Garden of Dreams (10 page)

The man ruffled Ravi’s hair. ‘You know these tramps, boy?’

Ravi’s eyes stared at them like a shell-shocked war victim’s.

‘Ravi!’ Eli raised his voice as much as he dared. ‘Leave him!’

‘He doesn’t know you, you twit. Bugger off.’

If he hadn’t had a bag of stolen shoes in his arms, if the police weren’t possibly after him at that very moment, with the goondas either ahead of or behind them, if the girls weren’t with him – he might have acted differently. But he couldn’t risk a fight with this man. They had to get over the wall and down to the river.

‘Ravi, please …’ he tried once more.

Sanjana grabbed Eli’s arm, dragging him towards the wall and their escape route. He didn’t take his eyes off Ravi, standing there like a puppy, watching them while the fat queer stroked his head and smiled lewdly in triumph. That was the last Eli saw of him, as he leapt over the wall, cradling the bag of shoes and skidding down the dusty embankment to the shores of the sordid river.

Eli charged ahead through the long grass, feeling as if he could burn up, explode. He didn’t say a word to the girls, who followed him silently. They were fleeing, a herd of refugees. They had to keep moving. They had to leave the boy behind. Eli told himself this again and again.

Soon enough they returned to the city streets, taking side alleys to avoid the congestion in front of the Taj. The streets were still hectic here, though, with pedestrians, motorbikes, rickshaws and taxis all competing for a piece of the road. On the curb, in the street, aggressively negotiating the traffic, Eli headed for the train station.

‘Eli wait!’ Sanjana ran up to him, panting. ‘Where you taking us?’

‘We’ve got to get the next train out of here …’ People, police, would be after them for the shoes, and worse.

‘Why? And where we going? What about the shoes?’

‘We’ll sell them at the next place …’ He had no idea where that would be.

‘You silly, now, Eli. Let’s go back to the hijras and say bye and,’ she was reaching for something, ‘maybe they help with the shoes?’

Shanti and Deevyah had reappeared and the four of them leaned against a jewellery shop window to let the crowds flow past. Eli imagined re-entering the human current, getting swept away through the city and out of these girls’ lives forever. Girls who seemed willing to wait till their fate caught up with them.

‘No loitering!’ A heavyset middle-aged man in shiny black trousers and dingy long-sleeved white shirt waved his finger at them from the shop doorway. ‘You vagrants drive away business! Scoot! Scoot!’ The man flicked Eli a few times on his shoulder. ‘I’ll call the police!’

Sanjana led them away again as Eli took up the rear, giving the man the finger. He pushed his way through the crowd up to Sanjana’s side.

‘We should leave, Sanjana, really.’

‘Tomorrow morning OK.’

‘Now.’

‘We vote. Who wants now?’ None of the girls raised their hands. ‘OK then.’

Eli was tired and sweaty and thirsty, and had no idea where to take the shoes. Or the others. He had no idea where to go next, if it wasn’t to return to the kotha with the white birds. So he followed Sanjana and the others. When he thought about it, the girls were really strangers to him; he knew so little of their lives before G.B. Road. But compared to this circus around him, they were friends.

Back at the kotha the hijras fluttered around them again, made them some comforting veg curry and rotis and stuffed them full of burfi and other sweets.
Where’s Ravi?
they asked, of course. When Eli told them, taut with remorse, the hijras surrounded him, stroking his hair and encircling him with their arms. Fate, the explanation again.

That night in the kotha’s pantry Eli had the mattress the hijras had laid out for him and Ravi all to himself. It was a single mattress and hadn’t been big enough for the two of them; Ravi had spooned him to fit on. Lying there alone, he heard rats jumping among the tins of rice and spices, and one gnawing a cardboard box. He wondered where the boy was now, what he was doing, what was being done to him.

After supper they had done puja for Ojal, said some prayers, lit some incense and laid marigolds at the small shrine in the lounge. The hijras even placed a few chapattis in a small dish on the floor. Afterwards, to Eli’s surprise, guru-ji had gone to the sideboard and presented him
with a small sandalwood box.
Here she is,
she’d said.
Her ashes must go to the Ganges
.
Not the usual hijra route to the afterlife, but what she wanted.
Perpetually discriminated against, she’d told them, hijras were generally buried with stones on their graves to prevent rebirth. Then guru-ji had produced a worn atlas and showed them on the map: the Ganga. Varanasi. Almost five hundred kilometres to the southeast.

So Ojal had determined where they would go. As he turned over and over on the mattress with its one threadbare sheet, in the windowless room full of rats, Eli thanked her for that. He thanked her for starting the fire, because he believed she did. He thanked her for her sacrifice, and for her warning. Auntie Lakshmi was a deadly bitch, and nothing would convince him that she had died in the fire. Even if she had, he could imagine her spirit rising from the ashes like some sinister dark phoenix, with an appetite for children.

