Garden of Dreams (3 page)

They came for him on time, rare in a country where people knew how to wait. Sikriti Bhyat and her driver pulled up to the curb outside his office as the square hummed at the intersection of life; along with crowds of people, there were dozens of monkeys on the palace steps this bright afternoon, grooming, foraging in the dirt, staring at their human relations. De Villiers stared back at one as he settled himself into the springy backseat of the grey Morris Minor, which should have been retired years ago.
You’ve got it right
, he thought of the troop of macaques,
living simply. We humans make a mess of everything.

De Villiers turned up his hearing aid and braced himself for the lecture he was sure Sikriti would give en route. He could always turn the device down again if she proved too much. And so she began: ‘Namaste, Dr de Villiers, are you prepared to be amazed?’

He smiled back at her, signed ‘namaste’; he couldn’t quite get the head wiggle that meant ‘yes’, and it might insult people if he tried. One could go only so far in adopting local custom; appreciation easily turned to parody.

‘Tell me what to expect,’ De Villiers said, knowing she needed no invitation. Sikriti had roughly two hours before they reached the rehabilitated child soldier’s village, in the foothills of the Annapurna range to the northwest.

‘This boy is a sad story,’ she began, ‘like all of the children who were with the Maoists in the war – or the government forces. He fought in the jungles with the Maoists, cooked for them, and then was captured by the government army, tortured and turned into a spy. Just eleven years old at the time, now he is nearly fifteen. These children live many lifetimes in a few years.’

‘And now?’ De Villiers tried to concentrate on Sikriti’s words, and not on the red tika mark on her forehead, an ever-present sign of devotion, or the tiny glinting diamond in her nose. They always distracted him. ‘How is the boy now?’

‘Remarkably, remarkably well. About to start Grade Six again, where he was when they kidnapped him, so he’ll be a bit big compared to the other kids, but he’s not alone … but he IS very big, very long.’ Sikriti’s hands, like small birds with puffed-out chests, were weaving around to show the boy’s dimensions. ‘His name is Kumar, by the way.’

‘How is the community treating him?’

‘The community? You mean the village? Very nicely, in fact. Well, his own people at least – the Dalits, the Untouchables. They are reintegrating him. He has been put through purification rituals and is now almost like a normal boy.’

‘Almost?’

‘Dr de Villiers,’ Sikriti said solemnly, lowering her head slightly. ‘Don’t forget what he has seen – what he has done.’

What
has
he done? De Villiers wondered, but kept it to himself. He’d learn the details, or some of them, soon enough. He could imagine the atrocities, part of every war. He’d seen less of violence itself than of the aftermath, the effects of violence – which lasted much longer than the physical act. Forever, perhaps.

The Morris climbed higher and higher with the gravel road; it was slow going. Annapurna and its sister peaks rose like giant angels spreading their wings above. Sikriti was unnaturally quiet, and the driver, a sullen, scrawny fellow with an over-large topi, had yet to say a word. De Villiers turned down his hearing aid to slip further into his own world, and wondered, as the landscape of fields and poor farmers became monotonous, why he was travelling all this way to see one child.

At last they turned off on to another gravel road, heavily rutted, and wound their way into the heart of the village, stopping by the community water tap – or the tap for the higher castes, at least. The air was heavy with the smell of wood-smoke and dung, coming from the mud and stone houses flung against the hillside like tumbling dice. To the west of the houses were terraces of rice, several shades of green. They left the driver with the car and his pack of bidis; Sikriti led the way up the hill, on a narrow track littered with plastic bags and populated by chickens scratching in the dirt. He marvelled at how she kept her feet so clean in her golden sandals.

They stopped at a house that looked much like the rest, a collapsing, squashed pagoda with a string of tattered prayer flags stretched across the front, over the door. The door was open, the inside dark. Sikriti knocked on the door’s wooden frame, and when there was no response, offered
a tentative greeting: ‘Mr Pande, namaste, are you there? Sikriti of Save the Children and Dr Anton de Villiers are here to see your boy.’ Then whispering, aside: ‘Pande’s English is very good, he was once a teacher.’

A rumpled middle-aged man emerged, barefoot with spiky grey hair, wiping sleep from his eyes and tugging at his white vest and salwar pyjamas. He came to the threshold and stared at them, squinting in the sunlight.

Sikriti made the introductions, waiting for Pande, now their host, to speak.

