The Selector of Souls (40 page)

Vikas pulls the grey back on her haunches just inches short of Mr. Talwar’s pointy brown shoes—“You’re quite right, Sharad-saab.” He bites off his words in the man’s alarmed face, “I’ll go. I’ll patch things up.”

A clang of the scoreboard; thanks to Vikas, National is now even with Calcutta 1–1.

Two days from now, Vikas’ black and saffron capsule will speed from the cacophony of the car rally in Shimla. Fearing gossip, he’ll drive alone, without chauffeur or batman to serve him. Alone, he will climb the terrible stillness of the blue-misted ranges, looking into the depths of lowland valleys. The stimulant and anaesthetic of speed
will replace image with image in dreamlike rapidity. Milestones will flash past, and despite sealed windows and air conditioner, dust will settle on his hair and moustache. With the article in hand, and the authority of the twice-born in his voice, he will inquire in Jalawaaz about the Catholic clinic, and by lunch time, will be helpfully guided to the Jesus-sister’s house.

F
OUR O’CLOCK MIST CONGEALS TO A MILKY FOG OVER
Gurkot and Sister Anu looks forward to a mug of hot tea. She stops at the decline of the driveway to the nuns’ residence and shifts
The 5 Minute Clinical Consult
book from one arm to the other. A saffron-orange car is parked at the cottage door.

The peace sign proclaims it a Mercedes, and the HIM license plate says the car was registered in Himachal state. Perhaps one of Sister Imaculata’s donors has come from Shimla to tour the Work?

The screen door creaks as she steps in. “Koi hai?” Then in English, in case the stranger doesn’t speak Hindi, “Who is there?” She lowers the heavy volume to the dining-room table, and drops her shoulder bag to a chair. Her eyes adjust to dimness. She flicks the light switch. Nothing—another power outage. More frequent and lengthy than in Delhi. And why people from Gurkot don’t allow themselves to become accustomed to electrical appliances. “Koi hai?”

Travel Health in India
crowns a stack of
Economic and Political Weekly
magazines on the coffee table.
Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets
is angled above the atlas. All these were on the bookshelf this morning. On the stone terrace, the reading chair isn’t facing the peaks. “Bethany?” she calls in the direction of the bedroom.

Dark trousers and black leather shoes swing off the bed. “Hello, darling.”

Sister Anu gasps, steps back. That scent.

The room seems to whirl, her heart races.
Don’t be silly
.

He’s standing in the bedroom doorway, hands in his pockets, smiling. Emerging from the fog-shape of her fears, walking into the room as if he owns it. “Just had to come and see the panoramic view from your bed. Took a shower while I was waiting. What
are
you doing here?”

“I live here.” Her voice comes out crisp and professional, though she’d like to spring from her skin. “And I’m not your darling.”

“Habit of speech, darling, habit of speech. You’re supposed to have the habit of listening. What? You’re not going to give your husband a kiss? Speaking of habits—don’t you nuns have to wear the super-woman cape …” His fingers stroke the air by his ears.

“Each religious order is different.” She shouldn’t sound so defensive—he likes her to be defensive.

“So I’ve found a modernized nun in Gurkot?”

“How did you …”

Vikas takes a long slip of paper from his pocket and holds it up. “Someone gave this to me.”

“Who?”

“I won’t tell you, just because you want to know.”

Sister Anu stares at the photo of herself with Father Pashan. “I didn’t think you read the Hindi newspapers.”

“I didn’t think you spoke Hindi well enough to be interviewed.”

“I speak Hindi most of the day.”

“But you still think in English, na? I hate that I think in English, don’t you?” He makes a show of consulting the article. “Says here you’re some kind of nurse? What are you trying to do?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” If she can find a knife or … something. She could drag his body across the dhurries. She could settle him in the driver’s seat, put the car in neutral and simply send
him over a cliff. That would be justice. Or would it save him from god’s justice?

“I’m listening.” He wears a look of exaggerated patience.

“I—I’m putting myself in the place of others. Trying to help.”

His laugh whip-cracks across the space between them. “Couldn’t you have just donated your saris or even some jewellery?”

“People here need ongoing help.” Her tongue feels like shoe leather.

He strolls across the drawing-room with loose-limbed grace, and inspects a few pages of
The 5 Minute Clinical Consult
on the table before her. So close now, too close. Scent of horses, leather, power.

