“Yeah. But . . . I don’t think he’s got the face right.” The words just blurt out. I haven’t even said them in my head. Not really. “It doesn’t look right. And he says that’s normal – even the plastic patients feel that way – but I don’t know. It’s like I’m looking at someone else. Maybe he . . . got the wrong picture.” But the kid I saw . . . that smiling one. I remember how it twisted my insides. Nah. He didn’t get the wrong picture.
On the screen, clouds and lake. No words.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” And when I say that, it really smacks me. Because it doesn’t. And I’ve been telling myself that it’s just me and everything is really all right, because it is.
And I don’t want to talk anymore, but I missed daturk a lot and I don’t want to lose her either. “Can you get in again?” I say, and I get a handful of sunflowers tumbling across the screen. That’s a yes. Then she’s gone. She’s always really good at reading me. I don’t know how you do that in digital, but she does. And I feel better . . . and realize all of a sudden that I’ve been feeling bad.
And Doc is gone, and I’m supposed to go in tomorrow for the final session, and when it’s all over . . . it’s a long one again, I guess . . . I’ll . . . be done. I walk through the condo, out to the little jungle that grows under the glass wall, kind of framing the city. It looks so beautiful up here. You can’t see the ugly stuff down there. I wonder what it’s like to live for years and years up above all the people who wash the dishes and panhandle and rob. I mean, I’ve been up here for a couple of weeks now, but it’s not like I live here. It’s more like I’m walking around in a dream, and any day I’m going to wake up and it’ll be time to go eat the spicy curries that Antonio feeds us and wash the paella pans and taste wine with Domino. I hold my hands out and look at them. Doc says he’ll fix them, too, but they work and . . . I don’t know. I think I don’t want him to. I run my thumb over some of the shiny white skin and it feels hard like plastic. I don’t want to be perfect. And I think about the old man again and the little-boy hands and that pride. Twenty years ago. No family, Doc said, so I guess he’s dead. Like my mother?
I turn my back on the city . . . I don’t know it from up here . . . and I go down the short wide hall, and I go into Doc’s room. I haven’t been in here before, just looked in. It’s dim, because silk drapes that match the silk quilt on the big bed kind of shut out the light, and the quiet furniture makes me think of my grandfather stroking that satiny wood and showing me how to hold a knife, I can smell Doc – a rich musky odor of flesh and some kind of scent, like he’s really here, maybe hiding in the closet, and the back of my neck prickles.
I’ve never snooped in here. Honest. I could have. Looked to see what he hides in his sock drawer. But I haven’t.
I’m not sure why I’m doing it now. I should just turn off the brain and go download a book, and wait for the final session, I guess. But I’m walking over to the dresser and I don’t think I could stop myself, it’s like I’m two people, and right now the other one is running the muscles. I don’t find anything in the drawers, or the drawers of the night stand. There’s a remote for the wall vid and music system. Clothes. Some pills with no labels. Tissues. That kind of thing.
It’s in the closet, flat against the wall up on a shelf, stuffed behind a stack of silky folded sheets or blankets or something. A picture. It’s not a holo base, but a flat frame with a digital photo printed out on real old fashioned glossy paper, as if it came from an antique camera. But maybe it really did. The Doc is fifty at least, probably more, if his plastic buddies have worked on him.
My hand is shaking. As if the part of me pulling the muscle-strings has already figured it out. But I guess I haven’t. Because when I take the picture over to the window and pull aside the drapes, my mind is empty. I just stand there, staring at the face in the picture, not thinking anything. Just staring.
Years ago . . . in another life . . . I sat in a chair and watched that laughing kid face that stabbed me in the gut lengthen and firm up and grow older. He stares up at me right now from the slick surface of the picture, his hair in a military buzz with a diamond stud in one ear lobe, and his eyes are a blue that’s almost gray, and he seems . . . sad.
It’s some kind of formal thing, like graduation but not military ’cause there’s no uniform, just a blue shirt with a collar. There’s another picture under this one. I can just see the edge and I kind of pry the frame apart and slide it out. It’s the same kid. Younger, or maybe just grubbier. He’s in a canoe that looks like it’s made from real wood. It’s floating on this gorgeous lake, kind of like daturk’s thoughtful lake.
