by Paul Haines
Sleep is a long time coming.
#
Durbar Square continues as it has for centuries, the beating heart of Kathmandu pulsing with life and seemingly oblivious to the chaos of last night. Snake charmers coax hooded heads from cane baskets; bearded sadhus clad in bright robes and beads meditate, soothe and hassle passers-by; touts and rickshaws brim between temples and palaces, while pigeons scurry and peck and shit. There are fewer tourists now, and the streets are heavily patrolled by soldiers—the only obvious signs the city is unwell.
'She looks like a goddamn mean bitch,' Gabe says to Luna.
A massive black wooden statue snarls silently at us. Arms snake from the torso; one clutches a sword, another the severed head of a demon, others beckon and twirl. Her belly and breasts are smeared with blood, around which a girdle of dead men's hands is carved. A red tongue droops from a fanged mouth.
'Do you know much about Hinduism?' Luna asks.
'Nope,' I say.
'This is Kali, the Black Goddess,' says Luna. 'The mother goddess, the destroyer. The bloodied sword and severed head symbolise the destruction of ignorance and the dawning of knowledge.'
'They still believe in this shit?' asks Gabe.
'At least twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. It's a little like a Catholic confession, but instead of confessing to a priest, you offer a sacrifice at Kali's altar to rebalance your karma. The bigger the guilt the bigger the sacrifice.'
'There's one this Saturday,' says Carly. 'It's up in the valley about an hour from here. Do you guys want to come with us?'
'Sure.' Gabe laughs and stares at me. His smile fades. 'Who knows? Maybe I need a little karma rebalancing of my own.'
'Hey, can you take a photo of us, Saul?' Carly hands me her camera. 'It's automatic: just press the button.'
The girls smile and hug each other, striking would-be model poses, and behind them the statue of Kali leers. I press the button and before the shutter snaps, the camera focuses on a wooden garnet of human heads dangling around Kali's neck.
And on we move, past statues of lower deities, ornately carved buildings, sweeping curved roofs, the girls pointing and smiling, camera clicking, Gabe laughing and touching, and me, aimlessly following, lost amongst the noise of foreign tongues and the heady scent of spice and incense.
Luna stops before two large wooden doors, admiring the skulls carved into the door's lintels.
'This is where she lives, Carly,' says Luna.
'Kumari? This is Kumari's Bahal?' Carly steps back and takes a photo of the intricately carved wooden building.
'Who is Kumari?' asks Gabe.
Suddenly a pack of Nepalese boys swarm around us, tongues jabbering, hands waving. None of them attempt to engage me, instead clamouring for attention from the others.
'No tour guides,' yells Gabe. He swats at them like flies.
'It's okay.' Carly hands the eldest boy several rupees. The others slip back into the crowds searching for other trade. 'What better way to learn about the Living Goddess than from the locals?'
'Yes,' says the boy. 'Kumari is the Living Goddess, the virgin goddess.'
'Really?' Gabe's eyes widen. 'A Living Goddess ...'
Carly produces a Dictaphone from her bumbag and starts recording as the guide speaks. Luna scribbles down notes in her journal. 'We're researching this at university,' she says.
'Kumari is an incarnation of Shiva's shakti Parvati—how you would say his wife. She is chosen at four years of age to come and live in this house and will remain here until she first loses blood when she reaches, what is the word? Puberty! Or through injury.'
'A goddess,' murmurs Gabe. His eyes scan the upper floors of the building. Three shuttered windows present themselves to the square. The middle one is open.
'If you are lucky, you might see her.' The guide notices Gabe's gaze. 'She appears once a day in the window for only a few seconds. She has not yet appeared today so there is still a chance. Legend has it ...'
The guide's voice drones on. My shoulders prickle and the skin on my spine creeps. Someone is watching me. I turn, scanning the crowds in Durbar Square. Dozens of eyes in brown faces stare, but I pass them by. Their interest is purely tourist fascination or the chance to make a buck. I sweep past statues and temples until I'm drawn to the pyramidal-blocked steps forming the base of a large, stone temple rising from the middle of the square. Rickshaw drivers rest at its base, waving when I catch their eye, but it is not their gaze I feel lingering on me, pressing down inside and peering into my secrets.
