Garden of Dreams (17 page)

‘What you want?’ he asked them. ‘Where you come from?’

Sanjana spoke to him in Nepali, very fast. ‘I tell him, tomorrow he take us on elephant, cross river. Too late today. He say OK.’

‘How much?’ They had hardly any money.

‘Five hundred rupees.’

‘We don’t have it.’ Unless the girls had stashed some away. ‘Do we?’

‘No. We don’t.’

He looked at his feet, at the high-tops he’d stolen from the temple. He’d seen the mahout looking at them. ‘Tell him he can have my shoes,’ he told Sanjana, ‘after he brings us to the other side of the river.’

Karma had caught up with him.

Sanjana spoke to the mahout again; he seemed to accept the offer, because he was smiling and doing the ‘no-that-means-yes’ head-wiggle. ‘So, where do we sleep?’ Eli wondered aloud, surveying the little field of straw and dirt, where the elephant, one foot manacled and chained to the ground, sucked up water through its trunk from a filthy plastic tub.

Sanjana translated, posed the question. The head wiggle again, more words in Nepali.

‘He says we can sleep here, with the elephant. If we give him fifty rupees, he bring food, rice and …’

‘Dal bhat?’ the girls asked hopefully.

The head-wiggle. Dal bhat. Yes.

When the dal bhat finally came, in little tin bowls that many hands had held, Eli thought nothing could taste better. Beautiful, rounded, dark brown lentils tumbling down a small hill of white rice. They ate with one hand, the right – he was an expert now – and scooped the steaming balls into their mouths with abandon. No one spoke, the food was too delicious. He watched the elephant standing as the shadows fell, eyes closed. Was it sleeping?

He looked back at the girls, whose bowls were nearly empty. This was their last supper together. He’d see them safely home, then find a way to Kathmandu as quickly as possible. Find his father, at last, in little more than a day.

‘What will you do when you get home?’ The question was for all of them.

‘First thing?’ said Shanti. ‘More dal bhat!’

‘Wash myself ten time!’ shrieked Deevyah.

Sanjana hesitated, looking into her bowl. ‘Find my friends – if they still my friends,’ she said softly.

‘And Eli, what for you?’ Shanti asked.

His mind flashed to his room in Cape Town, to his guitars poised in their stands, probably covered in dust by now. If not stolen by skollies. He stood, on the straw, and started playing air-guitar, throwing his head around, stamping his foot and singing. GNR’s ‘Paradise City’. They didn’t understand most of it, but loved the line about the pretty girls.

The mahout woke them up the next morning at dawn, by smacking their feet, just like he smacked the elephant. They all moaned, but, next to the promise of being home by sundown, nothing else mattered.
They’d
be home, at least.

Eli felt bad sitting on top of the elephant – her name was Mia – but the girls thought it was a grand adventure, and swung their legs playfully as Mia slogged out of the village. As they skirted the jungle border, trying to make good time, they sat back to back, each claiming a corner of the wooden platform, legs straddling a corner post. It was a makeshift howdah, he’d read about that, something the snotty British used to use.

Shanti said she felt like a queen, and the girls giggled madly at this; even the mahout – Bajra, he told them his name was – managed to smile. Then she started making up stories, about a queen, a king, two princesses, their servant and a wise old elephant, that seemed to have no end.

In less than two hours they were at the river. The Rapti. The only way out of the park was to cross it. The monsoons had nearly flooded it, bringing it to a spectacular height and speed; it raced east. On the far side, another elephant and her calf had come to drink but only watched the furious current. Though the sky had suddenly darkened, Bajra told them the rains had passed, the clouds would blow over.

‘How deep is it?’ Eli yelled to Bajra.

‘Not so deep for elephant.’

Shanti and Deevyah turned to look at Eli as Mia trudged down the slope to the river, under Bajra’s repeated whacks.
Hold on
, he told them. Sanjana stared out into the river, watching its eddies and white water splashing over rocks and downstream.

Mia went slowly but steadily into the water, obeying Bajra’s stern commands and the sting of the stick. She was nearly at the middle of the river and only up to her belly, or just higher. The river was thick and brown, madly curling and swirling. Better not to look at it. So Eli looked up and saw the blackest clouds he’d ever seen, blown in from god knows where.

