Buddha's Orphans, page 8
“The boy will have a better life with us. You’ll be performing a dharma, not a sin.”
“I’m a Brahmin’s son, Ganga Da. Even contemplating such a thing is a sin for me.”
Ganga Da reached for his wallet, took out five hundred-rupee notes, placed them on the mat in front of him one by one, and smoothed them. “Everyone will benefit. My wife will get a son, I’ll have peace of mind at home, and you . . .” He extended his lower lip toward the notes. Just a few weeks ago, Ganga Da had heard Bhimnidhi complain about his two teenage sons, whose extravagant tastes he couldn’t fulfill with his modest salary. Five hundred rupees nearly matched Bhimnidhi’s monthly salary, Ganga Da knew.
Bhimnidhi warily observed the bills. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, “You put me in a bind.”
Five minutes later, Bhimnidhi had pocketed the money and was writing down the specific date and time that Ganga Da dictated to him. After he finished writing, Bhimnidhi said, “I’ll try my best, all right, Ganga Da? Sometimes matters like these are a bit delicate. You never know who is your enemy, who is waiting for you to make a move like this so they can pounce on you.”
Ganga Da pulled out two more hundred-rupee bills, waved them in the air, and said, “There’s more here if other mouths need to be gagged, but first I’ll need the document in hand.”
Bhimnidhi spread his palms. “It’s in God’s hands.”
“When will it be done?”
“Come to Prasuti Griha this afternoon.”
“Today?”
“Yes, today. If it needs to be done, why delay?”
“But whatever happened to our famous Nepali way of putting off until tomorrow what can be accomplished today?” Ganga Da joked.
Bhimnidhi laughed heartily, and the two men departed in a jovial mood. Before he left the gate, Bhimnidhi asked that he bring the additional two hundred rupees to the hospital, as “more hungry mouths might need to be fed.” This elicited even more laughter from both men.
At home, Jamuna and Raja were still sleeping. Ganga Da woke them and asked them to quickly get ready, as they had to leave.
“Where? Raja hasn’t eaten anything,” Jamuna said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Right now it’s more important that you two go before Kaki comes.”
At the mention of Kaki’s name, Jamuna promptly stood, picked up Raja, and carried him to the bathroom, where she washed the half-asleep boy’s face; offering him water from her palm, she made him gargle. After Jamuna and Raja dressed, the three of them left the house. They walked toward Tangal, and Ganga Da’s heart jumped to his throat every time he saw a woman’s figure that remotely resembled Kaki. They made their way behind the royal palace, past the moss-covered walls that Bokey Ba had attempted to climb with baby Raja in his arms.
The three moved speedily; Raja sometimes walked on his own, sometimes was carried by Ganga Da or Jamuna, until they reached an old house in Tangal with a large unkempt yard. They opened the gate and went inside. A woman in the white dhoti of a widow, her hair graying, came out to the porch. Her face brightened at seeing Ganga Da, and she gave a curt nod to Jamuna. Before she could ask who the boy was, Ganga Da raised his palm and spoke quickly. “Bala Maiju, you’ll need to house Jamuna and the boy for a few days here.”
Bala Maiju looked shocked. “What’s wrong? Is this the boy whose mother worked—”
“She’s not his mother,” Jamuna said testily. “I’m—”
“That’s not important right now,” Ganga Da said. “When the time comes, Bala Maiju, I’ll explain everything.”
“This doesn’t look right to me. What is going on?”
Ganga Da went to her, put his arms around her, and said, “You think your nephew will do anything untoward and get you involved? What would Gaurav Uncle think of you if he were alive today?” Invoking Gaurav Uncle, Ganga Da’s maternal uncle, always worked with Bala Maiju, whose eyes teared up at the memory of her dead husband; he had doted on Ganga Da.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Bala Maiju said. “But keeping someone else’s child without their knowledge . . . I assume the mother doesn’t—”
“It’s just a legal matter,” Ganga Da said. “It’ll get resolved in a few days, and I’ll bring them back home.”
“You know that you’re welcome here for as long as you want,” Bala Maiju said, looking directly at Ganga Da, not Jamuna.
“Of course I know that. In fact, you shouldn’t bear the sole burden of these two extra mouths to feed, so . . .” He took out the two hundred rupees he’d waved in front of Bhimnidhi. A certain type of madness had come over him.
