My Secret History (59 page)

“Why didn’t you put the meter on?”

She had to repeat this.

The driver said, “Meter broken, mahdhoom.”

“I’ll bet it is!”

I didn’t intervene. I had been told at the airport that the standard fare was 120 rupees, and I knew that Eden would be calmer at the hotel, reassured by the style of the place, its look of a mughal stage-set—marble floors, and flowers, vases of peacock’s feathers, and chairs like thrones; the fountain in the lobby, the men in gold turbans and uniforms waiting anxiously to be flunkies.

And that was how it was, and it had its effect. When she was
calmer Eden was more compassionate, but in the queenly way of a prosperous person in a poor country.

“Don’t you wish you could take a couple of these little kids home with you?” she said as we were walking through the Red Fort the next day.

“They seem pretty happy here,” I said.

The children were scampering among the stalls and shops.

“Think of all the things you could do for them,” she said. “I’d like to gather up that little girl and spirit her away.”

She made it sound like an abduction.

“Would you be doing that for your sake or for hers?”

Eden became formal and ungainly when she was angry. In a deliberate and wooden way she turned away from me, stumbling slightly.

“I keep forgetting you’ve got a child,” she said. She was still walking with a ceremonial step, as though in a procession. She was still angry, her voice became poisonous when she added, “And a wife.”

“Eden, relax. It’s just that these children are happy as they are.”

“Are they happy? I wouldn’t know. I don’t have any children.”

“And this is
Hathi Pol
,” the guide was saying. “This is place where elephant can enter Red Fort, carrying
howdah
on back. Sometime being clad in silk and jewels.”

Big ragged crows perched on the battlements of russet stucco, cawing at us as we tottered on the uneven cobblestones. We visited the Moti Mahal and the Throne Room and the Marble Pavilion.

“That is
ghat
where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated,” the guide said, pointing over the parapet and beyond the wall to the memorial on the banks of the Jumna River.

“I feel dizzy,” Eden said, sagging slightly. “I must get back to the hotel.”

“Memsahib is poorly?”

“Yes. Memsahib is poorly,” I said, thinking how anywhere else in the world the word was absurd, but here
memsahib
suited her perfectly.

Later, by the pool, she said, “What bothers me is that everyone seems to be reaching out and nagging—beggars, guides, taxi drivers, hustlers, people selling postcards and souvenirs.
Even the birds—the sparrows and starlings and those horrible crows. They’re all pestering.” She sipped her tepid fruit juice and said, “God, I wish I had a real drink. We should have bought some duty-free booze.”

My friend Indoo met us at the hotel the next day. He was a journalist who had become a travel agent and publicist. He liked the glamour of travel, and dealing with foreigners—finding them always jet-lagged and compliant—suited his bossy nature. But he was, like many other Indian men I had known doing non-Indian jobs, more a big nervous boy, whose tetchiness made him a taskmaster. He told me frankly that he was in the business because he got cut-price tickets and was able to fly all over the world.

“It is a pleasure meeting such an attractive woman,” he said to Eden, and I knew that her height—she was a foot taller than him—unnerved him. And his charm had become more mechanical with each passing year.

I was surprised by the effect it had on Eden. She clearly enjoyed hearing this formula being repeated to her. I was embarrassed both by the flattery and by her reaction.

“I am at your service,” Indoo said, seeing instantly that she was susceptible. “I can see that you will want to be shown something very special of India.”

She was beaming—she was the
memsahib
, he the
chowkidar
, her servant.

“One of its many fascinating secrets,” he said, and glanced at me with a wan smile, perhaps hoping that I would not interrupt or mock him.

Eden said, “You’re very kind. But I think I’ve done all the sight-seeing I want to.”

She had told me that morning that she did not want to see Humayun’s Tomb, or the mosque in Old Delhi, or the lovely tower on the outskirts of the city, called the Qutub Minar. So we had taken a taxi and made a round of the antiques shops. In the course of browsing and buying she had learned some new words that she had already begun to use—
company paintings, mughal, Rajasthani
. She was full of questions. Three times that morning she asked shopkeepers what a particular stone object happened to be, and each of the men wagged his head and gave her the
same answer:
It is a lingam, madam
. By lunchtime she had bought some painted wallhangings (“company period”), a carved chest (“mughal motifs”) and some brightly woven cloth (“Rajasthani”). I had been on the verge of complaining about all this tedious shopping when she bought me a brass inkstand and kissed me—much to the delight of that shopkeeper.

