Hillstation

by Robin Mukherjee

  ‘I think she knows,’ said Hendrix, smiling. ‘Well, Robby, I guess this is it.’

  ‘Is what?’ I said.

  ‘What you wanted. The open road. New life.’

  ‘But that was only a dream,’ I said, feeling suddenly nervous.

  ‘Maybe it is,’ said Hendrix, enigmatically. ‘Maybe that’s all it is.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mr Chatterjee who had managed to push through to the police car. ‘This is a view confirmed by many theologians. The phenomenal world is apprehensible only within the realm of interpretation, which is to say the mind. Therefore what we experience is, in effect, a dream. The reality itself is indefinable just as the dream figure can never know the dreamer, even though without the dreamer no dream figure could exist.’

  ‘And that’s without dope,’ said Hendrix. ‘But listen kid, maybe we’ll meet up some day. London, Berlin, wherever. Just listen out for the noise. I’m usually there, cranking it up.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ said Mrs Dak, groping forward. ‘Does Rabindra propose not to come back? His father would never allow it.’

  ‘I guess that don’t matter too much if he ain’t coming back,’ said Hendrix.

  ‘But what of us?’ said Mr Dak. ‘Who will run the clinic now that your brother has been exposed as a charlatan?’

  ‘Best get going,’ said Hendrix, tapping the side of the car.

  ‘We can start?’ said Sergeant Shrinivasan.

  ‘Hit the gas,’ said Mike. ‘No, not the siren, the gas.’

  But the Sergeant couldn’t hear anything now and neither could we. The mouths of various villagers moved soundlessly at me. They seem to be anxious, I thought, some of them clawing at the car, most of them wide-eyed. Perhaps I could have prescribed some of that fish-phobia remedy, so efficacious with Hendrix and the mango-seller, but it was too late. I craned my head to see those who could manage it chasing after us. Father had emerged from the clinic, wringing the perspiration from his wig. Mr Chatterjee was talking to Mr Dak, gesticulating elaborately to convey, I presumed, some metaphysical nicety. Mr Dak’s eyes had already glazed over.

  In just a few moments we had passed the bus-stop and the last of the houses. From there the road spun sharply down to a bend beyond which I had never seen. Martina glanced at me and said something inaudible. Then she shrugged, smiled and looked back out the window.

  It is different, I thought. As I knew it would be. The trees are different, the stones are different, even the air has a different taste. And the further we drove the more different it got. There is nothing inherently wrong with difference, of course. It’s just a bit scary if you’re not used to it.

  Some of the villages we passed through were familiar as names. Our teacher had always been strict on geography, making us recite the key places of the world every Monday morning. ‘You cannot know where you are, if you do not know where you are not,’ he used to say. ‘Pushkara. Nearby villages. Distant villages. Everywhere else,’ he’d chant, picking them out from the vast map that covered much of the back wall.

  ‘That map in the school room,’ Dev had scoffed one evening after I’d confided my plan to walk to America, ‘is ridiculous. Have you ever looked at it? Where it says, “Copyright Calcutta Museum of Antiquities. Pre-Jurassic Cartographical Representation of the Globe”?’ Later on I’d found a more recent map and decided to walk to Australia instead.

  Although the Sergeant’s siren made conversation impractical, it at least ensured us uninterrupted passage through the numerous hamlets and villages that ribboned the mountain road. Cats, dogs and chickens would scatter in all directions, adults grabbing children to drag them to safety. The Sergeant would salute them as we passed and I thought it only polite to smile apologetically. Cindy took to waving her hand in a curious sawing motion until Martina said, ‘Cut it out, Cin.’

  Pol stirred a few times, usually when the Sergeant hit a pot-hole, or swerved to avoid a cow. Cindy would stroke his head while I checked his pulse. Once or twice he moaned pitifully. While there wasn’t much I could do for him in the back of the police car, I felt I ought to be alert, at least, to his needs. But the constant shriek of the siren and the interminable shuddering of the vehicle began to make my eyes heavy.

