Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

  The woman came up close to Joanna, talking in a near shriek. She was dressed in a long black dress and a pink stocking cap. Most of her front teeth were missing, and her heavy turquoise and silver earrings shook as she demanded payment for the extra days she was being deprived of her son’s labor.

  “She says he is hired for five days but already is gone ten,” Tot explained. “These men go to look. There is an avalanche near the trail, but no sign anyone is killed.” The old woman shook a brown cotton purse in Joanna’s face. “She says she gets no money now, she has no one to chop wood for her….”

  Joanna recoiled from the sour smell of the woman’s breath and body. She fumbled in her pocket, let Lawrence nudge her aside to negotiate the compensation himself.

  The woman, still grumbling, was about to leave when Joanna forced herself forward again, caught up the grimy hand in her own. “Tell her,” she said to Tot. “Tell her I need my husband just as much as she needs her son. Tell her I understand, and we’ll find them.”

  The old woman glared at the two clasped hands. Then she looked up at Joanna as Tot translated. Her whole face seemed to pull forward as she spat out another string of words, then yanked her fist back and strode away.

  “What did she say?” Joanna demanded when Tot hesitated to translate.

  He gave an apologetic shrug. “She says that foreigners never talk truth.”

  The beauty that only minutes ago had taken Joanna’s breath away now seemed oppressive. Lawrence touched her arm, started in about this being a ploy for guilt money, but she fled from him to find Simon and Kamla crouched at the edge of the river.

  They were making boats out of leaves and sticks. Thoroughly engrossed, they set each vessel in turn afloat, waited to see it into open water, then gravely waved goodbye.

  That afternoon the caravan set up camp in a grassy orchard long used as a regular way stop for Karakoram travelers. Now that the trail was officially closed, the site’s only other occupants were a middle-aged doctor, Reggie Milne, and his ten-year-old son, Ralph. Milne was a tall wiry man with gentle blue eyes, wheat-colored hair, and a dense russet beard, who welcomed the newcomers with the casual ease of one accustomed to befriending total strangers in the middle of nowhere.

  From Wales originally, Milne and Ralph had been living in the Sinkiangese city of Yarkand for the past three years, working with a Swedish mission. The people of Sinkiang were delightful, he said, but the politics had finally become untenable. Communists, Nationalists, Uighurs, Tibetans, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Mongols, Tungans—every time you turned around someone new was either calling for independence or being shot for doing the same. And now with the news of Communist advances in China’s eastern provinces, they’d decided the time had come to return to Srinagar, where Milne owned a houseboat.

  Milne talked a steady, good-natured stream, and after that morning’s encounter Joanna was reluctant to force the inevitable question, but the children appeared tongue-tied, and Lawrence simply stood there with his hands in his pockets as if waiting for Milne to run out of air, which could take into the night, from the sound of him. Finally Joanna could stand it no longer.

  She held up Lawrence’s photo of Aidan and blurted, “This is my husband. He’s missing. Have you seen him?”

  Milne looked at her. Then he examined the picture politely and handed it back. “I’m sorry. We haven’t seen but one other foreigner, and that was a woman, nearly three weeks ago.”

  The light seemed to change, becoming harsher, whiter. Joanna squinted against it. “Alice James,” she said.

  “Yes!” Milne lifted his eyebrows. “You know her?”

  “Only of her. Was she really traveling alone?” She deflected Lawrence’s questioning gaze.

  “She had a guide, a couple of men,” Milne said, “though you’d hardly call it a caravan. Strange girl. Acting so tough—she laughed and joked with the men as if she wished she were one of them, and she was a study with the language, too. But young…she couldn’t have been much over twenty. What do you know of her?”

  She shook her head. “I only heard about her in Srinagar. A reporter looking for a story. Apparently thought she’d find one in Sinkiang.”

  “One!” the doctor hooted. “More like a thousand. There’s enough intrigue back there to spin your head around.”

  “We have a story,” broke in young Ralph. He drew himself up with an air of importance and beckoned Simon and Kamla closer. “Some bandits robbed us up in the passes. They took our best ponies and three rifles—and we didn’t hear a peep!”

