Exiles (21 page)

It was after sundown, and a few friends of Raju’s father had collected. The men wrapped the body and put it on a rough litter made of bamboo and rope. One produced a straight razor and a bar of soap, then all the men took turns shaving each other’s heads, dipping the razor into a bucket. When they’d finished, one of them shaved Raju’s head; his locks fell to the surface of the roof and were carried away by the breeze.

Then, chanting prayers, the men hoisted the litter onto their shoulders and started down the narrow stairs, followed by Peter, Mina, Raju, and the oldest daughter—the pigeon girl—whose name was Arati. The grandmother would stay home with the younger children, who were huddled together in a heap, weeping, their eyes big with fear. As the men negotiated the litter around a tight corner they almost tipped the body off, but one man caught it in time, and the others chuckled quietly at the mishap. Raju stared ahead, his expression inscrutable.

After they’d gone a couple of blocks, Peter realized they were planning to walk all the way. A couple of the family’s friends, one playing a small hand drum and the other a bamboo flute, led the little procession through the darkened streets. Raju and Arati walked in front, just behind the body, holding sticks of incense, and Mina and Peter brought up the rear. The pace was slow down into Naxal, and they often had to maneuver around
tempos
, trucks, and cattle. But an hour later, as they headed east into Gyaneshwar and crossed the bridge over the Dhobi Khola, traffic began to thin out.

The stars were shining, and the evening grew cool as they went on, the men seemingly tireless under their load. They made their way by streetlight, or by the illumination from an occasional passing motorbike, but there were dark stretches where they proceeded primarily by the glow from the rising moon. People walking the other way stepped aside and bowed their heads briefly as they passed. The drum and flute rang out into the night, their music
plaintively marking the progress of the journey. Once, from a side street, a black dog appeared and began to howl.

They passed Ring Road and, after another hour or so, entered the long approach to the Pashupatinath Temple. When they reached the bridge into the main grounds, the men stopped. The leader, the one playing the drum, came back and spoke to Mina. He was a tall, emaciated fellow in ragged clothes. His freshly shaved head gleamed in the dim light.

“You aren’t allowed into the temple grounds because you’re not Hindu,” Mina explained to Peter. “But if you want to donate something for wood and flowers for the cremation, you can.”

“How much?”

“Give them four or five thousand rupees. It will be important to Raju that it’s done right.”

Peter handed the money to the man, who nodded and spoke to Raju. Raju took the man’s hand, and they crossed the bridge. Mina showed Peter to a nearby bench, where they sat and waited.

“How are you holding up?” she asked.

“I probably should have eaten.”

She pulled a small bag of cashews out of her purse, opened it, and shook some into his upturned palm. “It’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid.”

The men carried Shrestha’s body into a nearby building to prepare it. Mina told Peter about the temple, which had been established in the fifth century, comprised several buildings over more than an acre, and was dedicated to Shiva. The Bagmati River, which flowed beneath the bridge, was sacred, though Peter could see by the light from the temple lamps that the banks were littered with old papers, cardboard, and other trash. Monkeys screeched in the trees overhead.

On the other side of the river, a stone terrace abutted the base of the building into which they had taken the body, and stone steps led down to the water’s edge. This was the ghat where the body would be burned.

They sat quietly for a while, then Peter turned to Mina. “Would you want to be cremated here?” he asked.

Mina sounded bemused. “What kind of a question is that?”

“I just wondered.”

She hesitated. There was a commotion in the trees as the monkeys squabbled over something. “To tell the truth, I’ve always had the feeling I will die far from here,” she said. “I don’t know why. I can’t think about it without getting morose, so mostly I try not to.”

This surprising sign of vulnerability moved him. They were in moonlight. The torches on the temple grounds flicked orange light onto their faces. Mina looked tired, her head inclined, her eyes downcast. She leaned forward and took some of her weight with her arms. Peter could smell her perspiration, her fatigue, and a certain distinct scent that was just Mina, animal and familiar and even a little sweet.

It was time to say something; he felt it as surely as he’d ever felt anything. He didn’t really know
what
to say, but he couldn’t let things go on like this. His heart pounded.

“If you should die far from here, but not far from me, what would you like me to do?” he asked.

She looked at him, shifted her weight, uncrossed her legs. “Please tell me this isn’t some kind of joke.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

She half smiled, a smile that was part skepticism and part indulgence. “I thought you hated me.”

“I thought so too, for a while. In fact, I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual.”

She was pensive for a few moments. “I did hate you, I think.”

He thought he understood her reasons now, but he wanted to hear it from her. “Why?”

She exhaled between pursed lips, a
fffff
sound. “It’s embarrassing,” she said. “But almost every doc who’s come through the clinic has tried to get me to … you know.”

“Are we talking about romance?”

She waved her hand. “Oh, no, they didn’t want love; they didn’t even particularly seem to want friendship.”

“Just bed the beautiful native girl so you can tell your buddies back home?”

“Something like that,” she said. “The Belgian wasn’t a very good clinician, but the real reason we got rid of him was that he was such an incorrigible lech. I just figured you were the same.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I wasn’t looking for sex, but you were right about one thing: I thought I knew more than I did,” he said. “I didn’t know anything. I would have torn out half that girl’s septum on the first day if you hadn’t walked in.”

“That’s also true,” she said, smiling. “You were a sorry case.”

“So what changed, what happened?”

She sighed. “
You
happened, I guess. You started listening to me. You bought a girl to keep her out of slavery. You’re paying for the funeral of a man you don’t even know.”

“I didn’t do any of that to impress you.”

“I get that,” she said. “But why? Nobody’s that saintly.”

