Quarantine: Stories (4 page)

When it is time for the final act, Rajesh nudges me. His eyes widen. “Watch this.”

The announcer explains that in the villages, it is the woman’s job to collect water for her family. She may have to walk many miles, often over hot, desert sands. In a drought, the announcer says, she will have to walk even farther. The more she can carry in one trip, the better.

The performer emerges in a dark purple gagra choli with a large brass pot on her head. I expect someone young, but she is old. Her face is wizened. There is a drum, and she moves along with its beat, mechanically. Her eyes are foggy and far away.

After a minute or two of dancing, she makes her way to the edge of the stage, where a man standing on a raised platform adds another pot to the top of her head. The dance goes like this, every couple of minutes the man adding one or two more pots. When she is carrying six, and everyone in the audience has figured out the pattern, a new element is added. While the man on the platform is adding pots, another man is spreading something on stage for her to dance over, barefoot: one time hot coals, another time a shattered mirror, a third time nails.

Everyone in the audience oohs and ahhs as each new thing is added.

By the end of the dance, she has twelve pots on her head. There are twelve swords on stage, turned on edge, lying head-to-head in a straight line. She balances across them like a tightrope walker.

T
hat night, Rajesh suggests we eat dinner at a place that specializes in Rajasthani thalis. It is farther into town, away from the tourist center.

Everyone there is Indian. Within a minute or two of our arrival, the waiter has already brought us our food: a large, stainless steel dish for each of us, with several compartments filled with different delicacies. We eat quickly, without talking. Everyone else is eating the same way. The restaurant has the hushed quality of a place of worship.

Any time one of us is about to finish a particular selection, the waiter instantly appears to replenish it without our having to ask.

It is our day to take Larium, and I swallow one pill and give one to Darnell.

Rajesh asks, with his mouth full, “What’s that?”

I say, “It’s to prevent malaria.”

“Good, Sid, you are very smart, you Americans are so clever, protecting yourself, because there is so much malaria here, there are dead bodies everywhere from malaria, haven’t you seen? Mother Teresa should come.” There is nothing good-natured about the way he is joking. His sarcasm has a mean edge.

“Better safe than sorry,” I say.

Rajesh’s face hardens, even as he chews. “How can there be malaria? There isn’t even water.”

His anger unnerves me. I am accustomed to his being affable and docile. It is such a small thing, this minor outburst, but I suddenly realize how little I know him. I wonder,
Was this the real Rajesh all along?

I am reminded of Carlone’s cryptic comments about Rajesh as we were bicycling away from him, the day he stopped us outside his shop.
Why do you go with that boy? It isn’t right.
I am worried. Just this morning I was reading in
Lonely Planet
about a scam in Agra, involving touts who lead tourists to restaurants where they are poisoned and then taken to fake doctors and charged exorbitant medical fees. Some tourists died. Perhaps a similar scam exists here. Perhaps Rajesh is in on it.

I am reminded, also, of something my mother said when I saw my parents just before my trip. My parents were both full of warnings, they who have barely visited India since emigrating forty years ago, and even then, not in years. “Be careful of bottled water. Check the caps. Buy them from reputable stores, not vendors on the street, who might find empty bottles in the trash and fill them with tap water. Don’t leave your luggage unlocked. Don’t go with just anyone, even if they seem friendly, even if they speak English.” I rolled my eyes (though I would later heed their advice). When my mother saw my exasperation, she leaned in and said, quietly and deliberately, “Desperate people will do desperate things. You are young and lucky. You will learn.”

All at once I am convinced that Rajesh is trying to poison us. I make a big show about pushing my food away. I try to signal to Darnell that he should not eat his food either, but he doesn’t understand my code. It is too late. We have already eaten too much.

T
he next morning, when I wake up, Darnell and I are fine. Of course. No poisoned food. Darnell is sitting on the veranda in the morning sun, reading the paper and drinking tea.

I blame my paranoia the previous night on the heat and side effects of the malaria drug, which I vow to stop taking.

I decide perhaps I am overtired. We send one of the hotel boys to tell Rajesh that we will not be meeting him today. We spend the day relaxing in our room, blasting the air conditioner, and swimming in the rooftop pool. We make friends with a young couple: a Western-raised Indian from Canada and his white girlfriend. We have seen them around, they are difficult to miss, there are not many guests.

We make fun of them behind their backs because they are trashy. We see them in the pool, midafternoon, making out, the girlfriend straddling his hips. That night, when we eat dinner together in the rooftop restaurant, she wears a tight dress with a low neckline, and a wide, gold lamé belt.

When the bill comes, the boyfriend pays for all four of us. I knew he would. Earlier, he told me about his father, who had come to Canada with very little money and little education, and had made a fortune starting stores that box things up and ship them all over the world. When the boy pays the bill, signing the charges to his hotel room, I can see in his face the pleasure and urgency of someone who is only one generation removed from having nothing.

T
he next morning, Carlone stops us again in the street.

“You will visit my shop today?”

“Time is short,” I say. “We are leaving tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Carlone says. “How could that be? How is that you have not even had tea with me once?”

“We are in a rush,” I say, and Darnell and I edge past him.

“You are always in a rush,” he says, angrily.

We meet Rajesh at the café. He tells me he likes my pants. I have worn them before, and he has complimented me before. They look generic, but they are expensive designer pants I bought cheap at a sample sale in SoHo.

“Those pants have so many pockets.” Rajesh says. “They are good for keeping paints and brushes.”

