Tanya had examined Adam's countenance closely as he described how, about ten feet away on the ground, he spotted Cameron, with blood covering his head and fountaining over his shoulders. Surrounding his friend's prone form were not three but four people, two women and the men he'd noticed earlier. One of the women was sucking her knuckles and shaking, the other was taut and sticklike, speaking fervently. The old man had his back to Adam but the young man's features wore an expression of horror so intense that Adam had nearly choked.
Tanya had not refrained from asking Adam why he hadn’t gone to his friend's aid; then. Immediately. He insisted that he'd been too bemused to move.
'Cameron wasn't moving; if he had been, I think it would have shaken me out of my daze and made me run to him. I don't know what I thought. Maybe he was out cold. I definitely did not think he was dead. No! It just didn't cross my mind!' He was shaking his head from side to side. Sara laid a palm on his knee. He shook it off and continued, 'When the thin woman dropped down and put her ear to Cameron's chest, I didn't understand what she was doing. He'd been in scrapes before … back home … and usually he'd escaped with a slap or a bruise. That was Cameron, he didn't go in for brawling much. Then the old man walked away.'
'Where was his stick? Can you remember?' Tanya was alert, sitting forward.
'Someone handed it to him, I think. I can't really remember. When he went, he wasn't leaning on it though, he jabbed it into the river then he was using it to push aside the bushes; I do recall that because it was so . . . strange. Oh fuck, no!' Adam groaned and Sara had her hands over her mouth as the significance of the gesture struck them.
'Do you think the stick …?'
'Possibly. No way of telling now, it must have rained many times since. Try not to think about it.' Tanya was eager to get to the end of the narration. 'How did the old guy seem? Was he limping?'
'He looked strong enough to me … and before he left I saw him clearly: he spat at the crying woman. He spat right in her face and she didn't do a thing! It was worse than humiliating, it was like she was insensible. I waited, 'cause I thought they'd leave Cameron there and go off and then I could go to him and get some help. But they stayed. Do you get it? And I didn't know what they were saying so I can't tell you. It just seemed to go on and on, them talking and me watching and Cameron not moving. And the worst thing is … I was there, but I cannot say who hit him. It's all so fucked up.'
Adam had put his head in his hands. Sara was weeping openly. Tanya heard her but made no move to touch or comfort her. She was angry. If one of her friends had been in danger, she hoped that she would have had the courage to confront their trouble, to risk herself for them, to act without thinking of herself. But we all behave differently, under stress, from how we imagine we should. If he was telling the truth, she couldn't condemn Adam's cowardice.
At last he'd looked up, eyes wet, and finished his tale: there was not much more to tell.
The crying woman had been dragged off by the thin one, he told them. Then sobbing and gasping, the young man began to pull Cameron, lifting him under his arms, towards the river. Adam waited – how long? He couldn't exactly recollect, but maybe a quarter of an hour – couldn't see what was happening and so came out of the covering of the trees. Tanya saw Sara recoil in dismay when Adam told them how long he’d waited. Long enough to have run for help. Long enough for an injured man to die. Tanya had forced herself to concentrate on his narrative.
By the time he got to the river, Cameron and the young man had disappeared. He began to wonder if it had all been a hallucination. Then he heard breathing and shuffling and suddenly the young man passed him again, almost close enough to touch and rushed upwards without seeing him. Adam then stumbled down river, towards the place from which the young shepherd had emerged, and there he immediately saw a shallow grave.
He'd lunged and scrabbled and kicked at the leaves and earth, sobbing to himself and petrified, aroused from his torpor and dreading what he would find. The back of Cameron's head emerged; then his shoulders, dark mud and leaves clinging to the coagulating blood.
He was still warm.
Adam cradled the body and felt for its pulse, its breathing, brushing off the mud, kissing its lips, whispering to Cameron to wake up.
