Garden of dreams, p.21
Garden of Dreams, page 21
Chapter 29
The first village they visited, on the edge of the Chitwan jungle, looked deserted. At least upon first impression, as the jeep turned from the gravel road down its dusty main street, traversed only by goats and chickens. The monsoons had ended two weeks ago, and though the rivers were raging, the earth had dried out again. In the flat, late-morning light the thatched, mud Tharu houses all looked nearly the same: dirt yards, a water pump in the front, a water buffalo tethered to a post, vibrant green fields of rice and maize in the back, and towers of rice straw neatly stacked for the animals. From what the Maoists had said, villages had consistently welcomed them during the war, giving them shelter, food and drink. This wasn’t much of a welcome, and not auspicious for finding his son.
Raju had been returned, and as they jolted down the road in the back seat, refused to look at him. Whether he was ashamed of his fear or harbouring anger towards the recklessness of this mission wasn’t clear. Anton tried whispering to him – Do you know this place, where are we? – to make a connection, but he only shrugged. That left the two Maoist cadres for company, Khem and Niraj, a sullen pair in their early twenties. Khem, the driver, small and sinewy as a whippet, talked nearly incessantly in Nepali, occasionally hawking spit over the side of the jeep. Niraj, his mate, was much taller, though also thin, absorbing Khem’s banter, unsmiling.
The jeep stopped in front of the mud house at the end of the main road, larger than the rest. Anton guessed it belonged to the village headman, a person of status. No one in sight. Yet there was a sign of human presence near the pump: tin plates and cups had been scattered there, as though the washing-up had been interrupted. It wasn’t like these people, with few earthly possessions, to leave them unattended in the dust.
‘Get out!’ Khem ordered them, slinging his homemade rifle over his shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’
They followed him across the yard to the house’s low front door, a few planks nailed together, closed. Khem banged against the door, yelling, ‘Dhoka kholnuhos, Hamilai Tapaisanga kura garnu chha.’ Open up, we need to talk to you. Something like that.
A faint female voice murmured something on the other side of the door. Khem repeated himself. Slowly the door opened, revealing a girl holding a snot-nosed, naked baby. She must have been still in her teens, but the dark crescents under her eyes aged her. Along with her brown sarong she wore a dirty smiley-face T-shirt, but she wasn’t happy.
‘Aru kahan chhan?’ Where are the others?
‘Uniharu hijo Baagle lageko keta lai khojna gayeka chhan.’ That needed translation; he understood ‘they have gone’ and ‘boy’ and ‘night’ but not the rest.
‘Last night tiger took a child,’ Khem said, addressing him. ‘Whole village is out looking for him.’ Then, to the girl: ‘Uniharu kahile pharkinchhan?’ When will they be back?
She shook her head and hoisted the baby over her shoulder, burping him. Of course she didn’t know. Things didn’t go according to clockwork in this country. Anton didn’t think it was a good idea, but suggested it anyway: ‘Should we wait?’
Khem looked around the yard as if reconnoitring. ‘No point. We wait all day, maybe, and they still don’t come. Show her your photo.’
He pulled out his wallet and removed the little mug shot of Eli from the cellophane pocket. Held it in front of the girl’s face.
‘Tyo keto yas manisko chhora ho. Harayo. Ke tapainle dekhnu bhayo uslai?’ Khem explained. Something about it being his son, had she seen him? The girl stared intently at the photograph, moving closer for inspection. Another shake of the head. Anton didn’t want to admit the absurdity of it all: looking for a missing boy in a missing village looking for another missing boy.
As they skirted the edge of the jungle, passing acre after acre of green fields, sometimes with children playing there, Anton wondered why the cadres said nothing about his son. Asked him nothing. He terribly wanted them to ask him, anything really. He wanted to talk about him, what a gifted musician he was, what a young man he was becoming. But they said nothing. He stared at the back of Khem’s head, neatly shaven and wearing the Maoist cap, and realised that they would never ask him anything, they were Nepalis. Not ones to pry – though still, it was easy to confuse reserve with disinterest.
Perhaps it was better if they asked him nothing. There was so much he didn’t know about his son, he might not find the answers.
