“Welcome back,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I missed you.”
“You did?” he asked, surprised by the relief he felt in her presence.
She nodded and took his hand. “I have something for you.” She reached into her purse and extracted a pair of Jet Airways tickets.
“Goa,” he said, his voice brighter.
“Tomorrow we are going on holiday. I need to get out of this city.”
She looked at him with such unbridled expectation that he couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s a good idea.” He felt a sudden rush of affection for her. “You look beautiful,” he said.
Priya blinked at the non sequitur. Then her grin turned radiant. “Let’s get out of here,” she said and drew him toward the exit.
They spent the night at Dinesh’s flat in Bandra. The young banker was away on business and Thomas stayed in his bedroom. After the affection she had showed at the airport, he was hopeful that Priya would join him. He wasn’t so lucky. She left him with a hug and a coy smile and took up residence in the guest room.
For the second night in a row, he slept poorly. Around three in the morning, he woke with the irrational fear that Mohini was suffocating in the next room. He looked around wildly before remembering where he was. Afterward, he lay awake listening to the distant murmur of the city and contemplating the paradoxes of his life. How was it that in seeking honor he had lost it, yet in losing love he had begun to find it again? How was it that the very same pain that once had seemed so destructive now had come bearing gifts? The Jogeshwari case. The rescue of Ahalya. The search for Sita. Priya sleeping peacefully in the next room. The promise of Goa. How was it that he could have spent thirty years on this planet, obtained two advanced degrees, and ended up with more questions than answers?
In the morning he found Priya on the terrace, dressed in a nightshirt and sipping a steaming cup of chai. The sun was hot despite the early hour, but the breeze blowing in from the sea offered a modicum of relief.
“You look tired,” she said, taking a seat on a deck chair.
“I didn’t sleep much,” he confessed, rubbing his eyes.
“Was it Sita?”
He nodded, preferring a simple explanation.
“Dinesh has a nice place,” she commented.
“He’s done well for himself.”
“He seems at home in Bombay.” Her tone carried a trace of wistfulness.
“You aren’t?”
“It depends on the day and my mood.”
“Would you live here permanently?” he asked, trying to gauge the drift of her plans.
“I’m not sure. And you?”
He shrugged, not wanting to lie. “I don’t know.”
She stood with a yawn and brushed his hand with her fingertips. “Come along. We need to get ready.”
“There’s one thing I need to do before we go,” he said.
She looked at him curiously. “The plane leaves at noon.”
“It’s on the way. I just need to make a phone call.”
In the schoolhouse at the ashram, Ahalya sat at her desk, staring into space. It was eight thirty in the morning, and her teacher—Sister Elizabeth—was explaining the sine and cosine functions, much to the consternation of the other girls. Ahalya, however, already knew the material. She had taken basic trigonometry a year ago at St. Mary’s. The tutor arranged by CASE had challenged her with advanced coursework, but she came only on Mondays and Wednesdays. Otherwise, the sisters required Ahalya to attend twelfth-standard classes with the rest of the girls.
As was her habit, Ahalya lost herself in the past. She recalled things in meticulous detail, focusing on faces and mannerisms until she could almost see the inhabitants of her memory alive again. She projected personalities into a future that should have been, picturing the lines of her mother’s face in old age, imagining her father on her wedding day, envisioning Sita as a grown woman. Her imaginings went on and on, and she lost all sense of time. In fact, so often did Ahalya dissociate that the sisters at the ashram had begun to scold her about it.
“Ahalya,” Sister Elizabeth said, narrowing her eyes, “what is the sine of 90 degrees?”
“One,” she replied.
“And the cosine of 180 degrees?”
“Negative one,” she said, seeing the wave functions in her head.
Sister Elizabeth sighed and turned again to the blackboard.
At eight forty-five, Sister Ruth appeared in the doorway. The students regarded her warily, wondering what had prompted the headmistress to show up unannounced.
