Red Gloves, Volumes I & II

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘My brothers. They would like to get a lift. It is not far to their town.’

  ‘I met your brothers three days ago, Shere, and these are not the same guys. You think everyone looks the same to foreigners? They don’t, not anymore. Those days are over. These guys are not your brothers and cannot come in the car, it’s out of the question. Besides, I thought we had to get to Jodhpur?’

  ‘That is tomorrow. Today you may choose where you would like to go.’

  To be honest, she was not entirely sure where they were going next. Everything on the itinerary sounded the same. She had picked it from four others on her travel agent’s website. According to the schedule, she was staying in an old maharajah’s palace, a vast amber fortress that looked like a child’s sandcastle in the photograph, now converted into a luxury hotel. She was tired of eating in ornate, deserted dining rooms. The only other tourists she had seen on the entire trip were a pair of elderly British ladies who seemed to be duplicating her trip town by town. Their reasons for coming to India mystified her, because she often overheard them sharply asking the waiters for poached eggs or sausages and toast, anything but Indian food.

  She studied the arguing men from the window. Perhaps they were really his brothers. Everything here was designed to confuse, and everyone, it seemed, had the same first impressions; the colours, the mess, the filth, the lost grandeur, the blurred light, the beautiful children…part of her wanted to explore the narrow backstreets alone, but the touts and beggars were simply too exhausting, and Shere insisted on remaining by her side wherever she went. It was clearly considered too dangerous to let tourists explore for themselves. It seemed that they had to be brought in and unloaded, like boats being towed to docks.

  But oh, the children. Tiny boys with withered feet or hands, dragging themselves along the central reservation of the road on little carts, kohl-eyed girls balancing crying babies on their hips, boys twirling coloured strings on their caps to attract attention or tapping with endless patience on the windows of idling cars, selling copies of Vogue, a grotesquely ironic choice of periodical to assign to a beggar. The country was a smashed mirror with some pieces reflecting the past, others the future. Between the tower blocks and tin-roofed slums a Dickensian tapestry was being endlessly unpicked and rewoven, a world where nothing could be achieved without carbon papers and rubber stamps, where ten did the work of one and one the work of ten.

  Shere crunched the gears and pulled away from the men in some anger, swinging into the traffic without looking, so that trucks and rickshaws had to swerve from his path. ‘So where do you want to go?’ he asked, glancing at her in the mirror.

  ‘I hadn’t really—’

  My relationship with this man has changed over the past week, she thought, holding on to the door strap. He’s so bored that he barely sees me. I thought I was in control, but now I wouldn’t be able to do anything without him, and the further we get away from tourist spots, the more I am forced to rely on his services. The drivers run everything here.

  ‘Could you turn the air conditioning down for a while?’ She flapped the guidebook at her breast.

  He looked horrified by the idea, but did as she requested. She tried to study the book as they bounced through a convoy of trucks painted the shades of children’s toys. Phrases swam up at her. ‘Once known as the Land of Death’. ‘Funeral pyres at dusk’. ‘Nausea, cramps and exhaustion.’ The pictures of the forts and palaces all looked the same; crenellated battlements, archways, turrets and domes. She turned the page. Singh Pohl Monsoon Palace. An ochre pavilion, perfectly proportioned, overgrown, surrounded by sandstone walkways and set on a perfectly square lake, the green water so still that it mirrored the building, doubling its size. She raised the book and pointed. ‘I think I’d like to go here.’

  He looked over his shoulder and studied the directions impassively. ‘Forty-five kilometres, maybe more. It is not on our route.’

  She read from the guidebook. Vishnu, the most human of all gods, still haunts the forests around the Singh Pohl Palace. A flute, a peacock feather and the colour blue announce his presence. An earlier temple to the god Parjanya exists upon this site.

  ‘Yeah, that’s where I want to go.’ A decision had been made. She could sleep for a while. Ted never came with her on vacations. He said he wanted to travel, but the truth was that he hated leaving the US, and complained so much when he did that he destroyed any pleasure in the trip. Ted was never around these days.

