“Nothing,” I said.
He laughed. “I know that ‘nothing.’ It means the exact opposite. Come on, spill it.”
“What would happen,” I asked, “if you found out that your soldiers had done something wrong? If they’d broken a rule?”
“Broken a rule?” He frowned, considering it a while. “Well, I suppose it would depend on the rule, but, in general, we don’t look kindly on that sort of thing. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I said, and he gave me a quick sideways glance.
“Quite the enigma, aren’t you?” he murmured, and, for some reason, the words sent a quick, lightning flash of warmth up my spine.
We began walking back to the house, passing more soldiers, all of whom stopped in their tracks and greeted the brigadier with a salute. Merely walking beside him conferred a similar power on my person; most soldiers did not even dare to look at me, some gazing straight ahead, others glancing away quickly, as if afraid of giving offense. I was still thinking about this when I realized the brigadier was looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “Look, I wasn’t totally honest with you earlier. When I told you about my wife, I mean. She’s with her relatives in Coimbatore, that much is true, but she’s not just visiting. We haven’t lived together for over a year. She left me the day after our son went off to college. Ramchand is the only one around here who knows about it. Even my son doesn’t realize. He still thinks the only reason his mother isn’t living with me is because she doesn’t like the winters here.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked after a pause.
We had now arrived at the gate of his bungalow, but before the brigadier could answer, Ramchand came out. Ignoring me, he began to speak softly to the brigadier, who listened with his head tilted forward. I watched as the expression in his face was arrested, changing to concern, then to frustration and anger. He asked a question of Ramchand, who answered in a low voice. I stood off to the side, not trying particularly to overhear, but then I heard Ramchand speak the word Kishtwar and froze.
Before I could do anything, the brigadier himself approached me. “I’m so sorry,” he said, still sounding urbane. “Ramchand tells me I’m needed at the office. I’ll have to leave you on your own for a while, I’m afraid. Do you mind?”
“Is it Kishtwar?” I asked. “Did something happen?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I overheard Ramchand mention it,” I said quickly. “Please, could you tell me what’s happening? I have friends in Kishtwar. I just want to know.”
I could see him wavering on the edge of refusal. Then he sighed. “It’s a bit of a mess, honestly,” he said. “Kishtwar is under curfew, as you probably know, and it all seemed to be under control. But an hour ago, a few Muslims apparently decided it would be a good idea to attack the army camp out there. They tried to climb the walls, with nothing in their hands but stones and sticks. Naturally, they didn’t get very far. Nobody was hurt, but one of the boys lost his grip and fell, hitting his head. We’ve got him in the hospital, but, rumors being what they are around here, all of Kishtwar thinks he’s dead. People are out on the streets, and a few houses appear to be on fire.” He glanced at me. “Which part of Kishtwar do your friends live in?”
“Near the mosque,” I said. “The city center.”
I thought of the hundreds of houses and shops that surrounded the mosque and marketplace, all of them packed tight. I thought of the shoe shop next door with its dozens of flammable cardboard boxes. I must have swayed on my feet, because the next thing I felt was the brigadier’s warm hand on my back. “Steady there,” I heard him say, and his voice sounded strange. Ramchand appeared to have been turned to stone, for all the reaction that he showed, and a second later the brigadier’s hand floated away. He coughed. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise,” he said. As if on cue, a dark car with tinted windows pulled up to the house and the brigadier got into the backseat. The car rolled away, leaving me feeling strangely bereft next to Ramchand, whose bland expression still had not changed.
“Lunch is ready,” he told me and went back inside.
I sat numbly before the spread, unable to eat. Ramchand made no comment when I rose, having touched hardly anything, but he began to clear away the dishes. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to the brigadier’s study and sat in his chair, noticing for the first time that the worn, cracked leather held the faint smell of the aftershave he used, something citrusy and bracing. I waited until the top of the hour and then I reached for the TV remote and switched on the news.
