The Caretaker Page 31

  Ranjit stands motionless against the pillar, and the touts swarm toward him again.

  “Mister, you want cheap hotel?”

  “Nice girls, mister, nice girls?”

  He shoulders his backpack and pushes through them to the taxi stand, choosing a round-bonneted Ambassador driven by an old Sikh in a crushed pink turban. When Ranjit gets in, he smells incense and realizes that the old man is praying. There is a small shrine set up on his dashboard, a photograph of the Guru flanked by two smoldering incense sticks.

  Ranjit waits. When the old man is done praying, he turns and looks back with clear eyes. “Where to, son?”

  Ranjit gives the man Preetam’s parents’ address. He settles back into his seat and closes his eyes, feeling the thudding of his heart.

  The General had deliberately sent him to kill those men. The disgrace, all those years in jail, his flight to America: they were all unnecessary, all the result of Bear Handa’s secret plan. Why had he done it? Maybe fighting wars was all he knew. Maybe he had fought so much that war was his only reality, and peace a mirage that he refused to believe in.

  Ranjit thinks of the Sergeant and Dewan still lying up there on the glacier. “Sergeant,” he whispers, “if you can hear me, rest in peace. You were innocent, we both were.”

  And then he is crying. Hot tears roll down his cheeks as he cries for Khandelkar, for Dewan, for Anna. He cries, for the first time, for someone else, a younger version of himself, a young man whose future had been snatched away.

  There is the sudden blare of the taxi horn as it jerks to a stop. Through a blur of tears he sees a bullock cart roll slowly across the road.

  “Son, are you all right?” the taxi driver asks from the front seat.

  Ranjit stares at the bullock cart. Beyond it, what were once green fields are now dotted with concrete bungalows. Huge garish signs line the road, advertising Japanese cars and washing machines.

  “It has all changed so much,” he replies. “I can hardly recognize this place.”

  “Son, you are returning from where?” Under the crumpled pink turban the driver’s eyes are bright and clear.

  “America, Uncle,” says Ranjit, using the honorific.

  “Have you been away long?”

  “Yes, a long time. Too long.”

  “But you are still a Sikh. You have upheld our ways.”

  Ranjit hesitates. “Yes,” he says.

  The old man leans in and quotes a verse from the Guru Granth Sahib.

  “God has his seat everywhere.”

  Ranjit finishes the verse. “His treasure houses are in all places.”

  The bullock cart has finally made its way across the road, and the traffic lurches forward.

  The old Sikh smiles at Ranjit in the rearview mirror. “It’s all right, son. You are home now. You are with your own people.”

  Ranjit looks wordlessly out of the window at the streets swarming with people, sitting at roadside teashops and just loitering at each corner. He could be recognized by any one of them.

  * * *

  Home. The taxi drops him at the mouth of a narrow lane.

  Ranjit pays the driver, adding a large tip. He walks slowly down the lane, between high walls with bright pink bougainvillea spilling over their tops. The noise of the main road ebbs away, and the silence here is broken only by the soft cooing of doves.

  He passes bungalows on either side, hidden behind locked metal gates. His breath quickens as he reaches the tall iron gate at the end of the lane.

  From behind the gate, there is a sudden shout in Punjabi. “Oi, you can’t catch me, you can’t catch me!”

  Children scream with laughter.

  “Yes, I can!”

  It sounds like Shanti’s voice, speaking fluent Punjabi. Ranjit presses his face against the metal bars of the gate.

  But it isn’t Shanti. Two little girls are running barefoot across the wide green lawn, the pale soles of their feet flashing. They have Shanti’s curly black hair, and he recognizes Preetam’s sister’s daughters.

  The little girl who is being chased veers breathlessly toward the gate. She sees Ranjit and stops, and the other girl bumps into her.

  “Got you! Got you! Why did you stop running, silly?”

  The first girl points, and both their eyes widen. They shout, “Nani! Nani! A man is here! A man is here!”

  Preetam’s mother comes out of the house and shades her eyes. “What is all this shouting about—” She spots Ranjit and her face crumples with relief. “Ranjit. Praise be to the Guru. You’ve come, you’ve come!”

