The Cult of Loving Kindness (2 page)

From a cardboard crate on the floor beneath his desk he pulled a change of underwear and two pairs of socks. These, together with his veil and the untouched bread and cheese, he tied into a bundle, which he could carry over his shoulder. He picked up one of the saint’s copper medallions from the pile on his desk.

Due to the success of his department, the market in religious contraband—and especially these emblems of the Cult of Loving Kindness—was lucrative on both sides of the border. In Caladon the smallest trinket, for a sweeper or a guard, was worth more than a month’s pay. The deputy administrator, with this coin, hoped to bribe the sentry at the gate to let him go. Holding it in the center of his palm, he stalked across the floor and down the steps, leaving his post for the first time in seven months.

The customs compound—six rectangular buildings surrounded by barbed wire—occupied a wooded ridge above the port, and was connected to it by a metal tram. The deputy administrator stalked across the yard. The grass was thick under his shoes. Expecting to be challenged, he slunk between two buildings, keeping to the shadows. But he saw no one. And when he reached the outer gate, the sentry in the box was fast asleep. So he slid the coin into the pocket of his trousers, and ducked under the crossbar.

A paved road led southeast from the gate. He followed it for half a mile until he found a bare place in the trees. Here the road descended sharply toward the port two hundred feet below; from the crest of the ridge the deputy administrator could see the hands of the breakwater stretching out into the bay, pallid in the moonlight, each decorated with a single jewel. And there were lights, also, on the packet steamer by the dock, and a single shining ruby on the bell buoy out to sea. The deputy administrator listened for the sound—a muffled clanging on the small east wind. He heard it, and heard something else, louder, more insistent, closer, and he stepped aside into the grass. Below him at the bottom of the hill, the shuttle started on its hourly circuit from the port to the compound and then back.

He squatted down in the long grass. Soon he could hear the rattle of the car as it labored toward him up the slope. Soon he could see it—empty, brainless, fully lit, its wheels sparking on the steel rail that ran beside the road. He crouched down lower as it gained the slope, and he could read the advertisements in the empty compartment, and smell the singed metal as it hurried past.

Then it was gone. The deputy administrator stood up. For a minute he stood looking back the way he had come. Then he stepped out onto the road, continuing downhill for another hundred yards before he turned aside under the trees. A narrow track led away south along the ridge. It was the footpath over land, due south to the border and beyond, scarcely used now that the packets made the journey twice a week from Charn.

The forest closed around him after a dozen paces, and the dark was monstrous and loud. To the right and to the left, beetles quarreled in the underbrush, while high above among the jackfruit trees, tarsiers grabbed bats out of the air. Furry creatures, stupefied by moonlight, stumbled up against his ankles.

He walked almost for half an hour before the border came in sight: a small white cabin set adjacent to the track. East and west, a strand of luminescent wire sagged off into the trees, interrupted by the cabin and a wooden barricade. Placards in five languages were posted to this barricade, though only the boldest headings—PAPERS PLEASE, FORM SINGLE LINE, EXTINGUISH PIPES—were visible by moonlight.

Officially, the gate was open. But tongueweed licked at the administrator’s shoes as he came up the track. He stood studying the placards; to his left, a single lantern glimmered on the cabin’s porch.

By its light he could distinguish the gatekeeper sitting cross-legged on a table, his shoulders hunched, his head bent low, his hands clasped in his lap. It was an attitude of meditation; a kerosene lantern on the desk in front of him flickered in the humid wind, and it shone upon his narrow face, his naked scalp, his veil. He was staring deep into the flame.

Standing on the porch’s lowest step, the deputy administrator watched him carefully. He took pleasure in watching him, in examining his meager arms and legs, for the old man was a member of his own race, living, like him, in a world of strangers. Old and thin, the man was still quite supple, and his spine still made a graceful curve. Clearly he had crossed the seventh boundary of concentration, and was beginning to perceive the essences of small inanimate objects. An inkwell, a pebble, and a leaf lay before him on the tabletop, grouped around the base of the lantern.

The deputy administrator waited. After several minutes, the old man raised his head. His eyes glowed bright with comprehension. “Please submit your documents face down upon the corner of the desk,” he said. “Are you carrying liquor or illicit drugs?”

