The Girl in the Road Page 17

  “We don’t,” says the older man. “But if you say you mean us no harm, we’ll believe you.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “Do you mean me harm?”

  “No!” says the older man, surprised, and then looks over his shoulder at Navid, who’s giving me the evil eye. Finally he says, “I mean no one harm who means me no harm.”

  “Well, I mean no harm,” I say. Why am I so obstreperous? It’s like, now that I see so few humans, I have to audition them for worthiness.

  Our charade is done. The older man claps his hands together and approaches me and says, “Great! That’s settled. I’m Dr. Mohsen Yazdi, and this is Dr. Navid Yazdi.”

  They’re father and son oceanographers based at the University of Tehran. The phone receiver thing is actually a mobile seastead, a spar model that can bob around the seas and not fall over, which seems intuitively ridiculous, but here they are. It’s technically illegal to park their spar on the Trail, but they do if they’re close and no one’s watching. We like to stretch our legs, says Mohsen.

  I sit a few scales away while they perform the evening prayer. Navid’s temper cools and he tunes me out when he joins with his father’s voice. It calms me to hear other people pray. On the open ocean, their chant doesn’t echo, it just goes nowhere.

  When they’re done, Navid climbs back up into the spar to heat water. Mohsen apologizes and says they don’t have much left besides what they’ve caught on the Trail. He offers me some dried sea-snake meat. I say sure. He climbs up into the spar too and after a few minutes he descends with a plate of circles like cucumber slices, except they’re dry, withered, and colored pink with black skin. I bite one and it’s chewy, with a texture like dried mushroom and a strong metallic flavor.

  “It’s a cultivated taste,” says Mohsen. “They’re an invasive species. Beautiful things in the water though, just beautiful, like black ribbons.”

  He reminds me of Muthashan.

  “You have a faraway look in your eyes,” says Mohsen.

  “You remind me of my grandfather.”

  “Is he still with you?”

  The question is strange to me. My glotti probably didn’t catch the nuance, but I think he’s asking whether Muthashan is still alive.

  “Yes,” I say. “Far as I know, anyway. Haven’t been in touch with him for a while.”

  “Does he know where you are?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ah.” Mohsen sits back on his mat. “What in me reminds you of him?”

  Here we go again, when I try to translate what’s in my head to what comes out of my mouth and I fuck it up. If I could say it right, I’d tell him about the time I looked out the window and saw Muthashan sitting alone on a stone bench in the garden, and his shoulders were shaking, so I thought he was coughing. I’d just made chai, so I brought some out for him in a chipped white cup. I rounded the corner of the bench and he turned to me with cheeks wet and eyes red. So he wasn’t coughing, he was crying. I was mad. I was a teenager and he’d sprung this on me.

  I turned to go, but he held out a snotty hand to invite me to sit next to him. I did. I could tell he wanted to make a Connection. He put his arm around me and hugged me to him and cried on my shoulder. I stayed still, absorbing the shudders of his body. It was so un-Malayalee of him. I usually didn’t care about that kind of thing, but at that moment, I did.

  I watched an orange lizard thrash over the lettuce bed.

  Finally I asked, So what are you upset about?

  My son, he said. My son Gabriel.

  Oh, I said.

  Your grandmother would be so angry with me if she knew I was sitting here, crying like a child, while you comforted me.

  My hand settled on his back, but my eyes were blank. His crying dissolved into coughing. So I’d been right to bring the chai after all.

  “Here’s your tea,” says Navid.

  I realize I’d never answered Mohsen. I’d spaced out again.

  “Gentleness,” I say to Mohsen. “You have a quality of gentleness.”

  “That’s kind of you,” says Mohsen. “I take it as a compliment.”

  “I mean it that way. So what do you do out here?”

  “Gathering data on waveforms.”

  “Height and energy?”

  “That, and frequency and morphology,” says Navid, having decided I’m worth talking to. “And the usual conductivity, temperature, depth.”

  “You do this every year?”

  “Every year for the last ten,” says Navid.

  “He was fifteen, the first time I took him out in the spar,” says Mohsen. “He did so well! The best assistant you could ask for.”

  Navid actually blushes. These men are fascinating to me. I never knew fathers and sons to behave like intimates.

  “So what are you finding out?”

