Darshan (40 page)

Manmohan glanced up at it, then tucked a wad of American dollars into his son’s palm. “Do you need anything else?” he asked, pulling his hand away as Darshan tried to return the money. “Do you have everything?”

Darshan patted his bag. “I think it is all here.”

“Will you miss me?” Navpreet asked.

“I am sure I will.”

She gave him a haughty look, like she did not believe him.

“I will miss all of you,” he said.

Jai gripped both of his arms. “Study hard, and write us as soon as possible. I will be waiting.”

“I will,” he replied, adjusting the bag on his shoulder. “I should go.”

“Darshan,” Manmohan said, then hesitated because he was not sure what else to say. “Let me know if the battery in that watch stops.”

“Of course, Bapu.”

After Darshan had disappeared into the building, so dark inside compared to the bright sun on the tarmac, Manmohan left the rest of them at the fence. “I will be in the car,” he said.

“Don’t you want to see the plane take off?” Navpreet asked.

“I have seen it before.”

Perhaps twenty minutes later, leaning on the hood of the Falcon, the rush of turbulence was loud as the plane tore into the clouds above, but still Manmohan did not look up. He waited until the echo of the engine had dissipated into the atmosphere, and then he tilted his head back toward the sky.

~   ~   ~

Carefully navigating the thick underbrush and verdant tangle of trees and vines, Manmohan pushed through the jungle, his cane dangling from the crook of his elbow. He had not been certain how far in Darshan had built his shack, but it was very near. Turning around to look at the main house through the trees, he realized that if he had been standing on the front balcony, squinting hard enough, he could have perceived at least a corner of the shack’s roof from there.

The building was a bit worn, but Manmohan marveled at the durable stilts that had allowed the shack to weather the heavy storms that had blown across the island over the years.

A ladder rested against the open doorway, and Manmohan wondered if Darshan had been here that morning before leaving. He climbed up, and when he reached the blanket-covered door, he was more than a little surprised to hear the soft voice of his friend from within.

“I thought you would come,” Junker Singh said.

“How did you know about this place?” Manmohan asked.

“I have always known about this place,” the mechanic said, a little surly. “I helped him build it.”

Manmohan nodded slowly, feeling shame now. “I knew someone had to. He was too little to do it on his own.”

“But he knew what he was doing.”

Rubbing his aching finger joints, Manmohan peered inside the shack. There was a blanket crumpled in the corner on top of a sleeping cot. Junker Singh was sitting at a table on the only chair. There was a tin tumbler next to his arm, condensation on the outside indicating it was half full of water. A collection of treasures lined a shelf: magazine clippings of cars and pictures of foreign countries, notebooks and candies, a slingshot, a compass, and one fresh coconut. An oil lantern was hanging from a nail above the table.

“Are you coming in?” Junker Singh asked. “Or will you stand there in the doorway?”

“It is much bigger than it looks from outside,” Manmohan said, stepping all the way in, reaching up to touch the ceiling with his fingertips before taking a seat on the cot.

Junker Singh passed the tumbler of water to his friend. “I brought it up myself.”

Manmohan took it, wiping the condensation off on his shirtsleeve. He was not thirsty.

“Why didn’t you ever come see it before?” the mechanic asked.

“I thought it was private.”

“Darshan would have wanted you to come, but he never would have asked.”

“I do not understand why not.”

Junker Singh laughed, slapping his palm against the table. “You never made any sense.”

“Did he ask
you
to come here?”

“He did.”

“That is entirely different.”

The mechanic smiled broadly. “It is.”

Manmohan stared down into the tumbler, at the clear liquid within. He tipped it slightly. The water was so pure and clean against the silver of the tin. “I never knew you both were out here. You never said a word.”

“There were no secrets. It was your choice. He wanted to talk to you. It is a bit regrettable because that boy was always thinking of you.”

“I was too worried. The children always worried me.”

Junker Singh rose from the chair. Taking one last look around, he stepped toward the door and pushed aside the blanket.

“Where are you going?” Manmohan asked.