“Ahalya,” Sister Ruth said, “please come with me.”
She turned to the nun, surprised by her tone. She stood and followed Sister Ruth out of the school. The nun walked down the path toward the entrance to the ashram without saying a word. Ahalya grew more puzzled with each step. It was not like Sister Ruth to be taciturn. It seemed she always had something to say.
When they reached the pond where Ahalya had planted her lotus, Sister Ruth stopped and pointed to the bench.
“Wait there,” she said. “A visitor is coming.”
“Who?” Ahalya asked, at the same time thrilled and terrified. Anita from CASE came on Tuesdays. It was Thursday. The visitor was someone special.
Sister Ruth didn’t answer. Instead, she turned and walked toward the front gate. Ahalya took a seat on the bench, ignoring the persistent sensation of nausea that had been plaguing her for weeks now. She studied her lotus plant. The clay pot was visible beneath the surface of the pond. Above it, two lily pads had formed, but it was still far too early in the year for a flower. She reached down and touched the surface of the water. There was life in the pot. The lotus would bloom. It had to bloom, because Sita’s spirit was in it.
Grow! she commanded. You are the reason I rise in the morning.
Sister Ruth met Thomas at the gate of the ashram, her countenance unusually grave.
“Mister Jeff called to say you were coming,” she said, glancing at Priya waiting in the taxi. “You have news for Ahalya?”
Thomas nodded.
“Is it about Sita?” Sister Ruth asked.
“Yes,” he confessed.
“If it is bad news, she shouldn’t hear it. She is in a fragile state.”
“There is good news mixed in with the bad.” He fingered the rakhi bracelet on his arm. “I owe her the truth. I think she would want to know.”
The nun considered this and then nodded. “She is a strong-willed girl. She talks of nothing but her sister. When she talks, that is.”
“I only need five minutes,” he said.
The nun opened the gate and let him onto the grounds. “She is by the pond.”
They found Ahalya staring into the water. The girl looked up as they approached. She focused on Thomas and her eyes widened. She stood and walked toward him.
“You came back,” she said. “You must have news of Sita.”
Looking into her eyes, Thomas felt the weight of her loss. “Perhaps we should sit down,” he said, gesturing toward the bench.
Ahalya crossed her arms. “She is not with you.”
“No,” he replied.
He took a seat on the bench and looked through the forest. Somewhere in the branches above him, birds were chirping.
“The man who bought her from Suchir took her to France,” he said. “She worked in a restaurant for the last two months. The Bombay police caught the man, but they didn’t move fast enough. A few days ago, Sita was taken to the United States. No one knows where or why.”
Ahalya began to sob, her body shaking like a sapling in a stiff wind. Thomas took a deep breath, wondering whether Sister Ruth had been right to question his intentions. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come.
He looked at the fledgling lotus plant, searching for a way to buoy her spirits.
“I sent your picture to my friend at the Justice Department,” he said at last. “I told him that Sita is in the United States. I’m sure he will notify the
FBI. People will be looking for her.”
Ahalya continued to stare at the surface of the water, but slowly she regained control of her emotions. She turned to him again, her eyes redrimmed and her cheeks wet with tears.
“I have a message for your friend,” she whispered.
He nodded. “I’ll pass it along.”
She put her hand on her stomach. “Tell him there are two of us waiting for Sita now.”
With that, she started up the path toward the schoolhouse.
Thomas turned toward Sister Ruth in confusion.
The nun preempted his question. “She is a brave girl. Most would not have told you.”
“Told me what?”
“She is pregnant.”
He took a sharp breath. “From the brothel?” he asked.
The nun nodded. “It is common. But we were hopeful because she wasn’t there long.”
A wave of vertigo washed over him. “She’s going to keep the baby?”
Sister Ruth stared at him. “It is a life,” she said, too harshly. Then she softened her tone. “Right now the child is her only family.”
