JOHN CONNELL

The Green One

Being a selection from:

The Book of Kanthaka

The life of the Buddha from the view of Kanthaka, his old discarded horse

I.

            I am high up in the stony mountain. There’s nothing to eat but bitter red flowers and sour yellow flowers and the bark of the bent little pine trees. And then, in the wet arroyo bottoms, there is lanky grass in every rock-crack. And right at the brim of the snowcap, multitudes of purple gentian. The great horsemallow plant is there, a strengthener of mares, huge——haul out the root! . . . I am sad, but insides full of root . . . going to a sweet lull . . . I sleep with the big mountains before me.

            Going up: a suave continuous snow. Spruce tree is black on this long downglow—and whittled and cloud-eaten as a foggy rain slips around. And I stand against the snow face that hides soon in the spit and fuming up there. . . . I dream. I quake with sad memory, but mercifully every terrible thing is dressed as a sunflower.

            There, up the slope through swoops and curves: long-haired old tired rain, comes the Speck . . . slip, slop leaping down,—this mad glorying in the inclemency there,—as it draws near, I see it is a green-bodied creature and it’s got green unattended hairs, like a Yeti crown; a brain-cap like your Alpine pasture top. And it sports a male member like a homo erectus. And it gangles stark-naked like the Sadhus. But painted so glowing green in the storm-glooming there, it’s like the big asparagus-forked guy who comes creepin’ upon your misty meadow at dark of moon and pokes it in the young mare and makes bellyache and swelling there. . . . And here it comes. The He, all green like potato left out to turn. And him with eyes bright; dark eyes under thick green brows. And the top hair all nested with seasons of neglect. . . . As it drew close, I snorted and pawed. But still, but still, whatever vegetable thing it had accomplished, the close-up whiff of it said Man. . . . And so it was.        

            And yet this lonesome thing could talk to me: through his mind. He was just a man very long alone and his green color came from his solitary diet of nettles: as he explained it: nettle soup, nettle pudding, nettle dessert, nettle beer, nettle nettle nettle sandwich, and nettle medicine when sickness fell. . . . My nettle nettle nettle man was very very very kind and green as a cowslip bud. From a distance he looks grotesque, but demystify your eye and there is a simple, straight forward frank-speaking thing . . . who walks so free and natural you’d think he was the Bear of Innesfree on the joyful glacier of Could-It-Be . . . maybe not eat so much these mallowleafs . . .

            “My storm-soft thing,” said the man, said the green man. “What brings you to the yogi’s penthouse. I run in fear, my walking, eloquent snowpea. —From what do you, soft resplendent one?”

            “From a lot of slaughter and bad dreams,” I say. “The elephants they murdered and my lord ensnared and pure asshole Devaditta, may his head be stomped and bust open for good.”

            “You mustn’t speak like that.”

            “I’ve gone up and up eating the bitter rattlesnake weed and sharptasting pine bark and come to here when I saw the Green One sliding down through the rain. . . . And I see the Green One is at worst a kindly idiot—”

            “—and at best?” says the green man.  

            “At best my Green, at best my Green, you’re a cucumber well-brined in ecstasy, well trained in tolerance, used to the most unusual, toughened to the toughest weathers. You’ve got your man-thing on and you look terrible but you’re very near a godling, I would say.”

            “Flattering mare, you shake with the sleet up here. Come, come to my cave. . . .”

            And we plodded up the slope, the Green One leading. I feared the clear tracks in eternal snow, but the Green One said the sleet and lapping mist would wipe them clean.

That night I slept in the black hole while the Green One, rigid against the swatting storm, meditated all night at the cave front. I thought he guarded me from harm.

Once I heard him yell out and imprecate against some unseen demon adversary. When morning came, fog wadded the cave mouth and through that a sopping light came.

“Ah, glorious day,” sang the green man. And he had a charming voice, but deep, not like that of Tiny Moynihan at all.

This was a lord of high altitude all right. . . .

“Presently, I will find fodder for thee,” he said to me. “Horsenettle pie,” he laughed,—in circumstances so lacking in promise he laughed very wonderfully. . . . “Neigh, neigh,” he said, “for you the very juiciest meadow-veg,” he said.

But just then they came, just daubs of fibrous shade . . . but I knew them there from the dark. I stepped back and back in the cave. . . . The Green One sat at the mouth. Two dacoits clumsily riding two of my lord Siddhartha’s pack mules were coming up the slope. They rode up very close to the green man before they saw him. . . .               

They screamed out together. They plunged into the snow, trying to hide their faces. “Kill it,” said one. Their mules had bolted and run.

“Kill it, a bhuta sits there with ravening red fangs.”

One of the dacoits drew his dagger and, shaking badly, came forward.

The green man speaks: “No, no, no my good friends. Kill it if you will, its heart is here, its throat is here, its tender belly here—long used to sparest things. Gladly would it take your sharp knives, but the driver of that dagger should think twice . . . lest retribution from the gods ensue.”

And the green man raised his hand eloquently towards the fog all around:

“What witnesses we have here, what hospital hours in soft sheets we got up here, what fog maidens like soft romances we got all around, what white-bearded wisdoms we got for witnesses. Be careful my friend, lest the casual act bring the long-drawn blame. Beware my snowghost, lest thy crawling upward bring a horrible fall.”

And the Green One stood stretching himself, and the dacoit tumbled backward, rolling downhill.      

            “A talking bhuta,” said the second dacoit, “we must capture it.”

            The first dacoit crawled up back toward the cave mouth where the Green One stood, nibbled by the growing light . . .

            “We shall take you, Green One,” said the first man.

            And the second says: “Hahahahahahahaha, have you seen a horse in the neighbourhood . . . ?”

            “A horse on a snowfield, you’re kidding,” said the Green One.