“I said my goodbyes. But you should stay.” Junker Singh glanced at the ladder. “I tried to convince him to put stairs in, but he said this would help me exercise.” He held his breath like he was about to duck under water, and then the curtain fell closed and Manmohan could hear his friend grunting slowly down the ladder.

When the mechanic was gone, Manmohan placed the tumbler on the floor and pulled his legs up, stretching out on the cot. He covered himself with the blanket to wait for something important to happen. He thought maybe he was waiting for acceptance, like the goodbye Junker Singh had achieved. Or perhaps it was something else, like peace.

He lay there, and then he lay there longer, but nothing came to him.

Impatient, he sat up, touching the empty place on his wrist and swinging his feet back onto the floor.

PART III

Darshan

Bay Area, California

Ford Falcon Futura

1969

Family Tree

Darshan was cold. Outside Kaiser Hospital, the wind tunneled down Geary Street, carrying with it the dampness of thick fog that coated the city of San Francisco and penetrated his bones. It pimpled his arms beneath the double-breasted pea coat he had bought the year before. It brushed briskly against his neck and swept up his tapered corduroy pant cuffs, snapping at his ankles as he strode down Geary, made a right onto St. Josephs, and headed toward Terra Vista Avenue. He flipped up his coat collar and crammed his fists into his pockets. His father’s leather watchband he had adjusted to better fit him was tighter against his bony wrist in the chill. Forty-eight degrees. But he enjoyed this weather, the fact of its differentness. It felt like freedom.

Approaching Terra Vista, he leaned forward against the slope of the hill, his book bag seemingly heavier as he ascended. The slanted stoops of the row of Victorian homes in his periphery to the left and parked cars to the right went unnoticed as he trudged against the wind and gravity toward the warm apartment that awaited him. His thoughts were consumed by the comfort of bed: those soft flannel sheets, oblivion the moment his head touched the feather-filled pillow. Even the mattress, springy as it was, sounded appealing now, because although the work was satisfying, night shifts in pathology were exhausting, requiring a concentrated focus that left him drained by the end.

He did not have any specific aspirations toward becoming a pathologist, and was entirely unqualified when he went in for the interview two years before. It was still extraordinary to him that he had gotten the job, although the head pathologist, Dr. Levi, later told him that a good judge of character could always recognize a capable man the instant he walked through the door.

“Referred by Dr. Rosenthal, I see,” Dr. Levi had murmured when Darshan first introduced himself. Then, his voice suddenly crisp, he said more loudly, eyes magnified behind thick glasses, “I like him…Rosenthal…a brilliant teacher. Very regrettable when he retired from Kaiser. In any case, to the point. My man is leaving on short notice. I need someone right away to fill his spot. When can you start?”

His mouth very dry, Darshan replied, “Now, if you need.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Considering this, after a moment Dr. Levi said, “That’s good. Very good. So you say you drove ambulances?”

“Last year.”

“So you’ve got some familiarity with anatomy?”

“I am not exactly sure what you mean,” Darshan replied, suddenly uncomfortable.

“You had to help sometimes, yes?” the doctor asked, the large orbs of his eyes widening expectantly. “With the patients in the ambulance?”

“Not much, but I took a CPR class.”

“So you do then? Have some familiarity with anatomy?”

Darshan slowly bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Do you know anything about pathology?”

Sweat had begun to bead on Darshan’s lip. “Yes,” he lied with feigned confidence, feeling as though he was being too timid. Pathology, pathology, he thought desperately, rapidly flipping through his brain in search of some memory in which he might have heard of it before. Perhaps in class. Maybe his father’s medical journals. Or did he know it by a different name? He wiped his palms on the front of his pants, dreading being turned away to face a lifetime of washing dishes and serving food in restaurants, fated never to apply his knowledge and love of science.

“You have good hands,” Dr. Levi said approvingly.

Darshan looked down at them.

“Surgeon’s hands,” the doctor told him. “And a very good temperament.” He removed his glasses to polish them on his white coat. “Well, all right then. The job is yours.” His eyes were strangely beady when naked. They blinked cheerfully.

“Mine?”