Indoo said, “She is right. Why look at ruins? It is all tourists and disfigurements. Adventure tours are the big thing now. Thrilling, I tell you. Special—we go tomorrow.” He showed his teeth. “Adventure tour.”

“Do you want to, Andy?” Eden said. “It’s up to you.”

“I’d like to try,” I said. “What are we in for?”

Indoo, being very positive, semaphored with his head. He said, “White-water rafting on the Ganges. Bring your bathing costume. I shall provide a hamper and all other requisites.”

We left Delhi by car at four-thirty the next morning, Indoo sitting in front with the Sikh driver, Eden and I in the back. We slept on the way, jogging along in the dark, and it was sunny when we woke up at Roorkee—Indoo wanted to show us the canal and the carved lions. We stopped for tea and bananas, and then drove on—the Sikh honking incessantly at cyclists and bullock carts.

“This is a holy city,” Indoo said at Hardwar, and when the Sikh hesitated, perhaps thinking that some sight-seeing was expected, Indoo said firmly, “Carry on.”

He pointed out Rishikesh (“The famous Beatles visited here”) and we drove on. The road began to rise and curve above the river, but after a few miles the Sikh turned sharply right and we traveled down a narrow track to the riverside.

“This is the camp.”

There, among thin-leaved trees and twittering birds, was a pair of stone buildings. Two sturdy Indians wearing shorts and T-shirts sat with their backs against the warm stone, drinking tea in the sunshine. Just beyond them was the Ganges, thirty yards wide and frothing over smooth brown boulders. This alone was a surprise: I had always thought of it as a flat silent river, mud-colored and turgid. This was more like a mountain stream.

The two Indians scrambled to their feet when they saw us. Indoo shouted to them in Hindi and they hurried into one of the buildings. Ten minutes later they served us a late breakfast of
fruit and a burned oily omelet. Eden made the motions of eating but did not eat.

The Indians were caretakers, they were cooks, they were drivers and boatmen. While we ate they tidied the gear, sorted the equipment and began inflating the raft.

Eden said, “This is fantastic. I can’t believe I’m here. I feel excited, like a little girl on her first expedition.” She clutched my arm and said in a squeaky voice, “I’m so frightened!”

“If you don’t want to come with us you can stay here,” Indoo said. “We have all necessary facilities.”

“I’m going with you,” Eden said in a different and intimidating voice, as though her courage had been impugned. “Do you think I’d let you leave me behind?”

Indoo was rattled by the severity of her reply. He turned to me and said, “It’s so good to see you, Andrew!”

We strapped the raft to the car roof and drove along a bumpy road to a point several miles upriver, where there was an unoccupied villa. We parked in the grounds of this big empty place and changed into our bathing suits in its musty carriage house. Here the river was wider than at the camp, and not so turbulent, but Indoo said there was white water just around the bend, where there was a dome-shaped stony hill.

We walked to the rocky riverbank and in bright sunshine put on our life jackets.

“There’s something about putting on a lot of uncomfortable equipment that makes me nervous,” Eden said, buckling the straps.

“And crash helmet and gloves,” Indoo said.

“Oh, Jesus. See what I mean?”

Indoo stood at the water’s edge and showed us how to paddle—the techniques of slowing down, and turning, and speeding when it was necessary to power the raft out of a hole in the rapids.

“Why don’t we practice in the raft?” Eden said, and it was clear that she felt foolish standing on dry land flipping her paddle back and forth, attempting the correct strokes.

“We cannot,” Indoo said. “When we are on the raft there will be no time. River will be flowing too fast. Remember, this is Ganga!”

“Mother Ganga,” one of the boatmen said eagerly.

“Oh, Jesus,” Eden said under her breath.

“You don’t have to come,” I said, speaking casually, so as not to make an issue of it.

But Eden was insistent. “I’m not staying behind,” she said, and to Indoo, “Show me that turning stroke again.”

“That is the spirit,” Indoo said.

