Fugue States

by Pasha Malla

  If Brij were to be believed, Kashmir was different. But Ash had only visited once before the place had turned inhospitable. He’d been four. All he recalled of that trip were a mountainside resort—trees and snow and a woodsy smell—and that his socks, soaked through and draped over an electric heater to dry, had been left so long that they charred to a brown crust. As consolation, someone had given him a strange, pink, milky tea brackish with salt, which Ash had struggled not to barf all over the floor.

  Mona had spent lots of time in India, often on philanthropic missions. In fact she and Harj had met while eradicating the systemic poverty of Bihar’s village people, one well-digging at a time. But even before that she’d maintained more of an affinity for the fatherland. Since she was older her memories of Kashmir were more vivid: houseboat stays, shikara punts around Dal Lake. She even had some basic facility in Hindi, and was close enough with certain relatives that they exchanged regular emails.

  Over the baggage carousel was the requisite billboard of the Taj Mahal. When Ash was in eighth grade, upon discovering that her nephew had never seen this Wonder of the World, that Delhi aunt had guilted Brij into taking him. The car ride south had a perfunctory, grudging tone, and they’d barely entered the grounds before Brij was complaining about the touts, the monkeys, the tourists. So Ash had not, in the end, joined the queue into the world’s most spectacular monument to love. ‘The view’s better from outside anyway,’ his father had told him, already in retreat to the car.

  While India was essential to how Mona understood herself—down to the Bengali she’d married—Ash had mostly inherited his father’s resentments. Brij had never really liked India; on their family trips he’d been tense and weird and Ash had found it hard to know him there. After their aborted Taj tour they’d headed north to another uncle’s house in Jammu, the borderlands refuge for exiled Kashmiri Hindus and, in Brij’s words, ‘the most useless place on earth.’ In the late afternoon he’d led Ash to the rooftop and gazed through the smog at a lumpy smudge on the horizon. ‘The mountains where I grew up,’ he’d told Ash. Then the pained tremor in his voice had stiffened: ‘Not that you can see it for all this bloody pollution.’ And then he’d spat off the roof and gone inside.

  Consular Services had provided an address but no directions to the place where they’d stashed Matt, so once Ash had collected his luggage he rolled out the Departures gate with the astonished, cautious look of any newcomer. Having not alerted any family to his trip, he was faced with the prospect of cabbing into the city. But instead of a honking fleet of the bulbous yellow and black taxis of his childhood, a bunch of slick-looking men on cellphones loitered almost coquettishly outside the terminal.

  Ash bee-lined for the least shifty of the lot, an elderly Sikh who nodded at the address and led him wordlessly to a waiting Maruti. And then they were off into, as Brij liked to say, ‘the worst traffic in the world.’ Ash, numb with exhaustion, was only distantly aware of all those autos and bikes and garlanded, tootling lorries careening around the car. That chaos was nothing he needed. So he closed his eyes, feeling like some time-travelling interloper, passing through this temporal purgatory, on his way home to whatever Now he lived in.

  —

  A BLOCK FROM THE SAFE HOUSE, or whatever it was, the Maruti stopped. Neighbourhood kids occupied the street with a cricket game. Ash had barely paid the driver when he felt a tug at his duffel. Wheeling, he expected to be faced with thieves. But two grinning boys were simply thrusting a paddle into his hands. ‘Batsman, batsman!’ they hollered, and Ash was dragged to a water-bottle wicket.

  As a kid, Ash had played a little cricket with cousins and their friends in Jammu: a courtyard oval ringed with fruit trees, all that back-and-forthing as if the runner had forgot something at the other end. Now, in the pose of a baseball slugger, he cocked the bat over his shoulder. The young bowler, a spindly boy of ten or eleven, jogged into his windup: a bounce, a swing, and Ash hammered the ball over the rooftops.

  ‘Six!’ he cried—and his playmates cheered.

  Following the path of his homer, Ash noticed a bald, pale head leaning out of an upstairs window: Matt, looking anxious. ‘Third floor,’ his friend whisper-yelled, glancing around the street, then retracted and shuttered the window behind him.

