Losing Gemma

by Katy Gardner

  “How did you know we’d arrived?”

  “Well, we have, haven’t we?”

  Not waiting for an answer she turned and walked down the carriage. Gemma and I glanced at each other in surprise.

  “She didn’t even say good-bye!”

  We stared in bemusement at her departing back.

  “Did we say something?”

  Gemma frowned. “I was going to invite her to eat out with us, or something, to thank her.”

  The platform was coming into view now, and the carriage filling with porters. As the doors opened and the other passengers spilled out onto the platform, we were swept along by the tide of people and luggage. I grasped Gemma’s hand, terrified of losing her. Coral had long since disappeared into the distance.

  “Where do we go now?”

  “I don’t know. Out of here, I suppose.”

  We followed the crowds pouring out of Howrah Station into the bright morning light. Facing us was a concourse filled with shoals of black taxis, scooters, and an endless stream of hand-pulled rickshaws. Although many were empty others contained two or three passengers and a pile of luggage, their drivers dripping with sweat as they progressed laboriously through the swirling traffic.

  “Let’s get a taxi,” Gemma said decisively.

  She stepped out into the road, but before she had even lifted her hand, a battered black Ambassador swerved in front of us. The back door swung open.

  “Come on then! I got the transport!” Coral leaned out of the door, grinning and patting the worn leather seats beside her. “What are you waiting for?”

  For perhaps a second I hesitated. But, before I could work out why, Gemma had pulled her rucksack off her back and hastily, gratefully, climbed inside.

  6

  THE taxi nosed its way into the gridlocked traffic, honking its horn incessantly.

  “Whew!” Gemma said, turning to Coral. “We thought we’d lost you!”

  “Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I was just sorting things out.”

  Gemma glanced at her and laughed. She seemed so much more cheerful than the day before.

  “Bollocks, it’s hot.”

  As she twisted around in an effort to get comfortable, her backside made a sucky, slappy noise against the leather upholstery. There had been no room for me in the back, so I was sitting in the front.

  “I’m so sweaty it’s like I’ve wet myself! Look at me! I’m such an old tart!”

  In the front seat, my knees bent carefully away from the driver, I smiled weakly. I was relieved that Gemma’s mood had improved, but it was too hot for banter. My head was fuggy and my face shiny with perspiration. As the car crawled painstakingly toward Howrah Bridge I could feel a fine layer of dirt descending on my skin; my eyes felt gritty, and when I rubbed my face, my fingers came back smeared black. I slid down into my seat, glaring out of the window. Behind me I could hear Gemma and Coral chatting, but I’d stopped listening. My eyes kept flickering shut but I forced them open; unlike Gem, I did not want to miss a second of our journey.

  We passed over the bridge, the waters of the Hooghly stretching flat and oily beneath us. The traffic was moving so slowly that in places we were overtaken by foot passengers who jostled in a long line to cross the water. On the other side of the river I could glimpse a row of tanneries, the leather skins heaped in front of industrial vats, foul smoke wafting across the water and into the car. The stench of boiling skins was disgusting. I wound the window up, breathing through my mouth.

  After the bridge we drove through a more residential neighborhood, with large decaying mansions set back from the road. Another few blocks later we turned unexpectedly into a major concourse of traffic, including—to my amazement—red double-deckers. I stared after them. On closer inspection they were nothing like London buses; they were as rusty as old tin cans and so crowded that people were hanging out of the doors and windows and even sitting on the roof.

  My thoughts began to drift. I imagined Steve and Gemma sitting together in the pub, then inadvertently pictured the hallway of my parents’ house; the coats hanging from their hooks, the Monet calendar above the phone, my mum’s china cat hatstand crouching in the corner. I shuddered and sat up straight, shunting the uncomfortable thoughts from my mind. I suddenly realized that I had no idea of our destination.

  “Where are we going?” I said, swiveling around to face Coral.

  “Just this place I know,” she said coolly.

  “So you’ve been here before?”

