Invisible Armies

by Jon Evans

  “Ma’am –”

  “What’s your name? You and your assistant both, I want your names!”

  “Ma’am, perhaps you should come to the ticket office with us,” the younger policeman says, his voice soothing. “Perhaps we can sort this out there.”

  “You certainly better,” Danielle huffs.

  Laurent gives her a slightly stunned look as they fall into step behind the police. Danielle puts on her best flouncing Ugly American walk, and glares at every Indian they pass. Some of them shrink away. Danielle has to fight to conceal a smile. She feels giddy, like she is on some kind of drug, dancing on the edge of a cliff.

  In the ticket office they cut to the front of the line reserved for ‘FOREIGN PASSPORT HOLDERS, RAILWAY OFFICERS, VIPS, AND FREEDOM FIGHTERS’, earning themselves a glare from those next in line, a half-dozen Overseas Indians clutching British passports. The older policeman has a brief Hindi conversation with the sour-faced woman behind the counter, whose wrinkled face is adorned with a bright red dot on her forehead. Then he turns to Danielle. “Tickets, passports, and receipt.”

  Danielle blinks, then turns to Laurent. “The receipt.”

  Laurent looks at her.

  “For Christ’s sake, Johnny, the train’s leaving soon,” she says impatiently. “Give me the goddamn receipt.”

  “I,” Laurent nods, “just a moment, yes, of course, I have it here somewhere.” He unslings his backpack again and begins to search through it. “It’s in the inner pocket here, I’m sure of it.” He rummages and his face falls convincingly. “Maybe the outer pocket.” But the outer pocket is empty. “Honey,” he says, “I don’t know where it went.”

  “You don’t know where it is? You lost the fucking receipt?” Danielle allows her voice to ascend into a screech; easy to do, with her gut churning with anxiety. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Now, honey, calm down,” Laurent says faintly, “it’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t care,” Danielle says, turning to the policeman. “You must have hired one of your pickpockets to steal it. We know you’re all corrupt. We know you people have your little tricks. But not this time. I want our first-class tickets, and I want them right now, do you understand?”

  “Ma’am,” the older policeman says stiffly, no longer concealing the anger in his voice, “if you have no receipt, then you have no case, and I will thank you not to abuse my colleagues and myself in this manner any further.”

  “Who’s your supervisor? I demand to speak to your supervisor!”

  “Ma’am, you have no receipt. There is nothing we can do for you. I must ask you to leave immediately and stop causing a disturbance.”

  “How dare you –”

  “Immediately,” the policeman stresses, steel in his voice.

  “Honey,” Laurent says, taking her shoulder, “we have to go. The train is leaving. We can’t be late. We’ll miss the flight.”

  Danielle looks at him, then at the stony, contemptuous expressions on the two officers, the woman behind the window, and those whose queue they have hijacked. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” she warns. “I will be writing a very strongly worded letter to the Minister of Railways!”

  “Come on,” Laurent says, pulling at her.

  She shrugs him off. “Get your hands off me!”

  Head high, she storms out of the ticket office, followed by Laurent. He falls into step beside her as they climb the stairs that lead up to the platform. They board the train without looking at each other. It starts moving before they even make it to their berths. They sit down on the benchlike bottom berth, opposite a white backpacker couple in their early twenties, exchange a look, and then both of them dissolve into slightly hysterical laughter. Their berthmates look on with puzzled expressions.

  * * *

  Danielle lies in Laurent’s arms, soothed by the the hum and gentle rocking of the train. She slips her hand under his shirt, runs it gently along his scabbed movie-star muscles, and holds it to his heart, feels it beating slowly beneath her palm. She is grateful for his warmth. Indian Railways always turns the temperature in their air-conditioned compartments down to arctic, and this is especially evident on the top bunk, immediately below the air vents, to which they have retreated for the sake of privacy. On the other side of their berth, on the lowest of the triple-tiered bunks, the young British couple sit and read their Lonely Planet guide. Indian Railways also tends to clump foreign travellers together.

  “Back at the station, that was incredible,” Laurent says. “I truly thought we were finished. How did you think of doing that?”