  Mrs. Kaur walks across the lawn, flicking the long dupatta of her salwar kameez over her shoulder. She reaches up, turns a key in a padlock, and the gate swings open.

  “Preetam said you would never return,” Mrs. Kaur says in Punjabi, waving her thick arms. “She said you were no good. There is something wrong with that girl. She came back here talking about divorce and what-not.”

  “Maji,” Ranjit replies in Punjabi. “Many things have been my fault. Forgive me. I must talk to her.” He bends down and touches his mother-in-law’s feet, a mark of his respect.

  “Jeetay raho, beta,” she says. Live long, my son. Her face lights up with happiness and she gestures him toward the shady open veranda at the front of the house. “Come in, sit down,” she says. “They are both out right now, but they will be back soon. Have you eaten?”

  “I’m not hungry, but I am very thirsty.”

  They walk up the shallow stairs to the veranda and he lowers himself onto a wicker sofa. His two nieces peer at him, not recognizing him. The taller one was just a baby when he left for America.

  “I’ll bring water,” Mrs. Kaur says. “When Preetam returns, you talk some sense to her. Please, you talk to her.”

  Mrs. Kaur goes into the house and returns with a metal tumbler of cold well water. Ranjit thanks her and drinks it in two swallows. Even water tastes better here. He stares at the girls running across the rich green lawn, at the sunlight filtering through the leaves of a gulmohar tree aflame with red flowers.

  “How long are you going to stay? Are you taking them back to America?” Mrs. Kaur asks in Punjabi, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, her gold bangles jangling.

  “I’m not sure,” Ranjit replies. “I have to talk to Preetam. I was thinking that we could move to New York. She’ll like it, there are plenty of Indians living there.”

  “Aare, you are the man, you make the decision. You are a good man. I’ve always said that, no matter what.”

  She is alluding to his years in prison. He aches to tell her what he has just learned, but he holds back. He must tell Preetam first.

  Sitting back, he listens to the sun-dazed buzzing of flies, the exhaustion of the long journey clouding his head.

  “Where have they both gone, Mataji? When will they be back?”

  “Oh, Preetam has gone to see a film with one of her old school friends. Shanti was only just here, but she went to the bazaar. I was cooking and ran out of chilies, she wanted to go…”

  “She went to the bazaar? Alone?”

  “Yes, why not? She’s a big girl now, and everybody knows us in this neighborhood. This is not America, Ranjit.”

  He feels a deep sense of unease at the thought of Shanti walking alone through the crowded streets. After all, she is a nine-year-old girl, easily snatched up and bundled into a car.

  He rises to his feet. “The old bazaar, right? Down the road? Maybe I’ll take a stroll there. My legs are cramped after the long flight.”

  “Aare, don’t go out again! You look so tired, and Shanti will return in a few minutes. She’s probably gone to the sweet shop with my change—”

  “It’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

  He walks through the creaking gate and back down the lane, emerging onto the broad, sunlit street. Shielding his eyes, he looks for any sign of a curly black head, but there are only women returning from the bazaar, their shopping baskets overflowing with wet vegetabl
es.

  As he walks to the bazaar the air is warm and moist, surrounding him like a close embrace. Sweat trickles from his forehead, and he finds himself missing the cold of the Vineyard.

  He smells the bazaar before he sees it, a mix of rotting vegetables and the gamey odor of fresh-killed chicken. Rounding the corner, he finds everything as he remembered it: rows of open-air stalls that line a large courtyard, each stall piled high with purple-black eggplants, wet bunches of spinach, pale green squashes, and fresh okra.

  Which stall does Mrs. Kaur patronize? The one on the far left, he remembers, and walks over, pushing past two plump housewives who turn to stare at him.

  The vegetable seller is sitting cross-legged above his piles of produce, busy weighing muddy potatoes on a handheld scale.

  “Hello, Uncle?” Ranjit says.

  The vegetable seller looks shocked. “Ranjit Sahib! But I thought you were in foreign! Across the ocean!”

  “Well, I’m back for a visit. Have you seen my daughter? Shanti? She came to buy chilies. She’s nine—” He pats the air to approximate her height.

  “Mrs. Kaur’s American granddaughter? Sure, she was here. She’s not home yet?”

