Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

  Hari sat back and made a tent of his manicured fingers. Vijay poured more nimbu pani.

  She tried again. “I want justice for the crime that’s been done this girl. I’m not asking to run for office.”

  Hari shook his head. “I try to remember what a short time you have been in India, Joanna. You did not live through last year, the year before that, or the fifty that preceded our Independence. You did not have to stand by as your best friends were rounded up like dogs and thrown into prison for daring to suggest that after two centuries of colonial rule, the British had overstayed their welcome. You did not bid your former schoolmates goodbye as they fled for their lives over some arbitrary border that had yet to be marked by an Englishman who had never set foot in this country. Nor did you witness the insanity of Partition, when the border he drew was discovered to slice right through villages, towns, hospitals, schools, even individual homes, turning brothers against fathers, against one another. Co-workers hacking each other to bits, your own relatives hauling a machine gun to the corner and turning it on your neighbors. Women with no breasts, no hands, paraded naked through the streets. Wells overflowing with corpses.” He took a shuddering breath and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Barely two years ago…babies were nailed to the walls on iron spikes! And rape—you have no idea what is rape, Joanna. Yes, I called your crime a trivial one because next to what this country has suffered…” He snapped his fingers. “It is nothing.”

  In the thudding silence that followed, he shifted. “Nevertheless, because this is India, even such a nothing case is political.”

  Joanna kneaded a fold in her skirt. “Are you advising me to ignore this?”

  “I am merely telling you that your protests will do little good. The police today are local heroes. They are the survivors, the peacekeepers. We have no United Nations mediators here as they have up in Kashmir. We have been branded as savages by the entire Western world, and the British and friends are only too glad to be rid of their obligation to us. They have cut themselves a deal that allows them to continue dipping into our saucepots for profit, but they no longer have to clean up the messes or put out the fires that result when these saucepots overflow.”

  Joanna thought of Aidan, also branded a kind of savage by the local heroes back home, now wandering around Kashmir trying to expose the treachery among those same U.N. mediators in order to save his political skin. The thought inflamed her all over again. “Is that what this little girl is? A messy saucepot?”

  Lawrence snorted, obviously enjoying Joanna’s indignation. She tried to ignore him. “You know, Hari, I can’t tell whether you’re eulogizing the British, or vilifying them. What am I doing here if there’s no recourse for these girls?”

  “You are protecting them. Perhaps, in a few cases, you will rehabilitate them.”

  “But they’re not what needs rehabilitating! What have they done wrong? You know, I give up. First you say there’s nothing we can do against the brothels. They’re old as the gods, you tell me. And there’s no action we can take against the pimps and goondas that back them up, because that would be too dangerous. And the parents and husbands that sell these girls? No, too far-flung, too many jurisdictions. Besides, in some tribes, in some villages, in some castes daughters are expected to support whole clans by selling their bodies, so it would be against tradition to interfere!”

  “You’re getting yourself worked up for no purpose,” said Hari. “You volunteered for this position, remember?”

  “And have I done so poorly that you’d have me quit?”

  Hari smiled. “You’ve done a splendid job, Joanna. This is not at all what I am saying, and you know it.”

  “What I hear you saying is, there’s no point in doing my job at all!”

  Hari leaned forward, took a pinch from the bowl of fennel seeds and sugar on the snack tray and chewed it thoughtfully. “It is important to be realistic. I feel that already we have lost sight of this poor child even now lying in the other room. We are permitting ourselves to be dragged down into a debate of politics and police—”

  “And justice,” interrupted Joanna. “But who cares about that?”

  “I do,” said Lawrence in such a tone that he might have been teasing, and he might have been in earnest. Joanna met his eyes briefly, caught a conspiratorial nod, and looked away in frustration.

  She got up and went to the doorway. Beyond the veranda, the courtyard simmered, dusty green in the shade, blinding in the sun. The breeze generated by the wooden ceiling fan barely nudged the strands of hair pasted to her neck. It was simply too hot for argument, too hot to know for sure what was worth fighting for—or against.

