Love Children
Page 10
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to go to India."
"India. Hmm. I must admit, that is a surprise."
"Just for a couple of weeks. Christmas vacation is coming; you could spend time with the three oldest. I can take Joey and Betsy. I'll be all right. Please believe me that I'm not planning to cheat on you or anything. It sounds crazy even to me. I just want to go there, spend a few weeks, then come back. Nothing will change afterwards; life will go on. I'll be a faithful wife as I always have been. I have to go there, that's all. I have to go. I have to get it out of my system. I feel something calling me; I can't explain it." She started crying. "You know what? I don't even expect you to agree; I never did. It really does sound crazy, doesn't it? But at least I tried. At least I spit it out. I even thought of running away, but I could never do that. I know I have a responsibility. It's just that...I don't know...maybe I shouldn't have said anything...I'm sorry..."
Fred knelt in front of her and held her as she sobbed, and when she calmed down he said, "So give me a little time to think about it, okay?"
"Okay."
* * *
The path that had been pointed out to Asha meandered for several miles through the countryside and then joined the main road to India. She and Prem slept the first night behind a pile of gravel; every passing bus and truck caused the ground beneath them to tremble as if by an earthquake. In the morning they proceeded, but slowly. Not only did Prem tire easily, but there were so many new things along the roadside to investigate. Asha chafed at each delay; she knew that time was short, and she missed Jason and Jasmine and Paul and Sunny. She was too frightened and felt the burden of responsibility too heavily for her to relax and enjoy herself. She couldn't remember ever having felt as Prem did, and enjoying the simple pleasures of curiosity and discovery; life was too serious, too dangerous. But she did find vicarious satisfaction in watching Prem.
After several days of walking they met a driver at a roadside chai-shop who allowed them to ride in the back of his truck as far as the border. They held each other and stared in awe as they roller-coastered down around sharp turns, along the edges of sheer precipices and cliffs and crags and gorges and valleys, past towering trees and rice paddies as narrow as stairways and herds of dirty goats clinging to steep hillsides.
Asha knew nothing of borders or passports or identification; she and Prem simply crossed into India a few hundred yards from the checkpoint, as if they were crossing a street. She'd never been to the lowlands before; the air pressure, humidity, and heat caused her head to ache and made her feel sticky and uncomfortable and tired. As they walked through the crowded border town the world seemed so big. How would she find their way? There were so many places, so many people, so many languages. She felt smaller than she had ever felt, a dust mote floating in the breeze in the vast open sky.
Suddenly she felt someone. "Who is there?," she said with her inner voice.
"Who is there? Who is there?" repeated a mental voice that spoke in Hindi.
"Where are you?" she said.
"Where are you?"
"I do not know where I am. I have come from Nepal. I am lost."
"I am lost as well. But I have felt shadows of evil, and I have heard voices, some good and some evil. And still I wait, and listen."
"Can you come to me?” Asha asked.
"No. You must come. I will continue to speak, and you must follow my voice. I will call, and you will come; I call, you come. Are you walking?"
"Yes. But are you indoors or outdoors?"
"I sit beside the main road on the warm earth. I feel the sun's heat, I hear the sounds of life around me, I smell men and women and beasts and many other things as well."
"I think I am close. Continue speaking."
"I am Nazrul. I hear the gods calling me to Goa, but I cannot answer. So I sit alone and listen to the shadows and the voices and the gods."
She stopped before a beggar who had the closed sunken eyelids of one who has been blind from birth. He wore a clean white cotton shirt and pants and brown plastic sandals; he sat cross-legged on the ground behind an aluminum begging bowl similar to Asha's. "Nazrul."
"And who are you?"
"I am Asha, and this is my brother Prem. He cannot speak to you like this."
"Few can speak in this fashion. Have you heard the song of the gods, calling the faithful to Goa?"
"They are not gods, but men and women. I have met them."
"And are you on your way to answer the call?"
"Yes."
"Ahh. This is an auspicious occasion, that we should meet by chance, or perhaps not by chance. Who is to say what is chance and what is not? Sit beside me for a while, then you shall eat rice with me, and rest. That much I can do for you. Afterwards you shall continue on your journey, and I will remain here and listen as before."
Asha sat cross-legged next to him, and Prem squeezed himself between them. "May I place my bowl beside yours?" she asked.
"Certainly. Double alms, double alms, double blessing. Speak to me, child, about the world of sight. I have often wondered what it would be like to see."
"Though I can see I do not always notice what I see."
"Ahh. Child, this is not right. You are as one who has a great treasure but does not recognize its value."