He thought about it. “Alex had a rough time growing up,” he said. “She has a lot of natural compassion, but she had to put so much energy into defending herself, early on, that it just got trampled. I guess I wanted her to see that it’s possible to live another way, that you don’t have to harden your heart to survive.”

“I get the feeling you weren’t just targeting her for that lesson.”

He shook his head. “I knew it had happened to me too. Just with the everyday grind of living, I’d developed this carapace. Nothing surprised me, nothing delighted me anymore.”

“There must have been easier places, though.”

He smiled, thinking of the map and the dart. “We picked Nepal because she has terrible aim,” he said, then explained.

“So this wasn’t your first choice.”

“Personally, I was rooting for Tuscany. Of course, Tuscany wouldn’t have had you in it.”

There was a great hooting of birds, back and forth, among the trees. Mina shivered a little.

“I missed you while you were in Jorpati,” she confessed. “I was kind of horrified when I realized it.”

“It was mutual,” he said. “The missing, I mean, not the horror. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d really missed someone.”

She turned to him, her eyes large. She rested her hand on his, lightly. “You still want an answer to your question?”

“Sure.”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Cremate me then, I suppose, wherever we are,” she said. “Keep some of my ashes with you, while you’re alive, and scatter the rest.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“And if you’re first?”

He thought about it. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

She laughed, briefly and quietly. He loved hearing her laugh.

A little evening chill came up off the river. The temple doors opened, and the men brought the body out to the ghat. They built a pyre on the stone, then placed the litter on top and piled more wood around it. Raju and Arati sat on the ground to one side, their arms around each other’s shoulders. One of the men went down to the river and scooped up water in a small silver container. He brought it back up to the body and poured some of the water into its mouth, then flicked the rest over it with his fingers. He pulled the wrap up over Shrestha’s face, struck a match, and lit the straw and kindling all around the body. Smoke curled up into the light, and a cool gust fanned the flames quickly. Within a minute the pyre blazed. The children began to keen. One of the men went over, squatted down behind them, and took them in his arms.

In the firelight, Peter noticed a man sitting cross-legged on the ground nearby—a sadhu, a Hindu mystic. He wore a garland of flowers and had a long graying beard and dreadlocks. His forehead bore three white bands of paint, horizontal, each about the width of a finger.

“Offer him some money to pray for the dead man,” Mina whispered.

Peter went over and placed a couple hundred rupees in front of him, then pointed to the burning figure. The sadhu nodded, very slightly, without looking at him.

An hour later, when the fire had burned down and there was little left but glowing coals and a few fragments of bone, the men indicated that they would finish the night watch and scatter the ashes into the river in the morning. They suggested Peter and Mina take the children home.

Just up the road Peter hailed a
tempo
, one of the last out at that hour. Raju and Arati began to cry again. Mina and Peter reassured them as best they could, but Peter knew their words sounded as hollow to the kids as they did to him.

They took the children home; then, exhausted, drove Mina’s car back to Peter’s house. They arrived a little after 3:00
A.M.
to find a jeep parked in front. Two soldiers waited, one sitting sideways in the rider’s seat, the other standing by the archway to the front gate with one foot against the wall. As Peter and Mina pulled in, a bright orange dot bloomed in front of the standing soldier’s mouth as he sucked on a
bidi
. He pulled it from his mouth and exhaled the smoke, yellow under the streetlight. He threw the cigarette into the street, pushed himself off the wall, and came toward them.

“Oh, Christ,” said Mina. “I forgot to call my parents.”

“Your
parents
? You’re thirty-six.”

“I’m thirty-six and unmarried, and living at home,” she said wearily. “In other words, to them I’m still a rebellious teenager.”

Mina’s father, though retired, could still muster up a few troops for private duty if he paid them on the side. They spoke to Mina in Nepali, and it was easy enough to get the gist. The conversation grew heated. Mina turned to Peter in exasperation.

“They insist I ride in the jeep with them, even though my car is right there.”

“Tell them there’s no way I’m letting you get into that jeep, no matter who they work for.”

She repeated this in Nepali. The soldiers got angry, responding forcefully and gesticulating. “They say it is not up to you to allow or not allow anything,” Mina said. “They have orders, and they plan to follow them.”

“This is nuts, Mina.”

She was near tears. “Welcome to my father’s world.”

“Tell them if they take you in the jeep, I’ll follow in your car so you can get to work in the morning. Tell them I have a phone with me. They’ll get the point.”

She spoke to them. “They say your travel plans are your own concern,” she said. “They suggest that you not follow too closely, in case there is some sort of accident that results in your being injured.”

“Tell them I did my residency in Los Angeles, and I’m perfectly capable of sitting six inches off their bumper at eighty miles an hour with a cup of coffee in one hand.”

Mina rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to translate that, Peter. Anyway, how will you get back?”

He took a breath. “I’ll find a
tempo
, and if there aren’t any, I’ll walk.”

“It will take you the rest of the night.”

“The rest of the night is only three hours.”

The soldiers finally agreed. Peter took Mina in his arms. She pulled away a little.

“My father will hear about this,” she said.

“Good.”

“Are you trying to make trouble for me?”

“Absolutely.”

She smiled, and they kissed. She lingered on his lips, then finally they loosened their grip on each other and she stepped away. She got into the jeep, and the soldiers shut the door. Peter followed to her house, an old Rana temple that had been converted into apartments
for her extended family. He could see a silhouette waiting in an upstairs window. They got out of the cars and met by the gate.

“That him?” he asked.

She nodded. “He knows I’ve been old enough to do as I please for a long time,” she said. “But that doesn’t stop him from thinking of me as a little girl. If there were any justice in the world, he would have worked himself into a stroke by now.”