Refiner's Fire (31 page)

At night they boiled water in a copper cauldron, and there were gas lamps to light the room. They kept him clean, read to him, and gave him opium, but then he died as thousands and scores of thousands had died, wishing only for someone with imagination to contemplate his grave and feel the heat and light he had felt in his fine time, destined to pass too quickly. A photographer came to photograph the ward. In the morning light of early summer, his exposure was very rapid. A man wheeled himself away in a cane wheelchair because (with his leg gone) he did not want to be photographed. But then a nurse persuaded him back and they all stared into the camera, hopeful and delicate as patients will be. And outside, the bees were humming and the soft summer ground waiting. Time had raged about him. He had moved through it coolly, and often with love. He died well, and was remembered, even if only for a time—for rememberers are not immune.

A
YEAR
later Marshall returned to the cemetery to see how the notches in stone which said
Nims Burros
had weathered, and he looked at a tall oak, imagining himself straddling its branches beautifully balanced, leaning into the long telescopic sight of an octagonal-barreled Sharps rifle. There had been thousands of Union and Confederate sharpshooters in spring, summer, and autumn, balanced that way, a rake to their limbs, in fragrant pine branches or in oak. Their balance played and replayed—the delight of getting a good perch hidden in aromatic green, up above the clouds of gnats. They were there, and they were there again, and he remembered so well, or the memory was given to him so well, or so well had he dreamed, that (he concluded) time took its place among the many contravenable forces. Like gravity, inertia, and momentum, time worked its ways and could also be manipulated. Well.

The Prince was named Nataraj Patna, but soon came to be called Nat. In sophomore year he moved to a great Brattle Street mansion surrounded by formal gardens. Nat had a Rolls-Royce in which he explored the countryside, a leather-bound specimen book lying on the seat beside him. He was not one for expensive restaurants and clothing, but he was filthy rich, and would often allow himself rare and unusual things.

Marshall and Al often attended Nat's poker games, in which literally hundreds of thousands of dollars were won and lost of an evening between lethargic and corrupt sheiks, sons of dictators, and the pale hamlike children of the American super rich. Because Al had been Nat's roommate, and because Marshall had been pushed out of the room, Nat allowed them to play poker at the rate of a dollar per thousand. Even so, Marshall and Al had had some tense throat-buckling moments when they had bet far beyond what they could afford, although Nat would have bailed them out, for he was ingrained thoroughly with the habits and mannerisms of a munificent despot, and did not like to see strife or embarrassment. It was hard, though, for Marshall and Al to get along with incognito princes and the confused progeny of billionaires. Nat took to having them over in the afternoon, quite informally.

It was raining tremendous drenching thick wet drops. Al and Marshall splashed through lakes and puddles on Brattle Street. Everything was green and soaked and water began to accumulate in silvery sheets upon which could be seen reflections of trees and bushes. Sometimes the landscape smelled like a wet dog, and sometimes like a sweet garden. Professors sped along on bicycles, their briefcases propped on the handlebars, the rubber wheels splashing through water so soft that it seemed lubricated. At Nat's house, the butler brought them hot towels and slippers so that the highly waxed floors and the intricately worked carpets would not suffer from their dripping. Standing at the fire, Nat looked quite sad.

“Hello Nat. Whats the matter?” said Al.

“I don't like the rain. It's dangerous.”

“It's not dangerous,” said Marshall. “And besides, it cleans everything. It keeps people out of the streets. You can see the architecture.”    '

“Have you ever ridden a horse?” asked Nat.

“All the time,” said Al, who had never even touched a horse.

“And you, Marshall?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Would the two of you like to come to Beverly for a round of Bushkazi, Chabtal style?”

“What is Bushkazi?”

“A game with horses. It is the ancestor of polo. In the Chabtal style there are three players to a side. Three fellows are up at Beverly already, despairing because no one in the West is or ever will be interested in playing or watching Bushkazi.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Al. “Look how fast bowling caught on in the fifties.”

“Yes, but there isn't a single floating Bushkazi game in this country other than my own. Ravi Garhwal flew in from Washington just to play today. I couldn't find enough men to make a contest. Would you...?”

“Sure,” they said. “What can we lose?”