The newsreader’s pink lips moved, talking about the recent spate of farmer suicides; talks between the governments of India and the United States over a civilian nuclear deal; the arrest of an incumbent MP for assaulting a rival candidate in an upcoming election; the final day’s results from the Zimbabwe vs. England test series.
There was nothing about Kishtwar.
I switched to another news channel, and then another, but not one of the groomed and polished newsreaders barricaded behind their desks said a word about it. There were no images of screaming, angry crowds; no shots of policemen and soldiers advancing slowly shoulder to shoulder; no bodies sprawled in the street; no blazing houses. It was as if it weren’t happening at all. I felt a numbness, an unreality, creep slowly over my bones, coating them like oil. Finally, I simply turned the TV off, and then I just sat there, my hands folded in my lap.
A light came on, surprising me. I hadn’t realized it had gone dark. It was Ramchand. The digital clock on the wall read 10:49 p.m.
I started up from my chair. “Is the brigadier back?”
“He is still at the office. Is there anything you require?”
“No.” I sank back down. Then I said, “Yes. Yes. The pool.”
It stretched on forever, the unbroken surface a perfect, arctic blue. White lights anchored below the water gave it a still, tomblike quality. Beyond it was nothing but endless, dark trees, framed in the distance by mountains, and the night sky deepened its eerie, medical glow.
Ramchand left me at the entrance, after telling the single guard that I was the brigadier’s guest and was to be given complete privacy. He did not say when he would be back. Alone, I pulled my T-shirt over my head and slipped out of my jeans, leaving them in a pile on the dewwet grass. In only my underwear, I stepped to the edge of the concrete, watching the wavering black stripes that marked the swimming lanes.
Then I pushed off with my toes and shattered the perfect surface.
It was not water. It was something else, a material of this world and yet alien. It was sound turned fluid, wind turned liquid, nothingness made into a cool, physical substance, and I let myself fall through it, heavy as a corpse, willing myself never to come up. But my body wouldn’t allow such a thing, of course. When I couldn’t sink anymore, when my lungs threatened to split, I felt my limbs click to life like machines, felt them drive me up to air and to life, and it was only when the cold air blasted my face, only when I heard myself gasp and felt my chest expand, greedy, felt the sting of chlorine in my eyes, that the water became water again, ordinary and welcome, and I began to swim.
I had not swum in years, and the burn in my muscles began even before I’d finished a single lap, but I ignored it and pushed on. As I swam, I tried to keep thoughts at bay, tried to be nothing but a body, but it was useless; snatches of sound pressed on me, images and sensations crowding in. The clicking of cornstalks and the spaniel’s bark. Sania’s finger moving along a page, and Amina biting her lip. Aaqib’s small hand in mine, and the heat that rose from the flank of the red-and-white cow. A white house built on a ridge, too pretty to be real. Bashir Ahmed’s white stubble, and his hands folded on a pink blanket. The distant smell of smoke, and the glint of a rifle. The screeching of crows as they circled and circled, looking for something to eat.
The clouds shifted and the moon came out. I needed to stop; my lungs felt as though they
would crack my chest open, my heart floating bloodily away from me, trailing veins and slivers of muscle and white fingers of fat. But I refused to stop. I swam, forcing my aching arms over my head, each stroke bringing another shot of memory: Riyaz holding out a piece of wood on his open palm. Aaqib hanging upside down from the peach tree, T-shirt fallen over his belly.
I swam faster.
Stalin saying, Will you meet me again tomorrow? The woman on the train offering me her phone. Abdul Latief changing channels late into the night. The click of Zoya’s knitting needles.
My hand slammed against the concrete side of the pool, sending a searing pain up my arm. I scissored around, kicked, and set off again.
Mohammad Din saying, You are like me. Amina: I think it’s time for you to go home.
A town on fire.
In the dark, the swimming pool was as broad as the ocean, rippling like a field of corn. My mother sat in the shade of an umbrella, ankles crossed in the sun. The pine tree swayed at the very end, tall, heavy with its dark, living fruit, the thieving intruders, snatchers of corn and chicks alike. They may have been frightened off for the moment, but they would not be kept away for long. They would delay, patient, clever, biding their time. Soon they would return to consume everything.
