The Caretaker

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Enough.” General Handa is getting to his feet slowly. “Captain Singh is not stupid. He understands fully. Captain, I know you will do the right thing. The Major will return for an answer in the morning.”

  As they leave, the Major looks back, and his stern expression is unmistakable: Either you are one of us, or you are not.

  The Captain lies in the empty hospital ward, the IV pumping cool fluid into his arm.

  He closes his eyes. He sees Dewan falling into the snow far below, his thin chest heaving, the cut rope fluttering around his waist. He sees Sergeant Khandelkar as he kneels in the snow like a monk performing a religious ceremony, the rifle barrel shoved deep into his mouth.

  “I promised them,” he mutters. “I promised.”

  The dark-haired nurse appears, takes his temperature and feeds him more pills. He can barely swallow them, and his mouth fills with their bitter taste.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning, Ranjit spends twenty minutes trying to comb his unruly hair, then gives up and pulls on his baseball cap.

  He needs to ask James where the nearest library is and is relieved to find his neighbor’s door wide open. The small room has already been tidied up, and the blanket on the metal bed is stretched taut. James is doing pull-ups on the bar in the closet, his wheelchair locked under him.

  “Hey, sorry to disturb you. I can come back—”

  “No, no, have a seat. Forty-two, forty-three…” James’s muscular torso rises and dips.

  Ranjit sits in the metal chair, seeing that all the library books stacked beside him are about Vietnam: histories, memoirs, biographies.

  James speaks through clenched teeth. “People say we could have won the war. Bullshit. The politicians lied the whole time we were there. Turned the war into statistics, body counts, and KIAs … Forty-six, forty-seven…”

  Ranjit picks up a large hardcover and opens it at random, seeing a double-page black-and-white photograph. Vietnamese civilians are lying dead in a ditch, some bodies sprawled out, others curled into tight balls, as if they could ward off the bullets. The bare white soles of a man’s feet protrude into the lower corner, but the rest of him is cut off by the frame of the photograph.

  The My Lai massacre. They had studied it in officer training college. Ranjit’s face is pale as he snaps the book shut, but the image remains: bodies huddled together, caught in the moment of death—

  “Fifty.” James drops into his wheelchair, his white T-shirt soaked in sweat. “The least we could have done was behaved with dignity—hey, are you all right?”

  Ranjit’s head is whirling and he leans back in the metal chair. Bodies, lying in piles, high up on the mountain … not now, not in James’s room …

  Too late. There is a shimmer in the far corner of the room and Sergeant Khandelkar appears. His white snowsuit is stained with what looks like rust, and his mouth is a hole in a mask of stretched skin.

  Trust this man, Captain. He can help you.

  Ranjit can’t tell if the Sergeant’s words are in his head, or were spoken out loud.

  Sergeant, what are you doing here?

  I have no strength left, Captain. I cannot come anymore. This man can help you. Talk to him.

  He’s sick, he’s going to die soon.

  He will stay alive if he is needed. Trust him. He’s one of us.

  The image shimmers and vanishes. Ranjit stares wildly around the room, and James follows his gaze.

  “Hey, what the hell are you looking at?” A shiver runs through James’s wide, muscular shoulders. “Jesus, I feel as though someone just walked over my grave.”

  Ranjit slumps forward and buries his face in his hands. There is the squeak of James’s wheelchair coming toward him and a strong hand squeezes his shoulder. When he opens his eyes, James’s pale face is inches away, so close that Ranjit can see the whorls of fingerprints on his thick lenses.

  “You okay? Is it a seizure?”

  Ranjit shakes his head and opens his mouth, but no words come.

  James’s voice is softer. “Voices? You hear them too? I know you’re not crazy. It’s just that … the men who died. They come back sometimes.”

  Ranjit nods. “I … can’t control it. It just happens.”

  They sit in silence. When Ranjit finally speaks it comes out in a rush.

  “James, I am in big trouble. My daughter took this doll from a house I was looking after, and now she and my wife are going to be deported—”

  “You’re married? You have a kid? Jesus.” A shadow passes over James’s face.

