by Philip Roy
But the boy was nervous and didn’t want to come inside the bank. I insisted because I needed his help. I couldn’t hear. So he followed me in but a man stepped in our way, smiled at me but frowned angrily at the boy and pointed to the door. He barked something at him; I saw his mouth. I held the boy’s hand but the man looked at me and shook his head. He ushered the boy outside, without actually touching him. I thought that was strange. I wondered if it was because the boy’s feet were bare. “I’ll be right out,” I said to him, and I probably said it too loudly.
I changed my money from dollars to rupees and walked out with a fat handful of funny-looking money. Some of the bills were large and some small. I stuffed them into my pocket, let Hollie out of the tool bag and asked the boy to show me where the hospital was. He pointed up the road so I turned and started that way, but he lagged behind. When I turned around to see why, he came running up to me with something in his hand. I looked. It was one of the large bills. I counted the rest of the money and realized that I had dropped it, and he had found it. We stared at each other for a moment. He could have just kept it and I would never have known.
“Thank you,” I said. He smiled and his eyes sparkled. I remembered once finding a twenty-dollar bill when I was little and giving it to my neighbour who had lost it, and she gave me a dollar as a reward. So, I took one of the smaller bills and gave it to the boy. “Thank you for your honesty,” I said. He took it in his hands and stared at it as if he had never seen money before. And as we continued up the road, he never took his eyes away from it.
The hospital was just a small clinic. But they wouldn’t let the boy in. He stood at the door with a deeply guilty look on his face, as if he had done something wrong. This time I asked why he wasn’t allowed inside. A lady in a white uniform tried to explain it to me by writing a word down on a piece of paper. She wrote, “Dalit.” “What does it mean?” I asked. She looked at me and frowned. She wrote another word underneath the first one. “Untouchable.” Oh. That meant he was in the lowest class of India, or even lower than the lowest class. I wondered how she knew that. Could she tell just by looking at him? Was it because he was barefoot? Because his clothes were shabby? Was it the guilty look on his face? That went away when it was just him and me and Hollie.
So I asked the boy to wait for me again. He agreed. He pulled the bill out of his pocket and turned around to examine it again. I followed the lady to an examination room where she had me fill out a form asking for my name, age, address, passport number and what was wrong with me. I was waiting for her to tell me to take Hollie out too once she realized I was carrying a dog on my back, but she didn’t. She clicked her tongue and smiled at him through the mesh.
When the doctor came in, he read the form I had filled out and he clapped his hands but I didn’t hear anything. He looked surprised. He opened a drawer, pulled out a bag and took a little hammer and tuning fork from it. He put the tuning fork close to my ear and hit it with the hammer. I did hear something. “I heard that,” I said. “Just a little.” He went to the other side and did it again. I thought I heard it but wasn’t sure. He picked up a tool with a light on the end of it and stuck it into my ear and looked through it like a periscope. He moved it around. That hurt. I could feel his breath on my neck. He went around to the other side and did the same thing. Then he wrote down on a sheet of paper and showed it to me. “You heard a very loud noise?”
I said yes, but wasn’t about to tell him that I had been chased by the Indian navy and that they had attacked my submarine with depth charges. He wrote something else and tore a little sheet off a pad. Then he wrote on the other sheet again. “Prescription for steroid drops. Ears are damaged but will heal. Put drops in twice a day until gone.”
“Thank you,” I said. “How long will it take to get better?”
He raised two fingers, then three, and tossed his head to one side.
“Two or three days?”
He shook his head.
“Weeks?”
He nodded. Shoot.
I paid for the visit. It was only the same as twenty dollars in Canada, which was really cheap. The nurse drew a small map to show me where to buy the eardrops. I met the boy outside. Suddenly I had an idea and ran back inside and asked the nurse to come to the door for a moment. She frowned but came. I asked her to ask the boy his name and write it down for me. She shook her head. No. She wouldn’t do it! I couldn’t believe it. What the heck was wrong with her?