Six of us knelt in the big rubber raft—Eden and I in the bulgy bow—and we pushed off from the bank. The raft seemed an ungainly thing, like a misshapen rubber tire or a beach toy, but in the first set of rapids I saw that it was a useful shape. Its sides were cushions—the best protection against the sharp rocks in the shallow rapids—and the whole raft lifted and flexed and squeezed itself through the turbulence, as Eden screamed. The rushing water drowned the sounds of her fear.

The Ganges here was not a sluggish silent thing. It was blue and loud and very cold, reminding me of the melting glacier that was its source in the foothills of the Himalayas.

When we got through the first white water, Indoo gasped with pleasure and said, “If you fall out, protect your face and swim for the bank if you can. Otherwise we’ll pick you up.”

“Now he tells us,” Eden said, and I knew from her bad temper that she was really scared.

In this quiet reach in the river, Indoo gave us instructions for the set of rapids up ahead. We were to use the draw stroke, and when we entered the boiling hole beneath the rock we were to paddle with all our might in order to propel the raft out of the whirlpool—otherwise we would be hammered down by the force of the water, and kept there.

“Beautiful,” Eden said in a toneless voice.

The rushing water was as loud as a cataract and had the same rhythm of a pounding engine. The Indians at the stern were howling to keep their spirits up. It was a shattering minute of cold water and loud noise and frantic paddling. I looked aside and saw Eden’s mouth open, and her drenched face and white teeth.

And then we were out of it: we surfaced in the warmth and silence of another river bend.

“I’m cold,” Eden said. “I’m exhausted.”

One of the Indians squawked in Hindi, and the other replied.

Indoo said, “They see something.”

There was a sandbank ahead with a loose pile of dark driftwood on it.

We paddled towards it, the men talking in their own language.

“What are they saying?” Eden asked.

“It is a body,” Indoo said, as the raft swept onto the sand, a few feet from the jumble of bones.

His way of saying it,
a bhodhee
, made it seem especially like a carcass. The thing was leathery and ill-assorted, like a smashed valise, which in a sense it was. Only the skull gave it away: its teeth and its yellowed dome were the human touch.

“Let’s move out,” Eden said. “I don’t want to look.” Her helmet was off, her hands over her face. “Just leave it.”

The two Indian boatmen were talking solemnly.

Indoo said, “They are saying we must bury it.”

“How far do we have to go down the river?” I said.

“A mile,” he said.

“Are there any more rapids?” Eden asked.

“It is rapids, rapids, rapids, from here to the camp.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Eden said.

Indoo looked soulfully at me and said, “An unburied body is a terrible thing.”

But Eden was looking downriver in a desperate way and saying, “If we don’t go now—”

“It is not a matter for discussion,” Indoo said. “We have no choice. And remember this is Mother Ganga.”

Indoo saw Eden glancing back at the boatmen, who were standing over the scattered bones and chanting.

“They are doing
puja
,” he said, and smiled to reassure her.

“And you’re just standing there,” Eden said to me. She sounded disgusted and victimized, but what had I done to her?

As we were talking we had stepped ashore and tethered the raft. Eden turned her back on us and walked quickly along the sandbank. When she had gone some distance and we no longer felt self-conscious from her disapproval we lifted the bones onto our paddles. The four of us moved slowly along the sand to the highwater mark, balancing the bones on the broad paddle blades. We used the paddles to dig a hole and we eased the skeleton in—the Indians murmuring
Ram! Ram! Ram!
in their
puja
—and we covered it all with the largest boulders we could find.

None of us said another word. It was as though we had known that dead person, and from the way we had found it we sensed that the person—woman or man—had died violently and alone. No rites had been observed, the corpse had not been burned, and until we had seen it on the sandbank it was just part of the trash on the river. It could have been Ong Khan; it could have been me.

It had been upsetting, but the exertion of carrying and digging calmed me, and the reverence of the others impressed me. They had gone to some inconvenience to bury the human remains and keep them safe from dogs and fish and carrion crows. In a world of ambiguity and cross-purposes this was indisputably a good deed. I liked it best for having been carried out in such a solemn and dutiful way in the full knowledge that there were no witnesses and that it would never have been recognized or acknowledged. We might have simply paddled past the carcass, but of course we couldn’t. I did not want to die as Ong Khan had.