That Savage Water (12 page)

Water bucket back to Alexis' room, her meager body curled beneath the mosquito net, condensation slinking down the sides of a water bottle into rings. From the doorway, smell of sick, stale heat of a dark room at noon.Women from the market outside sold all the goods from their tables and now load empty baskets onto carts attached to donkeys, morning earnings tucked away safely in the blouses of their saris. Over a billion scrounging daily while a humid breeze creeps along a dirty, paint-chipped windowpane down to the sweat line where it releases its coolness.

Cam? – Alexis' dry-throated murmur – Can you get my sheet? It slipped off the end of the bed.

Yeah. Filled your bucket too.

I haven't felt this horrible since I left to come here. It was a mistake to trust that sadhu.

Ari and I are fine, though. It couldn't have been him. Must have picked up something else.

No. That's not how these places are. He was there to steal our money and you and Ari walked me right into it. You've always kidded yourself that way. Especially with Ari. But that's how we survive, I guess. That's how we get away with standing in the middle of this huge pile of shit thinking we're completely safe when we're not. No one is and that's the goddamned rule.

Sikh man passes the open door, glancing with turbaned head into the room. Pauses with bucket then continues down the hallway.

Ask him if he has a cigarette.

I'll come back later to check on you.

Ask him for a cigarette, Cam. I'll share the smoke with you.

Do you want food?

Oh, just fuck off then.

Shutting the door, fresh breeze of the hallway. But her face, clamped teeth of devastation like a bear trap. Can't say what I would do in similar circumstance, surviving your suicide and your own father finding you in a bathtub of blood, but would certainly drop the floor out from under you – that damned eternal precipice, wide eyes, teeth tongue teeth, rabid frothing lips. Can't say what I'd do or who I'd blame. Alexis telling Ari and I the whole story at the guesthouse in Varca, me thinking –
That's fine, we all travel for different reasons
– Isn't always with obvious purpose but everyone comes to India for one reason or another perspective. Maybe just to jump the fissure and for God's sake, what's wrong with fleeing if it saves you?

Ari, glancing at the clock on the inside wall, says – The train doesn't leave for another four hours. You could change your mind. I want to give you that option.

Say – That's fine. But I don't want to leave Alexis alone with all that to deal with.

There you go, being cautious again, Cam. I hate to think what'll happen if you don't start saying fuck it. The deep end is shallower than you think. But hey, that's your decision to make.

Dark eyelashes, hint of Spaniard slouched in his plastic chair looking over his bronzed shoulder towards the railing. That envious leanness to his movements, like a man being trained to fight or jump hurdles. Tough gristle of sinew snagged between dogs' teeth, thigh bone clamped in salivating jaws.

In Varca: Alexis, Ari and I in the guesthouse restaurant overlooking the beach. Three beers sweat their rings onto the plastic tablecloth, TV in the corner of the ceiling reporting a family of Christian missionaries burned alive in their car by Hindus in the eastern state of Orissa. Motive cited as forcefully trying to convert the poor. Quick smack over the sucking fuselage of a horse fly. Note: Desire to eradicate our annoyances, dreams of peace without the bother, cremation fires licking through the tough-skinned corpses of obstinacy. How a handkerchief over the nose easily blocks the acrid smoke of burning rubber, burning flesh.

Ari looks away – So simple just to demolish your misery, isn't it? Just put your neck through the noose and pull tight.

Or crash the car, he means, swallow pills, aim the barrel, slice the skin.

Alexis, wide-eyed, says – I'd dare you to try. Takes more guts than you've got – then pulls up the sleeves of her cotton shirt revealing without warning the still-red intersections on her wrists, as if to say
don't underestimate the balls it takes to end it.

Ari saying – Now, that's what I'd have done. Nothing like tramping through India to help you forget your own misery – But Alexis with that look of wanting to
say shut up, you can't possibly know anything about it
and Ari and I wondering why or how or if anyone knew she was here or if she ought to be. Said she left Toronto a day out of hospital, flew into Delhi, hitchhiked with two Australians to Agra, Kanpur, Varanasi, but said the food sat strangely in her stomach and, besides, she didn't like the feeling north Indian men gave her. Dirty auburn hair matted back in salted dreads, angular face with sly nose, cigarette dangling from lips as she bends to rip loose the threads unravelling her skirt. Then wondering what torrent of desperation had carried her to the brink then pooled there as she surveyed her dismal hellscape then swept her over from behind. And why, as she was falling, didn't her arms suddenly flail and grab hold of a tree root, crumbling overhang and wrists trailing blood down to her elbows, not pulling with last strength back over the ledge?

