Truth Lake (4 page)

The boys were fair haired and fragile-looking, with colourful caps and bare feet.  He was drawn to them instantly and did not want them to leave.

'I'm from Delhi.' He said, inviting them to share their names with him. The smaller of the two boys responded by introducing himself as Chand while his brother's name was Sonu. Their grandfather was called Devsingh and was, according to his grandsons, an extremely stern man – they looked at each other when they said it, chewing their lips and frowning – who was not in Saahitaal at the moment as he had gone to a distant village to intervene in a dispute over land. Their father had left their village when they were very young and worked in Delhi, they had been told; they barely remembered him. They had many cousins and other relatives all over the place but several also resided in Saahitaal.

As Chand spoke, Karmel was busy rolling his tent and stuffing his belongings back into the rucksack.

Sonu kept laughing shyly and touching bits of the dismantled tent. The boys seemed to be in a hurry to follow their animals which had halted restlessly by the river, their bells creating a kind of eerie music that made Karmel hunger even more for the company of humans. Chand, who appeared to be older than his brother despite his size, gave a long list of convoluted directions to Saahitaal and promised to see Karmel there at nightfall. Karmel thanked them and began to descend in the direction indicated.

The day was warm. Sunshine broke through foliage all along the riverbank.  Drops of water sailed through the slightly misted air and swirled around him whenever he bent down. He only realised that he was sweating when he stopped. His garments clung to him and sent shivers of discomfort rippling over his skin.

He had walked for several hours and the ground was beginning to climb steeply again, trees springing from the earth like gnarled phantoms. Interspersed with these, great boulders made of some shiny substance embedded in a darker slate-coloured rock cast blunt shadows towards the river, which was now silent and slow flowing. Looking around him he wondered if he had somehow missed his way. His sense of isolation became acute.

Making a quick decision, he began to ascend into the forest.

Flowers clung to the branches all around him, deep blushing bunches forcing him to breathlessness with their perfection. Looking around he remembered Adam's description and thought irrelevantly,
you didn't tell about the flowers
.
I'm glad you missed the flowers. I needed to see this for myself. 

He had never known such abundance of colour before and the long-tamed anguish of not being able to share his vision with anyone flared up again and kept him steady company for the next ten minutes.

Then the forest was gone and he was staring out at a wide, still lake.

Inside the forest, the brushing of his body against branches had created a kind of self-referential noise that had preoccupied his ears and stopped him from listening to the silence. Out on the rim of this placid pool he could no longer deceive himself. He didn't even dare to breathe aloud, for fear of missing something. But there was nothing to hear.

He looked at his watch and realised with a sense of having lost time that it was almost noon. He began to search for the path that he knew must exist, down to the village. As he walked, he became engrossed in a memory about flowers. His first paid job had been to deliver bouquets to rich women. He was eleven, had run from the Manek Foundation and kept going all the way to the heart of Delhi, to fresh flowers fallen from stalls at the flower bazaar, to nights of thieving and days of sweet, unexpected sleep. Then he stole some rare orchids to sell to passing rich folk at traffic lights; he was caught and beaten and made to work for the stallholders. Throughout that period of his life he had continued to sleep deeply, whenever and wherever he could, usually on pavements and porches scented with the bizarre fragrance of crushed and rotting petals. The smell rising up from beneath his boots now was fresher and more wholesome but still recognisably kin to that one.

Saahitaal ambushed him the way fear did in dreams, springing up around him before he was aware, like all the other things on this strange quest. A village of raised stone and wood cabins, layer upon layer stretching around and down the hillside, in clearings made by cutting away trees. A maze of narrow lanes ran towards him in every direction, dizzying and inviting at the same time. He stumbled forward and suddenly became aware of women watching. 

On doorsteps, old women stood and gazed at him: little girls were on the paths, where they had not been seconds previously, smiling behind their hands or glaring solemnly, pulling their own pigtails and biting nervously at their lips. A hushed but expectant noise – the purring of a multitude of cats – made its way through the village.  Stranger. It seemed to murmur. Stranger.

He felt the hair rise on the backs of his sweater-clad arms, on his chest, on the nape of his neck. 

For several years it had been Antonio Sinbari's habit to go for a pre-dawn jog around the deserted lanes of the exclusive colony that housed his spacious New Delhi home. He believed in keeping fit, in keeping the years at bay. Even when he was a young man travelling from city to city and improving his father’s legacy, he had always taken the time to go running. On the twenty-eight of July he began his run as he always did, with a slight smile on his cleanly shaven face and shades to cover his swollen eyes; he was not an easy sleeper.