‘Kumar is not here,’ his father said, ‘but come inside. He has gone to the forest again.’

‘Isn’t that where he disappeared? Where the Maoists abducted him?’ Sikriti asked, settling on to a deep blue and red handmade carpet and patting a space for De Villiers next to her, though not too close.

‘Kumar was out gathering grass for our water buffaloes when the Maoists came along and took him and four of his friends. Two of them died in the war. Another is also back in the village, very disturbed, and the other is missing …’

‘How’s your son?’ De Villiers asked, trying to get comfortable with his folded knees; he still hadn’t found the way to sit.

‘He has never returned from the war, in his heart.’ Pande sighed. ‘But here he comes now, you can ask him yourself.’

Pande withdrew to the stone hearth at the end of the darkened room and fanned the flames heating the small black iron kettle. De Villiers looked towards the open door, now filled by the boy’s silhouette. He was already taller than his father.

The boy came towards De Villiers and extended his hand. ‘I am Kumar,’ he said, nodding at Sikriti. ‘Hello, Auntie.’

‘How are you, Kumar? I am telling Dr de Villiers here that you are now much, much better – that this feels like home again. Am I right?’

The boy was silent. ‘Tell them, Kumar,’ his father said, handing round a tray of hot chai in earthen cups.

De Villiers studied the boy, sitting next to him now, on a cushion. His head was shaved, a dark shadow where the hair was starting to grow back; he was thin, dreamy-eyed, wearing brown cotton trousers too short for him and a black Metallica T-shirt, with a coiled, hissing snake on the front. Not his son Eli’s style exactly, but evidence of the same rebellious streak. ‘Where’d you get that T-shirt?’ he asked.

‘Storm gave it to me.’

‘Storm?’

‘His commander with the Maoists,’ said Kumar’s father. ‘That was his name in the war.’

‘
Nom de guerre
,’ said De Villiers. ‘In French.’

‘He doesn’t stop talking about him,’ Pande said. ‘Storm this and that, Storm day and night …’

‘And how is school going, Kumar?’ Sikriti again, sounding earnest and a bit exasperated.

‘He often doesn’t go,’ said his father. ‘I am thinking of pulling him out and training him to be a mason, like me. What is wrong with that?’

‘Oh, no, that would be unwise!’ Sikriti looked as though she might stand to make her point, but stayed seated, shifting slightly. ‘I mean, he is a clever boy and has always done well in school, has he not?’

De Villiers was beginning to feel badly for Sikriti – it was not playing out as she’d planned. This boy was meant to be her poster child for the child soldier rehabilitation effort, and here he was still under the spell, it seemed, of a former commander. A Maoist. And though the Maoists were now represented in Parliament, some, maybe this one, were still hiding out in the jungle. Still holding on to some of the children, in spite of a negotiated agreement for the children’s return to their families. But when, or if, they did in fact return, what then? What was there for them?

‘Tell me about Storm,’ De Villiers said to the boy.

Kumar’s face brightened, though he looked off into space, addressing no one present. ‘He was cool,’ he said. ‘He taught me everything. He taught me to shoot a rifle, to make socket bombs, to disguise myself in the bush. I cooked for him and the others, and he loved my food. He taught me that us Dalits are as good as anyone else – that the revolution was about making sure everyone believed that.’

‘You fought, in combat?’ De Villiers asked.

‘Yes, I fought. I fought very well …’

De Villiers waited before asking the logical next question, looking at Sikriti who seemed increasingly uncomfortable. He hoped the boy would tell him without his having to ask.

‘I killed plenty, I don’t know how many.’

It felt like bravado; maybe it was untrue. Either way, it was troubling that the boy seemed to take such pride in it. The air in the room, already thick with smoke and the smell of the earth, grew even heavier.

De Villiers had one final question. ‘Are you not sorry for what you did?’

‘Why?’ Kumar was now looking at him. ‘I did my duty with the Maoists. When the army captured me, I stayed loyal to them, to Storm. The army
put me at a checkpoint to make me identify my comrades, but I never did. So they sent me home after a few months.’

Kumar’s father, sitting against the wall of the house, in the shadows, said nothing. In his silence was resignation, the sad acceptance that the boy was in many ways no longer his, that he had switched allegiances, that his notion of ‘father’ had shifted. What was a mason, after all, in the eyes of a young boy, compared to a guerrilla fighting for freedom? What was a trowel compared to a gun?

