Holy Water

by James P. Othmer

  Henry nods. Okay.

  “And I don’t want you to mention my name or discuss any aspect of me with him at all.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I just want the damned straws.”

  “I understand, Maya.”

  “And you should be very careful, because he is a despicable, greedy, self-serving human being who cannot be trusted.”

  “Okay. Other than that, do you mind if I ask what he ever did to make you feel this strongly about him?”

  Maya straightens her chair, sits down, and rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Well,” she says, blinking and laying her hands palms down on the table, “for starters, about a year ago we kind of slept together.”

  ~ * ~

  Angle of Deterioration

  “So how’s your lady friend, then?”

  They’re in Madden’s Range Rover, heading toward the capital for a lunchtime meeting with the man who has the Galadonian distribution rights to the LifeStraw. How Madden got the Range Rover back after their mountain-road hijacking is a mystery to Henry. He thinks of asking but decides not to. He doesn’t want to know. “What lady friend?”

  “Playing coy, eh, mate?”

  Henry stares at the smog-blurred mountains. It’s not yet noon, and already the astonishing scale and clarity of the morning peaks are diminished, obscured, something that he can’t be sure he ever saw to begin with. It’s a malicious tease every dawn. Brilliant sun rising upon a day filled with beauty and possibility, only to disappear a little more each second behind massing clouds of natural and unnatural origin, all but disappearing before peak inclination.

  “I know, Madden.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Maya told me.”

  Madden makes a popping noise with his lips. “I didn’t mean to do her any harm, mate. I tried to do right by her.”

  Henry sighs. According to Madden, a year earlier he met Maya when she was part of a committee representing local interests during the first phase of the prince’s corporate revolution. Madden had promised her that a construction deal he was working on would include housing and jobs for locals. During the process they began sleeping with each other. No explicit promises of fidelity. When a more lucrative and easily resolved situation presented itself, Madden reneged on his promise and abandoned Maya’s interests. She was outraged. Several days later, after discovering that he was also having a relationship with a woman in a remote village in the southern part of the country, she abandoned him.

  “But, of course,” Henry replies, “you did do her harm and you didn’t do right by her. Plus, if I’m not mistaken, you were married.”

  “It’s more complicated than she might lead you to believe, Tuhoe. I tried to bring her plan to life, but it became more and more unrealistic. It was purely business.”

  “I really don’t care,” Henry says. “Other than hating you more than I think is healthy, she’s over you. That’s between you two and this is between us.”

  Madden nods. “All right.”

  “Just don’t accuse me of being coy when you’re the one groping around for information and pretending you barely know her.”

  “She deserved better than me.”

  “This is true. She deserves better than me too. The only question is whether I represent a step forward or back.”

  ~ * ~

  They meet in a Western-style steak house called Holy Cow a mile outside the capital, in the shadows of the unfinished sports stadium: Henry, Madden, and the regional distributor of the LifeStraw, a man named Sirajh. They order drinks in the bar and then Madden and Sirajh excuse themselves and leave Henry and his warm Chinese lager to consider the abundance of cow paraphernalia in the lobby while they step outside to have a private conversation.

  Upon returning ten minutes later, a smiling Sirajh places an arm around Henry’s shoulders and leads him through the large, empty restaurant to a corner table that overlooks the abandoned construction site. Sirajh explains that they may eventually be joined by another guest, the Galadonian minister of health, “who, along with the prince, offers his full support for this enterprise. But with the situation in the capital, I cannot guarantee this.”

  Madden had warned Henry that it was impolite to discuss a business deal until after they have finished their meal, so he bides his time, gnawing on an overcooked rib eye the texture of cork and an oily plate of mixed vegetables while Sirajh describes a recent trip to textile factories in southwestern China. The growth. The productivity. The whores. “And unlike here,” he whispers, pausing to sip from his glass of American rye, “the government knows how to put a fucking boot on the throat of dissenters.”

  Henry wonders how a person as crude and ruthless as Sirajh came to be the regional distributor of a product as pure and altruistic as the LifeStraw. Then, he figures, to Sirajh the LifeStraw is simply another product, another potential profit center, which then leads him to wonder if Sirajh even knows what it does.

  But Sirajh surprises him. He reaches into a bag under his seat and tosses a ready-to-use LifeStraw into Henry’s hands. “So,” Sirajh says, addressing Henry in a less amiable, more direct tone as soon as their entree plates are cleared. “There you have it. Twenty-nine centimeters long by twenty-nine millimeters in diameter. How many units are we talking about?”

  In his left palm Henry weighs the straw, which isn’t much more than a surprisingly light and portable white plastic tube. He clears his throat. “Well, we have an initial budget for twenty, twenty-five thousand U.S. dollars. So, however many—”

  Sirajh interrupts. “Eighty-five hundred units of the personal LifeStraw. Each filters up to seven hundred liters and lasts about a year. The family straw, another option, which has a much larger filtering capacity, is considerably more expensive and also more difficult to procure.”

