to resist.

Every hour there were more people, and now the path was wide. The pilgrims rushed along it in a stream, dividing behind Cassia and Servant of God, jostling them on either side, reforming in front of them. Children looked back with curious impatient faces.
“Koori, koori sana,”
they called, words unknown to Cassia, although she found herself repeating them. These newest pilgrims were a dirty bunch, with clothes and faces thick with grime and skins that smelled like smoke. They were barefoot, and the rips in their T-shirts showed tight bellies and thin shanks. But they were happy too, laughing and singing, their eyes bright with expectation, and when they opened their mouths their teeth were stained with kaya gum. They were carrying bundles of bark, bundles of roots, bundles of rags.

Or else others, more sophisticated but not especially cleaner, would limp along in broken plastic shoes, or would be carrying plastic shoulder bags emblazoned with bright foreign trademarks. Some of these were students, holding books and notebooks and ballpoint pens; some wore thick, unwieldy, battered spectacles. “Good morning,” they would call, though in fact it was near evening and the sky was dark and overcast. And they also were singing, and they clapped their hands and snapped their fingers to sophisticated, trendy rhythms; one even carried a radio, blaring static, and under it a tiny song.

Toward nightfall the line stopped for twenty minutes. The way forward was obstructed for some reason. People ranted and complained, and yet in the end they waited patiently. Cassia and Servant of God sat hand in hand without speaking. His eyes were closed. He was in pain, and he winced when she roused him to move forward again. The line was moving, and only a few minutes later it debouched into a clearing. First there was a barricade of broken trees and then they moved into an open space of trampled earth. And there they found Efe again; inside a circle of smoky torches, she and several others had set up a kind of kitchen. Six women had lit fires, and they were cooking manioc greens and lentils in big rusted barrels. And all around them people sat wrapped in dirty blankets, for the wind had come up again and it was cold, now that the shelter of the trees was gone.

The path had wound uphill all day, so gradually that Cassia had noticed only the change in vegetation, the rhododendron trees giving way finally to stunted pines. In the clearing, people squatted around fires of pinecones and pine needles, and the air was full of the smell of burning pitch.

And the soil was thinner too, a dry sand mixed with pine needles, which covered ridges of sharp rocks. It was as if, during the days of Cassia’s journey, the rock foundations of the land had slowly risen up through layers of sediment until finally it had punctured through. In the clearing it was uncomfortable underfoot, for the volcanic rock was as sharp as glass.

But some people had spread out canvas tarpaulins, and many others had scrounged in the forest for branches and dead leaves, which they had arranged in rough untidy piles for the children. More than five hundred people were camped in the glade; already a circle of canvas shelters had sprung up, and as the lamps were lit and Cassia came in, she passed a man with a mattock digging trenches for latrines, splintering the rock with heavy strokes.

Servant of God led her forward toward Mama Efe’s fire. Twenty feet from it she laid out his mat and he flopped down onto it. His knees were cut up from the rocks and he was tired, and yet his great liquid eyes were full of peace. He was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, while all around him milled a circle of admirers. To Cassia, sitting next to him with his guitar on her lap, it seemed that he, or more particularly his upturned face, had become the still center of that entire rustling mass of people. As it grew darker, she could see less, and all the activity around her seemed slowly to subside, and she could see patterns in the circles of the torches and the shadows of the shelters, and hear patterns in the cries and bangings and the laughter of the children. Again, there was music everywhere, but as the evening wore on it seemed less strident, less combative, and all the different songs around her seemed to resolve into a dreamy hum. She was tired, yet wakeful too, and she was always trying to pay attention as another person knelt down by Servant of God to mutter a few words. She would nod and listen to the cripple’s soft sweet voice as he greeted everyone by name, a tranquil expression on his upturned face. In time, Paradise rose behind a mask of heavy clouds; the sky assumed a silver sheen like another layer of light over the flickering torches, something permanent and luminous and thick. Then especially the noise and music around Cassia settled down, as if muted by the thickness of the air. All around there was an expectant sense of gladness. Cassia found herself happy, not knowing why, and in the new light the cripple’s face gleamed like a silver mask.

Mama Jobe sat down next to them, and she had brought them wooden plates of food—hot masses of lentils over sticky rice. Servant of God took nothing. He appeared to have entered a soft trance—“Ah, ah, ah,” he muttered. “Abu, ah, ah.” But the firelight was shining on Mama Jobe’s teeth, and together she and Cassia ate mountains of the wet, hot food, and it was loaded with peppers so that their mouths burned and their eyes watered. Mama Jobe had also an old orange cola bottle, full of a homemade liquor that was the first alcohol that Cassia had ever tasted. “Tonight’s the Prince’s night,” said Mama Jobe. “Tonight we’re drinking like he used to drink.”

Which seemed to mean to excess—all around them people were uncorking bottles. Cassia’s head was ringing after seven sips, and she concentrated with difficulty on the sound of the nearby radio. A young man had perched upon a rock outcropping behind her; he had a studious and bulbous face, and he was dressed in a clean white button-down shirt, with two pens in his pocket. He held the radio against his ear, and even though he never turned the knob, still the signal seemed to fluctuate between stations: sometimes music, sometimes static, and just once a loud clear voice, for the antenna of the labor camp at Danamora was just ninety miles away. “Tigers versus Wolverines,” it said, “one-nineteen to twenty-five,” words which made no sense to Cassia, even though they brought an image to her mind.