Bala Maiju slapped his hand and said, “Don’t insult me like this. What would your Gaurav Uncle think of such a shameful gesture?”
Smiling, Ganga Da put the money back into his pocket and raised his arms in surrender. The three of them went inside, where Bala Maiju once again tried to pry from Ganga Da why they couldn’t stay in their own house. But Ganga Da kept shaking his head, saying he’d reveal everything at the proper time.
After drinking some tea and eating a leftover roti, Ganga Da left, heading straight to his office, as it was nearly ten. Once there, he signed in, then sat at his desk for about an hour, taking care of some paperwork. He yawned, scratched his throat, then went to the corridor, which looked out on the lane that led to his office building, to see if Kaki had appeared. Every hour or so, Ganga Da wandered back to check again. The colleague who shared his desk remarked gently that it seemed as if Ganga Da was impatient for a lover to arrive. “Doesn’t he look like a restless Romeo?” the man said, addressing everyone in the room. The others nearby murmured their assent and either went back to work or kept sipping their tea. Around noon, Ganga Da purchased tea and samosas from the canteen. As he ate, he eyed the manager’s office, which was right across the corridor. The sliding sign outside the manager’s office had been stuck on OUT for years now. The perpetually unreachable manager, thought Ganga Da. He carefully pulled out a long piece of hair that was stuck between the peas inside the samosa, threw it away, and plopped the rest of the samosa into his mouth. The manager emerged, wiped his hands on his door curtain, stretched, then ambled off to the canteen, which was in the adjacent building. Ganga Da gulped his tea and, turning to his colleague, said that he’d be back within an hour. The colleague raised his eyebrows, but Ganga Da quickly made his exit.
The Prasuti Griha Hospital was about a twenty-minute walk from where he worked. It was located right next to the Bagmati River, and the sweet smell of the water followed him as he went into the building. A baby cried ferociously somewhere inside, and a quick glance through an open door revealed a young woman moaning in her bed. He found Bhimnidhi in a room with another man, who looked at Ganga Da as though he already knew his secret. Bhimnidhi closed the door and asked Ganga Da, “Did you bring it?”
Ganga Da patted his pocket.
“Give it to me.”
“Where is the paper I asked for?”
“That will happen,” Bhimnidhi said impatiently. Gone was his earlier cheerfulness; now he looked serious, almost rude. He spread out his palm to Ganga Da, who reluctantly placed the two hundred rupees in front of him. A nurse’s muted shout sounded outside the doorway. Bhimnidhi passed the money to the other man, who silently opened the door and left.
Bhimnidhi didn’t say a word to Ganga Da as they waited, standing. The man returned within two minutes and handed Ganga Da a yellow sheet of paper. He studied it and said, “This is it? This small paper?”
“That’s it.”
Ganga Da’s next stop was an astrologer’s dim room in Hanuman Dhoka. He handed the bearded man the yellow paper and told him what he wanted.
It didn’t surprise Ganga Da when he saw Kaki stationed outside his gate in Lainchour, her hands on her hips, her face dark. “Raja is missing since yesterday,” she said, cutting right through his pleasantries. “Where is he?”
He told her he didn’t know.
Her eyes probed his face, half in contempt. “This is the only place Raja could come to. He couldn’t have gone anywhere else.”
Ganga Da opened the gate and went in. “Did you inform the police?” He didn’t know how long he could keep up the façade.
She followed him and said, “No, I was hoping that he’d return to me or that I’d find him. Here.” Her eyes scanned the house, the yard. Then she noticed the big lock on his door, and said, “Where’s your wife?”
“She’s gone to her mother’s.”
Suspicion marked Kaki’s face. A wave of guilt washed over Ganga Da. But he couldn’t let her presence weaken him, so he mentally evoked, and amplified, the resentment he’d felt toward her for violating her promise, for leaving. He said testily to her, “You didn’t think twice when you took him with you, and now you have the nerve to come here. Even if he was here, why would I tell you?”
“You’ve hidden him somewhere, haven’t you?” Kaki hissed. “Where is he? Tell me before I fetch the police.”
Ganga Da folded his arms on his chest.
