I looked at him carefully. Was he joking? “I’m not clear what you mean by my people,” I said, beating eggs with a fork, “but if you define the term as those of us who love jazz in general, and John Coltrane in particular, the answer would be yes. Yes. My people call this music. It is music.” I poured the beaten eggs into a hot pan. “Great music.”
“It’s noise,” Jordan replied. “A great deal of noise. I’ll be taking my leave after breakfast. Might I prevail upon you to play some Bach or Albinoni—something with the hint of a tune—until then?”
I replaced the CD with a Vivaldi concerto and returned to my eggs, tight-lipped. After wolfing down a slice of wheat toast and dispatching the dishes, Jordan left for a run. There were no trails in my neighborhood; he jogged on the pathways of a nearby cemetery.
When he was gone I paced the apartment, feeling despondent. After all these years, I still yearned for his respect. Yet all my attempts to reach him, to share myself with him, were repelled. But how could I give up? We were still brothers, with a shared history. We’d shared a bedroom, played a thousand games of Ping-Pong, gone to the same schools. As kids we’d peed side by side, into the same beige bowl. No matter how rough things got, could I really tell him to leave?
The doctors Jordan had visited on the East Coast found nothing wrong with him, and counseling—in his view—was out of the question. He decided to make one more attempt to find a physical cause for the extinction of his libido. After many calls, he was able to schedule an appointment with a neurologist in Berkeley. If this specialist could not divine his problem, Jordan said, he would succumb to despair.
“I can state without exaggeration,” he declared, “that I have become the most wretched creature you have ever seen. No man, no beast, no creature of the sea is as wretched as I.”
“Stop bragging,” I said. “You sound ridiculous. And you’re breathing new life into your problem with every word. Are you quite sure that a part of you doesn’t thrive on the anguish, the poetic suffering?”
“It does not. And I add this: If there is no relief to this disability, I cannot abide another year. To love not is to live not. I shan’t have one without the other.”
Jordan’s life, it struck me again, had been an experiment in disconnection: a deliberate distancing from humanity. But that had been by choice. Now he was being forced into isolation, and the prospect was terrifying. He was like a man who, in love with the solitude of the Scottish coast, suddenly found himself shipwrecked on a North Sea island.
“I respect your point of view,” I nodded. “But you’ve barely begun to look for answers. Even if it takes years to work out, it’s worth it. Whatever’s going on with you can be fixed. I know it.”
“I wish I shared your confidence,” he snorted. “But when you’re up to your arse in alligators, it’s hard to remember . . .”
“. . . that your main objective was to drain the swamp.”
We laughed together, for the first time in weeks.
The results of his office visit were negative. The neurologist recommended psychotherapy. Jordan sank back into his morass, more embittered than ever. Once again I became an unwelcome guest in my own flat, self-conscious about my music, ashamed of my snacks, embarrassed by my love life. This could not go on.
On a damp April morning, I steeled myself and, as gently as possible, asked my brother to move. “Two weeks,” I said. “I’d like you to find another place within two weeks.” I knew he wouldn’t be homeless. A class-mate from Deep Springs lived in San Francisco’s Richmond district and had invited Jordan to share his apartment.
“As you wish.” He made no other response.
That afternoon I took a bike ride up into the Berkeley hills. When I returned, Jordan was gone. The sheets had been folded and shelved, his futon rolled up, the floor beneath his sleeping area swept clean. His oatmeal, bread, and Sanka were gone. Every trace of his presence had vanished.
He’d left no note. The next morning, though, I found the crumpled draft of a letter in the trash bin beneath my desk.
“The West Coast is lovely,” Jordan had written. “The light is of Grecian intensity and the air, unlike the over-breathed miasma of New York, arrives refreshed by the sea. Rest assured, my decision to repair here carries with it no regrets.
“I have been boarding thus far with a relative. But I shall soon relocate to San Francisco, and stay with a friend.”
A relative. As if our entire connection were based on nothing more than an accident of genetics. Jordan must have known that I would ferret through the trash, seeking a clue about his premature departure. His barb was well chosen. No schoolyard taunt, or reckless insult at the end of love, had ever wounded me more than those words.
