Garden of Dreams (15 page)

The first village they visited, on the edge of the Chitwan jungle, looked deserted. At least upon first impression, as the jeep turned from the gravel road down its dusty main street, traversed only by goats and chickens. The monsoons had ended two weeks ago, and though the rivers were raging, the earth had dried out again. In the flat, late-morning light the thatched, mud Tharu houses all looked nearly the same: dirt yards, a water pump in the front, a water buffalo tethered to a post, vibrant green fields of rice and maize in the back, and towers of rice straw neatly stacked for the animals. From what the Maoists had said, villages had consistently welcomed them during the war, giving them shelter, food and drink. This wasn’t much of a welcome, and not auspicious for finding his son.

Raju had been returned, and as they jolted down the road in the back seat, refused to look at him. Whether he was ashamed of his fear or harbouring anger towards the recklessness of this mission wasn’t clear. Anton tried whispering to him
– Do you know this place, where are we?
– to make a connection, but he only shrugged. That left the two Maoist cadres for company, Khem and Niraj, a sullen pair in their early twenties. Khem, the driver, small and sinewy as a whippet, talked nearly incessantly in Nepali, occasionally hawking spit over the side of the jeep. Niraj, his mate, was much taller, though also thin, absorbing Khem’s banter, unsmiling.

The jeep stopped in front of the mud house at the end of the main road, larger than the rest. Anton guessed it belonged to the village headman, a person of status. No one in sight. Yet there was a sign of human presence near the pump: tin plates and cups had been scattered there, as though the washing-up had been interrupted. It wasn’t like these people, with few earthly possessions, to leave them unattended in the dust.

‘Get out!’ Khem ordered them, slinging his homemade rifle over his shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’

They followed him across the yard to the house’s low front door, a few
planks nailed together, closed. Khem banged against the door, yelling, ‘
Dhoka kholnuhos, Hamilai Tapaisanga kura garnu chha
.’ Open up, we need to talk to you. Something like that.

A faint female voice murmured something on the other side of the door. Khem repeated himself. Slowly the door opened, revealing a girl holding a snot-nosed, naked baby. She must have been still in her teens, but the dark crescents under her eyes aged her. Along with her brown sarong she wore a dirty smiley-face T-shirt, but she wasn’t happy.

‘
Aru kahan chhan?
’ Where are the others?

‘
Uniharu hijo Baagle lageko keta lai khojna gayeka chhan.
’ That needed translation; he understood ‘they have gone’ and ‘boy’ and ‘night’ but not the rest.

‘Last night tiger took a child,’ Khem said, addressing him. ‘Whole village is out looking for him.’ Then, to the girl: ‘
Uniharu kahile pharkinchhan?
’ When will they be back?

She shook her head and hoisted the baby over her shoulder, burping him. Of course she didn’t know. Things didn’t go according to clockwork in this country. Anton didn’t think it was a good idea, but suggested it anyway: ‘Should we wait?’

Khem looked around the yard as if reconnoitring. ‘No point. We wait all day, maybe, and they still don’t come. Show her your photo.’

He pulled out his wallet and removed the little mug shot of Eli from the cellophane pocket. Held it in front of the girl’s face.

‘
Tyo keto yas manisko chhora ho. Harayo. Ke tapainle dekhnu bhayo uslai?
’ Khem explained. Something about it being his son, had she seen him? The girl stared intently at the photograph, moving closer for inspection. Another shake of the head. Anton didn’t want to admit the absurdity of it all: looking for a missing boy in a missing village looking for another missing boy.

As they skirted the edge of the jungle, passing acre after acre of green fields, sometimes with children playing there, Anton wondered why the cadres said nothing about his son. Asked him nothing. He terribly wanted them to ask him, anything really. He wanted to talk about him, what a gifted musician he was, what a young man he was becoming. But they said nothing. He stared at the back of Khem’s head, neatly shaven and wearing the Maoist cap, and realised that they would never ask him anything, they were Nepalis. Not ones to pry – though still, it was easy to confuse reserve with disinterest.

Perhaps it was better if they asked him nothing. There was so much he didn’t know about his son, he might not find the answers.

What did he know about him? He tried conjuring him from the past, from the intermittent times they had spent together over the last eight years, a few weeks a year. Like photos held in a memory card they flashed into his mind: Eli’s birth, and all those sleepless nights; first walks on Long Beach, holding his chubby little hand and watching their shadows; a baseball game where he tripped running the bases and his helmet broke his nose; Eli tearing into piles of presents under a Christmas tree; a school play some years ago. Most of the scenes had been deleted, as though with a few clicks their entire life together had been eradicated. Dumped in the ‘Trash’. In this case, irretrievable.

