The Brothers K (78 page)

As she pulled up beside the car in front of Peter’s she stopped, raised herself up by her arms, and quickly scanned the passengers’ faces, as if trying to assess the potential for pity and rupees. Peter still couldn’t quite see her face, but he saw her breasts now: they looked like car-killed carcasses scorched on a desert road.
Yet it’s calculated
, he thought with fascination and horror.
The hump, the dead breasts—they’re her tools, like a ball and glove are Papa’s. She exposes them just so. It’s her art, a kind of dancing almost
. … But no sooner had he thought this than the old woman turned toward his car, picked out his pale face at once, lowered herself, and began scuttling toward him with astounding speed.

Peter’s hair stood up. He drew back from the window and sank low in his seat. He felt like stalked prey. But when he heard her roll up outside he grew ashamed, and forced himself to look:

She was waiting, right at the edge of the platform. And the instant he appeared she raised herself with a soft, surprisingly feminine grunt of effort into an almost vertical position—and he saw that the hair was gray with dust, not age, that the skin of her face was unlined and youthful, the eyes deep brown, the lashes long, the gaze alert, clear, even sexually attractive. Unable to stop himself, Peter let his eyes rove over the sun-cracked hump, the dead breasts, the wild hair, back to the eyes. And she smiled as he did this—a smile terrible for its intelligence, its beauty, its complete awareness of the ruin in which it lived. Then she touched her
forehead with a root-wad hand, and in a voice like a little girl’s said,
“Prem se bhiksha dijiye?”

“Lover, give alms”? “Give with love”? Peter should have known what it meant, but he was mesmerized: he began blindly groping in his pockets, his eyes locked to hers—and he found himself wondering what her legs might be like if she had legs, what her breasts might be like had they not been crushed for years against the board, what she might still be like down beneath the cloth, whether the little girl might possibly be hers …

Then he realized that she was reading his thoughts. He felt it almost physically—felt her reach right behind his face and eyes and clutch not the language but the essence of his feelings. And though she continued to smile, her gaze now bound him, as if in ropes. Then it burst into flames. She seared him with flirtatiousness, then with malevolence; she demanded and received his pity, then scoffed him for its meaninglessness, reveled in his horror, exulted in his helplessness and shame.
“Nange se Khuda bhi darta hai!”
she cried in her girlish yet furious yet triumphant voice. Then the train lurched, and began to roll.

“Wait!” Peter gasped, as if that might stop it, and he turned his change pocket inside out, picked up eight or ten rupees, wadded them into a ball, jammed his arms out the window slats and threw them as hard as he could back toward her. “I’m sorry!” he shouted. “I’m so sorry!” But the breeze blew the ball to pieces, stopped the crumpled rupees far short of her reach, whisked them down the platform as the little girl chased them, then tumbled them off the edge, where they were sucked up close to the wheels of the train. The little girl scrambled down off the platform. The legless woman shrieked. Peter felt the world and everything in it turn to lead …

But the girl was still running when a man in a ripped brown T-shirt jumped down off the train and deftly scooped the rupees up. The little girl ran to him, smiled, held out her hand. The man looked down at her, smiled back—then clutched the rupees and fled, running right alongside the train, right beside Peter, before veering off and disappearing in a maze of mud-and-mat hovels. And all the while the woman kept shrieking, not at the thief, but at Peter:

“Nange se Khuda bhi darta hail Nange se Khuda bhi darta hai!”

F
rom Nizamabad all the way to Nanded, Peter dug through his lexicons and scribbled phonetic possibilities on a page, trying to work out the exact spelling and meaning of the phrase
Nange se Khuda bhi darta hai
. He had just concluded that it could only mean “Even God is afraid of the naked” when the train lurched once again, rolled out of Nanded station, and two Indian men walked into his car.

Or not “walked” exactly: one staggered, drunk out of his head, while the other sauntered, giving each passenger a wry, affable smile as they warily eyed his crocked compadre. The drunkard was wearing the red turban of the Sikhs and a red-handled kirpan dagger. A band of scarlet gauze squeezed his beard into a thin, greasy rope. A half-empty fifth of booze was jammed in the sash round his waist. His eyes were as red as the turban. The saunterer, on the other hand, was clear-eyed and clean-shaven, steady on his feet, and wearing the kind of clothes you’d expect to see on a Palm Springs golf nut—double-knit slacks, polyester shirt, pointy white shoes. The two men could not have been more different in mood or style. Yet Peter guessed at a glance that they were brothers, and that each had a great deal to do with the way the other looked and acted.