Doc’s in the canoe with him. The kid’s smiling for the camera and Doc’s smiling at the kid.
I was wrong. About what Doc is doing.
It’s his son.
You can see it in his face.
I wonder what happened.
I slide that picture back where I found it and I feel . . . slimy. Like I’ve been hiding, watching him have sex. I feel . . .
. . . I’m not sure how I feel.
But now I know.
I go into the bathroom in the room I’ve been sleeping in. His room. That’s who I’ve been feeling. I stand in front of the mirror. I haven’t looked at my face yet. Oh, I’ve looked. I watched the vids with Doc. I saw it happen. But I’ve just sort of inventoried it before this . . . I kind of skid over seeing the whole thing. It’s like my face in the mirror is ice, and I can’t get my footing.
But now, I look. I stand in front of the mirror and I don’t let my shoulders turn, my face duck, my eyes slide. Nah, I look. Like I’m meeting me on the street, on the way to Antonio’s to scrub the paella pans. Interesting guy. What do you think of him? What’s his past? I want to shake, and I kind of slap myself inside my head, you know? Hey. Look at him. He’s walking down the street, so look at him. And I do.
He’s ugly. That’s all. Just ugly. I mean, his face is kind of too bold, too bald. Not really formed quite right, you know? It should be . . . dunno . . . more defined. Maybe his mom ate something wrong or drank the wrong water when she was pregnant or something. And I remember one year way back, when I was in this kind of homey place for kids, like a real house. It wasn’t just us burn kids, it was some others, too, and their faces weren’t damaged . . . They just weren’t quite faces yet. And they had other problems, too. But that’s what I see. I’m not normal, but you know . . .
I’m just some guy that doesn’t look normal.
Not a monster. Not somebody where all you can think is ohmygodwhathappenedtohim?
I end up on my knees on the floor and I’m goddam crying, my tears are leaking all over my jeans and . . . it’s nuts . . . I’ve never cried. Well, in the hospital, yeah, when it hurt. But not after.
What was the point?
I’m crying now.
Doc is going to be home pretty soon. My knees hurt when I get up off the floor. I kind of focus on the pain as I stumble into the bedroom. He’s going to be home soon, and I don’t know how to get hold of daturk.
But she’s waiting for me. When I touch up the online, the screen is full of shriveled leaves, but they vanish as soon as I touch the screen. All of a sudden, it’s a snow of white petals against black. I guess she’s there.
I gotta go. I type the words in slowly ’cause I don’t think I can say them out loud. I can’t go through with this.
That same crimson question mark I saw that first day in the hospital curves onto the screen, burning into me.
I’m just finished, I type. I just need to get away from here. Nothing twisted. Not really. Well maybe that’s not true, maybe love is always twisted. Nobody serious is gonna come looking for me, I tell her.
The screen is frozen, question mark, white petals, I’m here all by myself.
I just need to go.
I type the words in, but she’s gone. Elsewhere. And I should just get up, go back to the walk-up, because I haven’t broken any law and the worst that can happen
is that the media follows me and makes a fuss and I have to stay away from the news streams for awhile. But I just sit there, frozen as the screen.
And then all of a sudden it goes blank and blue. Scary. White letters and numbers suddenly blink into life. No flowers, no visuals at all. Just an address. Some street address in Baltimore, of all places.
Thanks, I type.
The screen goes blank. She really is gone, this time.
I go find paper and pen in Doc’s bedroom, figuring he probably has some for fancy notes to friends or something. This isn’t something to type online and e-mail or print. I write the address down from memory, just in case I forget. Then . . . I lay a clean sheet on the desk beside the keyboard. I wonder what kind of wood the desk is made of, if the old man would know. Probably. The pen feels weird and clumsy in my fingers. I’ll take money from my account in cash, pay the surcharge for using it to buy a ticket. That should throw the media off. And Doc. Antonio isn’t going to care that I’m gone. And I wonder what I’m going to find at that address.
daturk?
