Right of Thirst (8 page)

The next morning the sky was a low steely gray, with swirling mist at the tips of the ridges. It was cold without the sun, and clammy, as if the sea were nearby. There was no wind.

“It is going to snow,” Rai said, at breakfast. “Maybe it is better not to go to the village today.”

“If it starts snowing too much we can come back,” I said, wondering why it had come over me so strongly—the need to work, to get started at last.

Elise nodded eagerly as she finished her bowl of oatmeal.

“I am ready,” she said. “I have my case.”

Rai sighed, and shook his head, but then he stood.

“Okay,” he said. “If you want to go, then we will go.”

I had a bag—antibiotics, ointments, a few rolls of gauze. Anti-histamines and anti-inflammatories. I'd filled it before breakfast, enjoying the heft and sense of purpose it gave me.

“It will be cold today,” Rai said. “Dress warmly.”

He put on a green wool hat, and produced mittens from the pockets of his army parka, and then we all stood up and left the tent.

Already the villagers were out on the field, working on tents, and we paused to watch them for a moment.

“Do you need to stay here with them?” I asked Rai, realizing that our departure would require them to work on unsupervised. But Rai shook his head.

“They know what to do now,” he said. “They will be okay.”

There was no path leading from the camp to the village. As we picked our way down the rocky slope toward the river, the sky grew darker, and for the first time there were a few tiny flakes of snow in the air. The sound of the rushing water came up to meet us as we descended to the bank, where a thin path appeared before us. Looking up I saw that the mist now covered the tops of the ridges entirely.

Soon the village was in plain sight. The houses stood at a bend in the river, where the water widened and slowed. Beyond the village lay the terraced fields, with their new green crops, dull in the gray light and the low clouds. Smoke rose. Beyond, in the fields, figures were working.

As we neared the village, a dog barked, and the first of the children appeared. They seemed to come from nowhere—one moment we were walking alone, and the next they were upon us. Four or five of them, with their high-pitched voices. Unlike the adult men, there was no wariness, and in a moment they were tugging at our sleeves and peering at us and pulling at our day packs. Rai turned on them, shouting fiercely, and they fell back.

The children looked perhaps eight or nine. Their hair was reddish black, their eyes dark and wide. For the moment they looked fed, but this, I knew, was seasonal, and I had no doubt that they'd gotten by on the barest of food at times, and that their growth was stunted as a result. So they were small for their ages, and this gave them an odd, preternatural air. If they moved well, and quickly, and spoke in long passages, it was because they were far older than they appeared to be. There was nothing attractive about them. They hardly seemed like children at all, in
fact, but some other human form altogether. When they stepped up close, pulling at my clothes, with their flowing noses and red-black hair and grubby fingers, the desire to shove them off with inappropriate force was difficult to resist.

Elise fumbled in her pack, then pulled a bag of candy from it with a look of expectation on her face. She opened the bag and began tossing the hard candy to the children, who followed us closely.

They fell on it. A kind of reflex, I think—they must not have had much experience with such gifts in the past. They snatched off the wrappers and put the candy in their mouths. But after a few seconds, with dismay on their faces, they began spitting out the candy on the ground and wiping their mouths on the backs of their hands.

“What did you give them?” I asked. I was tempted to laugh, but Elise looked crestfallen.

She handed me the bag. I put one in my mouth.

“It's sour,” I said. “Maybe that's it.”

Rai looked on, and said nothing.

“Do you have any caramels? Maybe they'd like those better.”

“I have some at the camp,” she said. “But I only bring these now.”

