“What do you mean?”
“My theory is that the pickpockets are actually working for the Penis Sadhu: like Fagin with his band of Artful Dodgers.”
“Of course,” Grace nodded. “We’re like sitting ducks, with our bulging wallets and both hands on our cameras.”
“Still,” I shrugged, “It’s hard to hold a grudge against the guy. Whatever he makes, it’s not enough.”
I scanned the area. There was no sign of the famous fakir. A few solitary sadhus sat on blankets, smoking clay chillums or reading from religious texts. Rather than celebration, there was an odd air of weariness.
Grace, too, had expected more. “Is this the wrong day?”
“No.” I looked at my watch. It was 8:30 in the morning; the area should have been covered with sadhus, and clouded with the mingled aromas of incense and ganja. There wasn’t much music, either; a few babas stood together under a tree, clapping to the accompaniment of a tabla and harmonium. The muzzle of a film crew’s microphone poked into their midst.
“No, it’s definitely today. You saw: There are a million people down at the temple. It’s just up here that it’s empty. Let’s check inside the dharamsala. It was pretty cold last night; maybe the sadhus are hanging out in there.”
But the shelter was also a disappointment. Traditionally, the place was filled with red-eyed pilgrims from the far corners of Nepal and India. This morning, there were no more than twenty mendicants. They sat cross-legged on woolen blankets and mouthed prayers from holy texts, pausing only to polish their spectacles or reach automatically for the hot tea beside them. One of them was applying red toenail polish; another held up a small, round mirror, fixing the bindhi on his forehead. A young man in a white shirt circulated among them, refreshing their cups from a huge aluminum kettle. He approached us with a smile.
“Namasté. Are you having tea?”
I looked at Grace, who nodded. “Sure.”
The man set down his kettle and skipped away, returning with two ribbed glasses. He poured a caramel cord of chiya into each, serving us with a flourish. We sipped slowly as he watched. “Good?”
“Mito chha,” Grace agreed. “Danyabat.”
“Oooh, you speak Nepali! Very good, very good!” He turned to me. “I am in love with your wife,” he announced. “Together you are looking too beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I said. “She is lovely indeed.”
The man bowed and departed. “Your wife,” Grace said. “I’m sure.” But she gave me a glance that I felt in my pants.
At the edge of the dharamsala stood a statue of Hanuman, the heroic monkey-god who steals the show in the Ramayana epic. His figure, painted from ankle to crown with vermilion paste, gleamed day-glow orange. As I approached the statue, a Westerner emerged from behind the pedestal. He was dressed in black leather, and held a helmet under his arm. I recognized Lou Tanner, one of Kathmandu’s longest-enduring expatriates.
Louis was four parts fixture, three parts legend. He’d lived in Nepal since the late 1960s, enjoying the then-plentiful hashish and enriching himself by smuggling gold, in Snickers-sized ingots that fit neatly up his ass, from Hong Kong to Kathmandu. Friendships with high officials, sweetened through a regular schedule of gifts and bribes, kept his visa afloat. Three years ago, though, Lou had run aground; the popular immigration officer he had cultivated was uprooted and imprisoned, and a purge of nonofficial residents brought him within inches of exile. Lou avoided exposure, but the payoffs had cost 50 percent of his savings and 90 percent of his nerve. He’d mothballed his false-bottomed briefcases and spent the remainder of his fortune importing Macintosh computers into the kingdom. As information became the new addiction, Lou prospered. The former outlaw was now CEO of Nepal’s top IT consulting firm.
“Hey,” I greeted him. “Small world.”
“How ya doing?” Lou slapped my palm and gave Grace a hug. “Can you believe how fuckin’ lame this is? There are more people here on Valentine’s Day.” Neither financial solvency, nor twenty years on foreign soil, had sweetened his Brooklyn mouth. “It’s unbelievable. The royal palace has its head up its ass.” His eyes darted around as if he was looking for someone he could hit.
“Give me a break,” I said. “You can’t blame the king for a slow Shivaratri.”
