The Cult of Loving Kindness

by Paul Park

  “I was lost; you found me.

  I was hungry, so you fed me.

  I was empty and you filled me.

  Then you kissed me on the lips.”

  To Rael she looked both old and young. Her body was supple, her face was smooth and unlined. But her eyes were ancient, and her hair, which hung in a long braid over her shoulder, was coarse and white. Her hands upon her knees were wrinkled, and the veins on them were thick and knotted.

  “I saw you wandering in the crowd,” she said. “This is the festival of loving kindness—no one should look like you. No one should have a face like yours. You have lost a precious thing. Is it not so?”

  Now he remembered. A string of firecrackers exploded outside the tent, and he remembered. Somewhere he could hear Enid’s laughter, and his world, which had seemed so dark and cramped when he awoke, now expanded to include the entire unseen festival outside. “Yes,” he said.

  Smells and noises filtered through the canvas walls. And part of it was the smell of his own body. He lay naked on the mat, and his skin was sensitive and fresh, as if several unnecessary layers of skin had been scraped away. He raised himself to his knees, searching for his shorts.

  “Take these,” said the woman. She put her hand upon a pile of clothing by her knee. “They belong to my husband, yet he will share them. Great Angkhdt tells us to share everything we have.”

  A pair of baggy trousers and a grey cotton shirt—Rael fumbled the shirt over his head. The woman sat watching him. He struggled with the trousers in the tight space, saved from embarrassment by the gravity of her expression, which nevertheless could not conceal a certain soft amusement. “My husband is a smaller man,” she said. “Smaller than you. But these are large for him.”

  Outside, Enid shrieked with laughter. “You’ve been asleep two hours,” the woman said. “Now it is time. Paradise is rising now. I can feel it rising in my heart.”

  “Something gone,” said Rael carefully. “Now lost.” He was on his knees, with his head close to the mildewed ceiling. He too could feel something in his heart; he raised his fingers to his breast and tested the flesh there experimentally. He looked into the woman’s face and he saw something. Her eyes were brimming over with tears.

  “Hush,” she said. “Hush.”

  She was dressed in a loose tunic made of the same fabric as the clothing she had given him. Her sleeve fell away from her arm as she raised her hand to her cheek. “Ah,” she said—her face was full of pain, and then she smiled. And at that moment there was a noise outside the tent, a shouting and a whistling and a banging of pots and bells and fireworks—a sound so full of layers, so full of different tones and loudnesses that Rael wondered whether everyone on the entire mountain had found a noise to make, except for him and the old woman.

  But then the zipper near her hand was torn open from the bottom to the top, and the quiet darkness in the tent was severed by an edge of light. First a single straight line, and then a triangle, and Enid’s face was in the burning gap; she had a sparkler in her hand. “Come out,” she cried, “it’s happening.”

  She yanked back the flap to show them, and even from inside the tent they could see how the horizon above the eastern wall of the caldera was ablaze. There were strange patterns in the sky, shifting waves of iridescent light, streaks of orange that opened up the sky in the same way that their tent had been ripped open, to reveal some impossibly bright firmament.

  The old woman was already scrambling out, and Rael followed her. “Grandma! Grandma!” shouted Enid and Jane, dancing up and down with sparklers in their hands. A whole group of men and women were with them—neighbors from other tents, perhaps, and they were laughing and embracing one another, and pointing at the sky. From all around came the noise of firecrackers, of shouts and screams that mingled with the smell of gunpowder and hashish. People were cheering and clapping, because at that moment, as Rael and the old woman stood side by side, the silver rim of Paradise showed above the eastern wall.

  There was a cooking fire outside the tent, and a few men still squatted by it with bottles in their hands. One held a metal spatula, and he was covering over the embers with dirt. When he was finished, he came and shook Rael by the hand. “Welcome,” he said. “I’m glad to see they fit okay.” He reached out to brush some sand from Rael’s sleeve. “How was your trip?” he asked, indicating the scratch on Rael’s forearm. “Did you learn anything?”—words that were scarcely audible in the blare of the crowd. Rael smiled and nodded, not understanding, not listening, for he was staring toward the east, where Paradise was rising. “All of us are looking and not finding it,” the man continued. “I just want you to know, you’re among friends.”