  “When did she leave?”

  The man shrugs. “Ten minutes ago, perhaps less. Aare, don’t worry, she’ll be home—children these days, they like to wander, especially with a little change in their hands.”

  Ranjit’s chest tightens. He looks around the bazaar, and then remembers Bhupinder’s sweet shop, just around the corner. Walking quickly, he reaches the corner, but just then a herd of dusty black goats thunders past, blocking his path. Sensing they will soon be slaughtered, the animals raise their bearded heads and bleat piteously.

  The goats pass in a cloud of dust, and he rounds the corner and sees the sweet shop dead ahead, its tall glass bottles holding myriad colors of boiled sweets. And there, reaching up to press a coin into Bhupinder’s palm, is a familiar curly head.

  “Shanti!”

  She turns and sees him, her eyes widening. Then she is running to him, her sandaled feet kicking up puffs of dust, red sweets falling from the open paper bag in her hand.

  He grabs her and presses her to him, unable to speak. She pushes her face into his shoulder and begins to cry.

  “Hey, hey, don’t worry. I’m here now. I’m here.”

  “Papaji,” she sniffles, drawing back her tear-stained face. “I knew you’d come. Mama said that you’d stay in America, but I knew you’d come back.”

  “Hey, look at you. You look so pretty.” He gestures at her pale pink salwar kameez, her wrists jangling with coral-colored glass bangles. Her hair is longer, the curls reaching her shoulders.

  She hugs him again, and he lifts her up, feeling how much heavier she has become. All this in a few weeks? It feels as though he hasn’t seen her in a decade.

  “Come, beti,” he says. “Your grandmother is waiting for us. You dropped your sweets. Do you want me to buy you some more?”

  She holds his hand tightly and shakes her head. “Forget the stupid sweets. I don’t even really like them. I wish they had Starburst chews here, like we get back home…”

  Holding hands, they walk back along the main road. Shanti chatters on, so quickly that he can barely understand what she is saying.

  “… Mama was so scared in the detention center, she just lay on her bunk and stared at the wall … I told her you would get us out, but she didn’t believe me. She wouldn’t eat, you know how she gets, anyway, the food was horrible in there, and we had to sleep with the lights on. Then they told us we were going to be deported, and Mama was crying, she was so ashamed, but Ricky came to get us. And the plane ride, Papaji, we had to stop twice, in Amsterdam and Dubai, and then we got here, and it’s so hot I can’t sleep, and you know, Nani lets me run errands, but she’s really strict, and sometimes I can’t understand what she’s saying, and…”

  They turn into the coolness of the lane, and then stop, seeing a taxi at the far end. It begins to back up toward them, and they flatten themselves against the wall to let it pass. As they walk on, they see who its passenger was.

  Preetam is wearing a sky-blue salwar kameez and silver high-heeled sandals, and she’s holding a large shopping bag from a sari store.

  “Mama!” Shanti shouts. “He’s here! Papaji is here!”

  Preetam turns and sees them, and her face goes pale.

  He stands stock-still and clears his throat. “I just want to talk to you, give me a few minutes.”

  Without saying a word, Preetam reaches out, grabs Shanti’s shoulder, and pulls the girl to her.

  “What is there to talk about, Ranjit?”

  Up close he can see that the time in detention has aged her. More gray strands run through her dark hair and her face is thinner. All the dreaminess is gone from her eyes, and they are sharp with anger.

  “Can we please go inside, just for a minute? There is something important I just found out. It changes everything—”

  Preetam pushes Shanti toward the gate. “Go inside. I need to talk to your father. Go.”

  “But, Papaji…” Shanti’s face contorts, and she starts sobbing.

  He bends and hugs her tightly. “It’s going to be okay, beti. It’s going to be okay. Listen to your mother.”

  Glancing backward, Shanti walks reluctantly through the gate and up the stairs to the veranda. When she enters the house, Preetam turns to Ranjit.

  “What is it that you wanted to say?”

  “Here? You want to talk here?”

  She averts her face, and he has no choice but to continue. “Okay, listen. I just found out that I’m not guilty of killing those men on the glacier. It was all a setup: the mission, the court-martial, everything. This General set me up because—”

  She raises a hand to silence him.

