The Broken God (101 page)

Danlo was one of the first men to understand this, as a man. With the cold edge of his chisel, he tried to grave awareness into every part of his god, especially into its deeply flawed face. But this was not enough. In many ways, Hanuman understood the suffering aspect of god-hood better than he did. And so Danlo worked other passions into the god's face, guiding his round knife and shaver with all the care of a tightrope walker placing his feet. Face is the doorway to the spirit – thus say the Alaloi mothers to their children when they wish to discourage the more selfish emotions. Danlo knew something about spirit that Hanuman did not. Yes, there would always be pain, and none could escape the flames of hatred, sorrow, lamentation and despair. But everyone carried inside the memory of the ancient heavenly fire so brilliant that it was beyond all burning. The fire whose touch could cool the spirit and quench the most raging thirst. Hot and cold, fire and ice, beginning and end – it was Danlo's gift to see the identity of opposites and to wed them together in his carving. The god's finely cut lips were pulled back both in ecstasy and anguish. It was the look of a man in the throes of sexual fever, or of a father who stands with his face toward the sky as he holds his son's cold, broken body in his arms; it was the pleasure of a god who has created life around a million planets, and the pain of watching a billion stars burn out and die. Danlo carved and carved, and his god's eyes twinkled with both laughter and madness, and with the utter awareness of a love beyond love or hate. It took all of his skill to reveal these passions. In truth, he had doubted that his hands were capable of such work, and in all his exhaustion and rage to carve, sometimes he wondered if the spirits of the Old Ones might be guiding him. As a boy, sitting by the oilstones on deep winter nights, he had watched the grandfathers of his tribe cut animals out of ivory or wood. Now he emulated the ease of their calloused old fingers, their sureness and strength, and most of all, their patience. He took infinite pains with the god's face. With his sharpest graver, he did the delicate work around the eyes, and he cut these fine lines between heartbeats, to keep his fingers free from the slightest of tremors. He worked with infinite slowness to bring out the god's most vital aspect, which he thought of as terrible beauty. Hanuman must behold the god and be soul-stricken with this beauty. He must take the chess piece in his hands and say: this is a god who drinks continually from the deep well of fire inside until he overflows with the power to nourish other life. He is the one who demands life despite all suffering and evil, and he shines with a terrible will toward all that is fertile, wild and strong, and his face is my own.

When Danlo finally finished carving, he picked up his polishing stone and began rubbing the body of the god. He was uncertain, at first, how closely this chess piece approached the image he had seen. But the more he polished, the more satisfied he was with his work. Of course, he had not realized this interior image perfectly, but then no creation can ever be perfect. He hoped the god was 'just as it is', or lowalosa, which is an Alaloi compliment for a carving which has revealed the true spirit of any animal or being. He was very tired, but with his sandstones he polished and polished for most of a day, pausing only to blow away the fine ivory dust that accumulated in the folds and fissures along the length of the god. He tested the smoothness of this polishing with his eyes only. The Alaloi consider it childish to put finger to a carving before it is finished. But after he had rubbed it from pedestal to brow with his finest oilskin, he pronounced his labour done. He looked around the room for a place to put the god; the entire floor was carpeted with ivory shavings and white dust. Moving like an old man whose limbs are crippled with pains, he set the god on the chest beneath the window. He touched it, then. He pressed his hot, blistered fingers to the ivory, which was now icy cold from the draughts of air falling all around. He marvelled at the god's creamy smoothness, the lustrous beauty of old ivory. He touched the eyes, the long nose, the coiled muscles of the throat. He smiled just before collapsing against his furs. The god returned his smile, or so he imagined, and the god laughed at him and wept for him, even as he fell into a dreamless sleep that went on and on without end.

