The Sandalwood Tree (19 page)

One man walked over to the cave and bent down to inspect a little girl. He made the child stand up and turn slowly. He parted her matted hair and scrutinized her scalp with a look of distaste. He pulled down her lower eyelids, then looked inside her mouth, probing with his little finger, and finally lifted her ragged tunic and took a long look at the thin naked body. The girl, no more than six years old, registered no emotion. She did as she was told and then sat back down. I started to tremble and Martin put his arm around my shoulders and held me tight.

The policeman talked with the slavers—they seemed to know him—but they were clearly annoyed with him for having brought us there. We pretended not to notice the scowls and gesticulating in our direction. After a while, the policeman came back shaking his head. “Ten times a fair price I am offering. I’m sorry. They are not having him.”

We left the way we had come, single file, inching along the putrid alley. When we got back to the bazaar, I felt myself spinning. It was too much—the slavers, the stink, the heat, the sound
of unseen drums. My breathing sped up, my lungs constricted, and my heartbeat became erratic. I clutched at my chest and rasped, “Martin, Martin, tell them to check the cars. The cars! Slavers have cars. They could be driving him away right now. Martin?”

Walker gave Martin a veiled look, and I turned on him like a whip. “What the hell?” My fingers retracted into a fist. I felt heat rising in my face and I could barely breathe, but I made my voice cold. “My child is missing. Don’t you
dare
patronize me.”

“I apologize, Evie.”

The police asked me to go home. I refused. The one in charge, a short, thick man with kind eyes, said, “People are not being restful these days, madam. I am assuring you, we are most capable.”

Martin took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I think he’s right.”

“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I can’t go home and do nothing.”

Walker stepped up and took a small brown bottle out of one of his pockets. He said, “If you insist on staying, take one of these.” He shook out a yellow pill.

“What is it?”

“It’ll help.” Walker offered the pill along with his water flask. After a moment, I downed the pill with a few swigs from the flask and within an hour woozily allowed Martin to take me home.

Martin laid me down on our white bed and said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

My speech came out drug-slurred and nasal. “If we don’t find him—”

“No.” Martin put a finger to my lips. “We’ll find him.”

“Billy,” I moaned. “Oh, God.”

Martin wrapped his arms around me and held me fast beneath Rashmi’s wilting mala, and I wept and wept and wept.

V
erna arrived with Lydia, and Martin left to rejoin the search. As soon as I saw the women, I wanted them to go away. Neither of them had children. They couldn’t possibly understand. They stood in the doorway, saying, “You poor dear.” I knew they were there to make sure I stayed home, but I was too drug-addled to argue with them.

I decided to run a bath—the only way I could think to escape them. While the bathroom filled with steam, I peeled off my clothes, which were wrinkled and limp with sweat that held the sour reek of fear. I left the clothes in a heap on the Mercurochrome-stained floor and stood naked beside the tub, watching it fill and caressing my stomach. The skin there felt a bit slack and I knew there were translucent stretch marks from pregnancy, spidery silver shadows meandering under the skin. I remembered the secret joy of feeling Billy move inside me, under my heart, warm and safe. Now he roamed God knew where, hungry and unclothed and alone, and it was my fault. How could I ever have left his side in this terrible place? Lydia was right. I shouldn’t have brought him to India. I put one foot into the tub and a tingling burn seized me up to the ankle, but I resisted the impulse to pull back. I got in and let the
scald take me. Penance. A monsoon of pain spread through my body, searing and biting, and it was a relief to feel something other than fear.

I sat there, hugging my knees, long after the water had cooled, and I listened to the women’s muffled voices in the next room, hushed, the way people talk at a funeral. I wanted to march out there stark naked and say, “You don’t know
anything
.” I splashed water on my face and climbed out of the tub, and then opened the door a crack to listen. They weren’t talking about Billy or me at all. They were talking about wires having been cut in Pathankot, and their circumspect tone made me angry. Who cared about cut wires now? I trudged into my bedroom with a towel wrapped around me, crawled into bed, and drew the mosquito netting.

Once in a while I found myself weeping, but I couldn’t remember having started. The sedative must have begun to wear off because I sat up, intending to get dressed, push past Verna and Lydia and go find my child. I stood up just as Verna came in with a cup of tea. She said, “Sit down, dear,” and set the cup on the bedside table. I obeyed rather than argue. I wanted her to leave.

Verna wasn’t smiling, and her lips looked wrinkled as a used handkerchief. Lipstick bled in rays around her mouth, and I realized that without the big smile Verna’s whole face drooped and her neck puddled like melted wax. Maybe Verna wasn’t childless. Maybe she had grown children, even grandchildren. Not that it mattered. She patted my hand and left.

I drank the tea quickly, thinking it would help counter Walker’s sedative, and then I only remember feeling as if I were being pulled underwater and wondering what they had put in my tea. I was half asleep when Verna came back.

