Abandon

by Iyer, Pico

  At the end was a dense appendix, referring to some professor of astrology in Los Angeles and his work on stars, and another, bizarrely, describing the hours of an initiate’s day, as outlined in a ninth-century handbook. At the very end, a final Appendix, C, on what a more secular soul might have called “The Sufi Way of Healing.”

  This included more talk about the cult of discipline and the virtue of doing without, and then drew a comparison between a culture of ease and of struggle. “In the one there is the belief that suffering is the enemy of life, that which we must expunge; in the other the sense that suffering is the source of life, the cradle of our wisdom. The only tragedy in the world is a young culture that believes in comedy.”

  Finally, in the very last words of the pamphlet, as if rising to a grand summation of everything he’d said before, the fervent young believer wrote:

  We live, some of us, in exile, in a culture that speaks of therapy, as if therapy was not with us all the time, in our God. The therapy culture tells us that everything we do is the product of a trauma, where we tell it that everything we do is the consequence of God. The therapy culture says that we are formed by family, community, upbringing, we tell it that we are the creations of the Divine. The therapy culture offers confessionals for those who have turned away from God; it says that everything has a reason, an earthly cause that can be yielded by analysis. We tell it that our cure, our source, our reason can only lie above us. We enter the causeless and find ourselves by losing ourselves in a Greater Self. All that we are is what we cannot name and cannot know.

  Written in the year of the Prophet, peace be upon him, Most Merciful and Just, 1362.

  He turned the final page, and sat for a long moment at the desk. Around him, two young Japanese girls were giggling; a tall bronzed boy in shorts was passing a note to a girl with long fair hair, and she was biting her lower lip and looking back at him. Outside, a few gaggles of students walked through the courtyards in the direction of the sea. The eucalyptus stood along the sides of the lagoon, and then there was open space and light.

  When he got up at last, his legs crumpled beneath him for a moment, and he almost fell; he had been sitting in one place so long that they’d gone dead. The kind of abandon his measured teacher had chosen to confess to the world at large, even a decade ago, was itself a shock; but more than that, there was the fact of his writing all this in English, and allowing it to be printed and kept in the library for anyone who looked. It was less a treatise, he began to think, than a call to arms.

  When he arrived in the Department a few minutes later, Eileen looked up and greeted him with a smile that seemed uneasy.

  “He’s not expecting you, I think?” she said.

  “I told you I’d be coming. I’m answering his summons.”

  “I see,” she said, unhappily. She put through a call, taking pains to say nothing in reply to what was said to her; then, not many seconds later, the door to the private office opened, and Sefadhi emerged.

  “I just got your message,” he told his adviser, and then recalled, strangely, that he’d heard the same phrase, said to him by someone else: she, calling from one of her hiding places, a few weeks before.

  “Come in,” said Sefadhi, leading him into the office, and pulling out the creases in his trousers before he sat down.

  “You’ve decided to take up my offer,” he said, as if he’d given his student a choice, and not a command. “It’s nothing urgent: just one of those things that come up from time to time.”

  “A nothing urgent that is sending me across the world.”

  “You don’t want a free vacation?” asked Sefadhi, knowing the question was rhetorical.

  “I’m not sure I’ve got much choice.”

  “You will enjoy it,” his teacher pronounced. “There is a manuscript that someone has found in Jaipur. Not of great interest to us, I have no doubt, but similar, perhaps, to the books they keep in Delhi and Lucknow. A relic of the time before they returned to their original homes.”

  “Then it’s of no use to us.”

  “No obvious use, no. But the owner of this text, a Mr. Hussein, has asked that we help him place his book.”

  “And tell him what he doesn’t want to hear.”

  “And tell him nothing,” Sefadhi corrected gently, no doubt catching the implication in his student’s voice. “He has a manuscript, and it is no doubt of value to him. That is all he needs to know.”

  She was waiting for him when he got back, sitting against the propped-up pillows, her face alive with all the places she’d scrawled across a pad: plans, projects, all the things they could do together in the few days off.

  “I’ll be there in a second,” he said, and took himself off into the study to collect himself.

  “What is it?” came the voice from next door. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “Not now. I’ll be there soon.”

  “You’re preparing something,” she said, her voice heartbreakingly free of the veil it usually carried with it.

  He went into the room where she was, the receding ocean leaving the sand behind outside, and sat by the blanket under which she’d stretched her legs.

  “What is it?” she said again.

  “Bad news.”

  Instantly, without a further word, the color went out of her face, as if this was what she’d been waiting for all along.

  “You’re leaving me.”

  “Not exactly. Only for a few days.”

  “You’re leaving me,” she went on, “just the way I said you would.” She didn’t think of sudden calamity or earthquake or death; only the drama she knew and had played out a dozen times before.

  “I’ll be back by the fourth of January.”

  “You leave when?”

  “Two days from now.”

  She counted the days off on her fingers. “The twenty-third. Just before Christmas.”

  “Sefadhi’s found some manuscript, in some old house in Rajasthan, and he says it needs authenticating before the new semester begins. He, of course, has other plans for the holiday, so his most faithful student—or the one most beholden to him at least—gets the call.”

