A Distant Heart Read online

  “That means you really need this money, ha? Your father didn’t get a chance to stash bribes away for a rainy day. Why didn’t your mother come? Why did she send you, a mere boy?”

  “I was only trying to help my aie. I can come back with her if you want an adult to take care of it. I just need to know what the procedure is.”

  The man gave Rahul another narrow-eyed look. “You’re one of those boys who thinks he is too smart, aren’t you?”

  Another question that had absolutely no good answer, so Rahul said, “What paperwork do I need to fill out to get Baba’s money?”

  The man rested his hip on the table. “So impatient. Okay, I’ll come to the point. But first I want you to understand that I am the only person in charge of these papers. No one else. You do as I say and you’ll have the money in your bank next week. Otherwise, who knows . . .” He looked at his watch, then counted something on his fingers. “With our backlog, maybe a year, year and a half.”

  So this was how the corruption adults kept talking about worked. The man wanted a bribe. Rahul relaxed a little. “If I had money to give you, would I be here?” Maybe the man wanted some of Baba’s fund money, but Rahul was damned if he would offer that up without a fight.

  The man leaned forward, treating Rahul to the nastiest mix of tobacco and chai on his breath. “Not all needs are satisfied by money. Some are satisfied rather more easily.”

  The barometer inside Rahul went mad, sending discomfort crawling across his skin. “What do you want?”

  He shouldn’t have asked, because the man answered by reaching out and stroking Rahul’s cheek.

  Rahul swatted his hand away and tried to get up. “What are you doing?”

  The man held the chair in place. “You’re a smart boy. I think you know what I’m doing.” He grabbed Rahul’s hand.

  Rahul struggled to snatch it away, but the man’s grip was stronger than Rahul had expected, and before he knew what was happening, he pushed Rahul’s hand into his crotch, his possibly infected crotch. He was horribly hard and his engorged penis twitched under the fabric of his pants.

  Rahul put all his strength into pushing away, his grunt of effort getting trapped in his throat. The man let him go and watched calmly as Rahul jumped out of the chair and scampered back, nausea churning in his belly like spoiled milk.

  “The first time you touch it is the hardest. It gets easier,” he said almost kindly, a sick mixture of amusement and cruelty making his eyes strangely bright. He took another step closer and Rahul stumbled back again.

  He kept stepping closer, and Rahul kept stepping away until his back was pressed against a wall.

  “Not so tough anymore, are we, little boy?” he said, although Rahul was almost as tall as him. He leaned into Rahul’s ear, making that spoiled-milk sickness creep up into his mouth and causing him to gag. “Another man would have asked you to send your mother. You’re lucky you’ll do just fine for me. Come to my house this evening and I’ll take care of the paperwork.” With that he almost pulled away, but then he leaned in again. “Oh, and don’t even think about telling anyone. No one will believe you, and the ones who do believe you will see you as a faggot forever. Now stop staring at me and get out before I put your hands and mouth to good use.”

  * * *

  The waves soaking Rahul’s clothes were warm, the sun beating down on him hot enough to burn off his skin, and yet he couldn’t stop shaking from the cold inside him. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting on the rock with the ocean crashing around him, but the salty spray splashing him at intervals was so steady and rhythmic it almost soothed him.

  Part of him wanted to storm back to the police chowki and turn the man’s gun on him. Part of him felt so tired he wanted to slip into the ocean until Baba’s dead weight eased off his lap, until the sick turgidity burning the palm of his hand washed off, until the corrosive guilt of those two sensations living inside him at once drowned.

  “Oy, you! Are you blind? Can’t you see the tide rising? Get back here before you drown,” someone shouted to him from the beach.

  He slipped off the rock and into the water that had risen all the way to his thighs. A wave rolled up to him. He let the surface of the water slap his palm as he skimmed the glassy surface, surfing the wave with his hand before submerging it in the powerful gush. He stood there like that, wave after wave washing his hand, knowing he had to get it clean before he touched his life again, knowing the events of today were something he had to leave behind in this ocean, because he could not carry them into his home.

