Inexpressible Island Page 27

  “What’s Lahpet?” Julian asked.

  “Pickled tea leaves served in a salad. But they didn’t prepare it correctly,” Devi said with scorn. “They didn’t add enough vinegar. It’s not pickled, it’s watered.” They had pork buns with mango. They drank a white palm toddy or coconut wine, a fermented cloudy sap. “It contains many nutrients,” Devi said, “including potash, which you could add to your suet if you wanted to make candles.”

  Julian chuckled. “There are some things I don’t regret having behind me,” he said. “That’s at the top of the list.”

  “Nah, I bet it doesn’t even make the top five,” Devi said, both of them mutely acknowledging some of the greater horrors. “Did you know,” Devi said to change the subject, “that longer fermentation produces vinegar, not stronger wine?”

  Julian smiled. “Yes, Devi,” he said, “I did know that.”

  “I forgot I was talking to the King of Vinegar,” Devi said.

  Afterward, the cook said he had a good time. “Maybe when Ava is discharged, I can bring her here for a celebration.”

  “I don’t know. She’s not thrilled with your food. You want to take the chance she’ll like someone else’s?”

  “Maybe I’ll take her to the Savoy, then,” Devi said. “I seem to remember she enjoyed it that one time you took us.”

  “You didn’t,” Julian said. Devi had derided the French cuisine at the Savoy almost as strongly as he derided the food at Tao Tao Ju tonight.

  “Like you, I’m capable of making small sacrifices,” said Devi with a straight face.

  They took the long way back to Quatrang, the really long way back. They meandered through the lit-up dusky Soho and Covent Garden. It was a Sunday night, there was street music everywhere, the city was pulsing with people, with laughter. The Festival of Lights re-formed some of the roads into a kaleidoscope of color. Buildings, statues, awnings were dressed up in red and gold. It was like fireworks on every street from Carnaby to Seven Dials.

  Like fireworks on every street.

  And the Spitfires and the Hurricanes weren’t in the clouds overhead and the air wasn’t pierced by a wrenching up and down wail.

  They walked down St. Martin’s Lane and sat on the steps in front of the National Gallery, watching the happy people and the hungry pigeons wage battle for domination of Trafalgar Square, listening to a choir sing Allegri’s “Miserere,” the sentimental harmonies mournfully carrying through the open doors of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

  “I’m going to miss London,” Julian said. It was a warm windless September evening, loud and crowded and sublime. “How do you figure I could ever forget this? You haven’t forgotten Kolka Mountain.”

  His head lowered, Devi stammered when he replied. “That’s true. But that’s how I continue to carry his soul with me—by not forgetting. I don’t have his earthly life to look forward to. I’m not as lucky as you.”

  “Devi, Mr. Lucky is leaving tomorrow. And we’ve known each other many years.”

  “What of it?”

  “There is hardly a thing you don’t know about me. Tell me about your son.” Julian put his arm around the sturdy little man. “Come on. Look what we’ve got. Our bellies are full after a farewell supper. We’re a little tipsy on sake . . .”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “We have a view, a camaraderie, a breathtaking choir. Now is the time we sit around the fire and tell stories.”

  Devi sighed. “I suspect that Tama’s love of storytelling around the fire is the least important thing you took from that experience. But fine. What would you like to know?”

  Julian shook his head. “Nope, no Socratic method this time. You tell me a real story, and I will sit and listen.”

  “He went missing on the September equinox,” Devi said. “Four years and eight equinoxes later, I went into the Q’an Doh cave to find him. I was willing to give up everything for a chance to make different choices that might lead to a different result. My mother begged me not to go. She said the breach in my life was his death, and by that time it would be too late to do anything to stop it. But I was obstinate, foolhardy, broken by grief. Sound familiar? A snowslide had formed a gravity current, carrying massive forces at astonishing speeds. Ice, rocks, trees compressed as if down a funnel. But despite the destruction, when I arrived in Karmadon, the villagers swore they’d seen my son alive near the gorge. And why shouldn’t I have believed them? I kept seeing him myself. Why are you back, I kept repeating to him. I thought you were shooting through October? I stayed for two years, searching for him. He was so real, I refused to believe he was dead.”

