A Walk Across the Sun (16 page)

Sita's favorite stories were from the bungalow by the sea. She seemed never to tire of hearing Ahalya conjure the voice of their mother, correcting their grammar, nagging them to tidy their room, and calling them to help with dinner; or the voice of their father, teaching them about the sea, the tides, and the coastal flora, and reading to them from the Ramayana.

Each morning, at Sita's request, Ahalya recreated one of Jaya's kolam designs at the foot of the bed using kernels of rice they had salvaged from the previous evening's meal. Jaya's drawings had been of flowers and Hindu charms, each with personal significance to her. Sita liked the flowers best, and Ahalya traced them out painstakingly with rice.

Each evening, Sumeera brought them a meal of
dal
and chutney. She saw the kolam designs, but she never reprimanded them for wasting their food, as Suchir or his young lieutenant—the girls now knew him as Prasad—might have done. Instead, she often lingered in the room and told them a story of her own.

When Sumeera left, the sisters ate their dal with their hands, saving only those morsels of rice needed for the next day's kolam design. Sumeera returned half an hour later to collect the dishes. By then darkness had fallen upon Kamathipura. The brothel's first customers usually arrived a few minutes after Sumeera bid them farewell. They knew the men by the sounds that erupted from the sex rooms.

In the hours between dinner and sleep, the sisters sat opposite one another on the floor, and Ahalya told Sita stories. Each night when her sister's eyelids grew heavy, Ahalya accompanied her sister to the sink and they washed their hands and faces together. After that, they slipped into bed and spooned as they had at home. Sita seemed to find it easy to sleep, despite the noise in the brothel. But insomnia kept Ahalya awake.

In the daylight, she found distraction in caring for Sita's needs. At night, despair returned and shame metastasized. She lay on the thin mattress, remembering Shankar and the birthday boy and contemplating the limits of her fortitude. She was strong, but she could resist for only so long. One day she would have no more stories to tell.

Something touched Ahalya in the night. She opened her eyes and tried to see through the gloom. She looked toward the door and her eyes began to adjust. A shape stood at her bedside. She suppressed the urge to cry out. Sita was asleep next to her, unaware of the intruder.

The shape changed and she felt hot breath on her neck. A male voice whispered in her ear in Hindi: “Do as I say and make no sound.”

The man reached for her hand and drew her out of bed. She stumbled, but he caught her and kept her from falling. He led her down the stairs. Still half-awake, she barely registered the fact that the moaning had ceased and the adda was quiet. Even the street sounds were muted, distant things. It seemed that all of Bombay was asleep.

They left the stairwell through the hidden door, and the man pulled her into one of the sex rooms. His skin was rough, his grip viselike. She bumped into the bed and stubbed her toe, but she stifled her cry, for terror had seized her.

He pushed her down on the mattress and closed the door behind them. He struggled with his clothes and then he was on top of her, exploring her with his hands. She writhed beneath him, pushing him away, but he was powerful and restrained her long enough to do his business. When a small cry escaped her lips, he clamped his hand over her mouth. He made sounds like all the others, but she knew he wasn't a customer. No customer stayed the night or had access to the attic room. The man was short and young. It couldn't be Suchir.

It had to be Prasad.

When he finished, he lay beside her, breathing heavily. She moved her sari back into place and cried silent tears. The act, in all its sudden and inexplicable violence, had left her feeling numb with shame.

He began to speak then, whispering words of devotion and love, words he had stolen from the poets. On his tongue, however, they were leprous. She resisted the urge to lash out at him, to drive her fingernails into his eyeballs and leave him blind. She knew it would solve nothing. She and Sita were entirely at the mercy of Suchir.

At last Prasad fell silent. He turned to Ahalya and kissed her on the cheek. Then he took her by the hand and led her back to the attic room. Prasad was smitten with her; that much was obvious. But his infatuation had been deformed by the lust of the brothel. In Golpitha, love was sex and sex was rape. It came to her that his affections knew no other outlet.

She walked to the foot of the bed and saw that her sister was still asleep. She knew that Sita's innocence was all too fragile. She had not yet been defiled, but it was only a matter of time.

Prasad leaned toward her and whispered, “This is our secret. Tell no one.”

Ahalya nodded, as much to herself as to her rapist. She slipped under the covers and watched as Prasad glided silently out of the room, closing the door behind him. She listened to the noises drifting in from the street. They were louder now. She heard the horn of a rickshaw and the rumbling passage of a bus. The city was waking up. Dawn was coming.

And with it another day.

Prasad came for her again the next night and the night afterward while the rest of the beshyas slumbered. During the day, Ahalya kept up the routine she and Sita had established. She bled a little, but not too much, and she masked her injuries. Inside, however, she felt hollow. When she told Sita stories, her tone often fell flat, and she struggled to smile. She was listless when she drew Jaya's kolam designs. She didn't laugh when Sita told one of their mother's jokes.

