Maya

by C. W. Huntington

  But now Nortul was laughing again, rocking back and forth in his seat, cackling like a hyena. His face was contorted with mirth, one hand slapping the table. I felt myself carried aloft by the frenzy of his rapture, a laughter so riotous, so insane and all-encompassing, it was impossible to resist. And when I, too, gave myself over and began to laugh, there was no turning back. Soon we were both laughing so hard, we began to weep. I saw myself lean backward, gripping the table with both hands. I saw myself wipe my eyes and struggle to breathe.

  “Better never begin!” He pulled himself slowly up onto his elbows, as if his body were a slab of warm taffy, then wiped his eyes with the back of one pudgy hand. “Yes, yes! Now you see, Mr. Tsan-lee! Now you understand! Once begin, better you finish!” This cracked him up all over again. “Hahahahaha hee hee! Some funny muhavrah, eh?” Gradually his laughter subsided, and he mopped his eyes and nose, using the ragged hem of his robe as a handkerchief.

  I took a deep breath and straightened up and said to myself: Now it is over. Now I will wake up. This is what I wanted. Or what, in that moment, I thought I wanted, for it immediately occurred to me, What if the alarm actually sounds? What if I really do wake up and find myself lying in bed somewhere? But there was no bell. We continued on, just as we were.

  Just as we are, just as we shall be.

  Sicut eramus in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum.

  And I thought, this is how it is: there are only the stories. Stories we tell to ourselves and to each other. Stories about ourselves in a world.

  There is only this endless layering of memory and imagination.

  Nortul finished swabbing his nose and grew calm. When at last he spoke, his voice was resolute. “Many things change after Chinese enter Tibet. Old ways dying. Old way of teaching no longer suitable. We live in . . .” He stumbled, searching for the right word. “We live in eunuch time.”

  Somewhere in my brain a switch flipped: where had I heard that word recently?

  An image presented itself to me: the jungles of Assam, 1959. A refugee camp somewhere near the Tibetan border. Nortul Rinpoche and Dorje Sherap are sitting together in a missionary’s tent, both of them learning English from the same old British Memsahab, both of them memorizing the same new vocabulary, testing and shaping each new sound in conversation with each other. Now this was funny. So why wasn’t I laughing?

  I want only warn you. Big yogi power.

  “What did you say? What kind of time are we living in?”

  He frowned. “Eu-nuch, eh? Means strange. Crazy. Very danger.”

  “Unique,” I said, fighting to control the anxiety rising in my voice, for I abruptly sensed that I was in over my head, that the alarm clock might yet ring—that Nortul would somehow make it ring—that he was making it ring right now, and if I didn’t very quickly find some way to shut it off, I really would wake up in Banaras—or somewhere else—Agra, Chicago. And if that happened, if I woke up, there would be no escape from the dream. No more dreaming of escape. And no way back into my old life with its habits of thought and reason, its perpetual conflict between the fear of loneliness and the fear of love, and all the other familiar certain ties that make it possible to know who I am. I knew without the slightest doubt that to wake up in this dream—to truly see it for what it is—would leave me in ruins. It was the last thing on earth I wanted. It was altogether beyond wanting.

  “The word is pronounced yoo-neek,” I insisted, my heart pounding. “With the stress on the last syllable, not the first. And it doesn’t mean crazy. Or dangerous.” But he wasn’t paying attention.

  “Very danger time,” he continued. “Old way of teaching too slow.”

  40

  THE YOUNG MAN wore loose khakis and a white khadi shirt. He was obviously a foreigner—an American with shaggy, reddish blond hair and blue eyes. He climbed the stairs that led up and out of the storage facility and walked quickly through the stacks toward the front entrance, eyes down, as if he were making an effort not to attract attention. A guard sat at his post near the main door. He saw the pale foreigner coming from some distance off and stood up and saluted him effusively with joined palms as the man passed by and stepped through the door into the glare of the north Indian sun. The heat was ferocious, the air so dry it sucked the moisture from the young man’s pores. Just outside the door he stopped dead, as if he had slammed into a barrier. He raised both hands to his forehead like a visor, shielding his eyes.

  Across the lawn, a kiosk was tucked into a small grove of spindly trees that struggled to assert themselves against the parched landscape. A group of students gathered nearby in a patch of shade. The sounds of Bollywood music, conversation, and laughter drifted languidly through the air. The American felt his way carefully down the stairs, squinting and shuffling like a blind man. The soles of his sandals were worn into small pockets of warm rubber that cradled his calloused heels, the thongs nestling snugly between his toes. As he crossed the yard the packed earth momentarily stirred to life, and pink clouds of dust snapped at the cuffs of his pants.

  At the kiosk an old man bent forward over the counter, resting on his elbows. He wore a Nehru cap and a short waiter’s coat stained with perspiration and grease. Nearby a child squatted, washing cups under a trickle of water that spilled from a concrete cistern. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking.

  The young man ordered a Limca, paid with a two-rupee note, and retreated to a nearby bench where he could sit quietly and watch. The bottle was cold and wet against his palm. He tipped the neck away, running his tongue against the polished rim of the glass. An exquisite flurry of wet sparks showered up inside his nostrils.