  “He can’t do that. It’s Christmas. It’s New Year next week.”

  “He can do anything he wants.” He put his hand on the leg underneath the blanket, and she pulled it away. “Without him, there’s no fellowship. Without him, I can’t even stay in the country. He can do anything he wants with me.”

  For a long moment she said nothing; he thought of someone whose car has gone off the road, and then, in the shock immediately after, starts throwing out flares, whatever distractions she can put up in the road.

  “He’s going to see his daughter, I guess.”

  “Who told you about his daughter?”

  “You did. The first time I met you.”

  But he was sure he hadn’t.

  “He’s going off to some Iranian gathering. And he knows I have no such excuse.”

  “You don’t?” she said, and then got up from where she lay and began to collect her things. “That’s fine,” she went on. “Greg said something about Palm Springs. I’m sure he can come up with something.”

  “I’m sure he can. All I can say is that, if you’re disappointed, I’m even more so. I’ve been looking forward to this since . . .”

  And then, when he said nothing, she turned to look at him, and everything in her softened. He had only to hint at all the holidays he hadn’t spent, with the family he didn’t have, and she was defenseless against him.

  “It’s just . . .”

  “I know. For you this would be the trip of a lifetime. I should dress you up and you could talk like me and say you’re John Macmillan.”

  She didn’t laugh, though, and went on pinning up her hair, while she proceeded to look around for whatever things of hers were still lying around.

  “Well,” she said at last, gathering things up in her arms to take to the bag in the next room, “I hope your tri
p is a roaring success.”

  “I hope it’s over before it starts.” He remembered the paper he’d seen in her notebook once in which she’d listed all the cities she dreamed of visiting.

  “We’ll go somewhere one day, I promise.”

  “Maybe,” she said, and then, with more feeling, “What if I can’t sleep without you again?”

  “We’ll have to make sure I’m always around.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “What if I miss you and miss you and you’re off looking for some inspiration? Or doing some stupid chore for your adviser?”

  “I won’t be, if the inspiration comes from you.”

  “So clever with your words,” she said, and took the things she’d gathered off into the next room.

  The light had fallen as they’d been talking, and the room was now pitch-black. He sat there for a few moments in the dark, the sound of the ocean outside, distant cries from near the point, while she, he could hear, was throwing her things together. Then, suddenly, the phone began calling from the study, and he ran to pick it up. Maybe the whole thing had been a test, one of Sefadhi’s elaborate devices to see how committed his student was? Maybe it had just been a joke of some kind; or he hadn’t managed to acquire the visa he said he’d scare up overnight.

  “Hello,” he said, picking up the phone.

  “Hi,” said a voice, almost familiar, but not quite. “How are you?”

  “Very well,” he said, trying to find his ground. “You?”

  “I’m well,” she said. And then, after a pause, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Who am I, then?”

  “Someone I know.”

  She laughed at the feebleness, and he began to put a face to it. “Kristina Jensen,” she said, to take him out of his cloud. “We met at your presentation on the Sufis.”

  “Yes,” he said, “of course. How are you?” But he’d already said that once, and now, almost reflexively, he was looking back at the living room to where someone else was collecting her things.

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  “No, not at all. I was just—well, preparing something.”

  “The reason I’m calling is Camilla. We were worried.”

  The “we” the most sinister thing she could have said.

  He didn’t say anything, so she’d have to make clear her intentions.

  “We haven’t seen her for a while, and we were beginning to worry. I wondered if you’d seen her recently.”

  “Not recently,” he said, willing the angry figure in the next room to be quiet, “she could be anywhere,” and he was rewarded with the conspirator’s laugh again.

  “You’ll tell us if you do see her?”

  “I’m sure I will,” he said, suddenly realizing that his new friend’s fears were not imagined.

  “Good. We appreciate that,” she said, and he waited for the inquisition to end before the voice in the next room could respond.

  “Who was that?” she said, pretending not to be interested when at last he put the phone down. “Your secret girlfriend?”

  “Hardly. Just someone looking for something.” He didn’t know what to say exactly.

  “Did you give her what she wanted?”

  “Not yet. It was something I care about.”

  By now her things were set in a neat stack by the door. Her face, as so often, broadcast the wish to run away playing off against the longing to stay.

  “Can I ask you for something?” she said, once her preparations were complete.

  “Whatever you like.”

  “I wish it were.” And then, after she’d made sure he’d caught the implication, “I think it’s better if I ask you for something you can give me.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Just hold me? Till I get to sleep? At least I can have one night of calm before you go.”

  He went in and cleared a space for her on the bed, smoothing down the sheets where she’d been lying before, and when she came in, he held her and embarked on a long, winding story to help her get to sleep. About two people who follow a road of dark curves up and up into the hills, and then find a space that has never been claimed, and start to make it their own—a private space outside the city, uninhabited—and then climb up into the large room, lights visible through the windows . . . but by the time he got to the empty, dark space, her breathing had fallen into a regular rhythm, and he could tell she was far away.

