Truth Lake

by Shakuntala Banaji

  Trembling, Gauri had tried to control her panic through the entire rigmarole with the stranger. They were often on thin ice, she had thought, skating around a terrible crime, using one story of violence and pain to conceal another. None of it was fair, and all of it made her an accessory to murder.

  But worse still: what if she had made the wrong decisions? What if a woman who had killed and got away with it were to do it again?

  She raked her companion with narrowed eyes. 'Just look at her. She's your sister! How do you feel?'

  Face grey with fatigue, high cheekbones shiny from the wind and wide nostrils flaring, Thahéra's sister bowed her head. But her words were cold and her tone was sharp.

  'She's free, isn't she? And that man will soon return to Delhi. Gauri – there's no going back.'

  44

  When Kailash Karmel left the hills, he too felt in his bones that there was no going back. He had, of course, imagined what it would be like to return to Delhi. He had anticipated its stench and noise for long hours in his sodden village hut. Chatting to Thahéra on their trip through the woods that day, he had pictured for her its streets and its people, the essence of his home.

  'But do you really believe we are so different up here from your Delhi folk?' She had asked him after he'd described to her the sparks of violence so quickly kindled between men on busses or along the roads by a stray look, a chance remark.

  'Would a man in the hills strike someone's face with a cycle-chain because they brushed against him in their hurry to be home? Would a woman here leave her newborn to die on a rubbish-heap?' He had countered, not really paying attention to her question. Confident in his knowledge of the evils of his city; basking in her presence. She'd fallen silent then. Thinking her own sad thoughts. Later, as they ate lunch, she'd told him about the monotony of her routine, the labour of every day that left little room for wants or dreams: mending the houses, seeing to the earth, the planting of seeds, the gathering of wood, the rearing of animals and children.

  'Does your husband ever help?' He'd asked idly, admiring the strength of her profile, the jut of her chin.

  'About once every four years.' She'd given him a coy look. 'You think we make the children all on our own, do you?' They'd laughed.

  Thahéra. Her soft face so pounded out and blackened by blows. Thahéra. The marks of her teeth on his wrist, blooming amethyst by the time he reached the plains.

  Karmel's landlady was watching the lane by her house in dejected apathy when suddenly she saw a familiar head of brown hair approaching her gate. Nearly falling from the window in wonder, she shrieked out to her tenant that his rent was late. Her pulse swung from normal to erratic the moment he looked up and gave her one of his slow enchanting smiles. My! He could take her breath away – those eyes, that physique! What was he doing in Delhi? He should be a model in Bombay. He should be in films.

  She heard him unlocking his door and then silence for what seemed like an eternity. What had taken him so long? Of course, he must have gone to check on that precious bike of his! She resolved to invite him over for a meal. Just the two of them! Her scrawny neck pulsed with delight as desire made the channel between her breasts damp. She couldn't wait for him to go to work so that she could creep up to his room and see what he was carrying in that huge old pack of his.

  Blissfully unaware of his landlady's intentions, Karmel dropped his pack onto his bed and then lay down beside it, legs dangling over the edge. He stared up at the ceiling and noted casually that spiders had laboured hard in his absence, weaving thick webs across each corner of his spacious room. On his dressing table the razor and comb still sat, side by side, the way he had left them that evening all those weeks ago. He raised his hand to brush his hair out of his eyes and his gaze lighted on the paling purple bruise by his wrist, a memento of his last three weeks.

  He could have gone after Thahéra. He knew that he probably should have.

  What she had done – at least the way he imagined it – was horrible, inexcusable. If there were few who would cry for her father, there'd likely be many who'd now mourn the vivacious British architect whose corpse still remained like an omen of sorrow guarding the riverbank.

  Karmel had rung the Charmoli outpost before leaving Bhukta. Whatever Croft had planned, there would certainly be parties climbing the mountain now, to retrieve his belongings and his body, to tie up loose ends. What those ends were, depended on what Karmel had put into his report.

