by Paul Park
His voice seemed thin and vicious, now that he was no longer speaking for the crowd: “You didn’t enjoy our demonstration,” he said, still holding out his hand. “I saw you leave just at the moment of surrender.”
She interrupted him. “There were priests in Charn—my father told us stories about the old days there. Starbridge priests—they worshiped idols. They blinded themselves upon their altars, cut off their own fingers. My father told me once when I refused to eat. Out of a sense of privilege, he said. Of privilege through pain. He said that we must guard against these marks of privilege.”
Brother Longo shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “But look at your own hand.”
She opened up her palm. The birthmark, which she had noticed for the first time the day before, seemed to have gown larger, and to have acquired an alarming color—purple, yellow, blue—as if she had been bleeding underneath the skin. But her palm was not sore or swollen.
* * *
Later that morning they continued on—Cassia, Servant of God, Mama Jobe, together with the mass of pilgrims. The track continued uphill. Past the outbuildings of Brother Longo’s mission, past a crumbling concrete ramp which rose up to the level of the treetops and then ended, past a field where nothing grew, in which stood the rusted hulks of boilers, engines, generators, turbines, and where the soil was still slimy from some grease or oil or tar that bubbled up out of the polluted earth—four miles from the clearing the track widened and there were remnants of tarmac for a while, remnants of stone gutters. Other smaller ways came snaking through the trees. By eight o’clock, when the sun rose, the track was many yards across.
Always they progressed uphill. Servant of God swung himself over the sharp volcanic rocks, his enormous hands wrapped in strips of cotton. Often he would move aside to rest, and then Cassia would look back to see the line of pilgrims coming through the trees, visible a long way, many thousands now, all with their knapsacks and bundles and children and bright ragged clothes. Weather-beaten, grimy, battered, happy, they jabbered to each other up and down the line, and they sang hymns and songs. Now, after weeks of weary traveling, they were close to their goal; it was the last day of the Paradise Festival, and the weather was beautiful once the sun had burned away the mist. The sky was a hard, sweet, cold metallic blue, visible now through the thinning trees, and occasionally the sun shone in their faces.
Servant of God was sweating, panting, and his knees and hands were bleeding. Yet even he was smiling as they climbed up slowly toward the open sun. At times now through a bare place in the foliage they could see the jungle far below them, its black canopy punctured here and there by giant tulip trees, each with its yellow crown, each with its surrounding cloud of birds. And in those same bare places Cassia now caught glimpses of the slope in front of her, rising out of sight, a shoulder of Mt. Nyangongo, whose enormous bulk appeared so gradually. As they climbed, sulphur fumes pinched at their nostrils, and sometimes a hot sulphur mist would rise up around them through a crack in the rock, turning the grass yellow, brittle, dry.
Sometimes they would cross a lava flow. Here especially Servant of God would grunt in pain as he labored over fields of pumice and obsidian. Even Mama Jobe, whose thin shoulders were bent that day under the burden of a crushing hangover, protested when they reached a place among the thinning laurels where the path disappeared among dunes of powdered glass. “Stupid,” she said, “you’ll hurt yourself,” and she grabbed him by the hair to yank him back out of the press of pilgrims. In fact many had turned aside to tie bandannas round their mouths and to lift their children up onto their shoulders, and to drink a few swigs of water before they continued on. From up ahead there came a squeak, squeak, squeak—the shuffle of their plastic boots upon the glass.
Servant of God had hurt himself. The cuts upon his knees and hands were coated with black powder, and his tongue also was black with it. But still he struggled grimly forward: “No,” he said, “I’m almost there.” They had to pull him back out of the dust; then he relented and let them care for him and wash him clean while he lay gasping on his back. They wasted water from Mama Jobe’s canteen, and he was sputtering and complaining. But whenever he relaxed his face, it returned to the smile that was now his natural expression.
Cassia had been walking in a daze of self-absorption. Intent on the confusion in her heart, entranced by the power of her own senses, she had barely noticed the cripple’s pain until they stopped. Now she chided herself, and with acute and careful fingers she picked the glass out of his wounds.
“No,” he said. “This is nothing; let me go.” But his struggles were halfhearted and in a little while he lay still. While Cassia washed him from the water bottle, Mama Jobe unwrapped from a rag six stiff narrow leaves. She crushed them on her palm and then she retched up from her throat a glob of phlegm, discolored from tobacco juice, and mixed it all into a paste. Then she was rubbing it into the torn flesh along the cripple’s shins and knees. Cassia put her finger out to touch some of the goo. She took some on the end, and soon the sensitivity of her skin was less, her hand felt alien, apart.
