Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (4 page)

‘Kem ksuid?’

Mr Smithson nodded. ‘My wife thought we should call Father Bevan…’

‘And he suggested we summon you,’ finished Jonah, ‘because he says you…have some experience in these matters.’

The awkwardness hung in the room like a blind, lost creature unable to escape until Mrs Smithson beckoned from the door.

The lantern she held threw long, loping shadows on the walls of a narrow corridor leading to the bedroom.

‘How old is Miss Lucy?’ asked the doctor.

‘Nineteen. A most trying age, when a girl’s mind is full of fanciful things. We must not be indulgent, doctor.’ It sounded more an order than a plea.

‘And her parents?’

‘Both dead, bombed in the Blitz. It’s a miracle she escaped.’

Mrs Smithson stopped and pushed open a door. ‘I’ll be right outside, doctor.’

He paused. With cases like these, he was never sure whether he’d need to be shaman or doctor. Sometimes, there didn’t seem to be a difference.

The room he entered was large and spacious, with a heavy chest-of-drawers and wooden bed on one side, and, on the other, a small table and chair by a window. A lantern placed on the mantelpiece above a cavernous fireplace shed limpid light on a girl as pale as the snowy quilt wrapped around her. Even when he moved closer, she lay still, propped on a pillow, her wavy chestnut hair spread out in a wild, flaming tangle.

‘Miss Lucy, how are you feeling?’

His question was met with silence.

‘Your aunt and uncle are worried about you.’

He thought there might have been a quickened breath.

‘If you prefer to sleep, I can come back later…’

This time she laughed, a hollow shaking that subsided when she turned to look at him. ‘Nobody else cares that I want to be left alone, why should you, doctor?’

‘They only want you to get better, as I’m sure you do too, Miss Lucy.’

He gestured to a chair. ‘May I sit down?’

She shrugged in indifference.

‘Why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you?’

She stared straight ahead, out of the window into consummate darkness.

‘Your aunt says you have headaches?’

She nodded slowly.

‘I can give you something for that, but might I examine you first?’

She sat up and responded mechanically to all his clinical instructions—to take a deep breath, stick out her tongue, open her mouth wide. Apart from a slightly increased pulse rate, she seemed physically well. Perhaps Mrs Smithson was right, that she was merely seeking attention.

‘I’ll give you a tonic for your headaches.’

As he reached for his bag, she turned to him. ‘Can I ask you something, doctor?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Do you think I’m mad?’

Her eyes were green—he’d never been close enough to notice before—like the pools of water at Laitkynsew, undisturbed for a thousand years.

As a good medic should, he turned the question around to her. ‘Why would I think that?’

She sank back into her pillow and closed her eyes. ‘They all do, I know it, except… It’s always there—that look on their faces, those hushed conversations. Following me…like flies. Only when I go riding, they can’t catch up. Everything disappears.’

An image flashed through the doctor’s mind—the girl against Sohra’s expansive sky and desolate hills. Perhaps this was a strange place for a girl like her to spend her time.

‘Your uncle told me you were…not yourself this afternoon.’

She answered quietly, ‘It’s my migraines, they explode in my head.’

‘Where does it ache?’

‘Everywhere. It’s like a light—a bright, blinding light. As though I’m having a vision of another life, or the end of time…’

She was much too young to speak of such things, the doctor thought, but didn’t say so.

‘Have you had them before?’

‘Sometimes. In London.’

‘Have you been sleeping well?’

She shook her head and reached for a glass of water on the bedside table.

‘What keeps you awake?’

‘Nightmares.’ She laughed. ‘Or “juvenile blarney” as my aunt calls them.’

Somehow, the doctor didn’t find that hard to believe.

‘She says it’s silly to pay any attention to dreams.’ Lucy turned, her eyes, bright and wary, met his. ‘But you, doctor, you don’t think so. Kyntang told me that here dreams are as important as waking life. Do you believe that too?’

‘Well, there are many things that Khasis believe—most of them born of centuries of stories and superstition.’ He spoke lightly, trying to calm her sudden restless excitement.

‘But is it true that people can be possessed? You’ve seen them… Is it true?’ A flush of colour rose on her cheeks. Her hair glinted in the lantern light.

