Sugar Rain

by Paul Park

  She broke away into an open space and ran up a small slope of rubble, towards where an alleyway came out onto the yard. Once there, she rested in the shadow of the gatepost, looking back towards the dancers and the actor who was playing her brother. And then she turned away. In those days her attention span was short. The world was various and new. And in a little while it was as if she had forgotten; she bowed her head until her breathing slowed, and then she squatted down to look into a tiny shrine set into the wall of an old house. Remembering part of an old prayer, she looked under the brass arch and past a double row of oil lamps. The back ones had burned out, and the image itself was covered up in shadow. But its eyes were made of mirror, and Charity could see them shining in the darkness. This god was very old. The level of the street had risen up around her knees. It was Angkhdt the God of Children.

  Charity leaned forward to sniff the smoke that rose up from the lamps. Drunk from sensation, she was fearless the way drunkards are, so that she didn’t even turn around when she felt somebody grab her from behind. He had to pull her out, and then he hit her hard across the cheek, but she took no notice. She put her hands up to her face.

  “Don’t run away like that,” said Raksha Starbridge. “Don’t make me chase you.”

  He grabbed her by the back of the neck and twisted her head around to make her look at him, and then he thrust her past the gatepost into a narrow, stinking alley, out of sight from the yard. He was stronger than he looked. Or perhaps the drugs had made him strong—he was sweating, and his whole body shook. And there was something different in his eye, too, as if violence had awakened something there. From her neck he ran his hand down the muscles of her shoulder, and pushed his trembling fingers into the soft flesh above her collarbone. She could smell his breath, a mixture of alcohol and rot. It was too rich a smell; she gagged and turned away, and then she pushed him in the chest so that he stumbled backwards and fell down. He hit his head on the brick wall behind him. A protruding brick cut a gash in his head, and he sat down in the mud and covered it with his hands. Charity watched him, fascinated by the black blood welling up between his fingers. And she was fascinated by the sound he was making, a low gurgle in his throat. Then he put his head back, and she could see tears on his cheeks, real tears. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he sobbed. “Please don’t be afraid. I can’t hurt you. I was in holy orders. They took my manhood when I made my vows. Only I need to touch someone sometimes. Is that so bad?”

  Fascinated, she bent down to look at him. “I need you,” he confessed. “You’re like my little Rosa. And don’t you understand, you need me too. You won’t survive out here, with no money and no food.”

  She reached out and pulled his hands away from the cut on his head. But suddenly he grabbed hold of her thumb and twisted it back and then jumped up, twisting her arm back behind her. Tears were trembling in his eyes, but then he winked. “I need you,” he said. “Don’t you understand?”

  He held her by the wrist, in a special hammerlock known only to parsons. And then he pulled her away and led her down narrow and deserted streets, along high, windowless brick walls. Underfoot the mud was covered with a sugar crust, and in the corners sugar had already begun to accumulate. In some places the drifts were six inches high and still damp, for it had rained all night and looked to start again any minute. In the middle of the roadway the crust had split apart over a gutter full of water and raw sewage, and as they went on, the water spread across the street. Soon it lapped the bricks on either side and then grew deep, so that they were wading through water past their ankles. And always they were going downhill, and at a choice of ways they always took the one that led downhill, until they stood at the top of a broad set of stairs with the water cascading down. It led down into what had once been a market, but now it was all drowned. Remnants of tents and canvas awnings still stuck up above the water.

  From where they stood, they looked out over a small lake. A wind had sprung up out of nowhere and chased itself in circles out over the water and raised whirlwinds of dust and newspaper into the air. Yet the surface of the lake was undisturbed. A layer of rain had built up on the surface like a layer of oil, and there were no waves or ripples on the lake, but only oily swells, rushing towards them up the steps and then sucking away.

  The parson put his fingers to his mouth and whistled shrilly. Across the lake a boat broke away from a group of others and came towards them. It was brightly painted and cut swiftly through the water. Charity admired the strong strokes of the oarsman. He was dressed in yellow trousers and a green shirt, and when he got close she could see how big he was. He had long arms and a big, burly frame. But his hair and beard were streaked with yellow.

