“Yes, darling, everything is retrieved,” says Vita, and their group is off. The big man pushes Vita’s wheelchair. Sunil pushes and pulls and hangs onto Vita’s bags. Joan trots behind, pulling her rolling suitcase by the red ribbon, as if it were a dog on a leash forced unhappily to run.
The customs line is filled with people pleated between snaking black ropes. Outside, the line continues, fanning out in all directions. With the big man leading, Vita Brodkey and Joan are whisked through customs without being questioned, or presenting their passports, or hearing the click-click of the entrance stamp marking their arrival in Delhi. Joan wishes her passport would contain evidence of her trip here, of her escape, but without the big man’s help, she might still be standing in that line several days from now.
Outside the main entrance, the air is heavy, humid, dirty, a yellow pall coating the scene. There are popcorn vendors, flower sellers, tandoori cooks, all those smells mixing together, along with the ripe aroma that hints of a zoo. Joan spies monkeys sitting in the sun, as if waiting for their ride, using the time to peel nuts.
Sunil marshals Vita’s bags. The big man thunders out a long string of words. Sustained honking moments later. And then a driver in a car throws the upper half of his body out of the window, one hand waving and waving, his toothy smile bright, as he inches the car forward in the dense traffic.
“Maim yaham hum,” the driver yells. “I’m here for you!”
Vita’s little hands are waving excitedly. “Namaste, namaste, Abhay!”
“Vita, do you know that man in the car?” Joan asks.
“Of course I do, darling. That is Abhay, the great-grandson of my parents’ chauffeur.”
The golden suitcases are stored in the trunk. The big man lifts Vita Brodkey out of the wheelchair, places her gently in the backseat, and carefully shuts the door. Joan had not expected him to be so kind, out here in the open, in the crazy Delhi airport traffic.
Vita leans out of the window. “Here, darling,” she calls to Joan. “Here is my card. Phone number and email. Call or write if you need me. You will be happy, I know it.”
Joan leans in through the window and hugs the twin points of Vita’s frail shoulders. When she steps back, the great-grandson of Vita Brodkey’s parents’ chauffeur twists around in his seat to kiss Vita’s hand. The car crawls forward and Vita and Abhay call out, “Namaste, namaste,” and Joan waves, until the big man says, “You’re next. So follow me and keep up.”
“Wait, please,” Joan says. When he begins marching away, she grabs the sleeve of his linen suit. “Please, a moment.”
Joan pokes her head through Vita’s window again. “You made this trip so much better than I thought it would be. Thank you.”
“Oh, darling, I know I did. You were a rough customer at first, but I believed you would come around. And wasn’t I right? You told me nothing about yourself, but I know what you want, what you need. It’s to be more like me, a woman following her heart. Like I said, call or write if you need me,” and Vita Brodkey squeezes Joan’s arm. “Last words of wisdom. Whoever you were as a child, she’s your future.”
“You!” the big man yells, as a sleek black car with diplomatic plates pulls up. “It will take an hour to get you to the train station. So let’s go. Chop, chop.”
In the diplomatic car, with her bags at her feet, the cacophonous sounds of Delhi disappear behind what must be bulletproof glass. When the driver leans on the horn, it is a distant honk, but he leans on that horn again and again, zigging and zagging each time the slightest space opens up. The streets are a messy jumble, filled with as many people as cars, and the driver uses a fast-slow combination through the traffic, jerking forward until he slams on the brakes. Joan loses count of the number of near collisions in just the first ten minutes.
An hour of this travel and Joan’s stomach is turning over, her skin slick with sweat, her eyes dry and glued wide. The train station appears, and the driver yanks the car this way and that, until he pulls up to the curb.
“Buy your ticket inside at the window, not on the train,” the big man says. He hands her a shiny business card. “For emergencies only.”
Joan is left on the curb, clutching the red ribbon on her suitcase, her carryall hitting her square in the back, the big man’s card in her palm. She looks down at the raised burgundy ink, at his very long name: Sadayavarman Bimbisara Sundara Pandyan, at his very long phone number: a string of digits nearly all zeroes. The information on the card explains nothing, but seems like proof, perhaps, of his exceptional importance. She turns the card over, another line of type in the raised burgundy ink: Premiere International Facilitator. She can’t imagine the range of duties that title might encompass. When she looks up from the card, the black car, its driver, and all-knowing passenger have disappeared into the wild stampede of cars and taxis and mopeds and bicycles, and people sauntering up and down the street, wildlife wandering about.
A long, multicontinental trip during which Joan expected to fall apart has instead made her more resolute. The gloom, the fear, the bone-breaking sadness, none of it has dissipated. But there is a muddling because of Vita Brodkey and her story, her pearls of wisdom, her insight regarding Joan’s future, and because of the big man who has delivered Joan to this next stage of her trip, leaving her with a brusque offer of emergency help. She does not feel quite as unmoored as she did when she first boarded the plane.
At the entrance to the Delhi train station, Joan sees the mob within, the madhouse that it is. There are men, young, middle-aged, and old, in black suits, or in typical Indian attire; teenage boys in low-slung jeans and oversized T-shirts, just like the kids in quiet Rhome, a town that is not even a suburb, is, in all respects, beyond anything urban; older women in saris; younger women in business attire. At the indecisive border between the street and the station, she wraps the red ribbon around her wrist, feels her suitcase nipping at her heels, and charges into the remarkable human mass. Rocked and swayed by the press of rushing bodies, she wonders if the touch of so many will rub away her former identity, leave her earlier self exposed, shiny and new.
32
The Delhi train station has signs that demand NO SPITTING, and other signs that state WI-FI AVAILABLE, and cows wandering through, stopping every so often to look around, as if confused about where to meet their fellow travelers. Joan’s purchase of a ticket for the overnight train to Chakki Bank involves loud admonishments that she failed to book a berth in advance, and then a poker spread of her options: an AC Chair car, an AC1 or AC2 sleeper.