  In the stairwell of Matt’s building, Ash was reminded again of the Jammu house, also a low-rise with pale blue cement walls and paneless gaps for windows. Even the sounds seemed familiar: as he made his way up, birdsong twittered from the rooftop, while down below the cricket game resumed with calls and taunts and laughter.

  On the third floor he discovered Matt—or, again, his head, poking out of a barely cracked door. ‘In here,’ he said in that same hushed and urgent voice.

  The flat was modest: a living area with a two-seater and a TV, a small table with matching chairs, a hot plate and bar fridge. A curtained doorway led to the bedroom. Light streamed in the window, as did the murmur of the main street. Matt and Ash stood by the door, like a realtor with a prospective client, taking it in. And then, as if remembering an obligation, Matt seized Ash in a quick hug. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘Nice place.’

  ‘Can’s through my room,’ said Matt, gesturing. ‘Regular toilet, not one of those snake holes you’ve gotta squat over like a goshdang mongoose.’

  Over the kitchen table was a calendar that, Ash noticed, expired in two days.

  ‘The couch doesn’t pull out but you’re not exactly the Jolly Brown Giant. Unless you got designs on joining me in my love chamber?’ Matt smiled, briefly. But then it vanished.

  ‘Who’s paying for this?’

  Matt took Ash’s bag and set it on the couch. ‘Me. Who else?’

  ‘But the Consulate owns it?’

  ‘They helped set it up. All’s I know? Way better than my last accommodations.’

  ‘Jail, you mean.’

  The sounds of the cricket game drifted in through the window: the chuckles, the shouts, the cries. Matt moved to the kitchenette. He looked thin, stooped. ‘Want a beer?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Honestly? Say la vee, as they say in Quebec. Beer or no?’

  ‘Is it even noon yet?’

  ‘Sack up, bro. It’s almost last call back home.’

  Ash sat beside his luggage; the cushions were firm as stones. ‘Sure, what the hell.’

  Matt popped the tops off a couple of Kingfishers. Handed Ash one and clinked it with his own. Ash drank. The beer burned his nostrils, sizzled down his throat, while the cricket game pitched into a mad jabbering littered with the slap of footfalls.

  ‘Thanks for bailing me out,’ said Matt. ‘Soon’s I get home I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Matt leaned against the wall by the calendar. ‘Frig,’ he said, shaking his head.

  Ash waited for an apology, some contrition.

  But his friend looked up brightly. ‘You want a shower or something?’

  ‘A nap, maybe, first.’

  ‘You got it. Feel free to take my bed, I’ll be fine out here.’

  From the street came a resounding smack and a roar, seemingly all the boys at once.

  ‘Sounds like someone scored,’ said Ash.

  ‘Nah, I bet he’s out.’ Matt drank. ‘That’s probably it. They’re done. Game over.’

  —

  WHEN ASH WOKE IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON, the light golden and slow. He listened for Matt in the other room. And from the stillness knew that the apartment was empty.

  Again he’d dreamt of the mountain, that figure ascending, himself trailing behind. A dumb dream, so frustrating—he never got anywhere. Ash chased the climbing figure but the top never grew any closer. And the rote symbolism of this, too, depressed him further.

  An amoebic splotch on the ceiling captured his attention. In it he tried to imagine something interesting and unlikely. But all he could see was a crudely decapitated head.

  Rolling onto his stomach he recalled the only time he
’d slept over at Matt’s mom’s place, in seventh grade. She and some scraggly, shirtless guy had commandeered the living room couch, so the boys were confined to Matt’s room the entire night. After an hour of trying to ignore the grunts and moans through the walls, Matt, twelve years old but already pushing six feet tall, stormed into the hallway and screamed, ‘If you guys are going to pork at least be frigging quiet about it!’

  The front door opened. Ash listened to the jangle of keys tossed on the table, the fridge opening, the clink of beer bottles stacked inside. A fast-food odour wafted in as well, as out of place as a Mountie on horseback tramping through the room. Ash’s stomach gurgled: he’d not eaten for an entire day.

  Matt’s face emerged between the curtains. ‘Here’s Matty!’

  Ash clamped the pillow over his head.

  ‘Come on, you’ve been napping for hours. Get up or you won’t sleep tonight.’

