Outlaw in India (11 page)

I handed him the paper with her brother’s name on it. He took it, read it and
started nodding his head and never stopped. He went back inside his shop and
started fiddling around with the urns. He picked up one and put it down. He
picked up another and put it down, then another. He came halfway out with an urn
in his hands, then went back inside and put it back down. Finally, he settled on
one, a brown and grey one with a silver strip around it. He carried it out and
handed it to me. “Here he is.”

AT THE OLD GOA TRAIN
station in the middle of the night Melissa
reached out her arms and I handed her the urn. If she were terribly upset
finding out that her brother was dead she didn’t show it. She took the urn as if
it were a soccer ball or something, tucked it under her arm and continued
talking. “I can’t thank you enough for getting him for me. I hope it wasn’t too
difficult. Mumbai is such an awful city. I just couldn’t go there. Funny, isn’t
it, to meet one’s brother only after his life is all over? I don’t know a thing
about him.” She looked at the urn and sighed. “Come. You two must be dead tired.
I’ll take you home and you can go to bed. Your seagull is just fine. What a
strange bird! I’ve never seen anything
like it. He’s been
chasing away the monkeys!”

I guessed she had known all along.

On what was maybe the brightest Sunday morning I ever saw, we took a pile of
clay tiles from the garage and laid the old ladder against the roof of the
house. The monkeys were watching from the trees but Seaweed had taken a spot on
top of the roof and was behaving aggressively towards them, I didn’t know why.
He just didn’t seem to like them. Seagulls from Newfoundland were bigger than
seagulls from anywhere else, and probably tougher.

Radji took to assisting me as if we were performing a religious ceremony. The
roof had a low pitch; there was little risk of falling. And the fall wouldn’t
kill you; still, I warned him to be careful. I carried some tiles up in the tool
bag with a hammer and nails. Radji came up behind me and climbed carefully onto
the roof. The tiles were dry and dusty and not slippery at all, although they
were too hot to sit on for long.

I had never replaced clay tiles before but it looked like a simple task. Each
tile had a hole in it for a nail, and each one interlocked with the tiles above
and below it. Well, it would have been simple if we could have just hammered the
nails through the holes into the roof, but every tile we wanted to replace had
an older tile above it and in the way of the nail hole. We could slide the tile
in place but couldn’t hammer in the nail. After half an hour or so, I was
sweating so much my hands were slippery and I was frustrated. It didn’t help
that
Radji kept sticking his fingers in under the tiles while
I was trying to figure it out.

Then he said he had an idea and went down the ladder to get something. “Be
careful,” I said. He returned with a sharp, hooked tool I had never seen before
and a long punch. To my amazement, he slid the hook underneath a tile and cut a
pilot hole for the nail in the roof. Then he put the nail in place, but at an
awkward angle. That’s where the punch came in. By fitting the punch onto the
head of the nail, and hitting the punch with the hammer, we could drive the nail
into the roof. It was a great idea. But Radji didn’t have the strength or the
coordination to hold the nail and punch in place and hit it with the hammer at
the same time. But I did. It worked perfectly. I was so impressed. “Radji,
that’s fantastic!” I was so pleased that I stood right up, lost my balance and
fell off the roof.

I hit the ground really hard, but it wasn’t a long way down. Still, it knocked
the wind out of me. I rolled over and looked up at Radji looking down at me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.

I got to my feet, brushed the dirt off my clothes, felt my bones and head.
Nothing seemed to be broken. “I guess so. It really hurt.”

Then Melissa came around the corner with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses.
She was wearing her white, wide-brimmed sun hat. “How is it going, boys?” She
poured a glass and handed it to me.

My hand was shaking as I reached for the glass but I tried
to hide it. “Thank you. It’s going great. We figured it out.”

“Did you? Well, that’s just wonderful!” She looked up and threw Radji an
affectionate smile, but he looked away.

“I’ll bring him up a glass,” I said.

“Won’t he come down?” said Melissa, looking a little hurt.

“Umm . . . I don’t think so. He gets pretty intense when he’s
concentrating.”

“I see. Well. Okay then.” She poured another glass and looked out from beneath
her sun hat. “It’s very nice to have men working around the house again.”

“Your roof really needs the attention. We’ll finish it up before we leave for
Varanasi.”

Melissa curled up the front of her hat with one hand so that she could look
into my eyes. “Yes, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, I thought maybe . . . maybe I could come too.”

“To Varanasi?”

“Yes. You see, I have these ashes. And my brother was a Hindu, like his
mother’s people. So, I suppose the thing I ought to do is put his ashes in the
river. In the Ganges. And since you two are planning to go there anyway, why
don’t we just go together? We can go in my car.”

