by Sharon Maas
‘Well then. Let me do that. I need to do something, Janiki. I feel so helpless. Let me do this. Let me. Please!’
‘Hmmm… well, I suppose it would work. He only has to hand over the money, say the password and look through a peephole. That’s it, really.’
‘See? It’s not much. He’ll do it.’
‘Ok. I’ll give you the address and the password. Have you got something to write with?’
‘Hold on a minute… yes. Fire away.’
Janiki dictated the address, spelling out the Hindi words as Caroline wrote them down in her diary. ‘And you need a password. The password is Blue Lily.’
‘Got it,’ said Caroline.
‘OK then. I guess that’s it. Confirm it’s her, and tomorrow Kamal buys her back. That part should be simple enough – he’s supposed to be buying her as a live-in companion and maid.’
‘Ugh. Horrible. Makes me want to puke.’
‘I know. But if it works that’s all that matters.’
But Hiran was not in his room. He was not in the dining room either. He had probably gone sightseeing on his own, and now she was stuck with the address: a priceless winning ticket and no one to redeem it.
She had left a note for Gita at reception, and indeed, there was Gita waiting for her, jumping to her feet at her approach.
‘Hi,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve got news.’
She gave Gita a quick summary of the situation.
‘So either we have to find a man to replace Kamal immediately, or—’
‘Or we lose this chance,’ Gita finished.
‘No. Or I go myself.’
‘You must be crazy! It has to be a man!’
‘I’ll fix that,’ said Caroline. She opened her handbag and showed Gita a large wad of banknotes. ‘Money speaks. It’s just a brothel manager who will show me Asha, not the actual pimp. I’ll give her the money for the pimp as arranged – see, there it is in the envelope, all counted out – and pay her extra for letting me in instead of a man and keeping her mouth shut. An extra lakh. It’s nothing for me, and a fortune for her. She’ll do it. I bet she’ll do it.’
‘Caroline, you’re—’
‘Brilliant, right?’
‘I was going to say crazy. But brilliant will do. And brave.’
‘Maybe all three. But c’mon. Let’s roll.’
Chapter 45
Caroline
It was a squalid grey building in one of Kamathipura’s narrowest and busiest lanes. Barred windows in its top storey were flanked by ragged scraps of would-be curtains. Between the two narrow holes of windows hung a washing line sagging with the weight of a few nondescript pieces of clothing. A woman stood at the window, screaming down at another woman who sat cross-legged on a charpai outside the doorway, nursing a baby and playing cards with a boy of about thirteen, and yelling what sounded like abuse back at the woman above. Gita took Caroline’s hand.
‘This is it,’ she said.
Sensing their presence, the card-playing woman looked up, quickly assessed Gita and Caroline as irrelevant, and returned to her card game and her screaming match. She pulled the baby away from her breast and laid it on the charpai behind her, where it began to squall with rage. The boy had his back to them and did not look around. The door was open, offering a glimpse of a long black passage in whose depths blinked a string of red fairy-lights, perhaps framing a door, perhaps lighting the way upstairs.
‘Namaste,’ said Gita. The woman on the charpai looked up. She stared first at Gita, then at Caroline. Everyone here stared at Caroline and she was getting used to it; she met the woman’s gaze steadily, nodded in greeting and turned to Gita.
‘OK, can you translate, Gita. Tell her that the fellow who was supposed to come couldn’t make it and I came instead. Tell her I have the money for her pimp but also the same again for her if she keeps quiet. Tell her I want to see the girl.’
Gita spoke.
‘She says she’s not interested,’ Gita said after a few sentences. ‘I think she wants more. She’s taking a risk, after all. It’s you being a foreigner, I bet, and a journalist. Word gets around fast; talk of a white female journalist doing research might have reached her already.’
‘Tell her I’ll pay her more for her silence and her help. We have more to lose than she does; all she has to do is lead me to Asha. That’s it. I don’t have a camera. She has nothing to lose, and a lot to gain. See if you can bargain with her. Offer her whatever she wants, within reason.’
