The Pruning
PART I:
Delhi, India
2012, August 13, in the thick of the hot season
Amit hurried through the streets, running a hand through his hair. It was dry and cut too short. He’d refused the coconut oil his grandmother had insisted he apply for his first job interview.
His first real job interview, she had reminded him, tsking as he had hurried out the door.
Amit had glanced up at the painting of Krishna above the door frame and offered up a silent prayer.
Now, he dodged a tuk-tuk on the street. The driver honked and swerved, but Amit stayed the course.
It wasn’t his first job interview.
It wasn’t, in fact, a job interview at all.
He ducked in a side alley and ran, dodging lines of hanging wash and piles of fly-infested garbage.
The whole place stank, mixing with the scent of his own sweat through his stiff velour coat.
Another good reason not to add coconut oil to the mix.
Deep in the ally, he stopped, tucking his tie into his collar.
The cover had been necessary. Painstaking. His work required that.
The sounds coming from the other side of the door: a chair spun across the floor, then slammed into the wall, followed by a gagged scream.
It must be going well.
PART II:
Colombo, Sri Lanka
December 12, 2013
It isn’t so much the morning air, as the dogs, barking at our heels.
It isn’t so much the dogs, their matted manes and yellowed teeth, nipping at our shoes, as it is the stench from the pig pens which barely hold in the odor nor the piglets nor the overflowing piles of dung.
But it isn’t even so much the stench, filling our nostrils and making us wheeze, as it is the feeling in the air, like the fallout from an atomic bomb or the devastating aftermath of a Tsunami.
We stop to stretch.
He, slower and built; me, with more years ahead of me to catch up on those pounds.
The humans all around us: they actually live here.
I reach my hands down to my feet, feel the twinge of my hamstrings. This is good.
For him, it’s normal.
He lives here too.
Not here, in the filthy sweating lean-tos on the trash-littered beach, but here, just a few blocks inland, away from the storm surges and the worst of the winds.
He’d survived a Tsunami three years prior.
But Bohrs has never talked about it.
“It’s here, too,” I comment.
The people. The mothers. I see them. I see myself in their reflections. The children are already coming out of the lean-tos, though the sun is barely a glow on the southern horizon.
Their eyes are hungry. Their hands are out.
“Here too,” says Bors.
He nods his head toward the furthest hut, the one closest to the swanky hotel jutting out like a pearl on the south side of the beach.
A little girl comes toward me, with eyes like that of a wolf, hungry.
“White lady. Give me money.”
She is ugly, her mouth turned down and dirt caked on her face. She despises me.
I shake my head.
She jolts her hand further outward as if to force the question.
If she had a knife, she’d probably pull it.
I squint and spot the telltale sign on her scalp, just covered by her hairline.
She has it too.
I purse my lips together and look at Bors, the question in my eyes.
Where is this coming from?
That’s what we’ve come to find out.
PART III:
Delhi, India
2012, August 13, still hot as ever.
Still in the Thick of the Heat.
“Just in time.”
Amit stands in the doorway and observes.
His hands aren’t crossed.
If he hadn’t seen this many times before, if he hadn’t had that part of him carefully numbed, he would feel a shiver run down the length of his spine.
And then back up again, coloring his face, making his heart pound.
Instead, he takes a step forward, then another.
The woman is in front of the four men, eyes covered by a black cloth, face turned upward, head leaning against the back of the chair, mouth open, panting hard.
He leans in to the closest man and lowers his voice.
“What did she say?”
There is blood trickling down the corner of her mouth.
He had told them not to ruin her face.
A malleable character, full of potential.
“Nothing.”
It was the shorter man, the one with a clean shave. The one who looked like he could be selling Saris out of his uncle’s bridal shop.
Which he did in the evenings.
Amit shakes his head and puts on the voice synthesizer. If she survives, it will be useful for them if she doesn’t know it was him.
Neha was not meant to come to this. But if she must, she must.
He takes a bat from the hand of the less-clean-shaven man, the one who looks like he might do this sort of thing for a living, and he lifts it behind his shoulders like he’s a cricketer about to swing.
“Neha,” says Amit.
She can hear the frustration in his voice, even through the strange tone of the voice masking. It’s probably the way he’s talking, through slitted teeth.
Her shoulders tense and her head shakes the tiniest bit, like a baby refusing food.
“I don’t want to have to do this. I even wore my best suit, added a silk tie. But…”
The prayers and his grandmother were long forgotten. Or were they?
Amit tightens his grip on the bat and looks toward Neha as if she were a ball about to be bowled toward him.
“I…please…”
Neha whimpers and then chokes. A bit of blood comes out of the corner of her mouth. It’s unbecoming for a lady.
Amit shakes his head.
“Neha,” he says. “I’m asking you one last time.”
She is sobbing now, fighting, trying to get her hands out from behind the chair. It’s like she knows the end is coming.
“No, please…I don’t know…I can’t…I can’t…”
The blow comes hard and fast and Amit feels the satisfying crunch of bone on bone, as something small and white and bloody flies out of her mouth and across the room.
She’s blubbering and spitting up blood and leaning her head forward as she tries not to choke.
Her hair is a mess now.
Amit watches, the end of the bat balanced on the floor, the hilt of it between his hands.
He spreads his legs.
“Plea.…ple.. please…” she pleads, saliva choking her words.
“Oh ple- ase,” she chokes, “Please God.”
She looks up, and for a moment Amit wants to laugh, picturing her five months ago, done up in reds and whites and yellows the day of their engagement.
END OF NOVEL EXCERPT