The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Vikas posts at the canter back to the lineup, in case video cameras are rolling. His two teammates’ horses snort as they follow him.

  Freeloaders, both of them. Handicaps lower than zero. His number 4 man isn’t bad—a lieutenant colonel with a bit of a belly—weekend player. Not too smart. The opposition, Calcutta Polo Club, is more evenly handicapped. In fact, the four army officers play as if they’re brothers. Have to beat them in four chukkers, no overtime, because unlike a military officer with a stable at his command, Vikas doesn’t own a fifth horse to ride for another seven-and-a-half-minute chukker.

  “Vikas! Vikas!” An older man is standing by the ponies, waving. Three-button grey suit, white shirt and diagonally striped tie. Brown pointed-toe shoes. So retro—can’t be someone who matters. Maybe a client.

  Then he realizes it’s Anupam’s uncle, Mr. Talwar. What does he want? He’s walking too close to the lineup. Serve him right if a horse bites or rears.

  A khaki-uniformed syce runs onto the field, grasps the bay’s bridle, then Vikas’s mallet and whip. Vikas slips from his stirrups and vaults off at the chalk line. He needs to change horses smoothly, quickly, and be back on the field in minutes. He’s playing pivot, position three, and victory depends on him. “Move it, oy!” he yells at the syce.

  The syce pats the bay’s neck, then her heaving flanks. He loosens the saddle, crosses the stirrup leathers over it and leads her away.

  Sharad Talwar says, “Left you three messages yesterday. Give your lazy servant a talking-to.” He thrusts an oblong of peppered white into Vikas’s hand.

  A clipping from an obscure newspaper, judging from the paper quality. Vikas sees a woman in a salwar-kameez and nurse’s cap standing beside a priest. Vikas doesn’t know any priests. “Who’s the Florence Nightingale?”

  Mr. Talwar points triumphantly to the scar. “Anu!”

  Vikas looks closer, having trouble distinguishing shades of grey. But that face is hers—slightly asymmetrical. He skims the Hindi article. Where is she? Where?

  Past Jalawaaz. Gurkot village. Bread of Healing Clinic.

  What a name—mixing food and illness. Bread is roti. Not to be polluted. And medicine is for illness. Illness is polluting—all those horrible body parts, blood, discharges, skin blemishes, deformations, imperfections … not to mention menstruation and childbirth.

  Scanning quickly, now. The clinic, says the article, is an example of religious cooperation—apparently the church stands beside a gurdwara. Religious cooperation! Between Christians and Sikhs?

  The rest is about the priest. Father Pashan. Pashan’s mother died of post-partum haemorrhage and his father brought him to a Christian orphanage run by the Sisters of Everlasting Hope because he couldn’t look after a child and work. Probably sweeper-caste. Reads as if the priest wrote it: attended seminary in Old Delhi. First social work—rescuing burned and maimed Sikh men and women after the 1984 riots in Delhi, counting and identifying the dead, trying to find people’s relatives, resettle orphans. Working for human rights and social justice issues ever since.

  Fuck social justice—inciting unrest in the lower castes is what that means.

  Father Pashan’s favourite song: “Imagine” by the Beatles. Favourite hymn: “If You’ve Courage to Give, Give It Now.” What an ass.

  Mr. Talwar is holding out his hand. “I read in the Pioneer that you’re attending a car rally in Shimla,” he says. “Take a ride, beta. Patch things up with Anu.”

  Vikas ignores the outstretched hand and it falls back to Mr. Talwar’s side. “Patch things up, Mr. Talwar?” He takes a stride forward. Mr. Talwar backs away. “Find out make, model, year, and where to find a good mechanic, and you can patch up a car.” Vikas lowers his voice so the syces can’t hear him arguing with an elder. “Show a horse who’s boss, it does what I want. But your niece … she’s untrainable. And you’re responsible. You arranged this—this marriage.”

  He strides over to his dappled grey, raises his left leg to place his boot-heel on the outstretched palm of its syce. The syce staggers back as he mounts.