  “They have nothing to do with this mess. It’s all my fault.”

  James takes his hand off Ranjit’s shoulder and wheels his chair a few feet backward, waiting for more. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” He shrugs. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  * * *

  When Ranjit is done with his story, James leans back in his wheelchair.

  “You’re shitting me. Senator Neals, the guy who brought that journalist home? He’s a hero, man. People say he might run for President.”

  Ranjit takes out the piece of cardboard. “I’m not making this stuff up. This was inside the doll.”

  James just stares at it. “What the hell?” He reaches out and takes the card from Ranjit’s hand. “I didn’t know they made these anymore.”

  “You know what it is?”

  “Yeah. This was inside a doll?”

  “It’s some kind of microfilm, right?”

  “It’s an aperture card. We used them back in ’Nam, when I was in the Eighteenth Engineer Brigade.” James holds it up to the light, his eyes magnified by his thick lenses. “Used to store blueprints on them. This window here is microfilm, it holds the image for one drawing. The punches are code, they note the order of the drawing within a larger set. When we built the airfield at Qui Nhon, we had thousands of drawings. The exact order is important.”

  “Why would someone have this? Isn’t all this information digital nowadays?”

  James smiles. “Sometimes, my friend, the old ways are the best ways. You know what the life span of a CD is? Ten years. One of these cards can survive a hundred years, even in hot, humid weather. And if you use digital images, the viewing technology changes every few years. This aperture card exists outside technology, it’s mechanical. Just pop it in a viewer, and there’s all your information.”

  Ranjit nods. “So what’s on it?”

  “It’s microfilm. You need a viewer to enlarge it.”

  “What about the code?”

  James shrugs. “I was an engineer, not a programmer. See the columns of holes? Some sort of ID punched in here. Know any computer programmers?” He leans forward and returns the card.

  Computer programmers? Ranjit shakes his head, then stops himself. Ricky Singh. Despite his flashy turbans and tight T-shirts, the kid knows a lot about computers.

  “Thanks, James. You’ve been a big help. I have to go now.”

  “Wait.” James wheels himself rapidly to the door. He slams it shut and turns around to face Ranjit.

  “I need to know what you’re up to.”

  Ranjit is silent.

  “This place”—James gestures at the corridor—“this whole place is full of men hiding from something. Druggies here, and plenty of ex-cons. But you, Captain, you’re different. You show up with a turban and beard, then it’s gone. Now you have some sort of microfilm. And last night the elevator was working, so I went down. Two men were in the lobby, asking the night manager questions. They showed him a picture, an old picture, but it was you, wearing an army uniform.”

  Ranjit stands stock-still. His passport photograph. Game over, they’ve found him.

  “What … what did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. And the night manager hadn’t seen you.” James’s voice is steady, the eyes behind the smudged lenses boring into Ranjit. “But in my experience, cheap suits always mean law enforcement. You told me quite a story, Captain. But maybe it’s a bunch of bullshit.
Like maybe you want to blow something up here, like a tall building?”

  “James, it’s nothing like that, I swear, on my daughter’s life.”

  “You know, folks here are always talking about their wives, their daughters. Most of the time, there isn’t anyone, it’s all in their heads. You don’t strike me as a married man, Captain.”

  Ranjit takes out his cell phone. He scrolls through the menu, finds an image, and passes the phone to James. “Look. That’s my daughter.”

  James stares down at the image. It was taken on a sunny summer day in Vineyard Haven, and Shanti was eating a red Popsicle, her mouth stained red as she smiled up into the camera.

  “And this is her with my wife.”

  He scrolls to a photograph of Preetam standing in the front yard of the old house, under a tall oak tree. Shanti has climbed up into it, and smiles down from a branch above her mother’s head.

  “And this is me with her.”

  Another picture—blurry this time, because Preetam had taken it—of Shanti helping him to rake the yard, red and gold leaves stuck into her hair.

  Ranjit’s voice is softer now. “I’m not lying to you, James.”

  James takes a deep breath and hands the phone back. “She looks like you. Same eyes. Tall, too.”