  Before she could reply the taxi braked. We had stopped beside a battered block of flats, the front of which was virtually split in two by a giant crack; damp dripped down the sides like tears.

  “It’s a friend’s,” Coral said as she climbed out of the car. “He said I could use it.”

  “That’s great!” Gemma cried, appearing after her from the taxi. “Come on, Esther!”

  THE door to the flat opened on to a cramped room filled with boxes. Edging her way inside, Coral stood aside with a flourish.

  “Come on in, then! It’s a right mess . . .”

  Gemma and I followed her into the dark room. With the exception of a National Bank of India calendar turned to March 1981 and a dome dubious red stains splattered at spitting height over the scuffed white paintwork, the walls were unadorned. Besides the boxes, the only furniture was an overstuffed leather armchair, a couple of stools, and a pile of cushions thrown haphazardly in one corner of the bare floor. Peering across the room we could see a narrow kitchen with a Calor-gas stove and various heavy pots and pans arranged on the floor.

  “Streuth, we need some air!”

  Coral put down her bag and walked across the room, throwing open the wooden shutters, which parted to reveal a wide balcony with a view of buildings and trees.

  “You can sleep out here.”

  She gestured to two lumpy mattresses laid out on the balcony.

  “You’ve got sleeping bags and all that?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll check out the bathroom. I’m dying for a slash.”

  She disappeared through a door hidden behind a pile of boxes. Gemma heaved her backpack onto the floor and wandered over to the crumbly balustrade.

  “Cool.”

  I followed her outside. It was surprisingly pleasant, with a refreshing breeze, a view of jumbled back streets and, directly beneath us, a small park filled with trees and scuffed grass. Yet for some reason I could not share Gemma’s enthusiasm.

  “At least it’s free,” I eventually said.

  A shadow of anxiety passed across Gemma’s face.

  “Unless she’s expecting us to pay . . .”

  “No way! She’s just being friendly.”

  “I wish I had her guts, to travel around alone like that.”

  I glanced at her. Her eyes were screwed up against the light and her cheeks shiny from the heat. She looked wistful, dreamy even. I wished I was a free spirit like Coral, too, but if she had a flat waiting for her here why had she pretended on the train to not know where she was going?

  “Thank God she picked up your belt,” I said lightly. “The angels must have been looking out for us.”

  “Good old angels.”

  We leaned over the balcony, gazing at the view.

  “Yikes! I’m soppy with sweat.”

  Blowing out her cheeks Gemma began to fan herself with her hand.

  “You look like an entrant for a wet T-shirt competition,” I said, glancing at her plump, sodden bosom.

  “Can you smell burning?” she suddenly said.

  I sniffed at the air.

  “All I can smell is drains. Don’t you think you’re getting a little obsessed?”

  “No way!”

  “Perhaps you should go back inside. Coral turned the fan to full.”

  “It’s making me itch.”

  I frowned at her. I was starting to wish that she would stop moaning about the heat.

  “How can it be?”

&nb
sp; “It just is. Look—here . . .”

  Stretching out her arms, she nodded down at the red patches that had appeared on her wrists. I’d seen it before, on Luke in the Sahara.

  “It’s prickly heat,” I said authoritatively. “It’ll go away when you start to acclimatize.”

  “I just hope this place in Orissa has air-conditioning,” she muttered. “Otherwise it’s going to be a nightmare.”

  “Gemma . . .”

  I didn’t finish the sentence. I sighed, looking away from her to the jumble of buildings and the park. Perhaps it was just the jet lag, but I suddenly felt irritated again, disloyal thoughts bubbling uncontrollably in my mind. Why did she have to whine about everything? Ever since we’d arrived she’d been whinging interminably about the heat. Even worse, she cheered up only when Coral was around. We stood for a few seconds in sour silence.

  “Hi, guys, how ya doing?”

