The Medicine Burns (19 page)

Even walking away from it, I could feel the eyes of someone trained upon me. I walked aimlessly, browsing the book shops and stopping for juice at a fly-riddled stand. But when I stood up to walk again, my legs folded beneath me. I remembered drawing my hand back from the wheel of a rickshaw, a crowd forming over me, and silence my only answer to the questions in their eyes.

“How long have you been sick?”

“A couple of months, at least,” I told the German. “Since I came to India.”

“This is not normal,” he said. “I've traveled India for three-and-a-half years and maybe I have been sick three weeks.” He put ice in his napkin and told me to put it to my head.

“You must take advantage of the ice in India,” he said lightly. “It is not easy to get.”

An ugly swelled bruise came out on the side of my head where I'd fallen. I winced moving the ice across it.

“It looks painful,” he said, “it's a wonder you got back here at all.”

“I couldn't remember the name of the hotel. But when I said Evergreen, the rickshaw driver began laughing, calling it Nevergreen, and said he knew it well.”

“Yes, well, they don't make commissions here.”

“He charged twice the price,” I said.

“Have you seen a doctor about that?” he asked, looking closely under the opened neck of my pajama.

I started to button it. “I don't want to expose it to the sun.”

“It looks serious,” he said, “not to alarm you, but you should see someone about that.”

“I just need to get away, have a rest. I think it's nerves. The cities are becoming too much for me. I should go somewhere quiet.”

“I'm leaving for Pushkar tomorrow. Why don't you come?”

“No,” I said, “I've come to Jaipur to visit a friend.” I pulled the square of paper out of my money belt and tried to pronounce the street John had written, Chandi Ki Taksal.

The German took the paper from me. “I don't see how you read this,” he said. “It looks like you put it through the wash.”

“How long will you stay in Pushkar?” I asked him. “Maybe I'll see you there.”

“I don't know,” he grinned, “I never know.”

The following morning I awoke before the sun came up. I stayed in bed with my eyes open, as if they were the only part of me awake. Through the screens on the windows, I could see the outline of trees and the empty chairs of the patio restaurant. It was completely still outside, as though my windows were actually frames around the stark images. If I could live like this, with just my eyes…

But I grew cold. The bed soaked through with sweat. A slight breeze through the window screen, unassuming as breath, passed over me like the hands of a lover.

The shower was cold, and I sat on the edge of my bed with the thin covers clutched around me. There were the first movements around the chairs outside my window from a group of newcomers with their baggage in tow. They sat and smoked cigarettes, waiting for the cooks to awaken.

I passed them as I was leaving. I smiled reservedly at the woman in the group, her hair cut like a pixie, a wistful, almost dreamy expression on her face. She said hello, turning the others' attention toward me. A man I'd seen her talking to turned to face me. A birthmark, like a cruel burn, covered half his face. I was startled when I saw him, and uneasy when I noticed he was smiling.

The sun was rising over the pink city, permeating and enriching its color. We passed through the gates and I already remembered these places, the fruit stands and bookshops, and it seemed for a moment that the city might be very small. The rickshaw driver was practically stoic as he drove, he was trying to convince me that he knew this address. He'd consulted with five other drivers, and I felt I had to keep asking just to keep him from pedaling to exhaustion. He swerved suddenly and took us down an unpaved side street that kept the rickshaw jumping and put an unbearable strain into his face. It was no surprise when at the first square we reached, he stopped pedaling and turned hesitantly toward me.

“We are here,” he said.

“Where is here?” I asked with some amusement in my voice.

“The address you want to go.”

“I see.” I looked around and there were so many children and they were moving toward me with their hands already outstretched. I stepped out of the rickshaw and paid him the price we'd discussed.

“No, sir,” I heard him say as the children took hold, “it is forty rupees.”

They were shouting and pushing each other to shake my hand. Some of the young boys shook my hand elaborately or with such force I began to worry that they could overpower me. The girls were less secure in their interactions with me. The boys crowded them out. I pulled out the address for one of them who was eagerly asking, “are you lost?”

