Exiles (32 page)

None of that really seemed like enough, though. When he was done with them he would move on. He would go home and find Wayne Lee and his friends. He would track down all the rapists, the thugs, the molesters; he would find them all and empty clip after clip after clip, mow them down by the thousands, until the world was cleansed.

Mina was there a couple of hours later. When Alex saw Peter she ran to him, and he wrapped her in his arms. She was bony. He apologized to her, over and over, as she cried. Mina stood off to the side, her eyes downcast. Peter was so furious he could barely look at her.

Finally he thanked her, coolly, for bringing Alex, and took his daughter inside.

Peter made the next few days as easy for her as he could, but there were things they had to do, many of which were far from easy: get her checked out by a doctor at the CIWEC clinic, give a statement to the Nepali police (who seemed utterly uninterested in what she had to say), make plane reservations, pack, and generally manage the chaos of sudden departure. Sangita came and helped as much as she could. Alex was desperate for food and sleep, and she needed more Flagyl for whatever she’d picked up from the mountain streams. She would be distant and disengaged, then suddenly flare up in a fury, and she was deeply upset that she couldn’t see Devi. Neither she nor her father wanted to discuss what had happened until they had more time, so they put on their armor and got through it.

Mina phoned. Peter was vaguely aware by now that what had happened was not her fault, that if anything he was far more to blame; but paradoxically this hot guilt only intensified his wrath—the way softer metals, when molten, alloy themselves into steel—and in this furnace of rage and shame he became all but incapable of talking to her. He asked her to call him in California a couple of
weeks later, when they’d be settled and he would have had a chance to collect himself.

On the morning of their flight, Sangita came over before dawn to say goodbye. They hugged her, then she tied a small red cord around each of their necks.

“These from very great lama, for protection,” she said.

Alex began to cry and put her arms around Sangita. “When you see Devi, tell her goodbye,” she said. “Tell her I love her.”

Sangita wept too. “I this doing, fair okay,” she said. She held Alex tightly for a few moments, then let her go. The cab came down the block and pulled in at the curb. They loaded their bags. Peter kept enough rupees for the cab fare, then handed the rest of his money to Sangita. At first she refused, but he reminded her that he couldn’t use rupees in America. She thanked him and tucked them into the pocket of her skirt.

As they drove away, Alex turned to wave. Sangita waved back briefly, then stood and watched them until they turned the corner and were gone. The last Peter saw of her, she was wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Alex fell asleep before the plane even left the gate, then slept off and on for ten hours. Peter dozed, read, and watched the clouds passing like great sea waves beneath them. He had come to feel alienated from America, but now he felt even more estranged from Nepal. It was as if their only home was on the plane, with each other, but that would end soon enough, and then they’d have to figure out something new.

They’d made arrangements to stay with Peter’s sister, Connie, who lived in San Anselmo, across the bay from Berkeley in Marin County. She met them at SFO and drove them north across the Golden Gate Bridge. Alex didn’t say much; she seemed content to look out the window at the ocean and the headlands, at this blue world that was familiar and newly exotic too.

Connie’s house was cool and quiet, nestled on a narrow street that curved among oak-covered hills. Her fifteen-year-old son, Ben, hauled his stuff up to the finished attic so Alex could have his
room. Peter had planned to sleep on the couch, but Alex wanted him with her, so that first evening he lay on the bed and held her.

“You can tell me whatever you want,” he said, as she wept.

She just shook her head. “Not now.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Try to make things normal, if you can. Normal is what I want.”

“We’re going for a lot of normal around here, don’t worry.”

After she dropped off, he stayed awhile to be sure she didn’t wake up again. Peter felt as if he’d spent the past few days in a fast-moving car, a vehicle built of rage at both himself and the world. Now he’d blown through the windshield and could feel the ground rising up to meet him, and he knew the landing was going to hurt. His savage impulses—toward Adhiraj, toward Pradhan and his men, toward Mina and himself, all three sides of the lethal triangle that had joined in this catastrophe—had not abated much, but he was adjusting to his anger the way you adjust to a mean dog that lives in your house, a creature that you know is essentially wild, full of teeth and dark appetites. You keep the dog under control and pray that it doesn’t learn the full extent of its power and tear you apart.

The next morning was Saturday, so Connie and Peter cooked a big breakfast—eggs, pancakes, sausages, everything Peter knew Alex liked. Alex remained withdrawn and quiet, though, and picked at her food. She sat next to Peter at the table, and every few minutes she touched his arm, as if she had to make sure he was really there.

Peter took her back to see her old shrink from her cutting days, Andy Edelstein. Alex wanted Peter to stay nearby, and she opened the door about every ten minutes to make sure he was still in the waiting room. It reminded him, of course, of when he
wasn’t
there, and every time she shut the door and went back inside he felt as if a great fist had encircled his heart and begun to squeeze.