About a mile into the jog, he was joined by Sadrettin. Lithe and handsome in white shorts and a cotton pullover, Sinbari's personal assistant was alert to any small changes in his boss's routine or manner; he noticed the grim lines of fatigue around Sinbari's mouth and the slight stoop of his shoulders as he moved. He knew, however, that their daily briefing which took place during this ritual run could not be foregone on any impulse of his own. So he started to speak.

'Our foreman at Mahanta Island has quit. I won't bore you with the details of his quarrel with us but he is threatening litigation for unfair dismissal so I thought you'd be amused to know that we actually have his signed resignation on file! Oh and your wife called from Florence about Vincent's graduation. Do you want to call her back or shall I fax her? You're planning on being there? Yes. What's she doing in Florence? Visiting an aunt of yours, she said. You’ll know who she means when I say the word ‘Luisa’. Ah, she was right.' As usual, Sadrettin answered questions that were never put into words.

He paused occasionally but Sinbari's heavy breathing and the plok plok of their trainer-clad feet were the only sounds to be heard so he continued. 'We have received authorisation to begin construction at Konali, Sir. The truckers are all loaded up and waiting for our signal. The design team is standing by to fly out there, all plans finished, and I thought that if you don’t need me for anything else, I should go with them, at least for the initial period. I had Mrs Pillai telephone to thank Raja Jobal for clearing those wretched labourers off that land. She sent over a bottle of Glenfiddich and something to keep him smiling. Very discreet, as you requested. I'll need clearance to send out cheques to Ma Randhor this week or else we'll be hearing from her lawyers.' The whisper of cloth against flesh muffled Sinbari's response.

'I beg your pardon, sir?'

'Pull out of the Konali project.'

'
Sir
?' Sadrettin almost stopped running. A bird shot up sleepily from a tree and cawed at them, then flopped back down again.

              'You heard me, son.' 

              'But . . . but aren't we
committed
? Haven't you
signed
a land reclamation form?  And Raja Jobal . . . ' Sadrettin's voice was rising in pitch. He was normally so calm, so intrepid, that his near hysteria infuriated Sinbari even more than it might have done, coming from another man.

'
I
pay you to look after
my
interests, not Jobal's, stupido! So if
I
say
I
want out of some bullshit little deal then that's what you do. Get us out of that project and no, you won't be apologising to anyone! Jobal sat on his ass for long enough without calling, now it’s our turn to play poker.' When he was annoyed Sinbari sounded like a magnate in an American film. It might have been the influence of the years he spent building out in California with his American ex-wife Mimi. Although he claimed he’d never watched a single movie.

'Can I ask why you're doing this, sir?' Sadrettin once more had his voice under control. Only the sweat that poured off him gave any indication of the pressure he was under.

'You can ask . . ..' Sinbari stopped running and stared hard at his handsome assistant. Then he relented. 'The capital's needed elsewhere. Is that a good enough reason for you?'

A man carrying a pile of rolled up newspapers cycled by and stared at them.  Sadrettin gave him an evil look and the man turned his head sharply away. Sadrettin was breathing heavily; he felt nauseous but calm.

He had made the choice as a very young man to leave the small family firm in Bihar and strike out on his own in Delhi. He'd worked as a p.a. for almost four years before he was headhunted by the Randhor-Sinbari group. He'd gone to them eagerly and so far he had never had cause to rue his decision.

'May I ask
where
we are going to invest the Konali funds?'

They began to walk. Behind Sadrettin's question lay years of experience about the changeable nature of property investment in the subcontinent and an intimate understanding of the methods they had used to satisfy their investors that Konali was indeed the perfect site for Randhor-Sinbari's latest tourist offering, an island just off the South-western coastline, almost deserted, tropical, utterly exclusive but quite unlike Goa in its bizarre abundance of caves and natural rock carvings that dated back hundreds of years.

The question went unanswered and, as Sadrettin held the door for his boss to enter the mirrored marble hall of the Sinbari mansion, he felt rather than saw the look of irritation on Sinbari's face. And perhaps he was right after all. The Tsunami has wrecked islands just to the East of Konali. People weren’t queuing up to go back there, despite the reassurances of the government.

They entered the home gymnasium together but Sadrettin said he didn't feel up to more exercise and excused himself. Stripping off his shirt he made straight for the showers. 

He was a man of enterprise, just like his employer, he reassured himself. What was the point of questioning such business decisions? Money and morality never could be allowed to mix, he’d learned. Ethics made men sentimental, made them weak, and Sinbari certainly was not weak.

His previous boss had been too malleable, too slow, shallow, naïve; he had allowed political pressures and alliances to dominate and his employees to drift away. Sinbari had not pushed himself to this position by treading lightly on the anxieties or interests of others. Was there not something primordial and utterly admirable about a character who could take from its environment and shape all that crossed its path to suit itself? Others seemed as shadows or clouds on the horizon to Sinbari's vigorous and amoral stature.