The thunder came first, a smash like the deepest of bass drums, quickly followed by a bolt of lightning touching earth not far ahead of them. Then the torrential rain, slapping them fiercely. Mia trumpeted but held steady. Shouting, Bajra was going to beat her to death. Another clap of thunder, and another, bone-rattling; two more bolts of lightning stabbed the sky. Mia trumpeted again, and this time lifted her giant body up, up out of the river, standing on her hind legs like a circus performer. She crashed down on all fours again, drenching everyone, and with the next thunderclap rose up once more, terrified, trumpeting wildly.

Everyone was screaming. Eli and Sanjana were in the back, facing down towards the river, held up by the howdah. But Shanti and Deevyah, above them, couldn’t fight gravity; they were too small, too weak, and they plopped into the river like two stones.

For a moment Shanti was right next to him; he could see the fear in her eyes. He reached out for her waving hand, but the river took her, took Deevyah. He remembered that they couldn’t swim. As Mia settled on to her feet again he thought of jumping in but Sanjana restrained him.

Furious, helpless, he shouted their names into the storm. He watched the dark little heads being carried downstream until they went under.

It was nothing like he’d expected, but then he was learning not to expect, especially not to expect the worst. As the Tata truck, ‘No Time for Love’, rumbled into the city, Eli was sure there must be another city ahead, waiting for him. Hidden by these hordes of cars, motorbikes and pedestrians, by these rows of junk, these half-built or half-destroyed buildings in pale blues, bubblegum pinks or make-up beiges, the strangest conglomerations he’d ever seen, with forests of TV antennae on their roofs. ‘Third World’ style, it must be; he remembered his father talking about that world on a visit once, and imagined it then as the different, closed world his father lived in. Now he knew better. But this wasn’t the Kathmandu in the postcards his father had sent.

‘Is this it?’ he asked the truck driver, a pleasant, stumpy man who spoke little English but enough to offer him a lift with no hitches. They’d been driving mostly in silence for five hours. He’d been scouting for the trucks’ names, hand-painted on the side or back, as they’d lumbered past or trailed behind: Broken Heart, I Miss You, Love for Sale, Catch Me If You Can. They were speaking to him.

‘Yes, Kathmandu,’ the driver said, smiling. ‘Welcome in Kathmandu!

But this part no good for tourists. You go to Durbar Square.’

‘Durbar Square?’ His father had spoken of Durbar Square.
My office overlooks it.

‘Best place in Kathmandu. Not far from Thamel. You go there.’

‘Thamel?’ The name was familiar. Right, Sanjana’s sleazy cousin, Akshyat.

‘Tourist place, plenty backpackers, restaurants, shops. Also dance bars where they sell girlies. But you too young for that.’

He squinted at the driver in disbelief, alarm. He’d thought Kathmandu would be safe. Surely safer than Delhi.

‘Don’t worry.’ The driver patted him on the arm. ‘You stay out of that business. I am just telling you, Thamel is Sin City.’

When they finally reached the factory where they were delivering a load of computers – ‘for recycling’, the driver had said – Eli jumped down from the truck and nearly tripped on shards of broken pavement. Vandals had smashed many of the factory’s windows, cut its barbed-wire fencing, sprayed weird black letters on its flaking brown paint. Time to get out of there.

‘Wait!’ the driver said, ‘how much money you have?’

Not this.

‘For the taxi, my friend!’ An arm slap, not a pat, this time.

The driver walked the few metres back to the highway and hailed a black Suzuki Maruti out of the throng, negotiated something, and motioned for him to come. As he climbed into the back seat, the driver handing him over signed ‘namaste’.

‘I’m sending you to Durbar Square, don’t worry.’ He waved goodbye heartily as the taxi backed up in a cloud of exhaust. ‘Be happy!’

To Durbar Square. It might as well have been to the moon.

The taxi stopped roughly twenty minutes later in a crooked alley, hemmed in by tall, narrow wood and mud-brick homes with ornately carved shutters and low doorways leading to darkness.

‘You walk now,’ said the taxi driver without turning around. ‘Durbar Square, ten minutes.’ He pointed to the end of the alley, a maze to nowhere.

Eli slammed the door and with his small bundle of clothes, tied in a ball, headed down the alley. The sun was overhead so he walked down a bright strip of sunlight, but in the dark interiors he could see only glints of light, brown faces peering out at him. Most of the doorways had carved lotus flowers in front of their thresholds, embedded in the cobblestones, and little stone Ganeshes, smudged with vermilion and garlanded with marigolds. The garlands were fresh; he remembered the festival. Dashain. A time for celebration.