  Behind her, Hari warned, “You’ll need a remand order to keep her.”

  “Is that a problem?” asked Lawrence.

  She turned to see Hari wiggling his head. “Remand orders come from magistrates. Magistrates depend on policemen, and in many cases are themselves former policemen.”

  “And when do magistrates issue remand orders for these girls?” Lawrence asked.

  “That depends. Alas, too often, it is a matter of this.” Hari rubbed his fingertips together. “Usually there is some interested party agitating for a particular girl. Sometimes this is a sympathetic babu who wishes the girl well without wishing to accept full responsibility himself. By coaxing the magistrate to issue a remand order, he feels he has ‘rescued’ her even if he never sees her again. Sometimes the petitioner is a missionary Christian who hopes to convert the girl. Sometimes it is a well-intentioned social worker such as our Joanna. But then, too, certain magistrates issue remand orders for highly desirable young women because they know that the brothel owners and pimps will pay a pretty sum to get their beauties back. This sum is then divided between the magistrate and the police who bring the girls in.”

  Lawrence crossed his ankles, slapping the sole of one sandal against his heel. “Seems a simple solution to pay the buggers off.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joanna said. According to Aidan, Lawrence was no stranger to the brothel trade, and what else he was willing to pay for was an open question. But Hari had no hesitation.

  “I am afraid,” he told Lawrence, “that as a government appointee, I myself am not at liberty to pay the buggers off, as you say. Salamat Jannat also is a government facility, and it would be most inappropriate for anyone associated with the home to attempt even such a seemingly simple solution.”

  “But I’m not associated with the home.” Lawrence raised his palms. “And who’s to say I’m not as sympathetic as the next babu?”

  Joanna shook her head. Vijay was staring slack-jawed as if Lawrence were proposing to take on all the goondas in Delhi with one hand behind his back. “Whose money will you use?” she asked.

  Lawrence’s forehead pinched into an exaggerated frown. “I believe I’ve a few quid stashed away. Seems a worthy cause.”

  Hari stood up, extending his right hand to Lawrence. “You are a friend, indeed. I only hope Joanna does not take too much advantage of your generosity.”

  “We’re paying off the very men who raped her. You do realize that?” she said.

  Hari clucked his tongue. “Not the very same men.”

  “It’s the old means or ends game, Jo,” said Lawrence, skewering her with his silver eye. “Decide which matters most.”

  Joanna felt at once that he was toying with her and that he was deadly serious. According to Aidan, money was not an issue for Lawrence, as his family owned a large sheep ranch in New South Wales, and for a man on sabbatical from government service, as he claimed to be, the time it would take to play out this charade was hardly a sacrifice. But she still didn’t fully trust him… Couldn’t they see the principle at risk?

  “For the girl’s sake,” Hari prodded her, “the order should be written this afternoon.”

  Joanna thought of the child sleeping in the next room. The trust she had placed in her “Mrs. Shaw,” in spite of all she’d suffered.

  “All right,”
she said grudgingly. “If you’re sure there’s no other way.”

  “Excellent.” Hari nodded. “It is settled, then. Vijay will take you over, Lawrence, and you specify to the magistrate that the girl must be remanded to Salamat Jannat.”

  Lawrence rotated the brim of his helmet between his fingertips. Joanna waited for him to say something, but after a moment he clapped the topee back on his head and followed the other two out without speaking another word.

  Half an hour later she was still wrestling with her conscience when the ayah banged on her office door. “Mem, police! Come quickly!”

  Even under the massive courtyard neem tree, the light had gone liquid with heat, and the rounded features of the policeman standing there shone as if shellacked. He was a sturdy man with a babyish face. He introduced himself as Inspector Golba and said precisely the words she feared. He had come to collect the blue-eyed child.

  “I understand that this is a rescue home for just such fallen girls,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of the bungalow, where a few of these “fallen girls” stood yawning in the doorway. “But surely, Mrs. Shaw, you are aware that certain procedures must be followed.”

