“Aye, aye, Captain!” Mattie answered, laughing.
“And you, Rupee?”
“Yes, Mr. Ian!”
Ian glanced at the attendant, who motioned for them to get going. Ian started to pedal and the car moved forward with surprising ease. A hill approached, and as soon as the car began to tilt upward, the resistance to the pedals intensified. A click could be heard beneath the car with each revolution of the pedals, and Ian assumed that some sort of safety feature kept the car from sliding backward.
The going was tough and Ian started to sweat. “You ankle biters pedaling up there?” he asked, tousling Mattie’s hair.
She giggled. “Let’s go faster.”
The car continued to lumber upward. “It’s like towing a bloody elephant up a hill!” Ian added, sweating profusely.
“Daddy! Stop being such a baby!”
Rupee laughed, peering over the side of the car, surprised at how high they’d already climbed. He pulled Prem out of his pocket and showed him the view. “Don’t get too scared,” he whispered in Hindi. “I promise we’ll be all right.”
Finally the car reached the crest of the hill, which plateaued for about twenty feet before descending in a series of rises and falls. “Look around, you two,” Ian said, gazing at the distant city. Varanasi seemed to smolder beneath the setting sun. Dead ahead, a pair of naked lightbulbs marked the start of the descent. Encircling the bulbs were hundreds of flying insects.
“Hold on!” Mattie shouted, as the car tipped forward and down.
The descent was faster than Ian would have guessed possible. The car dropped as if free-falling, producing screams from Mattie and Rupee. Ian laughed at the sound of the shrieking children, holding on as the car plummeted and soared. Though the ride didn’t have loops like roller coasters back home, for some reason Ian found this experience more enjoyable. The world rushed past, his heart seemed to skip a few beats, and Mattie and Rupee screamed as if they were on Space Mountain at Disney World.
When they approached the line of people on the ground, unseen brakes slowed the car in a start-and-stop fashion. Ian watched Mattie lean close to Rupee and laugh with him. At that moment Ian’s joy faded. He thought about how he had never given her a sibling, how she was destined to grow up alone, and how he would die one day and leave her with no one.
As such thoughts dominated him, he felt trapped in the battered car. He saw its age for the first time—the rust on its floor, the frayed ends of the seat belt. He watched Mattie help Rupee from their seat and knew that soon they would be separated. Mattie would leave India, and Rupee would be once again on his own. Ian had already decided to spend the next morning researching and contacting orphanages, but he was worried about being turned away. He couldn’t leave Rupee on the streets, but if the orphanages were full or uninterested, what choice would he have?
Mattie took Rupee’s hand and hurried toward the next ride—which looked to involve some sort of water balloon fight. Sure enough, a pair of adversaries spaced about thirty feet apart used oversized slingshots to launch water balloons at each other. The participants stood in a chain-link cage, so that errant balloons didn’t fly into passersby.
“Rupee and me against you, Daddy!” Mattie said, handing their tickets to an attendant. The man explained the rules in English, gave Ian a bucket with ten water balloons, and handed another full bucket to Mattie and Rupee.
Ian joked with Mattie, laughing, trying to fill her with joy even though he no longer felt joyous. I’ve become such a bloody actor, he thought, as he held up a balloon and threatened to throw it at his daughter. Kate’s dead. And sometimes the future scares the wits right out of me. But I have to smile and laugh and pretend that tomorrow is going to be lovely. But what if it’s never lovely? What if I have to pretend for the rest of my life? Soon Mattie will see right through me, and then I’ll only make her sadder.
His stomach starting to ache, Ian chewed on an antacid and picked up a red balloon. Placing it in the slingshot, he pulled back and yelled, “Ready to get wet?”
Mattie and Rupee laughed, working together to arm their slingshot. Mattie shrieked as they let go, and their blue balloon tumbled through the air, hitting the chain-link fence above Ian, dousing him with water. “I see ya be declarin’ war on me, Blackbeard the Terrible,” he said, speaking and snarling like a pirate. “Well, ya scurvy dogs, y’ll be walkin’ thee plank before this day’s dead.” Aiming his slingshot, he let go, howling triumphantly when his balloon burst directly over their heads.
