“Why sir, the child was an imbecile. No individuality, no sense of person at all. No life at all. It had to be that way, we could never have used a normal subject. Her parents were delighted when your colleagues bought her from them. At last their child might have a chance, with the experimental new technology. They thanked Lord Vishnu.”
With a wordless roar Thomas Lull is on his feet, fist balled. Nanak scuttles across the floor away from the raging male. Lisa Durnau smothers Lull’s fist in her two hands.
“Leave it, let it go,” she whispers. “Sit down, Lull, sit down.”
“Fuck you!” Thomas Lull yells at the nute-maker. “Fuck you and fuck Kalki and fuck Jean-Yves and Anjali!”
Lisa Durnau presses him into his seat. Nanak gathers ytself up, dusts ytself down, but yt does not dare come near.
“I apologise for my friend here,” Lisa Durnau says. “He’s overwrought.” She grips Thomas Lull’s shoulder. “I think we should go.”
“Yes, maybe that would be best,” says Nanak, shrugging yts shawls around ytself. “This is a discreet business, I cannot have raised voices.”
Thomas Lull shakes his head, disgusted at himself as much as any words in this room. He extends a hand but the nute does not take it.
The suitcases have little plastic wheels that rumble over the downtown streets. But the surface is patched and uneven and the handles are silly webbing loops and Krishan and Parvati are moving as fast as they can so every few metres the cases twist off their wheels and spill over. And the taxis just splash by Krishan’s upraised hand and the troop carriers prowl past and the songs of the karsevaks come from this side then that side, from behind, then right in front so they must hide in a doorway as they run past and Parvati is weary and soaked through, sari clinging to her, hair hanging in ropes and it is still five kilometres to the station.
“Too many clothes,” Krishan jokes. Parvati smiles. He hefts both cases, one in each hand, and sets off again. Together they huddle through the streets clinging to doorways, cringing from the military traffic, dashing across intersections, always alert for unexpected sounds, sudden movements.
“Not far,” Krishan lies. His forearms are knotted, burning. “Soon be there.”
As they approach the station people emerge from the capillary galis and project streets, laden like them with bags, burdens, cycle rickshaws, carts, cars; rivulet joining to stream joining to flow joining together into a broad river of heads. Parvati clutches at Krishan’s sleeve. To slip apart here is to be lost for years. Krishan wades on, fists rigid around the plastic handles that feel as if they are made of burning coal, neck muscles tensed, teeth clenched, looking ahead, ahead, thinking of nothing but the station the train the station the train and how every footstep takes him closer, takes him nearer to the time when he can set these burdens down. He waddles now, trying to keep step with the surge of people. Parvati is closer than a shadow. A woman in a full burqa presses past. “What are you doing here?” she hisses. “You have brought this to us.” Krishan pushes the woman away with his suitcases before her words can spread and bring the wrath of the crowd down on them for now he sees what has been before his face all this long road: the Muslims are leaving Varanasi.
Parvati whispers, “Do you think we will be able to get a train?” Then Krishan understands that the world will not stop for their romantic notions, the crowds will not part and let them free passage, history will not grant them a lovers’ pardon. Theirs is not a bold, romantic flight. They are foolish and blind and selfish. His heart sinks deeper as the street opens into the approach to the station and the flow of refugees empties into the largest mass of people he has ever seen, more than any crowd that ever streamed out of Sampurnanand Stadium. He can see the spars and translucent spun-diamond canopy of the concourse, the gaping glass portals to the ticket halls. He can see the train at the platform, glistening under the yellow lights, already loaded to the roof and more climbing on all the time. He can see the soldiers silhouetted against the breaking dawn on their armoured vehicles. But he cannot see a way through the people; all those people. And the cases, those stupid suitcases, pull him down through the concrete into the soil, anchoring him like roots. Parvati tugs at his sleeve.
“This way.”
She draws him towards the concourse gates. The press is less at the edge of the plaza; refugees instinctually keep away from soldiers. Parvati hunts in the beadwork bag over her shoulder. She fetches a tube of lipstick, ducks her head briefly and comes up again with a red bindi on her forehead.
“Please, for the love of Siva for the love of Siva!” she cries to the soldiers, hands pressed together into a namaskar of entreaty. The jawans’ eyes cannot be read behind their mirrored, rain-spotted visors. Louder now: “For the love of the Lord Siva!” Now the people around her start to turn and look and growl. They start to jostle, their anger begins. Parvati pleads with the soldiers. “For the love of Lord Siva.”
Then the soldiers hear her voice. They see her soaked, dirt-smeared sari. They read her bindi. Jawans slip down from their vehicles, jabbing their weapon muzzles at the women and children, forcing them back though they scream God’s curse at the soldiers. A jemadar gestures briskly to Parvati and Krishan. The soldiers part, they slip through, the weapons go up again to the horizontal, a bar, a denial. A woman officer hurries Parvati and Krishan between the parked transports that even in the rain smell of hot biodiesel. Voices rise to a thunder of outrage. Glancing back, Parvati sees hands seize a jawan’s assault gun. There is a short, fierce balance of forces, then the soldier next to him casually swings up the butt of his weapon and smashes it into the side of the protestor’s skull. The Muslim man goes down without even a cry, hands clutched to head. The man’s cry becomes the crowd’s; it surges like a river squall. Then the shots rip out and everyone in the plaza falls to their knees.
“Gome on,” the jemadar says. “No one’s hurt. Keep your heads down. What were you doing there? What ever possessed you? This day of all days.” She tuts. Parvati does not think Bharati soldiers should tut.
“My mother,” Parvati says. “I have to go to her, she’s an old woman, she needs me, she has no one else.”
The jemadar brings them up the side steps into the station concourse. Parvan’s spirit turns to lead. The people, the people. There is no way through this. She cannot see where the ticket counters are. But Krishan bangs down the cases and jerks out the handles and lifts them up on their little frayed black plastic wheels and pushes determinedly into the rear of the crowd.
The sun climbs over the transparent roof. Trains arrive, more people than Parvati can ever imagine press onto the platforms. For every trainload of refugees that pulls out from under Varanasi Station’s spun-diamond canopy another presses into the foyer from the forecourt. Parvati and Krishan are pushed step by step toward the ticket desks. Parvati watches the flatscreens suspended from the roof. Something has happened to Breakfast with Bharti. In her place is a video loop of Ashok Rana, whom she has never liked, over and over. He is behind some studio desk. He looks tired and afraid. It is only on the sixth viewing that Parvati understands with a shock what he is saying. His sister is dead. Sajida Rana is dead. Now the streets, the shots, the crowds, the running, the Muslims, and the soldiers firing over their heads, all become solid, one connected thing. Ignorant and innocent, they have been running, suitcases in hand, through the death throes of Mother Bharat. Suddenly her selfishness consumes her.
“Krishan. We have to go back. I can’t go. We were wrong.”
Krishan’s face is perfect, drained, disbelief. Then the gap opens in front of him and it goes all the way to the ticket counter and the clerk looks at Parvati, just at Parvati and in a moment the gap will implode.