The Atlas

TOO MANY GODS

They gave him parrotfish in brown rivers and he gave them white lotus flowers, purple lotus flowers; he transmuted fish into flowers. Girls and old ladies stood at the side of the road, holding out garlands for sale. They sold his flowers to him in the temples; he paid in good luck and deeds. Then he planted the flowers in the slit windows behind funnels in the stone. They grew into white towers with arches and statues. He planted the money plant in its pedestal in the courtyard. They gave him flowers, garlands and coconuts for offerings. But they were his flowers anyway. On the hillside his worshippers raised a stone phallus to him. He penetrated the faithful who lived slowly moving across their glistening fields, walking barefoot behind their water buffalo. Then the fields were fertile. At a distance suited to humility, rows of pickers and transplanters bent as if in prayer, but they were only taking from him again. Still he gave them cashew apples: red, yellow, green; gave them palm tree suns with green rays, gave them tiny black birds skittering over the swamp, houses tucked under palm trees. The hills of Goa were wrought with trees — mango, cashew, jackfruit, pineapple, and mango. Cashew liquor goes very good with Limca, they said, pleased. But they complained a little, because every year they had to change the roofs of their palm-leaf houses. — They wanted eternal leaves. If he'd given them those, then they would have wanted to be eternal, too. They wanted everything he had. They gnawed at his knowledge, paving nothing. But he couldn't help feeling pity for them. That was why he'd taught them how to fix things. To repair a bridge, they heated metal on wood fires which they'd started with dry coconut fronds. It was easy; he made it easy. His heart was bright green like a rice field.

Mango and bamboo went brown. Across the brown square fields, a woman came striding slowly in a red sari. She said to him that everyone was going to raise blue concrete crosses in front of their houses, because a porous arch had been exhaling the steam of Saint Francis Xavier's breath. Saint Francis Xavier was dead now, so he could not be contradicted. Everyone had decided to paint Jesus on the spare-tire covers of motorcycles.

He said no word. He stared at the woman in the red sari until she felt as tiny as a cashew fruit. She fled among the silvergreen palm-tree mango-tree hills.

He entered the town, and saw the Portuguese governors, plump, sweaty, with long black sickle moustaches, sitting wearily in their black and gold armor, which made their hips as big as women's. He shrank them down, but they were so far lost they didn't even notice it.

Saint Francis Xavier, dead under a roof of palm thatch; opened his eyes and saw him. There was already a halo around his head. Dappled, holding crucifix and rosary, Saint Francis Xavier said to him: They'll expose my body four times a year, on a bier of teak, resting on an angel's head!

He replied to Saint Francis Xavier: I'll be there. And I'll cover you back again, as a clean cat covers its shit.

He stared at Saint Francis Xavier, but Saint Francis didn't shrink. He was dead.

He went back to the black waterbuffalo wallowing in swamps. He saw his white churches, green trees. His arch still crowned a palm mountain.

His remaining worshippers gnawed him, like a cow nuzzling the side of a thatch house.

Houses went up, too, in the new town, roofed with red rusted tin. Churches went up. Saint Francis's church they built of porous lat-erite, its black brick arch rough like lava. Tall narrow windows capped old arches of the old black stone. Its roof-long timbers were parallel like those of a ship, then gold. The sun of Jesuit initials, I.H.S., un-derlooked two cherubs above; then beneath the sun, standing on a big gold pyramid (the child Jesus between his legs), stood Saint Ignatius with his hand raised, a silver crown upon his head, his belly plate widening like that of a beetle. He was bearded, radiant, distant.

And Saint Catherine's church, that was a white church, with a white dog, a big white arch, plaster behind hot cruciform. Inside, it was cool, white and gold. It was floored with gravestones. There were white summery muscles and tendons and arches on the ceiling. There were shell strips on her windows. She was shuttered with translucent shells.

He said: There are too many gods here now.

They gave him parrotfish in brown rivers and he gave them nothing. Girls and old ladies stood at the side of the road. They tried to sell his flowers to him in the temples, but he wouldn't buy them. They were his flowers anyway. On the hillside the angry worshippers knocked down the stone phallus. So he denied them cashew apples, palm tree suns, tiny black birds skittering over the swamp, houses tucked under palm trees. They stopped giving him anything. They stopped asking him for anything.

He walked the narrow tongue of beach, divided by palm trees from the bare ocean and the horizon-ridge of someday.

He paced among the slow vulture-shadows where the Moslems had once built a deep-moated fort. Trees grew on the walls. Grim black rocks. Shadows between the walls. Narrow windows. Turrets and sky. Night clouds like white stars. Gray trees. The smell of distance. The smell of dirt. A grasshopper. The feeling of an island. Dark gray water, light gray sky.