  Her mouth was dry. Shere had provided iced water and hand-towels for her, but she wanted something else. She had bought a bag of pedas and fruit candies studded with cardamom seeds in the market. They had the kind of sharply spiced flavours you would never find at home.

  They passed a partially constructed motorway on which just two men were working, slowly raking gravel in a manner that spread it across each other’s paths, each undoing the other’s work. How does anything run at all? she wondered. Over a billion people here, half of them shopkeepers selling nothing.

  Without the air conditioning she began to sweat. Her watch was gripping her wrist in a hot band, so she undid the clasp and dropped it in the bag at her feet. Pressing her head back into the rest, she studied the half-finished buildings of a small town slide by. Did no-one ever think to finish one house before starting another, or to plan the roads and pavements in such a way that prevented people from considering them interchangeable?

  She liked the markets, the running and fetching, the tumble and bustle and sheer connectedness of everything. No-one seemed to be entirely alone, no matter how poor they were. Everyone had some kind of support system. At home she and Ted barricaded themselves in their gated community unlocked with an electronic key fob, and only saw the neighbours departing or arriving at holiday seasons. If I needed help and couldn’t get to the phone, I’d have to lie there until Ted got home, she thought, even assuming he was in town.

  The car screeched to a stop. In the road ahead, two half-starved dogs were fighting. One had buried its teeth in the other’s left haunch. Loops of blood and spittle flecked the sidewalk as they rolled over each other. She opened the window an inch and the oppressive heat leaked in. Shere could not understand why his passenger was refusing the comfort of refrigerated air. This place disgusts and frightens me, she thought, and yet I am drawn in. It makes me dream again.

  She was touring with three large pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage. The driver did not seem to think this unusual. He was probably used to the strange habits of Westerners, who toured as though they were moving house. Shere knew a place where they could stop for something to eat. A wall of oven-heat touched her as she stepped stiffly from the car. Ahead was a low white block in a bare, dusty yard. The straight road passed it, but there was nothing to see in either direction.

  An ancient fiddle player witnessed her arrival, stood up and began to play a painful dirge until she had passed. The restaurant looked shut, but Shere waved her ahead.

  ‘You don’t want to come eat with me?’ she asked.

  ‘I have my own lunch.’ Shere smiled and wobbled his head in apology. As she approached the restaurant doors she saw the lights flicker on in the dark interior. Waiters were scurrying to don their white coats. She ate butter chicken and Pashwari naan alone beside a window with cracked panes of plastic that had been stuffed with toilet paper to keep out the dust. The food was sensational, the bathroom after, horrific. She sat in the car with a gurgling stomach as the roads grew dustier, browner, emptier. On the horizon, a line of wooded hills appeared. Finally, the road curved and climbed. It grew hotter and closer, until she felt as if she was suffocating.

  ‘The rains are coming,’ he said, reading her thoughts, ‘maybe tonight.’

  ‘How much further?’ she asked, but received no reply. I shouldn’t have picked this place, she admonished herself, too far away, and even the driver doesn’t seem to be sure of its whereabouts.

  They reached a string of small villages where everything glistened with marble
dust. Outside every house and shop stood large carved statues of Hindu gods. Men sat cross-legged on their forecourts, chipping away at great white blocks from which the gods were slowly breaking free. She could differentiate some now; Ganesha, Hanuman, Brahma, Shakti and Shiva, but the rest still looked the same. A guide had told her that there were more than 330,000 to choose from. Who on earth bought these huge statues? They stood in rows like sentries on guard duty, ignored by children who probably found them as familiar as relatives.

  A low brick wall—half finished, of course—ran around the edge of the town. She caught a glimpse of a sandstone building between the trees. ‘I think the palace is over there,’ said Shere. ‘My friend tells me the World Heritage people, they came to look, and were going to make it a site of special significance. Good for tourism. But they decided not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Politics. I don’t know.’

