Exiles (2 page)

He formed the offer in his mind and sent it out: Kill me, then. I’m all I have to trade. But let Alex live; she’s worked hard, and she’s young, and she deserves to see something come of it.

As if this thought had somehow penetrated her sleeping mind, Alex stirred and murmured. “Dad?” she said.

“Here.” His voice a dry rag in the wind, caught on some nail.

She crawled toward him. He met her halfway and helped her to his little section of wall. She draped herself across his lap, facing out, toward the doorway, and he stroked her hair. He’d always done this when she was a child.

She whispered, her throat parched, “Will anyone find out what happened to us?”

He knew what she meant by this; she meant her mother. He doubted anybody would ever know. He wasn’t sure Cheryl would care, anyway, at least about him, but there was no reason to point this out. “It might be better if she didn’t.”

Alex lifted a hand, then touched her fingertips to the packed earth, as if testing its solidity. “I guess so.”

She adjusted her position. Her ribs pressed on Peter’s thigh, and
his foot was going to sleep. He wanted her to be comfortable, so he held still; he wouldn’t be needing the foot, anyway, once the sun rose.

Beneath the odors of sweat and shit, Alex smelled the way she always had. The scent was like a small, shy creature, something he’d loved since she was a baby, and that hadn’t changed as she grew. She had been a beautiful child and then, as a young woman, slender and smart and athletic, her hair the color of wheat and her blue-green eyes as melancholy as a late-autumn sky. The ordeal of the past day—the long march at altitude with almost no food, the bad water, and now the diarrhea—had utterly drained her strength, though, and her mind was blurring toward a forgetting that might have been more frightening had it not also been merciful.

“I want to sleep some more,” she mumbled. “I hope they won’t take us too early.”

He stroked her hair. What world was she inhabiting? Was she delirious? She was hot with fever. In any case, it would be cruel to remind her. “Sleep as long as you like,” he said. Her breathing evened out and slowed.

She curled tighter around him as the night grew chilly. A little while later he could see that Devi was still sitting up. “Are you cold?” he asked. “Do you want to come over?”

“I’m all right,” she replied. “Thanks.”

He felt relieved at the final word. He didn’t want her to die hating him. Another thing that didn’t matter, of course, but in some way it did.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, quietly.

Devi exhaled. “You did your best. You just misjudged.”

He lay back against the wall, shivering. What could you do with six hours? Nothing but wait.

Off in the distance someone rang a bell, and from all around the village dogs began to howl.

September 2005

The plane turned into its final approach to Tribhuvan Airport, cutting down through a cottony sheet of cloud, as the sun dropped toward the western ridges. A moment of vertigo: the fuselage sliding in the air, the land tilted beneath them. An orange laser of sunlight penetrated the windows and burned through the cabin, briefly igniting faces as hands came up, reflexively, to shield eyes. They crossed a last, low range, the wings swung back to level, and the Kathmandu Valley spread out before them, green and brown, geometric with fields. The flaps came out and down, then the plane dropped so sharply that people gasped. Alex gripped her father’s hand as if she were hanging from a cliff, her pupils dilated with fear.

“It’s okay,” Peter said. “Just how they do it here.”

“How would you know?”

He shrugged, as nonchalantly as he could, because he didn’t know. To the north, the great matriarchs of the Himalayas rolled into view, awash in alpenglow as the pink remnants of the season’s monsoon clouds spurled beneath them.

“Look,” he said, to distract her, and she peered nervously out. His eyes were on the mountains, hers on the earth rising rapidly to meet them.

“The stupa,” she said suddenly, pointing at the dome of the temple in Boudhanath. “My God, it’s huge.”

|   |   |

They caught a cab into the city as the valley fell into evening and lights blinked on around them. A warm breeze pushed in through the open windows, carrying the scent of flowers, of human sweat and animal dung and diesel. Two- and three-story buildings, with shops below and living quarters above, pressed close to the sides of the street. Oil lanterns threw giant human shadows against medieval-looking stone walls.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“I’m glad to be on the ground,” she said. “At least, I think so.”

She turned back to the window, and he saw her fine nose, the elegant profile. Her hair picked up what little light there was. She leaned back, arranging her long limbs as best she could. It had been hard for her, cooped up so long.

He knew, of course, that there was more to it. She was far from convinced that she wanted to be here at all. He felt his own mix of emotions, stirrings of pleasant anticipation tempered by the apprehension that grew from experience.

The cab dodged through narrow streets full of people and dogs and cattle, bikes and motorbikes and three-wheeled contraptions—
tempos
, their cabdriver said—as well as the occasional bus. They drove on the left; Peter kept flinching at head-ons that didn’t happen.

After the third or fourth time Alex looked at him and managed a tight smile. “Want to hold my hand?” she asked.

“Thanks,” he said, and took it. He was gentle at first, but he gradually increased the pressure. She fought as long as she could, then she laughed and pulled her hand away.

“Now you know how it feels,” he said.

“Now
you
know how it feels.”

She was right. For her it was planes, for him traffic—and for both of them, too often, it was life in general. He didn’t so much mind dealing with anxiety, though, because he knew that on the other side of it lay despair, and it wasn’t a border he liked to cross. Fear was an easier land to inhabit, one for which reliable medications were available.