Thomas watched Ahalya disappear into the grove of trees. She looked like every other adolescent Indian girl in her pale-green churidaar and sandals. She was lovely, bright, and educated and spoke excellent English. Before the tsunami, she had been destined for great things—college, perhaps medicine or the law, at minimum a favorable marriage. Now she was carrying the offspring of a man who had stolen her innocence. If before her future had been precarious, now it lay in tatters.
“Do you think Sita will be found?” the nun asked.
“It’s possible,” he said. “But probably not.”
Sister Ruth made the sign of the cross. “Sometimes I do not understand the ways of God.”
“That makes two of us.”
The Jet Airways flight to Goa was mercifully brief. Priya had booked them a room at a hideaway in Agonda, far to the south of the tourist crowds of North Goa. He told her little about his encounter with Ahalya, and for once she didn’t seem curious. It had been so long since he had seen her joyful that he had no intention of spoiling the mood.
The taxi ride to Agonda Beach took the better part of the afternoon. Thomas rolled down the window and allowed the passing landscape to distract him from the burdens crowding his heart. In the blur of bungalows and eucalyptus groves, he found it possible not to think about Ahalya’s baby and Sita and the bracelet on his wrist. Or Tera and Clayton and the lies he had spoken to his wife. His only consolation was the restraint he had showed in Paris. In the bedroom of a beautiful woman who desired him, he had stood his ground.
A little after four in the afternoon, the taxi turned down a dirt road lined with shops and beach huts. The driver deposited them at the Getaway Resort and Hotel at the end of the strand. The place was exactly as advertised—clean, unpretentious, and close to the sea.
The proprietor, a pleasant white-haired man in a loud Hawaiian shirt, greeted them in fluent English. “Honeymoon?” he asked.
“Yes,” Priya replied, surprising Thomas. “Our second.”
“Here’s to new beginnings,” he said and gave them their keys.
They walked hand in hand to the bungalow and stored their things in an armoire at the foot of the bed. Priya used the bathroom to change and emerged in a white linen shirt and a floral print sarong. She looked Thomas up and down, taking in his surf shorts, Birkenstocks, and Russell Athletic T-shirt. She crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his chest, nuzzling into him. He embraced her with a passion that made him realize how much he had missed her.
After a while, she stepped back and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Where?”
“The beach.”
They walked down a rutted dirt path in the shade of palm trees. The path led to a bluff and across dunes to the sea. They shed their sandals and walked barefoot to the waterline. The sand was thick and luxurious under their feet. The tropical sun hovered above the horizon, speckling the water with gold.
Priya took his hand and they strolled toward a cluster of boulders. She climbed to the top of the largest one. Thomas followed. They sat down side by side on a flat spot at the top of the rock, looking at the sunset. He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him.
“Why does life have to be so difficult?” she asked.
“Life is what it is,” he replied. “But what we tried to do isn’t easy.”
“I have so many regrets,” she said quietly.
“Shh,” he said, putting his finger to her lips.
“No, I need to get this out.” She choked up. “I hurt you. I was terrible to live with. I had no idea how to handle the pain. I thought that coming home to India would make things easier. But it didn’t. Every morning I hear her voice. I see her tiny face and I feel the softness of her hair. I remember what it was like to give birth to her.”
Thomas felt as if he had been cleaved in two. He was still in love with her, he realized. He had never stopped loving her. Even when their child had died. Even when her eyes had become cruel and her tongue had cut him. He would marry her all over again. She was the best thing in his life.
“I don’t think that feeling will ever go away,” he said. “She’s a part of us.”
Priya pondered this. “Do you have nightmares?”
He nodded. “I wake up in a cold sweat and hear her crying. It was worse at home. It felt like I was living with ghosts.”
They watched as the sun fell into the sea, painting the sky with rose blush.
“They say it’s possible to begin again,” she said, taking his hand and running her fingers across his palm. “I’m not sure I believe it.”