  “Like Ava with Mia,” Julian said.

  “Not just Ava with Mia.”

  Julian hung his head.

  “The mystery of my son’s death,” Devi said, “is contained in the millions of cubic yards of stone and ice. He vanished without a trace, except for the trace he left in me.”

  “Did you ever stop seeing him?” Julian had not stopped seeing Mia. He still dreamed of her walking in the wet sunshine.

  “No.” Devi made a sound with his mouth, a cross between a click and a groan. “I should’ve listened to my mother—a good lesson for us all. She warned me there was nowhere for my soul to go except into his death. He was brand new. There was no past, no other body, no possibilities. But I went in anyway. Because I thought I knew best. Like you, I was arrogant enough to believe that my love could save him. I was convinced he wasn’t dead. He keeps appearing to me alive, I told my mother. Why would he do that if he weren’t?”

  Julian, Devi, and Ava all shared one grief.

  “I told myself that as long as the portal opened, I stood a chance,” Devi continued. “A portal to where, my mother said. You better pray it doesn’t open, she said, because it will either kill you or show you things that will make you wish you were dead. But I didn’t care. I didn’t know then that there’s another reason no one goes into the meridian caves in September. Because that’s when the bats return to hibernate for the winter. Ten million of them, twenty million. I don’t know. Infinite million.”

  “I don’t like bats,” Julian said.

  “You know my answer to that,” Devi said. “Don’t go. I nearly died from a nasty fungal infection I got as a result of touching bat guano, unavoidable really at that time of year. I had a heart attack. They had to revive me.” He sighed.

  “The bats and the precipice nearly killed me, and past the moongate there was nothing but ice. Ice under my feet. Ice in the walls. Ice above me. I was forever in that cave.” Devi sunk inward. “I’m still there.”

  Julian well remembered the Mount of Terror that formed into a frozen river that led him down and away from the black ditch atop Crag Hill in York, to the Hinewai in the Southern Ocean.

  “The cave didn’t take me across time,” Devi said. “But it did take me across space, all the way to Asia, to the Kolka Mountain. The cave of Red Faith didn’t let me save him or see him alive,” Devi said. “But it did let me find him. After a long time of meandering through the frozen tunnels, I looked up, and there he was. He hung above me suspended in the glacier cave ceiling. Frozen below the collapsed mountain, in a block of ice four hundred feet deep. You asked me what I see. That is what. Every day of my life, I see my son’s floating body, a dragonfly in crystal, trapped for eternity in the icy depths above my head.”

  Staring at their crippled hands, the two men sat, their heads low. “How did you get out?” Julian asked.

  “The same way you get out,” Devi replied. “I found light, a fissure, an opening. The dark equinox left me half dead and with half my soul. It brought me out into a geographical place called Karmadon, the divide that split my life into before and after. It was as if you had climbed out to Normandie Avenue and saw Josephine on the sidewalk.”

  “How many years has it been?”

  “Twenty-four. Twenty since the cave. I go back every other year. I’m still waiting for the ice to melt so I can bury him. The geologists say any
time now. They’ve been saying it for two decades.”

  “Oh, Devi.”

  “He was engaged to be married, like you. His soon-to-be wife married another. She has three grown children now.”

  “So—not quite like me. What was his name?”

  “S-s-s-s-samang. Sam. It means lucky in my language. Lucky in life.”

  Julian was afraid to touch Devi, afraid the stony man would fly apart like glass in a car crash. Julian’s body bowed forward as it always did when it remembered car crashes and all lost things. He listed sideways, toward the Vietnamese man.

  “What does your name mean?”

  “Devi? It means angel.”

  “Not devil?” Julian almost smiled. “And Prak?”

  “Silver.”

  “Aha. So you’re the Silver Angel.”

  “I can’t help what my parents called me. Just like Sam couldn’t help what I called him.”

  “It’s not his fault he wasn’t lucky.” Julian put his arm around Devi, comforting him. “It’s not your fault either.”

  “Whose fault is it?”

  “Nobody’s. It’s nobody’s fault.”

  “And finally at the eleventh hour, we’re getting somewhere, ladies and gentlemen.” Devi did not move away from Julian’s arm.

