At the apartment, Rose was unpacking boxes. She was pale and thin, but her hair had been combed, and she wore lipstick and an ironed shirt. She knelt in front of her daughter.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said, and stroked Judy’s short hair. Iris had it cut to look like her own, a curly crop.

  Judy didn’t speak because she didn’t trust her voice. But she saw her father watching, pretending to clean his shoes on the mat, scuff scuff, the sound repeating itself again and again. He hadn’t failed, she realised then, while her mother’s hands fluttered around her. But given the choice—the farm or Rose—Ezra could only save one.

  He chose Rose, and none of them would ever be able to forget it.

  Chapter 6

  Rachel sits on the torn vinyl seat of the train to Pathankot, her eyes on the scenery outdoors: the lurid green of rice paddies against the dust; small children squatting by the side of the tracks. A woman in a blue sari leads a water buffalo across a field, a baby strapped to her back. It is hard to keep focused on the window because all three of the schoolboys in the seats facing hers are doing their best to distract her.

  ‘Hello miss! What is your name, miss? Where are you from? Do you have boyfriend?’

  ‘Want to take my picture?’

  ‘May I have a kiss, miss?’

  ‘Where are you going? I will come with you.’

  ‘I will always loooove you!’

  They bounce up and down in their seats as they shout at her, none of them older than fifteen and each with a silly frond of peach fuzz on his upper lip. School uniforms of khaki. Hair greased and neatly separated by the teeth of combs.

  The skinny one with buck teeth sees her glance across at them and takes this as an invitation. He stands and starts to rub his groin against the wall beneath the window, though maybe he’s dancing, because now they sing a high-pitched Bollywood track out of tune. There is an old, lipless woman who sits beside Rachel, ignoring her and the schoolboys, but at this the woman gets up and shuffles to the back of the train. Her plastic sandals slap their disapproval. Rachel throws her bag on the seat beside her before any of them have a chance to leap across.

  A turbaned man who has been in the aisle moves closer and Rachel shifts the bag back to her feet. He sits down, legs spread wide. His belly falls across his thighs. He silences the boys with a few curt words. The man is a Sikh; he wears a saffron turban, a cotton tunic, and a curved knife on a belt slung across his chest.

  For a moment, it’s quiet. Rachel’s stomach grumbles at the smell of pakoras from the fried snack vendor walking through the aisles of the train. She thinks of the crackers and dried fruit sitting in the backpack at her feet. If only the pakoras didn’t smell so delicious. When she shifts against the barely padded seat, her tailbone aches. The Sikh turns towards her. He addresses his question—in flawless English—to the window, rather than her.

  ‘Are you okay, madam?’

  She nods. ‘Just tired.’

  ‘Pay no attention to those boys. Their mothers should be giving them a spanking.’

  She attempts a smile. There is something reassuring about this large, bearded man who carries a knife.

  ‘Are you going to Pathankot?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. For business. And you—Dharamshala?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘That is where every tourist on this train goes. The train to Pathankot, the bus to Dharamshala, up to McLeod Ganj. You will see our famous mountains. And perhaps the Dalai Lama, since I understand he is in residence?’

  ‘I didn’t realise I was so predictable.’

  ‘And you have been to Amritsar? How did you find the Golden Temple?’

  ‘It was beautiful,’ Rachel says. ‘I had no idea what to expect, but I loved it. So clean. So ornate.’

  The Sikh nods and smiles beneath his heavy beard. ‘And you are from America?’

  ‘Originally, yes. I live in Australia.’

  Rachel averts her gaze to the glass again. They pass through a forest now—it’s sparse but there are trees, so the altitude is gaining.

  The Sikh persists. ‘You are married?’

  Rachel nods. She sits, hands clasped in her lap, bag firmly tucked in the space between her legs. The man stares at her for a moment and sighs. She pulls at the stiff cotton of her salwar kameez—light blue flowers against a white background—and the matching dupatta draped over her head for modesty. On her left ring finger there is a thin platinum band. As much as she tries to blend in, there is no hiding her foreignness in this place, nothing she can do to become invisible.

