The Cult of Loving Kindness

by Paul Park

  In this way he loaded everything, except for the emptied water bucket and a single blanket, which he kept for last. Then he sat down to wait for his mother, a dour expression on his tiny face. At the same time, Mama Jobe had gathered together her own bundle, and Karan Mang had already packed up and departed. His own equipment had fitted easily into a shoulder bag, and Cassia had watched with interest how he had folded together his imported mylar blanket and his sleeping pad; she had never seen such things. He had walked away into the trees without a word, without a backward glance, and all the while Cassia was sitting on the palm mat. And the Servant of God was sitting with her, studying her face, holding her hand.

  * * *

  That day, all day she was aware of him, although she never saw him. But sometimes she could sense him moving along one side of the trail, perhaps a hundred yards into the bush. Sometimes on the other side, sometimes behind them, and once they passed a place where the fallen blossoms made a pattern that she found significant. Once she raised her eyes to a tall tree, the crossing of two branches, and one of them was trembling in a way that seemed unnatural, as if Rael, perhaps, had just leapt down.

  Sore and peevish, she walked slowly, carrying Servant of God’s guitar and rolled-up mat. He swung along beside her on his heavy hands, balancing occasionally also on his knees. He rested often and she rested with him, until all the others had disappeared in front—Karan Mang, Mama Jobe, who was carrying with sudden poise her bundle on her head.

  Finally even Efe and her children had disappeared. With a great deal of grunting and spitting she had loaded her basket onto her back, the conical end of it caught in the cleft where her spine met her buttocks, the tumpline round her brow. At the final instant she had sunk the pail into the top of her basket; wrapped in his blanket, the infant perched inside like a sailor at the masthead of a wide-bottomed boat, and he peered at Cassia over the edge of the pail while his mother labored underneath, his little face jerking up and down with every step she took. Just behind, his brother trudged along with his eyes upon the trail, similarly loaded with a fat small pack.

  Eventually they labored out of sight among the trees. Eventually Cassia could no longer hear them, and she was left alone with the Servant of God. But only for an hour or so, because as the day wore on the path became more crowded, and they were often overtaken by other groups of pilgrims. From time to time, also, other smaller paths joined theirs, and at the junctions there were often resting places where the ground was beaten flat, and where families of pilgrims sat and talked. No one was in a hurry—these folk were in a holiday mood. They wore brightly colored clothes and chattered together in loud voices. And although among them there was a complicated mixture of races and languages, still they seemed to be in good humor, and they were smiling and greeting each other, and making conversations out of gestures and repeated phrases. In time this made Cassia restless, because everyone seemed to know Servant of God, and with enormous smiles they would stop him on the path; they would bend down to embrace him and kiss him on both cheeks, and talk to him in unknown languages, while all the time peering at her curiously. Especially on these occasions she would be aware of Rael watching her perhaps, and with hot cheeks she would stand restless in these little glades while Servant of God conversed with Rais and Gurungs and Tamangs—tall spindly folk from Banaree and short squat westerners—specimens, in fact, of all the races Cassia had ever seen when she was on the road with Mr. Sarnath. Despite her natural self-possession, she was awkward and unquiet, because she had never seen so many human beings all together since she was a little girl, and she was not used to their loud voices, their abrasive laughs, the way they never cared how close to you they stood. Awkward also because Servant of God would never introduce her or even look at her during these moments of greeting, though she imagined many of his words and gestures must refer to her; for this reason people glanced at her with smiles on their faces.

  Often he would sit down to rest while he was speaking, and he would reach up to take her right hand in one of his, and he would caress her palm in a way that as time went on she felt to be more and more presumptuous. But to let go of him at such an instant would be to let him fall. So she resisted the impulse, and at the same time she reinforced her patience by imagining Rael’s frustration and jealousy to see her standing in what surely would appear to him to be the center of attention, hand in hand with this strange cripple. How jealous he would be! How he would curse his timidity and whatever else it was that kept him lonely and apart—if he were watching her at all, she thought, and were not someplace miles away, running through the forest by himself.

  In the afternoon she found herself moving in a long line of people. The path had widened by this time, and in places several travelers could walk abreast. From scattered snatches of conversation, Cassia understood that many had been on the path for weeks or even months, and in these especially she could feel an intense and growing excitement, above all in the children, who were everywhere. They formed the majority of every group—long-legged, wraithlike girls skipped by her, with shaved heads and luminous fair skins, and they were chattering and talking with their hands. “Tomorrow night,” one called, and made a song out of the words, for there was singing everywhere along that ragged and unruly line which trailed on behind Cassia out of sight. Carrying the guitar she did not feel out of place, for many others carried pipes, fiddles, concertinas, xylophones, and drums. At gathering places on the trail, children would sit in circles around lone musicians, and the line of pilgrims, passing, would pick up the song, and it would run along them like a wave until it clashed with something else, coming down the opposite direction. In time Cassia found herself smiling and humming too, not from her own happiness, but because the festival atmosphere was difficult to resist.

