Authors: Shakuntala Banaji
Reptilian Stitching Woman and her swollen-bellied daughter featured in Karmel's dreams that night but he couldn't retain any precise images of them when he woke. Eager to hold Thahéra to her suggestion about guiding him around the area, he dressed with record speed and shaved twice but when he opened his door and saw the sharp grey drizzle he was sure that she would refuse him, make some excuse and abandon him to his solitary projects again.
Half an hour later, the growing belief that Thahéra wouldn't show made his limbs weak; he squatted by his door, allowing the wind to spatter him with rain. Then he heard the self-pity and disappointment in his thoughts and a wry awareness of absurdity gave him renewed energy. He was not in the district for a dalliance with a pretty village woman. Having verified the facts he should have immediately notified headquarters and then received new instructions. The mobile phone was useless up here but he could have made his trip down to Charmoli two days back in order to use a telephone or to Bhukta to use the post. Locals did those journeys twice a week.
He planned his day. Perhaps he should try to rescue the corpse and transport it somehow to Delhi; but that seemed fanciful, given the changed weather and the difficulty of the terrain on the descent. He had determined to take himself off in the direction of the lake, ignoring his hostess' promise, when Thahéra herself appeared, breathless and urgent.
'Hurry, sir, please! She is dying! My neighbour's girl – sick, since last night . . ..' Abandoning his plans, Karmel stuffed an assortment of medicines and first aid items into a small backpack and hastened after her.
A group of anxious people were gathered around the girl's bed. She was running a high fever and at first Karmel thought that she might have Malaria, for she was shivering uncontrollably and there were septic mosquito bites all over her thin legs. But after touching the child gently and asking questions he realised that there was no pattern to the fever and that the girl had complained about a terrible pain in her gums for several days. He asked her mother, a hunched woman with straw-coloured eyebrows and buck teeth, to wake her.
Looking inside a mouth which gave off a stench reminiscent of city sewers in summer, Karmel was sure he had found the girl's problem: an infection under and around one of her teeth. Rot had set in and it was difficult to see where the gum ended and the tooth began, but he felt certain that the tooth needed to come out, and fast.
With Thahéra's help he sterilised cloth and gathered implements that might aid him in his task. The other villagers saw what he was planning to do but remained sceptical; an old man he hadn't seen before opened an almost toothless mouth to show three utterly decayed teeth. He mumbled that he had never had such a fever. 'What do you say to that, stranger, huh?' Karmel didn't bother to reply. If the tooth broke up he would be powerless for he had only the most rudimentary skills, acquired when he was young and lived on the roads, watching street dentists and bone-men heal or pretend to heal the destitute and the desperate.
The girl screamed so much that almost all those in the vicinity thought he was killing her. Women argued loudly with Thahéra when she asked them to leave but ultimately only the child's immediate family remained to watch as blood poured from the little girl's mouth and tears from her eyes. She looked possessed. At last the tooth, a molar with deep roots, rendered itself up to the tarnished silver tongs and Karmel fell back against the wall. After that he worked swiftly, cleaning the cavity, packing it with cotton, disinfecting her whole mouth and forcing her to swallow crushed analgesics on a spoon. Her mother thanked Karmel without being overly grateful. Then, as he turned from the now quiescent girl, Karmel noticed Thahéra's sister, a scarf pulled low on her brow, leaning against a wall of the cabin and watching him with her pale eyes. When he smiled at her, she turned her head away and withdrew hastily from the room. A shy village woman.
It was nearly ten a.m.; he had spent three hours trying to get the tooth out.
Lightening flashed as Thahéra accompanied him back towards his own cabin and when they had stepped inside and closed the door, thunder started in a monotonous bullying roll. During the walk his mind had been preoccupied, but for once it was not by his companion. In the cabin to which he had been called he had spotted something that aroused his curiosity: it was a sweatshirt, worn by one of the older boys, sporting a
Nike
logo and still relatively clean.
Under guise of wanting to keep the girl warm he had begged the use of this item. When the garment was in his hands, in the moments before he slid it over the shivering child, he examined the label. So, signs of the foreigners were everywhere, but no one mentioned them. Should he come straight out and request the villagers' help, revealing his status and his purpose –
or were they all in on it?