From the heights of the ridge, the village had looked lovely and clean, but up close it was as filthy as the children it produced. We followed the main path to the center, with narrower alleys branching off between the houses beside it. An overflowing stream ran through the middle of the path, diverted from the river, turning the earth to freezing mud. Offal, somewhere, and the vague odor of excrement, and little bits of refuse carried by the clear water out toward the fields beyond. There was the smell of smoke and snow in the air, and the gray sky seemed close and thick overhead. The children were shouting, and a moment later
the men began to emerge from the homes beside us. There were six or seven of them, bearded, restrained, murmuring to one another. They had weapons on their shoulders—mostly antique rifles, a century old or more, but several carried battered AK-47s. There were women also, watching through the windows, or standing in the doors, but they did not approach. Other dogs barked, but we did not seen them, and I imagined that they were tied up behind nearby walls.

Rai addressed one of the men. He spoke calmly and at length as we stood there, the villagers gathering steadily around us. We'd reached the village center, at a confluence of paths. The houses around us were brown mud, with narrow slits for windows.

The man Rai addressed wore a dark blanket over his thin shoulders, and a tight wool cap. His teeth were yellow and long, and his eyes, like his beard, were gray. Unlike the others around him, he was unarmed.

The man listened intently, and then he bowed and came forward, and took Rai's hand in both of his own, and shook it gently. The others stared at Elise and me, murmuring to one another, as the children milled around them. The man spoke, and gestured, then spoke again.

“What's he saying?” I asked Rai.

“He is the head of the village,” Rai replied. “He is offering us some tea.”

“Did you tell him why we're here?”

“Of course,” Rai replied.

More discussions ensued. A few minutes passed, and then the young man who had entered the house returned with a plastic tray. On it were a few clear chipped glasses, and a single charred and battered metal teapot.

He poured it for us one by one. I blew on the small hot glass
in my hands, smiling and nodding, hesitating, but then I sipped, as did Rai and Elise and the village headman. The tea was black, bitter, and hot.

The headman spoke again.

“He is sorry they have no sugar,” Rai said. “He is apologizing.”

“Tell him not to worry,” I replied. “That the tea is very good.”

Rai did as I asked. We stood and drank, as they watched us. I wondered why we had not been invited inside.

The minutes dragged on. Rai went back and forth with them, gesturing, and each time he spoke the men would murmur among themselves in low voices, as if discussing his words. Elise and I stamped our feet in the cold, waiting, and my impatience grew.

“What's taking so long?” I asked Rai.

“They are always like this,” he said. “They are deciding what to do. Everything takes time with them.”

“We should start,” I said. “Or we can come back later if they like.”

To my surprise, Rai translated my words.

The head of the village looked at me, and then he turned and said something over his shoulder to the others behind him.

A light snow began to fall. We waited, and finally a man emerged from another house with a rough unstained wooden table in his hands. Two boys followed, carrying a similar wood bench between them. The headman spoke again.

“He says it is best if we go to the orchard,” Rai said.

The orchard had high mud walls, and stood pressed against the village. We wound our way through one of the narrow alleys to a pair of unplaned wooden doors in the wall. To my surprise, the doors were padlocked, with a rusty link of chain between
them. The headman produced a key, opened the lock, heaved aside the doors, and gestured for us to enter.

“Why is it locked?” I asked Rai.

“So the apricots will not be stolen, of course,” he said. I wondered who the thieves might be, and who owned the apricots, but I said nothing.

The wall around the orchard traced a rough circle perhaps thirty yards in diameter. The wall was high—nearly ten feet, smooth and brown. Part of the creek had been diverted beneath the wall, and then divided again into a dozen or so smaller channels, like a bed of capillaries, before converging again and flowing out beneath the wall toward the fields beyond. The ground underfoot was soft with old leaves. Tangles of calf-high grass and weeds grew in profusion.

The apricot trees stood at irregular intervals, ten or so feet apart from one another, and cast their branches out above our heads. The trees themselves were perhaps thirty feet high, and oddly delicate, with their gray-green leaves, and their trunks little larger than my waist. Overhead, in the density of the trees, hundreds of yellow-orange apricots hung from the branches, glowing against the heavy gray sky overhead.

The headman led us out to the center of the orchard, where the trees were larger and spaced more widely, and gestured to the man with the table. They stamped the grass a bit with their feet, and then they put both the table and the bench on the ground.

