Michelangelo's Shoulder Read online

The Great Bob Marley

  Age had bent Grant slightly; there was a suggestion of the longbow about him as he walked through the village, tall and thin, thinking. Newcomers thought that he probably taught at the college; he seemed too independent for the commuter crowd. When Francie passed him on the sidewalk, she asked her friend, Janey, “Who’s that?”

  “Grant Kavanagh. Local boy, played on all the teams in high school. Been married a couple of times. He writes about art, art history.”

  “He reminds me of someone I knew who made stained glass windows. Any kids?”

  “I don’t think so. There was a stepson in his second marriage, but there was an awful accident, a car wreck. The boy died. Grant’s been single quite a while. Pretty buttoned up, hard to reach.”

  “I like tall men,” Francie said.

  “What about Fergus? He couldn’t have been more than five foot three!”

  “He was an exception.”

  “Exceptionally rich.”

  “He was.”

  “God, Francie, how could you leave him? Your life was so pleasant.”

  “Fergus was sweet. But he was such a good dog, you know, wanting to please everyone. He would stumble, jumping to his feet when anyone entered the room. He leaped to open car doors.”

  “You are a cold and heartless woman. If Nick opened a car door for me, I’d faint.” Francie threw her arms in the air, fingers spread to the sky.

  Grant, a block away, had turned to look at them. Her movement seemed good humored, and he smiled involuntarily. He’d seen her before with Jane Mavroulos. She was leggy with long black hair and blue eyes. She seemed deeply familiar to him, same DNA or something.

  An attractive woman was usually followed in his imagination by a crowd of parents, sisters and brothers, old friends, ex-lovers, children from a divorce, uncles and aunts; he would have to know them all. This woman seemed more alone. Her arms lowered. He shrugged and continued around the corner to the post office where he signed for a special delivery.

  “Looks like my passport, Axel.”

  “You taking off again?”

  “Guess so. Couple of months. Patsy will collect my mail.”

  “O.K., I’ll tell Bart. Where you headed?”

  “India.”

  “Good time to go; we got us a warm one today, but you know it won’t last.”

  “I know it.” Grant shook his head. “Keep ’em flying, Axel.”

  He walked home enjoying the first signs of spring, reddening buds on the trees, small streams rushing. Axel had retired from the Air Force, what, ten years ago? People like Axel helped make sticking around worthwhile. People who knew you when. You knew them when. A little conversation went a long way.

  That night he went to a party at Sharon Stinson’s. He was pouring himself a drink when Jane Mavroulos held out her glass beside his.

  “While you’re at it. How are you, Grant?”

  “Jes fine, Jane. How are you and Nick doing? How’s that shoulder?”

  “We’re good. Shoulder’s better. Body’s getting to the point where if something doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t work. This is my friend, Francie.” Grant put out his hand.

  “Grant Kavanagh.”

  “Frances Killian.” She regarded him calmly, not needing to strain to look him in the eye. Her fingers were long.

  “Excuse me,” Jane said. “Nick seems to be wanting something” Once again, Grant faced assessment. He felt like a lion who had dashed from one line of beaters to another. This beater was unusually good looking. Grant forgot to let go of Frances’s hand and was embarrassed when she raised her eyebrows and opened her fingers.

  “I’m sorry. I was staring. Your eyes—they’re like horses coming over a gate. I wish I could paint.”

  “Janey told me you write about art.”

  “I do. Or, I have. I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Get small,” she said.

  “What?”

  Frances extended her right arm, palm up, fingers together. Her fingers began to close slowly as her wrist bent toward her and the angle at her elbow increased. Her knees bent slightly, and she began to turn, gathering inward, wrist coming to rest on her breast, head tipped slightly forward and to one side, eyes lowered. She was still for a second, then straightened.

  “Something like that,” she said. “I’ve got to slow down before I can feel what’s next. Not that it’s easy; it’s like dying, almost.”

  “I’ll think about that. When I’m really stuck, I take a trip. I’m going to India on Friday.”

  “I love India. Will you be traveling around or staying put somewhere?”

  “I like to go to one place and mostly stay there. I’ll be in Dharamsala.”

  “I had a good time in Dharamsala.”

  “You did?”

