A Walk Across the Sun
Page 16
She mopped until midnight and collapsed in a heap in the corner with her food. She ate the meager offering but still felt hungry when she put the plate back on the counter. She thought of sleeping on one of the benches in the restaurant but feared that if the woman found her there, she would beat her. She returned to her corner and sat down.
As she began to drift off, the young boy appeared on the other side of the kitchen. After a long moment, he made a hesitant approach.
“What is your name?” he asked in Hindi.
“Sita.”
“I am Shyam,” he said, kneeling down in front of her. “Can we be friends?”
Sita shrugged, but Shyam persisted. “I am ten. How old are you?”
Sita didn’t respond. She could barely keep her eyes open.
“I brought you a gift,” the boy said. He removed a small figurine from his pocket and placed it in her hand. “It is Hanuman. He will keep you company.”
Suddenly, he turned his head and looked at the door in fear. His mother was yelling his name. “I have to go,” he said.
He stood up and switched off the lights. A few seconds later, Sita heard the door close and the lock snap into place.
In the darkness, she traced the shape of the figurine with her fingertips. She could feel Hanuman’s tall crown and scepter. She held him to her chest and remembered Ahalya’s voice as she told the story of the great monkey on the night Navin first came. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried in vain to fall asleep.
At some point, she began to shiver. The kitchen was poorly heated and cooled quickly with the stove off. She struggled to her feet and searched a nearby closet for a way to cover herself. She found a sack of soiled tablecloths. Spreading one on the floor, she lay down in the closet beneath a rack of cleaning supplies. She pulled a second tablecloth over herself and buried her feet in the lightweight fabric. She still felt cold, but at least now the temperature was bearable.
She placed her head on the sack and clutched Hanuman beneath her chin, warding off the icy tentacles of isolation and fear.
At last, she slept.
Chapter 13
The soul, it is said, is enclosed in bones, that human love may be.
—THIRUVALLUVAR
Mumbai, India
Thomas placed the call the day after the raid. The rescue had affected him profoundly, and he could no longer justify irresolution. Either he was going to contact her or he was going to let her go. His heart quickened with the sound of the ring and then her voicemail picked up.
“Hello, you’ve reached Priya. Leave your number and I’ll call you back soon. Ciao.”
Thomas searched for words and spoke after the beep. “Priya, I’m in Bombay. I know this is a surprise, but I’d like to see you. Please call me back.” He left his new mobile number and hung up.
It was two in the afternoon, and he was on Linking Road in Bandra. After the long night, Jeff Greer had given him the day off. Thomas had spent a lazy morning at Dinesh’s flat, reading and watching the news. After lunch, he decided to explore the suburb.
He turned north and walked slowly along the commercial strip. The stores were as diverse as those in an American mall, and the sidewalks were a hive of activity. Vendors propositioned him from their stalls: “Sir, sir, we have jeans, just your size.” Touts approached him aggressively, peddling packs of undershirts, bhel puri snacks, and colorful maps of the world.
“No, no,” he said, waving them off.
“But, sir, these are the finest maps,” one of them said.
He walked on. The tout, however, kept pace: “You look like a film star. What movie were you in?”
Thomas laughed. “I’ve never been in a movie and I don’t want a map. Thanks.”
At last the tout gave up and let him go.
He window-shopped for a while and then tried on a few pairs of shoes in an upscale haberdashery before returning to the street. He waited for his BlackBerry to ring.
Finally, fifty minutes later, it vibrated. He took out the phone and saw he had an e-mail. The address on the screen was Priya’s. He angled away from the curb and found a quiet alcove beside a luggage shop. He took a breath and opened the message.
She had written:
Thomas, this is a shock. I don’t know what to think. But I can’t ignore that you are here. There is a park on Malabar Hill. Take the train to Churchgate and tell the taxi-walla to drive to the Hanging Garden. I will meet you at the seaside overlook at 4:30.
Thomas immediately hailed a rick and instructed the driver to take him to Bandra Station. Following Priya’s directions, he caught the fast train to Churchgate and a taxi to Malabar Hill. Inside he was tied in knots. He had no idea what to say to her. It was almost as if they weren’t married, as if they were back in Cambridge, a boy and a girl from different worlds, tentatively exploring the intersection. Yet that was not true. They had a past, years of intimacy, of happiness and tragedy. None of it could be erased, but he didn’t want to erase it. He wanted … what? To begin again? To woo her back to Washington? To win over her father? The complexities were confounding.
The taxi passed the wide sand of Chowpatty Beach and entered the posh neighborhoods of Malabar Hill. The steep terrain and towering apartment complexes reminded him of San Francisco. The driver took a right and followed a serpentine street up to the crown of the highest hill. Buildings gave way to leafy foliage and lush parkland.
The taxi-walla dropped him off at the entrance to the Hanging Garden. He walked up the steps and looked out across the carefully tended expanse. Shade trees rimmed meadows of grass, and flowers and sculpted bushes proliferated.
