by Frank Huyler
If Raju, or Singh, or the soldiers noticed our departure, they gave no sign. They ignored us completely, and watched the ridges. Apart from the intermittent rumble of the guns, the valley was as quiet as ever, the calm of the early morning just beginning to give way to the first gusts of wind as the sun warmed the dark swathes of air against the cliffs.
We walked as fast as we could down the track toward the river, and yet it seemed as if hours passed before the mud homes of the village came into view, with the apricot trees swaying behind their walls, and the sunlight falling upon all of it. The fields of barley looked vibrant and green and rippling on the terraces, and the river began to roar at our side, sending its cold breath into the air. For the first time there was no one at work in the fields, and the village was shut up tight.
We walked in order—Rai, then Elise and me, then Ali and his nephew, and finally the soldier. For the first few minutes, Ali and his nephew managed well enough, though the trail was easy along the river. No doubt as the hours passed their struggle would begin and something would have to be done. But just then, in the cold morning, with the miles stretched out before us, I simply walked behind Elise, watching her little white gusts of breath growing fainter as the air warmed, my legs shaking beneath me on the rocky hillside, which soon gave way to the first of the low trees. By degrees the walls receded, as we descended, each step taking us farther out of range.
Finally we were alongside the village, on the path beside the river, and Elise stopped.
“We must do something for her,” she said, her voice rising. “We cannot just leave.”
“We don’t have time for this now,” I said.
“We promised her,” Elise said
“I gave her mother some money,” I replied. “And I promised her more. And I said I would get her a prosthetic leg.”
She looked at me, brushing a few angry tears from her eyes.
“But how will you do this?” she asked. “How will you get her a leg, and give her more money?”
Rai continued on down the trail, but the others stopped with us. “I will arrange it with him,” I said, nodding my head at Rai.
“But how will you arrange it with him?” she demanded. “How do you know he will come back?”
“Because I’ll pay him. And I’ll make him send a picture of her to prove he’s done it.”
“He will not want to. It will be difficult for him.”
“You’re right,” I said. “So I’ll just have to pay him enough. He can hire someone else to help him if he needs to.”
“You must promise me,” she said, turning toward me, reaching out and gripping my arm. “You must promise me that you will do this. I will help also. I will send her money when I get home.”
“I promise,” I replied. “But we have to go now. We have to get out of here.”
She stood there for a while longer, staring at the village, but she had no choice, and she must have known it. The seconds passed, my unease increased, and Rai walked on. Finally, the soldier cleared his throat behind us, and, as I knew she would, she simply turned her head away and continued.
Soon we were beside the fields, stepping over the rough irrigation channels on the riverbank. We didn’t speak for a long time, we just walked as quickly as we could, and after only a few minutes we’d passed the last of them. The slopes on either side went dry once more, and only the narrow strip of bushes and the rare gnarled tree reminded us that it was possible for things to grow there at all. The vegetation came to a sharp end a few feet up the hillside. It was a distinct line, from sufficient to insufficient, from presence to absence. But the strip of vegetation was a whole world unto itself, with tiny white, red, and orange flowers tucked here and there, and little round cacti, and a knee-high silvery kind of bush. High above us, the sun-filled granite walls, shining here and there with patches of water, and above it all, again, the blue and glacial depths of the sky. We warmed up as we walked, and I absently unzipped my jacket to my chest, and adjusted my pack on my shoulders.
The valley began to curve away behind us. At first I didn’t notice it, but when my boot lace came undone, and I stopped to tie it, I glanced back along the river and realized that I could no longer see the village. Already it was hidden by the side of the valley, and now the only human sign was the path at our feet. Only then, finally, did I allow myself to feel the beginnings of relief. But I could not free myself from the image of those men lying dead on the wall—I saw them again and again, those scrambling figures, the puffs of smoke on the rock. It overwhelmed everything else—Homa, the barrage, the endless waiting, the righteous anger I had felt—all of it was washed away. My ears still rang from the shots. Only the effort of walking calmed me, and allowed me to think at all.
On we went, hour after hour, with only the sound of our own breath and footsteps, moving as quickly as we could. The river grew larger beside us. At times it boiled and roared, and at other times, when the angle lessened, it spread out and flattened and slid by nearly in silence.
Finally, at a bend in the river, when the sun was directly overhead and it was as warm as it was going to get, Rai stopped us to rest and drink. A handful of boulders had rolled down from the wall nearly to the water’s edge, and we stopped there. It might have happened a thousand years ago, or it might have happened last month. It was impossible to tell.
We were miles below the camp by then. Surely we were far enough away, I told myself, surely we were safe now. The sense of threat was everywhere nonetheless, but for the first time that day I began to feel as though it was something I could master. The wind gusted against us from time to time, the river flowed on beside us. The water was an achingly cold gray, full of silt, but if left to stand in a pot it would clear, and could be decanted from the surface with hardly any grit. Rai pulled a cooking pot from the soldier’s pack, then crouched at the water’s edge and filled it. He carried it back and placed it carefully on the ground, then sat down a few feet from me, lit a cigarette, and smoked in silence.