Kaki shouted Raja’s name. She ambled to the back of the house and peered in through the window, then came to the front and banged on the door, all the while shouting the boy’s name. Then she sat down on the veranda and began to weep. Ganga Da remained with his arms crossed. Neighbors appeared at their windows, and Kaki appealed to them, asking if they’d seen Raja in this house. They quickly withdrew their heads, then peeked through gaps in the curtains. Kaki turned to Ganga Da. “You’ve stolen him from me,” she said. “You’ve conspired with that wife of yours to rob me of my boy.” She placed her head against the pillar on the veranda and closed her eyes, apparently weakened by the ordeal.
His throat tight, Ganga Da sat next to her, took her hand in his, and said, “Come, I’ll take you home.” He was acutely aware of the yellow sheet of paper in his shirt pocket. It felt hot, as though it were ready to burn a hole in his chest.
She shoved away his hand and stood, saying, “Don’t touch me. I spit on people like you. I’m going to the police.”
For the next hour, Ganga Da sat on the veranda, watching the sun set behind the Nagarjun hill. Some of his neighbors were still at their windows, whispering among themselves. He didn’t know what would happen next. He knew he ought to go to Bala Maiju’s house, tell Jamuna that Kaki had come to look for Raja, that the police might be involved. But the tussle with Kaki had exhausted him. Raja belonged to Kaki. She had raised him, had taken care of him when the rest of the world hadn’t. And now he and Jamuna were yanking him away from her. It was wrong.
He felt a bit dazed at the thought that the police might come knocking on his door in the middle of the night. They could ask for Jamuna’s whereabouts, and he’d just have to keep saying that she had left town, gone to a relative’s place somewhere. But in truth, he just couldn’t see why the police would take the complaint of a servant woman seriously, unless Kaki managed to involve her current employer. But he’d deal with events as they happened.
He had promised Jamuna that he’d go to Bala Maiju for the night, but now he became suspicious that Kaki might be lurking in the shadows nearby, waiting for him to go to his wife and Raja so she could then follow. It was a silly thought, but it made him scrutinize the yard and the surrounding walls as darkness began to slowly spread and the crickets started to chirp. He sat still, his heart hammering, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move in the tulsi bushes. “Who?” He stood up, and two birds—swallows?—swooped through the air and disappeared into the darkening sky.
Part II
* * *
The Document
NORMALLY SISTER ROSE combed through each piece of writing before Nilu, who was now in the tenth grade and the editor of the school magazine, took them all to the printer to be typeset. Sister Rose scoured the articles for innuendo criticizing the school or its policies, parodies of teachers, or love poems containing hidden sexual messages, especially from one girl to another. This year Sister Rose had already forced Nilu to remove improper lines from several articles.
During the winter, in one of these “proofreading meetings” held informally on the bed in Sister Rose’s narrow room next to the library, the two reviewed the pieces for the next issue; the early afternoon sun warmed their faces and legs. Sixteen-year-old Nilu’s back leaned against the wall, while Sister Rose lay on her side, head propped by an arm, knees pulled in, her shoes on the floor. A faint odor emanating from Sister Rose, like a mixture of men’s aftershave and the potatoes she’d eaten for lunch, was making Nilu slightly nauseated. As far as Nilu was concerned, the pieces they were reviewing were fine, and she wanted to be done quickly so she could go and finish her homework for her next class.
“What is this girl trying to say here?” Sister Rose asked, holding a Nepali poem up to the sunlight. “What does she mean by tyo saririk nashako sugandh? Let me see, that means ‘that smell . . .’ no, ‘fragrance of . . . physical drunkenness,’ right? Or intoxication. What does this girl, Prateema Ganguly, mean by that, pray tell me?”
“She’s just marveling at her own body there, Sister, almost in a spiritual way.”
“But doesn’t tyo refer to the body of the man she’s just talked about? In the previous line?”