“Hello?” He looked at me wearily. “It’s His Majesty’s government, man. All the way. Motherfuckers. They’re terrified by this democracy shit. They think India’s behind the whole movement—which could be true! Anyway, about a week ago some highly placed asshole decided that Shivaratri would be the perfect chance for India to smuggle antimonarchy instigators into Nepal. Cleverly disguised as sadhus. Brilliant, huh? So the border police have been stopping the pilgrim buses and sending them back to where they came from. Thousands of pilgrims, shit out of luck. There’ve been riots at the border. It’s a fucking mess.”
“You’re kidding,” Grace said. “How come no one’s protesting here?”
“Oh, they will.” Lou nodded over across the river, toward the rows of shops and tea stalls lining the entrance to Pashupati. “First of all, tomorrow’s a huge strike. Nepal bandh. You know that, right?”
I nodded; Grace shook her head.
“Black Day,” I explained. “Everyone’s supposed to close up shop and wear black armbands.”
Grace kicked my foot. “Thanks. I just didn’t know there was one tomorrow.”
“From what I hear, a bunch of students from TU are coming here to pass out democracy flyers,” Lou said. “Around nine, by the side entrance. Keep your eyes open. Should be a real party.”
I looked at my watch: It was quarter past nine. I could see the general area near the gate. People were milling about, but there was no unusual activity.
Grace studied the scene with me. “Anything going on?”
“I doubt it. They’ll be late, if they show up at all. This is Nepal.”
I pointed my chin at Lou’s motorcycle helmet. “Where’s your bike?”
“On the Ring Road, half a mile from here. Tried to ride it down the hill, but forget it, no way.” He squinted across the river. “Hey, we’re having our annual rally and picnic out at Godavari this afternoon. Fifteenth anniversary. I’m amazed that any of us are left, but we got sixteen guys together. How about that?” Lou raised his eyebrows at Grace, who registered cluelessness. He unzipped his jacket, revealing a faded blue T-shirt emblazoned with an image of Shiva astride a black Harley. His consort reclined on the gas tank, buck naked, her legs wrapped around his waist.
“Shiva’s Slaves,” Lou declared. “Kathmandu’s original bikers’ club.” He shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
Grace nodded dubiously. “Neat.”
“Anyway.” Lou snapped the waistband button on his jacket. “Good seeing you guys.” He nodded at Grace and looked at me. “If you ever need to fax a story, you can do it from my office.” He spoke in a stage whisper. “Save you a trip to Dillibazar prison, if you catch my meaning.”
“Thanks, Lou. Let me get your work number.” I tapped my pocket for a pen and was fishing out my notebook when Lou grabbed my arm.
“Fuck, you guys. Look!”
On the far side of the Bagmati, in the plaza near Pashupati’s south entrance, a demonstration had begun. A dozen young men had started shouting slogans and throwing handfuls of pink paper slips into the air. While some onlookers were fleeing, an equal number of people were rushing toward the students, forming a crowd.
Grace twisted her hips in a sharp, practiced motion that swung her camera around her body and into her hands. She pushed a switch with her right thumb, engaging the motor drive. “I’m outa here,” she announced, her voice thickened by adrenaline. She darted from the sadhus’ encampment, taking the steps to the river two at a time. We saw her run across the stone bridge a moment later, both hands cradling her Canon A-1.
“She’s crazy,” Lou observed. “She’d get better shots from right here.”
“No.” I shrugged off my daypack and pulled out my o
wn camera, slinging it around my neck and arm. “She’s right. I’m going down, too.”
“You’re both crazy motherfuckers. Be careful.”
I ran across the bridge, bumping tourists and Nepalis aside. Rhythmic chanting rose all around me as the crowd joined in. “Demo . . . cracy! Demo . . . cracy!” Just as I reached the plaza, a flatbed truck swerved into view. Soldiers in full riot gear—helmets, lathi clubs, and woven cane shields—leaped onto the pavement. The crowd surged back in a panic, retreating blindly, seeking the safety of the temple grounds.
I was in their way.
