The Cult of Loving Kindness

by Paul Park

  The sky was overcast. Toward afternoon, he descended down the side of a steep dark and tangled dell. The undergrowth was thicker, and he stopped to rest. The dell was full of laurel trees. Branches hung down over the trail, and he was pushing through suspended clusters of the sharp leaves, each one as thick and stiff as pottery, and they clanked against one another as he disturbed them.

  There was no wind.

  He saw the tracks of another animal.

  There was a patch of bare ground near where a rivulet had spread over the trail. He bent down to examine two large paw prints. They had filled with water, yet even so they were still fresh, the mark of each claw still articulate.

  Rael knelt down at the rivulet to drink. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He felt a presentiment of danger. He felt a strange, airless constriction in his chest, which was fear, although he didn’t recognize it. Around him from time to time, the laurel leaves banged randomly together.

  He sat back on his heels and pushed the hair out of his face. A man stood erect in the shelter of some saplings. Rael’s eyes traveled up his long dense golden legs, almost hairless, knotted with muscle, bleeding from six parallel cuts along his outer thigh.

  He was wearing the skin of an animal, tied around his hips and again around his heavy shoulders. Rael stared at the black and white striped fur, the cruel paws hanging down. The man was wearing the skin of a dead tiger. Also, the surface of his arms and throat were striped with tines of shadow, for the sun had burned down to the bottom of a layer of clouds, and the trees were full of a new color and a new dappled light.

  For a moment Rael stared at the man’s curled ear, the hairless jaw, the coarse yellow hair that was like his own. And then he bent back down so that his face was in the mud. He turned his cheek to one side and laid it in the dirt. So that when the music came he couldn’t tell whether the stranger had produced it with his mouth and with his voice, or else from some small instrument. It was nothing: over in a moment, a small scattering of notes, an interrogatory tune, or perhaps a puzzled warning. But Rael was staring at the stranger’s toe. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the toe was gone. The sun also had receded back, and there was nothing around him but the muffled banging of the leaves.

  Soon he picked up his blanket roll, and wandered back the way he’d come. By the time he had retraced his steps, it was already dark.

  * * *

  In the darkness, Cassia paced back and forth under the trees, beyond the trench for the latrines at Brother Longo’s mission. She crossed her arms over her chest. From where she was, she could still see the lights in the clearing, and she could still hear the crowd: the gravid silence first, and then the roar of voices, not always loud enough to cover a shrill scream.

  The air was cold away from the fire, and Cassia was rubbing her bare arms. A thin, harsh stink of urine was rising from the trench, mixing with the sickness in her stomach and the liquor in the back of her throat, which she was swallowing again and again to keep down. And she was thinking of Mr. Sarnath, his gestures, his inflections, his dry voice. She was thinking of the way that he would hold up his forefinger when he quoted from the master. Once when she was a little girl, just after she had moved into the girls’ dormitory, she had refused food for three straight nights. The keeper had told Mr. Sarnath, and he had come to see her in her room, and he had stood in the doorway with his forefinger raised. She had ignored him; she was lying in her cot with her face to the wall, studying a crack in the palm matting. Some light was seeping through. It was in the morning.

  The master had not approved of self-mortification. Nor had Mr. Sarnath—he called it the easy path. In time he came to sit beside her, though he did not touch her. In his left hand he was carrying a ripe persimmon, and as she listened to him talk, her mouth had filled with a sweet anticipation.

  She found herself walking among pine trees. And it was not quite dark. Paradise still glowed behind its layer of mist, and the entire sky glowed silver. Somewhere nearby she heard water dripping, and then she was aware of someone in the woods with her, among the pines, and she could hear his footsteps, and the crack of a dry branch. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned to go back toward the fire, but then there was a shadow in between two trees and it was he, it was Rael; she knew him by his height and strength and shoulders as he took her in his arms; she knew him by his smell, his roughness as he crushed her without speaking, and ran his hands over her breasts, her buttocks, and her thighs. There was some sickness in her belly, but it was lighter now, and she was conscious of another yearning, also, as he pushed her up against the rough bark of a tree and made a kind of love to her there, lifting her up until she clasped her legs around his waist, all soreness and all nausea forgotten.