I don't know what possessed her – Ari says as the rickshaw weaves through dusty traffic from Panaji out to Maruti temple, the driver chewing betel nut, red saliva filling the sacks of his cheeks then spouting from his mouth a thick splatter onto hot pavement – I'm sorry, Cam, but I just don't understand it. What drives a person to that?

Probably wanted to break free of her container – then thinking why all this to enclose us in the first place? Why so many walls and edges, damned precipice you either fall over or turn back at?

Then him looking at me, long with deep, sunned face, unshaven black scruff of the subcontinent traveller – Cam, I don't live by those rules. You see the way the men hold hands here? We'd think little or nothing about such preferences if our society simply ignored them. You're too damn careful. I hate to think where that prevents you from going.

Rickshaw halts by the base of the hill. Sun hits the dry stone in full glare and blaze, earth strewn with yellow boulders, mix of shrubs, clump grasses, heat and distant knock of cowbells. Two boys crouch in the ditch and catch crickets by hand, hold them up to their noses, then release them back into grass. Maruti temple perched high on the hilltop with a granite trail winding upward and behind, a lone sadhu cross-legged beneath an overhang. Climbing in the noontime heat, wondering about Alexis and how many of us stare out over the rims of escarpments onto weaving river valleys below, haze of smoke, exhaust, precarious footholds, whatever it is that keeps us from vaulting over.

Ari stops beside a boulder, looks at me, then drinks from the water bottle. Beads of sweat on his upper lip collide with the plastic opening, rhythmic gulps of his Adam's apple, glint of his saliva as he passes the bottle to me.

I say – I want to get to the top before long. Let's not lose momentum or there'll be no place to go when the sun is down.

Late afternoon light filtered dark through closed curtains. Mosquito net pulled to one side of the bed, Alexis sprawled, bottom sheet tangled around her feet like a collapsed shadow, revealing the dirty mattress.

Cam? – pale voice from the pillow – Cam, I feel so horrible. I shouldn't have come here. I brought all my miserable shit with me, just clung to everything, Christ. Did you bring a cig?

No.

Has Ari left?

Not until evening. His train leaves at six, I could tell him to come say goodbye, he's only up on the roof.

Don't do that – then the gentle hush of footsteps in the hallway, the Sikh on his way to the water tap – Has Ari said anything to you?

About Manobhava? He's convinced it's what he's supposed to do. He's asked me to go with him but I didn't think you could manage…

Not about that – Alexis pauses under the distant rumble of an army truck, bringing hand to her forehead, wipes sweat, eyes half-hidden behind fissured wrists – I slept with him, Cam. I didn't know if I should tell you.

Crack.

Instant in mid-air when all four appendages thrash at sky, cantilevered cliff side pulls away, neck muscles taught with impending skull smash. Ten seconds of free fall, that mountain range rising from haze, heat of the rain-starved plains and city exhaust smogging the distance all the way from Panaji to Pune, Mumbai, Silvassa, Ahmadabad, Jaipur, Delhi, then north to the Himalayas, the vagrant borders of Kashmir.

When? – I ask.

The night we all first met in Varca. I went to his room when you left and he told me to come in. He must've felt sorry for me, I don't know. I shouldn't have told you but I thought it's better you know. You don't hide that sort of thing from a friend.

Windowsill vibrates the dead carriage of a horse fly, brittle paint chips, dust-drift, army truck emptied of onions pulls away into the swell of Panaji.

You think you have a right to be upset, Cam?

I'm not upset…

Because it's times like this… – she says – when you're the loneliest, when you've exhausted all your other options…that nothing at all really feels like the better option. Goddammit, I shouldn't have come here. I know that now. There were a million things I could have done but I came thinking somehow the heat and the mess would distract me. And now being alone in this room for hours and hours…as bad as it was before, this is worse. I know he means something to you, Cam, but he felt sorry for me, I'm sure that's why he did it. It meant something to me too, just to have that body. And it means something that I can tell you…

I'll come back to check on you. I'll tell Ari you're feeling better. He'd be happy to know that.

