“Take it easy,” he said to Cheni, who was thrashing about, spitting out phrases in Newari. Yet he did not think that her struggles were fearful, but were bent at getting at something, and it seemed that her scream, too, had been enraged, not frightened. He reached for the knot that secured her right arm. The second his fingers touched it, he was overcome by dizziness. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and in doing so had a fleeting impression of something towering fifteen or twenty feet above him, something huge and indistinct that was gradually assuming a coherent shape, that of a demon similar to those on the walls of the corridor. Colorless, a mere outline, as if—like the frescoes—it had faded with time and hard weather. Thick-legged, barrel-chested. Talons tipped with moonlight. A fleshy tongue caged by fanged jaws. Its silence was terrifying, and Clement wanted to run, but weakness prevailed. He fell back, striking his head against the base of the column. His heart felt sluggish and hot, a flabby muscle whose weakness made a sick pressure in his chest. The demon’s form began to solidify, to acquire traces of color and detail, and lifting his gun hand—a tremendous effort, because the pull of gravity seemed to have increased—Clement fired at the thing.
Firing had been an act of desperation, and he had not expected it to have the least effect, believing that the demon was a hallucination or else immune to earthly deterrents. But there was an effect…though it was not one he would have cared to elicit. The bullet traced a fiery line through the dusky light, impacting with a splash of vivid gold at the center of the demon’s chest; then from the edges of the splash an inky darkness began to spread like oil throughout the demon’s form, until it appeared that a hole had been punched through into interstellar space, a hole that had roughly a human shape and was figured by a single golden star. It looked to be inset into the air, to give out onto a great depth, and it had for Clement the chill allure of a gorge that had suddenly opened at his feet. He scrambled back from it, clawing at the flagstones, but the blackness bulged toward him like a membrane under pressure. Then the membrane burst, and the undammed blackness flowed forth and swept over him.
As he fell—and it was a fall, slow yet out of control, pinwheeling down and down—he understood that he was passing along the channel that the bullet was forging through the demon’s flesh. He could see the bullet ahead of him—a golden dot maintaining its distance. He was terribly cold, and an aching emptiness was filling him the way that blackness had filled the outline of the demon. He cried out, but the cry offered no release. It seemed rather a spewing forth of the petty details of his life, as if life itself were no more than a cry. All his specifics, every violence, every affection, were—he realized—emblems of the horrid vacuum through which he had been falling for thirty-eight years. He touched and tasted each one, and was harrowed by their vacancy. He wanted to hide from the knowledge of what they were, what he was, but he could not. The golden light of the bullet was dwindling, and he saw that he would soon be trapped inside the demon, that his own hellish emptiness would become the bars of his prison. He twisted about, hoping to straighten out his fall, to move toward the light, but made no progress. Even if he managed to escape, he thought, what purpose would it serve? Emptiness and failure were everywhere, and the particulars of his life were demons in themselves. He had no choice but to confront them.
Reaching that accord, accepting it, acted to calm him, and when he tried once again to straighten out his fall, this time he succeeded. The cold began to diminish, the darkness seemed to be thickening, to be providing a resistance that slowed him, and he discovered that he could use this resistance to guide himself, to shift direction. The golden light acquired a gravity that drew him faster and faster; it became a diffuse golden circle, a sun toward which the darkness was funneling him, and soon, with the barest sense of transition, he found himself at its center, lying on a pallet, staring at a butter lamp set into a niche in a black wall from which the tips of bones protruded.
Cheni was kneeling beside him. He struggled to sit up, bewildered, unable to accept that he was safe, back in her bedroom; but she forced him to lie down and adjusted the pillow beneath his head. Her face was like the face of a gopi girl, one of those women who danced and played the flute for Krishna. Almost a parody of femininity, too sensuous by a degree. Yet he was drawn to her, attracted in much the way that he had been attracted to the demon and then to the light, physically compelled, and he shifted his right hand so that it pressed against her leg. She tensed, but did not move away.
“What happened up there?” he asked. “You were tied up.”
