Paris Was the Place

by Susan Conley

  Macon’s got the Lonely Planet guidebook out when I come back. “The Taj Mahal is going to be amazing,” he says. “I want to take photos for Pablo. It took twenty-two years and thousands of men to build. The whole thing is a statement of love.” He squeezes my hand. “There are rare gems inlaid in the walkways.”

  I put my head on his shoulder and doze again. When we get to Agra, there’s a small fight among some of the rickshaw drivers outside the station over who will take which tourists. A man pushes his bike to the front and yells at us in English to climb in. We sit and put our packs at our feet and he starts pedaling into the city. “Hello, my name is Abkar.”

  “Hello, Abkar,” Macon says. “I am Macon, and this is Willie.”

  I lean toward Macon. “There’s a small chance I might be pregnant.” I can’t keep it a secret anymore. No lies. That was the agreement when Macon decided to come with me. No lies or half lies. Only the truth.

  He’s examining a strap on his backpack that’s begun to unravel. “Right now? Today? Pregnant?”

  “Maybe pregnant. Not sure pregnant. Probably not. But maybe.”

  Then he laughs. “This is incredible. We’re going to the Taj Mahal and you might be pregnant!” Which is the best thing he could possibly say, and I kiss him.

  When we get to the front gates, Abkar stops pedaling and puts his feet on the ground. “I will wait there.” He points to the other rickshaw drivers sitting on their heels in the dirt under an almond tree next to a long, white concrete wall.

  Macon takes my hand, and we walk toward the ticket booth. “You can’t write a book about poetry in India and not see the Taj Mahal.”

  He gets his camera ready inside the gates, but a man wearing a white turban approaches us. “Sir. Let me help, please.” So I sit on a marble bench with Macon next to me and the man takes many pictures in which we’re both laughing. Then we thank him and follow a long, rectangular pool of water until we get to the tomb. It’s enormous and dome-shaped and built out of creamy white marble and precious stones with intricate paintings of lotus flowers.

  Macon reads out loud again: “The false sarcophagi are in the main chamber. The actual graves of Shah Jahan and his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, are at the lower level.”

  “This is raising the bar on how to honor the dead,” I say. We spend hours walking through the different chambers of the tomb, and the whole time I feel slightly dizzy.

  Then Abkar bikes us to the Hotel Rashmi. We get a small room with a double bed on a metal frame. There’s a blue-tiled bathroom and a wicker chair near the foot of the bed. During the night, I get cramps. I hold my stomach with my hands and try to keep very still so the cramps will stop. But the bleeding starts in the morning.

  “What’s going on, Willie?” Macon says when he wakes up. “My God, there’s blood here—where is it coming from?”

  “It’s okay,” I whisper.

  “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

  “Macon,” I say slowly, “my love. Please promise me right now you won’t take me to a hospital. I must have really been pregnant.”

  “But we should go to the doctor, shouldn’t we?”

  I lie back on the bed and start crying, and he tries to rub my arm. “If it doesn’t get better in an hour, then maybe we’ll go to the doctor’s.”

  “But are you in pain? Are you in too much pain? I can’t let you sleep on this sheet.” He leaves the room for maybe five minutes and comes back with the woman who owns the hotel, who I met when we checked in. She and her husband have a young boy, maybe two years old, who played with a red truck on the floor by the front desk. “Willie,” Macon says, “this is Kaela. She and I are going to help you get to the doctor.”

  “Oh, Macon, no,” I say. “Please.”

  “We’ve got to make sure. Just let me do this, okay?”

  He helps me stand. Then he takes me into the bathroom, and Kaela hands me several maxi pads that are like small hand towels, they’re so big. “Thank you so much,” I say. “I’m so sorry about this.” She just smiles and nods and closes the door. I put on my long skirt and place a pad in a pair of clean underwear. I feel nauseous and heavy and sluggish, like I’m walking in water.