In the distance he could hear music, celebratory music, drums and high-pitched pipes and more blustery horns. He walked towards the sound, weaving down one alley after another until they spat him out into the open, into crowds of people, Nepalis and a few tourists, surging forward like a wave, dressed in jewel colours and hung with marigolds, all moving towards what could only be the square, its red-roofed temple pagodas staring down at them with divine authority. But now he could hear other sounds, above the music and the hum of the crowd: the shrill, harrowing despair of animals again. Behind the high walls ahead, he guessed, the colour of old blood.

The tide of people carried him, past the stone steps of one temple, then another, like giant chess pieces on a board. Clustered in front of one of the smaller temples was a group of sadhus, glowing in their ochre robes, with faces painted red and white and long hair looped in mysterious ways. They looked like clowns. Their tin cups were thrust out, waiting for some attention from the crowd.

Perhaps for a few rupees they would answer some questions.

They came forward as he approached them, zigzagging through people, worshippers. The one in front was huge, not emaciated as most were, with a silver topknot, rounded belly under his golden robes and round black spectacles. He tapped his heavy walking stick as he came near, rattling the coins in his cup. In a moment the big sadhu and his mates were on him, throwing a marigold garland around his neck and smudging a tika spot between his eyes.

‘You come from where, my friend?’ the big sadhu asked, neatening the tika dot on his forehead.

Sanjana’s brother’s clothes. He realised he was still wearing them, the salwar pyjamas, big shirt and vest. But where was he from? He could tell them anything. He decided to puzzle them. ‘Africa.’

‘Africa?’ The big sadhu consulted the other three, garishly painted as well but predictably thin. ‘Is it possible?’

‘I’m looking for my father, Mr Anton de Villiers. He works near here, somewhere.’ He looked skywards, towards the circle of rooftops, temple peaks as well as flatter, more contemporary roofs. ‘Do you know him?’

The sadhus consulted again. ‘We are sure we know him,’ the big one said, and then, with prompting from another, ‘he comes through the square every day.’

‘What! When?’ He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

‘Never the same time, unfortunately. Tell us what he looks like, so we can be sure it is the same Mr Anton, exactly.’

He had no idea what his father looked like now. He drew from the memory of their last encounter, over a year ago. ‘As tall as you,’ he told the big sadhu, ‘and not quite so …’ He didn’t say it but outlined a belly curve with his hand. ‘Light brown hair and a light brown moustache and …’ He realised there was nothing to distinguish his father, really. Then added: ‘I look nothing like him.’

The sadhus were buzzing. ‘Yes, he is the one,’ said a smaller one, with thick brown dreads.

‘He comes here
many
times,’ said another.

‘Yes,’ said the big sadhu, ‘you wait here in the square and you will find him, it is most certain.’

But where would he come from? From which direction? His head was spinning as he looked at the strange silhouettes against the sky. Then he remembered.

‘My father told me he worked near the palace where they were all shot, the king and his family.’

‘Very terrible story,’ said the big sadhu, resting a large, gnarled hand on his shoulder and guiding him up the temple steps. ‘You wait here and watch. He will come from there, there where the palace lies. Wait and see.’

He could tell by the insipid smile on the big sadhu’s face and the others closing in that payment was expected. He gave them each ten rupees, and when they didn’t move, doubled it. To be rid of them. He was almost sure they were lying, but he wanted to believe them. He wanted to believe that his father would appear momentarily, or even in a few hours, walking through the square unaware that his son would be watching, waiting for him.

The sadhus trudged down the steps and wandered off, searching for other targets. Eli had no clue what time it was, but the sun was arcing toward the west. Hunger stabbed him in the gut, and he bought two bags of roasted peanuts when a little girl with a peaked knit cap came selling them. He threw some to the pigeons flapping around him and wondered how many peanuts he’d have to eat before his father would walk past. Or before he’d give up, at least for the day. He was so close now, and it seemed cruel, crazy, that he didn’t have a phone number, address or office name. He had nothing. All he had was word of mouth, and he’d just received the word from the mouths of holy men.

After several hours, the sun was slipping towards the skyline, and his father still hadn’t appeared. Eli was dizzy from watching the crowds flow back and forth, trying to single out someone, or even something, familiar. Sickened by the goats and buffaloes being dragged through the square to meet their maker, all in Durga’s name. Chilled by the autumn air and falling shadows.

He stood with a divided heart, wanting to stay, wanting to leave; he still needed to find a place to sleep. That awful moment, like a forked path, wondering which way to take, to remain or go. He might just miss his father if he left. But he walked down the steep temple steps, headed for the gate he’d entered through hours before.