I stared at her. I wondered if I wanted to travel so far with her. It would
take at least a few days to get there by car, and a
few back.
That was a long time to sit together in a car. And I bet Radji wouldn’t like it
very much. We had been planning to take the train. We liked travelling by train.
I took a deep breath and just stared back at her. I really didn’t know what to
say.

Melissa’s face softened. Her shoulders dropped. I wondered for a moment if she
was going to cry. Then it occurred to me that maybe she was sad about her
brother after all, even though she had never known him. Maybe she wished she had
known him. I knew what that felt like. I had never known my mother.

“Sure. Okay.”

“Oh, good! Oh, I’m so glad! We’ll have a good time. We’ll make a real trip of
it. It will be a true pilgrimage.” She beamed and looked up at Radji, then
hugged me. It hurt. I was sore all over.

We finished replacing the tiles on the roof of the house by suppertime. Melissa
brought us lemonade six times, and prepared us a feast, which we greatly
appreciated. Even Radji smiled at her a little. We washed up and came to the
table. Radji explained carefully how we had fitted every tile in place, and how
difficult and complicated it was to nail them down. He spoke carefully, with
precise detail, like an experienced worker. He had a right to be proud. Melissa
listened as if it were the most important thing she had ever heard. After supper
we hit the sofa. Radji curled up with Hollie and started to fall asleep
immediately.

I wanted to find a map. Melissa had a drawer full of maps
that had belonged to her father. Some were a hundred years old! They were great
if you wanted to travel to Varanasi by elephant. Then Melissa brought me a
topographical map that was fairly new. It had roads on it too. I was impressed.
I opened it on the floor, knelt down and studied it. Radji wiped his sleepy
eyes, slipped off the sofa, knelt down beside me and studied it too. Though he
couldn’t read or write, the map fascinated him. That didn’t surprise me;
everything fascinated Radji.

“What’s that?”

“That’s a road.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s a river.”

“Where is the Ganges?”

“Up here.”

“Is that far?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that?”

“Mountains.”

“Ohhhhhh. So many.”

“The Himalayas. Biggest mountains in the world.”

“Will we see them?”

“No. We go from here . . . to here.”

The roads looked like a thousand pieces of string twisted up in knots. What a
mess! I took a pencil and very gently followed a route out of Goa. It twisted
due north so I abandoned
it and tried another one. It went
south. Then I found a good one. It was the Number 7. It twisted around a bit but
kept going in a northeast direction, finding its way through the mess. It
appeared to follow the ridges of a plateau for a while, went past some animal
reserves, water reservoirs, woods and jungle. Then it levelled out and ran
through a drier, flatter terrain. Maybe it was a desert, I couldn’t tell for
sure. It wound north with persistence, as if its purpose was to bring us right
to Varanasi.

“Did you find one?” Radji asked.

“Yes. I think so.”

I showed him and he traced the road with his finger as if it were the route to
a secret cave filled with treasure. “Can we walk?”

“No way! It would take forever. We’re not walking. We’re going to drive in
Melissa’s car.”

I could tell by the look on his face that Radji didn’t like that. Too bad about
him. He was lucky he was getting to go in the first place.

He was quiet for a little while, thinking it over, no doubt. “How long will it
take?”

“Probably two or three days of driving, depends on the roads, how busy they are
and everything.”

“Roads are always busy.”

“It’ll be really interesting to drive there. It might even be fun.”

“What about the train?”

I looked Radji in the eye. The little rascal. “We’re going
in the car with Melissa.” He could take it or leave it as far as I was
concerned.

“She smells funny.”

“It’s called perfume.”

BUT WHAT WAS I GOING
to do with Seaweed? He wouldn’t be happy
sitting in the car so long, that was for sure. I didn’t want to leave him behind
either; we’d be gone too long. If he didn’t see us for that many days he might
drift away. I couldn’t risk that. But if he were following us through the air,
how would we know when he had stopped to rest? And how would he spot us when we
were swept up in the traffic of a big city? It wouldn’t be like following the
sub at sea.

The answer came to me as I passed one of the old photos on the wall. It was a
picture of the Jaguar when it was brand new. It was probably her father sitting
at the wheel. On the roof was a rack with a bunch of boxes and suitcases. That’s
what we could do—put a box on the roof that Seaweed could
ride in, and jump out whenever he wanted to. And we could put something shiny in
it that he would recognize from the sky so that he would always find us. That
would work.

Melissa spent a day preparing for the trip. She made a huge pot of rice and
spiced it up and cooked vegetables and spiced them up and filled one whole
basket with fruit. She filled another basket with bread, biscuits and cookies.
All that day her house smelled like a restaurant and bakery. Radji and I
replaced the rest of the broken tiles on the garage. We had the method down
really well now. We could have gone into business fixing roofs.