Soon they were on the outskirts of another village, much the same as the last. Turning down the main street, they passed a faded sign with a Maoist soldier raising his fist, clamped on a rifle. A recruitment poster? Before long children were running towards the jeep, waving, yelling for sweets. More came from the dirt yards as they passed the houses, climbing over or under fences, watched by their elders sitting in the shade against the mud walls. When it stopped at the largest house again, the jeep was surrounded by children, some as young as three, palms open and dark eyes expectant. Khem reached into the jeep’s side pocket and flung two handfuls of suckers into the air. Bedlam.

While the children were distracted, they walked up to the entrance to the headman’s house. Word must have preceded them; he was already standing at the doorway, signing ‘namaste’, bowing his head deferentially. A small, nut-brown man with a shock of white hair.

‘
Swagat chha, swagat chha, dherai dherai swagat chha. Tapain ke kati kaamle hamro gaunma aunu bhayo?
’ Welcoming them, ‘sirs’, extravagantly. Asking their purpose.

‘Show him,’ Khem said, again commanding with a swipe of his arm. ‘Show him your photo.’

Anton dug in his pocket, produced the photo and held it steadily a few inches from the headman’s eyes.

‘
Kehi Chiya lyaunuhos!
’ The headman turned away and shouted the order into the dark interior. More interested in tea than the photograph.

‘
Yo ketlani dekhnu bhayeko chha, ki chhaina?
’ Have you seen this boy, or not? Khem was growing impatient with the old man.

‘
Kripaya basnuhos.
’ The headman gestured to small woven stools just delivered by one of his women, in a pale yellow cotton sari, flitting off again like a butterfly.

Khem took the stool nearest the headman. ‘
Tapaile yo ketalai dekhnu bhayo? Samjhane kosis garnuhos ta.
’ Have you seen this boy? Try to remember. ‘Give him the photo.’

He handed it over reluctantly, sensing the headman’s indifference. The old man squinted as he pulled it closer to his face, looking solemn but then erupting into a disconcerting grin. ‘
Yo ketalai ma chindachhu! Dherai mahina aghi u kehi sathiharusanga yo bato bhayera gayeko thiyo. Tinihara Bharatko simanatira jandaithiye.
’ I know this boy … Passed this way several months ago with his friends. Something about being headed for India. The headman was still smiling, satisfied with himself. How stupid did he think they were?

Khem looked at him conspiratorially. This man was lying to please them, particularly the Maoists.

The butterfly woman, her veil partially shielding her face, brought the chai in steaming little glasses and made the rounds to serve them. Anton should say nothing, he knew, so the headman would save face. He waited for Khem to speak for him.

‘
Tyahi keta hoina, asambhav. Yo keta usko bubalai bhetna uttartira lageko thiyo,
’ Khem told the headman, shaking his head in disapproval. Not the same boy. This boy is headed north, to meet his father. ‘
U yataitira aundai gareko hunuparchha. Uslai khojnuhos – puraskaar paunuhunechha.
’ Look out for him … And then to him, directly: ‘I told him you’d pay well for his return – or even for news of him.’

The Maoists and the headman chatted further, but Anton wasn’t listening. Just hearing the meaningless sounds of a language he barely knew, incomprehensible unless he tuned in acutely to decipher key words. Somehow he knew they were no longer discussing his son. The headman was getting more and more animated, patting Khem on the back. Yelling again into the house, several times. He summoned a younger girl this time, barefoot and wearing what looked like a slip not a dress, carrying a giant green squash, which she deposited on Khem’s lap. She’d turned to go back into the house, perhaps for another squash, when Khem stood and signalled for them to leave.

‘There are many more villages,’ Khem told Anton over his shoulder as he pulled the jeep back on the dusty road again. ‘One of them might know something.’ And then, surprisingly, he laughed. ‘More than this old fool.’