Sikriti seemed at a loss. De Villiers thought that if she could have hidden her face completely in her pink veil, she would have. She remained composed, though, and addressed both father and son. ‘It will, of course, take time for you, Kumar, to find your place here again. To remember your friends, to make new ones, to readjust to school. You must stay in school, please! Please, Mr Pande, make sure he does. You of all people know the value of education. Be patient with him. We are here to help, as we can. We have had much success in other villages …’

Before she could finish there was a knock at the door. It was a neighbour, dressed more for the office than the field – a member of the mayor’s office down the road, home of the local panchayat. ‘Namaste. Is Dr de Villiers present?’ he asked. Kumar’s father stood, greeted the man and swept his hand towards De Villiers, who stepped forward.

‘Dr de Villiers, sir, I am sorry but I have worrying news for you,’ said the man, now just inside. ‘We received a telephone call just now from a Mr Sunil, who says he is from your office in Kathmandu …’

‘Yes?’

‘He went to fetch your son at Tribhuvan Airport, on time, just as planned …’

‘And?’ De Villiers had to interrupt. Drag the words out of this stranger.

‘The boy wasn’t there.’

He woke in a strange room, reeking of sandalwood and infused by music, like cats mewling, with a babel of voices from the street below. It was night, dark outside the barred windows facing the street; from the board-like bed Eli could see only wires like black snakes and a few street lamps. Someone had left a candle and matches, along with a plate of rotis and curry, on the floor next to his bed. He ignored the food but lit the candle and crossed the room to look out. Straight across were just a high wall, more wires and what he guessed were train tracks. Down the road, on the same side of the street, was a row of wrecked buildings, with tiny balconies decorated with coloured lights and, he saw, shadows moving on them. He pressed his face against the grillwork on the window, his head thick and nonsensical. A train howled from nowhere. The train. The driver with the sign. In the flicker of candlelight he wondered where the fucking hell he was.

The shadows were women, girls more like it. Some were free on the balconies, dancing sinuously and waving to the throng of men down below, moving in a current of people, cars, bikes, rickshaws and scooters. There was shouting he couldn’t understand and a constant percussion of car horns and bicycle bells. He saw a girl’s face if she moved into the light, lots of make-up around the eyes and blood-red lips. Saris spangled with gold and beads, arms full of bracelets – there was so much glitter, it was like a celebration. With the snaky music and the boisterous voices and the girls dancing, it felt like a huge, weird party to which he hadn’t been invited. In a city somewhere. In the old part, judging from the chipped walls and faded pastels of the old stone havelis, the broken flowerpots on the balconies and, in the distance, the minarets of mosques and crenellations of an ancient fort. In India, still, he assumed. A small, pale arm, with no adornment, jutted out through the grillwork on the building next door, waving urgently. Wherever he was, he knew he had to get out.

He moved across the room and tried the old wooden door with a
skeleton lock; it didn’t open. There were no sounds in the corridor, though he thought he could hear faint strains of other music, classical, from not far off – maybe Mozart, one of his mother’s favourites. Who could be listening to Mozart in this place? He pounded on the door with all his might till his fists were red and throbbing.

As he began another round of pounding, the door opened and a huge man, long black hair flying, lunged through the transom, grabbed him and hurled him through the air. He landed on his knees and stayed there, trembling and sore, submissive. When he dared to look up he saw more of the man: a white pathan suit, gold earring, thick moustache and a pair of mirror aviators. Black motorcycle boots that could kick the shit out of you. Eli saw himself in the man’s sunglasses, a shrunken little gnome.
Now he pulls out the gun
, he thought, almost in disbelief. Which is exactly what the goonda did, pointing it straight at his head.

‘Stand up, Eli, relax,’ he said, waving the gun at him a few times before stuffing it under his shirt and sitting down on the frail bed. He was chewing gum, cracking it. ‘Conserve your energy.’

‘For what? Where am I?’

‘You’re Auntie Lakshmi’s payback,’ the man said, lighting a cigarette in the still darkened room. ‘A present, shall we say, from people who messed Auntie around, didn’t deliver the goods. Now I guess they’re paid up.’

Eli looked around to see if there was anything – a chair, a small table – that he could fling at the man. Nothing, just the plate of soggy rotis on the floor, and the man’s boot next to them. ‘Where are my things?’