Noting the grim expression on his face, Thahéra didn't speak. Once inside the cabin, she stood quietly leaning against a wall, unconsciously mimicking her sister's pose. What had he been thinking earlier, dismissing her as 'pretty'? She was one of the most startlingly beautiful women he had ever met. Even if her face had not been so alluring – that wide mouth, those sparkling, long-lashed eyes – the swell of her bosom and hips might goad a lover to distraction.
He stared at her and swallowed but made no move, savouring the adolescent discomfort of an erection he had sudden thoughts of satisfying. Ultimately it was she who reached out and pulled him by the wrist until they were seated side by side on the string cot, which sagged beneath them. Resting her forehead against his, she opened her grey eyes wide. Smiled. The fringe of her scarf tickled him and he swept it away, trailing tentative fingers across her cheek. She pulled him towards her and their breathing became coarse. When the silky softness of his lips brushed the parched roughness of hers, she dug her fingers into his back and pressed herself against him as if to leave him in no doubt of her willingness. Looking over her shoulder, however, he was unaccountably distracted by the rusting tin trunk in the corner of the bare expanse of his cabin. Another detective would have closed his eyes, shut out the sight, at least until sex had boiled its way to climax. Not Karmel.
His brain danced and spun; he drew back and spoke tenderly to Thahéra, reminding her that she had promised to accompany him on a walk that day and suggesting that she make them some food to take along. Usually so outspoken and confident, she seemed suddenly shy, and simply nodded her head in response. Moving further from her, he drew her to her feet. He could see that her lips were still moist from their kiss, and he longed to pull her towards him once more, but his job came first. There'd be time for kisses later, once his curiosity was satisfied.
He led her towards the door and pushed her firmly over the threshold in his eagerness to search the trunk.
Everywhere across the plains the monsoon started. In Delhi and the surrounding areas a few fitful showers laid the dust to rest and took the edge off the heat. Karmel's landlady looked regularly at her calendar to determine how many days her handsome lodger had been gone and on the morning of the first rain of the year she marked a big red dot. It symbolised freshness and fertility in her mind. She used to mark a green dot until one of her relatives asked if she was marking Pakistani Independence day and she stopped using green altogether.
August was advancing and the summer was over for another year. In Bhukta and Charmoli the side streets turned to rivulets of muddy brown water with treacherous stones underneath. Cobbled paths were equally difficult to negotiate. People knew that these clouds would not want to depart until they had shed their burden so they wisely refrained from speaking about the weather and got on with their lives.
Only in Bhukta Lodge, Sinbari's party of architects, surveyors and secretaries bemoaned their fate. They had a DEADLINE. They were expected to report back. Time was Money. Money was being wasted. True, in Delhi each one of them with their westernised tastes and expensive habits would have spent up to eight times more than the miserable hundred rupees they were paying the owner of the Lodge; true they were all on monthly salaries that would have made most Indians blanche. But still, their employer's time was precious. And he was expecting them back within a week.
Taylor and Cornell tried to use their mobile phones to keep up with market news; when the satellites cut out they took to alcohol and became increasingly caustic about their employer. They made a pact that they were returning to Delhi if the rains kept up beyond the morrow. Narayan made a pass at Rimi and was slapped for his pains. Sadrettin watched it all, awkward, reticent, bothered to distraction by Rimi's constant flirting and unable to decide whom he hated most from amongst his colleagues.
Bitter thoughts of his stifling small-town existence with his parents recurred as they had not done in the past seven years of his life.
When he'd joined the Randhor-Sinbari group he had thought he knew what he wanted: a modern cutthroat environment, quick promotion, plenty of cash. Anything that would keep him well away from the desperation he'd felt when trapped in his family home with his mother's whining reproofs and his father's frowning concern for propriety. When his sister eloped and converted to her husband's religion, the fury and recriminations around him had been almost unbearable. Listening to his relatives screaming out what they would do when they caught the couple, he'd decided to move to Delhi. When he left his first employer to work for Antonio, he'd left all thoughts of his background behind. Now he wondered if he had made the right choice.
Resting his sleek head in his hands, Sadrettin gave himself over to a fantasy that was threadbare with use: it consisted of a vision made up of himself, wearing white briefs and seated at Antonio's feet on the edge of the pool; Antonio, from his deck chair, reached out a hand and raked it through his companion's hair. They were alone. It was night. Music played. Then they rose together and strode hand in hand towards the bedroom.