NORTH OF THE Swayambhu kora stands a forest of small white shrines. I wandered between their neat rows. Just beyond them was Shantipur, one of the most enigmatic, inaccessible temples in Nepal.
The thick-walled white building now boasts a corrugated tin roof. Tiny windows are cut into each side, set well above the ground. A latticed wooden gate, secured with an ornate padlock, forbids entrance. Two men sat outside, playing checkers on a stone ledge. A brightly painted Buddha watched over them.
Pressing my face to the gate, I peered into the musty interior. Directly across the chamber was a soot-blackened altar. Two massive black doors—each painted with a wide-open eye—lay behind. On either side of the doors were murals illustrating the mythology of the valley—its origin as a lake, and the kingdom of the snake gods. Two massive brass locks of ancient manufacture sealed the door. It was the sort of barrier that Indiana Jones might encounter.
Shantipur was a well of tantric mysteries: secrets I’d never be privileged to share. But there was a direct relationship between this bolted temple and the murky pond near my home. They both concerned nagas, working their magic again.
The Shantipur myth unfolds eons ago, when a crippling drought parched Kathmandu Valley. In a bid to bring the monsoon rains, the nine great nagas were rounded up by a disciple of a saint named Shantikar. It took more than coaxing; Karkot Nagaraja, the serpent king, had to be kidnapped and brought to Kathmandu by force. Eventually, of course, the nagas complied, and rain filled the reservoirs. For this they were rewarded, with a teaching by the great saint himself. When the audience ended, these noble nagas paid homage to Shantikar. As a parting gift, they each drew portraits of themselves—using their own blood as ink. The paintings would serve as a kind of proxy, to be used at desperate times. When the images were worshipped, the snake gods claimed, the crucial rains would fall.
The snake blood paintings are sealed in a chamber, deep below the Shantipur doors. Six rooms must be crossed to reach them. Each is guarded by hungry spirits, hooded cobras, ogres, beasts, and other deadly obstacles. Once every few centuries—when drought threatens to parch the land—the king of Nepal purifies himself and unlocks the bolted doors of Shantipur. Armed with purity of intention, he makes his way into the temple’s depths and recites the mantras on the ancient scrolls.
“No matter what’s going on in your life,” I’d written in Shopping for Buddhas, “if you walk down the streets of Kathmandu you’ll run smack into a metaphor for it.” The Hariti myth, which baldly reflected my shortfall with Jordan, seemed like an obvious prod. What Shantipur portended, I had no clue.
I RETURNED TO the kora. A Tibetan monastery stood on my left. I ducked in a doorway, climbed three flights of narrow steps, and emerged onto the roof: one of the highest perches on Swayambhu Hill. Red chrysanthemums stood in clay pots along a waist-high cement wall, and blue plastic pails were stacked in a corner. A dozen vivid yellow shirts—the monks’ laundry—dripped from a line.
Thirty feet away, at eye level, the epiphany of the temple’s dome—a square golden harmika, painted on each side with the half-lidded eyes of the Buddha—seemed close enough to touch. Above the golden cube was a majestic finial, as high again as the dome itself, composed of thirteen rings. Pigeons nested between these golden ban
ds, which formed a high-rise aviary. At the tip of the cone, crowning the entire structure, an ornate gold parasol symbolized the Buddha’s ultimate victory. From beneath this spire, cords of colorful prayer flags radiated downward in every direction. I pulled my brother’s letter out of my jacket pocket.
Dear Jeff,
Last month, vexed by dark thoughts, I complained to a friend that, while the gods had granted me profound knowledge on this earth, it happened to be sadness they had granted me knowledge of; to others it was given to know joy, or passion, or love; to me, sadness. I say to you now, brother, that the gods heard my complaint and have given me also to know love; but oh deep and bitter pity, as of a boon come long too late!
