The Selector of Souls (49 page)

“He loved his creature comforts too much to sacrifice them for love.” Kiran’s words rattle around in Sister Anu’s head. An image takes centre stage: Vikas, lounging in his most comfortable chair.

Is he dead? There’s a terrible look on his face. Her blood freezes as fear grows. Now another fear rises, grows to terror. Has she killed him?

That look, as if he died mid-sneer.
O Lord, help me
.

Sounds, like leaves rustling … the image vanishes.

God is merciful
.

Sister Anu cracks open the door of the men’s ward. An uncanny wind is blowing, carrying Kiran’s whispered words to her ears.

Kiran is asking Damini to “look after” the girl. There is no mistaking her meaning. “Tell Aman-ji I had a miscarriage because the doctor didn’t arrive on time.”

Sister Anu feels herself go rigid with anger and outrage. Even if Kiran owns the clinic, she can’t pressure Damini this way! Bread of Healing could be blamed for Kiran’s miscarriage. Sister Anu is about to rush in and put a stop to this nonsense.

But wait, this is a test of Damini.

Damini sticks one leg straight out in front of her, then the other. She regards her combat-boots. Finally, she looks up.

“No,” she says.

Not “No, Kiran-ji.” Just “no.”

“See the moon?” says Damini. “I see it, and also my parents’ spirits, though they may not be visible to you. My father and mother are saying I am still your family servant. My father says obedience to you is like obedience to a husband. If I agree to do this favour for you, he says, you’ll take care of me till I escape from living. But he doesn’t know those times are gone. I’m just a labourer you pay for a few hours when you need me, and this is the age of Kaliyug.

“My husband Piara Singh is also here. He is telling me, No. He wants me to do what’s good for my karma. He has not come to visit me in many months—he was angry at me because I did a great paap. I will
take his advice. This baby has Mem-saab’s blood and spirit. I don’t have to raise this girl or arrange her marriage, but I know you can.”

Tension releases in Sister Anu’s neck and shoulders.

Damini holds the baby girl in her arms tenderly and croons to her. Could this kindly, caring old woman have harmed her own granddaughter? No. Anu cannot believe it.

And would she guide young women to the Jalawaaz Fertility Clinic? Dr. Gupta said the number of infants who died before six months in Gurkot and five villages around is lower than last year. Children are more likely to survive when they’re wanted—may the Church forgive that thought. If families abort girls, they end up with wanted children only—sons. Is Damini the cause of the decrease in infant mortality?

It’s taken so much work to bring Bread of Healing this far. Its reputation is precious. What is the compassionate thing to do? Sin and salvation seem remote to this situation—injury and healing feel more significant.

In a small town, you believe you know people. But really, you don’t. We can’t know others, any more than I knew Vikas the night we were married off. We don’t know what others are capable of
.

There’s that image again—Vikas lounging back in his most comfortable chair, a terrible look on his face.

I don’t even know what I am capable of
.

Outside the clinic, the bell tower shines silver, and the snow peaks are jagged as a hound’s teeth. It’s 3 a.m. and Sister Anu has left Damini sleeping beside Kiran and the baby girl. Goldina would not return baby Moses to the crib, so Sister Anu has put a towel between Goldina and the boy, so there’s less danger of Goldina smothering Moses in her sleep. Unable to sleep herself, she stands at the front gate, looking up at the jewelled parasol of the blue-black sky.

Hard to believe all those far-flung stars were once together, that the events of this night were once compressed to a dot within them. She clasps her elbows above her head and sways, stretching cramped muscles. The universe is fertile—many things replicate and reproduce, not only people, not only stars.

A fricative skidding startles her—a small animal dislodging tiles as it jumps to the clinic roof. A flying squirrel or the ubiquitous monkeys.

She pulls herself together and vows that next time she’s in Shimla, she will buy a book with colour photos of mountain plants and animals. And familiar local names, rather than Latin and English ones. If she could name each animal and plant she might feel more kindly toward all of them.