  “True,” his father verified. “We had no idea until morning, when the man who was supposed to be on guard woke up and saw what trouble he was in!”

  “How do you know they were bandits and not just hungry villagers?” Lawrence asked.

  “Believe me,” Milne said, “there were no villages within weeks of us. These were either bandits or soldiers, though in this part of the world that’s small difference.”

  “What sort of soldiers?” Simon asked.

  “Why, any sort you like. Every tribe in the province seems to have its own army. Though the Chinese Nationalists set the standard. Bloody thieves. I can’t say I blame the locals for getting up in arms against them.”

  “Dr. Milne,” Joanna interrupted. “Is it possible that my husband could have left the trail somewhere between here and the border?”

  “Not likely.” Milne stroked his beard, lowering his eyes. “Not intentionally, anyway. There are no branch routes, if that’s what you’re asking. If he didn’t want to be seen, of course, there are plenty of places for a lone man to take cover.” He returned his gaze to Joanna. “I wish I could assure you that your husband is safe, but in reality if he met with some sort of accident, we would not necessarily have found him. I suppose the most reassurance I can give you is that we ourselves came over without a scratch.”

  “Dad,” Ralph said. “Can we take them to the hot spring?”

  Milne put a hand to his son’s shoulder. He paused as if to let the air clear, then spoke in a tone noticeably brighter, addressing the children. “I think that’s a brilliant idea. It’s just down the track, and I’ll wager you could all do with a scrub.” Then, to Joanna and Lawrence, “I’ll just take the kids off to fetch some towels. Wait for us here?” Joanna nodded, watching Simon reach out and catch Ralph by one hand, Kamla by the other. Then the three of them, linked together—for safety? for comfort? or simply because one of them acted on impulse?—trotted off after Milne.

  “What now, boss?” Lawrence asked when the others were out of earshot.

  She folded her arms, holding her elbows. “He wasn’t looking for Aidan. He could have walked right past him, lying at the bottom of some cliff.”

  Lawrence smoothed a patch of grass with the toe of his boot. “Why didn’t you tell me about this Alice James?”

  “What was there to tell? You heard Reggie. She left Srinagar over a month ago. Akbar mentioned her in passing. It made an impression, that’s all.”

  “I see.”

  They stood in silence watching Tot and the caravan men making camp on the other side of the apple orchard, tethering the animals under branches weighed down with late, white blossoms. The men moved with such practiced confidence that they resembled mechanical dolls.

  The hot spring was a mile or so down the trail. As they set off, Ralph and Simon raced forward in a game of kick the stone, and Milne engaged Lawrence in a rambling chat about the eccentricities of missionaries. Joanna hung back and Kamla sidled up beside her. They walked, swinging arms. She began to hum, and the little girl picked up the tune. “Amazing Grace.”

  At the hot springs a crude wooden shack, divided, leaned out over the steaming pool. Lawrence and the boys disappeared in one door, and Milne directed Joanna and Kamla to the other side.

  The hut was damp and warm and abruptly dark as they entered. The only illumination came from two spears of dust-filled sunshine that dropped between the uneven ceiling boards. A thick wooden par
tition blocked the other side, where the boys, from the sound of it, were engaged in a towel-slapping contest. The whole place, not much bigger than a closet and smelling pungently of sulfur and damp cedar, reminded Joanna of the bathhouses of her childhood. Although in those old Pacific beach cabanas, the pounding of the surf had been a constant, and the smells had been of sea salt and redwood and were inseparable in her mind from the splinters that lodged in her toes as she stretched to view herself in too high mirrors. Here there were no mirrors.

  Only, she realized, Kamla’s uncertain gaze. The child hung back in the doorway with her arms hugged to her sides. She looked up at Joanna, then at the dividing wall. They could not see to the other side, but they could clearly hear the male shouts and laughter.