  “I’m surprised he owns a boat,” said Charity.

  “All things belong to God,” replied the parson. “He rents it from the church.” And then he grinned. “Don’t give yourself airs. You’re lower down than him. He may not let you in the boat.”

  When the boatman saw who had hailed him, he laughed and waved. “Monsignor!” he shouted. He pulled up to a mooring pole, one of several near the steps. A makeshift jetty ran out to it, put together out of ladders and loose boards. The parson pushed Charity along it while the boatman shouted encouragement. He had a wide, freckled face and a smile full of teeth. When the parson tripped and almost pitched into the water, he stood up in his boat and clapped his hands. And then he made the gestures of respect. While they staggered towards him over the jetty, he bowed and capered in the boat, closing his eyes and pressing his knuckles to his forehead.

  He was using forms that were old-fashioned even then, unnecessarily servile and complex. But his laughter put irony into everything he did. At the very end he bent down to touch his toes. He was laughing when he straightened up, but the parson’s face was dark with anger. The boatman didn’t care. He reached his hand out for Charity to grab, but when she stepped down towards him, he pulled his hand away, and the laughter faded from his mouth. He had seen her palm.

  “Not your usual, is she, sir?” he asked. He sat down by the oars and stared at her, while she stood uncertainly on the jetty. But then the parson pushed her from behind, so that she collapsed into the bottom of the boat. He stepped down after her and sat down in the stern.

  The boatman hawked a wad of spit up from his throat and blew it over the side. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Spider Ghat. Not far.”

  “Any money?”

  The parson shook his head.

  “Any food?”

  “No.”

  The boatman frowned. “Got to be something, my master.”

  Charity wore a talisman she had gotten that morning, pinned to the front of her dress. One of the dancers had distributed them to the crowd, a tin button painted with her brother’s face. The boatman pointed to it. “I thought they were atheists,” he said.

  Charity opened her mouth to answer, but the parson shook his head. “Her mother was an antinomial. I’ll purify the boat once we get back.”

  “Thank you, my master. That’s not good enough.”

  “It will have to do. The harm has already been done.”

  The man stared at them a long moment, and then he bent down for his oars. He had a boat tattooed along the outside of each finger, and perhaps he had had something in his horoscope, or perhaps the priests had seen some promise in him when he was a boy, but the work was finer than was usual for people of his caste, less monochromatic, better drawn. Each boat was different: a steamboat, a sailboat, a barge, a tug.

  He pulled out swiftly into the lake. Drops from the blades of his oars made rows of circles in the water. “Antinomial, is she?” he asked. “Can she sing? I’ve never heard one sing.”

  Again Charity opened her mouth to speak, and again the parson shook his head. “I’ll give you twenty cents,” he said.

  “All right. But I have a sick friend.”

  “No drugs. I’m sorry.”

  The boatman rowed for a while in silence, and
then he smiled. “You’re not good for much, are you, monsignor? You might offer me a drink, at least. This is thirsty work.”

  The parson squinted up at the sky. A rip had opened in the clouds above them, and the sun was shining through. The light made swirling patterns on the water. Charity looked at her reflection over the side. She trailed her fingers in the lake, joining hands with her reflection. The lake gave off an acrid, sweaty smell. Smiling, she turned around and watched the sweat gather on the boatman’s forehead and drip slowly down into his eyes.

  “I’ll say this for her,” the man said. “She’s easily amused.”

  They were coming in among some buildings and the tops of flooded tenements. Charity looked through the windows into the apartments. Some were still furnished and intact, and some had rowboats parked outside, tied to the fire escapes.

  She saw no other people. But soon the water was much shallower. Ahead she saw a group of wooden houses built on stilts. It was a style that had been popular in winter, when the snow was very deep.

