The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  I had no idea how long we’d been traveling when the taxi stopped. I sat up. The darkness around us was nearly complete; all I could tell was that there was a river close by. I could hear the pounding, the full weight of water on earth.

  In the seat before me, Riyaz rose and beckoned to me with a finger. The driver had already hoisted himself onto the roof of the taxi. I pointed out my bag, and he freed it from the others, flinging it down to Riyaz, who grunted at the impact. The driver leapt down, bare feet landing without sound. He climbed back into his high seat, gave us a last nod, and drove off.

  I looked around. We seemed to be still on the highway, but there were small closed shops on either side, topped by little rooms, all of which had the hastily improvised yet durable look of a shantytown. There was no one in sight, and all the windows were dark.

  “This is your village?” I asked Riyaz, whispering though I didn’t know why.

  “No. We will go there tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?”

  He picked up my rucksack and swung it onto his own shoulders. “You want to break your legs in the dark? Go ahead.”

  He walked away from me, going about ten feet along the narrow pavement. Then, without warning, he was swallowed up by the earth. I shivered and yet I wasn’t entirely surprised. Any kind of magic seemed possible in this place. I hurried to the place where he’d disappeared, only to find a steep flight of stairs that cut between two buildings, going down the mountain.

  I descended cautiously and was amazed to find more buildings behind the single dark row along the highway. An entire town had been built into the side of the mountain, houses hanging one above the other, sewn together with tiny streets. I saw homes, shops, restaurants, barbers, even a little school. Most lights were off, except for the occasional glowing bulb in an upstairs window.

  Riyaz led me swiftly through, until we came to a house with a raised concrete verandah, its lights still on. The door was opened by a young woman with a long, sad face, who showed us past a small hall crammed with dark furniture, and into another room filled with gunnysacks and a cot.

  “You can sleep here tonight,” Riyaz said.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  He scowled. “Don’t worry about me. Be ready early tomorrow morning.”

  The sad-faced girl shut the door, and then I was alone in the room. It smelled like the cool loam of a graveyard. Illogically fearful, I pulled open one of the gunnysacks and pushed my hand inside to find something smooth and knobby.

  Potatoes.

  I started to laugh, weakly. What was I doing here? Starting out on this journey, I’d been so certain of finding Bashir Ahmed, certain that something vital would be settled if only I could see his face again, but had that been only the warped logic of grief? For Bashir Ahmed was dead, and where was I? In a room filled with potatoes, in a town hanging over a river, in the company of a surly stranger, and with my own life, as I had known it, vanished utterly.

  I heard a noise and peered out of the window. Riyaz was leaving. The front door closed behind him, and he walked to the raised edge of the concrete verandah. He stood there silently for a while, looking out at the tiny street, and then I saw his shoulders shift. He bent his knees, and in a graceful, unexpected motion, launched himself off the edge. Arms thrown out, toes pointed like a dancer’s, he hung suspended for a fraction of a second, every line of his body etched in sharpest relief against the dark. Then he landed, and, without breaking stride, walked away around the corner.

  The next morning, I woke to the sound of bells. A pair of mules stood outside my window. Swollen white sacks hung down on either side of their backs, and they swiveled their necks like slow, ancient machines. One of them stretched its neck up and brayed, dark lips pulled back over enormous teeth.

  The door to my room opened, and the girl stuck her head inside. In the light, I saw she had pocked skin and sweet brown eyes. “You are awake?” she asked. “Riyaz bhaiyya has already come three times. I told him you were still sleeping.”

  She gave me a simple, plentiful breakfast of milk, roti, and butter, and showed me to a chilly bathroom where I dabbed water on my face and under my arms. Then, carrying my bag herself, she led me into the little town above the river. The shops were open now, some owned by Muslims, others by Hindus who had lit sticks of incense in front of tinseled portraits of Lakshmi. The ground was littered with fruit rinds, plastic cups, pellets of goat shit, and runnels of brown water.

  Riyaz was waiting in front of the tinted glass of a barbershop, visibly impatient.

  “Don’t you know what ‘early’ means?” he snapped in Urdu at the girl, who flushed.

  “It’s not her fault,” I said loudly. “It was mine. I was tired.”

  He shot me an irritated glance. “Well, I hope you’re ready to get even more tired,” he muttered. “It’s a long way up.”

  He pried my bag from the girl’s hand and walked off. “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “Don’t let Riyaz bhaiyya scare you,” she whispered, reaching for my hand and clasping it in her damp one, smiling her sad smile. “He likes to get angry, but actually he is very nice.”

  I looked at his receding back. “I’ll try to remember that,” I said.

  Then I left her and followed Riyaz down toward the river.