You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

– from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Danlo would never know how long he slept, for he had lost measure of time. When he awoke, the lights still burned in his room, and it was dark outside. The storm had mostly stopped; down through the trees and glidderies, the wind whooshed weakly, like a sick child's breath. Without looking at the thermometer outside the window, he knew that it was warmer. Some would hope that the sarsara was dying, but he recognized this almost-quiet as only a period of recuperation, when the wind rests for its sudden and murderous return. It was a time for waiting, a time of chilblains and delusions and the nursing of old wounds. He dreaded going out in such weather, but he had to face the streets, and soon, because he had learned from one of his dormitory mates that it was early evening on the 99th of deep winter. Bardo would be conducting the great joyance even now, as he stood in his quiet little room, gazing at the god that he had made. A part of him insisted that he should heave on his furs and rush across the City to the cathedral. But, like a man preparing for his wedding, he dallied. Because his beard and hair were powdered with ivory dust – and because he stank of old sweat and seal oil – he used up long moments cleaning himself and drying his hair beneath the hot air jets in the bathing room. He combed his thick, tangled hair – for him an unusual act of grooming. After making sure that Ahira's feather was bound tightly and properly displayed, dangling curved side out between his ear and shoulder, he put on a clean kamelaika and his furs. He sharpened his skate blades. He pulled on his cold boots and spent much time walking back and forth, crunching ivory chips against the hard wooden floor. Then he wrapped the god in a newl skin, a beautiful piece of white leather that his found-mother had once chewed and worked into a lovely, clinging softness. He stowed this package in the inner pocket of his furs. Each of his motions he savoured as if he were watching a drama that some master cartoonist was programming, moment by moment. At last, when he could think of nothing else to do, he opened the door to the hallway, then went out into the storm.

His journey to the cathedral was short, cold and memorable. It was the last and holiest night of the Festival of the Broken Dolls. Fourteen nights ago he had gone out to see Tamara, and the streets had been splendid with tens of thousands of delicately glowing ice lanterns. And now the lanterns were still lit, only there were not so many of them because the yearly ritual of their destruction had begun. Gangs of red-masked Architects from the orthodox churches roamed the streets, using hokkee mallets or sticks to smash any lantern they could find. Danlo tried to avoid these gangs, but they were everywhere, in groups of three or four or forty. The whole of the Old City rang with cries and shouts and the tinkling sound of broken ice. Lights died all around him, one by one, making the skating treacherous. He kicked and stumbled and grated over ice shards; every third building, it seemed, had been vandalized, the pretty lanterns smashed into piles of crystal. On one or two streets, the air was black and stank of alcohol – not the kind of alcohol that one might drink as skotch or beer, but the pure methanol that the outlaw Architects use to douse the robes of the dead. That night, Danlo was to shun all violence, but in other districts of the City, Architects of the Infinite Life would die defending their ice lanterns and their enemies would burn their bodies with blue alcohol flames. For any Architect, from any of the numerous Architect sects, this is the most horrible of fates, for once the brain has been boiled into a red jelly, it is impossible to preserve the mind in an eternal computer. Architects dread dying such an irredeemable death, but each year, on the morning after Year's End, six or seven charred bodies are found in alleys or out-of-the-way glissades. Although Danlo was lucky not to intrude upon any such religious struggle, at various intersections of the darkened glidderies, he smelled the sick scent of burnt flesh. He could not tell from which direction this stench emanated, for the wind was fickle and cruel, blowing now from the east, then a moment later from the south or north. Frigid gusts of air surprised him and cut him, like drunken knives out of the dark. It was this inconstant wind, he remembered, that had frozen Tamara's face and nearly killed her. The wind followed him down twisting streets, growing stronger at each skate stroke and turn. By the time he reached the cathedral steps, he was cold to the quick, and one eye was frozen shut. It occurred to him, then, that his plan to redeem Tamara (and Hanuman) was truly hopeless. He might have traced his way back to his dormitory, but the screeching wind kept him from returning there. The wind was a wall of ice and memory and sound that drove him up the steps three at a time, in through the great western doors of the cathedral.

Immediately, two godlings stopped him. They were handsome young men too impressed with the gold robes they wore, and they pushed the palms of their hands toward Danlo and asked to see his invitation. When he admitted that he had none and then gave them his name, it was as if a magic word had been spoken. The shorter godling examined Danlo's wind-burnt face and said 'We're honoured, Pilot. The Bardo has hoped that you would return. We're sorry you missed the joyance, but the Bardo is still inside, and many of your friends. If you please, we'll take your furs.'