  Navid and Mohsen exchange looks. “How much do you know about the weather?” says Navid.

  “I know it’s getting worse.”

  “Right,” says Navid. “Because there’s more heat in all of the systems, which means more energy needs to be redistributed.”

  “Average wave heights all over the world are increasing quite dramatically,” says Mohsen.

  “Good time to invest in wave energy,” I say, indicating the Trail.

  “Indeed,” says Mohsen. “HydraCorp knew what they were doing. Now if the Trail itself can just survive being out here.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Ah, you underestimate the sea,” says Mohsen. “She’s a violent mistress.”

  “I can’t believe you’re walking on this thing,” says Navid. “Do you know anything about metallic hydrogen?”

  “I know it’s the superconductor used in the Trail.”

  “It’s also unstable.”

  “Navid, peace—it’s unstable under certain circumstances, like any substance.”

  “Killed hundreds of workers in Africa,” says Navid. “And it’s never been tested at sea. So hey, it could be fine, it could stay inert. Or it could get out and propagate instability.”

  “Speaking of which, I’m surprised I haven’t run into any storms.”

  “Ha! You will,” says Navid. “Bound to happen. What protection do you have?”

  “My pod goes underwater,” I say. “I haven’t had to try it out yet.”

  “You’ll have your chance yet,” he says.

  Why is he on my tits. I want to smear that condescending smirk off his face.

  Mohsen comes in to rescue us young hotheads. “Yes, there’s plenty more heat to redistribute,” he says, “which means stronger winds, which means stronger waves.”

  “So what makes a wave?”

  “An initial imbalance.”

  “Between what.”

  “Between layers of a gradient. All systems wish to be at rest. So they redistribute energy until they re-equilibrate, though of course, they never quite get there.”

  “Like castes,” I say.

  The word doesn’t initially translate for them. I have to say, you know, like layers of people in traditional Indian society, Dalit, Kshatriya, Brahmin.

  Oh, oh, yes, they nod.

  “Like people themselves,” Mohsen says. “Seeking equilibrium.”

  “But you can never trace the first imbalance.”

  “It depends on how far back you want to go.”

  I think: How far back do I want to go? For a second I feel like a game-show contestant and I’m pondering the question with bright flashing lights all around.

  For now I say, “So you’re saying we’re doomed.”

  “Yes,” says Navid at once. “Even the ocean may reach a tipping point. It will look calm, and then it will snap.”

  “Live far away from the shore and you’ll be fine,” says Mohsen.

  “Or live on the Trail,” says Navid. “There could be a tsunami coming through here right now and we’d never know it.”

  Mohsen sees that my tea is finished. He nods to Navid, who takes the cup and plate from
me and kneels a few scales away to wash them in purified water.

  “So you’re headed off again tonight?” asks Mohsen.

  “Yeah. I mostly walk at night because the water is calmer. And I don’t get roasted by the sun.”

  “Very smart. Do you know the stars?”

  “Some of them.”

  “The Needle?”

  “The what?”

  He tries again. “The North Star?”

  “Oh, the Dhruva Tara. No, actually. I always forget how to find it.”

  Mohsen stands up and scans the sky, which is flushed deep blue now. He points northwest up toward the Saptarishi and tells me to trace upward from the two pointer stars. I can see it now. A very unassuming star.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Take good care of yourself,” says Mohsen. “Be smart. Be careful.”

  A kilometer later, I throw up all the sea snake I ate.

  Geeta

  I wish Navid hadn’t been right, but he’d been too much of a prick not to be. When I wake up a few days later the sky is overcast and the wind is snappish. As I make breakfast I notice planks and other flotsam knocking up against the Trail, on the south side. Their corners aren’t weathered. They’ve splintered off in recent history. I guess that means a nearby meteorological event.

  I stop and check my locality. Nothing. I widen the range, and then I see it: Cyclone Geeta, coming up from the southeast. Wonderful. It’s not even cyclone season. Though seasons as a concept don’t have much integrity anymore.

