The Book of Stanley Read online

  The elevator door opened and Frieda stepped out, with a walking stick. She wore a sun hat and smiled neutrally. “Hi, Tanya. Ready, Stan?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “On a little hike.”

  Tanya lied. “I love hikes.”

  Stanley and Frieda had no choice. They invited her along.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Walking up Tunnel Mountain with Maha, it occurred to Kal that he didn’t know what a miracle was, really. The first thought that came to mind was of an extremely tall black man performing a slam dunk, as one of the all-sports channels called its nightly highlight reel “The Miracle Plays.” Catholic school had provided him with a few biblical examples: walking on water, making water into wine, bringing a dead man back to life, surviving a crucifixion. But these miracles didn’t seem to fit the time, the place, or the weather, and Stanley wasn’t much of a sports figure. When Kal was small, his mom had once taken him to the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium to see a man called “Raveen, the Impossiblist.” Raveen was supposed to be a miracle-worker. He was supposed to cure Kal’s mom of her smoking habit and give her a new lease on life. There was a spinning disco ball, and manufactured fog, and loud music. Raveen seemed determined, if nothing else. The miracle lasted three days.

  There were plenty of pitiable things in the world that a proper miracle-worker could fix. Starving babies in Africa and Ukrainian car dealers who waltz right up and steal a man’s wife from him, to name but two. Kal didn’t share these thoughts with Maha, who walked up the mountain with Raveen-like determination.

  They passed clumps of fir trees and wildflowers, and the air smelled faintly of smoke. Kal wanted to comment on the trees and flowers, or on the distant forest fires of northern British Columbia, or the accordion, but he was mindful of appearing frivolous before this serious girl.

  Stanley and Frieda walked in front, and Kal noticed that Maha wanted to keep her distance. When Frieda stopped to inspect a flower or point out a bird, Maha stopped too, and turned to gaze upon the town. Alok and Tanya were below them on the trail.

  They were halfway up the little mountain overlooking Banff before Kal thought of something to say. It concerned him that he was almost out of breath, as he hadn’t done a lick of exercise since stepping off the team bus in Saskatchewan. “Do you know what an impossiblist is?”

  “No.” Maha didn’t slow down or stop.

  “Tanya was saying Stanley’s going to perform a miracle, so I figured–”

  “A magician?”

  “What?”

  Now Maha did stop. “An impossiblist. It sounds like a fancy name for a magician.”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “What about it?”

  Kal wished he hadn’t worked so hard. Silence was much more relaxing. Maha had her big brown eyes fixed on him, and swiped her hair to reveal the full shine of her forehead in the haze. “I was just thinking that maybe that’s what Stanley is.”

  “He isn’t.” Maha started walking again.

  It pleased Kal that she wasn’t staring at him in that accusing manner any more. His lower back had broken out in an instant sweat, before that stare. She was a powerful girl, inside and out. “Okay.”

  “You’re Christian, right? What if I said Jesus was a magician?”

  Kal had to give her that. It didn’t seem right at all. But he did have questions about Jesus, now that Maha had brought him up. “Why did he spend all that miracle-working power on turning water into wine, anyway, when he might have–I don’t know–got rid of deserts? So babies wouldn’t starve in Africa, for instance. The miracles of Jesus, when you sit right back and think about them, are pretty damn selfish. If you were his friend or in his town or whatever, it was a pretty sweet deal. If you lived in a different desert, though: look out, Charlie.”

  “Look out, Charlie,” said Maha, as though hearing it had disappointed her.

  The only sounds on the path up Tunnel Mountain were their footsteps on the small pebbles and the odd breeze moving through the boughs and branches. Now and then, a couple passed, going down, and said “Hello,” with their various accents: Japanese, German, French. Up ahead, Stanley and Frieda stopped. They appeared to be arguing, very quietly. Maha stopped, and turned, and together they looked at the town some more. Alok was way down, bent over.

  “This is so weird,” said Kal.

  Maha didn’t concur.

