A Thousand Miles from Nowhere (16 page)

FINALLY HE
slept. He lay down on the metal cot and pulled the worn white blanket over him. He did not know what time it was or how long he had read, but he did not want to step outside and face the fluorescent glow of the parking lot, the desolate highway, the ghostly gray sky. He did not want to see or hear anything. He wanted Mohit's words to stay with him, wanted everything about the poem—the manuscript was, he quickly discovered, not a collection of separate poems but a single work, hundreds and hundreds of pages, thousands and thousands of lines long, vast and sprawling and sometimes for pages and pages almost incomprehensible to him, filled with allusions he did not understand, words that Latangi had left untranslated, a crazy impossible quilt, but all of it beautiful, devastatingly beautiful, even the manuscript pages so delicate and fine that the typed letters of each word seemed to have been embossed there—he wanted the lines, the images, the music of the poem to echo in his head. He wanted to continue hearing the strange and majestic cadences, the ordinary and the magical woven together into a seamless whole: a childless couple—the man with a withered leg, leaning on a crutch, the woman carrying agati blossoms—silently circling the temple at Madurai for forty-eight days, speaking only at night, once the moon had risen; a child perched beneath a palm tree playing some instrument called a
mridanga,
the rhythm summoning the barking deer from the forest, the red-tailed hawks from the sky; jealous gods churning heaven's oceans into powerful storms; a flower snake making its way room by room through a dark house and wrapping itself around the waist of a sleeping child; a young bride gently placing her feet atop those of her new husband.

Henry lay on the cot and tried to untangle the thread of the poem's story—the poet or God or both speaking to his beloved, the beloved asleep or absent or dead, the narrative a recounting of an arduous journey undertaken to rescue the beloved from her wretched state and return her to her rightful place at the poet's side.

This was, Henry knew, the story of every epic—a hero's death-defying voyage, a series of agonizing trials and tribulations, a final conquest that restored order to the universe, a city gleaming like gold in the sun, a funeral pyre's flames extinguished with drafts of glistening wine, love itself and nothing more steering the sun across the sky. But this single secret poem, hidden away in a drawer, with its baroque, antiquated language, its preposterously grand ambition, made it seem as though Mohit had not merely adopted this poetic form but had somehow invented it, as though he believed he was telling such a story for the very first time, the poet and his beloved reunited after years apart, once again bathing as they had as children in the Ganges, silver-finned fish rising from the water around them in graceful arcs, sun-blackened boys with long crooked cane staffs steering herds of buffalo through the dusty fields beyond the riverbank, broad-shouldered fishermen casting their nets into the water, pilgrims molding lingams on the muddy shore, old men squatting in the shade of the pipal trees and reciting holy verses, the lovers now standing in the middle of the wide river, garlands of marigolds on their heads, constellations of stars appearing in the sky one by one, each depicting some aspect of the poet's journey, night falling as the poet and his beloved embrace, as they sink down into the dark water, their fingers entwined and then their limbs and then their very souls as they descend slowly through the water until there is only darkness and they are no longer falling but rising, not back to the surface but to another realm, to a new life free of all suffering, the man's withered leg healed, the agati blossoms transformed in the woman's arms into a child.

When he had finished reading, when he had retied the manuscript with the colored thread and returned it to the drawer, Henry lay down on the metal cot. He felt that something new had overtaken him, something that he could taste on his tongue, that he could feel running through his arms and legs, an electric current or rushing river—he was not a poet; he couldn't think of anything but clichés. Somehow, though, by some trick of grace, Latangi had been right. Mohit's words had been, as she had claimed, waiting for him; it was as though he had been destined to step into this room and open this drawer and untie this colored thread. How had she known? How could she have known?

