“What should I do with the flock? They’ve grazed the area I was paid to clear. They were very hungry!” His laugh is high and shaky.
“I’ll pay you to keep them for a few more days. Are there other places they can graze?”
“Theek hai,” he says. “I will take them farther north.” When he turns to go, I remember I still have his shears.
I call out: “Wait!”
I run upstairs to get them, taking another moment to pick up a few coins from my week’s pay. When I get back to the drawing room, it’s quiet. Madho Singh is back in his cage, mumbling. But where is Rekha?
Then I see the open front door, and I hurry out to the veranda. Rekha’s there, talking to the shepherd.
“Why do sheep have tails?” she asks him.
I pull her back behind me. “Silly girl!” I say. I return the shepherd’s shears to him and put the coins in his hand.
He looks confused by the panic that’s so apparent in my voice and my expression. He drops the coins into his vest pocket and turns to go but then he stops and turns around.
“Behenji,” he says, “earlier today, when I was moving the sheep, a man came up to me and asked if they were mine.”
My heart, again, begins to race. Rekha starts to squirm before I realize I’ve dug my fingers into her shoulders. I make an effort to relax them.
“What did you tell him?”
The old man lifts his chin and draws himself up to his full height. “What business is it of his?” he says. “That’s what I told him!”
He grins, and the moonlight glows on the few teeth he still has left.
I nod. “How did you know where to find me?”
He scratches the back of his neck. “Word gets around,” he says.
Then he steps off the veranda and disappears into the darkness.
I close the door and lock it. I pick Rekha up and hug her tightly. “What have I told you? You mustn’t open the door for anybody. Not even old men.”
“I know, Maa, but Madho Singh likes him.”
“Madho Singh doesn’t even know him!”
I feel Rekha’s steady heartbeat, as I’m sure that she feels mine. When I was with my tribe, I never felt unsafe, the way I’m feeling now. If a shepherd can find me so easily, how long will it be before the smugglers find me, too?
An hour later, I’m huddled with the children on the drawing room sofa. They’re both asleep when I hear Dr. Kumar’s car in the driveway. I open the front door and go out on the veranda to wait for him. When he sees me, he rushes over.
“Kya ho gya?” he asks me. He ushers me inside the house and locks the door.
“It’s just that... I don’t think we’re safe here, either.” I tell him what the shepherd told me, how he’d found me. “If he found me here, then other people can find us.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“No. Nothing like that. I want to take the children somewhere, but, unless we’re with my tribe, we won’t be safe. Not even in the mountains. Now that people know I live here with you...” I realize I’m wiping my sweaty palms against my skirt again and try to still them.
He sits down in his armchair, opens his briefcase and takes out a notebook. After he’s turned a few pages, he picks up the phone and dials. It’s ten o’clock at night. Who could he be calling so late?
A minute later, he hangs up.
“Collect your things,” he says. “We’re going to move you tomorrow morning to a place where it will be difficult for anyone to find you or the children. Outside the city.”
“But what about the garden? Who will tend to it? I have to water the young plants—”
Dr. Kumar shakes his head. “For now, your safety has to take priority. Mrs. Kumar will take care of things when she returns. Chinta mat karo.”
Don’t worry? Worrying is all I’ve done since Malik left.
26
LAKSHMI
Jaipur
This morning marks the third day I’ve been away from Jay. Malik comes to the Agarwals’ early to tell me about his visit to the Singhs. Kanta and Niki have already gone out for a walk with Saasuji. Manu has barricaded himself in his study, far from the drawing room where we’re sitting.
Malik says Samir seemed genuinely shocked when he showed him how the gold bar fits into the brick. We agree it’s unlikely that Samir would put his firm in jeopardy for the promise of more money. What he really wants, we decide, is to believe his son has made the honest mistake of accepting damaged goods. But neither Malik nor I believe that Ravi’s error is an innocent one. Based on how smoothly he seduced my sister twelve years ago and shrugged off the consequences, we know how disingenuous Ravi can be.
Malik also summarizes his visit to Hakeem, the facilities accountant.
That puzzles me. “And Hakeem won’t come forward to say that he switched the receipts? Why? Who is he protecting?”
Malik hesitates. He never lies to me, but I know he won’t share things that might hurt me or hurt others. I wait.
“Hakeem...lives with Mr. Reddy.”
“The theater manager?”
Malik nods. “They share lodgings here in Jaipur. And Hakeem has a wife and four daughters in Bombay. He doesn’t want them to know about Mr. Reddy. It would destroy their lives.”
I’m trying to put the pieces together when it comes to me. “Accha.” Who am I to judge the accountant? I’m a woman who deserted a marriage and slept with another woman’s husband. People find love where they find it. “And the Singhs know...about the relationship?”
“Ravi Singh found out. Mr. Reddy will sacrifice his job. Hakeem will keep his. He has a large family to support.”
“So Reddy agreed to say he let more people onto the balcony than he was supposed to. Even though that’s a lie?”
“Right.”
Samir certainly won’t turn his own son in for fraud and misappropriation. Parvati will keep pressing Maharani Latika to fire Manu. And, as appalling as it is to me, Maharani Latika isn’t interested in an investigation; she wants the problem to go away and for the cinema to open again as quickly as possible. I understand. The tarnish on the royal reputation increases every day the situation is in limbo.
I’d promised Kanta that the maharanis were fair, but now I’m realizing how foolhardy that was of me. We have just one day to convince Her Highness not to let Manu go.
The pressure of being labeled a thief is getting to Manu. Instead of returning to work, he stays locked in his study, listening to the radio or reading poetry. At mealtimes, Kanta brings him his food on a tray instead of having Baju deliver it so she can sit with her husband while Niki, Saasuji and I eat in the dining room. Kanta says he takes only a few bites, claims to be full and asks her to leave. He hasn’t shaved in days, so when he does make a rare appearance to walk from the study to the bathroom, he looks more and more like the holy men of the Ganges. His unwashed hair hangs over his brow. He’s been sleeping in the same shirt and trousers for three days.
Niki is also reacting to this shift in his father. Even if Kanta allowed him to go back to school, her son wouldn’t go. Bad news travels even faster than good news, it seems. Niki’s friends have called to tell him some of his fellow students are calling his father a cheat and an embezzler. Niki knows his father isn’t capable of such deception, but neither is he capable of defending a father who isn’t even trying to defend himself.
Kanta spends time with Niki going over the lessons his teacher drops off. Reading novels, which they both love to do, keeps them busy, too. I stop by Niki’s door sometimes, listening to them discuss Slaughterhouse-Five and Travels with My Aunt. It reminds me of the way Radha used to lose herself in her Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.