What did he know about him? He tried conjuring him from the past, from the intermittent times they had spent together over the last eight years, a few weeks a year. Like photos held in a memory card they flashed into his mind: Eli’s birth, and all those sleepless nights; first walks on Long Beach, holding his chubby little hand and watching their shadows; a baseball game where he tripped running the bases and his helmet broke his nose; Eli tearing into piles of presents under a Christmas tree; a school play some years ago. Most of the scenes had been deleted, as though with a few clicks their entire life together had been eradicated. Dumped in the ‘Trash’. In this case, irretrievable.
Soon they were on the outskirts of another village, much the same as the last. Turning down the main street, they passed a faded sign with a Maoist soldier raising his fist, clamped on a rifle. A recruitment poster? Before long children were running towards the jeep, waving, yelling for sweets. More came from the dirt yards as they passed the houses, climbing over or under fences, watched by their elders sitting in the shade against the mud walls. When it stopped at the largest house again, the jeep was surrounded by children, some as young as three, palms open and dark eyes expectant. Khem reached into the jeep’s side pocket and flung two handfuls of suckers into the air. Bedlam.
While the children were distracted, they walked up to the entrance to the headman’s house. Word must have preceded them; he was already standing at the doorway, signing ‘namaste’, bowing his head deferentially. A small, nut-brown man with a shock of white hair.
‘Swagat chha, swagat chha, dherai dherai swagat chha. Tapain ke kati kaamle hamro gaunma aunu bhayo?’ Welcoming them, ‘sirs’, extravagantly. Asking their purpose.
‘Show him,’ Khem said, again commanding with a swipe of his arm. ‘Show him your photo.’
Anton dug in his pocket, produced the photo and held it steadily a few inches from the headman’s eyes.
‘Kehi Chiya lyaunuhos!’ The headman turned away and shouted the order into the dark interior. More interested in tea than the photograph.
‘Yo ketlani dekhnu bhayeko chha, ki chhaina?’ Have you seen this boy, or not? Khem was growing impatient with the old man.
‘Kripaya basnuhos.’ The headman gestured to small woven stools just delivered by one of his women, in a pale yellow cotton sari, flitting off again like a butterfly.
Khem took the stool nearest the headman. ‘Tapaile yo ketalai dekhnu bhayo? Samjhane kosis garnuhos ta.’ Have you seen this boy? Try to remember. ‘Give him the photo.’
He handed it over reluctantly, sensing the headman’s indifference. The old man squinted as he pulled it closer to his face, looking solemn but then erupting into a disconcerting grin. ‘Yo ketalai ma chindachhu! Dherai mahina aghi u kehi sathiharusanga yo bato bhayera gayeko thiyo. Tinihara Bharatko simanatira jandaithiye.’ I know this boy … Passed this way several months ago with his friends. Something about being headed for India. The headman was still smiling, satisfied with himself. How stupid did he think they were?
Khem looked at him conspiratorially. This man was lying to please them, particularly the Maoists.
The butterfly woman, her veil partially shielding her face, brought the chai in steaming little glasses and made the rounds to serve them. Anton should say nothing, he knew, so the headman would save face. He waited for Khem to speak for him.
‘Tyahi keta hoina, asambhav. Yo keta usko bubalai bhetna uttartira lageko thiyo,’ Khem told the headman, shaking his head in disapproval. Not the same boy. This boy is headed north, to meet his father. ‘U yataitira aundai gareko hunuparchha. Uslai khojnuhos – puraskaar paunuhunechha.’ Look out for him … And then to him, directly: ‘I told him you’d pay well for his return – or even for news of him.’
The Maoists and the headman chatted further, but Anton wasn’t listening. Just hearing the meaningless sounds of a language he barely knew, incomprehensible unless he tuned in acutely to decipher key words. Somehow he knew they were no longer discussing his son. The headman was getting more and more animated, patting Khem on the back. Yelling again into the house, several times. He summoned a younger girl this time, barefoot and wearing what looked like a slip not a dress, carrying a giant green squash, which she deposited on Khem’s lap. She’d turned to go back into the house, perhaps for another squash, when Khem stood and signalled for them to leave.