Every passenger in the car had a bench seat to himself. The two Sikhs were destined to upset that equation. Given the kind of day he’d been having, it did not surprise Peter at all when the drunken Sikh took one look at the sleeping Dessinger, wordlessly flung his feet off the bench, plopped down, and glared at Peter as if he dared him to do something about it. Dessinger stirred slightly, took a discreet peek at the man who’d disturbed him, and wisely decided to pretend to fall back to sleep. Meanwhile the clean-shaven Sikh nodded graciously when Peter made room on his bench, sat down beside him, squinted past him out the window, and said, “I like t’ride out alone over the wide Dakota prairie. I like m’bacon cut thick, m’whiskey straight, an’ m’coffee black.”

Peter acknowledged these assertions with an involuntary giggle, then set aside the lexicons and dove deep into his A. S. Barnes critical edition of Tulsi Das’s
Kavitavali
.

“Book learnin’s fine for some,” the clean-shaven Sikh said. “But me, I like t’slip off m’boots after a long day’s ride, warm m’feet by a little chip fire, rest m’head on m’saddle, an’ watch those bits o’ busted star come fallin’ down outta the night sky.”

Peter looked up long enough to give the speaker a cautious smile.

“I am Gobindh Singh,” the cowboy-and-Indian said. “An’ this is my strawberry stallion, Old Pal.” He rolled his eyes at his besotted brother.

“I’m Peter Chance,” Peter said, and he and Gobindh shook hands. But when he offered his hand to Old Pal, the red-eyed Sikh only sneered at it. Peter’s adrenal glands slammed into action.

“Ropin’ an’ ridin’, ropin’ an’ ridin’,” sighed Gobindh Singh. “That’s all there is t’this life, m’friend.”

Peter said nothing. The greasy Sikh kept sneering.

“Got m’friends, Doc an’ Miss Nellie, over in town,” Gobindh said. “But they don’t really understand me. Got m’hoss here. But Old Pal, he don’t say much. Got the brandin’ in spring, the roundup come fall, an’ the billion stars blisterin’ that black prairie sky at night. But in the end you look back, you see your life strung out behind you, an’ it’s plain as the color o’ the Dakotas in December. Ropin’ an’ ridin’, Pete. That’s all it was. Just ropin’ and ridin’.”

Noticing that Old Pal had either dozed off or passed out, Peter risked a nod.

“There’s got to be more, is what I tell the stars at night,” said Gobindh Singh. “But them stars, they don’t never answer.”

Peter shook his head sadly.

Then Gobindh also noticed that his brother was asleep, and his manner changed completely. Leaning eagerly forward, he pointed at his brown arms and face and said, “You know, my skin wasn’t really this color! It was a childhood disease! I was very light-skinned as a boy—as light as you, nearly.” He pointed out the window at some women carrying water. “Look at those black-skinned sluts! I looked nothing like
that
, I can tell you!”

Old Pal lurched upright, saw his brother’s distress, glared at Peter as if he were the cause, and literally began to growl. Gobindh shook his head sadly, reached over and slid the bottle from Old Pal’s sash, took a long pull, then turned to Peter. “I don’t reckon a fine gent like yourself’d take relief from a bottle that’s been lipped by the likes of me. But if ya care t’cure what ails ya—” He held it out.

Peter knew better than to hesitate: he grabbed the bottle, nodded thanks, and drank as if he craved it. It was some kind of rotgut whiskey—the first hard liquor he’d tasted since he was sixteen or so; he managed to stave off a coughing fit, but it burned him and left him gasping. When he could see again, both Sikhs were smiling, though for warmth and
coldness the two smiles could not have been less alike. “You got any sisters?” Gobindh Singh asked.

“Two,” Peter said without thinking. Then Old Pal began to leer, and he realized he’d fallen already into another trap.

“Out in Nevada, I reckon,” Gobindh said. “Or maybe up Wyomin’ way.”

“Washington State,” Peter said. “But they’re just little girls.”

“I marry!” shouted Pal, pounding his chest with both fists. “You bring, I marry! No dowry! Just marry! Then live with in America!”

Gobindh smirked. “You think he’d let his sisters marry a black-faced pig like you, Kalsa Singh?”

Again the red-eyed Sikh glared at Peter as if he’d spoken the offending words. And again Gobindh Singh just smiled obliviously. “But listen, friend,” he said. “Do speak to the little ladies about our life here on the wide plateaus and prairies. Tell ’em how you found us sittin’ proud in the saddle. Tell ’em how we—”

“You bring!” Kalsa Singh roared, slamming his chest. “You bring, I marry!”