Last night this woman, her name is Lindsay, left for Maine; her parents live there, and the whole family is to gather for a week. While Lindsay awaited her departure at the airport, I, at home, pondered the emotion that lay upon my heart—not such an emotion as to prostrate me and make me wish to smother consciousness with sleep, but enough to baffle for an evening other thoughts and efforts; so that, as a geologist in his laboratory assays a new sample, I assayed my emotion. And I found it compounded, familiarly, of love and jealousy, but also of fear: not, this time, that I lose Lindsay, but that I win her—only to bring to grief one who so unquestioningly deserves to be happy. I knew that this dread argued my love genuine. And I knew also that, to the extent it reflected an actual difficulty—my unrelenting dysfunction—it argued my life pointless.
For I can no longer conceal from myself, not by pages read or miles run or hours spent in picture galleries, the fact that I am in decline. I have called the years of my affliction los años muertos, “the dead years.” They have been exactly that; and this show of life has been but a danse macabre.
Lindsay indeed represents a chance at life, but I no longer believe it will “take” in my leached earth. I pound life into my lungs, my legs, ram it into my ears and eyes in the hope that if this dear woman entrusts herself to me, I have something in lungs and legs and mind to give her; for a certain thing I may never be able to give, at least as she and I could wish.
Adieu.
J.
I read the letter twice before folding it away. The birds and sunlight, the flags and stupa, returned to my consciousness in a sudden wave.
The urgency of my brother’s crisis no longer seemed like an abstraction. I recalled a scene from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which one of the astronauts is knocked off a spaceship. He flails desperately, spinning into the blackness of space, as his companion mounts a grim rescue effort. Jordan was in an equally dire predicament. I had to reach out to him, whatever the risk or cost.
Then and there I made a decision. I would not extend my ticket. I would fly back to America in one week, on March 5: the date on my original round-trip ticket.
The choice was agonizing, but necessary. If the revolution seemed imminent, my reaction might have been different. But the Nepalis were clearly cowed by the recent crackdowns. It could be months, years even, before they worked up the courage to openly defy the king. Meanwhile, my brother was taking a beating. This latest letter was a naked plea for help.
I left the roof the way I’d come, at peace with my decision. I’d been in Kathmandu for five months. That was enough for now. If things reached a head politically, I would hurry back.
On the ground floor of the monastery, inside the altar room, rests a towering statue of Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, who left his family and kingdom in 534 BC to win the “deathless state.” I’ve always liked that statue; there’s something in its eyes, a sort of omniscient grin, that appeals to me. Shakyamuni is awakened, but he doesn’t beat you over the head with it. “Give it a try,” he seems to be saying. The statue reminds me of the irresistible premise underlying all of Buddhist philosophy: that anyone, even a Bronx-born journalist, is a candidate for enlightenment.
In front of the statue is a broad wooden table, covered with small butter lamps. I lit the end of a long Q-tip-like wand and lit three of the candles: one for myself and the long journey ahead; one for Grace, whom I was starting to care about more than I dared admit; and a third for Jordan.
A strong draft gusted through the front door of the monastery, threatening my flames. I moved them to a sheltered corner of the table.
“Stay lit,” I demanded, but they flickered precariously. The Gioconda Buddha watched from above, offering an ambiguous smile.
15
Nighttime in Hadigaon
ASWITCH, A SERIES of blinking flickers, the familiar fluorescent glare of a light table. There was just one stool in Grace’s office nook, so I stood. The room was typical of the profession: cluttered with magazines, plastic photo sleeves, scraps of notepaper, cassette tapes, and used ceramic mugs with desiccated tea bags stuck to their insides.
Slide processing—by the one lab in town that wouldn’t destroy your film with scratches and dust—took a few days. Grace had gotten her pictures back from Shivaratri and invited me to her Hadigaon flat. She arranged herself on the stool, shifting from side to side, and picked up an Agfa loupe.
“Why do people do this?” she asked, leaning over the first image in the box. “I mean, no other animal stares this way into an artificial light source. It can’t be good for you.”
“Moths.”
She shrugged. “Is it good for them?”