  Danielle basks in his praise. “Just reflex. Law school, years of getting hassled by cops, dealing with lowlife druggie assholes, I guess I picked up a few instincts.”

  “You should join us.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re smart, capable, you know how to deal with India, you’re perfect for us. You’re exactly who Justice International needs.”

  She says, “I thought Justice International was all in jail except for you.”

  “That won’t stick. Even if it does, we’re not surrendering the fight. You saw the children of Kishkinda. We can’t give up on them. Maybe we can both join your friend Keiran’s group. Make common cause.”

  “It’s…” She hesitates. “It’s really noble that you spend your life fighting for that kind of thing. I admire it. It’s wonderful. But I just don’t know if I could do it. I can’t live like this.”

  “It’s not all running for your life,” he says, amused. “It’s just the decision to make the world a better place. Maybe you’re not ready for it. But if you make it, you won’t ever feel cheated by it. You won’t want to quit. You’ll get frustrated, you’ll get furious, but you’ll never wonder if you’re wasting your life. I promise.”

  “Must be nice. Having a mission.”

  “It is.”

  “I’ll think it over,” she says.

  “Do.”

  She kisses him, long and hungrily, then lets go and whispers, “I’m looking forward to having a room to ourselves.”

  “So am I.”

  “I can tell.” She smiles. “Can I stay up here with you? At least for a little while?”

  He says, “If you’re comfortable.”

  “Don’t let me fall.” The berth is very narrow.

  He shakes his head solemnly. “Never.”

  * * *

  Madgaon Station at six in the morning is quiet, misty, and deserted by Indian standards. The stalls on the platforms, little stands that sell chai, crackers, samosas, candy bars, pistachios, newspapers, even a few John Grisham novels, are not yet open, and the vast and oppressive station, all cracks and rust and peeling paint, feels like a tomb. Its main entrance hall contains only a few dozen people, sitting in small circles drinking tea, or sleeping in family groups on colourful woven mats. Only a handful of would-be taxi and autorickshaw drivers approach Laurent and Danielle as they exit. They eventually agree to four hundred rupees to go north to Anjuna; a fortune by Indian transportation standards, more than half the price of their 13-hour Bangalore-Mangalore-Margao rail journey, but then it is an hour’s drive away.

  Margao, like most Indian cities, is an ugly, overcrowded mess, but once they cross the bridge over the long, wide tidal river that divides Goa in two, the countryside turns rural and pretty. The dark ribbon of road winds its way through thick green foliage, red earth, golden grass, lagoons lined by palm trees, and villages of small but solid modern buildings, already busy at this hour. Nearly every village has a house with a wall facing the road on which is painted a huge blue-and-yellow ad for cell phones, informing passersby that An IDEA Can Change Your Life. Men in drab shirts repair motorcycles; women in blinding saris shop in the little stores, or at the markets that sell vegetables, heaping bins of grains and spices, clothes. Some stalls sell religious goods, Hindu figures and garlands of yellow flowers, like everywhere in India, but also rosaries, candles, and garlanded pictures
of Jesus. Goa, half-converted by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, is still largely Christian – albeit with a very Hindu flavour, as pictures of a blue-skinned Jesus attest.

  The Satori Ashram is on a large, mostly untended patch of land a few miles east of Anjuna proper, walled by chain-link fence. Two women at the wooden gates, presumably waiting for their own ride, wave casual hellos to Danielle as she and Laurent emerge from the taxi. Danielle knows their faces but not their names. It feels odd to be recognized and greeted. She realizes she left the ashram only five days ago. It feels like five years.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get settled. We’ll be safe here.”

  Part 2

  Goa

  Chapter 11

  Thirty thousand feet below Emirates Flight 502, the Arabian Sea glitters in the sunlight like burnished steel. Ripples form a complex pattern on its surface, interlocking ridges of water spread across a vast area. Much like what Keiran would see if he were to watch a small patch of ocean from a sailboat. A fractal pattern, repeated at every scale. Like a coastline, whose peninsulas and outcrops inevitably include perfect miniatures of themselves, the tiniest element governed by the same laws as whole continents and oceans. Keiran takes a moment to appreciate the elegance of the universe, then returns his attention to the chess game on the seat-back screen before him.

