The Overnight Palace

by Janet Sola

  I sense Wally’s smile is false and I know I should protest more. But somewhere inside of me Parvati rises and spins, demanding to remain the center of attention. I wrap my scarf around my neck, the boys in the shop nod goodbye to us, and the three of us get on Wally’s motorcycle, Sahil sitting behind Wally and me behind Sahil. My hand rests on Sahil’s shoulder. He’s wearing only his thin white shirt, and I can almost feel his skin beneath it, so familiar to me now. We gun through the city, taking the dark side streets to avoid the crowds of the festival. It seems to me we are not heading in the direction of the lake at all, but away from it.

  As we begin to climb the hill the route feels familiar, the same that I took with Wally a few days ago to the posh hilltop restaurant. Oh oh. “Where are we going?” I shout into the wind and the roar of the motor. But the only response is a lift of Sahil’s shoulder in what I interpret as a “don‘t worry about it” shrug. It’s the shoulder of an artist, not a warrior. And yet he came to my defense. That comforts me. My moment of anxiety passes. The city spreads out beneath us, the last of the festival’s procession moving in a dance of lights around the blackness of the lake.

  When we round the curves I feel that inexplicable force, the force that wants to fling us out battling with the one that holds us in. As we speed up that pull gets stronger and more thrilling. The words of an Indian woman poet whose name I have forgotten come back to me: “Who knew whom then, who knew oneself, who knew of the world’s wild ways?” The wind wraps around us as we snake up the hill and I think how lovely and civilized this is to let animosities and misunderstandings go and celebrate life with lassis, or tea, or drinks.

  The restaurant’s covered terrace is open to the night air, the moon a cold blaze in the sky. Orange-scented candles light the dozen or so well-dressed patrons. Sahil and I sit on one side of a gleaming chrome table, Wally on the other. “I changed my mind about the restaurant,” he says. “This one is much nicer. I’m sure you agree.”

  I just smile a “who cares” smile. I’m not going to show him any concern at all. He snaps his fingers and orders a bottle of wine. I tell him I haven’t eaten in a long time and prefer something a little more substantial, or at least a lassi, but he smiles and shakes his head. When the waiter comes with the wine Wally pays. It’s cold and tastes expensive. We all toast the festival and take big gulps. Wally scans the dim room, as if he is looking for something. His eyes stop momentarily and fasten on my nose, as if he’s seeing it for the first time. “Your nose is quite strange today, but I still like you,” he says.

  “Thanks a lot.” I lean over and blow out the candle. “There,” I say, “now you don’t have to look at my nose.” The truth is I am glad I no longer have to look at Wally’s face, his heavy lidded eyes, his increasingly curling lips.

  Wally taps his fingers on the hard surface of the table. “This Sahil,” he says to me, “you don’t understand boys like this. He only wants your money. He only wants to go to America with you.”

  “This is not true,” says Sahil.

  “You American women are so naïve,” Wally says. His insinuating, angry tone is coming back.

  I take a deep breath. Mistake, I think. Big mistake to come here. Perhaps I’ve had enough of being an irresistible goddess that mortal men fight over. It’s time to defuse the situation. “What a lovely night,” I say. “What a beautiful festival. You said we should not argue. So let’s not. It’s stupid.”

  Sahil ignores me. “What is this word naïve?” he asks.

  “Naïve means you don’t see what is really going on,” I explain. The hills on the other side of the valley below us are outlined against the deeper, star-pierced black of the sky. “Like the stars out there. That twinkling star we see may not be there at all.” It’s kind of a desperate analogy, but the point is to change the subject. “The stars are so far away and the light takes so long to reach us that by the time it gets here the star may already be dead.”

  “Yes,” Sahil agrees readily. “So naïve means you see stars when there are really no stars.”

  “Kind of.”

  “But we can still enjoy, naïve, not naïve, what does it matter?”

