Monkeys
Roy Lazarus
22 June 2009, 17:04The day has been growing steadily hotter and the shade of the pines are blunt lances stabbing ineffectually at the shimmering bulk of the dry, dusty heat that lies sprawled on the labyrinthine street like some obscene Minotaur. Watching the scalene shadows impinge us as we pass beneath, I suddenly understand why they call them needles, pine needles: the prick is real, as real as the heat. The monkeys that in the morning were playing noisily by the gully past our shabby guesthouse and towards the cleaner, upper slopes, are now nowhere to be seen. When we passed them by, on our way to breakfast at the riverside cafe (croissants for her – she’s English like me, but she’d rather be French – and buttered toast for me) I asked her if she thought that we’d descended from those frolicking beasts. She gave me a rather frivolous look, then realizing that I was serious, whispered earnestly, “But of course Maria! Why, don’t you?”
I nodded my head in silence, but I wasn’t listening to her anymore. A few joggers passed us by, huffing and puffing in the delicate morning air. My gaze was fixed on the sun, not in the cloudless sky, but in the lens of the video camera the Indian guy, only a few paces ahead, had aimed at us. He was short and thin and very dark, with an irregular, angular face and dressed like the other locals in worn-out corduroy pants and some random T-shirt. Behind the plastic veneer of the camera, I thought I saw nervous, ferreting eyes. The camera turned slowly to accommodate the arc of our brisk walk; there was no doubt that we were the intended victims of its transgression. I imagined him imagining us. Two slender, white women in flimsy chiffon tops and billowing Aladdin pants (I call them Aladdin pants, I’m not sure what they’re actually called) passing him by a hair’s breadth, drowning him in the sea of our lilting siren song: the fold of our milky cleavage, the flowers of our perfume. I saw the light in his eyes as he freely altered the images from the tape in his head, flinging off garment after garment with venous, trembling hands, replacing unflattering vacuums of the flesh with curves of exaggerated texture and munificence. The mole near my armpit was gone, the stretch marks were nowhere to be seen; I smiled.
“Doesn’t this temple look Greek to you?”, she asks, as we pass an old, crumbling temple with columns that look vaguely Ionic.
Everything looks Greek to her, but of course I do not tell her this. Instead I remark without much conviction that the temple though certainly Hindu, has something Arabic about it. Although, I add hastily, I know nothing about architecture. She tilts her head backwards and laughs like she always does – a dry coughing sound that makes me want to gag her – and says, that’s right, you know nothing about architecture, why, a Hindu temple with an Arabic design, whoever heard of such a thing. It’s the dome, I say softly, but she’s already surged ahead.
We are going to the Yoga class where they make us twist our bodies and contort our features, till we’re left gasping for breath. The last day they made us do what they called the “Fish posture”. We had to raise our hands in front of our faces, intertwine them in a convoluted spiral and try to grab palm with palm. It was hopeless; I gave up without even trying. Lisa, on the other hand kept up the effort, although without much success, and when we went for our dinner later, she complained of a pain in her wrists. I didn’t know what to do – I’m clueless when it comes to people in pain – and I just mumbled something like – Think of pleasant things, don’t think of the pain too much. To which she replied irritably, “Dammit, say something else, will you? Saying that only makes me think of the pain much more!”. And so I kept quiet.
The Yoga teacher greets us enthusiastically when he sees us. “Namaste!”, he says, and asks us if we’re feeling well this morning. I’ve never seen him do that to an Indian student, but then, he has hardly any Indian students. Lisa goes over to him and whispers something in a low voice and then they huddle over in a corner and he takes her wrist in his hand and makes concentric circles round her wrist. The other students, mostly white tourists like us maintain their difficult positions, although I can see the odd arm flailing, or the occasional grunt of exasperation issuing forth from among them.
The teacher, whom we are supposed to call “Guru” or “Guruji”, is dressed in a saffron robe, and the light from the glass window strikes its tender folds and leaves shades of dark – unexplored, virgin contours – on the thin robe. He is fair, fairer than most of his country-men, with a broad forehead, hawk-like piercing eyes, and a long, straight nose ending in thick, wavy curls of facial hair. I take up my place as unobtrusively as possible – at the far end of the rug, by the book shelf (full of Yoga and meditation books) where the others can’t see me. He is rubbing her hands vigorously now, not in concentric rings anymore, but in rapid, straight lines up and down the length of her slender arms; saffron movement in saffron robes, something I have definitely seen before.
Yesterday when we were having dinner a guy in a tweed, sleeveless vest and brown Aladdin pants came up to our table and pounced on Lisa. He punched her playfully in the back, and she laughed – not the dry, coughing laugh, but a smoother, more ebullient, an almost endearing laugh – and punched him back. He had a haircut that looked suspiciously like a mullet, though it actually wasn’t – he just had a couple of thick, beaded strands growing long at the back. Lisa told me his name was Ryan and that everyone here that mattered knew him. He smiled benignly and shook hands with me, although I wasn’t really interested in all their banter – I wanted to eat my sandwich in peace. I think he saw it, for he said, that he wouldn’t trouble us anymore and that he’d only come up to invite us to a sitar concert that would be held at the river grounds the next day. This made me prick up my ears, since I have a weakness for music, and I was eager to listen to some of the excellent local fares, instead of the loud disco music and the bad western imitations that they kept playing all around.
“Who’s playing? Is it someone famous?”, I asked, looking him in the eye for the first time.