The children shrieked, quickly reloaded, and sent a balloon in his direction. Ian could have ducked out of the way but he let it hit him in the chest. “Y’ve struck a blow,” he shouted, pretending to stagger. “But me ain’t one to run from a brawl. Prepare to be boarded!” He picked up another balloon, which popped in his hands as he tried to load it. “Curse thee cannon!” Another balloon splattered above him. “Ye think Blackbeard will go down so easy?” he said, baring his teeth.
“Have a drink!” Mattie shouted, as she and Rupee fired another balloon.
Ian smiled, a genuine smile, one that at least temporarily denied his pain and fear. He knew that he would make mistakes with Mattie, that he would fail her, that no matter how much he loved her, he wasn’t capable of being a perfect father. And one day he would be gone, leaving her with only memories of him, of their best and worst times together.
He wanted this moment to be one of the best times, something that would give her solace in the years when he was gone. So despite the many aches that compromised his life, he pulled back on his slingshot, told them to fear the wrath of Blackbeard, and launched his yellow balloon.
THE NEXT DAY BEGAN WITH BREAKFAST ON the veranda outside their hotel. Rupee had slept on the floor of their room and now sat next to Mattie, eating from a carton of yogurt. Though usually Ian ordered local food, he’d made the mistake of asking for scrambled eggs and forced himself not to grimace as he ate hunks of watery, half-cooked eggs. Normally, he would have set the food aside and munched on a piece of bread, but in Rupee’s presence, he ate every last bite of the eggs.
Though Mattie had spent much of the previous day laughing with Rupee, she was less animated this morning. They were leaving for Hong Kong the following day, and she didn’t want to say good-bye to Rupee. He knew how to make her smile, how to laugh and be silly. She had forgotten what it was like to have an aching belly after laughing on and off all afternoon. And she loved how Rupee grinned when she took his hand and led him forward.
Ian was eager to start looking for orphanages and paid the breakfast bill as soon as possible. The hotel had a small business center, and he stepped into it, then settled down in front of a computer and a phone. While Mattie taught Rupee how to draw with her colored pencils, Ian got online and started researching orphanages in Varanasi. He worked hard and fast, as he had before Kate had gotten sick. His fingers beat against the keyboard as if it were an instrument. His eyes read groupings of words instead of individual words. He was unaware of the children beside him.
Within an hour, Ian had a list of four orphanages that appeared to be reputable and well run. He picked up the phone and started making calls, being polite but also succinct and aggressive in his line of questioning. There were some advantages to being a foreigner in India, and he relied on these strengths, asking to speak with managers, pushing people when he felt that they were being evasive.
Once Ian had settled on what he thought was the best orphanage in the city, he tried to convince the man on the other end of the phone that Rupee would be a welcome addition. Though Ian spoke about Rupee’s good health and disposition, the man said that his orphanage was filled beyond capacity. Ian reached for an antacid, thinking of a way out. In the end, he promised to make a thousand-dollar donation to the orphanage if the manager would take Rupee. The man was delighted by Ian’s suggestion, and the details of the deal were quickly negotiated.
Though Ian felt rushed in his decision-making process, he knew that even i
f the orphanage wasn’t perfect, Rupee would be much better off than he had been a few days earlier. The boy had his own bank account, and the orphanage sounded like an honorable establishment.
Ian was worried that Rupee would be sad to leave them, but on the contrary, he was thrilled by the prospect of having a place to live. After Ian explained the workings of the orphanage, and how he and Mattie would try to find a family to adopt Rupee, the boy started smiling again, as if unbelieving of his good fortune.
Wanting to spend as much time as possible at the orphanage, Ian led the children to a taxi. The streets of Varanasi were predictably chaotic, and the driver punched at the horn like a moth battering itself against a streetlight. It took about twenty minutes to reach the orphanage, a two-story cement building adjacent to a dusty soccer field. Children swarmed over the field, chasing several balls, as if multiple games were occurring on the same patch of dirt.
Ian, Mattie, and Rupee walked past the field and toward the building. They hadn’t yet stepped inside when a well-dressed man emerged, introduced himself, and shook Ian’s hand. The manager spoke with Rupee in Hindi, and soon both were smiling.