The crowd of villagers flowed in through the doors, and began fanning out along the walls on either side. I could hear them moving through the trees behind me, chattering excitedly, encircling us.

I put my pack down on the table, and then turned to the headman, who watched me impassively, glancing occasionally
at Rai. Elise put her case down on the table as well, and put her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

“Okay,” I said to Rai. “Please tell them to get in line, and I'll see them one by one. Then Elise can draw their blood and pay them.”

Elise looked hesitantly at Rai. Rai thought for an instant, chewing on his mustache, as if deciding what to say. He turned to the headman, and spoke at length. There were no women in the crowd. One of the nearby men lit a cigarette with a match, took a long drag, and then passed it along to the others.

The headman watched Rai as he spoke, his face unreadable, and again he turned to the men behind him and spoke. They answered, and he listened carefully to the replies. Back and forth, for a minute or two, as we waited. Then finally he turned to Rai, a question in his voice.

“He wants to know why you want to take samples of their blood and what you will use it for.”

“Please tell him that we are doing a scientific study to learn where their ancestors came from,” Elise said, “and that if they do not want me to draw their blood I will not. And that I will pay them for each specimen.”

“They will not understand,” Rai said. “I will tell them only that you will pay, that it will not hurt them, and that they do not have to do it unless they wish.”

Rai spoke carefully. A few seconds passed, and again the men discussed this with themselves. The head of the village asked a single question.

Rai turned to Elise.

“How much will you pay?”

“One pound for each vial,” she said.

Rai grimaced.

“That is a lot for them,” he said. “It is too much.”

“It is okay,” she said. “There are not so many of them. I want them to agree.”

He stared at her for an instant, then shrugged and answered the question.

His words had dramatic effect. The men went quiet, and if anything became more watchful.

“Tell him,” I said, impulsively, nodding toward the headman, “that since he is the head of the village we will give him two pounds for his blood.”

Rai did as I asked. The man turned and spoke to the others behind him, and then they all began talking at once.

“Please tell them again that they don't have to get their blood drawn if they don't want to,” I said. “And that I'll see them anyway and give them free medicines.”

Again Rai did as he was told.

“Maybe Elise should draw your blood first,” I said to Rai. “It might reassure them.”

He looked at me with dismay.

“Why mine, Doctor?” he replied. “And not yours?”

“She's already drawn mine,” I said. “I'll do it again if you want. But I think drawing yours might be more effective.”

He glanced back and forth between us, then inclined his head in that characteristic sideways nod I'd seen so often among them, which Rai did only rarely, and only, as I'd come to realize, in moments of unease.

“If you wish,” he said, finally. His voice was cold.

He spoke to the men again.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“I am telling them I will show them what it is,” he said, tightly, “so they know it is nothing.”

“Elise,” I said, “you're on.”

Rai gave me a dark look before turning back to the men.
Then he took off his heavy parka, draped it over the table beside my bag, and rolled up his sleeve, exposing his brown forearm to the air. He did it quickly, forcefully.

“Thank you, Sanjit,” Elise said, as she bent and quickly un-snapped her case, then sat down on the bench.

He extended his arm across the rough table toward her, beginning to shiver in the cold despite himself. Goose bumps had risen on his skin. Elise bent over his bare arm, readying the needle and the vial and the alcohol pad and the yellow rubber tourniquet, and all the while Rai kept his face impassive, determined to betray nothing. The men craned their necks, and moved closer.

To her credit, she did it well, better than she had for me. She snapped the tourniquet around his arm, and waited as he squeezed his fist as she asked, and the vein rose in his forearm. She cleaned his skin with alcohol, then flicked the needle in as I had told her to and released the tourniquet. The jet of Rai's blood instantly filled the vial, and then the needle was out, and he was folding up his arm, pressing a ball of cotton to the oozing spot, his face impassive. He put on his jacket, as Elise stood up from the table and held the tiny vial up in the air.