I spy him on the topmost step of the temple, sitting amongst several tourists. Short and hunched, clad in brown cloth. From here I can't make out his features but I know he is the one. The midget. My stomach flutters and I'm pushing through the crowd to the bottom of the temple. Without taking my eyes from his face, lest he disappear, I stumble up the cracked stone steps toward him.
'Namaste,' he says. Nature did not bless this brown-skinned man. His nose is squat and his lip cleft. A wispy rust-coloured beard clings to his cheeks. His eyes, though, are intense and draw me into deep green, flecked with orange.
'Who are you? Why are you following me?' Sweat bursts from my brow, my chest heaves from the climb. The tourists edge away from us and I realise I'm shouting.
He sits motionless, calm. The voice that slides from between those cleft lips is rich and soothing, the accent unplaceable. 'You seem troubled, friend. Please, sit.'
'Who are you?' I take a seat. 'What do you want?'
'I'm not the one who is lost. I'm not the one who is wanting. I am not wandering blind through this world.'
I grab him by the collar of his shirt. 'Don't give me any of this mystical shit, pal. I don't believe in that crap.' I shake him hard; his body is surprisingly light, almost weightless. 'Don't fuck with me!'
'Don't fuck with me?' His hand closes gently around my wrist and suddenly all my strength is gone. 'The only person fucking with you is you.' He points down into the crowd near the Bahal, indicating Gabe. 'And him.'
'I ... I ... don't understand.' Laura is swelling somewhere deep inside, trying to break out, to engulf me. And the others, all the others I have slept with since. He releases my wrist.
'Some call me Anjaneya. Anje for short. It is as good a name as any, and many are given. You are named after a man made blind.'
'How can you know this?'
'Kathmandu is an ancient city, Saul, but it is a small city. One where tongue touches tongue to fill the street with the sound of the living. There are few tourists here these days. Why are you here?'
Everything is unravelling, too noisy, too bright. Heat rises from the earth, curling up the temple steps, distorting the square below me. I've felt this before, back when I first tested positive. Again when Laura killed herself. The world collapses, and it is all I can do to simply be. I can't talk. Nothing works.
'We are living in the last days of Kali Yuga,' Anje continues. 'The last Yuga. The last stage before the world begins anew. Everyone has a chance to be on the right side of the sword when the white horse comes, Saul.'
'White horse?'
'Seek Kali and you shall find the horse.'
'What do you mean?'
'Look there at the window!' Anje's face splits into an open-mouthed grin. There's a moon tattooed on his tongue. 'The Goddess awakes.' He rests his hand on my shoulder and the heat dissipates.
A small head peers around the corner of the middle shutter of the Bahal. Her face is powder white and the eyes mascara heavy. Even at this distance I see how wide her eyes are as she looks down on the square. A great cheer rises from the crowd and a childish smile plays upon her lips before she ducks out of sight. She looks about six years old, a child playing dress-up. The same age my never-born daughter would be.
'Do you believe she is a goddess, Anje?'
I'm sitting alone. I can barely focus on the people at the foot of the temple, let alone the shutters on the Bahal. I can't see the midget anywhere.
#
A colour photo the size of a single bed sheet covers the back wall of the shop. The buff, a small buffalo-like animal, still stands as blood fountains from the stump of its neck. Its head is spinning through the air, yet to hit the ground. A man laughs as he holds the tail of the buff so it can't run. The other man, the one with the khukuri, is bent over double, still in the downward arc of the decapitating swing.
I don't remember coming in. I don't remember coming here. I don't remember.
'It is our most effective advertisement.' The shopkeeper indicates his wares under the glass cabinet. Large knives, thick in the middle, with ends tapering to the point and the hilt. 'The point of the khukuri is as sharp as a needle, so it answers equally for cutting or stabbing. In consequence of the great thickness of the metal, the blade is exceedingly heavy. A blow from such a weapon as this is a terrible one. The very weight of the blade will drive it half through a man's arm if it falls from even a little height. The khukuri also comes with these two small knives, much like the knives that come with the Highlander's dirk. Makes a complete set.'
