Garden of Dreams (13 page)

Barely awake, she was late and running up the path to the schoolhouse. The children were still at their desks, watching her out the window, staying seated, unsmiling; normally they would have been waving through the glass or waiting outside. Margo was taking them to visit an Ayurvedic doctor and his garden of herbs and shrubs used in healing and massage. Soon they would be on the bus, wherever it was; her visit would cheer them up, as usual. But then she saw the shadow of a person coming towards her.

The heavy rusted door to the classroom opened slowly and revealed the nun, their teacher, the unpleasant, wizened, walnut-coloured woman, holding a ruler in one hand. In the other hand was an envelope, which the nun thrust towards her.

‘Take this,’ the nun said, filling the doorway. Her voice sounded spent, as though she’d already been yelling at the children. ‘From the Americans. Explain everything.’

‘What about the outing today?’ Margo took the envelope reluctantly.

‘No outing today. No more never. Not with you.’ The nun had spread her arms on either side, pushing against the doorframe like a giant cormorant drying its wings. ‘Americans don’t want you here. Children neither.’

Margo stepped back and looked in the windows again, trying to catch the glances of Chittaprasad or any of the other children. No one would look at her. Chittaprasad, in fact, had his head on his desk. Closest to the window, a little girl named Tanvi was crying.

‘I’ll be back, once I’ve looked at this,’ Margo said, feeling her resolve melting fast. Before she turned to go she saw the ruler being flicked against the nun’s thigh. ‘Damn you if you use that on any of them.’

‘You no good!’ the nun shouted after her. ‘You no good for children!’

Margo headed down the path, feeling the children’s eyes on her back, the nun’s hostility stinging. Away from the school, and down the beach, out of sight. She ripped open the envelope and, rising anger
clamping her throat, read the letter within. From
Roy and Paula Lighthouse, Anglican Mission, Vizhinjam.
Something about her services no longer being required, something about
inappropriate behaviour with some of the children, particularly one boy, Chittaprasad.
Inappropriate behaviour? She staggered down the beach, reading the letter over again, trying to decipher what that meant. Yes, sensing his loneliness, she had sometimes ruffled Chittaprasad’s hair, sometimes placed a comforting hand on his shoulder – just as she had with Eli, when he would let her. Nothing more. Nothing ‘inappropriate’, surely?

She read the letter again, willing the words to change.
Fuck the missionaries
.
Fuck the nun.
Weren’t these sanctimonious idiots blowing everything out of proportion? Or was this just one more sign that she didn’t know what she was doing any more – first losing her son, now this?

Her legs, almost on their own, took her towards the post office, to make a phone call. But to whom? Raj would never come get her. There would be tuk-tuks there at least, hanging out for a fare.

The post office was at least two kilometres away, on the other side of the harbour, so by the time she got there she was dripping sweat. Her pale gold, gauzy kurta pyjamas and sleeveless top were plastered against her skin, now almost as dark as the lighter locals. She’d tied an indigo scarf around her head and thought of taking it off, but reconsidered; her hair would be a sweaty disaster underneath. She had to look presentable, not like just another hippie, druggie dropout down from Kovalam. Even if that’s what she was.

It was an old-fashioned post office, one where you gave an attendant in a booth the number and then went to a wall phone to wait for your call to be put through. Wooden phone boxes, old handsets. Straight wooden benches filled with at least two dozen villagers in lungis and saris, barefoot, farmers and fishermen come to town to make a regular call, perhaps, or maybe an emergency one. One middle-aged woman in a bright green sari sobbed into the shoulder of the man next to her, who kept jiggling her slightly, shushing her. Margo stepped over several pairs of dirty feet to join the queue for the operator.

When she got to the head of the queue, still in a daze, she gave him a number and went to wait near one phone box, under the swoosh of a creaky ceiling fan. She stared at the dusty black handset and imagined it soon delivering Anton’s voice. How far away he was, more than a subcontinent. She imagined his office overlooking Durbar Square; she’d never been there. Yes, she was meant to have gone with Eli. In another lifetime.

