Holy Water (26 page)

“
Oh, yes,
”
she says.
“
The prince is quite fond of your lodge. He says it is a symbol of the new Galado, and he uses it to impress anyone who he thinks can make his vision come to pass. Shall we sit?
”

~ * ~

To their cliffside table for two, a young man in a
gho
who is Maya
’
s nephew brings them two cups
of
ara
,
a local rice-and-barley wine. He places a butter lamp on the top of the railing, then lights a stick of cypress incense in a stone dish two tables away.

“
When I met the prince,
”
Henry says,
“
he showed me some of his plans for the new Galado. Pretty ambitious.
”

Maya sips her wine and nods, but doesn
’
t answer.

“
I have no stake in any of this one way or the other,
”
he says.
“
You can speak freely with me about whatever you want. Politics. Bottled water. Buddhism. Pampered Americans. The other night, I thought I was having a heart attack in my room. So I decided to try a massage. They sent me a prostitute.
”

She tries to suppress a wince, but her eyes betray her. They close for two seconds of disgust before reopening, unfazed. She points to the peaks on the other side of the valley.
“
Do you see the tallest, to the right?
”

It is almost dark, but the snow-glazed mountain caps glow as if they retain sunlight. Henry nods.
“
Yeah.
”

“
It is more than twenty-two thousand feet high, and is one of the highest unclimbed mountains in the world. It
’
s forbidden for climbers to try to scale it because our culture says it would disturb the spirits.
”

“
Do you believe that it would?
”

Maya shakes her head.
“
I don
’
t know. But I
’
m happy that it
’
s forbidden. That preserving and considering the spirits and the nature is an important
aspect of our culture. Our laws, which the prince has already been altering to meet his needs, mandate that seventy percent of our land must remain forested and protected. It
’
s a
beautiful law with sincere intentions, but I
’
m not so naive as to think that we can remain like this forever. We
’
re poor. We are technologically isolated and grossly uneducated. We have no economic power or military leverage. To survive as a culture we have to change, but will excessive or hastily enacted change ruin the culture? Will it compromise happiness?
”

Henry takes a bite of his appetizer, a cheese dish heavily spiced with hot green
chiles
. His face reddens and his eyes begin to water.

“
Drink the wine,
”
Maya says.

He drinks, wipes his mouth and eyes with a napkin.
“
So you think the prince is moving too fast?
”

“
Opening up the country to trade and light industry, to the Internet and more outside visitors, if done gradually and moderated carefully, I think is a good thing. Breaking down every wall and law without regard to our land or culture, creating a Las Vegas—style sensibility with Western trinkets with total disregard for the consequences, is the sociological equivalent of giving alcohol and guns and smallpox-tainted blankets to your American Indians.
”

“
I don
’
t mean to sound rude, but how did you learn to speak English so well? How
’
d you get such a balanced view of the world?
”

This time she doesn
’
t hide the wince.
“
Whether you mean to or not, and I believe you do, what you say sounds and is rude. I was allowed to go abroad for my education because at one time I was part of the in crowd at the palace, and because I was the oldest daughter of well-connected and enlightened parents. I went to Princeton. Majored in economics, with a minor in philosophy. I liked your country very much, but despite the present situation, I love it here in Galado.
”

“
How does the prince get away with it?
”

Before answering, Maya waits until the waiter finishes placing before them two more dishes—chile-spiced pig
’
s feet and buckwheat dumplings with
bok
choy
and poppy seeds.
“
You mean, how does the essence of a physical place, built upon pillars of spirituality and peace, become a breeding ground for greed and power? Money and brilliant timing is how he gets away with it. For a while, at first, there was so much coming in, from China, Europe, and the U.S.,
that he was able simply to buy people
’
s compliance. Including, in a way, mine. A year ago I was teaching English one day a week in the palace school. Now I make more than my parents, brothers, and sisters combined. And of course the short-term result of his changes is that the economy, or, more
importantly, our standard of living, did get better. Until recently, anyway. There were more jobs for people like me, more money for schools. But now he is panicking because he feels the economic momentum slowing, and he is willing to try anything. And again, at what cost?
”

Henry swallows. In a perverse way, the chile heat appeals to him.
“
What
’
s your threshold?
”

“
Excuse me?
”

“
At what point would you refuse to do something because it compromises your ideals?
”

