Maya (41 page)

I was on my hands and knees wiping up the mess when what sounded like a herd of buffalo came thundering up the stairs. Before I could get to my feet, the door burst open and in reeled Mick, followed by three of his greasy friends, all of them obviously stoned off their respective asses.

“You are
not
staying in your room today, Stan. It's Holi! Look what I've got.” He dipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out several pellets of bhang. “Medicine for the doctor.”

I sat back on my heels, the rag still clasped in one hand. “No way.”

“It'll loosen you up. Get you in the holiday spirit, you know?”

Against my continuing protests he went over to the clay jug where I kept my drinking water, pulled a cup off the shelf and filled it. Meanwhile, his friends were surveying the contents of my room, presumably checking it out for any interesting foreign valuables I might have left in view. One of them I recognized. He was a regular at the Kerala Café in Belapur, where I had often seen him stuffed into a booth with six or seven of his friends, all of them talking and laughing ostentatiously. Our eyes met and he joined his palms, greeting me a big, paan-stained smile.

“Okay, here you go.” Mick stood before me, the glass of water in one hand, a chunk of bhang the size of a marble in the other. I was kneeling in front of him like a supplicant. “If you don't take your medicine, you'll never get well.”

I looked up at him. His hair was plastered against his head, streaks of blue and green water ran down his face and neck. To our left, on the desk, Vaidya's edition of the
Prajnaparamita
lay open where I had left it next to
my notes. Outside a rowdy cheer erupted from the rooftop next door as the family let loose with another deluge. In my peripheral vision I could see my neighbor leaning out over the railing, a plastic bucket held upside down in her hands. Her sari was soaking wet, clinging to the curves of her body like a second skin. I reached out and took the bhang from Mick. He handed me the glass of water, and I tossed it back. This elicited a boisterous applause from my guests, who threw their arms aloft and commenced gyrating around my room, obscenely swiveling and pumping their hips, performing a dance called, in Punjabi, the
bhangra.

“
Chaliyay
,” Mick said, gripping my arm and escorting me toward the door. “Let us go down into the world of mortals and see how they amuse themselves!”

Within half an hour I was toast. What remains of the morning and most of the afternoon is a hazy, dissociated pastiche of dreamlike visions. I see the white clown dashing through the streets pursued by hoards of screaming children, all of them engulfed in a multihued fog. Cows cruise by us like tie-dyed battleships. High above, a giant, translucent monkey dances gleefully along the wires brandishing a pichkari from which pours a luminescent stream of orange flame. Everywhere people are laughing and shouting. An elephant paddles through the crowd, ears flapping like canvas wings, legs pumping in slow motion. His flanks are draped in scarlet bunting, his tail adorned with golden streamers. He is floating like the Goodyear blimp, inches above the surface of the street. A skeletal musician plucks at the single string of his instrument, singing of his devotion to a God without name or form. One long, angular tooth thrusts upward from the ridge of his gum. The man's clothes are dirty and torn, his hair flies in oily strings as he twirls round and round. Nearby someone hammers at a drum, pounding out a frantic, syncopated rhythm. The singer's voice is mesmerizing, the beating of the drum erotic and irresistible. The white clown is dancing. We are all dancing. Beggars and holy men, shopkeepers and tattered children, monkeys and goats and water buffalo, the living and the dead, the righteous and the damned—we are all of us dancing together in this glorious, twisted, heartbreaking carnival of love.

By early afternoon the various magic potions were beginning to wear off. People blearily made their way home through painted streets. They would bathe and change clothes and go out, once again, this time to visit with friends and enjoy the rest of the holiday with chai and sweets that
the women had spent the last several days preparing. I had long since lost track of Mick. It occurred to me that I was ravenous. I caught a rickshaw to the Sindhi, which was closed, so I made do with half a dozen samosas purchased from a peddler. Hunger sated, I returned to Assi and my room. There I cleaned up and flopped down on my bed, exhausted.