  Ranjit closes his phone with a click. “Think about it. Last summer, people said the Senator wouldn’t even be reelected. Then he goes to Korea, comes back a hero, and suddenly he’s on top again. It’s strange.”

  There is a silence, then James nods his head. “People will do anything to stay in power. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. I saw it in ’Nam, when they bombed the crap out of Laos and Cambodia and lied about it. If politicians can lie about dropping incendiaries on thousands of people, they can do anything.”

  He takes off his glasses and wipes them on his sweat-stained T-shirt, looking up at Ranjit with naked eyes. “Okay, I’ll believe you, for now.”

  “Thank you.” Ranjit gets up and heads for the door.

  “Wait.” James gestures at the cardboard strip in Ranjit’s hand. “The aperture card. It’s not for a building. Or a bridge. To design those, you need hundreds, maybe a few thousand drawings. This is part of a huge set, tens of thousands of drawings. It’s some kind of machine, a very intricate machine. Go in peace, Captain. I’ll pray for your family.”

  As Ranjit walks through the door, he hears the click of a lighter and smells incense. Glancing back, he sees James bent over in front of the golden Buddha, his eyes closed and his palms pressed together.

  The sound of James’s mumbled prayer follows Ranjit all the way down the corridor.

  * * *

  Ricky sounds very frightened on the phone. He can’t get away from the store till later that afternoon, and they agree to meet at a coffee shop inside MIT’s student union. Ranjit arrives early and sips a chai latte, looking out of the window at the students passing by. Most of them are clad in just T-shirts and jeans, even in this freezing weather. Kids in this country revolt by underdressing for the cold, something he will never understand.

  For once, he feels at ease; there are so many foreigners at MIT that two brown men here will easily go unnoticed. Across from him, a group of Chinese students sketch complicated diagrams on napkins, and in another corner a table of men in leather jackets are talking in some Eastern European language.

  He takes a sip of what passes for chai here, and wishes he could just step around the counter and brew his own, flavored with cardamom and cloves.

  Just then Ricky enters the coffee shop, wearing a crisp white turban and a tight green T-shirt with BROOKLYN written across it. He sees Ranjit and a stunned expression crosses his face.

  “Ohmigod. Mausa, you cut off your hair? You dishonored yourself?”

  The hiss of the espresso machine masks Ricky’s loud voice, though some girls lined up for coffee stare at him.

  “Keep your voice down, please. I had to do this. Those men who came for Preetam and Shanti are looking for me, too.”

  Ricky sits down and leans forward, his eyes wide with fear. “I can’t believe this shit. I didn’t even recognize you.”

  “Have those Homeland Security men come back?”

  “No, but they turned the store upside down. They even went through the bins in the basement. We had to close for a day, just to clean up. Dad can’t sleep anymore. He spends all his time calling his lawyer, and the lawyer calls Homeland Security and gets a recorded message. We’re going crazy, we don’t know what to do.”

  “Did you tell anyone I was at the store?”

  “No. Dad thinks you’re in the Vineyard, and that the immigration people will pick you up, too. He says you deserve to be deported. He says you are a—”

  Ranjit holds up his hand. “Enough. I know what your father thinks.” He pushes his mug of tea aside. “Did you bring your laptop? And the scanner?”

  “Yeah, I always carry it. But how is this going to help Preetam Mausi?”

  “Listen, you have to just trust me. The less you know, the better.”

  Ricky’s pale, handsome face takes on a stubborn look. “What the heck can happen to me? I was born here. I’m American.”

  Ranjit sighs in exasperation. You could end up on a flight out of this country, bound and gagged, he wants to say. You could wake up in a cell in Yemen or Egypt with a bag over your head. Instead, he hands over the card and watches Ricky’s eyes gleam with excitement.

  “Cool. What the heck is this? Hey, it looks like a punch card for one of the old mainframes. I recognize the code, it’s Fortran.”

  “I just need to know what it says. Do you know how to read it?”

  Ricky laughs, his fears forgotten now that he has a technical problem to solve. “You don’t just read it, Mausa. It’s got to be decoded by a machine.”

  “Do you know someone who can do that? Quickly?”