“What’s the matter now?” grumbled Mama Jobe, for there were tears in Cassia’s eyes.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
Once Mr. Sarnath had come upon her in the woods, where she was sitting by a pool. So intent was she upon a water spider that she had not heard his footsteps. “Do not be misled by your sensations,” he had said. “Intensity is not the same as understanding. Surely I am part of this as well as you.”
She was sitting on a dusty tuft of grass, over a soil of sharp stones. Stunted, spindly trees hung over them. The sun was hot. Ten yards away, the stream of pilgrims passed unchecked, raising a mist of powdered glass out over the lava flow. Thin men, pregnant women, children, and none of them was Rael.
“What am I doing here?” she asked.
Mama Jobe rolled her eyes. She had ripped part of the hem of her dress to make a fresh bandage for the cripple’s hands, and she was smearing it with her anesthetizing paste. She was in no mood for foolish questions; her particolored face was full of wry disgust. Servant of God was lying on his back, quiescent now, his body daubed with grit, dappled with sunlight. His arm was over his face and he was smiling.
“Go and find someone,” said Mama Jobe. “He’s right—it’s not far now.”
Cassia wiped her hand across her cheek, and where her finger passed it made a long cold line. She turned her face aside. Now the woods were full of an ominous banging, a scattered roll of drumbeats. Perhaps a hundred men were marching in step along the path, fat men in crimson robes, with shaved heads and puffy faces that were covered with white greasepaint. Their eyes were lined with black and violet, and they had huge, grotesque false eyelashes, and they banged on heavy wooden drums with sticks wrapped in cotton batting. They were carrying flags too, awkwardly because of the overhanging branches. Cassia recognized the golden sun, the fat face of Abu Starbridge, the great dog’s head of Angkhdt.
Once more the tears rose to her eyes. She turned back to Mama Jobe, whose expression was kinder now, more humorous. “What’s wrong with you, girl?” she asked. “Is it your friend?
“Here,” she said. “There’s cakes in the knapsack.” That morning Efe had given them little flour biscuits baked in ashes. Now Cassia unwrapped one from its sheath of leaves and nibbled on it tentatively. “Not for me,” said Mama Jobe. “I’d puke.” She was sucking on a big plug of tobacco, which she held in the pouch of her jaw. “God, my aching head,” she grumbled, spattering the dusty bushes with brown juice.
Cassia’s ears were ringing too, with the drumbeats and the gongs. Now a new crowd of pilgrims were filing through the woods. They wore masks of stiff red cloth over their eyes. Again, their heads were shaved, in imitation of the saint. But each one had kept a single lock of hair, which was clubbed and oiled, and which protruded sharply from the nape of his neck.
These ones carried long brass horns that twisted round their bodies, though
mercifully they did not blow them. Cassia had her hands over her ears. When they paused before entering the lava flow, she got up and went among them, for they were fat, strong men.
With one crashing beat, the drums stopped. Some of the men sat down to rest, and others turned to look expectantly down the path. Soon Cassia could see more coming, dressed in black and carrying guns. Some had other burdens. A man beside her, a ragged, toothless pilgrim different from this new array, was muttering, “The fleas! They’ve brought the fleas.”
Four pairs of men were coming up the path, each pair carrying a metal cage between them on a hand sledge. And Cassia was amazed to see in each cage an insect as big as a dog, with a hard, heavy carapace and a bulbous abdomen. The cages were not large enough to let them move; their jointed legs protruded through the bars. Yet Cassia could see they were alive. The small claw on the end of each sharp foot was opening and closing.
She went up to one of the trumpeters who had paused to rest among the trees. “Please, sir,” she said, “my friend is sick.” But she was doubtful of his uniform and mask, the automatic pistol in his belt, and she was easily interrupted when he raised his forefinger to point back down the path.
There, four masked men were carrying a larger hand sledge, a kind of stiff wooden litter. Perched on it was a woman. The sunlight shone on her black dress and tattered shawl. Her hair was tied back in a dusty scarf.
Behind her and ahead of her, men carried banners blazoned with the dog’s head of Beloved Angkhdt. She clapped her hands and her bearers came to a quick halt. They stood unmoving, unblinking in the sun, their naked chests coursing with sweat.