Sumeera must have noticed Ahalya's sadness, for one evening after she delivered their meal, she sat down on the floor beside the girls and shared a lesson in religion she remembered from her childhood. She told them it had come from a traveling Brahmin, and it had become her lifeline in the adda.

“Desire is the enemy,” she said. “Desire for the past, desire for the future, desire for love, desire for family. Everything. A beshya has to detach herself from all affections and accept her karma. You will never be happy here. But you don't need to be sad.”

When Sita fell asleep that night, Ahalya watched her with a trace of envy. She resembled one of the angels stained in glass at the convent school, her peace unbroken. Ahalya lay back against her pillow and stared at the ceiling, certain in the knowledge of what the night would bring. She couldn't sleep. She knew he would always come again.

Night turned toward morning, and the sounds in the brothel diminished. Ahalya lay awake, watching the door. He came for her in time as she expected. They were the only people awake in the adda. He touched her arm, and she rose from the bed without a sound. There was no use in struggle, no purpose in resistance.

The room was waiting for them, the bed barely large enough to accommodate them both. She did what he asked. It was shameful and disgusting, but it proved Sumeera right. Detachment was the only escape.

When Prasad tired of lust, he rolled off her and started to talk. He surprised her by sharing about his family.

“Suchir is my father, did you know that? He has sired many children, but I was the first. My mother was a beshya and died when I was a boy. I grew up in the adda.”

As Prasad continued to share, Ahalya learned that Suchir had inducted him into manhood on his thirteenth birthday. The girl had been one of the
malik
's youngest acquisitions. Her name was Manasi, and Prasad considered her his first love. He had come to her in the attic room many times. She had stayed in the adda until she was nineteen. That year she tested positive for some venereal disease or another.

“I don't remember what it was,” he said, “but it wasn't HIV.”

When Sumeera delivered Suchir the news, he put Manasi on the street. She had haunted the adda for weeks, begging for food, until Suchir had paid a police officer to put her in jail. Prasad had never seen her again.

Ahalya listened to Prasad's confession with astonishment and revulsion. In her mind, he was a demon in a man's body. She found it profoundly disturbing that he could sound so human. Worse—
far
worse, in fact—she felt a twinge of pity when he told her the brothel was all he had known. It was a moment of weakness, and she drove the feeling away. The pain between her legs reminded her that his sins were unpardonable. His childhood didn't excuse them.

Nothing did.

After Prasad finished talking, he lay beside her in silence, making no move to take her back to the attic room. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. The intimacy of his touch nearly made her retch. She swallowed the bile in her throat and thought of her sister.
What if Sita awakes and finds me gone?
An idea came to her then. It was risky, but she needed to know, and Prasad could tell her. It was the first time she had addressed him directly.

“What does Suchir intend to do with my sister?” she asked.

“Sita is like you,” he said. “She is special. But Suchir will break her in.”

Ahalya controlled her rage. “When?”

“Soon,” he said enigmatically, and then he took her back to her bed.

The next day was a Sunday, the only day of the week when Golpitha seemed to rest. At breakfast, Sumeera brought them a box of colorful beads and lengths of string, and the sisters spent the day making jewelry. Despite the heat, Sita was playful, engaged, almost happy. Ahalya practiced the art of detachment. The pain in her lower abdomen was part of her existence, like the walls around her and the floor beneath her feet. She could bewail her karma or she could see the pain as a sign that her life still had meaning. It was all a matter of the mind.

When it came time for her evening story, Ahalya began to recount a tale from the Mahabharata, the great epic of love and war. Sita, however, interrupted and made a request. She wanted to hear the story of her namesake. Ahalya took a deep breath. The tale was long, and she had slept little in three nights.

“Are you sure you don't want to hear about Arjuna's great victory?” she asked.

Sita shook her head. “You told me about him last night. I want to hear about the princess of Mithila.”

Ahalya sighed. She had never been able to resist her sister's enthusiasm. “Sita of Mithila,” she began, “was a woman of great virtues. Yet in her kindness she was unwise. Without knowing it, she gave her trust to Ravana, lord of the underworld, and he took her by force to the island of Lanka, where she remained in exile, awaiting rescue by Lord Rama and Hanuman.”

“Tell me about Hanuman,” her sister said, her large eyes brimming with interest.

“The noble monkey had received a blessing at birth,” Ahalya went on. “He could assume any size he wished, large or small. When he learned that Ravana had carried Sita through the skies to Lanka, Hanuman grew so large that he stepped over the sea. He carried Rama's signet ring across the water and gave it to her—”

Ahalya stopped speaking when the stairs outside the attic room creaked. The sisters turned to watch the doorknob. Ahalya expected to see Sumeera on a housekeeping errand, but instead it was Suchir who appeared at the door. He stood on the threshold and studied Sita in silence. His wrinkled face was impassive, but his calculating eyes made Ahalya's skin crawl. Prasad's words came back to her.
“Sita is special. Suchir will break her in.”