They drove all day from village to village, until, finally, Khem slid back into the driver’s seat and announced, ‘We now find camp for the night.’ Without turning to look at Anton, he added, ‘Go to more villages tomorrow.’ Anton hadn’t anticipated this, spending the night in the jungle. For the soldiers it was nothing; it was how they lived. Through
the years of guerrilla warfare, they had come to know the jungle – it didn’t scare them. But all he sensed, as they drove off the main gravel road and into the bush, stopping at a site just within the jungle canopy, was danger. Behind this dense, green foliage – Mother Nature gone wild – were tigers, snakes, spiders and other bloodthirsty insects. Maybe other soldiers, even more hostile. The threat of malaria, heightened by the recent heavy rains. The Tharus were immune, he’d heard, but it could bring him down. He felt soft, ridiculous, powerless. As he stayed in the jeep with Raju, watching the soldiers set up two small khaki tents, it all seemed pointless – the war they had waged; his work trying to bring a foreign concept of peace and democracy to these people; the search for his son.

What did connect him with them – with these two soldiers and all the others who had fought in the war, who were still fighting – was anger. He realised this as he felt it rising in his gut, spreading through his chest and pushing against the sides of his skull. Anger, in their case, turned against others, as revolution. But in his case, it was suddenly clear, turned against himself for being so presumptuous, and so impotent.

The goonda mugshots stared at him from his office wall like an inanimate challenge. A taunt. A threat. A fuck-you-V.J. Gupta insolence. He’d started decorating them: smiles for the ones still at large, frowns for those captured or dead. He stuck another face on the wall with glue stick, a sleazy bugger with mirrored shades and messy long hair, and drew an inverted ‘U’ where his mouth used to be.

Gupta leaned against his desk, still looking at the wall, and lit a Gold Flake, immediately exhaling a mushroom cloud of smoke. A deep sigh welling up, releasing. No news, or leaks, about the De Villiers boy, in spite of the tip from Bianca. In spite of sending more of his men on to the Road undercover, into the kothas as paying customers and into surveillance on the street. He still hadn’t replaced Ojal, though it had been a month since her murder. Potential candidates, fellow hijras, had so far been too full of stories about all the other events where their presence was requested, and rewarded handsomely. He’d never be able to pay them enough.

The newly dead goonda might be just the ticket, though. After they’d found his body half-eaten by dogs in a G.B. alley, it didn’t take long to identify him as Lakshmi’s boy, Anand Bhatnagar, and it didn’t take much longer to connect him to Ojal’s murder. All right, the evidence was a little thin, but he wouldn’t be going to trial any time soon. Gupta was vaguely curious who had killed Anand and disposed of his body with so little heart; two guesses and he needed only one. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that with Anand’s death, a small window of opportunity had opened; he could feel the air coming through. It was risky, he didn’t know exactly what these bastards knew, how recently they had been in touch with Lakshmi, and if word had gone down that she had whacked him (as they said on the American cop shows). Because he was sure that’s what she had done.

His men had been doing their homework. Gautam and Sanjay Singh were now on his wall. Bloody ugly brothers. Not the most adept traffickers
in the city, but doing well enough in their factory front out in Okhla Industrial. He’d been sitting on the tip-off for too many weeks now; time to strike. He didn’t have an absolutely certain link between them and Lakshmi, but had heard that they had an abnormal lot of children at work on the factory floor, many with the Asiatic looks of the Nepalese. And, rumour had it, they’d ‘owed’ Lakshmi for a shipment of Nepali girls they’d lost and had tried to humour her with the gift of another child. Girl, boy, he didn’t know, but he was ready to place his bets.

He pulled a midnight-blue pathan suit out of his bottom drawer, plus a pair of patent black loafers and black aviators. He’d forgotten a thinner pair of socks, the police-issue were like burlap bags. No matter. When he finished dressing he looked at himself in the long mirror on the back of his door – there to measure the authenticity of his disguises. Well, perhaps also to sneak a peek of himself in uniform now and then. He slipped the shades down to the tip of his nose and liked what he saw. Goonda Gupta.

On the way out he stopped to give Hita the address where he was going. Just in case. A smile was trying to escape, he knew what it was saying. But she bit her lip and wrote down the address he gave her. ‘And, Hita,’ he added as he walked out the office door, ‘if I’m not back by three p.m., send in the cavalry.’

He hailed a cab, couldn’t bear to drive out through all that mess in the southern part of the city. It depressed him – first the slums where many of the factory workers lived, then all these factory blocks surrounded by barbed-wire fences. Nefarious activities going on in many of them. Child labour violations, at the very least. When he saw the extent of the rot in this place, it either fired him up to hyperactivity or nearly paralysed him. But he couldn’t stop, could he? Even though it was pretty bloody clear that some higher-ups, maybe even in government, were orchestrating hits on his men. He’d lost three in the last month, in inexplicable shoot-outs after mysterious call-ins. He could be next. Even today.

