by Paul Park
The woman shrugged. “The pills caused her to miscarry. She was ninety days before her time.” She pointed with her chin. “There’s the father, so she claimed.”
“The child is still alive,” said Mr. Sarnath.
He had dropped his knapsack a few feet away. Now he retrieved it and pulled out his flashlight. Switching it on, he drew back a corner of the blanket to reveal two infants in a caul.
A movement had betrayed their presence, a small tremor on the surface of the blanket that had covered them. No cry, no noise had escaped them, though now Mr. Sarnath thought he could detect a tiny sputtering. They turned their heads away from the harsh light, a dark girl and a pale, fair boy, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Their eyes were open, blue and dark, their arms were wound around each other’s backs, their tiny legs around each other’s hips. Sarnath noticed with surprise the boy’s erect penis; he laid the light aside and then picked up the pocketknife the gatekeeper had given him, to cut the double, knotted cord that joined them to their mother.
“They’re alive,” he said.
“Not for long.”
The cord was greasy underneath his fingers, slippery with blood. He cut it off ten inches from the mother’s slack body and then held it up, pinching it tight, unsure of what to do. “What do you mean?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’ve seven of my own.” At that moment, her sister started to moan softly. The old woman pulled her sister’s head into her lap and cradled it in her thin arms—a fierce, protective gesture. “Take it away,” she said. “Leave it on the altar—there.”
By this she meant the stone sarcophagus. The image of the saint loomed over them, his hands held to the sky. Sarnath bowed his head, and with a common sense he didn’t know he quite possessed, he tied the cords off on the bellies of the twins and cut them short. With a corner of a pair of underpants, Sarnath wiped the blood and fluid from the babies’ faces, and removed the remnants of the caul. They stirred fretfully under his hands. And they were making noises now—wet little clucks and moans, though still far short of crying.
He wrapped them in the blanket. “I’ll take them to the town,” he said. He sat cross-legged on the sand. The eastern sky was pale above a line of hills.
Awkwardly, he held the children up. They were restless and squirming in the blanket. Their mother had quieted down again, and the old woman’s eyes were full of tears. Then she made a sign that Sarnath barely recognized. She ducked her chin down into her left armpit and then spat into the sand—the ancient sign of the unclean. “Who’ll take them?” she said fiercely. “Spirit children, look—they’re one month premature. More than ninety days—they should be dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at them—they’re healthy as a snake, while she lies dying. Big, too. They weren’t so big inside her body, I can tell you. You could scarcely see.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at this place! Do you think those are her children? No, but they were conceived there on that altar.”
“These are superstitions,” murmured Mr. Sarnath. He was trying to find a way of holding the children that would keep them comfortable. But they were squirming and fretting in his hands. Were they hungry? He had goat’s milk in a bottle.
“Superstitions! No one comes here. No one but the murdered dead.” She pointed toward Lycantor Starbridge with her chin.
Part Two:
The Master
IN THOSE DAYS THE MOON ROSE twice each season. The first time Mr. Sarnath saw it he was just a boy, living with his master in the village in the trees. It had risen for a dozen nights during the final phase of spring, the time of its least influence in the affairs of men. Then it had been a small disturbance at the zenith, a small light in a bank of clouds.
Then he had stood watching in a bare place in the almond grove, while his master raised his arm to point. But Sarnath wasn’t listening. Then it had been hard even to think about the wintertime. Hard to imagine all the trees down, and the horizon all around, and the land empty. Hard to imagine how Paradise had shone like a pale sun on the pale snow, commanding the night sky, the dreams of men, the city of Charn—it seemed unreal to think of it. Winter was safe when Mr. Sarnath was a boy, a distant memory, a distant prophecy of nightmare. It was sealed in the past, sealed in the future.
Yet eleven thousand days later, when the moon rose again the night that Rael and Cassia were born, its power was already waxing. Only midsummer, yet already by midsummer the world had turned. Gradually, inexorably, new impulses were combining with ones as old as time to threaten the power of democratic Charn, born in the bloody revolutions of midspring. Not so long before—there were men alive who still remembered the tyranny of the old government, and it made them desperate to forestall the future. Desperate when they saw those old roots bear new greenness, those old sophistries and superstitions gather weight. It was for this reason that the smuggler at the port of Caladon was put to death.
