Janice walked back out from the path, but this time did not approach the gate with the bell. She went past it, parallel to the field of yellow grass. The man looked up from his fire but did not move. She looked from her new perspective, but saw only a single woodcutter, hacking branches from a dead tree with a primitive instrument that looked like a hoe.
“Elliot Hoover!” she called.
There was no answer. After ten minutes of standing alone, feeling ridiculous and yet determined, Janice saw a monk walking slowly toward her. His head was down, and yet his legs seemed to move in a familiar stride, direct and yet soft, as though his whole being knew exactly where he was going and how many paces it would take, and that he had all of eternity to get there.
“Elliot?” she whispered.
The monk looked up. It was a brown face, thin, the face of an ascetic. The eyes were very dark, almost black, and they seemed to look out at her with irritation.
“Why is it you have come to disturb us?” he asked calmly.
“I beg your pardon,” she stammered. “I truly am sorry….”
“What is your purpose here?” he asked in a flutelike voice that reminded her of one who took drugs, it was so otherworldly and disassociated.
“I am looking for a friend,” Janice said softly.
“Who is your friend?”
“Elliot Hoover, an American, about six feet tall, blue eyes—”
“Yes. We know Elliot Hoover very well. He is not here.”
“Not here?”
The monk sighed, as though regretting the complication of an explanation. Over his shoulder, Janice saw the other monks, oblivious of her presence, worshiping, some out in the field now, in the lotus position of trance.
“There was a subdivision among the order,” the monk said. “You must know that we believe in performing works of charity and ahimsa—that is, peace and nonviolence to all living beings.”
Janice pretended to know it with a nod.
“And you must, by now, know about the revolts to the south?”
“Revolts?”
“Yes. The North has repressed the facts. But it is very bad. This whole area has been evacuated.”
Astounded, Janice’s mouth opened. The idea of warfare was incongruous against the tranquility of the ancient forest and the sloping field of prayer.
“Then why are you still here?” she finally asked.
The monk smiled indulgently.
“The vicissitudes of material life do not concern us,” he said defiantly, looking directly into her eyes, challenging her very existence.
“But Elliot Hoover…?”
“He and several others decided to help the victims of the conflict. They left nearly a week ago.”
Janice felt weak. If she had known where he was, if she had flown straight from Tel Aviv to Mysore City and then taken the train south…
“Where? Where is he now?” she asked.
“I am sure that he is where the fighting is. And that is over the mountains.”
The monk gestured to the heavy black clouds to the south. Janice heard a deep rumble of thunder that echoed through unseen mountain valleys. She looked up. There was a sense of rain, but the forest, the path, the compound were all bone dry.
“Very bad,” the monk added sorrowfully. “When the rains come, the villages suffer disease. Disease from the floods, you understand?”
“Yes, I see. Do you expect floods?”
“There are always floods. It is the nature of things.” The monk gazed at her with compassion. “Perhaps if you go down to the village in the valley below, you can ask at the military compound. They screen everybody who goes beyond the Cauvery River. They will know where our members are.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Do not fear the army. Do you have your passport?”
“Yes.”
“Explain to them that you come from the ashram. So they will not be suspicious. But do not fear them. They are still disciplined.”
“Thank you very much.”
“May you find your friend.”
The monk turned abruptly and walked slowly, placidly, back to the compound. The birds screamed at his departure. Janice stood alone in the shadow of the great forest, feeling utterly alone. At length she picked up her small suitcase and followed the road down into the valley. She felt more secure when it entered the main road. As she descended the slope, the forest rapidly thinned until she looked across a steep drop of dried grass to the rapid Cauvery.
Across the river was a stone bridge, buttressed by logs. A flag flew from what appeared to be a military outpost. At least there were two convoy trucks and a jeep parked in front of it. The ground was heavily plowed by the tires of the heavy trucks, as though they had only come there recently, and it was still the scene of feverish activity. But now there was no one visible. The river made a dull music against the stones of the bridge, and the logs rose and fell, banging and grating against the wires that held them.
Janice walked out from the forest. Sheep moved slowly away from her, looking for green grass. The dried pellets of manure covered the path and were impossible to avoid. Janice looked for a sign of life, but there was still no movement in the village.
A donkey suddenly brayed, a vicious, snarling laughter. Then a soldier walked around the rear of one of the convoy trucks. He stopped as soon as he saw her and bristled. He looked illiterate, his uniform was two sizes too large, and suddenly the monk’s phrase “still disciplined” came to mind. It was easy to see that military discipline was a burden barely imposed on the village mind.
Janice reached into her handbag and showed her passport. The soldier examined it, saw that the photograph matched the person, but did not know the purpose of a passport. He went to the door of the outpost, knocked deferentially, and opened it. He gestured for Janice to follow him in.
A sergeant sat at a large, scarred desk. He had a drooping mustache and black hair. His uniform was spotless and a little tight. He took special pride in his leather cross-belt with its shining medals. A black revolver hung at his belt. He was very surprised to see Janice walk in by herself. He kept looking for someone to come in after her and when no one did, he ordered that the door be closed. In the gloomy dank air, Janice finally noticed a second soldier, as unkempt as the first, who had snapped to attention when she entered.
