Paradise Tales (6 page)

He contorts for a moment, stretching his neck, shoulders and arms. He shivers his way back into normal standing position, mastering himself and the fire.

“Now it’s their turn to cheer,” he says. He starts to climb again.

Only Arun can lay a comforting hand on his burning flesh.

Become evil to do good

A year later only the Ten are left.

They live in a cave, surviving on what they can hunt. They shiver in furs and spend the long dark hours in meditation. A hard life is what they have come to love, and despite all their virtues, they have become hard men. There are few words and no laughter between them.

Except for Arun. Curiously, he has learned how to laugh. He tells jokes to himself, the Ten, and sometimes even to Kai, when he can find him.

“Master, come back. We need you to warm the walls.”

Kai has retreated into the high snows. He perches on icy crags, buffeted by howling winds. The snow sputters on his skin and melts in a perfect circle all around him. The rocks he sits on have the dull metallic look of stones in a steam bath. Trails of vapor hiss from them.

“At least you will be very clean,” says Arun again. He crouches near Kai with a pot of stew. Already the stew is icy cold, which is how Kai likes it. It cools his throat as he swallows. Arun feeds him with a spoon he himself has chipped out of stone.

Arun sits in the shelter of Kai’s warmth, and places the pot of stew on Kai’s lap to heat it up. He tries to make conversation.

“You should come and burn the cave clean for us!” Arun says, but the gale drowns out his words.

“To tell you the truth, the Ten all think I am still a slave. I do all the work!” Still no response. Being with Kai now can be lonelier than being without him. Arun eats his boiling-hot stew.

The gray sky edges toward blue. Arun cannot be caught out on icy trails at night. Arun hugs Kai, though it sears his hides and makes them stink.

Kai looks pained and saddened, staring at something quite definite in all that swirling cloud and snow.

Arun stands up, shouts goodbye, gets no answer, and then turns and walks into the blizzard.

Kai sits alone. The wind drives the snow sideways. The world gets bluer, almost turquoise.

Then, swelling out of the storm and the hillside comes a giant stranger made of air and hardship, rock and salt, wind and sleet.

The Buddha was tempted by Mala, the World. Mala offered the Buddha kingship, and the power to do good in the real world.

“Well,” says the World. “Here’s a fine place for a Hero to end up. Happy in your work?”

“I know who you are,” says Kai through broken teeth that glow like embers.

“I know a good dentist,” says Mala. “I made him myself.”

The World sits down and sighs in a showy, airy way. “Now what do I have here? Oh, cooling ices. They are made in a city called Baghdad. It’s a desert town, quite sophisticated, fiercely hot. They have learned how to transport ice and make sweet delights from it that are colder even that this snow. Magic ices, that would soothe your fiery throat.”

Kai chuckles, puffing out smoke and ash from his burnt windpipe. “Go to hell,” he says.

“That’s where I am. Hell is wherever you are, my friend,” says Mala. “Freezing and burning for the rest of your life? Sounds familiar to me. Myself, I prefer comfort, the here and now, and if a little bit of magic gets us what we most desire, I, the World-as-it-actually-is, don’t see any reason to forego it.”

“It is not the will of God.”

Mala sighs. “I have no idea what the will of God is. And, my would-be Hero, neither do you. By the way, you have not achieved Heroism.”

“I know that.”

“Think you’ll find it in your navel?”

“Better place to look than up your ass.”

“My my, we are sharp this morning, aren’t we? A year of agony tends to do that to people. How about looking for Heroism in reality?”

“I do.”

“Haven’t found it, have you? Look, I’m the entire world and I have many places to be at once. So I’ll say this once only and quickly. Your aim was
not
to destroy magic. Your aim was to free your kingdom from the Neighbors. I’m sorry to have to make this clear to you, but the only way to do that in the World is to destroy the Neighbors. So why not take the most direct and intelligent route? Destroy them through magic?”

Kai sits unmoved, eyes closed. “All I have to do is give up enlightenment.”