Ali and his nephew had fallen a few dozen meters behind. For the first few hours of the morning they’d stayed with us, but as I sat on the boulder with my pack beside me, sipping cold, iodine-tinted water from the bottle, feeling the circle of sweat cool between my shoulders where my pack had rested, I could see that both were laboring. They shuffled together, heads down, eyes fixed on the path. Ali, in particular, without the resilience of youth, looked pale beneath the load, his forehead beaded with sweat, his eyes wide and strained. A vessel in his neck flashed along with his heart, and when he took off his pack he let it fall heavily to the ground, which drew a sharp word from Rai, who sat watching. His nephew collapsed beside him.
Ali nodded, vaguely, then crouched on his haunches and leaned against the pack a few feet away. He let out a breath, then wiped his nose crudely on the back of his hand. He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
Rai said something to him, pointing to the pot of cold water. Rai was steadier, more like himself. He repelled me then, and I did not know what to say to him. All I could think about was what he had forced himself to become.
“It’s too heavy for him,” I said, finally.
Rai scuffed at the ground with his boot. He didn’t want to look at me; for the first time he wouldn’t meet my eye. Ali and his nephew took turns gulping from the pot. Rai let them finish. A few minutes passed, in silence. Lunch for Elise and me was dry crackers, a few packets of cheese, and a tin of unappetizing processed meat. I could hardly eat. We drank more water, but Ali and his nephew drank most of all. They got up to lower the pot again and again into the river. Their throats worked, and water ran down Ali’s beard onto his chest.
Finally Rai stood, wiping his hands on his thighs, and advanced toward Ali. He spoke.
Ali got to his feet, and did as he was told—he opened the duffel and began spreading the contents out on the ground. Rai spoke again, and the boy followed suit. The soldier, for his part, simply watched, crouched on his heels.
&n
bsp; It was mostly food. Our clothing also, and our tents and sleeping bags, but the bulk of the weight was cans of condensed milk and meat, the bags of rice—all that had sustained us for the past weeks.
“This is why I should not have brought them,” Rai muttered, and though he spoke in English it seemed as if he was talking as much to himself as to me. “They are too weak.”
He spoke to Ali again. To my surprise, Ali replied, protesting. Rai answered, his tone harder, but again Ali answered back loudly, gesturing. I had never seen him so animated. An expression of surprise passed across Rai’s face. Ali, meanwhile, pointed to his nephew and talked some more, and then began, unasked, to put the tins of food back in his duffel.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He says that he can carry it, and his nephew also,” Rai managed. “He says that they will be stronger.”
“We can carry some of it,” I said to Rai. “And there’s too much there anyway. We can just leave it here.”
“We need it,” Rai said.
I hesitated.
“Did you tell him that he would have to pay for what was left behind? That you would deduct it from his wages?”
Rai did not answer.
“I can pay for the food if it comes to that. But Elise and I can carry some of it.”
As he stood there, his mirrored glasses reflecting the blue sky and the ridges above us, I felt his anger, even though he said nothing.
“Why are you punishing them?” I said. “What have they done?”
“This is not your place,” he said finally, restraining himself with visible effort. “But if you want to carry it, then carry it.”
Perhaps, in the end, we took thirty pounds each, but it was enough for Ali and his nephew to stand far more easily, with palpable relief. Only the soldier’s load remained unchanged. When finally we were ready, and standing, Rai threw his own pack effortlessly across his shoulders, and stalked off down the trail.
When Rai’s back was turned, Ali approached me, quickly, bobbing his head, half bowing, and then, to my dismay, he grabbed my hand and tried to kiss it. I waved him off. The soldier watched impassively.
“Thank you,” Elise said, looking down the trail at Rai.
I did not answer, and we continued in silence. My pack had weight now, but it was not unpleasant. There is something satisfying about a modest load, in its illusion of strength and possibility. And after a while, when we’d settled once more into the rhythm of walking again, the scene between Rai and me receded, as if it had never happened at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Late that afternoon, shortly before the sun fell behind the western ridges and cast the valley in shadow, Rai finally stopped us for the night. He’d chosen well—a bend in the river, along a sandy bank flat enough for the tents, where the current was slow and easy. I was tired, aching, and it was an effort to set up my tent. Rai looked at the low bank carefully—it was only a few inches above the water—and then glanced up at the sky.
“Probably is okay,” he said, “for one night. But the river can rise up sometimes.”
“There’s been no rain,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied. “But sometimes the snow melts quickly in the mountains. I have seen it before.”
“I don’t care,” I said. In fact there was little choice, since the walls rose steeply again a few feet away.
“I think it is okay,” he said, then set Ali and the boy to work collecting water and lighting the stove.