She was in there for three hours, after which she emerged, pale,
with tearstains on her cheeks, her arms wrapped around herself. Edelstein briefly met Peter’s eyes and gave him the slightest of nods.

At home she shadowed Peter, always staying within a few feet of him, though she rarely spoke. She didn’t leave the house except to go to the doctor for follow-ups, or to see Edelstein. In both cases, Peter drove her and waited just outside the door of the room she was in. At least she wasn’t pregnant, and the labwork showed that she hadn’t gotten HIV.

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One afternoon when Alex was asleep, Mina called Peter from Kathmandu.

“I never should have told you to trust him,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really thought he could do it.”

Peter stood in the living room, staring out the big bay window at the hills.

“So that’s it? You’re sorry, tough luck, hope it goes better next time?”

There was a pause. “Peter, you gave Bahadur’s computer to the
Nepali Times
.”

“It was obvious the cops weren’t going to do anything otherwise.”

“Well, it worked. The whole story came out, and my father and the others are in jail.”

“Good,” said Peter. “When you talk to him again, tell him the day he or any of his men get out, I’ll be waiting for them. I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life in some shithole Nepali prison, I’ll be there. Tell him that.”

Mina’s voice wavered. “Don’t say things like that. Please.”

“Why the fuck shouldn’t I? I mean it. I’ll do it.”

“Peter, this is going to be hard enough for Alex. She’s going to need you. You can’t let it destroy you too.”

“Nothing’s destroying me.”

“It will, if you go on like this,” she said. “I’ve wanted to kill him too, I’ve been so angry. But if he was younger, if he’d been there himself, it never would have happened. They would have known about the dogs, no one would have died, Alex would be fine. His men weren’t as good as he thought they were, and that’s his fault. But he tried, and in fact he did get her out. He didn’t do this to her.”

“Oh, and I did? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I didn’t say it, Peter, you did.”

These words, spoken simply and honestly, sucked the breath
right out of him. He knew, of course, that she was right. That without his idiocy, his pride, his foolish gullibility, none of this would have happened.

“Are you there?” Mina asked.

His voice was a reptilian croak, primitive and broken. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m here.”

There was another pause. “I don’t want to stay in Nepal anymore,” Mina said. “Our family has been wrecked.”

“I did that,” he said, as stupidly as a confessing child. “I did it on purpose.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Forgive me.”

Mina began to cry. “You know I would never have done anything to hurt your daughter. Tell me you understand that.”

He looked out the window. There were tears on his face too. He wiped at them with the back of his hand, but they kept coming.

“I understand,” he said.

“I’ll come there if you still want me to. I love you; I love you both.”

He took a breath. “Give us some time, okay? We just need time.”

He looked out the window; a hawk was riding a thermal high up over the oaks on the hill, its red tail fanned out and twisting to adjust to the breeze. Up still higher, twenty or thirty yards away, flew its mate. They rode opposite sides of the updraft, turning circles around each other at a distance, a dance of elegant, patient hunger.

“How’s Usha?” Peter asked, at last.

“She’s still staying with me,” Mina said. “She really wants to come to the U.S. and be a doctor. She’s so smart, Peter. You picked the right girl.”

“Yeah, I’m good at that,” he said, and heard her laugh a little through her tears. And then, almost without knowing the words were coming, he said, “The visa will be hard to get, you know.”

She hesitated a moment, as if to be sure he meant by this what
he seemed to mean. “Do you remember Alice Finley, at the American consulate?”

“The woman who couldn’t do anything for me.”

“I’ve spoken to her,” said Mina. “She was so horrified by what happened to Alex that she said she’d make it happen, for me and Usha both, if we decide to come. She just needs a couple of weeks’ notice.”

“Okay. We’ll let her know.”

After they hung up, he decided to take a walk. He strolled along block after block of beautiful houses, tucked back into shade. When he got downtown, shiny, late-model BMWs and Lexuses and Mercedes filled the parking spaces and the crowded roads. The stores were full of expensive kitchen goods and linens and furniture. The restaurants had lunch entrées starting at fifteen dollars. Everyone was white or Asian American, well dressed, healthy-looking. There were no beggars, no panhandlers, no spent old people lying on the sidewalks, no shit in the streets. This had been home, and now Peter wasn’t sure where home was. He passed a woman wearing diamond earrings that were probably worth more than most Nepalis would earn in a lifetime, and he was possessed by a sudden impulse to rip them right out of her ear-lobes.

He wondered who that other Peter was, the cardiologist who’d lived in a nice house in the Berkeley hills and driven a Land Rover. What did he like? What did he
want
? Mainly he seemed to have lived a life of desperate waiting—to get out of his marriage, to find some sort of meaning or direction. Cheryl had once said she’d rather
be
dead than live with the dead, and now he finally understood what she meant. He was as perplexed by his own identity as if he’d unearthed the yellowed diary of some ass from an earlier century who bled his patients with leeches, prescribed mercury for the clap, and felt very fine about himself indeed.