  “Don’t you get bored of winning every time?” Estelle asks from beside him.

  Keiran looks over to her, and to Angus in the seat beyond. The colourful Scotsman and his pixieish American girlfriend with tattoos and purple-streaked hair stand out amid the airplane’s mostly Indian and Arabic passengers like mustard splashes in a coal mine.

  “No,” Keiran says. “Their computer plays the Alekhine Defense every time. That’s truly bizarre. I’d love to meet whoever programmed it.”

  “But you still beat it every time.”

  “Deep Blue it’s not. But every game is different.”

  “Is it too much to ask for you to focus on what we’re here for?” Angus asks. “You haven’t taken that laptop out since we left London. I thought you had work to do.”

  Keiran pauses a moment to consider possible replies. Then he says, “I don’t know about you, Angus, but I’m here because you fucked up colossally. Which puts you in a curious position vis-à-vis lecturing me on how exactly I spend my time.”

  “Christ. I don’t know how many times I can say it. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “As if sorrow and ignorance somehow make it better. I’d actually rather it was deliberate and you felt good about it.”

  “My information was that it would be perfectly safe,” Angus says.

  “Yes. Exactly the information I passed on to Danielle. Which very nearly got her raped and murdered. If I’m not very receptive to your complaints just now, it’s because I try not to listen to idiots.”

  Estelle puts her hand on Angus’s. “Keiran, please,” she says. “People make mistakes. Then other people accept it, and we all move on.”

  “I’ll be happy to move on. Soon as I’m confident you won’t make any more catastrophic errors.”

  “And how exactly are we meant to convince you of that?” Angus asks.

  Keiran shrugs and returns to the Alekhine Defence.

  * * *

  The town of Calangute comes as an unwelcome shock. The biggest tourist destination on the Goa coast, it is a technicolour vision of Tourist Hell, screeching with shouts and car horns and unmuffled motors, smelling of dust and exhaust fumes and too much humanity, full of cheap hotels slapped together out of uneven concrete. Its streets are clogged with fat blustering English tourists who resent the country they have travelled to for being insufficiently like Britain, Indian hustlers with angry eyes who physically pull tourists into their shops, taxi drivers who tell outrageous lies to get fares, and middle-aged Europeans who will not speak to anyone with dark skin except with peremptory orders. Even Calangute’s long, glorious beach cannot redeem it.

  “Don’t worry,” Estelle says in the taxi, noting Keiran’s appalled expression. “You get used to it. And anyway we’re staying near town, not in town.”

  “Thank Christ for that.”

  The crowds and buildings thin out as they drive north, until there is only a narrow strip of cafes, restaurants, and lodges to their left, between the road and the beach. The right side of the road borders waterlogged grassland patrolled by a few cows. They cross a tidal river via a concrete tunnel bridge, and enter an area of spacious estates hidden behind high walls. The driver follows Angus’s directions to a pair of spiky iron gates, the only aperture in a stone wall topped with mortared broken glass. Angus exits the car to punch a five-digit code into a numbered panel next to the gate. He shields his hand, but Keiran instinctively watches the relative motions of his arm as it jabs back and forth, and guesses the code is either 13854 or 46087.

  The house is blue, three-storied, with two satellite dishes visible on top. Keiran identifies the dishes as Sky India TV and a VSAT Internet connection. He is pleased to see the latter. The driveway winds through lush, well-maintained gardens, to mahogany doors adorned by a brass knocker shaped like the Sanskrit symbol for Om. The verandah runs right around the house.

  “I see we’ll be roughing it,” Keiran says.

  Angus smiles. “Builds character.”

  “You never did explain how exactly your crew of unemployed anarchists and social castaways came into all this money.”

  “No,” Angus says, as he pays the taxi driver. “I didn’t.”

  Keiran takes his laptop bag and small backpack, both of which he carried on his lap, and watches as Angus and Estelle unload their bewildering amount of luggage from the trunk and other half of the back seat. “Nor did you explain why you’ve got enough gear for an Antarctic voyage.”

  “That we can tell you,” Estelle says. “We decided Goa might be a good secondary base of operations.”

  Keiran raises his eyebrows. “Setting up shop in the tiger’s mouth, eh?”