Jesus, Cam. I just thought I should tell you before he left. Bring me some water when you come back. And for Christ's sake, find me a cigarette.

Condensation maps highways down the plastic bottle, Ari lifting his shirt, wiping forehead sweat. His taught abdomen, a line of black hair from his navel until waistband. Behind his head in a breezeless sky, two black pinpoints circling, their hawk-eyes spotting field mice. Ari says – We'll be back before it's dark. Not to worry – then put my lips to the mouth of the bottle, wet of his saliva, that constant sun and the feeling that sooner or later all of our subterrains eventually bubble to the surface, and why not here in India where it's easy to get lost and change forms? Hand the bottle back and watch him drink a second time –
There
.

An hour of climbing later, arriving at Maruti temple with a view stretching out over the boiling plains, the sprawled smudge of Panaji then the whole vast linear ocean in the distance, all those hidden troughs and ridges that tower beneath the water in submerged marine continents. Us on the stone railing that perimeters the temple, legs dangling above scrub weeds, a child tapping our shoulders, holding marigold garlands with one hand, and the bells from the temple in the background. Priest wakes the monkey god Maruti from his sleep and gathers handfuls of herbs from the glacial streams that spill from inside icy Himalayan crests, faithful devotee of Rama, kind simian of loyalty and thunderbolt. Boy with marigolds lingers behind the shade line, shadow from the roof cutting across his bare feet, brilliant loops of tangerine over his arms, then turning away, ducks inside the temple bordered by tall grass. Ari looks at me, smiles, moves his knee until it rests against mine.

Says – What little we need, don't you think, Cam? Isn't this what it all boils down to? Just two simple creatures, happy in their circumstances, contented apes with their arms around each other, surveying the jungle?

How you put things – I say – makes me think there's something meaningful under all this mess. I'm glad you brought that water bottle. It's difficult to think ahead sometimes. I don't mean you can never not plan for things. But during the day, with the heat…

Come to Jaipur with me… – then his quick kiss on my cheek, soft as bread mellowed in milk at the bottom of a bowl. Toes slip over the threshold, swift skid down the slope into scrubland, pebbles ricochet off fibrous plant stems, avalanche of crumbling dirt, torn roots and foliage – Let's go to Manobhava, Cam. Vanish together.

Together. Like a split shadow retracting into a common core, snake tongue moist with information coiling back into scaly mouth, glazed eyeballs, dragging tail with rattle: A smooth, vulnerable belly.

Then leaving Alexis' room with the slick crash of everything finally shuddering into position, shards of venomous metal lodged in the pink esophageal tunnel, palm trunk rubbed raw scabbing over with thicker bark. That aching chain and leg iron, that motorcycle roar like suddenly flying over the handlebars into a wire fence strung with barbs. Peel away, quivering wedges of flesh left dangling. Short pause before blood, urge to vomit, then choke, then sob.

You are taking such good care of your wife – Sikh man in the hallway, grey beard tumbling over his face like the waters of a river rapid. Eyes I'd normally avoid but now feel like a deep well, brimmed with salve and calm.

No – and then – I don't even know her really. I filled her bucket, that's all. She can take care of herself. I'm leaving tonight…

May I ask how you enjoyed Goa? Beach parties are so popular with the tourists. Did you come for beach parties?

No.

If you came to see a guru, you should really go to Jaipur. Jaipur is most famous for its gurus, you see.

I didn't come for that either.

Smile curls beneath his beard – Tourists only come to India for two things, either parties or gurus. Am I right? But then I am something of a tourist myself. I am from Kashmir, north of the Punjab. I've come to Goa on business as a seller of pharmaceuticals. Have you ever been to Kashmir? – Thick fingers comb, gather wisps at the base of his turban, twist and tuck back inside – It is the most volatile and beautiful place in the whole country. Our borders change constantly so the Punjab people are scattered everywhere throughout India. Such a phenomenon, don't you think? How people place themselves in this world?