  ‘Any tourists here now?’

  ‘No, none. Not since the bombings. This is a ghost palace. Nobody comes here at night. Only the spirits live here now. You will want to walk in the palace?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘There is no guide for you.’

  Good, she thought, I’ve had enough of standing in the heat listening to earnest men reeling off building statistics. ‘Do you have any more cold water I can take with me?’

  ‘We can stop.’ He pulled up beside a small shop and purchased a bottle of water for her. While she waited in the car, a handful of children ran to the window and started tapping on the glass with distracted insistence. When she’d first arrived in the country, she had given all her small change to these hollow-eyed creatures, but the driver had stopped her, explaining that they were forced to pay their earnings back to gang-runners in the slums. After a few days she realised that her generosity could change nothing and would do nobody good in the long run.

  Shere returned and they drove towards the palace. He swung the car off the main highway onto a back road, between tall dusty trees whose branches bent into arches from the weight of their own high leaves. A flock of green parrots blasted screeching into the air above them. Then there was only heat and silence.

  She looked for a sign or a ticket booth, but there was nothing to mark the entrance to the palace. A single kitchen chair stood by a gap in the wall, where a guard usually sat. Drawn by the sound of the car, a few tiny children appeared, scampering towards her as they drew to a stop. Shere turned off the engine, then took a call on his mobile.

  One small boy remained against the wall, holding back from the group. He watched Marion with the kind of sad resignation one usually only saw in disappointed old men. When the boy realised that he had gained her attention, he pushed away from the wall and bunched his fingertips, gesturing to his mouth. Ignoring the others, she beckoned him over.

  Her belongings were grouped around her on the back seat. She found the brown paper bag of candies and waited. His shyness surprised her. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of a sign. She realised she was frowning, and smiled instead.

  He came a little nearer, then stopped. She held the sweets up against the window, remaining motionless. The other children saw that she was not looking at them, and gradually dispersed. I choose you, she thought, because you are trying hard not to look as if you care.

  Shere finished his phone call and turned to see what was happening.

  The boy remained with his hands by his sides, studying her, as if trying to see a friendly spirit within. He cautiously approached, but two little girls remained at the window with their hands outstretched, blocking his way.

  Marion handed them each a silver-wrapped sweet, then passed the bag through the window to the boy. Clutching it to his chest, his serious eyes briefly locked with hers, and he ran away. She watched him go with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. What did you expect, that he would show gratitude?

  ‘You are ready to visit?’

  ‘I’m ready,’ she sighed, feeling suddenly empty. ‘You don’t have to come with me, I can find it.’

  ‘I can come with you.’ He didn’t sound keen.

  ‘It’s fine, I have this. It’s all I need.’ She held up the guide and tapped the cover, then slipped out of the car.

  ‘I’ll be here.’ Shere got out, opened her door, then took the opportunity to light a cigarette.

  ‘I know you will. I won’t be long.’

  Slipping the guide into her back pocket, she followed the overgrown path into the complex. Ahead, a family of white-haired monkeys with triangular black faces scattered at her approach. Everyone’s a part of something here, she thought, even the monkeys. I’d like to be part of something. Would Ted even notice if I didn’t come back? The incline to the palace was low but steady, and the heat was dense, tangible. Sweat formed on her face, in the small of her back. Something must break soon, she thought, this is unbearable.

  The first building she reached was a pillared pavilion containing a bull shrine. The carved black bull was life-sized and kneeling, garlanded with artificial jasmine flowers, so perhaps the villagers were still worshipping here. Beyond this, though, came disappointment. The lake had dried out, and appeared as a shallow rubble-strewn cavity in the ground, littered with plastic bottles. Due to global warming, she had read, the shrinking monsoon season means that lakes and rivers all over India are drying up, many to vanish forever.