“I like Dr. Rosenthal,” Dr. Levi said, sliding his glasses back on, the innocent pleasure on his middle-aged face once again intensified behind the lenses. “And as far as I can tell, you know enough about bodies to satisfy me.”

“Bodies?”

“Anatomy.”

“Dr. Levi, I…I have classes.”

“Yes, yes, Rosenthal mentioned part-time. I understand. Now, let’s begin.”

When, on that very day, Dr. Levi had wheeled out a dead body on a steel table and explained that his new employee would need to eviscerate the organs, then cut them open to examine them, Darshan had nodded somberly. He concentrated every effort on appearing professional, like he had known all along that pathology was the slicing open of a dead body and the removing of its organs. He was given only two days of training—which included how to replace the organs after they had been examined; how to suture the body, wrap it in plastic, and roll it into the cold box; as well as how to section the tissue samples doctors had taken from live patient organs so the lab could check for cancer or inflammation. After those two days, Dr. Levi had abandoned him in the morgue. Though it should have terrified Darshan to be alone, holding the scalpel over the bluish, gray chest of his very first dead body, he had been invigorated. That first one had made clear his capabilities, the extent of his talent for defeating the unknown, and doing it well.

And the unknowns in those days had been numerous. From the moment he landed at San Francisco International Airport, nothing about the city resembled his fantasy of it while flying thousands of miles across the Pacific to America’s West Coast. Though aware it had modernized since 1912, he had still imagined San Francisco to be the place he read about in one of his father’s history books, as Ranjit Singh Toor might have experienced it: his great uncle striding through the hilly dirt roads past trolley cars and horses toward 5 Wood Street, the Ghadarite headquarters. Two generations back and just a short bus ride from Kaiser Hospital, Ranjit had been one of the Punjabis voicing his intention to eradicate global racism against their people.

Manmohan had told Darshan that the world was more tolerant now, that the newer generations would benefit from Ranjit’s efforts, that there was no more fear of being beaten in the streets, of being hounded and abused. And yet, the year Darshan washed dishes in the humid and steamy kitchens of popular restaurants, the clank and chink of silverware against china mingling with the happy chatter of light-skinned customers in the dining room, proved that there was still progress to be made. Sikhs were nominally numbered in San Francisco proper, and unlike Hindus, their striking appearance—long, full beards and turbans—was unsuitable for a society that favored clean-cut men.

Darshan had been so discomfited in the beginning, so hyper-conscious of his dissimilarity. After resigning from his ambulance-driving job—in which he was rarely seen and never heard—he had not been able to find proper work, and he knew it was because he was different. He endured a year of fruitless interviews and menial jobs before finally cutting his hair and trimming his beard. Perhaps he should have been more troubled by the sight of his long tresses on the barber’s floor, more distressed by the betrayal to his culture, but when he looked in the mirror and saw before him a new person—hair long enough to resemble the cool hippies he saw loitering around campus, but short enough to be acceptable—he could not help but admire his own courage, the fortitude it took to make this concession, which was simply one of the many he had made in order to adapt here, just as with his plans for UC Berkeley.

Though he had been accepted and was due to report to the enrollment offices of the university in 1966, no one had warned him of the cost, and he did not have the money to attend. The tuition rates at San Francisco State were more reasonable, and disillusioned, he signed up for classes at what he initially deemed a far more inferior college. His disappointment, however, was quickly curbed by a number of challenging courses and the equally exhilarating events that were taking place on the State campus. He watched from the sidelines as students doggedly protested the Vietnam War. Police with batons and helmets patrolled the campus, their job to prevent students from scaling trucks where speakers had been set up for pro-War speeches. Darshan had seen it once. Samuel Hayakawa booed away, his voice drowned by the crash of a massive speaker hitting gravel, several small pebbles shooting out like shrapnel, stinging one man in the shin, and all the voices raised in outrage. Though remaining strictly on the fringe—not willing to risk deportation with only a student visa—the anti-Vietnam movement had roused Darshan’s idealism, had made him feel as though he was in the middle of something significant, the world changing drastically at his feet.