“Chod,” she said. “The hermit helps me with the ropes. He helped carry you down, too.” She glanced behind her. “He gave me something for you. I must have left it in the other room.”
“I don’t get why you have to tie yourself up,” Clement said.
“You saw the demon?”
“I saw something.” He laughed. “Way it’s been lately, I’m liable to see anything.”
“Demons thrive on fear. To practice chod you must put yourself in a position that forces you to confront them. If you have nowhere to run, you have to make a stand.”
Nothing she said made any sense…or if it did, it was not the sort of sense that mattered to him. He ran his hand along her thigh, and the contact warmed him. He wanted her to take away all the cold inside him, to be a new meaning, a new level of pleasure. He sensed this was possible, that she would no longer reject him.
“Do you understand?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.”
He turned on his side and put his other hand on her hip. He waited for her to resist, and when she did not, he pulled her down next to him. Her face was stoic, impossible to read. He touched her breasts, let the soft weight of one settle in his palm. Her eyelids drooped.
“Last night you locked yourself away from me,” he said. “And now you’re…you’re letting me get close.”
“I saw that we might be lovers. I needed a lover, but I was afraid for you. Then at the monastery you were courageous. It wasn’t necessary, but you didn’t know that.”
“And this is my reward?”
“It’s no reward,” she said. “I know why you’re here now. I saw it at the monastery.”
The light from the butter lamps seemed to be melting over them, thickening into a languorous atmosphere. Clement tugged down the zipper of her jeans, worked his hand beneath the stiff denim, his fingers pushing into silky hair. She was already wet, open, and she arched against the pressure of his hand, making a scratchy noise in the back of her throat. Despite his arousal, he felt odd touching her so intimately. It was as if their sexuality was purely genital, as if their closeness was unemotional, a kind of intricate fitting together, satisfying in the sense that solving a puzzle is satisfying.
“Why am I here?” he asked, easing her jeans down past her hips.
“Kumari led you,” she whispered.
“I don’t understand.”
“Kumari,” she said, and repeated the name several times, her tone growing frantic, the rhythm of her speech effecting a counterpoint to the clumsy struggle they made of shedding their clothes. It seemed that her inability to explain things was unsettling her, and Clement told her that it was all right, that he had no need to understand.
“You’re going to know Kumari…her light,” she said. “Luck doesn’t matter for you anymore.”
He pushed her onto her back, propped himself above her, and thought how fine it was that a kid from a Wyoming orphanage was about to fuck a goddess.
“It never did,” he said.
As he entered her, he imagined himself engaging bad luck, terrible luck, and something cold trickled along his spine; yet even the thought of death was arousing now, inspiring, enlisting his adventurousness, and for a few moments it was good with her. Her fingernails raked his sides, her ass churned beneath him. In the hazy, buttery light her face was a lover’s face, softened and rapt, and her words were the breathy affirmatives of passion, the broken phrases and hissed endearme
nts of a tender madness. It had been a long time for her between lovers—he knew that from the way her body responded—and this pleased him. But though clinically fulfilling, their lovemaking never matched his expectations. It remained clumsy, tentative, curiously uninvolving, never attaining the ease of a true compatibility, and afterward he felt that he had taken advantage of a sick woman and was ashamed. He left her sleeping, then dressed and went into the front room. It seemed that all his emotion and tumult had come to no result, and he had needed a result; he believed he had been promised a result by the place and the woman and his desire for resolution. Maybe, he thought, he should spare them both embarrassment and leave while she was still asleep.
