Exiles (19 page)

Usha helped Alex do the dishes, then she lay down and went to sleep almost immediately. Peter made tea and was pleased when Alex poured herself a cup, came over, and sat beside him.

“How much money you figure you’re losing by working here, Papaji?”

A thaw, mercifully, he hoped. “That’s what makes us different from them,” he said. “I can go home and make more. Hope totally changes the psychological terrain.”

Usha began to snore. Alex rolled her eyes. “What is it with these people? Do they all snore? Is it some special mutation?”

Peter suppressed a smile. “Of course, I feel obliged to point out that you snore.”

“I do not. Though
you
snore like a goddamn ape.”

“Liar,” he said. They were both grinning for the first time since the fight.

She looked over at Usha. “Think about it,” she said. “Her parents actually
sold
her.”

“It’s a tempting idea sometimes, I’ll admit. The only thing that holds me back is knowing how little I’d get for you.”

She batted at him, then got up, changed into her sweats, and crawled in with Usha. Soon she too was snoring. A few minutes later, one of them—Peter wasn’t sure which one—farted. The place was like a barracks.

He got into bed and turned out the light. The night came in: the dripping of the outside water tap, dogs trotting by and rooting through trash, beggars shuffling down the road and yelling at the dogs to keep them away. Someone was chanting a late-evening
puja
, the bell ringing out into the night in rhythm with the liturgy.

Soon he drifted off, but he awakened again when he heard something near the bed. Usha stood there, blue bands of moonlight across her T-shirt.

“Dhanyabaad,”
she said quietly.

He pulled himself up on one elbow. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “We’ll figure something out. Get some sleep.”

|   |   |

Alex took Usha under her wing and showed her how to help at the clinic. The next week they drove up to get Devi. They found her in a concrete courtyard with four or five of the
anis
, playing a pickup game of basketball. Some American foundation had apparently decided that the monks and nuns had a pressing need for exercise, so they had sent over six soccer balls, three basketballs, and a backboard and hoop. Lama Yeshe had overseen the construction of the half-court for the nuns and had helped the monks build a small soccer field.

Devi’s face lit up, and she ran over and gave Alex a hug. Alex introduced Usha to Devi, who regarded the newcomer quizzically and not all that happily. Alex quickly whispered that it was fine and she’d explain later, then strode out onto the basketball court.

“You girls need instruction,” she said. “You don’t even know how to dribble.”

“So show us, if you’re so smart,” Devi said.

They walked toward the court with Usha in tow. Devi said something, gesturing at Alex, and the
anis
pretended to be over-whelmed
with awe—laughing at her in a shy, funny sort of way. They tossed her the ball. Alex took it, dribbled once, and swished a three-pointer from the edge of the court. The nuns stopped laughing. They threw it to her again; she took it on the run, drove to the basket, then leaped and sunk a layup. She snagged the ball, dribbled out to the end of the court, and threw a hook shot over her shoulder that hit the backboard and then the rim before falling through. The
anis
stood still now, watching with big eyes, until Devi said something and they laughed again.

“She said this is what passes for spiritual practice in America, and that I have great
siddhis
,” Alex told her father. “She said I’m a
tulku
—a reincarnate master—of basketball.”

They wanted her to teach them, so she gathered everyone together. Peter was proud, watching her. They got two balls going and stationed someone behind the backboard to act as goalie so they wouldn’t have to spend so much time trotting down the hill after missed shots. Soon more nuns showed up and got into the drill, rotating through shooting, dribbling, and catching runaways. Shortly thereafter the third ball was in play and the
ani gonpa
looked like it had been transformed into a basketball camp, except that all the women had shaved heads and wore maroon robes, and they ranged from roughly Alex’s age to maybe sixty. But even the oldest ones were startlingly spry.

The nuns already knew about high-fives, and when it was getting close to dinnertime, Alex worked the crowd, slapping one palm after another.

She came back to Peter, her face flushed, her smile brilliant. Devi collected her things, and the four of them piled into the jeep. Usha stayed quiet and held herself a bit apart from the other two girls.

Bahadur had been satisfied with his payoff, and word came from Franz that they could soon return to Kathmandu. Peter didn’t really want to kick Sonam and Sangita out of the house, but it turned out they’d saved enough by staying there that they could finally rent a small apartment in the complex where they’d previously pitched their tent.

One morning, a young Canadian couple showed up at the clinic in Jorpati. Anne was a freshly minted pediatrician, and David was a burly, seasoned RN.

Banhi gave them a steely once-over, her arms across her chest, her jaw set like a bulldog’s. She finally grunted her approval and returned to sterilizing instruments in the pressure cooker.

Peter walked them through the clinic and watched the sheen of their idealism fade.

“Um … there’s no
autoclave
?” asked Anne, her voice rising in disbelief.

“It’s surprising how well the Presto works.”

“Those trucks,” said David. “They’re hauling
hides
?”

“Water buffalo, mainly, yes.”

The two looked at each other, and Peter could see the silent conference.

“The taxi driver just ripped us off,” said David. “We can’t walk ten steps without getting accosted by street kids. I understand we’ll be getting most of our drugs from a pimp.”

“When was the last time you had patients who were genuinely grateful?” Peter asked.

They thought about it. “It happens from time to time,” said David.

“Patients who decide to name their next child after you? Patients who want to give you their best goat?”

“As far as I know, there aren’t any extra Annes out there because of me,” Anne admitted.

“As a rule we aren’t offered a lot of goats in Toronto,” said David.

