Garden of Dreams, page 3
Eli folded the note and shoved it back in his pocket; the skinny man smiled at him again and looked about to speak. Eli quickly bent over and grabbed his backpack from under his seat, fetching his water bottle. As he took long sips of the water, now lukewarm, looking out the window again to avoid the skinny man’s eyes, listening to the babble of Hindi around him, he imagined his father waiting for him on the top of Everest. Of course he wouldn’t be there, he never would, he wasn’t that fit; Eli, lean from radical growth spurts, wasn’t even that fit and didn’t like hiking much. His father would come to the airport in Kathmandu. But would he recognise him? After these long separations, they weren’t exactly strangers, but each time they had to get familiar again, like actors learning a new script. Some things stayed the same, though: they’d play video games, go out for pizza, talk – or his dad would ask questions and he would try to answer them. Short answers for a much longer story – most of Eli’s life.
The chug-a-chug of the train was making him sleepy, the smoke of bidis, woozy. He thought of Badresh, the previous afternoon – riding after him on that smelly camel, into the desert outside Jaisalmer, to his little white house, eating, drinking, listening to his endless talking, the fog when he awoke back at the hotel. He was sure the asshole had drugged him.
He remembered his mother’s stories, about being drugged years ago in India – by two young guys at a café in Pushkar – seeing witches and wolves in the dusty streets as she staggered back to her room; another time in Egypt, by a nightclub owner on the banks of the Nile in the Valley of the Kings. I saw pharaohs flying around my room that time, she’d said. But what was Badresh up to? And why had he just put him on the train, not brought him to the airport? Maybe Eli was being ‘uptight’, something his mother warned him against. But it still didn’t make sense.
‘Excuse me, mister …’ It was the skinny man, speaking to him at last. ‘You are travelling alone?’
Eli looked at the man, about forty he guessed. He didn’t look so bad, really – smiling again, with those big teeth, and his dark eyes smiling, too. With his hands on his knees and his knees knocking back and forth, he looked like Josh, the most hyper kid at school. A pain, maybe, but meaning no harm. ‘Yeah,’ Eli said.
‘You are quite young to be travelling on your own, are you not? Just what is your age exactly?’
‘Sixteen,’ Eli lied. People told him he looked much older. He was taller than many Indian men, including this one.
‘Well, that is not so especially young. But who is meeting you in Delhi?’
‘My father,’ Eli lied again. The truth was, he barely knew who was meeting him. Look for a man about my size, no moustache, with a sign bearing your name, Badresh had told him. ‘We are travelling north together.’
‘Ah, to Kashmir, probably? That is such a worth-visiting place, apart from all the troubles they have been having, but those are not so great at the moment. You know – all those problem Muslims, those militants who want their own country.’
Eli didn’t know, he didn’t want to know. ‘Yeah,’ he said. Just to satisfy the man and shut him up.
The man reached into the folds of his dhoti and took out a half-smoked bidi, lit it and puffed smoke into Eli’s face. ‘You are from where?’
Eli had to think for a second; the answer wasn’t a simple one. Born in Africa, grew up in Boston, now back in Cape Town. He didn’t feel like telling the truth to this guy, not the whole truth. ‘I’m an African-American,’ he said, straight-faced.
The smile dropped. The man looked at him intently, wide-eyed, befuddled, momentarily speechless. He seemed to sense a joke, so he laughed. ‘Very good!’ he said.
‘Where are you from?’ Eli decided to take the lead.
‘Oh, I am most certainly from Delhi,’ the man said. ‘I was visiting my brother in Jaisalmer, he is a successful businessman there. Running camel tours into the desert, most exciting. He is the superstar of our family, it must be said. I am a mere teacher of English … and you must please forgive my clothes, I am trying to be comfortable for the train. I will change before we arrive.’
