by Pasha Malla
‘If I get a brain parasite you are so dead when I get back.’
‘If you get a brain parasite, I doubt I’ll be the one worried about dying.’
‘Well can you at least write this down? I need someone to tell my story if I don’t make it home.’
‘What am I, your secretary?’
‘Whatever you want to call it, bro. You’re the book guy. Not much point in making memories if there isn’t some way to share them.’
—
ASH WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING, at least. Who would have guessed that, with some Moscow syndicate hot on his heels, snacks would be Matt’s undoing? Compared to a Mafia hit (drawn-and-quartered by elephants, for that particular South Asian flavour) the samosa had seemed so innocuous: glistening with oil, served in a little cardboard tray—and his doom Trojan-horsed along.
Before the train left Delhi, Matt, with a berth to himself, ignored the wallahs lugging steel cisterns (‘Coffee!’ ‘Chai!’ ‘Tomato soup!’) up the aisle. Though after they disembarked he wondered if filling his stomach might neutralize the parasite en route to his brain. So at the next station-stop he was on the lookout for grub—chips, a Kit Kat, something pre-packaged and safe. The doors clattered open; passengers bundled out and others bundled in. The brakes hissed. Silence. Matt waited for the touts to board. Instead, someone down the far end of the car began singing.
He sat up.
The voice was heartbreaking: at once jubilant and doleful, full and fragile. It was the warbling love-cry of a hurt bird, the siren song of some beach-stranded mermaid. Who was making this song—a woman, a boy, some Rajasthani castrato? The high notes threatened to crack, as if they pained the singer to the verge of collapse.
Matt felt desperate. He was too alone for something this haunting, this beautiful. He thought to run to another berth—‘Listen! Listen!’ But he didn’t dare move for fear of wrecking the spell. Matt tilted his head into the aisle. Shuffling up the car with weary grace was—impossible—a man. Khakis and flip-flops; bald spot and beard. A man! What angel was he channelling? What did the words mean? Something tragic. An elegy for the guy’s family, starved to death: kids dead, woman dead—the blues, the blues.
The singer was now a half-dozen berths away. Matt dug out his wallet and readied a hundred rupees. He watched the guy approach, stocky and mincing. Yet his eyes were wide with mystery, as if possessed by some spirit calling from the ether. Now four berths away. Matt added a thousand rupee note. Not enough. So, another. Pocket change to Matt, it’d buy the singer rice for a year. It’d make him happy. It would save him. It would make a fine, fine memory for everyone involved.
A steamy hoot sounded from the head of the train. A clack from the tracks. The singer went silent. It was as if a mask had been flung off: like that he transformed into any nameless face thronging the streets of Delhi. And it was this man, this mortal, who ducked out the doors as they closed. The train pulled away. Off they went. Matt sat back and tried to recall the song. Only a faint sense of it remained, like the tenor, but not the details, of an interrupted dream.
A couple came up the aisle and arranged their baggage under the bunk opposite Matt. Before he could ask about the singer (Had it really happened?) they had organized themselves for sleep: pillows, blankets, heads tilted back, eyelids swiftly shuttered like windows for a storm. Within seconds they were snoring in chorus.
The light outside was turning richer. Evening approached. The train chugged south through farmland and villages. Matt nodded off. An hour or so later he woke to dusklight and palm trees and his berth-mates slopping curries around tin plates with their fingers. The smells were pungent; Matt’s stomach grumbled and rolled. But Indian food was dangerous. The slightest nibble might hasten his demise.
‘Would you like some?’ said the woman, gesturing at the spread. She looked to be in her fifties—matronly, with a kind and open face. ‘Please. Go ahead.’
The offerings ranged from an off-yellow goo to a lumpy brown sludge. ‘Looks fantastic,’ said Matt, ‘but honestly I’m okay, thanks.’
His stomach cried out in protest.
The woman’s husband grunted something at her in their language. He was lean and long, dressed in crisp white pyjamas, with big square glasses perched upon a beakish nose. His wife replied, gestured at Matt, seemed to be indicating his size. The husband belched and returned to his meal.