She was looking at Cassia with a peculiar expression on her face. Yet it was not unfriendly; Cassia gathered up her courage and approached.
The woman was immensely old. Her face was covered with a web of wrinkles, so numerous and fine that from a few yards away they were invisible. From a few yards away she could preserve the illusion of a kind of youth, but once Cassia stood in front of her, her nose was assaulted with a smell of ancient dust. The woman’s skin looked thin as paper over her sharp bones, and her black eyes were speckled with white motes. Nevertheless, she appeared to see Cassia clearly. Though Cassia was tempted to believe that it was not her face but another’s that the old woman saw. She was looking at Cassia with a bemused expression which suggested recognition.
“Please, ma’am,” said Cassia, and then she stopped, embarrassed. But Mama Jobe was there to help her. She was standing by the hand sledge, and before she spoke she hawked up her entire plug of tobacco, and dribbled it out into the grass.
“For the love of God,” she said, wiping her grey lips. And then she put her fist against her forehead and mumbled: “ ‘Every man and every woman I desire equally, with equal appetite.’ ”
It was the beginning of a verse from the Song of Angkhdt. But then she too broke off, and allowed her natural impudence to overwhelm this small attempt at piety. She reached out to seize hold of the sledge’s rim. “Get off of this,” she said, wiping her lips again. “Please. My friend needs this more than you.”
Without moving, without changing their expressions, the men in red masks seemed to acquire bulk, seemed to swell up, so that Cassia was aware of them again. But then the old woman got up from her cushion and hopped to the ground. She paid no attention to Mama Jobe. She was staring at Cassia’s face. When she smiled she showed a perfect set of tiny teeth.
“Well, so what about it?” demanded Mama Jobe, glaring around at all of them. “Abu Starbridge told us to share everything we had. He kissed the laundress on the lips. We are the poor folk, and we love him best.” But she was protesting for no reason, because the old woman wasn’t listening. But she was staring at Cassia’s face and smiling with an odd vague hazy smile, showing teeth that looked too fragile for use. “Where is the cannibal?” she asked. “Where is the skull?”—words that made no sense to Cassia.
Ancient as dust, yet still spry, the woman caught Cassia by the arm as she stepped backward. Her voice was clear and high, and yet remote, as if it reached them from a long distance away. “How could you know?” she asked. “How could you know anything? Not yet—but I will show you.”
* * *
The old woman was called Azimuth; she had no other name. She was the last person still alive in what had been the diocese of Charn to have been born into the old tradition. A consecrated priest of Angkhdt, a curate from the Temple of Kindness and Repair, had escaped out of the city after the revolution, hidden in a wine jar. He had disdained to flee the country with the others, and until his death he lived in Caladon, disguised, nocturnal, hunted, hidden from the police in safehouses and caves. He had held celebrations of the mass among small covens of believers, and before his martyrdom he had managed to baptise a few infants according to the old rite. Azimuth was one, the only daughter of a wealthy wholesaler of cocaine. The priest had listened to her wailing, as in the words of the newborn she had told him of her life in Paradise, and of the sins that had compelled her down into the world, to be reborn in the harsh world. He had marked her penance on her body. “Look at my hands,” she said to Cassia. And in fact there was a great deal to look at. Cassia was accustomed to the way the pilgrims would adorn their palms with ink or chalk or charcoal patterns. She had seen a man cut a crude symbol into his hand with his own pocketknife, and then rub ink into the wound. She had seen the gleaming hands of Longo Starbridge. The old woman’s hands were not like his.
Her hands informed her how to act. “You’re right,” she said, turning to Mama Jobe, raising at the same time her emaciated index finger, which was wrapped in the scarlet double helix of generosity and loving kindness. “You’re right,” she said, squinting toward the rocks where Servant of God lay propped, chafing the tiny black nutcracker upon the ball of her thumb, the mark of empathy for the unfortunate. She took a few steps toward him, her head cocked at the end of her brittle neck. Then she turned: “Stop here for lunch,” she said to her red-masked captain, who was standing by the trail with an automatic rifle in his hands. “Carry these people to the altar,” she said, touching the rooster’s purple silhouette upon her wrist, the symbol of random and arbitrary authority in small matters. “Follow us there and keep the others back. Keep the people back for half an hour,” she said in her remote high voice. “We’ll go alone,” she continued, turning back to Cassia. “Ah!—it will be time to talk.”