  I’m heavy, but not that heavy. I can’t risk the wind on the surface of the Trail if the cyclone hits. According to my scroll it’s about twelve hours away, so I keep walking through the night. There’s a full moon, but it’s covered by clouds, so its light suffuses the whole sky like I’m walking under a gray veil thrown over a lightbulb. On the Trail it’s hard to appreciate natural beauty. I’m too aware of thousands of kilometers left. These sights might be beautiful to me, someday, in memory, but now I just walk a tightrope over an abyss.

  When the sky begins to lighten, I see a discoloration to the southeast, approaching like an army on the battlefield. But of course each stage of arrival is not the ultimate stage. The sea is still calm. I feel a little reckless. For a while I entertain the illusion that I’m keeping pace with the storm or even outpacing it. But it keeps arriving. I see the first flashes of lightning.

  Time to go under. I take out my scroll and pull up the pod manual. It says that my pod is designed for depths of up to ten meters and that the skin can be adjusted for oxygen porosity, though it takes more energy the deeper it goes, because dissolved oxygen gets more scarce.

  I inflate the pod as usual and activate the oxygen extraction mode that assumes submersion in water. I have no idea what these pods were originally designed for. Rich Brahmin adrenaline hounds? I imagine them inflating pods and taking them over Jog Falls. Which would be idiotic, though hardly less idiotic than what I’m doing. And I’m Brahmin too, imagine that. The poor don’t have the luxury to be so dumb.

  The wind is picking up and the waves are getting choppier. I have to work fast. In the original pod kit are two items I’d been tempted to throw out in the arrogance of someone who assumes that if they don’t know the purpose of a thing, it must have no purpose: (1) a ten-meter elastic cord that expands in water and (2) a rubber sphincter lined with the same polymer as the cord, so that, when joined, form a watertight seal. Again, up to ten meters’ depth. Regarding anything below that depth, the manual is silent.

  I need something to secure the cord to. On the seasteads, I’m sure they have steel rings anchored to the platform for this very purpose. What can I use? The Trail runs smooth for hundreds of kilometers in each direction. There are no protuberances. Excellent. I’m fucked. I begin to feel rain spattering my face. The only thing I can think to do is tie the cord around an entire scale, which will take up two or three meters of its length, and hope it holds.

  I insert the sphincter into the pod’s skin, making sure the lining makes a seal with the rest of the skin, and then thread the cord through. No time to think. I take a deep breath and slip into the water with all my clothes on, holding the other end of the cord, and swim down under the scale deep enough where the water gets cold to make sure I’m clearing the scales by a good meter, because if they knock together while my head’s between them, this adventure will be over. I clear them and surface on the other side and heave myself back up, having made a loop underneath, and tie it around the hinge assembly.

  Now the wind is blowing rain into my eyes and it’s hard to see. I hold one arm up against the wind and nudge the pod to the edge of the platform. I slice it open and crawl inside it with all my things and then pinch the skin closed. I take off my wet clothes and wrap them up and set them aside to deal with later. I’m naked in an orb. Typical. The new oxygen extraction setting isn’t completely clear; it’s translucent, like seeing the outside through a filmy window. Rain begins to come in sideways.

  Nothing left to do but go down. I rock forward. No luck. I have to be more forceful, but not enough to break the skin. I rock again and feel a sickening dropping movement and overcorrect back in terror, but it’s too late. My pod rolls on the surface of the water and bobs in the waves. Then I begin to sink.

  The water rises like a stage curtain. It’s already a third of the way up my pod. I can see drifting gold dust in the gray water. I tell myself this is exactly what’s supposed to happen. Though now I feel certain that this pod wasn’t made for the open ocean, but calm ponds and reefs off of Goa. I curl up at the bottom of my pod, wishing I were lighter, if that would make a difference. I reread the instructions. It might take a minute for the pod to begin to sink completely, it says. So I have to wait. I fight the urge to unseal the pod and scramble back out onto the Trail. The storm would be much worse on the Trail.

  Slowly, the water level rises farther. It’s halfway up. Then there’s only a circle of sky above me, rain drumming hard, and then the circle is gone. My world is blue-gray with yellow crumbs floating by. Getting darker. The air inside the pod becomes cooler and wetter. I force myself to take deep, calm breaths. It’s almost as if the pod isn’t sinking at all, but rather that the world is flooding. This is my new state now. The air is fresh. The oxygen extraction seems to be working. I examine the seal that the cord makes with the lining of the sphincter, which itself bonds with the skin of the pod—all seem to be holding. I realize I’ve been clenching all my muscles and try to relax. The pod becomes still as it sinks. Then there’s a gentle tug from the top. I’ve descended three meters, which I set as my initial stop point.