He stared at the square of paper for some time, rubbing his thumb across it as the others looked on.

“English?” he asked finally.

I read the street name off the paper. The children just looked enthusiastic and confused. I put it away and started walking, losing some of them to their street games and to the ice-cream stands. The streets were dominated by the gem trade. Workers sat hovered over rotating wheels, refining gems at the end of their sticks. There were jewelry shops boasting custom work and silver. The men stood in their doorways, calling me in.

I would see him in a doorway, too, and my recognition would be immediate, and he would know by the way I hesitated to step any further that I had come for something impossible.

I did not see him though, and when I asked the other shopkeepers they did not know the street I tried to pronounce. I began to think he must have written this name to confuse them—when they said it to themselves their minds went blank.

I wanted to look into every doorway, see behind every curtain. The address he'd written was a hoax, a screen. But there was a part of me already resigned not to find him. I thought of us on that train—had we spoken at all? When I imagine us speaking now, there is a subtext of futility that drowns out our words.

I entered a shop. The man in the doorway offered chai. His expression was gentle and assuring as he put his arm around my shoulder. I realized that I wanted John to tell me I wasn't sick, no more than any other tourist, and that I wasn't alone. The man displayed a tray of rings.

I was looking at the stones. I was crying. The shopkeeper noticed at the same instant.

“It's just dust in my eye,” I told him, and took the tissue he offered. I pointed to the center of the tray. “Is this a Star of Burma?” I asked.

“Very good,” he said excitedly, “do you know how you can tell their value?” He didn't need to be a good salesman, but he was.

“Can't someone wire you the money from the States?” he asked, when I told him the price would break me.

“Yes, I can take your traveler's checks at a very good rate,” he persisted.

I shuffled the last of my checks. This is another three months in India, I thought as I endorsed them. Somehow, I felt free of the burden of watching them diminish.

The white star is like a blossom trapped in the pink stone, like-something alive in a glass ball. You judge the value of the stone by the fullness of its star, by the spears of light it emits
.

“You can sell this for hundreds of dollars back home,” he said, but it fit my finger perfectly.

It was raining when I left his shop. I greeted it with the same enthusiasm I'd seen the Indians show at the train station. It was a brief rain, and there was a strange feeling of relief when it stopped. I came out of an alleyway to a large, paved street and hailed a rickshaw. The driver did not respond when I said Evergreen Hotel, but he began pedaling when I said Nevergreen. I thought of the name, and how it made the drivers laugh and I wondered if they'd ever thought it might apply to them, to their life in the desert, to its barrenness. Perhaps they only needed that light sprinkle of rain to assure them that all things come back

And later, when the hotel guests sat laughing and talking around the tables as the sun sank behind the carnival lights, I wondered how they drew their strength and where their laughter came from. I wondered if they didn't cling to their separateness, to the fact that they were tourists. And maybe it is better to travel with a camera, to consign those needy faces to paper, or to write letters, taking control over each story as you retell it. Even a distant observer of India could believe he had the power to save her people from anonymity, from their numbers. A photo makes them the object of someone's love, and they will carefully assemble themselves before the camera as though it was a wedding picture, their marriage to you—just for looking at them.

I could hear the crickets and the waiters squatting in a row, singing to themselves as they washed the plates in large tubs. The sun had set, and many of the tourists had dispersed, either to their rooms or out for the evening. I did not want to go to my room. It meant looking at myself in the mirror, taking off my clothes, and counting the ribs and notches of spine. There were sweet flowers outside that enabled me to forget the smell of my body. When I looked at my face in a mirror, I saw the face of a beggar, the white paste on my lips from dehydration, the skull that seemed to be rubbing out the skin. In my eyes, I saw the remoteness of my lover's eyes.

A plate fell from a waiter's hands and shattered. The last tourists laughed and applauded. But soon afterward, they gathered their things and went inside.