  We made our way down a mud track littered with animal shit and plastic bags, broken shoes and chocolate wrappers, to two thick concrete pillars supporting a bridge. We passed between them, and here I stopped, because below us was the river. I’d learned its name as a child in school, and that it was one of the five mighty rivers of the north, but I had not been prepared for such a vital, living thing. The water was gray in places, slate blue in others, and, farther off, a tawny green. The roar was so loud it seemed to dampen the sun’s glare, so that it felt momentarily as if we were standing in shadow. The bridge itself was of old wood, its green paint flaking, the beams cradled within twisted metal cables as thick as my calves. It looked solid, immovable, but as soon as I was a little way out onto it, I realized that the bridge creaked and swung wide above the roiling river, and my stomach began to churn. I took each step slowly, keeping my eyes fixed on my feet, but when I reached the middle, I could not resist looking up. I could see miles and miles up and down the river, mountains looming dark on both sides, all that tall blue sky held between. It was terrifying and exhilarating, and a sound—a laugh of delight or moan of fear, I couldn’t tell—escaped me, torn away in an instant by the gale that funneled through the valley.

  On the other side of the river, a Hindu temple stood on a flat, grassy patch, which gave way to a rough upward track, strewn with sharp, glittering stones. Riyaz was waiting here for me to catch up. I remembered what the sad-faced girl had said, and I said with as much friendliness as I could muster, “Thank you for taking me to your village, Riyaz. It’s very kind of you. Your father used to talk about it all the time. I’m so happy that I’m going to be able to finally see it.”

  He gazed down at me, and I thought for a moment he might not respond at all. Then he said, “If you want my advice, try to contain your happiness, at least while we’re walking uphill. Otherwise you’ll be crying for rest every two minutes, and it will take us even longer to get there than it already has.”

  With that, he hefted my rucksack onto his back and began walking. Part of me wanted to turn on my heel and go the opposite way, but now I had no choice. I followed in silence, partly because I did not know what else to say to him, but soon because—he was right, as it turned out—I had no breath to say anything at all. The incline, which hadn’t been noticeable at first, quickly became punishing. My panting sounded obscene in the hot, still air. Stones dug into the soles of my running shoes. Pain shot through my hamstring, an old swimming injury. Occasionally, people passed us, carrying their belongings on their heads or slung over their backs: cloth bundles or tin boxes, and once even a gray sheep straddling a man’s shoulders, gazing gloomily back at me.

  Riyaz,
meanwhile, kept climbing. I suspected he was testing me, trying to wear me out, so the few times he turned, I forced myself to walk erect, a careless half smile pasted to my face. As soon as his back was turned, though, I slumped over like an abandoned puppet. The slope of the mountain dropped away to our right, and I saw where it had been leveled into terraces, each holding a field of corn. Along the path were trees with twisted trunks, which threw a shade as thick as syrup. I longed to curl up beneath them, close my burning eyes, but after what Riyaz had said, I did not want to ask him for a break. And the sun—the sun was everywhere, between two branches, leaping from leaves, shimmering in the sand. My clothes were drenched with sweat. My vision blurred; at one point I thought I saw a tall, thin figure standing just behind my shoulder. I nearly screamed, but realized in time that it was just the shadow of a tree whose limbs stretched out over the track.

  Later I would find out that we climbed four thousand feet that day. I saw one mud-walled house, then another, built into the mountainside. I saw cornstalks with their tapering, swordlike leaves. I saw a pumpkin vine snaking across the path, leaves splayed broad and shining dark as an oil spill. Riyaz abruptly cut off from the main track and began to lead us downhill on a trickle of a path, stepping over a leaking water pipe, to a small mud house, its walls painted sky blue, with a flat roof of pressed dirt. A pressed mud porch extended in front; in the far corner was a magnificent buckled tree with delicate pink blooms. A honey-colored spaniel raced up, barking, and flung itself against Riyaz’s shins then sniffed my ankles vigorously.

  Through the haze of my exhaustion, I saw an older woman on the porch. Her face gathered in wrinkles, her eyes set deep in her skull, the same eyes as those of the man in front of me. Her legs bowed in a faded green salwar. Her head covered in a faded scarf too warm for the weather. Her feet bare. Her mouth set in a line that did not betray the slightest welcome.

  “My mother,” Riyaz said. “She has been waiting to meet you.”

  12

  I SAT ALONE IN a room with mud walls, the bottom half of which was painted the same sky blue as the outside of the house. The top half was bare, the line between blue and brown running along the periphery of the room like an inverted horizon, broken only by a wooden cupboard sunk into the wall and painted white. Bolsters were scattered about, exactly as in Zoya and Abdul Latief’s home, but here they were old and faded and misshapen from years of use. A threadbare mattress lay under a single large window, which framed an astonishing view. I could see peaks upon peaks, the farthest of them pale and watery, as if some trick of light threw an endless reflection.

  I heard a noise at the door and looked up. It was the woman, Riyaz’s mother. She did not enter, but stood at the doorway, watching me. I opened my mouth to speak, but something stopped me, and instead I sat there while she took me in. She seemed to be in no hurry, her face dispassionate as a surgeon’s before an anesthetized body. I could not read her expression, could not ascribe to it welcome or curiosity or pleasure. I know it sounds strange, but the closest I could come was to say that she was memorizing me, learning my features for some purpose of her own. I shivered under the gaze, but also, strangely enough, was comforted by it.

  The old woman looked at me a moment longer, then turned and left. Five minutes later, she came back with tea and some flaky buns on a plate. Riyaz accompanied her. He’d splashed water on his face and on his hair, which glistened where the drops still clung to the tips.