Out of curiosity I opened the hood of Melissa’s car. Wrapped around the engine
I found what looked like a dirty old strap, which turned out to be a dead snake.
That made me wonder when she had last changed the oil. Poking around I found the
oil filter. It was clogged like a wet towel covered with sand. No oil was
getting through. Then, I discovered there was almost no oil in the car anyway. I
looked around the garage and found a can of oil but it seemed to have thickened
into a kind of tar. I had no idea how Melissa was driving around without oil. I
stepped into the kitchen door and asked her how often she drove her car. She
wiped the sweat and cookie dough from her brow and smiled. “Oh, not too often.
Maybe once or twice a month. Or less.”

I asked her where a garage was so I could buy some oil. She said there was one
at a crossroads just a mile away. Could
I ride the old
bicycle that was in the garage? Of course. So, I climbed onto the bike and Radji
climbed onto the back carrier and we rode to the crossroads where we found the
garage and a few shops. I left Hollie in the house. I didn’t want to risk losing
him again. While I bought oil for the car I saw Radji staring intensely at one
of those posters for skin-whitening cream in the window of a nearby shop. The
contrast between the happy, almost white family in the ad, and the wishful look
on Radji’s dark little face made me feel a twist in my stomach.

Though I didn’t agree with it, I stepped into the shop and bought him a tube.
It wasn’t expensive and it made him happy. He put it on right away. Then, on the
way back I had to keep telling him to hold onto the bicycle because he kept
rubbing his skin and almost falling off. When we got back to the house, he made
a point of walking by Melissa with his arms sticking out, but she didn’t notice.
She was too busy. I took a breath and sighed. Back home in Newfoundland people
paid money at tanning salons to darken their skin. Some even bought bottles of
brown liquid that made them darker. It wouldn’t sell well in India.

I drained the old oil from the Jaguar. When I pinched it between my fingers it
felt gritty. The last bits came out in clumps. It wouldn’t have surprised me to
see a dead snake inside the engine too. Pouring new, crystal-yellow oil into the
engine was a joy, like giving a glass of fresh water to a man who had just
crawled out of a desert.

Next, I checked the tires. They were okay, not great. If it
rained we’d have to slow down a lot—there wasn’t much traction. Luckily we
wouldn’t have to worry about ice or snow. I checked the spare. It needed air but
we could get some on the road. All of the tires needed filling.

Then I found the roof rack and fastened it to the roof. Radji helped. This part
would have been easier by myself but he was determined to help. Then we tied a
wooden box to the rack and looked around for something shiny. Radji found a
round tin plate about the size of a large pizza. One side was very shiny so we
fastened it to the back side of the box. I let Radji do that by himself. I went
into the sub to get some things for the trip. When I came back about an hour
later, Radji was just finishing up. He had drilled five holes through the plate
and box, fastened five nuts, bolts and washers, and filed the edges of the bolts
smooth so that Seaweed wouldn’t cut himself on something sharp. I was impressed.
I called Seaweed, coaxed him down with the promise of dog biscuits, his
favourite, and tossed the biscuits into the box. Seaweed hopped onto the car,
took a peek into the box, looked at me, then jumped in and gobbled them up. We
were almost ready to go.

Melissa said that there was a good tent in the rafters of the garage, and that
we should take it down, set it up in the yard and air it out. Well, we found it,
Radji and I. It was heavy and full of dust. We slid it sideways (after checking
it for snakes) and it fell onto the floor with a bang. We picked it up by its
corners, dragged it outside and unfurled it. It smelled
strange, like the really old smell of an afternoon party, which was probably
what it was. But it was a good size. We also found sleeping mats, and Melissa
had washed sheets for them. We were ready to go.

The Jaguar was a bossy-looking car on the road and Melissa was a bossy driver.
But that was a good thing in India. The front made a face almost like a real
Jaguar and I kind of imagined that it warned other cars to get out of the way or
it would eat them up! Melissa had obviously learned to drive in India, had
driven there all her life, and drove just like the rickshaw drivers, squeezing
into every empty space on the road within an inch, even as we raced past cars
going in the opposite direction.

It was crazy, really, and yet it is amazing what you can get used to. I sat in
the passenger seat, which was on the left side because it was a British car, and
Indian drivers drive on the left. Radji sat in the back with Hollie. They had
lots of room to stretch out. Radji took out the chess set immediately and we
started to play. He would make a move, pass the board to me; I’d make a move and
pass it back. Then he would study it for a long time. Because it was a magnetic
board the little pieces never fell off.

For the first couple of hours I kept sticking my head out the window to see
Seaweed’s head sticking up and his beak pointing into the wind just like the
little silver Jaguar on the
front of the hood. He appeared to
be enjoying himself. But it was hot, hotter than the hottest day I had ever
experienced in Newfoundland. I loved it. Heat like this grows on you. It feels
like a hot brush on your arm and a warm towel around your head. Your hands are
always warm. Your feet are always warm. Your breath is damp. If you stick your
tongue out in the sun it gets hot.