He thought of the scene late in the poem in which a haggard old woman has cast a spell upon the poet; left to wander in a thick mangrove forest, he can no longer remember his beloved's name, can no longer construct in his head even a single feature of her face or hands. He knows that he is racked with loneliness but can't remember who it is he longs to be with, so when his beloved finally discovers him resting by the bank where three rivers meet, he runs away despite her protestations of love, believing she is the old woman in disguise. He later discovers that the old woman had in fact been his beloved, that she had been under her own miserable spell, one that stripped from her both her youth and her beauty until the poet returned, as indeed he would, to forgive her for stealing his memory.

Was there not a message in this for Henry? It now seemed possible to him—he was now willing to believe—that some divine, inscrutable force had been guiding him, that the life he had wrecked and then abandoned could, if he somehow managed to discern a proper path, if he could figure out exactly what he should do next, be restored to him. Was that what all his dreams of wandering had been about? Was it possible that he had been meant all along to undertake this journey, to rid himself of his every possession just as the young Buddha had done before achieving enlightenment?

Amy,
he thought,
where are you now?

And he imagined her magically hearing his voice, following the echo of his words across the mountains, through the woods, down below the earth. He imagined her following the echo and finding this motel, stepping into this dark room, kneeling before this cot, whispering,
I'm here, Henry, I'm here.

Why couldn't his life, his story, be as triumphant as the work Latangi's husband had created? Why couldn't he and Amy, hero and heroine, be reunited through the wonders of mystery and magic and improbable grace?
Oh, Amy, where are you now?
he would say, and she would answer,
I am here, Henry. I have been here all along. You simply had to call for me. You simply had to remember.

Oh God.
What a lousy hero he was, the lousiest anyone could ever imagine: a coward and a lunatic and a fool. He was no hero at all, in fact; he was a man who had left his wife, who had thrown his money away on nothing, on an abandoned grocery store, who had endlessly dreamed not of peace or grace or redemption but of wandering and seduction, who had conjured a girl from thin air, molded her purely from the coarsest clay, an adolescent boy's version of mystery and allure: peppermint breath and petite pointy breasts and tiny hands to wrap around his cock and guide him up between her legs and shove him inside her, a girl with dark curly hair cascading across her face as she whispered and moaned with seductive schoolgirl pleasure.

What girl, what woman, would ever want such a man?

He thought of Don Quixote, but of course he hadn't actually read
Don Quixote
, so what he saw was not whatever figure Miguel de Cervantes had created but the gaunt and craggy Peter O'Toole in
Man of La Mancha,
sword in hand, proudly perched on his old mare. Henry had seen the movie with Amy at the Prytania. She'd leaned her head on his shoulder as Peter O'Toole, face caked with absurd makeup to create the illusion of age, sang “Dulcinea,” as Sophia Loren spit and cursed at the old lecher but then, moved by his strange, sad protestations of love, by his pathetic romantic ardor, listened to the words:
I have sought thee, sung thee, dreamed thee, Dulcinea.
And Amy had held his hand as if they were teenagers, as if he were the one singing to her.

But no matter his infirmity, his delusions, his foolishness, Don Quixote possessed a noble and loving heart, a regal bearing. Henry did not. He possessed nothing.

No. He now possessed this manuscript, this beautiful remarkable epic entitled
The Creator's Mistress.
Couldn't he deliver this work to Amy, offering it as it had been offered to him: by sheer chance, by blind good fortune? Had he ever believed until now that a life could be changed by a story? Wasn't that what the English teacher guiding his students through a novel was supposed to believe? And the hysterical pastor, the ecstatic congregation, they believed it as well—that a story, a single story, could possess such power that as a result of its telling, of its words being pronounced, a life would be transformed.

How absurd to imagine that in a single empty room of a rural Virginia motel, such a story, a manuscript wrapped in colored thread, would be waiting in a drawer for a sad and lonely and pathetic man to discover it. But isn't that precisely how such extraordinary stories always unfolded, a great work rescued from oblivion, salvaged by a wayfarer, a nomad, a hermit?

Couldn't he just find Amy and say again that he was sorry? Couldn't he tell her that now, finally, once and for all, he understood how very much he had hurt her, how much he had given up when he'd left?