I stopped swimming. There was a figure standing at the other end of the pool.
Vapor billowed from the blue surface of the water, making it hard to see. For a second, I thought it was the security guard, spying on me, but from the way the figure stood, confident, making no attempt to hide, I knew it was the brigadier. There was something bulky under his arm. He did not call out, did not wave. I could not see his eyes, but I knew he was watching me.
Something grim and purposeful took hold of me. I began swimming toward him. Each time I lifted my head, he was a little closer, another of his features revealed: his chin, the peak of his hair. I swam right up to the edge of the pool and stopped, my fingers pressed to the concrete.
He squatted down and offered his hand. I let him pull me out of the water.
Water slid in runnels down my stomach, my inner thighs, but the brigadier did not look down. His eyes were locked on my face. He handed me the rolled-up towel that was under his arm.
“Ramchand told me you forgot to take one,” he said.
I wrapped myself in it, picked up my clothes, and we walked out of the building. The guard was nowhere in sight. The same black car was parked across the road, though without a driver. The brigadier slid behind the wheel. I got in next to him. The interior was spotless and smelled of incense.
He drove very slowly through the sleeping cantonment, hands on the wheel at ten and two, like a learner. He did not look away from the road and he did not speak to me. He had the air-conditioning on but switched it off when he heard my teeth chatter.
He stopped the car in front of the bungalow and we got out. We walked up the front path and into the house. Ramchand was in the living room, untying the drapes, and his eyes followed us as we went past him, past the study, and to the brigadier’s bedroom door. He was very close behind me, and I felt his hand brush my towel-wrapped hip as he reached past me to turn the handle.
The brigadier’s bedroom was surprisingly plain, given the rest of the house. A simple bed with gray sheets, a Godrej almirah instead of a cupboard, a chair and dressing table with a comb and a pair of nail clippers. Cotton curtains at the window. No clothes in sight, no disorder.
I felt him come up behind me. He did not put his arms about my body, did not touch me, just stood there, his breath at my ear, his chest, with all those medals, an inch away from my back. I realized he was waiting for me to begin, to indicate what I wanted.
I turned to face him. His expression was half-wry, half-suspicious, as if he didn’t quite trust that this wasn’t somehow a trick. I opened my mouth to speak, but the effort required was too great, so I simply let the towel fall. I unhooked my soaking bra and peeled off my underwear. Then I slid beneath the sheets, my skin tightening where it came into contact with the clean fabric.
He’d watched all this with close attention, and now he began to undress. First, the medals, which he laid out in a neat row on the dressing table next to the comb and the nail clippers. Then his shoes and socks, which he placed by the chair. Then his belt, which he looped over the handle of the almirah. Next, his shirt and pants, folded and placed on the chair. Standing in only his white vest and briefs, he looked down at me, then he pulled them off. His stomach was just starting to go slack, but there was still the good definition of muscle. His nipples were very light, and by contrast the hair on his chest very dark, though some of it was flecked with white. He smiled.
I moved aside, and then there was no more thought, for he was there, under the sheets, the impossible fact of another human body, with its warmth and odor and breath and movement. The foreignness, the utter otherness, of him. As if I had suddenly been struck blind, it took me a moment to identify whatever I touched. A mouth, I thought with pained wonder. A tongue. A thigh. Afoot. Fingers. A knee. A chest. Feature by feature, I constructed him, I saw that his eyes were open, and in them was the same amusement, as if he knew better than I did why I was here. It irritated me, so I plunged, taking him into my mouth. It worked, his breath snagged. He lightly touched the top of my head with his fingers, a gesture both astonished and cautionary.