  “I went for a week and stayed two months.”

  “Really? What were you doing?”

  “Hanging out with the monks, mostly. I was interested in their ceremonies. I’m a dancer.”

  “I see that.”

  “Hello, Grant.”

  “Hey, Nick.”

  “Look, Grant, one of these days let’s get together, talk about your woodlot. I have some ideas that can make us both happy.”

  “Always ready to talk, Nick. But, when I get back.”

  “I heard you were heading out. Watch it! Don’t get married this time.”

  “Not this time. I’m staying in a monastery.”

  “I remember those pictures you took. Very scenic. Get back in one piece.”

  “Do my best.”

  Frances had moved away with Jane, and Grant decided to go home. He thanked Sharon and waved at Frances on the way out. She didn’t notice.

  Saturday morning, after an overnight to DeGaulle, Grant boarded an Air France flight to Delhi. His seat was next to an Indian man, middle-aged, with bright dark eyes. The Indian, whose name was Udayan, was returning from a literary conference.

  “They love me in Paris. The plane is full of writers.”

  “I’ve written a couple of books,” Grant said.

  “Ah. When I saw you, I thought—he’s either an artist or he has been to India many times.”

  “Some of each. Not so sure about artist. I like art, write about it, in fact.”

  Udayan was in a good mood. “I was up very late last night eating Chinese food, drinking wine. Talking and talking.”

  “How was the conference?”

  “Very big. I was a keynote speaker, and they asked me what I liked about France. I said it was easier to tell them what I didn’t like. Two things: the food—it is so bland and tasteless.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Then I said, The Eiffel Tower. It is ridiculous! It is a toy; toys should fit in the hand of a child.”

  “You’re lucky they didn’t throw you in jail.”

  Udayan chuckled. “My interpreter said I was disappointed by the tower, but that I saw it in bad light in the early morning. I think he was saving me. Do you know Hindi?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say.”

  “You should really try to learn it. English is too pale for India. We are a pagan snake-charming culture, damnit all! You know, I am thinking we writers are all talking to each other, all over the world. It is good.”

  Udayan wound down and fell asleep over the Black Sea. They passed above the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, snow covered on the mountains, the Karakorams, and Pakistan, flying away from the sun into onrushing dark and, finally, over the subcontinent, world within a world, and down at Delhi. Udayan said goodbye and shouted cheerful exchanges in Hindi with security guards.

  Grant stood in the customs line for foreigners. This was his fourth trip. Between visits, he forgot the heat, the intensity, the press of the people, the vivid colors, the sense of how muted he was by comparison, a walking island surrounded by life that he could see and hear and smell but not quite touch.

  Usually he stayed two nights in L
ittle Tibet adjusting to the ten and a half hour time change and getting ready for the long bus or train and cab ride to Dharamsala, but a new airport had just opened in Kangra. He had reservations for a flight the next morning, so he stayed in a hotel near the airport.

  The flight was a revelation—barely an hour, lifting off from Delhi and over the baking green and gold fields of Punjab to Pathankot, a nine-hour trip on the train. He remembered the tens of thousands living along the tracks in cardboard and tin shacks, tattered tents of cloth and plastic, or just sleeping in the open. Didn’t see them at all from the plane.

  A quick hop to Kangra and a forty-five minute taxi ride took him to McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, at five thousand feet, fifteen hundred feet above the town of Dharamsala. Full summer. Flowers blooming. Curving terraces of wheat. Alpine meadows above them on the last highest foothills. Gray rock, the sharp snow capped ridges and peaks of the Dhauladhar, ten thousand feet higher, bear and leopard country, a band that stretched more than a thousand miles across northern India and Nepal. Grant remembered an Indian making a sudden throaty call, sharp and then constricted. You hear that at night, you know your dog is gone, he’d said.

  The five streets of McLeod Ganj were crowded with trekkers, monks and nuns in burgundy robes, tourists from Australia, Japan, Israel, and Europe, Indian shopkeepers, Tibetan children, cars, scooters, Suzuki van cabs, three-wheeler cabs, cows, and load packing mules. Monkeys peered from rooftops. Kites circled overhead. Good smells from food stands reminded him that he had to be careful about what he ate.