In my room, I rolled my clothes into my suitcase. I went through my money belt. It scared me then—when I realized how little money I had left. It was as though I had put a pressure on myself to expire before it did. I almost hoped that I would, so I would not have to depend on mercy.

5.

The busride to Pushkar brought on a fever that ravaged me for a week. The bus was cramped with people. The seats were filled with mothers and infants. I pushed my way to the back of the bus and leaned against a rusted exit door. We were jostled back and forth over the unpaved roads that wound their way up the desert mountains. The people stood very close and still, shielding their eyes from the sand blowing in the windows and the brightness of the sun, which bleached out the landscape. The exhaust fumes were coming up from the floor of the bus, and I became drowsy and short of breath. I'd catch myself sleeping while holding myself upright. I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming the faces gathered around me, the Indian faces watching and laughing. I let my knees slacken and fell almost instantly asleep on my bag. But I soon felt them nudging me awake, shouting over the space I was taking up. They pulled me to my feet and were laughing again. I stood there with my head toppled forward like a puppet for their amusement.

By the time we reached Pushkar, I had vomited out a back window and had begun feeling the dizzy signs of fever. I felt shame amongst the others and kept my arm crossed over my face. When the bus pulled in, I waited for the others to gather their bags and leave the bus before I began to drag my own bag behind me.

A young boy approached me. I was standing still at the center of the activity. The driver was distributing the baggage alongside the bus, and the vendors wove their way through the new arrivals with food and strung flowers hanging from their arms. The boy offered to take the bag for me.

“I will take you to my uncle's lodge,” he said. He was wearing the customary earrings of the Rajasthani villagers, sixpetaled flowers with rubies, sapphires, or diamonds on each petal. The men wear them in both ears, and it seems to make them all soft around the eyes. His long, black eyelashes made him look both feminine and sad. We walked silendy together. There are no rickshaws in Pushkar, and the road was quiet and untraveled.

Pushkar is a small village, a ring of civilization around a lake. The lake is holy; it is claimed to be the footprint of Brahma, and the businesses around it have sprung up like mushrooms. But the businesses are seasonal operations and haven't destroyed the lake as a place of prayer and worship. There is an almost hypnotic rippling on the surface of the lake, a calm that manifests itself in the pace of life around it.

We arrived at the Lotus Lodge, a small establishment of maybe eight rooms and a courtyard which sloped down to the lakefront. The boy dropped my bag and called out to the owner who approached me with his hand extended. He shook mine enthusiastically and asked the boy to make chai.

We sat at a table on the lawn and he pulled his accounting book from under his arm. His name was Acharya. He was balding at the top of his head and wore wire-framed glasses which acted as his business attire. The only clothing he wore was a pair of underwear cut like shorts and the Brahmin chord, a janai, loosely hanging from his shoulder like a sash.

He told me the room would be very inexpensive because there was no business here in the summer.

“Why haven't you gone with your friends to Kashmir?” he asked.

“I'm traveling alone,” I told him. “I wanted to come someplace quiet.”

He began at once writing in his book and simultaneously telling me of the difficulties he'd had in getting someone to fix the fans in the room. While he talked, I looked over at the storage room, in which the boy was squatting before the fire, making our chai. There was no light on inside and it seemed like a cave in there, the boy's eyes like an animal's.

Acharya explained that the room would be ten rupees a night since the fan was out and I'd most likely prefer to bring my cot out on the lawn and sleep there.

“Then you have only to worry about the monkeys in the morning,” he said. “When they come down from the trees they like to run along this back wall.” Even then, a family of monkeys was playing on it. “The boy did the painting on it,” he continued. “It is the symbol of the Om.”

Just then, the boy emerged with a tray and the two cups of chai. He bowed with a strange formality as he served it to us, and his uncle asked him then to fill the shower tanks with lake water. Acharya and I sipped our tea in the heat, watching the boy trudge with the water buckets from the lake to the top of the hill where a cement shower room was built for guests.