I let Hollie out and we walked away. Now I was hungry. “Are you hungry?” I asked the boy. He nodded. “Good. Me too. Let’s go find a restaurant.”
We found three restaurants but none of them would let the boy in. They saw him standing there staring at the ground in shame and they shook their heads at me. Holy smokes! So we went back to the Chinese fishing nets. There were people baking fish and onions and selling them. And there was more of that delicious drink. I bought a whole bunch of everything and we sat down by the nets and ate it, and man it was good. Suddenly my first mate came gliding out of the sky and landed beside us, probably because he saw us eating. The boy was startled to see a seagull come so close to us, and couldn’t believe it when the seagull let Hollie sniff its feathers. I explained that Seaweed was part of my crew.
The boy twisted his face up in confusion. What did I mean?
I smiled. Boy, was he in for a surprise.
Chapter Five
I FOUND THE PHARMACY, bought the eardrops, turned my head sideways and squeezed them into my ears. It tickled so badly my eyes watered and my toes curled in my sneakers. The liquid bubbled and crackled in my head, with the sound of a ship sinking under water, a sound that I hated. I waited till the bubbling stopped, then we walked all around old Kochi.
It was an interesting place. If the polar ice cap ever melted, Kochi would be one of the first places to disappear under water. It was completely flat, yet you couldn’t see far because of all the buildings and houses. Some of the old houses had colourful arches and little bridges and dark alleys between them, and some had sculpted faces that stared down at you from a timeless past. Some were just flat and boxy, with clotheslines wrapped around them, which reminded me of houses in Newfoundland, and in the Arctic, where they were so plain. And some of the houses were completely rundown, like the abandoned warehouses, leaning over as if they would fall, but not falling.
But there was also a neighbourhood that was very wealthy, where the houses were large and fancy, like in Hollywood, or some rich place like that. There were high iron gates to keep people out, beautiful lawns, enormous gardens, and little houses beside the big houses that were just for decoration. There were expensive cars there too, and they were driven by chauffeurs. I was amazed to see such a rich neighborhood so close to the poor areas, but I didn’t get to see much of it because the boy was too afraid to walk there. He shook his head desperately to tell me that he was not allowed. Was he not even allowed to walk down the street? No! He made gestures of hitting and kicking. He would get beaten? Yes. But why? He pointed to his bare arm. I was confused. He would get beaten just for walking there? Yes. He took my hand and tried to pull me away. Okay, I said. And we turned away.
Since we couldn’t seem to eat in a regular restaurant together, I went into a store and bought groceries to bring back to the warehouse for later. The boy waited outside with Hollie and Seaweed while I chose packages of Indian food that looked good. The pictures on the boxes showed mothers happily serving food to happy families. I was curious to find out what it tasted like. I also bought fresh oranges, bananas, a melon, grapes, bread, cookies, milk and juice. I had rice on the sub already.
On the way back to the warehouse we ate a whole box of cookies and drank a bottle of juice. It was twilight when we approached the channel where the drain was. We sat on the bank and waited until dark. Then, when we were sure no one could see us, we pushed open the grate and climbed through the tunnel. Seaweed flew up to the roof. Dark tunnels were not his thing.
Once we were
inside the warehouse, I said to the boy, “Now, I have to show you something. Do you know what a submarine is?”
In the light of the flashlight he shook his head. No? Oh boy.
“Okay. Do you know that there are boats that go under water?”
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
“Good. Well, I have one of those. That’s where I live, with Hollie and Seaweed. And that’s how we travel around. Do you understand?”
He looked like he was trying really hard to understand, but he didn’t. He shook his head.
“Well, let me show you. Would you like to see our submarine?”
He nodded excitedly.
“Okay. Follow me.”
