The Cult of Loving Kindness (24 page)

A voice said: “Aren’t you hot?”

Rael turned. Beside him stood a girl his own age. She had silver glitter in her hair. The inside of her mouth was rinsed with silver.

She said: “Great Angkhdt tells us to be kind to strangers. My grandmother said you looked lonely when you passed our tent. She sent me to give you this.”

In her right hand she was carrying a paper bowl of dahl baht, garnished with two sprigs of broccoli. In her left hand she held a yellow pear. She was smiling as she raised them up, but then her expression faltered, for Rael had not moved. She looked away and then looked back.
“Kamesh nidiri,”
she said. And then in a third language,
“Ku’un sabh,”
she said, even more timidly. Then she switched back to the first.
“You understand me when I speak?”

Rael nodded. In fact he did feel hot, his blanket scratchy and uncomfortable. He pulled it down from around his face and loosened it around his neck.

The girl smiled. “That’s better. Grandmother asked me to invite you back. She said no one should be alone tonight. She sent me to invite you.”

Rael loosened the blanket from his shoulder until his hands were free. His fingers were shaking as he put his hands around the paper bowl; it was still hot. He raised it to his lips. “Thank …” he said, and then stopped, interrupted in his thinking by a single mental image of Mr. Sarnath in the woods, his hand upraised for silence, trying to teach him how to use the thanking word. “You,” he concluded, after a long pause.

His mouth was burning, for the dahl baht was full of chili peppers. As he chewed, he could feel a tingling flush overtake his cheeks, could feel the sweat bead on his forehead. In front of him Great Angkhdt and the yellow gypsy shuddered to new life, after several minutes of darkness.

“Let’s get away from here,” said the girl. “I hate this one.” She took a few steps into the dark and Rael followed her.

She was dressed in a grey leotard and denim shorts. Her arms were bare. Rael followed her, chewing the fiery rice, his face covered with sweat. Then she turned back toward him, holding out the yellow pear. He took it gratefully and gave her back the empty bowl, which she crushed together in her hand. “Thank you,” he said again.

The pear was so cool in his mouth, so fresh. The taste of it seemed to spread through his body. His blanket had fallen open to reveal his chest, covered with dirt and streaked with sweat. There were four cuts on his stomach, scabbed over but still oozing blood.

“Look at you,” she said. “You’re shaking. How long since you last ate?” He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know, couldn’t remember, couldn’t bring back any image from the recent past. Only the six notes that had occurred to him upon the mountain—seven, eight notes now, and she was right. He felt tired.

“Look at you,” she said again.

 

She had followed him along the outer circle so as not to miss him. But going back they took the short, straight way, which led them through another section of the fair. Merchants and peddlers had set up booths. Some were merely lamp-lit tents, or stools supporting wooden boxes, their small shelves lined with toothpaste, incense, aspirin, biscuits, razor blades, and bags of stale bread. Others were more elaborate: permanent wooden booths on wheels, with windows cut into one side and lined with neon or electric bulbs. People sold kaya gum and hashish oil, comic books, icons, syringes, antibiotic capsules, fireworks, and, donated by a foreign government, strings of condom prophylactics in bright foil packages. People sold imported rhinestone jewelry, and calculators, and transistor radios—these booths especially were packed with customers, for it was all untaxed contraband, and the prices were low. People sold ice cream, curried sweet potatoes, and fried dough from little stalls. Rael found his mouth still chewing as he followed his companion through the crush, even though his pear was long gone, and he had swallowed even the stem and the seeds. The girl turned back to him. And she only hesitated for a moment before she took his hand and led him past rows of blackjack booths and wheels of chance. He allowed himself to be led, for his eyes were overwhelmed by the cascade of lights. People touched him with their greasy skins, touched him everywhere. His blanket was gone, lost, snatched away, and his ears were deafened by the shouts and yells, the scratchy carnival music from the loudspeakers.

 

His companion bought some cotton candy from a stall. “I promised my sister,” she said. Then she stepped into a dark place between two tents, and instantly the noise was less. The lights scarcely penetrated ten feet from the thoroughfare; she led him down a corridor in back of a row of tents, and it was dark there, and they were alone except for someone urinating in a ditch. Again Rael looked up at the sky. He could see the stars, and again that small song occurred to him—ten, a dozen notes now, just a small flicker of music in his mind and it was gone.