  “This is what you wanted to tell me?”

  Confusion clouds his thoughts.

  “Yes, don’t you understand? It changes everything.”

  “It changes nothing.” Preetam closes her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opens them again, her face is calm, and she chooses her words carefully. “It changes nothing, Ranjit. Guilty or not guilty, you were my husband, and I waited for you all those years. I had faith in you, I believed you were a good man. But now…”

  She pauses and then looks directly into his eyes. “In the detention center, I had plenty of time to think about things. You have lied to me, Ranjit, you have shown me such little respect. I feel as though I don’t know you anymore.”

  Hearing her calm, considered words, he feels the panic grow.

  “Preetam, please … look, it’s not safe for me to stay here … I can explain it all to you, but we have to return to America. I have green cards for all of us, real green cards—”

  When she does not respond, he reaches out and pulls her to him.

  She does not resist, and he holds her, feeling how light she has become. He inhales the scent of her hair, and his grip tightens, but she still averts her face and remains passive in his arms. He might as well be holding a sack of straw.

  Gently, she disentangles herself from him and steps back.

  “You can do what you like, Ranjit. Return to America if you want, but leave us alone. I cannot go on like this anymore.”

  Before he can say anything else, she turns on her heel and walks down the lane, between the high walls. There is a flash of her sky-blue salwar kameez, and then the high iron gate slams shut. He hears the key turn in the padlock on the other side.

  He is suddenly so exhausted that he cannot move.

  Slumping against the wall, he closes his eyes. It cannot end like this, he vows. Whatever it takes, I’ll get my family back.

  But for now, he has to leave. All his frantic calculations return to the same conclusion: the longer he remains here, the more dangerous it is for them. Reaching into his pocket, he fingers the return ticket to Boston. The thought of returning there makes him sick; he’ll change the ticket at the ai
rport and fly back to New York. Maybe he can stay there till he figures out what to do.

  He opens his eyes and walks down the lane, listening to the cooing of the doves. Soon the silence fades away, replaced by the raucous beeping of horns and the roar of traffic.

  Squaring his shoulders, he walks out into the sunlit chaos of the main road. He looks around, but there is no one staring at him. He takes a deep breath and walks away, heading toward the taxi stand by the bazaar.

  In a few minutes he is swallowed up by the crowd, and vanishes.

  Acknowledgments

  Several works were crucial to the writing of this novel. The Sikhs by Patwant Singh (Doubleday, 1999) provided some of the quotes from the Guru Granth Sahib; others were adapted from the complete Shri Guru Granth Sahib (Forgotten Books, 2008). The haunting images from Martin A. Sugarman’s War Above the Clouds: Siachen Glacier: Photographs (Sugarman Productions, 1996) provided insights into this hidden war.

  A first novel owes many debts, and I am glad to acknowledge them here:

  In Boston: Chris Castellani and Whitney Scharer at Grub Street provided invaluable support. Thanks to all those at “The Council,” and a special thanks to Jenna Blum and Randy Susan Meyers for their unwavering guidance. Nicole Lamy for first publishing me. Bernice and Joel Lerner, Brother Tom Miller, and Miriam Stein for their kindness and insights. Tom Matlack, one of the best men I know. Alex and Whitney Van Praagh for many dinners and conversations.

  In New York: Katia Lief and Matt de La Peña for early encouragement. My crew: Charlene Allen for always being there; Maija Makinen and Laura Chavez Silverman, who kept me on the path. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. My talented agent, Stéphanie Abou, at Foundry Media, and my editor, Hilary Teeman, who made this a much better book.

  In Martha’s Vineyard: Wayne Elliott, whose stories about caretaking inspired this book; Karla Araujo for her insights into life on the island.

  My fellow talented writers: Emily Russin and Chaiti Sen, for many conversations and support. Angie Kim for all her insights.

  My family: Zig, Chippy, and Rehana for telling me stories. Doug and Carolyn Nash for their faith in me, and for keeping the ’chives. My parents, Ameer and Naseem; siblings, Karim and Naira, for keeping me company on this long road. My son, Amar, an artist in his own right, who drew many pictures while I wrote this book.