  “Do you sometimes step out of yourself and see yourself doing something weird and think, ‘I can’t believe I am where I am.’? I did that a lot, playing hockey. I’d be on the blue line and the puck’d be in our end, in Syracuse or Rochester, and I’d think: I am playing hockey in Syracuse. Or Rochester or whatever. I’m definitely having one of those moments right now, up here on this mountain with you.”

  It appeared Maha wasn’t listening. She took a deep breath and blew it out.

  “Maybe later on we could head down to the hot tub again.”

  “I don’t think so, Kal.”

  “You got a boyfriend back home, don’t you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Someone you like? Or love?”

  “I have a fiancé in Toronto.”

  It was like someone had sneaked out from behind a juniper bush and kicked Kal in the face. He half expected his nose to start bleeding. Stanley and Frieda continued along and so did Kal and Maha, up the switchback. Kal had a great idea for a miracle, if Stanley was fixing to dole them out and the babies of Africa were already taken care of. He could go ahead and give Maha’s fiancé a nice bit of rectal cancer. Then, a bouquet of shame bloomed in Kal and his stomach ached fiercely.

  “Well, congratulations to you. I bet he’s real handsome and rich and smart. Lucky guy. Your family likes him, probably. That’s good. Why rock the boat, right?” They walked past a thorny bush and Kal grabbed a handful of it. “Great news.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  At the summit of Tunnel Mountain, everyone but Alok looked out over the deep valley and commented on the view.

  On the slope of the mountain not far from his wife and new friends–were they friends?–three mule deer stood together in sweet silence.

  Stanley watched them for several minutes, their smooth and careful movements. It was easy to see why deer inspired longing in humans, for a purity lost to avarice. Knowing what he knew, or half knew, since the powers had come to him, Stanley saw this longing as yet another expression of weakness. All that was pure was contained in the vain hope for purity.

  All morning, Stanley had been wondering if it was ethically sound to deprive the world of special powers, if one had acquired them. Sometime in the late 1970s, he supposed, Stanley had stopped believing in good and evil. It wasn’t easy to catch up. Where should special powers be directed? What was good?

  Like the hunt for purity, goodness was a mirage. So far, the special powers had moved Stanley to empathy and pity, to a fuller understanding of weakness, but not much else. Every time Maha called him “Lord,” he flinched. He continued to distrust the conceits of religion, of a comprehensive historical and spiritual world-view. At the same time, he didn’t feel capable of driving home with Frieda later that afternoon.

  Alok lay on some moss, breathing heavily and moaning about the ugliness of morning hikes. His skin, in the flat light of an overcast day, had a somewhat green quality about it.

  “Never again before breakfast,” said Alok. “Never again!”

  Two women with a distinctly European mien about them took pictures of the deer and started back down the mountain. Stanley helped Alok to his feet. “I think Frieda has some water.”

  “I don’t need water. I need to be in town, with eggs, bacon, potatoes, coffee, and a small glass of Grand Marnier, and you know it.”

  Stanley led Alok to the far end of the summit, where the others looked down at the Bow River half a kilometre below. Kal was telling them about a plaque he had read; it turned out there was no tunnel through Tunnel Mountain.

  “Someone wanted to build
a tunnel, or something, but everybody else figured it was a bonehead idea.”

  The wind came up out of the valley in cool gusts and whipped their hair about. Frieda looked away from the valley and into Stanley’s eyes. Since arriving in Banff she had been uncharacteristically quiet and docile. Her manner now was inscrutable, but Stanley knew what Frieda wanted. She wanted, even more than before, to walk down this mountain immediately, load the Oldsmobile with their luggage, and drive home, preferably by way of the Columbia glacier.

  The light, even with the cloud cover, was bright up on the mountain. Frieda squinted and the beautiful lines above her cheekbones, lines she had inherited from her mother and her mother’s mother, were long and deep. It occurred to him that the relevant fact of being God in a godless universe, thanks to a chemical reaction in his backyard, was simply this: Frieda would die and he would live.

  “Well,” he said.