  ‘What are you, my dad?’

  ‘I got us some Mickey D’s. Maharaja Macs, bro. For real!’

  The sandwiches were gooey and tasted weirdly of cigarettes, but Ash wolfed his down, chasing each bite with beer. Once the food was gone they took turns belching. Compared to Ash’s, Matt’s burps were like thunder drowning out the chirp of crickets.

  ‘So I hear you’re heading to Bollywood?’

  Matt nodded, face stern and professional. ‘I guess they’re always looking for white guys. Who knows, if all goes well with the trial maybe I’ll stay, get some work?’

  ‘Back to acting, huh.’

  Matt balled up their trash and stuffed it in the takeout bag. ‘Maybe a chance to be something other than an extra.’

  ‘To be a star?’

  ‘Honestly? I would settle for a frigging speaking part.’

  ‘But what about your life? Aren’t you the star of that?’ said Ash. ‘Making memories?’

  Matt ignored the insinuation of the most recent, catastrophic memory he’d made. ‘I mean, for years I thought I’d be a World Cup skier. Then I did my goddamn knees.’ He replaced their empty bottles with full ones. ‘Then acting didn’t really work out. And now, gosh. What am I? A massage therapist? Not even. Well, not yet.’

  They drank in silence for a while. Malnourished and jet-lagged, Ash felt the booze zipping to his head.

  ‘Honestly though?’ Matt resumed. ‘One thing about traveling? It’s a lot like acting. You can be whoever you want. Everything that happened before, whoever you were—gone. You’re just whatever you say you are.’

  ‘Until you can’t escape yourself.’

  Matt drank, eyeing Ash from behind his bottle.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ash.

  Matt shrugged. Checked his phone again.

  ‘You expecting a call?’

  Matt stood, went over to the fridge. ‘You can get wireless in this spot,’ he said, lofting the handset to the ceiling. Signal achieved, he tapped out some words and handed it to Ash. ‘Check it out. Flights to Kashmir are super cheap right now.’

  The screen was tuned to some flight-saver page.

  ‘That’s because it’s winter. No one goes there in winter. It’s basically shut down.’

  ‘Because of the snow?’

  ‘So much snow they have to move the capital outside the state.’

  ‘Yeah, and down here it’s nearly January and like twenty-five degrees and there’s palm trees and mangoes everywhere. Feels wrong. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Going somewhere with an actual winter? And rocking New Year’s Eve in your pop’s hometown?’ Matt leaned forward. ‘How much snow are we talking—enough to ski, right?’

  ‘Are you allowed to leave Delhi?’

  ‘I think so.’ He took some papers off the top of the fridge. ‘Yeah, right here: “The applicant shall not leave the territory of India without the prior permission of the Court.” Kashmir’s in India, right? Should be fine.’

  ‘They call you an applicant? What are you applying for?’

  ‘Honestly, we’ve got time. Pre-trial isn’t till January 4.’

  ‘You realize this is insane, right? That you could be going to jail? And you’re talking about a ski vacation?’

  Matt looked grave. ‘I’m not a frigging idiot. I know what this is.’

  Ash sipped his beer.

  ‘But it would be nice to, you know, do something. With my best friend. In case I do get locked up.’ Matt’s smile was weak but affecting.

  ‘And what you want to do is go to Kashmir?’

  ‘Your home turf!’

  ‘Canada is my home turf,’ said Ash. ‘Kashmir was barely my dad’s anymore.’

  ‘Still. Heritage and all that. See where your people come from.’

  ‘I’m not sure how rocking New Year’s is going to be in Srinagar. It’s not like there are nightclubs or anything. I’m not even sure you’re allowed to drink.’

  ‘Who cares. We’ll just, like, hang out. Talk to people. No presh.’

  ‘I don’t feel any presh.’ Ash moved into the hot spot, did a quick search on Matt’s phone. ‘Well, there’s heli-skiing in Gulmarg. My dad talked about that place. Apparently it’s really beautiful.’

  Matt pointed his beer at Ash. ‘There you go.’

  ‘God, I haven’t done any serious skiing in years. Let alone from a helicopter.’