  The three of us make it down the stairs and into a car waiting outside the hotel. Kaela gets in the front seat and instructs the driver. Macon sits in the back with me, and I put my head on his lap. We go to an international clinic attached to a big hotel in the new part of Agra. Kaela organizes everything there. She speaks to the office receptionist, and I’m taken into a small, unfinished doctor’s office with a wooden examining table in the corner. Macon helps me up on the table, and I close my eyes and doze until a woman in jeans and running sneakers walks in.

  “I’m Dr. Pellman,” she says. “By way of Canada and Nepal. Willie, it’s nice to meet you. Let’s find out what’s going on here.” She takes my temperature with a glass thermometer. “Have you ever miscarried before?”

  “I’ve never been pregnant.”

  “The thermometer says you have a slight fever. One hundred and one. That’s consistent with a miscarriage. How are the cramps? Are they easing at all?”

  “Not yet,” I say, wincing. “They’re the worst cramps I’ve ever had.”

  “That sounds about right. I’m very sorry. Unfortunately, miscarriage is the most common type of pregnancy loss. Do you think your bleeding is still as heavy?”

  “I don’t think it’s let up.”

  “The main goal of treatment is to prevent hemorrhaging and infection. This pregnancy, by all counts, was a very early one. The earlier you are, the more likely that your body will expel all the fetal tissue by itself.”

  “So I won’t have to stay here overnight?”

  “I am not ruling it out, but I don’t think you’re going to require further medical procedures. If your body doesn’t expel all the tissue, the most common procedure would be to scrape the uterine wall, but I honestly don’t see any need for that yet. We’re going to let you sleep now.”

  She leaves, and I have a dream that I’m dying and that Macon’s dying and also Luke. When I wake up I feel so tired I can’t imagine ever standing again, or washing my face, or putting on a shirt, or leaving the clinic. I will live here forever. Where’s my father? My mother? It’s so hot. They would want to be here with me. I fall back asleep, and in this dream the baby’s born on different days, in different hospitals, but it’s always unrecognizable. “I’m having some sort of breakdown,” I say to Macon when I open my eyes again. He’s sitting on a wooden chair by the table. “I dreamt the baby was a monster.”

  “You had a nightmare.”

  “I can’t ever leave this room.”

  “Okay. We can stay here as long as you want. Have I told you that I love you very much?”

  I’ve been waiting to hear this almost since the first time I met him on Rue de Metz, and I try to store his words away for later because I wasn’t expecting them today. I can’t take in his kindness fully. Even though it’s what I’m most hoping for. “But I can’t leave the clinic ever.”

  “Not even once you are better?”

  “Not ever. And please don’t bury me. I don’t want to be down there in a tomb.”

  Macon looks at me with such concern on his face. Then I don’t feel so alone. “I will never bury you. We will lie here in this clinic for the rest of our lives together. I’ll rub your back and maybe later, in a few hours, you’ll feel like getting up and having a shower.”

  I take one in the afternoon and wrap myself in a blue towel the nurse gives me afterward. Macon says, “I’m going to go back to the Hotel Rashmi with Kaela now and gather up our things.”

  “Kaela is still here? She waited all this time?”

  “She was very worried about you. She and I have figured out a plan. You and I are going to take the four o’clock train to Chandigarh. Then we’ll go to Shimla and sleep. If you’re feeling strong enough in the morning, we’ll go farther north and take a final bus to Dharmsala. Or
we’ll stay put. It all depends on how you feel.”

  “I don’t care where we go as long as we go.”

  “There’s so much good stuff to come on this trip, Willie. You are going to be okay. We haven’t even gotten to Dharmsala yet.”

  28

  War and Peace: a famously long Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy

  We’re the only two people inside the compartment on the train to Shimla. The seats are made of old red vinyl. Dirty, cream-colored vinyl curtains hang in three-inch strips across the windows. I pull them to the side and button them to a matching sash. Then I open War and Peace and read for hours. I learn that Napoleon extended too far into Moscow and that the French army had been in good shape when it left Russia, except that the cavalry was starving to death. I learn the Russian peasants burned their hay instead of feeding it to the French horses and that Napoleon should have ordered more boots. This is how so many of his soldiers died—from frozen feet.