'How much?'
The weight of the weapon is comforting. I remember leaving.
#
Gabe meditates naked on the floor of our room. It's something he's practised for years, he tells me, not like this new-age crap that's insinuated itself into our Western lives. I don't know what he does or how he does it, and I don't care. All it means is I'll be spending the night alone; he tends to disappear for the evening after meditating.
There's a knock at the door. 'You guys in?' It's Carly.
'Tell her to fuck off,' whispers Gabe, emerging briefly from his trance.
I open the door a crack and block her view with my body. 'He's not here.'
'That's cool,' Carly says. The way her eyes dart around in her head tells me otherwise. 'There's this Tibetan restaurant near Durbar Square. We're thinking of going there a little later, if you guys want to come. One of the hotel guards will escort us, so there'll be no trouble with the curfew. It's called Momo's, you know, if you're keen.'
She tries to peek past me and I raise my hand to block her.
'Jesus!' Carly jumps back, her eyes wide. 'Where did you get that?'
I realise too late I'm holding the khukuri, brandishing it in front of her face. 'It's Nepalese,' I mutter. 'Traditional. I ... uh ... look, yeah. I'll let you know when Gabe gets back.' I shut the door on her confused face.
'Where'd you get this?' Gabe has risen from his trance. He takes the knife from my hand, slapping its weight in his palm. He runs a finger down the blade. 'Good quality.' He licks the thin welt of blood from his finger. 'I didn't think you took our conversation last night so seriously.' He passes the hilt of the knife back with a grin. 'But I must say I'm pleased you did.'
'I don't know why I bought it.' The handle is contoured to my hand; it feels made for me.
The hot water pipes shudder into action and the spatter of water on tiles follows.
'Make sure you swing upwards when you use it,' Gabe calls from the shower. 'You wouldn't want the blade swinging back into your knee, would you?'
I sheath the khukuri, reluctant to relinquish it, and put it into my backpack. 'I don't suppose you want to go to this restaurant tonight?'
'Carly said it was near Durbar Square. That suits me fine.'
The pipes shudder again and the splattering water stops. Gabe emerges from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. His eyes shine almost as bright as his skin.
'Did you see the Living Goddess?' he asks. 'Can you imagine it, Saul? What it would feel like? A goddess!'
His cock swells beneath the towel.
#
Momo's is almost empty, aside from a few tourists sitting at another table in the gloom. I stab at one of the many momos in the middle of our table. I bite into the steamed dumpling, surprised this one contains a mild spiced meat, probably the legal form of beef, called buff. Most of the namesakes I've eaten tonight were vegetarian.
'Do you think Gabe's all right?' Carly asks. 'He's been in there a while now.'
'He's probably got the shits from eating these.' Luna laughs. Food is stuck between her teeth, and after her mouth closes, the lump her tongue makes beneath her lips works away at the food.
'He's been almost quarter of an hour,' says Carly.
'I once shat for twenty-seven minutes straight,' I say. 'He's hardly been gone.'
We eat in silence for the next few minutes, listening to each other chewing. A gunshot echoing from the mountains is the only other sound to penetrate the restaurant's walls.
'You girls know a lot about Hinduism, don't you?' I ask.
'We are studying it,' Carly says.
'What do you want to know?' There is a kindness in Luna's voice that is lacking in Carly's.
'I met a man today. He told me about someone called Kali Yuga. Do you know who she is?'
'Kali Yuga is not a person. A Yuga is a time period, and the Hindus have four of them. Kali Yuga is the last Yuga; the one we now live in. It's supposed to last for about 400,000 years,' says Luna.
Carly leans forward so the shadows from the candle flicker over her face. 'It's the age of vice, violence, ignorance and greed. Where the powers of the gods wane and evil walks the earth.'
She leans back and laughs, the sound strained in her throat. She glances back at the door leading to the toilets. Waiting for Gabe. Desperate for Gabe, the fuck of her lifetime. Waiting for the man who poured every drop of his hate into her while she mistook it for passion. I want to tell her she's wasting her time, her youth, on such a cold creature. To shake them both and yell at them to stay away from him, from us, before any hearts are broken. Or worse.