‘What’s within reason?’
‘I have the equivalent of four thousand dollars with me. One and a half is for the pimp. You can offer her the rest.’
Gita, Caroline could tell, was a hard bargainer, but so was the woman, who sent away the boy and gathered up the cards before getting down to what was obviously hard business. Finally, Gita said, ‘She says two lakh to show you the girl and for her silence. But first, the password.’
‘Blue Lily,’ said Caroline at once. Gita repeated it in Hindi and the woman nodded.
The woman got up from the charpai, taking her time doing so, as if moving caused her much pain. Once she was standing she rearranged her sari, tucking in various corners and ends, hawked and spat into the gutter, screamed at a skinny dog that had ventured under the charpai foraging for grains of cooked rice, and then gestured to the two women to enter the house behind her.
The corridor, lit only by the red fairy-lights, was so dark that Caroline and Gita were forced to walk slowly. It ended in a staircase so narrow, and a ceiling so low, they were forced to stoop as they ascended. Caroline groped until she felt the wall, cool and dank with what felt like slime. She shuddered, but moved on until she stumbled against something like a plank at ankle level; but by now the blackness had lightened to grey and she could see the shadowed outline of a steep staircase.
The building was narrow but tall – four storeys high. The staircase was, in effect, nothing more than an appropriately adjusted ladder, fitted to slant snugly against the wall and upgraded with a precarious banister. She reached the first landing and edged herself along a dimly lit corridor that was little more than two feet across and interrupted by several narrow doorways, some open, some curtained. Glancing through the open doorways Caroline saw tiny cubicles, each one about the length of a human being and the breadth of a human being with an arm stretched out. A cot occupied half of the space, and on each one lay a filthy mattress and crumpled sheets. There was a rat-like creature scurrying at the far end of the corridor and Caroline glimpsed the shadow of a human being disappearing into a cubicle and heard the ratch of a quickly drawn curtain, which still shivered as Gita passed it seconds later.
At the end of the corridor was another flight of stairs. The woman led the way up, Caroline trying her best to keep up.
She reached the second landing, where she stopped for a moment to draw breath and, literally, sniff the air. The smell was acrid, an alloy of rancid body fluids and other unidentifiable rotting waste. Caroline felt her mind like an open satellite dish, receiving signals imperceptible to the senses: thoughts and feelings, heartbeats and heartaches, and a never-ending, silent wail of terror. Up the next flight, to the third storey, the woman panting by now. This corridor was identical to the two beneath it, except that the cubicles here had doors, and all the doors were shut – and bolted, with heavy steel padlocks hanging from the bolts.
The woman, panting still, stopped in front of one of the doors and pointed.
‘This is the one,’ said Gita. The woman reached up to a small curtain at eye level, drew it back. There was a tiny window, the glass smeared, let into the door. Caroline peered through into a box room, little more than a cubicle, lit dimly by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. A charpai was pushed against the far wall, and on the charpai a small girl reclined. There she was, curled up in a foetal position with her back to the door. Her face was not visible. Yet still, Caroline knew. Perhaps it was the colour of her hair – not jet black as an Indian’s would be, but a
dark chocolate colour, and curly, just as in her photos; a mop.
‘Asha,’ breathed Caroline. ‘Gita, it’s her. It’s really her.’
‘Let me have a look,’ said Gita, and she too looked. She shrugged.
‘I can’t see her face!’
‘It’s her all right. I know.’
The woman drew back the curtain so that the peephole was covered once more, and turned to go.
‘Stop!’ cried Caroline. The woman stopped, and looked at her.
‘Tell her to open this door,’ she said to Gita. She pointed to the bunch of keys dangling from a knot at the end of the woman’s sari. ‘Those are the keys. They were the first thing I noticed about her. Tell her to open it.’ She tapped at the door.
Gita spoke to the woman, who replied sharply in Hindi.
‘She says that wasn’t the deal. The deal was to look only. No opening of doors, no talking, no touching.’
