Tiger Hills (56 page)

The car rounded a bend and the valley below came into view. The paddy was growing, a brilliant green fuzz over the soil. Herons skimmed the crab pools; all around, the emerald hills.

These are my roots,
Machu had said to her, when they had stood looking out over Coorg from the Bhagamandala peak. And
still
he had given her his land. She stared unhappily out of the window. Tiger Hills had always been Appu's. How had Nanju ever assumed it would go to him?

Like
breathing,
Nanju had said to her, that was what being at Tiger Hills felt like to him. Her normally reticent child had suddenly turned into a poet.

A heron took solitary wing, floating from the fields in a spool of purest white. Devi watched its flight, gripped by melancholy.

To love so fully, to be so completely immersed in someone or something, yes, that love ran deep; it could feel as natural as breathing. But what Nanju did not yet know was that there was a deeper dimension to such love. A rootedness brought alive only by loss.

“Love is breath, yes, but also what follows after, when all breath is done, when all that remains is silence. Love is water, yearning for the sea. It is the tree that must remain rooted while reaching for the sky. It is shadow, freighted with absence, the recesses where joy blossoms no more.

“Love is what endures, through the years, the bastard aftermath of a loss I cannot even mourn as my own.”

The car turned another bend. The heron soared, banked, flew on.

Chapter 37

A
ppu tilted his head and looked at the sky. Here in Berlin, the stars seemed distant, out-dazzled by the lights of the city.

There had been an air of suppressed excitement about Stassler all that evening. They had first met for drinks in the lobby of the Blue Velvet and had then proceeded to the cabaret. Midway through the evening, Stassler had leaned forward and whispered in Appu's ear. “You must come with me afterward.”

Appu gazed thoughtfully at him. Stassler's eyes had seemed to bulge even more than usual, a vein swelling on the side of his forehead. He shook his head, as he drew on his reefer, swallowing a mouthful of smoke. “Not tonight, Ellen is tired.”

“Not Ellen. Only you. You
must.
”

Despite himself, Appu was curious. He took another drag of the reefer, feeling his lungs expand. “And where are we going?”

“You must come” was all Stassler said again.

Appu was even more mystified at the end of the show when he realized Stassler had invited along only two others from their party: Henrik and Gustav, a flamboyant fashion plate of a couple, both with startlingly perfect skin. Henrik looked about them as they headed away from the Dormendstrasse and down one of the lesser-known alleys.

“So where is this dashing new club then, Jürgen?” he asked.

“Ahead,” Stassler mumbled.

“Well, slow down a little, won't you, my pretty?” Henrik said. “The heels on these shoes are entirely too high for such abuse.”

Gustav laughed gently, but Stassler said nothing and hurried along.

Appu ambled beside them, listening with only half an ear to Henrik prattle on about the show that evening. He looked dreamily about him, the reefers he had smoked all evening filling his lungs.
Such
lights there were in this city. Green … yellow … blue, red, orange, and colors he did not even know the names of, diffusing from the streetlamps and the cabarets, reflected from the earrings of the women—men?—who passed by. Appu raised a hand and it seemed translucent, the bones jointed in a webbing of color.

They walked on, turning down this alleyway and that. Appu noticed that the lights swirling about him were slowly dimming. Still they walked, down increasingly quieter streets. There were no clubs here—in fact, now that Appu thought about it, it was awfully deserted. They turned yet another corner, and he was filled with a fierce longing for another reefer.

“Stassler,” he began irritably, “where in God's name—” Then he saw them.

About fifty paces ahead, four or five figures were standing under an unlit streetlamp, waiting. Appu shook his head, trying to clear it. No, it was no mistake, those men in the shadows ahead were watching out for something.

“Stop,” he hissed. “I don't like this.”

Henrik and Gustav huddled together, suddenly nervous. “Stassler?”

“Come on!” Stassler cried then, his voice harsh. His hands flew in the air, beckoning to the waiting men. “Over here!”

Appu stood frozen as the figures peeled themselves from the shadows, one, two, another, then two more, and charged toward them. They were shouting something, but he couldn't make out their words. Henrik screamed in fright, or was it Gustav? The useless pattering of their heels as they tottered back up the street.

“Get them,” Stassler was screaming at Appu, his mouth twisted with hatred. “Don't let them get away.”

Appu raised his fists drunkenly, still not understanding, but the men were already streaming past him. He stood like that for an instant, fists bunched in front of him, then turned, watching, as if in a dream, as they overtook the two flamboyants. He saw them fall, Henrik-Gustav-Henrik, hard to tell who was who, a muddle of shrieking silk and velvet. The
tshack-tshack
sound of fists, marring that pampered skin. A picture floated into his head, of the goat meat that hung from hooks in the butcher's shop at Mercara. Great slabs of flesh, skinless, colored red and purple, such vivid colors, marbled with creamy veins of fat.
Tshack-tshack-tshack,
the sound of fists hitting skin, like meat being pounded.

They were screaming for help. “Dags!
Bitte Bitte, mein Gott, Bitte.
”

One of the men pulled out a vicious-looking trench and began laying into the figures. Stassler had run over as well, and was laughing as he kicked ferociously at the two shapes on the ground.

Still Appu stood frozen.

“Dags.”

The cry was feebler now. He could hear an awful crunch, bones being broken. A dark stain was spreading from the bodies, red, or black or maroon, he couldn't tell, seeping into the street.

Appu turned on his heel and
ran,
ran for his life, away from Stassler and the Hitler Youth.

