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.
“Mohan,” she said, the single word a cup, holding her terror, her loneliness, her guilt, her confusion.
Mohan cradled her face, his own close to hers. His eyes searched hers, reading her, and then he traced her mouth with his index finger. “Jaan,” he whispered, and bowed his head and blotted away the world until she didn’t know where he began and she ended, where any of them did: Meena and Abdul, Mohan and her, India and America, past and future, life and death. She was no longer sure if she was the consoled or the consoler, the healed or the healer. And the last conscious thought she had was that it didn’t matter—the only thing that mattered was that neither one of them would be alone for the night.
The next day came hot and still, with a cloudless blue sky.
Inside the house, Smita felt the irregularity of the weather patterns—she was warmed every time Mohan’s eyes fell on her as they made Ammi and Abru breakfast and felt the chill each time he left the room and was out of her sight. Light and shadow. Heat and cold.
What she had wanted to do was to stay in bed with Mohan all day and refuse to face the intrusions the new day would bring. She wanted him to block away the knowledge that Meena was dead, wanted Mohan’s kisses on her eyes to keep them from seeing the horrors that lay behind their lids, wanted his mouth on her mouth to keep her from screaming.