  The Sikh man does not speak for the rest of the trip to Pathankot. The schoolboys are replaced by two young women carrying toddlers that they smother with kisses and feed sticky, bright orange sweets to. The littlest one, a boy, has his eyes outlined in kohl. It is hard not to stare, so Rachel pulls out her Lonely Planet and re-reads the sections on McLeod Ganj and the history of Tibetan exile. The words clank around in her head, refusing to gather meaning. When the train finally comes to a stop, the bearded man passes her a card, soft with wear, but written in English.

  ‘My card,’ he says kindly, ‘if you ever require it.’

  The train empties as chaotically as it filled, and Rachel reads the worn type on the card as she prepares to disembark.

  Dr Jajgit Singh, Psychologist

  She stuffs it into her backpack and makes her way through the press of bodies simultaneously trying to leave and enter the train.

  Rachel lies on the hotel’s narrow bed with its hard mattress. It is past ten and a dim light bulb casts long shadows in the small room. The television doesn’t work and the toilet smells, but there is a balcony and in the morning there will be a view of the mountains, just as the owner said when he took her money and passport a few minutes ago. Now it is dark, though, and she only sees her own reflection as she stands to draw the curtains. She pulls her sleeping bag out of the backpack and unrolls it over the sheet and blanket. Her skin crawls with imagined insects.

  She changes into pyjamas, washes her face and brushes her teeth with some of the bottled water that remains from the journey. It was a long day. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow she will walk until she is too tired to think anymore. She will eat something other than crackers and sweet, milky tea. The last two Valium are inside the smallest pocket of her toiletries bag and she swallows them dry. She closes her eyes. As they catch in her throat she suppresses a gag, and then lies down. She waits to forget.

  Chapter 7

  ‘How many passes will you need,’ the man at the door asks.

  ‘One.’

  ‘You are travelling alone?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  He lets Rachel into the room, where she sits for a photo. Then she waits in one of the folding chairs while he laminates it. It seems like a lot of work for a day pass, but this is the Dalai Lama. And people tell her how lucky she is to have the chance to see him here, how he has been away for months and just now he is giving public teachings. There are followers of Tibetan Buddhism who have travelled from as far away as Detroit. And Rachel will go along because it’s a way to pass her days. She thinks of how envious Jen will be back in Delhi, in the airless office of an NGO.

  ‘If you are going to travel alone, and you don’t want to be constantly harassed, you need to go to Dharamsala,’ Jen told her when Rachel was making travel plans back in Delhi. ‘It will be swarming with other backpackers, but they will be purposeful, at least, and it’s one of those spots where there are solo women travellers. And maybe the highest concentration of Israelis outside of Israel.’

  Jen came up here a few months ago to do a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat. She didn’t speak to anyone for ten days. Rachel has no desire to be alone with her thoughts for ten days.

  Her pass is ready and the man hands it to her without the pretence of patience. He gives her the spiel: she must be at the temple at 8 a.m. sharp tomorrow. She steps outside to the narrow, muddy street. There is a fruit and vegetable market with a few boxes of overripe mangoes, black bananas and green spiky fruit that she doesn’t know the name of. There are vendors further along who sell cotton T-shirts with psychedelic designs and woven hemp shoulder bags that she has seen backpackers carry. She walks past them through the narrow streets. Autorickshaw drivers swerve, horns blare, music grows louder then recedes. If this is a peaceful place, then she hasn’t witnessed it yet. There are flyers for yoga classes, cooking classes, meditation classes, masseuses and chakra re-aligners. She walks past a shack that claims to be a cinema. Tonight they will be showing Thelma and Louise. She saw the film once, but she can only remember fragments. A boyish Brad Pitt jumping on a hotel bed. A red convertible sailing off a cliff face—the moment where forward motion becomes downward.