  Every hour there were more people, and now the path was wide. The pilgrims rushed along it in a stream, dividing behind Cassia and Servant of God, jostling them on either side, re-forming in front of them. Children looked back with curious impatient faces. “Koori, koori sana,” they called, words unknown to Cassia, although she found herself repeating them. These newest pilgrims were a dirty bunch, with clothes and faces thick with grime and skins that smelled like smoke. They were barefoot, and the rips in their T-shirts showed tight bellies and thin shanks. But they were happy too, laughing and singing, their eyes bright with expectation, and when they opened their mouths their teeth were stained with kaya gum. They were carrying bundles of bark, bundles of roots, bundles of rags.

  Or else others, more sophisticated but not especially cleaner, would limp along in broken plastic shoes, or would be carrying plastic shoulder bags emblazoned with bright foreign trademarks. Some of these were students, holding books and notebooks and ballpoint pens; some wore thick, unwieldy, battered spectacles. “Good morning,” they would call, though in fact it was near evening and the sky was dark and overcast. And they also were singing, and they clapped their hands and snapped their fingers to sophisticated, trendy rhythms; one even carried a radio, blaring static, and under it a tiny song.

  Toward nightfall the line stopped for twenty minutes. The way forward was obstructed for some reason. People ranted and complained, and yet in the end they waited patiently. Cassia and Servant of God sat hand in hand without speaking. His eyes were closed. He was in pain, and he winced when she roused him to move forward again. The line was moving, and only a few minutes later it debouched into a clearing. First there was a barricade of broken trees and then they moved into an open space of trampled earth. And there they found Efe again; inside a circle of smoky torches, she and several others had set up a kind of kitchen. Six women had lit fires, and they were cooking manioc greens and lentils in big rusted barrels. And all around them people sat wrapped in dirty blankets, for the wind had come up again and it was cold, now that the shelter of the trees was gone.

  The path had wound uphill all day, so gradually that Cassia had noticed only the change in vegetation, the rhododendron trees giving way
finally to stunted pines. In the clearing, people squatted around fires of pinecones and pine needles, and the air was full of the smell of burning pitch.

  And the soil was thinner too, a dry sand mixed with pine needles, which covered ridges of sharp rocks. It was as if, during the days of Cassia’s journey, the rock foundations of the land had slowly risen up through layers of sediment until finally it had punctured through. In the clearing it was uncomfortable underfoot, for the volcanic rock was as sharp as glass.

  But some people had spread out canvas tarpaulins, and many others had scrounged in the forest for branches and dead leaves, which they had arranged in rough untidy piles for the children. More than five hundred people were camped in the glade; already a circle of canvas shelters had sprung up, and as the lamps were lit and Cassia came in, she passed a man with a mattock digging trenches for latrines, splintering the rock with heavy strokes.

  Servant of God led her forward toward Mama Efe’s fire. Twenty feet from it she laid out his mat and he flopped down onto it. His knees were cut up from the rocks and he was tired, and yet his great liquid eyes were full of peace. He was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, while all around him milled a circle of admirers. To Cassia, sitting next to him with his guitar on her lap, it seemed that he, or more particularly his upturned face, had become the still center of that entire rustling mass of people. As it grew darker, she could see less, and all the activity around her seemed slowly to subside, and she could see patterns in the circles of the torches and the shadows of the shelters, and hear patterns in the cries and bangings and the laughter of the children. Again, there was music everywhere, but as the evening wore on it seemed less strident, less combative, and all the different songs around her seemed to resolve into a dreamy hum. She was tired, yet wakeful too, and she was always trying to pay attention as another person knelt down by Servant of God to mutter a few words. She would nod and listen to the cripple’s soft sweet voice as he greeted everyone by name, a tranquil expression on his upturned face. In time, Paradise rose behind a mask of heavy clouds; the sky assumed a silver sheen like another layer of light over the flickering torches, something permanent and luminous and thick. Then especially the noise and music around Cassia settled down, as if muted by the thickness of the air. All around there was an expectant sense of gladness. Cassia found herself happy, not knowing why, and in the new light the cripple’s face gleamed like a silver mask.

  Mama Jobe sat down next to them, and she had brought them wooden plates of food—hot masses of lentils over sticky rice. Servant of God took nothing. He appeared to have entered a soft trance—“Ah, ah, ah,” he muttered. “Abu, ah, ah.” But the firelight was shining on Mama Jobe’s teeth, and together she and Cassia ate mountains of the wet, hot food, and it was loaded with peppers so that their mouths burned and their eyes watered. Mama Jobe had also an old orange cola bottle, full of a homemade liquor that was the first alcohol that Cassia had ever tasted. “Tonight’s the Prince’s night,” said Mama Jobe. “Tonight we’re drinking like he used to drink.”