  He followed the couple a little farther himself, in his mind, into the empty space, up to the wall against which they could sit, the intimation of Spain, the Alhambra in the lights outside, and then, as he began to fall asleep, suddenly he felt her clutching at him, desperately, as if clawing.

  “What is it?” he said. “What’s happening?”

  “There was this, I don’t know,” she said, “this figure all in black.” Her nails were digging into him, and it was as if she were still asleep. Or taken up, at least, in some other place. “I was saying, ‘Go away! Get away from me! You’re evil!’ But it was coming after me, and I went home, and then it was coming out of the bushes. It was after me, it wanted to get me.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, waking up. “It’s all right. It’s just a dream.”

  “It was, I don’t know . . . We were wrestling in my room, and then I was saying, ‘You’re evil. You’re black!’ And my mother came in, she had a knife, and she was drawing it across her hand.”

  “It’s all right. It’s just a dream. I’m here. You’re okay.”

  “Like this person who had no color, no color at all. And I was saying, ‘Leave me alone! I don’t want to see you. Leave me alone, can’t you?’ ”

  And then she was sobbing, great speechless sobs, and it was another person he’d never seen before, squeezing out all the things that had been trapped inside her. Choking now and then, and talking through her tears in words that came out muffled, incoherent. “You see?” A great gasp. “You see what I’ve been telling you? Anytime anyone starts getting close to me, I get like this. I become the person they most want to run away from.”

  “It’s all right. It was just a dream. You’re better now.”

  “Now you see why everyone gets sick of me.”

  Then, as abruptly as she’d clutched at him, she got up and made to walk towards the door, where all her things were stacked.

  “You can’t go now. It’s four-fifteen.”

  “If I don’t go now,” she said, and she didn’t have to complete the sentence. You’ll never want to see me ever again.

  “Then come back as soon as you’re feeling a little better. We can have Christmas in advance.”

  “ ‘In advance,’ ” she said, as if it were a nice thing for other people to believe in.

  In the morning, as he’d half suspected, there was no sign of her. He checked the answering machine, he opened the door, but there was nothing. He stayed in from the library, didn’t take his run, but the apartment was more silent than if there had been no one there at all.

  The following morning, very early, he put his things into a bag and drove south. The sky was the color of steel above the sea, light-threaded, and along the coast the traffic was sparse: people had already begun staying in for their Christmas celebrations. The last time he’d come along the road, he thought, seeing the occasional surfer come in from the sea, he’d been on his way to Westwood, the Iranians and their manuscript, her house full of clutter under the smog.

  “I look at you sometimes”—her voice in the cabin near the creek, the light from occasional cars shooting through the windows—“and all I can see is this hope, this boy’s hope, that everything will work out okay. I can’t share in the hope, I can’t believe in it, but it seems like a good thing to have, not terrible at all. And then, sometimes, I see you at your desk, or when you’re running along the beach—I see your back—and all I can see is this incredible vulnerability. As if the slightest wind would knock you down.”

 
“It’s the language they speak here,” Alex had said, years before. “It’s the Californian addiction. The only thing they recognize is weakness.”

  But then she’d gone on. “That’s why we’re perfect echoes. You see in me the things you’d never admit to in yourself.”

  “I’m glad you can see it like that.”

  “I’m not. But if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t believe I had anything to give you.”

  At the departure gate, after checking in, he called the most recent number she’d given him, and heard the male voice dispense its command. Then, trying to frame his words carefully, so they’d reassure her without throwing off anyone else who might be listening, he said, “This is a message for Camilla Jensen. This is . . .” and heard a click.

  “Hi. I was hoping it was you.”

  You didn’t come, he might have said. I waited and waited; I went out into the streets in my pajamas at dawn. Instead, he simply said, “I can’t wait to see you again. We’ll celebrate Christmas when we meet.”

  “By then . . . ,” she said, but whatever came after was drowned out by the sound of the announcement of his flight.

  III

  British Airways flies through the night to London, and then through another night to Delhi. When he arrived, in the dark of 1 a.m., there were figures coming towards him out of the mist, shrouded in blankets, only their eyes staring out through the phantasmal chill: “Sir, please, sir, come with me.” “Sir, best price for you.” It was always like a graveyard outside the international airport—he remembered even from his trip in college—and the number of figures had increased, moving without direction in the brown light, wrapped in turbans, their dark eyes sharp.

  He got into a broken-down Ambassador, some of the shawled figures getting in on all sides, turning around from the front to smile or gawk at him, scrambling into the back seat to sit beside him and guard his carry-on. As they drove into the spectral capital in the night—it was 2 a.m. now, local time—he felt as if he were moving through a battlefield at the end of some medieval war. Here and there, figures were sitting by small fires along the side of the road, their eyes wild as the headlights caught them, while others plodded along with bullocks in the middle of the half-deserted street. The air was brown, over everything a kind of filthy mist, and the buildings that came occasionally looming out of the dark, illuminated, looked more unreal than ever, like painted models. India had the one thing that California lacked, he realized—the theme of all his research coming back to him—native ghosts. Everywhere the sense of unseen and unburied spirits taking over the imperial city while the people slept.