They swung through the neighborhood the driver identified as Naxal, then turned north, through a dark world of mooing and whistling, car horns and bicycle bells. They finally reached Bhat-bhateni, the district where Peter had rented a house. The driver found the address and pulled in to the curb. They got out and hauled their bags from the trunk. Peter counted out a stack of rupees, unfolding them one at a time, the paper worn and slick as it passed his fingers.

“Thank you very much, sir.” The driver beamed, looking a little surprised. He placed his hands together in prayer position. “Namaste.”

“Namaste,” said Peter. The one word he’d learned.

They hauled their bags toward the door and, when the driver was gone, Alex said, “You got took.”

Peter affected indignation. “Apparently you missed the fact that he worships me.”

She swung her head from side to side, a display of mournful tolerance. “Dad, Dad,” she said. “Took, took, took.”

The house was built of bricks but with an ornately carved wooden door and window frames. A high wall surrounded it, topped with broken glass to discourage thieves. Peter found the door unlocked, so they wrestled their stuff inside.

Alex shivered. “It’s freezing,” she said. Peter went hunting for a thermostat. There was a light on in a room at the back of the house. As he moved toward the room, a small figure burst through the doorway and nearly collided with him. Peter jumped back a step, startled.

“Forgive me, sir!” said the woman excitedly. “You certainly good reflexes has!”

Alex laughed.

“Who the hell are you?” Peter asked. Irritation born of surprise, he knew, a brand of annoyance that hadn’t afflicted him as a younger man. He was embarrassed by it, but what was he supposed to do?

The woman looked briefly taken aback by his rudeness, but she presented her hand. “I am Sangita,
didi
,” she said.

Peter took the hand a little hesitantly. “Sangita Didi?” he said. “I’m Peter, and this is Alex.”

The woman’s brow furrowed, as if she wasn’t used to having such difficulties with basic communication. “No,
didi
is what I am, name not,” she said, sounding a little annoyed herself now. She glanced at Alex as if hoping for reinforcements.

“Of course,” said Peter. He had no idea what she was talking about and turned to Alex as well.

“It means big sister,” Alex said. “And housekeeper, right?”

Sangita relaxed a little and smiled. “This correct—sister, housekeeper, also cook. Dr. Franz at the clinic has made this very kind arrangement for you.”

“Dr. Franz?” said Peter. “At what clinic?” He’d arranged to work at the teaching hospital and hadn’t dealt with anyone named Franz. “And how did you get in? You have a key?”

Sangita looked at him and squinted a little. “I think all this soon clear becoming,” she said, with an evident attempt at patience. “Perhaps now best eat.”

Peter and Alex looked at each other; they were both famished. “Okay,” he said warily. “But could we turn on the heat?”

“Heat?” Sangita replied. She smiled and turned back toward the kitchen. “Oh, no, sorry. No heat.”

“No heat of any kind?”

She waved nonchalantly, though Peter was pretty sure he detected a hint of victory in her dismissive tone. “Nepali houses not
have what you call, mm, furnace,” she said. “We just more clothes use.”

|   |   |

Peter and Alex, bundled in their fleece jackets, tramped into the kitchen. There was a small table with benches, so they squeezed in next to each other to share a little warmth. Alex shoved her shoulder into his arm, and he pushed back. Sangita stirred something on a three-burner gas hot plate connected to a rubber hose running through the wall to the outside.

“So, you father-daughter?” she asked, not quite looking at them.

“Sure,” said Peter. “Of course.”

Sangita smiled knowingly. “Some Western men I seeing in Kathmandu, young girls with them, but daughter not. You not so old-looking, Doctor, sir. I think the girls might like.”

“In this case, father-daughter,” Peter said, suppressing a smile. Alex looked at him in disgust.

“Smug,” she whispered. “Tell it to your bald spot.”

Peter picked up his fork and casually jabbed at her with it, but she deflected it and then, with a lightning move, twisted it out of his grip. She grabbed her own so she had one in each hand and waved them menacingly. She had that predatory feline look in her eyes.

“Ooh,” said Sangita, with appreciative mockery. “I watch out for you.”

“I sue for peace,” said Peter.

“The pacifism of the defeated,” replied Alex. She handed him back his fork, tines first, so it stuck him a little.

“You like my daughter,” said Sangita. “Scary-scary.”

Alex turned to her, apparently brightened by this prospect. “You have a daughter?”

“Oh, sure. Husband, son, daughter. Dog, chickens.”

“How old are your kids?”

“Daughter, eighteen. Son …” Sangita paused, her face clouded for a moment. “Twenty now, would be.”

Peter and Alex looked at each other, both wondering why Sangita had trouble remembering her son’s age.

She loaded the plates and brought them to the table.
“Dal-bhat,”
she said, and smiled. The plates were heaped with white rice, and each had a bowl of cooked lentils on the side. She carried over several smaller dishes and taught Peter and Alex the vocabulary as she put them on the table: flatbread (called
nan
), a vegetable curry (
tarkari
), pickled mangoes (
achar
, she said), and half a stick of goat butter. Finally, she fixed a plate for herself and stood, leaning against the counter, as she spooned lentils over her rice.

“Won’t you join us?” Peter asked.

Sangita fluttered her hand, looking embarrassed. “I fine,” she said.

“We’re not used to having a
didi
,” Alex said. “This kind of thing makes us feel guilty.”

Sangita regarded them as if she were indulging a couple of crazy children, but she came to the table and sat on the opposite bench.