She waited for the signals to connect and, when the phone rang on the wall in front of her, lifted the receiver and waited for Anton’s baritone. The South African accent she’d always loved, not too pronounced. But she got a sterile, nationless voice instead:
The subscriber you have dialled is unavailable. Try again later.

Try again later. But when?

She’d missed him now and would probably miss him the next time she called. How many times in life do people just miss connecting? Jder the swoosh of a creaky ceiling fan. She stared at the dusty black handset and imagined it soon delivering Anton’s voice. How far away he was, more than a subcontinent. She imagined his office overlooking Durbar Square; she’d never been there. Yes, she was meant to have gone with Eli. In another lifetime.

She waited for the signals to connect and, when the phone rang on the wall in front of her, lifted the receiver and waited for Anton’s baritone. The South African accent she’d always loved, not too pronounced. But she got a sterile, nationless voice instead:
The subscriber you have dialled is unavailable. Try again later.

Try again later. But when?

She’d missed him now and would probably miss him the next time she called. How many times in life do people just miss connecting? Jder the swoosh of a creaky ceiling fan. She stared at the dusty black handset and imagined it soon delivering Anton’s voice. How far away he was, more than a subcontinent. She imagined his office overlooking Durbar Square; she’d never been there. Yes, she was meant to have gone with Eli. In another lifetime.

She waited for the signals to connect and, when the phone rang on the wall in front of her, lifted the receiver and waited for Anton’s baritone. The South African accent she’d always loved, not too pronounced. But she got a sterile, nationless voice instead:
The subscriber you have dialled is unavailable. Try again later.

Try again later. But when?

She’d missed him now and would probably miss him the next time she called. How many times in life do people just miss connecting? Jder the swoosh of a creaky ceiling fan. She stared at the dusty black handset and imagined it soon delivering Anton’s voice. How far away he was, more than a subcontinent. She imagined his office overlooking Durbar Square; she’d never been there. Yes, she was meant to have gone with Eli. In another lifetime.

She waited for the signals to connect and, when the phone rang on the wall in front of her, lifted the receiver and waited for Anton’s baritone. The South African accent she’d always loved, not too pronounced. But she got a sterile, nationless voice instead:
The subscriber you have dialled is unavailable. Try again later.

Try again later. But when?

She’d missed him now and would probably miss him the next time she called. How many times in life do people just miss connecting? Jder the swoosh of a creaky ceiling fan. She stared at the dusty black handset and imagined it soon delivering Anton’s voice. How far away he was, more than a subcontinent. She imagined his office overlooking Durbar Square; she’d never been there. Yes, she was meant to have gone with Eli. In another lifetime.

She wai

When he woke the next morning to the bothersome cries of crows in the trees, Shanti and Deevyah had gone to the temple. As the crimson sun rose from the river, rousing the beggars around them, only the heap that was Sanjana lay next to him, under her fading pink shawl. Her dirty feet stuck out from one end and he marvelled that the tiny red stone in the toe ring, not possibly a ruby, still sparkled. He thought he should wake her, to go help the other girls with the temple garlands, but she was coughing badly, wracking her body. He reached out and gently massaged her back, hoping to let her dream a while longer.

What are your dreams?
she had asked him once, back at the kotha.

That was easy, at the time. To be a guitar hero, a real rock superstar. Not another Slash but something like him, without the drugs. And – should he say it? To have a whole family, not just a part of one.

Becoming a kickass guitarist seemed much more likely, then.

I want to help girls like me,
she had said.
Whose lives have been very hurt.

Would they get there?

Like a corpse come back to life, Sanjana turned, stripped off her shawl and sat up. ‘You! Don’t touch!’

‘You were coughing …’

‘You can’t have anybody you want.’ Her almond eyes looked murderous.

‘What are you talking about?’

