The Medicine Burns (18 page)

4.

I rode first class on the way to Jaipur and the berth was empty for most of the ride. It was too hot, even at night, to use the blankets they supplied. Instead, I took a cotton lungi from my bag and wet it down with water I'd brought from the bathroom, then stretched it over myself and it was cool for a while. I kept the windows open even as we made our way across the desert, and the sand began to cover the floor. Eventually the monotonous sound of the train became secondary to the silence of the desert. It seemed as though the tracks were buried behind us like the bones of an animal. During the day I'd see the women coming off the horizon in their brightly dyed veils carrying stones in wide baskets on their heads. From far off, they appeared like sails, their saris beating in the wind. It seemed impossible that they could find their way to the tracks, to the specific spot where they would lay and break their stones. They made their way through the emptiness, over the hot, white sand, as though it was in them, as though emptiness was what they were most certain of. I imagined myself walking out into the desert. Could I read the lines the wind left in the sand, or the snake tracks one sees in the mornings? I knew for certain I'd be lost in the desert silence. But as I lay there staring out the window, the landscape seemed more and more familiar, and I felt, for the first time, a connection to India and all its unknowable miles. And I felt an empathy too, for my lover who had died, and for all the others who had glimpsed me like an apparition outside a window, a mirage.

I remembered the way he touched me, his need toward the end, parched, drained of life. I was all of his needs, but unavailable. He'd rub my skin, watching it, as though it always changed. And then the weakness, the fatigue that killed his desire. It happened all at once. The selfishness and insecurity and all the desires they brought up were exterminated. He was just looking up at me then, his eyes taking in the vast, empty space. Me in the chair next to him, but not with him. That's when I tried to talk to him, to make him say my name. But there was no more desire in him. I was rubbing his hands when the heat left him. I could feel him taking me with him. That's what scared me the most, that I would die with him or go on living featureless, insubstantial. I found myself clutching his hands. The room was silent as if we'd both stopped breathing.

I let the sand pepper my face. I felt it stinging at the corners of my mouth. The moon had risen, perfectly disc-like, and the desert stretched out blue-black in the darkness, like a mirror of space. We traveled three hours before we came to the next village.

There were lights strung in the station, and a rush of faces and hands pressed against the grilled windows of the train. Some were offering food or chai, others just hung to the window, staring, smiling. They seemed hypnotized by these faces moving across the desert. I smiled back at them, their faces glowing under the yellow, swinging illuminations of the lanterns. This stream of faces was a mystery they toiled to keep alive with their endless breaking of stones and shifting of iron.

A young man, an Indian in a western-styled suit, entered my berth. There was a crowd of Indian children outside the window by now, pushing their hands through the bars, talking and laughing excitedly amongst themselves. The man went to the window and shut the glass. “They're laughing at you,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, stung immediately.

“They're just children,” he said, smiling and sitting across from me. “To them you are something new. And then, of course, you're wearing only that lungi over yourself, and you are covered with sand.”

“Here,” he said, reaching out with a handkerchief, “to wipe the sand from your eyelashes and your lips.”

I began to wipe the sand away, but as if I were a child without any understanding of my face, he came and sat next to me, and took the cloth from me and rubbed my face. He moved that cloth like a sculptor smoothing wet clay. He smiled down at me, his eyes observing and comforting at the same time.

“You have a fever,” he said.

“I thought so.”

“Do you want chai?” he asked, smiling more comfortably as the train moved out of the yellow, generated light of the station. In the dimness he sat facing me and his eyes were charming.

“No,” I answered. “Where are you going?”

“To Jaipur. My family has a business there, gems.”

“I'm also going to Jaipur,” I told him.

“Did you know it is famous for its gems? Look at my ring. Do you like it?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I really don't know anything about gems.” I looked out the window.
I don't want to go to your jewelry store
.

“This is a Star of Burma.”

“It's pretty,” I said. My eyes were on the desert, empty.

“Maybe it's not as beautiful as the stars you're looking at,” he said, joining me at the window.

“You can't set them in gold and wear them on your finger,” I said somberly.

He laughed, though. I was surprised to hear it and turned to look at his face. His eyes were brown and warm in the shadow, and his lips seemed to anticipate a smile but while I looked on him he did not move, just stared into my eyes as though my sadness had contour or meaning. Before I turned away from him, I felt his hand move up my back, and with a gentle but determined force, I felt him draw me toward him.

“Have you taken pleasure with an Indian man before?” he whispered.

“No,” I answered.
Taken pleasure
—I smiled.

“In India, we are very discreet about this. There are not many Indians who will tell you they're gay. Most of them will marry.”

“Are you married?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “I live alone, a very special privilege. I travel often for the business. My education is European, and my way of life is as European as possible in a place like India. They think of me as a kind of madman for living alone, and I still have to stay with my family at least twice a week to prove to them I haven't forgotten them. India is very old. Her customs are protective.”

He patted my knee. There was something fatherly about him, or something childish in me.

“I can't let myself touch you like that on the train,” he said, withdrawing suddenly.

“Hold me.” I pulled his arm over my shoulder, “like you would a drunken friend, or a friend who's sick.”

I stretched my legs out behind him and rested my head on the pillow, holding his hand with both of mine. “If anyone comes in here,” I said determinedly, “I'll tell them I'm sick, that you're helping me.”

He pulled his hand from mine, then began to rub my face with both his hands, vigorously, as if to wake me.

“Calm down now,” he said. “I will write you my address in Jaipur.”

“What's your name?”

“John,” he said. I did not ask him for his Indian name.

After a silence I asked, “Can you tell I'm sick?”

“All tourists get sick. Even I get sick when I return from Europe.”

“Please open the window.”

He hesitated. “The sand is blowing all over the cabin.”