A heavy woman ran directly into me, and I fell backward, landing on my ass and elbows. I rolled quickly onto my belly and struggled to my knees. Someone stepped on my ankle; a knee slammed me between the shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of me and driving me down again. My camera was on the ground, next to my hip. As I tried to maneuver it into the safety of my armpit someone stepped into the lasso of the strap. The leather snapped, and I watched helplessly as the camera was kicked out of reach. Then there were only feet: In the small of my back, on my neck and shoulders, in the cleft of my ass, kicking into my ribs. I shut my eyes and folded my arms over the back of my head as my nose and cheek were mashed into the ground.
Funny, the things that go through your head as you’re being trampled. The dirt beneath my nose smelled like my high school baseball glove. The leaflets littering the ground were hot pink, an odd choice for political flyers. I even felt a pulse of gratitude that this was happening in Nepal, where people are small and everyone wears flip-flops. And I wondered, with real concern, what had become of Grace.
AT SOME POINT, I came to. But before that blow that knocked me out (a kick to the head, guessing from the bump above my right ear), I’d had a powerful image of stampeding sheep—and a brief memory of my brother, who specialized in imitating them. It was a skill he’d learned in school, at Deep Springs. One evening we were in Macy’s together, buying Mom a gift. We’d gotten lost, and found ourselves in the lingerie department. Jordan chose that moment to pause. He raised a finger. “Here is the cry,” he announced, “of a young male sheep being castrated.” With that he cleared his throat and produced an incredible sound: “Mmmmnnnnbbhaaaaaaaannnggghhhh.” It was ear-splitting and heart-wrenching, a ventriloquist’s yodel that might have come from anywhere. Every woman within earshot stiffened, seeking the sheep in her midst. My brother affected similar confusion, glancing every which way. He then turned back to me. “But we were looking for sweaters,” he said. “Perhaps something in wool?”
Lou and Grace helped me up. My face was striped with dirt. There was blood under my nose, and my legs were bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken. I staggered to my feet. A crowd of Nepalis, including sadhus and policemen, stood around us. The demonstration was over, and I was the new attraction.
“You’re all right,” Lou said. “You look like hell, but you’re okay. Which is more than I can say for those protesters.”
“Someone’s getting a cab.” Grace had her arm around me, but her eyes still wandered in search of pictures. “I’ll take you home. Unless you want to get some X-rays.”
I breathed deeply, flexed my fingers, and tested my teeth with my tongue. “No, I’m okay. Jesus. How long was I out?”
“Less than five minutes. They beat the shit out of those kids and hauled them away. Everyone else scattered.”
“What about our bikes?”
“Don’t worry.” Grace wet a lens cloth with her water bottle and dabbed around my eyes. “We’ll get them later.”
A red Toyota with a yellow roof pulled into the square. Grace helped me into the backseat and climbed in beside me. “Nag Pokhari,” she announced. “Chitto janus. And by the meter.”
The driver looked for Grace in his rearview mirror, ready for an argument, but got an eyeful of me instead. He dropped the flag and took off, his custom horn blasting the opening bars from “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
10
On the Ghats
BY SEVEN I’D showered, washed the gravel and cow shit out of my hair, eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, and napped. I felt almost human again. My worst injury was the bump on my head, which continued to rise like the membrane of a Jiffy Pop pan. My legs and back looked like fields of pansies, blooming in a breathtaking array of reds, blues, and purples.
Grace phoned. “Our bikes are still at Pashupati,” she said. “Might be a good idea to reclaim them.”
“It’s hard to think of going back . . .”
“I know. Anyway,” she said, “they’re locked up. They should be fine until tomorrow.”
“But tonight’s the big night, isn’t it? They could get swiped.”
“Maybe. But it’s a weird year. I doubt it’ll be much more crowded than it was this morning.”
“Hmmm.” I stretched my legs; they’d carry me. “What the heck, let’s go. It might be fun. Oh, fuck!”
“What’s wrong?”
“My Nikon. It got kicked away from me. Shit, now I won’t . . .”
“Relax. Lou picked it up. People were too freaked out to steal it, if you can believe that. I have to tell you, though, the wide angle lens is cracked. The filter, at least. But the body’s fine. I have it here. You want me to bring it with me tonight?”
“No. Thanks.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll pick it up later.”
“Fine. So how should we do this?”
“I’ll come to you.”