The train was slowing down, the whistle blasting. Outside the window the scene was shifting: clusters of shanties growing thicker, more people wandering, more people in Western dress. ‘Jaipur,’ the man announced, shuffling his feet and knocking Eli in the shin. ‘You must disembark and find breakfast. In just twenty minutes, then we go.’
Not particularly hungry, Eli inserted himself into the mob in the aisle and let himself be carried by the human current down the train steps and on to the platform. He moved vaguely towards the toilets, following the stench above all the other stenches, and walked inside the station, a remnant from the Raj with lots of mahogany and unreachable ceilings, fans whirling slowly from them. He pushed inside the men’s room, waited for a stall, and thought he saw the back of someone familiar – maybe the skinny man – but there were too many people and he didn’t turn around.
Back in the station’s main hall, amid the tides of people and babel of noise, Eli looked around for something edible – maybe some dried chickpeas or, if he dared, cucumber with salt and paprika or a fresh mango juice. There were vendors everywhere, strolling, sitting in stalls, among crates. He was about to order a juice – the vendor was fingering a plump mango for ripeness – when someone tugged at his elbow.
‘It is dangerous, this juice – you know, Delhi Belly and all that sort of thing!’ The skinny man was giving him a warning.
‘I’m thirsty,’ Eli said.
‘Well, as you wish. I think we must re-embark now.’
‘See you on the train.’ Eli paid for his juice and drank it slowly as the skinny man walked away.
On board again he wished he could find another seat, but he’d be lucky to hold on to the one he had. So he made his way back there, trying not to push but being pushed incessantly, his chin rubbing against women’s hair and headscarves. When he sat down, after removing a large orange plastic sack from his seat, it was clear that the skinny man would give him no rest.
‘Those are my tiffin, my meals,’ the man said, reaching for the sack. ‘I was protecting your seat from invaders!’ He pulled a pack of playing cards from his dhoti. ‘As we are here together for another five hours, I suggest we entertain ourselves. We will have to use our laps as tables, I am sorry for that.’
Eli played cards when he was younger, but now they seemed really old-school. Better than looking out the window for another five hours, though, or answering the man’s questions.
‘What shall it be – gin rummy, go fish …?’
‘Blackjack,’ Eli said.
‘You are a gambler I see,’ the man said, dealing them each a hand.
A Jack and a six of spades. ‘Hit me,’ Eli said, and the skinny man dealt him another card. A five of hearts. Too easy. He wanted to show his skill, not leave it all to chance.
‘Blackjack.’ Eli splayed his cards face-up on his knees.
‘You are quite the – what is it they say in English? – “card shark”, isn’t it?’
Eli laughed in spite of himself at the image of him as a shark, rows of razor teeth bared, swimming towards the skinny man. ‘Your deal again.’
The skinny man stared at him, again, as he placed the cards alternately on their knees. ‘You are quite beautiful.’
Eli was used to being stared at, with his golden hair falling around his shoulders and usually over his eyes, deep blue and still trusting much of the time. But this was too weird – maybe it was the man’s English, though he was a teacher; it didn’t sound right. Back home, he wanted people to notice him, particularly a certain girl, but here he wanted to be invisible.
He played his hand but only half-heartedly. His thoughts drifted out the window again and north towards the mountains up there somewhere, waiting for him. He longed to see his father but was afraid of wanting too much. Afraid of what happened each time, being handed over to someone else while his father went to meetings. Sightseeing all day with the driver or some other local, brought home to the hotel in the evening for supper with his father. The two of them, an even number but an odd combination; how he longed for it to be three. Once again, Eli felt furious at his mother for not coming with him. He kept hoping that his parents would get back together, that maybe on a journey together, in a strange place, where everything familiar fell away, they could remember why they had once loved each other.
Eli handed the cards back to the skinny man at the end of the game and huddled against the train wall, hugging himself, eyes closed, trying to sleep. He imagined climbing the mountains, from pictures he’d seen – tiny villages on the slopes, dark wooden huts, smoky inside with people drinking chai, people with snow-burnt faces and rainbow clothes, yaks, and the trails, green and forested at first, winding higher into the snows, the ice, away from people, into yourself, cold and empty, the opposite of here.