But there was no air-conditioning in the Jaguar, that was for sure, and so the
windows were all the way down and the air rushed through like an industrial fan
with a constant soft roar. And with the air came the smells of the countryside,
dry smells mostly, and occasionally the smells of fruit or flowers or the
woods.

We were not the only pilgrims on the road. In fact, there were more pilgrims
than anybody else, according to Melissa. They came in buses, trucks, Jeeps,
cars, and on foot. Mostly they were squeezed together in small buses like
sardines in a can. Inside a bus that was built to carry twenty-five people you
would see fifty or sixty or more! They were pressed against each other in
cramped spaces without air-conditioning. It looked really uncomfortable. Why
were there so many pilgrims? Why did they go to so much trouble to visit a few
temples? I asked Melissa. She wiped the dust and sweat from her brow and
answered without taking her eyes off the road. “This is India. Pilgrimages are
part of the Hindu faith. Every day there are millions of pilgrims on the roads.
It never stops.”

I nodded and stared at a bus ahead of us. The buses on
pilgrimage were all painted bright colours, like pink, purple and yellow.
They looked like chewy candy or bubblegum or something like that. It was kind of
strange but you got used to it. Some of the trucks were painted like that too,
even big dump trucks carrying rock and gravel—they had pink and yellow and
purple flowers painted all over them with what looked like house paint. And some
vehicles were painted like a kaleidoscope; they glowed with brightly coloured
shapes. It was pretty weird. In Canada, vehicles were just vehicles.

I was watching the bus up ahead. My eyes were resting on it rather sleepily as
it tossed and pitched on the bumpy road, almost like a dory in a choppy sea. I
was thinking it was bouncing a little too much for a bus on a highway, but I was
too lazy to think anything more about it. You became used to the crazy driving
in India after a while, as if vehicles were about to fall right off the road any
second. And then, that bus did.

For a second I thought it was just my imagination, but it wasn’t. Cars ahead of
us pulled off to the side of the road, and so we did. Melissa asked me, “What
happened?”

“A bus just went off the road.”

“Are you sure? What bus? I didn’t see a bus.”

“It was up ahead of us, a really colourful bus, packed with people.”

The traffic slowed to a crawl, but some people just refused to stop.

“I’m going to go and take a look,” I said. “Radji, stay here with
Hollie.”

“Can I come?”

“No. You’d better stay here.”

“Should I stay?” Melissa asked, confused.

I nodded. “Yes, please.”

I climbed out of the car and shut the door. Radji stared out at me kind of
desperately. He didn’t want to be left alone with Melissa. I didn’t know what he
was so afraid of; I was coming right back. I started down the hill. There was a
cloud of dust in the air where the bus had slid down the bank, hit a rock,
turned upside down and slid a little further on its roof. I felt queasy in my
stomach. I sure hoped nobody had been killed.

Near the bottom of the hill a crowd of people had gathered. Some had come out
of their cars, like me, and some had crawled out of the upside-down bus. People
were yelling but no one was screaming hysterically. I was glad for that. There
were a couple of men who seemed to be in charge. They were checking everybody
over. About two dozen people were sitting on the ground holding their heads or
arms or stomachs. One of the leaders was finding people to take injured
passengers to a medical clinic. When he saw me he asked me, “Do you have a
car?”

“Yes, we have a car.”

“Do you have room to take someone to the clinic?”

I thought about it. The Jaguar had such a big back seat I figured we could
probably take two people comfortably if we shared the front. “We can take two,”
I said.

He turned and made a sweeping gesture to two men. I went
over and helped one of them to his feet. Another man helped the other and we
started slowly up the hill. They were stiff and shaken up but seemed okay
otherwise. Probably they were in shock. It’s always a good idea to get checked
out by a doctor anyway.

We went up the hill very slowly. When Melissa saw us coming she got out of the
car and came to meet us. She helped lead the men to the back seat, but when they
saw Radji in the car, and Radji was wearing that guilty look, they wouldn’t get
in. I couldn’t believe it. Were they serious? The two men started looking around
at the other cars.

“Get in!” Melissa said firmly. “We’ll take you to the clinic.”

They didn’t answer her but looked anxiously for another ride, then moved away
from us. I stood and watched them go. It was absolutely incredible. I wondered:
would they rather have died than ride in the car with an Untouchable?
Maybe.

We climbed back in the car and pulled onto the road again, slowly.

“Is everyone okay?” Radji asked.

I turned around and stared at him. He looked so innocent. “Yup. They’re fine.
Probably just bruised.”