Here was the next stop: Gwalior. Matt had a fistful of money ready as the local caterers came aboard. After passing up dishes similar in odour and consistency to that of his seatmates, Matt was delighted to discover a guy selling boxed sandwiches at thirty rupees a pop. He took a huge bite—and was shocked by a vegetal crunch. He opened the sandwich to discover a green layer secreted between the cheese and bread. If the samosa didn’t take him down, this surely would: cucumber.
India!
Matt held his breath, closed his eyes, tried to sense if he could feel anything wormy swimming in his guts. Should he barf? (In his boozier days a finger down the throat had been a weekly manoeuvre.) Yet the hygienic implications of kneeling at the train’s shit-splattered cistern—a hole in the floor, the tracks coasting by beneath—negated the benefits of puking. And maybe the sandwich was feeding the parasite. Why upchuck the very stuff preventing death from venturing skullward?
He eyed the couple slurping at their fingers. Maybe Indians carried some sort of brain-bug anti-venom?
‘So,’ said Matt, ‘heading to Goa?’
‘Goa, no,’ said the woman.
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are going to Goa?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Quite a distance! Over two thousand km.’
‘Is it that far? They told me two days…’
‘You are American,’ the woman said eagerly.
‘Canadian.’ Matt indicated the flag stapled to his backpack, yet to be acknowledged by anyone.
‘We are Indian,’ she said.
‘Visiting our son in Madhya Pradesh,’ said her husband. ‘He works in IT. Many changes coming to India, even in these backward places. What is it you do? In Canada.’
‘Currently? I’m in school—’
‘Ah, yes. Studying. At McGill University?’
‘No. No, at a college—’
‘Queen’s University. Very good medical school.’
‘No, it’s out West. In British Columbia? Though we have to do anatomy and all that, it’s sort of like med school. I’m on a break. To travel. To…see your country.’
This seemed to please the woman: she smiled approvingly.
‘I wanted to ask,’ said Matt, leaning forward, lowering his voice. ‘I just ate something that might have not been washed properly. Or washed, but in dirty water.’
‘You will have diarrhoea,’ announced the man.
‘No. No, that’s not it.’
‘You will vomit.’
‘No! Though do you think I should?’
‘This is what happens to you westerners—Brits, Americans.’
‘Canadian.’
‘Delhi Belly,’ said the woman.
‘Delhi Belly,’ agreed her husband. And the two of them sat back, nodding like judges who’d passed a particularly satisfying verdict.
‘Not Delhi Belly!’ Matt’s sudden surge in volume made them jump. ‘Sorry. Just, I heard you can get a parasite in your brain. From veggies. Anything raw.’
‘Preposterous,’ said the man. ‘No such thing.’
‘But—’
The man waved him off and reached into his pocket. For medicine, Matt hoped, the magic antidote. Instead he produced a pack of cards. ‘Gin rummy. Come, we will play.’
For the next three hours Matt played cards with the man, Doctor Joshi, and his wife, Mira. The train rocketed along as evening ceded to night, their travel halted intermittently by some palely lit backwoods station. Though they never quite stopped, just slowed alongside the platform and then eased out again into the dark.
Doctor Joshi’s play was ruthles
s, cunning, each trick laid down with a crisp, smug flourish. Mira kept score in a little notebook. Soon, Doctor Joshi was up four hundred points. Was his wife passing him cards, or sabotaging Matt in some sly eastern way?
Though maybe the secret was in Doctor Joshi’s shuffling: a fat wedge repositioned twice to the top of the deck before he’d proceed to ‘distribute.’ So Matt got more or less the same cards every time, and like a fool he kept chasing runs and sets, only to discover Mira withholding his missing matches when her husband displayed another winning hand. Their conversation, meanwhile, consisted of long silences interpolated with Doctor Joshi volleying questions at Matt and then ignoring his answers.
Finally, Doctor Joshi reached the appointed thousand-point mark, swept up the cards, offered Matt a limp handshake, and pocketed the deck. Out the window, amid the blackness a serrated horizon suggested mountains or trees.
‘Where are we?’ said Matt.
‘The south,’ said Doctor Joshi.
‘Is that where you’re from?’
‘From, no,’ said Mira. ‘From Gujarat.’
‘Is that near Kashmir?’
‘Not so close,’ laughed Doctor Joshi. ‘How do you know Kashmir?’