  He was a dense and compact man, with a strong handshake. His head was shaved on top, to commemorate the baldness of St. Abu Starbridge. “It is traditional tonight not to share names.” He smiled. “But you’ve met the girls. They told you—we’re from Cochinoor.”

  “Thank you,” said Rael, shouting above the din, which every moment had grown louder.

  “I’ve asked the girls to take you to the stage tonight. But remember, you’re free to come back here afterward to sleep.”

  “Thank you,” repeated Rael. “Eating, sleeping in the darkness, and that sweet silver, that bright golden, and that orange light.”

  For the first time the man’s frank gaze was complicated with a small trace of uncertainty. Then he smiled—“Exactly right,” he said. In his left hand he still held his spatula, while with the other he caressed Rael’s forearm. Now he let go to turn and face the sky.

  Above them, the mists on the summit of Mt. Nyangongo had blown away, revealing red streams of lava dripping through the rocks. Now Paradise was rising, impossibly huge, almost too bright to tolerate. Rael lifted up his hand. He turned back to the mountain, where the silver light of Paradise was chasing its steep flanks. Now the darkness was cracked open, and Rael put his hand to his head.

  “Snow,” he said, a word which Cassia had taught him, when she had told him about the north part of the world. “Snow,” he said again. For he saw the high mountain in the snow under the moon. The snow thick as the silver light of Paradise, and the light was catching at the mist upon Mt. Nyangongo, so that the sky was full of silver flecks.

  Around him, the crowd, the clamor, and the bustling din fell silent. He took a few steps forward and almost fell. And with one part of his mind he was aware of the man’s hand upon his arm, and the old woman’s voice saying, “It’s the drug, don’t worry—it’s the drug.” In the other part he was alone in the bright snow, in that far northern land.

  But not for long. Paradise was rising. The sound of the crowd rose up around him, and now another sound too, the stuttering of gunfire.

  Slowly, laboriously, a helicopter struggled over the caldera’s rim. Painted silver, shining with the light of Paradise, it wobbled like a wounded insect in the sky. Something was wrong with its steering mechanism, and its tail was revolving slowly around its head. It was flying low. And it was firing rockets and flares out of its belly. They were hitting something; Rael could see the flames rise up nearby. Yet in the crowd around him no one seemed to be afraid. The helicopter was a magical and, for most of them, unprecedented sight—only a few had ever been imported.

  Built for a different climate and a different atmosphere, it seemed fragile and unwieldy in the air. For that reason, perhaps, it was unthreatening. Its thumping rotors and its blinking lights made it seem part of the festival. Some children clapped their hands as it turned slowly overhead. Enid was trying to make out some of the writing on its side.

  “ ‘Property of the University of Charn,’ ” she said. “ ‘Rural Initiative #2: Donation. Inter-Cooperation Friendship Group. Carbontown.’ ”

  But then a klaxon was sounding over the loudspeakers, and in time the gunfire was returned. Soldiers moved along the street dressed in black uniforms and carrying automatic rifles. Their captain carried a megaphone, and he was warning the people to
stay calm.

  This was almost the first deployment of Longo Starbridge’s militia, the so-called “soldiers of Paradise.” Unkempt, barefoot, young, they gave no indication of the expert ferocity that later would distinguish them. Except as they came past, the harsh mist of their perspiration rose around them, and Rael turned his head aside.

  A rocket had exploded, and two cardboard shelters were in flames. The soldiers moved around them. Some were firing guns into the air, although the helicopter was already out of range. It had drifted away, off to the east.

