Invisible Armies (3 page)

Chapter  
5 

<    Laurent and Danielle sit companionably next to one another, beneath the window, their backs to the wall, out of the sun. Occasionally she mops sweat off both of them with her shirt. At least all his cuts, mostly small and ragged, have now clotted shut. She feels weak from hunger and the brain-sapping heat, and they are almost out of water, but these things do not worry her. She has too many worries already, there is no room for any more.
    "What brought you to India?" he asks.
    "I got a job. In Bangalore."
    "Why take it? I'd think Americans wouldn't come."
    "I don't know. I was in law school, NYU, and I couldn't stand it any more. I don't know why. I guess I needed to do something drastic. So I came here. Then I quit the job and went to a yoga ashram in Goa. It's not as flaky as it sounds. I'm not like one of those New Age ayurvedic women."
    "Right this moment it doesn't much matter to me if you are," Laurent says drily.
    "I guess not. Anyways I was doing yoga teacher training at this ashram. I just graduated last week. I was just about to leave, go back to Boston, as soon as I got the certificate."
   "And Keiran knew you were in India, so he emailed you to deliver Jayalitha's passport," Laurent says. Danielle nods. "No indication there might be trouble?"
   "No. All he said was that the roads were bad and I might want to go with a friend from the ashram or bring a driver. But after four months in an ashram what I really wanted was to get away from everyone else for a little while, and I was feeling all Little Miss Invincible Biker Chick. Yeah. That worked out well, huh?"
   Laurent smiles. "So you were to give Jayalitha her passport and then leave? Only that?"
   "No. I was supposed to help her get back to Goa and put her on a plane to England. We were supposed to be in the airport right now. And here I am. Locked up, and beat up, and fucking starving. I'm glad you're here. If you weren't I'd be going nuts right now."
   "I'm glad you are here too," Laurent says solemnly.
   "What happened to you?"
    "I was collecting groundwater samples in a village not far from here. One of the villagers must have informed on me. I woke up surrounded."
    "How did you go from the French Foreign Legion to that village?"
    "It's a long story."
    Danielle looks at him. "You got something better to do with your time?"
    "Perhaps not."
    "Actually," she says, "begin at the beginning. Why join the Foreign Legion in the first place?"
    Laurent shrugs. "I had an unhappy childhood."
    "Unhappy how?"
    "In the usual ways. Followed by a troubled youth. Again in the usual ways. My story is simple. I wanted to be someone else. And the Legion offered a way. And a certain glamour. And extremity. I've always been drawn to extremes. I despise the ordinary. So here I am, extraordinarily uncomfortable. I don't suppose you know how to pick locks?"
    "Sorry. They don't teach you that in the Legion?"
    "They do, but these Indian cuffs are unusual. I don't think I can open them while in them. Do you have anything that might work as a pick?"
    She shakes her head. "They took my day pack. And my travel pouch. I've still got my wallet. Nothing much useful in there. Some coins. Shoelaces. That's about it."
    "No underwire in your bra?"
    "Sorry. Sports bra. I was dressed for comfort not style."
    "Pity." He looks at her consideringly. "You know, even under the circumstances, you are remarkably pretty."
    Danielle half-laughs. "Are you actually hitting on me?"
    "I'm stating unarguable facts. Another is, we must escape."
    "Feel free."
    "Thank you." He gets to his feet and surveys their cell. After a moment he turns on one foot and kicks sideways at the door, lightly, not so much a blow as the application of pressure. Then he moves beside the window, and carefully examines the corrugated ceiling, there only an inch higher than his head.
    "Aluminum," he mutters. "Steel is much stronger than aluminum."
    "Great. Got any steel?"
    "Yes. On my wrists."
    "Taking us back to the no-lockpick problem."
    "Your earring."
    Danielle blinks. It has been years since she has removed the crescent-moon earring from her right ear. She has lost awareness of its existence as a separate thing from herself.
    "Take it out," Laurent says. "Time for a crash course in lockpicking."
* * *
    It takes two frustrating hours, in which Danielle repeats the same tiny motions again and again, and impales her thumb a dozen times on the hook of her earring, before his left cuff finally pops loose.
    "Got it," she says, too tired to be triumphant. The concentration required by the process, added to her weakened state, has made her dizzy. She sags back against the wall as Laurent takes the earring and applies it to the other cuff. It takes him less than a minute. He flexes his newly freed wrists in front of him experimentally, still holding the handcuffs, a heavy Indian design that looks like a pair of chained-together horseshoes, locked by cylinders shaped like huge bullets.