Rajesh has probably noticed the frayed hem. He probably thinks I will not want to bother taking such shabby trousers back to America. I understand this is how he acquired the Diesel jeans, the leather loafers with contrast stitching.

Today is the day Rajesh is taking us to his house to look at his paintings. It is centrally located, and I wonder why we haven’t been meeting there all along, instead of at the café.

It is an old stone house, one story tall, with four or five small rooms facing an open-air courtyard, and covered walkways connecting the rooms. The walls are cracked and crumbling. Nothing is painted. A scalloped archway separates the house and the courtyard from the street, which itself is only a small side lane.

As we walk past one room, he points inside and says, “Those are my sisters,” but he doesn’t invite us to meet them or to enter the room. From the courtyard, the room seems small and dark. His sisters are sitting on the floor, sifting lentils in front of a large, old television with dials. The reception is bad. Through the static, I recognize a song from a popular Hindi film.

We pass another room with the door shut. “That is my mother’s room.”

I know, without his telling me, that she is sick. I know by the closed door and the heavy silence within the room. I know by the sisters sifting lentils alone.

I also know, by a garlanded portrait hanging in the hallway, that his father is dead.

When we enter Rajesh’s room, I am surprised by the mess. It is a very small room, poorly lit, like the sisters’ room, with old newspapers and rags stacked in corners. There are pens and pencils and paints everywhere.

Rajesh unlocks a metal cupboard, and withdraws a cardboard portfolio. He clears a surface on the cluttered desk and opens it, spreading out the paintings. “Pick any you like,” he says. “I will give you a good rate.”

The paintings are just as I would have expected, just like the ones I see in the windows of every tourist shop in town: miniatures painted on silk and parchment, subjects like camel caravans, courtyard scenes, men with delicate beards relaxing under trees, smoking hookahs.

He shows us a triptych with the three palaces—City Palace, Monsoon Palace, Lake Palace—each with a different animal in front of it. He explains to us that the peacock represents beauty; the elephant, strength; the camel, love. In the painting, the lake is full. “This is my original design,” he says. “You won’t see it anywhere else.”

Earlier that day, Darnell and I argued about whether we would buy a painting. Despite everything, I was hesitant to break my promise to myself. I said, “We have already given him so much: fancy meals he would never have been able to afford otherwise.” Darnell said, “We owe him this.” In the end, I agreed.

We finally settle on two portraits from the very few paintings that are not in the miniature style: a Rajasthani farm man in a red turban with a blue background and a Rajasthani woman in a yellow sari with a green background. We already have two frames at home the perfect size.

Rajesh tells us how long it took him to paint each portrait, and then he multiplies that number by an hourly rate to arrive at the price. He shows us the math, which he scribbles on the back of an envelope. Darnell and I do not haggle.

“What about the rains?” I ask Rajesh. “We still have a month of traveling. Won’t the paintings get ruined in our backpacks?”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I will wrap them nicely. Nothing will spoil them.”

We agree to meet the next day at the café, on our way to the bus station. Rajesh will bring the package, and we will pay him.

When we leave, there is a small boy bouncing a rubber ball in the courtyard. He was not there earlier.

“My brother.” Rajesh lifts him, and the boy squeals. I notice a large rip in his pants.

“So sweet. How old is he?”

“Twelve.”

I am shocked. He is so small. I know very little about children, but I know this boy does not look twelve.

It is in this moment that I understand Rajesh will not attend the J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. He will not visit France. He will not move to London. He will not go anywhere.

By the time we bicycle back to the hotel, it is dark. I want to stop to buy water bottles, but Darnell needs to use the toilet, so he rides ahead.

When I reach the hotel, Carlone is in the street waiting for me. He steps directly in front of my bicycle. He grabs hold of my handlebars and catches my front wheel between his legs. His brothers surround me. They have been drinking.

“Where is your friend?”

“He is at the hotel.”

“You think I am not good enough even to drink tea with?”

“That’s not so. I have been busy.”

“We know what you have been busy with.”

His brothers laugh. Carlone is angry. His eyes are narrow and bloodshot. He sets his jaw. “Tell me: Which do you like?”

“What do you mean?”

He motions toward his brothers. “Which do you want?”

“I don’t understand.”

He says, through clenched teeth, “I will give you a good rate. Choose.”

They have closed in on me. The night is dark, without much moonlight. During my visit, I have barely noticed the brothers, I have barely given them any thought. As I look at them now, wondering how I am going to get past them, get back to Darnell safely, something strange happens. I catch myself, for a split second, considering Carlone’s proposition. Not that I ever would, but if I could, no, if I
had to
, which would I choose? I realize, looking at Carlone’s puffed chest, his swagger, his desperation and unwillingness, that I wouldn’t choose any of the brothers. I would choose Carlone.

“I want to go home.”

I mean the hotel, but I am thinking now about my real home, how far I am from it, how far Carlone and his brothers are from theirs.

“Look, I will come to your shop tomorrow morning, I promise. We will have tea, I will look at paintings, whatever. But please, let me pass.”

He says, “You had better.”

T
he next day, Darnell and I both sleep late. Our bus isn’t until afternoon, and we aren’t scheduled to meet Rajesh until just before our departure.

I haven’t told Darnell what happened the night before. He will worry. Whatever problem Carlone has, it is with me, not with him.

I am not sure whether I will visit Carlone in his shop, whether I will keep my promise. There is nothing he can do if I don’t. In a few hours, I will have left this town for good.

Darnell and I eat a light breakfast by the rooftop pool. The young man from Canada is there. He is on his mobile phone, talking loudly to his father, who is visiting Delhi.