Sadrettin left the communal living space in the guesthouse and slunk back to the murky room he shared with Nelson Cornell. It was empty and he lay down on his damp straw mattress. Outside, the wind lashed rain at the wooden shutters.
They had been in Bhukta two days.
*
Further up the mountain, as they walked side by side on their way back from the day's 'soil-collecting' expedition, not touching, smiles fluttering around their lips, Karmel and Thahéra were greeted by villagers in a manner more friendly than that to which Karmel had become accustomed.
Thahéra's daughter, Maya, came to meet them, shouting that the food was going cold; rain saturated their clothing and trickled damp pathways down their backs and made him want to laugh. Darkness seemed not to be dark.
They ate merrily, entertaining Maya and each other with tales of unusual events and delightful coincidences and the absurdity of life. Their voices were too loud but they didn't notice. Thahéra's neighbour came in for a few moments to explain that her daughter was recovering, sleeping in a cool and placid manner. She addressed Thahéra and did not thank Karmel, but he noticed that her eyes were often upon him, in a peculiar and searching manner.
During the meal Thahéra's boys returned after securing the animals. Her youngest, the talkative one, immediately joined them and began to chatter of his day's doings; the older son, the sullen one, grabbed his food and sat in a corner, watching them suspiciously and devouring his stepmother with his eyes. Intercepting his gaze, Karmel was jolted by the memory of his real work and the nameless, pitiful body that had brought him to these parts. He determined to confide in Thahéra and to ask for her help; but somehow, as they all sat around her fire, listening to each other's tales, he did not get an opportunity to do so.
'We have an uncle', Thahéra's youngest told him, 'who can bite a sheep's tail off in a single bite.'
'I have seen men who can break a bull's neck with a single chop of their hands', he responded.
'Once, when I was a girl and I was visiting a relative in another village', recounted Thahéra, 'I watched a holy woman dancing with a snake. When the music ended she swallowed it whole!' As she stopped speaking, Karmel raised his brows in teasing irony and she smothered a laugh. Sensations from their morning's embrace trickled between them, inviting them to quench their thirst. Minutes passed and neither of them looked away.
The young people fell asleep, exhausted by their chores. Thahéra swept the room, rinsed the plates, then lit a cigarette and invited him onto the veranda to share it with her.
They sat beside each other on the stone porch and listened to the rain. A residual reluctance stopped him from telling her about his true purpose in coming to the hills.
Whirling and eddying downhill, rivulets of mud were beginning to form everywhere and Karmel understood why most of the houses in Saahitaal were slightly raised off the ground, with animal quarters below and humans living above. He gazed down onto the dark pathway and wondered what the dead man had seen in here. Something had prompted him to write to his friends about this place. Could that invitation have been the cause of his death?
'Tell me please,' he turned to Thahéra. 'Tell me about that foreigner who came here. I understand that you people all knew him; but no one says anything; and what about the other young foreigners? There are whispers. If something bad happened, you should tell me about it.' His companion had gone very still. It was a while before she spoke.
'Why do you want to know, stranger?'
'For God's sake, use my name!'
'Okay, Arun, or whoever you are', she paused, but he was silent; '
why
do you want to know?'
'Come on, I'm curious. You people live in such an isolated place….'
'People come and go here all the time. If there were foreigners … I can't remember when they came or why they left. I'm busy with my work. We all are. What else is there to do?'
'That's not what I've heard.' Karmel felt angry but hid his emotions well. Thahéra was not so polite.
'Are you saying I lie? What gives you the right?' She was breathing fast, her broad shoulders lifting with each inhalation. 'Can't you just look for your soil and then leave? Why are you wasting your time with us?' Her fingers twisted and untwisted a strand of her hair.
'I'll leave if that's what you want.' Karmel's voice trembled. Memories of their morning's intimacy filled his mind. He wanted to protest, but also wanted to know what she was thinking. Clumsily he touched her left shoulder. 'Why don't you tell me if you know something. Are you afraid?'
She studied her cigarette for a while and tapped out her ash into a grey-brown puddle. When she looked at him again there was a blank wall in her eyes where her soul had been and he felt a chill of tension. Their earlier harmony might never have existed. For a second it felt as if they were looking at each other through a distorting glass, seeing bits they'd never imagined. He wanted to take back his words and re-establish the connection between them.
