Outlaw in India (15 page)

He handed me back the little magnetic chess set. “You should keep this on your
submarine, Alfred.”

I looked Radji in the eye and put my hand down on his shoulder just as
Ziegfried had done to me. “I am so happy for you, Radji. Do you think you will
be happy here?”

“Yes. Yes, I will be happy here. And I will work hard, like you, and like
Ziegfried.”

And I knew that he would.

THE DESTROYER LOOMED
ahead like a giant troll on a bridge. She
scared me. She pointed in our direction and her bow was sharp and her missiles
glistening. The barge in front of me was slapping clumsily through the water
like a pond turtle. We were so close behind I could see hairline cracks in her
rusty stern. When she turned to port and aimed for the barge terminal I tucked
in on the port side of her. And when she reached the terminal I went under her
and waited there until dark. When I knew that darkness had fallen, I pedalled
out of the harbour as quietly as a bat. I slipped underneath the first ship I
saw, after checking that it wasn’t a navy ship, and followed it for a few miles
out before surfacing. I cranked up
the engine full blast,
opened the hatch and climbed the portal with Hollie and Seaweed. Beneath a
shining crescent moon and two beautiful stars, we headed southwest towards
Africa.

Ziegfried and Sheba were on their way to Delhi and Agra. It was their
honeymoon, an exciting new beginning for them. That made me happy. Radji was
studying the alphabet with Melissa, a new beginning for each of them. I knew
that Radji would grow up to become someone important in India, someone who would
bring changes to his country, maybe even like Gandhi. In some ways he and
Melissa were an unlikely pair. And yet, there was a certain logic to their
arrangement.

Melissa would look after Radji to the best of her ability. She would teach him
to read and write and give him the chance to go to school. She would feed him
well and he would grow healthy and strong. This I knew. And Radji would become
like a son to her and give her the sense of family that she longed for so much.
And she would be happy. He was young, and she was old, but he already had so
much maturity and integrity. When he was older I knew that he would return to
his own family and make things right. He was a wise old man in a young boy’s
body, he really was.

As we ploughed through the darkness of the Indian Ocean and I contemplated
these things, I felt that all was right with the world. And yet I left India
with a small sadness. I would miss it. I had fallen in love with it. That seemed
strange to me in a way. There were certain things about it I didn’t like— how
some people treated other people. But that didn’t stop
me
from loving it. And perhaps it was changing. I kept thinking of the rich man in
Varanasi: the sight of him standing in the Ganges, smiling, laughing, holding
hands with Radji. It was such a wonderful memory now. I remembered the nurses
and the girl performing a traditional dance on the train. I remembered the smell
of the ground, the heat, the fresh spices of India. I felt a little ache inside
because I would miss all of this.

Funny, so many millions of people here believed in reincarnation, just as Sheba
believed in reincarnation. And so if it were true, then maybe I had lived here
before too. Perhaps I had even known Radji in another life. I wondered. But I
guessed I didn’t really believe in that. Not yet. But I did believe one thing:
that I would come back. And when I did, a part of me would be here already,
waiting.

Philip Roy continues to live in Nova Scotia, the province of his
birth, but keeps on the road so often he sometimes cannot remember where he is waking up in the morning. Besides the
Submarine Outlaw series, Philip is publishing an historical
novel this year—
Blood Brothers in Louisbourg
—and has several other projects on the go, including his picture book series,
Happy the Pocket Mouse
(unpublished), already a favourite
read-aloud series on his school visits. Philip has just returned
from a trip to Africa where he was researching Alfred’s next
adventure—
Seas of South Africa
.