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Authors: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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intended to.
“He’s here,” she whispered.
“Ask him to move his foot,” Cameron said.
She did. There was no response.
It hit her that she was stuck here in the passage with a corpse, that she had gone through all this for nothing. Now she couldn’t stop the hiccuping sobs. Knowing how dangerous they were just made her cry harder.
“It’s okay,” Cameron said. “You did really well. Better than any of us could have. Try one more time, then come back.”
She made herself touch the dead foot. She shook it, feeling the bile rise in her mouth. Just when she thought she would throw up, the heel turned a little.
“Tariq,” she cried, forgetting to be quiet. “I’m here.”
There it was again, the tiniest swivel of the heel, as though he had heard what she was saying.
“Brave girl!” Cameron said. “Come back now so we can start clearing the debris.”
Lily imagined herself buried under that pile, wood and metal and pieces of glass pressing against her backbone, her mouth stuffed with dirt. She imagined feeling a hand around her foot, and then that hand going away. “I’ll wait here,” she said. It wasn’t heroism. When she thought of her journey in reverse, slats of wood coming loose again in her fingers, that uncontrolled sliding, it made her body heavy with terror.
Cameron didn’t waste time trying to persuade her. She could hear him whispering instructions. She removed a little debris from the side of the pile under which Tariq was buried but stopped when a chunk of Sheetrock slid menacingly toward her. Instead, she thought about Beethoven. When deafness began to descend on him, it musthave been like being buried under auditory darkness. But somehow he found a spark, the music sounding inside his head. As she waited for Cameron to arrive, Lily tapped out the rhythm to the Danse Villageoise on Tariq’s heel.
MANGALAM WAS NOT AFRAID AS HE HELPED CAMERON AND MR. Pritchett clear the passage. He did not look up at the hole from which grainy dust drizzled intermittently. He did not wonder what might happen if they pulled the wrong piece of wreckage from the pile that teetered in front of them like a crazy giant’s Jenga tower. (Mangalam loved American games and had bought several since he arrived here. If they required more than one player, he played against himself.) Right now, his brain was a file cabinet where he had shut all the drawers except one. The open drawer held a single folder, titled What the Soldier Says to Do, and that was what he focused on.
In the past, this particular talent of Mangalam’s had enabled him to enjoy moments of forbidden pleasure without worrying about consequences. Today it was bolstered by a bottle of Wild Turkey that had miraculously escaped the wrath of nature and was safely hidden inside his file cabinet. Over the last several hours, he had been making surreptitious pilgrimages to it, followed by guilt-ridden mouthwash sprees in the bathroom. The guilt was two-pronged. First, he had been brought up in a strict Hindu household on scriptural verses that declared that the consumption of alcohol was a primary symptom of the depraved age of Kali. And second, though it didn’t exactly fall under the category of food, he felt that he should have turned the bottle in to the soldier.
Under normal circumstances, Mangalam was not a drinker. He had the bottle in his office only because he had received it last week,a gift from a grateful client whose visa he had expedited through a less-than-legal shortcut. He had planned to take it back to India, where the price of Wild Turkey was astronomical. He hadn’t yet decided whether he would sell it or re-gift it to someone important who might extend his overseas assignment. But now India had receded from his life, and the best he could hope for was that an aftershock would not shatter the bottle before he had the chance to empty it.
Mangalam hauled off beams that had splintered like the neem sticks his parents had used as
“He’s here,” she whispered.
“Ask him to move his foot,” Cameron said.
She did. There was no response.
It hit her that she was stuck here in the passage with a corpse, that she had gone through all this for nothing. Now she couldn’t stop the hiccuping sobs. Knowing how dangerous they were just made her cry harder.
“It’s okay,” Cameron said. “You did really well. Better than any of us could have. Try one more time, then come back.”
She made herself touch the dead foot. She shook it, feeling the bile rise in her mouth. Just when she thought she would throw up, the heel turned a little.
“Tariq,” she cried, forgetting to be quiet. “I’m here.”
There it was again, the tiniest swivel of the heel, as though he had heard what she was saying.
“Brave girl!” Cameron said. “Come back now so we can start clearing the debris.”
Lily imagined herself buried under that pile, wood and metal and pieces of glass pressing against her backbone, her mouth stuffed with dirt. She imagined feeling a hand around her foot, and then that hand going away. “I’ll wait here,” she said. It wasn’t heroism. When she thought of her journey in reverse, slats of wood coming loose again in her fingers, that uncontrolled sliding, it made her body heavy with terror.
Cameron didn’t waste time trying to persuade her. She could hear him whispering instructions. She removed a little debris from the side of the pile under which Tariq was buried but stopped when a chunk of Sheetrock slid menacingly toward her. Instead, she thought about Beethoven. When deafness began to descend on him, it musthave been like being buried under auditory darkness. But somehow he found a spark, the music sounding inside his head. As she waited for Cameron to arrive, Lily tapped out the rhythm to the Danse Villageoise on Tariq’s heel.
MANGALAM WAS NOT AFRAID AS HE HELPED CAMERON AND MR. Pritchett clear the passage. He did not look up at the hole from which grainy dust drizzled intermittently. He did not wonder what might happen if they pulled the wrong piece of wreckage from the pile that teetered in front of them like a crazy giant’s Jenga tower. (Mangalam loved American games and had bought several since he arrived here. If they required more than one player, he played against himself.) Right now, his brain was a file cabinet where he had shut all the drawers except one. The open drawer held a single folder, titled What the Soldier Says to Do, and that was what he focused on.
In the past, this particular talent of Mangalam’s had enabled him to enjoy moments of forbidden pleasure without worrying about consequences. Today it was bolstered by a bottle of Wild Turkey that had miraculously escaped the wrath of nature and was safely hidden inside his file cabinet. Over the last several hours, he had been making surreptitious pilgrimages to it, followed by guilt-ridden mouthwash sprees in the bathroom. The guilt was two-pronged. First, he had been brought up in a strict Hindu household on scriptural verses that declared that the consumption of alcohol was a primary symptom of the depraved age of Kali. And second, though it didn’t exactly fall under the category of food, he felt that he should have turned the bottle in to the soldier.
Under normal circumstances, Mangalam was not a drinker. He had the bottle in his office only because he had received it last week,a gift from a grateful client whose visa he had expedited through a less-than-legal shortcut. He had planned to take it back to India, where the price of Wild Turkey was astronomical. He hadn’t yet decided whether he would sell it or re-gift it to someone important who might extend his overseas assignment. But now India had receded from his life, and the best he could hope for was that an aftershock would not shatter the bottle before he had the chance to empty it.
Mangalam hauled off beams that had splintered like the neem sticks his parents had used as
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