Suddenly, the thunder rolled overhead, drowning out the sound of the river. Janice presented her passport. The sergeant took a long time to study it and her, buying time, since he clearly did not know what to do.
“American?” he finally said.
“Yes. You speak English?”
“No.”
He scrutinized her entry stamp in the passport, showed it to the soldier, who spoke a few words while still at attention. The sergeant handed her the passport.
“Area is closed,” he said in good English.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“No.”
“I’ve come from the ashram.”
The sergeant stroked his mustache and looked at her clothes.
“Tourist?”
“I’m not a tourist. I have business here. I’m looking for my husband.”
“Husband?” the sergeant said suspiciously.
“Yes,” Janice faltered.
Suddenly the air had taken a chill. The sergeant glanced nervously over his shoulder at the black sky.
“Rain,” he said, agitated. “Soon too much rain.”
He snapped his fingers, pointed at Janice’s passport in her hand; she dropped it on the desk. He telephoned and waited a long time. He spoke quickly, then pronounced her name very slowly, with bad pronunciation. Janice waved to get his attention.
“His name is not Templeton,” she whispered.
“But he is your husband?”
“Yes.”
“What is he called?”
“Elliot Hoover.”
“Ell-i-ot Hoo-ver,” he said into the receiver, then waited.
“American,” Janice whispered.
The sergeant gestured impatiently for her to be quiet. He nodded, listening, then hung up.
“Mr. Hoover is registered in a village in sector number five. He is with three members of the ashram that worships—Tejo Lingam.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“The sector is stable, so it is not impossible to meet him.”
“God bless you,” Janice blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, thank you very much. Very, very much.”
The sergeant blushed, cleared his throat, and stood up. He tried to be angry, as though to restore a sense of his command.
“A truck will move to sector five tonight.”
Janice nodded.
“There is a small house,” he continued, “next to the river. You can rest there.”
The sergeant smiled, satisfied that things were under control. He spoke to the soldiers waiting at the door. They indicated for Janice to follow them down a small path among the saplings.
The house had once been whitewashed, but now it was caked with dried mud along the bottom and large cracks showed down the walls. Inside it smelled of feces and dry dust. She saw a tattered mattress, heavily mildewed and rotted at one end. On it the soldiers had carefully placed two blankets stamped with the insignia of the Indian Army, and one soiled pillow. From her suitcase Janice selected fresh underwear and stockings. She changed beneath the privacy of her blanket and gingerly settled on the mattress. Then she put one blanket under her, the other around her, and lay her head on the clean end of the pillow. The saplings outside rustled in the wind. The river splashed, strangely irregular, as though too much water was funneling down from the heights. She wondered if the rains had started further south. Janice dropped into a heavy sleep, and the last thing she thought she heard was bells far away, perhaps from the Tejo Lingam ashram.
Janice awakened at eight. It was dark. Fires were lit to boil tea. Then boots quickly stamped them out. Shouts were heard. The trucks exploded into action, the engines roaring, soldiers jumping into their seats. The sergeant looked anxiously for Janice and found her on the stone steps of the headquarters.
“Come,” he ordered. “You shall ride with me. First class.”
Janice swallowed and climbed into the cab. She was pinched between the sergeant, who stroked his mustache and kept looking into his own sideview mirror, and the driver, a short man with a sloping forehead and thick eyebrows. The sergeant waved an arm, and the two trucks slowly pulled out of the outpost.
In the darkness, Janice saw the headlights pick out rough tracks of other trucks. Scrub brush grew in profusion along the rutted road. The trucks were climbing, at first gradually, then making hairpin curves that left the driver sweating and offering apologies to the sergeant.
“The bandits all run away,” the sergeant chuckled. “Look. How many do you see?”
Janice looked straight ahead, hoping to see nothing but the livid forms of dirt that the powerful headlights threw up suddenly from the humid void. The truck plowed into the hard clay at the side of the road and stopped. The supply truck had innocently followed and was now also stuck in the dust. Cursing, the sergeant had the men dig out the supply truck, and the two vehicles then backed down the road. Shamefaced, the driver bent low over his wheel and peered into the darkness.
“You must love your husband very much,” the sergeant said after a while. “To come all this way for him.”
Janice smiled. “Yes, I do,” she said simply.
After two hours, the supply truck honked its horn. The lead truck stopped, the sergeant jumped out, and there was a waving of arms and arguments. Janice looked into the sideview mirror. She saw the sergeant slap a soldier across the face. Then the soldiers leaped back into the cab of the supply truck. Soon they were laboring up the mountainside again.
“The problem,” the sergeant said, when he had regained his composure, “is the monsoon.”
“The monsoon?”
“Yes. When it does not come, the earth dies. When it comes, the earth drowns. And these stupid people, they do not understand why the government must interfere in their lives and build dams!” He laughed. “They are like children. Like baboons. They believe in magic. Their children die, but still they go to the magician, not the doctor. I tell you, we shall teach them a lesson!”
