Dream thief

4

… THEY STARTED OUT AT first light. Spence had not slept at all well. If not because of the hungry dogs that roamed in packs barking through the night, it was the sudden chilling expectation that Rikki the rat-catching python would mistake him for a rodent and strangle him. He was up and ready to be off as soon as dawn broke over the iron-blue, smoky skyline of Calcutta.

Gita had been up long before dawn making arrangements and seeing to last-minute details. He returned huffing excitedly and talking in gibberish, his round, dark moon face glowing with pride and good cheer.

"I have secured our passage," he announced. It sounded as if they were attempting a hazardous ocean crossing.

"How long will it take to reach Darjeeling?" Spence asked.

"A week. Maybe two if it rains." To Spence's look of amazement he hurriedly added, "You do not understand our roads. In the rain they dissolve and run away. They become rivers. It would take you a long time to swim to Darjeeling, and all uphill."

Gita scampered around his apartment throwing provisions and personal belongings into sacks and bundling them together. "One bundle for each," he explained. "That way if we must walk part of the way it will not cause too much strain."

Gita looked like a man who had lived most of his life investing in strain-avoidance schemes, and had become wealthy collecting the dividends.

"Is it really as bad as all that?" Spence asked, hardly keeping the naive bumpkin out of his voice.

"Traveling to Darjeeling will be like traveling back in time," Gita warned.

He had arranged for them to join a group of merchants camped about half a mile from his house. These men banded together to travel under the protection of armed soldiers, hired to defend them against the goondas and dakoos – bandits and outlaws living in the hill country. They would be moving at a snail's pace in rusty old gas-burning cars over once-smooth roads that had crumbled into little more than cattle tracks.

Spence and the others set out walking the few blocks to the caravan in the early morning light, tinged an oily brown from the smoke of ten million cooking fires throughout the city. They stepped carefully over the sleeping bodies of Calcutta's homeless who lined the streets like human pavement. Mange-ridden dogs ran yapping, poking here and there among mounds of putrefying garbage for morsels to eat. A hump-backed cow stood gazing at them with deep melancholy over a dead body where two crows perched on a stiffened arm, clucking their beaks in anticipation. Small children, already awake and crying, clung to their stillsleeping mothers, becoming quiet as the men passed.

The buildings lining the streets wore iron bars at windows and doors, though it seemed on the whole a useless gesture since, by Spence's estimation, anyone with little more than a strong resolve could have toppled them, they looked so tentative.

The three rounded a corner a few blocks away from Gita's house and saw the caravan. Their convoy consisted of five clanking sedans, a small bus loaded with objects of trade, and a jeep carrying three soldiers with old-fashioned M-16s leading the procession. It was already lined up, and the various merchants involved in the enterprise darted here and there to store their goods and pack just one more item on the bus. The soldiers came strolling down the street at a leisurely pace eating their breakfasts wrapped in paper with their fingers. Their rifles were slung on their backs and they laughed heartily among themselves.

This is our protection? Spence wondered.

The whole troop would have been comical if not for the fear Spence saw in the faces of the merchants. To them it was a life – or – death proposition with death an all-too-possible outcome. He found it hard to believe such conditions still existed in a world that was quickly hurtling itself toward the stars. He himself had walked on Mars, and these frightened merchants could not even conceive of such a thing. His world was as far from theirs as – well, as far as Kyr's was from his.

When they had walked the length of the caravan a tall, gaunt Indian with the pursed expression of a man perpetually sucking lemons hailed Gita and met them.

"This is Gurjara Marjumdar, leader of the merchants making this trip." The man bowed low, placing his hands together in the classic greeting.

"Your presence among us strengthens our purpose." He smiled a puckery smile. Later, Gita told Spence that with the money they had paid Gurjara to join the convoy the merchant had already made a profit.

"I have arranged for you to travel in my car," Gurjara said with some pride. "I hope you will be very comfortable."

It was all Spence could do to keep from remarking that perhaps they would be more comfortable if the car had springs. He could already see that the junker rode low to the ground, and as yet no passengers were aboard.

After a few more minutes of frenzied packing and tearful, heart-rending good-byes among the merchants and their families, the caravan, asthmatic engines gasping and sputtering, rumbled off. Gawking street sleepers staggered out of the way as the odd train of vehicles rattled past. Children and dogs ran beside as they wound through the streets, hoping for trinkets and shouting at the drivers to honk their horns-a request the drivers obliged with childlike persistence.

Spence marked their passage through the decaying city with numbed wonder. It was repulsive, and yet somehow fascinating in its lazy, sprawling decadence. He had never experienced anything like it.

Behind the train a small army of ragged wayfarers walked or rode bicycles. They too were making the trip to Darjeeling; though lacking the money to hire a car or other transportation, they were nevertheless anxious to benefit from the presence of the soldiers.

At the outskirts of Calcutta they came to a greasy, noisome river where they stopped, though Spence could not determine why. He and Adjani got out to give their legs a last stretch before the train headed into open country. Walking to the head of the convoy they saw the reason for the delay. A family had set up housekeeping on the bridge during the night-not only one family, but several-and were having to be removed in order to let the cars pass by. The people repacked their baggage and belongings-which seemed to Spence to consist mostly of broken bamboo chairs, rags, and hacked-up oil drums-with a sullen slowness under the urgings of the soldiers.