  But suddenly Jane and Enid were tugging on Rael’s hands. “Come farther in,” they shouted. “This is the children’s part.” And in fact children were making up most of the crowd now that the soldiers had passed. They were crawling from the tents; they were leaving their parents behind. They were clapping their hands and shouting. Their faces were painted in strange bright colors, or they were wearing masks. They had capguns and sparklers and noisemakers and squibs, and they were moving in a slow mass down the spiral toward the center of the caldera, toward the altar of Beloved Angkhdt. Rael could only see the top part of it where it rose above the arcades and the booths, the shelters and the tents—two towers of scaffolding, hung with spotlights and crowded with people with their legs hanging free over the edges or poking through the struts. They were pointing up at the face of Paradise, and some had turned their spotlights from the stage between the towers, so that beams of multicolored light shone upward.

  But now Paradise was rising like a silver sun, overwhelming all but the brightest lights, bleaching the faces of the children in the crowd, bleaching the faces of Enid and Jane as they pulled Rael inward through the spiral. He looked behind him to see the old man and the old woman with their arms around each other, and the woman waved. Then they were gone, and they had disappeared around the bend. Enid and Jane were chattering to each other, pulling Rael until he lurched into a run. He felt confused and shy but somehow happy, and the silver light of Paradise was beating down upon his head, flattening his thoughts. There was no movement in his mind, just the mirrorlike reflection of image after image. “Look,” said Enid. “Look at the servant. Look at the Servant of God.”

  In the middle of the arcade a space had been kept clear, where the booths were arranged in a ring. The crowd was parting around a white circle of sand, where all night there had been fire eaters and trick cyclists and jugglers. Now a woman with piebald hair and piebald skin had spread a sheet out on the ground. Two men in robes held torches, while between them, a black squat pregnant woman was dancing. She had a rope of bells tied around each wrist and each knee, but apart from that and a cloth over her sex she was naked, and the torchlight was shining on her buttocks and her belly and her fat bare breasts. She was raising her wrists to the sky and knocking them together until the bells clashed; she was whirling round and round with her head flung back. Her eyes were rolled back and her tongue was thrust out past her teeth. Her skin was slick with vegetable grease, and the sweat ran down her breasts. Rael could smell her. In all that mass of people Rael caught a wisp of an odor that could be her alone, something raw, something alive, something so hungry that he found himself attracted, drawn forward by a force that was greater than the two girls tugging on his hands. “Let me see!” they shouted. “Let me see!” And he gathered Jane up, and put his arm around Enid’s shoulder, and then he pushed his way through the people, not understanding their curses as he trod on their feet. He pushed them aside until he stood in the front rank of the ever-thickening crowd, with the girls beside him.

  Between two men with torches, the woman was whirling in a circle. She was describing a circle perhaps twenty feet across.

  The piebald woman was spreading out the sheet in the middle of it. On the sheet lay a cripple with massive arms and shoulders and thin, withered legs. He was also naked. He was lying on his back under risen Paradise, with a frightened expression on his face. He was looking toward the edge of the crowd to where another man was drawing figures in the sand—long strings of numbers. He squatted over them and rubbed his jaw, often consulting his wristwatch and a pocket astrolabe.

  A copper lantern stood before him on the sand. It was fashioned in the shape of a man with an animal’s head and a long penis, which he held out in front of him between his hands. Now the man in red took out a butane lighter, and he lit the lamps so that a small jet of flame protruded from the statue’s foreskin. This was a signal, for at that moment some people in the crowd started to sing, and many others started clapping to the rhythm that the dancing woman made. She was whirling in a circle, shaking the bells upon her wrists, but now she stopped. She knelt down beside the piebald woman.

  The cripple lay on his back, his long legs crossed, each ankle locked over the opposite knee. The two women were kneeling on either side of him. The piebald woman had unscrewed the top from a jar of ointment, and she was rubbing this ointment on the cripple’s legs. Still the crowd was singing and clapping to the rhythm that the pregnant woman had abandoned; she was out of breath. Her naked breasts were heaving as she bent down low and took some of the ointment on her palms.

  Now the man from the edge of the circle joined them. He squatted down by the cripple’s right knee, which he took between his hands. There was a bandage on it, which he removed. Then he was pushing his thumb into the joint, while with his other hand he kneaded the pitiful flesh. Then he seized hold of the cripple’s right ankle, where it lay crossed above his other knee. Bracing himself, he yanked the leg straight; there was a crack as the frozen joint unlocked, and the cripple’s back arched off the sheet where he was lying. Around Rael, the clapping and the singing wavered and then recommenced. The cripple’s face was twisted up with pain and fright, but then he relaxed somewhat. He was staring up at risen Paradise while the pregnant woman rubbed his thigh.

