“So are you. So are half the people out here. We’re circling the drain as slowly, as far out, as we can get.”
“That’s true. Fine. Very true. But I’ve never seen anyone do what you do. You practice. You perform. You sleep. You sit here with your evil camel. That’s neither life nor afterlife.”
“It’s my business.”
He stopped flexing his fingers in the sand.
Akram went into town by himself.
—
The next day, some newcomers came riding into town, making their way through the bazaar on elephants.
“Elephants,” said Milo to Akram.
“Elephants, indeed!” said Akram. “Magnificent creatures! Have you ever been an elephant? I have. Once, back when—”
Milo had a certain look in his eye.
“Milo,” said Akram. “No.”
But Milo was already approaching the first and largest of the new arrivals. A wonderful animal, draped in jeweled cloth, with painted tusks and a howdah full of well-dressed nomads on its back.
He began talking pleasantly to the people up in the howdah, and they seemed to be amused by what he was saying.
“Milo!” barked Akram, stepping up beside him. “No!”
“You did it.”
Akram twiddled his thumbs.
“I may have, and I may not have,” he said.
“It’s in your book.”
“Lots of things are in my book. It’s just a book.”
The nomads climbed down, and Milo stepped under the elephant.
“God is good,” said Akram, “and protective of fools.”
It didn’t work.
Milo trembled, pushing up against the elephant’s belly. Every muscle in his body—and these had grown to be considerable—vibrated visibly, but the trouble seemed to be that there was nothing, really, to push against. The elephant grunted. It didn’t seem put out; if anything, it seemed to want to help, if it could only discern what this strange, eerily focused two-legs wanted.
But some things are impossible. There are limits and absolutes.
Akram drew a circle in the dust with one sandal. Maybe this was the sort of lesson his friend needed. Maybe afterward they’d ride out of town, go someplace else for a while.
Then the back end of the elephant rose into the air, just a little.
“Ooh!” gasped the crowd.
The elephant made a slight trumpeting noise.
A long second later, the front feet left the ground, as well.
Complete, stunned silence.
It didn’t last long, and the elephant didn’t go very high. Maybe a couple of inches. But it was an undeniable, visible fact that, for an instant, there was a man holding an elephant in the air.
With an exhausted “whuff!” Milo fell to his knees, the elephant landed daintily, and the crowd shouted and hurled money.
Akram bolted into the street, nudged the elephant aside, and helped Milo to his feet.
Milo wouldn’t stay on his feet, though. He got about halfway up and then sank like a ship.
“I think I broke myself,” he whispered.
“What did you expect?”
“I expected to lift the elephant. And I did.”
Akram lifted Milo over one shoulder, fireman-style, and carried him out of town.
“It’s hardly juggling,” he said.
“Save it for your book,” said Milo, and passed out.
—
Milo slept.
Akram laid him out in his tent and checked on him now and then, stepping over Satan to do so.
The sleep became a coma. Maybe a half coma, because he woke now and then to drink water and even eat a little. But then he’d slip away again.
Time passed. Specifically, a week.
Then, in the middle of a cool, breezy night, the flap of Akram’s tent lifted, and Milo stood there in the dark.
Akram lit a candle.
Yes, it was Milo. Awake finally, and looking pretty good. A little slimmer, maybe, but overall good. At least that’s what Akram thought until he saw his friend’s eyes.
The eyes had already developed a strange, inward glow before the elephant. That glow had somehow intensified, as if stoked by a week’s worth of constant dreaming.
“I came in to say goodbye,” said Milo. “And to tell you I’m grateful.”
“Goodbye? Where—God is good, Milo!—where in hell do you think you’re going? You’re in no condition—”
“I am going off alone somewhere,” Milo interrupted, “to learn to juggle water.”
Outside, a breeze kicked up. Satan belched.
“Milo,” said Akram, “please listen. Water cannot be juggled. No, listen: The elephant was just a question of degree. It was heavy, but at least it had substance, something to hold and move…”
Akram fell into a helpless silence.
Milo said, “God is good,” and slipped out.
—
He spent a solid week riding Satan across the desert. Milo let the beast go where he liked. What difference did it make? He flexed his hands as they went. He juggled stones.
After a time, entirely by accident, Milo found himself at the same spring where he had first met Akram. The source of the clear river that led who knew where.
And there he stopped, and pitched his tent, and dipped his hands in the water.
—
Travelers who found him at his oasis called him the Juggling Hermit or the Staring Hermit or the Splashing Hermit or the Hermit with the Unholy Camel, depending.
If they were lucky, nomads discovered him in a relatively expansive mood, juggling nuts or rocks or mudballs. He might even put on a show for them, juggling anything they tossed his way. Other times, they might find him sitting at the very edge of the water, staring down without blinking. Not at his reflection, it seemed, but at something deep and invisible.
Sometimes they found him splashing in the water like a child, although he seemed not the slightest bit embarrassed to be caught out. In any event, he was always gracious and welcoming, if somewhat withdrawn. His camel, unfortunately, was off-putting, but you didn’t fault a man for that. Especially a holy man, which this specimen obviously was.
The stars circled, and the moon and sun passed overhead, and the desert rolled and changed.
One day, Milo was staring down into the water, trying not to see Suzie’s face, trying to see the secret thing in the water that would give it form, when a large traveler in a bright-green robe appeared from downriver. Masked in a tightly wound headdress. Leaning on a tall walking stick.
“Ah!” said this apparition, drawing near. “There you are!”
Milo looked up and blinked. Sometimes out here he saw things that proved not to be real.
The traveler was real. She unwound her headdress, knelt, and reached for him with big, fat, wonderful arms.
“Mama,” he rasped, and let her hold him.
—
He found food, and fetched her a cup from his tent, and warned his camel not to vomit at her. They sat and ate quietly, until the sun finished going down and she asked him, “Milo, what in the scarlet goddamn hell do you think you’re doing?”
He mumbled about juggling water.
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You can’t.”
“If I could, though,” he argued, “it would be an act of Perfection.”
Mama unwound her travel robes and waded into the water.
“Is that what this is about?” she asked, floating amid reflected stars. “Because it doesn’t count in the afterlife, you know. You know?”
Milo said he supposed he knew that.