Maya doesn
’
t immediately answer. With the end of the chopsticks that doesn
’
t touch her mouth, she transfers red rice from a bamboo bowl onto her plate.
“
Look at the flaming stacks in the valley, from factories burning coal to feed the Chinese machine. Look at the prayer flags alongside the factories, on the tops of our mountains, asking the gods for peace, compassion, and wisdom. Think about your spa, your lodge, where Westerners come and switch philosophies the way a diva makes wardrobe changes. Wealthy people served by the previously impoverished. Win-win or obscenely wrong? And what about our company and our jobs, selling something that can be gotten for free from a sink, a stream, or a cloud in the sky for billions of dollars? It all comes down to what it is you
’
re compromising. It
’
s complicated.
”

“
It is,
”
Henry agrees.
“
But there are a lot more despicable things one can do than create jobs selling bottled water.
”

“
We
’
ll see. What you need to understand is that right now Gal-ado is a petri dish in a grand experiment being conducted by a madman. A double-blind experiment, where neither the individuals nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the experimental group. Every act has implications and consequences. In any place, especially in a country this small, at such a critical time, our presence, even at this table, has a significant and possibly irreversible social impact.
”

Maya
’
s nephew reappears as she finishes speaking and asks if they would like more wine. Henry begins to say yes, then catches himself. He looks at Maya.
“
Why do I feel like whatever answer I give will cause irreparable damage to all mankind?
”

~ * ~

After the third glass of rice-barley wine, the topic switches from bottled water and Galadonian politics to their personal lives.
“
Why did you come here?
”
Maya asks.

“
Circumstances pointed me here. It was a choice, but a choice based on a passive rationale.
”

“
You were forced?
”

“
Not really.
”

“
You chose?
”

He shakes his head as she stares at him.

“
You don
’
t know why you
’
re here, do you?
”

“
I
’
ve had an interesting time of it lately.

Maya sips her wine while she decides whether she wants to know more.

“
For starters, my wife threw me out the day I lost my position at work, because, in part, I falsified my vasectomy.
”

“
Okay.
”

When he sees that she hasn
’
t winced, he decides to continue. He tells her about the first time he met Rachel and their move to the country, their adventures in conception, the debacle of Meat Night, and even about the pagan spell that was cast on him this evening, moments before he left for dinner. He has to recite the chronicle of his falsified vasectomy a second time before she understands what he is talking about.

“
You
have
had an interesting time of it lately.
”

“
As you said,
”
he reminds her,
“
it
’
s complicated. Every act has implications and consequences.
”

“
You know,
”
she answers,
“
you are the first American I have met who is so . . . forthcoming about his. . .
”

“
Shortcomings.
”

“
Yes.
”
Maya laughs, and for the first time Henry thinks of her as a fully realized person instead of as a businesswoman or a threat or
an ideologue. He
’
s not proud of this. But when you meet so many people every day in meetings and hallways, on conference calls and through e-mail and text and tweets, there is little time for the personal, the human.

“
So then,
”
she continues,
“
you came here to escape?
”

Henry tries without success to locate the peaks in the darkened sky. He thinks of Meredith and the Eliot poem. Escape. Finally he says,
“
Escape implies that some planning, some actual thought, went into it. It takes a certain amount of passion or nerve to escape from something. The truth is, I came here because it was the next thing that life told me to do.
”

For several minutes neither speaks, but it is a comfortable silence. Now that the monks have finished their sutras, Henry considers their absence, the way the absence of a thing can make it feel more powerful than an abundance of it.

“
You know,
”
she says,
“
I really did not like you.
”

He shrugs.
“
These days I
’
m not exactly in love with myself either. So how come you
’
re no longer rolling with the royal posse?
”

After a lag, Maya quietly says,
“
I had a child. She died when she was sixteen months old. I grew up near the palace. My father was an intellectual and a teacher who had the blessings of the king. That is where I learned English and received an education that few in Gal-ado are fortunate enough to have access to—America, Princeton, travel—and why I am not working in a field today. Five years ago, soon after I became pregnant, the prince began to undermine his father, and to institute decrees against intellectuals of a certain type, artists and cultural hardliners. By that time the king was already losing his senses. We were among many who were ostracized, and in a way we were lucky, because my father had known the king since they were little boys. Others were sent to prison or killed. But my father, who in grammar school had taught the prince to read poetry, to understand the philosophers of the West, was permitted to move out here with our relatives in the country and work in the taro fields.
”