  ‘You should take a rest,’ said Martina. ‘I’ll wake you if anything happens.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘A doctor on duty never falls…’

  I woke with a jolt. Something was wrong but it took me a moment to work out what. We had been travelling for some distance without going up or down. In Pushkara, all roads eventually lurched or plunged one way or the other. But this did neither. I blinked my eyes to see, on either side of us, nothing. Not a hill, or a mountain, not a shack, goat or clump of trees, just desolate plains rolling on to a distant haze beyond which, I assumed, was only more nothing.

  Martina had also fallen asleep, her head resting on my shoulder. The drip was hooked up to a hand-hold over the door. Pol was quiet but alive. Sergeant Shrinivasan was nodding his head in time to the siren.

  ‘The mountains,’ I said. ‘They’ve gone.’

  ‘Not gone,’ said Cindy. ‘They’re behind us.’

  I managed to turn my head without dislodging Martina, but could see only a thin streak of grey across the level blandness of a dull horizon.

  ‘Without mountains,’ I said, ‘my soul has no limits.’

  ‘Pol talks like that,’ she said, stroking his hand.

  ‘But without limits it has no form, without form no substance, and without substance it is nothing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Therefore I am nothing.’

  She pinched my leg.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said.

  ‘There. You couldn’t say that if you weren’t something.’

  I had to admit that I was possibly over-thinking, as usual. But the sky felt wrong without peaks to poke it, the horizon naked without the skirts of a mountain to preserve its modesty. To where, I wondered, do the eagles fly? From where does the rain fall? Without snow, how can there be streams of sparkling water, ice cold in the sultry stillness of a summer’s day? With every mile of nothing my heart sank a little lower. And then we hit the town.

  Martina stirred, sat up and wiped her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all,’ I murmured.

  ‘Looks like we’re nearly there,’ she said. ‘Do we know where the hospital is?’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Sergeant Shrinivasan.

  ‘Do we know where the hospital is?’ she shouted.

  ‘Huh?’ said the Sergeant.

  As if from a swamp or some hidden schism in the folds of circumstance, the city had risen from nowhere to envelope us. Shambling bungalows jostled with gated mansions, mouldering shacks clustered round vast edifices staring back from a hundred windows. Bustling shops, markets, and go-downs slipped by in a dizzying stream; not just one sari seller, or two sari sellers glaring at each other from across the road, but shop after shop, parade after parade, each as busy as the next.

  The Sergeant was veering wildly now as cars, cows, scooters, auto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws and suicidal pedestrians threw themselves at our wheels. I had never seen so many people. I hadn’t known so many existed. Wherever I looked I saw more in a single gaze than I’d beheld in my whole life, and all of them striding, shoving, shouting. Even with the siren we hardly drew a second glance.

  ‘The city,’ I said, ‘is so busy.’

  ‘This is nothing,’ said Cindy. ‘You wait ’til we get inside.’

  ‘Then where is this, if it is not inside?’

  ‘The “burbs,” she said. ‘The further you go, the crazier it gets.’

  By the time the Sergeant pulled up under a sign saying, ‘No Parking Under Any Circumstances’, I was numb to the complexities of existence. Several times we had careened around the same roundabout, its myriad strea
ms spinning us in circles as bicycles, taxis, dogs, cows and people, seemingly reconciled to the brevity of their existence, hurtled around each other in a random choreography of shouts and waving fists.

  ‘I can park where I bloody well like,’ the Sergeant was saying to someone dressed like him but without the medals. ‘So hop it, sharpish, or I shall thwack you with my stick.’

  I clambered out after Martina to see that we’d stopped in front of a double door marked, ‘Accident and Emergency’.

  ‘As you can see from my regalia,’ continued the Sergeant, ‘I am a fully augmented Sergeant of the First Rank, while you are a lowly constable, fortunately proximate to a number of head and fracture specialists whose services you are imminently in need of unless you desist from haranguing me over these petty regulations about parking and noise.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to the constable. ‘As you can see from this leg sticking out of the window, we have an extremely sick patient here in urgent need of medical attention. Could you please go inside and find someone to help us?’

  The constable looked at the blood over my clothes and saluted, turning briskly through the doors.

