by Jon Evans
“Oh, she’s not with us, she’s doing the teacher training with Tara and Guru Virankasulam,” she says, speaking the last name reverentially. “They’ll be at the other end of the property.”
It is a five-minute walk to a tentlike structure with open walls, a hardwood floor and pillars, and a canvas canopy rather than a roof, where nearly fifty people, almost all of them women, all of them extremely fit, are in the midst of a strenuous yoga class. A redheaded woman and a bald, elderly Indian man conduct the class. Both are clad in saffron robes. The guru calls out what Keiran supposes to be the Sanskrit name for a stance, and then, as the men and women attain and sustain the pose in question, the redheaded woman goes among them, adjusts their stances, sometimes forcefully, and scolds them for minute failures.
It is an impressive spectacle, this sea of athletic, sweat-glistening bodies moving in unison, their loud Darth Vader breaths in perfect sync, as they lift themselves off the ground, balance precariously on hands or heads or one foot, and twist and fold their bodies, human origami, into poses that must near the limit of human capability. It takes Keiran a little while to pick out Danielle. He hasn’t seen her in more than a year, and she has cut her hair very short. He sighs with relief, to finally see her in the flesh and know she is all right, that his dreadful mistake that so endangered her can after all be repaired.
They retreat to a crude wooden bench beneath a copse of trees, within sight of the canopied wooden floor, to wait for the class to end.
“That’s pretty intense,” Estelle says. “I mean, I do ashtanga yoga too, I can go through the whole primary series, but nothing like that.”
Keiran nods. He too is impressed. Danielle practised yoga when they dated, but never approaching this level.
A shirtless, heavily muscled man, almost hairless yet vaguely apelike, approaches them. His long arms are tattooed with vaguely military sigils, and he has bare feet and a black eye. He pauses, squints for a moment, and says, “Are you Keiran?”
Keiran looks at him. “Who wants to know?”
“You’re here for Danielle?”
Already out-informed, Keiran doesn’t want to let anything more slip, but Estelle says, “Yes.”
“You must be Estelle. And Angus. I’m Laurent. Justice International.”
Hands are shaken all around. Laurent all but crushes Keiran’s hand.
“Thanks for coming,” Laurent says.
“Thanks for helping her out,” Keiran says stiffly, already deciding that Danielle is too good for this lout.
Angus says, “You knew Jayalitha.”
“I did,” Laurent agrees.
“Are you sure about what happened to her? Is there any chance…”
“I didn’t myself see it, and they left no evidence,” Laurent says, “but don’t let that stir false hope. There is no doubt. I’m sorry.”
Angus looks at Estelle, who takes his hand and clasps it between hers.
“Those bastards,” Angus says. “They will pay. I promise you, I will see them pay for that. Jaya was, she was … extraordinary.”
Laurent nods.
“What happened to her?”
“They burned her in her own house. With her family and all the evidence she gathered. By the time I arrived there was nothing but ashes and bones.”
Angus grimaces. Estelle closes her eyes for a moment. A silence follows.
“How did you know her?” Laurent asks.
“We met her when we came here a few years ago,” Estelle says.
Angus picks up the story. “Jaya was working in a hostel in Cochin, saving up money to marry her husband. It was what they quaintly call a ‘love match’ around here. Meaning both families were appalled and there were death threats all around. Her husband was from Kishkinda, as you may know. I don’t remember his name.”
“Tamhankar,” Laurent says.
Angus nods, satisfied. Keiran suspects he knew Jaya’s husband’s name perfectly well; that was a test. “Yes. He’s Kannada, and Jaya is Tamil.” He pauses and his face tightens again. “Was. Was Tamil. They will regret what they did to her. I know that sounds hollow, but it’s truth.”
“I heard it was a man called Vijay, from the Bombay office, who killed her,” Laurent says. “It might have been him that captured me and interrogated Danielle. If so I think he has military training. He was new, I’d never seen him before.”
