The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  “Today, it is a heritage symbol of our region and it is responsible for the social, cultural, and economic creation and development of the settlement of the Kangra valley. More than ninety years after it was built, the track remains impeccably maintained. The stations are the elegant originals, as are the chhotey trains. Nothing about the railway is ordinary.”

  Joan wonders if the stationmaster will take a breath before launching into detailed descriptions of the first views Joan will see from those nine hundred and ninety-three bridges. Then the Kangra Valley Railway train sways into the station and shivers to a stop. The train is chhotey indeed. It is a tiny train, a toy train, a train meant to be played with by little boys who will upend it from its tracks, watch it fall over the steep precipice of an unused Ping-Pong table, and do it again and again until, in the midst of repeated wreckages, they are called for dinner.

  “Please, I will help you,” the stationmaster says. “The steps are narrow and it is easy to slip.” He sets Joan’s bags gently into the stairwell, then takes her left hand, and together they walk forward, as if they might start to dance, the stationmaster on the platform, Joan mounting the steel steps, until she is at the train door.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Eka acchi yatra hai. Have a good trip.”

  The stationmaster does not care why Joan is here alone at Chakki Bank, or where she is headed. His second bow, deeper than the first, tells her, more than all his words have done, who he is, and what he wants from her, something simple and prized, that she enjoy and respect the train he loves dearly.

  The gears mesh in a quiet gnarl. When the train slowly moves away from the station, the stationmaster doffs his cap, steps back, and flings his arms wide, not at Joan, who waves again as she passes him, but at his beloved leaving him behind. Right then, the train sends out the choo-choo of a toy.

  * * *

  Joan is astride a worn red leather seat in the shaky chhotey train throttling itself hard up the Kangra valley. There was no space or room to breathe outside of her sleeper car last night, but in this carriage, she can spread out. The passengers are few. There is a young mother and her two little girls, all dressed in Crayola-bright dresses, with long ribbons of hair, smooth as melted chocolate, trailing over their shoulders, the mother between her daughters, holding their hands. All three are looking out the windows. Two old men, their necks bent like swans, converse rapidly in what sounds to Joan like a high-pitched song, with a call and a refrain. And a woman, older even than Vita Brodkey, wears a cobalt-blue sari covered in crystals. When the sun strikes the crystals they dash rainbows against the roof of the carriage. The old woman keeps turning around, but her milky, cataracted eyes make it impossible to tell whether her smile is aimed at Joan, the voluble men, the bright mother and her girls, or reflects instead her happiness at being alive and aboard the Kangra Valley Railway.

  Beyond the windows, the countryside is alien and lush. Below, steep gorges fall away, a perilous descent to a bottom out of sight. Ahead, in the distance, jagged mountains rear up like magnificent marbled statues, awesome and godlike. The land falls away and the train rattles across the first bridge. Nothing but unblemished blue sky all around. Joan imagines her decades as wife and mother dropping thousands of feet to where the mountainous water flows. She need not settle for her old life, she could toss away her grave losses, say goodbye to a son, a husband, the life she once knew at home. Love was never critical to her, she could let it all go, and up on the bridge, it feels that easy.

  Back on solid ground, the engine gathers rumbling power and streams forward. The momentum stirs Joan up, shakes questions loose in her mind, forces her to consider the implications in choosing to bring herself to India, headed to the very place where Eric now resides on some temporary basis, at the foothills of the Himalayas, in the state of Himachal Pradesh, North India.

  Why isn’t she on a train in some other equally distant place where, at the end of the line, she will find no one to whom she is related? Because Martin never wanted to come here, she thinks. And she did, always has, and now she is here, a conscious and unconscious return to her youngest self, making good on her girlhood promise when she read all those novels and short stories set in India. She sees herself at her desk in her parents’ house, serious and thirteen, opening up her notebook labeled Quotes I Like. She remembers clicking the pen and writing down R. K. Narayan’s words about being a writer in India: The writer has only to look out the window to pick up a character and thereby a story. She wonders if Narayan’s words will prove true for her.