“Come on,” said the girl. “We’re almost there.” She pulled his hand. She turned between two rows of cardboard shacks, stepping daintily over the entwined legs of a man and woman copulating in the sand. Tied together in a sheet, their pulsing bodies blocked the way. Rael followed the girl past them a few yards, and then he stopped. “Look,” he said.

She frowned. Rael could see a small crease in her brow. “Don’t bother about them. It’s true—they don’t quite understand. Not yet, says Grandmama. But they’re closer than some others.”

Rael shook his head and tried again. “Looking now,” he said. “Not find her is finding. A sweet now,” he added, turning his face toward the sky.

“What did you say?”

“Yes,” interrupted Rael. “But not seeing.”

They had reached a thoroughfare, quieter than the one they’d left. People sat outside their tents, smoking cigarettes.

The girl walked out into the middle of the road and peered along it. “What did you … ?” she started, but questions always irritated Rael.

“Many,” he said, raising his hands to the sky. “Many many many.” He felt a slow uncertain nausea, deep in his guts. “Lost her,” he said.

The girl pushed out her lips. “Who?” she asked, but Rael did not reply.

“A friend of yours?” she asked.

“We’ll help you if you want,” she said after a pause. “Me and my sister. Not now—most people are inside. You’ll never find her. But when Paradise comes up, they’ll all go down into the middle. You’ll have a better chance down there.”

“You’ll never find her” was what Rael understood, because it was so close to his own thoughts. He let his arms drop to his sides. “Don’t worry,” said the girl. “You’ll feel better once you’ve had some food.”

A smaller girl was running toward them up the street. “Oh, Enid,” she called. “You got him.” But then she stopped. “Oops,” she said. “I know we’re not supposed to use our names.”

She was younger, perhaps half Enid’s age. She wore a red satin dress and red shoes. She wore a scarlet mask over her eyes, glitter in her hair, and a hibiscus blossom pinned over one ear. The yellow tongue of its stamen protruded out at Rael. Behind him, the couple in the sand were generating soft wet slapping noises as they made love.

Almost he turned to go away, but Enid had grasped hold of his thumb. Her other hand was on her hip. “Jane,” she said, “I told you, Jane, what Grandmother told me.” And then to Rael: “My sister’s name is Jane.”

“Oh, well, it’s stupid anyway,” protested the younger girl. “We’re all friends now.” She took Rael’s hand upon the other side. “Come on. They’re waiting to see if you came back.”

She pulled him forward a few steps and then she stopped. “I almost forgot. Grandma gave me this to give to you,” she said, pulling the hibiscus flower from her hair and holding it up. “She said to tell you that God loves you.”

The blossom felt fragile and tired in his hand. It had no scent. “Humph,” said Enid. “He knows that already. Everyone knows that.” She was angry. She pulled him along by his thumb and he went with her. She pulled him along a row of cardboard crates, each one with a little cookfire outside. Men and women sat on blankets and they called out greetings. They raised up their right hands, their fingers spread apart, to show the mark of the shining sun, crudely drawn in charcoal on their palms. This was a quiet section of the spiral, with no fireworks or loud commotion, though Rael as he looked upward sometimes saw a rocket speeding off into the night.

But as they came around the turn, they saw some people grouped in front of them. “It’s the apothecaries,” cried Jane. She pulled down Rael’s hand so that she could see his naked palm. “Did you get some? No. Come on.”

A steel cage lay in the middle of the road, and at each of its four corners stood a man in a red robe with an automatic rifle strapped across his back. Inside the cage was the largest insect Rael had ever seen, a fat six-legged cockroach or a flea, more than two feet long from its blind head to the end of its abdomen. Its snout protruded through the bars; its mandibles and claws made a spasmodic clicking noise.

Beside it, another cage lay upended in the sand. Three old men, also dressed in red, were sitting on a spread-out sheet. In front of them lay the gutted husk of another insect. They had pulled off part of its carapace, and on a glass mortar stone they were crushing it to a powder. They were mixing it with other powders from a row of bottles.