“I’ve been alone here for a whole hour—going out of my mind with boredom. I called for a servant to make tea but no one came.”

“We don’t have servants. You could have made it yourself.”

“Your home is mine,
Mrs
. Kohli. Why should I have to make my own tea? Besides, there’s no power—your kettle doesn’t work.” He flops into the cane reading chair, and puts his feet up on her footstool. He looks up at her expectantly.

Anu mutters, “Ever heard of a saucepan?”

“Already with your burd-burd!” he shouts. And after a second’s pause he says so gently, “Aren’t you going to offer me some tea? I’ve driven hours from Shimla to see you.”

“I’ll make you tea, and then please leave.” Was it her convent-school manners or the imperative of hospitality or playing for time that made her say that? She must placate him—or kill him.

“What? Not even a night in the sack for old time’s sake … ?”

“No,” she says evenly.

A grin slides across his face. “Why? Is someone else sharing your bed these days?”

“My companion sister will be here very soon.”

“
She
shares your bed?” His lip curls in disgust.

“As you see we have two beds.”

“Is she the prettier one?”

Distract him
. She walks into the kitchen and fills a saucepan with
water.
Keep him talking. Please, god, make Bethany return
. She turns on the gas burner.

“I can’t believe you left me and Chetna, and life in Delhi, for this hole in the wall.”

“My definition of family is larger than yours.” She pulls opens a drawer as if reaching for a spoon.

“What’re you talking about?” A dragon-breath roar blasts into the kitchen, “My family is
much
larger than yours. Much! You hardly have a family. Why would you say your family is larger, when you
know
mine is?” She hears him pacing the drawing-room.

Sister Anu covers her ears with trembling palms. Another shout and she’ll be right back where she started …

She hears him take a huge breath. “But do I leave my duties? I don’t run away to hick towns in the Himalayas.”

“No, you just beat up anyone you can,” she mutters.

Shut up! Don’t remind him. Don’t plant the seed in his mind
.

“Burd-burd, again. Don’t think I can’t hear, Anupam.”

Anu lowers her palms, she makes no response.

Vikas sits down on the divan and stretches, arching his back. His left arm thumps across the roll pillows. He drops his head, presses the forefinger and thumb of his right hand to his forehead. “Oh, Anu. I don’t know what made me say that. I get angry when I’m tired and hungry, you know that. I let off steam! But don’t worry—it’s past. I have forgotten it.”

He seems to think she has erased it from her memory, too. Now he’ll mimic vulnerability.

“I really apologize if I have been insufferable—that’s just how I am.”

Sister Anu takes a spoon from a drawer, and leaves the drawer open. She opens the tea tin and puts a teabag in a small teapot. She waits for the water to boil, willing the crunch of footsteps on the driveway, but all she hears is the tinkle of wind chimes and the hiss of the wind.
Please god, be with me now
.

The pan rocks a little.
Pick it up, throw boiling water over him
.

Don’t anger him. You could have an “accident” off the cantilevered terrace, like Bobby. You could end up in the rain-harvest tank
.

Should she add milk? If she does, it will either be too much or too little. She takes the lid from a steel pan of milk, pours it into a milk jug. He doesn’t take sugar. But if she doesn’t serve it, he’ll want some. She finds a tray. Her hands tremble only slightly as she arranges the milk jug beside a teapot.

Vikas leans against the door jamb, blocking her exit. “You’ve put on weight.” In fact, Anu has lost four kilos from walking up and downhill. “I haven’t.” He boxes himself manfully in the solar plexus. “Polo on Sundays. Handicap still plus two.”

Sister Anu clenches her fingers around a knife handle. “Good for you,” she says.

“Come, I don’t hold a grudge, unlike you. You hoard every incident and bring it up months later.”

“You would too if you had been hurt and shouted at.”

“You get hurt too easily.”

“Yes, I do.” She turns slightly to block his view of the drawer, and reaches for the sugar bowl at the same time.

“What’s the matter with you? You know I don’t take sugar. My tastes haven’t changed in just a year or two.”

Sister Anu gives a shrug, “People do change. People do learn.”

“I don’t. I don’t need to. You’re the one who
changes
.” He spits out the word like an epithet. “You’ve been serving tea and god-knows-what to unrelated men all this time, haven’t you?”