'There was a gigantic gash at the side of his head, shrivelled skin and hair curling back just behind his ear, and I tried to hold it together with my fingers – but it wasn't even bleeding any more – all the blood seemed to have seeped out and pooled around him. His skull felt mushy, like a vegetable that's rotted on one side but when I felt tiny bits of bone coming off into my palm, I was sick ….I had to move away from him to vomit. Ages before I could stop the retching. I'm not proud of myself.
'While I was puking I heard loud speech, and I knew I had to go before the same thing happened to me or before someone accused me … accused me of killing him. I crept back to the cabin we shared, avoiding the village and the clear paths – somehow I found it and went in and packed all my stuff. I wanted to take his things too but I had no energy, so I took mine and made off; the only thing I kept of his was this camera.' He'd unzipped a suitcase and held out the small digital camera. 'I stumbled along all that day; didn't sleep at night and stopped only to wash off Cameron's blood. I was going to get the cops; I was going to find out what had happened. Then I saw Sara! It was a nightmare. I nearly screamed. I'd forgotten about her. I'd forgotten everything I ever knew. The last thing I wanted was to tell her about Cameron, but I was desperate for her to know so I could share the whole experience with someone.'
Sara had been so cheerful, anticipating her reunion with the man she loved, that Adam's terror had hardly registered. He'd told her first that Cameron wasn't there; that he'd moved on, they might as well leave. When she thought he was fooling around, he came right out and told her. Cameron was dead. And this time she seemed to believe him – or at least she said she did. She whimpered a bit and that made Adam cry too. They were both exhausted and depressed, trying to figure out what had happened and why it had happened. Sara insisted that they climb to Saahitaal.
'She was much braver than I'd have been', Adam told Tanya. And she believed him. There was something solid about Sara, notwithstanding her external fragility, which gave one confidence. She wouldn't let anyone down.
'We were so ravenous by the time we reached the outskirts of Saahitaal that Sara agreed to go on ahead and get food for us. Nobody knew her and she was confident that she could get what we needed. She wasn't as scared as I was, perhaps because the reality of what had happened hadn't sunk in for her. She was still hoping it was a joke, a hoax by Cameron and myself; now I guess she'd thought it my revenge on her for the shock I was supposed to have received on hearing of Cameron's engagement to her.’ Adam cleared his throat, his pain still raw. 'She assumed that I’d been told: she had no way of knowing otherwise.'
But Sara wasn't prepared for the unfriendliness that washed across her path every time she asked about the young foreign man: the closed doors when she described him; the hostile eyes on her back as she walked away. Eventually a woman approached her and agreed to her mimed request for food. An hour later she was descending the slopes by the lake, carrying a pot of stew. She ate it alone: Adam didn't seem able to eat. He was moody and silent, dreading her reaction when she saw the body: she thought he was morose at the failure of his ruse.
Unable to bear the suspense any more, he dragged her to the riverbank as soon as she'd eaten. They trudged back and forth for an hour as Adam tried to orient himself and find the dreadful spot; every time he stopped, Sara told him to come off it, to give up the joke and come with her to meet Cameron. She was laughing. The tears she'd shed had left her more cheerful than ever. Hearing him describe her optimism Sara cried even harder. Now Tanya felt nothing but pity for both of these young foreigners.
From there onwards it was almost as they'd described in their report. They found the body and Sara, who'd resisted believing for so long that Cameron was dead,
was finally silenced by the overwhelming intensity of her horror.
Adam saw the ravages of three days on his lover's face and went to the river to be sick again. Sara slipped the watch off the wrist of her fiancé's corpse. Then, terrified for different reasons, they both fled.
41
Karmel stood by the door of the cabin at the bottom of whose stone steps he had been attacked. Memories of that smouldering pain still invaded his thoughts, the gash on his head a reminder that a killer had stalked him too. Outside, dawn had washed Saahitaal in normality again. The village was still not homely – that it could never be; but daylight had robbed it of its terrifying potency. Slightly bedraggled, the dwellings seemed to slant towards each other and whisper the news of the night in terse breathless gasps. Or perhaps that was just the breeze stirring the dripping trees and rippling across the foggy lake. Women were leaving the cabin, pushing past him, descending the steps.