I went towards the boathouse door, and he followed me. I pulled open the door and shone the flashlight in. At a glance there was nothing there, but I could see the flat circle in the water which was the top of the hatch. “Be careful where you step because the wood is really old here. Can you hold the flashlight and point it right there?” I handed it to him then climbed down onto the hatch and opened it. I looked up and saw the flashlight pointed at my face and the dark outline of the small figure behind it. “This is our submarine. Do you want to see inside? Just wait a minute; I’ll be right back.” I couldn’t tell what his answer was. I went in and turned on the emergency lights and pumped air into the tanks to surface completely. I came out and reached up for Hollie and brought him inside. Then, I came back for the groceries.
When I came out again, the boy was ready. He handed me the flashlight, took my hand and jumped onto the hull. He poked his head into the hatch and looked down, filled with wonder. I could tell he was afraid but his curiosity was greater. I think we were the same that way. I showed him where to hold onto the ladder and climb inside.
Hollie was excited to have a visitor in the sub. He ran to his corner, grabbed his ball, brought it over to the boy and dropped it at his feet. As distracted, nervous, and filled with wonder as the boy was, he bent down, picked up the ball and patted Hollie.
I showed him around the sub. I didn’t think his eyes could have opened any wider. He was especially interested in the observation window in the floor, and the periscope, even though he couldn’t see anything through it in the dark. I showed him the bicycle, the engine, the batteries, and explained that we had been chased by the Indian navy and that the submarine wasn’t working right and I had to fix it before we could go anywhere else. He nodded as though he understood everything I was saying, but I didn’t think that he did. How could he?
While I made supper, the boy sat by the observation window and played with Hollie. I was surprised how quickly he seemed comfortable here. He had a lot of energy for Hollie, which was nice; Hollie loved getting attention from other people.
I cooked rice and mixed three of the packages with water until they turned into bright green, yellow and red sauces. Then I mixed yogurt, water and sugar together and whipped it up into a drink called a lassie—I read the instructions in my guide book. I cut up the melon and put it on a plate with grapes. Then I laid everything out in bowls and plates on the floor in the bow. Hollie sniffed at everything but I fed him a can of dog food in his dish by the engine room.
We sat and ate. The boy ate without taking a drink. I had to take a drink after every bite because the sauces were so hot and spicy it was like lighting matches in my mouth. My whole body felt hot and my forehead broke into a sweat. Then I had to make more lassie to cool my mouth down. Indian food was tasty but it was like eating fire.
After supper I dug out my chess set. I wanted to see if he could play. He couldn’t. Would he like to learn? Yes. Great.
It wasn’t easy to teach someone to play chess when they couldn’t ask you questions. Considering that, he learned amazingly fast. He was so fascinated with the game and especially that all the players moved differently and had different powers. We spent a few hours at it, while Hollie lay beside us and watched. Once we started yawning I told the boy he was welcome to sleep inside the sub on a sleeping bag if he wanted to. He nodded emphatically. I told him I had to turn the light off to save power but would light a candle that would burn through the night. When the sun came up I would get busy fixing the batteries.
As I lay in my cot and waited to fall asleep, I thought of how different life was in India. In Canada, no one would let a ten-year-old boy live by himself. Clinics and banks wouldn’t refuse to let him inside. What if he got really sick? What then? Here, he wasn’t allowed in stores, so how could he buy food and clothes? And where would he get the money anyway? How will he be able to get a job when he is older if he isn’t in school now learning to read and write? It was lucky at least that India was so warm. He would never survive a Canadian winter living the way he did. No one would. And yet he seemed kind of happy, strangely enough. He seemed happy to be alive. How different the world was here, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep.
I woke and saw the boy asleep with an arm around Hollie. Even though Hollie was awake I could see that he didn’t want to disturb the boy by moving. It was as if Hollie knew somehow that the boy was as he had once been himself—orphaned and alone in the world. I put the kettle on for tea, turned the emergency lights on and started examining the batteries. I couldn’t see anything wrong with them, but Ziegfried had taught me not to trust the look of things, to examine them thoroughly, and so I did.