The ride to Beverly was beautiful even in the downpour. Wonderful trees hundreds of feet tall posted and skeined wufts of turbulent fog. Horses danced in the privacy of the rain. The light green and the soaked forsaken browns vanished in supine Icelandic mist. All the way to the Bushkazi, Nat played taped ragas and was lost in a dreamlike state, into which Marshall and Al quickly followed, rolling their eyes distractedly in complete oneness and harmony with the Rolls-Royce.

The hunt club was almost deserted, and Marshall and Al were the only Westerners. The rest were Gurkhas, Persians, Afghanis, and Sikhs. They wore turbans and tunics, and their mustaches were turned as neatly as the curl of a sea nautilus. A vast yellow-and-white striped tent had been set up next to a field of new grass. Inside, on camp chairs, were several older men—mainly Gurkhas and Sherpas. Their eyes glowed. “Thank the Highest One!” they said. “We will have our Bushkazi today, and it will be as if these clouds have plummeted down from the mother of all mountains to spray the land in cold and green.”

“We've never played before.” Marshall felt quite young.

“And I haven't ridden in a while,” Al added.

“That is all right,” answered Garhwal. “Bushkazi teaches itself and takes its players with it. You will move like lightning. In two minutes you will be as fierce as lifelong players.”

“Fierce?”

“Bushkazi,” said Garhwal, a man of middle age with a graying mustache and an enormous frame, “is a savage game. In Chabtal style, very often, several are injured. In Chabtal style, we use not whips, but staves.”

“What do you mean, not whips but staves?”

“In Chabtal,” answered a tremendous Gurkha, moving his hand to indicate great distance, “the inflated skin of a goat is placed in the middle of a playing field, and the six players rush to it. A goal is scored when a player tosses the goatskin into the ring on his end of the field. The staves are weapons with which to knock and smash one's rivals.”

“You must be joking.”

“No!” replied Garhwal. “It is holy.”

“You could die that way. Look at these things. They're thick and heavy, and long.”

“Many die at Bushkazi.”

“I'm not playing with staves. No. It may be holy to you, but not to me. Whips are one thing, but staves can kill.”

“You would not be afraid to play with whips, then?” asked Nat.

“No, not with whips.”

“Splendid! Mount!”

Before Al and Marshall knew what was happening, they had sheepskin jackets, leather boots, and stubby whips. The horses were so tall that they had to be mounted from stepstands, so strong that their muscles felt like steel cables. The field was covered by an inch of water. Nat led them. His teeth clenched and his eyes wide, he raced for the goatskin. At the instant he seized it, Garhwal's whip fell across his back and tumbled him out of the saddle into the water. Marshall and Al felt their blood boil. They cinched their legs about the horses' hard girths and galloped toward Garhwal. Marshall slashed with his whip, panting and spitting, his teeth bared and the muscles around his eyes making a tight ring. Garhwal threw the goatskin to the tremendous Gurkha, but Marshall whipped it down in midair. Almost before it struck the ground Nat galloped up and snatched it. Garhwal wheeled around and threw himself at Nat, beating with his whip. The combat lasted until Nat threw the goatskin to Al, who had been trying as best he could to control his horse as the animal turned in circles and dipped its neck. Al screamed, “Jesus!” and kicked the horse. The horse sensed that he did not know how to ride, and ran off the field into the meadows.

“Cheating! Cheating!” yelled the other team. They were very angry, but did not move until Garhwal spurred his horse, saying, “My honor!” and burst out in the direction Al had taken.

The five of them gave chase. These men (but for Marshall) were tall and of royal stature, their horses were enormous and classically beautiful, and the trappings, bridles, saddles, and costumes were splendid to see on one alone, much less on all at once as they galloped in a thunder after Al, who rode ahead jostling on his crazed horse. He held the goatskin as if it would save him. Marshall watched breathlessly as Al's horse took a high fence. He was sure that everything would stop there. But Al stayed on, and did not lose the goatskin. They could hear his screams, which had changed from those of fear and terror to those of complete physical ecstasy and excitement. They took the fence several at a time, tons of horses and men sailing over a light wood frame, a wave of brown and a chorus of backs bent in fleecy pelts. Al looked back. He had learned by trauma how to ride, and something in him had snapped. (Marshall knew exactly what it was.
He
had had the same madness after the Rastas had come to High View.) Al clutched the goatskin and bent over to lessen the pressure of the wind, urging his horse on to escape his pursuers. They saw him whipping desperately. His mouth was curved in a snurl. He had become a Himalayan bandit.

