Honor: A Novel(84)
“What if the brothers find out that she’s with us? What if they claim family rights?”
“How are they going to do that?” She could hear the bafflement in Cliff’s voice. “Didn’t you say they’re almost illiterate? They probably don’t even know where America is on the map. And who the hell is going to give them custody?”
Smita fell quiet, wondering if the horror of what she had witnessed was clouding her professional judgment. Cliff sounded so damn sure. “I envision this as a long narrative piece,” she finally said. “I need a few days to work on it, to get quotes from people on the record. I mean, Meena is not famous. Her death is not breaking news. No one else is covering this story. I’d prefer to situate her story within a larger context.”
She pictured Cliff chewing on his pen as he considered the shape of the piece. “You gonna write it as a first-person account?” he asked.
“Cliff. It’s been a very long day. I—there’s a lot going on here. I won’t know until I start writing it. You’re going to have to trust my judgment on this.”
Cliff exhaled. “All right, kiddo. Let’s talk again tomorrow.”
Smita grimaced. Kiddo? Cliff was just two years older than she was.
“And hey, Smita? Good work.”
Yeah, Smita thought, as she hung up. Good work that your source is dead. It makes for a better story. She shook her head, knowing she was being unfair to Cliff and that she was being cynical about a profession she loved. Meena was dead. Nothing could change that fact. Smita’s failure to reach Meena in time would haunt her the rest of her life.
She went out into the living room, walking quietly so as to not disturb Ammi and Abru, who slept together on a pallet on the kitchen floor. (Smita had looked askance when Mohan had suggested this arrangement during the ride home, until he had reminded her that Ammi—who had slept on a mud floor her entire life—would find the softness of a bed intolerable.) The house was dark and quiet, and Smita felt ghostlike as she went looking for Mohan. She had not changed out of her clothes since arriving, and they smelled of smoke and gasoline. She shivered at the thought of Meena’s incendiary death. Still, she didn’t want to go back into her room to change. The numb, hollow spot in her chest felt as if it was growing.
Mohan wasn’t in the living room. Surely, he couldn’t have gone to bed, leaving her alone to deal with the horror of what they’d been through? Smita’s throat ached. Vodka, she thought. I need a shot of vodka. In her travels, it was her drink of choice—after a long day, the foreign correspondents would gather in a hotel bar, ordering shots. Or, if she was on assignment alone, she’d return to her room and raid the minibar as soon as she walked in. She needed a stiff drink to forget what her eyes had seen: Meena’s brutalized, bloodied body. Her hand seeking Smita’s. The foot smashing Meena’s jaw. The hut exploding in flames. Abru’s face as she screamed for her mother—the first spoken words out of the child’s mouth an elongated river of longing, an endless cry of grief and loss.
What good did Anjali’s involvement do Meena? Smita wondered. In fact, had the court trial hastened Meena’s death? Anjali’s justification for taking on the legal case was similar to what Smita had herself often said—that she had become a journalist to be a voice for voiceless women like Meena. But as Cliff had reminded her, it was a fine line they walked between journalism and voyeurism. Poverty porn. Is that what she did, ultimately, in her travels to the far-flung places of the world—sell poverty porn to her white middle-class readers back home? So that they could feel better about their own “civilized” lives and country, even as they tsk-tsked while reading about oppressed women like Meena? Smita herself had repeated the platitudes about the humanizing effects of literature and narrative journalism, how each medium cultivated empathy in readers. But toward what end? The world remained as sad and brutal a place as ever. Was it simply vanity that made her believe that her work made a difference?
A choking sound escaped her lips, then another. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a stirring in the darkness and realized that Mohan was in his room and that he’d heard her.
He was sitting at the edge of the bed, holding his head in his hands. Smita watched him, knowing that he was broken, that she had broken him. Now that they were home, safe from danger, he was also replaying the images of the evening. Mohan looked up, and from the light cast by the outdoor patio lights, Smita could see his face, dirty, teary, worn-out. There was no trace of the irreverent, playful man who had breezily offered to give up his vacation to drive her into hell. We will never be the same, Smita thought. Mohan extended his right arm toward her. Smita moved across the room, sat next to him on the bed, and put her arm around Mohan. It was the mirror image of how he had consoled her a few days earlier, and Smita was glad to be of use. They sat this way for a long time, in the still, in the dark. At some point, Smita felt the salt on her face, but didn’t know whether they were her tears or Mohan’s. One of them must have swiveled to bridge the space between them, one of them must have initiated the kiss that the other received thankfully—but Smita didn’t know who had led the way. Grief was the great leveler. The dark stripped them of language and inhibitions and doubt. They clung to each other in this fashion, each pulling the other in.
They stopped; Mohan drew back. Was it remorse Smita was reading on his face? He ran his fingers through his hair. She could feel him receding.