  Frieda hugged herself. It was not a warm day and she wore only a zip-up sweater over her blouse. Alok spoke into the wind now, about the majesty of the view. The sacredness of this place, the good omen of deer, the significance of mountains in nascent religions. “Someday,” Alok said, “the people will look at Tunnel Mountain and they will see much more than a mountain named after a stupid idea. The plaques will say, ‘Hark!’”

  Alok continued but Stanley stopped paying attention at “Hark!” He took a few steps back from the ledge and Frieda followed. “What do you think they want from you?” she said, just loud enough to be heard over the wind.

  “They want answers.”

  “Do you have answers, Stanley?”

  “Not yet.”

  Frieda sighed. In these last days, she had become a world-class sigher. Not long ago, she had concentrated all of her powers on making sure her husband got through each day with a morsel of hope. She had been an unpaid nurse, psychologist, and cheerleader. Now she merely followed him, and sighed. Frieda did not even argue any more. Of all the answers Stanley hoped to receive–from where? on high?–he awaited a strategy for Frieda with the most impatience.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Stan.” She stepped in close, took his hands. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Another gust came out of the valley, this one so strong that Frieda stumbled. She let go of Stanley’s hands and looked up, perhaps for rain. Stanley wanted to tell her what he was about to do, but he didn’t know how. “Don’t worry,” he said.

  “How can I not worry?” Frieda spoke without looking at him, and laughed. “You and I, that’s what we do. We worry.”

  “We can stop now.”

  “Stan, there’s more reason than ever to worry. Unless, of course, you’re keeping something from me.”

  Stanley took his wife’s hands and kissed her. He took three steps toward the edge of the mountain. And he jumped.

  THIRTY-THREE

  For a moment, the Lord could fly. Trivial things blew away and belief clung to her insides like melted iron. This, this was what Maha had been waiting for. This was why she had been born, why they were here, to bask in his greatness. To serve the one God. To transcend themselves through him.

  Nothing she had learned in school was important, no piece of history or chemistry. Books were insignificant–dust-collectors! The clothes upon her, symbols of vanity. Her family consisted of three talking mannequins. She reached out and grasped a handful of Kal’s shirt at the chest. He flexed his pectoral muscles.

  In the next moment, the Lord could not fly. The Lord fell into the valley stomach first, his hands and feet swimming along. He did not cry out. As he plunged to the dense forest of pine and fir trees far below, the Lord tilted forward. He crashed into the canopy headfirst, with a ferocious cracking of branches audible even in the strong wind, and then the Lord disappeared from view.

  His wife fell to her knees on the summit of Tunnel Mountain and cried in whispers.

  No one said a word. They waited a moment. Maha had not heard the thud of his body crashing into the tan riverbank. She backed away from the ledge.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Tanya turned to Alok and slapped his mighty breasts with the back of her hand. “You said he had powers and I actually believed you. I actually believed you.” She addressed the others. “Do you understand the trouble we’re in here?”

  Alok filled his cheeks with air and blew. Kal continued to look down.

  Maha put her hand on Frieda’s shoulder, waited for her own sadness and disappointment to come. But they were not there. Even though the Lord had just plummeted to his death, Maha felt no sense of loss. “Don’t worry,” she said, to Frieda. Maha hugged the Lord’s wife around the shoulders. “He’s okay.”

  Then she addressed the others. “Don’t worry. The Lord is not dead.”

  “Are you fucking blind?” said Tanya. She motioned toward the Bow Valley with her thumb. “Hello!”

  Frieda pulled at some weeds as she sobbed, her hands shaking. She seemed not to have heard Maha. Frieda seemed to be in another place, mentally. Maha kneeled beside Frieda and prepared to explain things to her.

  “Let her grieve.” Alok pulled Maha away.

  “But she doesn’t need to grieve. He’s not dead.”

  Tanya looked at her cellphone. “I bet the Mounties are pretty bored around here. They’ll investigate us. No one’ll believe he jumped. We’re screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

  “Kal. Will you listen to me?” said Maha.

  “You bet.”

  Maha looked over the cliff with him. “You see, he’s testing us. Our faith.”