  Joanna smiled and motioned for Kamla to join her on the platform that edged the water. The child’s fingers spread, grasping the khaki fabric of her trousers. Her small sharp chin pressed against the throat of her camp shirt. She wore no ornaments, no nose or ear jewelry. The reasons for this were obvious enough, given her background, but now, as she raised her face into the sunbeam and lifted those blue-green eyes, it was equally clear that no jewels were necessary. Joanna held the child’s gaze like a vow. For all her own preoccupations, here was one whose life hung even more precariously in the balance.

  The men’s voices splashed between them as Joanna removed her boots and socks. She unbuttoned her shirt, undid her belt and trousers, folding each item before placing it in a pile in a dry corner. As she loosened her hair from its knot and peeled off her brassiere she saw each fret of her rib cage, the slackness of her small white bull’s-eye breasts, even the immunization circle on her right arm reflected in the child’s eyes. Joanna was realistic about her body. Aphrodite she was not, but neither was she self-conscious. This was not difficult for her, only necessary. A conscious demonstration of trust.

  She stripped off her underwear in one clean motion, and dropped down over the edge. The dark water lapped against her crotch, bubbles clinging to her skin. Curls of steam rose from the surface, and she gasped with pleasure, gliding into the heat, her hair like streaming seaweed.

  She came up slick and turned around, propping her elbows on the floorboards. Four feet away Kamla stooped, clothes dangling, agape. Their eyes met. She’d been watching Joanna as she raced to finish undressing unseen. Now caught, she halted as if conceding a bet. A return to poise, the hasty child banished, she resumed at an imitating pace, carefully folding each garment as Joanna had done, removing, stepping, turning until she, too, stood naked before her equal. It was an act of pride and courage—and defiance. I will prove myself, she seemed to be saying. One way or another, I will prove myself to you.

  Joanna was humbled. She had not intended her nakedness as a dare, but this was clearly how it had been received. Kamla felt obliged to present herself as deliberately as she, Joanna, had revealed herself to the girl. But oddly, the result was not parity. No. In some barely perceptible way, the tables had turned. This child’s innate grace made Joanna’s naked truth seem insignificant by contrast.

  Less than three weeks had passed since the day Kamla appeared at the rescue home in Delhi. Since Joanna had examined this same child’s body and noted a bruised sternum, lacerated hands, and welts across the buttocks. Since she had clenched her teeth and forced herself to memorize the exact hues of green and yellow and purple—the flesh tones of brutality. Yet in these weeks she ’d discarded that memory. She had allowed her own lesser horrors to drive it from her mind, had satisfied herself without reexamination that the child’s clear smiles and stamina on the march meant that she was healed. Such wishful thinking was inexcusable in one trained to know better. Joanna did not excuse herself. And yet, as the girl stood before her now, she could see that Kamla had indeed healed. And this healing was more than skin deep. Oh, the body was miraculously straight and smooth, narrow hips unscarred, and her flesh had evened to a golden bronze, brighter where the dusky light fell across one slender shoulder. But the truer healing was in her face, the clarity of her regard, the calm with which those blue eyes rested, measuring Joanna.

  Kamla smiled as the boys on the other side let out a gleeful yelp. Then she stepped to the ledge and slid seal-like beneath the dark surface of the water. It was immediately apparent that she couldn’t swim, and she sputtered as Joanna lifted her up. Even so, she laughed with pleasure.

  That night after putting the children to bed Joanna came out to find Lawrence alone by the riverbank. She sat down in the grass, stretched her legs in front of her. “I wish I knew their secret.”

  “Whose?”

  “Kamla’s and Simon’s. It’s as if they have a second skin.”

  “Childhood, you mean.”

  “I guess that’s it. I always used to think children needed extra care and protection. Now I’m wondering if they wouldn’t be better off if we just stepped aside.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Or deputize certain adults as parents. Reggie Milne, for example.”

  “Milne! He’s dragged his poor kid backward and forward over these mountains, exposed him to war and bandits, and that’s just what we learned in the first few minutes!”

  “He kept him safe through all of that.”

  Lawrence didn’t answer.

  “You never talk about your son,” she said softly.

  “What good does talking do?”

  “It might make him seem closer.”