I checked all the wires and all the connectors. Everything had been so well constructed and was designed to absorb lots of bouncing and banging around it was hard to believe anything was broken. And then I found it. Ziegfried had built a relay switch between the batteries and the rest of the sub. Inside the relay switch was a row of fuses. One of the fuses was burnt out. The explosions must have caused the batteries to surge and overwhelm the fuse. That was it. That’s all it took to shut the sub down.
Fortunately for me, Ziegfried had stocked the sub with extra parts for everything, including extra fuses. But when I went looking through the parts drawer I couldn’t find them. I had a vague memory of having brought the fuses along when I went into the Sahara Desert to fix an engine the year before. I also had a vague memory of having forgotten to bring them back. Shoot! Ah, well, that just meant I’d have to pull the fuse out, find an electrician’s shop and buy another one to replace it. Surely there was an electrician’s shop in Kochi?
Nope, there wasn’t. But there were some in Ernakulum, the city across the harbour. And we could take a ferry there. I learned that after the boy woke up and we went out for fried fish and more of that delicious cinnamon tea, which, according to my guide book, was called chai, now my new favourite drink.
Seaweed was waiting for us when we came out of the sewer drain. We strolled along the road beneath a cloudless sky towards the Chinese fishing nets and our breakfast. I asked the boy if he was allowed on the ferry. Yes. Great. We greeted the men at the road stands, bought grilled fish, onions and chai, then sat and ate while we watched the Chinese nets scoop fish out of the sea. Certainly if there were any place in the world that made homelessness tolerable this was it. Some Pacific islands wouldn’t be too bad either.
The ferry ride was a treat. It was a noisy old boat with an exposed engine in the centre that whined and coughed and blew smoke all the way across the harbour. Every inch of the boat was filled with people squashed together like sardines. The boy and I stood on the bow and had a spectacular view of the harbour and its incredible number and variety of vessels. Hollie sat in the tool bag on my back. Seaweed was up in the air somewhere.
From the far side of the harbour I could see where the naval base was. I also saw navy helicopters taking off and landing nearby. Boy was I ever foolish trying to sneak in here in the daytime.
Ernakulum was a modern city, but nothing like a Canadian city. It was very noisy and busy, with way too much traffic for the streets, and man, what strange traffic! There were cars, trucks and buses—new ones and old ones, and some that were painted bright pink, red, yellow, green and purple. The bu
ses were jam-packed with people. You never saw so many people on a bus in Canada. It would be illegal there. There were also taxis everywhere—four-wheeled ones, three-wheeled ones and rickshaws. There were men hauling wooden carts piled high with wood, metal, boxes and burlap sacks. I even saw one filled with dead carcasses. In the middle of all of this, unbelievably, cows were wandering around like it was nobody’s business! Somehow the traffic was racing around the cows without hitting them. I didn’t see how it was possible, but it was. There was also garbage everywhere. There seemed to be no garbage pick-up whatsoever.
Once we got away from the busier streets we found smaller, quieter streets where all the working shops were—the garages, wood-workers, tanners, shoemakers, rice sellers, spice sellers, paper sellers, tinsmiths, printers, plumbers and electricians. Most of these shops were in two- or three-storey buildings and were squeezed into tight spaces. It was easy to walk around here and there was a lot to see. We passed a sewing machine shop that had dozens of old-fashioned sewing machines that you would only see in museums back in Canada, the ones that you pedal and that don’t use electricity. These were brand new. They were still making them in India. Cool. Then I saw a bicycle shop with old-fashioned bikes and they were brand new too. Oh, they were so beautiful! “Let’s go in here,” I said. But a clerk met us at the door and wouldn’t let the boy in. Oh, yah, I forgot. So we stood at the window and looked in. But the clerk didn’t like that either and came out and made a fuss, so we left.
Finally, we stood in front of an electrician’s shop. Through the window I saw a stern-looking man sitting at the counter reading a newspaper. “Just wait here, okay?” I said to the boy. “I’ll be right back.” And I went into the shop. I walked up to the counter with Hollie on my back and pulled the fuse out of my pocket. Before I could say anything, the man spoke to me and made an angry gesture towards the boy.