  Vikas tightens his chinstrap and yells for a 54-inch mallet. Another syce jogs over with it immediately. Vikas slips his right hand through its tape loop and lets the cloth-bound handle roll against his palm. He stands in the stirrups. Bamboo whips and cuts through air as he tests the stick. Offside forehand, backhand shot, under-the-neck, under-the-tail strokes. Now the near side—forehand, backhand, under-the-neck, under-the-tail. Nice whippy mallet.

  Mr. Talwar has sidled up to his horse’s side again. The grey swishes her tail. He buttons his suit coat, then unbuttons it. “Well, up to you, beta. I just thought …”

  “You thought? That must have been a new experience.”

  Mr. Talwar blinks, “Anu’s father passed away,” he says.

  “What does that do for me?” says Vikas. “He hardly owned anything.”

  Mr. Talwar nods sadly. “Hardly a few square metres. But now Anu has no one to look after her.”

  The older man seems to have forgotten that Anu is the one who filed for divorce. Vikas shrugs. “You can do the needful.”

  “Chetna sends you her love,” Mr. Talwar says, in doggedly friendly tones. “I spoke with her yesterday.”

  His daughter’s name conjures up her soft arms around his neck, her wide serious eyes with their worshipping gaze. But he won’t give Mr. Talwar the satisfaction of hearing Vikas Kohli ask about his daughter. One of these days, though, he’ll just take her from the Lal family and send her to boarding school. Not a convent school, but a place that will toughen her up, so she won’t whine like her mother if someone smacks her precious face. But right now, he merely says, “Thank you—ji.”

  Vikas’s leather-padded knees lock onto the saddle. He tightens the double reins, shifting the grey’s weight to her haunches. Then he digs his brass spurs into her sides, galvanizing her from standstill to a half-rear, then a canter.

  The ground is baking. After tournament season its well-watered green will bald, and dust will churn beneath flying hooves. He should be enjoying the smell of horse sweat and leather, the starting bugle, the cloud archipelagos scattered across a cobalt sky. Instead he’s responding from habit, letting his mare seek the ball in the melee of mallets and hooves after the umpire’s throw-in.

  Damn it—Calcutta 3 has the ball. Vikas gallops after him, marking the Calcutta pivot along the line of the ball. His left knee edges closer to the player’s right, then slightly ahead.

  All this time Vikas has assumed Anupam was living with her parents while the divorce was in progress. Insult to injury, a whole lot of insult to injury.

  Swami-ji teaches that when you like something too much, you must have self-control, enough self-control to give it up. Control your thoughts, he says. But Vikas loses all control as soon as he feels his blood surge up into the madness of anger.

  Whumph! As horses and riders collide.

  Got him.

  With his knee locked over the other player’s, Vikas can ride him right off the field if he wants.

  Why didn’t he just ride Anupam off his turf years ago? He should have.

  Because women have the plumbing. Without women’s shakti, even Lord Shiv would have remained forever in corpse pose. And you need a woman to convert purush energy, your masculine heat to matter, just as this mare is converting her feed into motion, speed, pulls and turns.

  Unstable particle, that Anu. Disappeared from Delhi only to reappear in the photo, without having been anywhere in between. Not instantly of course, but incomprehensibly. Unpredictable. All outcomes are possible, not only desired ones. Mad woman—doesn’t appreciate her advantages.

  Sister Anupam! Why not Nurse Anupam? Makes her sound like a nun.

  Surely she can’t have converted?

  The priest. He’s brainwashed her.

  His grip loosens. The Calcutta player slips from his control. Damn!

  The priest is her paramour, of course. A Christian Ravan. She’s easily influence
d, weak-willed.

  Vikas extends the grey’s gallop, comes up on the man’s near side.

  Idiot, trying to lock his knee in front of Vikas’s.

  Vikas easily evades. Paired players chase down the field on the line of the ball. A quick turn of his helmet. The two umpires’ black and white striped shirts recede in the distance.

  Now he’s riding neck and neck in a thunder of hooves.

  Like the night he raced down Rajpath, raced with that fuckwit on his motorcycle. Oh, Anupam and her whole family blamed him. As if he didn’t lose his beloved Cord Roadster. Shit happens, as his dumb American clients say. And when she got out of hospital, there she was again, Mrs. Mournful Eyes, with a face no magazine editor would love. Made him feel like thrashing her—he did, once. Maybe twice—he can’t remember. Let himself go. Made the mournful eyes more mournful.

