by Todd Babiak
“I really want a big animal to eat her,” Maha said to Kal as they followed Tanya. “I wouldn’t even turn away.”
“Come on.”
“All right, I’d turn away. But I wouldn’t cry.”
Kal shook his head.
“All right, I’d cry.”
At the top of the mountain, they waited for Tanya to finish her phone call. She promised Stanley would be back in town in two days. Stan was seeking wisdom in the wilderness, like all the really top-shelf prophets.
Tanya folded her phone shut and dropped her red cigarette pack on a flat rock.
“Please pick that up,” said Maha.
“The garbage?”
Maha wanted to shove Tanya off the edge. “Yes, the garbage.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Tanya pointed her phone at Maha like a gun. Then, slowly, she picked up the cigarette package and dropped it in her purse. “Satisfied? Everyone satisfied?”
Now that they were up there, it was obvious no one knew what to do. If Stanley was right and God was a process, then it did not matter what they said about Alok. As long as they said something. But Maha felt–no, she knew–that Stanley was wrong. It rested in her shoulders, this unhappy certainty, and pounded in the back of her head. She fiddled with the lid of the urn.
The wind blew their hair into their eyes. Tanya opened her cellphone, looked at the screen, and closed it again. She and Maha made quick eye contact with each other and then regarded their footwear and the riverbank below, where Stanley had jumped.
Kal stepped between the women. “Alok, uh, was a super guy. I just want to say I wish I knew him better, and I’ll always remember him.” He cleared his throat and nodded, and looked up. “I love you, pal, wherever you are!”
“I love you too.” Maha wiped her eyes and fiddled with the urn some more.
Tanya slipped her cellphone into her pocket and clasped her hands, looked down. “Well, Alok, we went through a lot together, didn’t we, old buddy? And–”
The urn popped open and Maha jostled it violently as she attempted to grasp the lid. Alok’s ashes twisted out and into the air. Some drifted over the edge and into the valley. Other bits settled on the rock of Tunnel Mountain. The remainder, like a naughty ghost, blew into Tanya’s face and hair.
SEVENTY
On his first visit to Svarga, Stanley had not noticed the diversity of architecture on the town’s fringes. Mexican adobes, minimalist Japanese dwellings, sod houses, New York brownstones, twisting two-storey brick houses with bistros on the street level. He also had not noticed the sasquatches’ dark eyes. Up close, there was a distinct sadness in them, and something like wisdom.
The sasquatches led Stanley down a long white stone road surrounded by plane trees. They came to a white château, with two turrets, built as a bridge across the river. Several men and women in matching uniforms tended its gardens.
“What is this place?” Stanley asked, breathing in the Svarga air hesitantly. He couldn’t help wondering if it might revert to water.
The sasquatches did not answer. Standing between two of them, Stanley found they smelled like the hair of a seven-year-old boy with neglectful parents. At the entrance of the château, the sasquatches stopped and bowed, and a woman in a tattered man’s business suit appeared in the murky sunshine of the inner castle.
“Welcome to Chenonceau,” she said, with a strong French accent. “Have you been here before, or to the original in the Loire?”
“No.”
“My name is Aurore.” The woman in the suit offered her hand in such a way that Stanley did not know whether to shake it or kiss it. So he kissed it, and the woman laughed. “We are curious about you.”
“Do the sasquatches talk?”
Aurore ignored his question and led Stanley deeper into the castle and up a set of stone stairs. “Underneath the castle, you may have noticed the River Cher.”
“Yes.” Stanley waited for a pertinent piece of information about the River Cher, but there was none.
“The gardens outside are reproductions of those enjoyed by Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de’ Medici. Are they not beautiful?”
“I didn’t get a good look at them, to be honest. The sasquatches–”
“After Versailles, this is certainly the most beautiful château in France.”
Stanley decided it was futile to attempt anything like a conversation with Aurore. As she walked, her legs made a clicking sound. Walking behind her, Stanley could see through a hole in her neck.
