Invisible Armies Page 6

  “This may be difficult,” Laurent says, as they approach the station, and she starts out of her reverie “Foreigners are supposed to have a passport to buy a train ticket. And I don’t think Indian Railways will be as easy to persuade otherwise as Berry’s Hotel.”

  Danielle nods. Indian Railways, unlike most of India, actually works with reasonable efficiency; its trustworthiness and reputation for integrity exceeds that of the police, the courts, the government, and the military combined. “I know. That’s okay. I have a plan.”

  “I hope it’s a good one. There are police here. They will be watching for us.”

  Her stomach tightens painfully. She had somehow not considered that probability. For a moment she wants to abort the plan, turn around, go back to the hotel and think of something else – but there is no something else. They won’t be safe in Bangalore. They need to get to the ashram. And no other route to Goa will be any easier.

  Chapter 9

  “I’m really sorry to trouble you,” Danielle says, doing her best to sound embarrassed instead of terrified. Every time she sees any kind of uniform, her heart writhes in her chest. Fortunately, the ticket office is overcrowded, and a hefty percentage of those waiting here are backpackers. With any luck all white people look alike to the Indian eye.

  The towering blond Dutch couple look down at her sympathetically. “I understand,” the man says. “I lost my passport at a hotel in Thailand once. It was my first time travelling.”

  “Of course we’ll help you,” the woman says. “Our train doesn’t leave for another two hours, we won’t mind standing in line again.”

  “By now I think we won’t even notice,” the Dutchman says, and both of them laugh. Danielle and Laurent smile back. “Just remember, as long as you’re on the train, your names are Johann and Suzanne. Do you know how much the tickets will cost?”

  “Fifteen hundred rupees,” Danielle says, offering them four five-hundred-rupee notes. “Please take the rest and have a nice meal somewhere, from us.”

  “Oh, no, we couldn’t,” Suzanne says, detaching three of the notes from Danielle’s hand. “It wouldn’t be right. Just wait here, or in the cafeteria. But don’t eat anything! I think the food there is very dangerous.” They laugh again. “We’ll bring you the tickets in half an hour.”

  “Thank you,” Danielle says, feeling a little miserable about lying to these nice people, even if it is in the noble cause of her own self-preservation.

  It is only twenty minutes before the Dutch couple return. Doubt is on their faces, and for a moment Danielle fears the worst, but they are holding two computer-printed Indian Railways tickets.

  “I’m afraid the next train is full,” Johann says. “We bought you tickets for the overnight train. I hope that’s all right?”

  “It’s fine,” Laurent assures them. “Tonight is fine.”

  Danielle isn’t sure of that, she was counting on being out of Bangalore as soon as possible, but she supposes it’s better than nothing.

  * * *

  Killing time before the train, they stop at one of Bangalore’s many Internet cafes, which sell an hour of computer time for as little as ten rupees, less than twenty-five cents, surely the cheapest Internet access on the planet. Danielle logs into her Hotmail account and composes an email to Keiran, explaining what is happening and why she needs his help. It is hard to make everything that has happened in the last few days form into a coherent order in her mind. She falls back to instincts learned in her year of law school, imagines she is writing a brief. The simple recitation of facts takes longer than she expected. It makes it seem more real, somehow, rereading her own description of what happened, ordered in neat rows of words. After selecting the SEND button she is more frightened than ever.

  “When does the train leave?” she asks Laurent.

  “Four more hours.”

  She nods. “Let’s get a drink.”

  They order a pitcher of Castle beer at NASA, a bar on Church Street, just off the thronging neon-brand-name chaos of Brigade Street. Beyond NASA’s chromed airlock, the tables are decorated with glittering rockets, the walls are curved and ribbed brushed metal in a vaguely 2001 style, and a Star Trek movie plays silently on the giant video screen. The music, Tricky and the Prodigy and Tupac, was hip five years ago in the West, and is loud but not too loud for conversation. The crowd is young and extremely upwardly mobile. It even features Indian women dressed in smart jeans and T-shirts, and one very daring one in a halter top, drinking with boyfriends or even co-workers, an unimaginable sight almost anywhere else in India. Danielle is sure no police will come looking for them here.

