Garden of Dreams, page 30
The frangipani trees intoxicated him; taller, feathery trees whose names he didn’t know and vines wrapping themselves around cupolas and arcades made him feel he was back in a jungle. But a civilised jungle. Graced by spacious, elegant white buildings harking back to another era, a hundred or so years ago when, he imagined, people lived with more style, more dignity. When people had gardens like this, sprawling but well tended, with sculptures in them and hideaway places for lovers to love. For dreamers to dream. These days you were lucky to have a garden.
Beyond the elephant statues, mother and baby, among the pavilion’s colonnades, waiters in tuxedoes moved effortlessly, like skaters on ice, delivering tea in porcelain pots and plates of biscuits. He would bring Sanjana here for tea one day, perhaps even a meal. He would show her the old library overflowing with books. He would bring her here and they would sit on the emerald lawn sweeping down from the amphitheatre, and perhaps there would be music. Nothing he would like, probably – no rock, surely – but something soothing and sweet and just the right music for a garden.
Now he heard only doves cooing and the pure trickle of a fountain.
There was another pair of lovers seated on the lawn, on a small blanket. They nuzzled each other and kissed, long kisses with their arms locked around each other. He’d wanted to kiss Sanjana, terribly, on so many occasions. But she’d been used enough; he didn’t want her to mistake his love for lust and count him among all the others.
Not long ago the lovers would have embarrassed him; now he envied them. He wanted his own girl to bring to the garden.
He took his father’s cell phone from his pocket and the scrap of paper he had saved from Sanjana’s village, the one cousin Akshyat had given him, with his cell phone number on it. Dialled. At first he thought it wouldn’t go through, that the village was so far away. But on the fifth ring a voice answered.
‘Akshyat? It’s Eli in Kathmandu.’
‘You made it?’ Akshyat sounded sceptical.
‘I did, and I found my father,’ he said proudly. ‘How is Sanjana?’
There was a pause on the end of the phone and he thought he’d lost the connection. Then Akshyat spoke again, with a strange enthusiasm.
‘She’s gone back to Delhi, my friend. New job. Very lucky for her, isn’t it?’
How? When? Why? The questions came all at once, panic shooting up inside him like a flame.
‘My father Shambhu found it for her. A maid in a very fancy house, movie star’s or something. Maybe you can visit her one day there.’
‘When is she coming back?’ He knew there was no answer to this question.
‘Achha, Eli, you know they don’t come back. Too much of the good life in the city. Right?’
He was silent. They had got her. Again. He wanted to scream at Akshyat, tell him to turn his father into the police. But he had no proof, only suspicion. And Akshyat was probably in on it as well.
He pushed the red ‘end call’ button while Akshyat was still saying, ‘Right? Right?’ Wrong. There was no good life in the city. He wondered if there was a ‘good life’ anywhere at all.
He sat on the low wall of the fish pond, full of plump orange koi, next to the stone elephants. He should have brought Sanjana here, with him, all the way to Kathmandu. Not left her in that nowhere place with relatives who betrayed her. He wanted to cry, or scream, or beat someone to death. He almost wanted his parents, he needed them, but less desperately than before. He suspected they also needed him, they had to have him, or their lives wouldn’t make sense.
As the sun sank and the other visitors to the garden started wandering towards the exit, he stood and followed them, slowly. He didn’t want to leave the garden. But it hit him suddenly: its beauty was a deception, a fake. Like a film set that could be easily assembled or dismantled. Life beyond the garden walls seemed much more real. Where people showed how ugly they could be, how evil. Where children were stolen, lives taken away. Dreams obliterated.
He passed the ticket man, closing up now. He looked back once, into the garden’s perfection, and felt a bittersweet longing, both to return and to move on. Perhaps he should never come back; perhaps he never could. It would remind him of Sanjana, a garden of ghosts.
But he had escaped, at least. He was free. In the dimming twilight he read the inscription just inside the garden gate, which he hadn’t noticed before. From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Ah, moon of my delight who knowst no wane.
The moon of Heaven rising once again:
How oft hereafter rising shall she look
Through this same garden after me – in vain!
As he stepped out into the street, illuminated now by the neon signs of so many seductions, he looked skywards. The moon had yet to rise, but he felt sure that it would shine on him again. Somewhere. Wherever he went.