  “Mister, Mister, your shoes are very dirty, sir. You need shine.”

  “No, maybe tomorrow.”

  “Very dirty, sir. Please.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “You promise?”

  “O.K., maybe tomorrow.”

  “You promise?”

  He bought a bottle of water and descended a long set of steps and a steep path to the monastery where he had reserved a room. The noise of the town faded above him. The valley below stretched green and sunny into a hazy distance. He stopped and put down his bag. Bees moved from flower to flower.

  At the front room of the main building, he presented his passport to a short monk with chubby cheeks. “Tashi delek.”

  “Tashi delek. How are you, Mr. Grant?”

  “Good. Hot and tired.”

  “You must relax after your long trip, Mr. Grant.”

  The monk led him to a yellow cement building at the lower edge of the compound, where they climbed steps to a row of small rooms with wooden doors that overlooked the valley. There was a shared toilet in a nearby building. Grant thanked the monk and lay down on the single bed.

  He awoke thirsty and disoriented in the late afternoon. Images from the trip careened around his mind. He walked back up to town and ate dinner in an Indian restaurant, dal and rice, chai, safe food. He’d forgotten to bring his flashlight, so he returned down the hill before dark.

  Besides the bed, there was nothing in his room but a standing metal wall locker, a small table, one light, and a plastic chair. He brought the chair out in front of the door and stared over the low cement wall into the twilight. He seemed to be the only one staying there. Birds called, settling in for the night. A half moon rose over the ridge to his left. He went to bed and fell asleep immediately.

  At three in the morning he was wide awake. It was too early to get anything to eat in town. He lay there picturing his kitchen at home. “The farm,” his father always called it. The field was still hayed, but it had been many years since there were cows in the barn and chickens behind the house. His father had done a good job converting the barn and two outbuildings into living space. “Your grandfather and great-grandfather are probably shaking their heads up there, but this land is too valuable to farm.” Grant had helped off and on for twenty years, weekends and between his father’s building jobs in town. After his mother died, his father just worked harder. Now there were five good apartments with nice light, views of the field, plenty of space.

  His father had connected with Milly Planetree after her divorce. “O.K., Grant,” he’d said one day, “it’s all yours. I’ve been taking care of this place my whole life; it’s time for something different. Milly and I are going to Florida. It’s your turn.”

  “What are you going to do down there?”

  “I can still work. Milly’s got some money. Social Security. What more do I need?”

  Gave him the whole place. It was a fair amount of work to keep things up, but he had the freedom to do what he wanted most of the time—as long as he kept expenses down. Beat hell out of working for someone else.

  He fell asleep again and woke to birds singing. He walked through the monastery, listening to the buzz and drone of chanting coming through an open door. He met no one on the path. In town, close to the temple, he found an open café. It was small, run by Tibetans, nearly filled with westerners and monks. He asked an American if he could share his table.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m Grant.”

  “Ted, here.”

  Ted was a Nam vet with sad eyes. He was burly, good humored on the surface, a regular at the Tenyang Coffee Shop in the early morning. He had retired from a computer programming job and come to live in India. During the next week, they exchanged stories. Grant told him about a girl he’d seen.

  “She was about seven years old, standing in the doorway of the refugee place on Jogibara. She was watching me with big eyes. I wanted to pick her up and tell her everything was going to be O.K. She had her mouth set against disappointment; she knew I was going to keep walking. I felt terrible. Maybe I should adopt her.”

  “I know,” Ted said. “I got friendly with a Nepali family. They have a daughter who is beautiful and really smart. They live just up the hill in a little shack. I used to sit around with them in their yard. I tried to help out with money now and then. We bought clothes for the girl. They’d ask me for help with this or that emergency. Only it turned out they were lying; they were making things up and drinking the money. I wanted to help the girl, see, but the money went through them. I had it out with them a couple of times, said, ’Look, you can’t lie to me, or I can’t help you.’ But they kept doing it, and they wouldn’t let me see the girl.” He was upset.

  “Too bad,” Grant said.

  “Yeah. It’s tricky.” Ted considered. “There’s a lot of phonies around here, but there are good people, too. People you can learn from.”