As they approached the Singhs’ factory he prayed his deception would work. The cab driver had been eyeing him uneasily in the rear-view mirror throughout the half-hour trip, so the get-up was convincing. But once he spoke to the Singhs, in person?

He paid the cabbie quickly, not waiting for change, and approached the drab olive guard box at the factory entrance. A guard popped out, rifle slung over his shoulder, but also half-asleep. He said nothing, just peered from under the brim of his cap, scrutinising.

Make the move.

‘I’m here to see Gautam and Sanjay,’ he said, trying to sound familiar. The guard looked unmoved. ‘Lakshmi sent me.’

The guard went inside the box and picked up the phone.
One of Lakshmi’s
was all he heard, but it seemed enough to gain him entrance. The guard came out and half-heartedly frisked him; it tickled in certain places and he swallowed a giggle. He was then waved through unceremoniously, as though he were a fly.

He couldn’t find a front door, so went round the back. Inside the building – falling apart, smelly and windowless, a real fire trap – was an equally decrepit elevator operator who took him to the top floor.
Door at the end of the hall
, the old chap said, so he walked down the dank, mouldy corridor, appreciating the lack of light. For the moment.

He knocked on the door and a voice shouted, ‘Who is it?’

‘Pradip,’ he said without hesitation. ‘The new Anand.’ He regretted saying that, too flippant. But it opened the door.

Worse than the mug shots. One of them stared at him with the door half-open, before opening it fully. His sallow face probably rarely saw the sun; a long, pink scar tracked across his neck, like a giant slug, unobscured by the gold chain. Revolting. He looked slovenly, unfit, in his tight jeans, his red Guess T-shirt pulling out from the waist. A pair of shades, oversized and almost Jackie-O, hid his eyes. He took another sip from the whisky in his glass and sneered. ‘Why didn’t you call?’

‘Gautam, let him in!’ yelled a voice from inside. Commanding.

‘Lakshmi’s been trying to reach you,’ Gupta said, stepping through the threshold into a dim room, opulent, with curtains drawn and chandeliers faintly glowing. The other brother was sitting with his back to him on a giant velvet sofa, watching cricket on the telly. Also drinking. The infamous Sanjay. Smoother and more intelligent than his brother, and much more brutal. So he’d heard.

He could feel Gautam hovering behind him and wasn’t sure he hadn’t trained a pistol on his back. Sanjay wouldn’t take his eyes off the cricket. ‘Bloody
chutiya
,’ he yelled, shaking his fist at the screen, ‘learn to bowl properly or get your arse into retirement!’

Then Sanjay looked at him, scanning him up and down. ‘What happened to Anand?’

‘You don’t know?’ Bloody hell. He’d guessed they did.

Gautam circled around and stood next to the television, turning it down. Arms folded. ‘We heard he bit it.’

Bit it?
These boys had been watching too much
CSI
or something. ‘You heard right. I’m his replacement. Lakshmi sent me …’

‘To check up on us,’ Sanjay snarled, eyes on the cricket again. ‘Bloody bitch doesn’t trust us.’

‘Well, Sanjay-ji,’ Gautam said, shaking his head, ‘should she?’

Sanjay stood and faced him, clicked off the TV with the remote and threw it on the sofa. Taller than his brother, also in tight jeans but with a more refined Oxford shirt. Terrible eyes, flaying. ‘Let me guess – she’s sent you to check up about the boy.’

How stupid could they be? They were making it easy for him. Easy to have this conversation, at least. Executing a plan was another thing entirely.

‘The boy, yes,’ he said. And then, feeling bolder, ‘May I have a glass of water?’

Sanjay flicked his head towards the bar, where Gautam went to oblige his request.

‘It was your fault, Gautam,’ Sanjay said without looking at him. ‘We shouldn’t have left him alone.’

Gautam returned with the water, in a foggy glass, and handed it to him. He looked hurt. ‘My fault? You’re the one who tied him up. And I wasn’t the one deciding to leave him unguarded. You’re de-… delusional, Sanjay.’ Ouch. A big word for this one.

‘Ha!’ Sanjay laughed, sort of, the kind of laugh measuring victory over lesser people. He obviously thought his brother was a dolt.

‘Where is he now?’ Gupta asked. Knowing they’d have no idea.

‘He’s left Varanasi, that’s for sure,’ Gautam said, trying to claim authority. He headed back to the bar for another drink. ‘I’m sure he and those other little twits are over the border by now.’

