The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (49 page)

He aimed west of High Street, toward one of the mixed commercial blocks that rimmed the downtown. It happened to be the street with the old Hudson’s Bay Co. building, now the soup kitchen where he volunteered on Saturdays—tomorrow.

The other devotees.
Did they know?
The video had been broadcast some months ago, in the U.K. How could he not have heard about its awful accusations? But there were always detractors, naysayers. Such as those in his own family. If Seth sensed the criticism coming, he turned off, tuned out, as they used to say. Why would none of the other devotees have told him? He would have listened if it had come from Nick or Kaj. Kaj would have said something. He must not have heard either.

He drove the dragging belly of the old town. In front of The Minter’s Arms, he saw a hepatitis sufferer he knew from the soup kitchen, bloated and alone, either waiting for the bar to open or not permitted to enter. Seth hoped it was the latter. What time did the bars open? He would have liked a drink himself except that it would mean stopping the car. His native buddy from the soup kitchen, the one with the cloven face, was across the street, his arm around a woman. All his years in Canada and, with a couple of exceptions on Harbord U committees, the only Natives he had met were on the other side of the Sterno divide.

Ah, no, wait. A memory undimmed. He turned east, toward it, toward their second apartment, the one they had moved to when Lakshmi was pregnant. They lived on the ground floor, a two-bedroom flat. At the very top was a tiny attic suite inhabited by a quiet girl with long brown hair and glasses, in nursing school. Francine. She spoke another language—Kutenai? Why was Seth remembering such trivia now? He drove past the house, which had been dilapidated when they lived there, split up, propped up, carpeted. Now its gingerbread was repaired and repainted in stately plum and beige, of a piece with all the other historic homes reclaimed from the students and itinerant workers, fancy landscaping burying the stories of their recent past.

Had Francine been in the residential schools? He hadn’t given her a thought when all the news was breaking on these generations-old
traumas, dating to when government officials seized children from their homes, putting them in the care of lecherous priests who beat them for speaking their mother tongues. Francine spoke English with a lilting accent, when she spoke at all.

Seth’s only experience of Catholic priests was at St. Joseph’s. Horrors must have happened, there as elsewhere, at some point, he was forced to admit. But systematically? Surely he would have known. Had Father O’Sullivan, beloved of all, heard of such things? How could he not? Seth tasted something bitter on his lips, but couldn’t feel his mouth. He couldn’t feel his fingertips, either, though it wasn’t that cold. He turned the heat up and spiralled, north again, toward their first apartment.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal …

Seth remembered Venkat’s long-ago warning, in the wake of his suicide attempt:
Attachment is pain
, he had said. Perhaps Shivashakti had orchestrated this: given Seth his mantra; cultivated his love; put him in the midst of a crisis so he could save himself with prayer and then, when Seth’s attachment and gratitude were at their heights, look him in the eye and show him his folly. Was it folly? He was not sure. Speak to me, Lord!

 … and gather me / Into the artifice of eternity
.

His very first apartment here. A basement studio. The house looked neglected now: foundation cracked; stucco patchy; walk unshovelled and icing over, ready to crack the hip of whatever ancient resident had been abandoned inside. Surely not his old landlady? She had been in her sixties at the time, thirty-five, no, thirty-seven years ago. Dr. Shiner, a history prof, no family that they ever saw, though there was an old photo on the mantel: a woman that could have been her, in a dark shin-length dress and small hat; a confident smile dividing sharp, hooded eyes from a jutting chin, posed with a man and two children.

Dr. Shiner had doted on Seth to the point of imposition. Fortunately, he had been raised to accept the controlling attention of elders, surely one reason she loved renting to him. Then Lakshmi arrived. He recalled that first year of marriage as a sex-addled haze with occasional breaks
for teaching. Dr. Shiner transferred her affections to Lakshmi, who was home more. Pregnancy gave them an excuse to move.

Perhaps Shivashakti, incarnate, was as fallible, as prey to the same blind desires and bad judgements, as any other mortal? Plausible. But insufficient.