Her words were loud, and carried through the silent village. 'I remember nothing. No use asking me questions. I have to go now and sleep; you probably have more soil to collect in the morning.' Then she gathered her skirt and stood. For a second she seemed to tower over him, her shadow cutting off the light from the tiny lamp inside.
Karmel rose reluctantly and descended to the path. Before he slept, he took pen and paper from his rucksack and wrote an account of the events that had taken place since the beginning of his journey. Meticulous as he was, he left out little, including the conversations he had had with the sculptress, Stitching Woman, as well as Thahéra, her sister and their children. No one except Chand had so much as nodded when he mentioned the foreigner, and he pointed out in his report that this in itself was highly suspicious. He squatted on his haunches till well past midnight trying to construct a plausible scenario that would exculpate the villagers yet explain their sinister silence in relation to the corpse that had so unpropitiously been deposited in his bed. Finally, he added to his report details of what he had discovered in the trunk:
A rucksack of amber canvas containing camping stove and gas canisters, shirts, waterproof jacket and woollen sweaters, socks, shorts, patterned kurta, reel of twine, maps of the North West Indian region, stationary, books – two guides to the region and two on architectural design, magazine with an article on secession movements – post-card, written to some-one addressed as 'Darling' and detailing some of the beauties of the lake, but never finished; bandages, syringe, unused needles, box of pills.
In one of the side pockets: drivers' licence, passport and credit cards all made out to 'Cameron Croft, 31, of 9, Lerrick Drive, Edinburgh, United Kingdom' and papers containing a signed contract between 'Randhor–Sinbari Hotel Management' and Cameron Croft, stating terms on which the young man was to have examined the region for its potential as a resort site following his own suggestion. Furthermore, he had started working on the design of some kind and toting up material costs: pieces of paper with sketches and notes on them tucked into the pouch.
In addition:
four polished wooden globes
, matching the ones in the house near the lake.
And a state-of-the-art digital camera
.
Karmel underlined parts of the penultimate paragraph several times, reliving the sense of disgust that had coiled and uncoiled within him when he read Sinbari's name on the contract. The man was a criminal, to have deceived them all into thinking he did not know anything about the village or the area other than what the young guests had told him. But it would not do to become bitter, for part of the blame went to his own credulity; besides, Hàrélal was likely to be angry enough for both of them when he read the report.
Now, twelve hours later, he recollected his sudden anxiety when he'd heard footsteps outside the cabin.
He had stuffed all the items back into the trunk and slammed its lid, just as Thahéra began to push open the door. It took him some uneasy seconds to explain why his cot was obstructing her entry and to move it away. She had glanced at him curiously before displaying the food she'd brought and he had hurried her out of the place before she could note the lock lying beside the trunk.
Shaking off his mood of tension, Karmel had proceeded to enjoy his day, chatting casually to his glowing companion as he mystified her and confused himself with tales of soil and trees. The aura of their earlier intimacy had clung to them throughout the day. Now he was sad.
If only he had left it at that
. If only he hadn't persisted with his questions. How coldly she had left him.
He finished his report and placed it in his carry pouch, ready for the next day's trek. Sleep was brief and uncomfortable. In the morning he rose to find the sun hidden by glowering clouds, though no actual rain was falling. Breathing a sigh of relief, he battled his way through the trees in what he thought was the best way towards Bhukta. He did not use his map until he reached the lake and after that the going was so rough that he forgot all about the time.
By noon he was halfway to his destination, just a stone's throw from the village known as Mulundi, and his stomach was cramping with hunger.
Sadrettin and his party passed the first map-point on their way to Malundi at roughly the same time as Karmel did, but they did not see him. Two small boys overtook them, climbing upwards and disinclined for any interaction. Nor did any member of the Sinbari team feel equal to holding a conversation, so choked were they by the exertion of climbing and so repulsed by the mud into which they seemed to sink up to their ankles at each step. Saturated flowers shed their petals to give off a suffocating scent which hung at the back of the throat like powder, making them cough. Surveying hill locations in the past had been a breeze compared to this and all the sites they had developed in valleys or across the plains were like picnic spots to this jungle. Each of them was willing to believe that someone amongst them was responsible for planting this idea in the Boss's mind, for he was usually a gifted judge of location. Sadrettin knew better but had remained silent as Taylor battled it out with Rimi back in their damp lodgings. Now he was glad to be using his muscles again, but he was probably the only member of their irritable team to feel any modicum of satisfaction.