She smelled like dust, and Cassia hated her. But her fragility made her hard to resist. She took Cassia by the elbow and led her up the trail. The men in red masks held their rifles to their chests, and turned aside to let them pass.
And so they stepped out from under the shadow of the trees, under the blank sun. They came out on the lava flow and climbed over the first hills of powdered glass.
They had left the others where the trees gave out. Miss Azimuth was nimble, but her bones seemed dry and weak. Cassia was afraid that if she fell down among the complicated rocks, the shards of glass, then she would break them. She allowed the old woman to take her by the elbow. With her other hand, Miss Azimuth was making elaborate gestures while she talked. “Look at my hands,” she said.
Underfoot, the path was full of crushed obsidian, and it rose over a dune of black rough powdered glass, glinting with an intolerable and shifting brightness in a thousand parts. Cassia hesitated, closed her eyes, and for the first time she could feel the effect of the new altitude, a throbbing in her ears, a buzzing in her blood, and her breath was small and shallow in her chest. Far ahead the path wound down into the trees again, and above her rose the wooded slope of Mt. Nyangongo, up to the rim of the first caldera. She felt as naked as a fly among the harsh sharp shards of glass, as if her body had been reduced to some elemental smallness; she raised up her hand against the sun. On the lava, all color had been leached away, and there were dusty blacks and whites and greys, a long dry river which had flowed down from a crack in the caldera rim, shattering the trees for a span of half a mile.
/> In that place, all color seemed to come out of the hands of the old woman. Her hands were covered with tattoos, a myriad of letters, words, and symbols. She was working her hands ceaselessly, and they were talking as she talked. Each phrase out of her brittle lips seemed to require a different and specific gesture that would bring a different and specific image into prominence. Out on the lava flow, they would pause often to rest. There she would let go of Cassia’s arm and let her hands talk together.
“Don’t worry about them; you’ll see them soon,” she said, for Cassia was looking backward at the trees where they had left the others so abruptly. The soldiers had spread out among the broken trees that marked the edge of the flow, and Cassia could see them with their rifles in their hands, keeping the people back. “The cripple is a holy man,” said Mistress Azimuth. “I’ve heard of him. Under risen Paradise he will walk again. But he must save his strength. I have medicine for him, a special dose.”
She was of the caste of scholars and apothecaries. The image of a row of old glass bottles ran up the inside of her middle finger, and her clothes smelled like the laudanum that Mr. Sarnath had taken sometimes with his tea.
On the mound under the old woman’s fourth finger, floating in a sea of indigo, shone Paradise. Her skin was dry as paper, like painted paper stretched over a cage of dry bones, and on it shone the silver orb of Paradise, covered with its strange and regular patterns of lines—the cities, the towers, the castles of the blessed. Beneath it, the deep night indigo had lightened to a molten rose; looking closely at the central panel of the old woman’s palm, Cassia could see the unmistakable flank of Mt. Nyangongo, rising in full eruption, spattering the sky with light, its black slopes streaked with rivers of fire. “This is the mixing point,” said the old woman. “This is the crisis of my life.”
Her voice was little and remote as they struggled up the hills of glass. Her legs were thin as sticks; she tottered over the uncertain ground, and if she fell, Cassia knew that she would break them. “It is the crisis of my life,” said the old woman. “This is the crisis of my life,” she repeated, staring up into the sky. The pupils of her eyes were closed to steely dots. And she kept on mumbling these words and others in a small drugged singsong as they came down over the flow and into a black dell. There was a puddle of black water at the bottom where the footprints of a thousand pilgrims had turned the trail into a gritty swamp. Cassia’s bare feet, toughened to leather from a lifetime out of doors, nevertheless were now abraded and sore. She stepped carefully from rock to glinting rock, but at the bottom of the dell she slipped and gashed the high arch of her foot against a shard of glass. When the yellow blood came bubbling out, the old woman bent to examine it. She bent down from the waist until she was touching Cassia’s foot. She kept her legs straight, her knees locked, her back straight too, and her jerky sudden movement was so exactly like a puppet’s or a wooden doll’s that Cassia felt her stomach and her temper rise. She forgot about the pain. The old woman was mumbling to herself and rubbing a drop of blood between her thumb and index finger, over a tattoo of a wicked blue face. Gradually a stain of green seemed to spread out over her fingers as the blood mixed with the pigment underneath; she stared at it, mumbling and clucking.