  Which seemed to mean to excess—all around them people were uncorking bottles. Cassia’s head was ringing after seven sips, and she concentrated with difficulty on the sound of the nearby radio. A young man had perched upon a rock outcropping behind her; he had a studious and bulbous face, and he was dressed in a clean white button-down shirt, with two pens in his pocket. He held the radio against his ear, and even though he never turned the knob, still the signal seemed to fluctuate between stations: sometimes music, sometimes static, and just once a loud clear voice, for the antenna of the labor camp at Danamora was just ninety miles away. “Tigers versus Wolverines,” it said, “one-nineteen to twenty-five,” words which made no sense to Cassia, even though they brought an image to her mind.

  “Where’s your man?” asked Mama Jobe. Cassia smiled and Mama Jobe smiled too. But she was looking at Cassia out of the corner of her eye, and when Cassia said nothing she clicked her tongue against her teeth. She took another swig of liquor and then wiped her mouth. “I’d a doubt this morning,” she said. “And I told you so. Because you know we must be careful. But when they sent the Prince to jail, they put him in a common cell with six hundred prisoners. Which means to say, everyone is welcome. Here around us you’ve got folk from everyplace. They’ll be sneaking from their families, their husbands, and their wives. Whole villages of outlaws. But tonight we are protected. All stupidity forgiven. Because you know, he was not a perfect man.”

  “Who?” asked Cassia.

  Again the woman clicked her tongue. “Abu Starbridge, child! The Prince! Why do you think you’re here?”

  All around them, the night was settling down. With the alcohol, the world was starting to contract, and Cassia no longer felt the presence of the folk outside a certain small contracting circle. A woman in a greasy blanket, puffing on a pipe. A family of children in a pile of leaves. A row of men along a rock, passing a bottle back and forth. The student’s radio had quieted down to static only, though he still pored over it. And Cassia was most aware of smells, which seemed to take on a new power as all the sights and sounds diminished. A sea of smells was rising up around her, and it was made of smoke and unwashed bodies, lentils and frangipani, and hot powdered milk. From time to time also, a fluctuation in the wind would bring a smell of excrement and urine from the trench, and as time went on the smell of undigested liquor, regurgitated food. A child retched softly, rhythmically, over to her right.

  “He was not a perfect man,” repeated Mama Jobe. “For this reason all frailties are forgiven in advance. To become pure like him requires neither willpower nor strength. But only say the word.”

  These sentences were different from her normal speech, and it seemed clear that she was reciting something. “What word?” asked Cassia. Again Mama Jobe looked at her out of the corner of her eye, and again she took a drink.

  “You’re with us now,” she said at last. “The Servant chose you. Maybe he chose you for your helplessness, so that we could show you loving kindness. Maybe he chose you for your ignorance, and that when we told you these things, we’d find ourselves repeating them and knowing them. For Abu Starbridge was a teacher. Once when Paradise was full, he went down to the dock in Charn among the poorest people of the town. They were the antinomes—they too were ignorant. But they knew music and the dance of death, and they were antinomes and they were living in the holes of the earth, and they crept out of them to sing and dance for him. So today we honor singing and dancing, which is the gift of the stupid to the wise. And in return he taught to them their history, and taught to them the story of the world, and taught to them the force of loving kindness, when he was living in their caves with them for two nights and two days. And when Lord Chrism Demiurge was king in Charn, he sent the soldiers to destroy them. But Prince Abu stood against them on the dock below the Harbor Bridge, and he raised his hand and scattered all of them with the power of loving kindness, and he had no other weapon, for he was the protector of the weak, the broken, and the miserable against the powers of the world. He raised the laundress to her feet and kissed her on the lips. For this reason we raise up our hands to him and on our palms we mark the shining sun, which is the symbol of the heat of love, which is our mark.”

  These words were spoken in a halting singsong. And they seemed to come not only from the lips of Mama Jobe, but also from the darkness all around her—a muttering of voices not always in unison. When she reached the end she raised her hand; others nearby raised theirs also, and they spread out their fingers to mimic the sun’s rays, and then with the thumb of his other hand each one marked a symbol on his forehead or his tongue. The old woman laid her pipe aside, the student put away his radio, the children raised their heads up from the leaves. Servant of God also was moving his lips, and he unbuttoned his ripped shirt to show the sun drawn on his chest in silver ink. Even in the darkness Cassia could see the crude thick lines.

  Now all around her the music seemed quieter, and al
l the sounds of talking settled down. People lumbered from the darkness to sit down beside her, and they were sitting with their children in their laps, wrapped in blankets against the freshening wind, leaning in to listen when the cripple said:

  “Drunk with the whiskey, drunk with wine, drunk with compassion for the poor folk of the world, he abandoned his high tower and his life of luxury; he abandoned his family and his friends. In the secret hour of the night he came into the streets of Charn, wearing just the clothes upon his back. In this way he showed us that all men are equal, and they do not shine by their own light, but it is the touch of God that makes them shine. And if we strip ourselves of pride, and arrogance, and the weight of our belongings, then we can forget false differences. We are naked and helpless, and we have nothing to give. Yet everything will be provided if we only say the word.”