“Vijay,” Angus says, tasting the name. “From the Bombay office. Keiran. I want you to look into that. Vijay.”
Keiran nods.
“When did it happen?” Angus asks.
“Two days before Danielle arrived.”
“Just ten days ago,” Estelle muses. “Jesus. What an evil thing to do.”
Another silence.
Laurent says, “Danielle will be very happy to see you all.”
“She won’t be long now,” Estelle says, “They’re in shivasana.”
Keiran glances at the yoga class, whose members are now lying back on their mats, arms and legs splayed out to the sides, eyes closed, silent. It reminds him of the famous picture of the Jonestown victims in the 1970s, hundreds lying dead in neat rows.
“I’ve been doing my due diligence,” Angus says to Laurent. “Reading up on your group. You have an impressive track record. I think we could do good work together.”
Laurent nods. “I was thinking that too. Common cause.”
“You’ve got the organization there in the field. We’ve got money, and contacts, and certain other advantages. Like him,” he says, indicating Keiran. “Your ground war, my air war, together we might beat these bastards.”
The yoga class disperses, its members glowing with sweat and endorphin bliss. When Danielle sees Keiran, her face stretches into a wide grin and she pelts across the field like a delighted child. She rushes to him and he hugs her, tightly at first, until she grunts with pain and pulls away.
“Easy,” she gasps, “I’m still a bit bruised.”
“Shit. Sorry.” He backs off. “Is that from…”
Danielle nods awkwardly as Laurent casually drapes his arm around her.
“Oh Jesus,” Keiran says. “Those fuckers. Dani, I don’t know what to say. I am so sorry.”
“What did they do to you?” Estelle asks, her voice soft.
“They just hit me the one time. That’s all. This little tinpot dictator with a lathi. But then Laurent showed up and saved the day.”
“After she released my handcuffs,” Laurent says. “It was a joint effort.”
“It was entirely my fault,” Angus says. “I sent the passport. I told Keiran it would be perfectly safe. You have every right to be absolutely livid at me. I had no right to ask you to go. I never imagined they might do that to you, but obviously I should have. I’m, fucking, I don’t even know the right word, abashed and mortified and grovelling don’t even come close to my level of guilt.”
“Mine too,” Keiran mutters. “For believing you weren’t full of shit.”
Angus gives him a weary look.
“Well,” Danielle says. “Just don’t let it happen again, okay? Once in a lifetime is more than enough. Trust me. But, you know, as long as you can get us out of the country, all’s well that ends well.” She smiles faintly. “There were even certain fringe advantages.” She looks up at Laurent, who leans down and kisses her.
“Speaking of getting out of the country,” Keiran says, trying to hide his annoyance at the way Laurent is pawing Danielle, making it clear she is his property. He digs in his penguin-pack and produces a digital camera. “I need pictures of the both of you. Laurent, over there, with the sky behind you, that will be easy to edit out.”
“What’s this for?” Danielle asks.
“Your new passports.”
Laurent blinks as the camera flashes. “You can give us passports?”
“Fake ones. But good enough to fool Indian customs on the way out.”
“What about when we land?” Danielle asks, taking Laurent’s place.
&nb
sp; Keiran snaps a picture of her. “You just can’t imagine how it happened, but somehow you lost your passport in the airport in India. It’s not hard to prove you’re American. They might put you in a holding cell overnight, that’s all, until they confirm your identity.”
“And they might call the Indian embassy to see if we’re wanted by the authorities here,” Laurent says skeptically.
“Indeed they might. But the Indian embassy will say they never heard of you.”
Laurent looks at him. “How can you be sure?”
“Trust me.”
“Keiran, I don’t mean any offense, but trusting you is how Danielle got into trouble in the first place.”
Keiran looks at him expressionlessly.
“Don’t worry,” Danielle says. “If he says they won’t know, they won’t know.”
Keiran explains, “It’s what I do.”