Seth turned again. He saw a hawk wheeling up as he descended.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer
.

This time he drove farther north, past the university, before turning west to enclose Willard Park in the counter-clockwise loop.
Things fall apart …

If Sita and Sundar had not been killed, he would never have found God. The old game: what would he have done instead? Maybe he would have had a hobby. Model trains. Birdwatching. Perhaps with Venkat? But Venkat would never have become interested in birds if his family had lived. Most of the condo residents had given the parakeets back. Moe got an aviary for the lobby, but when residents reported there had been a bird dead in the cage for three days, he set the rest free. The parakeets went feral for the summer, flashing among the trees in Willard Park. Winter was another thing: when bright corpses started appearing in the snow, the SPCA rounded up the survivors and adopted them out to a local cult, which erected a parakeet shrine in the park. Now, a lone Steller’s jay mocked the crows hopping under barren trees, strange and flat against the grey air, and little brown birds rustled berries in the bushes.

The spiral grew wider and looser, past his children’s schools, past the plant nursery where Sita had worked, and then out of Lohikarma along the lake. The road bowed away from the water to make room for parklands but the lake was never fully out of sight. Crafty Canadians: they knew which side their bread was buttered on. These days, clear-cutting was allowed only on mountainsides facing away from the highways, so that the only people who could see the ugly bald patches were ones who had already made their commitment to the place. It was a principle he admired. His kids could call him cynical, but everyone was out to
make a buck. In India, they didn’t care what they spoiled. Beautiful spots became cesspools, hill stations trashed and unrecognizable. It was possible Canadians truly respected and valued nature, but even the ones who didn’t had to act as though they did. Made life easier for everyone. Another hawk circled trees and lake, then another.

He turned onto a country highway. Trees closed in, but beyond them was pastureland. He was out in Canada now.
Out in Canada
. It sounded like a TV show. It sounded like one of his kids’ jokes, something they might invent to pass the time on a road trip. Bungling Indian FOB drives around the Kootenay countryside asking real Canadians dumb questions about things that seem obvious. The kind of thing he would laugh at, particularly now that he, too, was Canadian. But in the early years, that was him.

Out in Canada
, an untended field to one side and what might have been an ancient orchard on the other. Fragments of Shivashakti’s lectures drifted up before him. They were always there, favoured phrases and arguments. For twenty years, Seth had steered his life by them. He looked out at the gnarled trees bent with phantom fruit and remembered,
The worm is happy in the apple’s core, and knows no other home
. Why an apple, not a jackfruit or mango? He had thought perhaps the reference had become universal, or thought it was evidence of how effortlessly international were the workings of Shivashakti’s mind: universal mind. Now he wondered if it was a deliberate attempt to reach out to Western devotees. Would that be so bad?

The lake made him recall the guru’s words on the tsunami:
The calmest water has within it this power to take the life it also gives. Let your mind be the ocean, calm and accepting. Reserve your power to rise up and conquer weakness and temptation
.

Something about this had troubled him but he had not had time this week to think about it. Now, he understood it to be the hint that nature had intention. If Lakshmi or his daughters had raised this objection, he would have resented their literalism. Asked if they had ever heard of metaphor. Pointed out that there was nothing untrue in the words, if you read closely, which they hadn’t. To say the ocean is calm
is correct: this is a physical state, not only an emotional one. Perhaps he had been infected by their view, over time. They were hard to resist. Perhaps Shivashakti had driven him into their arms. Perhaps that was his intention.

The country highway had turned to gravel at some point. Up ahead was a turn that led into the woods, very like one he and the kids took, a couple of times, to a campsite they loved. You drove through the woods to the site, fifty metres from a cliff with a huge view of the sky. He would feel better if he could see that view.

The barren landscape brought to mind Shivashakti’s talks on death, especially what he said in the wake of the bombing:
Krishna said to Arjuna
, I am death, shatterer of worlds.
Your world has been shattered. But death comes, by human hand or divine will. This loss makes you want to kill. If you must strive, strive against this. Think, what else can I give? All is karma. These matters are not within your control. But the actions of this life are. If you must strive, strive to do good and be humble. Then strive to cease striving
.

