Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Rabbi Yesa said: Adam comes before every man at the moment he

is about to leave this life, in order to declare that the man is dying

not because of Adam’s sin, but on account of his own sins.

—read until his focus loosened and the lines of text divided into duplicates and floated on the page.

Half awake, he dreams himself coming to the colonel at the end: and the colonel says: You know there is a cycle of imagining and desire, desire and death, death and birth, birth and imagining. And we have been tempted into its mouth. And it has swallowed us.

He imagined the look in the colonel’s eyes as he witnessed Storm breaking a cycle just for the curiosity of breaking it.

He traveled the city not allowing himself to desire the women—their silk touching past him in tight aisles, on buses, in cafés.

On his fourth visit to Rajik, the Hindu gave Storm his answer, speaking again with an immense gentleness. “You cannot be healed. You are forbidden to hope for it. You cannot be saved.”

Four days after the hanging Storm took a deluxe bus with air-conditioning and even TV to the end of the line, the end of the highway itself, in Gerik, a sizable, complicated town of wooden structures and dirt streets. It was nighttime when he disembarked. He walked among the vendors’ tables in the square where the buses stopped.

Sands had been right: immediately Ju-shuan accosted him. A squat,

heavy man. He wore shorts, a large T-shirt. Walked crab-footed in his zoris. “Hey, Fm glad you came. Call me Mr. John, okay?” “Mr. John okay.” “Want massage? Want woman?” Storm said, “Do you have boy massage?” “Boy massage? Hah! Yes. You want boy?” “Is that too twisted for you, Johnny?” “Boy, girl, fine. Anything.” “Girl is fine.” “Girl massage, fine. You gonna stay at my hotel, okay? Two blocks.

You are American? Germany? Canada? Everybody stays at my place.” “Let me get some food.” “I got food in my café.” “Fm gonna get some fruit.” Storm went among the vendors’ tables. He bought a couple star

fruits. A mango. Johnny followed him. “You want coconut?” “I’m done.” “Then you can have some dinner, and then whatever you want. I get

you the lady for the massage.” “Dinner later. Woman first,” Storm told him. As they went into Johnny’s, he pointed out to Storm the establish

ment next door. “Don’t stay in that place,” he said. “Don’t go there. It’s a bad place.” It looked pretty much the same as Johnny’s.

Johnny put him in a room with a straw tatami on its wooden floor and a Muslim toilet with a rubber hose. “Wait one half hour,” Johnny told him.

“Don’t bring me one that doesn’t smile.” Johnny brought the girl in twenty minutes. “Smile,” he told her in English. “I think I know your friend,” he said to the girl when Johnny was

gone. “Mr. John is my friend.” “I think his name is Ju-shuan.” “I don’t know Ju-shuan. I never heard Ju-shuan.” She too was Chinese. Thick of flesh and friendly. She smelled of the

joss-house, of incense. Possibly on the way over she’d stopped to pray, or

to contribute. Not, he hoped, to consult the monks as to some ailment. “You seem sad,” he said. “Sad? No. Not sad.” “Then why don’t you smile?” She gave him a brief, sad smile. Later Storm ate out front of Johnny’s hotel at a small wooden table

under an awning, on the street itself, under a paper lantern, in a storm of moths and winged termites. He shared the table with a Malaysian man who tried to talk to him in

English. “Don’t bother me now, Maestro.” “Whatever you say. I’m all yours!” Except for the small lantern over their heads and a few dim-lit door

ways, all around them was darkness—damp, warm, stinking like breath.

Out of it materialized a skinny European, a young man with an angularity both boyish and plainly British, coming at them like a horror-film mummy, his belt cinched and his khakis puckered at the waist, the crown of his head wrapped in dirty bandages.

He sat down at the table and said, “Good evening. How can I get served?”

Johnny joined them and introduced himself and ordered food for the traveler and conversed in Malay with the other man until, after a while, the other man finished his tea and left. “He doesn’t know English. He is a relative from my wife,” Johnny explained. He urged on them more bowls of rice mixed with a green lemony weed and bits of shellfish, or crisp pork, Storm couldn’t tell which. “What happened to your head?” Johnny asked his new guest. ”You’re okay now, I hope.”

The young man had been going at his meal seriously, surrounded by whirling bugs. He stopped long enough to say, “Last week I was in Bangkok, just passing through, and I stepped into an open sewer.”

He went back to his eating. He ate everything. They always did. In the Colombian mountains Storm had once seen a Brit eat cattle tripe tenderized in kerosene, eat it like a starving man.

“Pitch-black. Walking along. Right into a concrete ditch. There wasn’t a lot of wonderful stuff in there, I might as well tell you. I’ve been monitoring my symptoms ever since.” He spoke mainly to Storm. “I fainted right in the guck, with an open gash in my head. At this minute I picture an invading horde of microbes assaulting my skull. I took myself to the nearest surgery in a cab and the young nurse told me, You should carry a small light with you wherever you go wandering. A small light. She told me when I came, and again when I left with a head full of stitches. Wherever you go wandering, take a small light. Sounds rather like a line from a musical play.”

Johnny said, “I can meet you to a healer. A woman. Massage. To heal you.”

“I like the Asians,” the Brit said. “As a general thing I find I like them quite a lot. They don’t play games the way we do. Of course, I mean, they do the same things we do, but they aren’t games. They’re simply there. They’re simply actions.”

“This your first visit?”

“But not my last. And you?”

“I’ve been in and out since the sixties.”

“Really. Impressive. In Malaysia, then?”

“Yeah. The general region.”

“What about Borneo? Have you been?”

“Borneo is not good,” Johnny said. “Don’t go there. It’s ridiculous.”

“I’ve got a torch now, you can bet. And it’s no small light. Look here.” He dug a small but hefty-looking flashlight from the pocket of his pants. “Bore a hole in your flesh.” He pointed it playfully at a little child hovering at the edge of the dark. “Bore a hole in your flesh with this one!”

“Please don’t give him any coins,” Johnny said.

“No, I wouldn’t,” the Brit assured him. “I’ve got too many friends in

this town as it is.” “You have a lot of friends here?” Johnny said. “I’m just playing a game,” the young man said. To Storm he re

marked, “You see? Mr. John doesn’t play games.” Johnny asked, “Are you a sightseer?” “I am when I haven’t got thirty stitches in my head.” “You are a sightseer. I can get you a guide to the forest tomorrow.” “Give me a rest. Two days and I’m ready for Kilimanjaro.” “What about you?” Storm asked Johnny. “Do you hire out as a guide?” “Sure, if you want,” Johnny said. “But we’ll go slow, and I can’t climb

the mountain. Just to visit the caves at the Jelai River. I’ll show you the

caves, and that’s all.” “That might work out.” “There is one small mountain we must pass.” “I’ll think about it.” “The mountain is nothing. It’s just more of the same thing—up, up,

up. Are you a sightseer? Maybe we’ll see an elephant.” “I said I’ll think about it.” The young man with stitches in his head said: “I met a missionary