Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

  He could not see the driver as the Ambassador pulled over. A door opened and Kamla leaned inside. Across the width of street and sidewalk, from the gateway where he concealed himself, he could hear her voice, sounding sharp and foreign. Then she climbed in, the door slammed, and the car rolled away. The headlights snapped off.

  Simon pushed his bicycle from behind the tree. He was breathing too loudly. There were no other cars or rickshaws now. The bicycle rattled as he hauled it over a root and back onto pavement.

  “Accha thora admi!” Laughter from the roundabout as one of the girls there spotted him. Then the others joined in. “Come back, little man!”

  Taunting, begging, waving their arms, now shrieking. “I want one like that!”

  “Could you give me a lift?”

  “I like you!”

  Somehow he got up onto the seat and began pedaling furiously. The clamor followed like a wave at his back. He could hardly see, and his face felt as if it would explode before the laughter faded behind him. He thought for sure he had lost Kamla, but he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and kept going, if only to get away, and there, just a block ahead, was the car’s round black hump turning off the main road.

  Two stone pillars topped by carved lions marked the drive. Simon recognized the lions as the emblem of the Jai Mahal hotel. Lawrence used to bring them to the Jai Mahal to swim, though never through this back gate.

  Outside, the street was strangely deserted. No beggars slept or camped so close to the hotel, yet there were no guards standing sentry, either. Nor was there a single light beyond the pillars. Simon pulled his bike back behind a hedge on the opposite corner. As he struggled to catch his breath, he watched two Ambassadors glide from the gate, another enter, identical. Above the walls the silhouetted trees formed a cage against the brown sky.

  He wanted to go home. Instead he left the bike hidden behind the hedge and ran across the empty pavement, ducked inside the compound gate. The hotel itself, with its side verandas and hundreds of windows, twinkled in the distance, but here in the yard the cage of trees closed into a roof of darkness. The smell of frangipani burned his nostrils. His throat was coated with grit. He could make out the dozen or so cars parked in front of him only by the shimmer of chrome, the occasional sulfurous burst of a match. He couldn’t tell one from the others, but he detected a waiter gliding among them, the white of his jacket floating as if worn by an invisible man. Suddenly over the banging of his own heart Simon heard a girl’s stifled squeal. Then an engine turned over, roaring. A car rolled past and out the gate.

  His muscles cramped. His cheeks were slick with tears, his shirt and shorts soaked through. He stood up and ground the sweat from his palms into his thighs. Another anonymous vehicle slid past, and he became conscious of the rising wind rattling the trees overhead. As he turned toward home the blowing sand felt like nails driving into his skin.

  By morning Kamla lay once more in her bed, her hair like a shadow across her face. He stood over her staring into that shadow, trembling and unwilling to touch her. He waited for her to wake, half expecting and more than half wanting her to blurt out a confession or break down in tears. He waited a long time. She liked to sleep late these days.

  When at last she opened her eyes, she laughed at the intensity with which he stood watching. Nothing in her expression showed shame or regret. She said nothing to explain herself, merely bathed and ate her usual breakfast of Weetabix and juice, then curled up with a book on her bed. Mem had gone out, the servants kept their distance. When she was not at school or sleeping, Kamla read.

  Simon took his slingshot into the desert behind the house. He spent the morning shooting stones at disintegrating termite mounds and mongoose holes. Kamla had become a stranger. It seemed impossible that they had ever shared the same bed, the same games, the same stories and songs in the dark.

  He remembered now one story she told him long ago about Kali dancing on her husband, Shiva’s, dead body, swinging a severed head in one hand, her bloodied sword in the other. As the goddess of death, she warned him, Kali must destroy even the ones she loves, because nothing on earth is eternal.

  Simon did not tell Mem what he had seen. He was afraid she would turn Kamla out, afraid, too, that she would punish him for sneaking after her. He could not bring himself to tell even Nagu or Dilip or Lazarus. Instead he finally decided to write to Lawrence. He picked a plain piece of notebook paper and set to work: “Dear Lawrence, Something bad has happened.” But it was impossible to write exactly what had happened. So instead he begged simply, “Please come back.”