  ‘These municipal police!’ spat the Sergeant. ‘They have no respect. In Pushkara my constables wouldn’t argue with me. They jump to attention when I speak. Why, sometimes they even stop breathing in my presence if only to hear me the better which has resulted, on more than one occasion in the need to administer revival tactics after collapse due to awe-induced asphyxiation.’

  ‘You don’t have any constables,’ said Cindy.

  ‘But if I had, they would,’ replied the Sergeant archly. ‘It takes more than a waxed moustache to make a policeman,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘I’ll bet he doesn’t even play a musical instrument.’

  With Cindy and Martina’s help, I carefully eased Pol from the back seat as Mike climbed out, stretching his neck, and the Sergeant leaned against the car, pulling a packet of bidis from his top pocket.

  ‘I don’t mind you having a rest,’ said Cindy to Sergeant Shrinivasan. ‘God knows, you deserve it, but would you mind turning the siren off?’

  ‘Pardon?’ said the Sergeant.

  The constable, meanwhile, had returned with a man in a white coat, two ladies in blue dresses and a porter with a trolley.

  ‘What happened?’ said the man.

  ‘He fell,’ I said. ‘And he’s lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘So what’s he had?’ said the man taking a quick look at Pol’s leg as we laid him across the trolley. ‘Are you his Doctor?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Martina. ‘He is.’

  ‘So what’s he had?’

  ‘Ah, Novocaine,’ I said. ‘And saline solution.’

  ‘And you set his leg?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought that was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said the man, smiling. ‘I’m just asking. Dr Gupta, by the way.’ He offered me his hand which I shook. ‘And you’re Doctor…’

  ‘Sharma,’ said Martina.

  ‘Nice to meet you. Okay, let’s get him in. Who’s got the drip?’

  ‘I have,’ said Martina.

  ‘And you are… ?’

  ‘Just a friend.’

  Inside, the wheels of the trolley squealed across the waxy floor like a rhythmic mouse. People in white coats or blue dresses moved confidently among nervous people clothed in any old thing, looking lost. The air hummed with murmurs, pattering feet and a thousand doors creaking open and shut.

  ‘So where’s he from?’ said Dr Gupta.

  ‘Pushkara,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s sort of that way,’ I said, gesturing, though to be honest the roundabouts had left me confused. ‘Along the main road, back to the hills.’

  ‘Oh, I know, near Bradinashwaya. I’ve got a cousin there.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Much further. Right at the top where the mountains begin.’

  ‘I didn’t think there was anything up there,’ he said. ‘Is that where you work?’

  ‘It is,’ I said.

  With an abrupt turn, the trolley clattered through a set of doors into what looked like an operating theatre. Two more ladies took the ends of the trolley and positioned it beside a bed. A silver-haired gentleman glanced round from the sink.

  ‘Transfer him please,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see saline. Let’s call for some more. And I want bloods cross-matched. Quickly does it.’

  One of the nurses prepared a syringe. The silver-haired gentleman walked over to Pol. ‘Can we get the temporary plaster off, please?’

  Two of the nurses fetched scissors and a bowl while he picked gingerly at my handywork.

  ‘Who stitched his head?’ he said.

  ‘Dr Sharma,’ said Dr Gupta, indicating me.

  ‘Nice work, Dr Sharma.’

  ‘This is Mr Shankar,’ said Dr Gupta, quietly.

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Shankar deploying, I noticed, my own rhetorical device but with presumably less need. ‘Clinical staff only. Friends and relatives outside. There’s a nice little room you can use. Nurse Sujatee will show you the way. May I ask what the patient’s name is?’

  ‘Pol Bister,’ said Cindy.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mr Shankar. ‘We’ll let you know how he gets on. Now, let’s have those bloods, please. Not you, Dr Sharma.’

  I stopped at the door.

  ‘I need a full history. And I’m sure you’d like to see how your patient shapes up. No?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, glancing at Martina who nodded to me.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Cindy. ‘Can I ask…?’

  ‘What his chances are?’ said Mr Shankar. ‘I don’t believe in beating about the bush, so I’ll be straight with you. I don’t know. At this moment I’d say his chances aren’t high. But a chance is a chance. As I said, we’ll let you know.’