‘Tell her I need to see the girl’s face. That was the deal. The girl’s back is facing the door. I will tell her boss she did not show me properly so the deal is off. I want her to open that door. I need to see the girl properly. Now. Or else.’
At the ‘Or else’ Caroline fumbled in her handbag and produced her Swiss Army knife, flicked open the blade. It was a pity to have to threaten a woman, but needs must.
The woman scowled and fumbled with the knot in her sari, muttering and uttering what could only be foul curses. She held the bunch of keys up nearer to the naked ceiling bulb.
The door creaked back, opening into the cubicle.
Caroline entered the room. The girl on the cot sat up, rubbing her eyes.
‘Asha? Asha, it’s me. It’s me, my darling. It’s Mom.’
The girl stared for a moment. Terrified eyes focused in recognition, and the brow above them, creased with a frown of puzzlement, smoothed out.
‘Mom? Mom!’ she cried.
Caroline, arms held out, rushed forward towards Asha. She was halfway across the room when a loud crash made her stop and swing around. The door to the cubicle had been slammed shut; she heard the rasp of the bolt as it crashed into its slot. The clatter of keys and the click of the padlock snapping shut followed, and the vile cackle of their jailer.
The woman shouted something obviously very rude at them from beyond the door. There was shouting: Gita’s voice, and the woman’s, in Hindi, and ‘I’ll send help, Caroline!’ from Gita. Steps on the stairs, growing fainter by the second, after which there was silence.
She was locked in with Asha.
Chapter 46
Gita
Once out on the street Gita ran. She ran for her life, zigzagging down the crowded lane, sometimes knocking into people, running without looking back, leaping over a ditch here or a dead dog there. Heads turned as she ran but she tore on until forced to stop for breath, and when she had recovered she ran on until she reached the edge of Kamathipura. There she flagged down an autorickshaw.
‘Telephone shop,’ she cried. ‘Quick!’
They didn’t have to drive far; the driver found a small shop with the ubiquitous sign STD International Calls Fax Internet in five minutes. Gita leapt from the rickshaw before it had stopped, thrust a bundle of rupee notes at the driver and plunged into the shop, finally able to stop for breath again.
She nodded to the shop attendant and practically leapt into the telephone cubicle next to the open doorway. She dialled the number of Tulasa House; Subhadai answered. In reply to Gita’s breathless demand she said, calmly, ‘Doctor is not here. Nobody is here.’
‘Damn!’ muttered Gita, and fumbled in her shoulder bag for her notebook. Finding the number for Dr Ganotra’s office at the hospital, she dialled that, but without much hope. No reply. She dialled a few other numbers of possible contacts, but nobody was available. The person to contact was Kamal; but he was out with Sudesh. Janiki, too, could not be reached. By now she could hardly think. But she had to. She sat herself down on the rusty metal chair in the cubicle and buried her face in her hands and thought. A few deep breaths. Think, Gita, think.
There remained, of course, the police. But everyone knew what the police would do: nothing at all. Kamathipura was out of bounds as far as a police rescue mission was concerned. Riddled with crime and prostitutes and pimps, it was beyond redemption and a person lost in there, a person imprisoned or abducted, had only themselves to blame. Even if that person was a foreigner, a white-skinned blonde, an American.
An American! Gita gasped. Of course! Yesterday they had discussed contacting the American embassy for help, and the problem had been that Asha was not American. But Caroline was. The American embassy would be bound to help. They’d send in the CIA, the military, a whole arsenal of gun-toting troopers who would march in there and storm the building and pull out both Caroline and Asha.
She needed the number. There was a fat, dirty, seriously dog-eared Bombay telephone book on a shelf in the cubicle, dated several years ago. Gita leafed through the chunk of A pages. Several had been torn out, including, she realised, the pages beginning with Am.
She burst out of the cubicle. ‘Computer!’ she cried to the assistant. ‘Internet!’
He nodded languidly and pointed to a terminal at the back of the shop. Gita swung herself onto the rickety chair, tapped a button and waited impatiently for the computer to boot and connect. That done, she tapped in ‘American embassy’.