“Of course, love – I’m playing! Why’d you think people would pay two hundred bucks for the tickets? To see Booda here flaunting his sitar?”, he winked and motioned to the waiter with an exuberant sweep of his hands (which I noticed, were adorned with an assortment of flamboyant rings), who just then was bringing us our mugs of lemon ice, and laughed. It wasn’t a heavy laugh; it was light as paper, as diaphanous, as dismissive. The waiter was Nepali, although he could just as well have been Indian or Tibetan – what do I know of such things? He was the one who always served us. He had slight Mongoloid features, barely discernible, and prominent jaws and he was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and baggy, checkered shorts. I didn’t know his name, but something made me almost certain that it wasn’t Booda.
“As far as I know it was Booda who invented the sitar”, I quipped, but Ryan had already turned around by then, slipping his prim feet into his black flip flops and Lisa, well, Lisa was noisily blowing at the vegetable soup, willing it to cool.
“Today, we shall be doing a new posture. It is called the Sleep posture, or the Dead posture”.
Lisa has gone back to her usual place, and Guruji is now once again in the front where he belongs and is dabbing at his forehead with the end of his robe. The perspiration has left dark stains on the saffron cloth and it spreads like ripples in a pond. Ripples, when you throw a stone and disturb the calm of mossy waters. He lies down, and so does everyone and so do I. The parquet floor is hard beneath me and I try to imagine the pattern on the wood – unending V’s, endless little strips of wood pulling at each other for endless time. Everyone has closed their eyes; I follow suit.
“It is okay if you fall asleep. It is okay. Just close your eyes and relax. Imagine you are weightless and floating in space. Slowly drifting, slowly, slowly…”
The voice is already distant. For a moment I am not me, I am under me. Under me, sewn into the V of the parquet floor below me. My hands a strip of wood, my legs a strip of wood, my trunk a strip of wood and my head a strip of wood, all bound to each other and pulling at other, similar strips of wood. And it goes on and on, the floor will not end, nor the pattern, nor the confounded strips of wood. It is a disconcerting thought and I open my eyes for an instant and watch red streamers float over pale, yellow wall: particles in my eye, how extraordinary. I can see particles in my eye, and with this thought I close my eyes again. They are there for a few moments then slowly start dissipating away, like old memories. Thought takes over, like it always does. Why was the policeman beating the drunk guy? Why were they chasing the couples out of the park? Why was the shopkeeper pelting that cow with stones? Why did Lisa think I didn’t matter? Why Lisa? Where Lisa? Who Lisa?
“God, are you really sleeping?”, Lisa is poking at my ribs and violently shaking me. Her face is flushed with exertion, though strangely all we had to do was to lie down and sleep. The others are already donning their shawls or sandals and making their way out after saying “Namaste” to Guruji. Soon we are the only ones left. Guruji saunters over, making light creaking noises over the wooden floor.
“So when can you girls come over for the extra classes?”
We’d joined late, and according to Guruji were way behind the other folks and needed to do extra time to catch up. I am not very enthusiastic about it, but Lisa jumps up.
“We are free today evening! Shall we come here?”, she says, rising and turning around to meet him in the face.
“No, no, in the evening I’ll be at my hut. You walk down the river, past the bridge, past the police station, to where there are a line of houses on the mountain shelf facing the river. Ask around for me, they’ll know me. Everyone knows me, I’m a very famous Yoga teacher.”
Famous Yoga teacher. I’ve heard that before, only it wasn’t being said to me. Lisa ties her boutique scarf around her neck and then we are off, shuffling down the dusty street, gliding on films of gravel. We try a different cafe this time, we’re bored of the other one. We climb up the wooden stairs, and they creak beneath our pink feet, and protest loudly, but we go up anyway. Lisa first, then me. This one has no tables and chairs, instead you can spread yourself on thick Indian rugs, prop yourself up on some thick cushions and eat your food on covered divans that also round up as tables. There’s a Spanish couple sitting on the side, opposite the open window, and in the receding light of the early evening I can see her murmuring something to the count of her rosary beads. Her boyfriend or husband is smoking a cigarette, blowing contemplative rings of smoke in the air.
“Oh, we forgot about the concert, dammit! It’s past four already, isn’t it? Shit, Ryan will be mad…”, Lisa says as she drops down on the rug. The Spanish guy shifts in his position: probably a leg cramp. I notice he has his hair done up like the Indian sadhus, like our Guruji, like the guy in the saffron pajamas who was sitting next to me yesterday at the cyber-cafe and slowly rubbing his erection as the woman in the screen – a white woman, a French woman, judging from her accent – was flashing her wrinkled breasts and saying, “Really? Really?” without an iota of incredulity in her voice, as he kept on rubbing harder and harder and faster and faster and saying on and on again, “I’m a very famous Yoga teacher. I’ll be famous in France too one day. I’m a very famous Yogaaa…”
I order a bruschetta with cheese and olives and some lemon ice, while Lisa orders some more croissants and a cup of hot, steaming chai. The waiter takes the order and rises up without smiling or nodding his head. The sun is a million broken pieces that emerge staggeringly, drunkenly out of the tiny mirrors of her necklace, the one the Spanish woman is wearing. The sky is cloudless still and I can see the roof of our guesthouse through the open window. The pines they stand as motionless as ever, towering over the people, over the roofs of the houses, over the mountains themselves. Past the gray, craggy rooftop, past the black plastic water tank, past the gigantic TV antenna, past the colorful rubbish heap, I can see the leafy alcove, where the monkeys were playing in the morning – picking up fruits from the ground, eating them, throwing the pips at each other, smelling admiring suitors, and sometimes just staring at us down below with strange, incomprehensible eyes. I imagine a shopkeeper or a pushcart owner chasing them away with a stick or a volley of stones or with a barrage of violent abuses, and all of a sudden, I feel unbearably, inconsolably sad.