The T-shirt was bagged and waiting on his desk. Inspector Gupta had trimmed off the edge he’d used to scrape cow shit off his Italian loafers. Not cricket, but who would know. There was still enough left of the singed scrap – the skull, top hat and roses – to make it identifiable, or not. He’d see what the father could do with it – a positive ID, or another useless fantasy from a disconsolate parent.

‘He’s here, Inspector.’ Hita had gained a few kilos and was looking almost edible, almost feminine in a pink shirtwaist dress and white flats. More jalebis were in order.

‘So show him in, my dear,’ Gupta said, deciding to hide the T-shirt in a desk drawer for dramatic effect. ‘And masala chai for two,
kripaya
.’

Gupta paced in front of his desk, excited or anxious or both, he wasn’t sure. He felt assured in his newly pressed khakis and jaunty beret, but this was a surface calm; deep in his throat he felt a growing constriction, as though a python had him. He prayed to god that this T-shirt was the boy’s, and that it wasn’t all that was left of him.

The man who entered his office was not the man he’d met five weeks ago. Not much thinner, but hugely diminished. He couldn’t have shrunk, but he seemed less tall, less imposing. His olive linen jacket – European chic – looked tired and his brown tie was skew; shirt and trousers looked day-old, and one shoelace of his what, Hush Puppies, was untied. His eyes were still kind but veiled in sadness and fatigue. He seemed to have more beard and less hair. It happened, the hair falling out, under extreme stress. Gupta was glad he still had so much that he had to slick it down with brilliantine every morning.

‘Good to see you again, Mr de Villiers,’ he said, motioning to the chair facing the desk and extending his hand. ‘You’re looking well.’

The irony wasn’t lost on De Villiers. He smiled and sank into the chair, grabbing its arms. The poor bastard had just got off the plane from Africa, and was finished. ‘What have you got for me, Inspector?’

‘A cup of tea, for starters.’ Gupta sat down in his oxblood wing chair on the other side of the desk. ‘You drink masala chai, I presume, living in Kathmandu? Though it’s not the same … we Indians like it spicier, I think?’

Hita entered as if on cue and served them both, De Villiers first, decanting the smells of cinnamon and ginger as she poured. De Villiers smiled at her, too.

‘Chin up, old chap!’ Gupta said, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the desk. ‘We may be making progress. I’ve been dying to share this with you, but couldn’t find you …’ He wrestled with the desk drawer where the T-shirt was stashed and finally opened it, almost tipping it out completely.

‘I was on leave – in Cape Town. My assistant finally managed to get through and delivered your message.’

‘No sign of your wife?’ De Villiers shook his head. Of course not. Gupta was quite sure she had done a runner, but wanted to humour the poor man. ‘We’ve put bulletins out all over the country, listed her on our Missing Persons website … I’m afraid nothing yet …

‘But look,’ he said, holding up the clear plastic bag like a naughty schoolboy who’d just stolen something precious from a mate. ‘What do you make of this?’

De Villiers took the bag and turned it over and over, pressing the plastic down against the cloth so he could see the design better. The roses, the top hat, the skull – oh yes, and the guns. He stared at it, like a long-lost relic that transported him back to an earlier time, obviously making associations but not disclosing them. Gupta shifted in his chair, uncrossed his legs, cleared his throat. More staring and silent fiddling with the bag.

‘Well?’ Gupta leaned forward. This wasn’t going according to plan.

‘It could be anyone’s.’ De Villiers looked at him gravely. Gupta knew the signs: the parent who didn’t dare to hope and turned to denial. ‘Though he is a Guns N’ Roses fan. Or he was …’

‘Was? What do you mean “was”? Have you given up on your son, De Villiers? I haven’t.’

‘I can’t say that it is his …’

‘Can you say that it is not?’ Gupta stood up and circled the desk to the front, leaning against it, his knees not far from De Villiers’ own.

The man now had his head in his hands, elbows in his lap, and seemed to be massaging his face. Then he looked up. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘Drink your tea please, Mr de Villiers,’ Gupta said, handing him his cup. ‘You’ve had a long journey.’ And you’re about to have an even longer one. ‘I found it amidst the charred remains of a kotha on G.B. Road, after last week’s fire.’

‘What else did you find?’

He knew what De Villiers meant. ‘Twenty-nine bodies, from five kothas altogether. None of them was your son.’

He’d told the man’s assistant very little on the phone, just get here chop-chop, he had a lead, perhaps a false one by the looks of it. At least the T-shirt. But Gupta wasn’t done yet, convinced that, as defeated as his visitor looked now, watching him blankly and smoothing wisps of hair over his balding crown, he could still prove to be of use. He was some bigwig with links to the political movers in Nepal, wasn’t he?

