Truth Lake (25 page)

They carried the bodies out of the devastated cabin. The rain had not abated and, apart from the lantern they bore, it was pitch dark. Karmel would not allow himself to stop, to reflect, to feel. Thahéra's unconscious figure was heavy but he managed to stagger the length of the path with it, thinking all the while of the ghastly symmetry of events, the way in which just the previous night she had been the one whose strong arms encircled him, carrying him to safety. When they reached her sister's cabin, he laid her down on a raised pallet and examined her devastated body.

When he couldn’t bear to see the marks of violence on her any more he looked around him.

Karmel had never been into this cabin. Here the rain had wreaked no havoc; the atmosphere was serene. Sonu, Chand and their cousins lay asleep in one corner, their backs to the firelight. Pots and pans were stacked neatly on a shelf; there was an old loom at one end of the spacious room and various agricultural implements hung from hooks set into the roof; the floor was covered in cow-dung, like that in all the other dwellings in the village. The walls were dry.

It was a complete contrast to the scene that had greeted them when they reached Thahéra's home. 

There the floor had been covered in leftovers from the meal: vomit and blood and splintered wood mingled into a lethal sludge. The devastation was so thorough that when he’d raised his lantern to illuminate the scene, Thahéra’s sister had shrunk back moaning.

Thahéra was sprawled on her side in the middle of the wreckage, one arm twisted beneath her; her father lay at an angle, crumpled into himself, his eyes and mouth open, swollen tongue lolling, and his face bluish-grey, gnarled fingers still clutching at his throat. It was a gruesome view. 

Thahéra’s sullen boy came swiftly into the room and threw himself at the old man’s feet, ignoring Karmel completely. Thahéra’s sister entered, as if against her will, and together the two of them hefted the old man from the ground. After one initial glance, neither one of them stooped to touch Thahéra.

Karmel had given himself over to the task of reviving her.

Splashing her face with water, he touched the bruising around her eyes with shaking fingers. Her body shuddered slightly and he noticed that she was regaining consciousness. He’d felt for her pulse. When he found it, jubilation flooded his chest.

Now he wasn't sure where her eldest son and her sister had gone but he knew that they had not been far behind him; surely they would enter any minute, bearing the body of the old man, Thahéra's father. Whether it was a corpse or a body, and what had gone on in that terrible cabin, still remained to be seen.

              In the event, Karmel found himself alone with the sleeping children and Thahéra's prone form for the rest of the night. He sat and watched over her until sleep took him. Dawn found him hunched over on the floor, stiff with cold and discomfort. The fire had died but she was conscious now, he could tell; her breathing was regular and her eyelids fluttered, despite the great swelling around her nose and cheeks. He stretched and walked to the door, looking down the steps and up the path towards the lakeside pastures. His lungs felt tight. 

              The night's rain had cleared the air but given it a sharp, icy tang; in the trees he could see droplets of moisture caught in spiders' webs. It was a cliché that gave him a jolt of pleasure. He turned into the cabin and bent to brush Thahéra's battered cheek with his fingers. She murmured, but did not wake.

Five minutes later he was sliding and squelching his way up the path towards the lake. It was the logical place to look. If they had not come to this cabin then they had gone to Gauri's.

She was the last link in the chain. He could not leave without speaking to her and hearing what Thahéra's sister had to say.

When he pushed open Gauri's door, she looked up at him as if he had been long expected. He moved forward eagerly to ask questions, wanting to gain reassurance, to find that his theories were right. To his dismay, however, her cabin was crowded. 

In every corner sat villagers, wrapped in shawls and scarves, their voluminous skirts tucked about them, their faces tired and drawn. Some of them held babies, sleeping against them; some had unlit pipes in their hands. Others were stroking the wooden carvings that littered Gauri's dwelling. He recognised Thahéra's sister, and Stitching Woman – and her daughter.

In the centre of the room, near Gauri's unlit fire, lay the body of the old man.  Beside him, kneeling, Thahéra's eldest son, the only other man in the room. Karmel walked to the interior of the house, ignoring all the women. He pushed the youth aside and touched the cold body. There was no pulse and the limbs were stiff, the digits of one hand sill curled to form a fist. Looking at the face, he had known the man was dead. His guess was some kind of poison but he had no way of knowing for sure. The lips were discoloured and bloated. Fluid had run out of the mouth and was caked in the contours of the skinny neck. The man must have suffered greatly before he quit the world. Remembering Thahéra's torn lips, her shredded flesh, he sealed off any compassion and quelled his loathing; then he turned and stepped out of the door.

The plane dipped and straightened, an apology from the captain hanging disembodied in the sterile air. Most people had nodded off over their pre-lunch tipples.  There were few families in business class. Tanya's earrings swung and glinted in the softly lit cabin, drawing the admiring eyes of more than just the South Indian banker to her left. However much she disguised her good looks, there was something about her disordered curls that always drew attention. The sleek curve of her shoulder beneath the orange blouse and the arc of her chin above it were reflected back at her in the glass window. She appeared to be dozing but actually her mind was awake, replaying the scene that Adam had conjured for her in that elegant Goan hotel room.