  Taking a deep breath of the balmy air, Coral stepped onto the balcony. She’d showered and was wrapped in a towel, her damp hair clinging to her skull. In the soft morning light she looked younger and more vulnerable than on the train, her skin so thin that it was almost translucent. She was beautiful, I suddenly realized; it was strange that I hadn’t noticed before. She stood, staring over the balcony, her face serene. For the briefest of moments I was reminded of something; I stared at her, trying to grasp at it, but already it had slipped out of reach.

  “Great view, no?”

  I smiled somewhat forcedly. “That’s just what we were saying. Where are we, anyway?”

  Coral shrugged. “Down there’s Tagore Park . . .”

  “Hey, listen,” Gemma interrupted her, “it’s really brilliant of you to let us stay here.”

  “No hassle.”

  “So you’ve been here before?” I blurted. I’d meant it to sound friendly and relaxed, but my voice was gratingly sharp.

  Coral grinned at me. “Did I say that? Jeez, I forget all the places I’ve been.”

  Something in her voice put me on my guard. I glanced around at her, but she just smiled and winked. She was teasing us, I realized with relief; that was all it was. Her story about jumping aboard the train had been a joke. Of course she had known where she was going.

  We were quiet for a while. I stared down from the balcony, temporarily mesmerized by a young boy floating a plastic boat over the gray water which gurgled in the drain.

  “Look at that,” Coral murmured.

  She pointed to the labyrinth of roads which unfurled to the east of the park. Following her finger, Gemma and I squinted uncomprehendingly at the tangle of buildings and lanes, then noticed a long line of people walking slowly down the main street toward us. Those in front were carrying something on their shoulders; for a moment they disappeared from view, obscured by a row of tall buildings, then they appeared again, the procession snaking down one of the side streets directly below the flat. Now we could hear the discordant sounds of trumpets and drums and see that the object was white and covered in flowers.

  “It’s a funeral,” said Coral. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “A funeral? You mean that’s a body?”

  Gemma stepped back from the balcony, her mouth hanging open. The mourners were passing directly beneath us now: a solemn line of orange-robed priests and white-dhotied men. We could see the tops of their heads and the contours of the corpse, wrapped tightly in its shroud. Following a few steps behind and dressed in red and gold suits as if for a circus was a group of musicians.

  “Sure it’s a body. They must be going to burn it on a pyre down at the ghats. The river is just on the other side of those buildings.”

  She pointed to the other side of the park. Gemma had been right about the smell of burning, I suddenly realized: rising into the warm air above the buildings was a cloud of smoke.

  “It must be someone pretty special. Look at the amount of people there are . . .”

  “You mean they’re going to actually burn the body, right there?” Gemma stared after the procession as it turned up the lane, her voice incredulous.

  “Sure. That’s the power of fire. It’s the most spiritual of all the elements. It transforms everything it touches. They say that as the brain explodes, that’s when the soul is released.”

  “Blimey.”

  “It sounds like a chestnut cracking,” Coral continued quietly. “It’s like, really transcendent?”

  I glanced at Gemma, hoping to catch her eye, but she was still gazing intently at Coral.

  “To go to the fire, that’s, like, the highest form of purification,” Coral was saying now. “Like, sati? That’s why I light a candle every night, for my puja and stuff.”

  She looked in the direction of the river. Now that I knew what it was, I saw black smoke billowing toward us. I was starting to remember an essay I’d written in the second year; something about the relationship between gender and religious ideology, which I’d spent an entire week researching in the library.

  “Isn’t sati where those Hindu widows had to burn themselves on their husbands’ pyres?” I said slowly. “Hasn’t it been outlawed for eons?”

  Coral cut me off. “It’s like the most transcendental act any woman can do,” she said authoritatively. “Through sati they break out of the cycle of karma and become gods themselves.”

  She smiled at me, as if there was nothing left to add. She’d obviously been in India a long time, but I could no longer hold myself back.

  “But that’s just one way of looking at it, isn’t it? I mean, among others?”

  Under their tanned sheen, Coral’s cheeks paled. “Yeah? Like?”

  “Well, some people would say it isn’t about gods or spirituality. It’s about patriarchy. You know, men burning women to death . . .”