Sanjana just sat there, arms crossed, legs crossed, staring towards the river. He felt steam rising from her body.

‘What are you talking about?’ he repeated.

‘Just go to work. Maybe you meet another girl today.’

Katya. She must have seen them together. It was nothing and he didn’t want to talk about it, especially what happened at the backpackers’.

Sanjana eyed him up and down as he knelt to roll up his bedding, then huffed, ‘You don’t want to see what we find?’

Impossible. What he liked most about Sanjana, her tenaciousness, often irritated him too.

He stood to gain the advantage. ‘OK, what? What is it?’

She reached under her butt, under her blanket, and pulled out a rumpled sheet of newspaper.

It was in Hindi, script his eye was getting used to but still couldn’t comprehend, strange, bursting flowers on the page. But five photographs needed no translation. Four smaller ones, mug shots, of Ravi and the girls. One large one of him, taken where? His shoulders were bare and he wasn’t looking at the camera. It made him feel sick.

‘Where did you find this?’ He gave the newspaper back to Sanjana, who buried it beneath her again. ‘When?’

‘Yesterday, outside temple,’ she said, still not standing. Holding her ground. Lowering her voice. ‘They looking for us.’

‘Who?’

‘Police in Delhi. This says call this number at police headquarters. For information.’

‘
With
information.’

‘Shhhh! People are looking.’

It was true. Three beggar women in tattered saris and large nose rings, like bulls, he thought, were staring as they sorted through their tins of rice on a filthy sheet. Even the beggar’s monkey was looking at them intently.

‘Is there a reward?’ he asked. Maybe his parents had offered one. At last.

‘No reward,’ Sanjana said, sternly. ‘Now go work, so we can have money for leaving!’

Wary, he turned to go, but felt something ping off the back of his calf. A pair of black sunglasses, racy like a gangster’s, lay at his feet.

‘You wear those,’ Sanjana ordered. He didn’t ask where she got them.

No reward. As he walked towards the main ghat and Ashok’s boat, he wondered what his life was worth. And to whom it might be worth something. He obviously wasn’t worth a dime to all these strangers. Was he?

Ashok was onshore talking to some other boatmen when Eli arrived at Dashashwamedh Ghat. Waving. And when he got closer: ‘Who are you today, James Bond?’

‘Sorry I’m a bit late, Ashok.’ He wasn’t. Late or sorry.

‘For that you can go buy me some paan,
chutiya
.’ Ashok handed him a ragged ten-rupee note. ‘And hurry back! Bring customers!’

He headed towards a kiosk at the far end of the ghat, where a thick crowd was milling, pilgrims, sadhus, beggars, children, tourists, men in
pathan and grey Western suits. All elbowing and shoving to get a better look. At what?

Then he saw her, rising above the heads of the crowd like that Venus coming out of the shell. She must have been on a platform or something, because she stood above all of them, posing like a movie star, with cameras going off all around her, pro ones with long lenses. People were waving and trying to touch her, but several hunks, security no doubt, guarded the base of the platform or whatever she was standing on, like giant bees with their identical dark glasses. Ready to sting. The woman, Indian, with waves of black hair, gold lavished on her neck, ears and arms, and a white satin dress that shaped her like a mermaid, removed her own oversized sunglasses and seemed to look right at him. For a very long second. Then she turned back to the cameras.

He made his way around the periphery of the crowd, behind the famous woman, to the kiosk. People were backed up nearly this far, barefoot in soiled dhotis, all craning at the superstar.

‘It’s a
Filmfare
photo shoot,’ said the man in the kiosk, framed by its small window. Eli still didn’t know his name, but his little wire-rimmed glasses were like Gandhi’s. ‘Big star, that one. Good fun for her, obviously, showing off how filthy rich she is amidst all these who have nothing.’

‘What, you bring no one?’ Ashok shouted when he reached the boat and threw the paan to him. ‘Take those glasses off, I think you are scaring people.’