              According to him, he'd turned, amongst the trees and the undergrowth, and looked back towards the spot from which he could hear loud voices; but the foliage was such that he could see nothing. Knowing he was only a few hundred yards away from Cameron, he'd started back up the path.

Adam found climbing arduous and, since he was trying to move quietly, his progress as slow. Tanya had asked what was being said and he had laughed: of course he could not understand a word of it but there were three voices, one which sounded accusing, another enraged, the third might have been the woman's but he hadn't been paying enough attention to recognise it. He was breathless and scared as he climbed, wondering if Cameron was in some kind of trouble. The first thought which occurred to him, he'd admitted, was that Cameron's architectural plans for the area might have upset somebody powerful in the village. As he rushed back, he tried to recollect the faces of the two men he'd glimpsed approaching but it was all a blur. He thought that one of them was very young and that the other used a stick as a crutch, but he wasn't certain.  Branches impeded his progress and he became more and more flustered as the shouting increased in volume.

Tanya started. A flight attendant stood beside her. He was slim and black-haired, but she could see the age around his eyes.

'Can I get you another drink, Ma'am? Mineral water? Juice?' She shook her head, wondering briefly what his life was like and whether it was true that all male flight attendants were gay. The man moved on down the aisle.

Where had she got to? Adam finally managed to see what was going on. She'd questioned him sternly, she knew, forcing him to repeat himself time and again, humiliating him with her distrust, goading him to anger; chipping away at his story until it had satisfied her legal imagination. In a courtroom, she was certain, a jury would have been convinced: for better or worse, she'd felt, Sara had to know whether her friend was a coward or a killer.

The whole incident had probably lasted no more than ten minutes – the time it took Adam to find his way back to the spot where he had said good-bye to his friend. But in that time the shouting had ceased, to be replaced by the muted splash of the river over rocks. As he peered back through the trees, Adam explained, he'd had the urge to stay hidden. At first he couldn't see anything and decided that he had overshot the mark and come too far up. Then he heard voices almost beside him, and withdrew into the undergrowth, cowering from sight. 

Tanya had examined Adam's countenance closely as he described how, about ten feet away on the ground, he spotted Cameron, with blood covering his head and fountaining over his shoulders. Surrounding his friend's prone form were not three but
four people
, two women and the men he'd noticed earlier. One of the women was sucking her knuckles and shaking, the other was taut and sticklike, speaking fervently. The old man had his back to Adam but the young man's features wore an expression of horror so intense that Adam had nearly choked.

Tanya had not refrained from asking Adam why he hadn’t gone to his friend's aid; then. Immediately. He insisted that he'd been too bemused to move. 

'Cameron wasn't moving; if he had been, I think it would have shaken me out of my daze and made me run to him. I don't know what I thought. Maybe he was out cold.  I definitely
did not
think he was dead. No! It just didn't cross my mind!' He was shaking his head from side to side. Sara laid a palm on his knee. He shook it off and continued, 'When the thin woman dropped down and put her ear to Cameron's chest, I didn't understand what she was doing. He'd been in scrapes before … back home  … and usually he'd escaped with a slap or a bruise. That was Cameron, he didn't go in for brawling much. Then the old man walked away.'

'Where was his stick? Can you remember?' Tanya was alert, sitting forward.

'Someone handed it to him, I think. I can't really remember. When he went, he wasn't leaning on it though, he jabbed it into the river then he was using it to push aside the bushes; I do recall that because it was so . . . strange. Oh fuck,
no!
' Adam groaned and Sara had her hands over her mouth as the significance of the gesture struck them.

'Do you think the stick …?'

'Possibly. No way of telling now, it must have rained many times since. Try not to think about it.' Tanya was eager to get to the end of the narration. 'How did the old guy seem? Was he limping?'

'He looked strong enough to me … and before he left I saw him clearly: he spat at the crying woman. He spat right in her face and she didn't do a thing! It was worse than humiliating, it was like she was insensible. I waited, 'cause I thought they'd leave Cameron there and go off and then I could go to him and get some help. But they stayed. Do you get it? And I didn't know what they were saying so I can't tell you. It just seemed to go on and on, them talking and me watching and Cameron not moving. And the worst thing is … I was there, but I cannot say who hit him. It's all so fucked up.'

Adam had put his head in his hands. Sara was weeping openly. Tanya heard her but made no move to touch or comfort her. She was angry. If one of her friends had been in danger, she hoped that she would have had the courage to confront their trouble, to risk herself for them, to act without thinking of herself. But we all behave differently, under stress, from how we imagine we should. If he was telling the truth, she couldn't condemn Adam's cowardice. 