Luna saves me from having to act on my thoughts. 'Remember that bloodied black statue in the square today? The one with all the arms? When the world finally turns to shit, she's supposed to appear and start chopping her way through the evil hordes so Shiva can come riding in on his huge white stallion and smite all and sundry. Like when Christ comes back and takes the believers to heaven while he damns the rest of the world. And then the cycle begins anew, back to the pure and holy first Yuga.'
'I hope Gabe's okay.' Carly stares at the door. She's switched off our conversation already.
'That's weird. This guy told me to look for Kali and a white horse.'
'Did he want money? Maybe he was having you on.'
I'd think it was all bullshit, some tourist scam, if not for the other night on the balcony with Luna. But now I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. For a second I almost tell her about the white horse rearing at the end of the street that night, huge even in the distance. And that sounds crazy, even to me.
'I've seen him around,' I say. 'Said his name was Angie-nayer or something. He's a midget.'
'That name sounds familiar,' Luna says.
'Can you check on Gabe, please, Saul? I'm worried.'
'He's okay, Carly. Jesus. Give him some space.'
'I'll check.' Luna rises from her chair.
'Nah, look, I'll go.' I avoid their eye contact and walk to the door leading to the toilets. It opens into a narrow, dark alleyway lined with crooked wooden walls. A dim bulb flickers at the end. The smell of shit and urine thickens in the air around me. I tread gingerly, my sandals sucking at waste leaked into the mud around the toilet doors. I wish I'd taken a deep breath several steps ago. I wish I'd worn my boots.
'Gabe? You okay?'
Silence.
'The girls are getting worried. Gabe?'
The toilet door is ajar, hanging lopsided on broken hinges. I pull my shirt up over my nose and push the door gently. It swings inwards, the hinges grinding in protest.
'Gabe?'
The stench crashes over me, permeating my shirt. I gag and stagger back, but not before realising the toilet is empty.
'He's not in there,' I say, back at the table.
'What?' Carly leaps from her seat and runs to the door. 'He must be. He has
n't come out.'
'He's not there!' My shout attracts the waiter who scurries over.
'Something is wrong?' Hands clasped, leaning forward, subservient.
'My mate went off to have a shit in your toilets and he's not in there.'
The waiter smiles and half bows. 'He has left then.'
'He hasn't come out the door.'
Carly appears in the doorway. 'He's not in there!' Her voice is too high, the seeds of panic settling in her throat.
'If your friend not in there,' says the waiter, the patience practised, 'then he must have come out. Unless,' and the waiter laughs, 'he climb the walls and run over roof.'
'He's not there!' Carly's voice is getting higher. Soon it will crack.
Luna sits there, watching, saying nothing. Carly rushes from the restaurant.
'Your friend is an arsehole.' Luna rises from the table. 'I don't know what he's done to Carly, but she's been acting weird ever since the other night.'
'Well, you better go chase her then. You never know what our escort from the hotel will do to your hysterical slut mate out there in the dark.'
She glares at me and leaves.
I don't need this shit; I don't need them; I don't need anything. I think it's time Gabe and I went our separate ways. If he's done his usual disappearing trick, he might not be back for a day or two then he'll want to leave.
And I have a confessional to attend this Saturday.
#
My stomach churns by the time I get back to the hotel. Something twists in my bowels sending spasms through my gut. Those fucking buff momos. I stagger into the bathroom, tear down my pants, and collapse onto the stained toilet seat. The seat is icy against the heat of my skin. Sweat oozes from my body and the room slides at the edge of vision. The shit pours and pours from me, splattering against the bowl, the water and back onto my skin. I have to hold my head in my hands as another bout streams into the bowl. I move slightly, the seat sticky now from the sweat slicking my body. The stench of disease screams up at me. I throw up into my lap, vomit stinging the inside of my nostrils, throat burning and arse on fire. The room no longer slides, instead it lurches up at me. My face connects with the tiles. Is this the beginning of the last stage of my condition? Am I now fully blown? Vomit fills the grout between each tile, easing into dark and black and nothing ...