  He felt the sudden urge for companionship, for a conversation that was normal and balanced rather than weighted down by distrust and regret. To whom could he turn? Most of his colleagues were envious and narrow-minded – their faces had registered nothing but spleen when he showed up at the office. He'd greeted them pleasantly, nevertheless, explaining to Bokada, whom he outranked, that arrangements had been made for the conveyance of the foreign architect's corpse from the hills: it would be arriving in Delhi during the weekend where Mr Croft senior was arriving to make a formal identification.

  Bokada's sneering retort had splashed on the floor between them like rainwater.

  Karmel licked his dry lips and sat up. He had work to do, other cases to catch up on. Maybe he would make a trip to the Chief's house, as he hadn't been at the office. Surely it would at least amuse Hàrélal to hear who had given Karmel a lift back to town.

  Karmel still couldn't quite believe the chance that had landed him in a jeep just outside Bhukta with two of Antonio Sinbari's American flunkies. They were tight-lipped about their reasons for being in the hills and he said not a word about his own purpose; but intuition told him that they'd been sent on a mission similar to the one Cameron Croft had been on. Whether they'd had any success or not, with all the bureaucratic hassle surrounding Croft's sudden death he didn't think they'd be starting work on their model village any time soon. Hàrélal would see to that.

  Thoughts of the Chief inevitably brought thoughts of the Chief's daughter, with her tousled hair and cutting remarks. Perhaps she had been in some scrape while he was away and the Chief would tell him all about it over a bottle of beer. And then, maybe she would be at the house . . .. He hadn't been there for a while. Before his adrenaline shorted out, he rang Hàrélal's residence and left a message to say he was on his way.

  As he showered, he thought about the last time he'd met Tanya – that day a year back when she'd come to the office and greeted him with such delight. It had hurt him to snub her, but he didn't need gossip getting back to the boss about Karmel making a move on his daughter. Or at least that was the way in which he rationalised his withdrawal: back at the house under the watchful eye of Mrs Hàrélal was one thing, but alone in a room at the office, no elders present …

  He was suddenly ashamed of himself.

  Tanya had tried so hard to be his friend. When she finished her law degree last year she'd wanted to ask his advice about what to do and, knowing that her mother was searching for a suitable boy, he had turned away from her. Perhaps she did intend to work, to make something of herself, not to turn into another female statistic who'd passed through college only to become somebody's over-qualified bride. Could he bear that? If Tanya married someone else, joined her future to theirs, touched her body to theirs each day, laughing up at them with those dream lips of hers and ceased to exist for him in any practical way? At most he'd glimpse her at formal functions. Her parents would be there, forever between him and her. Solid, material reality. And her in-laws. Their servants. And her husband. Oh, in the world she'd inhabit then, there would no getting away from folk – a man like him wouldn't be left alone with another man's wife.

  Other men's wives. He'd seen enough of them in Saahitaal to last a lifetime.

  The soap stung his eyes and brought him back to the present. He splashed water across his face, shaved and began to dress. Looking into a mirror for the first time in weeks, he noticed that the lump on his neck had grown smaller. He touched it with his fingers and then trailed them down over his collar and shirt.


  It was such a pleasure feeling the fabric beneath his fingers, cotton instead of wool, light jeans instead of soaking wet denim. Memories of the lake were still too close to the surface, too raw. He shuddered inwardly as his motorbike came to life beneath him.

  Glancing over his shoulder he glimpsed the ever-ravenous face of his landlady peering out from behind a curtain. He raised his hand in an amicable wave. He'd have to pay that rent soon.

  Outside, Delhi looked cleansed after the night's rain but the traffic remained as manic as ever. Motorists failed to stop for each other at intersections and there were long snarls tailing away on every minor road. Hot pastry sellers hawked their wares to resigned cabbies and to weary commuters mauled already by the city dawn.

