Thirty-six hours that are his own, that he must kill.
His mood clouds over.
What will he do, visit old friends?
He sits on the bed and waits. He thinks about locking up and leaving.
But are they even his friends?
He sits on the edge of the bed, eyes closed, back straight, palms on his thighs once again.
Thinking.
Picturing himself driving up.
He used to play it over, the scene. He could visualize it so well.
He’d turn up in a smart black SUV, in his uniform, but with the buttons open at the neck, to prove he was off duty. He’d have an easy manner about him, an enigmatic smile that would break into a laugh the second they recognized him. Someone would hug him and feel the bulge of his gun and they’d be in awe, they’d ask to see it. He’d take it out and remove the clip, check the chamber, pass it over. He’d laugh about the boy he used to be, reminisce about the old days, tell stories of Delhi, of how the big people live. He’d show that he was a man now, a man of the world. And they’d say: you made it, brother.
That’s how he imagined it.
But what stories would he have to tell of himself?
What stories can he tell when he barely knows how to speak?
There. He sees it once again: the Tempo, the cage, his mother and sister watching as he’s driven away. The other boys packed in with him in the night, his scared and frightened little self, receding from his wretched home, disappearing into the great blue mountains.
He sees it again: his father’s half-burned corpse.
It’s getting harder and harder to breathe.
* * *
—
At midday he removes his gun and holster and enters the villa proper and begins to tidy, making sure the kitchen is spotless and that Sunny’s clothes are in order. He finds himself standing in the middle of the living room in dim light, thinking nothing with nowhere to go. He walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge, sees the beer and wine lined up in the door, the leftover food Sunny didn’t touch. He closes it again. He’s not even hungry. He doesn’t drink. He has nothing to do.
* * *
—
But in the early evening as the sun is sinking into the ocean, he walks through the villa garden, out the white picket gate, down to the private beach. There are a few sun loungers with foreigners sipping drinks, a lifeguard in a tower, two security guards patrolling the stretch, chasing off stray dogs or beach vendors, the white sand the preserve of the rich.
He is still wearing his uniform, sweating lightly into his undershirt beneath. He unbuttons the top few buttons, rubs the damp skin around his neck, walks near the shoreline. He has the overwhelming urge to immerse himself. He takes off his shoes and socks, removes his suit jacket, and places it next to his neatly lined-up shoes. He walks toward the sea, his feet squeezing the moisture from the wet sand. At the first wave he closes his eyes and stops. Then starts to walk in.
He wades in slowly, with his eyes closed and a look of reverence on his face. All the way up to his waist.
Stands in the crashing waves, opens his eyes, and takes in the setting sun.
“Hey,” a voice calls out. “Hey.”
He looks round—the security guards are standing behind him on the shore.
“You’re not allowed in there.”
Ajay looks between them before returning his attention to the ocean.
“You’re not allowed here. The beach is for guests only.”
He holds out a few seconds more, but his rapture is already ended. He turns and wades back to the beach, passes between the two guards, picks up his jacket, his shoes and socks, and returns to the villa.
15.
He never sees Neda again in Goa. Sunny drops her off at the airport before he returns. Then the two men fly back to Delhi. Sunny seems calmer, resolved. A few days later, he sits on the sofa with his laptop, looking through some architectural designs, when Ajay brings him coffee.
“Here.”
Sunny removes a piece of notepaper from his notepad and holds it out.
“Sir?”
“This is the place your mother and sister live.”
Ajay unfolds the paper and stares at it.
“You can thank my uncle,” Sunny says. “Vicky found her.”
He’s speechless, lost for words.
“You have four days,” Sunny says. “After that, I need you. After that, everything is going to change.”
AJAY II
1.
Ajay travels from Delhi to Lucknow by train and from Lucknow he takes another train to Gorakhpur and from there he takes a local bus. It all comes back to him now. All that dust and all that smoke, the smell of burning plastic in all those towns, the buffalo herds and fields of mustard and corn and wheat and cane, all that engine oil dripping into the ground, mixed with the garbage and rotting vegetables. And the phantoms too. Arms cut off, throats slit, heads caved in. Corpses thrown into wells. The feces of men. Men on fire. But he has risen. Transcended. He sits by each passing mile a man remade, smuggling into his past, the past inside the present, with his safari suit and his handsome face, his lean body, his gun pressed against his ribs. And the money. Oh, the money. He is carrying three lakhs of rupees in the duffel bag at his feet, pristine, wrapped in brown paper, in turn wrapped in cloth. Three lakhs for his mother, all the wages in the world, next to a spare box of ammunition and a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
She will see him now, and all will be well. They will see him. His mother and his sister. And what else? His mother was pregnant as he left his old life, but he has lost this fact, just as he has lost the memory of pain. What will they say? In truth he has not considered what he will find when he finds home. He hasn’t imagined anything save the broad lines—for himself he keeps it simple: they are alive, they exist. I exist. I am going home. I am returning just as I said I would, as was foretold. I am returning as a big man, a man of means, a success. Even as he imagines this homecoming, a dark part of him knows it is a lie.
The bus he is traveling in breaks down in the evening.
The passengers sit groaning in their sleep, wrapped in shawls, waiting for something to change. Nothing changes. Soon everyone is told to climb off. Most sit on the roadside, huddled against the creeping cold. Some who know the way begin to walk.
He climbs out with his bag and begins to walk too, hails a truck.
* * *
—
He sits in the cab beside the driver, careering into the night. They have been going an hour now, barely sharing ten words. He is studying the road ahead by the sweep of the lights. He begins, so he thinks, to recognize landmarks, monuments to the embedded memories of exodus.
The truck driver, a stout, bearded man in his fifties, chain-smoking beedis, studies the reverence in the boy’s face.
“Where are you from?” he asks.
“Delhi,” Ajay says.
Time passes.
“But you know these roads.”
Ajay doesn’t reply.
“What do you do?”
“Kaam.” Work.