  “I love the faces,” Grant said. “The old people walking kora around the temple early in the morning—some of them barely walking—so open and radiant.”

  “Some of the young ones have it too,” Ted said, “but a lot of them are into Hondas, hot bikes.”

  Across McLeod Ganj, visitors were having similar conversations, comparing experiences, sharing opinions. Grant had met Daisy that way and ended up married in Melbourne. They’d parted friends after two years.

  He took long walks, letting memories float to the surface and move along. There were no pressures on him here, no phone ringing with needs to be filled. He was generally silent, apart from restaurant conversations. As he lost his winter weight and became rested, he began to sense something knotted or lodged in his chest, a heaviness, a constriction. The weeks passed, and he felt steadily worse.

  Late one afternoon, when he was feeling particularly oppressed, he stopped by an eroded gully on the Jogibara Road. Large gray-brown stones balanced irregularly on each other in their slow tumble toward the plains. On the flatter surfaces, mantras were chiseled and painted in prayer flag colors. Weeds with tiny flowers of a brilliant blue edged the rocks and dirt. The immediacy of the flowers, the presence of the mantra carvers, thousands of years of Buddhism, the erosion of the Himalayas, vibrated together in different time scales. As he stood there, his inner weight lightened. Twenty minutes later he walked on, ready for a meal.

  Once or twice
a day, he stopped at a cyber café to check his email and browse the internet. Frances Killian wrote to say hello and that his book was being used in a course in one of the schools where she taught dance. He answered immediately:

  “I’m glad to sell a few books, but it makes me feel strange. I was just trying to figure out what makes great art great, what is lasting. I hate the idea of people using my words to be—I don’t know—politically correct, reducing works of art. I should have put a warning in the book.

  “I’m going to stay here another month at least, maybe two. I was just in a café where a waiter was wearing a T-shirt that said, You’ll never guess who I was. Whoever I was, I don’t think I am anymore. Want to have some coffee when I get back? Where do you live, anyway?”

  He was descending the path to the monastery, the day he heard from Frances, when he felt a sudden need for a toilet. It became urgent and he went behind a bush. He hadn’t gotten his pants down before a rush of shit poured out, half on the ground, half down his legs. He pulled up his pants and walked slowly back to his room. Luckily, no one stopped him for conversation. He cleaned himself and washed his underwear, pants, and socks.

  For two days he stayed in his room, making regular trips to the toilet. The monks brought him water, tea, and rice. He was depressed. No matter how careful he was, India got him sooner or later. A few days in bed weren’t so bad, but he felt old and out of place.

  Four days later, he was fully recovered. He bought a pair of hiking boots for a Tibetan baker named Achi who had taken his mother’s money and fled over the mountains without saying goodbye. After seven years, sadness and guilt had overtaken him; he was going to try and sneak back into Tibet that winter, when the rivers would be frozen and the Chinese patrols fewer.

  “Aren’t you afraid of getting shot or thrown in jail?”

  Achi had spread his arms and smiled—a smile that accepted death and the injustices and follies of life with a depth that made Grant feel like a child.

  India reveals you to yourself. As the days passed, Grant felt increasingly barren and alone. He hadn’t lived with anyone since Shelley and David. David was a good kid, big-hearted, a little wild, what you’d expect from a teenager. They’d had their battles, but Grant had held his ground, given him room, been fair. They’d come to respect each other. Even to like each other. Wiped out in a stupid crash. Bad company. Bad luck.

  Shelley had crumbled, left her job at the end of the semester, gone back to California and never returned. Her first marriage was a disaster, and her marriage to him was mostly about David, as it turned out. It was good for five or six years. They did things together on weekends and in the summer. David grew. And then—gone. He pushed the memory down.

  One morning he was standing on Temple Road wondering whether Santosh, a young painter he had met, would open his tiny stall earlier or later. A light mist was lifting through the pines. Someone was looking at him. He turned and saw first the smile, then the blue eyes and black hair, Frances Killian.

  “Hi, Grant.”

  “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  “Getting out of Dodge. I’ve got a few weeks off.”

  He was so surprised that he forgot to be defensive. “Amazing! Let’s have chai or something.” They walked to Moon Peak café.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. She hung a beige pashmina scarf on the back of a chair and sat down comfortably. She was wearing a dark blue silk shirt over loose cotton pants. Flip flops. “You look great, right at home. When did you get here?”