Can she do any more to help Kiran accept her baby daughter? Sister Anu’s hand rises to her heart. Like that tiny hand that once groped for her breast—you will love me, said that gesture. She remembers how, incredibly, mother-love came, after fifteen hours of labour, like a life-jolt from heaven. How she connected with a force much stronger than herself. The same force that pulled her to a bright warm light. The god-particle that connects everything in the universe. The force she yearns to reconnect with through daily prayer and her work.

Somehow she must persuade Kiran to love the baby’s sweetness, her helplessness, to feel responsible for this little girl’s life.

Yet a mother shouldn’t be encouraged to believe she owns her daughter or she might act like Mumma. How do you say “son of” or “daughter of” in Hindi, Punjabi or Pahari, or any of seven hundred Indian languages, without suggesting possession? Maybe children should be given temporary names, until they’re old enough to give themselves inspiring names the way Goldina did.

A name. Even a temporary one. An inspiring name
.

Sister Anu re-enters the clinic and takes up a lighter shawl. Damini is still sitting beside Kiran in the men’s ward, the baby girl in her lap.
Sister Anu wraps the shawl about her head, slips off her shoes and approaches Kiran’s bed. She reaches for the cloth-wrapped prayer book on Kiran’s nightstand.

“Careful!” says Kiran. “That’s my gutka.”

“I know,” says Sister Anu. Book in hand, she crosses her ankles and sinks to the dhurrie beside Kiran’s bed, “I’m opening it at random. I’m looking at the top left corner. Let me show you what your Guruji says: it’s an Arah—the letter A. The Guru says you must name the baby with the letter A. What will you call her?”

Kiran is quiet. Then she says, “I know what you’re up to, Sister. You have no right to do this.”

Damini says, “Anyone can read the words of the Guru, men and women, high and low—even Christians.”

She strokes the baby girl’s forehead, caresses her cheek.

Kiran says, “This is no way to name a child. You dress up in your best clothes and jewellery, you invite guests, you sing kirtan, you distribute food and kara parshaad and sweets to the whole community, you say the Ardaas …”

“At least temporarily,” says Sister Anu using her most persuading gentle voice. Names flash through her head like lightning. She doesn’t know very many Sikhs or Sikh names—just a few names of the Sikh gurus. But she does know that Sikh names can be for girls or boys. “Let’s call her Angad, just for now.” She pronounces it ung-ud, like the name the first Guru gave his successor.

Another long silence.

“Angad,” says Kiran, very low. “Piece of my body.”

She takes the girl from Damini’s arms.

Sister Anu reads several couplets aloud to let Kiran reacquaint herself with the verses, hesitating a little over the archaic Punjabi. Kiran’s makeup is disintegrating, her cheeks are blotchy red.

Sister Anu looks up from the small book as she hears a car. The driver’s palm thumps the horn as it pulls to a stop before the gate. She closes the prayer book, bows slightly over it, and gives it back to
Kiran, then hurries to the veranda. “The child is born and the mother is well,” she calls calmly to Amanjit Singh as he alights.

He storms past Sister Anu, into the patients’ waiting room—“
Ohé
! Where’s my boy?”

Sister Anu leads Amanjit to his wife’s bed and closes the door to the men’s ward. Let Kiran choose what she wants to tell Amanjit Singh, and let Kiran deal with the consequences.

S
O PERTURBED IS
A
NU BY THE EVENTS OF THE NIGHT
, she takes the 5 a.m. minibus and the 8 a.m. bus to Chhota Shimla, loyally accompanied by Bethany. At St. Anne’s, they are told Sister Imaculata is in Delhi for an interfaith conference, and Father Pashan and all the nuns are away on a rare outing to Baljees restaurant at the city centre. Two more buses and a ride in a lift up the mountain ensue. Then Sister Anu strides down the Mall from one end of Shimla to the other, closely followed by Bethany. Through the hundreds of tourists thronging the pedestrian-only central promenade, without a glance at Tibetan shawls in lean-to stalls, the antiquarian books at Maria Brothers, the chocolate biscuits displayed at Gainda Mull Hem Raj, or the high-heeled shoes in the Chinese shoemaker’s shop. Without a sniff at the fragrance of sizzling ghee and cardamom rising from Lower Bazaar, or a wrinkle of her nose at baboons sunning themselves on rooftops. Her pace slows only when she passes the Raj-era grey stone municipal buildings and nears the hole-in-the-wall Punjabi restaurant at Scandal Point. The nuns have finished lunch and are preparing for a leisurely walk back to the lift.