‘My buddy’s from there. Or his dad is anyway.’
Doctor Joshi asked Ash’s surname and rolled his eyes. ‘All Kashmiris are “Kaul” or “Dhar.” It is like your American “Smith.” ’
‘Canadian.’ Matt waited; no response. ‘Have you been to Kashmir?’
‘We used to go every year,’ said Mira. ‘Very beautiful.’
‘A paradise on earth,’ confirmed Doctor Joshi. Then his mood soured. ‘But now these bloody Muslims have ruined it.’
‘I’m pretty sure my buddy’s family are Hindu,’ said Matt. ‘Or were.’
‘Were? Not were. We are Hindus or we are not. He is a Pandit, your friend?’
‘Uh. He’s got his own radio show, if that’s what you mean?’
But Doctor Joshi’s attentions had fled. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth, peering out the window and appraising the countryside—or the whole nation—as it went slipping dimly by. ‘Since times immemorial these Muslims have caused trouble. First they invaded India, fifteenth century; it was a bloodbath. They beat their women, they thieve, they wreak terror upon the globe, and yet we allow them in our government, to run a secular country. A secular country, mind, yet still we have communal violence.’
‘Oh, they’re not all bad,’ said Matt, grinning. But when he looked to Mira for support she shook her head.
‘Can you show one Muslim country where Hindus are extended the special rights accorded Muslims in India? Can you show one country where the seven-eighths majority craves the indulgence of the one-eighths minority? Can you show one Muslim country which has a non-Muslim as its President or Prime Minister? In Maharashtra they have elected a Muslim as Chief Minister. Can you imagine a Hindu CM of J&K State?’
‘Um.’
‘In last fifty years, Muslim population of India has increased from ten percent to? Fourteen! Whereas Hindu population has sunk to less than eighty-five percent. If Hindus are intolerant, why is Islam thriving? Where are the missing Hindus? Do Hindus have human rights?’
Doctor Joshi had transformed. His voice trembled with rage. White froth collected at the corners of his lips. And still he hadn’t looked at Matt, staring out the window into the darkness. What did he see out there?
‘No one talks of the ethnic cleansing of four lakh Hindus from Kashmir,’ he continued. ‘Why are Pandits denied same minority rights afforded Muslims everywhere else in India? Haj pilgrims are given subsidy, yet Hindu pilgrims to Amarnath are taxed!’
‘Amarnath?’
‘Amarnath pilgrimage.’
‘I know, I know!’ Matt smacked Joshi’s knee. ‘Shiva’s…ice…what have you.’
‘What does your friend Pandit Dhar think of all this?’
‘Amarnath?’
‘The ethnic cleansing of Kashmir!’
‘Ethnic cleansing? Definitely against it.’
At last Doctor Joshi turned from the window. He examined Matt as he might a specimen under a microscope.
‘So, hey,’ said Matt, ‘Amarnath. Have you done the pilgrimage?’
‘Every year, as I said. Not whilst the embargo, but we will return summer next.’
‘Really!’ Matt quizzed the Joshis on their route, how long the hike took, the ratio of women to men, what the women wore, the sleeping arrangements. ‘And, sorry, last thing: the lingam. What’s it like?’
‘This is one of the holiest sites in all of India.’
‘So I hear. But the lingam. Tell me about it.’
‘What do you wish to know?’
‘Like, what do you get out of seeing it?’
‘Get?’
‘Like, after. Do you feel…better?’
‘Why else would one lakh Hindus hike for days into Himalayas? Do you think it is some silly jaunt only?’
‘Not for tourists,’ murmured Mira.
‘No!’ yelled Doctor Joshi, thrusting a finger at Matt. ‘This is not Goa or Shimla or wherever else you Americans—’
‘For the last frigging time: I’m Canadian!’
‘Canadian, American, same thing.’
‘No. It’s not the same thing! And don’t point at me. I’ll toss you out the window of this train and not think a goshdang thing of it.’ Doctor Joshi’s expression clouded.
‘And another thing? Being Irish I know a little about religions killing one another and let’s just say it takes two to tango. Or riverdance, or whatever.’
‘I thought you are Canadian?’