“I'm so hot,” I said, almost panicking, “my breath is short.”

He opened it. The desert invaded immediately. The sand slid across the table and gathered around the water bottles.

I asked him to take a water bottle and wet down the lungi I was stretched naked beneath.

“You don't want to waste your drinking water,” he said.

“They're refilled with the water from the bathroom.” I pointed to where he should start, the top of the lungi, just above my nipples.

He was nervous turning the bottle up, as though it held ink or blood. He poured lightly at first, thin streams that I felt stretch over the fabric, cooling my body down. He poured the water heavily over my crotch and thighs, then put his hand there and quickly withdrew it. When he had completely wet me down, he looked me over in sections: my chest, my stomach, torso, and legs. He looked closely, almost squinting, but didn't touch me again.

Finally, he said “you are dehydrated,” rubbing two of his fingers over my lip. “I will get us chai.”

He left the berth and came back with a large thermos. He poured out a cup and held it to my lips. It was too hot for tea, but I drank it for his effort.

He let himself stroke my hair and I closed my eyes, trusting him enough to fall asleep, leaving everything unlocked and unguarded.

I woke up some hours later. The sand had covered over everything. I could feel it on my cheeks like a stubble. I could feel it under my nails. It had gathered on the lungi between my legs, and between my fingers. John was gone. It seemed almost as easy to imagine he had never been with me. My possessions, becoming fewer and fewer, were untouched.

I looked out the window then, and in the darkness was able to see the outline of homes just a few yards from the tracks. People were out on their doorsteps, the wind blowing their hair across their faces. It must have been after midnight so it was strange to see them there, as though they'd roused themselves so not to miss our passing.

In the distance behind them I saw a sudden series of colorful lights flashing and rotating, a carnival a few miles from the tracks. That is how I realized this stop was not a small village, but perhaps our destination, Jaipur. I gathered my things in case the signs confirmed it when we pulled in. When I went to take the water bottle from the table, I found his address on a small, torn square of paper. Some of the ink had run under the ring left by the bottle. He wrote only his first name, John, and the number and street. Underneath he wrote Jaipur and underlined it. I slipped the paper in the front pocket of a pair of pants then put them on.

The train moved slowly into the station as though it was dividing its way between the throngs of people. The crowds were taking refuge from the rains, the first in three years. I watched them with their umbrellas and sheets of newspaper over their heads, running from the rain but with expressions of excitement and joy. The rain affected them like a prophecy or a promise. I watched the others staring out at the rain as though it was a theater curtain.

People began to jump from the train and I watched them moving through the crowd until they were taken up and embraced by family, or took seats on the floor, waiting for the bicycle rickshaws to commence service, waiting for the rain to slow. I looked out over the crowd to see John but I didn't trust my memory of his face. I remembered the Star of Burma, and how he'd reached his hand out to show it.

I saw him then, pointing the way to a porter burdened with his bags. I left the train car, bag in tow, knocking into a woman and her child, and stepped out onto the platform where the crowds were swarming. He was lost somewhere, and when I gave up searching for him I was shocked by the part of me that had ventured out like a tentative root.

The rain that had entranced the crowd. Falling heavily for a moment, it stopped abruptly.

In the hotel I discovered a rash covering my side, like a continent mapped on a globe, and I felt nauseous looking at it, afraid to run my hand over it. Perhaps it was the fiber of the lungi, or the dye. My symptoms had improved since Banares; the vomiting had stopped. For two days, I could not leave the hotel. I watched to see if the rash would change, for it to get larger or disappear. I was feeling better, but now my body had this marking, and I could not reconcile it. There were moments when I could imagine wellness, but the long red patch remained. And only when I let myself stare at it and confront its otherness could I connect my mind to my body.

For two days I stayed in bed, giving myself pleasure by smoking cigarettes on my back and masturbating as often as I could. This would go on through the night until the last guests would climb the gate and enter their rooms. It was impossible to sleep, thinking of the sickness and how far it would extend. It became a vigil, to watch the borders.

I believed that my sickness was the result of being inattentive. I scrutinized the rash throughout the nights, thinking my concentration could stem its advance. And it did, temporarily. On the second day in Jaipur, it seemed to have improved. Perhaps I had already grown used to it.

I stood up and pulled the kurta pajamas over my head. They hung loosely, barely touching the rash. I think I did something silly then, like floating around the room waving the pajama pants in the air. I was delirious with life and with hunger. The Evergreen Hotel had a patio restaurant, always busy with travelers talking and playing chess. I sat at a large table where the talk was of Tiananmen Square. Many of them had been traveling in China when the protests began. They started talking about genocide and what it meant to be a casualty of a massive backlash, a massive intolerance. They all agreed that the ideal death would be one they choreographed themselves, that there was nothing more tragic than to be taken by history.

I ate voraciously; it was so seldom that I could hold food down. I'd kept my diet to glucose biscuits, bananas, and curd. I couldn't help listening to them talk, though. It was like someone nearby whispering about you, lying.

A German sitting next to me asked my opinion.

“Nobody choreographs their own death,” I said, shaking with stubbornness. “Not heroes, and not cowards.”

I kept thinking,
everyone dies blindly
. That's a reason to forgive them.

They moved the discussion to Israel, to the security cards that would be mandatory for Palestinians.
People must have their integrity to survive
, they agreed.

I took a rickshaw into the old city, the pink city, the walls around it cut from pink sandstone. Brightly painted suns crowned the lampposts. The streets were wider here, and for the first time in an Indian city, I did not feel cramped. The rickshaw driver let me off at the Palace of the Winds, and I stood back from it so I could see its ornate edges and honeycombed windows. The women of an historical court were once kept here, and I could imagine their eyes flashing behind the filigreed bars on the windows.