Maybe. It occurs to me that I don’t really know even that she’s a she. I’ve just sort of . . . guessed. It doesn’t really matter.
Maybe . . . just maybe . . . my mother is alive and it’s my memories that are right and not the state database. I mean . . . it had to cost a million bucks to fix me. And if she walked away . . . well, National Health did it. Maybe that was the reason? You can find out anything if you’re willing to pay. Antonio doesn’t pay much, but what did I have to spend my money on, before? I think maybe . . . if she’s really alive . . . all I want to do is go look at her. Just once, you know?
Nah. I don’t know.
I touch the pen to the paper, make a tiny blue dot, perfectly round and the color of the sky that first night here, when I watched the city lights all come on. Doc, I write. The words form slowly, letters looping out across the sand colored paper. I found the picture. Of your son. I haven’t snooped before, I’m sorry, and I don’t know what happened to him or to you both. I just don’t know, and I want you to know that you did such a great job and I really really mean it. And I’m sorry I’m not staying, but I just can’t. I don’t know really why, maybe just because I’ve never been me, you know? I mean, I guess I was, a long time ago, but after the crash, I was the kid in bed four, and then I was the burn kid, and then the monster who made people look away, and the paella pan washer and now I don’t know . . .
I guess I just want to try being me. I don’t know if I can even do that, isn’t that a joke? But I need to try. And there’s this girl and she’d be a whole lot easier than me to do, and she’s blonde and you can see she was real pretty and the media would love her and it would be like Cinderella or something. Her name is Kitten and you can find her at the support group I used to belong to, the Tuesday one, and it’s gotta be in my file. And I need to say more to him, but the words won’t come. I think maybe I don’t know yet what it is that I need to say. It might take awhile to know and maybe then I can come back and say it. I don’t know.
But it’s a possibility, and I’m not sure that I’ve had possibilities before. Just stuff that happened to me.
So I just write, thanks Doc and I leave the note on the table and I go out the door. First time I’ve done it by myself, but no alarms go off. The frog plops into the little pool in the pretty courtyard, and I take the elevator down to the lobby, and I’ve never been through there. And this woman is coming in all dressed in this nice business suit and boots, and I can see her eyes coming up to my face and I’m going to do the thing I do on the street, look past her, not see.
Only I make myself not do that.
And she looks and I’m ugly, you can see that in her eyes.
But she looks.
And then she goes past me and gets into the elevator.
That’s it.
Thanks, Doc. And I’m sorry. I wish I could have been what you needed.
I’m scared.
I go out the door, onto the street, and I head for Baltimore.
DELHI
Vandana Singh
New writer Vandana Singh was born and raised in India, and currently resides with her family in the United States, where she teaches physics and writes. Her stories have appeared in several volumes of Polyphony, as well as in Strange Horizons, Trampoline, and So Long Been Dreaming. Her first book for children, Younguncle Comes to Town, has just been published in India.
In the compelling story that follows, she shows us a man who’s being haunted not just by one ghost, or even by a houseful of them, but by an entire city . . .
TONIGHT HE IS INTENSELY aware of the city: its ancient stones, the flat-roofed brick houses, threads of clotheslines, wet, bright colors waving like pennants, neem-tree lined roads choked with traffic. There’s a bus going over the bridge under which he has chosen to sleep. The night smells of jasmine and stale urine, and the dust of the cricket field on the other side of the road. A man is lighting a bidi near him: face lean, half in shadow, and he thinks he sees himself. He goes over to the man, who looks like another layabout. “My name is Aseem,” he says.
The man, reeking of tobacco, glares at him, coughs, and spits, “Kya chahiye?”
Aseem steps back in a hurry. No, that man is not Aseem’s older self; anyway, Aseem can’t imagine he would take up smoking bidis at any point in his life. He leaves the dubious shelter of the bridge, the quiet lane that runs under it, and makes his way through the litter and anemic street lamps to the neon-bright highway. The new city is less confusing, he thinks; the colors are more solid, the lights dazzling, so he can’t see the apparitions as clearly. But once he saw a milkman going past him on Shahjahan road, complete with humped white cow and tinkling bell. Under the stately, ancient trees that partly shaded the street lamps, the milkman stopped to speak to his cow and faded into the dimness of twilight.