“I must talk to you,” she tells Father Pashan.

“And I’m ravenous,” says Bethany.

Father Pashan asks the nuns to continue without him, and orders makhni dal, raita and naan for the two sweating arrivals.

Anu yawns, and covers her mouth with her palm, “Excuse me! I was awake all night—two babies were born.” Those two miracles definitely happened. But hearing herself tell him how the two babies were nearly switched at Bread of Healing seems incredible. “Goldina was raped,” she adds. “A member of our parish. Should I report it to the authorities?”

Bethany spoons dal onto Anu’s plate.

“Does Goldina want to lodge a complaint?” asks Father Pashan.

“Now?” says Sister Bethany, through a mouthful of naan.

“I will support her,” says Father Pashan. “She can’t read or write, so I myself will go with her to the superintendent of police and help her fill out the charge sheet. I’ll go to her house and tell her so.”

“That might put her whole family in danger,” Bethany says. “From her rapist, his caste-members,
and
the police.”

Sister Anu tells them that Damini was the one who finally persuaded Kiran to give up Moses, but also recounts Goldina’s accusations against her. “I can’t believe Damini would let a child die—or worse,” she says. “But that’s what Goldina said.”

“Because the child was a girl?” says Father Pashan.

“It was implied, but I have no proof. Just as there’s no proof Kiran-ji tried to bribe me.”

“There never is,” says Bethany, emphasising each word with a flourished fragment of naan.

“And I heard Damini refuse when Kiran-ji asked her to ‘look after’ the girl.”

“Even so,” says Bethany. “You can’t let her continue working—you’d be afraid to ever leave her alone with a child. Can we find her something else? She can read and write in Hindi. And she wants to help other women—I’ve seen her reading to Goldina.”

“She has a son in Jalawaaz,” says Sister Anu. “Maybe he can assist his mother.”

“Bethany, maybe she can help you with literacy classes?” says Father Pashan.

“I’ll see.” Bethany sounds dubious.

“She worked for the Amanjit Singhs in New Delhi for years,” says Sister Anu. “She still works for them occasionally in the Big House. But after last night I don’t think Kiran-ji will hire her.”

“Yes, I’m sure she didn’t believe you or Damini would challenge her, much less perform a Sikh naming ceremony for her baby,” says Sister Bethany.

“I’m still horrified that she thought she could bribe me. What did I do to make her think I would accept it?”

“Nothing, I’m sure—some people are in the habit,” says Father Pashan. “But what made Mrs. Kiran Singh try to steal our poor Goldina’s baby?”

Sister Anu hesitates. “She said she didn’t want to disappoint Amanjit-ji with a girl. Maybe she thought Goldina could be bought because she’s poor and powerless.”

“No,” says Sister Bethany with tense passion. “It was because Goldina is a dalit. Everyone can be poor—it’s much worse to be poor and a dalit. And much worse than that to be poor and a dalit and a woman.”

“Well, my child, you managed to return the babies to their rightful mothers,” says Father Pashan. “The Lord was working through you. But as for Goldina—the man should not be allowed to do this to a Christian woman. Goldina didn’t name him—just said he is a teacher?”

“Yes. I couldn’t tell if she meant he is employed as a teacher, or that he was a private tutor, or a self-styled guru.”

“Maybe Samuel did something to anger the rapist, and Goldina took the punishment,” says Bethany.

“That shy man? What could he have done?”

“Maybe he unfurled an umbrella while the teacher was walking by,” says Bethany. “Maybe he tried to enter the Ram-Sita temple—which
other stonecutter is skilled enough to carve those idols? Maybe he squatted on a cushion in the teacher’s presence. Maybe he smoked or wore sandals. Maybe he asked for payment on time for his work. Maybe he asked the teacher or principal to give one of his children admission to the school, or the discount the law says they should have. Maybe he just looked the teacher in the eye.”