  Tanya's plane had landed on time but there was no one to meet her. No one in fact knew what her plans were. Traffic was heavy during the drive from the airport, and she had to ask the driver to pull over. She was sick with tiredness and apprehension, retching up onto the broken pavement all of the grief and fear she had absorbed in her two days with the foreigners.

  When her cab drew up at her own gate, however, her father and mother rushed at her with tears and hugs. They vowed to protect her and her baby, come what may, and her father hinted that he had framed a master plan to save the situation: if it was about her marriage, she told him, he could keep it to himself or else she was out of there. He laughed in response, a patronising guffaw, which warmed her and irritated her at the same time.

  When she asked why he wasn't at work he said he was waiting to have a showdown with that grovelling motherfucker, Sinbari. While Tanya refrained from revealing everything she'd learned from Adam and Sara – she did not feel it was her duty to report on their sexual proclivities or on their mistrust of each other in the matter of Cameron's death – she told her father enough about Sinbari's manipulation of the young foreigners to please him greatly and to strengthen his hand.

  If Sara's tale was to be believed, the man had stolen – yes, no other word for it – the young architect's idea about the model village and was now touting it as his own; he had deliberately misled the police, removed two potential suspects from Hàrélal's jurisdiction and broken at least one trading regulation. He was no murderer, but it was going to be a pleasure, watching him squirm.

  After a stressful half-hour drive, Antonio Sinbari's air-conditioned car swung through the gates of the discreetly guarded stone building that housed the British high commission.

  He had convinced himself that he had nothing to be afraid of. To this end he had phoned and postponed this meeting by two days – it was to have occurred at noon on the Wednesday. Now it was Friday. It had given him great pleasure to thwart the police and to keep the diplomats guessing about his plans. The delay had also enabled him to get the firm agreement of two big-name investors, men with enough money to blast holes in the hills and relay half the roads in India – if they chose. Hundreds of calls from his office to officials of the newly elected government, and a team of accountants working overtime had ensured financial backing for his proposed Green Lake Resort. Red tape was being obliterated to accommodate his investment; he no longer felt like a second class tycoon. His poise was back.

  Had he been aware of the presence, in the room to which he was being led, of Hàrélal's fully documented report and a British lawyer ready to slap him with a compensation claim and possibly a criminal lawsuit on behalf of the family of the deceased, one Cameron Croft, architect and erstwhile employee of the Randhor-Sinbari Corporation, he might have felt a tad rattled. Had he known that at that precise moment his crumpled and dejected mountain expedition – minus Sadrettin, who had, to his colleagues' dismay, stayed in the hills for a few days’ leave – was alighting from jeeps outside the Randhor-Sinbari head-office, he would have felt less sanguine. The finishing touches to his fury would have been complete had he realised that, by bizarre chance, his team had conveyed back to Delhi a dark and handsome stranger who was none other than the much maligned detective, Kailash Karmel, bearing photographs of the body and of Cameron Croft's belongings, as well as copies of plans and contracts and folders implicating Sinbari in a grand and illegal landgrab scheme.

  But, striding with his usual arrogant grace down a polished marble corridor towards a perfectly appointed room, Antonio Sinbari had no inkling of the events unfolding around him.

  45

  Tanya didn't know what to do: she was afraid to show herself but loathe to remain concealed. He would notice her stomach at once and she would have to watch as he drew his own conclusions.

  Anxiety and anticipation curdled her lunch inside her and made her dash for the bathroom. Five minutes later she was back at her post in the hall just beyond his line of sight, where she'd been hovering throughout her father's hour-long conference with Karmel. As she took in drinks, their kindly old maid had grimaced at her and nudged her towards the room, but she'd demurred.

  She could hear her father telling him about Sinbari's fall from grace and about what Tanya had done, how she'd flown to Goa all by herself and interviewed the foreign tourists; and confirmed so many of Karmel's intuitions.

  There was a moment of silence, then she heard Karmel ask, almost as if it mattered to him personally, 'Did Tanya get a description of the two women at the scene?' There was so much pride in her father's voice.