Danlo slipped the god from its pocket, then shrugged off his furs. He stepped into the nave, which was ablaze with light from thousands of candles. Although there were many people – perhaps two hundred men and women milling about in their golden formals – they seemed small and insignificant beneath the vast sweeps of the stained glass windows. Bardo had finally completed his scheme of replacing the old glass with new; even the lovely stonework lining the walls had been resculpted, with figures of Bardo and Leopold Soli and Dama Moira Ringess, with Balusilustalu and other Agathanians whom some people believed to be nearly as godly as Mallory Ringess. Danlo thought that this robot-made sculpture was poorly executed, but then, he was the only person in the cathedral whose attention was turned in this direction. All the others stood in groups of five or ten, deeper inside the nave, in the paper-strewn area around the chancel. Indeed, there were papers everywhere, ten thousand squares of gold foil carelessly cast against the bare floorstones. They made a gleaming, crinkling carpet beneath his boots. He realized, then, that he had missed not only the joyance but the gift giving that followed. While he had been combing his hair, Ringists from across the City had unwrapped their presents and departed. Now only the elite members of the Way remained. As he walked down the nave, he could see the faces of those he knew very well: Thomas Rane, the brothers Hur, Surya Surata Lal, Kolenya Mor, Nirvelli and Mariam Erendira Vasquez. And Sherborn of Darkmoon, Lais Motega Mohammad and Delores Lightstone and many others. Some he did not recognize, such as the Trian merchant-prince and the alien courtesan who stood next to Bardo. In truth, there were too few people. He had hoped to present Hanuman with the god just after the joyance in the great confusion of giving gifts that had filled the cathedral. He had wanted to catch Hanuman by surprise, perhaps behind one of the pillars of the dark aisle, to speak with him privately and watch his face as he unwrapped the newl skin. But now Hanuman stood at the centre of a circle of his admirers, and it would be impossible to slip through unobserved and take him aside.

And so Danlo walked straight ahead, the sole figure in the cathedral who was dressed in black. He stepped over mounds of rustling foil. It was probably the crunching of this golden paper that caused Mariam Erendira Vasquez to look his way. Suddenly, ten others followed her gaze, and then two hundred more, as everyone turned to watch him approach. They were strangely quiet, as if they had been caught talking about him. But that seemed unlikely because their eyes were soft and happy with the remembrance of Hanuman's Elder Eddas. In their hands, they clutched jewellery or boxes of triya seeds or purlets or other coveted things. All of them, around their fingers, wore a golden ring that Bardo had given them earlier. Bardo had given rich gifts to every Ringist, and he seemed well pleased with his munificence. He was drunk with the splendour of the moment. (And stupefied with the afterglow of electronic samadhi.) In a golden robe studded with black diamonds, he stood above all the others as he laughed and waved his arm and called out, 'Danlo wi Soli Ringess! You've returned to us!'

Danlo walked into the crowd of people standing below the altar. He might have been a stone falling into the sea, for as he moved forward, men and women hurried out of his way, and then in golden waves closed in behind him. He heard Bardo bellow, 'What a night this is, by God!' The word 'God' rolled over him and echoed from window to window high above; it filled all the cathedral, and Danlo wondered if Bardo had chosen this ancient structure in order to glory in the sound of his magnificent voice. 'But it's too bad you missed the joyance,' Bardo continued. 'It's been a brilliant night – a night of true remembrance.'

The last of the people stepped out of Danlo's way, and Bardo was waiting with his arms held wide to welcome him. But Danlo kept a distance; he bowed politely and looked past Bardo to the altar stairs. There, standing on the plush red carpet of the second step, was Hanuman. He was dressed out of colour in a new golden robe, and he wore the diamond clearface like a second skin moulded to his naked head. He bowed to Danlo. When he straightened up, due to the added height of the steps, his head was just higher than Bardo's. 'Hello, Danlo,' he said.