  The shattered remains of a pair of marble lions guarded the arched entrance to a platformed complex, and a tall Mughal swing had been placed by rooms that she knew would once have housed a harem. But the swing itself had fallen into disrepair, and the semi-precious gems that should have been inset in the arch had long ago been prised out by robbers. The main pavilion was complete, but in a sorry state. Instead of the smooth amber and ochre walls in the photographs, she found herself looking at colours that had faded and died to streaked greys and dirty browns. The inset mirrors and plaster carvings of the interior walls were ruined, and the ornate jaali screens were nowhere to be seen. Nothing was as it appeared in the guidebook. Next time buy a recent edition, she reminded herself. Like there’ll be a next time. Ted wouldn’t allow it again.

  Set at right-angles to the pavilion was a structure raised on four great fluted plinths, each beset by a pair of squat lotus urns, but the building did not look safe enough to enter. In the quadrangle formed by the buildings, bathing tanks and a complex network of stone gullies must once have been filled with water, but were now dried out and dead. She cupped her hands to shield out the sunlight, and looked to the roof, which was lined with terracotta pitchers. Somewhere in the woods beyond, a bird thrashed and screamed.

  There were other buildings to explore, a small mosque with dried-out marigold garlands on its steps, a partially ruined tomb, but she did not have the energy to investigate them all. Outside the royal apartments, peacocks pecked at the sunbleached ground. Clearly the villagers had been here, for the birds’ tail-feathers had been plucked, presumably to sell at the market.

  In the shadows of the tomb’s canopy she saw a small seated figure, and immediately recognized the boy. He’s different to the others, she thought, quiet and more thoughtful. Through the trees she could make out the far edge of the village. After studying the scene for a few more moments, she turned to make her way back. If I had seen this ten days ago I’d have been more impressed, but I’ve walked through too many of them now. They’re all the same. They lack life.

  She tore open a moist tissue and wiped her forehead. She found Shere leaning beside the car, smoking. Surprised by her fast return, he went to grind out the cigarette. ‘It’s okay,’ she told him, ‘take your time.’

  She opened the passenger door and slid onto the back seat. The sun was still high. They had stopped early for lunch. Surely it could only be about two o’clock. She fished on the floor for the sweet bag containing her watch, then remembered that she had given the bag to the boy.

  How could she have been so stupid? What had she been thinking? The watch had b
een a gift from Ted, solemnly presented in order to make amends for his behaviour. The damned thing was encrusted with diamonds and worth around fourteen thousand dollars, even now. She had never really liked it, but that was less to do with its appearance and more because it represented an expensive apology. Over the years she had grown so blasé about wearing it that she had become careless.

  The boy had been sitting in one of the temples in the palace. She had to go back and find him.

  Shere caught her alarm. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘My watch. The boy.’ It was not an explanation, but all that she could manage right now. The monkeys scattered as she strode back up the path thinking, Insurance, sales receipt, Ted, how will he ever be persuaded to give it back—

  As she approached the palace’s large central pavilion, she became aware of the change in light all around her. The gardens had lost the little colour they possessed, darkening to olive, the walls deepening to camelskin.

  She crossed a cracked courtyard and climbed the palace platforms, peering through the stone latticework in search of the child. She had her purse; she would offer him rupees and have him return the watch. After all, what would he want with such a thing?

  She became aware of a presence behind her, a tall figure bisected by shadows. She turned, startled, and found herself facing a huge stone statue of a god wearing a strange cloud-crown. He was holding an eight-petalled plant in each hand. On the floor was a wooden plaque written in English. It read:

  ‘PARJANYA is the Old God of the Heavens. He rules lightning, thunder and rain. He controls the procreation of plants and animals, but can also punish sinners. His powers are a mighty wonder to behold.’

  She studied his wind-damaged face. A faint but defiant smile played on his lips, as if he wished to play a game, or be challenged. As if he was waiting to show his strength. She shivered. A wind had risen. Dry leaves scuttled across the terrazzo floor. In the last few minutes a wall of rolling cloud had appeared on the horizon and was sliding across the sky like a steel shutter.