“No, no,” Nilu said, although she knew that to be precisely the case. She even knew the man that Prateema Ganguly, her best friend at school, was writing about. Prateema claimed to have fallen in love with the teacher who tutored her at home in Nepali, her weakest subject. He was a poor man who taught at a local school, but something was happening during these tutorial sessions, Prateema told Nilu with dreamy eyes, and suddenly she’d begun writing poems of longing in Nepali, a language that had always troubled her, as her family was originally from Calcutta and they spoke Bengali and English at home. “I’ll teach him English, he’ll teach me Nepali, and our children will write poetry in both languages, no?” Prateema had once said to Nilu, who liked her friend enough to forgive her this romantic crush, which she thought was awfully silly and likely to be short-lived. Probably the tutor had a wife and child back in his village, Nilu thought. She herself had never lost her head over a boy, let alone a man. Strangely, she still thought of Raja, her childhood friend, and she wondered what he was like now. She dreamt about him, still: the two would be playing in the yard, jumping into a mountain of sand, or they’d be strolling in a foreign country amid beautiful pillared monuments. She didn’t know why, after all these years, Raja still haunted her, why she wasn’t interested in the boys around her, as her friends were. In fact, when a boy made romantic overtures to her, she rejected him outright, calling him an “idiot” or “nincompoop” to his face, so that even the most aggressive boys were slightly afraid of her. The boys she liked were those who, even if they harbored secret feelings for her, never revealed them and treated her like a friend. Nilu had a calm, solitary energy about her that attracted people; they were often impressed by her composure. She was bookish, and to fit the stereotype she wore big glasses that enlarged her eyes, making her look even more somber.
“Prateema and I have been reading the poetry of Rumi.” Nilu lied to Sister Rose. “Have you read Rumi’s poems, Sister? He talks about how spiritual our bodies are.”
“Really?” Sister Rose said. She looked up at Nilu, her eyes registering a sudden interest. “Tell me more. What does Rumi say about physical intoxication?”
“Oh, he talks about how God can . . .”
Sister Rose placed her right hand on Nilu’s thigh, which was exposed because her skirt had slid up. “Go on,” Sister Rose said, and yawned.
Nilu squirmed and shifted her leg, so Sister Rose’s hand would slip away, but it remained on her thigh. “Rumi . . . well . . . he suggests that physical desire can be channeled for union with . . . God.”
There was no mistake now: Sister Rose’s fingers had traveled farther up Nilu’s thigh, closer to her crotch, and with a jerk Nilu bolted out of the bed and stood up. Her breath stuck in her throat, and when the words came, they tumbled out rapidly. “I have to go.”
Sister Rose’s pale face turned crimson. “Already? We haven’t discussed the piece.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Nilu said.
“Sit down, Nilu. What’s the hurry? Would you like a piece of Swiss chocolate?”
But Nilu grabbed her bag. “I have things to do.”
Sister Rose’s skin color had returned to normal, and now she once again frowned at Prateema’s poem. “This poem can’t go in the magazine. We’ll start getting calls from parents.”
“I don’t care. I have to go.” Nilu tugged at the doorknob, but the door didn’t open. It was latched. Nilu felt her body grow hot: Sister Rose had must have fastened the latch when they entered the room. She clanked it open and strode out, running to the nearby bathroom, where she locked herself in a stall, breathing hard. She swallowed a few times, and the nausea subsided. She contemplated going to the principal, Mother Mann, and telling her what had happened, but even as she rehearsed what she’d say to her, she found herself fumbling with the words. The sisters at the school often put their arms around the girls, pinched their cheeks, or rubbed their backs in gestures of affection, so Mother Mann would most likely brush aside Nilu’s version of the event, saying that she had imagined it, that Sister Rose’s touch was innocent, a gesture of fondness from a teacher to a student with whom she was working on the school magazine. Mother Mann might even yell—she liked to yell, provoking a vein on her throat to throb viciously—at Nilu for casting aspersions on Sister Rose. Nilu thought about going to Sister O’Malley, her favorite teacher, an iconoclast who favored jeans and a flowery kurta to her nun’s robe and frequently fought with the other sisters about draconian school rules. Among the students Sister O’Malley was popular, and a flock of girls were always hovering around her in the hallways, or on the playground, or in the canteen, which irked the other sisters. For her part, Sister O’Malley mocked her own colleagues, mimicking their speech patterns and facial expressions and making the girls hysterical with laughter. Sister O’Malley would most likely believe Nilu and curse Sister Rose under her breath (she didn’t shy away from words that made the girls giggle and blush), but what more could she do? She was already treated like a pariah by the other sisters, and rumors were circulating about her possible transfer to a small Jesuit school in a village in southern India.