  The fear had withdrawn now, like the sea at low tide, leaving the world awash in a gentle sadness, an elusive, tender beauty that belonged to no one and to nothing. It was as if the present moment were itself only an especially vivid and compelling memory. Even these thoughts and feelings were beyond his grasp, things already lost in time. But hadn’t it always been this way—everything secondhand? Always only the echo, never the cry itself. Only the tracks in the snow, the reflection of a face in the mirror,

  A phantom’s mask,

  a shooting star, a guttering flame.

  A sorcerer’s trick, a bubble swept

  on a swiftly moving stream.

  A flash of lightning among dark clouds.

  A drop of dew,

  a dream.

  Across from where he sat, the college boys strutted and crowed for girls who clutched their books tightly against their breasts, filmy dupattas fluttering like the flags of unconquerable nations. Several devotees were clustered around one of the co-eds. She was dressed in tight jeans, high heels, and a sheer kurta, her hair cut short and bobbed. She appeared to be genuinely amused by someone’s clever remark. They were discussing, in a seamless blend of English and Hindi, the poetry of Thomas Hardy.

  In the street nearby, an auto rickshaw was parked, a stunning yellow and black chariot, with red fringe trailing along the edge of the canopy. An elderly Sikh leaned heavily against the windshield, hands cupped over his mouth. A curl of smoke wound upward through his fingers. This time the young man was not fooled; he saw who it was. The driver spotted him, finished lighting the bidi, and took a long drag, simultaneously letting the match fall at his feet. He ambled over.

  “Auto rickshaw, Sahab?”

  The American nodded.

  “Kahaa jaanaa hai?”

  “Connaught Place. Jai Singh Road.”

  “Aaiyay, Sahab.” The driver tipped his head and turned, walking in the direction of the street.

  The young man finished the last of his soda and set the empty bottle on the table, then followed his guide to the rickshaw and slid in back, skimming his fingertips over the glossy surface of the vinyl seat. A picture of Guru Nanak was fastened to the dashboard just in front of the handlebars. The saint in golden turban, luxuriant white beard spilling halfway down his chest, his right hand raised, bestowing a blessing. The orn
ate frame was wrapped in a garland of marigolds, remnants of a morning puja. Wilted orange petals lay slack against the glass.

  In one graceful motion, the driver swiveled around and pushed the flag down on the meter and leaned over and yanked up on the starter handle. Beneath his seat the engine popped and whined, spewing a haze of burned oil into the air. His wrist cranked backward on the throttle and the vehicle threaded into traffic, heading for Ring Road and the maelstrom of Old Delhi, driver and passenger hurtling between iron monsters that bellowed and roared. Once again the young man was along for the ride in a crazed South Asian ritual of surrender to the road and its perils. He clung to the metal bar that held the meter; the canopy rattled in the wind.

  Near Ramlila Maidan they were sucked into a tide pool of trucks and taxis, cycle rickshaws and bicycles. Two-wheeled carts stacked high with cargo were dragged along by oxen or pushed by sweating, emaciated spirits cloaked in rags. A camel towered above the chaos, gazing impassively out over the swarm that raged around his knobby knees. Strapped across his hump and suspended, one on each side, were two canvas saddlebags stitched together with hemp. A man perched just in front of the bags, his legs straddling the animal’s neck. Everywhere horns screeched and two-stroke engines coughed up a poisonous smog. The maidan—a long meadow the size of a football field—was thronged with people. At one end a high platform had been erected, over which, in large red letters, a banner proclaimed the victory of the Janata Party. A group of politicians stood on the platform behind a table draped in orange, white, and green bunting. One of the politicians was speaking into a microphone, and his amplified voice boomed out over the crowd.

  Inside the stalled auto rickshaw, the driver feverishly punched a button on the handgrip with his left thumb, which triggered an angry, insect-like buzzing. He persisted in this futile effort for a minute or two, then killed the engine and slumped back against the seat, wiping his brow with one sleeve. His face was visible in the rearview mirror above the windshield, his weary eyes gazed back at the American in apparent resignation to their shared fate. The two of them looked at each other through the reflecting surface of the glass. The old Sikh smiled and shrugged.

  “Araam karo, Sahab. Ham kahin nahin jaaengay.”

  “Relax. We are going nowhere.”

  A boy in shorts emerged out of the pandemonium and snaked his way barefoot through the dense tangle of traffic. He carried a dented aluminum kettle in one hand and with the other gripped a burlap sack slung over his shoulder. A frayed T-shirt clung to his ribs. The American leaned out and waved the boy over and purchased two cups of hot, milky chai: one for the Satguru—the True Teacher—and one for the pilgrim, come so far to learn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  C. W. HUNTINGTON, JR., translates and interprets classical Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts. He is on the Religious Studies faculty at Hartwick College and is the author of The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Madhyamaka. This is his first work of fiction.

  Wisdom Publications

  199 Elm Street

  Somerville, MA 02144 USA

  www.wisdompubs.org

  © 2015 C. W. Huntington

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Huntington, C. W.

  Maya : a novel / C. W. Huntington.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 1-61429-198-5 (softcover)

  1.Fulbright scholars—Fiction. 2.American—India—Fiction. 3.India—History—20th century—Fiction.I. Title.

  PS3608.U594968M39 2015

  813’.6—dc23

  2014044814

  ISBN 978-1-61429-198-5ebook ISBN 978-1-61429-215-9

  1918171615

  54321

  Cover design by Phil Pascuzzo.

  Interior design by Gopa&Ted2.

  Author photos courtesy of Samuel L. Huntington.