‘Why didn’t you follow them?’

Leaning against the back of the sofa, Sanjay watched his brother pour a tall Johnny Walker. ‘Gautam, offer a drink to our guest.’

He took the drink, equally tall, and slugged back some of it. Not normally a drinker, so it felt like kerosene going down his gullet. Burning. But Goonda Gupta had to drink.

‘Why didn’t we follow them, Gautam? Tell our friend here. You seem to have the answers to everything this morning.’

Gautam dropped into a plush red velvet chair, matching the sofa. ‘We didn’t follow him, or them, because we wan – I mean ran – out of time,’ he said, slurring his words. ‘Sanjay-ji, isn’t it? Tell him. We have too much here to do, we can’t go running that bloody bitch’s errands whenever she wants.’ Satisfied with himself, he drained nearly half his glass.

Sanjay appeared to be meditating. Silent and contained, still. ‘Tell
her we nearly got him,’ he said finally. ‘We’ve put the word out along the line to the north,’ he said, and, as though he really believed it, ‘and we will get him.’

As he left the brothers to their feelings of incompetence, richly deserved, Gupta hummed a little tune, one of Bianca’s love songs from one of her countless films, and walked down the dark hallway, grateful to be leaving, moving towards the light. He’d ask the useless guard to call him a cab, and when he returned to Indraprastha, he’d tell Hita of his triumph and she’d put it all on the computer. Maybe one day it would be bigger than that – in the newspapers, even.

It took him only a few days to dream up the next move. Slightly diabolical, he admitted, but then he was tired of restraint. The following Monday found Gupta sitting in what qualified as an unmarked car, Hita’s old Ambassador, about twenty metres from the entrance to the factory. From there, he could watch ‘the fire inspector’ and a handful of ‘firemen’ – goondas he’d got off the street – file past the guardhouse, on to the property, and march around the back to enter the building. The factory was in disrepair: broken panes on the lower levels, graffiti on the walls, and the maze of inescapable corridors inside. Logical that it needed periodic inspections, in this case a much-needed fire drill.

The children were running and skipping as they emerged from the factory. Two of the goonda-firemen shepherded them through the gate and tried to contain them – at least a hundred of them – in a group on the other side of the fence. He’d never seen so many urchins in one spot, barefoot and ragged. When had they last seen the light of day? Some were shielding their eyes from the afternoon sun, others looking wide-eyed around them, probably scared out of their wits and wondering where they’d be taken next. One little boy about six had sat down on the dirt and was crying uncontrollably. No one went to him.

When the Singhs came out they were both shouting at the ‘fire inspector’, waving their arms at him like helicopters readying for takeoff. Admirable, the ‘inspector’s’ gravitas and professionalism. Gupta imagined him telling the brothers how this was standard procedure, critical for their own safety and that of the children. Ha!
For the good of the children
. Bloody hell.

All of them – the Singhs, the children, the ‘inspector’, Gupta himself – were looking at the factory when it exploded into flames, red-orange demons licking out the windows, black smoke curling into the sky. The children were silent en masse for a few seconds. Then they burst into
wild applause, clapping and cheering as though their little hearts would pop. Kids jumping, twirling, hugging each other, doing somersaults. Even the little boy who’d been crying had a smile on his face.

The Singhs, still standing with the ‘inspector’ and facing the inferno, were indescribable. Gobsmacked. That was a good one, Gupta thought,
gobsmacked
. Shock and awe. The mission had been a risky one, but so brilliant! Now it had to be completed with equal finesse – and speed. Gupta stepped out of the car and, on cue, the ‘firemen’ pulled guns on the Singhs, who looked at each other helplessly, before they turned their stares at him, fast approaching. When the brothers raised their hands in the air in defeat, the young mob went wild. As he navigated through the children to get in the gate, they looked at him adoringly (he was sure it was adoration); some even grabbed his arm and one cheeky bugger slapped him on the butt.

‘Fast acting by the fire department, don’t you think?’ he smiled as he clamped the cuffs on one Singh then the other. Their eyes looked like deep pools of poison, but they were harmless now. He turned around and saw it all – the flaming factory, the captured brothers, the satisfied ‘actors’, even the ancient elevator operator, who’d slipped out unnoticed. The ecstatic children, now free. Though heavens knew what he was going to do with them all.

It gave him great pleasure to state the obvious: ‘Looks like your fire drill was long overdue.’