On the second floor of the château, Aurore stood outside a darkened room. “When Catherine de’ Medici died, she left Chenonceau to Louise de Lorraine, wife of Catherine’s son Henry III. Of course, King Henry III was homosexual.”
“Of course.”
“But Louise de Lorraine was completely devoted to him. When Henry was assassinated in Saint-Cloud, she had this room designed as the site of her grieving, and a great darkness settled over Chenonceau.” Aurore waved him inside with a curtsy. “Please.”
“Thank you.”
Mary Schäffer stood in a window. She was not wearing her characteristic clothing. Instead, she wore a pair of baby-blue yoga pants and a white T-shirt. Mary Schäffer turned and smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The ceiling of the room was black and decorated with silver tears and adorned crosses. In a corner of the room, a four-poster bed with blue sheets and a green tapestry.
“Queen Louise did nothing but pray after her husband died. She surrounded herself with woe.”
Stanley admired the room, the window, the view of the gardens, and the river from the window. “I didn’t leave the Bow Valley.”
“No, you didn’t. And you weren’t kind to those lunatics I sent after you. By the way, it wasn’t easy to return to them the power of speech. I had to erase their memories!”
“What did you ask them to do?”
“To capture and kill you, obviously. It would be much simpler and much more pleasant if you were dead, as you’re attracting even more idiots to the valley. I trust you’ll make another public appearance and send them away, this time without any of your magic tricks.” Mary Schäffer rearranged a couple of the flowers in the bouquet before her. “Get things back to normal.”
“What is normal?”
“You know what normal is.”
“I don’t.”
“If you start a new religion, it will only make things worse. They aren’t interested in an actual religion, you must know that. It’s an insult, what you’re doing.”
“To whom?”
“Shut up, immediately. For you, that is an unanswerable question.” Mary Schäffer did not make eye contact with Stanley. She continued to fuss with the bouquet.
Stanley waited for Mary Schäffer to answer his unanswerable question. Svarga made him feel dizzy and he wasn’t sure how long he would last there. Time did not seem to be an issue for Mary Schäffer. So Stanley picked up the vase and tossed it out the window.
“Now then.”
“You’re a madman, Mr. Moss.”
“If I stay here much longer, I will be.”
Mary Schäffer swallowed and shook her head. It took some time for her to recover her smile. She turned to the door. “Aurore, would you please fetch us some tea? Nothing with caffeine?”
“Oui, madame.”
Mary Schäffer sat across from Stanley, at a wooden table. When Aurore was gone, Mary Schäffer pounded the table. “Some discretion, Mr. Moss, please. What do you think this is?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“It’s very painful for us, Mr. Moss. Like you up there, we endeavour to forget painful realities we cannot change. We create diversions. Soccer matches, bullfights, Chinese operas. Once a year, Shakespeare comes and directs one of his plays using the original London cast. Unlike you up there, we don’t have death as a balm. Things being as they are, we know we will be here in Svarga forever.”
“Things being as they are?”
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br /> “God has abandoned us.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Aurore brought the tea, rooibos with licorice, and pleasantries were exchanged. Mary Schäffer asked if Stanley enjoyed rooibos tea, as it was packed with antioxidants and other disease-fighting agents.
There wasn’t space in Stanley for rooibos tea. He considered tossing the teapot, after the vase and bouquet, out the window. To squeeze this desire out of his mind, he considered the decommissioned fireplace with its two giant logs.
Mary Schäffer dismissed Aurore and poured the tea. There were also biscuits and dark chocolates in the shape of pyramids. “That’s why we don’t know who you are or what force created you. God has been gone for too long.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We hoped that by killing or expelling you we would gather some insight.”
Stanley laughed. What else could he do? “So this is Hell.”
“I resent that.” Mary Schäffer gestured at Stanley’s glass. “Drink, Mr. Moss.”
“You first.”
“We don’t eat or drink. We’re dead people!”