A boy approached him, carrying fans made of peacock feathers. “You like a fan, sir?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Very nice, sir, for your wife or girlfriend? Only fifty rupees, sir.”
“I don’t want a fan, but I will give you fifty rupees for directions to the seaside overlook.”
The boy pointed back the way Thomas had come. “Cross the street and go into the park on the other side. The overlook is that way.”
Thomas took out his wallet and gave the boy his money.
“Here is your fan, sir,” the boy told him, placing it in his hand. “Directions are free.” He smiled and walked away.
Thomas held the fan awkwardly, but then he started to laugh. He crossed the street and saw the shimmering blue of Back Bay in the distance through the trees. He followed a path through rock gardens and spotted the overlook in the distance. A few people sat on scattered benches, but he saw no sign of Priya. He glanced at his watch and realized he was ten minutes early. His wife would probably be late. She had always possessed a carefree sense of time.
He walked up to the railing and looked out across the bay toward Marine Drive and Nariman Point. His thoughts drifted to Suchir’s brothel. He found it scarcely imaginable that the filth and abuse of the red-light district were only a few miles away from Malabar Hill.
Before long, Priya stepped quietly to the railing. “Thomas,” she said simply.
He turned to her and found himself speechless, gripped by the terror he had imagined since he stepped foot on Indian soil.
She rescued him by speaking first. “I see the fan-walla found you.”
Thomas looked at the trinket in his hands, and it became a lifeline. “He was persistent,” he said at last, the pressure in his head easing slightly.
“So you are here. I can’t believe it.” She spoke softly, testing the water.
“I’m here,” he replied simply.
“Did you come to see me?” She had never liked small talk.
“No,” he admitted. “I came to work for a public interest group.”
Priya was astonished. “You left Clayton?”
Thomas nodded.
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.
When the silence became awkward, he spoke a half-truth. “I needed a change. Nothing was right about the way things were.”
He thought furiously, working out an excuse that would interrupt the interrogation. She was a natural at cross-examination, in some ways better than he was.
“You’ll be gratified to know we lost the Wharton case,” he said. “The verdict was $900 million and change.”
Priya blinked but lost only a second of focus. “I’m happy to hear that. But this isn’t about Wharton. It’s about you. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“People change,” he said. “You know that as much as I do.”
Priya gave him an intense look. “Why does that sound like a copout?”
Backed into a corner, he held up his hands. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry I had goals? You knew that when you married me. But I’ll apologize for what I did. I wasn’t there when you needed me.”
His contrition, however qualified, seemed to soften the edge of Priya’s skepticism.
“What did your father have to say?” she asked in time.
Thomas swallowed hard. “He didn’t understand.”
“But he accepted it?”
“What else was he supposed to do? It wasn’t his decision. You put your father in much the same position, if you recall.”
She pondered this. “What NGO did you join?”
He tried not to look relieved. “I’m working with CASE in the redlight areas.” He gave her a summary of his work, emphasizing the points that would impress her most. It was self-serving, but it was the only advantage he had.
“A worthy cause,” she replied. “I grant you that.” Then she turned the tables on him again. “And Tera, what did she have to say about all this?”
Thomas controlled his breathing. He had dared to hope she wouldn’t bring Tera up, but he had been foolish. He feigned a bit of righteous indignation and delivered another half-truth. When it came out, however, it tasted like a lie.
“Come on,” he said, “leave Tera out of this. I told you before, nothing happened. I needed somebody to talk to. If I crossed any lines, it was because I needed a friend.”
“And I wasn’t good enough?”
“We’ve been over this before. We weren’t in any condition to help each other. Frankly, we needed to see a shrink. We had at least five people tell us that. But we were too stubborn. So you talked to your mother and I talked to Tera.”
Priya’s hands began to tremble and she gripped the rail, looking at the sea. She took a deep breath and thought about his words.
“Suppose I decide to accept that,” she said at last. “Suppose I believe you when you say you’ve changed. What makes you think that anything is different between us?”
“I’m here, am I not? That has to mean something.” It was a gambit, he knew, but he was running out of clever answers.
“I’m not going back to the United States,” she said quietly. “At least not soon. You should know that.”
“Okay.”
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“The only thing I’m surprised about is that you’re standing here.”
Priya stood silently, the breeze lifting her raven hair. He wanted to stretch out his hand and touch her face, but he restrained himself. When she spoke, she took the conversation in a different direction.
“My grandfather used to bring me to this overlook when I was a little girl. He showed me the skyline of the city and pointed out all the buildings he owned. My father hated it when he did that. He never wanted what my grandfather had. His only love was the life of the mind. When I was old enough, I took my father’s side.”
Thomas waited. He knew she had more to say.
“You’ll never understand how hard it was for me to do what I did. To leave my family, to defy my father’s wishes, to cross the ocean and marry you. I never fully realized it until I returned to Bombay. I’m not sure my father will ever forgive me.”