"Perhaps. But life is not easy. Daily I must find food for Prem and myself. We wander from place to place."
"Another treasure: a companion. Do you realize what a great gift your brother is? That you do not have to face the vastness of life alone? Would you know the secret of my heart? In your eyesight and your brother you possess the two things that I desire more than anything in the world. I have never wished for anything else. My begging bowl supplies me with ample provision, and I have a small hut in which to sleep. But I am alone, and..."
"I'm sorry," Asha said. "I will try to describe what I see."
"Yes."
"The sky is blue, and a small bird flies high above the village."
Nazrul gasped. "What is this?"
"A bird? It is a small creature with wings."
"But in my mind, in my mind. What has happened?"
"Is something wrong?"
"The bird!"
"There is another. It is beautiful, and seems to float on the wind."
"Wonder of wonders!"
"The bird?"
"I saw it! I saw it!"
"But how is it possible? Your eyes have not opened."
"In my mind. This is a great mystery, child. I saw it not with my eyes, but with yours."
A tremor of apprehension caused Asha to lose the connection.
"Do not fear. It must be that more than words can pass between our minds. Please. Let us try. Look at something else."
Asha concentrated on seeing as many details as she could: the crumbling plaster on the buildings around them; the leering idols with gaping mouths and sharp teeth and many arms and the heads of animals; the sweet shop with tray upon tray of neatly-stacked multicolored delicacies; the fruit carts piled high with mangoes, papayas, and bananas; the passing trucks and buses and rickshaws and ox-carts and pedestrians; the cows with dung-caked backsides, the scrawny dogs pawing through the garbage, the rats scurrying at the bases of the buildings; and above all, the deep blue endless sky.
"It is beyond wonder," Nazrul said. "All my life I have dreamed of this."
"It is common," Asha said. "There is nothing unusual."
"Have you ever gone without a meal so long that you can think of nothing but food? Of course you have. You long for that food; you can almost taste it. A deep empty ache fills your stomach. And then finally you obtain some food; some rice and curry perhaps, or a warm chapatti, and that first bite...it is indescribable. Have you experienced this?"
"Yes."
"Now multiply this experience one thousand times one thousand, and you would still not come close to the wonderful feeling of seeing these sights for the first time in my life. Thank you, child. Thank you."
"Yes," Nazrul said. "Yes, yes, yes." He touched Asha's shoulder. "But you have become weary, child. You must rest now. I am accustomed to my darkness and I can bear it for a time."
"I'm sorry."
"No. You have been most generous with your strength. But I must ask a greater alms of you."
"Nobody has ever asked me for alms."
"Perhaps you had nothing to give. Now, however, you have the power to grant me the greatest desires of my heart. May I accompany you to Goa?"
"I...I don't know."
"I will not be demanding. A bit of sight, perhaps, from time to time; nothing more. I can follow the sound of your footsteps on the road. We can seek alms side by side as we have done today. It never entered my thoughts to answer the call until I met you, but I believe somehow that it is the right thing to do."
"In the short time that I knew Jason and Jasmine and Paul and Sunny they became much more than a family to me. We have always been alone, Prem and I. But now, though my friends are far away, I am no longer alone. I know that there are ones who care. Who am I to deny that to another? Of course you can come with us."
"Thank you, child."
As they had spoken, the sunset had faded into darkness. "Look," Asha said. "The stars."
"Yes," Nazrul answered. "Yes, yes, yes."
* * *
Sunny moaned, and covered her ears. The incessant hard rock pounding in her ears day and night was beginning to get on her nerves. She'd always sought escape from her day-after-day monotonous boredom in such music, but now, after listening to it non-stop for so long, she wanted only silence, so she could hear the sweet signal calling, calling, calling her to Goa.
On the way to the train station her apprehension at feeling the shadows groping at her and others like her had caused her to have second thoughts about taking conventional means of transportation. Surely her uncle would be searching for her; the train station, the airport, and possibly the port might be watched.