  Vikas arcs his stick above his head as the ball lines up right below his offside stirrup. His forehand smashes down with tilted mallet, and swings through, right past the forelegs of the Calcutta pivot’s gelding.

  The gelding checks, almost stumbles. The Calcutta pivot reins back with a shout. “Foul!”

  But the umpires are too far away. There’s no whistle.

  Turf flies as Vikas wheels the grey onto the new line of the ball. He’s at least sixty yards from the goalmouth with no one to mark him.

  Where are his forwards? Way behind. Probably never learned simple vector theory to predict the line of the ball. Playing cricket instead of polo. Bloody girls, both of them.

  Girls are always playing a different game—you just can’t tell what it is. Your family provides you with one around age twenty-five—twenty-nine in his case—to satisfy your biological needs. At which point you attain householderhood, and all you get after that is responsibility and more responsibility. And blame for not being sentimental or charitable enough.

  He’d only liked one—loved one? Met her riding. A jumper. Ample breasts. Wore skin-tight jodhpurs that showed off hips like a Khajuraho sculpture. Would have made her a Hindu and married her if her family hadn’t rejected the proposal and married her to some Sikh bugger. She disappeared forever. Not even a surreptitious goodbye call.

  Then came Anupam. Who could have predicted that behind the facade of a sweet, kind, gentle, accommodating, unambitious little travel agent lay an obstinate woman intent on a complicated dance of deception and eventual betrayal?

  Vikas shortens the reins in his left fist. He’s up on the bouncing, darting ball again. The bit digs into the mare’s mouth. She slows.

  Because—it’s still bothering him. What if sweet little Chetna isn’t Vikas’s at all? AskJeeves.com said one in ten children isn’t sired by the chap told he’s the father. Of course, the study was about Americans—most studies are about Americans—but should he be required to pay for Chetna’s upbringing and education and her wedding? What is he, just a chequebook?

  The ball is just sitting there. Size of an ostrich egg. With no one but him to hit it.

  Tha! Vikas’s mallet connects.

  Anupam could take a lot of thrashing without waterworks—he’ll give her that. As if she knew something, understood something about him, something he couldn’t understand about himself.

  “Lovely lofted shot …” shouts the commentator.

  People in the stands are clapping. Anyone who is anyone in New Delhi is clapping. Mr. Talwar is clapping, the syces are clapping.

  Maybe also laughing.

  Families abroad break up with divorces. Not the family of a high-caste, high-class man about town. He’s been explaining Anupam’s absence at corporate product launches, fashion shows, embassy parties, cocktails and dinners hosted by his parents’ friends by saying she is in Canada visiting her cousin. Bachelorhood is a demotion to boyhood. Makes him want to challenge other men to stupid stunts. The press is speculating—might have been less embarrassing to advertise his divorce in the Times of India.

  He thought Anupam was living in some small town with her stamp-collecting bore of a father and her social-climbing Anglo-aping snob of a mother. Who could have imagined this? For almost two years!

  If he were shooting this movie, there would be a burst of welcome, tears. And he would raise her up and tell her she must never leave him again. He would stroke her beautiful long black hair, enjoy her touch on his skin. How long has it been since anyone touched him? The thrill would be unbearable, the mysterious tension of it would ignite, explode …

  Ravan the demon can’t have her. Even if he’s converted her, even if he’s slept with her. She’s Vikas’s. Like this horse, like his new saffron-orange Mercedes with its black interior and soft-top.

  Vikas leans back, jerking the reins. The mare tosses her black mane and halts. Stirrup buckles bite Vikas’s inner thighs, as he urges her into a tightly curving canter. Red spittle appears at the corner of the grey’s mouth. He touches his whip to her withers, his spurs to her belly. She rolls one gelid black eye at him. Hooves drum; she extends her gait to the lineup.

  Vikas pulls the grey back on her haunches just inches short of Mr. Talwar’s pointy brown shoes—“You’re quite right, Sharad-saab.” He bites off his words in the man’s alarmed face, “I’ll go. I’ll patch things up.”

  A clang of the scoreboard; thanks to Vikas, National is now even with Calcutta 1–1.