But I shook off his hand and went on. He groaned but didn’t touch my head again. I closed my eyes to shut out everything else—where I was, where I had been, who I had known. Locked into that deadly rhythm, I felt the rest fall away, felt myself shrinking, shrinking so that I encompassed only one thought, or felt the thought expand to occupy me, felt it multiply itself, so that my mind became a place of mirrors, all surfaces reflecting back to me a single lonely idea: This is all I am.
When I came up again, his eyes had changed. All the irony had been shaken out of them. He looked apprehensive, and it caused me a sliver of pleasure. I moved onto my back and guided him so that he was over me. He hovered for a second, searching my face, but I closed my eyes. Then I felt him bring himself low, his forearms resting on either side of my head. I pulled my knees back, felt the pressure of his body, its whole weight, and then, without any warning, we were inside a different rhythm, fast and greedy, trying to grab, it seemed, something that was fleeting.
I sneaked a glance at his face. His eyes were closed now, so I watched. His jaw was slack, but the muscles of his neck were strained and there was a frown on his face that could have been mistaken for one of displeasure. Then his eyes flew open, but there was no recognition in them, it was pure reaction, the need to make some extravagant bodily gesture, and his pace quickened. I felt his body heave hard against mine, go still, then shudder. He did not let out any sort of cry. For another second, he hovered over me; then he carefully let himself down at my side and lay on his back.
Light from a passing car floated across the curtains. I lay still for a moment, then reached for the brigadier’s thick hand and placed it between my legs. His eyes, which had been scaly and clouded, snapped back to attention, and his hand followed every stroke, matching my pressure. I lifted my hand away and he continued, propped on his elbow, absorbed in his task. I closed my eyes and focused on the dark churning that had begun, low in my stomach, its tendrils spreading to the rest of my body, down my legs and up across my back, sending out thick, warm ropes that wrapped themselves around every organ, lifting me imperceptibly, inch by inch, above myself. And then an immense surge upward, then a pause, pure silence at the highest point above the black.
Then I was falling, pleasure sparking and shooting into every corner of my body. The black surface rose far above my head. The tendrils loosened their grip and withdrew. The churning diminished, then died, leaving just the occasional pulse, a ripple in the dark.
Then I began to shake. My body was thrashing and I could not stop it.
“What?” I heard the brigadier say. “What happened?”
But the shaking wou
ldn’t stop. I gripped the sheets in both fists until I could control it. The brigadier had his arm around me. He stroked my hair, then my back, then my hair again.
“Please,” he murmured. “Whatever the problem is, I wish you’d tell me. I’ll help you, I promise. You just have to tell me.”
Footsteps passed outside the door. I imagined Ramchand moving about outside, his ears trained not to hear what he could not fail to hear, his mind trained not to know what he knew perfectly well. Loyal, I thought. He’s loyal.
I pushed the sheets off and stood, then walked over to the window. Pulling the curtain back an inch, I looked outside. The street was empty, utterly quiet. Slowly, very slowly, the trembling subsided.
Then, from nowhere, a young man appeared. He had his chin thrown up and a smile on his face. His steps were decisive, though not hurried, and I watched as he reached the end of the street and was lost to sight.
“Shalini,” the brigadier said softly.
I turned from the window. He was sitting up in bed, the sheets gathered around his waist, folded and rumpled. There was something sad in the way he watched me.
“I saw something,” I said.
He smiled. “Just as long as nobody saw you.”
“No,” I said. “When I was in the village. I saw something there.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Instead of answering, I asked, “What happened in Kishtwar tonight?”
“Oh, not much in the end,” the brigadier answered. “People broke curfew, paraded around for a while, made a little noise, threw a few stones, but then they decided it was better to go back home. It’s all under control. That mosque neighborhood, where your friends live, is fine, by the way. I’ve asked my men to keep an eye on that area for the next few days, just in case.”
That surprised me. “Thank you,” I said.
He gave me a little bow and a sad smile. “As I keep saying, I’d like to help you, if only you’ll tell me what’s wrong.”
I stared at him. I thought of the way soldiers looked at him, the fear evident in their eyes. Then, suddenly, I made a decision.
The Far Field Page 37