Couldn't he offer to her Mohit's poem?
Read this,
he could say.
It is the story of my love, of love itself, of a love lost and regained, of a life restored.

The words had been waiting for him. Could they not, then, be waiting for Amy as well?

Our story,
he could say to her.

And what would she say to him? How would she answer? Would she declare, once again, that he was a fool?

And his sister? How desperate Mary must be. By now, she had to be certain that he was dead, that he had failed to leave and had drowned, alone. Had she already begun to grieve, to forgive him, to think back over their strange, sad childhood? He thought of the time she had stayed out late one Saturday night and come home to discover her mother, still awake, sitting up in bed. Angry, threatening, she had said, “Where were you, Mary Claire? Tell me this very minute where you were.”

“You know where I was, Mama. I told you,” Mary said. “I was babysitting. I was at the Broussards'.”

“You were
not
at the Broussards'!” her mother shouted with such certainty, such anger, that Henry, overhearing this exchange from his bedroom, had rushed to his mother's room and stood in the doorway, sure that Mary's lie had finally been discovered.

“I
was,
” Mary said quietly, and Henry could hear the fear in her voice, the same pleading tone she'd used when he'd first learned what she was doing. She did not turn around, so he did not know if she even realized he was there.

“Well, I'll tell you this. Mr. Broussard called the house,” her mother said to Mary. “He called here tonight. He said he hadn't seen you in weeks.”

Oh God,
Henry thought, confused.
He called. How could he have called?

But he saw Mary's shoulders relax, saw her step toward her mother and climb next to her on the bed. “He didn't call, Mama,” she said, running her hand through her mother's graying hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ear. “You know he didn't call. I was there tonight. They went out.” She sat up now and held her mother's hand. “They went to a dinner party. Some politician's birthday, I think. There might be something about it tomorrow in the paper. It was at the Peristyle in City Park. Mrs. Broussard said there was a lovely string quartet and paper lanterns. She said she and Mr. Broussard danced and danced all night until their feet were sore.”

Mary continued to stroke her mother's hair but looked over at Henry. He nodded and stepped away from the door without saying anything. How was it, he wondered, that even though he knew this family did not exist, he had nevertheless believed for a moment that Mr. Broussard had called, had spoken to his mother? She had sounded so angry, so certain. Had she suspected that Mary had been lying about something but had no idea what the lie was and so had tried this bluff? Or had she truly believed that Mr. Broussard had called? Had she been swept up into the lie simply because she had wanted to believe that lives like the Broussards' were possible, that her daughter could indeed enter the constellation of such shimmering stars?

It was only a few weekends later, though, that Mary came home and told her mother that the Broussards were moving away, that Mr. Broussard had gotten word that he was being transferred. She said that he couldn't tell her where they were going, that they would return to New Orleans someday but didn't know when that would be. And Mary had pretended to cry and had let herself be comforted by her mother. “You're going to miss them so,” her mother had said, holding on to Mary, and Mary had nodded and continued to cry, an act so convincing that her mother had begun to cry as well.

He hadn't understood what Mary was doing, why she had devised an end to her story, but now, so many years later, lying on this metal cot, with the images from Mohit's poem racing through his head, Henry believed that he did finally understand. Mary had no doubt become afraid of the story she had invented, afraid of the power it had gained over not just her mother but her own mind, her own imagination. She hadn't
pretended
to be sad that the Broussards were leaving, he now realized; her tears, her weeping, had not been a performance. They were real; it had all become real to her.

His eyes were closed, but he heard the rumble of thunder outside, and then, a few moments later, the rain begin to fall. He heard it striking the low, flat roof of the motel and the parking-lot pavement. He heard the metallic ringing of the gutters, the rainwater rushing down, spilling out. He imagined the storm—perhaps the final vestiges of the hurricane—sweeping up from the South, the clouds stretched across the mountains like a dark sheet. He opened his eyes, and he felt the emptiness of the room. The girl Clarissa Nash was gone, and she would not, he now understood, come back, just as the ghost of his father playing the bass had not come back.