“A message has come, dear.” Verna put something on the side table and picked up the empty cup. I glanced over and saw a rolled note on long Indian paper—probably from Harry. I ignored it. Verna said, “Would you like me to read it to you?” I started to say
it wasn’t important, and then it occurred to me that the note might be from a local who had seen Billy. I sat up and unrolled it. The writing blurred and swam, and I had to blink to clear my vision.

Dear Evie
,

I have secured a translation of the Urdu reference to Miss Winfield, and it is interesting. Please come to the temple at your convenience. I’ll be here every afternoon from now on. The ashram is driving me mad
.

Your friend
,

Harry

I tossed the note on the table and lay back down. I said, “It’s nothing.” She nodded and left.

When Lydia came in, I rolled away with my back to her. She said something, but her voice seemed to come from far away and her words didn’t string together the way they should. I let her stand me up stark naked and slip bra straps over my shoulders. When I didn’t move, she gently fitted the cups over my breasts and fastened the hooks. Obedient as a child, I stepped into my panties and allowed her to pull them up. Then she draped my chenille robe over me, threaded my arms through the sleeves, and tied the sash.

Verna had made tea and cucumber sandwiches, but in spite of the kettle steaming and the women sitting at the table, the kitchen seemed cold with no curry pot simmering on the stove. I said, “What happened to Habib?”

“We sent him home, dear.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, we paid him.”

“Thanks.”

I stared at the sandwich they’d set before me while Lydia complimented the dessert Verna had served at their last dinner party. Verna explained the fine points of constructing a strawberry trifle, and after the trifle recipe had been beaten to death the women
shared amazement at the outcome of a recent cricket match. I understood that they didn’t really know me and didn’t know what to say to me, but …
trifle and cricket?
Martin came in around three in the morning and the memsahibs left.

I said, “Does anyone know anything?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“We haven’t found him yet. But lots of people are on it. Lots. We’ll find him. Simla is not Delhi. I only came home to see how you are.”

“I’m fine.”

“We’ll find him.”

Martin went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face, and I slumped onto the camelback sofa, dizzy and disoriented. After a while, I lay down, hating myself for being so sleepy, and absently pulled a loose thread out of the seam on a down pillow. I watched the thread unravel and the welting come loose, thinking things fall apart too easily. It seemed wrong; things should be sturdier than that. Half the welting hung limp and desultory, ready to fall off. I gave it a tug and the pillow ripped open, exposing feather guts, looking the way I felt.

Martin came out of the bathroom and leaned over the back of the sofa. He said, “I’ll bring him home.”

I twisted at the waist and threw my arms around his neck. Ah, the comforting familiarity of his touch. He said, “I have to go.”

“Yes.” I let him go. “Find him.”

After Martin left, I wandered into Billy’s room and stared at the empty bed. The sequined camels hung under the mosquito netting, and his wooden blocks lay in a heap under the window. I picked one up, turned it over in my hand, and threw it against the wall as hard as I could. It didn’t help, and I sank to my knees on the floor. I sobbed and hit the floor with a fist, crying out when a loose plank popped free with a sound like a gunshot. As I pulled out the
plank, intending to set it properly back in place, I saw a small tin box tucked into the space under the floorboards.

I took it out, wiped off a crust of dirt and mold and lifted the lid. The box contained two rubber hot-water bottles, each with one end sliced off to make a sort of pocket. Inside, I found a small handmade book with a mauve suede cover, sewn neatly with silver thread. The stitches were small and regular, like tiny silver teeth clamped all around the edges, and on the bottom right corner of the cover I saw the initials:
A.W
. It was Adela’s journal.

Now? Now, when I didn’t care anymore? I almost laughed.

I fanned the pages, disinterested, and saw the place where several pages had been torn out—February to June 1857—the pages I had found in the Bible. Listlessly, I opened the back cover and one heavily underlined word in the last entry caught my eye—
sorry
?

August 1857

Is there no end to this nightmare? I returned to find Lalita crying & Felicity gone. He left a thick, cream-coloured calling card on her bed with a scribbled note. “I have taken her. I’m sorry.”

He’s
sorry?

He’s
sorry
?

Where has he taken her? And why?

There were more entries, but I didn’t care. I closed the journal and dropped it in the tin box. Then I lay down on Billy’s bed, under the sequined camels, and curled up like a drugged snail retreating into its shell.

T
he doorbell rang and I woke to the sound of feral dogs barking and brawling. Verna and Lydia must be waiting patiently on my verandah, no doubt carrying more sedatives in their purses. Why couldn’t they leave me alone? My hand had fallen asleep under my hip and pins and needles prickled up my arm, but I didn’t move. The bell rang again, and then they began knocking, but I lay still. After they went away I would get dressed and go out, and I would stay out until I found him.