  Then they lay together on the pine needles. Rael lay on his stomach, and she curled up beside him. His skin seemed hot, and it was hot enough to keep her warm. “Just pay attention,” she said into his ear. “Just be careful.” But she could feel his tension and his wakefulness; once she woke up in the middle of the night to see him standing over her. Later, he was gone again. She woke feeling empty as a broken bottle. But he had left the blanket, and she wrapped herself in it and sat up until the dawn.

  Part Eight:

  Mt. Nyangongo

  AT THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH PHASE of summer, the citizens of Charn elected a new mayor, who went on to surprise them with his energy and daring. Inheriting a massive public debt, nevertheless he managed to negotiate new loans with the city’s foreign creditors, while at the same time expanding his commitments to education, nutrition, health care, rural literacy, and rehydration. These priorities differed from those of previous governments, which had tended, with the encouragement of foreign banks, to favor large public works. By September of the sixteenth phase of summer, most of these projects had been curtailed or abandoned, so that the countryside beyond the city was full of half-built bridges, and stadiums, and dams.

  The mayor was a man named Marcus Gentian, and he was squat and stout and stupid-looking, with an elaborately wrinkled face and a permanent expression of befuddlement. But he brought great force of character to his job. Almost single-handedly he managed to coax various austerity measures through the council, including taxes of 500 percent on luxury and imported goods. In this way he hoped to encourage domestic manufacturing and reduce the hemorrhage of raw materials abroad.

  Also at this time he was working on a universal employers’ code, specifying new levels of minimum pay, and including new provisions for overtime, vacations, and sick leave. This code was already in effect in the city and in all government-owned businesses, but in the rural areas it was ignored. Most of the large agricultural and mining projects were still owned and managed from abroad; since they had involved major investments in land reclamation and technology, most had been started and maintained with foreign money, foreign expertise. The mayor’s new survey on abuses, which so far had been blocked from publication, had mentioned seven industries in particular, and had even suggested criminal proceedings against the owners of the mine at Carbontown.

  On September fifty-third of the sixteenth phase of summer, 00016, the mayor of Charn inaugurated a week-long celebration of civic harmony. This was to coincide with the dates of the old Paradise festival—the moon was visible that week, and made a strange, disquieting addition to the summer sky. The mayor hoped that this ceremony, this demonstration of public pride, would help to salve a new dissatisfaction among the middle classes, caused by the sudden disappearance of tape recorders, portable cameras, dishwashers, cassette players, and motorbikes from the city’s shops. He sought to evoke a spirit of solidarity, and at the same time to counteract a new insidious phenomenon—the secret worship of Immortal Angkhdt, which after the hiatus of a lifetime was beginning to resurface even within the city limits of Charn itself.

  On the night of the sixty-third, for the first time since the days of Raksha Starbridge, the temples of the old regime were opened to the public. The may
or hoped that he could preempt their old significance by using them for his new ceremony—the interiors had all been renovated and redone. During the revolution, the thousand temples of the city had been used as barracks, stables, shooting ranges, public restrooms; they had been gutted and vandalized by semiofficial partisans, and many had been subsequently torn down. But the stonework of the great old churches was still intact: St. Dimity’s, St. Soldan’s, the Cathedral of a Thousand Tears.