  “He’s dead, Joanna. Not lost.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He leaned back and skipped a stone across the moonlit water. “Tracy—my wife—couldn’t stop talking about him.”

  A wolf bayed somewhere above them. The sound, both mournful and alarming, raised the hairs on the back of Joanna’s neck. “I’m told some people find comfort in religion,” she said.

  “You’re told?”

  “I wish I could say I believed it myself. But Aidan persuaded me years ago that religion is a lie. It pretends to offer protection when really it’s robbing the flock and setting it up for slaughter. The church is the maestro of war, he used to say, and faith is ammunition. I cursed him for making so much sense. The idea of a benevolent all-powerful Father had real appeal to me.”

  “It’s like you were saying about children. The parent is so often either the problem or a lie.”

  “Which were your parents, Lawrence?”

  “Both. At Davey’s funeral they had the gall to tell me it was God’s plan. As if my boy were a pawn in some cosmic chess match, and we were simply spectators. I haven’t seen them since.”

  He crossed his arms in front of his chest, then abruptly turned. “It’s late and we have an early start tomorrow. I’m going to turn in. G’night, Mrs. Shaw.”

  Joanna could see him just well enough to make out the change in his face, the pain that dulled his eyes. “Good night, Mr. Malcolm,” she said softly, and watched him walk away.

  9

  The caravan departed Panamik shortly after dawn, leaving the Milnes to continue on their homeward journey via Leh to Srinagar. Tot had acquired a squadron of yaks from the local herders, and with these capable, surefooted beasts to serve as porters at the higher altitudes (the half-dead ponies had all they could do to get themselves up and over), Lawrence predicted the caravan would cross Saser Pass by midday.

  But as they climbed away from the river, the landscape hardened and became more foreboding. Thunderheads were massing over the summits, and for the first time they encountered the shattered downhill streaks and tumbled debris of recent avalanches. These leavings all appeared at some distance from the trail, which to Lawrence looked unscathed. Still, Joanna stood scanning the slope, peering down at the steepest drops, shading her eyes with one hand sharp and stiff as a salute.

  Two nights before Aidan departed from Delhi, Lawrence had met him for a drink at the Imperial. They were talking about his preparations for the trip and his problems with the FBI. Abruptly, Aidan turned the conversation to Jo
anna. “I know it’s unintentional,” he said, “but I feel the question every time she looks at me. ‘What are you going to do? How are you going to beat this? How can you let them do this to us?’ She never says it out loud, but it’s always there. I have to tell you, I’m not altogether sorry to be going away.”

  Up ahead, Joanna paused to talk to the children. She had her hair pulled back from her face. The ends were tucked under a pale green slouch hat, leaving her nape exposed. Unscathed, that’s what she was. Oh, she wore the scratches from childhood brambles, surface scars and congenital bruises. She was not unblemished, but she was unhurt. And she defended this tentative innocence like a prized virginity. Lawrence imagined this was the very trait that originally had won Aidan over—before it started to drive him away. He knew Aidan meant to warn him that night, but the warning said more to him about Aidan than it did about Jo. And it didn’t resonate with Lawrence at all. If he could, he’d distill Jo’s admittedly simplistic passion and pump his own veins full of it. Or, he’d just take her as she came.

  Her chin now lifted toward the threatening sky, a gesture of false bravado like a child’s defiance, and in spite of that bulky sheepskin jacket, he was aware of the whole slender length of her quavering in the ongoing struggle for oxygen.

  All that morning they stumbled through slate moraines, skirted girders of ice several feet around and boulders the size of elephants. The sky hung damp skeins of fog above them, and the lush green of the valley gave way to shafts of rock that tore into their feet and gradually numbed their eyes.

  The altitude became an invisible vise, the wind a perpetual drone in their ears, and the cold ate through hats, gloves, boots, and bone, cracking flesh and freezing blisters. Only the yaks were immune as they plowed doggedly forward, leather yakdans swelling their barrel-round sides while the burdenless ponies quivered. All human movement was brittle and sore. Thought soon became an uncertain ordeal, the effort of speech excruciating.