    "Now what?" she asks.
    Laurent picks up her bloodstained shirt, wraps it around his right hand, pulls the loops of the handcuffs over that cushion, and walks to a corner next to the window, where the ceiling is lowest. His strong jaw, deep-set eyes, solid build and long, muscle-knotted arms combine with his ragged cuts and purpling bruises to make him look almost simian, half man half beast. If she had not seen it herself Danielle would not believe him capable of the kind of martial grace he showed outside.
    "Now," he says, "brute force and ignorance."
   He makes a handcuff-strengthened fist, takes a few deep breaths. Then he crouches slightly and, exhaling sharply, unleashes a textbook uppercut into the ceiling, near one of the iron prongs that connect roof and wall. The clang! is so loud that Danielle instinctively covers her ears.
    The impact strength of steel is three times that of aluminum, the roof is old and thin, and Laurent is strong, highly motivated, and skilled. Most of the force of the punch comes from his powerful legs. It has to go somewhere. It goes into a visible dent that flattens part of one of the corrugations. The next punch causes that whole area of the roof to crawl slightly upwards on the rusted iron prong that anchors it. Laurent keeps punching, getting into a rhythm, breathing deeply, crouching, then, on the exhale, uncoiling upwards with all his strength. Danielle hears the men left to guard them outside, chattering worriedly between the metronomic clangs. So much for sneaking out.
    The rebar prongs that support the roof have been flattened slightly, so that their tops are a few millimetres wider than the rest of their length. This prevents the aluminum from just sliding off, but does not long prevent it from tearing free of the first prong, under the pressure of Laurent's onslaught. He moves to the next length of rusted rebar and continues to punch. He is breathing hard, now, but his motions are as elegant as before. Soon the roof breaks free of this rebar anchor as well. He continues, machinelike, despite the beating he took only a few hours earlier, the cuts and swollen bruises all over his face and body. Danielle finally realizes that Laurent actually means to peel a corner of the roof off the hut and go over the wall.
   He does not stop until the roof has been torn from four anchor prongs, two on either side of a corner. Then, breathing hard, he reaches up towards the ceiling, only an inch taller than his head, and simply pushes. For a moment all his muscles stand out in sharp relief. Then, with a roaring, tearing sound, the whole corner of the roof folds upwards to an almost perpendicular angle, opening up a triangle of space some two feet on a side, allowing in a blinding ray of noontime light that silhouettes him dramatically.
   Laurent stops to catch his breath. Danielle stares at him in awe.
   "Thank low Indian standards," he says hoarsely. "Wouldn't have worked on a Western roof."
   Outside, their guards hold a nervous-sounding conversation. She expects them to charge in, but they do nothing. Maybe they have been ordered not to open the door under any circumstances. She knows from her six weeks at Infosys that few Indians delegate authority well, and many of their low-level workers seem almost physically incapable of showing initiative or dealing with unexpected situations. She hopes her captors fall into that group.
   "Any water left?" he asks.
   "A little."
   He drains the last puddle from the water bucket.
   "What do we do now?" she asks.
   "Now it's like World War One. Wait for the right moment, then go over the wall."
   She looks at the wall.
   "Can you climb that?" he asks.
   "If I need to."
   He smiles. "Good girl."
    Considering what he's just done, she decides to let his patronizing tone slide. "How long do we wait?" she asks, her voice low.
    "Long enough to be unexpected," he says in a normal voice.
    Ten seconds pass. Fifteen. Twenty. Then, without warning, Laurent vaults onto the wall like a gymnast.
From his crouch atop the wall, first he jumps straight up, and Danielle sees the end of a lathi describe an arc through the space beneath his airborne legs. Then he leaps down and Danielle hears the collision of bodies. Without allowing herself to think, she grabs the rebar prongs herself, engages
moolabundha
and
uttayanabundha
, the yogic names for muscular locks in the pelvic floor and abdomen that provide the body with the internal leverage she needs right now, draws herself most of the way up the wall, brings her right leg up above her head to brace against a third prong, and uses that lever to pull herself over the top.
   On the other side, Laurent and one of the guards stand opposite one another, both holding lathis. The other two guards already lie senseless on the ground. Both Laurent and his opponent turn and stare at Danielle for a moment, amazed by her appearance. Then Laurent strikes out, quick as a cobra, there is a dull rapping noise, and the third guard falls.