Such thoughts made Sadrettin long to spend more time with his employer. That, and the delicate tracery of lines around the eyes, which made Antonio's tanned face seem so poignant and vulnerable when in fact he was at his most ruthless.

Sadrettin rarely allowed himself to dissect his sentiments towards the man who employed him and now urgency tugged at his gut. Their auditors would be furious. He would have to work fast so that International trading standards commissioners didn't get a whiff of the new deal and start arguing that the money was already committed elsewhere. But what was this new deal. . .? Where . . .? 

Suddenly he stopped on his way to Sinbari's fourth shower room. Pivoting on his heal he hurried back towards the gym in time to see Sinbari's body disappearing under the glittering water of the indoor pool. A strange and utterly devastating feeling of alienation enveloped Sadrettin as he watched his lean Italian boss swim back and forth across the rectangular space like a caged shark. When he could bear the tearing sound of his own heart no longer, he turned and almost ran from the room.

*

Karmel had often run from things, since he was a boy, and now he wanted to fling his pack down on the dry, cindery path and fly from this place with its whispering women and its suspicious, taunting houses. 

Instead of fleeing, however, he placed his hands together and faced the villagers with a smile curving his lips.

'Greetings' he called, with a ceremonial bow that he had dreamed of making when he was a child to the parents who never came to claim him. It seemed somehow fitting to treat these women with great respect – these inscrutable girl children who clutched at household objects and each other like talismans that would guard against him, these near-sighted, bent grandmothers with shining mountain caps and voluminous skirts. All around him the gesture was echoed slowly – reluctantly even – but it
was
echoed and he felt his poise return. 

He was a member of the police force, a trained man, a city-dweller with more power and knowledge than these mountain people could ever dream of. There was nothing to fear here, surely. Why was he allowing a tale told by two naïve and inexperienced foreign tourists to affect him so much?

The young boys he had met had also been from this village. Their grandfather resided here and had only been gone some weeks, they'd said; there must be other men around the place, as well as boys who went up to higher, less forested areas during the daytime. And, now that he thought about it, there were no stout middle-aged women visible either which made the remaining villagers simply those too young or old to work.  With a reassured shrug, he selected a lane that looked wider than the others and hoisted his pack.

The village would most probably have some central point or gathering place. He would rest there until a woman invited him in or until the heads of some households returned. True, it was unusual that he had not been greeted with more warmth but then, with his smouldering eyes, grimy clothing and week-old growth of beard, he must look an awe-inspiring sight to these fresh-faced, fair-haired people.

Seemingly lost in thought but actually quite alert, he descended along the path and a few girls followed him at a slight distance, stopping cautiously when he paused to look around. Most simply stayed where they were and followed his progress with their eyes. He had his back to them, or he would not have missed the unspoken communication between two of the watchers who stood, eyebrows raised, shoulders hunched against the cold, just inside a darkened doorway.

That same evening, at a table in a noisy joint on Demello Street, Aguada's prime tourist haunt for those bored by the sterility of other Goan resorts, the two erstwhile tourists were well into their fifth round of beer.

Although they were in Goa, nothing much about the room spoke of the Asian subcontinent. Apart from the obsequious and ubiquitous waiters, who seemed to watch everyone's every move and anticipate requests by a fraction of a second, there were no other Indian clientele.

A football match was being shown on a small screen across the room and most of the British patrons were absorbed in its progress. A Russian couple whispered to each other in a corner, clearly disappointed by the lack of local colour: during the evening they had requested some Goan music and been booed by a couple of drunks. After that they'd conceded defeat and were eating their shrimps and curried pork in hurried, furtive jerks. Shouts of 'Ged on it, Forrester, you dickhead!' and 'Off Side, Refereeee!' mingled with the chatter of a group of white college girls in another corner.
Where are all the hot guys? How're you ever ginn'a get laid this way? Shurrup, you!
This isn’t Aiya Napa.
Their hair was gelled and sprayed into mountainous shapes and glitter adorned their sun-baked shoulders. Some of them wore bindis, the season's favourite fashion accessory. Watching them, Sara found herself becoming increasingly nervous.

What the hell were she and Adam doing in this place that was so far from what they were used to and so truly uninviting? Surely Adam knew as well as she did that nothing good could come of this procrastination?
Her
memories of the climb were as vivid as ever and she knew that
his
would not fade any time this decade. In fact, she was beginning to feel more distraught than she had when they left the mountains. Finally, a bit drunk and unable to bear her thoughts in silence any longer, she turned to Adam and moaned, 'You should ha' told them the trooth, you fool! You should ha' told them the trooth!'

And Adam, drunk too but still composed for all his liquor, hissed back, 'It wuz both of us that lied –
both of us
, Sara, babe. Don't you try’n’ forget that.'