Eli awoke to the sound of the train screeching into Delhi Station. People were frantically grabbing their things in the aisles. The skinny man had his duffel bag on his lap and was waiting. He wore a dark brown suit now and a lurid blue shirt, and he’d slicked back his hair again. ‘I can help you find your father,’ he said.
‘I’m fine.’ It sounded a bit harsh. ‘Thanks, though – and thanks for the cards.’
The skinny man stared at him, nearly through him, one more time. ‘Now the adventure begins.’
He thought it had already started. Eli stood up, grabbed his backpack, and pushed into the aisle, not afraid to shove now – everyone else was, madly. He smiled goodbye at the skinny man but just wanted to get off the train.
On the platform a dizzying mass of humanity swarmed around him, a collision of rich and poor, Western and traditional dress, bare feet and shiny Italian leather, caged chickens and cell phones. Above the din, in his head, he could hear Axl’s voice screaming the lyrics to Guns N’ Roses’ best song. He was in the jungle, baby. People were going in all directions, but seemed to know where they were going. Eli headed towards where he thought the exit must be, dodging people, slipping through the tight spaces between them – it felt like driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Now, in this throng, he wanted to be recognised.
Finally he saw the sign with his name on it, and a pair of arms hoisting it aloft, waving it above the crowd. He couldn’t see who the arms belonged to, but hoped he wasn’t a talker. Just a good driver who knew the shortest route to the airport. His flight for Kathmandu left in three hours.
‘Mr Eli de Villiers’ – they’d spelled his name right, its bold black letters swaying back and forth above the heads of all these people, a name among the nameless. The sign. A sign. With the fatalism that moves India, he walked towards it.
Chapter 4
They came for him on time, rare in a country where people knew how to wait. Sikriti Bhyat and her driver pulled up to the curb outside his office as the square hummed at the intersection of life; along with crowds of people, there were dozens of monkeys on the palace steps this bright afternoon, grooming, foraging in the dirt, staring at their human relations. De Villiers stared back at one as he settled himself into the springy backseat of the grey Morris Minor, which should have been retired years ago. You’ve got it right, he thought of the troop of macaques, living simply. We humans make a mess of everything.
De Villiers turned up his hearing aid and braced himself for the lecture he was sure Sikriti would give en route. He could always turn the device down again if she proved too much. And so she began: ‘Namaste, Dr de Villiers, are you prepared to be amazed?’
He smiled back at her, signed ‘namaste’; he couldn’t quite get the head wiggle that meant ‘yes’, and it might insult people if he tried. One could go only so far in adopting local custom; appreciation easily turned to parody.
‘Tell me what to expect,’ De Villiers said, knowing she needed no invitation. Sikriti had roughly two hours before they reached the rehabilitated child soldier’s village, in the foothills of the Annapurna range to the northwest.
‘This boy is a sad story,’ she began, ‘like all of the children who were with the Maoists in the war – or the government forces. He fought in the jungles with the Maoists, cooked for them, and then was captured by the government army, tortured and turned into a spy. Just eleven years old at the time, now he is nearly fifteen. These children live many lifetimes in a few years.’
‘And now?’ De Villiers tried to concentrate on Sikriti’s words, and not on the red tika mark on her forehead, an ever-present sign of devotion, or the tiny glinting diamond in her nose. They always distracted him. ‘How is the boy now?’
‘Remarkably, remarkably well. About to start Grade Six again, where he was when they kidnapped him, so he’ll be a bit big compared to the other kids, but he’s not alone … but he IS very big, very long.’ Sikriti’s hands, like small birds with puffed-out chests, were weaving around to show the boy’s dimensions. ‘His name is Kumar, by the way.’
‘How is the community treating him?’
