at all. So I left at three in the morning. And you know that deep forest you have to drive through? You feel as if tigers will spring out of the bush any time. Some guys were standing there in the dark, in the middle of the road, with a torch and a dead man on the ground – they had put a tree branch across the road to make cars stop. I thought I was going to be robbed and killed, but they just wanted my help to take the man to hospital. He was unconscious it turned out, not dead. A huge Sardar, bleeding all over. I managed to spread a rug over the back seat, but in the process of hauling the man in, my shirt … musn’t give it to Gappu Dhobi, he’ll imagine the worst.” He paused and added, “As you did.”
I could not tell where the thought came from and I could not stop the words when I heard myself saying, “Where was it you rushed off when those helicopters were circling Ranikhet? Remember? You saw me on the road, but you didn’t stop. You didn’t come back for weeks. Nobody knew where you were.”
“What are you talking about?” Veer said. He seemed mystified by the question.
“I mean that time in May, when there were choppers in the sky all day, and you got a call on your phone and left without a word to anyone. What was that about?”
“Why do you sound so aggressive? I can’t tell you everything. That doesn’t mean I’m up to something fishy. What do you think I do anyway? Don’t you trust me?”
“You might trust me too, and tell me what that was all about. Most of the time I have no idea where you go, what you do, who you see – nothing.”
Until the moment I asked him, I had not even been aware that my suspicions about that morning were still gnawing at me. But now that I had begun, each thing I said stoked my rage.
Veer said nothing. When he clamped his lips shut the way he was doing now, and sucked in his cheeks, his face grew thinner still and grimmer, locked away. He looked at his computer screen, not at me, and said in a voice that was clipped and cold, “It was to help the Army with a search they needed to do. I know that area well, and I’ve done chopper searches before. Which is why they called me in.” He did not look up from the screen, and said nothing more.
I did not know what to say. I fiddled with a Banksia creeper by the door. I looked at a goat chewing on a young plant in the garden. It had rained that morning and now every leaf gleamed in the clear, washed light. Water plopped from a rainwater pipe into a tin drum. The grass had turned a tender green, but I knew it now hid black threads that bloated into blood-gorged leeches where they found warm skin. I could feel one on my ankle and bent to pluck it off. The scab would itch for days. Bijli appeared from somewhere and wagged his tail at us and gave a few short barks to suggest a walk. I patted him and said I would take him.
I turned to go, paused, trying to form the words for an apology, but could not. As I left the veranda my footsteps slowed and I came back. “Sorry,” I said, “it came out wrong.” I knew I still sounded grudging, and I was filled with regret for starting a quarrel and ruining a beautiful day, especially when he had just returned after a long journey.
I waited for him to say something forgiving, but he did not look up from his typing.
One afternoon soon after, I stood looking at the mountains, which had risen out of the monsoon sky. Clouds were piled high at their base so that they floated in mid-air, detached from everything earthly. Something in the quality of the light made the peaks appear translucent, as if the molten silver sky were visible through them. In the next few moments, I saw an extraordinary cloud form out of nothing, gather over the peaks, and grow larger and larger, spreading a black cloak as it travelled towards me, seemingly at the speed of a rocket. In no more than a minute it reached our hills and turned afternoon into twilight. Then the