  Joanna felt herself floundering. How did this man even know Kamla was here, let alone the unusual circumstances of her arrival? And why was he taking such interest in this case? She needed somehow to stall him, buy time for that remand order to come through. It occurred to her that her debt to Lawrence had just multiplied.

  “As I am aware,” she said, working to steady her voice, “this child has requested asylum here, and until I myself have thoroughly documented her case I have no intention of releasing her to you or anyone else.”

  The man drew a rolled sheaf of papers from his back pocket and lifted it above his head, exposing an underarm stain that stood out like an inkblot against his faded uniform khaki. “Madam, I have instructions on highest authority!”

  Joanna scrutinized the paper baton and made a calculated guess. She positioned her hands on her hips. The slightest crack would give her away. “I don’t care if you’re acting under the authority of God Almighty, which I’ve every certainty you’re not.”

  The baton came down. “Certain homes are having licensed supervisor, Mrs. Shaw, these are official permitted homes. You are not licensed, I think.”

  She swallowed. “Are you threatening me, Inspector?”

  He hitched up his leatherette belt, and floated his large head on the stem of his neck. Neither-yes-nor-no-but-maybe-both. He had the velvet, self-satisfied gaze of a man used to getting his own way. Joanna suppressed a mental image of Kamla’s bruises and wounds.

  She stepped deeper into the shade of the neem tree. His informants could be anyone, from neighbors outside the home to her own staff. And whether his papers were official or not for the moment was irrelevant. Though Joanna wouldn’t risk looking toward the knot of girls now watching from the common room window, she sensed Kamla among them. She hoped the child had the wit to hide. She also fervently wished that Lawrence were still here.

  The inspector stabbed the papers with his finger and started in again. “Salamat Jannat has not been renewing its permit for more than two years.”

  She forced herself to meet his eyes. “You might as well know, Inspector, that I have already alerted my good friend, the American Ambassador Minton, to this case. He has promised to investigate. Police abuse of powers is a red flag in any democracy, and particularly in a new republic such as India, it warrants close review.”

  This was a grotesque lie, particularly in light of the sermon Hari had just delivered, but Aidan had often remarked that America was regarded with awe in India as the Other Colony That Got Away and Showed Up England in the Wars. Based on this, she took the chance that the Ambassador’s name would get a rise.

  To her relief, the officer’s moist face again began to float from side to side. His mud-brown eyes widened, and the soft lips stretched revealing flat betel-stained teeth. He muttered so incoherently that whatever he was trying to say got lost in the louder whine of cicadas and the splash and tangle of street sounds. One of which was the metallic thunk of a bicycle dropping against the gate.

  When the blue-uniformed messenger came striding across the courtyard Joanna felt like hugging him. Instead she said merely, “A moment, Inspector.”

  The messenger held out the telltale yellow envelope. “Please excuse, memsahib. I am bringing a telegram for Mrs. Joanna Shaw.”

  Consciously slowing her movements, she dried her palms on the thin white cotton of her skirt and signed for receipt. Then she dismissed the messenger with a generous tip and slid her thumbnail under the flap of the envelope. The cable consisted of just a few lines. She stared down at the first of them.

  “As I thought,” she said, feeling herself go numb even as her voice reverberated inside her skull. Stay focused. “Ambassador Minton will be back in Delhi next week, and he has alerted me that he would like to personally interview the child in advance of his meeting with Mr. Nehru. In the meantime, I am under no circumstances to surrender custody.” She dropped the hand gripping the telegram to her side. “I don’t believe we have anything further to discuss.”

  Golba frowned, stopped wiggling his head. He eyed the message in her hand with evident suspicion, but after a moment’s consideration he must have decided that if he asked to double-check her paper she might just ask to see his. “I am not forgetting this, Mrs. Shaw,” he warned. They stood glaring at each other for several long seconds. Then he cleared his throat with a lugubrious rattle and strode out the gate.

  Joanna managed to wait until he was gone, then groped blindly for the stone bench behind her. She sank down and finished reading the cable. She read it again. And again.