  “My mother asked me to tell you there is more tea in the kitchen if you want it,” he said.

  “She doesn’t speak Hindi?” I asked. “Or Urdu?”

  “No, just Kashmiri.”

  I looked again at her. Bashir Ahmed’s wife. This was the woman whose absence had been present all those afternoons when Bashir Ahmed told his stories, when my mother had laughed and smiled, when I had not dared to take my eyes off either of them, as though they might be snatched away if my attention slipped even for a second. This woman had been there with us the whole time, the invisible one that nobody dared to mention. I felt suddenly shy before her, embarrassed.

  “What is her name?” I asked Riyaz.

  “Khadijah.”

  “Could you tell her that I’m happy to meet her?”

  Riyaz translated into Kashmiri. She listened then said something brief back to him. He nodded. “She says you should drink your tea before it gets cold.”

  They left the room together, and then I was alone again. I picked up the chipped cup and took a bun from the plate. It was warm and light and delicious, and the tea was the salty kind. I ate and drank everything the old woman had placed in front of me, then waited for them to return. But they did not, and as hard as I fought to stay awake, it was as if my body had absorbed every one of those four thousand uphill feet, and they now became four thousand weights inexorably pulling my aching muscles down to the cloth-covered floor. I crawled over to the mattress under the window and fell asleep. At some point, I clawed my way briefly to the surface to find that my cup and plate had been cleared away, but before I could wonder which of them had been in the room, I was asleep again.

  The next time I woke, my head was relatively clear. I had no idea of the time, but the dense haze of sleep that had enveloped me had gone. I was still alone in the same room. It was broad daylight, and the mountains were sharp as paper cutouts in the window. I gingerly got to my feet. My muscles ached, but I appeared to be not too much the worse for wear. I made my way out into the narrow corridor and toward the front door. To the right was a small smoke-stained kitchen I had no recollection of passing on my way in. It was empty of human occupants; only a round, soot-blackened iron pot sat on a mud stove that had been built into the wall at floor level. Where on earth were Riyaz and his mother?

  The mud porch was as empty as the house. Half a dozen or so chickens plucked desultorily in a bed of large orange blooms, and when I emerged from the house, they abandoned their scavenging and came to crowd hopefully around me.

  Right then, a young woman came around the corner of the house, stopping short at the sight of me. Then her face broke into a huge smile.

  “You’re finally awake!” she exclaimed in Urdu, as though we’d already met.

  “Yes,” I said, blinking.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked. “How are you feeling? Are you still tired?”

  “A little, but I’m fine, thank you.” She had clear brown eyes, and a crooked, humorous mouth. Her long headscarf hung down the back of her kurta, dyed in vivid streaks of purple and red. “I’m sorry,” I blurted finally, “but who are—”

  She laughed. “I’m Amina,” she said, “I am Riyaz’s wife. He did not tell you?” She used his name without shyness.

  I shook my head. “Do you know what time it is?” I asked.

  She seemed to find the question hilarious, because she laughed again. “Time? It is the next morning! You slept for, oh, I think fifteen hours. I have never seen anybody sleep that long.”

  I blushed. “I’m sorry.”

  She waved her hand. “No, no, you were tired. Now come and have breakfast.”

  In the kitchen, which was immaculate, lined with mud shelves on which were stacked a few dented tins, a handful of steel plates and tumblers, and three or four fire-blackened pots, she began to select sticks from a pile in the corner and place them deftly in the mud stove.

  “Sit,” she said, indicating a woven straw mat on the floor. I lowered myself onto it and watched her light the sticks, leaning forward and blowing to encourage the newborn flame.

  “You said your name is Amina?” I asked. She nodded without taking her eyes off the slowly growing fire. “My name is Shalini,” I said.

  “I know who you are,” she said smiling. “I was the one who told Riyaz to bring you up.”

  I could not hide my surprise. “You?”

  “Yes,” she said, then her face softened. “He told me that you were looking for Abbaji.”

  “Yes.”

  “You used to know
him?”

  “A long time ago,” I said. “When I was a child. I thought he would be … I mean, I didn’t know until Riyaz told me that he—”

  I broke off. The young woman looked sympathetic, then she clapped her hands together in a brisk way and said, “Well, you are here. Once you eat something, I will show you around the village.”

  “Thank you,” I said, adding, “I won’t trouble you for long. I’ll leave in a day or two.”

  The merriness had now returned to her face. Raising her eyebrows, she said, “You’ve just arrived, and you are already talking about leaving? You hate this place so much?”

  “That’s not what I meant at all,” I said, quickly. “I just meant—”

  Again, she burst into laughter. “I’m teasing,” she said, “but, really, there is no need for you to run away so fast. You’re like one of my murgis outside. Come here a second. I’ll show you.”

  She picked up one of the battered cans from the mud shelf above the stove, and went to the kitchen window, which overlooked the front porch. She dug in the tin, pulled out a fistful of rice, and flung it in a shower on the ground outside. The half-dozen chickens rushed up with amazing speed from all corners of the porch. They scrabbled at the earth with their strong claws, their beaks jabbing furiously as they fought for space, a riot of feathers and dust.