Problems with People (7 page)

His map, he soon found, was misleading. He wanted, first, to get to the Ring Road—a straight shot, according to Google—but in truth the indicated route, beyond the immediate pale of his hotel, was a maze of muddy alleys full of flies, dog shit, mangy curs, garbage, and—most immediate of all—poor people. The area was called Boudhanath, and according to his guidebook it was full of Buddhist monasteries. Sure enough, he saw monks walking around. The big point of interest in Boudhanath was its gargantuan stupa, which, according to the guidebook, contained relics of the Buddha. That explained the many shops—right now, all with metal roll-doors down—under signs indicating that they sold things for tourists, like Buddha figurines, prayer rugs, prayer flags,
incense, postcards, and thangka paintings. At the moment, though, they sold nothing, because of the strike. Instead of selling goods and wares, the merchants were sitting around, and so was everybody else, except for a few kids playing cricket in the street because—for once, he realized—there were no cars and trucks to stop them, except that on occasion someone blasted through on a motorcycle, taking, he supposed, a political chance. Young guys, reckless and cavalier, always with a passenger, sometimes two. As soon as they passed, things fell quiet again. It was a hot morning in early May—dogs asleep in the shade, garbage reeking. And beggars everywhere. Some were lame and sickly, immobile and imploring, but most were urchins who trotted along next to him, trying to look and sound more pathetic than they were. Not that they weren’t pathetic. Half naked, unwashed, they naturally and inevitably plucked at his heartstrings. But, still, he wished they wouldn’t tap his hip eight thousand times in a row while saying, “Sir, sir, money, money,” or otherwise, in their half-intelligible ways, pleading their insistent cases. He decided to pretend that these child-beggars didn’t exist, that he didn’t hear or see them, but this was even more infuriating, because it embroiled him now in self-examination, and in pondering the conclusion he was rapidly coming to—that you couldn’t win in a case like this. That, no matter what you did, you were wrong.

Beset this way, he came to the Ring Road. The Maoists had taken control of it, he could see, by clogging the intersection. In red shirts and bandannas, they milled with restless zeal, listening to a speaker exhort them through a bullhorn. Except for a few motorcycles, some oxcarts, bicyclists, water
trucks, and a couple of ambulances, the Ring Road was, for the moment, pedestrians only. In a way, that was lucky: he wouldn’t have to dodge traffic. Trying to look full of confidence, bold, he crossed it and pressed on toward the hospital. Now his way felt unimpeded. He’d left the tourist zone of Boudhanath behind, which meant fewer beggars, con men, and touts. Once, he saw an air-conditioned bus coming at him with a large sign on its windshield reading
TOURIST ONLY
, as if that were a talisman that could thwart tossed rocks. As far as he could tell, the sign was working. The bus seemed to have carte blanche, despite the strike. But then he saw that, behind the bus, there were two jeeps full of soldiers in blue camo fatigues. They had weapons in their hands and slung across their shoulders. On he walked, with sweaty duress, bulling past the frowns of red-shirted teen-agers, some of whom brandished long, thick staves. Troops had taken up positions. Some kept watch behind sandbagged outposts, while others stood or crouched in the shade, or bounced past in fast-moving, canopied carriers. Well, it wasn’t his business, whatever was going on. None of this had to do with him. But then he came to what his map called a river—mud, plastic bags, garbage, shit—and the road he was on became a bridge blocked by Maoists. Fortunately, they were letting pedestrians cross, except that, when
he
tried to cross, a caramel-skinned and gaunt, tense teen put a hand on his chest to check his progress. They stood like that, facing each other, the Maoist with his imposing stave, he with his sunscreen, water bottle, and hat. While other pedestrians passed in droves, the reality of his circumstances soon became clear to him: he had to go back, he couldn’t cross.

He retreated, but only by fifty yards—back to the first patch of shade he could find—and stood there, wondering if he should get out his wallet, produce a wad of Nepalese rupees, and try, again, to cross the bridge. He was considering this when someone tapped his hip—a boy a little older than the average child-beggar, whose English was coherent but far from perfect. “America,” he said. “Have a nice day?”

“No.”

“Yes,” said the boy. “Not as nice. And now, I clean your shoe.”

“No.”

“Yes, yes, please,” said the boy. “I clean.”