  He spun around and faced the palm trees lining Carter Road as it ran along the Arabian Sea. Across the curving road, Pali Hill rose in a gentle pincushion of buildings. Faceless garden-filled terraces and balconies witnessing the endless churning of the ocean edged by a beach, half rocks–half sand, and him, Rahul Surajrao Savant, a nameless speck looking up at a world where payment was demanded of children to claim the legacy of their dead fathers.

  Up at the top of the hill overlooking the ocean was Kirit Patil’s house. Aie thought he was being stupidly proud by refusing the politician’s guilt money. She was right. When you had nothing else, pride left you with unwanted things in your hands. Someday he’d earn his pride. But to get there he’d have to let someone help him first. It might as well be the man who got other people to take his bullets for him.

  8

  Kimi

  A long time ago

  It had been eight days since Mamma had let Kimi out of the house, and she was so bored she was climbing the walls. Like, literally. She had climbed over the stone wall that ran around their backyard, jumped into the neighboring building’s back lawn, and then walked over to the play area and parked herself on a bench to watch the children play. It wasn’t the first time either. Every time she had the sniffles, Mamma acted as though she was going to catch some sort of fatal infection and die. It was most annoying.

  The joke in her school was that she spent more time out of school than in school. They called her “Kum Aya” instead of Kimaya, a sorry wordplay on how little she “visited” school. She couldn’t believe her classmates were jealous of her. As if being locked up in the house any time you so much as sneezed was something anyone would enjoy.

  Add to that the fact that she was never allowed to go to the playground (too many other children had touched the equipment with their germy hands). Papa had put a jungle gym in their backyard when she had complained, so she had stopped complaining about anything else, because who wanted to play by themselves on swings and slides? Well, she had to now that Papa had done that for her. She was never allowed to go to her friends’ homes (who knows how sanitary their parents kept their homes?). Her friends never came over because who wanted to explain to them why the servants kept asking them to wash their hands?

  Okay, so strictly speaking, Kimi had no friends. For all of these reasons. The only reason that she was even allowed to go to school at all was because she promised Mamma that she cleaned her hands with alcohol disinfectant every fifteen minutes, and that she wiped her desk with Lysol, and that she did not let anyone bring their face too close to hers when they talked. She poured out half a travel-sized bottle of alcohol gel into the school commode every day so Mamma thought she actually used it.

  Now, she was fully aware of what a big waste that was. Just because she lived in a big house and had to be careful not to say she liked something to stop her parents from promptly buying it for her, it wasn’t as if she didn’t know how lucky she was. When you stayed home every time you caught a cold, and when you had no friends, you read a lot of books and you watched a lot of TV. And TV was basically filled with how wretched the world was. Unless you watched the soap operas where the world was filled with very large families that wore a lot of makeup and fancy clothes and conspired to ruin one another. It gave her a headache. So she watched the news instead where, come to think of it, reporters wore too much makeup and fancy clothes and talked about people conspiring to ruin one ano
ther.

  How she envied those journalists. The fact that they got to travel to all corners of the world and share their experiences with people who never left their homes was amazing to her. The world was such a huge place, and the only people who truly seemed to comprehend its magnitude were the journalists. It was all she had ever wanted to be. Which was hilarious, because even to just sit on a bench in the building adjoining her house she had to arrange pillows on her bed and pull the covers over them so she could slip out her balcony and climb over a wall.

  Her watch beeped. She had set an alarm for forty minutes, because her nanny would check in with sugarcane juice to hydrate her every hour and she had to be back in her room before her next round. She had precisely ten minutes to make it back. Circling the building, she went to the front gate. She picked late afternoon for her outings because it was when Bhola, their security guard, went inside to get his chai and chatted too long with the kitchen staff. Just enough time for Kimi to jump over the wall and get back inside. She climbed the embankment around the huge banyan tree outside the stone wall between the building and her house, then pulled herself onto the wall, and then landed on their gatehouse roof.

