the apartment. “Somewhat. But it’s also about courage,” he said, after some hesitation. “It’s about the struggle to find courage.”
“And if we don’t? What happens? We drown?”
He smiled. “In a way.”
“You don’t think this, this Puffrock is weak?”
In that moment, Mohan’s eyes flashed with a sadness so intense, so violent that Poornima felt it—the sadness, the violence—flare against the back of her own eyes. Then it receded just as quickly as it had come. “I think he’s just like you and me,” he finally said.
Poornima looked at him. No, she thought, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. He’s nothing like me.
6
Madhavi might still be able to help her.
That was what Poornima considered that night, after Mohan left. She couldn’t be certain, but Madhavi, isolated as she was, as all the girls must be, might still have been taken to a different location initially—as a kind of holding cell, until space opened up in her current flat—or maybe the girls sometimes rode together, and she’d seen one or another being dropped off at various other apartment houses, or maybe the girls talked, or one of them mentioned a street, a neighborhood, anything.
It was her only chance.
She waited all the next day. Since she no longer had keys, she surveyed her own building and found an unlocked back way, by the trash bins, and she had to leave the door to her apartment open. She estimated that Mohan nearly always arrived between four and eight P.M. What did he do during the day? How many shepherds did he monitor? How many girls did they own? Did he know Savitha? She had answers to none of these questions; she knew only that she had to wait until after eight, after his departure, before setting out for Madhavi’s.
He was late that evening. He arrived near nine o’clock, offering no explanation for his delay, and yet, in some way, he seemed more conscious of her, softer in the way he studied the room, her face, the disarray of the sleeping bag, her few things spread across the floor. It was as if their conversation about the poem had awakened in him the possibility of Poornima, the possibility of her existing as anything other than a purveyor of girls.
“Need anything?” he asked.
“Vegetables.”
“I’ll bring some when I come tomorrow.”
“Stay for dinner.”
His gaze darkened, perhaps with revulsion at the request, perhaps in surprise, though Poornima understood suddenly, very distinctly, as though after a clarifying rain, that here was a man who was very alone, who knew very little beyond that aloneness. He left soon afterward without a word.
* * *
It was after midnight when Madhavi was dropped off at her flat. Poornima waited again in the bushes, at the border of the apartment house in which Madhavi lived and the one next to it, to the north. This time, the girl seemed unfazed by Poornima’s abrupt appearance as she passed through the thin light of the entranceway. Poornima looked at her and saw that there was no point in asking how she was doing; it was obvious that she had hardened. That in the space of a week, she had reached a slow and stoic resignation. A week. How little time it takes to sever the spirit, Poornima thought, if the spirit is disposed to severing. Above them, clouds obscured the moon, the stars; a nearby streetlight flickered.
Madhavi sighed. “Are you here about that girl again?”
“You met her? Do you know something?”
“Please, Akka, stop coming around. If anybody sees us—”
“Look, just tell me if you know where the other girls live. Any of them.”
“I don’t.”
“They’ve never dropped someone off at another apartment house? You’ve never ridden with another girl? Talked to another girl? They’ve never taken you to another location?”
Madhavi shrugged and looked away.
“You have, haven’t you? Who? Where does she live? What did she say?”
“Not another girl. Just…” Here Madhavi trailed off, and Poornima nearly burst; she clenched her fists to keep from shaking it out of her.
“Just what?” she asked gently, steadying her voice.
“Well, he took me to a room once. Different from the ones we clean.”
“Where was this room? Were there other girls in it? Other people?”
“No.”
“Who took you?”
“Suresh.”
Who was that? Poornima wondered. The brother? They stood silent for a time, Madhavi avoiding her eyes. “Where was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Was it close to here?”
“No.”
“Close to the airport?”
“No.”
Poornima searched her mind for other landmarks, other sights that Madhavi might know. “Was it near that tower? That thin one? Was it near water? Or was it