  All reference to the old religion had been expunged. The space inside the Church of Morquar the Unkempt was empty. The frescoes on the sanctuary walls—portraits of the thirty-two bishops of Charn—had been painted over. The mosaic of the dome had been redone. With infinite and patient labor, tile by tile, the figures of the saints had been transmogrified, their faces and their gestures changed, their bright halos eradicated. Of course the new work was cruder, easy to distinguish from the old, but that night among the crowds who packed inside, there was not one who could have possibly remembered what the dome had once been like. They gazed up dully, yet even so, many thought it was peculiar in a way they could not quite identify, to see above their heads on the great central panel a representation of the first national assembly of the revolution. There, standing in their seats, were figures who to the people had already taken on the attributes of myth, glimpsed only through official statements and the foggy reminiscences of their parents and grandparents. There—Valium Samosir, dressed in white, representative of the seventh ward and later president of the Board of Health. There—Earnest Darkheart, leader of the Rebel Angels. There—Martin Sabian, ugly, tiny, crippled. And there, an enormous black gaunt figure on the central throne—Colonel Aspe, the Liberator, Lord Protector of the city until his death from cancer in the ninth phase of spring.

  No one could have guessed by looking at it what the mosaic had once represented. No one could see the glorious convocation of the first Starbridges around the throne of Immortal Angkhdt. Yet even so in the packed crowd some seemed to understand, and even there were some who mumbled secretly a part of an old prayer, or made tiny secret gestures with their hands.

  The mayor had rededicated each of the five largest churches in the city, and had declared each one a monument to a distinct aspect of civic progress. That night, at nine o’clock precisely, the spotlights were turned on around the new palaces of Hydroelectricity, Justice, Agriculture, and Nonviolence. In preparation for the celebration, new streetlights had been erected all over the city, in an attempt to rob some splendor from the risen moon.

  Yet even so the ceremony was less than a complete success. Even with the new mosaic, the interior of St. Morquar’s—the new Palace of Industry—had an empty, purposeless look. Alcoholic beverages, in short supply since the embargo on imported hops, were distributed free from a long table in the nave. There was an enormous crowd, yet somehow their reaction to the spectacle which formed the heart of the evening was unsatisfactory. People shuffled their feet, yawned, sweated, smiled inopportunely, scratched their heads.

  The drama was performed on a square dais underneath the dome, and the people stood around three sides of it. The sets were gigantic, the costumes pleasingly expensive. Several celebrities—members of the city council, the postmaster general, the dean of the school of law—had taken roles. Some of the speeches, including several in praise of the inventor of a new process of smelting, had been written by the mayor himself.

  In the final scene, seven young women represented the seven liberal arts, and they danced provocatively with an equal number of young men, whose hats suggested different industrial procedures. The men were prominent sports figures, the women the seven runners-up of a pageant that had been held the previous day. Yet even so, some energy was lacking, some vital spark. And in this it contrasted with other, smaller, private celebrations which were taking place all over Charn that same night. Illegal, punishable in some cases by long prison sentences, they persisted especially in the slums, where in hot broken rotten houses, not yet reconditioned into workers’ flats, fervent gatherings of the faithful squatted around single candles in the dark. They were rubbing worn crude homemade fetishes, and chanting stories from the life of Abu Starbridge, stories from the life of Angkhdt. In those days the two mythologies had come together, to form a potent new religion of the disenfranchised and the miserable.

  It was a religion made of stories. This is a story that they told in those days: Abu Starbridge was carried in a cage through the streets of Charn, on the way to his place of execution. And he was stinking drunk. And they had loaded him with chains, and covered up his face with the dog-headed mask. In the back of an old truck, he was driving through the streets of Charn, while the people yelled curses and threw stones. When he was passing up the avenue of Seven Sins, a laundress from the lowest caste jumped up onto the tailgate. She asked him for his blessing and bent down to touch his feet. But then he reached out through the bars of his cage. He raised her up. He said, “Do not fear. Among a hundred thousand I will know you. And when I see you in the land of Paradise, I will kiss you on the lips.”

  Or this—Beloved Angkhdt went traveling, marked with the tattoos of a gardener. It was the starving time, the dark part of the year. Wherever he passed, grass grew under his feet. It poked up through the snow along his footprints.

  When he got to a town, the men and women brought their children, for he had the healer’s touch. He would touch them in the secret places of their bodies. Sometimes the women came out while their husbands slept. They lay with him inside the cowsheds, among the cows.