  She was about to jump off the gatehouse and onto the high retaining walls around the bushes when she noticed Bhola standing right there talking to a boy who looked like he had just walked through a tropical storm. Except it was April and the monsoon wasn’t due for three months. He was trying to convince Bhola to let him come in and see Papa.

  “Patil-saheb knows who I am,” the boy said, his proud stance completely at odds with his wretched, damp state. “If you tell him Assistant Sub-Inspector Surajrao Savant’s son is here to see him, he’ll see me.”

  He had to lean back and look up at Bhola, who was the tallest human being Kimi had ever seen in her life. But even staring up at gigantic Bhola, the boy’s demeanor was confident, almost confrontational.

  Kimi folded herself into a crouch. If Bhola saw her, these little adventures would be over. Some of the servants she could convince to lie for her, but Bhola was too loyal to Papa and too obsessed with security to let her get away with it. Plus, he’d lose his job if she forced him to lie and he got caught. Her only hope was that if she stayed very still they wouldn’t see her.

  “Patil-saheb isn’t expecting you, and no one can just walk in off the street and see him.” Bhola tried to make his tone kind but firm in his Bhola way.

  The stormy boy looked up, ready to present his case again, and met Kimi’s eyes. Yipes!

  She pressed a finger to her lips and joined her palms, pleading for him to stay quiet. But she was an idiot. Why would he? He didn’t even know her.

  Bhola must have noticed the quizzical frown that folded between the boy’s brows because he was about to turn around when the boy pushed both palms into his face and started to cry. Really loudly. Bhola spun back to him.

  “You know Patil-saheb was shot at during that election rally, don’t you?” he said through remarkably realistic sobs that even she would have believed if they hadn’t come on so fast. “My father was the policeman who took the bullets for him.”

  Kimi pressed a hand to her mouth. How terrible! Was he really the son of the man who had saved Papa’s life?

  The boy continued to fake-sob. At least she thought the sobs were fake. “Patil-saheb said I should come and see him if I needed something, and now here I am and you won’t even tell him I’m here.”

  “Arrey, beta, don’t cry. I had no idea who you were. Wait while I call him.” He pulled his stool out of the gatehouse and placed it next to the boy, whose sobs had magically cleared. “Here, sit for a bit. Did you walk here?”

  He sat. “Thank you. Are you calling him then?” he asked, and Bhola went into the gatehouse to use the intercom.

  The boy narrowed his eyes at her as she crouched there staring at him. He flicked his chin and she realized that he was telling her to move. She jumped onto the retaining wall.

  Bhola was about to emerge from the gatehouse. “I’m so sorry. Saheb wants me to take you inside. Come, come.”

  She froze, and the boy threw himself on Bhola, hugging him and pushing him back into the gatehouse. “Thank you, thank you,” he said. “I really don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Oy, mention not, mention not.” Bhola sounded so confused she had to press her hand into her mouth to keep from bursting into giggles as she ran across the side yard, slipped into the side door, and took the stairs to her room just in time for her juice delivery.

  Sarika tai found her giggling when she came in with the tray.

  “Baby must be feeling better.” She touched Kimi’s forehead. “The color is back in your cheeks.”

  Kimi’s heart was beating fast and she had the craziest urge to jump up and down. All her life she had wanted to have an adventure. Today she’d had a real-life one. She started giggling again.

  “Did Baby read a joke or something?”

  She thought about Bhola’s face when Storm Boy had burst into sobs. “Yes, Sarika tai, it was so funny.”

  “Silly girl.” Sarika smiled and handed Kimi her glass of juice, which thanks to being out in the sun for an hour was exactly what she needed.

  She gulped it down, relishing the bite of ginger and the tartness of lemon mixed in with the stark sweetness of the sugarcane. “I feel amazing. Do you think I can walk around the house for a bit?”