‘There are many more villages,’ Khem told Anton over his shoulder as he pulled the jeep back on the dusty road again. ‘One of them might know something.’ And then, surprisingly, he laughed. ‘More than this old fool.’
They drove all day from village to village, until, finally, Khem slid back into the driver’s seat and announced, ‘We now find camp for the night.’ Without turning to look at Anton, he added, ‘Go to more villages tomorrow.’ Anton hadn’t anticipated this, spending the night in the jungle. For the soldiers it was nothing; it was how they lived. Through the years of guerrilla warfare, they had come to know the jungle – it didn’t scare them. But all he sensed, as they drove off the main gravel road and into the bush, stopping at a site just within the jungle canopy, was danger. Behind this dense, green foliage – Mother Nature gone wild – were tigers, snakes, spiders and other bloodthirsty insects. Maybe other soldiers, even more hostile. The threat of malaria, heightened by the recent heavy rains. The Tharus were immune, he’d heard, but it could bring him down. He felt soft, ridiculous, powerless. As he stayed in the jeep with Raju, watching the soldiers set up two small khaki tents, it all seemed pointless – the war they had waged; his work trying to bring a foreign concept of peace and democracy to these people; the search for his son.
What did connect him with them – with these two soldiers and all the others who had fought in the war, who were still fighting – was anger. He realised this as he felt it rising in his gut, spreading through his chest and pushing against the sides of his skull. Anger, in their case, turned against others, as revolution. But in his case, it was suddenly clear, turned against himself for being so presumptuous, and so impotent.
Chapter 30
After a night and nearly a day on the road, travelling by bus and by train, Eli’s little troop reached the border. Sunauli, the border post, seemed not really a town, more of a sad, dusty strip of little shops, overrun with multicoloured Tata trucks, stuck in endless queues to cross over into, or return from, Nepal. Dozens of migrants shuffled towards the border on foot, or came towards them, into India, weighted by the luggage balanced on their heads or slung in limp sacks over their shoulders. Impatient rickshaws and motorcycles whizzed past them. The four of them stood there in the dirt, dumped there by the bus from Gorakhpur, still reeling from its black fumes as it pulled away. Now what? Eli asked the girls, not having a clue. They murmured together in Nepali, uncertain. They’d crossed this border before, under different circumstances, years before. When they’d come hopefully to India, never expecting what awaited them.
It was the end of the day, just before sunset, and the touts were out like bats. A young rickshaw driver had already descended on them, swatting away his competition.
‘Very bad time to come to border,’ said the driver, a sticklike boy, maybe just a few years older than Eli. His dhoti and camp shirt were stained, as though he’d dribbled chocolate ice cream down his chest and belly. But his dark eyes looked tired, joyless, as though he never ate ice cream. ‘Fifty rupees give me, save the day, I take you to Indian immigration office, not far. They stamp you and out you go.’ He smiled slightly and wobbled his head.
They didn’t want him, they didn’t need him, in fact he was an obstruction. On the overnight train from Varanasi to Gorakhpur, and on the bus from there, Sanjana and the girls had almost convinced Eli they could cross the border without being caught. None of them had papers, but no problem, the girls had said. The border is open, no fence, we just walk across … even you. Right.
‘Walking is fine,’ Sanjana said emphatically, stepping past the rickshaw and making a beeline for the immigration office. ‘You take other people.’
What other people? he seemed about to ask, but then another bus screeched and jerked to a halt not far from the rickshaw driver. The hordes being disgorged were more than enough to distract him. Sanjana made a ninety-degree turn to the right and walked faster and faster, as though racing.
‘Wait up, Sanjana!’ Eli ran to catch up with her, with Deevya and Shanti skipping along after him. ‘Where you going?’
‘Follow me, be quiet! They won’t care. If they care you pay them.’
He had come to distrust authority almost as much as they did. Even before coming to India, he’d begun to despise it. That’s where the music came in, a big kick to authority’s ass. After what had happened in India, he distrusted everyone over twenty and a lot of people younger than that. So many people here seemed to have a deal they were working. If you thought about it, probably everyone did, everywhere.