After several minutes of small talk, the manager asked if Mattie and Rupee wanted to play soccer while he spoke with Ian. Mattie wasn’t interested, and politely declined, taking Rupee’s hand and leading him toward a purple bench near the other children. Ian and the manager stood not more than thirty feet away, watching the children, talking about Rupee’s future.
Mattie edged closer to her friend. “I’m going to miss you, Rupee,” she said, happy for him but sad for herself.
Rupee smiled, sure that he was dreaming, that an American girl couldn’t possibly think of him as a friend, that he hadn’t arrived at such a beautiful orphanage. “Why?” he asked. “Why you my friend? Everyone else, they think I dirty. Cannot touch me.”
Her hand found his. “You make me smile, Rupee. And you’re not dirty. See? My skin is against yours and there’s no dirt anywhere. So if anyone ever calls you dirty again, you just think about your hand against mine.”
Rupee nodded, remembering sifting through piles of bones at the bottom of the river, hoping that Mattie was right, that his hands had somehow remained clean. “You send me letter? From Hong Kong? I get someone to read it for me.”
“I’ll send you a lot of letters. A heap of letters, as my daddy would say.”
“I no forget you.”
“And I won’t forget you.”
Rupee looked at her skin against his, remembering her words. He didn’t have a single memory of being held, of a hand against his. “I so happy,” he said.
Despite her sadness at the thought of leaving him, Mattie smiled, reaching into her backpack. She took out her sketch pad and leafed through its pages, coming to the image she had drawn of him. She set the pad on his lap. “Someday, Rupee, I’ll come back to India. And I’ll draw another picture of you.”
He studied her sketch, smiling at his smile in the picture, warmed by the glow of his face. “You so good, Mattie. I think maybe . . . maybe a painter . . . he already reborn into you.”
Mattie thought about the river, about whether her mother was in heaven or had been reborn, as the Hindus thought. “Rupee? Can you climb a tree with me?”
“A tree? Why?”
“Because I want to leave a picture for my mother. So she can see it.”
Rupee looked around the soccer field, pointing to an immense teak tree at the corner of the building. “Like that one?” he asked, carefully handing her back the sketch pad.
She nodded, then walked to the orphanage’s manager, asking him if they could climb a tree and leave a message for her mother. The man’s brow furrowed, but then he saw the yearning in her expression, and he nodded. Knowing that her father was watching, Mattie walked toward the tree.
The climb was difficult, as the trunk had been pruned of low branches. Rupee went first, jumping up, grabbing onto the stump of a broken branch and hoisting himself higher. Mattie repeated his motions, her backpack moving from side to side as she climbed. She wondered how high Rupee would go, hoping that he wouldn’t stop. Wanting to give her mother the best possible view of her sketch, Mattie climbed higher. She liked following Rupee, liked that he looked down to make sure she was fine. Twice he held out his hand for her, helping her up, their fingers intertwined.
Mattie asked herself what it would be like to climb a tree with a brother or sister. Would they always help each other? Would they be best friends?
Rupee stopped, leaning against the trunk. He pulled Mattie up again and she straddled a nearby branch. They were higher than the top of the adjacent building, and Mattie saw that an immense puddle had formed in the center of the flat roof.
Using her right hand, Mattie unslung her backpack, opened it, and removed her sketch pad. She leafed through the pad until locating her drawing of the Taj Mahal. She studied the drawing, showed it to Rupee, and then carefully folded it and stuck it into a crevice formed within a split branch. She looked up, trying to somehow glimpse her mother’s spirit. She spoke silently to her mother, asking her to watch over Rupee, to make sure that he was safe and happy.
“Why you leave picture in tree?” Rupee asked, Prem held tight in his hand.
Mattie put on her backpack, glancing below at her father, who stood near the base of the tree. “My mother . . . she’s dead, like I told you. But she loves to see my drawings, and to read my words. So I put them in wishing trees.”
“Wishing trees?”
“Places where I feel closer to her, where I know she’s looking.”