“Then why do you have rooibos tea, and biscuits, and tiny chocolates?”
“Why, for visitors. Like yourself.”
“You get others?”
“Occasionally scuba divers will go too deep and pass through the membrane. We can’t let them go back, of course, so we have to kill them. Drink up!”
Stanley sipped the tea. It struck him that Frieda would love it. “Is it Purgatory?”
“Now you’re getting warmer. It’s like a border town, between Canada and the United States. Or Kashmir. Yes, it’s like Kashmir.”
“And on the other side of the border?”
“There are theories.” Mary Schäffer lifted a hand and touched her hair. “Do you know? Have you heard something?”
“No.”
A sequence of loud noises floated through the window and Stanley looked out. A line of people and sasquatches wound its way through the gardens of Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de’ Medici. At the front of the line, several men and women played drums and blew a variety of horns.
“What’s this?”
“The parade of gloom. They’ve been doing it since God abandoned us. Ignore them.”
“Why did God abandon you?”
“He abandoned you, too. What arrogance! If it weren’t for you, up there, God would still be with us. Taking us over the border into Paradise.” Mary Schäffer joined Stanley at the window. “I have half a mind to kill you myself, for your impertinence.”
“Did you ever see God?”
“No, not me. They say God’s assistant visited a few times after I arrived but I wasn’t mayor then. There were a few closed-door meetings, a reception in Central Park. By the time I found my way out of the desert and understood Svarga, even God’s assistant was gone.”
“What did God look like? The white hair, the beard?”
Mary Schäffer laughed. “There’s no point killing you. You’re too young and naive to be anyone, or anything, of importance.” She left the room and Stanley followed her. They walked along the corridor, down the stairs, and into a large room decorated with painted tapestries and an engraved oak door. “This is the guards’ room,” said Mary Schäffer. On the other side was the entrance to what looked like a chapel.
“The original is filled with depictions of the Virgin. When we built this Chenonceau, we substituted God for the Virgin.”
Stanley did not understand what he was seeing. The paintings, the stained-glass windows, the marble statues all depicted a young girl. They weren’t exact representations, as the clothes were all wrong, but the artists were clearly inspired by Darlene.
“Darlene?”
“What?”
Stanley laughed. “That’s Darlene.”
“What’s Darlene, you silly man? Who is Darlene?”
“No one. Nothing. It must be the tea.”
“It must be the tea!” Mary Schäffer pushed Stanley aside. “God has taken many forms, of course, but sometime in the 1500s God became a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Why?”
“I won’t talk to you any more if you don’t stop asking inane questions.”
“Sorry. I’ll try to do better.”
“Now, I suppose you came down to Svarga to see your friend.”
“My friend?”
“Your friend. The portly one, with the brown skin. Alok.”
“Alok’s here?”
“Of course he’s here! He’s in the desert. That’s why you came, isn’t it?”
They stood in front of the chapel, and its depictions of God, for a long while. The sound of the parade, which had briefly faded, started up again. “You’ll take me.”
“On one condition.”
“Anything.”
Mary Schäffer led Stanley out of the château and on to the grounds. The parade of gloom, which had wound its way around the gardens and beyond, turned out and down the road lined with plane trees. “When you get back up there, you go out of the valley and leave us in peace. I can’t ask you to commit suicide, which would be my preference, because I’m sure you lack the inner strength. But I’ve already expelled you and wasted no end of energy having you killed. Please, be a gentleman.”
“And leave.”
“Yes! Yes! Go back home.”
They walked past the forecourt and the marques tower, beyond the gardens. Ahead of them, the parade musicians played an off-key version of “Louie, Louie.” In the back, sasquatches clapped their hands and danced for God’s return.
SEVENTY-TWO
The lush, continental climate of the Loire Valley gave way, in an instant, to a stiflingly hot desert. Stanley and Mary Schäffer passed from rivers and drooping trees into the sands of what appeared to be the Sahara. He looked back, and the Loire Valley had disappeared.