  The train rockets through a pass of boulders and foliage and wind-stunted trees at angles, and Joan thinks there is nothing to do now about traveling forward, where one son is at her destination when she has left the other behind. She made Martin promise not to reveal her whereabouts to either. Eric won’t know she’s in Dharamshala until she decides to make herself known. Daniel does not know she has gone and that’s the way she wants it. Martin knows where she is and, considering she doesn’t really know where she is, that’s sufficient, maybe even too much.

  * * *

  The trip up the Kangra valley takes several jostling hours. When the train comes to a halt, the young mother says to Joan, “This is your stop. Kangra Valley. Get off now.” Joan grabs her suitcase and her carryall, and looks back before she steps off. That small feminine family, all bright colors and chocolate, are laughing at Joan from behind their hands.

  Metal steps to packed ground, her rolling suitcase behind her, her carryall strapped across her back. The sign on the platform might be in Hindi, Joan can’t tell, but people are yelling in English, “Kangra, Kangra. Bus. Taxi. Here, here,” so she is where she is supposed to be, which seems astounding. But where Kangra is in relation to the rest of the world, or, more specifically, where it is in relation to Dharamshala is unclear, and what comes next for Joan seems indeterminate.

  Several men are pedaling their rickshaws around the train stop and one man halts his in front of Joan. “Let me show you around, you can get off whenever you want.” His voice has the sweet trill she already associates with India. His head nods gracefully while he speaks, and although Joan doesn’t know what the nodding means, she knows it means something. The rickshaw driver’s face glows, his black eyes sparkle with kindness, his black hair is thick and looks as soft as an animal’s pelt.

  “That’s very kind of you. But don’t I need to take a bus to Dharamshala?”

  She lifts Eric’s itinerary and it whisks in the slight breeze. The itinerary was never meant for Joan to figure out how to get where she is going, and no matter how often she read Eric’s confusing margin notes on the chhotey train, she is not sure what combination of transportation—grabbing a bus or hailing a taxi or finding a rickshaw or walking—is required now that she has reached Kangra, in order to end up in Dharamshala.

  “I think it says here that I’m supposed to take a bus eighteen kilometers to Dharamshala.”

  “I can take you there. I can tell you have traveled far. Better now to be outside in the fresh air. But so you know, it’s McLeod Ganj you are wanting, not Dharamshala.”

  “Oh,” says Joan. “Are you sure?”

  “You do not know me, but you can trust me on this. Everyone coming here for the first time says they are wanting Dharamshala, but it is the hill station of McLeod Ganj that they are meaning. That is where the life you are seeking will unfold.”

  Joan looks down at Eric’s itinerary and locates the name McLeod Ganj, but there is no marginalia about McLeod Ganj versus Dharamshala.

  “You’re sure?” she asks.

  “I am. Dharamshala is shorthand for the whole area.”

  “All right. So it’s McLeod Ganj I want. Is it also eighteen kilometers from here?”

  “Maybe four kilometers more. But a mere pittance along the earth comprised of so many miles. A total of thirteen miles or so, give or take. I cycle it many times a day.”

  He pats his thin thighs, stringy and sharp. Whe
n he flexes his calves, Joan sees the strip of his muscles, the lack of any fat.

  “See. I am strong and the cycling is easy. Come. I am a good and harmless man who seeks only to be of service.”

  It is late afternoon, the sun is high and warm, birds are twittering in the trees lining the dusty road, and the rickshaw driver looks fine and respectable. She decides it is unlikely he will leave her for dead, and steps up into the purple carriage of the three-wheeled rickshaw, places her bags at her feet. The man turns around and smiles. “I am Natwar.”

  Just two days ago, Joan thought she might never smile again. But she has—at Vita Brodkey on the plane, at the stationmaster at Chakki Bank—and she thinks her younger self was right about wanting to come here, there is something particular about India that makes it easier for her to smile.

  She smiles back at Natwar. “I’m Joan,” she says.

  “So good to meet you, Joan,” Natwar says, gripping the handlebars of his bike, his legs starting to pump steadily, taking her and her bags and her sundered life away from the small train station and toward Dharamshala.