In his madness, Al directed the horse to the highway. He raced along the shoulder, passing slow-moving cars. The five came after. They were by this time heated and enraged, and had decided to chase him down and kill him. It was neither dark nor light when Al broke through a hedge onto the lawn of a large brightly lit house. Half a dozen men and women were sitting on a porch overlooking the enclosed copse into which Al had burst and around which he raced trying to find an exit. They had been drinking. The men were wearing plaid pants, pink shirts, and canary-yellow jackets: it could easily have been a reunion of the St. Paul's Class of '37. The house guests and their hosts sank numbly into their chairs as Al and the other riders pounded across the slippery lawn and made circles around lawn furniture and bushes. On several occasions, Garhwal and the Gurkha jumped their giant mounts over a garden tractor. Finally they caught up with Al right in front of the porch. The audience gazed in wonderment as Garhwal, the Gurkha, and their teammate—a huge dark Sherpa—exchanged fierce whip blows with Al, and Nat nearly broke his lungs pleading with them in his own language to stop. Marshall made circles about them and, when Al began to draw blood and it flew, spattering the people on the porch, he charged the knot of horses and men. Then Nat charged, and it was a battle royal. Sweat and blood mixed indistinguishably. The horses gasped and tore at one another, their horsey teeth protruding like old surgeons tools of whalebone. The animals screamed and the men cursed hoarsely in several guttural languages.

The agony and greatness of this was brought up sharp by a sudden blast. The master of the house had taken out his shotgun, and, while loading, had fired prematurely and blown a hole through the roof of the porch. He trembled, unable to comprehend the presence of Sherpas and Gurkhas in skins, the whips, the bloody mounts, the goatskin, the large elegant mustaches, the flashing eyes. Battle over, Al still clutched the goatskin. Nat addressed the man with the shotgun. “Excuse us,” he said. “We apologize for the disturbance, but we have hurt no one. My father, His Most Illustrious Majesty Sawatni Patna, is fond of saying, ‘Everything that rises must converge.' We are sorry to have converged on your private grounds, but perhaps you should strengthen your hedge, and besides, we have diplomatic immunity.”

Al threw the goatskin onto the porch, and the band of fierce horsemen turned about and raced for the darkness and rain as if they were heading for a camp on the wet silver slopes of the Hindu Kush. They thundered back across the fields, faces red, wounds stinging, the wind whistling through jackets and saddlery.

O
BJECT LESSONS
abounded in Cambridge, though they were mainly examples of what not to be. There was, for instance, the bread. On the bakery shelf of Sweet Tobin's emporium was a sign which said:
BAKED FRESH DAILY, THESE LOAVES CONTAIN ONLY FLOUR, WATER, SALT, AND YEAST. NO TWO ARE THE SAME.
Marshall could see that they were clearly irregular: they were not the same, and yet he could not tell one from another. So with the many people who pridefully cultivated their differences without being different at all—people who wore bells and shaved their heads, who dyed their eyebrows pink and filed their teeth into circlets and moons, who dressed in skins, wore powdered wigs, went nude, tied logs to their backs, crawled on all fours, wrapped themselves in black satin, carried monkeys, walked ocelots, and put bones in their noses (and there really were people like this in Cambridge, so many, in fact, that it challenged the sanity of many students—and won). These people changed their identities with fashion, and the fashion at the time was to be revolutionary. Marshall was not that.

He was not against change if it were to perfect rather than replace. One might argue that, had the inventors of engines merely continued the development of steam power, there would be no internal combustion, rocketry, etc., etc. “Imagine though,” Professor Berry had said on one of his diversions, “a steam engine of the year Two Thousand, having been perfected for more than two centuries with utilization of new metals, materials, and the recent discoveries of pure science. It would be like a shining jewel, as efficient as the geometry of a crystal, something so pleasant to behold and operate that it could in itself be an entertainment, sparkling and miniature, silent and clean, and such an old friend.