‘The community? You mean the village? Very nicely, in fact. Well, his own people at least – the Dalits, the Untouchables. They are reintegrating him. He has been put through purification rituals and is now almost like a normal boy.’
‘Almost?’
‘Dr de Villiers,’ Sikriti said solemnly, lowering her head slightly. ‘Don’t forget what he has seen – what he has done.’
What has he done? De Villiers wondered, but kept it to himself. He’d learn the details, or some of them, soon enough. He could imagine the atrocities, part of every war. He’d seen less of violence itself than of the aftermath, the effects of violence – which lasted much longer than the physical act. Forever, perhaps.
The Morris climbed higher and higher with the gravel road; it was slow going. Annapurna and its sister peaks rose like giant angels spreading their wings above. Sikriti was unnaturally quiet, and the driver, a sullen, scrawny fellow with an over-large topi, had yet to say a word. De Villiers turned down his hearing aid to slip further into his own world, and wondered, as the landscape of fields and poor farmers became monotonous, why he was travelling all this way to see one child.
At last they turned off on to another gravel road, heavily rutted, and wound their way into the heart of the village, stopping by the community water tap – or the tap for the higher castes, at least. The air was heavy with the smell of wood-smoke and dung, coming from the mud and stone houses flung against the hillside like tumbling dice. To the west of the houses were terraces of rice, several shades of green. They left the driver with the car and his pack of bidis; Sikriti led the way up the hill, on a narrow track littered with plastic bags and populated by chickens scratching in the dirt. He marvelled at how she kept her feet so clean in her golden sandals.
They stopped at a house that looked much like the rest, a collapsing, squashed pagoda with a string of tattered prayer flags stretched across the front, over the door. The door was open, the inside dark. Sikriti knocked on the door’s wooden frame, and when there was no response, offered a tentative greeting: ‘Mr Pande, namaste, are you there? Sikriti of Save the Children and Dr Anton de Villiers are here to see your boy.’ Then whispering, aside: ‘Pande’s English is very good, he was once a teacher.’
A rumpled middle-aged man emerged, barefoot with spiky grey hair, wiping sleep from his eyes and tugging at his white vest and salwar pyjamas. He came to the threshold and stared at them, squinting in the sunlight.
Sikriti made the introductions, waiting for Pande, now their host, to speak.
‘Kumar is not here,’ his father said, ‘but come inside. He has gone to the forest again.’
‘Isn’t that where he disappeared? Where the Maoists abducted him?’ Sikriti asked, settling on to a deep blue and red handmade carpet and patting a space for De Villiers next to her, though not too close.
‘Kumar was out gathering grass for our water buffaloes when the Maoists came along and took him and four of his friends. Two of them died in the war. Another is also back in the village, very disturbed, and the other is missing …’
‘How’s your son?’ De Villiers asked, trying to get comfortable with his folded knees; he still hadn’t found the way to sit.
‘He has never returned from the war, in his heart.’ Pande sighed. ‘But here he comes now, you can ask him yourself.’
Pande withdrew to the stone hearth at the end of the darkened room and fanned the flames heating the small black iron kettle. De Villiers looked towards the open door, now filled by the boy’s silhouette. He was already taller than his father.
The boy came towards De Villiers and extended his hand. ‘I am Kumar,’ he said, nodding at Sikriti. ‘Hello, Auntie.’
‘How are you, Kumar? I am telling Dr de Villiers here that you are now much, much better – that this feels like home again. Am I right?’
The boy was silent. ‘Tell them, Kumar,’ his father said, handing round a tray of hot chai in earthen cups.
De Villiers studied the boy, sitting next to him now, on a cushion. His head was shaved, a dark shadow where the hair was starting to grow back; he was thin, dreamy-eyed, wearing brown cotton trousers too short for him and a black Metallica T-shirt, with a coiled, hissing snake on the front. Not his son Eli’s style exactly, but evidence of the same rebellious streak. ‘Where’d you get that T-shirt?’ he asked.