It was time to face them. There was nothing to be gained by running. Smoke, silence and sorrowful frowns were not as daunting as the thought of never hearing the answers he craved. Karmel confronted the women and met every pair of eyes, slowly scanning the chamber and looking last of all into the tearful brown pair of Thahéra's stepson. Startled by a sudden resemblance he turned his head and met Gauri's gaze. There was no mistaking their likeness: answers began to click into place in his head like tiny bones in a skeleton's spine.
The room now contained only Thahéra's sister, Stitching Woman and her daughter, the old man's corpse, the boy and Gauri. Karmel stepped in and pushed closed the door. Gauri took a slow grating breath, but it was Thahéra's stern sister who spoke.
'Stranger. We are grateful to you for all you have tried to do. We want you to know that. And we won't stop you if you feel that punishment is necessary.' Her pale eyes gleamed. Karmel inclined his head but something inside him shrank from her. He thought he knew what she was going to tell him but he wanted to hear her say it anyway, just for the record: the boy was guilty. He prepared himself for a bleak tale. In the event, he could not believe what he was hearing and had to sit down to prevent himself from falling.
'When I was seven years old', she began, 'Thahéra was born. Our father was the roughest and most feared man in the area. He had half-killed several low caste shepherds who had crossed him and nobody ever dared complain about his behaviour – least of all his wife. He was known to dislike women and girls and it was with alarm that the village heard his wife had given birth to a second daughter. It was even rumoured that he was not the father. The night he was told the news he was, however, extremely calm. He did not shout or get drunk. He simply sent me to stay with a neighbour. In the morning he asked for me back and I remember checking fearfully to see if my mother was hurt but she seemed to be fine, suckling the baby and lying on her side in a corner of our hut; the very same place where you have stayed all these days, stranger.'
Thahéra's sister stared at Karmel for a few minutes. Then she proceeded.
'However, when a neighbour came to massage my mother, she found that her left arm was broken in three places.' Karmel sighed. Thahéra, had tried to tell him about Devsingh's propensities. Such stories were not uncommon in Delhi, or elsewhere in the world for that matter. Hindered by romantic preconceptions about the innocence of these hill people, he hadn't given her a chance.
Gauri shifted restlessly in her seat and grew still when he glanced at her.
'My sister was the strangest girl – sometimes gentle and kind, sometimes wrathful and bold. She took to hanging around with our father and why he tolerated her presence we never knew. But one day when he was to take some of our cattle up to pasture, she wanted to go with him. He laughed in her face – just kept laughing at her until she was so ashamed. All the other shepherds saw it and they laughed too, as much from fear of my father as from sympathy with his humour. He dragged her by the elbow to the shed and he showed her, in the far corner, two little calves. He pointed to them, and kept laughing at her; all of us girls witnessed it, for we ran behind them in fear. He lifted her up in the air, pinching and squeezing her below the armpits and told her some horrible things, truths he called them, about the lives of calves and girls and women. Then he left with the others. You have talked a lot to her, but I bet she did not tell you this.'
'She did not.'
'A day later she burnt down that shed; she killed those calves and when he returned my father almost killed her.' Karmel swept the room with his eyes. Stitching Woman was staring at Thahéra's sister, opening her mouth to speak in what looked like rage, but Gauri interrupted with a brittle laugh, which became a suffocating cough. Finally, Stitching Woman grunted, opaque eyes gazing in Karmel's direction.
'Do you believe these old tales? What good are they to you? What interests you isn't history, it is the present time. A man was killed. Now another corpse lies before us. You would have it all neat and tidy, would you not? The wrongdoer mad or evil, the criminal punished. But you will be frustrated. Remember my words. Disenchanted. Disappointed. You will curse yourself. I told you at the beginning – ask only questions to which you know the answers. Otherwise you will hurt yourself needlessly and you'll be told more lies.' Her husky voice rose. She swung round on Thahéra's sister and stepson and hissed, 'Speak, speak, do I say the truth?'