He looked at his shoes. Sure enough, as the boy had sought to suggest, there was copious dog shit on one of them. Yellow-brown, shiny, slick, and fresh, and smearing both the sole and the leather below the laces. “Great,” he said. “Dog shit.”

“I clean,” replied the boy. “Please.”

They were in front of a shop where, among other things, you could have gotten a vacuum cleaner repaired if there was no strike. It was closed, or nearly closed; the metal roll-door was open about two feet at the bottom to let air in on someone who, he could tell by the clink of tools, was working today. Here the boy pulled two plastic bags from his pocket. With one he made a clean place for his client to sit, spreading and smoothing the plastic fastidiously. Then, just as carefully, he removed the offensive shoe and, holding the shoeless foot up, set the other bag under it, and set the shoeless foot down on that. And so, via two bits of plastic produced from the boy’s
pocket, his pants seat and sock were buffered from contact with Kathmandu.

He watched. The boy appeared neither humiliated nor disgusted. With the point of a stick, he worked steadily on the dog shit while squatting with an enviable comfort and flexibility that, ubiquitous here, were rare in America. He also had an incredible head of hair, glossy, black, thick, neatly cut. And an unwrinkled, clean, short-sleeved rayon shirt. And clean shoes. And patience. And deft technique with a worn brush and a rag. And he was so thorough about cleaning the shoe that when he was finished there was absolutely no sign of dog shit. Not only that, the shoe looked better than it had for a long time—about the way it had when it came out of the box. Lacing it up, inspecting it, he was impressed by what this boy had accomplished with so little in the way of equipment or tools, impressed enough that he unlaced his other shoe and asked the boy to clean it, too. A deferential waggle of the head; two hands, as if the shoe were made of glass; the boy took the shoe with these signs of subservience and then, silently, moved his plastic protector under the newly shoeless foot. And so the second shoe was cleaned as well, with the same polish, efficiency, attentiveness to detail, and pride as the first. “How much do I owe you?” he asked the boy, who answered, while cleaning his hands by rubbing them together, “Twenty-five rupee.”

Twenty-five rupees—a little over thirty cents. “That’s a steal,” he said, and doled out a hundred. Strangely, the boy looked at it with graphic consternation—the way someone at home might look at a parking ticket. “Please,” said the boy. “I am taking one hundred rupee and I am bringing seventy-five rupee. Please,” he said again. “You are waiting.”

“No, no, no. At home that’s called a ‘tip.’ You get to keep the extra.”

The boy didn’t argue, but he didn’t go away, either. Instead, he began asking personal questions. What city? Bellevue, Washington. Is it near New York? No. What work? LASIK surgery. Lay-sa-lick sur-jur-ee? Helping people see better. How many childrens? Three children, all grown. What are their years? Twenty-six, twenty-four, and twenty-one—no grandchildren. Your wife, you have a peek-chur? No picture of my wife. The boy ran out of queries in this vein and began, instead, to float proper nouns—hopeful points of reference—terse utterances that were meant to provoke, from his American interlocutor, just what response? What was he supposed to say to someone who said to him, simply, “Michael Jackson”? Or “Liberty Statue”? Not knowing what to say, he asked the boy what he did when he wasn’t cleaning shoes. Answer: the shoe boy was a student of English, math, and computer programming, but there was no school today, because of the strike. The teachers were either supporters or intimidated. This morning they were either thwarting students who tried to attend or letting them in furtively. A teacher had let the shoe boy through the door, so that he might make solitary use of a computer. But then the teacher had gotten nervous and kicked him out.

“Okay,” he said. “So now what?”

“Now,” said the boy, “I help you walk.”

“What?”

“We go,” said the boy. “This way.”

They used alleys that weren’t shown on his map and, around two bends, crossed the “river” on a footbridge of well-traveled pallets planted in a wallow. Then, having detoured, they
returned to the main road, well out of sight of the Maoist blockade. “Good one,” he told the boy. “Great.”

He thought about doling out another hundred rupees. Two hundred rupees? He was in the midst of such deliberations when the boy touched his arm and called his attention to a man with a rag around his head. “Shoe man,” the boy said. “He have? He have the shoe box.”

“Shoe box?”

“Everything shoe box.”

He looked. The man with the rag around his head had in front of him a rather elaborate-looking shoe-cleaning kit full of brushes, sticks, wires, polishes, rubs, rags, waxes, and oils. It was built like a large suitcase, foldable, with a strap. A clever contraption that made his business portable. He could easily purvey services and take it home with him each night.