In other gardens.
Acknowledgments
I wrote this book solo, but many people nursed it into being. First thanks go to the late Stephen Watson – poet, teacher and mentor – who embraced the short story that became the novel’s first chapter and found me a grant to keep writing. Without his generosity and guidance, this novel may not have happened.
Huge thanks go to writer, editor, friend, Joanne Hichens, my supervisor for the novel in the University of Cape Town’s Master’s Creative Writing Programme, where this book had its genesis. Jo’s tough love – a balance of criticism and cheerleading – plus a vigorous imagination for brainstorming carried me through the writing process and launched me towards publication. Thanks, too, to my fellow writers in the UCT programme – fine writers all of them. Special thanks to my friend, former classmate and ace mystery writer, Michéle Rowe, whose enthusiastic and intelligent reading of the earliest chapters spurred me on in the face of grave doubts.
Deep thanks to Vikas Swarup, whose generous reading and authenticating of the novel mean so much to me, as I have ventured into his familiar terrain – which he writes about so brilliantly.
To my editor, Jenefer Shute, a big thank you for your discerning, meticulous eye and warm support. It was a pleasure whipping the book into shape with you. To the team at Penguin SA – Frederik de Jager, Janet Bartlet, Genevieve Adams, David Simmons, Ziel Bergh, Sabrina Knipe, Ellen van Schalkwyk, Jean Fryer and others I’ve yet to meet – thanks for taking a chance with me and I hope it pays off, for all of us, in many, many ways. To Julie Miller, thanks so much for believing in the book at the start and punting it to your colleagues.
Thanks, if I could deliver them, to the many people in India and Nepal, where most of the novel is set and who contributed to the story through their stories, through who they are. Auntie Lakshmi and Inspector Gupta are drawn from no one in particular, but from many people in general. India and Nepal deserve appreciation for being among the most inspiring countries in the world – in spite of their devastating poverty – which trafficking exploits. The human will to survive there, to find meaning in a demeaning world, is inspiration itself. In India, my thanks go to Rakesh Pushkara, our intrepid guide in Delhi who took us to G.B. Road, despite his shock that I wanted to visit it, where he marched up the dark steps into a kotha, ignoring the shouts from two prostitutes: ‘Bagh ja, chutiya!’ (Go away, fucker!) Gratitude and much affection go to the staff at the Killa Bhawan, the small hotel tucked into the wall of the old fort in Jaisalmer, where the story begins. Manu, the manager, filled our heads with stories of obscene babas and all sorts of nefarious goings-on, which I am sure filtered into the novel. The entire team there – many, in fact, from Nepal – made us feel like we never wanted to leave. In Nepal, particularly, I’d like to thank the staff at Kantipur Temple House, especially hotel manager Digamber Shresta, who made me feel at home during my very strange time in Kathmandu. He and I had tea in the Garden of Dreams, a real place in Kathmandu’s Thamel section (open nine a.m. – ten p.m.; I ‘closed’ it earlier in the book), and he introduced me to the astounding library next door in the old mansion of the Rana dynasty. Thanks and respect go to Anuradha Koirala and the staff of Maiti Nepal, which rescues and rehabilitates trafficked girls. A big thank you to Shyam Basnet, my Nepali guide and friend who answered every prayer (except seeing more of the mountains!) while I was in Nepal. Thanks also to Khimlal Devkota, a Maoist soldier who helped me understand what the Maoists fought for, and what they still hope for.
Finally, immeasurable thanks go to my family, fractured as it is. Without that fracture, I suppose, this book may not have materialised. Thank you, Hannes, for your love and support beyond the bounds of marriage, and for the work you continue to do for people you barely know, or know not at all. Thank you, Rafe, my loveable son who so challenges and infuriates me as we navigate through these teenage years, and I see you becoming the great musician and man that you are meant to be. Through the journeys I have travelled with the two of you, I have perhaps been able to understand the journeys others travel. And to comprehend that the tension between loving ‘one’s own’ and complete strangers needing love is irreconcilable.
THE BEGINNING
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First published by Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 2014
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Copyright © Melissa Siebert 2014
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-143-53131-9
Melissa Siebert, Garden of Dreams