  “There is one thing,” said the parson. “I could write you a charm. In lieu of payment. What kind of man is he? Your sick friend.”

  “Like me. He has a fever.” The man put his oars up and let the boat glide from its own momentum into Spider Ghat.

  “Understand, I don’t guarantee results. It’s a question of faith.”

  “I understand.”

  “Just so you know.” The parson fished a ballpoint pen out of a pocket in his robe. From some other place he produced a book of rolling papers, and he took one out and ripped it in half. He spread it out on the gunwale and bent over it, hiding it from Charity as he wrote. Then he handed it to the boatman. “Have him roll it up and take it like a pill.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It is a verse from holy scripture. A very potent verse.”

  One of the houses had a wooden porch built along three sides, and steps ran down from it onto a wooden landing. The landing floated on the shallow water, lashed to oil drums at either end. “There,” said Raksha Starbridge. “Take us there.”

  A scum of Styrofoam and driftwood covered the water near the landing, wreckage from the submerged apartments, pieces of furniture, and broken chunks of roof. Charity pushed aside some saturated sofa cushions and stared down into the water. She could see the concrete curbstone two feet down and, superimposed, the reflection of the house as they drifted to the landing. It was one-storied and dilapidated, with cracks in the sheathing. The windows were broken and boarded over, the walls covered with graffiti. The porch and the landing were crowded with objects salvaged from the flood—crates and chains and spools of wire, a child’s tricycle, a broken rocking chair.

  Charity raised her eyes. The boatman was still sitting in his seat, puzzling over the fragment of paper. He spindled the paper in his hand, curling it around his finger while the parson stepped out onto the landing. And then he made a tiny gesture with his head, a gesture of dismissal. Charity got to her feet, and the parson grabbed her around the wrist and pulled her from the boat. He let go of the painter. But the man just sat there in the boat with the paper curled around his finger, until the parson pushed the gunwale with his foot, and the boat drifted away. Charity stood looking after it, while the parson held onto her wrist, forcing his fingernail into the vein beneath her palm. The man in the boat backed water slowly, but it wasn’t until he was out of sight behind the wreckage of a wall that Raksha Starbridge permitted himself to laugh. “He’d better pray there is no God,” he said.

  * * *

  Five miles away, Lord Chrism stood on Bishop’s Keys, beneath the belly of the temple. From Wanhope Prison he had traveled underground, along a web of waterways that stretched for miles under the city. Returning to the temple he had traveled underground, in his somber, hearselike barge of state, all gilded wood and purple hangings, poled by silent members of his guard.

  He stood at the edge of the stone pier, looking back into the darkness the way they had come. He could remember when that whole enormous cavern had been ablaze with light. When he was a young man, each member of the council had kept a boat here at the docks beneath the temple. The catacombs had been full of noise and messengers in livery and soldiers transporting grain. In winter they had used ponies to pull sleds over the ice, smart brown beasts with sharpened hooves and ribbons in their manes.

  Then, standing on Bishop’s Keys, he had been surrounded by a storm of light and brilliant colors and the high, strident voices of the priests. Now everything was dark, save for the torches in his guardsmen’s hands. He could hear the water slapping against the wooden bottom of his barge as the men stowed it along the slip and covered it with tarpaulin.

  He shivered, and with cramped, arthritic fingers, he plucked at the sleeves of his robe. Then he turned and walked quickly over the stone promenade. His men fell into place a step behind him. Their torches spit and flared, grabbing at the cavern’s roof unsuccessfully until they passed under a lower vault. There the echoes of their footsteps seemed flatter and less resonant. Rough carvings protruded down into the light, though Lord Chrism’s blindness robbed them of detail. Even in his memory they had no detail.

  This part of the temple had been built during the reign of the ninth bishop, in winter many years before. The principle of the elevator had been forgotten then. From Bishop’s Keys the architects had built stairways that reached toward every section of the temple, hollow fingers of stone that stretched up half a mile, some of them, a lot of steps for an old man.