  “To survival,” she toasts sarcastically, offering up her glass.

  “To you,” Laurent says, lifting his glass to clink against hers. “You’ve been extraordinary. Strong as steel. Most women, it’s sexist to say but it’s true, most women would have collapsed, could never have coped.”

  “I was pretty close to collapse before you showed up. Even if I’d gotten out of that hut, I’d never have made it here without you.”

  “I’m a soldier. Dealing with situations like this is my job. With you it seems to be a natural talent.” He smiles. “Perhaps you should join the Foreign Legion.”

  “I didn’t think they accepted women.”

  “No,” he admits. “But for you they should change their mind.”

  “High praise, I’m sure. You’re definitely the first person ever to call me ‘strong as steel’. Usually it’s more ‘strong as butter’.”

  “Why is that?”

  She shrugs. “I give up on things. You know how hard it was for me to quit smoking?”

  “Very difficult?”

  “Piece of cake. One week and I was fine. Quitting is for quitters. And me, I’m a natural quitter.”

  He looks at her quizzically. “It doesn’t seem that way to me.”

  “Yeah? I quit pre-med to do English lit. Then I quit college to be an artist. Well, drug-culture slacker really, but I called it being an artist. Then I quit art to go back to college and start law school. Then I quit law school for the job here. Then I quit the job for the ashram. And you know, if it wasn’t going to be over in a few weeks anyways, I would have quit that too. Without even talking about relationships. Oh, but there I pick quitters too, so frequently they end it first. Saves me time and trouble.”

  “Why do you quit?”

  “Men or careers?” she asks.

  “Both.”

  She pauses to think before answering. “I guess it’s the same reason both ways. I feel cheated. I have this image of how I want them to be, and the way they present themselves, and then I try them out and they’re just stupid bullshit. College is a bunch of snobbish twerps trying to get stoned and get laid. Art is a bunch of pretentious assholes with poor personal hygiene telling each other how great and famous they’re going to be someday. Law school, the worst kind of abstract plastic inhuman crap. Jobs, pointless drivel, they eat your soul and time and give you nothing back. Ashrams and ayurveda and all that so-called enlightenment bullshit are for damaged people to put tiny little bandages over their huge personal fissures so they can pretend they’re not fucked up any more. And men, don’t get me started. They tell you they love you. Then an hour later they see some teenager with big tits and they want to follow her down an alley and fuck her. And I never learn. See, they’re all really great at first. You see trouble, sure, right from the start, but you see so much potential, you just know that someday it’s really going to be great. Men and careers both again. Being a starving artist and doing a lot of drugs is really cool because you know that one day the Guggenheim will call and you’ll be famous and everyone you know will be so jealous. You just know you and your latest troubled boyfriend will be perfect one day, you’ll look back on these days of him stealing money from you and laugh. You’re sure of it. You’re just paying your dues. It’s just the prelude to perfection. And then one day you wake up and you realize, the Guggenheim isn’t going to c
all, he isn’t going to start helping you without being asked, this isn’t going to turn into something wonderfully different, this is no prelude, this is it, this is your life, and it’s going to stay your life unless you do something. So what do I do? I do something. I quit.”

  Laurent looks at her.

  “Jesus,” she says, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that come from. I don’t usually babble like that, I swear. Only when I’m in imminent danger. Sorry. Jesus. No more beer for me.”

  “No apology needed,” Laurent says. “Au contraire. I understand completely. And it doesn’t mean you’re weak. Not at all. It means you’re strong. It’s the ones who accept the half-life, the damaged life, who are weak.”

  “Well. Nice of you to say so.”

  “I say it because it’s true. You’re no quitter. You’re a seeker.”