  “As long as we keep it quiet,” Angus says, “the, shall we say, flexible regulatory environment might work to our advantage.”

  “Could you give us a hand with some of this?” Estelle asks, overloaded with bags nearly as big as she.

  Keiran considers. “I could.” He makes no move to help.

  “Jesus. Are you always such a prick?”

  Keiran looks at her. He doesn’t know Estelle at all well. Until receiving Danielle’s emailed report of danger and disaster, all his contact with their group had been via Angus himself.

  “No,” he says after a moment, walks over, and picks up a heavy pack. He has every right to be angry with Angus, but none to take it out on Estelle as well. “Sorry.”

  She nods, partially mollified. Angus draws out a large, ornate, old-fashioned key from an inner pocket, and they follow him into the luxuriously appointed house.

  “We should ring Danielle, let her know we’re here,” Angus says.

  Keiran says, “I believe her guru frowns on telephones. We’ll have to go to the ashram ourselves.”

  * * *

  Keiran is drained by thirteen hours of airplanes and airports, his clothes are thick with sweat from India’s alien heat and humidity, but he connects his laptop to the house’s satellite uplink and checks email before he showers. This journey is the longest he has gone without Internet access for several years. He is relieved to be back online. He was beginning to feel exiled, stripped of one of his physical senses.

  A sign in the washroom warns in bold type that toilet paper must be discarded in the small lidded wastebin, rather than the toilet, lest the finicky Indian sewer system choke on it. Another sign warns that the water is not drinkable. A few tiny gecko lizards dart about on the roof and walls, flicking their tongues. Keiran doesn’t mind their presence. Even a luxury holiday home like this cannot be made both gecko-proof and livably cool. And he likes geckos. Their extraordinary climbing abilities are a miracle of science; gecko paws are
covered by filaments so fine that they form a powerful quantum bond with any surface, allowing them to climb on anything like Spider-Man. Plus they eat mosquitoes. Indian tourist authorities claim that malaria has been eradicated in Goa, but the World Health Organization’s web site treats that claim with considerable skepticism.

  He dresses in gray slacks and gray T-shirt. Normally he wears all black, but that would be near-suicidal in the Indian heat. His day-pack is black canvas decorated with a Linux penguin. When he descends to the foyer, Angus and Estelle are waiting for him, clean and newly dressed, he in cargo pants and a red shirt, she in a green sarong and a sky-blue blouse filigreed with black. It’s an eye-catching ensemble; with the purple streaks in her hair she looks like the top half of a rainbow. Keiran admits to himself that he resents Angus a little for having so pretty a girlfriend.

  “Shall we?” Angus asks. “The taxi is waiting.”

  “Shouldn’t we just hire a driver for the week?” Keiran asks.

  Angus and Estelle exchange a look before she says, “We wouldn’t be comfortable with that.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “When you hire a taxi, you’re dealing with an independent local entrepeneur. That’s fine. But hiring a driver for an extended period is like having a servant. It would be too close to exploitation.”

  Keiran stares at her. “It’s exactly the same thing either way. You pay a man to drive you around.”

  Angus shakes his head. “There’s a difference.”

  Keiran considers arguing, but just shakes his head at their Alice In Wonderland politics and follows them to the taxi.

  * * *

  The Satori Ashram is essentially a disorganized summer camp for unhappy Western women. Its inhabitants sleep in individual A-frame huts but bathe, cook, eat, take ayurvedic lessons, and do yoga together, in big tents or out in the open. Keiran sees Tibetan monks in saffron robes, Indian men in designer clothes, and the occasional tanned Western man in locally purchased drawstring pants, but most of the population consists of white women, early twenties to late fifties, with stringy hair and grimly reverent expressions. A few of them wear saris, generally with Western clothes on beneath. Teams of women wash pots, prepare foods, chop herbs, clear weeds, and clean huts. There is no obvious nerve center; past the parking lot, in which a half-dozen cars and twenty motorcycles rest, several different paths lead into the ashram’s large property, past haphazardly strewn buildings. Keiran, Angus, and Estelle wander for several minutes before the third woman they ask recognizes Danielle’s name.