Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

As the bus continued east, then cut to the south, Janice saw mountain ranges to both the east and west. The land was rolling, green and gray where the boulders were stacked, and there were no fences. It looked unbounded, wild, and primitive. The villages the bus rumbled through were composed of mud-encrusted wood huts, many with thatch intertwined on the roof, and rusted iron which helped support the porch pillars. Children watched in amazement, a curious passivity on their lovely faces, as though the bus belonged to a different, and superior, solar system.

The road turned pink, then red. The villages were fewer and farther in between, smaller, and now no children came to gawk. Army soldiers watched, bored, at key crossroads.

Janice felt certain that the ashram could not have taken this long to reach. She went to the front of the bus and showed the driver the note that Mehrotra had written. The driver became so confused, he stopped the bus in the middle of the highway and engaged the entire crowd of passengers in a heated argument concerning its location. Then he gestured for Janice to sit down, and he started the engine and serenely drove on.

A sudden spasm shook her abdomen, making her gasp. Silently, she cursed whatever it was that made Western digestive systems vulnerable to half the world.

The driver stopped the bus and motioned for Janice to step forward. As she came near the driver’s seat, he pointed to a small dirt road just off the highway.

“ Ashram? ” Janice asked again and again, and showed him her note.

He brushed her note aside and pointed to the dirt road. He opened the door and ushered Janice out into the blazing day. Another man gently handed her the suitcase and with a smile pointed to the dirt road. The bus coughed, ground its gears, and rumbled on, ever uphill, toward the distant southern peaks.

Janice had never felt so lost. She fought back tears. Who the hell knew how far away the ashram really was? Was it just a short walk up the road? Or far across the valley? Or in some no-man’s-land where the soldiers forbade entrance to tourists?

Janice walked down the road raising brown dust over her trousers. From time to time she paused, catching her breath. Though she was thirsty, she would have to wait until she got to the ashram. Not only would they have a well, they would take pains to boil the water for her first. Janice came to the top of the slope. There was no ashram.

There was a gentle valley, covered in loose deciduous forest. She noticed that the road continued down the slope toward the forest. Maybe the ashram was tucked among the thick trees. It made sense, that feeling of being reclusive in the woods.

Janice crossed the top of the slope. The road twisted down into the darkness of the forest. As she walked, she felt certain that the ashram must be around the next curve. Monkeys leaped among the treetops, screeching. The trees became so dense and the clouds so dark, that it was like night. The sweat had long since ruined her blouse and her trousers, and the ubiquitous red clay soiled her sandals like a tanduri food dye. The suitcase pulled heavily at her arm. She looked for the orange robes among the trees, but saw only the thick, tangled roots of trees that seemed perched halfway into the air.

She became frightened that she might pass the ashram without seeing it. It might be disguised in the thickets, the shrine being no more than a conglomeration of vines, branches, and a tiny stone sculpture. Perhaps it had a secret entrance. Janice had heard of religious orders holed up in caves turned into temples.

The forest cover became so thick that, had the rain finally broken, she would not have noticed. She listened to the birds making a raucous din overhead. The whole of India seemed to be screeching at her, warning her not to enter. At least, if the animals of the forest set up a racket, she thought, the ashram would immediately know a stranger had come. Surely at least one member would have the curiosity to take a look. A Western woman in the foothills. Hoover would have to catch wind of that. If Hoover was anywhere around at all.

There was a sound of heavy wooden wheels. Janice stopped. Out of the gloom of the down-winding road came a farmer, his ragged black hair plastered down with dirt and sweat. His clothes were so dirty that there was no color under the caked earth and dung on them. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Janice. As she approached, she took out Mehrotra’s letter and gently showed it to him. He backed away, being illiterate, frightened of the script. He picked up the support poles of his cart and began hurrying up the trail.

“ Ashram? ” Janice shouted after him, feeling like a fool.

He cast one dark glance backward over his shoulder, turned the corner and was gone. Janice listened to the silence. It was an uncanny silence. A second ago the monkeys, birds, and chattering insects had kept up a din of voices, and now it was silent. As soon as she had shown the farmer the note, like a magic talisman, everything had become still. Now when she walked, her own footsteps made the only sound.

Her sandals padded softly on the dark red clay, winding down, down toward the river. There were no clearings in the forest, only the rank, primeval growth. Gradually, as she walked, distraught, the chatter of the forest began again, until the air was filled with a shrill crescendo of screams.

Then she saw a marker: a post painted red at the top. Within the red paint was an image. She leaned closer. It was a crude carving of a tiger. A smaller path led from the post into the depths of the forest. She paused. It was obvious that something lay at the end of the path. But what? Tejo Lingam meant incarnation of fire, or something about fire — not tiger. Still, the path invited her. It wound gently into the darkness, through the creeping vines and the glossy plants that looked like a hothouse gone rebellious. What attracted her was that the path was neatly cut. Somebody tended it. It was the kind of activity that a religious order would do — like the Temple in Manhattan — that neatness, that manicured care which expressed internal harmony.

Janice looked down the path, walked twenty paces, and saw the path emerging from the woods into the sultry fields again. She returned to the tiger post. She glared down at the hideous face, cut so deep that the vermilion paint had filled in the carved lines, making a pure red against the grain of the wood. Janice took a deep breath and entered the narrow path.

No sunlight filtered down through the woods. Only a gray, leaden light that seemed to belong to the Pleistocene Era, it was so rank, so humid. Orchids burst into glorious sprays of white overhead, but they no longer looked beautiful, they looked carnivorous in some strange way. She avoided huge, glistening black beetles under her feet.

There was a second tiger post. The path continued, meandering into thickets. The birds flew low under the canopy of overhanging leaves, diving among the vines. There was a third post, a fourth. Then she smelled smoke far away, coming in low through the cool, dry odor of rotting roots and dead logs. Janice paused to catch her breath.

She knew Elliot Hoover was near. This was his landscape. Primeval. Frightening. Yet strangely beautiful. He would have the courage to live here, in prayers and ritual, afraid of nothing. There was something savage in his faith, some power that Janice never comprehended. Yet it was for that strength, for that charismatic compassion, that she had come so far, against every shouting voice in her conscience. For Bill. It seemed so strange that her destiny had led her to such a hideously lovely forest, so far from home, so alien to everything she knew. She suddenly wondered if Bill knew where she was. And was there something deep inside her that wanted to see Elliot Hoover, not for Bill, but for herself? Janice became frightened. The thoughts had a life of their own, as though the tangled wealth of forest creepers, flaming flowers, and glittering leaves had whispered their own ideas into her brain. Was she just frightening herself with false ideas? Or was a dark truth emerging, now that she was on the threshold of finding him?