  “Devi,” Julian said, “I’m really sorry I couldn’t help you.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Devi said. “Do you know when I realized you might show me something I’ve never seen? Long ago, when you told me you were a boxer. Rather, when you told me that a boxer was all you ever wanted to be. Do you know why? Because to be a good boxer, you must train harder than at anything else. You must have discipline over yourself as over nothing else. You must be an ascetic, a monk. You must know how to break your own will. Coordination, limited rest, masochism, superhuman endurance. You must first become grit before you can build your body up from nothing to be a silent killing machine—and the only thing that can direct that is your soul. That’s how I knew. You are brave and strong, Julian. You have the perseverance of the saints. You have kept your faith even when you were greatly afflicted. In many ways, you have surprised me over the years. Don’t ever be sorry. My friendship with you has been the best of my life.”

  * * *

  On September 22, a reluctant Devi nonetheless accompanied Julian to the Greenwich Observatory.

  Julian brought nothing with him except his old multi-tool, a few slivers of her crystal and his headlamp.

  They left in plenty of time for noon. They walked slow, because they had time.

  “Yesterday was a good day,” Julian said.

  “Yes, it wasn’t a bad day for a last day.”

  “Right. There was church, a stroll through a legendary city, a dinner, some drink, a conversation, even a few laughs.”

  “Very few,” said Devi.

  Julian laughed.

  “Now a few more.” Devi smiled.

  They walked on.

  “Do you know what’s inexplicable?” Julian said. “I never did find that café with the golden awning. I had been so sure I would. I’m beginning to think it was never here. Who knows, maybe I did just dream it.” He shrugged away his disappointment. “I’ve walked through London as one walks through the desert. I’ve lifted every grain of sand. I’ve lived through centuries of fruitless searching. It must have been a mirage.”

  “Not fruitless.”

  “But where is it?” They were in the Royal Park, in the gallery under the trees. It was eleven, another hour to go.

  It was a while before Devi answered. “It’s still out there somewhere.”

  “That means she’s still out there somewhere.”

  “You know she is. Where are you headed to, if not her?”

  They continued their slow walk under the canopied trees. Julian wasn’t used to Greenwich being warm like this. The equinox in March was always so rainy and windy.

  “You don’t have to leave, you know,” Devi said. “You could wait.”

  “For what?”

  “Next year. You could continue looking for the café. You could stay. Help me shred and grill.” He looked up at Julian, knocking into him lightly. “We could go to the market together, to church. I bought a French pastry book. Ava keeps teasing me, so I’m thinking of learning how to bake.” Even as he was saying it, Devi smiled ruefully, as if he knew that it would never be.

  They bought their tickets for the Observatory and wandered around the leafy grounds, not speaking.

  At 11:49 they made their way into the Transit Room. The roof had been retracted. The bright sun streamed through the open slats. The Transit Circle stood enormous and shiny black, exactly as it was in 1854 when Julian first set eyes on the wonder that was Mirabelle.

  At 11:55, he lay the fragments of her crystal in the palm of his hand and gave the glass jar to Devi. Julian didn’t want to admit it, but he was so afraid. “Devi,” he mouthed, nearly inaudibly. He couldn’t give voice to his terror. He didn’t want to die! He didn’t want to die . . .

  “I know,” Devi said, as if he really did know.

  “I won’t go until you bless me,” said Julian, tilting toward him.

  “Be, and be not afraid,” Devi said. “Remember the one who is always with you.”

  Noon came and went. Julian reflexively held out his hand. “Just in case,” he said.

  “Good thing it didn’t open,” Devi said. “Then where would you be?”

  12:03.

  12:05.

  “This is it, Julian.”

  “This is it, Devi. One more time—for her. Once more into the breach, or we can close the walls up with our English dead.”

  “Remember, go with your gut on things,” Devi said, fixing the zipper on Julian’s jacket. “Trust yourself. If you feel something’s right for reasons you can’t explain, go with that. There’s a reason for your intuition: this life and your suffering.”

  “All right. But . . . I’m going to try hard to actually remember.”

  Devi allowed that Julian might remember some things.