  Two days from now, Vikas’ black and saffron capsule will speed from the cacophony of the car rally in Shimla. Fearing gossip, he’ll drive alone, without chauffeur or batman to serve him. Alone, he will climb the terrible stillness of the blue-misted ranges, looking into the depths of lowland valleys. The stimulant and anaesthetic of speed will replace image with image in dreamlike rapidity. Milestones will flash past, and despite sealed windows and air conditioner, dust will settle on his hair and moustache. With the article in hand, and the authority of the twice-born in his voice, he will inquire in Jalawaaz about the Catholic clinic, and by lunch time, will be helpfully guided to the Jesus-sister’s house.

  Gurkot

  ANU

  FOUR O’CLOCK MIST CONGEALS TO A MILKY FOG OVER Gurkot and Sister Anu looks forward to a mug of hot tea. She stops at the decline of the driveway to the nuns’ residence and shifts The 5 Minute Clinical Consult book from one arm to the other. A saffron-orange car is parked at the cottage door.

  The peace sign proclaims it a Mercedes, and the HIM license plate says the car was registered in Himachal state. Perhaps one of Sister Imaculata’s donors has come from Shimla to tour the Work?

  The screen door creaks as she steps in. “Koi hai?” Then in English, in case the stranger doesn’t speak Hindi, “Who is there?” She lowers the heavy volume to the dining-room table, and drops her shoulder bag to a chair. Her eyes adjust to dimness. She flicks the light switch. Nothing—another power outage. More frequent and lengthy than in Delhi. And why people from Gurkot don’t allow themselves to become accustomed to electrical appliances. “Koi hai?”

  Travel Health in India crowns a stack of Economic and Political Weekly magazines on the coffee table. Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets is angled above the atlas. All these were on the bookshelf this morning. On the stone terrace, the reading chair isn’t facing the peaks. “Bethany?” she calls in the direction of the bedroom.

  Dark trousers and black leather shoes swing off the bed. “Hello, darling.”

  Sister Anu gasps, steps back. That scent.

  The room seems to whirl, her heart races. Don’t be silly.

  He’s standing in the bedroom doorway, hands in his pockets, smiling. Emerging from the fog-shape of her fears, walking into the room as if he owns it. “Just had to come and see the panoramic view from your bed. Took a shower while I was waiting. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” Her voice comes out crisp and professional, though she’d like to spring from her skin. “And I’m not your darling.”

  “Habit of speech, darling, habit of speech. You’re supposed to have the habit of listening. What? You’re not going
to give your husband a kiss? Speaking of habits—don’t you nuns have to wear the super-woman cape …” His fingers stroke the air by his ears.

  “Each religious order is different.” She shouldn’t sound so defensive—he likes her to be defensive.

  “So I’ve found a modernized nun in Gurkot?”

  “How did you …”

  Vikas takes a long slip of paper from his pocket and holds it up. “Someone gave this to me.”

  “Who?”

  “I won’t tell you, just because you want to know.”

  Sister Anu stares at the photo of herself with Father Pashan. “I didn’t think you read the Hindi newspapers.”

  “I didn’t think you spoke Hindi well enough to be interviewed.”

  “I speak Hindi most of the day.”

  “But you still think in English, na? I hate that I think in English, don’t you?” He makes a show of consulting the article. “Says here you’re some kind of nurse? What are you trying to do?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” If she can find a knife or … something. She could drag his body across the dhurries. She could settle him in the driver’s seat, put the car in neutral and simply send him over a cliff. That would be justice. Or would it save him from god’s justice?

  “I’m listening.” He wears a look of exaggerated patience.

  “I—I’m putting myself in the place of others. Trying to help.”

  His laugh whip-cracks across the space between them. “Couldn’t you have just donated your saris or even some jewellery?”

  “People here need ongoing help.” Her tongue feels like shoe leather.

  He strolls across the drawing-room with loose-limbed grace, and inspects a few pages of The 5 Minute Clinical Consult on the table before her. So close now, too close. Scent of horses, leather, power.

  “I’ve been alone here for a whole hour—going out of my mind with boredom. I called for a servant to make tea but no one came.”

  “We don’t have servants. You could have made it yourself.”