* * *
Keiran, Angus and Estelle decide to visit Anjuna’s beach before returning to the house. Anjuna’s meandering main road, lined by restaurants, hostels, shops, Internet cafes, travel agencies and money changers, extends for two miles from the highway junction to the sea. At the waterfront, beachfront cafes overlook the surf, and a nightclub hidden behind tall fences stands on a high bluff. The town is far more easy-going than Calangute’s seething chaos. White people are everywhere, most of them young and very fit, on foot, on motorcycles, eating in cafes, throwing Frisbees on the beach. As they descend the sandy path that leads to the beach, Angus is twice offered ganja and Ecstasy by local men ostensibly selling souvenirs and psychedelic paintings. Keiran supposes Angus’s dreadlocks make him a magnet for drug dealers.
“So what do you think?” Estelle asks Keiran, as they walk over rocks and onto the long strip of soft, golden sand.
“Of what?” Keiran says.
Angus says, “Our new friend.”
“I think he’s a dangerous idiot.”
Angus looks at him. “His shagging your ex-girlfriend wouldn’t make you a wee bit biased here, would it? And besides you think everyone is a dangerous idiot.”
“So do you. It’s one of the wonderful common threads that makes our friendship so rich and vibrant.”
“I’m touched. But it’s not true. I only hate most people. The useless, selfish cunts who grow up rich and turn a deliberate blind eye to the dying poor all around them. Ordinary people. Laurent, however, happens to be a member of the tiny minority that actually works to help them.”
Keiran says, “Danielle was born very rich indeed, and I don’t see her slaving away to save AIDS patients in Zimbabwe. How do you feel about her?”
“Sod off, straw man. By ‘rich’ I mean everyone ever born in a First World country, as you well know. Don’t waste my fucking time with all these petty class distinctions among the haves. We’re all haves. And I think she has potential. I even, and this really makes me a starry-eyed dreamer, think you have potential.”
“Better check into the hospital, mate. I think you’re having an aneurysm.”
“Ever the comedian. What do you think of Laurent?” Angus asks Estelle.
She says, “I like him. But what matters is that he can help us.”
“Help you or help the poor?” Keiran asks.
Both of them look at him bewildered.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. They’re one and the same. How convenient.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Angus asks, an edge in his voice. “You think we’re in this for our own good? You’ve seen how we’ve lived for the last ten years. You’ve seen the bruises. You’ve visited me in prison. You sell out to work at an investment bank and then you have the fucking nerve to suggest that I’m the hypocrite?”
“I couldn’t have sold out. I never bought in.”
“Always quick with the smooth contemptuous one-liner. Dodge the question. Maybe I’m wrong about you after all.”
Keiran says, “It’s not your noble goals I question. Yes, you want to make the world a better place. The problem is, you’re totally fucking wrong about how to do it. You want to save the world? Be my guest. But you’re going about it in exactly the wrong way.”
“Meaning what?” Estelle asks.
Keiran thinks a moment, then shakes his head. “Never mind. What do I care? What do you care what I care? Nothing to both. I owe you my life, and I’ll pay my debt, and then I’ll go back home. No sense fighting over politics while we’re at it.”
They walk in silence for a little while. Then Estelle says, “Keiran, it’s fine if you don’t want to talk politics. But if you ever do, I’m always interested in hearing the views of someone as smart as you are.”
Keiran nods. “All –”
“Even if you are needlessly abrasive.”
“All right. Maybe we can talk politics when I’m in a better mood.” He pauses. “And I’m sorry.”
“Answer me this,” Angus says to him as they walk. “What is it you want out of life, mate? What lives in your dream world?”
Keiran doesn’t miss a beat. “Rolls-Royces stuffed full of twenty-pound notes. Non-unionized people with dark skin scurrying to obey my every whim because they know they’ll starve to death if I sack them. Huge dams flooding vast tracts of old-growth rainforest. Perpetuating the Chinese iron fist in Tibet. A world full of people who eat nothing but genetically modified McDonald’s french fries, and Chiquita bananas they bought at Wal-Mart. Helping plan the American invasion of Iran. Fifty-year patents.”