He lit a butter lamp and sat down, resting an elbow on the table, cupping his chin. His elbow nudged against something, and he cocked an eye toward it. At first he could scarcely believe what he was seeing, and even after he had picked the thing up, he half-expected it to vanish, to prove to be another hallucination. But it was solid, real. A cunningly carved wooden tiger. Painted orange and black, with a red mouth and white fangs and eyes of vivid green. Flawless. A feral talisman. The hermit, he thought, recalling what Cheni had said about the man giving him a gift. D’allessandro was the hermit, he was up there right now…up in the monastery. Clement felt so much, he could not put a name to any of his emotions. He got to his feet, clutching the tiger, and paced back and forth, wondering if this could be a trap. If D’allessandro was there, why would he choose to make his presence known? He’d be afraid…even of Clement. And that, Clement realized, must be the answer. D’allessandro would figure that Clement would find him sooner or later, and he wanted to arrange a meeting on his own terms. He wouldn’t have risked firing at Clement in front of Cheni, and he couldn’t kill Cheni without arousing the suspicions of the villagers. This way, however, he could discover how many people knew of his whereabouts. And he’d give Clement a chance to prove himself—Clement was sure of that. Exhilarated, he looked about for his coat and spotted it crumpled in a corner. He grabbed it, and the automatic fell from the pocket. He scooped it up. The gun reminded him of what had happened the previous night, and he had second thoughts about returning. But no, he realized, it had been Cheni who had brought the demon—if the demon had really been there—and that if D’allessandro could live in the monastery, then he—Clement—would be all right. He shrugged into his coat, tucked the gun into his belt at the small of his back, and stepped out into the street. The sun was high, shining whitely through fraying storm clouds, and Clement set out walking briskly, enlivened by the cold thin air and the prospect of seeing D’allessandro.
Bad luck, my ass, he said to himself.
By day, the courtyard where Cheni had been tied up seemed more abandoned and ruinous than it had by night. Wind whirled up dust from the flagstones, and the outer wall showed itself to be deeply pocked, with fist-sized chunks of rock and mortar lying at its base. The clouds had moved on, and the strip of sky between the two buildings was a bright burning blue. Clement called out to D’allessandro, and the name seemed to stir a little something in the shadows. He shivered, took out the wooden tiger, and examined it again. Plush red jewel box of a mouth, and painted muscles flowing. The cunning white teeth were absolutes of biting. He closed his fist around it, feeling anger and love and frustration.
“It’s me!” he shouted. “It’s Roy!”
A snick, a small solidity among the whisperings of wind.
He squeezed the tiger more tightly; its pointed ears pricked his palm.
“D’allessandro!”
He had a sense of presence nearby, and he laughed, a cracked laughter that trailed away and left him empty. A bird, visible as a black incision in the blue void, soared overhead, and the sight caught at Clement, filling him with longing. He walked into the courtyard, out of the shadows and into the glittering silence.
“C’mon, man!” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
He listened, but heard only the wind. He stood straight, hands clasped at his back, and faced the curtain of yak hair covering the doorway from which he had come.
“Know what I can’t figure, man? Why you didn’t convince me you were dead. You could convince people of anything, you were a fucking genius at that. It’s like you wanted me to know you were alive…isn’t that right?”
The wind fluted through the ruins, cutting a thin breathy passage of melody.
“Well,” Clement said, “if you’re not going to come out, I’ll just talk, okay?” He let out a sigh and that weakened him, opened him to greater emotion. “Remember what I did for you? All the killings, all the bloody detail work? I hated it, y’know. But I owed you, man. I really appreciated what you’d done for me. Really! I wouldn’t know shit if it wasn’t for you. And when all the shit I know is screwing me up, I’m still very appreciative.” He scuffed his heel against the flagstones. “I guess this must sound a little…uh…a little confused. I realize that. But what can I tell you? I probably am a little confused. That’s how you gotta be if you want to keep the assholes off-balance, right? You taught me that, too, remember? You said I had to learn to act irrationally for rational reasons.” The silence was eroding his control; the sun seemed to be making a fuming noise. “What is this crap! If you’re paranoid, man, do what you gotta do! Otherwise get your grimy ass out here!”
A faint scraping sound.
“For Christ’s sake!” Clement was suddenly close to tears. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I’ve missed you!”
Another stretch of silence, and then a hoarse baritone said, “Put your hands on top of your head, Roy.”
Clement did as ordered, his heart racing.