  Wally stands again and runs his thumb down the zipper of his jacket. “Do you remember?” he says to me. “You rode my motorcycle with me to watch the sunset. You had a drink with me here. In this restaurant.”

  “Is this true?” Sahil turns to me as if he does not quite believe it. “You did not tell me this. You tell me he is the son of your teacher. That is all.”

  “It was nothing. He is making something out of nothing.”

  “Yes, it is true,” Wally says. “She does do this. And it is not nothing. You kissed me. Is that nothing?”

  I shake my head. “That is not true. You know that.”

  “Do not say things that are not true, Wally man,” Sahil says. He does not move, but his voice has a deadly calm in it. Wally’s eyes shift back and forth from Sahil to me.

  “Now you must choose,” he says.

  “But that’s ridiculous.” I shake my head at him in disbelief.

  “You must choose,” he repeats. He sits down again and squares his shoulders. “I am taller, handsomer, and richer. And older. This boy is too young for you.”

  “Be careful what you say, Wally man,” Sahil says. “These things you say are not important. She is happy with me. She cannot choose you.”

  He is right, I think. I am happy with him. But more than that, I am in the middle of my story with him. I have a leading role, maybe roles—Saraswati, Parvati—and I want to find out what happens next. And because . . . I think I love him.

  Wally stares at me. “Choose.” He presses his fists together and gives me his closed lip smile. I want to find the right words to give the least offense. “All right, I will choose. I choose Sahil because he has been my friend almost since I came to this city.”

  Wally looks straight ahead and says, “OK. We go back.” The lights of Udaipur are beckoning from far below.

  All the way down the mountain I’m waiting for Wally to make some crazy move to throw Sahil and me off the cycle. But after all, he’s an up and coming professional, a man with a lot to lose. He would not do anything rash. When we reach the center of town, Wally stops dead and we hop off. Without so much as a word or a glance at us, he guns his motor and is gone.

  Sahil and I make our way back to his studio. The fireworks are over, but two of his friends are still there, talking and smoking, hardly moved from their original positions. “I want to show you something,” he says, and I follow him to the back room. There, on an easel, is his painting.

  “This is what I paint in the village. The village market.”

  The scene is one of color and motion. Women are buying and selling fruit, a bespectacled man rides a bicycle, a yogi meditates, a dog barks at a fleeing hump-necked cow, a musician plays a sitar, a blue and yellow bus waits in the background. It has imagination and spirit and craftsmanship.

  “Do you see someone special?” Sahil asks me. I look at it more closely. And there, in the midst of the market is a woman in a blue sari, a scarf draped over her head, blondish hair peeking out.

  “Is that me?”

  “I am in the village but I think of you.” He looks at me almost shyly.

  “I’m glad I could visit the village of your grandmother in some way.”

  “See this.” He points to the signature. “This is your India, signed Sahil the artist. It is for you.”

  “It’s beautiful, Sahil. It’s the most beautiful present I’ve ever had.” And it’s true. I feel embarrassed that I was so imperious. “I’m sorry about Wally.”

  “I believe you Elena. I believe you when you say it is nothing. You believe me when I tell you I was in my village and I believe you.”

  “We believe each other.”

  “We go to your hotel to see the stars that are not there anymore.” He wraps the painting in brown paper, and hands it to me.

  At the hotel, we go pas
t my room to a small staircase and then a ladder that leads from the top floor to the roof. We watch the stars for a while, then hide in the shadows of a thatched structure, where no one can see us. I unbutton his white shirt, and he slides his hands up under my dress, and there again is that smell of salt and paint and earth that make me ravenous.

  When he leaves my room later that night he says “Someday I take you to the village of my grandmother.” He says this with conviction, as if he sees a future for us. Could that be in the realm of possibility? What would his grandmother think of me?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Escaping Udaipur

  It’s quiet the next morning on my way to Sahil’s studio. Except for more litter than usual scattered in the streets, there is hardly a sign of last night’s festivities. Just a calm blue sky and sleepy vendors selling their wares, my humped-necked cow friends, the women beating their laundry in the shallows of the lake. And the Shadow. He catches me by surprise as I pass the broad expanse of the city’s main ghat.