His voice was creaky and disused. Instead of answering, the deputy administrator climbed the steps until he stood inside the circle of the light. The old man stared at him with luminous eyes. And then he shook his head. “Sarnath,” he exclaimed. “Sarnath Bey.”

Mr. Sarnath took his bundle from his shoulder and lowered it to the floor. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Leaning forward with his hands over the lamp, he indicated the three objects on the tabletop. “What do you see?” he asked.

The old man shrugged. “Three different kinds of death.”

They spoke in a Treganu dialect, using it gratefully and tentatively after so long away from home. The old man unwrapped part of his long veil and pulled it down, so that it hung around his neck. “Why are you here?” he asked.

Mr. Sarnath smiled. With his index finger, he reached forward and touched the stem of the dry leaf. “I saw a moth drown in a bowl,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“No. It was as if I almost understood. Yet it was enough—I’m going home.”

The old man didn’t speak for half a minute. Then he shook his head, and his voice, when it came, was softer, clearer, full of sadness. “They let you go?” he said.

“I was a volunteer. And they were all asleep.” Mr. Sarnath looked over the railing of the porch to the dark forest all around. “You must know what I mean,” he said. “What keeps you here?”

The old man sighed, a melancholy sound. “You have all the luck,” he grumbled. “Yours is the first face I’ve seen here in a week.”

“A moth was drowning in a bowl of light,” said Mr. Sarnath. “It is not the time or place that is important.”

“Even so,” replied the gatekeeper. He gestured toward the gate. “This can’t be what the master had in mind when he told us to go out into the world. If I see seven clients in a month, I’m lucky. What can I learn from them, or they from me? But you had boatloads every day.”

Mr. Sarnath shrugged. He gestured down the track the way he’d come. “They have a vacancy,” he said.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Mr. Sarnath looked away, and calmed himself by studying the effect of moonlight as it pierced through the forest canopy. This night was magical and rare, for only at rare moments in the voyage of his life had he ever sensed his forward progress. Now in everything he saw the traces of a new significance, and it was lurking in the darkness like a delicate and subtle beast, vulnerable and shy of controversy.

Here and there, bright beams of moonlight fell unbroken to the ground, a hundred feet or more. Insects spiraled up them as if climbing to the stars; on a sprig of manzanita by the trail, a polyphemus fly arranged its wings. “I’ll be going now,” said Mr. Sarnath. He rose to his feet and retrieved his bundle from the floor.

The gatekeeper ignored him and continued to sit hunched over the lantern, staring at the flame. Mr. Sarnath made a little gesture of farewell. Then he walked down the steps. The gate was a simple one, an X-shaped cross of wood set in a wooden frame. Mr. Sarnath pulled it open and slipped through.

But he hadn’t gone a half a mile before he heard a cry in back of him. The old gatekeeper was hurrying after him; he stopped and waited by the track. “Sarnath Bey!” cried the man. And then, when he got close: “Please forgive me, Sarnath Bey. Please—I wish you well.”

He too was carrying a bundle, a cotton knapsack covered with embroidery. This he thrust into the traveler’s hands, and then he bent down wheezing, out of breath. “Forgive me,” he repeated, as soon as he could speak. “My eyes were blind from envy and self-pity.”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“No, but there is.” He wrapped his skinny rib cage in his arms, bent his head, and then continued: “Three thousand days I’ve lived there. More than three thousand, and I think that I’m as far as ever from achieving understanding. How long has it been for you? Not long—you’re still a young man.”

He stood up straight and reached his hand out toward the knapsack. “Forgive me,” he repeated. “I was jealous, I admit. Because I’ve been away from home so long. But perhaps it’s my impatience that keeps me here. Perhaps if I can overcome that… .” His voice, eager and unhappy, trailed away. But then he shook his head. “I’ve brought you gifts,” he said. He pulled the knapsack out of Sarnath’s hands, and pulled the strings that opened it.

They were standing in a patch of moonlight. “Here’s some food,” he said. “Sourbread and wine—it’s all I had. A flask of goat’s milk. Here, but look at this.” He opened a small purse and showed a handful of steel dollars, each one incised with the head of the First Liberator, Colonel Aspe. “These I confiscated from a merchant.” He shrugged. “I have no use for them.”

