The Sandalwood Tree (18 page)

I thanked him, and he shambled out of the door looking diminished. I regretted having made him remember his daughter, but of course he had never forgotten her. He simply knew how to get on with his life in spite of his pain. I wished he could have told me how to do that.

I took down a faded volume and opened it to January 1858, the year of Adela’s death. I turned the pages, scanning the banal details of parish business, and came to a page that appeared to have been torn out of another book. It had been folded and tucked into October 1858.

8 October 1857

The christening of Charles William
.

The name seemed incomplete. In my experience, English children always had at least one middle name before their surname. But this child apparently had either no middle name or no last name. I went to the bookcase and flipped through the earlier volume until I found the place with a page missing in October 1857. I fitted the torn edge of the page to the torn edge in the earlier book, and the saw-tooth pattern matched perfectly. I went back to the later volume and saw that the torn page had been inserted alongside ordinary church business, including a death notice.

14 December 1858

Adela Winfield laid to rest after a long illness
.

Someone had placed a christening record in with Adela’s death notice, but Felicity was the one who was pregnant. A consumptive could have a healthy infant, and this must be her baby, but why
would the christening notice be placed with Adela’s death notice? Felicity would not have gone home and left Adela here with her baby. And if Felicity died, why was there no death notice for her, and where was her grave? If they both died, what happened to the baby?

I hailed a tonga and rode home, wondering what had become of them. I was still distracted when I arrived to find Rashmi waiting on the verandah, wringing her hands. Rashmi’s unfailing good cheer had failed. When she saw me, her face twisted with anguish, and the red bindi on her forehead disappeared in a deep crease between pinched eyebrows. English forgotten, she babbled frantically in Hindi. I didn’t understand, but the tears streaming down her face made me sick with dread, because everyone cries in the same language. Rashmi pulled me into the house and led me to Billy’s bedroom. The bed was empty. The blue shutters and the window were wide open. Billy was gone.

I
dropped my purse and flew out of the house. I hit the pavement running, first one way, then another, rushing wildly up and down the road. I shouted his name, “Billy!” Then again, louder, “Bii-llyy!” I ran down the road.
No, no, no, no, no
. I called his name again, because I didn’t know what else to do. “Biii-llyy!” I ran like a mad woman—
No, no, no, no, no
. My hat flew off and my hair bounced as I ran. I kept shouting, “Biillyy!” My blouse pulled out of the waistband of my slacks, and sweat blossomed under my arms, in the small of my back and on my face. I sped past Morningside and saw Verna peek through her curtains, curious and alarmed. I screamed,
“BILLY!”
She threw open the window, but I could see by her confusion that she knew nothing.

I raced down the hill, calling his name and scanning both sides of the road. When I came to the house with the red graffiti, I walked around it. Someone had tried to wash off the red paint and the wall was a disturbing mess—as if someone had tried to clean up after a firing squad. A sloe-eyed woman flipping chapatis on a hot rock paused to inspect me, tilting her head at my dishevelment, my air of frenzy, and then she went back to her work. Men rumbled along on bull carts, mangy dogs lay in the sun, and women strolled
along the road, swaying gracefully with water jugs on their heads. The calm that had so comforted me before now infuriated me. My son was missing. I wanted someone to
do
something.

I dashed into the crush of Himachali huts and ran between them, dodging cows and children and goats. A woman in an apple-green sari stopped me and said, “Madam, in the road your little boy I am seeing.”

“Where?” My head whipped around.

“Not now, madam. Towards Simla he is walking.”

It seemed unlikely that he could walk to Simla—almost ten kilometers—but could someone have taken him? That question sent my head and stomach into free fall, and I rushed out to the road to hail a tonga. I asked the driver to go slowly, and I called Billy’s name over and over, trying to scan both sides of the road at once. With every passing kilometer, my panic deepened.

In Simla, I paid the tonga driver and headed for the Lakkar bazaar, Billy’s favorite place. As usual, the streets were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people, and I knew Billy’s head would only reach hip level. I strained to see through dense, shifting crowds, but everything looked impossibly normal and it drove me crazy. The world was ending; how could everyone be so complacent?

Billy hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning or dinner the night before. He’d be hungry and, oh God, he was probably still wearing pajamas and a flimsy pair of moccasins. I imagined him picking his baby way through the bazaar, and when the pitiful children approached me with their hands out, I remembered the slavers.

It wouldn’t take long to spot a little boy with curly blond hair tramping around in teddy bear pajamas, and I knew what slavers would do with a five-year-old white boy. I doubled over, hugging myself—
Oh God, Oh God, Oh God
.

People looked, but they didn’t stop. They walked around me with eyes averted, the same way I averted my eyes from their lepers and ramshackle slums. Martin had told me what they thought
of white women—morally suspect, and one wrong word to a white woman could get you arrested. When it came to white women, it was best to mind your own business. Saris and kurtas parted around me, and a rush of panic made me dizzy.

My breathing turned fast and shallow; my lungs refused to expand. I tried to take a deep breath, but a vise gripped my chest.
Oh God, Oh God, Oh God
. I felt light-headed. I struggled to pull in one good breath, and the vise tightened. I raised my arms but it didn’t help. Pinpricks of light flickered in my peripheral vision, and I felt my heartbeat, stuttering like a flame in the wind. My vision began to blur, colors and sounds ran together, and I sucked at the air like a fish out of water. Gasping and crying, I stumbled to the telegraph office.