  Here the cavern had assumed a disklike shape, the walls still out of sight, the ceiling not more than nineteen feet above their heads. In front of them, the first of fifty stairways rose up from the floor, a narrow spiral cased in stone. It stood alone, like a tree with the ceiling in its branches. Farther on, the stairways grew closer together and more numerous, until the three men were walking as if through a stone forest, among groves of trees irregularly spaced and sized. These were the servants’ stairs, leading up to kitchens and guardhouses. At the base of each there was a door, black now, mostly, though some still showed a feeble glow. That was how the chamber had been illuminated in the old days—the staircases were sheathed in alabaster, and inside, the spirals had been lined with lights, red, green, violet, the colors coded to their destinations and the caste of people who could use them. Then each stair had formed a column of light nineteen feet from floor to ceiling, the colors bleeding through the thin, transparent stone.

  Then this entire chamber had been alive; now it was dead. Lord Chrism hurried on. Ahead of them, a wall stretched to both sides. Lord Chrism turned to the left and walked along it, past a gaping doorway. A single bulb hung from the keystone of the arch. Once guards had been stationed there around the clock. It was the entrance of an old granary, one of one hundred and seventeen cavernous storage bins cut into the rock beneath the temple. The electric light gave contour to a mass of carving all around the arch, a beautiful woman in a variety of different poses. Each granary was dedicated to one of the one hundred and seventeen lovers of Immortal Angkhdt; this one, named after the so-called White-Faced Woman, had served the Church of Morquar the Unkempt, and all the shrines between the river and the Morquar Gate. All winter and well into spring, for more than a lifetime, it had fed the people of that district. Now it was empty. They were all empty, and people everywhere were forgetting God.

  In the summertime and autumn, generations of men and women had slaved to fill these granaries, working with increasing desperation as the weather grew colder and the power of the priests increased. When Lord Chrism’s father was a boy, the episcopal wheatfields had stretched for ninety miles around the city, land that was all barren now. Winter had scraped it clean, down to the red rock. And when the snow had come, and the countryside was empty, and the country people had all come in through the gates, then these caverns had been full of light, and soldiers pulling carts and sledges loaded with fat red grainbags, each one stamped with the black dog’s head of Angkhdt
. Their labor had been a kind of worship, and they had chanted songs of worship while they worked. They had pulled the sledges over the ice and through the catacombs down underneath the city. They had pulled them through the crypts beneath the churches, where the grain was off-loaded and turned over to the parish priests for distribution to the multitude, between the sermon and the invocation, in small plastic bags.

  Farther on along the wall, Lord Chrism stopped for breath next to another doorway. The carvings here had been among his favorites when he was a boy, and even though he could no longer see, he put his hand out to stroke the smooth neck of the brass statue. He slid his finger down her spine. In scripture, this woman had no name. The God’s encounter with her had been brief and furtive, and the granary itself was insignificant. But the statue was delightful. As the old priest stopped to catch his breath, he let his hand stroke the curve of her buttocks.

  This granary was empty, too, and the light in the archway had burned out. But nearby there was another, prouder entrance cut into the stone and a wide rampway sloping up and to the right. It led up to Lord Chrism’s private quarters in the Courtyard of the Rights of Man, a long and weary way. Fingering the statue, Lord Chrism prayed to God for strength and muttered charms to slow his breath and smooth his heart. He turned back to his men, standing behind him in a pool of light. “Don’t wait for me,” he said. “Don’t . . . wait.”

  He made a gesture with his finger, and they bowed their heads. They could not speak. Their lips were sewn shut with a metal thread. But they touched their knuckles to their foreheads, and then they walked past him up the ramp without looking back. At intervals along the walls extinguished torches hung in metal brackets. As the two men walked up the ramp, they lit them from the torches that they carried, so that a line of guttering blue lights followed them along each wall. Lord Chrism smiled. In the darkness, his eyes made out a curving double line of blue. He fingered the head of the prophet’s metal penis and fingered the ring of mystic symbols carved around the woman’s lips.