  I stopped, self-righteousness rising in my chest like acid indigestion. I was trying desperately to remember the conclusion to my essay, which to my pleasure had been awarded an A+, but my mind had stalled. For a moment, Coral was silent, her face turned to the burning pyre.

  “But isn’t that just, like, people in the West saying that?” Gemma suddenly said. “I mean, who are we to judge?”

  She sounded like the most annoying students on my course, the not so bright ones, who had got hold of the idea of cultural relativity and now repeated it ad nauseum in seminars, as if it was the only answer. They’re different, so live and let live, they’d say, and I’d twiddle my fingers and doodle furiously on my notepad. It was so woolly, so bleeding-heart complacent that it made me want to spit. I turned on Gemma, no longer able to contain myself. “What do you mean? Don’t you think women in other places should be given the same rights as us?”

  She glared at me, her small nostrils flaring. “I don’t know,” she said in a small, hard voice. “You’re the one with the anthropology degree. I’m just a sixth-form drop-out. Remember?”

  Coral reached out and put her hand on her arm. “Guys, cool it,” she said. “You mustn’t let India get to you.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “I’m not letting India get to me,” I said quietly. “I just don’t agree that sati is transcendental. You’ve just got hold of some romantic idea about it. And, anyway, it doesn’t happen anymore. It’s just a cliché that India is like that. It’s just foreigners getting off on exotica . . .”

  I stopped, aware that I had said enough. I hadn’t intended to get so worked up, but Coral’s condescending tone had infuriated me and now my heart was pounding and my palms were sweaty from the unexpected confrontation.

  Next to me, Gemma was staring at the floor, her hands still flapping in front of her face in a useless attempt to cool herself down. There was a long, heavy silence.

  “Let’s have a smoke,” Coral eventually said. “I’ve got some great stuff inside.”

  Gemma and I followed her back into the flat, still not looking at each other. Tucking the towel around her legs, Coral squatted down on the floor. We sat in front of her, like nursery schoolchildren waiting for a s
tory. Rummaging in her bag, she produced a lump of hash and a small pipe. She lit it, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. After a few moments she handed it onto me.

  Around us sunlight fell in bright patches onto the dusty floor; the air smelled of hot concrete and marijuana. I was calming down now; in retrospect my vehemence seemed slightly embarrassing. It was stupid to argue over a bonfire, I thought as I breathed in the pungent smoke. I should relax, not take everything so much to heart. So what if Coral liked the idea of sati? We were going to spend one stoned night with her, not set up home. I passed the pipe onto Gemma. As she took it we smiled sheepishly at each other. I think I might have winked.

  “This is the life,” Gemma said.

  Coral closed her eyes, sighing and smiling to herself. “Sure is.”

  “So where else have you been, Coral? Where do you recommend?” I said after a while.

  “What, in India? It depends what you’re into.” She opened her eyes, peering into my face as if trying to work me out. “Like, if you’re into partying then you’ve got to check out Goa. Go to Anjuna. It’s full of folks like you. You’ll have a ball.”

  I nodded. Gemma looked at me uncertainly.

  “Where else?” she said quietly.

  “Well, there’s the mountains. That’s where I go to get my head sorted out.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “Manali . . . up in the heavens.”

  She laughed, pushing her hand through her wet hair and taking the pipe from Gemma.

  “So where are you guys headed next?”

  “We’ve got this plan . . .” Gemma started.

  “Orissa,” I put in quickly. I didn’t want to tell Coral about Agun Mazir; she’d think it was pathetic, a schoolgirl’s prank.

  “We’re going to visit this shrine,” Gemma plowed on. “It’s Esther’s idea. What’s the name of the saint, Ess? Nirulla, or something.”

  “Er, yeah.”

  “We let fate decide. We threw the guide in the air and we’re going to the place where it landed.”

  She paused, then said: “It’s Esther’s way of showing how adventurous she is.” She giggled, digging me in the ribs with her elbow. I could feel my face flush a deep, treacherous pink. Coral was looking at me carefully through the smoke.