This was not the river’s failing, of course, but his own. Along the ghats, the steps down to the river, was a life he could not understand. Strange symbols, strange movements. A woman, a sari draped over her head like a shawl, circled a large ficus tree with a piece of red string, tied it off, and smeared turmeric onto the trunk. These things had meaning — the number of times she walked around the tree, the color of the string, the amount of turmeric in her hand. If he could understand those meanings, then maybe he could understand his own.
A cluster of children followed him, both boys and girls, each offering something: guided tour, boat ride, silk, chai, flowers. One made a cigarette gesture: You want kush? Ted pretended to hear none of it, and when one child tired, disappearing into the crowds along the ghats, another took her place. Ted watched their fists suspiciously.
Knee-deep in the river, two women washed laundry. They stood before tilted slabs of rock and twisted the cloth until it was a thick rope. With a single movement, they raised the cloth above their heads and slapped it against the rock. Their smacks echoed in the air. An explosion of soap, a corona of suds. A teenage girl spread them to dry, and like that, the stone steps took on color, patches of lavender, blue, ocher. Bedsheets, school uniforms.
A boy pulled his shirttail. “Mister, where you from?” When Ted didn’t answer, he tugged again. “Mister. Hey.”
Teenage boys bobbed in the water like seals. This boy should have been with them, stripped to his underwear, diving in. Around him: snorting water buffaloes, tourists and their endlessly clicking cameras, the chirp of mynah birds on the water buffaloes’ backs, the scamper of golden monkeys along the tops of walls. Near the bank, a man rose from the water, flapping his arms to frighten a stray dog nosing at his robes. His white beard dripped onto his chest, and once out of the river, he rooted in his clothes until he found something for the dog to eat.
The boy should have been in this cacophony of joy. Not bothering Ted. “Parlez-vous Français?” the boy asked. “Habla Español?” The faster Ted walked, the faster he pursued. Smoke rose up ahead. A burning ghat. “Please,” the boy said. “Come see beautiful silks. Best in all Benares.”
On the steps overlooking the cremation platform, everything here was the color of ash: the steps, the stones, the ground. Logs were stacked in pyramids, waiting for bodies. The boy sat next to Ted. Near them, an old woman fought the tide of dirt and goat droppings with a straw broom.
The wood smoke had a bittersweet underpinning, which Ted recognized instinctually as burned flesh. On the bank, a man in white walked clockwise three times around an unlit pyre. Was that the direction the universe turned? It meant something, the same way that it meant something that the man didn’t cry, the way he walked with his back straight. The body on the pyre was shrouded in white cloth.
“Four thousand rupees to burn a body,” the boy said. “English?” Ted shook his head. “Understand,” he said. He kept saying this—“understand.” It wasn’t a question—Do you understand? — but a command—You must understand.
The man lit the end of a long stick; the tip fanned out like a webbed foot. He dropped it and stepped back from the heat. The pyre didn’t catch, but attendants stoked the fire. The cloth burned away first. Then, after a few minutes, the flesh had blackened and peeled away, and yellowish fat dripped down, making the flame burn hotter, a more vivid orange, the color of the holy men’s robes.
Ted felt the heat on his face. The world smoldered.
“Body with good karma,” the boy said. “Burns faster.”
If a body with good karma burned quickly, how long would it take Ted to turn to ash? Hours — days — a never-ending flame? Who would circle his body, and who would pour ghee onto the fire? Who would watch him bubble and combust until what was left of him could be scooped into someone’s hands? He had never considered his own loneliness before — it had always been there, this estrangement — but now he realized he had no one to mourn him. How close had he come to death, with John, with amoebas? He felt it close by, licking his skin, not with cold, but with heat.
He watched the fire for what seemed like hours. The logs shed white, flaky ash. Except for the dark-skinned attendants, he and the boy were the only witnesses. Was he intruding on someone’s private grief? The center of the pyre had collapsed, and the head and legs stuck out like branches. One of the attendants took a large pole and pushed those into the fire, sprinkling sawdust in. Soon, bones and kindling were indistinguishable, and finally, only cinders remained.
The boy held out his hand. “Donation for burning,” he said. “Good karma.”
Ted said, “Zidovudine? Didanosine tenofovir disoproxil, fumarate.”
The boy said, “Mister? Please?”
Ted responded, “Saquinavir — emtricitabine aldesleukin.”
Gobbledygook: a formulary of AIDS drugs. He didn’t want the boy hounding him in any language whatsoever. He wanted to make it clear that there would be no communication whatsoever — no way for them to connect.
But the boy would not relent, even as Ted walked away. Among the other sounds — parakeets squawking from holes in the walls, cheers and yelps from bathers in the river — the boy called, the same three words, “please,” “mister,” and “understand,” in infinite variation, as if uttering the correct combination might make Ted a better person.
Dev returned, late in the afternoon. In the room, he kissed Ted on the lips.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s take a boat ride. All the tourists do.” He said “tourists” as if it were slanderous.
“What’s wrong with being a tourist?”
“Nothing,” Dev replied. He brushed Ted’s cheek with the back of his fingers. “My little tourist. Let’s take a boat.”
Dev chatted first with a middle-aged boatman. An amiable bargaining session, Ted thought, though he probably would have assented to whatever price. It was not that he didn’t know he was being ripped off, but what seemed like an astronomical sum—hundreds of rupees — was no more than a few dollars. But the boatman said something wrong, and Dev said, “Let’s go.” Ted thought this was part of the strategy: walk off and let the boatman follow. But even as the boatman counteroffered, Dev ignored him.
“What was that all about?”
“He assumed I was your tour guide,” Dev said. “He said to charge you four thousand rupees and we would share the money afterward.”
“Is that a bad price?”
Dev flagged another boatman. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen. His skin was sun dark. The joints of his hands were thick and callused, like wood burls.
“He’s too young,” Ted said, but it was too late. Dev had made the deal. It didn’t, however, stop others from calling, “Sir, boat?”
The boy laid down a plank for them to cross to his boat. Puddles pooled on its bottom. The boy pointed to where they should sit and unroped his boat from its brothers. Other young boatmen slept like lumps of laundry, absenting themselves from the unceasing racket: innumerable boys serving innumerable tourists, a supply and demand of which Ted was now a part.
“How much?” Ted asked.
Dev spread his legs to rest his feet on dry spots. The boy took the oars.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t insult me,” Dev said. “You are my guest.”
The boy rowed without gloves, and his arms quivered as if the weight were almost too much to bear. When Dev wasn’t looking, he’d slip the boy a tip.
“What’s your name?”