But we knew why she did it. The pretense of doubt was a game, a way she teased herself. All her life, from the bio lab to the light table, she had liked to look at things closely. They had always been small things, lit from behind by a clinical glow.
It was late, already past nine. Grace had biked home half an hour ago from an event at the Annapurna Hotel; one of those pakka functions where you show your face, drink with the right people, and express keen interest in their well-meaning development schemes, hoping that your earnest attention will lead to a well-paying gig.
Tonight it had been a UNESCO banquet, surgically scheduled to slip between the major Hindu and Buddhist holidays. She’d worked for the organization before, shooting a paper-making project near Pokhara. Now they were talking about a sexier job: documenting vocational schools in Nepal’s economically depressed northwest. An assignment like that would pay real money, maybe even lead to a show in DC.
“My one mistake,” she said, “was eating the appetizer. I broke the prime directive: Never eat shellfish in a landlocked country. But I was longing for seafood.”
“It was the UN,” I said. “They’ve got refrigerated planes, probably. I’m sure it was okay.”
“Yeah. More likely they were left to sit at the airport for three days before clearing customs.”
“So why’d you eat them?”
“They were shrimp. Anyway, we’ll see. Hopefully I won’t find out until tomorrow.” Grace leaned closer to the light table, steadying a slide with her thumb. Her walnut hair, falling straight down on either side of her face, created a kind of photographer’s blind. I wondered if she’d grown it long that way on purpose.
The telephone on her desk—an old black rotary—began to ring. “Who could that be?” Grace picked up the handset and wedged it between her ear and shoulder. “Hello?” She glanced at me. “Rhoda,” she mouthed.
Grace had mentioned this person. She was a former literary agent, living in Kathmandu in what amounted to exile; she’d lost a fortune shepherding a score of “New Beat” writers into obscurity under a dubious imprint called Elysium Editions. Rhoda had married a journalism student she’d seen at Hunter College: This was Kunda Mainali, the Shaligram reporter I’d met at the doctors’ strike. They’d lived awhile in Brooklyn and moved to Nepal three years ago. Now Rhoda was four months pregnant, teaching English to privileged teenagers, and bored out of her skull. She hated Kathmandu: the soot, the noise, the chaos. She’d hated those things about Manhattan, too, but at least you could find fresh rye bread.
“On my bike,” Grace said in response to something. “Not so bad tonight. There must be
a ban on harassing Western women. The ‘suck my dick’ guy wasn’t around. Oh, one kid yelled that he wanted to marry me. Very charming.”
There was a long silence as Rhoda spoke. “That’s probably normal. What did Dr. Dan say?” Grace nodded, and gave me the talky-hand gesture. “Listen, Rhoda . . . I know . . . Rhoda, I have company. Jeff’s here.”
“Tell her to say ‘hi’ to Kunda for me.”
“He says ‘hi’ to Kunda. Mmmm.” She cupped the receiver. “He’s working late.” Back to Rhoda. “Well, I’m not surprised. We all are. Yes. So I’ll see you soon. Yes. Good night. Love you.” She hung up the phone. “They want us to come over for dinner.”
“When?”
“Soon. After Lhosar.” She positioned the loupe over a slide. “Here, look at this one.”
The photo showed a Nepali teenager with curly, close-cropped hair—a Tribhuvan University student, probably—holding a fistful of pink flyers. He was shouting something to (or at) someone past the camera. The depth of field was shallow. The protestors behind him were indistinct, like figures in the background of an impressionist painting. There was something iconic about the youth’s rage; he could have modeled for Auguste Rodin.
“That’s very good.”
“Thanks. And this one. Look.”
It was the same student, this time in close-up. Now he wore an expression of glee, anticipation. Looking at his face, it was easy to imagine that the point of these democracy protests was less political commitment than an opportunity for breathless juvenile delinquency.
Grace appraised a few more slides without comment, tossing three of them into the trash bin beneath the table. “Here’s another one.” A view of the soldiers from the bridge across the river, watched by a pair of monkeys in the foreground. The sentiment was obvious: Will the real apes please stand up?
Snake Lake Page 14