In those midsummer days, forests and jungles stretched a thousand miles from the coast, beyond the borders of the old diocese of Charn. Traveling through it on his long, slow journey toward the village of his birth, Mr. Sarnath passed evidence of this new awakening. He saw the shining sun of Abu Starbridge painted on stones and on the trunks of trees. He saw the painted image of Immortal Angkhdt. And even though he had left his duties at his desk in Caladon, still he was made anxious by these new phenomena. For he was a student of history, a student also of human nature, and he wondered how the indigent and unsophisticated peoples of the forest could find anything in the old legends to attract them. Yet the Cult of Loving Kindness seemed to flourish best among the poor.
Once when the children were just old enough to walk, Mr. Sarnath had stayed a month in a small town. It was hidden in a grove of mescal bushes; on the sixtieth night he had left the children sleeping and had climbed down the slope into a swamp. Dry land in the middle of the wet, difficult of access, and there he had crouched with many others, watching a shaman of the Cult of Loving Kindness sing his song. The man had told them how Beloved Angkhdt came down from Paradise in the world’s morning, and sifted gold from dirt, and threshed out corn from chaff, and raised up certain men and women to be Starbridges and kings. He told them how the rest should suffer gladly, how they like Angkhdt himself had been reborn on earth to suffer for their sins, how it was only through glad suffering that they could purge themselves of sin, until their souls rose up to Paradise again.
The shaman’s face was painted white. His lips were drawn back in a grimace almost of anger as he told them of Angkhdt’s journey through the solar system, through the planets of the nine hells where worse torments, perhaps, awaited them upon their deaths. And in the swamp they had sat listening with eager gaping faces as the shaman made each of them confess their own inadequacies; troubled, Mr. Sarnath had climbed back up into the town to sit with the children as they slept.
Or once when Cassia was already talking, he took a job for a few months near Cochinoor. One night he saw a traveling group of players act the passion of St. Abu Starbridge—how his hand was marked with the tattoo of privilege. How he declined to use it to protect himself. How he was put to death. How he was seen drinking in a barroom that same night, according to a dozen witnesses. How he descended into darkness, and fought there with a white-faced devil. How by his victory he spread his privilege to common folk, and loosed the chain of hell, and brought the sugar rain. How he replenished all the earth.
Or in another town, Mr. Sarnath once had been accosted by a doddering old woman, who told him stories of the wonders of old Charn before the revolution. She was toothless and she mumbled so that he could barely understand. She gripped him by the arm. A city of ten thousand palaces and shrines, she told him, ruled over by a Starbridge bishop of the golden blood, a young girl martyred by the usurper Chrism Demiurge, burned together with her wild lover. She and her wild antinomial had been taken down from her tower cell and burned. But a magic
tree had grown over the pyre. Broken open in the revolution time, her tomb was empty. She was the white lily on the stump—“Wait for me among the days to come,” she’d said. Also: “Once more I will be with you for a little while.” Also: “I am the spark that reignites the fire.”
The old woman had gripped him by the arm. Mr. Sarnath smiled at her and pulled away, sad in his heart. Yet there was something touching in this version of events. How poignant it is, he thought, that we are always eager to surrender the burden of our own power, even to people who have always tortured us. He conceived of a desire to discuss this with the master, and so he hurried from that town, and from the next. He rented a donkey for a little while. And finally in November of the fourteenth phase of summer, 00016, he found himself at last in a wet jungle of almond trees, forty miles from the nearest human settlement, eight hundred miles west of Charn. This was the site of his master’s village.
In those days it consisted of twenty-seven palm and bamboo houses raised on stilts above the forest floor. The novices had dammed the stream, and in the marshy ground below the village they grew taro root and rice. On drier ground above the stream they had burned the vegetation from a number of small hilltops, and after careful management they were able to grow soybeans, manioc, yams, and even occasionally cotton. These crops, harvested communally together with small plantations of bananas, mango trees, and pawpaw, gave to the villagers a richer diet than that of any other forest race. “Strength, which is the wisdom of the body, comes from the multitude of small experience,” the master said.