Dessinger was no longer playing possum: he was watching the Sikh the way a cornered mouse watches the cat. But thanks to his sleepless night and empty stomach, one swig of whiskey had given Peter a new lease on life. “Listen,” he lied. “Skin color isn’t important where I come from. In America, all people are equal. Every color, every sex. Which means not only that you’re equal to me, but that women are equal to both of us. So marriages are never arranged. And not even a king can marry a little girl. It’s the law. In America, girls grow up into women, then marry whoever they choose. So you’re welcome to my sisters, Kalsa and Gobindh Singh—if you win their hearts when the time comes. But that’s between you, them and the gods. I’ve got no part in it.”

Gobindh was nodding thoughtfully at all this. Kalsa was looking more pissed off than ever. Peter decided a second puff on the peace pipe might be in order: “Gimme another swig o’ that shit you got there, Gobindh,” he drawled.

Gobindh Singh smiled, and did so.

W
hen the train reached Parbhani, Kalsa and Gobindh Singh rode off over the Dakota prairie to rope some more whiskey. Dessinger was hugely relieved when the train left before they’d returned. Peter, to his own surprise, was a little disappointed: he’d had no idea how swiftly the miles could pass with the help of a little cognitive dissonance, fear and booze.
Dessinger had also left the train in Parbhani—to find a latrine, Peter assumed. But he’d returned very soon in the company of a stranger who really snapped the suspenders on Peter’s disbelief: the guy was an easy 6′4″ and wore cowboy boots, a Western shirt and a black string tie with a silver buffalo clasp. He struck Peter the instant he saw him not as a flesh-and-blood human but as some sort of mock-mythical being that had sprung into the world straight out of Gobindh Singh’s cattle-punchin’ third eye. As the newcomer heaved two enormous suitcases up into the luggage rack, he bellowed, “Theodore Bartholomew Waites,” then spun around, shook Peter’s hand in bone-crunching Western fashion, and added, “But you damn better call me T Bar.”

The dissonance was back. Despite a lifelong aversion to the nicking of names, Peter heard himself say, “Call me Pete, T Bar.”

“I been ridin’ two cars ahead since the air-conditioners blew,” Waites told him. “But Dessinger here says the natives are a bit restless up the line, and that maybe us Yanks ought to stick together for a stretch. So here I am.”

“Here he is,” said Dessinger, looking up at Waites, then smiling hugely at Peter.

For reasons he didn’t fully understand, Peter was enormously relieved to learn that boots, tie and handshake notwithstanding, T Bar knew nothing about “ropin’ an’ ridin’.” Though he made his home in Livingston, Montana, he confessed that he’d lived all but the last year of his life in various suburbs of LA. “What was my line, you ask?” he said, though no one had asked him. He then answered himself, saying that he’d been in the import business “ever since God invented hippies,” mostly incense “for head shops and guru-hounds” but also bangles, curios, a little jewelry. But his mainstay, the incense, would crap out soon, he predicted. “No offense, Pete,” he said, eyeing his ponytail, “but this hippie shit’s about dead in the water. Did you know the same chemical giant that makes glow-in-the-dark Frisbees for acidheads makes napalm for the Pentagon? Did you know Bob Dylan left the lyric sheet off his last mumbly record so you gotta buy the four ninety-five songbook from CBS to grasp the antimaterialistic lyrics? An’ what
is
a hippie anyway? Just a dope-smokin’ college brat, usually. And wait’ll the war’s over, the brats finish college, and daddy says, ‘Kiss my ass and like it or kiss your inheritance bye-bye.’ Man, we’re gonna see barbers in hair up to their armpits! We’re gonna see bra and Bible sales rise from the dead! We’re gonna see peacemongers and acid-retreads stormin’ Madison Av and Wall Street sellin’ brain, body and soul to the biggest corporate buyers they can find.
We’re gonna see—” And T Bar went on with a list of mostly accurate predictions. But Peter was hardly listening anymore. Waites had begun to irritate him for his style alone—because the style had begun to remind him of Everett.

Dessinger also appeared to be having trouble following the big neo-Montanan. But he seemed not so much irritated as distracted, perhaps even anxious. It made Peter want to hear more about the “restless natives” up the line. But Waites’s torrential monologue made a change of topic impossible. After going into excruciating detail about the killing he’d made selling his import business, and the little gem of a cattle ranch and the downtown Bozeman sporting-goods store he’d purchased with the pelf, Waites said, “Why sportin’ goods, you ask?” though again no one had asked him. He then jumped to his feet, pulled down one of his two suitcases, unlocked it, flung it open—and Dessinger’s bewilderment seemed to verge on horror when all they saw inside were countless plastic bags full of exotic feathers, animal fur, tails of deer, hackles of hens, elk hide, spools of gaudy thread, vises, clamps, tinsel, scissors and literally hundreds of little cardboard boxes, each with a different-sized fishhook Scotch-taped to its top.