The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  “Of course I know,” she said placidly.

  After that, things seemed to take on a more optimistic color. I plunged back into my classes with renewed energy. I studiously avoided the toy-king’s son, and after a while he grew bored with me, looking right through me whenever we happened to pass each other. Rupa and I went to the movies together, sitting on the seawall afterward, sharing a packet of potato chips, throwing crumbs to birds, and watching the wind scuttle the waves, and all the while, my cell phone was tucked into my pocket or my backpack, ringer turned high, ready to receive my mother’s calls.

  Except she didn’t call.

  I went home several times over the next two years, and she always seemed slightly different. Garrulous, goofy, stern, placid—I could never tell from one visit to the next how I’d find her. The final time I went home, I found her standing at the gate looking out at the road one evening. There was nothing to see, just a street dog trotting with its tail raised high, a driver taking a nap in the backseat of his auto, his bare feet sticking out the side.

  “Waiting for somebody?” I said, then wished I hadn’t.

  She turned and smiled. “No, little beast. Just standing here.”

  “You haven’t called me little beast in a long time.”

  “Well, you haven’t been little in a long time.”

  “But still a beast?” I asked, trying to make her laugh, but she only smiled.

  “You should call me, Amma. What else did you give me the cell phone for?”

  “I will,” she said, still gazing absently out at the street. “I will.”

  I went back to college, expecting nothing to come of it, as before.

  But I was wrong. She began to call all the time.

  In the middle of classes, my phone would buzz loudly, making everyone jump, and causing the professor to glare at me. “Sorry, sorry,” I’d mutter. She’d call at seven in the morning, then at seven forty-five, then again that evening at five. She never had anything to tell me, and though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t lose patience, I frequently found myself gnashing my teeth at her protracted silences. She would keep saying, “So what else?” as though I’d called her, instead of the other way around. Sometimes I’d make an excuse, guiltily hanging up. Once, she called just before I was about to drop off to sleep. As a way to get her off the phone, I said, “Why don’t you go out tomorrow? Go shopping or something.”

  “Shopping?” she repeated, sounding a little like her old, mocking self.

  “Or visit friends,” I added quickly.

  “A quaint idea. Except that you seem to forget I’ve never had any.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “Oh? Enlighten me then.”

  I hesitated. “What about Bashir Ahmed?” I ventured. “Wasn’t he a friend?”

  Silence on her end. Then, “You know, I’d forgotten all about him.”

  I was supposed to be studying, but I could not concentrate and so I’d gone out to watch the girls play basketball. It was a very warm night, the air heavy with salt, and the combination of heat and humidity had driven me from my room. I stood at the edge of the concrete and watched the girls’ shadows knifing across the yellow-lit court. They laughed and grunted and flung casual insults, and I found myself smiling. For once, I had not taken my cell phone with me.

  It was the hostel warden who ran to find me, a plump figure bounding into the spotlight. “Your father,” she panted. “The hostel phone. He needs to talk to you right now. Go, quick.”

  This is what my father told me.

  He had left for work that morning, as usual, at eight o’ clock. My mother had wished him goodbye. Stella had arrived at eleven and done all the housework, watered the plants, cooked. After she left, my mother had gone to the corner shop; the shopkeeper said she’d come around four in the afternoon; he remembered because she was unusually sweet to him and because the only thing she bought was a tall green can of mosquito repellent.

  What she did after that can only be guessed.

  My father came home at six forty-five, poured himself a drink, and sat in the living room for over an hour, listening to a record. John Coltrane, he told me in a daze. Live at Birdland. My mother was nowhere to be found, but he didn’t wonder too much about it; he simply assumed she’d gone out to buy something and would be back soon. But when she didn’t come home by 8:00 p.m., he wandered about the house, calling her name, in case she’d fallen asleep in one of the other rooms.

  Outside the guest bedroom, whose door was closed, he’d caught the sharply astringent odor of a chemical, as though she’d fumigated the room for cockroaches, and he opened the door.