  The train rocks, and I close my eyes and try to imagine the French horses and if any of Napoleon’s soldiers gave them last rites. What are last rites, really? I start crying. “Luke wants to be cremated,” I say to Macon. “He called me last week, before we left, and made me promise not to bury him. I told him he was crazy and that I wasn’t talking about it. I wish I were in Paris with him. Maybe we shouldn’t have come to India after all.”

  “We should have come to India. You have a book to write.”

  “Can I call him? How can I call him and find out he’s all right?”

  “We’ll find a phone. I promise.”

  We get to Shimla and sleep at an old wooden bungalow made into an inn by a retired military officer and his wife. She gives us strong morning coffee like sludge with watery milk in the back garden, and it tastes so good. There’s a green parakeet stock-still in a steel cage. We eat hardboiled eggs and chapati while the officer tells us about the Shimla military museum and its collection of artillery. Macon makes notes on a little pad out of respect. Then we go to the train station. Our trip feels long now. So much time away from Luke. My cramps have almost stopped, and the bleeding is mild. I want to meet Padmaja and see the poems and go home.

  But there are no trains to Dharmsala. The mountain switchbacks are too steep. So Macon gets us tickets on the afternoon bus that will get us there before dawn. The bus is bright green, circa 1968, and decorated like a cupcake, with swirly pink lotus blossoms and blue elephants and curlicues all around the front window. Inside, the driver has covered the dashboard with laminated glossies of Krishna and Vishnu and Buddha like a shrine. The seats are low and narrow and covered in crinkly green plastic.

  It never quiets on the bus—everyone talks and smokes and snores. I sit with my cheek against the window and stare at the brambles and the dark shape of the road. Late in the night, soldiers flag us down. Two of them climb on carrying thin automatic rifles—boys in their late teens with shaved hair under camouflage caps. They force us off the bus and make us walk to a clearing behind a concrete shed.

  “Passports,” one of them says to Macon. “Passports now.” We fish in our packs. I try to pull the zipper open on my green passport pouch. Little surges of adrenaline spike in my stomach and travel down my arms. I finally hand the booklet to a boy soldier with doe eyes.

  “America. You come from America to this place?” He doesn’t open the passport. He’s distracted by its beauty, maybe, and turns it over and over in his hand like it’s a small animal that will soon begin to talk. Then he gives it back and shrugs decisively—done with games now.

  An hour passes. Two older men from the bus are escorted to the side of the shed, where they have to stand with their arms above their heads. I can’t see their faces, but their hands start to sway in the air like the men are postulating. It’s as if they’re deeply moved by the sound of some distant music that none of the rest of us can hear. I’ve read the newspaper articles this week about Kashmiri separatists floating down the Jhelum River through the Punjab to get explosives from the bigger cities. Some of the Kashmiris have been captured as far south as Delhi. Some are caught in Nepal. Many are captured in the middle.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Macon says. The neck of his T-shirt is darker blue with sweat. “The most important thing is to not draw attention to ourselves. Let’s stay calm. Soon I bet we’ll be boarding the bus again.”

  “But not those men.” I point.

  “Willie, stop pointing. Don’t you get it? Keep your eyes down. I won’t be able to live with myself if you get hurt here, so do this for me.”

  Another hour passes. Two of the soldiers call us back to the bus. I follow Macon to the middle row. Three in the morning, and I can’t stay awake any longer. I miss my brother. I have to meet the woman named Padmaja the day after tomorrow and persuade her to let me see her mother’s poetry manuscripts. It’s why we’ve come this far. The driver closes the door and the engine rumbles to life. I turn in my seat and watch the soldiers close in on the two men. It’s a small distance between us, maybe five feet. The soldiers put handcuffs on the men.

  I bang on the window with my fist. “How can we just leave them? Jesus Christ, people!”

  Macon grabs my elbow and pulls me down into the seat. It happens so quickly I’m not sure it’s him. “You’re losing your mind,” he hisses.

  “Stop pulling my hair!” I try to stand but he pushes my head down again.

  “I’m warning you. They’ll take you away, for Christ’s sake.”