“Where’s your man?” asked Mama Jobe. Cassia smiled and Mama Jobe smiled too. But she was looking at Cassia out of the corner of her eye, and when Cassia said nothing she clicked her tongue against her teeth. She took another swig of liquor and then wiped her mouth. “I’d a doubt this morning,” she said. “And I told you so. Because you know we must be careful. But when they sent the Prince to jail, they put him in a common cell with six hundred prisoners. Which means to say, everyone is welcome. Here around us you’ve got folk from everyplace. They’ll be sneaking from their families, their husbands, and their wives. Whole villages of outlaws. But tonight we are protected. All stupidity forgiven. Because you know, he was not a perfect man.”

“Who?” asked Cassia.

Again the woman clicked her tongue. “Abu Starbridge, child! The Prince! Why do you think you’re here?”

All around them, the night was settling down. With the alcohol, the world was starting to contract, and Cassia no longer felt the presence of the folk outside a certain small contracting circle. A woman in a greasy blanket, puffing on a pipe. A family of children in a pile of leaves. A row of men along a rock, passing a bottle back and forth. The student’s radio had quieted down to static only, though he still pored over it. And Cassia was most aware of smells, which seemed to take on a new power as all the sights and sounds diminished. A sea of smells was rising up around her, and it was made of smoke and unwashed bodies, lentils and frangipani, and hot powdered milk. From time to time also, a fluctuation in the wind would bring a smell of excrement and urine from the trench, and as time went on the smell of undigested liquor, regurgitated food. A child retched softly, rhythmically, over to her right.

“He was not a perfect man,” repeated Mama Jobe. “For this reason all frailties are forgiven in advance. To become pure like him requires neither willpower nor strength. But only say the word.”

These sentences were different from her normal speech, and it seemed clear that she was reciting something. “What word?” asked Cassia. Again Mama Jobe looked at her out of the corner of her eye, and again she took a drink.

“You’re with us now,” she said at last. “The Servant chose you. Maybe he chose you for your helplessness, so that we could show you loving kindness. Maybe he chose you for your ignorance, and that when we told you these things, we’d find ourselves repeating them and knowing them. For Abu Starbridge was a teacher. Once when Paradise was full, he went down to the dock in Charn among the poorest people of the town. They were the antinomes—they too were ignorant. But they knew music and the dance of death, and they were antinomes and they were living in the holes of the earth, and they crept out of them to sing and dance for him. So today we honor singing and dancing, which is the gift of the stupid to the wise. And in return he taught to them their history, and taught to them the story of the world, and taught to them the force of loving kindness, when he was living in their caves with them for two nights and two days. And when Lord Chrism Demiurge was king in Charn, he sent the soldiers to destroy them. But Prince Abu stood against them on the dock below the Harbor Bridge, and he raised his hand and scattered all of them with the power of loving kindness, and he had no other weapon, for he was the protector of the weak, the broken, and the miserable against the powers of the world. He raised the laundress to her feet and kissed her on the lips. For this reason we raise up our hands to him and on our palms we mark the shining sun, which is the symbol of the heat of love, which is our mark.”

These words were spoken in a halting singsong. And they seemed to come not only from the lips of Mama Jobe, but also from the darkness all around her—a muttering of voices not always in unison. When she reached the end she raised her hand; others nearby raised theirs also, and they spread out their fingers to mimic the sun’s rays, and then with the thumb of his other hand each one marked a symbol on his forehead or his tongue. The old woman laid her pipe aside, the student put away his radio, the children raised their heads up from the leaves. Servant of God also was moving his lips, and he unbuttoned his ripped shirt to show the sun drawn on his chest in silver ink. Even in the darkness Cassia could see the crude thick lines.

Now all around her the music seemed quieter, and all the sounds of talking settled down. People lumbered from the darkness to sit down beside her, and they were sitting with their children in their laps, wrapped in blankets against the freshening wind, leaning in to listen when the cripple said:

“Drunk with the whiskey, drunk with wine, drunk with compassion for the poor folk of the world, he abandoned his high tower and his life of luxury; he abandoned his family and his friends. In the secret hour of the night he came into the streets of Charn, wearing just the clothes upon his back. In this way he showed us that all men are equal, and they do not shine by their own light, but it is the touch of God that makes them shine. And if we strip ourselves of pride, and arrogance, and the weight of our belongings, then we can forget false differences. We are naked and helpless, and we have nothing to give. Yet everything will be provided if we only say the word.”

Cassia, stupefied by alcohol and ignorant of the legends of St. Abu Starbridge, sat back with her hands around her knees. The story, indeterminate and vague, nevertheless lulled her to a kind of peace, for it seemed to speak about the triumph of goodness and simplicity over a large and complex evil. Above her, Paradise was climbing toward its zenith, its rays diffused behind thick layers of clouds. Yet its power every moment seemed intensified, a fine mist that filtered down upon her head. Its light was in the air she breathed.

She closed her eyes. She seemed to feel its heat upon her face. She felt its heat upon her lips, as she listened to the words rise up around her:

“Though he was not subject to our laws, still he came down to live among us, and to die. ‘Kindness is the only thing,’ he said. ‘How can our hearts be dirty, if our hands are clean?’ he asked. So he dispelled the myth, and showed us all the way to Paradise, which is not reserved for one or two, but for all men and women. When he went into the church at Beggars Medicine, he broke the chains of those condemned to death. In their place he offered himself up, and he was put in prison in their place. He was put into a cell with seven hundred others, in that dark black Mountain of Redemption, and even though they had no right to hold him, still he stayed there of his own goodwill, and he put his sacred hands upon them, and he gave them candy and good things to eat, and especially the children. And he taught them hopscotch and the jumping rope. In the place of judgment when they offered him his freedom he refused it. And a third time he refused it in his cell before his execution when Lord Chrism Demiurge had gone down on his knees. For he knew the chain, once broken, could never be reforged. For he knew the rope, once broken, could never be retied. For he knew when Starbridge blood was smoking on the altar, only then the oath could be renewed.”