Martin didn’t waste any time. Within minutes he had called the police and had half the office staff out on the streets. Martin and I went with Walker to the Simla kotwali to file an official report, and then all three of us tailed a policeman—a short, portly man in a black turban and khaki uniform—while he questioned people. He talked to tradesmen and customers and rickshaw-wallahs and housewives; he stopped at temples and huts and shops and stalls. No one had seen Billy.

“How is that possible?” I pleaded. “A blond five-year-old in pajamas? How is it possible no one saw him?”

“It’s a delicate matter, Evie.” Walker rubbed his beard. “People would be afraid to pick him up, but no one would want to admit seeing him and not picking him up. Anyone who might have taken him might now be afraid of kidnapping charges.”

“No! No charges! We’ll offer a reward … tell them.”

“Yes!” Martin said. “No charges. A big reward.”

“Right.” Walker rubbed his beard.

Rewards were not the way things were done in India; the situation required money up front, baksheesh. Martin took out his wallet, but he didn’t have much cash so we sped home and I raided the
tea tin while Martin waited in the old Packard. We drove back to Simla and dispensed baksheesh freely, forcing rupees into people’s hands. The police were the first with their hands out and that surprised me, but only me. We stopped people on the street and halted tongas and rickshaws, and Martin passed out rupees to everyone. He stuffed paper money into hands and pockets, but no one knew anything. We didn’t need a photograph. A five-year-old blond boy in Western pajamas was description enough.

I wanted the shops to close and the streets to empty. I thought it would be easier to spot a small child without the shifting masses of people. But streets in India are never really empty, and I felt a sudden rage at the crowding. I wanted them all to stand still, make way, go home, do
something
.

Martin and Walker huddled in conference with the policeman, and I shoved my way into the middle of them. “You don’t talk without me. This is my child.”

Martin took both my hands in his. “Honey, there’s a place they want to check, but I’m not sure you should go there.”

“If Billy might be there, I’m going.”

Martin put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s a slave market.”

My knees went weak, but I said, “Let’s go.”

We followed the policeman down slanted stone steps into increasingly narrow lanes, twisting and turning, going up and down and up again, until I knew I could not have found my way out alone. In a filthy alley piled with rotting garbage and alive with vermin, the policeman stopped and said, “In here.” He stood at the entrance to a lane so narrow that it disappeared into deep shadows even now, in the middle of the day.

Martin peered into the dark and said, “Evie, are you sure? Walker can wait here with you.”

I said, “I’m sure,” and stepped past him.

The little policeman looked at me with baleful eyes. “So sorry,” he said, shaking his head. He looked helpless and I felt sorry for
him. He did not want me there, but he did not know how to refuse an insistent memsahib. “This is no good place for madam.”

He was chivalrous, in his way, and uncomfortable dealing with a white woman. But the thought that Billy might be anywhere near this awful place seized me with a sense of urgency. I turned to Martin. “Tell him to stop apologizing and go. Every minute counts.”

Martin nodded at him and the policeman sighed. He said, “Please be walking carefully, yes?” He pointed down and I saw a narrow black canal of open sewerage snaking down the middle of the lane. “So sorry,” he said again, “but madam must be walking like so.” He placed his feet on either side of the foul water and began a slow, rocking waddle into the dark.

I followed, trying not to step in the filth that flowed between my feet while the evil stench rose up in my face. I heard Martin and Walker sliding along behind me in the mud, and I had the sudden thought that, when we got home, I would have to throw away our shoes. Immediately I felt disgusted with myself for having such a trivial thought when Billy was missing. I was chastising myself for pettiness when the policeman stopped abruptly in front of a sagging wooden door, and I almost slammed into him in the dark.

“No tourists in people market. You pretend you come to buy, OK?”

I felt sick, but Martin quickly said, “Yeah, sure.”

The policeman rapped a series of coded taps, and I heard scraping and cursing as a wooden bolt was lifted on the other side. A woman shrouded in black opened the door, but only a few inches; she squinted at us suspiciously. A reek of garlic and boiling mustard oil seeped out of the partially open door.

The policeman spoke to her in whispers while she watched me with kohl-lined eyes. Then she made a contemptuous gesture, a sideways flick of the hand as if swatting at a pesky fly. She said, “Neh.”

The policeman wheedled and cajoled, and finally Martin shouldered past him and thrust a wad of rupees at her. She counted the
money, gave me a sharp look then swung the door open. She led us along a narrow hallway, stinking of garlic and laid with filthy rush matting, and then out to a secluded courtyard. The woman plodded ahead of us like a tired workhorse, and I wondered whether she was a slave.

Her house (if it was hers) had been built right up against the crevice in a mountainside, accessible only through the garlic-scented hallway. There was a cave entrance on the far side of the courtyard, where six young children sat on the ground, silent and unmoving. Daylight was blocked out by a canvas awning stretched overhead—no doubt intended to thwart prying eyes—and the effect was an eerie artificial dusk. Oil lamps shed a sickly yellow light, and men in djellabas and kurta pajamas, clustered in one corner, chatting quietly. They looked up when we came into the courtyard, and there was a rush of whispers. I distinctly heard “white woman” but I couldn’t tell which was the greater offense, my color or my sex. We hung back and after a minute they went back to their conversation.