A massive figure in a maroon robe pushed through the curtain of yak hair to stand at the top of the stairs leading down into the courtyard. Wearing sandals and carrying an Uzi. Filthy gray hair twisted into strands that fell to his shoulders. Jowly, glum face dyed mahogany. Six years had worn new lines in the face, but Clement would have known it anywhere, no matter how effective its disguise. He felt eager and anxious like a child hoping for approval, and he couldn’t think what to say. D’allessandro’s dark eyes, set amid folds and pouches of skin, were narrowed, fixed on him, and he shifted uncomfortably.
“You look like a fucking gypsy,” he said at last, and laughed.
His expression solemn, D’allessandro came down the stairs, keeping the Uzi trained on Clement. “What am I going to do with you, Roy?”
“Do with me? What the fuck you mean, do with me?” He held up the wooden tiger. “Finally got ’em right, huh?”
D’allessandro ignored this. “Are you alone?”
“Hell, yes! You know I wouldn’t bring anybody else.”
“Why did you come here?”
Nothing was going as Clement had anticipated. He had thought that the emotion of their reunion would overwhelm suspicion; he had expected that D’allessandro would have grown simple and beatific like Gepetto, reduced to his saintly essentials; he had pictured them embracing, weeping.
“You look terrific,” he said. “Really terrific.”
“Answer me.” D’allessandro gestured with the Uzi. “Why did you come?”
“Kumari…I wanted to learn about Kumari. Jesus, I couldn’t believe it when I saw the tiger. I couldn’t fucking believe you were here.”
He started forward, but D’allessandro waved him back.
“Are you certain you’re alone? I thought I saw someone else.”
“Fuck, yeah! I’m alone, all right?”
After a pause D’allessandro said, “It’s good to see you.” But his tone was neutral, and he did not lower the gun.
“I’ve been looking all over hell for you!” Clement said, his frustration boiling over. “Six goddamn years! And all you got to say is, ‘It’s good to see you?’ Shit!”
“You should have left well enough alone.”
“Damn it! You wanted me to find you!”
D’allessandro gave an exasperated sigh and glanced up
to the sky as if seeking guidance. “Roy,” he said sadly.
“How are you?” Clement asked. “Are you happy?”
D’allessandro appeared startled. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“That’s good, that’s good.” Clement searched for something else to say, wanting to gain the old man’s trust. “So what do you do here? Just hang out and carve the animals?”
“I have books, music…a cassette recorder.” D’allessandro wore a bemused look. “It may sound austere to you, but it’s a welcome simplicity.”
“Great,” said Clement, still at a loss for words, but beginning to think that they were going to get past this moment, that they would soon be sitting in the sun and talking about the future, being like father and son, clear of their bloody convoluted history, and they would make new plans, achieve tremendous successes, and D’allessandro would teach him the secrets of absolution and forgetfulness; and that was important, for without absolution and forgetfulness, he was not going to make it, but seeing how contented the old man was, he knew those secrets must exist, that there must be a way to lift memory from the brain as easily as those magical little screens that kids draw on; and when they peel back the plastic sheet, what they had drawn would be erased.
“Roy!”
Clement realized that D’allessandro had been speaking. “Yeah, what?”
“Put your hands back on your head!”
Clement was surprised to find his hands dangling at his sides. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just…”
A little sound like the whiff of a vacuum can being punctured, and D’allessandro’s head exploded. Sprays of blood painted the wall behind him, bone fragments clittered on the flags. As the old man toppled, Clement threw himself into a shoulder roll toward the wall, digging for his automatic, and came up firing at the curtain of yak hair. Continuing to fire, he crawled over to the body, plucked up D’allessandro’s Uzi; then he sent a burst of fire into the curtain, making it jerk and dance. He got to his feet, edged along the wall toward the curtain; he lifted the braided edge away with the barrel of the Uzi, and return fire tore through the hair. He glanced around, searching for an option to the corridor. The outer wall. By using the pitted sections for handholds, he should be able to scale it. Whoever had shot D’allessandro would pull back, knowing that Clement would have to make a break sooner or later. They would take cover in the boulders outside the gate. At least that was how Clement himself would handle the situation. They would not be looking for him atop the wall. And even if they did, he wouldn’t present much of a target.
The Ends of the Earth Page 37