  Remembering that Kamla said Lazarus was able to contact Lawrence, he sealed the note in an envelope and gave it to Lazarus to send. As he waited for a reply, he continued to follow Kamla. One night, two, sometimes three in a single week she would steal out. He went as far as the roundabout, careful now to hide so that the other girls would not detect him, and watched until the first car or rickshaw took her away. He traced the heart shape of a pipal leaf with his fingertip in the darkness. He memorized the glitter of the girls’ saris, their movements in the moonlight, the curves of their bodies when the headlamps caught them. He listened to the drone of the cicadas and smelled the heavy scent of expectancy that weighed on the city at night. He imagined he could hear the breathing of the millions who slept in the streets. Strangely, he never felt frightened. He remembered the waiter at the hotel, unseen but for his ghostly jacket and the glitter of his tray, and he felt he was like that, too—invisible. Incidental. He saw Kamla, however, as savagely at home in the street, as purposeful here as she’d seemed in the mountains going to search for her father.

  Then one night he recognized a battered white car from a previous week. He heard an old man’s wheezing, tremulous voice call out a made-up name. He heard Kamla laugh in reply, a shy, tinkling laugh that sounded fake yet was unmistakably Kamla. He watched her climb into that car for the second time. The door slammed. The car drove off. Somehow, with this repetition, this made-up laugh and name, he was sapped, the betrayal complete and finally outside him. He rode slowly home, feeling nothing.

  3

  By Saturday the weather had turned. The sun rose warm in a sky so clear it looked polished. Lawrence’s hotel was a tourist dump near the Smithsonian, and by the time he’d walked the mile to the Tidal Basin he was down to shirtsleeves. He reached the Jefferson Memorial at nine and busied himself feeding his breakfast toast to the ducks that swam out front. Forty-five minutes later he looked across the water and saw a short, thin man in a khaki jacket limp across the bridge on the other side of the pool. The man’s head was down, his arms swung straight. Each step seemed to require concentration.

  Lawrence dusted off his hands and stood, turning casually as if to leave along the west side of the basin. Instead he doubled back inside the colonnade. He pulled a navy driver’s cap over his head, threw his jacket over his shoulders, and joined a group of British couples admiring Mr. Jefferson’s earnest bronze countenance and the great man’s sayings on the surrounding walls. “If only he’d been on our side,” one of the women said with a sigh. “The whole bloody business might have swung the other way.”

  Lawrence hadn’t counted on the pleasant weather, which in turn had brought out the tourists. He’d thought he might have this place to himself and take Eldon by surprise. But he could see Eldon now at the base of the steps in front of the memorial, one hand over his eyes, leaning his weight on the banister as he searched for Cross. Though his gaze did not pause, he stared directly at Lawrence. Could he make the match? Surely Eldon knew of him, but he wasn’t expecting him here, and there was a chance he’d never seen a picture or perhaps even a description to tip him off.

  After twenty minutes, when Eldon looked at his watch for the last time, the Brits were still jabbering and a French family had just arrived. He cast one more searching look around the premises and set off, continuing around the basin. Lawrence gave him a two-minute start.

  They strolled at a leisurely pace
, but soon Eldon began to rub his leg. He found a bench beside a stand of cherry trees that were about to burst into bloom and pulled a rolled newspaper from his jacket pocket. The trees shielded the bench from the park and road behind it. A curve in the shoreline of the pool likewise obstructed the view back to the memorial, and the knoll that encircled the basin formed a natural screen so that the only path visible was the empty one around the pool.

  Lawrence picked up his stride as if to pass right by Eldon’s bench, but when he came abreast he glanced down and swung suddenly around, laying one hand in an uncompromising grip on the other man’s arm.

  He could feel Eldon stiffen, but he didn’t startle. His gaze left the newspaper slowly, traveling the length of Lawrence before reaching his eyes. Only then did a spasm of uncertainty cross his face. The mismatch had the power to throw even seasoned professionals off balance.