There was a number, and opening times. She looked at her watch. They would be closed by now, but there was an emergency number. She scribbled it into her notebook, returned to the cubicle and dialled.
‘How may I help you, ma’am?’
‘My friend, an American citizen, has been imprisoned! She’s in danger! She needs immediate help.’
‘Very well, ma’am. Please describe the circumstances of the emergency. Where is your friend? How did this happen? Have you notified the police?’
Gita gave a quick run-down of the situation. The woman at the other end of the line asked questions, but the more Gita spoke and the more the woman asked the more Gita became aware of the scepticism and the doubt, even the reluctance, in the voice.
‘So you’re saying this friend of yours went voluntarily into a brothel in Kamathipura? And she is locked up in there?’
‘Yes, yes, she went to rescue her daughter—’
‘Her daughter is a prostitute?’
‘Yes – no – her daughter is a child, imprisoned there, she…’
‘Is the daughter an American citizen?’
‘No, she’s Indian, but the mother, my friend, is American, and—’
‘Ma’am, Kamathipura is an extremely dangerous area. A high-crime area. Was your friend aware of this when she entered? Was she aware of the risk involved?’
‘Yes – listen. Could you just write down the address and send someone to rescue her, right now?’
‘Have you reported this to the police? You must submit a FIR – a First Information Report. And then—’
‘But the police won’t bother. They’re all bribed! Can’t you do it? Please – you have to send someone with authority! The Consul himself – or – or…’
‘Just give me the address, ma’am, and I’ll see what we can do.’
‘You’ll help, won’t you? You’ll send someone around right away?’
‘I will ensure that the information gets to the Regional Security Officer, ma’am, and we will see what we can do. Now just give me the address, please. Better yet, come yourself to the Consulate tomorrow and speak to him in person.’
Gita was weeping as she dictated the address. She left the cubicle and the shop, slumped into herself, physically and mentally. She had to find someone, someone who understood. She flagged down a rickshaw. Where would Janiki be? At a computer somewhere, no doubt. She had said there was an Internet shop across the road from her hotel. Gita looked at her watch. It was almost six o’clock; dusk was approaching. Kamathipura would be coming to life for business. Would Caroline even be there, still? Wouldn’t
they have removed her straight away? She had to talk to someone, if only to relieve her own distress. She gave Janiki’s hotel address to the driver, and he chugged off.
Chapter 47
Caroline
Caroline turned back to Asha, to complete her embrace; but Asha, it seemed, had had a change of heart since the door slammed shut and now, instead of coming forward, shrank away, back to the charpai, folding her limbs into a huddle.
‘Honey, oh honey! Don’t be scared – I’m here, and I’ll never leave you again. Never. I’m so happy I’ve found you. You’re happy too, aren’t you?’
Janiki waited for Asha to nod, but the girl did not react. She simply sat there, staring straight ahead as before.
‘Oh honey, say you’re happy I found you! I love you so much. I’m sorry, so sorry, you’re here and I’ll do my very best to get us out. I promise. I really promise.’
But Asha continued to cower and, far from showing happiness, the spark of animation she had shown on hearing her name, on calling out to her mother, her expression now reflected trepidation and distrust. Caroline noticed a tightening of the grasp that held her legs hugged tightly to her body.
Watching her, for the first time Caroline took in Asha’s physical appearance. And for the first time she acknowledged Asha’s almost ethereal beauty, which managed to shine through in spite of the veneer of abject misery that coated her both physically and mentally. The girl was the personification of distress, and yet instead of distorting her features that distress itself seemed somehow uplifted by resting on this girl; it glowed with a pain so exquisite and poignant Caroline could feel it almost physically, echoed in her own heart. Asha’s eyes were amber, like her own, but opaque; saying nothing, yet eloquent in their very lifelessness. Her features had a symmetrical swing; her skin, so fair for an Indian, was translucent; her cheekbones too prominent. Her clothing was ragged and dirty; her hair unkempt. Yet all of this seemed to accentuate her beauty rather than diminish it.