I must have fallen asleep, and when I awoke it was twilight, that mysterious time out of time when the world drifts, rudderless, between day and night. The streets outside were quiet. I lay on my back and looked around the room. The books stood side by side on the shelves, desk and chair in front of the window. I sat up, turned, and slid my legs off the bed and pushed my feet hard against the surface of the floor, feeling the smooth tiles press against my calloused soles. I stood up and stretched, then took a couple steps over to the almari and pulled out the kerosene stove for chai. But where are the matches? I went over to the desk and sat down and looked halfheartedly for them near the little Garuda incense holder. Things were still a bit fuzzy around the edges. It would take another twelve hours or so for the effects of the bhang to totally wear off.

Just outside my window a lone rhesus monkey rested on the narrow ledge that ran along the perimeter of my neighbors' rooftop. A large splotch of purple dye covered his back. I recognized him from the jagged scar on his forehead; it was the same big male that often paused here for a moment, at this hour, before continuing his rounds through the city. He sat hunched over like a yogi, his limbs drawn close, staring blankly off into the distance, absorbed in solitary rumination. He had not yet noticed me. Every now and then he raised a hand and idly picked at his scabrous belly. His head was a scrawny ball bristling with sparse tufts of red hair. The sagging flesh of his ears appeared distressingly human, as did his sorrowful pink face. I had seen this same face more than once, back in Chicago, among the winos who sat nodding on the benches in Jackson Park. My visitor gazed out at the world through restless, pensive eyes, as though a single piece had somehow been removed from the puzzle of life and this one omission had cast the whole affair into disarray. He seemed to be on the verge of an insight, a crucial revelation that would change everything. The line between us was razor thin, and he was poised to cross.

We sat so close to each other that I could see the muscles twitch under one eye where a fly probed its moist edge. Carefully, so as not to startle him, I reached behind me to the bed and retrieved a small paper bag
containing the remains of some Holi sweets I had carried back with me. I took out the last small square of pista barfi and placed it gently between two bars. As I withdrew my hand, the monkey's eyes darted around and stopped cold, riveted with burning intensity on my offering. He looked quickly back and forth between the delicacy and me, sizing up the risk, then pitched forward across the open space and snatched it up in a one swift motion that had him instantly back again on the ledge. His spindly fingers picked furiously at the prize, skillfully breaking off one crumb after another and tossing them up between whiskered lips. Very soon it was gone and he looked hopefully at the spot between us.

Now I raised my hands and laid them palms up on the desk to show my guest that there was no more but also to make it clear that I had no weapon. As I did so, I found myself seized with compassion for this half-starved, injured being. On this holiday, this celebration of love, I desperately wanted to make some kind of genuine contact with this sad, fuzzy old man whose path across the rooftops of Banaras had inexplicably intersected with my own. I sat looking at him, my empty hands stretched out over the desk, while he continued to scrutinize the ledge where the barfi had been. After a few seconds the monkey lifted his eyes and locked them on mine with a tense, penetrating stare. I had the eerie sensation that the lost piece was about to fall into place. I was certain that I saw, in his eyes, a hint of recognition, a possibility that I appeared as familiar to him as he did to me. Are we not evolutionary brothers?
He must realize this
, I thought. I remained absolutely still, holding his gaze with infinite tenderness, my hands relaxed and welcoming.

All at once the glimmer in his eyes ignited and blazed across his face. With a savage hiss the monkey flung his body directly toward where I sat and struck the bars with the full force of his weight, gripping them tightly with all four hands, digging his frightful black nails into the iron. The ferocity of his charge literally propelled me backward out of the chair. My legs caught under the desk; I tripped and fell, and then laid there sprawled on the floor, frozen in horror while the livid animal bared his teeth and—still clutching the bars—heaved his body against them, again and again, as if to wrench them free with the sheer enormity of his rage.

And then it was over. He sprang back across the alley and bounded along the wall, leapt to the power lines and onto a veranda across the street, disappearing over the rooftops that spread out against the dusk and the last vestiges of smoke from the Holi fires. He was gone.