  “I don’t know you,” Eldon said. “And I’d appreciate your removing your hand.”

  “No worries.” Lawrence sat down, tightening his grip before he released it. “You’re Aidan Shaw’s mate, Ben Eldon.”

  He nodded, eyes impassive. “Why are you following me?”

  “Lawrence Malcolm.” Lawrence stuck out his hand.

  Eldon lowered the paper and gave him a tepid shake.

  “I’m here on Joanna’s behalf, you might say. Ever since Jo told me you made a special trip to Delhi to give her the good news about her husband’s defection I’ve been asking myself, now, why would he do that?”

  Eldon considered him before speaking. “Maybe I thought if she heard it from anybody else she wouldn’t believe it.”

  “You had a vested interest in her believing it, then?”

  “I thought she should know the truth.” The tone was righteous, the inflection Southern.

  “Truth! Well, that’s bloody noble of you. Damn near broke her heart, you realize.”

  “If anyone broke Joanna’s heart, it was Aidan. I had nothing to do—”

  “Didn’t you?” Lawrence shifted his body. He was easily twice Eldon’s size. “I think you had everything to do with it.”

  Eldon calmly pulled a pack of Beeman’s gum from his shirt pocket and offered Lawrence a piece. He shook his head and Ben took one for himself. “I always thought you Aussies were nuts.”

  “Didn’t stop you using us, did it, mate?”

  “Using you!” Eldon paused, chewing, then continued in a lower voice. “We threw you a bone. Your boss was so eager to play he was practically pissing in his pants. Secret intelligence, joint operations. All that jazz.”

  “Battersby.”

  “That’s right. We didn’t need you. Battersby came to us, and with Hoover breathing down our necks we decided it wasn’t the worst idea to distance ourselves from a known leftist like Aidan Shaw. But make no mistake, you were nothing more than a convenience.”

  “You Yanks are arrogant bastards, you know that?”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “What did Aidan know when he left Delhi?”

  “Whatever you told him. No one else talked to him.”

  Lawrence leaned closer and pressed his thumb into the soft flesh behind Eldon’s collarbone. He had a scrawny build, and there was little muscle to resist the pressure.

  “Having your leg blown off raises your threshold of pain,” Eldon said evenly.

  “I’d like to blow your fucking head off,” said Lawrence. “I don’t mind that you played us as dimwits. I don’t even mind that you conned Aidan—”

  “No one conned Aidan. He volunteered. Saw his transfer to India as the perfect stepping-stone back into China. Just a hop, skip, and a jump, he said. I told him to keep his eyes and ears open, and the opportunity was sure to present itself. I was right, as it turned out.”

  Suddenly Lawrence could see Aidan. Hear him. That haughty Brit accent that sounded put on. Kashmir? Why the hell not? Bound to beat the bureau desk in Delhi.

  He removed his hand from Eldon’s shoulder. His fingers were numb. Eldon had to be in pain, but he didn’t budge.

  “What’s destruction’s door?” Lawrence asked.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I broke the code,” Lawrence said. “Tsi men.”

  Eldon let out an explosive laugh. “Simon, you mean? Sure you know who Simon is.”

  Lawrence felt his heart snap.

  “Don’t worry. It has nothing to do with the boy. It’s just a code name. He’s sentimental, I guess.”

  Sentimental.

  Eldon lifted his face to the sun and half-closed his eyes. He was silent for a minute or two, then said, “You don’t even know your girl’s been visiting our Communist friends, do you?”

  “Joanna!”

  “That’s right. She’s a trouper, Jo is. Never gives up. Blind faith, that’s what I call it. I don’t know what she thinks she’ll get out of it, but doggone if she hasn’t persuaded them to bring him out and see her one last time.” He cast Lawrence a sidelong glance.

  Innocents still abroad. All set for end of March.

  It was now February 27. Lawrence breathed a little. “You don’t know what she thinks she’ll get out of it?”

  “Oh, I can guess.”