  Passengers turn to watch us. An older man makes his way down the aisle wearing a large gray turban. He points his finger at me and places it on his lips. Then he motions to the soldiers outside and runs his finger across his neck. “They will hurt you.” His English is slow and deliberate. Then he goes back to his seat.

  The soldier with the doe eyes yells at the driver, who opens the door again by pushing on the black metal handle next to the steering wheel. The engine idles so loudly it’s hard to hear.

  “They will hurt you,” Macon repeats. “If you say another thing. It will be a really stupid way to die.”

  The soldier goes row by row, questioning each passenger. Oh fuck. Oh God. How could he have heard what I yelled? Then there’s noise outside. One of the handcuffed men runs toward the woods. The soldiers start screaming at each other. Our soldier jumps off the bus and fires a shot at the man’s leg. Misses. Shoots again at the man’s foot, and the man falls down but keeps crawling toward the trees.

  “Oh Christ. Oh Jesus.” Macon is still holding on to my waist. My whole body rings from the sound of the gun. The driver has us in second gear, then third. I turn in time to see the tallest soldier bang his rifle against the side of the fallen man’s head. “Oh no.” And again.

  We’re a quarter mile down the road. Darkness all around us. No one talks or moves. Macon and I sit with our hands on top of one another’s and say nothing.

  WHEN WE GET TO Dharmsala, it’s five o’clock the next night. We’re let off at the base of town and have to make our way north, past wooden houses built along the sides of the mountain. We’re looking for a place to sleep. We haven’t talked yet. I’m not sure we have words. Macon carries my pack. Most of the houses have stone courtyards and piles of firewood and a thin cow or goat for milking chained outside. The main street runs along the edge of the small mountain. We pass two Tibetan monks in long red robes and a man with a chiseled face leading a donkey on a rope. There are hardly any cars.

  We find a teahouse with a sign outside that reads MOMOS AND BAGLEP. SERVE ALL DAY. FREE POCHA. ROOMS. I look inside the door, and a thin woman in a black apron waves us into her kitchen. Three Western girls sit at the table behind us, smoking little hand-rolled cigarettes. The girls look maybe twenty years old. College students on summer abroad. I could be their teacher. I take a sip of the butter tea the woman places in front of me. It’s salty and hot and doesn’t go down easily. “I wonder how much I’d fight for my life.”

  “If those men are Kashmiris in India illegally, then
they will be arrested,” Macon says. “But the legal system works differently at midnight in Himachal Pradesh.”

  “I have no idea what it would be like to risk my life for something.” I look down at my plate and back at the women starting to gather their rolling papers and money together. I want to tell them about the men we left on the side of the road. I want people to know. “I think we should report the soldiers to officials in town. It’s still July, isn’t it? What day in July?”

  “They would laugh at you at the police station. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  “I don’t have the capacity to imagine more violence. Maybe this is a weakness of mine. Do you think the soldier killed that man? Do you think he’s dead?”

  “It has been a long couple of days for you. Now you need to rest. We need to go upstairs to the room this nice woman is renting us, and we need to put you to bed.”

  The room is perfect—just the bed with a red Tibetan blanket and a dark wooden trunk by the door. There’s a closet down the hall with a toilet that flushes and a bucket of water for washing. The woman speaks some English, and when Macon asks her about hotels, she tells us of a house for rent a quarter mile down the hill that we can see in the morning.

  I dream a dreamless sleep. Then I wake up in the middle of the night with cramps again. I trace forward until I remember the men by the side of the road and I see the handcuffs and the guns, and none of it was a dream, and I can’t sleep again after that.

  29

  Border: a boundary; an outer part or edge

  The house in the woods has a square wooden table in the kitchen and a stone sink and a mattress on the floor covered in a white sheet. We rent it for three days. The back window looks out on a thicket of cinnamon trees. Years before, someone dug a small well and circled it with stones, which have begun to fall down in places. The front is a tangle of evergreen vines, but a path has been cleared a hundred yards up to the door. There are so many birds making a racket on the first morning.