The World’s laughter melds with the sound of the storm. “You are so far from achieving enlightenment! You’ve killed too many people! You’ll be lucky to reborn as a frog!”

Mala stands up, shaking his head. “You are a complete and total failure. I’ll leave the ice cream here. Don’t worry, it won’t melt. Not up here.”

In a particularly stinging blast of wind and snow, Mala leaves …

… Kai …

… alone.

He finally eats the ice cream.

He stands, and pauses for thought.

“Good?” asks the World.

Kai trots down the hill.

To Arun, he gives the power of wind, to freeze or dry or scorch. To the Likely Ten he gives in order:

• pestilence
  
• sudden rending of flesh
  
• blindness and deafness
  
• dazed stupidity and cretinism in all its forms
  
• sterility and impotence
  
• drought and famine
  
• age and the death of children
  
• disaster: flood, earthquake, accidents of all kinds
  
• depression and despair
  

He himself is already Fire, so he gives himself the power of kings to make things pretty.

Together with Mala, the Likely Ten descend howling on the Neighbors. Kai stands huge and billowing in flame over the capital city.

Fire torches all their wooden buildings, their finely carved palaces, and the beautiful verse inscribed on palm leaves.

The soldiers of the Neighbors fall where they stand, buboes swelling up and bursting under armpits or in their groins. Others are suddenly split into two. Their fathers go deaf and blind, their faithful wives become so stupid they cannot remember their own names. The young men will find they can’t get it up. Their horses and elephants all have rabies, and the vaginas of their women blister with new and fatal contagious diseases. All—
all
—of their children under twelve die; a million children in one night.

Then the sea rises up to swamp their ports and sink their ships. Earthquakes shake their sacred temples into rubble.

Those few Neighbors who are left alive sit down and weep and surrender to dazed despair.

Kai flies on wings of fire and seizes hold of the King of Kambu. “Remember me?” he chuckles brightly.

He seals the body of the King in amber and uses it for his throne. He makes sure that none of the King’s sons, cousins, wives, uncles, or nephews are left alive.

“No nonsense this time,” Kai declares from his new and sad-eyed throne. “The Commonwealth of the Neighbors is no more. It is a happy part of the Kingdom of the Sons of Kambu. I am their King.”

It is Mala, not Arun, who chuckles and pats his shoulder. No hurricanes blew during the conquest.

“We have swallowed you,” Kai admits. “You should have considered the possibility when you tried to swallow us. Now, my dear friends and loyal subjects. It is your turn to build a railway.”

All the Neighbors are enslaved.

Then do good to earn merit and undo harm

Women become pretty. The bones in their faces shift subtly and slowly at night. Their teeth straighten. They become pregnant, if they want to be.

Every afternoon, predictably, just before the children go to drive the oxen home, it rains. People finish their wholesome lunches listening to the pleasant sounds of rain on the roof.

The fruits on the market stalls are round, with perfect blushes of ripeness, firm enough but sweet. They scent the air.

Old people suddenly notice that they can stand up straight and that swinging their legs out of the hammock is easier. They find that standing first thing in the morning no longer hurts. They can dance for joy. They can work in the rice fields as the Chbap advise, and they call to their friends cheerily.

And most strangely of all, whenever they recite the Chbap, good things happen.

Kai chuckles to himself and confides in Arun. “I’ve given them all magic powers. What was wrong about magic was that it bent the rules unfairly for just a few people. Now, everyone has the power of magic. Everyone has the power to do good. They will realize it, but slowly.”

“Whereas,” says Arun, his smile a bit thin, “you have a monopoly on doing harm.”

“Yes. But I don’t have to use it.”

“Much,” says Arun.

Birds sing, the sun shines, people eat but don’t get fat. The Neighbors see that Sons of Kambu have a superior way of life, and envy them. “Well, you know my grandfather was Kambu,” they begin to say, as they stagger under the weight of railway ties. “I always put my superior good fortune down to that.”