    "I didn't think you'd climb it so fast," Laurent says as Danielle lowers herself to the ground.
    "I thought you might need help. I guess not."
    "No. But thanks for good intentions. We need to go before they wake."
    Danielle says, "I couldn't agree more. Which way?"
    "A village, over that hill. They're friends. I hope. Don't be happy yet. We're not safe. We won't be safe for some time. They'll be after us within the hour."/p>

Chapter  
6 

<   The village is a collection of a dozen single-room structures made of branches, vines, and thatch, located in a flat patch between two ridges, on either side of a thin stream. As Danielle and Laurent approach, holding commandeered
lathis
, they join a half-dozen women, wrapped in dull shapeless cloths, returning to the village with spine-warping loads of firewood on their heads. The men who wait for them wear
dhotis
, like pale kilts, stained with years of wear and filth. Most are shirtless, but a few wear tattered T-shirts.
   Both men and women seem less curious about their battered white visitors than Danielle would have expected. Maybe they are too exhausted; the women must walk for hours to find firewood, there are few trees in these stony highlands. Maybe, after growing up in a place like this, they are incapable of being curious, they have never developed enough imagination.
   Chickens, pigs, and dogs pick their way among and inside the buildings. Small, ragged fields line either side of the stream, to the end of the valley. Danielle doesn't know much about farming, but even she can tell that the crops here are sparse and stunted. A few bullocks graze further afield. Every thatched hut has a few plastic buckets and watering cans, metal pots and implements, candles, cigarette lighters, empty whisky bottles that Danielle is appalled to see – how can anyone in a place as poor as this spend money on whisky? A few of the huts are adorned with Bollywood movie posters, and colourful pictures of deities, Ganesh and Krishna and Lakshmi, decorated with marigolds, are found in nearly every one. A simple wooden cart, four wheels on a frame, the most elaborate machine in the village, stands next to the single dirt track that leads away from the village, over a ridge and to the north.
    It would be bad enough without the sicknesses. But those are everywhere. Of the sixty people in this village, fully a third have a visible illness or deformity. Children missing legs. Adults with rubbery, cancerous growths on their throats, abdomens, faces. Limbs so devoid of muscle they are only bone wrapped in skin. Men and women whose every breaths are loud, rasping struggles, overcoming deformations in their throats. Babies born missing an eye, or with faces warped like melted plastic. It is like visiting a leper colony. Danielle's exhilaration at being alive, at having escaped, slowly dissipates into appalled horror. She has never even imagined misery like this.
    A group of men, relatively hale and hearty, sit around a small open fire, smoking bidis, cheap Indian cigarettes made from individual dried tobacco leaves, and drinking, from clay cups, what Danielle angrily realizes is whisky. One of them sees Laurent, recognizes him, stands to greet him. The others glance over at them and then away, disinterested.
    "
Namaste
," Laurent says to the standing man, pressing his hands together in front of his heart and bowing.
    The man returns the greeting. He seems neither pleased nor displeased by Laurent's presence.
    "Dr. Lal?" Laurent asks. "Is possible?"
    The man gives Laurent the sideways Indian nod, bringing his ear almost to his shoulder; not quite as much a 'yes' as the Western nod, but a definite acknowledgement. Without another word, he stoops to put his cup on the ground, then turns and walks away.
    "One of our doctors should be near here somewhere, doing vaccinations," Laurent explains.
    "Should we go with him?"
    "No. He'll find him faster alone. We need to rest."
    Danielle can't argue with that. Now that they are safe, however briefly and tentatively, bone-deep weariness has fallen on her like an anvil. She finds a relatively inviting patch of grass, some distance from the whisky drinkers' fire, and sits. Laurent does the same.
    "Is this the village where they captured you?" she asks.
    "No. No one here would report on us. This is a village of friends. But they will search for us here. We need to leave very soon. If we are found here we endanger the entire village."
    "Endanger how?"
    "They might burn every building. With the families inside."
    "That's crazy," Danielle says, shocked. "There has to be – can't the government do something?"
    "There is no government here. Delhi and Bangalore are too far away. Government officials don't go where there are no roads. Think of this as a different planet. The state authorities are bribed by Kishkinda, the local authorities are Kishkinda, and even if someone was willing to believe illiterate farmers, they don't dare testify in court, they know their families would not survive. As Jayalitha showed. And even if the government did get involved, this isn't as simple as 'evil Western company exploiting the poor'. The Indian government owns a one-third share in the mine. And there are rifts among the local people, mostly caste but also money, the landowners support the mine. You understand, these people around us, these are the lucky ones. This is a village of free men. Most people in this district are slaves."