  The last movie she saw was in Delhi; Jen took her to a Bollywood cinema. It was in Hindi, of course. The actors shouted and gestured before breaking into choreographed song and dance routines. It was odd, but endearing. Such a chaste, innocent world, Rachel marvelled, where the men and women didn’t even kiss, and where gestures and words still carried so much weight.

  Rachel walks on a small dirt road into the hills behind the town. Here the sound and dust have died away, there is green, and, beyond, snow-capped mountains. There is the rush of a river nearby, water breaking across rocks. There are a few buildings, and a sign in a language she doesn’t know. A dog with prominent ribs and a tail tucked between legs runs up to her and rolls on her back in a display of submission. Her teats are swollen and raw-looking.

  ‘Where are your babies?’ Rachel asks softly. She crouches to scratch the dog’s jutting ribs.

  The entire flight over from Sydney, Rachel had slept. She took three Valium in order to do so. Once she woke up groggy to empty her bladder in the cramped toilet, but otherwise she was out. It was the only way she could go through with her plan, her escape. When Jen picked her up at the airport in Delhi, a frown creased her forehead. ‘My God, I got your messages. What’s happened?’

  ‘I left,’ Rachel said, collapsing into her arms.

  ‘You’ll get fleas,’ someone calls from the doorway of one of the ramshackle buildings. There is a man with a shorn head. Other people lie on charpoys or low chairs around the perimeter. They are travellers. She recognises the smell of marijuana as she walks closer.

  ‘Does she have puppies?’ she asks. The dog follows her, tail still hidden.

  ‘Yeah.’ A head peers out from a hammock. It is a girl, freckled, with dreadlocks as thick as bananas. ‘The cook drowned them. He had to. So many hungry, filthy strays.’

  Rachel’s stomach turns. She blinks back tears. The guy who was in the doorway walks over and offers her a lit joint.

  ‘Want a puff?’ he says, and Rachel nods, places dry lips over it and inhales. She squats in the dirt afterwards, the dog curled up beside her. Their conversation washes over her, but occasionally it includes her. They all have long hair, mostly uncombed, except for the shorn one, who leans against a tree next to her. They are all Israelis. They have finished their required military service and this is what you do, the girl says to her. You go away. Somewhere cheap. Somewhere far.

  The hairless one bends down to put out his cigarette in the dirt.

  ‘We are going to hike up to a waterfall, a few hours from here. There is a little place near there for lunch. Do you want to come?’

  Rachel nods. Her mind flits around, fuzzy. The sun is warm on the bare skin of her arms. The dog’s ears feel like velvet between her fingers.

  She has forgotten herself—forgotten who she is. She shakes her head. ‘Not today,’ she says, and stands up. Blood beats in her ears.

  They all watch as she turns to walk away.

  ‘Fear is born from attachment,’ the Dalai Lama says. Actually, that is what the small transistor radio beside Rachel says, because the Dalai Lama is speaking Tibetan and the English translation comes through over the radio. Rachel is lucky that Eli, the shorn Israeli she met yesterday, showed up at the teaching this morning. Otherwise she would be sitting on the floor of this packed temple, the Dalai Lama sitting only ten metres away from her, with no idea what he is saying.

  She got there early to get a good seat. Only when she saw the other Caucasians in the audience pulling out portable radios and headphones did she begin to wonder. His Holiness walked in, bowed, and smiled at—it seemed—each person in the room, but it wasn’t until he sat on the cushions to speak that she realised her mistake. He wasn’t five minutes in before a rustle behind her made her turn. Eli had snuck across; he passed her an ear bud from his radio. ‘Unless you speak Tibetan,’ he whispered, and Rachel blushed, shaking her head.

  It is something just to see the Dalai Lama so close, in person. The red and saffron robes, the glasses that are too large for his face. It is something else altogether to hear him. He speaks of the differences between emptiness and nothingness. How fear is born of attachment. The man translating on the radio has an accent and Rachel struggles to keep up with what he says. Eli sits still beside her, his eyes closed, his face impossible to read. If she moves her head the ear buds they are sharing will fall out of his ear and drop on the ground. She has to stop watching him, to focus on what the Dalai Lama is saying instead.