The band of sun rose up the high walls to the east and disappeared. Once again, the transition was abrupt, from sunlight to the pool of shadows, and the temperature plummeted nearly as quickly. I sat there on the bank for a while, in front of my tent, with my rolled-up sleeping bag as a pillow, trying to get warm, watching the river and sipping the cup of tea that Ali’s nephew had brought me. Elise had retreated to her tent as well, Ali and the soldier and the boy sat crouched beside the stove, heating more water, and Rai, for his part, paced uneasily at the water’s edge, his cigarette blooming and fading like a firefly. The barrage was gone. Perhaps it had stopped, or perhaps it simply could not be heard that deep in the valley.
After a while, the ridges to the east lost definition—only their sharp, angular tips could be seen, printed against the sky, which glowed, and began to reveal, one by one, the brightest of the stars. And then too, the river began to shine, diaphanous, and the narrow strand of rapids below us leapt out of the background like white cloth. I sipped my tea, cool in my jacket, listening to the rocks knocking along the riverbed, wondering how on earth a man like me had found himself there. How unlikely it seemed, how enormous and strange the world was, and how unprepared I felt. By then my fear had receded to a dull and distant ache, and mingled with my physical exhaustion, so I could not quite tell where one began and the other ended.
I heard a sound, and looked up. It was Rai.
“Can I talk to you, Doctor?” he asked, quietly, reeking of cigarettes, his jacket buttoned up tight to his throat.
“Of course,” I said, and moved over to make room for him.
He crouched beside me, then flicked his cigarette out into the river.
“I am having difficulties,” he said finally. “I am sorry.”
I didn’t know how to reply.
“When you are an officer like me,” he said, “you must distinguish yourself for promotion. Whenever there is a chance you must take it, or else you will have nothing. I am thinking about my daughters and my wife. Their education. Their food. Do you understand?”
“I don’t know,” I said finally.
He ran his fingers through his hair.
“I am paid very little,” he said. “Every month we do not have enough, or only enough.”
He picked up a handful of stones, and began tossing them, one by one, into the river.
“You didn’t only do it for your family. You did it for yourself as well.”
He kept throwing the pebbles.
“Yes,” he said, tightly. “You are right. What you say is true.” He shook his head.
“But there was no hope for them, Doctor,” he continued. “I hope you understand this. They would not have escaped.”
“If you had missed, how could anyone have stopped them?”
“Colonel Raju was ordering Singh to bring out the machine guns from the tents. That is what he was shouting when the corporal missed. Singh was reaching for the radio. It would only have taken a short time.”
“Why didn’t they then?”
“Because you cannot hide a machine gun. Without optics you must use tracer rounds at that distance. And so there is a risk for return fire, if there are others. But a single rifle, that is very difficult to see. They could not tell where the shots were coming from.”
He threw more stones in the river.
“You could have captured them,” I said.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But this would be difficult. They were across the river. We could not have reached them quickly. And they were running.”
We were quiet for a while.
“You could have captured the last man,” I said, coldly. “The one with his hands in the air.”
“Yes,” Rai said, softly. “I am also thinking this. It is troubling me a great deal. And I don’t know what to do.”
He swore, and threw the remaining pebbles in his palm hard into the water.
“You know,” he said, “when I was looking through the scope, I felt nothing. I thought only of the range, and the lead. I thought only of adjusting for the difference in elevation. That is all.”
“You still pulled the trigger.”
“Yes,” Rai said. “And so now I know.” He shook his head. “I must be stronger. They were spies in our country. They would have done the same to us if they could.”
I said nothing, and we each stared at the river for a while. My body ached, my hips and back.
“Are they just going to leave them up there?” I said, turning toward him.
> “No, we will recover the bodies. They will have no identification, but sometimes we find things. This has never happened here before. Probably they saw the camp with aerial reconnaissance, and that is why they came. But in other areas, active ones, this is common. This has happened many times.”
“And you do the same. Send men into their territory.”
“Yes,” Rai acknowledged. “Sometimes we do this also. But not here.”
“And both sides deny it, of course.”
“Yes,” he said. “These are covert operations always. That is why they were not wearing uniforms. It is so things do not get out of control.”
“What am I supposed to say, Sanjit? What do you want from me?”
“I do not know,” he said, falling silent again. We both watched the water for a while.
“Colonel Raju was talking to me afterward,” he continued. “He was telling me that it is a difficult thing, but that I have done my duty. He was telling me that he has felt the same, but that I must calm myself. But I could not calm myself.”
He shook his head.
“He is a good commander. He has also come from nothing. He understands my position. But I should have controlled myself better. I gave Singh another chance at me.”
“Captain Singh?” I said, puzzled.
“Yes. Singh is nobody without his father. But that is enough. He can do anything he wants and he will be promoted anyway. He does not need his pay. He does not need anything. But he tries to damage my position anyway because I speak good English also and we are the same rank and in the same regiment. Always he is telling me to wash his car, or to clean his garden, as if he is joking. But he is not joking.”
Rai spoke with great bitterness.
“If you had his advantages,” I asked, looking at him carefully, “would you have shot those men?”
The question hung between us, and Rai thought for a long time.
“I do not understand what it is like to be given anything,” he said, finally. “My father was nothing. A shopkeeper. He died when I was a child. But I think I would have let them use the machine guns. I did not want to kill them. I only wanted to do my duty.”