"Why would anybody homestead a bridge?" he asked as he watched the unusual scene.

"Look around you-where else is there for them to go? Besides, it's close to the water for bathing and drinking-that's why most of them try it. They may even get to stay there a day or two if no one moves them."

Spence looked down at the buff-colored water and grimaced. "They surely don't try to drink that stuff." Adjani didn't say anything, but pointed down along the banks below them.

Every square meter of available space was taken up by crude brush lean-tos and cardboard huts right down to the water's edge. The Hooghly river was both sewer and reservoir to the clamoring masses that crowded its bare earth shores. In the murky light of a new day, as far along the shore as he could see, thousands of river dwellers were going about their daily business; men, women, and children stood naked in the shallows and splashed the foul water over themselves to wash away the previous day's filth.

Near a group of bathers, a starving dog worried a floppy, white rubbery object which Spence at first could not identify. Then with a sick, churning feeling he recognized the thing as a human corpse, bleached white by the river and deposited on the shore.

Spence turned away from the scene with a hollowness in his chest. In a short while the journey resumed. He avoided the accusing stares of the displaced bridge settlers as the car passed them along the side of the road.

For a long time after that he did not say anything.

At midday, though only a few kilometers out of the city, they stopped to eat. Fruit sellers materialized with baskets full of produce to sell to the travelers. Spence was not particularly hungry, but bought two bananas from an old man with a stump leg -mostly out of pity.

Adjani and Gita had gone to confer with Gurjara about the route they would take. Spence sat on the ground in the shade of the car and peeled one of the bananas and munched it thoughtfully.

The air was clearer away from the city, and the land green with tropical foliage. Except for the crumbled pavement underfoot they might have been a safari from long ago exploring an uncharted territory-the sense of the new unknown was strong in Spence.

To the north the foothills rose in even steps leading to the high mountains which showed as little more than a faint purplish smudge in the sky behind the hills. Somewhere up ahead in those hills was Darjeeling, jewel of the mountains. Six days, seven, maybe more away. Rangpo was further still.

Spence sighed; perhaps they were on a wild goose chase. Perhaps Ari was nowhere within a million kilometers of those superstition-breeding hills. Thinking of her, wondering about her, worrying over her had made him sick at heart. He kept telling himself, and anyone else who would listen, that he should have done something to help her. Adjani had pointed out time and again that her kidnapping had been carefully arranged and that she was probably out of the building before they had entered the room.

"What about the scream? That was her scream, I know it."

"How do you know? We both heard what we were meant to hear. We were summoned when our presence was required and not until then. Do you really think that if there had been a struggle we would not have heard it? We were but a few steps from the door and could have rescued her easily if she had been there to rescue. No, they knew where to find her. They were watching her, waiting for a chance to act."

"But why? What is she in all of this? Why didn't they take me?"

Adjani shook his head. "I don't know. But we're doing the right thing. We'll just have to trust God to show us what to do when the time comes."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I don't see that we have any other choice-do you? We were meant to follow. So be it. We follow."

Spence felt he had betrayed his beloved. It frustrated him to have to sit in the road eating bananas while she waited for him to rescue her.

He finished the banana and tossed the peel away.

At once there was a flurry of motion at the roadside where he had tossed the peel. Two children-a girl about eight years old and wrapped in a ragged, faded sari, and her brother of about five who wore only a man's sleeveless shirt-dived after the banana skin. They had been watching Spence from a distance and when he threw the peeling, they pounced.

The girl brushed the dirt away from the peeling and pulled a small square of frayed cloth from the folds of her sari. She spread out the cloth neatly and she and her brother sat down.

With patience and care she began pulling the long stringy soft portion of the inner peel away from the skin. When she was done she discarded the outer skin and divided the remains with the boy.

They ate them slowly and with deliberation as if they were munching a great delicacy best enjoyed at leisure. Spence was so moved by the sight that he went to the children and held out the other banana.

The girl's eyes grew big and round and the little boy cowered at his sister's shoulder. Spence smiled and offered the banana more insistently; he could tell by the way they looked at it that both wanted it very much. They were simply too shy to accept it.

So, Spence put the banana down on the dirty square of cloth and walked back to the car and sat down. As soon as his back was turned the girl snatched up the banana, peeled it, and broke it in half. Both were slowly chewing the fruit when Spence returned to the car.

Adjani and Gita returned and they began discussing their plans for the immediate future. They heard the soldiers call out and the pop of the jeep firing. As they were climbing back into the car Spence felt a tug at his elbow.

He turned to see the little girl and her brother. He started to gesture to them that he had no more bananas when the girl smiled prettily and with some ceremony presented him with his banana peel.

Spence grinned and gave the peel back. Both looked at each other as if unable to believe their good fortune and then scampered off to devour the rest of their prize.

The happy look in the children's eyes warmed Spence the rest of the day.

"It's just a little thing," he replied to Adjani's knowing glance. "It's nothing."

"It's more than you think, my friend."

Thereafter he always made it a point to buy three bananas.