Kambu words sprinkle their speech. The Neighbors begin to recite the Chbap, and lo! Their backaches cease.

“We have a lot to learn from these Sons of Kambu,” they agree.

Their few surviving daughters start to wear Kambu fashion. Their eyes follow noble Sons with alluring brightness.

And then the strangest thing of all comes to pass.

To earn merit, Kai orders the rebuilding of temples.

The stones are piled back more or less as they were. Kai is a follower of the Dharma, but he honors the gods that underlie that more clear-headed faith, as he sees it.

All the artisans of the Neighbors are now either dead or senile, so good Kambu craftsmen restore the temples to Vishnu, Siva, and even Brahma. The artists love doing this, for underneath the newer religion, the old gods survived in the hearts of the people. Fine new statues of the gods are made, and the monks who were the rivals of Kai are given new jobs. They get to enrobe and feed the statues.

The new enlarged kingdom smells of honey.

The old gods come back.

It starts quietly at first. Whispers are heard in cool stone galleries. The shawls and garlands of flowers that drape the statues flutter, with the wind surely, but as if the stone arm supporting them had moved.

Water poured over the linga and the yoni tastes delicious, poised between sweet and savory. The purified water has the power to restore even Neighbor slaves to health. All anyone has to do to receive a blessing is drink and swear loyalty to the gods and their earthly representative, King Kai the Merciful.

The temple oracles find that their ingenuity is no longer taxed. They no longer have to invent orotund but ambiguous answers to questions. Instead their heads are thrown back and a godlike voice whispers out of them. Sometimes their listeners look overjoyed by the answer, sometimes they are plunged into despair. But they no longer look baffled.

The Sons of Kambu never quite stopped believing in even older religions. For them, everything has a spirit—a house, a tree, or even a stone.

The food left in spirit houses is found suddenly eaten. The flowers in the beds stir and creep forward, conquering more waste ground. Roofs repair themselves and house fronts seem to adopt cheerful smiling faces.

Finally, at least to superior persons and Brahmins, the gods themselves begin to speak.

“More,” the gods ask. They have a great way with simplicity in speech. More sweetmeats, more incense, more garlands, more rice. A little gold or a new temple would be appropriate.

“Well,” sniffs Kai, to wealthy dependents. “You heard what the gods told you. Build them a temple.”

It is good way to keep his nobles occupied and leave them no extra cash for private armies.

Suddenly there are hospitals and rest stations for travelers. New roads are built. The King is quick to point out to the gods that roads are necessary if worshippers are to bring offerings.

Roads are also necessary for trade.

A little grudgingly perhaps, the gods do some good. Strong trees, healthy rice, more wildlife to forage, fish in the sea, calm trade routes, and boats that do not leak. Things prosper even more.

“This is a really good deal for you,” the gods point out to Kai.

“And for you.” He smiles back.

Mala is happiest of all. “I surrender to the superiority of the gods,” the World says and keeps himself in the background. The birds sing sweetly.

Heroism is completed by inaction

Late at night, Kai wakes up with Arun’s sword at his throat.

A howling gale fills the room and pins Kai to his bed, pushing all his fire down onto the stone mattress.

Arun wants to talk.

He strokes Kai’s flaming hair with one hand. “What,” he asks Kai, “do you think you’re doing? If you swallow the Neighbors, you need to consider the possibility that someone else will turn around and swallow you.”

“Arun,” says Kai in a tone of voice that embodies the realization that he should have expected this moment to come from him. “Of course I’ve considered it.”

“Of course. But you take no action. You still have a problem taking action, after all these years. But only I know that.” Arun lightly plants a kiss on Kai’s fiery cheek. He waits for a response. Kai still takes no action.

Arun smiles at him. “Scared old man,” he says affectionately. “Who do you think these gods are who are showing up wanting handouts and threatening to turn off the rain if they don’t get it? How long do you think they will let you rule?”

“Until I die. They are gods and can afford to be patient.”