He removed his glasses, but the glare off the water made him put them on again. Ashok had tucked the paan into his cheeks, stuffing them like a squirrel. His mouth was so full he could barely talk. ‘Weev gut gustmers!’ he said, pointing in little circles behind him.

Before Eli could turn around something hard nosed his back. Something clicked. He’d seen enough movies to know it was the sound of a gun being cocked.

That was the last thing he could remember, the click of the gun, when he woke up sometime later, somewhere else. His head felt smashed, like a pumpkin split open by Halloween vandals. Near his left eye he felt a crust of dried blood. He was gagged and his hands and feet bound, cable-tied to a rickety wooden armchair, in a vaguely familiar, dim, empty room. They hadn’t blindfolded him, for some reason. Through the partially open window, even though it was several metres away, he could see a view he’d seen before. In the stark shadows of the late afternoon
sun, the tall, rust, conical towers of the buildings at Manikarnika. He was quite sure he was in the hospice.

If he was, he was not sure where, exactly, on which floor. Was anyone else in the building? Where was the old woman? Who had done this to him? And how did they get him away from the boat, from Ashok?

He started to drag the chair to the window, moving in fits and starts like an injured toad. When he stopped to rest for a moment, stinging from the plastic slicing into his wrists and ankles, he heard footsteps in the hallway. Then the door thrown open, banging against the wall. As he turned his head to see who had come for him, a fist whammed into the right side of his jaw, and the gag muffled his scream of pain.

‘You are going to talk to us now, fucker.’ Two men stood in front of him – them, the two men from the boat and the backpackers’ lodge. Still in their creamy pathan suits, shades, bushy black moustaches. They looked like twins, though one was a bit taller than the other. The shorter one had a long ugly scar on his neck, as though someone had tried to hack his head off.

The shorter, scarred one stepped forward and took the gag out of his mouth. His hands smelled like whisky.

‘Where are the girls you escaped with?’ the taller one asked. He seemed to be in charge. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to tell us.’

‘Who wants to know?’ It just came out.

A punch to his gut took his breath away. He would not cry, he would not cry.

‘Sanjay,
ruk jao
!’ said the shorter one. “Take it easy on him. She won’t like it if we bring him back all bruised and banged up.’

‘
Bagh ja, bhai, tu pagal hai!
Don’t use my name.’ Sanjay crouched in front of Eli, pushing down on both his hands like a cider press squeezing apples.

‘Please – stop! I’ll tell you.’

‘Go on then.’ Sanjay remained where he was; Eli could see himself in his sunglasses. He also smelled like alcohol.

‘Who do you want to know about?’ Eli asked, stalling for time.

Sanjay stood to increase the pressure on his hands. He thought he would faint.

‘You little shit, you know who we want to know about. Give us some answers. Start with that little fuckass, Ravi.’

‘I don’t know where he is.’ Sanjay, standing, was about to slug him again but his partner caught his arm. ‘I’m not lying. I last saw him in Agra. He didn’t come to Varanasi.’ That’s what he’d tell them, that the others had all left, gone in different directions.

The shorter one seemed willing to listen, to believe him, but Sanjay would have none of it, like a hungry beast who wanted to feed and would not be distracted until he did so. Eli had to come up with a convincing story, and fast.

‘I came here with the others, the girls, about two weeks ago,’ he said, starting with the truth. ‘But they left, said they were going home. I don’t know where they live. I am going to Kathmandu to see my father. He is waiting for me and knows where I am right now.’

The two men looked at each other in silent conference. He thought he might have made it, that they would leave and start looking for the others. But he was wrong. Sanjay grabbed the gag, still in the other one’s hand, and retied it, much tighter this time. He was hungry and thirsty and had meant to ask for food and drink, but now it was too late. He could breathe through his nose but the gag made him nauseous, panicky.

‘We’ll be back later for the truth,’ Sanjay said, clapping him hard on the head again, so hard that the room was spinning, blurring, going out of control until it all went dark.