  He is going to read a few lines, he says, from A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, a book by Shantideva, an eighth century Buddhist master.

  ‘How strange it is to squander

  This bird I have found by some coincidence…’

  How strange it is to squander, Rachel whispers. The man on the radio keeps talking. His words become static; they come in clear again.

  ‘All I have given rice to is

  The agonies in the mother’s womb, and to suffering.’

  Rachel wishes she brought a pen and a piece of paper. But it will stick in her head anyway, she thinks: how strange it is to squander. What does it mean: this bird? Why give rice?

  He reads more: ‘If I feel that I never have enough sensual objects

  Which are like honey smeared on a razor’s edge

  Then why should I ever feel

  That I have enough merit which ripens in happiness and peace.’

  There is a break in the teachings—an hour. She takes the ear bud out, wipes it on her T-shirt and goes to pass it back to Eli. He has only just opened his eyes but still sits motionless. She lets go of the ear bud so that it dangles against the brown skin of his arm. His profile is sharp, like a monk. She can see the muscles at the back of his neck, the small indent at the base of his skull. Her stomach growls. She is starving.

  She starts to gather her bag and stand, and Eli snaps out of his trance.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he says, standing in a single motion, gracefully, as if unravelling himself. ‘Do you want to get some lunch?’

  Eli leads the way to one of the little restaurants in a narrow back street lined with sloping houses and piles of rubbish in the open gutters. After the polished, spotless temple the street is a reality check. She could have been anywhere.

  They walk through a beaded doorway into a tiny room with a few tables and chairs. A large woman in an apron greets him with a broad smile and polishes her best table with a sodden, grey rag.

  ‘This place makes the best momos around,’ Eli says, as Rachel takes it in. ‘Don’t look so worried. You’ll love them.’

  Tea comes in round ceramic bowls and Rachel cups hers and squints at the ragged menu above the cash register. She tells Eli to order for both of them.

  ‘What do you think of the teachings?’ Eli asks, after ordering.

  ‘I’m enjoying it, though I’m not so good at sitting still. I wouldn’t make a good Buddhist.’

  ‘It’s about more than sitting still, though that’s a big part of it. It’s about overcoming that part of yourself that never stops talking or criticising. Judging.’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ she says, sarcastically. ‘Does it work for you?’

  Eli smiles and looks out the doorway to the street, as if he’s expecting someone. ‘It helps.’

  ‘Do you practise Judaism as well?’ Rachel asks.

  ‘No. I mean, I grew up with it, but I’m not practising. Maybe one day.’

  ‘I don’t think I will.’

  ‘You are, too? I should have known. A name like Rachel.’

  She shrugs. ‘My mother was, my father wasn’t. I am not.’

  The momos arrive in metal dishes, steaming and fragrant. They use chopsticks to dip them into shallow bowls of sauce. Rachel scalds her tongue with the first one and sets it back on the plate to cool.

  ‘Was it hard,’ she asks Eli, ‘serving in the army?’

  ‘Yes and no. All my friends were doing the same thing. It is just what you do. We all dealt with it in different ways.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Can we talk about something else?’

  ‘Okay.’ Rachel picks up her dumpling and chews it slowly. Eli was right; it is delicious.

  He leans across the table. ‘I will tell you one thing. I liked it sometimes, the feeling of power. Working at the border, the fear that I would see in a man’s eyes when he saw my uniform. We were all scared, too—anyone could have a bomb strapped to his body. Her body. Anyone could blow us up, anytime. So when you see someone who is more scared than you, you feel good for a moment. If he is on the other side, his fear makes you strong.’ He pauses.

  ‘Looking back, I don’t like who I became. I changed. I never killed anyone but I could have. I had the capacity in me. The world became too black and white, good and evil—you were either one or the other. I want to get as far away from that as I can. As far away from who I was.’

  He sits back in his chair and places another dumpling into his mouth. Rachel watches the lines of his jaw.

  ‘What about you,’ he says. ‘What are you escaping?’

 

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