“Here it happens all the time,” Peter said.

David gazed downward at the floor, his shoulders elevated as if shrugging off a cold rain. “This pimp,” he said. “Can he get us other kinds of stuff? Like, say, disposable syringes or at least a decent autoclave?”

“Depends on how badly you want it,” Peter said.

“I mean, what if we pay out of our own pockets?”

Peter felt a surge of warmth. “You’ll do fine,” he said. “Just offer him a tenth of what he asks and haggle up to about twenty percent.”

|   |   |

That evening Peter said goodbye to Banhi, closed the clinic, and went to a small bookstore, where he found some children’s books in English. The three girls had formed a casual alliance, but now that Devi was back, Usha set up a separate bed and apparently understood the situation. Alex and Devi went out for dinner by themselves, as a sort of farewell to Jorpati, so Peter and Usha had some
dal-bhat
and sat together on his bed, leaning against the wall. He
read to her the way he’d done with Alex when she was young, following the words with his finger and relating them to the pictures. Usha was a quick study, and, perhaps because she was already literate in Nepali, within an hour she recognized some of the words and pronounced them as he got to them. She was especially good with animals, and got “dog,” “cat,” “goat,” “chicken,” and “cow” right away. He was so proud of her that it surprised him.

The girls came back, sated and happy. Devi, who seemed even more radiant than usual since her stay at the monastery, suggested they go to the great stupa in Boudhanath. She told them to bring as much money as they could.

As they walked the narrow streets they could see the huge, spired dome towering over the houses and buildings, glowing in the fading light.

More people moved with them down the dusty road, released from the day’s work, fingering the Buddhist rosaries known as
malas
and quietly reciting
Om Mani Padme Hum
, a deep rumble of sound that seemed to well up from the earth as much as from the people on it. From houses and nearby monasteries came chanting, bells and drums, and the long Tibetan horns used in
pujas
. The horns were so deep and powerful they seemed to bend air and rupture it, blast it outward toward the mountains in palpable waves.

It seemed they’d waded into a warm current and needed only to let go and allow themselves to float calmly downstream. Alex’s eyes were wide and luminous. She slipped her cool hand into her father’s as they walked. Usha and Devi strolled together and talked quietly in Nepali.

The dome was alight with butter lamps on ascending levels, shimmering as breezes brushed the flames, the crowning spire reaching upward a hundred feet. Multicolored prayer flags fluttered against the darkening sky, lit from below by the lamps. Around the perimeter, merchants closed up their shops for the day as children and animals played in the dust. Rows of beggars sat
waiting, patiently insistent. A legless old man on a small, wheeled cart said, “Rupees? One rupee, please?” Devi gave him one, and they moved on.

“Give all your money away while we’re here,” she said. Peter slipped some rupees into Usha’s hand so she’d have some to pass along.

They entered the slow, clockwise whirlpool of people circling the stupa. Mainly they were Tibetans and Nepalis, but there were foreigners too, Americans and a few Germans. Several sturdy-looking Tibetans progressed via prostration; wearing wooden blocks on their hands and long leather aprons, they extended themselves on the ground, arose, and moved forward like inch-worms.

Devi spun the prayer wheels as they walked. A gust extinguished a dozen butter lamps, and they stopped to relight them. Clouds of incense arose from sticks piled into wooden boxes. As they moved on, a couple of monks walked beside them for a while, tossing rice; other people threw flowers or lit candles. One woman sat with a small burlap bag, throwing barley to the birds, which would fly in, peck a few grains, burst away again, then return. Another woman, hidden from view, sang high, haunting notes in a language none of them recognized, and Peter wondered if she had made it up. One kid pedaled the circuit on a rusty, dented bike.

A small family sat off to one side, burning juniper and incense and praying, offering the blue smoke itself, which swirled upward above their heads and fanned out, scenting the air and dissipating into the night sky. A small boy looked up from the flames, his face half bright, half shadowed; his eyes were big and dark, his expression neutral, neither smiling nor frowning. Devi blew him a kiss, and he staggered back a step, as if the kiss carried force.

There was a blond, Scandinavian-looking woman in a ball gown so vividly blue it seemed electric, with matching elbow-length gloves and a tiara. She tottered forward barefoot, holding a champagne glass aloft in one hand as if toasting, her hair radiant
in the twilight. Some of the locals looked at her in disgust, some in awe, but Alex just grinned.

A small girl of about six lugged a green thermos half as tall as she was. She went from beggar to beggar, pouring them tea that smelled of cinnamon and cloves. Some of them ignored her, some blessed her, but all drank the tea. Peter and the girls passed them, and coin by coin, bill by bill, their money dropped from their hands as their pockets emptied and they grew lighter.

They finished one circuit and ascended to the stupa’s second level, and then the third, and from this vantage they could see out across the city, its wires and streetlights, and the tiny bright squares of windows. Away to the west lay the illuminated galaxy of Kathmandu. Up the hill to the north, one of the monasteries gleamed in the hard light of the rising moon, a butter lamp on every windowsill. Behind it rose the Himalayas, their snow crowns ghostly blue, hovering in space above the foothills. And above them, the north star and the Big Dipper, bright and nearly unblinking in the high, cold atmosphere. Juniper smoke and incense and the smell of people mingled in the air, and always came the low recitations,
Om Mani Padme Hum
. Devi had told them it translated as “the jewel is in the lotus,” meaning that Enlightenment was to be found within one’s own heart, in the flower whose roots are anchored in the mud of everyday existence.