  He came to the city. The primate heard that he had come, and then the primate gave him money. But Angkhdt had seen the primate’s daughter. He said he would plant a garden in her stomach, and then he went away. But she lost flesh, and she was almost dead, and she was the only fruit upon her father’s tree. Then the primate took his bow, and hunted Angkhdt through all the hills and the high pastures. He saw him on the hill, a black shadow standing up, and he shot him with an arrow through the thigh. He chased him through the wood. Beloved Angkhdt, he left a trail. And his blood was falling on the snow. There was a flower which sprang up, and a scarlet berry. Then the primate found his clothes discarded in the snow. He was following the track—human footprints, then they changed.

  * * *

  On the morning of the sixty-third of September, Cassia waited in the pine grove for Rael to return. A cold mist was hanging in the trees, beading in her hair. At the end of an hour she was too cold to keep on sitting as she had been, wrapped in Rael’s blanket with her bare feet dug into the pine needles. So she got up and walked back to the clearing.

  There the bonfire was still smoking, and she stepped among the rows of sleeping pilgrims to reach it. She pushed her toes down into the warm ashes, and bent to rub the stiffness out of her legs. Near her the branding tree had fallen to its side. The book, the lantern, and the pail were gone.

  The pilgrims had lain down to sleep where they had sat the night before, and most still lay inert, crushed in together for warmth, their arms around each other. Many snored. The ground was scattered with discarded bottles.

  But the children were awake, huddled up among their parents. Some had gotten up, and were laughing and playing among the trees, throwing pinecones at a marmot in a tree.

  Servant of God was still asleep. So was Mama Jobe, her hand still clasped around her bottle. But Efe was awake—she was returning from the edge of the clearing with a burden of firewood. Her face was puffy and streaked with charcoal, and she was grunting to herself. Her baby was tied to her back in a red strip of fabric, which only left its feet and head uncovered. And behind her, also with his bundle of sticks, trudged her little boy in his old man’s cap.

  Mama Efe squatted down near Cassia, poking with a stick into the ashes, searching for embers from the bonfire. In the cold morning she was wearing a black cotton jacket, which nevertheless she had not buttoned; it did not close over her breasts. She laid her cooking fire with efficient movements, while
in the meantime her little boy filled up a bucket from a standing tap near the latrine. It weighed almost as much as he did himself, and he was spilling most of it as he dragged it toward the fire.

  Cassia went to help him. But he would not relinquish the bucket; he glared at her with dull hostility, his fingers tugging at the handle when she tried to lift it. Water splashed onto the neck of an old man who was stretched out nearby snoring. He slapped at his neck as if trying to kill a bug, then woke and cursed. Mama Efe cursed too, and whispered something Cassia didn’t understand. She let go of the bucket’s handle and stepped back.

  Brother Longo was there, standing by Cassia’s elbow. “You’re up early,” he said. But she was startled to see him, and disgusted by her memories of the previous night. As she turned, her face must have betrayed it, for Brother Longo’s expression also changed.

  She moved away from him, away also from the cursing old man, and stepped instead into a more open place, leaving Efe’s son to drag away the bucket by himself. Brother Longo followed her, and hearing his step, she felt a sadness and a panic in her that she couldn’t identify. But part of it came out of a new feeling of aloneness—Rael had not returned, and she was guessing for the first time how alone she was in the big world. This feeling had been ebbing and flowing since she woke, but at that moment it was at its height. She turned again.

  Brother Longo was holding out his hand to her, a smile upon his face. In the light of day there was nothing impressive about him. His skin was covered with red spots, red hair, and she could smell the odor of his armpits. Her mind was full of regret, full of Mr. Sarnath, full of Rael, and she had no patience for it.

  She could see the mark of the brand upon his palm, upon his fingers. In the misty morning light, the effect of the phosphorescent paint could not be seen—his hands looked dirty, that was all. And his smile, which was widening, included a broken canine. Next to it, one of his incisors appeared to have been filed down.