  “There are some Sikh guys from MIT who come into the store. They’re cool, but kinda losers, they always want me to set them up with girls. I’ve done some programming with them. I’ll e-mail them.”

  Ranjit watches as Ricky takes out a pocket-sized scanner and feeds the aperture card through it. He attaches the scan to an e-mail, addressing his message to a string of people with names like “BigbearSikh” and “PunkSingh.” He types rapidly, then signs off with the traditional Sikh greeting, Sat Sri Akal. For these American-born kids, Sikhism is just one aspect of their lives. Their beards and turbans are just style, something that makes the girls pay attention.

  The e-mail vanishes with a small beep.

  “What now?” Ranjit asks.

  “Now,” says Ricky, standing up, “we wait. I’m going to get some coffee.”

  * * *

  Half an hour passes. Ricky is on his second half-caf double-whip mochachino. Ranjit is tense, watching the students entering the coffee shop, blue with cold, stamping their feet and shivering.

  “I miss Shanti,” Ricky says quietly. “She’s such a cool kid. She’s got a great sense of humor. I don’t get it. Why would they want to deport a kid?”

  “They’re just enforcing the rules. Our tourist visas have expired, but nobody would have found out. Someone deliberately tipped off Homeland Security.”

  “Who? Who would want to do that?”

  “I have an idea of who it is, but I told you, I don’t want you involved in this.”

  Ricky wipes a line of foam from his mustache, a gesture that reminds Ranjit of Shanti. “My dad said that he offered to sponsor you for a green card if you kept working at the store. But you turned him down. Why?”

  Ranjit looks out of the plate-glass window. The temperature must have dropped, because the kids outside are walking faster, their hands thrust deep into their pockets.

  “Ricky, I couldn’t take the store anymore. Maybe I should have listened to your father, but I … look, what’s happened is all my fault. I know that.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I hate working there, too. It’s bullshit. If I were a programm
er, I’d be pulling down some real cash, but Dad says I have to help him. What should I do? With you gone, there’s only me, and—”

  The laptop beeps. They both look down, and Ricky opens the e-mail, his eyes scanning the screen.

  “Mausa, is this a joke?”

  “Why?”

  “One of my friends replied. He’s at the Draper Lab at MIT. Look at this.” He turns the laptop around and Ranjit reads from the screen.

  Dear Dickhead, the e-mail says.

  Nice joke. Didn’t know you could code in Fortran. And the aperture card gag is a good one. So this is #11,078 in a set of 23,010 engineering drawings for the Agni developed by IGMDP? Ha ha. Very funny. Though I did enlarge the image of the circuit, and it looks pretty real. Almost got me. Are you up for going bowling in Allston Saturday? Can you get that cute yoga chick to come, the one you told me about …

  Ricky looks puzzled. “What does Agni mean?”

  “Let me have your computer for a second.”

  Ranjit opens a new window and types into a search engine, then clicks his way through several Web pages. He drums his fingers as a military Web site slowly loads, reads from the screen, then closes the window.

  “So what’s it all about? What is an Agni?”

  Ranjit ignores the boy’s question. “Can you find out what’s on that microfilm?”

  “Yeah, probably.” The boy’s face creases in thought. “My friend said it was some kind of circuit, but he’s a programmer, not an engineer. I can post an image on a bulletin board, and someone will know what it is. But then it’ll be out in the open. You want that?”

  Ranjit remembers the abstract geometry embedded in the microfilm. It doesn’t matter exactly what information the drawing contains. He realizes he has a powerful bargaining chip, good enough to cut a deal.

  He stands up abruptly. “Tell your friend that your e-mail was a joke. Delete the whole exchange, and don’t talk to anyone. Thanks, you’ve been a great help.”

  “That’s it? You have to tell me what’s going on.” Ricky’s mouth is open as he stares up at Ranjit. “C’mon. This military stuff sounds cool.”

  Ranjit puts both hands flat on the table. “Cool? This is serious, Ricky. You might have been born here, but you are still a brown man in a turban. You tell anyone about this, and you’ll be in big trouble—”