Sanjana grabbed his arm and dragged him in line with her. ‘You don’t worry, you just walk. Many, many people come, go, over this border every day, no stopping. Nepalis and Indians …’
‘And me?’ Sanjana stopped and eyed him. He felt dirty and exhausted and wondered what he looked like. It had been days since he’d looked in a mirror, or at his reflection anywhere.
She unwrapped the saffron scarf around her neck, a recent find at the temple where they’d strung the marigolds in Varanasi. ‘Tie this on your head, and you are chai-wallah! And rub this on your face, make you look more …’
‘Stop!’ He was laughing as he pushed her hands away, smudging his cheeks with dirt. ‘I’m dirty enough.’
‘It will work, I am sure,’ Sanjana said, her hands characteristically on her hips again. ‘You see anyone looking for us?’
It was true: no one was chasing them. In the dim light the border guards now had their backs to them, handling the long queues at the office and in the truck lanes. They could see the rickshaw driver dropping off people from the last bus, and other rickshaws lined up for the next one’s arrival. But no one was looking this way.
Yet he still felt hunted. He was sure all of them did; he’d told the girls about the two men and the hospice and the old blind woman, once he’d stopped crying that night in Varanasi. Their trip to the border had passed without incident, but waves of foreboding now washed over him. The goondas and their she-devil boss, closing in perhaps. Ahead, a border crossing that they might, or might not, make. Beyond that, a jungle full of man-eating tigers, and snakes that could squeeze the life out of you.
Sanjana insisted on smearing more dirt on his face. ‘OK, come,’ she said when she finished, wiping her fingers on her sari, giving it stripes. She headed back towards the main thoroughfare, thick with people, rickshaws, bikes and motorcycles, turning to silhouettes as darkness fell. Plastered with signs – for San Miguel beer, Coca-Cola, tailors, tea stalls and money changers – illuminated by bare bulbs.
They walked near the shops, as though they worked there or had come on a cross-border errand and were going home. The queue was still filing into the immigration office; up close there were far more tourists than had first appeared, confusing in their native dress. But the backpacks gave them away. He was supposed to be in that queue with his mother, like a normal person. He should have passed with her through this border two months ago, something like that – he barely knew what month it was any more. But here he was with three escaped prostitutes, on the run, all of them. He’d tried to stop thinking about them that way, they were just girls, after all. Girls who had fucked thousands of times, while he’d barely snuck a kiss from a girl at home. Girls who knew their way around a male body far better than he did his own.
He focused on Sanjana’s sequined sari top as she walked in front of him, just a few paces ahead. Because if he looked to the right now, just across from the immigration office, he thought he might choke. It seemed that the only people getting stopped and interrogated as they reached the borderline were the truck drivers, unlocking the backs of their trucks so the guards could shine their torches inside. Were they looking for drugs? For guns? For children? The trucks looked so friendly on the outside, gaudily painted, their cabs draped with golden tinsel, like Christmas trees. But surely they were up to something.
Head down, he kept walking, right behind Sanjana, nearly stepping on her sari more than once. He couldn’t believe how easy it was, or seemed; he still half-expected a policeman to grab him from behind at any moment. Or worse, the men who had captured him. But as he walked further, now accompanied by a dove-grey Brahman bull that had sidled up to him, he began to feel a surprising degree of normalcy, as though he were walking home for the night, or even from one room of his house to the other. Not at all like leaving one country and entering another one. As though the border didn’t exist, except for those who chose to acknowledge it and stand in those stupid queues.
He gave the bull a pat and swore it smiled at him. A protected being now offering protection.
Just ahead was a sort of arch, an open gateway with an illuminated sign overhead: ‘Indian Border Ends’. There were no guards, only people shuttling back and forth, still dozens though it was dark. Sanjana was walking faster, and the younger girls were keeping pace with her, but he lingered, and finally stopped in front of a telephone pole near the gate. There was just enough light from the gate itself to see the black-and-white poster tacked midway up the pole. The words were mostly in Hindi, except for two: ‘Big Reward’. He could barely make out the photograph, until he stepped closer – and then nearly gagged. Recognising his own face, the same photograph someone had placed in the newspaper.