    "Slaves?"
    "They call it debt bondage, but it's slavery. Most lower-caste men and women here, nine in ten, spend all their lives farming their masters' fields, in exchange for a single kilogram of wheat per family per day, and a single acre to grow enough vegetables to feed their family with, if they have any strength left over after twelve hours in the fields. If they flee they are killed, but the sad truth is, the idea never even occurs to most of them. Their debts constantly increase, and then the debt, meaning the slavery, is inherited from parent to child. Some of the families here have been slaves for a hundred generations. The federal government tries to buy their freedom and give them money to live on, but of course the program is thoroughly corrupt, especially here, all that money goes straight into the landowners' pockets. Don't misunderstand. It's not unique to Kishkinda. There are millions upon millions of slaves in India. The men and women you saw working the fields on the way here? Slaves, all of them."
   "Slaves." Danielle shakes her head. It seems insane, that thousands of people could live in feudal slavery amid these barren, windswept ridges, only a short train journey from Bangalore, city of tomorrow. But then this is India, a nation torn between medieval and ultramodern, where physics researchers in Mumbai study string theory a few miles from the largest and most awful slums in Asia, a country where hundreds of thousands of computer programmers graduate every year, but hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers live on less than a dollar a day.
   Danielle closes her eyes. Then tiny fingers tug at her shoulder. When her eyes fly open, she is lying on the grass, she fell asleep without knowing it. A dozen children have clustered around herself and Laurent, their eyes bright with wonder, chattering incomprehensibly. Most poor Indian children have learned to ask white strangers for 'one pen' or 'one rupee', or at least to say 'hello', but these ones know no English, they only want Danielle's attention. Three of them, two boys and a girl, have faces so deformed Danielle has to fight instinctive repulsion. One girl is missing a leg; another has a grotesque tennis-ball-sized growth on her throat. A boy with some kind of elephantiasis has to use his hands to drag his bloated legs and body along the ground. She is almost glad she cannot understand anything they are saying. That would be too heartbreaking.
    "God," Danielle says. "Is this all from the mine?"
    "This?"
    "Their…their faces."
    "Yes. Tailings, dumped upstream. Toxic waste. Of course Kishkinda denies it. They produce sheafs of faked studies saying the water is safe and the land has not been poisoned. And people believe them. No, not really. People simply don't care. One billion people in India. Too many already." Laurent ruffles a boy's hair. "These children are expendable. Let them suffer. Let them die."
    Danielle can't think of anything to say.
    "There's Dr. Lal," Laurent says. "I hope he can help us."
* * *
    Dr. Lal rides into the village on a creaking, wobbling bullock cart, driven by the man Laurent sent. A large water bottle and a matte black shoulder bag sit on the cart next to him. The doctor, skinny, twentysomething and ponytailed, wearing very dirty khaki cargo pants and a T-shirt that may once have been tie-dyed, disembarks gingerly and shakes hands with Laurent.
    "What happened to you?" Dr. Lal asks.
    "Thuggery," Laurent says. "We need to get to Hospet."
    Dr. Lal purses his lips. "I see. Will they be looking for you?" His Indian accent is barely noticeable. Danielle guesses he has studied in America.
    "Yes."
    "There is only one road."
    Laurent says, "I know."
    "Perhaps we can try to hide you?"
    "That's what I was thinking."
    The doctor nods, American-style, and has a brief conversation with the driver, who turns the cart around and leads it to the edge of the village, towards a small mountain of hay that has been piled and left to dry.
    "If my parents and professors could see me now," Dr. Lal says, smiling slightly. "There were no courses on cloak and dagger work in Iowa. Such an oversight. I can dress those cuts while we wait."
    "I'm fine," Laurent says. "They're shallow."
    "As you wish. Be sure you clean them when you can. Are you all right?" he asks Danielle.
     She nods.
    Dr. Lal looks around. "I don't think I've been to this village before. It seems healthier than most."
    "You can't be serious," Danielle says.
    "I'm afraid so. The free villages are terribly sickened. The debt slaves are much healthier. I suppose sick workers are discarded. There are villages like this with a cancer rate of six in ten. And always much higher among children."
    "God. Is there anything you can do to help them?"