  In response, Hàrélal coughed. 'Why don't I let you read her report, heh? Or better still, talk to the girl herself!' Then he dropped what he was saying to a whisper. That made Tanya even more nervous because it probably meant that daddy was discussing her faults and wrongdoing.

  She jumped when Karmel appeared in the hall. She wanted to turn and run but it would have seemed too absurd. Like the fighter she was, she decided to face it out.

  They stared at each other for a moment then he came towards her with a hand outstretched, greeting her softly. 'Tani. Didn't know you were home.'

  'Liar. Daddy's just been telling you.' She kept her voice equally low.

  'You caught me out. He has. Becoming an unwed mother now, are you?’ So, he was choosing to joke about it. She wasn't sure if she'd wanted him to take it seriously. She wasn't sure what she wanted him to feel about her or the tiny being that had taken up residence in her body. There was certainly no one else in this fucking city who'd be able to laugh at her news, so she might as well take it in the right spirit. She giggled loudly, but unaccountably felt her eyes fill.

  Karmel pulled her against his chest before her first sob, and was stroking her back. Their heartbeats knocked against each other, echo for echo, the oxygen receding.

  'I'm so sorry, so sorry, my life.' The endearment slipped out. Was it just a meaningless phrase or did he think of her like that?

  'Oh shit, Kailash. Don't.' She stepped away from him as her mother appeared in the hallway. She gave them a quizzical look, but Mrs Hàrélal didn't seem particularly perturbed by Karmel's proximity to her daughter. She moved off into the garden carrying her magazine and a pair of pruning shears, her thin hips swaying slightly beneath her sari. Tanya looked after her, feeling puzzled. Was there a conspiracy to be nice to her or was the unconcern due to the fact that no one would ever suspect the sublimely honest Karmel of a harbouring a bad motive? Tension stewed in her heart, her stomach, her lungs. She would explode if he went on looking at her like that. ... She bit down hard on her lower lip and a small claret stain appeared just below the fragile skin. He touched his finger to it silently and experienced its warmth and texture as he'd judged its colour: honey in the rock.

  Trembling with suppressed passion, Tanya brushed his hand away, then fell back on habit and started telling him about her adventures with Lal Bahuba and with the foreign tourists.

  They sat on the antique swing just outside the back door. He clicked his tongue when she described the confrontation between Saané, whom he knew by sight, and her father; and listened with keen interest to her thoughts on Adam and Sara. As he'd assumed, she hadn't told her father everything: neithe
r had he. Pieces that had puzzled each of them fell into place. The relationship between Cameron Croft and Adam. Cameron’s casual polyamory. All these other lives which had swirled willing or unwilling against each other because of him. There was no doubt that he had invited both his British lovers to the village intending them to meet, hoping for… what?

  Tanya fell silent; so did Karmel. It felt good to be together, to be in a neat and orderly place. So far away from that memory-stained warehouse in Daubaba Lane and the chill chaos of the hills.

  Karmel's face twitched as he thought about what had happened: his farewells, the biting regret he'd felt on the downward climb. How had he screwed up so badly? The women had approached him with such candour in the last few hours, asking his forgiveness if they had seemed rude, giving him food for his journey and begging him to return in the spring when their lake was wreathed in sunshine and flowers. He was so moved by their words that he could barely speak. What had they done that anyone in the plains would not have: they were protecting their own, that was all. Perhaps if Thahéra had been less well loved, if she had not been the woman she was, his task might have been easier. But even then, he was guilty of so much: mistrust, paranoia, foolish fantasies which had almost led, in the end, to Thahéra's death.

  Seeing Tanya's glowing face he shook off his mood and began to tell his part of the tale. She closed her eyes when he described the way Thahéra had looked after her father attacked her, the torn cheeks and bloodied eyelids, the broken teeth and swollen lips, distended almost beyond recognition.

  'So the old man just battered her all the time – since she was a little kid?'

  'Seems so. Who was going to stop him? Everyone who cared about her was either too young or too scared; you could tell they loved her though.'