After several minutes I pulled myself up, leaning on the desk to get my balance. My hip throbbed where it had slammed against the floor. I stood and looked out in the direction the monkey had gone. Finally, I picked up the chair and returned it to its place, then found the matches, limped over, and lit the stove. When the chai was ready I took it to my bed and crouched there with my back to the wall. The ceiling fan turned slowly, its breath brushing against my damp skin. It was dark now, and through the open window, I could already see the garland of the Milky Way, billions of stars slung in a low arc over the black water of the Ganges.

32

I'
M ON THE
S
UPER
F
AST
again. High beams reach out into the darkness like hands clawing their way over hot asphalt, opening a narrow tunnel of light through which the bus pitches forward. This time I know for certain that things are not as they appear. It's nothing but a trick of the mind: I have dreamed this dream before.

Has he already died?
I lift one hand and feel my lip. No blood. It hasn't happened yet. To my left, just outside the window, a light flashes in the huge rearview mirror, and a jolt of fear rockets up my spine. I shiver and turn away, averting my eyes from the glare. Something's not right. Where's the driver? He's not where he should be, just in front of me. Instead, two arms stretch forward out of empty space, fingers wrap around the big steering wheel. The grooves on its plastic surface are smooth to the touch and slick with sweat. The accelerator thrusts itself up against my foot with a sense of urgency.

I'm going to kill a boy.

RAAAAAANNNNNGGGG
! The alarm rips through the veil and yanks me out of the dream.

Je-sus Christ.

I reach over and hit the button to shut it off, then lie there on my back watching the still blades of the ceiling fan. No electricity. It's unusually humid for March. The disturbing images from the dream are still vivid in my mind.

I'm going to kill a boy.

I push the heels of both palms hard against my eyes, rake my fingers back through my hair.

A dream. Nothing but a dream.

With great effort I drag myself upright and force my legs around, feet off the bed, pausing only a few seconds before I drop to the floor amid my library and force myself into the morning exercise routine. Fifty pushups, fifty sit-ups, fifty leg lifts. Touch the toes, stretch, run in place. My feet
pump up and down, toes digging in. Calisthenics finished, I pick up the plastic bucket and towel and step through the door, pulling both panels shut behind me.

I can't shake the dream, an eerie sense of unreality clings to everything—or is it a heightened sense of reality? In the dim light from the electric bulb, the hallway feels too narrow. The curved steel handle of the bucket pushes down into the crook of my fingers, as if it were a living thing, calling for attention. A repellent odor hangs in the darkness like the smell of rotted flesh.

The dog.

I'm still dreaming.

Now I'm hunched over in the dank, triangular crawlspace below the last twist of the staircase. The dog is lying on the concrete in front of me, struggling to move. I'm pushing her with my foot; her fur bristles against my skin, stiff as wire.
This dog cannot remain in this place where I bathe and clean my dishes and take my drinking water.

RAAAAAANNNNNGGGG
! All over again the alarm rips through the veil and yanks me out of the dream. I swing my hand over and hit the button hard.

Je-sus
fucking
Christ.

My fingers remain where they fell, and I lie still for several minutes, disoriented and apprehensive, staring at the blades of the ceiling fan as they revolve slowly in the hot, dry air. Could this, too, be a dream? Cautiously, I withdraw my hand from the clock, sit up, and look around the room. The books stand side by side on the shelves like dutiful sentries. Desk and chair rest quietly at the foot of my bed, waiting to serve. I run my fingertips over the cotton sheet, touch the grain of the fabric and the knotted stitching along the hem. How would I know? I turn and slide my legs off the bed, wiggle my toes against the floor, feeling the glaze on the tiles hard against the soles of my feet.

By the time I've finished the exercise routine, my skin is sticky with sweat. I pick up the bucket and soap and towel, step cautiously through the door, and make my way down the stairs. At the faucet I pause to scrutinize its dull brassy sheen. A single drop of water clings to the spout, iridescent, then falls like a tiny jewel into the dark mouth of the drain. Everything is exactly as it is every morning. I take a breath, inhale the odor of wet stone, then exhale slowly, stoop, and place my fingertips against the cool metal of the tap.