The Svarga sky looked how the sky up there ought to look in the middle of the Sahara, deep blue and streaked with mysterious white blotches. They walked for what seemed like several hours, in deep sand. To Stanley’s delight, he grew neither tired nor sweaty. There were smooth hills and spines in every direction, extending in bleary mists. Over one last giant hill of sand, a slightly more forgiving landscape appeared, with short grasses and scorched, leafless acacia trees, their branches twisted like falcons’ nests.
Ahead in the shimmering heat, another parade of gloom snaked its way around a small hill. Three goats with bells tied around their necks stood near the parade and ignored its singing, dancing, drumming, and horn blowing. It was easier to walk on this sand; Mary Schäffer adjusted her dress. Just beyond the hill, Stanley made out a few lopsided, windowless stone houses.
“This is as far as I go,” said Mary Schäffer, as she walked back toward the hills of the Sahara. “This is a miserable place, with scorpions and rodents. Do you like horned vipers? I hope so.”
Stanley was about to call out to Mary Schäffer, to thank her for bringing him to this place, when he heard a familiar voice behind him. A familiar yawn. Alok stood, stooped, in the entrance of the poorest-looking house. With a gush of relief, Stanley ran to his friend. They embraced. “I thought you were gone.”
“I am gone.” There was no wildness or joy in Alok’s voice.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. If only I could have…”
Stanley wanted to continue but Alok had turned away. He wore a yellow muumuu, with reproductions of cave paintings. “Would you like to come inside?”
“I’d love to.”
Alok allowed Stanley to enter the stone house first. It smelled of rotting meat and feces. To spare Alok’s feelings, Stanley pretended he did not smell the smell. There was a stone bed and a mattress built with twigs. There was a broken chair and a giant wooden bowl and several blankets. In the middle of the house, a firepit.
The living arrangements were, in sum, horrifying. “Are you being punished?”
“You can’t choose when, where, or to whom you’re born. Near as I can tell, it�
��s the same down here.” Alok kicked at ashes in the firepit. “I’ve done everything to get rid of that smell.”
“There’s no water. Do you want or need some?”
Alok sighed. “I do not like being dead, Stanley.”
“Surely, you can earn your way out with good works. You aren’t stuck here forever.”
“That’s a nice thought, but there’s no real logic to this. Near as I can tell.”
Alok led Stanley out of the stone house, to the best place for sitting, in front of an acacia tree. The heat didn’t seem to bother Alok, but there was an atmosphere of monotony in the windless air of the desert community. They sat, and Alok pulled out a small, rusted knife. He whittled a twig that had fallen nearby, and sighed.
“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“No God.”
Stanley nodded.
“People don’t talk about it. But what a kick in the teeth. I mean, all the things I could have done differently. Sex, travel, hunting. A New Age store? How humiliating.”
One of Alok’s neighbours, a bald white man wearing Bermuda shorts and a floral-print shirt, stepped out of another stone house and stretched and waved. He walked over to a black goat and rubbed its head. “Some kind of weather!”
“Yeah, that’s a good one, Irving.” Alok tossed his whittled twig in the sand and addressed Stanley. “Same joke every day–if this is a day. I don’t know.”
They sat together, leaning against the tree, watching the goats. Stanley put his hand on Alok’s shoulder and held it there. He wanted to say something, to make his friend feel better. But nothing seemed right. Alok sighed some more and time, or something like it, passed.
“How often does the parade of gloom come by?” Stanley hoped to instigate some liveliness in Alok. Perhaps there were benefits to joining.
“Time to time. They’re assholes.”
They sat for several more hours, until it began to seem pointless to Stanley, his being there. He watched Alok whittle, and nearly laughed out loud as he recalled his conversations with Darlene. “I know what I have to do.”
“It really doesn’t matter what you do,” said Alok, without looking up from his gleaming twig. He wasn’t whittling it for any purpose. Soon, it wouldn’t be a twig any more. It would be scrapings on Alok’s lap.