When he was younger, he thought the apparitions he saw were ghosts of the dead, but now he knows that is not true. Now he has a theory that his visions are tricks of time, tangles produced when one part of the time-stream rubs up against another and the two cross for a moment. He has decided (after years of struggle) that he is not insane after all; his brain is wired differently from others, enabling him to discern these temporal coincidences. He knows he is not the only one with this ability, because some of the people he sees also see him, and shrink back in terror. The thought that he is a ghost to people long dead or still to come in this world both amuses and terrifies him.
He’s seen more apparitions in the older parts of the city than anywhere else, and he’s not sure why. There is plenty of history in Delhi, no doubt about that – the city’s past goes back into myth, when the Pandava brothers of the epic Mahabharata first founded their fabled capital, Indraprastha, some 3,000 years ago. In medieval times alone there were seven cities of Delhi, he remembers, from a well-thumbed history textbook – and the eighth city was established by the British during the days of the Raj. The city of the present day, the ninth, is the largest. Only for Aseem are the old cities of Delhi still alive, glimpsed like mysterious islands from a passing ship, but real nevertheless. He wishes he could discuss his temporal visions with someone who would take him seriously and help him understand the nature and limits of his peculiar malady, but ironically, the only sympathetic person he’s met who shares his condition happened to live in 1100 AD or thereabouts, the time of Prithviraj Chauhan, the last Hindu ruler of Delhi.
He was walking past the faded white colonnades of some building in Connaught Place when he saw her: an old woman in a long skirt and shawl, making her way sedately across the car park, her body rising above the road and falling below its surface parallel to some invisible topography. She came face to face with Aseem – and saw him. They both stopped. Clinging to her like grey ribbons were glimpses of her environs – he saw mist, the darkness of trees behind her. Suddenly, in the middle of summer, he could smell fresh rain. She put a wondering arm out toward him but didn’t touch him
. She said: “What age are you from?” in an unfamiliar dialect of Hindi. He did not know how to answer the question, or how to contain within him that sharp shock of joy. She, too, had looked across the barriers of time and glimpsed other people, other ages. She named Prithviraj Chauhan as her king. Aseem told her he lived some 900 years after Chauhan. They exchanged stories of other visions – she had seen armies, spears flashing, and pale men with yellow beards, and a woman in a metal carriage, crying. He was able to interpret some of this for her before she began to fade away. He started toward her as though to step into her world, and ran right into a pillar. As he picked himself off the ground he heard derisive laughter. Under the arches a shoeshine boy and a man chewing betel leaf were staring at him, enjoying the show.
Once he met the mad emperor, Mohammad Shah. He was walking through Red Fort one late afternoon, avoiding clumps of tourists and their clicking cameras, and feeling particularly restless. There was a smoky tang in the air because some gardener in the grounds was burning dry leaves. As the sun set, the red sandstone fort walls glowed, then darkened. Night came, blanketing the tall ramparts, the lawns through which he strolled, the shimmering beauty of the Pearl Mosque, the languorous curves of the now distant Yamuna that had once flowed under this marble terrace. He saw a man standing, leaning over the railing, dressed in a red silk sherwani, jewels at his throat, a gem studded in his turban. The man smelled of wine and rose attar, and was singing a song about a night of separation from the Beloved, slurring the words together.
Bairan bhayii raat sakhiya . . .
Mammad Shah piya sada Rangila . . .
Mohammad Shah Rangila, early 1700s, Aseem recalled. The Emperor who loved music, poetry, and wine more than anything, who ignored warnings that the Persian king was marching to Delhi with a vast army . . . “Listen, King,” Aseem whispered urgently, wondering if he could change the course of history, “you must prepare for battle. Else Nadir Shah will overrun the city. Thousands will be butchered by his army. . . .”
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