He drew out a cotton sweater and a quilt. This he spread out in the moonlight on the grass, and then he squatted down. “There’s a flashlight and a pocket knife,” he said. “And look.”

He unrolled a length of fabric. “Look,” he said. He flicked on the flashlight, and in its narrow, intense compass Sarnath could see a row of bones: the skulls and limbs and shoulder blades of various small animals, each one covered with a mass of carving.

“These I do in my spare time,” said the old man. “I find them in the woods.” He held up the femur of a wild dog, cut with scenes from the lives of the Treganu sages and set with precious stones.

The work was exquisite. Mr. Sarnath picked up the skull of a small child. Flowers and leaves were cut into the bone, and on the broad white forehead was engraved a single sign: the endless knot of the unravelers. “That one’s for my sister,” said the old man. He pointed to a piece of elephant horn, decorated with quotations from the nine incontrovertible truths. “For my mother, if she’s still alive. No, take them all. I have no use for them. Give them to my friends, to anyone who still remembers me.”

Mr. Sarnath shook his head. With careful fingers he separated out the food, the sweater, and the quilt. “These I’ll take,” he said.

The old man picked up a piece of bone. “Please take them to my friends,” he said. “And this one—look.”

They were squatting in the grass. The old man held the flashlight in one hand. He dropped the bone onto the others, and then he pulled a bundle of paper from the last recesses of the knapsack. “This is the finest one,” he said. “It is my gift for the master. Please.”

Mr. Sarnath uncovered the last bundle. There in a nest of ancient paper covered with ancient spidery writing lay another skull, with a curiously flat forehead and a curiously bulbous occiput. The eyeholes and the inside of the nasal cavity were chased with silver, the jaw rebuilt with silver and fastened with a silver hinge.

“Look at the top,” said the old man. He shone the light along the cranium, so Mr. Sarnath could see that its surface was covered with new carved figures, the new lines gleaming white against the dull brown bone.

They were scenes out of the master’s life. “It is my gift to him,” persisted the old man. “My finest work—the skull I took from an old smuggler—the papers too. They’re valuable—I know they are. The man refused to tell me what they were, and when the guards came he attempted suicide.”

“It is not valuable to me,” said Mr. Sarnath gently.

The old man squatted on his heels. He looked up into the darkness, and when he looked back there were tears in his eyes. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

Then he stood up. He left the flashlight lying on the quilt, but he had the purse of dollars in his hand. With trembling fingers he undid the cord, and then he was throwing handfuls of currency off into the darkness, until the purse hung empty. Mr. Sarnath could hear the coins clinking against tree trunks and against stones. He could hear the movement of small animals as they dodged away; then there was silence.

The old man bent down to the ground. And then he was picking up the pieces of old bone and scattering them into the undergrowth. The small skull of the girl he tested in his palm, and then he threw it with all his strength against the trunk of a java tree.

“You were always a quick scholar,” he said. “But I’m just an old man. But,” he said, a tint of pleading in his voice, “you’ll tell the master about me? How I threw these things away? ‘All life is a journey,’ ” he quoted miserably. “ ‘The more I carry, the more difficult it is for me to move.’ ”

Mr. Sarnath put his hand on the last skull. It lay in the beam of the discarded flashlight, tangled in its nest of papers, staring up at him with hollow, silver eyes. “This I’ll take,” he said. “A present for the master. I’ll tell him what you said.”

“No,” repeated the old man. “Leave it. You were right, and I was wrong. It’s eleven hundred miles. Too long to carry an old bone.”

For an answer Mr. Sarnath rearranged the skull inside its bundle; and wrapped it in the quilt. Then he took the food, the sweater, and his own few clothes, and thrust them with the quilt and the knife into the knapsack. Last of all he turned off the flashlight and slipped it into a side pocket of the pack. “Thank you,” he said.

There were tears upon the old man’s cheeks. “Thank you,” repeated Mr. Sarnath, standing up. The old man was muttering and mumbling. Suddenly he seemed embarrassed, eager to be gone.

Mr. Sarnath slung the pack over his shoulder. The old man stood in the beam of moonlight, hugging his frail rib cage. “My master told me to give all I had,” he muttered plaintively. Then he turned away. “Goodbye,” he said, shaking his head, not responding when Sarnath embraced him, and kissed him with the kiss of peace.