Men and women from the tents and shelters stood in a circle around them. “It’s the fleas of Angkhdt,” whispered Enid as she pulled Rael forward. “It’s for the festival.” Never letting go of his thumb, she slithered to the front. Jane was there already, kneeling before one of the old men, holding out her hands.

He was a small, fat-bellied man. He lifted up a fragment of the insect’s leg, and with it he made portentous passes over the head of a brass statue of Immortal Angkhdt, also cross-legged, also fat-bellied. “You’re too young,” he said to Jane. “Besides, weren’t you here already?”

“It’s not for me. It’s for him,” she protested, motioning back toward Rael.

“Then let him come.”

The apothecary’s voice was hollow and empty. His words meant nothing to Rael. But Enid pulled him down until he too was squatting in the sand, and she tugged on his thumb until his palm lay open. People made way for him; smiling and friendly, they helped him down onto his knees. They held him by the shoulders as the apothecary passed a smoking stick of incense over his hand, and then marked it in charcoal with the mark of Abu Starbridge.

The apothecary seized him by the wrist. Rael could see the man’s bare arm up to his shoulder, and it was flabby and unmuscled and relaxed. Nevertheless, Rael felt his own arm pulled forward, and he was staring into the apothecary’s cold grey eyes. At the same time, another man with equally strong hands scratched him on the inside of his forearm with an iron stylus. He sealed off the vein in Rael’s elbow with his thumb, and then massaged the scratch that he had made until a line of tiny beads of blood appeared amid the smudges from his dirty fingers.

And that was all. Suddenly released out of the old man’s grasp, Rael staggered to his feet. He staggered backward out of the circle of onlookers into cooler, less obstructed air. Already as he did so, a peculiar sensation was spreading up his arm. He caressed the inside of his elbow, and rubbed his fingertips together. “Don’t worry,” said Enid, reaching for his thumb, pulling his hand away. “It’s for the festival.”

Already he felt giddy. Her words seemed distorted and remote. But it was only a few more steps to her grandmother’s tent. When he reached it, he sat down on a blanket, staring straight in front of him. Someone brought him food from a pot by the fire, and he just managed to finish his sixth bowl of cauliflower curry before he fell asleep. His head sank down upon his chest, and it required the help of several neighbors to move his body inside the tent, and stretch him out upon a cotton mat. He was not aware of them. His sleep was smooth and black and still.

 

Cassia, though, was rolling and tossing in her bed. She was mumbling, and shaking her head back and forth. Her hands were clenched, her breath ragged and hoarse, for she was drowning in a pool of dreams.

 

But after the first hour she stopped struggling and slid down to a darker level. Then she was quiet: her body stiff, her spine taut. For forty minutes the only movement which her observers detected was the trembling of her fingers, the trembling of her eyelids.

In the middle of the second hour she relaxed somewhat, and rolled onto her back. Her breathing now was slow and deep. The fist of her right hand unclenched, and her fingers lolled open on the coverlet. Miss Azimuth, waiting for the change, chose that moment to pull back the lid of her left eye. Miss Azimuth held the lantern up, to demonstrate to Karan Mang and to the priest how Cassia’s pupil was expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. The old woman had observed the process, but she had no way of understanding what it meant: how at that moment Cassia’s dreams were changing. Images appeared to her. A series of images appeared to her. On the surface of the pool where she was drowning, there appeared a knotted rope. It was the story of a life. She seized it; she grasped hold of it, and moved along it knot by knot, and the first knot was the image of a cat, scratching at the outside of a windowpane.

“I do not understand,” said Karan Mang in his accented, careful voice. He had come late, after the end of the first hour. Yet of the four observers he was the most restless, often getting up and moving to the entrance of the big silk tent and looking out over the festival grounds. Now he pulled back the white silk flap so that the others could see the workmen at the altar, a hundred yards away. With a block and tackle they were hoisting up onto the stage the enormous wicker statue of dog-headed Angkhdt. Under the klieg lights the God’s twisting shadow reached almost to the tent.

Cassia was dreaming: First there was a noise at the window, an animal scratching at the pane. Precipitation had coated the outside of the glass with sugar scum, and the animal’s claws cleaned out a circle. Through it she could see a circle of black night and glimpses of a furry face. And then the casement gave way, the window swung open, and a cat jumped down into the room.