            “Listen—the tracks lead here, right here. Are you the horse?” said the first.

            “I could be,” said the Green One. “It’s not impossible.”

            “But the horse was a mare, and you’re a he-drip,” said the first.

            “Now don’t get smart wit’ me, punk. I can have you laid out here and gutted in fifteen seconds.”

            “Did you say that?”

            “Are you kidding?”

            “You are rare, my Green One. The boss would like you.”

            “Some day the boss will meet me,” said the Green One: sort of disconcerting, the way he intones it. . . . As I say, the Green One has a beautiful voice. A sanity is making its way towards the world through his voice: out of the moss-draped stick he calls a location . . .

            “Oh my friends, come take me,” says the Green One. “I welcome thy warm embrace.”

The dacoits shook.

“Well, we want the horse. We know she’s in there.”

“Well, come in then and look around,” said the green man, and he stood aside.

It was clearing now and the light crept in and almost touched me and the dacoits with their daggers drawn came in. The green man was quite tall and well made—taller than the dacoits and it was obvious they feared him . . . but they came in. They imagined their heredity made them do it. I stood stock still.

“Here and here. Hoof-marks in the soft cave dust,” says one.

“And here again,” says the other.

They come on back.

“How deep is this cave?” says one to the green man.

“Who knows,” he says. “I just use the forefront here. I like the view. . . . It may go very deep. It may drop into chambers down below. . . . Let me kindle a firelight. I would hate for you to fall down a thor-hole or something. I would have no way to aid you.”

“Yes, yes, would you—could you light a firebrand for us?”     

“With pleasure, real pleasure.”

The dacoits were right there. Had they reached out, either of them, they would have touched me.

“Come my brave explorers,” said the Green One. “Come over here and I’ll kindle you a memorable blaze.”

And the Green One grabbed hold of his member and pissed a blazing stream of fire. The cave floor poured molten for a moment (aiyeeaiyeeaiyeeaiyeeaiyee).

The dacoits had had it now. They ran into the gauzy snow day. They ran and tumbled and grew tiny and disappeared.

The Green One laughed pleasantly. “Heat yoga,” he said to me. “Just a cheap trick.”

II.

How could I stay with the Green One so long? . . . He was just such a lovely man, that’s all.

He went out and foraged for me and brought back precious grass by handful and handful. When we had both assured ourselves that no one else would come for me, we said goodbye. The Green One made me a nettle pie goodbye cake and we parted. . . . The Green One cried like a horse. . . . My Green One, my Green One. Someday, come down to this world of dust and scatter the darkness here.

And, my lord Buddha, may you meet the Green One.

The months have passed: I go down. Long now, long now there’s no milk in me. I vow never to get pregnant again. I love the Green One. I love my lord wherever he is. My colt I love and I love this valley. . . . A grin in granite cheeks smiling up it is. . . .  And still I am up here. Come over the snowpass and now down and now a trail, a place where men traverse the glacier. But so high. How can they breathe. . . . I come on down and presently I pass a yak train on the trail and presently I pass the bearers burdened down and grim, so far along in the day. . . . They’ll sleep on the glacier. The deepest cold will marry into the pith of them. . . . And they will die. . . . I know this. . . . I go on down. It’s getting spring. It’s getting downright toward the spring-side edge of summer. The girls in the hillside villages wear sleeveless blouses. The young men just stand around in the puddles. . . . I go down into the valley. No one stops me. They all seem charmed. . . . I don’t know myself, am I wearing golden bells still? With rich tasselled horsey-clothes? . . . I doubt it. The winter has eaten these things I hope. . . . I just go on.

The valley is so wonderful. The juiciest herbage is everywhere offered. I don’t want to get sick. I take it easy.

The fields are planted down here and well-sprouted. The people live in separated farmsteads, not bunched in villages like where I come from. . . . There’s a two-story mud-plaster house by the road. . . . A young girl comes out and stares at me and smiles: so extraordinary. . . . I must kiss her cheek. . . . I do. . . . And she kisses my vast lips.

“Oh darling,” I am saying. . . . She has the big eyes too. . . .

Suddenly she is up on my back. I am after all still saddled after all this time and golden bells are ringing in my ears. I long for the snowfields and the Green One then,—for a moment only. —She is riding me like a real horsewoman though a small one. What do you think? I respond. I’m trained to live for this. . . . Wisdom and duty, is there a conflict? Consult your Bhagavad Gita. . . .

We’re posting right down the high country mud-puddle road. . . . Oh, jeez, here comes a swaying clutch of chanting monks. This ecclesiastica ain’t never gonna let up. We canter on past and they turn and gawk. Yes, I am Kanthaka, a part of your future. You ain’t never gonna see this sight again, you puritanical suckers. . . .

“What is your name darling?” whispers the girl in my ear.

How can I tell her?

Finally I slow down.

“I’ll call you Canticle III,” she says then.

“Please call me nothing,” I say.

But she’s saying it over and over: “Canticle III. Canticle III.”

It sounds so cheap, but she is such a warm, sincere girl. . . . When she takes me home, father decides I shall be a plow horse. Father decides he’ll breed me with the blue hell-stallion of Isfahan. But I’ll have none of it. I do the plowing, though, and think of the snowfields and imagine my lord Siddartha. . . . How can he be? . . . Maybe he just goes home and says, “Poppa, a slight mistake,” and takes to his former splendour. . . . I doubt it. I know it ain’t so. And I know he lives. He’s been right down on me and I feel him still.

. . . This valley is all shining harvest grain now. . . . And the Green One. . . . The Green One. . . . Down here they talk of a Green One too, but as a long-transfigured one who just chlorophylls away one day . . . pleasantly immortal on green Avolokitesvara’s right hand. . . . But the Green One is just a middle-aged man . . . and he is lovely. . . .