The doctor took off his stethoscope and placed it in his bag. ‘I have seen people who are deeply unhappy. And within this emptiness, many demons may reside. Like creatures in the hollow of a tree. I don’t know if the demons come from outside or within.’ He added gently, ‘But if you dream of loved ones who are no more, the Khasis say they come to visit you…’

‘I used to dream of golden eggs,’ she interrupted. ‘They fell all over like rain, whistling through the air, bursting when they touched the ground. And now, a fire bird.’ She turned to him. ‘What does it mean? If you dream of being inside a fire bird.’ The girl suddenly pushed the quilt away and climbed down from the bed. Standing barefoot in her white nightdress she looked like an angel who’d stepped out of a painting—like the ones he’d seen hanging in Father Bevan’s office. She moved to the window at the other end of the room and flung it open. A gusty wind tugged at the curtain and the edges of her clothing.

‘It’s what I dream of…floating around there,’ she gestured towards the sky. ‘A dazzling fire bird comes crashing down to earth, like a star that’s burst into a million flames. It drops fast, lower and lower, shrieking loud and clear…’ She placed her palms against her ears, shivering in the cold. ‘I’m dizzy…I’m dizzy,’ she murmured, and crumpled to the floor, knocking over the chair and table.

Doctor Wallang lit a cigarette as he stepped out of the bungalow. It was a clear night, and far away a half-moon hung over the gentle rise of a mountain. He stood at the edge of the garden path, unsure whether he ought to have left. Yet there didn’t seem to be anything more he could do. Moments after Lucy had fainted, her aunt rushed in, followed closely by Jonah. From her dress pocket, Mrs Smithson whipped out a packet of smelling salts and, with practised ease, slipped it under her niece’s nose. When Lucy came round, the doctor carried her to the bed—she was light in his arms—laid her down, and covered her with the quilt. She was too exhausted to speak, and soon enough she fell asleep.

‘She’s alright,’ he’d reassured the family. ‘It was probably the cold from the window… We should let her rest.’ As they walked out, he’d glanced back to see Jonah pause by the bed. He’d never seen that expression on the boy’s face before—it was an odd and unusual tenderness.

In the living room, Mr Smithson had asked the doctor what he suggested they should do. Doctor Wallang hadn’t been able to prescribe anything specific. Lucy needed to eat better, put on some weight, perhaps meet other English girls her age.

‘I know Miss Lucy sometimes helps out at Sunday School,’ the doctor added, ‘but it’d be good if she had more friends to keep her occupied.’

‘When she’s better I’ll take her to Shillong,’ said Jonah.

With the striking of the clock Mr Smithson had exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, and insisted the doctor go home.

Doctor Wallang stubbed out the cigarette and looked back at the bungalow. It lay shrouded in darkness; the household had retired and the lanterns put out. He wrapped the shawl closer around him, glad for its warmth against the frosty night air. From the pine forest came the wail of a niangkongwieng, its shrill, tremulous notes carried to him on the wind.

‘Next,’ the doctor called, wondering how many patients were left before he was done for the day. He’d seen more cases than usual and was tired. From the window, he caught a glimpse of his wife watering the vegetable garden, leaving neat lines of dark, wet soil. On his desk lay a note from Sahib Flynn, requesting for an antiseptic cream to apply on a cut on his hand. As Doctor Wallang mixed the medication in a mortar, his back to the door, someone entered the room.

‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

‘Doctor, will she become well?’

The young man, with windswept hair and lean, wiry limbs, seemed uneasy indoors—perhaps he was more at home in the stables or out on the hills.

‘They won’t let her come out any more now. I hear she’s ill…lah kem ksuid.’ The boy struggled to stay calm.

It had been a week since Doctor Wallang’s visit to Kut Madan. He would have liked to check on Lucy, but he hadn’t been summoned, and he couldn’t drop by at the bungalow unannounced.

‘Why are you concerned about her?’

The young man flushed.

‘I’m Kyntang…’

‘I know who you are. That’s why I’m asking.’

‘You won’t understand,’ he said, with the martyric certainty of youth. ‘Everyone told me I’m mad, I must forget her because this—it’s not possible.’

‘It’s not possible,’ said the doctor. ‘You know that.’

‘I’m the only one she can talk to in this place.’ His voice contained a quiet relentlessness. Doctor Wallang encountered it everywhere in Sohra—the ‘knupmawiang blossoms, the hardy villagers. It was what enabled them to survive their valleyed isolation, the perpetual rain, the long winters.