The man blew a vast cloud of smoke, cinnamon-scented, into his face. ‘Auntie Lakshmi has them. She’s waiting for you in the next room. She’s been waiting all day for you to wake up. Let’s go,
jaldi
!’

As the man turned his back on him to open the door, Eli thought of tackling him from behind. But he was way too big – and then what? Run screaming down the stairs and into the streets, where he’d probably be mugged, murdered or dragged off into another dump? Instead, feeling sick to his stomach, he followed the creep into the hallway.

It was a long, dark, narrow passage, leading into blackness, with the faint outlines of benches along the far walls. Eli could see light coming under the doors at the ends, and vaguely hear what sounded like snorting and grunting from that direction. But he followed the pathan suit just one door down, on the right, where the Mozart was coming from, and waited for the man’s knock to summon whoever was in there.

‘Don’t be shy, gentlemen,’ said a voice behind the door, screeching
slightly, munchkin-like. ‘Auntie Lakshmi is waiting patiently and for too long!’

A key turned in the inside lock, a bolt was unbolted and the patter of slippered feet rushed away from the door. The goonda pushed it open to a room glowing with candles, drenched with floral scent and draped with pink, orange and purple silks. There was a garish red Persian carpet on the floor, and on the lilac walls, posters of the gods: Hanuman, Shiva, Ganesh and of course Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty and wealth. Smack in the middle of the room, on a gold brocade daybed, reclined a middle-aged woman whose long black hair, loose, snaked over her humongous breasts, down over the folds of her bare belly. Crammed into her crimson sari with fake gold coins she looked like a fancy sausage.

‘Eli, my little
chutiya
,’ she said, beckoning him nearer, her fingers covered in rings, ‘Auntie Lakshmi wants a closer look.’

‘Meet Auntie-ji,’ the goonda said. ‘Runs the best kotha on G.B. Road. Best girls, fresh, healthy, best prices …’

‘Anand – that all can wait,’ said Auntie Lakshmi. ‘Now we must get to know Eli, isn’t it?’

Anand pointed to one of two Queen Anne chairs facing the daybed, showing Eli where to sit. At Auntie Lakshmi’s insistence Eli pulled it closer, to less than a metre away from this creature with a pale, pancaked face, drawn-in black eyebrows and lips slathered in red. She had eyes black and bottomless, like a shark’s, and an overlong nose with a ruby in the left nostril. Her right hand propping up her head, she breathed heavily, her chest heaving.

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’

Auntie Lakshmi raised a finger to her lips. ‘Shhh … bring me his rucksack, Anand, it’s in the bedroom.’ She waved the goonda into the adjoining room.

Anand returned with the rucksack, still zippered shut. Eli moved to grab it but Auntie Lakshmi’s solid arm barred him. ‘Wait,
chutiya
. Let us see what kind of little man you are.’

She nodded to Anand and said something in Hindi, so Anand unzipped the bag and scattered the contents on the floor between them. He then hovered behind Eli’s chair, ready to pounce.

‘Oof! Anand, back down! This is not an inquisition. Auntie Lakshmi is merely getting to know the boy – and he may get to know her, just a little bit …’

Sitting up now, she took the green and black rucksack on to her lap and examined it. ‘What is this “Billabong”? A piece of a song, isn’t it?’

‘Aussie company, Auntie-ji. Makes surfer gear, and …’

‘Anand is an expert on certain aspects of popular culture,’ said Auntie Lakshmi, smiling. ‘Now look at this,’ she said, holding up Eli’s favourite T-shirt, fronted by a long-haired rock guitarist in a top hat. ‘I’m sure you know who this is, isn’t it! Ten seconds for your answer, Anand!’

Anand shook his head and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. ‘Everybody knows this, Auntie-ji,’ he laughed. ‘That’s Slash of Guns N’ Roses – look at him … he could be an Indian with that nose ring of his!’

The two of them laughed hysterically, cackling. Eli wanted to smash them. He could feel rage pressing against his ribs, and gripped the edge of his chair so hard his knuckles whitened. Rage quickly turned to terror when the woman fixed her eyes on him again.

‘
Achha, achha!
’ Auntie Lakshmi said, calming down but staring at him intently. ‘We must be serious now. What have we here? iPod, iPhone, Canon PowerShot … You are a very lucky boy, Eli! Somebody loves you.’