“Very funny,” Angus says sourly.
Keiran grins. “I try.”
Chapter 12
Estelle comes to join Danielle for yoga the next morning. Still basically strangers, they are a little skittish around each other, and Danielle is glad when small talk ends and the class begins. She clears her mind, focuses on her breath and body, as they move through the namaskaar series, the warmups before the Primary Series begins.
The class is gruelling and fast-paced, and though Estelle is fit and experienced, she has to stop and rest a few times in balasana, child’s pose. Danielle pushes herself through the strain, past the sweat and hoarse breaths and aching limbs, until the rhythmic powerful ujjayi breathing at the core of the practice manages to extinguish past and future, until she is entirely in the now, all body and no mind.
At the end of the class, they lie back in shivasana, which Danielle privately calls naptime. She feels sore and wrung out, but deliciously loose and relaxed, at peace with the world. Whatever happens will work out, somehow, she is sure of it. She tries to ignore the nagging voice telling her that that’s just endorphins talking, that real problems aren’t fixed just by going to a yoga class for an attitude adjustment.
After the class Danielle and Estelle sip tea in the ashram’s open-air cafe.
“Thanks for having me here,” Estelle says. The remains of her Southern accent are more palpable now; she seems to have let down her social guard. Danielle feels more at ease too, now that they have sweated together.
“No problem.”
“Did you like living here?”
Danielle looks around and chooses her words carefully. “It was a valuable experience. I think it’s best that it didn’t continue much further.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“I haven’t really thought past getting out of the country in one piece.”
Estelle nods. “Understandable. Here’s one option you might want to think about. Angus and I, we don’t know you well, obviously, but we do like you. Keiran speaks very highly of you. And you’re obviously tough as old nails. We’d like you to think about working with our movement in some capacity.”
Danielle’s instinct is to immediately decline. This is what she always does, when she is asked to join or support a political group, a gallery, a movement. She assumes, whenever asked, that she is being approached for her and her family’s wealth. But Estelle probably doesn’t even know she is rich, Keiran isn’t likely to have mentioned it. And besides, Estelle is right. Danielle has be
en tough and resourceful. Their desperate escape from Kishkinda feels far enough behind her now that she can feel proud of it. It feels good to be approached because of what she is, what she can do, rather than her ability to write fat cheques. Danielle isn’t sure it’s ever happened before.
“I’d have to think about it,” she says.
“Of course.”
“What capacity do you have in mind?”
Estelle says, “Depends on what you’re comfortable with. But we might, for instance, have you help organize protests. We’re considering a possible major protest in Paris in two months’ time.”
“That’s what you do? Organize protests?” Danielle says disbelievingly. “That’s why you hired my ex-boyfriend the uber-hacker?”
“No.” Estelle hesitates, then says, “Our inner circle does more challenging work. But we can’t ask you to join that yet. That’s not a decision either side can make lightly. We have to completely trust the people we work with. You understand, we don’t necessarily play within the rules set down by governments.”
Danielle looks at her. “What does that mean exactly?”
“Well. I can give you a lot of soothing euphemisms, but what it really means is, we break the law. No violence against people, unless absolutely necessary, and it hasn’t been yet. But we can’t afford to play nice. Not in a world where ten percent of the population holds the other ninety in chains.” Estelle’s voice turns grim as she speaks, her eyes harden, she seems to change before Danielle’s eyes from a friendly, playful woman into a vengeful angel. “Strong preying on weak, rich feeding on poor, like fucking vampires, everywhere you look. And it’s the strong and rich who make the laws. We can’t be bound by the law if we want to break the chains. Legalized slavery and mass murder, that’s what it boils down to. You were there. You saw them dying in Kishkinda.”