“We won’t know unless we try.”
They sat together on the rock until the sun became a memory and the first stars appeared.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Whenever you are,” he whispered, turning to her and inhaling the jasmine and lilac scent of her perfume. It brought back memories, every one of them good.
She looked into his eyes and her lips parted. He kissed her, hesitant at first and then needful, drawing her into his embrace.
“Why don’t we forget about dinner?” she murmured.
He took her face in his hands. “More welcome words I have never heard.”
The land of Goa brought out all the shine in their world. The sea had never been bluer, the sand had never been softer, the sun had never been more radiant than in those three days. They spent almost as much time in their bungalow as they did outdoors. Priya seemed never to tire of Thomas’s touch, and he found no difficulty obliging her. Each time he drew his wife to himself, he felt as if they were unraveling another strand in the knot of lost time.
On the morning of the second day, they rented a moped from a shop in Agonda. Priya sat sidesaddle and held his waist loosely. Growing up in Bombay with a brother who loved motorcycles, she was at home on the back of a two-wheeler. They rode north along the rugged coastal road to Coba de Rama Fort. The air was moist and salt-laden and the sky traced a towering arc between horizons green and blue.
They followed the signs to Margao and wound their way through rice paddies and palm groves. Eventually they ascended to an arid plateau above the tree line. To the west was the indistinct blue of the sea. The fort was fourteen kilometers from Agonda, but the two-stroke engine ate up the distance quickly. At the end of the road, they found the ruins of centuries-old battlements occupied at various times by Hindu, Mogul, and Portuguese monarchs.
They parked their moped at a dirt turnaround and scaled the crumbling walls to an abandoned cannon emplacement overlooking a bay. The land plummeted hundreds of feet to a shore of black basalt. Waves crashed against the rock, sending spray high in the air. They stood on the parapet for long minutes, enjoying the scene.
“In places like this, it’s hard to imagine that the world can be so ugly,” Thomas said.
“This is
how it was meant to be,” Priya replied. “The ugliness is our own fault.”
Around five o’clock, they took the coastal road south to Palolem, a seaside community four kilometers past Agonda. The entrance to the beachfront was lined with shops and vendors hawking their wares. They parked at the end of the road and walked onto the beach toward a line of fishing boats sitting on the sand.
The beach at Palolem was wider than Agonda and more crowded. Goans dressed in long sleeves and saris walked with their children, while vacationers from Europe, Australia, and America roamed about in swimsuits and danced to loud music in beach shanty bars. The contrast could not have been more marked, but no one seemed to notice or care.
They took seats on the porch of a cocktail bar and ordered piña coladas. The molten sun sank slowly toward the peninsula that embraced the bay. Out on the beach, an Indian boy swung a cricket bat beside a wicket impaled in the sand. He turned and waved wildly toward the shore, shouting words drowned out by the wind. Soon a motley crew of boys assembled around the wicket. They talked and then separated, one boy to bowl, another to bat, another to catch, and the last to field.
The makeshift cricket game captivated Thomas. He took out a pad of paper from his backpack and scribbled a description of the scene.
When he read it to Priya, she said, “You should take up writing. Forget the law. The world has enough lawyers.”
He took her hand, laughter in his eyes. “I just might take you up on that.”
They watched as lights began to appear on the strand.
“It is good to be here with you, Thomas,” she said simply.
He turned toward her. “Does this mean I’m making progress?”
Her eyes twinkled. “What do you think?”
On Sunday morning, Thomas awoke to the sound of birdsong and the whisper of the sea breeze in fronds of palm. He turned over in the bed and saw that Priya was gone. Her absence gave him little cause for concern. At home she had often risen early to greet the day. He rubbed his temples. They had been out late the night before, enjoying the gaiety at Palolem Beach. He had ordered one drink too many—enough to leave him with a pulsing headache.
A Walk Across the Sun Page 30