He was shaking when he reached the Blue Velvet, the coins slipping through his fingers as he tried to tip the doorman. Ellen had fallen asleep. He sat trembling on the sofa and, uncorking the decanter of brandy, downed its contents.

Dags. Bitte, Dags.

He should have done something, he should have done
something.
He tilted the decanter to his throat again, but it was empty.
It was not your place. It was
not.
This is not your problem, this isn't your home.

He stared at Ellen, as if seeing her for the very first time. What was he doing here? He looked at the tautness of a thigh flung
across the bedclothes, the thin blue veins that lay in the hollow of a knee. How tawdry she seemed. So easily had.

He shut his eyes, willing away the horror of the evening, and Baby's face floated suddenly in his mind. Appu thought of his waiting fiancée, was reminded of the bone-jolting beauty of her. Pristine, so pure. The certainty that no man had ever feasted his eyes upon her thighs, that no man other than he ever would.

Dragging open his trunk, he began to pack, throwing in piles of smoking jackets, shoes, shirts, bow ties and felt hats, whatever came to hand.

Ellen awoke, startled by the noise. “Dags?” she asked woozily. “Dags?” she asked again, her voice now high with alarm. “What's going on? What … Where are you going?”

Her mascara had smudged along one cheek, giving her the look of a frightened clown. “Dags! Whatever is the matter? Why aren't you saying anything? Please, Dags,
where
are you going?”

“Home, darling,” Appu said, without even looking at her. “Home.”

Chapter 38

M
ist swam up the sides of the hills, blanketing the mourners. A three-legged stool had been placed in the center of the courtyard. It too was wreathed in gray. A brass plate rested upon the stool, heaped with raw rice harvested from the Nachimanda fields; atop the rice, the flame from a gleaming brass lamp flickered and dipped as if in time to the dirge. The drums beat slowly, wistfully, as the Poleya funeral dancers, arms entwined, undulated in a circle about the stool. Now appearing, now vanishing, treading in and out of the fog.

A reed mat had been woven by the village mat maker especially for the funeral. It had been laid upon the floor of the verandah, and the women of the house sat here, their hair unbound and hanging to their waists, yards of white muslin draped and knotted about their shoulders. Gravely, in time with the drums, the funeral singers sang the requiem.

You are ruined, Tayavva, ruined like never before

The loss you suffered, Tayavva

O! What a terrible loss

You are defeated, Tayavva, defeated like never before.

Devi sat as if carved from marble, barely, it seemed, even breathing.

Tukra kept pace with the drums. He seemed to dance instinctively,
not really listening to the throbbing beat. His face was contorted with grief, his features blurred and running into one another; whether this was from the mist or the film over her eyes, Devi was not certain.

He had insisted on dancing at the funeral, even though his wife had warned him it would not be easy on his knees. “You're old now; leave the funeral dance to the young,” she had counseled, but he had been adamant. “It's for Tayi,” he had wept, “Tayi.” He circled the lamp now, one step forward, one step back, the voices of the singers washing over the mourners and the somber hills.

Like the Lord's seven strings of gold beads

Snapped and scattered, Tayavva

So too you have snapped

Just as His looking glass

Slipped from his hand and shattered, Tayavva

O! So too are you shattered, Tayavva.

Devi stared at the corpse lying on the verandah. They had washed the body that morning and wrapped it in white. She had stoppered the nostrils, earlobes, and slack belly button with plugs of cotton; a gold sovereign gleamed from the center of the wide forehead.

Just as His golden needle

Broke at its eye, at its eye, Tayavva

O! So too are you broken, Tayavva.

Tayi was lying there.
Tayi.
Her Tayi. Gone. First Avvaiah, then Machu, then Appaiah, and now Tayi. A great weight settled on her, like a millstone rocking slowly upon her chest, constricting her lungs. Devi rose to her feet and stumbled into the house.

It lay quiet and deserted. The hearth would not be lit for eleven days after Tayi was … after the cremation. Devi stood facing the soot-darkened walls.

Devi kunyi. Flower bud! Here, a hot otti.
The high-pitched, care free sound of a child's laughter. She started, but it was nothing, nobody. Ghosts from the past.

A story, Tayi, tell me a story.

A story is it, my sun and moon? Well, let us see now…It is said that years ago, many, many years ago, before the Kaveri temple was built, when the mighty trees of the forest were still curled upon themselves in dormant seed, there was a great war. It was waged over a king's daughter, the most beautiful princess you ever did see. Yes, my flower bud, just like you.

Such a war was fought, the likes of which our people had never seen. When it was over, our brave lay unmoving upon the battlefield, their eyes open to the skies, and our queens had vanished into smoke. It is said that our people fled then, the few who remained, leaving behind the rocks and golden sands, stained now by pillage and carrion. And that when they left, there sounded an unearthly sigh, like a gust of cold wind. It traveled the length of the battlefield and blew past the smoldering remains of the fort, and the sky grew dark with cloud.

Far they traveled, down rivers, through the plains and steaming jungles, shadowed always by the sorrowing clouds, until at last they halted in wonder. Such a land lay before their eyes. A land of sparkling waters and shaded hills, a place of fruit and milk and honey. They stood there marveling, at the edge of the hills, when a maiden appeared before them. “Halt,” she said, and her voice was like the murmuring of a brook. She was Kaveri, she said, the caretaker of the hills, and none might pass without her command. She heard their story then, of the terrible war just waged, and she tilted her head, her tresses flowing like water.