  By then, she’d tumbled off the guest bed onto the floor, her head thrown back, her neck stiff and at a sickening angle. He only had to take one look at her, then at the can of repellent on the floor, its spray nozzle pried off, to know exactly what had happened.

  He snatched her up, threw her limp body into the car, and rushed her to the hospital, even though he knew she was gone.

  V

  32

  THE RED-AND-WHITE COW ROLLED her watchful eye toward the door as I entered, then, seeing who it was, she relaxed, letting her head drop. I went up to the calf, who was already straining at the rope that kept it from its mother. It jerked hard just as I was trying to undo the expert knot that Amina had tied, and the rope slipped from my hand, burning my palm.

  “Shh,” I said, “it’s just me. You know me.”

  I finally managed to get the knot loose, and while the calf sucked greedily, I looked around the dimness of the barn. From the other side, the two mules looked back at me with their soft, huge eyes. Riyaz was still here.

  I coaxed the calf back to its stake and tied the rope into a knot, willing it to hold fast. Then I squatted by the side of the red-and-white cow and began to work. As I did, unbidden, the image of Amina came to me, as though I’d summoned her back. And without being fully aware of it, I began to imitate her movements, the quick downturn of her wrists at the end of each stroke, her way of spreading her fingers wide to relieve the cramp in her palms, even the angle at which she held her head, and briefly, it seemed to me that we occupied the same space, moved inside the same body, her movements and mine in perfect synchrony. For a moment, I was almost certain I could hear her breathing, deep and measured, only to realize the breathing was my own.

  I heard a sound behind me, the crunch of someone stepping onto hay, and turned to see Riyaz at the barn door. He wore his brown kurta, the one he’d worn the day I first met him in Kishtwar. I turned back to the cow and kept working. He said nothing, but I knew he was still there. When I rose, holding the full pot in both hands, he stepped back to allow me out into the cool air.

  We looked at each other in silence, but it was not the same silence as when we’d stood at the edge of the porch, watching darkness fall over the valley. This silence was different; it was filled with the sound of Amina’s absence. Riyaz was the first to speak.

  “You’ve learned a lot,” he said, gesturing down at the pot.

  “Amina taught me well,” I replied and saw him grimace.

  I was about to pass him and go up to the house, when he said, “There was a call this morning for you.”

  I paused. “A call?”

  “Yes,” he said. “On my cell phone. It was Saleem.”

  For a second, the name did not register. Saleem? I knew nobody called Saleem. Then I remembered. Orange hair, poetry, Kishtwar. “How did he get your number?” I asked slowly.

  Riyaz shrugged. “Probably from my mother’s relatives in Kishtwar.”

  “What did he say?” I recalled the mobs, the soldiers, the violence that had supposedly broken out the previous night. Was he calling to tell me they were okay? Or—my heart dropped—had something happened to Zoya? “Is everything all right?”

  “He said that they’re all fine. But he thinks the situation will become worse all across the area. He is worried about you. He thinks you might be frightene
d up here.”

  “Me?”

  Riyaz’s lips, I noticed, were very dry. He had been speaking very fast, but now he fell silent. I waited, knowing that there was something else to come.

  “He wants to send a car for you,” Riyaz said in a rush. “To take you back to Jammu, so you can get back to Bangalore from there. He says he sent you up here, so he feels responsible for you.”

  I could not respond, could not think. Saleem wanted to send a car? To take me from here?

  “But,” I said at last, “you told us last night that all the roads were closed.”

  “They are closed,” Riyaz said, “but he—Saleem—said that this driver of his knows all the back roads, and he can get you to Jammu. The only thing is that you need to leave right away. Tonight,” Riyaz added, as if I might not have understood.

  I began walking up to the house, holding the pot out stiffly. Riyaz fell into step beside me. As if the uphill movement had freed him to speak, he said, in a low, urgent voice, “So? What should I tell him? Should I tell him to send the car?”

  I stopped walking. We were on the porch now. There was a terrible eagerness in his face, and one look was enough to tell me exactly what he wanted. It wasn’t hard to recognize, after all, that desire. It was the same desire that had propelled me away from my father, from Bangalore, that had put me on the train to Kishtwar. The desire that had brought me here. The pure, blank promise of escape.