  PLANE CARRYING YOUR HUSBAND DISAPPEARED LADAKH RANGE DIFFICULT TERRAIN WEATHER INTERFERE SEARCH PARTY DETAILS TO FOLLOW AS AVAILABLE

  GEN PETER FARR

  She looked up to find that the hill child had crept beside her. The girl had a hand on her arm and was staring at her with those wide blue eyes. A look of longing and unabashed will.

  Joanna reached out and pulled her to her. Perhaps some of the child’s courage would rub off.

  Chapter 2

  1

  MRS. SHAW HAD INDEED PROTECTED ME! I was watching from the veranda when she sent Golba away. More than that, he had gone with a look of shock, like a bull who finds himself outsmarted by a goat. But after he had gone, the fear in Mrs. Shaw’s face warned that the message in her hand had nothing to do with me. A crack had opened in that white disinfected palace of her life. I did not know its cause or exact location, but I could see that if I was to hold my claim on her, I must act at once.

  I was clean. She had bathed me, fed me, dressed me in a freshly washed salwar kameez. And I had seen her touch those dirtier than I. After all, I was no Untouchable! So I summoned my courage and dared to reach out, to stroke her bare arm. I moved my fingertips light as butterfly wings from the soft, smooth curve where her shoulder emerged from her sleeveless white dress all the way to the knob of bone like ivory jutting from her elbow.

  At first I was not sure she even noticed, though through that brief contact I read so much. The dampness and firmness of her skin, the color of her, pale as ginger except for the perfectly round—and to me, mesmerizing—moon of her vaccination mark. Even in that split second, I imagined this circle was a kind of sign, that she was a member of some great elite with supernatural powers. Perhaps these powers possessed her in the same way Indrani had possessed me. But if I could break away from the flash house and come to Mrs. Shaw—actually lay my skin against hers—then might she not reach back to me?

  I saw tears. Then she drew me to her and held me against her breast. I hardly dared breathe. I, Kamla, in Mrs. Shaw’s arms! When at length she pushed me back she stretched her fingers to my cheek and looked into me so deeply I could feel her inside. But she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Something’s happened—” Her voice broke as if a bone had
caught in her throat, and she looked away.

  A commotion at the gate drew her attention. She cried out, “Lawrence!” and, without so much as a backward glance, started across the yard. The other girls spilled forward now laughing, calling, preening for attention as if this safe haven were itself just another brothel. I held myself in my own arms, but the sensation was lost. Reluctantly I let go and turned my attention to this man Mrs. Shaw called Lawrence.

  He was surely the largest I had ever seen. Not so much in height, or even necessarily in girth, his mere presence seemed enormous. He had so much hair, for one thing, springing out from under his helmet and shirtsleeves, cascading down his arms and from the open throat of his collar, coating those tree-trunk legs that showed beneath his British short pants. His hair glowed, not amber and fine like Mrs. Shaw’s, but orange as the skin of flame. And his flesh glistened, slick with sweat and bright pink in color, dotted with brown like a sprinkling of nutmeg. His face stretched, broad and muscular as his body, but what made him most remarkable were his mismatched eyes. One was a clear silver gray, the other muddy green, so that it seemed he was always moving in two directions at once. Smiling with one eye, sad in the other. Reaching forward and pulling back. Offering and taking away. He was so utterly foreign, and yet in this, my first sight of him, I had much the same feeling as when I’d first noticed Mrs. Shaw. I knew that from this moment on, he, too, was my possession.

  He removed his helmet and combed a hand through his hair. Mrs. Shaw’s aide, Vijay, danced about, waving the other girls back to the veranda. Curiously, though I stood just a few feet from this Lawrence and Mrs. Shaw, the Hindu did not seem to notice me, or in any case did not push me back as he did the others. I had the peculiar sense that I had become invisible. But then I realized the man, Lawrence, was watching me even as he listened to Mrs. Shaw. He appeared to recognize me, though I knew I had never before seen him. That I would have remembered.