  I’m not sure I could sleep even if I wanted to. According to the Established Routine, this is the time of day when I read, but it seems ridiculous to read when I just dropped myself into the ocean like a tea ball. I can’t reconcile the absurdity of that idea with the mundane reality of it. How I’m lying on my back naked with my legs crossed and my backpack in my lap. How it feels like I’m sitting on a waterbed. How the orb around me is colored a perfect gradient of light to dark.

  I try to get comfortable. Being in neutral buoyancy, the pod has assumed a more spherical shape than it does on the Trail, where it sags from gravity. I try to spread my weight around because I still don’t trust the pod skin to hold me. I keep my eyes trained on the light color above and sing through the twelve or thirteen kritis I know by heart. I may be agnostic but I know my people’s songs.

  I’ve been lying in the pod looking up for maybe fifteen minutes when I trust that, since I haven’t suffocated so far, and my knot seems to be holding, and the pod skin hasn’t split, I can give myself permission to move. I pull up a baggie of food I brought down—a couple of idlee cubes without sauce—and eat them, still staring up. They settle my stomach.

  I pull out my manual and read it again. It says that, to pull myself up, I have to take the cable in through the sphincter and basically pull myself up like pulling myself up a rope. As of now, the cord is letti
ng out bit by bit on its own, which means that the scale it’s tied to is bucking in the waves. The storm must have really arrived now. I just have to wait it out.

  I go through my kritis again.

  I hold out the last note of the last song until I run out of breath.

  I take out my scroll. I reread the section on underwater survival. In theory, I can stay down here for a few days—the pod’s skin has molecular pumps for both oxygen (in) and carbon dioxide (out). I’m beginning to actually feel comfortable. But sleep is still inconceivable. I turn my head to look down and there’s only darkness. How many meters to the bottom, I wonder. Probably two or three thousand.

  I tell my scroll to play the essays of Reshmi West, the writer-guru I first started reading after I dropped out of college. I close my eyes and listen. She was born in Dubai but went to India for college. Then she retraced Gandhi’s travels by train. Then she lost touch with her parents. She traveled, not begging, but eating very little and filling whole journals, each of which she mailed to a friend in Trivandrum when finished. She carried only one salwar kameez and one sari ensemble, which she wore on alternating days, and washed herself on the ghats of whatever village she was in. I’ve seen holos of her from this period: light, skinny, fragile. She was a tiny woman to begin with, but here she looked like a marmoset.

  She came to Madurai, the temple town that’s home to the Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple. The gods there are Meenakshi (mine and my mother’s namesake) and Shiva. The priests bring Shiva to Meenakshi’s bedchambers every night, sing them lullabies, and then leave them alone for their cosmic lovemaking. No one is allowed to see it.

  Reshmi spent the entire day in the temple complex. After all the pilgrims left, after the priests had put Meenakshi and Shiva to bed and gone to bed themselves, she remained. She was so quiet that no one noticed her. She sat on the floor, with her back to a pillar by the Golden Lotus Tank, and strained to listen for the sounds of lovemaking. She claims she heard them. She heard panting and whimpering and gasping, sounds that one makes when one’s finger is struck with a hammer. On through the whole night it went, and she sat still and observed her reactions to it. At first she was delighted and felt especially blessed, that she’d been allowed not only to catch a glimpse of the gods, but to hear them at night. She closed her eyes and pictured them: water-blue Shiva and fish-eyed Meenakshi, the lovely warrior. She pictured them entwining. She moved from delight to tears at the beauty of it. But the tears were not entirely happy. She was jealous, too. She realized she’d been alone for three years, not allowing anyone to touch her, and she was jealous that Shiva and Meenakshi had found each other, and flaunted it every night. Their sounds echoing through the pillars became not beautiful, but ugly. As if she were being forced to witness something unbearable, the embarrassing, sordid coupling of strangers. The gods were merely animals in heat. Can’t they control themselves? she thought. And then the sky began to lighten, and the rapacious moaning finally, slowly, lessened with the coming dawn.