    "I have my bag of tricks," Dr. Lal says. He indicates his black case. "Justice International keeps us well supplied, no mean feat in India. I'll vaccinate them, I'll medicate them, I'll treat them as best I can, I'll keep careful records. Some of them will respond. But most won't." He sighs. "We don't have enough volunteers. And most stay less than a year. I may not stay much longer myself. It isn't the money. It's…in Mumbai, or Bangalore, I would mostly treat patients who wouldn't sicken and die no matter what I did."
    Danielle looks at the children who surround them, some of them smiling and excited, others shy and downcast, all of them fascinated by today's exotic visitors.
    "Come," Laurent says, taking her arm. "Our limousine is almost ready."
* * *
    Four hours later, Laurent and Danielle enter the city of Hospet on the back of the bullock cart, hidden beneath bales of hay piled upon layers of jute cloth. The jute feels like sandpaper, the cart is made of hard many-splintered wood, and the road is as warty as a toad's back; her bruised stomach aches as if aflame; but as she lies on the cart, squeezing Laurent's hand in hers, Danielle's mind is occupied not by pain and discomfort and exhaustion, but by two other, sharply contrasting things. The sheer exhilaration of still being alive, and the bright, hopeful eyes of the wretched village's misshapen children.
    Hospet is a busy, modern Indian city, and when they emerge from cover, in an alley near the open market, the profusion of noises, smells, colours and people is almost overwhelming, hallucinatory in its intensity, after the isolation of the last two days. Stalls heaped with mangos, coconuts, papayas, bananas, goat carcasses hanging in the air as small boys use rags to wave flies off them; machine-gun haggling from all around the dense crowd of women in bright saris, moustached men in dark slacks and pale shirts, and the odd Westerner in stained cargo pants. At the edge of the market, autorickshaw drivers shout at one another for some perceived slight, revealing teeth stained red by betel nut, as chauffeurs relax behind them in bulbous Ambassador cars.
    "You said you had your wallet," Laurent says. "Is there any money in it?"
    "Yes." Danielle checks. "Almost five hundred rupees."
    "Please give fifty to our driver."
    Danielle passes fifty rupees, about one U.S. dollar, to the man. He takes it with the same lack of emotion with which he agreed to help them escape. He and Laurent exchange
namastes
, and Laurent leads Danielle into the market. The mingling smells of food make her mouth water and her stomach cramp with hunger.
    "They will be looking for us," he says. "We must take the first train to Bangalore. We will be safer there."
    "Do I have enough money?"
    "For third class. It won't be comfortable."
    They eat street food in the market,
chapatis
and
aloo parathi
and
chai
, ten rupees per person, the finest meal Danielle has ever eaten. They then buy T-shirts to wear, fifteen more rupees apiece. A nervous twenty minutes pass at Hospet Junction railway station. There are a few white backpackers, but Laurent and Danielle stand out, especially he, barefoot and bruised, his left eye swollen shut, easy for his captors to find. But nobody approaches them.
   Daytime third class is worse than Danielle imagined. All the seats are taken, and the overflowing throng of fellow-passengers presses against her on all sides, forcing her to stand in various aching, uncomfortable poses. Vendors selling coconuts,
chai
, and deep-fried
pakoras
somehow pass through what seems like a solid mass of humanity, holding vats of boiling water above their heads as they jostle and elbow their way through, but somehow, miraculously, disaster is perpetually averted. Even after Danielle manages to garner enough personal space to sit crosslegged, a privilege she knows she is only accorded because she is white, the eight-hour journey seems to stretch into forever.
   But eventually, late at night, they reach Bangalore, once India's Garden City, now its modern high-tech hub, the most Westernized city in the country. Danielle has never been so grateful to arrive anywhere. She is also so tired she feels almost drugged. So is Laurent, she can see it in his glazed eyes. It feels very strange, and very draining, to have escaped desperate peril, then travelled from a fourteenth century village to a twenty-first century metropolis, all in one day.
   They leave the train and pass through the main hall, where, in typical Indian style, workers are prying up what seem like perfectly serviceable stone tiles in the train station's main entrance hall and replacing them with new ones, rather than working on any of the ten million sites in Bangalore that actually need repair. It isn't until they are outside that she realizes she has no idea where to go. She hasn't been in Bangalore since quitting Infosys four months ago. There were a few people at work she might be able to stay with, in an emergency, but she doesn't have their phone numbers, only email addresses.