  She smirks. “I asked Bobby Dylan, I asked the Beatles, I asked Timothy Leary, but he couldn’t help me either…”

  “Exactement. You’ve never found anywhere you felt you belonged?”

  She hesitates. “Maybe once. I spent a summer in Baja California once. One of the years I pretended I was an artist. My boyfriend was a scuba instructor. I did a lot of diving, became a divemaster, like an assistant instructor. He was a shit, but I liked it there. That was, yeah. That was good. Do you dive?”

  “A little. With the Legion.”

  “Anyway. He was a shit. We broke up. Sometimes I think, maybe I could go back there, start up a dive shop.”

  Laurent nods. “But that would take money, and …”

  “No. Money’s not a problem.” She swallows. “My parents are rich. Very rich. There. So, yeah, whatever that means. Maybe I’m just a spoiled rich girl who’s never had to deal with real consequences. God knows I’ve heard that often enough. Sorry. One of the things about growing up rich is that you get so fucking awkward and guilty about it. I own an apartment in Manhattan, you understand? My parents were so excited about their prodigal daughter getting into law school at NYU they bought me an apartment. Outright, no mortgage. Broke their fucking hearts when I dropped out.”

  “So why didn’t you go to Baja California?”

  “I don’t know. It would have felt like cheating. Like quitting. Ironically. Like, I would have lived in my own little safe corner of the world, teaching rich tourists how to dive, and one day I’d find some grateful sensitive Mexican hunk to cook me dinner every night, but I would never have really done anything, you know? It would have felt like a total retreat from the world. So I came here instead. Big mistake, huh?”

  “That,” Laurent says, “remains to be seen.”

  “What about you? You woke up one day and decided you want to join the Foreign Legion? What’s your real name?”

  “On my passport it says Laurent Cinq-Mars.”

  “But that’s the name the Legion gave you?” she asks.

  “The name I chose for myself when I joined.”

  “Cinq-Mars?”

  “French for March fifth,” he explains. “The day I came to the Legion recruiting office. In Quebec, when unwanted babies were left on church steps, they were named after the day of discovery. Same idea. I had thirty francs in my pocket. I spent all the money I had on the flight to Paris. And I couldn’t go back to Canada.”

  “Why not?”

  “I would have been killed.”

  She blinks. “Seriously?”

  “I was deeply involved with very dangerous people.”

  “So this whole running for your life thing is old hat to you, huh?”

  “No matter how many times your life is threatened,” Laurent says, “believe me, it never becomes routine.”

  “So you were a gangster, then you were a soldier, now you’re an activist?”

  “Not so different from you. Quitting an old life, trying on a new.”

  “Just like changing clothes, huh?” she asks.

  “Not quite so easy. As I think you know.”

  “Maybe I do. So what’s your real name?”

  “Laurent is my real name,” he says firmly.

  “Fine. What was your first name?”

  “I’m not yet drunk enough to answer.” He smiles thinly as he says it, but a burr in his voice hints that she should let the subject go.

  “Okay. How’d you get so political?”

  Laurent purses his lips. “I was stationed with the Legion in a number of poor countries. Mostly in Africa. I saw the injustice of the world. And I decided to do something about it.”

  “Simple as that?”

  He nods. “It really is that simple. Deciding to do something. I’m surprised you’ve never made the decision yourself.”

  “Yeah. Well. I guess I tell myself I’m trying to figure out how to get myself right first, then I’ll worry about the rest of the world.” She takes a drink. “That’s not the truth, of course. It’s just what I tell myself.”

  “And what’s the truth?”

  “The truth is I just don’t give a shit. Or didn’t, anyway. I always knew there were people starving and dying of malaria and getting tortured to death. Everyone knows that. Sometimes when I saw something horrible on TV I’d feel bad for a moment and call their 800 number and give them five hundred bucks. And feel really good about myself for a week. But normally, it’s not just me, most people, normal people, we just don’t care. We’d rather go see a movie and forget about it than actually do something. I know that sounds awful, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Yes. It is awful. It is the way it is.”