Somebody loves me. Loves me not. His mother’s tired face flashed before him, from that last night in Jaisalmer in that dingy guest house room, fading fast. He tried to conjure up an image of his father.

‘My father will find me!’ he told them, defiantly.

‘And just who is your father?’ Auntie Lakshmi asked. ‘“De Villiers” is what sort of name, exactly?’

‘My father knows the King of Nepal! He knows the men in government, the army, the Mow …’

‘The Maoists?’ Anand asked. ‘Your father knows the bloody guerrillas?’

‘And your father’s good name is?’ Auntie Lakshmi eyed him suspiciously.

‘Anton de Villiers.’

‘And he is living where?’

‘Kathmandu.’

Auntie Lakshmi looked at Anand, then back at Eli. ‘Do you know people in Kathmandu?’

‘Just my father.’

Anand picked up the iPhone and started to press buttons. ‘Is his number in here?’

‘Shame on you, Anand, give that here!’ said Auntie Lakshmi, grabbing the phone from him. ‘I’m sure we’ll speak to his father in good time.’

‘What are you doing with me?’ Eli asked.

‘That depends, I suppose,’ said Auntie Lakshmi, tossing her hair back over her shoulders, first one side then the other, ‘on what you’re good at. What are you good at, Eli
chutiya
?’

Playing guitar. He used to be good at baseball, he wasn’t bad at bodyboarding. He was a loyal friend but not very good with girls. Looking
at the pathetically few tokens of his life on the red carpet in front of him, he said: ‘I can take photos.’

Auntie Lakshmi bent over her ample stomach and picked up the Canon PowerShot, staring at it as though the small silver rectangle with the rounded edges held a great secret. ‘Stand up, Eli,’ she said, bringing the camera up to take a shot.

‘Get up, yaar!’ Anand kicked his chair, hard. ‘Just point and shoot, Auntie-ji!’

‘Closer,
chutiya
.’ Her ringed fingers summoned him. ‘I can’t see your face.’ She stood and came towards him, sickly sweet in her perfume, and tried to brush his hair out of his eyes. He swerved. ‘Stand still,
chut
,’ she said, and fondled a golden strand, seemingly mesmerised, before sitting down again.

Raise your chin. Turn your face. Sideways. Look at me. Don’t look at me. Put your leg out. Pull up your chest. Unfold your hands. Smile.
Each photo she took robbed him of something.

Humiliated, he followed her orders and listened to the music. The strains of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, still playing, promised to carry him away, so light and ethereal were they, otherworldly. But then Auntie Lakshmi put the camera down, fell sullen; he could feel the chill coming from her.

‘Take him to his room, Anand,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. Not in the mood for a massage.’

Before Eli could ask
what massage?
Anand had grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out the door. He walked along the hallway to the room,
his
room now, with Anand’s brawn hurrying him on. Once inside, he stood in the shadows and faced his captor. Even in this low light he could see himself again in Anand’s sunglasses.

‘Sleep now – you won’t get much of it around here.’ Anand turned to leave.

‘Wait!’ Eli almost shouted. ‘I want to know …’

Anand looked at him impatiently.

‘What’s a
chutiya
? Auntie Lakshmi kept calling me a
chutiya
…’

‘A
chutiya
, yaar, is someone who can’t think past a
chut
, a girl’s … But speaking more broadly …’

‘She can’t call me —’

‘Auntie-ji can call you whatever the fuck she wants, yaar. And in this case I would say the shoe fits …’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ Anand’s voice boomed as he stepped closer, in his face. ‘Because a
chutiya
, in plain English, yaar, is a fool.’

Anand left, slammed and locked the door from the outside. Eli stood in the darkness, listening to Mozart mixed with street music and noise, from all the sorry lives coming together and being torn apart. He closed his eyes, leaking tears, and wished that everything would be different when he opened them. He’d heard of G.B. Road but wasn’t sure where it was; he knew that kids disappeared here. Like they did in South Africa, chopped up for muti, or in America, tortured and raped and buried in a cornfield or something. Then he thought of the girls living here, working here, and of meeting them, soon perhaps. It made him feel slightly less alone.

Though it was mid-summer he felt intensely cold and crawled under the single sheet on his bed, pulling it over him like a tent. Hiding when it was impossible to hide. He tried to drag from memory what had happened to him at the Delhi train station, how he got here. But it was all a blur. A black hole, a dark, demented rabbit hole that he had fallen down.