  “You want to come with me?” I asked dully, though it wasn’t really a question.

  He licked his dry lips. “You’ll help me, won’t you? I won’t be able to do it alone. I don’t know anybody there except you. You’ll help me to find a job, a place to stay. I don’t need a lot, you know that, and I’ll do anything, whatever you say. I promise. And once I’m settled, I won’t trouble you ever again. Just please help me with this one thing.”

  “Riyaz,” I said weakly, “you can’t just leave your home.”

  He drew himself up. “Why not?” he asked. “Didn’t you?”

  I had no answer to that.

  “So what shall I tell Saleem?” Riyaz repeated.

  I looked down at the yellow-white surface of the milk in the pot. My hands shook, and a soundless ripple passed across it. Maybe he was right, I thought. Maybe it was time to give up and go home. I would see Bashir Ahmed in a couple of hours, I would talk to him, and then it would all be over, wouldn’t it, this little adventure? And maybe it was for the best. Amina was gone, Aaqib was gone, and I didn’t know when, if ever, they would come back. And this life I had supposedly chosen for myself, this decision I had made with such hubris and joy, how much was it really worth? Was it worth the idea that I had somehow destroyed the family I’d come to love? Was it worth the constant feeling that I was an intruder, that no matter how many years I stayed, I would still never fully belong to this place, or it to me? I wavered, on the verge of telling him to call Saleem, but then I imagined climbing into a car, the mountain roads twisting and winding toward Jammu, the highway tea stalls, the green roadside signs, the village falling far behind me, and an instinctive rebellion rose at the back of my mind, a blank white wall of refusal. “No,” I said.

  He froze.

  “I’m not leaving, Riyaz,” I said quietly. “I’ve got an offer. To become a teacher. In the school here. I wanted to tell you before. I’m not going back to Bangalore.”

  It was as though he didn’t understand me. He just stood there, feet planted slightly apart, not a man but the statue of a man. “Riyaz,” I said softly. “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.” His voice came through gritted teeth. “I’m not deaf.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t reply, turning instead toward the valley. The spaniel, who had been nosing about one of the flower beds, came up and sniffed his ankles. He took no notice of her, did not bend down to scratch her ears or her belly, but continued to stand there, his eyes darting around, as if searching for something to vent his rage upon. Then he caught sight of the pine tree, pulsing and swaying with the dark shapes of crows, and his eyes narrowed.

  “Enough of this,” I heard him whisper.

  He disappeared inside the house. Not knowing what else to do, I took the pot of milk to the kitchen and handed it to Riyaz’s mother, who took it with the barest nod. I was about to sit down when Riyaz stormed out of the house, his face set straight ahead. He had his rifle in his hand.

  Riyaz’s mother stood, nearly upsetting the pot of milk. We both rushed out to the porch, but Riyaz was no longer there. He was striding down along the side of the barn toward the cornfield, his kurta billowing, the spaniel flying ahead of him. They paused at the edge of the corn, then they plunged in together. We waited, but the silence that followed stretched on, unbroken even by the sawing song of the corn stalks, the sighing of their leaves.

  Then the air was ripped open by a single explosion. An enormous black cloud shot up from the pine tree, scattering in all directions, making it seem that the tree itself had come apart. The air was suddenly filled with screeching and cawing, a deafening cacophony.

  Riyaz’s mother went back inside, but I couldn’t move. I stood, unable to take my eyes off the wheeling shapes, so dark against the blue sky. Then a movement in the corn caught my attention. I saw the spaniel dart out, heard her frenetic barking. Right behind her was Riyaz. In one hand he held the gun aloft. In the other, by its legs, he held a spreading black stain, dark and shiny as an oil spill. It was a single large crow. He looked up and after a moment beckoned me to come down.

  I ran down past the barn, and it seemed to take ages. When I was finally standing in front of him, Riyaz held out the dead crow, which was larger than I’d previously imagined. “Here,” he said. “Hold this.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need to get something from the house, and I can’t put it down or she’ll get it.” He nodded toward the spaniel, who was slinking around us, belly low to the ground, her yellow eyes rapt on the bird in his hand. Without thinking, I shook my head.