  When Martin joined Men on Bikes, he researched bikes and tested bikes and talked about gears and weight and torque and handling, debating the merits of every single model, until Joan thought she might scream. And after taking his new sleek black bike for a test ride around their neighborhood, he returned saying, “It’s kind of scary having your feet locked in. I keep thinking, what if I fall and my feet are attached, and what might have been just a tumble turns into something much worse because I’m falling with a bike attached to me?” Joan had thought that locked-in feet was an interesting metaphor for a long-term marriage. “I think you should be in control of the bike, not the other way around,” she had said, and Martin agreed, swapping the locked-in pedals for flat ones. And then there were the cycling shoes Martin needed to purchase, each with its own merits and issues, and when Martin opted for the pair with double Velcro straps and a semiflexible sole, Joan watched him clip-clopping around the house, testing them out, and she said, “They’re pretty snazzy,” which they were.

  She is recalling Martin’s conundrums about his expensive bike and pedals and shoes because Natwar is wearing rubber sandals, his pedals are flat, and his bike is painted a cheery turquoise, but is clearly old, passed down perhaps through generations, and attached to the bike is Natwar’s purple rickshaw that carries the weight of his human cargo. Natwar probably has never had a choice about the bike he might want to ride, or the footwear he might want to wear, or the pedals he might want to spin through the beautiful landscape.

  Trees and flowers grow wild in pastures just off the road. Llamas are munching on grass. Kangri villagers and their children are industriously collecting firewood. Traveling thirteen miles or so in a rickshaw takes time, and it feels as if she and Natwar might well travel this way for hours and hours.

  * * *

  Suddenly Natwar rises up off his seat, cycling hard up a steeper road, bumpy and rock-strewn. At the top, he lets out his breath, and then they’re moving fast on the flats until eventually a square opens up before them, as if they have stumbled onto a foreign movie set. Monks in crimson robes and nuns in saffron robes strolling everywhere, and people who must be locals, with their bamboo baskets, and others who are clearly foreigners, but at home in this unusual place, and tourists with short socks and sneakers and cameras slung around their necks.

  Joan hears chanting, and the sound of lapping water, and singing bowls being struck, the pure sound of their gongs traveling through the air, across the square. In one of Eric’s emails, he said the singing bowls emitted sine waves, and she wishes now she had bothered to find out what those are.

  “Joan,” Natwar calls over his shoulder. “This is McLeod Ganj. We will drive around until we find you suitable accommodation. No pressure because it takes time to look. Like life right? Lots of looking,” and Natwar laughs a happy laugh.

  He points out various hotels to Joan, bowed or topsy-turvy or built into the outcrops of rock. Joan shakes her head at each.

  Natwar comes to a stop at one hotel. “Take a look,” he says to her. “But I will say right now that I am not so sure about this place for you.”

  Joan steps out of the rickshaw and enters the hotel. When she returns, she is shaking her head. “You’re right. Not the right one.”

  The second hotel she enters at Natwar’s nod is too large and there is too much gold glinting on the railings, on the tabletops in the lobby, an elevator with a golden door. She might as well be in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

  Natwar shows her three other hotels, but none feels right.

  “I’m sorry,” Joan says, when she climbs back into the rickshaw for the fifth time.

  “No worries, my friend. We will find that which is home for you. I can promise you that.”

  Natwar pedals back to the main square, past the monks and the nuns and the travelers and the tourists and the locals, past food stands where chefs are busy at their grills and flower sellers are stringing marigolds into necklaces. He takes another narrow dirt road and winds up another steep slope. Fifteen minutes later, he pulls up the drive that has led them to Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise, its sign neat and demure, and places his sandaled feet into the dirt. “I am thinking that this one might be just right for you.”