Listening to her speak, Thomas marveled at the clarity of her thought and the evenness of her tone. When he last saw her, she had been a wreck—haunted, conflicted, occasionally delusional. Her time in India seemed to have restored her balance, though he could see the sorrow buried just beneath the surface.
“How is your grandmother?” Thomas asked, relieved to be on surer footing.
“She has the best nursing care that money can buy, but she is old. My father is struggling with regret for taking us to England. We lost so much time.”
“I take it the Professor doesn’t think much of me.”
Priya shook her head. “He doesn’t talk about you. I don’t know what he thinks.”
“I’ll never be Indian,” he said. “Nothing will change that.”
“It doesn’t matter. His opinion is his. Mine is mine.”
“Would he have you divorce me?”
Priya stiffened. He could tell the question stung. “In Hinduism, when a girl marries a man, she marries him for seven lifetimes. My father is secular in many ways, but he is devout in that sense. I doubt he would suggest divorce.”
“Does he think we were never properly married?”
“Perhaps. But we performed the saptapadi and took our vows. He can’t deny those things, even if the ceremony wasn’t traditional or complete.”
“Was it complete to you?”
Priya took a moment to answer, and Thomas held his breath, kicking himself for putting so much on the line so quickly. It had always been this way between them. She drew him out without so much as an ounce of effort, and he said things he regretted.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I’ve never doubted that.”
Thomas let out the breath he was holding. “So where does that leave us?”
“In a complicated place.”
He waited for her to elaborate, but she left it at that. “Can I see you again?” he asked.
She turned toward him and their eyes met. “I need to think about it.”
He nodded. The answer was about the best he could hope for. “Can I walk you back to the road at least?”
“Sure,” she said, giving him the faintest glimmer of a smile.
They turned away from the sea and strolled quietly through the light and shadows of the park. Thomas listened to the wind soughing through the leaves and thought of the many walks they had taken in Cambridge beneath the oaks and willows along the Cam and afterward through the forests of Virginia. Their love had always been an improbable venture. Considering the feat they had attempted—the unification of two races, cultures, and civilizations—he had been naive to think that the world would grant him happiness without tempering it with trial.
When they reached the road, Thomas flagged a taxi for Priya and another for himself.
“It was good to see you,” he said, surprising himself with the depth of his feeling.
Her smile brightened, but she didn’t reply.
“You’ll think about it, right?” he asked as she climbed into the waiting taxi.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
He watched the taxi pull away and waved once, hoping she would look back. She didn’t. He stood in place until the vehicle disappeared around a bend. Then he turned to the waiting taxi-walla.
“Churchgate Station,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, Jeff Greer greeted Thomas and the CASE staff with the news that Suchir’s attorney had pulled strings at the Sessions Court and scheduled a bail hearing for eleven o’clock. The attorney had connections with the Rajan gang and had perfected the art of manipulating the judicial system. If he wanted a hearing for his client, he got one.
“The prosecutor told Adrian that she is going to recommend against bail,” Greer said, “but she isn’t hopeful. Chances are, Suchir and his people are going to walk.”
“Will they skip town?” Thom
as asked.
“Doubt it,” Nigel answered. “They know nothing but the sex business. The girls will be given small fines and they’ll open up the brothel again in no time.”
“Even when they were prostituting minors a couple of days ago?”
Nigel laughed. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
After the meeting, Thomas approached Samantha Penderhook, CASE’s legal director, and asked if he could accompany Adrian to the bail hearing.
Samantha hesitated. “It’s not that I don’t want you to go. It’s just that a white face in a Bombay courtroom can cause a stir. These people are very sensitive about anything that looks like foreign interference in their system.”
“What if I sit in the back? I can be a fly on the wall.”
Samantha drummed her fingers on her desk. “Okay. But do exactly what Adrian says. And if the lawyer for the other side tries to make an issue, have the good sense to step out into the hallway.”
Thomas thanked her and went to find Adrian. The young advocate wasn’t enthusiastic about Samantha’s decision, but he nodded cooperatively.
“Are you ready?” he said. “We need to leave in ten minutes.”
“I’m ready now,” Thomas replied.
On the way there, Thomas peppered Adrian with questions about courtroom practice in Bombay. He learned that the public prosecutor assigned to handle the bail hearing was one of the best in the city but that her competence was irrelevant to the outcome. The jail at Arthur Road was beyond overcrowded, and some of the trial judges tended not to regard trafficking cases with much seriousness. If the defense lawyer presented a thoughtful argument for release, it was likely the judge would buy it.
“Will Suchir offer the judge a bribe?”
Adrian shrugged. “Probably not. The judges aren’t as corrupt as the police. But the gangs still have a lot of power in this town. It might not take a bribe to sway the court’s decision.”
When the train arrived at the station, they made their way to the Sessions Court. Although built in the grand Gothic style of the Raj, the building was a model of urban neglect. Its decor was spare and its walls and stairwells were dingy with grime. Adrian and Thomas took the stairs to the third floor. Adrian checked the docket outside the courtroom and nodded.