  “Devi . . . will I remember you?”

  The two men stood wordlessly.

  12:06.

  “I don’t know, Julian,” Devi said. “But I’ll remember you.”

  Julian climbed over the railing. The chasm was about to open for the beggar again. The earth was full of his cries. Just before the sun moved into the crosshairs of the equinox, Julian turned around, leaned forward and pressed his head to Devi’s head. They were already ringed in the shimmering blue halo. “Goodbye, my friend.”

  12:07.

  “Goodbye, my friend,” Devi whispered into the dark empty footwell.

  34

  Seven Stars

  JULIAN HAD NEVER BEEN ON THE RIVER SO LONG. AND THE river was unlike any he’d been on. It was narrow, languid, and deeply meandering, still waters zigzagging their way through the steepest cave mountains. He stumbled on an abandoned old boat without oars, and in it he floated, shining his headlamp at the cave walls. When he got thirsty, he drank from the river and smiled when he thought it might be the River Lethe, the mythical river of forgetfulness, and when he drank from it, he’d forget.

  Then he became afraid it wasn’t a metaphor, and he really was on the river of forgetting. He stopped drinking and stayed thirsty instead, standing in the rowboat like a wherryman and counting off one by one the names of the places he had been with her. Collins Lane, Whitehall, Silver Cross, Drury Lane, Seven Dials, Holborn, Monmouth, Gin Lane. Taylor Lane, Crystal Palace, Langton Lane, Grey Gardens, Clyde and Dee, Bluff, Ross Sea. Grimsby, Bank, the Strand, St. Martin’s Lane, Savoy Place. Mytholmroyd . . . Loversall, Blackpool, Babbacombe . . . Yes, everything was all right. He was still with his memories, the water wasn’t a potion, his mind was intact. Devi was wrong.

  When he got thirsty, he drank, and to test himself he recited again and again the names of places, and then, the names of the faces.

  Aurora, Cornelius, Cedric. Baroness Tilly, Margrave, Fabia
n. He would never forget Fabian; how could he. Agatha, Cleon, Fulko, Little Legs, there was a lot to remember from that life. George Airy, Spurgeon, Aubrey, Coventry Patmore. Kiritopa, Edgar Evans. The Maori and the Welshman were the only two Julian wanted to remember from New Zealand, banishing the names of all others from his memory.

  Liz Hope, Nick Moore, Peter Roberts, Phil Cozens, Sheila, Shona, Frankie.

  Duncan and Wild.

  Wild.

  He wouldn’t forget any of them, ever.

  Wild most of all.

  He got thirsty and drank again.

  The light in Julian’s headlamp dimmed. A sudden swirl of icy wind knocked it off his head. In the dark his hand clasped around the shards of her crystal. God forbid he should lose them. Yes, Devi said Julian was his own totem, yes, Devi said Julian’s soul would find the breach in his own body, he was his own holy relic, but without the bits of crystals, how would he find her?

  After a while, when he recounted the names of the places, he could no longer recall the name of the town in his first trip back, or Mary’s last name, or the given name of her mother. He remembered Cedric the hostler. And then not even him. The names of the madam and the poisoned whore faded from him, the names of the sewer hunter and the hanged man slipped from him, the faces of Spurgeon and Airy grew blurred. Kiritopa remained tall and Edgar Evans sat strong in the boat.

  And then, not even them.

  Goodbye, Swedish, a man kept saying with a smile, walking away, holding a baby in one arm, a baby wearing Julian’s precious red beret. I’ll see you, Swedish.

  I’ll see you, Wild.

  He was okay. He remembered the important things. But what Julian really wanted was for the river to come to an end. His body was sore, hurting, empty, misbegotten, blackened, burdened, hollowed out.

  When will it end?

  When will it end.

  As his boat floated, his exhausted eyes blinking open and closed, he held the crystal slivers up to the cave, perhaps to bounce off something, to give him a little light. He was so tired of the darkness. While his pleading hand was stretched out, there was a flare, and in the brief reflection, he saw the river up ahead. He was headed into a junction. Julian stood at attention peering into the darkness, holding the tiny slivers up, again, again, please! trying to catch a glimpse of the tributaries.