  “Day before yesterday. I thought I’d run into you. I was going to send you an email if I didn’t.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I’ve got a room at the Snow Lion.”

  “I’m down the hill at the monastery. Very nice there. Peaceful.”

  “I live in Stamford. I didn’t answer your email.”

  “Oh. About forty-five minutes from me.”

  “You’re looking very brown,” she said.

  “Haven’t done much since I got here but walk around.”

  “So fun,” she said, “just to look.”

  “There’s a lake I’ve never seen, past the Tibetan Children’s Village. Want to walk up there one of these days?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  They talked for an hour about themselves and about Dharamsala. When they parted, Grant was surprised at how relaxed they were with each other.

  The next morning at nine, they met at the bus stop. They walked out of town past a line of taxis and tourist jeeps and along a narrow road cut into the mountain. Half an hour later, they could look across at McLeod Ganj, colorful in the sunlight, silent at that distance. It was cool in the forest. There were few cars. One elderly Tibetan passed them, walking in the other direction, fingering wooden beads. The road bent around the face of the ridge where fields had been cleared. They walked past another road that led down the ridge to a several clusters of buildings. They saw a line of identical large trucks and heard orders coming from a loudspeaker. “The army,” Grant said, “same everywhere.”

  Two guys came by on a scooter and turned into the TCV grounds. Grant and Frances continued up a hill past several Indian shops and then a closed storefront that advertised espresso on a hand painted sign. “Too bad,” Frances said.

  The lake was a quarter mile around, fitted neatly below steep wooded slopes, a pond, really, created by a small dam. A ceremonial path led around the quiet water. Half an hour later, they were headed back down the hill. The espresso shop was open—three bare tables, a counter, no one visible. They walked in and waited. A young Tibetan with bright eyes emerged from a back room and made coffee for them. He put on a CD, and the room filled with reggae.

  “The sound of Jamaica,” Grant said, “all the way over here.”

  “It’s universal,” Frances said, tapping her fingers on the table.

  “It’s true—the other day in town I saw a Tibetan teenager wearing a T-shirt that said, No woman Nuh cry. It was pink with white lettering.” He paused. “David listened to reggae all the time.” The obstruction in him got larger.

  “He was my stepson. Killed in a car accident. He played bass. You would have liked him. Kind of a clumsy kid. He had these eyebrows that dived down between big eyes. You looked at him and you knew he was always doing his best.” Grant’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. He swallowed and tried to talk. He swallowed again. “I’m having trouble here.” Frances put a hand on his forearm. She was calm, knowing, satisfied, even.

  Grant breathed deeply a couple of times. “I miss him.” He choked up again and tears rolled down his cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. He swallowed his espresso, and smiled helplessly at Frances. “More coffee?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  He went to the counter and pointed at the large speakers. “Very good!”

  “It is the great Bob Marley,” the Tibetan said, eyes gleaming. Grant made a fist the way David used to and then returned to the table.

  “Sorry. The reggae. And this guy—he reminds me a little of David.” When the waiter brought the coffee, he asked if the music was too loud. “Cannot hear it,” Grant said. The Tibetan grinned and turned up the volume. No woman, nuh cry ... I remember when we used to sit in the Government yard in Trenchtown ... Everyone, anywhere, who ever remembered being with someone special, was there in Bob Marley’s voice. Something lifted in Grant’s chest. He felt a living rush, heart and mind merging.

  Frances’s head moved with the beat. The rhythm spread to her shoulders and back. She danced herself upright, and Grant followed stiffly. Bit by bit he relaxed and let the sound move him. He wasn’t showing off, the way he used to. Neither was Frances. She seemed completely free, although she danced in a small area. Later, outside, he would hold her and, for the first time in many years, if not ever, surrender, trust totally, his head hanging over her shoulder, but now they danced on the plywood floor, between a framed photograph of
the Dalai Lama, adorned with a white silk scarf, and a FREE TIBET slogan painted in red on the boards of the opposite wall, ... Buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta ... renewing, honoring, celebrating, letting passion burn them clean.