“Or …?”
“Or the Hindu extremists — say, Sri Bhargava, James Bond, for instance. The Hindutva fanatic.”
So far extremists on both sides have been banging away at each other while foreigners look on complacently. Maybe David violated this “convention of indifference.” Maybe.
“I have to get to Kashmir and retrace his steps,” said Max, “see what he saw, pick up his trail in Srinagar at the Hotel Mount View.”
Juliette no longer knew what to think.
“Be careful,” she said.
The porter at the Liverpool Guest House seemed to be as sleepy in the day as at night. Leaning over a greasy samosa that stained his receipts, he held the room key out to Max without even looking at him. On the terrace, travellers in pyjamas drifted to and fro in slow motion like lily pads floating lazily on a swamp. Not quite the same ones as the day before, but popped out of the same mould. Max was about to slide the key into the lock when he noticed something to his right, or rather someone. An Indian was looking over the message board where the hippies exchanged tips and news or exhibited their poetic talents. Discouraging to read.
Something about this Indian didn’t fit. He wasn’t an employee. Max was sure of that.
Despite his typically Indian look — shiny pants and belted shirt — he was peering hard as though searching for a jalebi recipe or a travelling companion to Annapurna, but what caught Max’s eye was the fact that he was too normal. That stood out. Something was definitely off.
Instead of going in, Max pretended to have forgotten something in the lobby. The porter had finished his samosa and was perusing the register with the energy of one halfway between life and death. At the bottom of the stairs, however, just in front of the door to the street, was another Indian, definitely not a beggar or a shoeshine boy, but dressed the same as the other and with the same fake debonair attitude. This one had something else going on that Max would have recognized anywhere, anytime … he was a cop, just like the terrace guy. There were probably two more already in his room with guns drawn.
Max was just able to slip past the counter without being seen and dive for the stairway on his left. It led to the roof. Being painfully silent, he climbed the stairs one by one till he faced a door. He pushed it open and was blinded by the sun. After shielding his eyes, he saw five more of them in khaki uniform, and, as he turned to go back down, he found himself face to face with the plainclothes cop from the street. That was it. The only possible way out was to bluff.
“Look, sahibji, you’re making a serious mistake. It isn’t what you think.” Then lightning forked through his head and everything went black. Another blow sent him to the floor. The cop he hadn’t seen coming gave him a massive blow without even taking a wind-up. Max tasted blood and tried to protect his face with his arm, but it didn’t help. It was raining hammer blows non-stop.
Lying on the terrace floor, Max didn’t even have the strength to moan. The beating had happened without a word being spoken, almost like a ritual. He was barely conscious. He saw boots approaching, probably a havaldar, his footsteps echoing on the tiles as though his head were jammed inside a church bell. He waited for the boot to finish him off, but the voice said, “Okay, the masquerade’s finished, O’Brien.”
25
Juliette and Vandana fell into each other’s arms and then set off for coffee and a chat, the way Juliette had done so often with David. Before leaving for India, they’d lived at the Somerset in the Glebe district, an apartment block swarming with Western members of Parliament when it was in session. The rest of the time, it housed wandering diplomats. A life that was reminiscent of, David liked to say, being “young” again. She was right. He would never get old.
“Mr. Bernatchez asked me to come with him,” Vandana explained, “For the conference …”
She had said too much, and regretted it. But Juliette smiled. “No, no, I understand. You don’t need to feel bad because you’re standing in for him. Anyhow, you’re better off here than there at the moment, aren’t you?”
Vandana’s face clouded over, and there was a long silence before she said, “The people running my country have gone completely crazy.”
They’re firing mortars all along the Line of Control, she explained, killing the usual innocent victims: a young woman and five civilians in Garkhal, thirty kilometres from Jammu. At Naugam, in southwestern Srinagar, an Islamist militant was killed by Indian soldiers. It was the same on the Pakistani side — civilians caught in the crossfire, and the media were mostly watching Kazakhstan in the former USSR, especially the city of Almaty, where the regional summit on Asian security was being held. Atal Vajpayee and Perez Musharraf were the stars right now, of course. They alone out of the sixteen heads of state could stop this war.
Talking international politics is her way to keep from crying about David, thought Juliette. Besides, she was glad to see her friend, whom she’d always liked. In Delhi, the young woman had been the first one to visit their home in Maharani Bagh and set Iqbal straight before he stepped too far out of place (“Domestics expect to be treated as such. Otherwise, they think we actually don’t respect them.”). Juliette had balked at that, coming from a background where equality was the rule, and she was finding it hard to adjust to a country where inequality was the basis of society. Vandana often guided the couple around the mohallas and government stores on the weekends. She was able to deflate some of the rug merchants’ usual self-assurance, and furniture salesmen used the division key on their calculators more often. David and Juliette had managed to save a lot of money because of her.
Later, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Juliette had relied on her to correct her Hindi pronunciation. Vandana was the first to tell them about the similarities and common roots between Hindi and French. Both of them were derived from the mythical Indo-European language, which in India had become Sanskrit, thence to the Mediterranean Basin and Greek, Latin, and so on … Two, seven, nine, ten. Do, saat, nau, das.
“Few oppose the war. For a peace march in New Delhi,” she explained, “four hundred people are nothing. And we’re in the homeland of Mahatma Gandhi!”
Major/great + soul (âme) = large soul.
Maha + Atma = Mahatma.
“Meanwhile, embassies lie empty now: Iran, Israel, South Korea …” There was no hiding Vandana’s disgust. “The leaders of the BJP really want to sock it to the Pakistanis.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Kathmandu?” Juliette asked.
That startled Vandana, though she was expecting it sooner or later. She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know. To protect David, I suppose, or rather myself. When I found out he’d lied, I was afraid.” Her eyes were moist as she looked up at Juliette. “I shouldn’t have done that, I know.”
Juliette took her hand for reassurance. No one dear to her heart should feel responsible for David’s death. “It wouldn’t have changed anything, Vandana, not a thing.” Then she said, “I’m pregnant. ‘A new universe created out of the ruins of the old,’ is how to see it, according to the Mahabharata.”
Vandana seemed happy, and she grabbed Juliette’s hand and squeezed it. Then, not able to bear it, she turned away. “They’ve arrested Max O’Brien. Bernatchez told me just after I landed.”
Yet again, the world collapsed around Juliette’s head.
26
The pain in his face, especially his nose, was excruciating. The cops had really done a number on him. He still had on the same clothes, and his shirt was stained brown with dried blood. Any glimpse of daylight blinded him. Max O’Brien turned his head just a few centimetres, and the effort it required was colossal. He could make out a white wall and a solid door. He thought