From a long stretch of wooden shops people were selling everything
– painted boxes, embroidered silk bags, scarves, books, pipes, shoes and much more inside, he was sure. He stopped at one shop with a postcard display outside, on a revolving metal rack. He pushed it round, it was old and crooked, the photos looked dated. Temples from the square; a child goddess; a Bengal tiger; many snow-capped mountains. When he stopped turning, the card in front of his eyes was a garden, deep green with an ornate white pavilion, a pond and a pair of stone elephants, mother and child. The image stirred his heart for a moment. He removed the postcard and flipped it over.

The Garden of Dreams
was all it said.

He’d heard of it. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, where all his father’s words had drowned, it came floating to the surface like a dead person.

‘Where is this place?’ he asked the shopkeeper. Accepting the directions like a gift, he ran but wished he could fly.

He had to stop running because people were staring, as though he were a thief, fleeing. His heart drummed in his chest, his pulse quickened, he felt light-headed. But here it was, the main thoroughfare glutted with cars and rickshaws and Honda bikes, Kantipath. The road to the garden. Where his father came for tea, for peace, for sanity.
We’ll go there one day
, his father had told him.

At the intersection, across the street, he saw a high, old wall, once white, and an old mansion towering behind it, sheltered by tall trees he couldn’t name. ‘Ministry of Education’ said the sign on the wall at the entrance, where a guard in rumpled khakis, shouldering a rifle, strolled back and forth. He crossed the street and entered.

‘The garden?’ he asked the guard. Obviously it wasn’t.

‘Library,’ said the guard, inclining his head towards it.

He’d followed the shopkeeper’s directions, he didn’t understand. Perhaps inside, in the library in this weird old home, they’d redirect him.

Like other libraries, this one was musty and hushed inside; it looked an old, very rich uncle’s study, with Persian carpets, tall shuttered windows, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, overstuffed chairs and ancestral portraits on the walls. Except that the men in the paintings all wore turbans and carried swords. Not to mention the stuffed tiger at the far end of the room.

He walked down the central aisle, between the tables on either side, and didn’t dare to disturb the heads bowed over huge, antique volumes. By the time he reached the tiger, a well-dressed Nepali man in tweeds, scarf and shiny brogues, about his father’s build and age, had come through from the next room and stopped him.

‘May I help you?’ he whispered, smiling wrinkles on to his face, meticulously clean-shaven. A whiff of sickening cologne. ‘Do you need a guide?’

‘I’m looking for the garden.’

‘Ah, the dream garden,’ the man said, running a long, manicured finger over the dead tiger’s skull. ‘It’s just next door. But first you must visit this, once a royal palace.’

‘What is this? Besides a library …’ His voice sounded extremely loud. Several people looked up from their books.

‘Come,’ said the man, gesturing towards the room he’d just left. ‘I’ll show you the wonders here.’ He offered Eli a peppermint, which he refused.

‘I can’t – the garden …’

‘It will be closing, if it isn’t already closed. Are you a tourist?’ The man rested his hand on Eli’s shoulder. Eli twitched.

A tourist? He supposed he was, but the thought made him laugh. Here to see the sights, to photograph these people’s faces and children and homes and streets and temples and mountains, and to take it all home on a memory card. Back to life as you left it. If he still had his camera, he’d probably be doing the same. But life as you left it?

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I do need a place to stay.’ Adding quickly, in case the man got the wrong idea, ‘A hotel.’

The man reached into the pocket of his grey tweed jacket and produced a card, with the all-seeing eye on it, a name and an address. Nirvana Guest House, Jyatha, Thamel. ‘Tell them I sent you …’

He didn’t want to know the man’s name, didn’t wait to hear it. He took the card but then turned swiftly and almost ran out the front door, down the steps and towards the guard at the gate, now sprawled in a wooden chair.

‘The Garden of Dreams, where is it?’ he asked ferociously.
Better tell me this time.

The guard half-heartedly, vaguely, pointed for him to exit and walk around to the other side of the wall.
Entrance there.

As dusk softened the city’s edges he raced around the high wall, running down another street and stopping at a door with a wrought-iron gate, still open. Eli walked through and saw a small ticket booth, the ticket seller nearly invisible behind the glass, but still there. Several metres to his right, through an archway and a tangle of vines, lay a flowering oasis that denied the city’s existence, though the sound of horns penetrated faintly through the trees. Two young lovers, oblivious to time and everyone else, embraced on the other side of the arch. He thought of Sanjana.

He pushed his money into the trough, but a hand shoved it back at him.