A boy, maybe twelve, stands in the shade of the truck. He wears a T-shirt announcing “San Diego Padres, 1998 World Series Winner.” The cloth is so thin that Ted can see the boy’s ribs underneath. “Hello,” Ted says. The boy cups his hands. Ted speaks slowly: “Your mother?”
But it’s useless. So far, Ted has only learned the word for water: pani. He’s heard earthquake referred to in three different ways: bhukampa, lodai, gadgadati. How is he supposed to help anyone if he can’t understand what they need?
Well, Irina never said “only give food to women” was a hard-and-fast rule, and if one can’t be flexible during an emergency, then when can one? Ted roots in the piles of plastic wrap. It’s like swimming in spiderwebs. He hands the boy a basket. Does he even know how to prepare food? Ted watches him leave. He’ll have to learn.
At the next distribution point, Ted sees the boy again. Same dirty face, same T-shirt. Maybe the Padres sent boxes of these shirts to India when they lost the World Series that year. The crowd here is larger, more unruly. One soldier no longer looks to see who receives the food; he hands it out so quickly he might as well be flinging it.
Ted stands straight. His bones hum. He holds a breath and lets it leak through his nostrils. He is a conduit, a funnel through which food flows, and it’s up to him to pace distribution. OK, then.
He puts a hand on the soldier’s back, who stops, paralyzed. Ted nods, and the soldier slows his pace to something more fluid, more natural. And Ted watches the hands take the baskets. One second, empty; the next, full; and then finally, clasped together for a split second, a gesture of thanks.
The boy beckons Ted, waving with his hand, asking him to follow. The boy judges him; he’s not trying hard enough or fast enough.
Ted nudges the soldier. “What does that boy want?” he asks.
The soldier asks, listens. “His father can’t move. He needs to bring enough food for them to survive.”
“Does his father need medical attention? Is he badly hurt? Tell him—” Ted doesn’t know what to say. “How much food does he need?”
“He says they haven’t eaten for several days.”
Bloodshot eyes. The boy’s skin looks like it’s melting off the bone.
“OK,” says Ted. The boy is probably telling the truth. Probably. Ted takes a food basket under each arm and jumps off. Ted has a moment of misgiving, a regret so strong that he has to stamp it out like a burning match.
“Lead the way,” he tells the boy, and off they go.
The city is a maze, and following the boy this deep into it is a mistake. Even with Irina’s map, he can’t figure it out. He notes landmarks: the refugee tents at the Dwarkadish temple, a hygiene poster glued to the wall of the Decent Public School.
Why are you following him? Lorraine asks. There are thousands like him.
He needs my help.
Lorraine’s experience has tempered and sharpened her. When she encounters a problem, she cuts through it: I don’t care; just get it done. Ted, on the other hand, hammers at the problem until he’s dented and bruised.
The boy hops over splintered chunks of timber with the precision of a cat. The afternoon brings haze, a heaviness in the air like paste.
His family has no access to food, Ted replies. He needs food.
Thousands, Lorraine insists.
Maybe Ted has a self-destructive streak, like a snake waiting patiently underfoot. He should have asked a soldier to accompany him. John used to tell him that spontaneity was not his strong suit, that his sudden impulses always ended badly. “Every time you do something by the seat of your pants,” John said, “you live to regret it.” But that, Ted figures, is his normal state of being: he lives and he regrets, so therefore he will always live to regret.
“How much farther is it?” Ted asks.
The boy calls out, “Challo, challo,” and Ted challoes. Ted checks the sun, as if to determine how many hours lie between him and curfew. If Piotr were out all night, Lorraine wouldn’t worry, but with him—?
I’m not a child, he says.
Then stop acting like one, she replies.
The boy leads Ted into a fortified courtyard, walled off from the rest of the city. This place could be a medieval European fortress, built from buff-colored stone. A vertical crack runs up the side of a clock tower. The hands on the clocks have frozen at different times; one is missing its hands altogether. On the south face, the hours from four to six have fallen out.
Ted looks for a campfire, a lean-to, some indication of life, but finds instead marble pillars shaking off their Corinthian entablatures, slabs of cornices from overhead. He looks behind him — the keystones in the arched passageway he passed beneath have slipped. A tremor could trap him here.
To his left is a wooden sign on stilts that says “Aina Mahal Museum.” One of its supports has shattered, and the arrow points toward the sky. Along the ground, broken statuary. Torsos dancing despite missing heads and limbs — a chorus line of amputees. He remembers his parents taking him to a fair when he was twelve, where he bought a ticket for the Krazy Kastle. After the out-of-proportion room and the glow-in-the-dark room was a room where everything was upside down. A chandelier stuck upright out of the floor like a crystal stalagmite, and overhead was a fully set Thanksgiving meaclass="underline" a turkey, a bowl of peas, mashed potatoes. Right now, he feels the same discombobulation.
Ted’s instinct is to retreat. He should leave the baskets and go back.
The boy chatters to a man in a doorway, half-hidden in the shade. Ted had mistaken him for a statue. The man — nearly bald, slim, with features as jagged as rock — rises in a swift movement. He holds a pistol.
“Karsan,” the man says in crisp, accented English. “You’ve brought a friend.”
The man introduces himself as Prasant, the curator of the Aina Mahal.
“I apologize for the brusque reception,” he says. The nosepieces of his glasses form red craters on either side of his nose. Flecks of dry skin curl off his lips. “I’ve been on guard since the earthquake. Karsan has been kind enough to fetch me food so that I don’t have to leave the grounds.”
“Is he your son?”
“No,” Prasant says. “He’s the son of one of my guards.” Karsan picks off the plastic seal of a water bottle and hands it to Prasant, who sips just enough to wet his mouth. “His father has been — lost — these last few days.”
Ted eyes the pistol.
“It’s an antique,” Prasant says. “If I tried to shoot, it would most likely explode in my hand. It’s not even loaded.” Prasant holds the gun for Ted to inspect, but Ted waves his hand no. “I have it to deter looters.”
“Here too?”
“They send scouts. The antique dealers from Delhi and Mumbai were prowling around like dogs. I have to sit watch.” He points behind him, to a building with a shattered stairway. “Whatever remains, I protect.”
“How much damage has there been?”
“I don’t know,” Prasant says. He chokes, as if out of breath. “I don’t know.”
The men carrying away pieces of Bhid Gate yesterday. Ted remembers his uselessness — not in doing good, but in preventing evil.
“I cannot guard this place by myself,” Prasant says. His hand strangles the gun. “I’m too old to keep all the jackals from the door.”
“Your other workers?”
Prasant holds his hand out, as if introducing Ted to his staff.
“I’ll try to get someone,” Ted says. “The army—”