Again, he patted his revolver. What worried Janice was his need to reassure himself. The sergeant licked his lips and peered anxiously into the darkness on all sides. After half an hour, the trucks stopped, maps were brought out, and the sergeant finally decided which of two mountain roads to take. The trucks rumbled on.
Janice was just dozing off when the trucks abruptly halted.
“Sector Number Five,” the sergeant said.
Eagerly, Janice jumped down from the cab. The ride had taken so long that her legs had cramped, and she had to walk slowly, unstiffening them. As the soldiers clumsily unloaded their wooden boxes, she followed the sergeant toward a dark hut.
“I will ask about your husband,” he said softly.
As he went inside, the horizon glimmered. Jagged mountain peaks were suddenly visible. Then the thunder rumbled into the darkness. Soldiers ran back and forth in rain ponchos, but there was no rain. The breeze turned cold as it had the night before. The sergeant came out.
“The group from the ashram are in the first village. The village is in the valley. When the rain comes, the village will drown.”
“But I have to go there!”
“My officer says no. It is a bad idea.”
“My husband is there!”
“There is nothing I can do.”
The sergeant walked away. Janice ran after him.
“What if I disobey your officer and go?” she called.
“You will drown.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The sergeant looked at her, fatigued, bored with her, and eager to get some sleep.
“Every year the village drowns,” he said. “I told you, they are like baboons. Like children.”
As the sergeant turned, Janice shouted after him.
“What will you do to me if I go?”
He shrugged. “Bury you,” he said.
Dismayed, Janice walked back to the two trucks. They were empty. Blocks had been placed around the tires. The compound looked deserted. She walked back toward the huts where the soldiers slept. She found the sergeant coming back from the latrine.
“I am going down,” she told him. “Tonight.”
The sergeant sighed, then shrugged. “The road continues down the mountain. Follow it.”
“How far?”
“Two miles.”
“All right, then. I’m going. May I leave my suitcase?”
“As you wish.” Janice shivered. Her own bravado began to sound hollow. Nevertheless, she had come too far only to find another empty village, a place where Hoover had been. By now, he might have heard from a pilgrim, stopping at the Tejo Lingam ashram that an American woman was looking for him. Perhaps Mehrotra had been able to reach him in some way. He might be in Benares, or back at the ashram, looking for her. Or he might be over the mountain. Or he might be dead.
14
The road was tricky to follow, since she had no light. She also felt like a fool. India was full of tigers, as everybody knew. India was full of poisonous snakes. India was full of rebels and scorpions and panthers. But it seemed so unreal. There was only the night, and the hard, baked road that she sensed out of the corner of her eye, leading down, going around curves through the scrub brush and dry earth. India also had monsoons. Her imagination began to conjure images of walls of water, islands of houses swimming around, sucked under in great whirlpools.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Get hold of yourself.”
After half an hour the vegetation at the side of the road had become dense. She was soaked through with sweat, and she knew she was grimy from head to toe. She thought she heard rain. S
he stopped. Nothing. The leaves of unknown bushes throbbed in a crosscurrent of chilly and warm winds.
An hour passed, and she began to wonder if the sergeant had really known how far the village was. Clods of dark clay crumbled under her broken sandals. She felt too frightened to turn around and go back. She cursed herself for being such a fool as to end up in a strange country, on a dark road, waiting for the thunderstorm. It was like a fate that she had relentlessly pursued since the day she landed in India. Well, finally she had caught up with it.
She passed a deserted hut. Then a second. Debris littered the fields, dry and broken, where nothing seemed to grow but dead stalks. The debris meant the village was near. She peered into the darkness, but saw nothing but the road. It was so dark she had to feel her way, her foot scraping at the clay that meant the road.
Another half hour passed, and a third hut, this one with a donkey outside, and babies crying inside. Janice paused. The road branched suddenly into a fork. Standing in the middle of the road, she heard a strange, laughing yell. It sounded like an insane dog. Her heart beating almost out of control, she walked quickly down the right branch. After ten minutes a light bobbed into view, then another. Janice almost wept as the fear evaporated. She stumbled down into the main village, which was only five small buildings and two broken-down sheds. Bottles were littered all over the ground. There was no river in this valley. It was deathly silent, now that the dogs were quiet. Only the incoming wind hissed over the cracked piles of dirt in the fields.
Thunder boomed nearby. It was barely a mile away. The echoes died very slowly. Janice walked through the village, but all the lights were off. It was well past midnight. She was afraid to knock on any door that was closed.
She would have to wait until the morning before she could spot the orange robes of the monks and, hopefully, Elliot Hoover.
Janice peered into the first shack with an open door. Something slithered rapidly across the dirt floor. It occurred to her that body warmth would attract snakes. She walked to the second shack. It was evil-smelling but it looked cleaner. Heat lightning flared over the horizon, casting its soft glare onto the boxes and metal bolts and nails on the floor. She went in and lay down on a pile of empty canvas bags, neatly folded.
For Love of Audrey Rose Page 19