‘My mom was a quarter Irish!’ Matt affected a Gaelic lilt. ‘Anyway, that’s not the point. That was some racist stuff you said. Take it back.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Take it back. What you said about Muslims.’
‘Take it…back?’
Matt stood. His head grazed the ceiling. ‘My girlfriend’s Muslim,’ Matt said, his brain scrambling through his sexual history: at some point, even for an hour, this must have been true. There had once been an Egyptian—did she count?
Mira whispered to her husband. He began collecting their luggage. ‘We will be leaving now,’ said Doctor Joshi. ‘Pardon me, sir. I don’t appreciate you threatening my wife.’
‘Your wife? This isn’t about her, you dummy. You barely let her get a word in!’
But they were already slipping past, suitcases in hand.
Matt sank back onto his seat, the vinyl puffing—so much like a sigh. The train galloped along. His brain called feebly, like a child from the bottom of a well, for weed. (For weed!) Outside the darkness was absolute. No moon, no stars. Matt could see nothing in the window save his own reflection: the pale dome of his head and the twin black punctures of his eyes, into which poured the night.
AFTER HANGING UP ON MATT, Ash thrashed around, flipped his pillow, kicked his feet free from the sheets, wrapped himself again. The hour crept from two to three, and into those dead hours before dawn. What was Matt doing in India? His presence there felt like an invasion. Ash pictured him blundering around the country in slapstick, leaving a trail of destruction: villages in flames, women in tears, men with broken ribs—from a punch, from an overeager embrace.
At just after four Ash rose and opened his computer. No emails, and the internet’s infinitude felt exhausting in the wrong way. So he fired up Word. Why? He was no writer. He sat there, staring at the screen. And then an idea struck him. He took out Brij’s novel and placed it beside the keyboard. He titled the document, half ironically, The Patrimony—his great inheritance—saved it to the desktop, and began to copy the thing, word-for-word, into his computer.
Toward the base of the mountain the hero proceeded, with thoughts of how he might be saved, and with each thought his strides lengthened, became stronger, he moved with purpose, there was no stopping him now. He could not yet see high above his goal but knew it was there. An
d as he began to ascend now and the terrain rose, he grabbed a crag of rock and hauled himself up and felt the gnarled rock warmed by the sun, and felt a slight burn in his calves as they pushed off below and he scrabbled up the little ridge. And then he was atop this boulder and stood and turned and looked back to the village where he had spent the night before, that little cluster of flat-roofed huts, only a few hundred yards below, he had not come far but he had come and every step brought him closer to glory.
Ash hadn’t intended all this typing to be much more than a mechanical and mindless task to numb his brain. So he was surprised to find each transcribed line glowing from the computer with something like potential. Two pages in, he stopped to get a glass of water, and when he returned the cursor seemed to blink with the eager opening and closing of a baby bird’s beak, summoning more words. Ash continued until his eyelids began to sag, his head to dip. He closed the laptop and rolled into bed and lay there with the book’s voice replacing his thoughts, talking him to sleep. Toward dawn he dreamt of climbing a mountain—after something or someone, he couldn’t say.
—
AT TEN THE NEXT MORNING Ash woke to a commotion upstairs. Burt was yelping and tearing around the living room, nails clattering on the hardwood. His sister must have arrived, no doubt towing her invasive species of a husband. Grudgingly, Ash headed up and discovered his mom hugging Mona at the front door—his sister alone, her pregnancy swelling her coat. No sign of Harj.
‘Hello, brother.’ Fresh tears stained Mona’s cheeks.
Ash stared: that nose-mining bastard had done something. ‘Everyone’s here,’ said their mom, as if taking attendance, ‘just as I’m heading out the door! Rick’s already at the arena setting up our table…You two okay on your own?’
‘Why?’ said Ash. ‘Do you think we need a babysitter?’
‘Oh, quiet, you.’ She swatted at him. ‘I feel bad! Here you kids are, both home for Christmas, and I’m not even here to host you. There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry. We’ll be home sixish. Wish me luck! Bye-bye!’
‘Kids,’ Mona laughed when she was gone, and knelt on the floor with Burt. ‘Kisses,’ she commanded and presented her cheek. Obediently he gave her a lick. ‘At least somebody loves me,’ she sighed. And looked up at Ash.