  Henry shakes off the family straw, takes a drink of warm beer, and hears himself say, “Is that the best you can do on the personal?”

  Sirajh looks at Madden. Is this guy serious? “Okay,” he responds, taking a sip of rye and seeming to run some numbers in his head. “Nine thousand units for twenty-five K. This is less than three dollars per, and you should know the markup on this humanitarian shit is a joke. Next to nothing. But since you know this son of a bitch and he speaks highly of you, I will do him, and as a result you, a favor.”

  Henry smiles at both men. “That sounds reasonable. I appreciate your consideration, Sirajh. How quickly can we get them?”

  Sirajh fixes his eyes on a place in the distance and makes the calculator face again. “Once the financial situation is settled, we can have them packed, shipped, and ready to use in two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? Two weeks won’t work for me. Madden said we would be able to have them within two days. And the financial situation can be settled now if you’d like. I can arrange a transfer immediately.”

  Sirajh shrugs. Henry turns to Madden. What now?

  “The thing is, mate,” Madden explains to Sirajh, in a tone that bears no trace of joviality, “Henry here has corporate types coming within the next few days for a very important PR dog-and-pony show. An event that is important not only to Henry but to his very close mate the prince of Galado. And if you think you’re gonna exploit that situation, I guarantee that will be a decision you will deeply regret.”

  Sirajh sighs and closes his eyes for a series of more complicated calculations. “Do you need all nine thousand for this pony show?”

  Henry shakes his head.

  “What I can do is get you a box of one hundred, which is more than enough to hold up to the cameras and hand out to the villagers. I can even get you a few dozen empty boxes for props to give a more impressive appearance.”

  “That would work for me,” Henry says, nodding in gratitude.

  “I will have them delivered to your place tomorrow, no money down. And after the rest arrive, in a week or so, this is when you can arrange payment.”

  Henry begins to pass the straw back to Sirajh, but he�
��ll have none of it. “Yours to keep,” Sirajh says, waving him off. “Just don’t go drinking all seven hundred liters in the same place.”

  ~ * ~

  Outside, Henry and Madden hear chanting coming from the direction of a village djong about a hundred yards away from the restaurant. Assuming it’s a political demonstration, Henry listens alongside Madden for a moment, then turns to walk in the opposite direction, toward Madden’s Range Rover. Madden touches his arm before his next footstep lands. “Let’s take a quick look, all right?”

  Henry rolls his eyes, but as soon as Madden begins walking toward the djong, he sticks the LifeStraw into his back pocket and follows. Before they headed inside for lunch the area was almost empty, but now the street is buzzing with pedestrians. They walk past groups of young people in celebratory ghos gathered in small groups, singing and laughing, old street vendors with dark, creased faces selling chile snacks and drinks and brightly colored beads and scarves. Unlike Maya’s village near the river, the village near the call center, and most of the rural towns Henry has driven through, this one is well taken care of. The paved main street is lined with clothing and electronics and food shops with whitewashed fronts and colorful hand-painted signs. At a large carved mahogany archway to the monastery, a block-long structure of brilliant white stucco capped with a series of terracotta-tiled pyramid hip roofs, Madden turns to Henry.

  “We’ve stumbled upon a tsechu. At different times of the year, almost every large village has one for up to five days, always near the tenth day of the lunar calendar, to celebrate the deeds of Padmasambhava, the bloke who introduced Buddhism to Galado in the eighth century. People used to walk for days to get to them, but they say they’re not as popular with the young people as they used to be.”

  Inside the courtyard they stand against a wall and watch four monks in brilliant gold and orange and purple costumes performing a dramatic dance, accompanied by two drummers and a dranyen player. As Henry watches the monks sway and reach and flow as if in a sort of underwater dream ballet, he thinks of the song Maya left on his computer. “It’s beautiful,” Henry whispers, more to himself than to Madden.

  Madden raises his chin toward the dancers. “This whole country is so caught up in the bloody process of trying to preserve its culture, but really, if an aspect of a culture is worth a damn, it’ll preserve itself, right?”

  Henry doesn’t agree. Madden has a way of doing that, answering his own hypotheses for you, but Henry’s fairly sure that Madden, who moments earlier told him that the tsechu is a fading tradition, doesn’t agree either and is merely rationalizing, coming to terms with a flawed aspect of himself.

  Across the courtyard, Henry notices two boys, perhaps twelve, watching a slightly older boy play a handheld video game, all oblivious of the ceremony. When Henry sees that Madden has noticed them as well, the two contrasting forces at the heart of the country’s future—the spiritual and the commercial—in the same line of vision, he sees no reason to reply.

  After the music stops and the monks bow and disappear through a side door, there is a lull. Two four-year-old girls in maroon ghos sneak out into the center of the courtyard where the monks just performed and begin an impromptu dance of their own. While Henry watches the girls, transfixed, the courtyard begins to fill with a parade of new visitors coming in off the street, all wearing some form of red. Shirts, bandannas, ghos. Madden has stepped away and is in deep conversation with an acquaintance who owns a local taxi company.