  “More beer?” she asks.

  “Do we have time?”

  She glances at her watch. “Two hours.”

  “Time enough.”

  * * *

  Danielle is a little tipsy, not drunk but warm and confident, when they emerge from the bar and flag down an autorickshaw. When they get in he puts his arm around her, and she instinctively leans into his strength, puts her head on his shoulder, closes her eyes, rests her palm flat on his muscled chest. The rickshaw pulls away, into the squalling cloud of horns and engines and screeching brakes that is Bangalore traffic. She lifts her head up, opens her eyes, and looks at him for a long moment.

  “What’s your real name?” she asks, without really knowing why.

  He kisses her. A lurch of the rickshaw parts them for a moment, long enough to smile at one another. Then he wraps her in his arms, and their next kiss lasts all the way to Bangalore Junction.

  “This isn’t a good time,” Laurent murmurs when the autorickshaw pulls to a halt and they separate.

  “I guess not,” Danielle says, breathless. “We have a train.”

  “They might be waiting for us.”

  “They better not be.”

  Laurent finds this very funny. He is still chuckling about it when they approach their train, the Mas Vasco Express, Indian Railways number 7309, bound for the city of Margao, although the destination station is actually called “Madgaon”, presumably to confuse Western travellers. They check the computer printouts on the side of the car to ensure that Johann and Suzanne van der Weld are indeed scheduled for second-class sleeper births 61 and 62.

  Danielle at first thinks that the tap on her shoulder is Laurent. But when she turns she sees two small, moustached Indian men in brown uniforms, insignia on their shoulders and lathis in their belts. Laurent stands rigidly next to them.

  “Tickets,” the older policeman says. “Passports.”

  Chapter 10

  “Are you the police?” Danielle asks.

  She can barely hear her own voice, but she seems to have been understood. “Railway police,” the younger man says. “Tickets and passports.”

  “Tickets. Of course.” She starts fumbling with her backpack, stalling. “Honey, do you have the tickets, or do I?”

  “I’m not sure,” Laurent says, unstrapping his own backpack, pretending to search within.

  Danielle tries to think. They haven’t been arrested, so they haven’t been identified, a
nd the tickets are in Johann and Suzanne’s names. But they have no passports. That will look suspicious. The more suspicious they look, the less chance they have of ever leaving Bangalore. Stalling won’t work, their train doesn’t leave for another fifteen minutes. But there must be some way out of this.

  Inspiration hits. “You’re very late,” she says loudly, making her tone that of angry complaint. “We asked for you ten minutes ago. What’s wrong with you people? What if we were in danger? How can it take you so long to get here?”

  She glares at them, pulls out their tickets, and waves them in their faces confrontationally. “There you go. Now what are you going to do about it? We demand full compensation. I’m an American. I’m not going to let you people cheat me like this.”

  Their stupefaction is exceeded only by Laurent’s.

  “Excuse me,” the older policeman says warily, “I do not understand.”

  “You don’t understand? It’s not complicated. Don’t you speak English? Do. You. Speak. English?” she asks shrilly, her voice growing louder with every word. People in a twenty-foot radius turn to stare at them.

  “Yes, ma’am, of course I speak English,” the older policeman says, with barely concealed annoyance. “I do not understand the nature of your complaint.”

  “I already told the boy I sent to get you. We paid for a full-price first-class ticket, and they gave us these!” She waves the tickets again. “Second-class! I demand the tickets we paid for and financial compensation for our trouble! Just because we’re white doesn’t mean you can cheat us like this! I want our first-class tickets right now!”

  “Ma’am, I think there has been some misunderstanding –”

  “You’re goddamn right there’s a been a misunderstanding! And it’s your job to fix things up and make us happy! Now are you going to do that or are we going to have to go to your manager?”