“Looks convenient,” he said to the boy. “But you’re better than he is without any ‘shoe box.’ You’re a shoe-shining fool, man, when it comes right down to it.” This seemed the right time to reach for his wallet, and as he did so he added, feeling a little jaunty, “It’s early and you don’t have school today. What will you do with your temporary freedom? Shine shoes? Homework? What’s up?”

The boy replied that he was going home to his mother, two sisters, and two younger brothers, but not to his father, because his father was in their village in India while the boy and his mother and siblings were in Kathmandu. His father, he explained, couldn’t come with them, because he had a job making bricks in Bihar. Then the boy pointed down a hill to their left. In a field of rubble and garbage, beyond which stood
buildings that looked bombed out, was a camp where people lived under tarps, plastic, and cardboard. “I am there,” he said. “My family.”

So this was the boy’s turnoff. That’s what he was saying. He was saying that it was time for them to part. And this was fine, since, in his opinion, now was the time to do so. “Goodbye,” he said, but the boy replied, “You are meet my family, please. Sit down, drink a tea. Please, you come.”

“No.”

“Tea,” said the boy.

“I don’t want tea.”

“Please,” said the boy. “You greet my mother.”

“Sorry. No.”

“Please,” said the boy. “You buy me the shoe box.”

“How much is a shoe box?”

“Please, you have give me seven thousand rupee. For—”

“Jesus,” he said, because, in the end, this was about something like eighty-five dollars and not about anything else. Which was too bad, because, until now, the episode had been affecting. He’d even imagined, in its midst, how he might speak of it in glowing terms when he returned home, how he would describe it as a positive experience to his kids and associates, how he would refer to it with his nurse and receptionist. But not now, because what had seemed so positive had swiftly collapsed. It had gotten entangling, irritating, difficult. “Look,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed our meeting. You did a great job with the shoes and the route finding. But, sorry, I have to move on now. So okay. So long. Thanks.”

Yet the boy stayed at his side as he walked—at a faster, all-business,
I’m-done-with-you pace—saying, repeatedly, “You buy me shoe box.”

“Go home,” he shouted finally. “I mean it, now. Shoo!” He waved a hand menacingly. “Go on, get out of here. Vamoose!”

For a half-second he gleaned, in the boy’s face, disappointment. But then, this kid was going to get over it quickly. He was obviously indefatigable, irrepressible, and intrepid; he was young, optimistic, and a budding entrepreneur who’d recover his confidence and equilibrium. A wonderfully handsome kid, in his way, with skin as perfect as his hair; he had the whole package, he was going places, at least by Nepal’s standards. But right now, transparently, he was covering a wound, trying to conceal it from an American who could, for his part, tell what the kid was thinking. He was thinking he didn’t deserve this dismissal. He was thinking this American was angry with him. But the American in question wasn’t angry at all; it was more that he no longer had patience for the shoe-box insistence. He had things to do; he had to get moving. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not buying you a shoe box.” Then he dug out his wallet and showed the boy a thousand rupees. “But here’s a start,” he added.

Without waiting for a response, he put the money in the boy’s hand, then wheeled away quickly and, without looking back, went on toward the hospital.

His ex-wife was watching the strike on television—on the television he’d rented for her, the day he’d arrived, without asking her or saying a word about it: a television as his unspoken
gift—and sweating beneath a large ceiling fan. She looked better than she had the afternoon before—less peaked, yellow, black-and-blue, but not less glazed by pain meds. Despite everything—the green hospital gown, the swollen cheeks, the greasy hair, and the gauze taped over one ear—she still looked good to him, and he was still attracted to her style and manner: to her attitude, he supposed was how to put it, or to her ambience, maybe. To the feeling she communicated. To whatever it was that had brought him to her in the first place, when they were both just twenty-three. Here she was in her ravaged condition, trashed and battered, bruised, stitched, and trussed, and he still felt the same tone and tenor of attraction. Soon after they’d met, they’d become caretakers on a tree farm; mornings, there was frost on the inside of their cabin windows, and as a result, they’d alternated—one morning, he would get the fire going in the woodstove before jumping back in bed to wait with her for the temperature to rise, and the next morning, it was her turn to light the fire. It hadn’t mattered, to him, whose morning it was, and he still felt the same at Patan Hospital.