She had gone to Plaka, the old part of the city below the Acropolis in downtown Athens, and had found an empty seat on a bus full of hippies on its way from Amsterdam to India. The driver hadn't bothered to check whether the name she gave him was genuine or not. And so, in the midst of thick billowing clouds of hashish smoke, blasting speakers, and raucous tales of mind-blowing highs, potent dope, and remote corners of the world that were paradises for drugs, Sunny traveled through northern Greece, through Istanbul and then central Turkey, where dark-faced men stared at the bus as if it were an alien spacecraft, past majestic snow-covered Mount Ararat, and past the stark clay villages that dotted the barren countryside of Iran. The bus had two drivers who both drove like madmen, themselves stoned most of the time. They stopped only for meals and toilet breaks and so made good time despite the bad roads, or in some cases, almost no roads. Sunny felt most apprehensive at the borders where the customs officials would invariably empty the passengers out of the bus and thoroughly search the bus, the baggage, and the hippies. They seemed to especially delight in slow body searches of the females, but what bothered Sunny more than this was the fact that she had to give her real name on the forms and show her passport; her heartbeat would increase and her muscles would tighten and beads of sweat like little crawling insects would trickle down her sides, and she wouldn't be able to relax until the documents were back in her possession and the bus was on its way again. She didn't smoke the hashish that was continually being passed around, but sometimes just breathing the sour bluish air would cause her to get dizzy and nauseated, and paranoia would build up within her that some of the hippies sitting around her worked for the people who had visited her uncle and were spying on her, and were waiting for an opportunity to grab her and turn her over to the dark shadows that she sensed here and there along the way, the shadows that groped for her like insubstantial black tentacles.
Finally in Tehran she could stand the situation no longer; she grabbed her backpack and hopped off the bus. She booked a room at the Amir Kabir and lay down on the bed and closed her eyes and listened. Yes. There it was, gently calling, calling, calling her to Goa. Where was Paul and what had happened to him? Surely if she heard the signal then he heard it too and must be on his way to India. Perhaps he was already there waiting for her. As she listened she pondered her next move. She didn't have much time; she might have to take a chance and book an airline ticket. She began to worry but her apprehension subsided as she listened to the voices.
Calling, calling, calling.
Chapter 11
Coming In
They’d found a cluster of abandoned villas owned by a Goan family that had moved to Bombay; after a quick psychic shove the resident rodents and insects had sought accommodation elsewhere. The white sand beaches and warm blue waters of the Indian Ocean were a short walk from the front veranda of the main building; bright green hills covered with palm trees were behind. With local help they’d swept and mopped and repaired and brought in furniture and curtains and food and everything else they needed for a temporary stay. Enough eccentric foreigners lived in the surrounding areas so that they did not attract undue attention.
Though they were physically ready, they still had no organized plan of how to teach the arrivals what they needed to learn. They could do nothing but take one day at a time, and they realized that they would probably learn as much from the arrivals as the arrivals would learn from them.
They decided to house themselves in one building and the arrivals in another, and give the arrivals private bedrooms as long as bedrooms lasted. They weren’t so naïve as to think that initial sleeping arrangements would remain consistent, but they needed to start somewhere.
Afterwards, they waited. Reports began to come from the reception teams in Bombay and Pune and Panjim that arrivals had been spotted and contacted. The atmosphere became charged with excitement and anticipation.
* * *
Martin Lewis was staring out the window at the lush tropical foliage and marveling that he had actually arrived when he heard a whisper in his mind. “Knock, knock. Can I come in?”
“What? Oh, sure. Come on in.”
“Did I disturb you?”
“No, I was just… Well, I still can’t believe I’m here.”
The door opened. She was as tall as he was, with auburn hair that fell in loose curls almost to her waist. She was barefoot and wore only a green and white lungi tied just above her breasts. As she walked it would partially open, and he could see that she had nothing on underneath.
“These local wraps are so comfortable in the heat,” she said. “I’m Rose. Jasmine just replaced me in Bombay and I wanted to come see you right away.” She kissed him gently on the cheek. “How are you? Are you comfortable? Have you rested after your trip?”
“I’m fine.”
“Outsiders say that as a formality, don’t they? Whether they’re really fine or not. You don’t have to do that here. We want you to be honest, completely honest. If you’re sick or upset for some reason we want you to let us know so we can help. What good does it do to say you’re fine if you’re not?”
Martin sat on the edge of the bed; Rose sat next to him. The overhead fan ticked quietly as it stirred the warm air in the room.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Actually, exhausted. But I can’t sleep. This whole situation is so unreal. Just a few weeks ago I had my job and my routine and life looked like it would go on like that for a long time. Now, suddenly, here I am in India, and I don’t know what’s going to happen or why I came. It seems crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake, but at the same time I know I didn
’t make a mistake. Do you know why I’m here?”
“We called you.”
“But why?”
“We don’t have all the answers either. It will take time to understand why we’re all here and what we’ll do. Why don’t you try to relax?” She took his hand and held it in both of hers.
“Where are you from? And why can we communicate like this?”
“I’m human, like you are. And, well… I’ve always had the inner voice, as long as I can remember. Our guardians taught us to use it.”