  He lifts his head to me, a cocky gesture I interpret as come here. “I must speak to you.”

  “I’m very busy,” I say, barely glancing his way.

  He follows me as usual. “Very important.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have something to tell to you. Your Moslem friend is in big danger.”

  Something in the tone of his voice makes me think he is serious. I stop and turn to look at him. “What are you talking about?” I have always seen him in the murky shadows of twilight. In the bright light of day he doesn’t look sinister. He’s just a strange, awkward man with oil stains on his pants. But it’s the same strange, awkward man who was happy to pass on to Wally the location of Sahil’s studio. A professional trouble maker, as Sahil said.

  “We sit,” he says, indicating the stone steps of the ghat.

  “I don’t need to sit.” A man with wispy white hair and a shrunken naked torso is stretched out and sleeping on the step just below us.

  The Shadow’s forever restless Adam’s apple repositions itself. “I am not telling you truth before. About Moslem boy.”

  “His name is Sahil,” I say, my voice icy. “Not ‘Moslem boy.’ Sahil is his name.”

  “He does not have many women. Only one before you. French woman a long time ago.”

  “Is that what you want to tell me? Do you think I believed your lies?”

  “India is a different country,” he says.

  “Different than what?”

  “A woman cannot have two men here.”

  I pull back from him and stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I feel my face reddening. Without thinking, I bring my hand to my nose. It’s still tender.

  “Last night, your friend, this Wally . . .”

  I interrupt him. “He is not my friend.”

  “This Wally with shiny motorcycle. He take a big stick—not a cricket stick but American baseball bat—and go look for this Moslem boy who is also your friend.”

  “Sahil,” I say again, trying to remain calm. “What happened? How do you know this?”

  “Very late last night, when festival finish, I see Wally man. He say you have a date with him. He say he take you and Moslem boy along on his motorcycle. He say you are a bad woman. He is very mad.”

  Is he telling the truth? I am trying to put this together in my head. He must have seen Wally after the three of us came down the mountain and Wally dropped Sahil and me off. Otherwise, how could this guy have known we all went on Wally’s motorcycle together?

  “This Wally man show me this stick. He say he look for Moslem boy and break his leg.”

  “Break his leg?” My voice rises in alarm.

  “He go last night to do this. If he find him he break. Maybe leg. Maybe neck.” He raises him arms and brings them down hard as if he had a stick.

  “Why did you do this? Why did you tell Wally the way to Sahil’s studio? What is the matter with you? You’re a bad man.” Scenarios of Wally hitting Sahil in the shins with a stick and worse are running through my mind. I think of going to the police before I remember how useless that would be.

  “This is the fault of women like you,” he says. “Women who do not care about our ways. Women who think only on themselves. Women who come here to have mischief with men and do not care what they leave behind.”

  I try to take in what he is saying. Can that be what I’ve done? Blood rushes to my face. Shame and embarrassment mix with fear and distress. I look at the ghat’s steps that go down beneath the water, each step darker and murkier than the one above it, and wonder how far down they go. I want to go all the way down them and immerse myself in the lake. But I’ve got to go. I've got to warn Sahil.

  It’s only a short walk to Sahil’s studio but I feel as if my legs are made of water. “Women like you, women like you.” Those words keep pounding in my brain. This horrible man is right. I have had no idea what I was doing. I have been caught up in my own drama, as if the world were small and revolved only around me. And look at the consequences. Sahil is no match for Wally, especially Wally with a bat. If anything has happened to Sahil it will be my fault.

  When I get to his studio, I pound on the closed door. There is no answer. I keep pounding. Finally, I hear a stirring inside. The door opens and one of Sahil’s friends peers out. He rubs his eyes. I can see another body, sleeping on a mat, behind him. “Have you seen Sahil?”