  ‘Bro, it’s like riding a bike! You just strap on and go.’ Matt grinned. ‘Don’t you want to strap it on with me?’

  But Ash wasn’t listening. The grey box in his duffel tugged at his thoughts: he pictured himself tipping it from the open door of a hovering chopper, the cremains dispersing upon the snowy slopes below.

  ‘Come on, we didn’t get a chance to ski in Quebec. You made me stare across the highway at that resort the whole time.’

  This Ash heard. ‘I’m sorry my dad died and wrecked your vacation.’

  ‘Come on, that’s not what I meant.’ Matt’s eyebrows arced—his version of an apology. ‘All’s I mean is it’d be fun, like old times. Remember our ski trips in high school?’

  ‘I remember you disappearing to have sex in the change room at Blue Mountain.’

  Matt nodded. ‘Adeline.’

  ‘You remember her name?’

  ‘I remember them all…’ Matt’s tone was mystic; he tilted his head to contemplate the mental rolodex of every woman he’d ever slept with.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ash said, ‘we’d need to look into some other stuff before we go booking anything. Like, is it safe, for example.’

  ‘Nothing in the news. I’ve been checking.’

  ‘How much do you hear in the Canadian media about the far north? Such as that entire towns don’t have running water, for example.’

  ‘You sound like your sister. Or her husband.’

  Ash shook his head. ‘I don’t want to even think about that asshole.’

  ‘Frigging commie.’

  ‘Frigging cheater, is what he is.’

  ‘No. No way. On Mona?’

  ‘Can you believe it?’

  Matt stood. ‘I’ll murder him.’ And sat. ‘If I don’t go to Indian jail, I mean.’

  ‘And be a wanted man on two continents. Good idea.’

  Matt’s expression shifted: the forehead crinkled into worry.

  ‘Hey,’ said Ash, ‘there’s a good chance you’re going to get off, right? The kid’s fine. And surely they won’t lock you up for one little joint.’

  Matt palmed his own head, rubbed it briskly. ‘This trip—I really need it.’

  ‘Heli-skiing. In Kashmir.’

  Matt nodded. He looked more frightened and desperate than Ash had ever seen him.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’m going to take that as a yes.’

  ‘I said maybe!’

  Matt motioned for his phone, a wild grin on his face.

  ‘Oh god,’ said Ash. ‘I know that look. What have you done?’

  Matt passed him the phone: displayed on the screen was an email confirmation from some tour company. ‘Four-day package, bro. Gulmarg, just like you s
aid. Bought it while you were sleeping. Merry belated frigging Christmas.’

  2

  AFTER SEVEN HOURS FLYING from Pearson to Heathrow, then another dozen hours to Delhi, and now back up in another plane to Srinagar, Ash was losing touch with the ground. All he knew was sky. Also Matt was very big. He spilled both into the aisle and upon Ash, crammed in the middle row. The minute they were airborne Matt thrust his seat back—fine on roomier flights, less so on this cramped little shuttle. Ash offered a sympathetic look to the discomfited woman behind him.

  ‘Should have sprung for business class,’ Matt grumbled.

  ‘The flight’s only an hour. Suck it up.’

  ‘Suck it up? Easy for you to say. Not everybody’s a munchkin.’ Matt surveyed Ash from head to toe. ‘I could probably fit you in the overhead bin. Better watch yourself or it’ll be like that time you took a swing at me and you spent the afternoon in your locker.’

  ‘I still hate you for that.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have tried to sucker punch me then.’

  ‘You were being relentless! All day you kept smacking me in the balls.’

  ‘Which reminds me: what’s the capital of Thailand?’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Ash cupped his crotch just in time, barely deflecting the backhand.

  ‘Bang-cock!’

  ‘We’re nearly forty years old,’ said Ash. ‘You realize that, right?’

  But Matt was on a roll. ‘Do you have a sleeping bag?’

  Ash failed to get his meal tray down before Matt delivered the punch line: ‘Wake up!’

  The blow caught him squarely in the testicles and a sour, cloudy pain swam up from his gut. Matt giggled like a madman. The guy in the window seat edged away.

  ‘Fun times,’ said Matt.

  ‘No,’ wheezed Ash, ‘they’re not.’