  She feels like Goldilocks, walking across the sandy path and up the wooden stairs. The walls of the lobby are covered in loose panels of cloth, alternating strips of vibrant Indian red and the sunny yellow of those perky marigolds she saw in the hands of the flower sellers. To the left is a comfortable sitting area, and beyond the sitting area, an enormous window that looks onto a dense stand of trees, dark-brown and lighter-brown trunks, leaves in all shades of green. The place feels relaxed and comfortable and something smells good. Lit incense on a wooden table in the sitting area, its perfume subtle and soothing. A handsome young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, stands at the long, low teak reception desk, smiling at Joan.

  “Hello,” Joan says, “Do you have a room available?”

  “Of course, madam. A lovely room. Would you like to see it?”

  “No need,” Joan says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She walks out of the hotel, down the dirt path she now notices is bordered by small white, yellow, and pink flowers, to Natwar on his bicycle with the rickshaw behind him.

  “Yes,” Natwar says. “Sometimes it is the sixth place that is the charm. It is what I always say.”

  Joan laughs and the freedom she hears within her own voice surprises her. She has not laughed since the night at the Sumners’, the night before she discovered Daniel’s theft, when Martin and Larry Sumner told stories about hospital politics, and she wonders whether it is today or yesterday in Rhome.

  Natwar walks her bags into the lobby, and then the two of them are out in front of the hotel, beyond the stairs, and Joan says, “I forgot to ask how much for your good services.”

  “I never say a price. The client always decides.”

  At the Delhi train station, Joan exchanged dollars for a thick wad of rupees. The exchange rate on the board read 1 US dollar equaled 30.153 in rupees, so that means the dollar is worth more than the rupee, she thinks. Is that right? She fingers the pastel bills, Gandhi’s face in her hands. The denominations are confusing and she has no idea if Natwar’s trip should cost ten dollars or a hundred.

  “Natwar, I would like to give you fifty American dollars, but I’m not sure what that looks like in your money.”

  “Thank you,” he says, “I accept,” and extracts several bills from her stack and counts them out to Joan. She realizes she might be hugely overpaying.

  “One thousand five hundred and seven rupees is equal to fifty American dollars,” Natwar says. He pockets the fare and then, surprisingly, he wraps Joan in his skinny brown arms.

  “Blessings for you, my dear friend.”

  Joan closes her eyes and bows her head. Three people now have cared about her or done right by
her since she left home: Vita Brodkey, the big man, and Natwar.

  She is not aware when Natwar’s arms release her, but when she opens her eyes, the rickshaw driver and his rickshaw are gone, a puff of dirt just settling back to the ground.

  * * *

  At the low reception desk, the young man says, “You are most welcome here at Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise. We are so happy to have you. From where have you arrived?”

  “The US,” Joan says, and wonders if she should have said America. So she says, “America.”

  “I thought so. I am familiar with America from living there for two years. I have been back here for eight months,” he says.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes, to some degree, but I returned home as soon as I could, wanting to be of aid to my grandparents who own this lovely multiperson abode. But I should not be so personal. My apologies. For how long will you grace us?”

  “Three weeks, I think,” and Joan sees his eyes beam with innocent pleasure.

  “How excellent,” and he holds up a key. “For your room. And just so you know, we are completely hooked in. Wi-Fi and cell service and all the small benefits of home.”

  He insists on carrying her suitcase and her carryall and Joan follows behind. He looks back and says, “We have many guests right now, but I had this sense that I ought to save our best room, and I am glad that I did.”

  She thinks he must say this to every traveler, about sensing their arrival, saving the best room just for them.

  “A correction. I saved for you, though I only sensed you were coming, our very best pine suite.”

  Suite makes Joan think of Vita Brodkey’s three gold suitcases. Pine she translates into pining, and she thinks that whatever kind of room this young man is going to give her, his best or his worst, somehow he knows she needs a place in which to pine over her losses.

  At the end of the corridor, he keys the lock, opens the door, sets her bags inside, and steps out of the way.

  “Breakfast will be outside your door every morning. I shall leave you now. But you can always ask me for anything. Call me up on the phone. Come find me. Yell from your door. Anything I can do for you, I will endeavor to do. I am Kartar and you have my word,” he says, and Joan thinks how she once had a son whose word she would never have doubted.