  Cindy bit her lip and left.

  While Mr Shankar, Dr Gupta and the various nurses fussed over Pol, I began to tell Mr Shankar everything I could about the cause of his injuries.

  ‘We can skip the marigolds and butter,’ said Mr Shankar. ‘I just need to know how far he fell and onto what.’

  It seemed like hours later, and probably was, that I stumbled back into the teeming concourse of the corridor. Mr Shankar, remarking on my pallor, had prescribed what he called a ‘steaming mug of Doctor’s tea’, and asked Doctor Gupta to direct me to the staff canteen. When I said I’d rather see my friends, he smiled and said, ‘Visitors Room. First stairs on the left, one flight up, through the door, turn right, it’s third on the left, you can’t miss it.’ I wished I had Hendrix to help me but Mr Shankar said to follow the signs and ask if I got lost.

  I found the stairs easily enough, lifting up through the building’s many floors, each a bustling labyrinth of pain, despair and finality, its steps worn smooth by the solemn tread of heavy hearts. How many hands, I wondered, had gripped these banisters, and how much hope had tumbled down its spiralling river of stones? I stopped on the first landing. Tall windows, smeared with dust, refracted the day’s hazy sun, while pigeons on a ledge outside cooed and strutted over the grey-white landscape of their other principal activity. Beyond were more buildings, more windows. I closed my eyes, listening to the horns and engines, voices and radios that tumbled up from the streets below.

  I remembered the quiet glade, Pol sweeping a lazy hand through its cool waters, twisting the surface into swirling clouds of mud. And thus, I thought, is humanity swept by the hand of some great Pol, spinning helplessly in the eddies of his mischief, thinking all the while it is they that move.

  ‘Is everything alright, Doctor?’

  A nurse had stopped, one foot on the next step.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, thank yo
u,’ I said. ‘I was just contemplating the hand that stirs all this into motion.’

  ‘You’ve had a bad one?’ she said, indicating blood on the white coat that Mr Shankar had ordered me to be issued with. A nurse had helped me on with it while Mr Shankar glanced over and nodded.

  ‘It wasn’t easy,’ I shrugged.

  She smiled gently and moved on.

  As promised, the door to the Visitor’s Room was labelled ‘Visitor’s Room’, along with ‘No Spitting’, ‘Please Use The Toilet Facilities For Ablutionary Purposes’ and ‘No Begging At Any Time’.

  Cindy jumped to her feet when I came in. Martina looked up warily.

  ‘He will live,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Robby!’ said Cindy, hugging me. ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’

  I tried to speak but couldn’t get the requisite air. Eventually I managed to say, ‘Please, it wasn’t me but the dedicated skill of a certain Mr Shankar along with his excellent team of clinical practitioners.’

  ‘But you got him here,’ she said, renewing the clench. ‘And if you hadn’t, oh, Robbie, he’d be dead.’

  ‘What about the leg?’ asked Martina.

  ‘He might limp for a while,’ I said, attempting to re-inflate my lungs. ‘Possibly always. But it remains attached.’

  ‘He can limp all he likes,’ laughed Cindy, ‘as long as we can dance together to the edge of time. Can I see him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think that will be alright. Where’s Mike and the Sergeant?’

  ‘That’s something we have to talk about,’ said Martina, standing up.

  Cindy glanced at Martina with a quick signal of complicity. ‘I’ll catch you later,’ she said, giving me a last little squeeze.

  ‘You know where he is?’ I gasped.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Martina closing the door. ‘You and I need to have a chat.’

  I sat down. Martina paced the room a couple of times then took a breath. ‘Mike’s gone to the airport to sort out flights,’ she said. ‘He made some calls and apparently there’s one tonight.’

  My heart, possessed of a sudden gravity, sank to the floor, through the lino, and down to the next, tumbling onwards from room to room, slipping quietly past some grisly procedure, some weeping wife, and further still to the dingy basement with its groaning pipes, resting finally at the very centre of our spinning globe where all is iron and fire.