His house was in the center of the village. All the others were arranged around it in concentric circles, according to the spiritual progress of the occupants. In theory all the houses were identical, for they had been built according to the master’s precepts. Inside they exemplified the same three principles of sparsity, simplicity, and emptiness, but outside there were differences—the novices, who themselves lived in the outermost ring, had worked hard on the inner houses. They had built elaborate roofs of banana leaf and almond wood, painted in bright colors, all oriented inward toward the master’s dwelling. These roofs served no purpose, except to shelter from the rain some of the open space between the houses. Spiritually, their implication was at best ambiguous, yet even so the master tolerated them. In those days he tolerated foolishness that would have once infuriated him, for he was old and close to death. Lately some people had even started to build altars in their homes, and decorate them with small carved images of the master sleeping, eating, talking. But if he knew of this he gave no sign.
* * *
On November ninety-second of the fourteenth phase of summer, three travelers appeared on the outskirts of the village: two children and a middle-aged man. This was Mr. Sarnath, coming home after an absence of half his life. The journey from the customs house at Camran Head had taken more than three thousand days, for when the children were first born he had been obliged to find employment in a series of small towns.
The children appeared first. They came running down the forest pathway, a big, golden-haired boy and his dark sister. The girl was laughing and running with her brother close behind; his face was twisted up with anger, and he was trying to crowd her off the path and down into the ditch. A quarter of a mile below the village they were running along the top of a raised embankment when the boy managed to trip her with his heel, so that she fell headlong down the dike and down into a swamp of mangrove trees. When the first novices arrived from the village she was lying on her back and laughing, ever though she was covered with mud and bleeding from cuts on both palms and both knees. The boy was standing on the path, and when the novices tried to restrain him he attacked them too. His skin was slippery with sweat; he slid inside their hands and started punching at their stomachs, which were as high as he could reach. Startled and confused, they fell back along the dike, which made the little girl laugh harder than ever. She was shrieking, almost choking with hilarity by the time Mr. Sarnath arrived at the bottom of the path.
“Stop that, stop,” shouted the novices. “Stop that noise!” They fell back before the fury of the boy’s attack, but one of them, a small, thick-bodied man with big protruding ears, held up when he saw Mr. Sarnath. He grasped hold of a sapling that was growing by the dike, and with his other hand he pushed the boy aside. “Sarnath?” he inquired—a soft, tentative question that cleared away all other noise. The little girl stopped laughing suddenly and there was quiet, save for the boy’s angry breath.
The novice was bare-chested and was dressed in baggy shorts. Despite his low spiritual condition, he was not young. His face was heavier than those of most of his race, and when his mouth broke open in a smile, he revealed a row of large white teeth—evidence of a strange genetic mix.
He pushed the boy aside. He walked slowly down the dike and stopped, and reached out his dirty hand to touch the traveler’s face. Mr. Sarnath was smiling and he closed his eyes, but the old novice hesitated at the final instant, and reached instead to grasp the end of Mr. Sarnath’s veil where it was hanging low around his mouth. The novice pulled the veil away completely, unwound it from the traveler’s neck. Then he reached out to touch Mr. Sarnath’s arm and take his knapsack from his shoulder. “How are you?” he asked, his wet lips making a mess out of the words—“How are you doing?” But his face was lit with happiness, and when Sarnath hugged him, he placed his forehead shyly on the taller man’s chest. “Nice to see you,” he said.
“Honest Toil,” replied Mr. Sarnath.
The little girl had dragged herself onto the dike. Avoiding the boy’s stare, she limped down the path toward Sarnath, and she burrowed in between him and the older man, cleaning her face against their pants. The path was wider where they stood, but not much; startled by the new contact, Honest Toil pulled away. He gestured the other novice forward and stood holding the shoulder bag, muttering to himself and making soft, impatient noises, while Mr. Sarnath squatted down with his handkerchief and started to wipe the mud from the girl’s hands and legs.