Gupta took a long sip of his chai and stood up again, circling around behind his guest, gripping the back of his chair. ‘We can help each other, De Villiers.’

‘How so?’ The man was sceptical, confused.

‘The kotha where I found this shirt – which could possibly be your son’s, couldn’t it? – belonged to the biggest bitch in Delhi, a scourge, a terror – Lakshmi Kapoor. Auntie Lakshmi, to those unfortunate enough to know her more … intimately.’

‘Who is she?’

Gupta moved around to the desk again, sitting on its edge and facing De Villiers. ‘Just the most infamous malkin – former prostitute, madam and now kotha owner – on G.B. Road. A child trafficker to boot. Works with a network of traffickers within the country, bringing in kids, mainly girls, from Nepal. You should know about that …’

‘We’ve been looking into it.’ Of course.

‘It’s been happening for decades, actually. Mostly Tamang girls from the country – they look exotic, almond eyes and all that. They were sex slaves for the Nepali royals in the old days. Maybe still are. Then somebody got the idea that they’d go down well – forgive the pun – across the border.’

‘Why don’t you arrest her, them – the traffickers?’ De Villiers had loosened his tie and looked even more undone.

‘Mr de Villiers, with all due respect – need you ask?’ He felt a twinge of impatience. ‘It’s the same in many places, I imagine. Prostitution itself is legal in India – soliciting in public, not. Human trafficking is of course completely against the law. But the cops either get paid off to ignore it or are in there as paying customers. The really scummy ones don’t even pay.
As for nailing the traffickers,’ he slicked his moustache down over his lip, ‘they’re like the Hydra. You cut off one head and dozens more appear. And I’m no Hercules, that’s for bloody sure.’

De Villiers looked slightly amused. ‘It’s that bad, then?’

‘Yes, it’s that bad.’

A brief silence fell between them, as though each contemplated the vastness of the problem, how in god’s name they would find one boy in the midst of this maelstrom of evil, find him alive. Gupta wondered if he could persuade this man to become his ally, to transform the search for his son into a much wider campaign.

‘You could help me, though.’ He folded his arms and waited for De Villiers to accept the challenge.

‘How so?’

‘I’ll go after Lakshmi and her connections from this end – and you come at them from the north, from your contacts in Nepal. Maybe we can find out where she’s sourcing her kids, expose the trafficking network between the two countries. We squeeze the bloody bitch from both ends. And, god willing, we find your son in the process.’

De Villiers looked dumbfounded. He rose stiffly from his chair and walked to the window, looking out at the non-stop traffic on the road below. People and cars and rickshaws all passing by as though none of this was happening, as though there was a logical order to the world and everyone did as they should and went where they were supposed to go. There was a harmonious logic to the traffic that even foreigners eventually observed – a yielding, a respect for others.

De Villiers looked at him again. ‘How exactly can I help?’

Gupta walked to the back of his desk again and struggled with another drawer. ‘As I say, I advance from the south, you from the north, and we trap her – them – in the middle. There are a few details to work out, of course. But are you in – or out?’

‘I’m in.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘Yes, I’ll do whatever I can.’

‘Good, then. Let’s start with this.’ Gupta fished in his drawer and finally found what he was looking for. He removed a wrinkled tan sheet of paper, a crude poster, and handed it to his guest. ‘I admit it’s a terrible photo, but surely you recognise him?’

De Villiers stared at the photograph, so blurry it seemed nineteenth-century, but the pain in his face showed that it registered. Of course the Hindi script would mean nothing to him.

‘We found that three days ago nailed to a tree at the end of G.B. Road, near Ajmeri Gate,’ Gupta said. ‘Give it back and I’ll read it to you.’ He thought he might have to grab it out of the poor man’s hands, but no.

‘“FIND THIS BOY! FAT REWARD OFFERED. DISCRETION ASSURED.” There’s also a phone number, so far untraceable. I tried the number several times but no dice – just a generic recording saying to try again later.’

‘And now?’ De Villiers looked deflated.

‘Now, my dear man,’ Gupta smiled, circling around De Villiers and slapping him on the back. ‘Now we know what to ask next.’

‘What?’

‘Who, pray tell, is looking for Eli – besides you and me?’

On the flight back to Kathmandu that afternoon, De Villiers drank five whiskies in two hours. He couldn’t bear to hope; he couldn’t bear to snuff out the little flicker, either.
He’s alive, we can probably conclude
, Gupta had said before they parted.
And we can also probably conclude that he’s headed north – to you. Given that his mother is …

Still missing.
He had filled it in.

Down below were the overheated Deccan plains, brown and sere, eventually giving way to the green of the Terai jungles; they had crossed the border. The mountains thrust up, snowy mammoths, on the horizon. Somewhere in-between, he had to believe, somewhere down there was his son.