  “Sahil not here. Wally person come last night to look for him. Very late. Very loud voice. Carry big stick. I tell him the same. Sahil not here.”

  “When did you last see Sahil?”

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  On the long unpaved road that circles the lake, I look up and try to remember which house Sahil had pointed out to me as the house of his mother. Maybe he went there. I’m not sure, and even if I found it, what would I do? Go knock on the door and introduce myself to her? Tell her that someone is after her son to beat him up because of me?

  When I walk into the aunties’ garden though, there is Sahil, his hands afloat in the air, entertaining them with a story.

  “You’re all right!” He looks as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

  He gives me a puzzled frown. “Yes. Nothing is wrong.”

  “Where were you last night after you left here?”

  “I am at the house of my mother. Then I come here this morning. Do you not trust me again?”

  “It’s not that, it’s . . . I must tell you something.” The eyes of the aunties are cast down on their embroidery. “In private.”

  He follows me to the rooftop restaurant. I find the cold bottled water I've stored in the refrigerator and pour us each a glass. I tell Sahil what the Shadow has told me. He shakes his head at the story. “Maybe this man tells you a lie. Another lie like the one he told you before about me.”

  “What if he is telling the truth? Sahil, this Wally is a little crazy. I told you, he came to your studio with a stick last night after he dropped us off. He wants to hurt you. He knows this place. He could come and look for you here.”

  He shrugs.

  “OK, brush it off. But what if he comes and breaks your leg? Or worse. Then what will you do? You don’t even have insurance.”

  He shakes his head. “What is this insurance? The same insurance that helps me for my broken foot?”

  “Please Sahil, listen to me.”

  He holds his glass of water, slowly rotates it in one hand, then raises it in the air. “You are right. You are always right. My idea is we go to Jaisamand. A very nice lake.”

  “Another lake. So many lakes in Rajasthan.”

  “Because the old maharajahs know people enjoy the water. They build dams to hold the water in. Beautiful. Biggest lake in Rajasthan. Many people go there on their honeymoon. But now, not so many people.” He reaches out for my hand. “It is a good lake for swimming. Very nice for us.”

  We decide we won’t tell anyone where we’re going. We’ll leave today as s
oon as we pack.

  “I go to my studio first. For my paints.”

  “I don’t think you should go there. He might be watching for you. Maybe you can get those things where we’re going.”

  “OK. I take nothing. I need nothing.”

  Just to make sure, I tell Sahil to explain to the aunties that if anyone comes asking for me, especially a man on a motorcycle in a leather jacket, to say I have left Udaipur and gone back to America. While I’m in my room packing and Sahil is pacing, waiting for me, I hear a pulse in the air. A throb of feathers. There she is, the pearly gray dove, followed by her mate. They each carry a twig, which they deposit on the bookshelf before they fly out of the open window again. “They’ve come back.”

  “Ah,” Sahil says, “always, birds come back to the place they love.”

  In less than an hour, we are on a bus to Jaisamand, after I tell the aunties to be sure not to close the shutters while I’m gone and give them an extra tip to ensure it.

  PART THREE

  DURGA

  The goddess Durga is the manifestation of courage. When evil forces threatened the very existence of gods, she went into battle with her vehicle lion without the help of any male companions.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Bottomless Lake

  I love this expanse of sky and water. Rumored to be bottomless, and so blue it is almost black, Jaisamand Lake stretches as far as the eye can see in one direction, flanked by sparsely wooded hills. Sahil is diving and surfacing like a seal. I watch him from the steps of the gleaming marble ghat, in the shadow of the stone elephants that are the lake’s guardians. He plunges down headfirst. I hold my breath along with him, count to thirty, gulp air, and try to guess where he will emerge. I take another breath, hold it, and just when I get to the end of that, and am trying to subdue my nervousness, he pops up, laughing.

  “Come in, Elena. Very nice water.” He swims over to the steps and playfully grabs my toe.