Strive to cease striving. Renounce even renunciation. Seth had found himself, in recent years, thinking more and more on such prescriptions, perhaps particularly as Lakshmi became more and more committed to the new form of meditation she had found, without gods, mantras or other trappings; perhaps particularly as they both aged toward the phase of life when their own traditions prescribed that they begin withdrawing from the push and pull of material life, toward asceticism. Maybe they would move out into the country, he thought with a vague glance at the enfolded mountains, the well-made fields. But no, they should do it gradually, with few outward alterations. Shivashakti talked about how strictness in asceticism can itself become a distraction, a source of vanity.
The goal is not the goal
, he would say. It put Seth, smugly, in mind of Bala and his boasts on the many things he could live without. Poor Bala: his son seemed to be struggling. Their daughter was doing well, though: a medical professor, married to an investment banker, two kids. He thought of Brinda. His throat grew tight.

The goal is not the goal. Strive to cease striving. He’d always liked the sound of that. Strive to cease striving.

Drive to cease driving. His accelerator felt loose. It seemed he was on a logging road, a couple of ruts through the trees, scrubby grass between them, made for and by Jeeps and trucks. How long had the gas indicator light been on? It was hard to see in daylight but all too visible in the off-road shade. He remembered now that he had meant to fill up on returning from the airport this morning. The car rolled to a halt as the motor died into the silence of the vast Canadian winter.

After yesterday’s warm spell, the temperature was dropping again. He always overheated the car; it began cooling quickly now in the evergreen shade. He was wearing gloves and a winter coat but had forgotten hat and scarf. Thin socks. Oxfords, with thick rubber soles, so he wouldn’t fall, but he still could freeze. What could he do? He had to walk. Where? He got out of the car and regretted it as the cold clapped his cheeks and boxed his ears, which started ringing again—panic. Where the hell was he and which way should he go?

He turned toward the nose of the car, pointing deeper into the woods. How far would he have gone if he’d had more gas? How far would a full tank have taken him? Maybe it was a blessing—maybe he was closer to civilization than he otherwise would have been. And still it was only mid-afternoon. Winter, though: only a few hours till sunset. The road curved off ahead and disappeared, nothing familiar about it, and there was little chance of finding anyone at the end of it who could help.

He started to retrace his way. How long had it been since he had passed a house or anyplace that looked even vaguely tended? How long had he been driving? He looked at his watch. Three o’clock. What time had he left home?

His coat was bulky and inelegant, with sturdy snaps and zippers; it looked as though it were made for this weather and it had served him well from home to car to office, but now he felt the difference between it and its more expensive counterparts. A hood, for one thing. He pulled the puffy collar up close to his ears. He balanced among the heavy-truck treads, fossilized in the frozen mud, stiff as the soles of his shoes. Glancing behind, he found his car had already disappeared. Progress! The trees around him were not huge but they were indistinguishable.
He presumed his car was still back there. His eyes stung. It wasn’t that cold. Maybe a couple degrees below freezing. No wind. Why were his eyes watering? Not that cold compared to what? Most of Canada. He was thinking fast but it wasn’t helping him. Mind racing; car stalled. Sounded like a fortune cookie. Fate don’t fail me now—ha! Jokes no help. Cold hands; warm heart. What was he supposed to do, pray? Ha, and ha again!

The trees were different now. Everything changes. They weren’t all evergreens anymore. Birches, he thought,
bent to left and right
. Frost! Last thing he needed was more frost: what about a poem called “Nice Warm Fire?” Or “Gas Station.” Ha again. More light coming through. His daughters had told him about this, how trees tell you the age of the woods. Back when they went out in the woods together. Not often, long long ago. Evergreen woods are older.
Straighter, darker trees
. He thought so anyway. Younger woods let in more light. It was warmer, by a tint, he could feel it. Splashes of sun on his face. Younger woods, more recently cleared. Old growth long gone. Old farms grown over? Or land cleared for some other reason. Or land where no trees had grown before.