  Lawrence’s arm shot out, slammed across Eldon’s throat so hard and fast he could hear the spit clog his windpipe. “Don’t guess,” Lawrence warned him. “Tell me what you know.”

  Eldon’s face turned white, his eyes glassy. His Adam’s apple looked as if it had turned sideways. He coughed his gum onto the grass and a wad of blood after it. His hands never moved from his pants pockets, and he refused to look at Lawrence again. If he was trained for combat you’d never know it, but he was a master at passive aggression.

  “What I know,” Eldon said finally, “is that Joanna and Aidan are alike. They both back themselves into corners, then find their own ways out. Difference is, Aidan thrives under pressure. I knew that when I saw the pictures he shot after he saved my life. If my camera had been a gun he’d have blown that whole village to smithereens. He set himself up, shooting his mouth off, writing those left-wing articles, only asking the logical questions later. Which side was he really on? The answer just so happened to dovetail perfectly with our needs.”

  Eldon’s eyes followed a family strolling along the opposite side of the basin. A couple with a young boy bouncing a basketball behind them.

  “What are you getting out of it?” Lawrence asked.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Aidan, mostly. It’s a guts play.”

  “With the Chinese calling the shots?”

  “Yup.”

  “And he goes back in afterward.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What about Jo?”

  “What about her? She went to the Reds on her own. We had nothing to do with it.”

  “You showed her the picture of Aidan alive.”

  “We needed her to rattle the cage. It was too quiet. The Chinese were starting to doubt Aidan’s credentials.”

  “So this proves his stripes.” Lawrence felt the hot chill of rage pass through him again, but Eldon was right. It was Aidan who had betrayed Joanna. “She doesn’t know?”

  “Better off if she doesn’t.” Ben stretched his legs in front of him and clasped his hands behind his head. “If I were you, I’d think very carefully before playing the hero and warning her. You won’t be doing her or yourself any favor.” He paused. “Mate.”

  A school outing appeared down the path. Twenty little children skipping, holding hands, their teachers zigzagging behind them like sheepdogs. What matters most, Lawrence thought.

  4

  The first Friday in March arrived blazing hot and so dry my eyes felt parched. It was teachers’ holiday, so we had no school, and Simon sulked all morning because Lazarus had taken the day off “to see a sick pal” and Simon’s friends had excluded him from a duck shooting expedition to Sultanpur with Brian Wilcox’s father. Simon w
as sulky in general lately, especially when deprived of the pleasure of making trouble with his friends, and today even Dilip and Bhanu were away with Nagu visiting relatives. So poor Simon was stuck. Mem had stayed home with us but shut herself in her bedroom doing her work, and having spent most of the night with my old gent from Moradabad, I passed much of the day with my head beneath my pillow. Simon took out his frustration by playing the phonograph at top volume—Gene Krupa and his orchestra with a scratch smack in the middle of the drum solo.

  I pressed the pillow tighter around my ears and stared into the pages of a book I lacked the concentration to read. Shrilal was lately paying me more and keeping me longer into the night. He had begun to talk of my coming to live with him. “You will be my Manu and I your Gandhiji,” he proposed. I reminded him that Manu was the great Gandhi’s grandniece, not some street girl he had picked up. “Nevertheless,” said Shrilal, “they shared a bed. They bathed each other. They were chaste together.” Much as this last element of his proposal appealed to me, I told him I must think long and hard before accepting his offer. For as attentive as he was, Shrilal’s withered legs and arms, the pale flaccidity of his belly, and his old man’s smell sickened me. Even the bang and screech of Gene Krupa was preferable to the prospect of this old man’s constant companionship. Toward the middle of the afternoon I pried myself out of bed and had just joined Simon in the living room when Mem appeared.

  “Come along,” she said, straining her voice over the phonograph. “It’s too hot, and the two of you are too aimless to spend another minute in this house. I have a meeting, but you can swim, and then afterward…I don’t know, maybe we’ll go for ice cream?” She seemed to be trying her best but, as usual, was doing several things at once—gathering up her purse and papers, looking for her hat, pulling the needle from Simon’s record, and frowning. These days, always frowning.