“Good. Meet me at nine, at the overgrown temple in Hadigaon. We’ll grab a cab from there.”
DESPITE THE NEW moon, Pashupatinath wasn’t as dark as I’d hoped. In years past the temple would have been lit with palm-sized butter lamps; these days, amber streetlights illuminated the stone bridge and riverside steps with a dull alien gleam, like sunset on an outer planet.
We found our bicycles and climbed to a forested hillside. Singing and chanting filtered from the woods, seeming to emanate from the trees themselves. Cords of incense wove through the breeze. It was just cold enough for our breath to fog.
I preferred Shivaratri on this diminished scale. Bands of sadhus sat by bonfires, heating water in aluminum dekshis and warming their hands. In the midst of the forest was a complex of centuries-old wooden temples, beautifully carved stone lingam shrines, and shuttered rest houses where the oldest devotees lived year-round. Outside the door of the women’s kitchen, venerable anis and aamas squatted around crackling pyres, the wrinkles in their cheeks writhing in the firelight. They ignored us, muttering mantras into the night. We passed by quietly, dropping a few coins at their feet.
“We can get to the river this way.” Grace took my arm, leading me away from the nun’s hostel and down a narrow trail that fed back into the woods. “We’ll come out by the smaller cremation ghats on the north side of the temple. Away from the lights. It might be pretty spooky . . .”
The path led among moss-laced trees, ending at the top of a stone stairway that led steeply down to the Bagmati. A few of the steps, and most of the masonry retaining wall, had been dislodged by roots and rains, creating a dangerous descent. It was very dark; neither of us had brought a flashlight. We negotiated the steps one by one, gripping each other’s hands, elbows bent. I limped slightly. As we came within sight of the river I saw an orange glow rippling on the water, and I swallowed hard. Bodies were burning.
A moment later we emerged onto an ancient cornice. The crowded temple itself was about two hundred yards downstream, around a bend in the Bagmati, hidden by trees. The downriver sky glowed with an ambient halo, laced with smoke.
At the river’s edge stood two round, flat cremation ghats, a dozen paces apart. One of them was empty and appeared freshly swept. Upon the other lay a shrouded human body, engulfed in flames. We watched in silence, reaching again for each other’s hands.
“It’s weird that no one’s around,” I whispered. “Isn’t someone supposed to attend these things?”
Grace shook her head. “Usually. Maybe it’s d
ifferent tonight. Maybe, on Shivaratri, no one wants to get anywhere near a cremation; they just light the fire and run. I don’t know. It’s Shiva’s night: Shiva ratri. Isn’t he supposed to hang out near cremation ghats?”
“I think so. So what are we doing here?”
“Don’t you want to meet him?”
It was a recently lit fire. The upper layer of straw had just been consumed, revealing the charring corpse of what might have been a man. But the body’s hair had burned away and the skin was roasted and crackling, making it hard to guess his age. One leg was twisted away from the center of the pyre and protruded toward us, out of the flames. We couldn’t see the face.
“A sight you won’t see in Missouri,” I remarked.
Grace smirked. “Not these days.” As she walked closer to the ghat, the wind shifted, blowing the scent of burning flesh our way. “Ugh.”
“You don’t want to get too close. I’ve watched these things before. At some point the skull will burst, and you might get scalded.”
“Scalded?”
“With blood. It can shoot out in a stream.”
She backed off and stood very still. “It’s very beautiful.” She trembled slightly. “The whole body, turning back into energy and ash. I think it’s much more poetic than burying people. Not to mention the finality of it.”
“That’s true. When you’re cremated, you’re really gone. The whole idea of zombies and vampires, the ‘undead,’ wouldn’t work here.”
“Instead you come back. Fresh. As something completely new.”
I looked over at her. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“I do.” She was silent for a moment. “Do you?”
“I want to. Very badly.” I remembered Chokyi Nyima’s talk, and his insistence that the elements of Buddhist doctrine should be tested, and well checked, before they were trusted. Though the idea of rebirth would be a great comfort, I couldn’t accept it on faith, much less find a way to test it. This, it seemed to me, was a fundamental problem with this whole karma business.
Snake Lake Page 9
