On the way back, the old man was still in his place, looking out into the distance, unaware of the woman who had crumpled to the icy curb because of him, and Martin said, “You know, maybe he’s an avid birdwatcher.” Her chest was still tight, but she had smiled up at her husband, because even though it was winter and she didn’t think it was true, it might have been, and his ability to find an innocent pastime for that lost old man had made her happy.
She is out of bed and researching Willem Ackerman on her computer. He is a giant in the world of nature photography and photojournalism. Five books of his photographs have been published by Taschen, a sixth by Abrams, a seventh by Rizzoli. He has given lectures at universities throughout Europe and in America about photographing birds. Should she feel guilty that she is going to be camping with Willem, that she finds him very attractive, that she, who missed out on the years of being girlish, giddy, and flirtatious, was instead the intense young writer, is feeling those very things now, that she has not talked to Martin on the phone in weeks, that her emails to him have not moved into serious territory, remain well-crafted travelogue stories?
*
Joan is waiting outside of Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise at six two mornings later when Willem drives up in a bright orange jeep. The back of the jeep is piled high with equipment and rucksacks, but there is no assistant sitting in a seat.
“Jinpa’s girlfriend came for a visit, and Jinpa, throwing out all manner of apologies, begged me to let him sit out this trip.” This is what Joan learns at dawn.
“What could I do?” Willem says. “Love is love. Though I have met this girlfriend and I think Jinpa is in for a hard crash. She’s much more worldly than he is, not from Dharamshala. I doubt the two of them will last beyond this week. But until she cuts him down, at least he’ll have a good time.”
What should Joan make of Jinpa’s absence? Will she find herself rolling around with Willem in the dirt, zipped up together in a double sleeping bag? It is a very intriguing thought. When Willem starts the engine, she pulls closed the flimsy jeep door. What does it matter that she hasn’t reclaimed her life yet? She is still a brave woman, with courage, she is here in India, sitting next to a world-famous photographer she’s never heard of, but when Willem Ackerman turns the bright orange jeep around in front of Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise, she is ridiculously nervous.
The jeep barrels down the road, past the Dalai Lama’s complex, past the Namgyal Monastery, where Joan and Camille have made dozens of koras together. There goes Namgyal Monastery in the wing mirror on her side.
They fly past Kotwali Bazaar and Willem Ackerman is making pleasant conversation about the weather, telling Joan that, according to the weather reports, the late monsoon season is taking a breather. They will be lucky at the reserve.
“The formal name of the Pong Wetland is Maharana Pratap Sagar Sanctuary. Named after a patriot who lived in the sixteenth century,” he says.
“A patriot of what?” Joan asks, and Willem looks over at her and grins.
“I never thought to find out. But I can tell you when it was created in 1974, it swallowed up homes, communities, fertile fields, people who had lived there since the dawn of time. They were all resettled away from the lake, or in Rajasthan’s Thar Desert. Very tough on those affected. But it’s a really beautiful place.”
What has she gotten herself into, bouncing in a racing jeep with handsome Willem Ackerman, on a three-hour drive to some sanctuary to see birds?
She’s here now and she might as well see where it all ends up. “Tell me more,” she says, shifting in her seat to face him. And he does.
“Those are the Shivalik Hills, a primeval mountain range older than the Himalayas.” All she can see from this distance are tall brown plains, and she wonders if her eyesight is starting to go.
“The Shivaliks turn green when the rainy season really gets going. See out there? That’s the Dhauladhar range. The Kangra valley sits between the two. The Pong Wetland is just thirty kilometers from the foot of the Dhauladhar.”
When Willem’s geography lesson comes to an end, he presses a button and music mixes with the rushing wind. Shaking bangles and chanting falsetto voices—it sounds to Joan like an Indian pop tune stripped of its lyrics. Willem is quiet for the next couple of hours, intent on driving, and Joan thinks how nice it is to be in a car with a man who does not require the constant flow of conversation to signal that everything is all right.
*
Though her eyes are shut, Joan is not asleep when the jeep slows, then turns off the main road. She looks around, at the waterline far out in the distance, at the unpaved road that follows monsoon-carved bends. A pink stone building, six stories high, appears like an obelisk in the middle of nowhere. A balustrade encircles the roof. Large windows, like square spectacles attached to the stone, go from roof to ground.
Willem pulls the jeep up alongside the quirky building and cuts the engine. The sign at the front reads THE LODGE @ PONG. She laughs at how that @ sign spells futurity on the shore of a wetland of international ecological importance.
Willem looks up. “I know. Talk about confusing your guests. I’ve never figured out whether that’s actually the name of the hotel, or the owner’s attempt to advertise their Web site. When I’ve asked, no one seems to know.
“Listen,” he says. “Without Jinpa, I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable, so we won’t be camping out. I booked us rooms here. There’s a good restaurant on the roof, with a tremendous view of the reservoir. You can come with me while I work, as much or as little as you want. Or you can do anything at all that you desire.”
She is so pleased by the existence of the lodge, so pleased she will be sleeping in a bed, in her own room, with her own bathroom, she hopes, and not in a tent on the ground, having to pee behind trees. She is grateful that Willem Ackerman has made such arrangements, has let her know she can do as she pleases. She smiles at him and thinks maybe it’s time to try something completely different.
41
They have walked an hour out from the shoreline, across an arid plain dotted with shrines and temples left intact when the people were relocated and the land was flooded. Once the monsoon season arrives in earnest, the reservoir will fill up and submerge even these ancient structures, turn everything into an Indian Atlantis.
The lake, all greens, browns, and blues, is still a serious walk from where they are and it is busy there, over the water, where birds are congregating and socializing, the sun pebbled by shadows when the birds streak across the sky. She watches them floating on eddies of air, then diving, their watery world all flapping wings and screeches.
“Do you prefer them?”
Willem nods, and Joan likes that he understands her question.
“Because of the purity: the specifics of their life-spans, their migratory passages, their needs so basic, just sustenance and shelter.”