Rupee nodded. “Tomorrow, when you at airport, when you go to new country, I come outside and look for your drawing. If it fall to ground, I carry it back up, put it at top of tree again. Then your mother see it for many days.”
Mattie moved her loose tooth with her tongue, not wanting to think of being separated from Rupee. “Do . . . do you miss your mother, Rupee?”
“Me no remember her, so me no miss her. But sometime . . . me see mother with boy, and this make me sad.”
“I know. Me too.”
“But you take me here, so now I so happy. Maybe someday I have mother.”
“We’re going to find you a family. My daddy’s really great at that stuff.”
Rupee exhaled deeply, as if he’d just arisen from the river’s murky waters. “Me think me already reborn. When you say hello, when you take me to eat food, that day I born again. Me lucky. No have to get body burned, pushed into water to get reborn. I already reborn. You are like my Ganga River.”
“Really?”
“You . . . you do so much for me. Next time I see you, I do so much for you. And Mr. Ian. I make you feel reborn too.”
Mattie studied his smile. She was so happy to see it. But her smile was only half as wide. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye to the boy who made her laugh, who gave her his hand and helped her climb a tree.
Mattie wanted to be reborn. She understood what he was talking about. She longed to wake up and have everything different, everything the way it had been.
“I’ll miss you, Rupee,” she said, biting her lower lip so that she wouldn’t cry.
Rupee’s smile wavered, and he reached out to her, their fingers meeting and clasping, neither of them quite ready to climb down from the wishing tree, from a place where rebirth seemed so near and yet so far.
HONG KONG
Pain and Pleasure
“IT IS ONLY WHEN THE COLD SEASON COMES THAT WE KNOW THE PINE AND CYPRESS TO BE EVERGREENS.”
—CHINESE SAYING
The hotel rose like a sword into the night sky. The ultramodern building was sleek and soaring, thrusting higher than the half dozen skyscrapers crowding around it. Forty rows of oversized windows provided guests with spectacular views of downtown Hong Kong, which at night resembled its own solar system, replete with brilliant constellations, glowing planets, and setting suns. The city seemed afire with color and radiance. The skyscrapers weren’t s
imply tall rectangles of steel and glass, but sculpted and flowing structures illuminated by millions of green, purple, blue, and red lights that reflected off the clouds, the nearby sea, and the mountains, giving rise to a futuristic landscape that might have been conjured within the pages of a science fiction novel.
Ian stood near the window of their hotel room, peering through a telescope at the world below. Four high-rises fell within his immediate field of view, and all appeared to be apartment buildings. Many featured large windows, and he saw families eating dinner, watching television, gathered around flat-screen computer monitors. Children ran from room to room while mothers washed dishes. Fathers spoke on cell phones, pacing like caged lions. Other telescopes twisted and turned as people studied the scenes around them.
Not sure what to think of such voyeurism, Ian continued to look into the night. The nearby buildings must have housed wealthy families, for many of the apartments contained a variety of large rooms. Ian intensified the strength of the telescope and was able to see children smiling and laughing. He watched a pair of boys make paper airplanes and toss them around a family room. Sitting nearby, a man and a woman, presumably the parents, drank wine and smiled at their children’s antics.
Ian turned the telescope, scanning lit and unobscured windows, pausing when he realized that a woman in a nearby building was staring through her telescope at him. He stepped back, fumbled at the buttons of his pajamas, and then once again put his eye to the instrument. The woman wore a black cocktail dress. Her hair was pinned up, dark ringlets held in place by a pair of lacquered chopsticks. She waved to him, then turned her telescope elsewhere.
Twisting to Mattie, Ian started to ask if she wanted to look out into the night but realized that sights of cheerful families would only further dampen her mood. She had been quiet since they’d left India—actually, since they’d left Rupee. Ian was aware of how quickly Mattie and Rupee had formed a bond, a connection based perhaps on the losses they shared. After Kate’s death, Ian had often arranged playdates with Mattie’s friends, but she’d never seemed to want to be around them. Maybe they had been too happy, their lives too perfect. One day, Mattie had asked Ian to stop inviting her friends. She’d wanted to be with him, or with no one.