“I’m a nurse. I look after ordinary people.” The knife has made it from the drawer and now lurks on the countertop beneath the short legs of the hotplate.

“And for that you had to convert to Christianity and become a nun as well?”

“No, I could have converted to any religion that says you should help the poor.”

“So you rejected Hinduism because we have
no
requirement to pay the poor?”

“I don’t reject it. I’m still a Hindu.”

He cocks his dark gelled head. Knitted eyebrows rise. “Strange Hindu. Not a Ganesh at the door, not even a Lakshmi calendar in this house. I should have brought you our latest on coated paper.” He gestures at the crucifix over the fireplace. “Jesus, Jesus everywhere.”

“Most Hindus find everything is god and god is in everything whether Ganesh or Lakshmi or Christ. But you’re right, that’s beyond your understanding.” She spreads a table mat on a tray, and arranges the tea pot, milk jug and sugar pot on top. She walks toward him as if utterly confident he will let her pass, as if she hadn’t just slipped the knife beneath the table mat.

He steps aside with exaggerated chivalry. “What can you do that will last here? There isn’t even enough power to run a bloody kettle.”

Sister Anu places the tray on the dining table. “I am a nurse, now. I know a bit about the human body.” She knows all the points where a knife should enter his flesh to do the most harm. She can see the artery pulsing in his neck, knows the soft area below his ribs where she could thrust it upwards.

“I know your body better than you know it, Mrs. Kohli. I’ve seen areas of it you’ve never seen. You don’t know anything about your body—let alone the bodies of others.” Chair legs screech on cement as he sits down. He takes a sip; his face scrunches. “This is tea-dust, not tea. And this mug—why are you giving me a servant’s dishes?”

“I told you we have no servants. Bethany and I have one mug each. Both are alike.”

“What a way to live. Okay, do you have jam-toast? Pakoras? Jalebis? I’m so hungry. I drove four hours to get here.”

“I’m afraid not.”

He grimaces again, but sips the tea. “Why not do something more necessary?”

“What’s more necessary?”

“I don’t know. Charity fashion shows in New Delhi—all my friends’ wives are organizing them. But you’re so selfish, Anu. You abandoned your child and think you’re going to help strangers?”

Lead me not into temptation, Lord. Deliver me from evil …

Aloud, she says, “You seem to have abandoned Chetna too.”

He shrugs. “I was invited to five Holi parties this year and at each one, people were asking, ‘Where is Anu?’ Told them you were away in Canada. Couldn’t say I was single! Lord Ram has Sita Mata, Lord Vishnu has Lakshmi Devi, Lord Shiv has Parvati Devi, Krishna has Radha, salt has pepper—didn’t you miss the Holi parties?”

“No. The hosts were your friends, not mine.”

“You’ve always been so judgmental, so critical and harsh. Man, your superiority is so insulting.” He pauses for breath. “Most of us just want to get the most out of life for ourselves and be cool, and the hell with the rest.”

“I believe in Christ’s ideas, Gandhian ideas.” The fog seems to have crept indoors and she’s shivering. She should have made a second mug of tea, but it didn’t occur to her. Vikas doesn’t notice that he is drinking while she is not.

“Gandhi! Ah, that little brahmin—the Congress Party’s mascot. No one tells me what to do with my money.”

“No one can. But I don’t have to contribute my labour to your lifestyle, either.”

He laughs as if he will fall off his chair. “As if you did any.”

“I worked!”

“Hardly! If you quit or were fired, you could just say, ‘Oh it was my hobby,’ and no one would call you a bloody failure, as they would a man.” He takes a gulp of tea. “And what’s so terrible about my lifestyle? Every man in my Old Boys Association strives for it. All the comforts of Europe—plus servants. India is no longer backward.” He stops. “Except here. What can anyone sell to these people? Hmm, let’s see—family planning? But you’re a nun.” He slaps his knee as he laughs.

When he stops, she says, “I don’t have to sell them anything. They just need health, education and clean water. Which could be supplied by the government, but isn’t.”

He gestures around the cottage. “So you call this living? I mean, great view, but you can’t eat it. Can’t fuck it either. And live here? It would drive me crazy.”

“We’re closer to god, here,” says Sister Anu. “I pray for you to be so, too.”