  “Mamma said to rest,” Sarika said. “But you do look better, so I suppose a little bit of walking around wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  As soon as Sarika left, Kimi raced down the stairs to her mother’s office, which happened to be right next to her father’s study. Fortunately, Mamma wasn’t home. Kimi pressed her ear to the door connecting the two rooms.

  “Mona can go,” Storm Boy said in that too-grown-up voice. “Mohit doesn’t start school for two more years.”

  Papa’s voice was nothing like his usual voice. He used neither the tone he used with her and Mamma, nor the tone he used with the staff, but rather something between those two. “The condition is that all three of you go. I’ll pay for everything. The uniforms, books, lunches, transportation. But you have to go as well. My offer is only valid if you go as well.”

  The boy didn’t respond, and Kimi pressed the door open a crack because she had to see his face. He looked so angry. But it wasn’t how anger usually looked. His eyes reminded her of those people they interviewed on TV after disasters. So much anger but also so much restlessness because there was no one and nothing that could ease them, as though their situation was so absolute that their anger seemed like a waste to even themselves.

  If she ever lost Papa, it’s exactly how she would feel.

  Papa took a step close to the boy, and he stepped back. For a moment his anger and confidence collapsed around him as though Papa were someone to fear. Papa stepped away and the boy straightened again, puffing his chest out with salvaged pride.

  “Listen, beta.” Papa’s tone was suddenly gentle, almost helpless. “I know you blame me for what happened. And I am to blame. Those bullets were meant for me. I know. I can’t bring your baba back. I wish I could. But I don’t have that power. No human being does. What I can give you is any life you choose. You dream it up and I can make it happen. That power I do have. Let me use it. Whatever you want to be. I’ll make it happen.”

  “Can you fire a sub-inspector?” he said, his eyes shining with anger again.

  That threw Papa off and he didn’t respond.

  “Fire him without asking questions?” the boy pushed.

  When Papa still didn’t answer, he smiled. “See, no one can make anything happen.”

  Papa opened his mouth, then closed it again. They studied each other. Papa and this Storm Boy, who retained no hint of the person who had pretend-sobbed to help her escape into her own home.

  No one ever stood up to Papa. He was a gentle man, but everyone always did as he said. Except maybe Mamma. He was also six feet tall and he could stare anyone
into submission.

  Except the boy didn’t seem to see it that way.

  Papa flicked his hand and his assistant left the room. “Give me the bastard’s name.” His voice was angry enough to match the boy’s.

  Instead of being happy at getting his way the boy deflated again. As though what Papa had said was the last thing he had expected.

  “I won’t ask questions. I promise.”

  “You can really have him fired? Just like that?” Suddenly, all the storm was gone from him.

  “Not just like that. It will take some work, but yes, I can have it done. Because it seems like it will convince you to trust me and take my help.”

  Another silence passed between them and Kimi held her breath.

  “Okay,” the boy said at last.

  “Okay, you’ll give me the name?”

  “No. I’ll think about going to St. Mary’s and letting you help me.”

  “And the sub-inspector?”

  “I don’t want you to mention him again.”

  “Fine. How much time do you need to think about it?”

  He shrugged and Papa’s phone rang. “Sorry, I need to take this. I’ll check back in a few days. I hope you’ll make the right decision. Rafiq will show you out.” With that, Papa left the room, and his assistant, Rafiq kaka, came in and led the boy away.

  Kimi ran down the stairs and through the empty guest suite and pushed open the French doors that led to the terrace. She jumped over the railing and circled the house to the main entrance just as Rafiq kaka and the boy left the front porch and headed toward the gate.

  She had no idea what she was doing. All she knew was that she had to talk to the boy.

  “Rafiq kaka,” she called before she changed her mind and ran back inside.

  They turned to her. Storm Boy’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He hadn’t been this surprised to see her on the gatehouse roof.

  “Yes, Kimi-baby?” her father’s assistant asked and she desperately racked her brain for an answer.