‘One day, she came back crying,’ the young man continued, ‘after going riding with Bah Jonah. She looked upset so I asked her what was wrong. She couldn’t believe I spoke their language…but I’ve worked with bilati people all my life.’

‘It will never make you one of them.’

‘I don’t want to be one of them.’ He sounded mutinous. ‘I just want to know if she’ll be well.’

‘She’s young and strong, but beyond that I can’t say. Who knows what demons people wrestle with on their own.’ The doctor carefully emptied the antiseptic preparation into a bottle. ‘Did she ever tell you about her dreams?’

The young man hesitated. ‘I don’t remember but the next time she…’

‘You cannot see her again, Kyntang. Not if you know what’s good for her.’ He gestured to the door. ‘And for you.’

When the doctor was summoned to Kut Madan a fortnight later, he found Mrs Smithson waiting for him by the front door. On her face were hints of how she must have once been beautiful, yet now, her high cheekbones only served to emphasize the long hollowness of her cheeks, and her eyes, though startlingly blue, were cold and distant.

‘How is Lucy?’ asked the doctor; he wished her husband was around to take the formal, disquieting edge off the air.

‘The foolish girl has stopped eating.’

‘For how long?’

She paused. ‘Four days…nothing but bread and water, some fruit. And only when we force it down her throat.’ Her voice carried a trace of exasperation. He had a feeling Mrs Smithson was accustomed to people submitting to her orders; presumably she didn’t know what to do with her niece.

‘She’s stubborn,’ the lady blurted. ‘Just like Eve. I told my sister to get out of London, the city was being bombed to bits, for god’s sake…but no, she stayed on, to nurse the wounded. And now…well, now I have an impossible situation on my hands.’

Doctor Wallang wanted to say he was sure it was traumatic for Lucy too.

‘May I see her?’ he asked.

She gestured for him to follow. They walked down the narrow, airless corridor that led to Lucy’s room; without a lantern it appeared darker during the day than at night. At the door, she stopped. ‘See if you can talk some sense into her, doctor.’

He found Lucy sitting by the window, a shawl wrapped around her knees, an unfinished embroidery hoop on her lap. On the table was a plate of winter fruit—small soh um berries and thick, fleshy soh mon—lying untouched and unpeeled. He wasn’t expecting to find his patient looking well, but he didn’t think she’d have deteriorated this quickly either.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, trying to avoid her dark-circled eyes.

She glanced up at him, her skin translucent in the light. ‘May I go riding, doctor?’

It was too cold, and she much too weak. ‘When you get better, of course you may.’

She turned to look outside; a series of frosty nights had left the landscape pockmarked with patches of burnt, shrivelled grass.

‘I will not get better.’

‘You won’t if you carry on this way. Your aunt says you’re refusing to eat…’ He sat on a stool beside her. ‘How are your headaches?’

‘They come and go.’

Around her were layers of fog far thicker than the clouds that rippled over the hills.

‘Have you been sleeping well?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your dreams?’

A small smile flitted over her face. ‘They visit like old friends.’

They sat in silence, a faint drizzle had begun; it pattered softly on the tin roof.

A maid entered and placed a coal-filled chula in front of them.

Lucy drew her hands out from under the shawl and held them over the stove. They shook slightly.

‘Doctor, if I’m not permitted outside…no matter how much I long to…I’d like to bring it in…the sun, the wind, even the rain.’

He said he wasn’t sure he understood.

‘What I mean is…I’d like to see Kyntang.’

The doctor began to say it wouldn’t be possible.

‘They’ve dismissed him from service at the stables here… I overheard the maids talking…he was good with the horses.’

Lucy sounded as though her mind was far away on the open hillside.

‘I know my aunt and uncle won’t hear of it, even Jonah… they don’t understand. I was sent here to be safe.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But it follows me everywhere.’

‘What does?’

‘There’s no escaping it,’ she continued. ‘I told you. Yet sometimes when I’m with him…’ Her eyes were the colour of the hills after the rain.

‘I don’t see how such a thing could be arranged.’

Her shoulders drooped. Under her shawl, she seemed a captive, fluttering creature. Outside, it was growing dark, the days were short and graceless in November. He stared at the coal in the chula, burning amber-golden, in between liquid and light, solid and shadow. Lucy had her eyes closed, her breathing flimsy and shallow.