At last he'd looked up, eyes wet, and finished his tale: there was not much more to tell. 

The crying woman had been dragged off by the thin one, he told them. Then sobbing and gasping, the young man began to pull Cameron, lifting him under his arms, towards the river. Adam waited – how long? He couldn't exactly recollect, but maybe a quarter of an hour – couldn't see what was happening and so came out of the covering of the trees. Tanya saw Sara recoil in dismay when Adam told them how long he’d waited. Long enough to have run for help. Long enough for an injured man to die. Tanya had forced herself to concentrate on his narrative.

By the time he got to the river, Cameron and the young man had disappeared. He began to wonder if it had all been a hallucination. Then he heard breathing and shuffling and suddenly the young man passed him again, almost close enough to touch and rushed upwards without seeing him. Adam then stumbled down river, towards the place from which the young shepherd had emerged, and there he immediately saw a shallow grave. 

He'd lunged and scrabbled and kicked at the leaves and earth, sobbing to himself and petrified, aroused from his torpor and dreading what he would find. The back of Cameron's head emerged; then his shoulders, dark mud and leaves clinging to the coagulating blood. 

He was still warm.

Adam cradled the body and felt for its pulse, its breathing, brushing off the mud, kissing its lips, whispering to Cameron to wake up.

'There was a gigantic gash at the side of his head, shrivelled skin and hair curling back just behind his ear, and I tried to hold it together with my fingers – but it wasn't even bleeding any more – all the blood seemed to have seeped out and pooled around him. His skull felt mushy, like a vegetable that's rotted on one side but when I felt tiny bits of bone coming off into my palm, I was sick ….I had to move away from him to vomit. Ages before I could stop the retching. I'm not proud of myself.

'While I was puking I heard loud speech, and I knew I had to go before the same thing happened to me or before someone accused me … accused me of killing him. I crept back to the cabin we shared, avoiding the village and the clear paths – somehow I found it and went in and packed all my stuff. I wanted to take his things too but I had no energy, so I took mine and made off; the only thing I kept of his was this camera.' He'd unzipped a suitcase and held out the small digital camera. 'I stumbled along all that day; didn't sleep at night and stopped only to wash off Cameron's blood. I was going to get the cops; I was going to find out what had happened. Then I saw Sara! It was a nightmare. I nearly screamed. I'd forgotten about her. I'd forgotten everything I ever knew. The last thing I wanted was to tell her about Cameron, but I was desperate for her to know so I could share the whole experience with someone.'

Sara had been so cheerful, anticipating her reunion with the man she loved, that Adam's terror had hardly registered. He'd told her first that Cameron wasn't there; that he'd moved on, they might as well leave. When she thought he was fooling around, he came right out and told her. Cameron was dead. And this time she seemed to believe him – or at least she said she did. She whimpered a bit and that made Adam cry too. They were both exhausted and depressed, trying to figure out what had happened and why it had happened. Sara insisted that they climb to Saahitaal. 

'She was much braver than I'd have been', Adam told Tanya. And she believed him. There was something solid about Sara, notwithstanding her external fragility, which gave one confidence. She wouldn't let anyone down. 

'We were so ravenous by the time we reached the outskirts of Saahitaal that Sara agreed to go on ahead and get food for us. Nobody knew her and she was confident that she could get what we needed. She wasn't as scared as I was, perhaps because the reality of what had happened hadn't sunk in for her. She was still hoping it was a joke, a hoax by Cameron and myself; now I guess she'd thought it my revenge on her for the shock I was supposed to have received on hearing of Cameron's engagement to her.’ Adam cleared his throat, his pain still raw. 'She assumed that I’d been told: she had no way of knowing otherwise.'

But Sara wasn't prepared for the unfriendliness that washed across her path every time she asked about the young foreign man: the closed doors when she described him; the hostile eyes on her back as she walked away. Eventually a woman approached her and agreed to her mimed request for food. An hour later she was descending the slopes by the lake, carrying a pot of stew. She ate it alone: Adam didn't seem able to eat.  He was moody and silent, dreading her reaction when she saw the body: she thought he was morose at the failure of his ruse. 

Unable to bear the suspense any more, he dragged her to the riverbank as soon as she'd eaten. They trudged back and forth for an hour as Adam tried to orient himself and find the dreadful spot; every time he stopped, Sara told him to come off it, to give up the joke and come with her to meet Cameron. She was laughing. The tears she'd shed had left her more cheerful than ever. Hearing him describe her optimism Sara cried even harder. Now Tanya felt nothing but pity for both of these young foreigners.

From there onwards it was almost as they'd described in their report. They found the body and Sara, who'd resisted believing for so long that Cameron was dead, was finally silenced by the overwhelming intensity of her horror. 

Adam saw the ravages of three days on his lover's face and went to the river to be sick again. Sara slipped the watch off the wrist of her fiancé's corpse. Then, terrified for different reasons, they both fled.