  Now his right leg lay straight. It seemed to flop around under the woman’s hands as though it had no bones. But his left leg was still bent. The priest moved to it, and again Rael heard the sharp crack of the joint. Again he saw the cripple’s back lift from the sheet.

  The noise from the crowd was more urgent now. The priest got up to retrieve his lantern from the circle’s edge. It had gone out, and he stood fiddling with it while the two women massaged the cripple’s knees. His legs were so frail that they could easily join their hands around them, even at the thick part of the thigh. His penis seemed as big around as either of his legs. It was swelling and distending underneath the women’s hands.

  The two men with the torches stood as still as rocks. The priest had lit the lamp again, and now he walked between the cripple’s outstretched legs. He was saying something that Rael couldn’t hear, and he was making gestures with his hand.

  Rael turned his head toward Enid, who was standing beside him holding his hand, her face soft and composed. And then toward Jane, who had climbed up upon the crook of his arm. She had her right arm around his neck. She had pushed back the red mask from her face, and she was sucking her thumb. Her eyes were open wide. Rael could see the glare of the torches in her pupil, and in the contractions of her iris he could see the scene; he didn’t have to look. In the minute adjustments of her iris he could see pity and anxiety and disgust and fascination all succeeding one another, across that tiny circle. He could see the pain in the cripple’s face. And in the waxing, waning noise of the crowd he could hear how the priest was trying to raise him to his feet—trying and failing, trying and failing until finally, with the women’s hands under his armpits, the cripple took a few false steps.

  Jane closed her eyes for several seconds and then opened them. Her pupils now contracted to hard dots, and she hid her face in Rael’s shoulder. He could smell the henna in her hair.

  “Come,” he said. They went. Jane climbed down to the ground, and then she was off, her slight figure fading through the crowd. Rael and Enid followed more slowly; they turned again into the spiral path, which was widening as they approached the center of the caldera. Soon it led out
into an open space around the altar of Beloved Angkhdt. The crowd was thicker there, but it was mostly made of children. Rael moved through it easily, not stopping until he stood between the towers of scaffolding. Then he looked up. A wide stage rose in front of him, ten feet off the ground, and it was surrounded by soldiers dressed in black.

  He raised his eyes. A painted wicker figure dangled from a chain above the stage, just grazing it, swaying slightly to and fro. Beside it, a man stood with a microphone. Rael examined his face and saw that he was saying something. Then Rael heard his voice, coming from the loudspeakers on either side of the stage. What had been a loose rattling in Rael’s ears now became words, and he realized that he had been hearing this noise for a long time. It had been meaningless for a long time, growing louder as he approached it through the spiral. But now, when he saw the movement of the emcee’s lips, he could distinguish for the first time the shape of the words, and he could even understand some of them, although many were still beyond his comprehension: “. . . yes sir ladies and gentlemen, a gift of seventy-five thousand dollars in cash, as well as twenty-five hundred fully automatic assault rifles, and you have only just seen demonstrated tonight how necessary that kind of firepower is to us and to our cause—though I’m happy to say that the injuries to Mr. Myron Callisher and his wife are not as serious as were first reported. But even so, that airship, now luckily repulsed by our brave freedom fighters, just goes on to demonstrate how we can never be safe from these attacks. Our basic freedoms have been consistently denied us. Well I say it’s time to stand up and be counted. I say it’s time to say that we won’t tolerate it. I say it’s time to stand up for our rights, time to say no to torture and death. So I know you’ll join me in giving a very warm round of applause for his high excellency Karan Mang, who arranged for the delivery of this gift. Also a very, very warm round of applause for his sponsor Prince Cotillion Starbridge, foreign minister of the royal episcopal government-in-exile of Charn, who naturally could not be here tonight, but who has sent this inspirational message from his palace near Lake Baladur, which I will read to you . . .”