  He laughed softly, nastily. “So,” he said. “You want to stay, but you can’t even do a small thing like this? How do you expect to survive?”

  I knew he was angry and that there was no conviction behind his cruelty. But all the same, it set off something in me, a flare of my mother’s obstinacy, perhaps, or just plain, old-fashioned defiance. I put my hand out and firmly grasped the dead crow’s feet, my hand grazing Riyaz’s briefly.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said curtly, and left me there.

  For some reason, I’d expected the crow to be cold and heavy and dense, but it wasn’t. It was warm and dry and light. The wing tips gently brushed the dirt, the beak was like dark gray rubber, and the chest, unexpectedly muscular, was a glossy purple black. Look at me! I cried silently, not wholly sure who I was addressing. Riyaz? My father? My mother? Amina? Look at me! This is my life now! Do you see? I shook the bird, as if to make my point to my invisible, silent audience, and it shifted slightly. And that was when I saw what I hadn’t noticed before: the bullet wound just beneath the right wing, the feathers there simply vanished, as though rubbed out by an eraser. And the wound itself, bone white at the edges, darkening to a sunken, marbled red in the center, the blue-black feathers around it clotted with blood and still glistening.

  I glanced up and saw Riyaz standing at the edge of the porch. He was looking down at me. I raised the bird slightly, like proof of something. But his eyes were in shadow, and I could not tell what he thought. Moments later, he was beside me again, drawing a length of string from his pocket. And though the bird had not felt heavy all this while, my arm ached as soon as I’d relinquished it. Riyaz shinnied up the nearest tree, and with a few nimble motions, trussed the bird by its feet and suspended it from one of the branches. It twirled slowly, darkly festive, like the paper streamers in Bashir Ahmed’s room. Riyaz jumped down.

  “That will keep the others away,” he said. He sounded grim but satisfied.

  �
�It will?”

  He shrugged. “For a little while, anyway.”

  33

  ALL MORNING, I WAS restless, the thought of seeing Bashir Ahmed looming over everything like a shadow. I kept going out onto the porch to look at the hanging crow. From there, it merely looked like a blur, the black flag of war or death spread against the tree trunk. The living crows in the pine tree did not seem particularly affected by the loss of their comrade. They still clung to the branches, still circled, though I had to admit they appeared slightly less willing to drop down toward the cornfield. In the meantime, I kept myself busy with the tasks that, until yesterday, had been Amina’s responsibilities. I’d watched her do them so many times, my body seemed to move automatically. After washing the breakfast plates and pans at the outdoor tap, I swept the mud porch with the stubby broom, and scattered a handful of grain to the chickens, watching with a conflicted sense of triumph as they came sprinting in from all corners of the porch.

  In the early afternoon, Riyaz set off for the mosque, and I went to the kitchen, where Riyaz’s mother had lunch ready. We sat quietly until Riyaz came back, and then she laid out three plates, filling them with steaming rice, chicken, and gravy that ran to the edges. I tore at the chicken with my fingers, surprised by my own appetite, my unabashed craving for meat. Riyaz, as soon as the meal was over, took himself out again, muttering something about needing to cut wood for the stove. His mother looked at me. I pointed to the pot of rice on the stove, the bowl of meat sitting on the floor beside it, then toward the back of the house, where Bashir Ahmed’s room was.

  Without a word, she filled a plate and handed it to me. I poured a steel tumbler of water, then carried both up the corridor. Halfway to Amina and Riyaz’s room—now only Riyaz’s, I reminded myself—I had to stop for a moment, because my legs were trembling so hard.

  Pushing open the door of the bedroom, I noticed right away that certain objects were gone. Amina’s kurtas, her headscarf that had hung on the handle of the cupboard, and for a moment, I wanted to turn around and leave. Then, steeling myself, I walked up to the colorful curtain and listened for some signal—a cough, a clearing of the throat—but I heard nothing to indicate a person waited on the other side. I took a deep breath, nudged the curtain aside, and went in.