  Ac once a dozen bass drums begin to sound. The little girls end their dance and scatter as the first line of more than a hundred red-clad men and women carrying red-painted signs begin chanting in a tone that is much more aggressive than a sutra. The newly formed crowd responds with a cheer before joining the chanting with an intensity and anger that is such a contrast to the dreamily dancing monks and children that it disorients Henry. He turns to Madden for an explanation, but Madden is gone.

  A door opens behind him and a scrum of angry men pours out into the reddening courtyard. On the lower edges of the terracotta rooftops are perched dozens of chanting people pounding their open hands on the limestone gutters, legs thrashing in the air. Henry tries to move to his right but is confronted by another group of young men in red bandannas, rushing the other way. One slows and, making the flash decision that Henry is an ideological enemy, shoves a raised forearm against his throat, knocking his head against an iron wall sconce. When he regains his balance, he wipes his forefinger against his brow and sees that it is smeared with blood.

  Another face appears in front of his, twisted into a hateful smile. He begins to lift his hands in a gesture of peace, or cease-fire, or submission, but they barely move before the man shoves him, sending him stumbling backward into the courtyard. Two others in red T-shirts and bandannas pursue, steering him with small shoves toward the center of what minutes earlier had been an artistic stage. One spits at him and another condemns him. Henry doesn’t understand but assumes that the words have to do with money and commerce and the destruction of their culture. And something about him too. Something that he lacks.

  “Friend!” he half shouts, finally getting his hands up in front of him, but they don’t understand or don’t want to. Another double-handed shove to the chest pitches him backward onto the courtyard’s dry earth floor. He rises, thinking, What else can I say? Future LifeStraw provider? Friend of Maya? Sustainability expert? Approaching from his left he sees a muscular young man with fists cocked at his sides, but instead of shouting any of the above, Henry twists his hips and lunges upward from a crouch and uncoils a tight, fierce right uppercut that crashes into the man’s lower jaw, lifts his bare feet a half-inch into the air, and sends him careening onto the ground in a burst of dust.

  For a moment Henry’s violent response stuns the other two, but then it just makes them angrier. As they rush toward him, Henry spreads his legs and half squats for balance. But instead of bracing for their impact, he reaches into his back pocket, pulls out the LifeStraw, and charges them. They freeze. He bashes the LifeStraw tube against one man’s temple, then pounces on him and thrashes his head and face with the hard plastic life-saving device. When the third man moves forward to rescue his stunned companion, Henry raises the LifeStraw behind his ear with two hands as if it is a broadsword, and the man freezes.

  A hand grips his shoulder. He spins, the now bloody LifeStraw still cocked high and ready to strike. “Easy, mate!”

  It takes Henry a moment before bringing down his hands and beginning to see Madden with the slightest glint of recognition. Madden jerks his head toward the entrance gate some twenty yards away. “Come on,” he implores, clenching his fists and preparing to make a dash. “Let’s get out of this fuckshop.”

  ~ * ~

  In the Range Rover, Henry presses a wet napkin against the gash on the right side of his forehead. “What the hell was that?” he asks, checking to see how much blood the napkin has sopped up.

  “That,” Madden says, “was an impassioned plea for the preservation of art and culture.”

  Henry stares at the napkin and decides, based on the size of the blood spot, that the cut, other than being a festering ground for any one of a half-dozen indigenous and potentially fatal infections, isn’t serious.

  “So howzit feel, mate?”

  “How does what feel?”

  “Bashing a bloke in the face like you just did. Like a bloody man, I imagine.”

  “I beat a Buddhist with a life-saving water purifier endorsed by UNICEF.”

  “When’s the last time you knocked a bloke on his arse like that?”

  Henry stares out the window. They’re on the road back toward the call center, USAVille, and Maya. “I don’t know. Fifth, sixth grade. I don’t think we should play together anymore.”

  “You should be proud of yourself, Henry Tuhoe. You negotiated a damned nice deal to get your bloody water thingamajigs in time for your little event. You stood your ground against an angry mob. And you brought do
wn two men with your bare hands.”

  “And a LifeStraw.”

  Madden smiles, and after a while Henry does as well.

  ~ * ~

  For the next five minutes they drive without speaking. Madden breaks the silence when he says, “She’s a good woman, mate.”

  “We’ve already covered that territory, mate.”

  “Truth. But you know, I never lied to her. Never told her I was gonna marry her or be true to her. Shit, she knew I still had a wife back in ‘stralia.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I can be a cutthroat motherfucker, Tuhoe. But I’m no liar.”

  “That’s fine, but you should know”—Henry stares at Madden until Madden decides to look back—”in those rare instances that I truly care about something or someone, I can be as cutthroat a motherfucker as anybody.”