The young man remained silent, bent over in mourning, seemingly unaware of any of them. He held Devsingh's hand in a tight grasp, despite the clammy skin and stiff fingers. It was the first time Karmel had really looked at Thahéra's stepson. This was the young man who was always grim, always scowling and watching him so suspiciously in the confines of his stepmother's home. This was the same youth who had followed him along the path he took with Sahusingh and confronted him in such a dramatic fashion only to flee in hysterical tears. Now he was grieving for a vicious old man to whom he wasn't even related?
Gauri rose and went to stand beside the youth. Karmel spoke before she did.
'He's your child. The one you ran away from?' Gauri nodded sadly.
'You can see it. Our village – so cut off here by the lake, such a dearth of eligible men … when I left my husband's home, his mother didn't have to look far for a replacement …'
'Thahéra.'
'Yes. But it isn't what you think. We were friends for many years before she married my one-time husband. She accepted him for my sake; so I could see my son.'
Karmel stared at Thahéra's sister, not hiding his pity, realising that it could be none other than her husband who had raped Gauri. This sullen lad was the product of a single brutal encounter between Gauri and her husband's brother; Thahéra's father, for all his cruelty, had been the only man in the boy's life.
But all this … what did it have to do with the foreigners, with Cameron Croft and his death? And why was Stitching Woman even now so contemptuous of him, so bitter? He felt dizzy and hot, yet the air in the room was cold, even glacial. An icy wind whistled round the cabin, reminding him of the altitude at which they were located, so far from his beloved metropolis. Gauri rubbed her eyes.
'You came to find out about that foreign man and we've talked to you about everything else. The shameful things that we tell only God. And you sit here and look at that old dog –' she gestured at the old man's corpse '– and wonder again what we are up to. You won't believe me if I tell you that what happened to the foreigner was not meant to be, that it happened by chance, misfortune, call it what you will.' She gasped. 'The truth is, most of us liked him.' She looked around the room, 'and he played with us.' Another pause. 'But sadly – I say sadly, Stranger, though I accept fate – he thought he was too clever to be trapped; he thought he was invisible, invincible. But he was found out and then he had to face the consequences.' She paused, looking glum, sweat dripping off her brow.
'You say his death was an accident. But you imply that it was his own fault; that he deserved to die.' Karmel's tone was sharp. Thahéra's sister jumped in and continued the tale.
She described the day on whi
ch Thahéra confronted Cameron and asked him to take her away from the village. Apparently, she was careless of everything then, knowing her father was in the area and letting go of her dignity. Afraid for her, Gauri had waited trembling in the shadows. Cameron was edgy, dismissive, but she continued to plead and he became agitated.
What had happened afterwards had been a mistake. A tragic twist of fate.
As the older woman spoke, Gauri put her hand on the boy's head.
'Tell him.' She said. 'Tell him now.' Her voice was hoarse and arid, empty of emotion. Obediently the young man released the old man's cold fingers and began to mutter. At first Karmel couldn't make out a word. Then he realised that the boy was talking to him.
'I followed. I followed them wherever. Saw things. Always follow everywhere, he said, he told me, follow them, see, listen, tell me…saw white man, saw them, heard them. Grunt. Grunt. Making noises.'
He was a spy, this pathetic boy? Karmel absorbed the information with disbelief.
'In the name of God, whom did you follow? Was it Thahéra? Your aunt? Your mother?' Karmel was leaning forward, the lump on his neck bulging, his hair awry. The boy nodded.
'When he was away. I saw them. I told him. He made me take him – out there, where they were. I buried man. Then I dug him up. Brought him to you. Wanted you to go and take him too. Give him injection. Maybe he get up again?' So, it had not been a warning or a threat, but rather a pathetic attempt to bring the dead back to life.
The boy was still talking, on and on in rigid fragments. 'He made me promise. Then caught me doing wrong … with her –' he turned and pointed at Stitching Woman's beautiful daughter, ' – ask her! She knows. We did. Making noises. Together. She's my friend.' He looked at the girl and for the first time Karmel saw him smile; it was absurd: this damaged boy was going to be a father soon.
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