Under his fingers the bruises seemed to grow, spreading soft and yellow from her knee. The gladness that protected her from pain had dissipated; now she was biting her lips to keep from crying. Mr. Sarnath raised his head. “How far are we?”
Honest Toil was shaking his head and mumbling to himself, but when he saw he had Sarnath’s attention, his face cleared suddenly and he smiled. “Oh,” he said. “I would like you to meet my friend Mr. Goldbrick.”
The second novice, a younger man, stood relaxed and unresistant as Honest Toil pulled him forward by the hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, a hint of good-natured irony in his voice. Mr. Sarnath wasn’t looking. He was poking at the little girl’s thigh. But then, glancing up, he noticed signs of renewed consternation on Honest Toil’s face, and he reached out his hand. He nodded hello; for an instant the three men’s hands came together, and they seemed to generate a spark that only Honest Toil could feel. He grinned excitedly, shaking out his fingers. “One quarter of a mile,” he said.
The day was hot and overcast. A little way along the path, the boy stood on one leg and picked a thorn out of his foot. A cloud of midges jiggled around Sarnath’s head, and the swamp gave off a rich, fermented smell. Unctuous water stretched away on both sides of the dike.
There had been no swamp here when he was a child, no mangrove trees upon their stiltlike roots. Here had been a dry glade of anorack. Now at eight-thirty in the morning it was already hot. Cassia’s skin, as he wiped it with his handkerchief, was covered with small beads of sweat.
* * *
That day was important in the history of the village because at nine o’clock the master announced to his disciples that he was leaving, that his term of life was over, that he was unable to stay longer with his students and his friends. Eight weeks before, he had broken his hip while he was working in the lentil pit. The bone had twisted when they were getting him out—he had hung suspended in the ropes, cursing steadily, and by the time he reac
hed the ground he was unconscious. Though he had awakened in two minutes, the joint itself never reknit, and for the whole month of November he lost weight. He lay on his back in his house in the center of the village. He was not able to write, or even sit. Often before, during the days of his strength, he had been querulous and demanding, and had sometimes lost patience with his students, and called them fools and blockheads when they made mistakes. But in his final illness he achieved a new tranquility. He spoke softly and carefully, using many small words of endearment. He answered the most clumsy questions without irony or impatience. Toward the end, even when the gangrene had spread into his leg, he persisted in refusing opium. Instead he lay immobile on his back, meditating, or else listening and talking until late into the night. Nor did he speak about his death, except to say: “When it is no longer possible for me to live correctly, then I will begin to consider my alternatives.”
On the morning of November ninety-second, at the same time that Honest Toil and Mr. Goldbrick led the three travelers up into the town, the senior students of the master gathered around his bed. The novice who had been assigned to help him with his breakfast lowered him down onto the pillow and wiped the liquid from his chin. The master’s plate was still half-full of broth, but he could stomach no more; he smiled and shook his head. The senior student made a gesture with his hand, a signal for the novice to take the plate away. The novice bowed. But before he could get up and leave, the master put his fingers out and grasped him by the wrist. “No,” he said. “Stay with us, please.”
For several minutes he lay on his back with his fingers tight around the novice’s wrist. He shut his pale old eyes for several minutes, and then he opened them. “There is room for everybody here,” he said.
Again he lay silent for a little while, and then he turned his head. One by one he looked into the faces of his senior students. His mat was on the east wall of his house next to the window screen and the veranda, and his students sat in a semicircle around him, in order of their spiritual precedence. It was an order they had assigned among themselves, according to their performance in certain spiritual debates, when on Tuesday nights they sat up late, arguing the master’s precepts long after he himself had gone to bed. They never troubled him with the results. Only in the morning they sat around him in a certain order, and they wore cords of different colors knotted around their waists, black, blue, red, tending toward white, according to their scores. The master himself, in his days of health, would always tie his trousers with an old white belt, one of the nine objects that he owned.