  “Of course.” Alok joined them, and clapped his hands. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m a fool. That’s why he dragged us up here. It’s like Abraham and Isaac.”

  “Ishmael,” said Maha.

  Tanya stuffed the phone into her purse and jogged toward the path. “On second thought, I won’t call from my own phone. Let’s go, you guys. We have to get our stories straight.”

  Maha helped Frieda up, and Kal and Alok followed. As they reached Tanya and the path, Frieda pulled herself away from Maha and walked determinedly into a bluff of shrubbery and spruce.

  “Let her go,” said Alok. “She knows the way down.”

  “Frieda’s a problem.” Tanya gestured toward the shrubbery. “She could tell the cops just about anything.”

  The Lord would not appreciate Tanya’s doubt. Maha wondered what would have happened if Abraham, peace be upon him, had not followed the Lord’s directions. What if Abraham, peace be upon him, had stayed in camp, protecting his beloved son from the eye of Allah? What if his faith had been weak, as Tanya’s faith was weak? Allah surely would have destroyed the prophet and his son, and Abraham, peace be upon him, would not have led his tribes out of darkness.

  “Maybe we should pray,” said Maha.

  Tanya did not slow her pace. “All right, he was a crazy person. Everyone agree? Good. If they press us on it, we can say he led us up a mountain to show us a miracle. That isn’t a lie. We’ll look naive, maybe a little stupid. But it’s better than a holding cell. Even cops understand simple human curiosity, right? Alok, you shared some history with him. It was cordial?”

  “I wish I had an accordion right about now,” said Kal.

  It was much faster going down Tunnel Mountain than up. Maha wore sandals and the leather straps rubbed at the backs of her heels. But she would endure the pain without complaint. There were much greater things to consider. The Lord, she imagined, watched them somehow. Not from the riverbank but from nowhere and everywhere at once. His human form was only a shell, a vessel. This was the flaw in Maha’s narrow imagination: she used the model of western reason to comprehend the incomprehensible. She wanted to look through the Koran again, for hints of the Lord’s return and all that he expected of her.

  Kal touched Maha’s arm and smiled at her. “I know why he chose you, Maha.”

  “Can we walk slower?” said Alok.

  They neared the bottom of the mountain and Maha recalle
d the visit, to her mosque in Montreal, by an imam from London, England. She’d still been a child then. The angry imam had recited various prophecies about the last day, and claimed they were coming true on what was then the verge of the millennium. These stories had terrified Maha, for she’d feared she was one of the unrighteous. Her thoughts were not pure. She had seen pictures of men and women fornicating on the Internet. She had sneaked chocolate bars at school during the fast of Ramadan. Desperately, desperately, she had wanted her parents to be rich so they might buy her a horse.

  In the presence of the British imam she had felt irredeemably far from God. On the way home, in the blue minivan, Maha had wanted her mother to say he was a silly man, a medieval lunatic from a depressing suburb. But her mother had said nothing about the imam, even when they’d stopped for ice cream at Dairy Queen. The imam’s words and his beard and his long fingers, the peculiar, well-travelled accent to his Arabic, kept her up that night and for many nights thereafter. Maha realized, in view of the Tunnel Mountain parking lot and two shirtless men with goatees drinking beer from cans, that this was the first time she’d felt entirely free of the imam’s prophecies.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  During his fall, Stanley experienced a few regrets. Number one was the way he had handled things with Frieda. He really should have told her he planned to fly off the back of the mountain. Number two was going public before a couple of practice sessions.

  Stanley passed through a hot and mysteriously fragrant pocket of air. In the newspaper, or perhaps in a book, Stanley had read that when people jump off buildings they die of fear before they land. He questioned the science of this. How could scientists know such things, unless they had hooked monitors to a volunteer?

  Stanley was falling faster than he imagined possible, and he was not afraid. He experienced a more potent, ecstatic, and comprehensive version of empathy–not only for Frieda and his new friends but for Asian restaurateurs and nasty teenagers and his son in New York City. He thought, for the first time, that he understood Charles.